Once upon a
time I lived in the outskirts, waking up every day with a variety of birds.
Boundaries were generally superficial, mainly because I could sit on any
fence. Nothing really mattered between
the sun above and earth below. Not even the lives of the ordinary people
visible through their kitchen windows, easily accessible from the boundary walls. The
metamorphosis of the butterfly from the caterpillar had my undivided attention, the yellow chick in a shoe box
hidden under the bed, my best friend, or the solitary white mouse purchased
from savings from my pocket money. Sometimes, if I could afford it, a kite lazily
wavering in the shimmering scorching sun, the scalding roof top burning my
childish feet. Girls were actually boys
wearing skirts. Life was easy. No cell phones. No world wide web. What you saw
was what you got. Open spaces, butterflies, rainbows and the blowing of conch
shells thrice in the evenings.
Things got
moving pretty fast thereafter. A time lapse study of metamorphosis. People came
in all shapes and sizes from all directions and settled down in the locality, at
random. Some with their hands on their hips, frown on their faces some with
fake smiles and mostly all with the 'I know better' look in their eyes. Amidst
all these my space was still empty. People came by once in a while. Some stayed
back , some didn't. Some left with a good bye, some with menacing looks in
their eyes and curse on their lips. Life was balanced. Summers were cooler and
winters bearable. Once in a while there were rainbows , at other times, as I
lay on my back, watching the night sky by
myself, shooting stars forebode bad luck. I was an unperturbed
atheist without boundaries. Slept late,
got up late. A normal living being with normal habits in a world of millions of
other normal creatures. Only , I was not
living in the outskirts anymore. I was in the eye of the storm, so to say;
'Waylaying the meteors with a drawn sabre...'
Then there
was a huge storm for a period of time. An untitled superstorm. Thunder lightning et all. Nights were more or
less sleepless and days depressing. And then
one night the storm stopped suddenly...like all storms do and in the deathly
silence there was this sound. The sound of a sharp knife entering the human body. In the dead of night, it is sometimes impossible
to fully analyze a sound or shape. And
sure enough the next morning, there was no bleeding dead body but just a bag of
garbage on the green grass of my empty space. My empty space. Somebody dumped a bag of garbage on my space! Initially it was just a garbage bag with
unknown contents, till some crows got
busy and started picking on it with determination and gradually the rotting
stinking garbage with the history of some household came out tumbling and lay
scattered like blood from a shotgun injury. I knelt down in front of the garbage, Sufi
style, with outstreched arms and cursed at the sky, the Gods and humanity. The
sky did not respond, Gods did not bother and humanity did not care a damn. Some
dogs came running for a taste of the stuff. Otherwise life went on as if
nothing has happened.
From the
next morning the whole scene changed. Except for crows, birds
no longer chirped, as if offended with the open display of filth. People who
stopped by at other times, for a word or two, went past in silence with a look
of accusation in their eyes. I wanted to tell them that it's not my fault if
someone threw their garbage on my space! But I couldn't. Mainly because they
never asked me and neither stopped to
listen and the very few who did, kept nodding their heads in a 'yes' but their
eyes said 'come on...'. Things slowly went out of hand. In the dead of the next night and all nights thereafter, the sound of
the sharp knife went on and on, stabbing repeatedly, and every morning the pile increased in size
like a malignant tumour. Rotting stuff was all over the space and before long
the whole area was covered in an ocean of garbage, the grass below wilted and
bare earth bared its teeth. People hurried past, blocking their nostrils, the
same people who dumped their stuff the
night before. Slowly the pattern changed, so that garbage was dumped right in
front of my eyes, and nobody waited for night to descend. I was suffocated,
nauseated and prayed for a miracle. But nothing of that sort happened. Only
that I realised I had gradually become transparent or buried under the deep sea
of filth or a killing field.
I knew it
was time to move.
I am once
again waking up every day with a variety of birds. Boundaries have gently faded
or are non existent. Nothing really matters between the sun above and earth
below. Wild flowers are slowly emerging
from between packets of filth and colourful kites are all over the sky.
Faces and places pass by like ordinary stations. My head is home to a thousand
clouds and my heart is echoing with church bells drifting across vast, deserted
green fields. I am once again in the outskirts. I am free.
