Making of a Life

I feelin’ the touch of a child’s lissome fingers against me. I crumble like a candy-wrapper into the pocket of this seven year old.

Here me have it. The Passage of ma Life.
Me Red & White with Black words upon it.
Me a Rs. 1000/- note. Yeah, that’s what’s me. Years of sweat upon me. Ma Life is all ruin & no more.
Somanypeople kept me.
Somanypeople gave me away.

Life paces outta my fingers I lose time & reason to live. To be free. To be On ma own.

I remember this damn poetic freak who scribbl’d this upon me.

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.”

I started ma life in a place that those brainless bighead’d conceit’d ‘nifty’ humans callin’ a ‘mint’. Yeah, that’s where me born. Fresh as a flake of Fresh snow. I smelt the usual as all other notes does – of Printers’ Ink.

I are salary for an NGO.
I are loan for a farmer.
I are fish for a housewife.
Et cetera.

I must accept the sweat-blotchy fact that I’ve had my helping of adrenalin rush. Once, I are stolen. A long time back.
I are taken ‘cause I special or something. I don’t knowin’ for what.

They made me with stuff dreams made of.
That what I think – at least a leper’s sorta dreams.
May be.

Coming back: Some nasty someone stole me. I were inside that NGO’s purse (remember the salary). Believe me, I do no good for my abductors.

Blank.

For some period in time the memory is just colors.
Blank. Like color’d darkness, yeah, that was whirlin’ in ma head. Giddiness suffocation.

The darkness in suitacase. Nuts.
I went nuts.
For real.

But I were saved. I could have drown’d myself, gotten meself smudg’d & died into blank oblivion. Yeah, I felt the end of the rainbow’d come. Were there a Pot of Gold?
I don’t know. I din’t wish for it either. Not yet.

It were then that this seven year old brat found me.
In a river. That’s what he said his father.

It night outta the windows. He looks out of the windows.
I aren’t philosophical. But, … somethin’s don’t go away. Like words of a special kind.

Me being look’d at. He look at me. There’s a Glint in his eye. The Glint. The Touch.

He folds me into folds. Deep folds.

Me a paper plane now. Me flyin’. Yee haa! flyin’ like a feather.
Me flyin’ with the wind in my wings.

I breathe this to the winds:

“… Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child! …”

*

For Nammi,
My buddy … for the amazing friendship all through.
Being with you, was a fun-ride. Always.
Wanted to write something for you & here it is.

Poetry Courtesy: The Stolen Child, William Butler Yeats