The Matchboxes

When I was young, I used to pour them all on the floor. Then I would make them all lie flat on ground, make sure no one’s over the other. I remember, once I had made shape like a car, then a snake, a house… using those cool matchsticks.

But today, I am trying to make a palm, palm of someone who made them. I still remember, he would try to sneak a few boxes in his pockets. I wouldn’t know, what he used to do with them. Then once I went to his house, It was an evening that belonged to the storm and the rain.

There was no electricity in his house, a hutment… Dripping rainwater made its way through the roof and into the utensils his mother would keep on the floor to collect it. In the corner a lamp was fighting with the wind that came in as I opened the door, and a couple of flies on the verge of doing the daredevil self-immolation act into its fledgling flame. The only thing that I still remember apart from their faces, with eyes seeking something which I could never give, as I had nothing but money… what I remember, was the place to worship they had in that small hut… I remember, it was a place where they had kept the idol of the god they worship. They had made sure, there was no rainwater coming over their god’s small temple. They had kept it so clean, that no pest could come there.

Before I knew, my palms had touched each other to praise the god in that holy place. I was absolutely amazed at the temple more than the god’s statue inside. The temple was made by that kid, said his mother. I looked at the lad and smiled with utter respect in my mind. He smiled back at me.

I had to leave then, somehow we didn’t talk much. Its not been very long, but I just don’t recall much… Today as I lit the lamp in front of my god’s idol, I wish that matchstick helps bringing light to that kid’s hut. Because, he no longer will… Maybe the god that he placed in that beautiful temple he made with his own hands, helped him save so many lives in the fire at the factory today, finally took the kid away from his mother and closer to him…

I just wish to make his palm’s shape, with those matchsticks on a paper. I do not know, if his mother still prays to the god in the temple that her son made with his own hands, and with the same matchboxes and matchsticks, he used to steal from where he worked… I do not know, if there is a temple holier than the other, or there’s a god different than other, because as I lay those matchsticks on the paper, I only remember the boy’s face as he denied the money I offered… I remember, his smile when I was moved by his temple… I remember his trust in the god, who can not stop the will of the rich who employ a kid’s hand to make them fancy matchboxes to collect and matchsticks to lit their cigarettes…

The Line
I used to teach him things, he would use in his school, before he actually started going to school. I felt, it would prepare him, for what’s he going to study there.

For this chap, even holding a chalk was like holding a thing from a fantasy novel coming to real. He would stare at it for long after holding it in his tiny fingers. Sometimes he would hold it tight, so much that I had tough time rubbing the chalk’s dust off his fingertips. Sometimes, he would just hold it softly, but not so soft that the chalk would fall.

He then would like to get the feel of the chalk’s shape, at least that’s how I could analyze it… He would twist the chalk around itself, turn it upside down. I made sure that I was giving him a chalk of a different color every time when we met. He would be amazed equally regardless the chalk’s color, that I would ask him to hold, he would welcome it with the same wide open eyes, gazing at the chalk.

He had a black rectangular slate. I though of giving him a board, as for a child of his age, I was expecting him to make the walls of the house, his canvass… But he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t draw a thing, unless I was in front of him. Sometimes the slate would be left with no space to draw anymore, sometimes it was just me, who would stop him, but I don’t recall a single day, when he stopped, by himself… until that day.

Until that day, I don’t recall a single picture, or the imagery he would draw on the slate, picture – too orthodox a word to use… Never in the worlds he would draw on that small slate, you would see things that are around you. Nor, you would see things that he was growing up with…

That day, instead of handing him over the slate, I took it in my hands. Held it in my left hand, in my right hand was a chalk, white – conventional white. I drew a straight, vertical line, on the right hand side of the slate. I carefully left a lot of space on the left side of the line I drew. Then I gave him, the slate and the chalk. For the first time, instead of staring at the chalk, he was staring at the slate. Hopefully, he was staring at the line, or maybe he was staring in the empty side of the slate… Then I asked him to draw a line just like the one I had drawn for him. The next moment, he drew it. There was a smile on my face as he was looking at me with his big beautiful eyes. He then handed me over the slate, and the chalk. And then he kept staring at me… waiting for me to ask him to draw, something else, from the little that I could draw on a slate of everything around me or maybe of the things I could remember myself drawing, when I was not drawing what was around me…

The Blade
The blade that my father gave me, I was too young then… It was so sharp, could cut through years of love easily, and in a blink of an eye could erase memories of a lifetime…

He asked to hold it in my hand, the glaze lit my face, so bright that my eyes couldn’t see… But I could hear him tell to me and to the god that resides in the temple, the blade shall now be mine and after me, my son’s.

Today I hold that blade again, rusted now, but still the one; still can guide hordes of mindless hate… I don’t quite know, why I must ride, but it was the call of our old and I must obey…

The blade, that once brought the freedom of our land, freedom we love so much to hold it in our fists… So I ride again, beyond the hills on which I played as a child, and towards the plains where children of our enemies play, and to burn the farms where they spent their quiet lives…

The blade, that was forged to destroy the evil that ruled from our palaces, shall now satisfy the greed that now rests within our hearts…

All Hail…

The Words

“So, where have you been these days?” I asked. “Everywhere”, he said. “Sometimes, I almost reach there, but before I know of it, I am just lost”, he went on. I then thought to myself, does he really know where he has to go? I thought of asking him first, but I just didn’t ask him… But then he continued, I felt like he somehow was answering the questions I had, or was he just adding some more of them to my list…

“You know, sometimes I really don’t care, what I am going to do, when I reach there, but I just want to get there, before… before getting called back…”, he sighed. “I even remember those times, when some guys, who were not true enough, or… or rather were some made-up-for-the-occasion kind of fellows, being pushed, and I bet they reached there.” I felt like asking him, why he doesn’t go back and ask, that why wasn’t he sent. But I just nodded. I was afraid, maybe he would really try that, and it would all just come back to me…

“So all you guys, what do you do, if you reach there?” I asked. “I am not so sure, but there’s a way it is all supposed to work… Usually if a group of guys makes it there, the other group in the line gets ready… it’s like, if you were not on the list for the first time, you may never get a chance to go there. But that possibility is not like totally denied, the kind of guys coming from the other side can make the list to change. Guess what, sometimes the guys coming from there actually tell, who needs to be there on the list, but as I said before, those deserving fellows don’t just get the chance…” He said, and he went on again “Once you reach there!! Wow!! It’s a new place, a new work, especially if no one who bears the same name as yours, and has been there before, wow, that can create a whole new universe of possibilities!!”

Then suddenly, I don’t know, maybe I just didn’t think of the consequences this one time, I just shot it at him as soon as it came to me, “So how does it feel like, to be a word?”
I waited long enough for his answer, but I never heard it nor could I even meet him after that, may be his answer was just called off or may be he reached where he really wanted to be…

The Shadow

Sometimes the things I did, under the cover of dark, the people I met there,
I would think no one could see them
But maybe I was wrong…
So I go back to the dark, to see if they are still there
Don’t know what am I scared of more, is it to see their faces in the dark
or to find no one there…

I used to share my secrets with the ones in dark, often I cried, thought never the light would see my tears
Wasn’t so sure, if those who live in the light would let me walk with them, if they knew of my secrets
I would walk facing the ground…

But now I feel, the light knew about me all this while, more I tried to hide, more it saw clearly. Now I know, darkness walks with me in the light, talks to the light of the tears I hide behind my fake smile, looks at those of the light who I wish to know more than myself and still try to avoid them…

So, I go back and scream at those in the dark. “Are you still chasing me in the light? Are you hiding inside my shadow?...”

The Wall

Those days he would stand most of the time on a ladder, placing bricks on his wall. I still remember when he started, can’t tell really when, but when he started, the wall wasn’t so tall and neither was he, so alone. I am not too sure, if he started building it from where someone left it, or he was the one who laid the first brick, brick-by-brick it has grown so tall now, I doubt if my voice would reach the other side.

I was just another stare-at-it-from-under-your-hat pedestrian, when I used to watch him placing the bricks. I think I knew him well, when the wall was so short and when he was sitting on the ground and placing the bricks. I would talk to him sometimes, looking in his sleepy-wary eyes, one could tell, he was placing the bricks all-the-way through the night…

He never told me, for what he was building the wall, never I would wonder either… I used to think, he built it to protect all that for which he stood by. Then I felt, he built it, so that no one could see what he is doing on the other side. Now I feel, maybe I should have asked him, why…

These days, I don’t even recall how he looked like, there’s not much I can see beyond the bricks to find out. One-by-one when he placed them, maybe I should have talked to him more…

So I decided to just ignore his wall, and forget everything I could remember about him. I decided not to stare at his wall or for that matter anybody’s wall, I would just abandon all the thoughts I had for everyone of them. And, before I knew, I had started building my own wall…