Sunday, January 27, 2008

Crows...





It was desolate….the lone wind from the fields tempted me to look towards the rice paddies where I feasted on the harmonic motion on the crops…I was accompanied by two crows.. who were busy feasting on a dead rat. The lone car proved to be satisfactory to me…at least I could treat myself to thinking about the occupants of the car and where they were headed…maybe I would meet them in the long road of life…intersecting ways…

It was my first day at college.. so I did not want to be late…so I arrived an hour early at the bus stop. Since the heat was unbearable I moved to the shade of a neem tree and sat down. Just then I saw in the turning a girl wearing a pink salwar with brown hair and iridescent eyes!…..iridescent? …Yea….i felt I could see the whole world in her eyes…I never knew such a girl lived in my locality…she must live in the Brahmin colony near the gomti river…no one really went there other than the inhabitants…they had a reclusive, heretic and a dogmatic lifestyle and their lives revolved around the local temple, mathematics, astrology and those oil dripping jalebis. She had a bag in her hand …good she was also going to college…I noticed that she would occasionally look at the paddies on both sides and would close her eyes…she loved the wind caressing her face…

She came to the stop and leaned on the post…she didn’t mind the crows…neither did they….

The sun had gone behind the clouds…so he went to the post as the bus would be here any minute…she didn’t mind his presence…she was feeling the wind slapping on her face as she gently opened and closed her eyes…he was ruminating…what should he do??

he could hear melancholic music from the house near the stop….why???…did that have something to do with his condition now…

He went towards her….the smell of cuticura powder lingered…as if it was an aura…it was to him

“hey…I’m sundar…I have never seen you here?”

“I’m revathy…my father got a transfer to the local bank here…today is my first day at college here…I hope it will go well”

She spoke a lot…but I just loved the way her head swayed as she talked…and the way she looked into the miles and miles of paddies…there was this felling..of butterflies in the stomach… But this was more…it was as if they were tickling your pancreas…a funny one…

“today is my first day at college too….it is good that I found a new friend before going to college..”

“You have a very different voice…not that its different..there’s something more to it…”

“so can we sit together in class??….”

“I don’t know…you know I’m in the block for the visually challenged…I’m blind…so ill need more help..”

it was as though a dart had punctured his heart…those iridescent eyes….he looked into those eyes….he did not see the bus going by…he did not hear her telling him and signaling that she heard a bus…

the crows were now fighting for the remnants of the rat…but she was not disturbed by the sound…

“that sound… crows aren’t they?… they must be fighting over something…I just wish I could see them…such a lovely sound..


she takes interest in the trifles of life….crows….momentarily forgetting that she was blind…. Or was it convenience?

“and so is your sound..”

I was looking at her face… she had a small smile on her face which accentuated her eyes…. I saw a faint glow in them…missing the bus was worth it…I thought..It was then that I noticed that the melancholic song had changed to the latest pokkiri song....

The rat was over….still the crows stayed…

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