Mayurakshi

He was sitting over there, on the railing of the Maharo Bridge, with his legs dangling over the murky water, some 100 feet beneath. The sun had already set and there was no moon. Slowly the darkness was creeping inside and around him and it was too late to notice. Even he could not figure out that how this darkness had seeped inside. He was relieved to see that it was approaching alone today, without its companion Moon and so he could talk with the darkness freely and incessantly, as much as he wished.

The dark water of Mayurakshi was flowing down, reminding him of her dark black eyes. What a beautiful pair of eyes did she have? Just like eyes of a peacock.

Beautiful, dark and having a depth to kill.

Mayurakshi – Mayur + aakshi.

Having eyes like a peacock’s.

Name of the river was making sense now, reminding him of her even more. He had promised himself that he would forget her. But the result; he could not forget even a single unit of her. He stood up and started walking over the bridge.

The air was chilly and blowing straight to his face. A red dot was glowing at the wireless tower over Hizla hill as warning him of some unforeseen danger. Something crept in his mind in a flash. A small kid rushing down the hill with whole bunch of friends so that they don’t miss that episode of Ramayana.

A chill went through his spine and he stopped. Why this?

Life is a combination of light and darkness.

Black and white.

Zero and one.

There is no other color, no other digit.

Rest all are derived entities of hardly any significance. Out of these he had to choose one and he chose the omnipotent darkness. The zero without which mathematics was nothing but scrap. And he would not deviate from his stand. After all everybody had to die, then why not die in the depth of her eyes. In the gloomy waters of Mayurakshi.

Knowing that the longer he pondered, the more deviated he will get he jumped from the bridge. Now gravity was in full force, pulling him towards the center of earth which again was dark.

Suddenly he caught the glimpse of a mom crying loudly after finding her kid who had been missing for about an hour. A dad taking his 8 yr kid to a treat of rasgullas as a reward for topping the class. A sis bathing her younger brother ruggedly with a promise that it would make him fairer than Rimjhim.

Considering the air drag, it would take about 3 seconds for him to kiss the waters of Mayurakshi and at this point he felt that how long 3 seconds can be.

He closed his eyes but his vision had extended to 360 degree of view. Everywhere there were figures, leaping around hopping, jumping, flying. A kid clapping for a Mithun movie, a group of children playing cop and thief with plastic guns, a semi-dark railway station with a very long platform, a dark canteen with some chairs under a tree with a branch just broken, a beautiful girl with deep eyes having a depth to kill……. and his thoughts were disturbed by the cold splash of water over his body.

He continued to dip deeper into water under the pull of gravity until he started suffocating. It seemed that his lungs would burst open and then he realized that there was nothing similar between the river and her. And even there was something then he wouldn’t have opted for it. He realized that it was a bad decision but there was nothing he could do. All had been lost under the struggle of taking breath. He tried very hard to stay afloat but there was nothing he could do. And a few seconds later water gushed inside his lungs, tearing the whole world apart. He started feeling dizzy and lost all his strength to struggle.

Now he was submissive.

Submissive before the only truth of life.

One who has taken birth must die, and his time had come. He gave up his resistance and became still. His thought started wandering for the last time, but there was no restlessness. Instead a very sweet form of clamness was there, a calmness no one has seen in life.

There was a calm serinity encapsulating him- serinity developed out of the warmth of unconditional, possessive love which only blood can breed. The same feeling when a child wakes up from a bad nighmare to find that he is in the arms of his mother, secure and safe without anything to worry.

Again there were figures around him but this time they were lesser in number. No beautiful eyes now, and no sitting silhouettes in the canteen.Just few family members, he in dad’s lap with Sisters sitting around and mom singing a lullaby, stroking his hairs until he was finally deep asleep.

The Photograph That Moved The World

I was just browsing through the web when I stopped at this picture. Don’t want to tell my feelings upon seeing this terrible site. I know that you must be feeling the same way. In fact every human being will feel the same shame.
I don’t know what happened to the child and nobody else does. But can you imagine the scene. A vulture waiting for a child to die to have a feast. The child crawling on her knees towards a food camp, for survival, which is one km away. And a mock spectator who is not only watching but also capturing this moment.
what must be running in each one's mind?
Vulture is not human and so have no feeling, no emotion nothing. It has just some basic drives and its aim is to satisfy these drives.
The child was a famished one and so she can also be counted as non-human. Her mind was focused at a single goal and it was the food camp. Her hunger was so great that everything including death had ceased to exist. It was just food, food and food.
Nothing else.
She wasn't even aware of a predator stalking, right behind her. An assassin ready to strike with its accomplice ready, to capture the moment, to glorify his work and shame the humanity.
What a contradiction these two words make.
Glorify and Shame.
Now what about the mock spectator?
The accomplice?
He was the one who was sane and sensible. He was the one who could think. He was the one who was human. The one with feelings and emotion.
And what he did? he took this photograph. He couldn’t touch the child because it will transmit disease. He chased the vulture repeatedly, but it returned and So he left the place as he had many more photographs to take.
Its as simple as that.
Though the photographer is long dead, by committing suicide (may his soul rest in peace for he didn’t after he took that snap), I am still discussing it because I was appalled by a sight so horrific.
Why in this age of prosperity, people are still suffering from hunger.
When millions of tones of grains are lying rotten in the godowns and being eaten by rats of the prosperous country, why living human beings are compelled to become the prey of a vulture.
why is work so important and fear of a disease so overpowering that a photographer, whose photograph made the whole world cry, is forced to abandon a child just outside the devouring mouth of a predator.

Though it has been more than a decade for this incident, nothing has changed except for the Proper nouns associated with it. Sudan has been replaced by Somalia and Iraq and there are automatic rifles also along with the hungry vultures, ready to devour anything which comes along.