Polarities

1. Distress

A kaccha-house in the midst of a bustling row of slums;

Reeking of rotten fish and the pungent scent of stagnating sewage water;

A boy of age barely more that thirteen cowers in fear against the wall in the corner of his home; he’s a docile animal awaiting his slaughter;

School-books passed on to his little sister, paintings shredded to bits, comic books set ablaze, hope and dreams broken into infinitesimal crumbs.

He chokes out a sigh as he stares out an open window at night as his sister clings to him and weeps silently,

He whispers promises in her ear until she dozes back to sleep and he stays awake till his soul is wrenched out by the night sky;

At dawn, he’ll be shoved off his family and discarded on the threshold of an upscale mansion stridently;

He’ll bleed, suffocate, sob, bruise, feel queasy and beg for release but he’ll learn the hard way soon with a livid, repulsive black-eye.

2. Lethargy

A mansion in the midst of an open, grassy landscape;

A colossal chandelier, carpets of Persia, stairwells of marble with balustrades that seem to lead to the moon, and wall paintings that seem to narrate age-long stories of ancient Greek history;

A boy of age barely more than thirteen gazes out the window of his private library eyeing the trickles of rain with droopy eyes, mouth slightly agape;

His days stretch as long as decades but when the night falls, he is an unfettered bird- if only for a few hours- as he runs clandestine marathons across his territory.

The books on his table lie haphazardly and he has spilled his juice on the carpet accidentally;

The clutter is taken care of very soon as a woman replaces the wasted juice with another and walks away in quick pace with her head hanging low;

He grimaces on the lethargy inculcated in him; it has persisted from an age quite early, Whatever the reason might be, the world to him was forever an undulated stretch of marshland: thriving for some but mostly shallow.

3. Defiance

He watches as a boy roughly of his age- wearing raggedy pieces of clothes, hair a mound of complete hazard, and a missing slipper- collapses on the threshold and is taken for a slave by his caretaker a minute later, He contemplates on the words written in bold in a copy of parable he holds in his hands with dewy eyes:

“All of us, in the Universe of God, are born equal. (Important)”

It was as if on impulse does he crumple and meticulously blades- out of the book- the thin paper,

And stacks it on the pile of his selection of invalid thoughts and preaches of this month next to a matchbox, anticipating nightfall for their demise.

~ to be continued~

~ Riddhi Chakraborty

Notes: Economic disparity implied.