The War.

The way back home. It lead to the proliferation of negativity. Why do I attract so much of shit into my mind? As if my bike skids over the road/ I run into a truck right into its ass?

May be that's what too much of solitude is doing to me. Should I term it as loneliness? There is, my friend, this thin line of ice between solitude and loneliness which is finely crafted and is supposed to be delicately maintained from breaking. Its breaks, its going to take away the rigidity of your backbone along with it.

I just go around with pursed lips, zipped earlobes and ripped thoughts. May be I am letting the female parent of mine to look over my shoulders right through my scalp, into my some 1400 grams of meaty shit and doom over me, to cast her shadow, to overlap mine. No offence.

The endless cynicism that runs in the blood of deprived 60s' kids is infuriatingly nauseous and promisingly depressing. The way the adulterated kids now look over their literal kids erupts a suspicion that there's something insanely and wholly wrong with the generation altogether. It generates the same dubiousness in both the generations involved in the underlying crime scene, which is never exposed by the infected paparazzi busy shooting the skimpy bikini shoots of Kim Kardashian.

The grown ups curse their littles during their morning meditations, the adolescents rip off their predecessors during the late night alcohol streaks. But the time between the two schedules of a day, slides off unknowingly to both of them, stuck in the timeless loop of constantly trying to prove to the vice that they are actually treading the right path.

The same happened with Hanif, similarly with Anurag and is right now happening adjacent to you, yes! listen through that costly coated wall of yours! there's a battle been waging. Between the everlasting cynicism and the never ending hope.

There you see, my friend! That timeless, epic battle that was ever fought and still being fought, which intimidatingly promises to break the dawn tomorrow as well.

   

A crushed corn.

That's a far away village in Punjab. It is enriched with fertile soil, fertile enough to cultivate almost everything that's sown. It is called Shapoor. A village once filled with people who were content, happy and everlasting.

Its 6.00 am now. That's too late for any villager to cuddle his blanket and sleep. So Rudra Singh woke up; in no haste, but with a sense of anxiety, a little tension at his temples & made his way to attend nature calls.

Its a big day for him. His relentless, untiring efforts which lasted almost for half a year are going to pay off today. He may pass or fail, which is still uncertain. It is the day on which he's supposed to pluck the ripen corn sticks off from his field, load them up, travel a good 250 miles to reach Ghanpur, where the market yard is set up. He need to auction his download, sell it for a profit which is usually sufficient enough to buy peanuts barely,  or at least to reach the break even price. No profit - No loss: which leads into another half year of just survival. To get back what he invested, along with his forgotten patience, unnoticed sweat & an endless hope.

By 7.00 am, Rudra is ready to plunge into the field to start plucking. He had the typical Indian villager's breakfast of starch. All that he can afford now is that. Hopefully, that can change in a day. His idea is to finish  loading the crop into a truck before its noon & start hitting the road so that he can reach there by late night, do a sleepover & hit the market yard early tomorrow, sell off what he's got as early as possible before competition intensifies, & make a come back to Shapoor at the earliest.

He reached to the steal box in an old cup board which served its purpose of a safety locker for generations together, his father's & forefathers'. He counted what all he saved in this year. It ended up at 6,000 rupees; which is exactly he's supposed to pay to the truck's owner to send it with him to unload his load at Ghanpur yard.

He let out a deep sigh, forecasting a day filled with hunger, hard work & hope - laid ahead. He is hoping for a decent pay off.

He could have sold the corn right here in Shapoor but the reason he chose to take the pain in going all the way to Ghanpur is his hope for a little profit he could possibly make. He's a man with a wife & 2 little, lovely kids, with strong wish in their eyes that the time of a year has come when their father would buy them new clothes & some barfi. He's a family man.

By 12.30 pm, he's done uploading stacks of corn into jute bags. There are 100 of them. 60 rupees a bag & he'd crack the break even. If he makes somewhere around 80-90 a bag, he'd be moderately rich; rich enough to buy rice for at least next three consecutive months. His chest expanded with hope, as he looked the road ahead. He dozed off somewhere in between.

The truck came to a sudden halt jolting which shook Rudra from sleep. He rubbed his eyes, opened wide to see its dark. Ghanpur it is.

He got down from the truck, looked around to find some water to wash his face. He eventually did & cleansed his face.

He checked his weary, torn wallet to see if he could find any coins to feed his belly. Unfortunately, he didn't. He sighed as he expected the empty lips of his wallet opening itself to his face to mock him. He drank a jug full of water, leaned himself against the last pillar of the market yard, slept off waiting for the dawn to break.

It being summer, the sun broke into lives of Punjab very early in the morning, & it is gleaming sharply through the closed eye lids of Rudra, which eventually opened after 8 hours. He looked at the skies with clinched eyes, slid a smile across his lips, hoping for the best.

In an hour, he's in the yard with his 100 bags placed in front of him, shouting aloud their quality & price. His voice echoed energy, he looked consummated with hope. A couple of hours passed by & not anybody seems interested in his corn. He started to grow nervous, impatient and ironic. He could see that he & his efforts aren't going any where.

After 3 hours, a man came by, with a bag tucked safely under his arm. He was chewing beetle leaves & his mouth is thick red. As red as Rudra's face. He is spitting out the beetle extract once every minute. He seemd so business minded, cunning, smart enough to rob off framers like Rudra for unbelievable & deceivingly cheap prices. Farmers are stabbed in India.

He approached Rudra with a splenetic smile, which is sure enough to say that Rudra becomes his first scapegoat to open his till today. Rudra couldn't care less. He asked what Rudra is quoting & a skeptical Rudra yelled out '90 rupees a bag'. He laughed as if he's gone mad which is driving Rudra mad now.

'30 a bad or nothing. You see there's no other corn seller in the yard other than you. Corn sucked this season. You did a mistake by choosing it & its too late to rectify. Its a costly mistake, you see', he said in one go.

There is a terrible silence & an air of tension between the two. That man is checking his mobile phone with his left hand, trying to pluck something out of his infected mouth with a toothpick with his right one. For a moment, his two kids, their wish filled faces, his wife's involuntary stalk when he reaches home & the silent question her eyes shoot - all such things flashed across his brains. He didn't say a thing. That man took Rudra's long silence for approval. He smiled & yelled out for his boys to carry the load to their truck. He placed 3,000 rupees in Rudra's hand & walked away.

Rudra removed the folded kerchief which has been tied around his head all this while ago. He wiped his forehead & the kerchief drenched itself in the freshly wiped off sweat.

He sat down, leaned against the same pillar to which he did the last night. Numb, motionless, dumbstruck. Darkness slowly scampered. Lights went off in the yard. Ghanpur fell silent. As deafeningly silent as a graveyard.

The next day, his wife & his kids walked back out of a graveyard. Silent & hopeless. Rudra's cremation was done by the 3,000 rupees. 

The joy within.

It is a normal day of a typical pre-summer month. Krushik is toiling hard enough to cope up with the sweat induced out of his seat & trying to come up with an article to meet today's deadline.

He then sniffed the comforting odour of first rain of the year. Odour of the mud which is ready to take its first bath. Within minutes, climate changed as if it never knew what & how a subcontinental summer is like. He turned around in his chair to stare through the window. He noticed the invariable habitat getting ready to embrace the first drops of the season. For some strange reason, his eyes brimmed a hope that he's about to witness something magical. He smiled at his own exhilaration about little niceties.

In no time, it started to drizzle which tool nearly 20 minutes to let some one call it a 'heavy pouring'. Krushik's heart is overwhelming & there's a huge gush of happiness in his heart which is being restricted by a barrier called 'work place's composure'. His heart is somersaulting with joy. For no reason to you and me, for some reason to him.

It may look amusing to some of us by the way Krushik is letting himself getting connected to the changes in the nature. We generally rule them off by quoting normalcy. However, he seems to be in no mood of being bothered that we are not bothered by his reason of being joyful. But we're actually frowning our foreheads a little.

He discovered the hidden child in him. The unbridled joy that follows a conscious process of unlearning has wrapped him in its arms now.

He must have arrived at a conclusion that life is a comic play with subtle niceties, here & there, now & then, visiting us. Only to unveil the truer us & immerse ourselves in the purest joy of living such moments is all we can actually do.