On a Monday morning in August Amos is riding a bicycle towards South Campus. Dragging his extra fat with the help of a burrowed bicycle, he is riding at around 10:30 am from North Campus to South Campus in University of Hyderabad. Despite his heavy weight, he sweeps on the road quickly with an air of superiority over his colleagues. This is because he comes from the same place where one of the five professors in his dept. (Physics) comes and shares a common language unlike all his fellow students who communicate only in English with the professors. Hence, he pays no attention whatsoever on the road where he is riding nor the poor chameleon which will get run over by his burrowed bicycle later crushing its head.

Kongbrai is riding beside Amos. If you put both of them together in one frame like this…

Kongbrai looks extremely thin and lanky besides the overgrown flappy Amos. Kongbrai, who otherwise looks perfect, is made to appear scrawny by Amos’s unsaturated fat which will eventually take his life away in the future before he turns 40. His boring Christian life is bound to fade with a few heart attacks. No one dares to make a conversation with him about his perennially bulging belly. It is the way, he should not be judged on his physical look.

Unlike Amos, Kongbrai could concentrate on the road because the only thing he does with the air around him is to exhale and inhale while cycling. There are only rocks on both sides of the road and it is getting hot, even more so because of the picture of the dry landscape except for some tufts and concrete buildings for every quarter of a kilometer. The palm trees are of no help in cooling down the heat. However, Kongbrai retains his coolness despite the heat and rides beside Amos.

There it is, a chameleon, camouflaged in the center of the road, one meter in front of the front tyre of Amos’s cycle. Its greyish pale green skin blends in the road.

Kongbrai shouts at Amos, nervous and worried, Amos turns the handle, the front tyre screeches avoiding the chameleon by a few inches.

The back tyre runs over its head. Plop! Blood streaking out of its head, spurting like a garden spray for a second. It lays motionless on the road while Amos increases his speed forgetting about his disturbed BMI. He zooms out from the scene without even looking back once.

Kongbrai, devastated, stops his cycle in a jerk and stares at the motionless chameleon. He has a dream of keeping chameleon as a pet one day. He keeps telling his girlfriend that someday, he shall get one and feed it and nurse it. This reminds his girlfriend of Ceasar in ‘The Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ a few minutes ago. ‘You and your obsession in reptiles’, she’d tell him occasionally. He even proved that it is hereditary, that he can’t help it, that he loves them by asking his brother a question in front of his girlfriend who conveniently replied, ‘Yes, snakes should not be killed just like that. They are the ones who are afraid actually. Not humans. It’s wrong to kill them every time we see one.’

Now, this man, spilling out of his bubble dream rushes towards the half-dead chameleon and realizes that it is still breathing. He looks around for sticks and twigs which he finds after a minute or so, with which he takes up the chameleon, carries it to a side with assiduity and place it smoothly. This chameleon, who is endowed with the ability to change its skin color to defend itself from its prey ends up getting a lethal blow owing to its ability. Its own power transforming into a beacon of its death.

I am half of you,
you are half of me.
we are single, only twice as big.

Your sweat is mine,
mine is for you.

My father knows
not,
my mother knows
not,
yet the color remains blue
and continues to be blue
till our life is brimming in blue.

Remnants

It is true I seek you through my poems-- the remnants of the chimera.

You are the phosphorescence in the black night-- ice cold in summer.

Explanation- I have to give for each and every step 

to this world that never explained itself to me.

Pain- I take because its inevitable.

It comes together with the magic.

Lesser and lesser I get,

Until the veins stop

regulating and

The lifeline 

shrinks

into 

a 

[dot]

One Night's story

The heat of the summer is starting to decrease. Perhaps, because of the rains in the last few days. But the temperature is still above 40°C.

Today is Wednesday, 16^th of April 2014. The End-Semester Exam starts from 21^st, 5 days later.

Last night, I slept late. It was around 2:00. I think. After watching two movies, we went to bed. We exchanged our pillows. He got the softer one, I prefer the harder one. I tried to sleep but I couldn't. There were mosquitoes near my left ear buzzing now and then. It reminded me of the sound that comes out when you scratch on the blackboard with your nails. I grinded my teeth, got up, switched on the light and remained motionless. There it was, an unusually tiny mosquito on the wall just beside the bed. I turned the palm of my hand towards the wall and moved closer slowly. Then I slapped the wall. I felt the heat burning up on my palm.

I looked at the wall, then at my palm. Nothing. The mosquito got away. He heard the sound and woke up. I made him go back to sleep assuring him that I was just trying to kill a mosquito. I sat up for some time, looking around for that pest. But, in vain. I thought I better go to sleep. Just then, as I was about to get up to switch off the light, I saw…. Another mosquito, a much bigger one than the last, sitting on his cheek, its belly filled with blood. I knew this one couldn't get away, its body too heavy to fly or even move an inch.

I refrained myself from blinking and moved closer and closed and……tapped on his cheek. The blood burst out from its belly and smudged my fingers. Scarlet red.

Startled, he opened his eyes and looked at me in perplexity. I showed him my bloody fingers and asked him to wash his face. He got up, washed his face, came back, applied some mosquito repellent ointment and went back to sleep.

Why didn't I think of it before? I applied it on my hands and feet just like he did and lay down beside him, exhausted.

A lost Visitor

I asked my friend to drop me at the gate. She agreed and got her bike. All of a sudden, my dad called me from inside the house. I went inside the house to find out what he was telling. Just as I was about to cross the threshold, I saw my grandmother standing behind my dad. I just kept staring at her, standing there like a stature. I couldn’t properly hear what he was saying. She was twice as tall as my dad. I could see the upper half of her body. She wore her faded yellow Enafi that she used to wear whenever she went to Govindaji temple. She seemed to be wearing a garland on her neck.

There she stood, staring and smiling at me-My thin old grandmother, glowing like an angel.

I shouted, ‘Ba, Nang maningda akhoibok leire.’

He was beaming with joy when he turned back and saw her.

I ran towards her to hug her but she was already lying on her bed. My dad sat on the floor just beside the bed and held her left hand. I bent down, kept my knees on the floor and touched her fingers. It felt real. I told him, ‘Ba, Si asengkisu akhoibokne. Mai makhutse eingonda faowe.’

All this time, she kept smiling and looking at us.

Amo came in from nowhere. He also sat down and said, ‘Ba, si oithoktabane, moi nungdangda hougatpa ngamdabane!’

My dad answered calmly, ‘I know, son.’

I wondered if she can really come back. I suspected if what they burned down was not really her but only logs of wood.’

*                       *                   *                    *

My eyes are wet. I rubbed them off and stare on the ceiling. The fan continues to whirl. The room is silent except for the noisy fan.

My grandmother died last year. Her body had been burnt down to ashes on the bank of Imphal River. She was 96.

She was sick when I returned home after completing BA. We nursed her day and night. We took her twice to RIMS Hospital. Curse the doctors there! She died the second time we took her there.

She held my hands tightly, wriggling on the bed. She tried to take off the tubes on her nose a couple of times. That time, I had to hold her hands tight. I kept telling her not to take it off, that nothing is gonna happen, that she’s gonna get well and go back home. She couldn’t speak. Her feeble voice broke into silence. She only tried to look at me under her wrinkled heavy eyelids.

I felt her hands turning cold, then her body turned blue. Finally, she stopped wriggling and I could sense her heart beat slowing down. It stopped altogether, she lay on the hospital bed motionless, her eyes still looking at me.

Who is this person sleeping beside me? I know him. I stopped crying. I try to sleep again.

You are the writer, You name it.

I see you in my yellow dream
planting a bomb in my brain,
leaving a trail of smoke rings,
bereft of a burning cigarette.

I feel you by my side,
my heart just melted down.
The fan is slowing down.

My heart sank when I behold

My heart sank when I behold
The army in the streets:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am 22,
So be it not when I shall grow old.

Let me live!

The child is given a gun:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural miseries.





Here is a link to the original poem by W. Wordsworth.