The Battle Between Truth and Fiction

Fiction's stance..

The blob of luminescence was dancing brilliantly, hanging on to the roof with wires sans their rubbery drapes. 'Fluctuation' they called it. On. Off. On. Off. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Kalpana sat their electrified by the fluctuating wonder. It had been like that for a while. Her mother complained about it. Kalpana was rather partial towards it, it gave the feeling of a Disco you see in those movies they showed at Ghatra's sole village theatre. She fed on the movies. Big dreams, Big love, Big hopes and Big people(always with the capital 'b'). Mother dearest didn't fancy them either. She was the one who always complained. Depressed soul that she was. Not a pinch of imagination. Hence not a teaspoon of contentment. If habits were inherited traits, you'd say Kalpana was adopted. Like her mother's somatic chromosomes had got lost somewhere in Prophase-I. Neither did she resemble her father. Forever consumed by those brown bottles of liquid heaven. And 'heaven' is a relative word.

And then kaboom. That deep shade of black. Blackout for the nest five hours. Inactivity in action. Just like the infantile paralysis or 'poliomyelitis' she suffered from because of which she walked funny; lifting her left leg placing it at an angle no lesser than 30 degree outwards and then dragging her right foot. It was kind of a game now. Kalpana didn't mind this lilttle virus in her body. She enjoyed games. The virus seemed to sting her mother more than her. She couldn't much lend a hand to her in the field. The mere two acre land piece that could hardy sustain three stomachs. Education was too big an ambition for it. Kalpana had been forced to withdraw her name from the village school in the summer of third standard when severe drought had hit. She took this bane quite sweetly. Sitting for six hours and reciting about lone gone heroes? She rather stayed an illiterate. She liked Edison though. A man who epitomised a dreamer, a man whose seed of idea lay planted across every corner of the world and glowed like a shining star. It is an entirely different argument that it hardly did in Ghatra. Kalpana dreamed and put her ideas into not action but pictures. Her favourite piece of toy thus being a slate, an instrument towering power. Draw whatever you wish to and just quickly wipe it with a a wet cloth in case ma was around.

One should feel for her mother too. A poor soul who struggled and juggled between the household and her daughter. Another mission was just added to her kitty, finding a groom for Kalpana. This seemed like an undoable task considering the piggy bank they had as dowry and the added asset of diseased leg. The torch, no bulb of education rather faced a voltage shortage in this little village. Here babas prevailed more than doctors and logic and community sympathy lay locked in a box.

Kalpana didn't belong to Ghatra. Her calling came from the open skies. Where her ideas would lift her away, far way from this cruel terrestrial being. It was just a matter of time before she went there, she was sure.

Truth's stance..

Handicapped young girl. Drunkard father. Poverty stricken. Conservative society. No hope.

- Sleeping Devika

Love- Succumb and Escape

The window was opened,

the beyond revealed.

It was near fluorescent,

I made the jump, no repent.

The light, bright as bright could be.

Accustomed to dark it blinded me.

The sound, goring as goring could be.

Chained me down yet gave me glee.

I drank the sound, intoxicating.

Feasted on the light, appetizing.

Still more strapped,

further handicapped.

And the world knows of Adam's sin,

and I too being a human, am his kin.

Greedily poured the fluid of blitheness

into my goblet of hollowness.

Trespasser became the word 'should',

cause plain experience did me no good.

I wished to hold it, embrace it

it too was none to rest under a lid.

I stood, deep down a cupidity unredeemed.

To get what asked is a dream undreamed.

Holy water from the now blind organ,

wets my way back to square one.

A fragmented glass is never the same.

Yet we'll play the same game.

I may be back to the same dreary wall.

But there isn't much time till the next fall.

-Sleeping Devika

Trip to the Attic

[I wrote this after a great anarchy of emotions when in this crappy position with my silly but chummy friend. But we did make the trip to the attic!]

Once it was a dictator supreme,

who conquered with charm

and held a massive regime,

with the sweet pump as the Capitol.

Once it was the President,

the legislature, executive and judiciary.

But how that mahogany resident,

dwells in the filthiest slum.

It lies there in deep slumber,

facilitated by mighty inertia.

No more a member

of the noble chattels' society.

Adorned by the the spider's carpet

vetoed to be graced by the broom,

home to a cockroach and a maggot

every nook covered with grit.

But it is plain old harmless dust,

easily cleansed with a wet rag.

Vacuumed back into an object of lust,

All basic is a trip to the attic.

-Sleeping Devika

That Dash of Sugar

The smell of freshly brewed coffee woke up Ajit Garg from the macabre experiences of the night. He saw the petite figure of his wife, Avantika approaching him with a cup of coffee accompanied with a smiling face. An interchange of monotonous "Good Morning"s was followed by Avantika dictating him a list of utmost essential items to be bought from the pas hi mein to hai grocery shop while he sipped his cup of coffee. "Salt, biscuits, tea bags, sugar,flour, some namkeen and don't forget to ...." she chanted on but he heard nothing beyond the sugar part. His mind was anchored to that part like a human who had suddenly found his reason of resolved to never even dither from it. "Sugar?", he thought "Why do you even need sugar when you haven't the heart to use it?" looking dubiously at his coffee.

Milk right. Coffee powder right. Temperature right. Sugar wrong.

It had been like that for the seven years they had been tied in the 'sacred' threads of matrimony. All his polite attempts to tell her the far-reaching consequences of this everyday blunder(after all the way to a man's heart goes through his stomach) had gone in vain. And every morning he thought of just laying it on the the table, allowing her to deal with it the harder way but dare he commit such a crime against the spirit of husbandhood. But why?Why couldn't she make that divine coffee with the perfect sugar like his mother made. No, don't him wrong. He wasn't a mother patronizing poor fella, just a 36-year old computer executive who liked his coffee a little sweeter. Is that a criminal desire?

On a more solemn note, that extra sweet coffee for him stood like a symbol of warmth and induced a peaceful feeling of being understood. It is bitter that his 'better half' hadn't ever been able to provide that extra dash of sugar.

"Are you even listening?" asked a scowling Avantika. "Sorry darling", apologized Ajit "what did you say after sugar?"

- Sleeping Devika

The Pencil

You are merely a piece of wood

with a rock fitted inside,

dressed in a yellow hood

a tool to draw and divide.

I'd err, you understood,

consent me to brush you aside,

Till tiny and petite you stood.

But the world is not the leeward side

Where to forgive is not divine.