FROM DREAMS TO 'REALITY'

From within the desolate stretches of the city,

From where the foul stenches rose,

A jewel of a kind arose.

They called him a poor man’s son—

But was his father alive?

Purposeful indifference had turned him into steel—

A victim of a heartless life.

He grew up in the dingy lanes vis-a –vis the palace,

Where people did not know how ‘pizza’ was pronounced;

A dream to live, a dream to realize—

He had in himself.

But he had never seen roses in all his life,

Only thorns and venom.

Who shall call him a decent man’s son?

He didn’t know what churches were for,

To whom mosques belonged;

A small portrait of a god he had—

The sole receiver of his prayers.

Orphan—shall we call him?

His roots unknown, his stories untold—

He thrived with some others,

Who knew the pain unlike them.

Deprived of a mother after birth,

Lost in the crowds of the city,

He had to make something for himself.

With every morning sun that

Dawned upon the sole ‘window-pane’,

His sights ranged beyond the city limits—

How could he dare to dream?

Where the city was redolent of dirt,

Where the citizens never thought of stepping their feet,

Amid that same dirt blossomed a rose.

Rough, cracked fingers—

Strained by the test of steel

And hardened by indifference;

His palms soiled and feet lacking care—

He hadn’t seen the parvenus

Queuing up at Lindsay Street for a pair of shoes—

Smile wryly: maybe bare feet were enough for him.

Years passed by but life never improved

In those dingy lanes;

Rotten and foul—place or people?

I don’t know: maybe only ‘they’ can say.

When dusk had given way to dawn,

He perhaps dreamt of entering the palace—

Beyond his limits, where desire lead to death—

From dawn until dusk he saw people entering and leaving;

He too wanted to make his position upright.

For the first time he entered the palace the next day;

Awed by the ‘beauty’ and amazed by ‘life’, he again dreamt.

With the help of adulation, he entered the place;

With the company of despondence, he left—defenestrated.

Who desired a ragamuffin amidst the ‘suave’?

It rained heavily that day,

As he watched the drops pelting down hard on the tin roofs—

And the wasted pond’s resonance.

He watched the rain seeping through the roof,

Wetting his belongings—

There was waste water everywhere.

But again he dreamt—

He dreamt of immaculate swans swimming

In heights of ecstasy;

He dreamt of clear water

Sparkling under the sun’s rays

And babbling streams corroding the cliffs.

If ‘God’ had been present, perhaps

We could account his dream to ‘Him’—

Altogether depriving him of thought.

But since the wind here blows the other way,

The dusty scenes seem yet more squalid,

It was not the situation.

Whether it rained brine I do not know.

Every morning he used to watch the

‘Better-Dressed’, ‘Better-Mannered’ boys go to school in their cars—

But perhaps his dreams soared even higher.

Under the scorching heat everyday—

A pencil, scale and an eraser—

He traipsed to the local school.

He hadn’t seen the glamorous heights

Of the city’s top schools, where they forget their origin.

Some years went by in the same dreary routine,

As life hardly changed,

But something happened the other day:

His only uncle passed away of cancer, devoid of care—

It rained brine that day, I know;

The place was flooded again.

Now he had no one who would rear him up—

Orphaned and doomed now.

(‘Now’? I don’t know)

His ‘education’ ended there—

He sought after tea stands and stalls—

Hankering after a living,

He finally learnt to earn twenty a day.

A middle-aged boy now—his dreams continued.

He still dreamt—

He dreamt of working in the hotel vis-à-vis the stand,

Imagined how people might look there.

Berated by the stall-owner,

Smacked by some—

He still dreamt—

Of a sumptuous lunch at the hotel,

Of great dresses he save people wear.

He used to return ‘home’ late in the night—

The pictures of his late parents

And his idol—everything inspired him.

He went to the hotel next day—

Everyone laughed and shooed him away—

He resisted and hurled a stone at the manager:

A whack came within a split second—

And departure and endless sobbing.

He came back to his hut

Only to see its demolition—

‘Their’ Government wanted more skyscrapers to

Beautify the city.

Homeless, parentless, famished—

Tears were no more visible.

His dreams came to a stand-still—

His mind never soared high again.

His ‘education’ was over:

He learnt ‘what life is’.

He went to the tea stall to collect fruitless (is it?)

Reminiscences of his work—

When an immediate ejaculation of rash abusive followed,

Questioning his absence.

He stood silent—

And was dispensed with.

It’s true that he now had no one (or nothing?) to worship.

Night had fallen in

And the poetic stars had decked the night sky;

A boy from the roof of South City looked up at them,

And asked his father, “Dad, aren’t they beautiful!”

Sadly, the boy never looked down.

But the stars seemed as the innumerable miseries of his life,

Beauty and Appreciation—had he ever heard of them?

Why, he wasn’t taught those qualities ever.

He spent the entire night on a footpath;

When he woke the next morning,

His dreams were fulfilled—

He was dancing in the green fields

With his mother who was singing

A song from his childhood—

And he lived happily ever after.

The day’s newspaper reported

An earthquake of considerable magnitude during the night—

Rattled cars, shaken trucks—

Many were buried under building rubble.

The quake had shaken everything it seemed—

But I have something to ask:

Did it shake us?