Corn fields and thoughts

Under the twilight below the lumps of sadly colored clouds, I sit in my balcony watching the world that is slowly loosing its view from my sight. The leaves of maize that had blushed green upon the touch of spring and ha bore the corn after a consummate love making have withered. So little they live yet with such a pious cause to feed the earth. They rattle against the window. Their corns have been plucked. Their leaves yellow bleached in heat as the last rains of the seasons pour upon the earth. They have no name still they live for cause. They feed when they are young and they burn when they die and dry.
Just few days have slipped into history with nothing much remarkable. Just few days back the children played hide and seek in these corn fields, just few days back the broke corns off its plant and roasted them, celebrated corn-picnic in the mud house at a distance. Just few days back they had the skins of children burn in rashes. They have lost it. Just few days back the owner of the field came to see them, looked at their large corn with pride, and held its leaves in hand with smile. The owners were filled with zeal when their saplings had come out piercing the earth, green and small. They worried when it didn’t rain for mere two days, they became desperate when the heat was little too much. They came to the fields with their children; they showed their children the reward emerging from the earth for their hard work. Just few months have passed and there they lie unattended, they are gasping and very soon they will dry in the sun will reach the kitchens to cook food. This is life, life swinging inside the frame of time loosing care with each move. Hair turns grey and the bones bend, beloved life looses itself. It leaves behind the earth, the sky, the water, the air that was never its possession. A story of an individual comes to an end but the saga of life lives on. Seed grow into saplings, saplings into plants, flowers into fruits but to wither is an undeniable destiny. The plant will die but its seed will be buried in earth again, it will raise its head from hide and it will continue. Suffering is a part of life, moving is its destiny but end is the ultimate truth.
A whiff of air breaks my series of thoughts. It also flatter the worn out leaves again, there are roots trying to ungrip the earth. Their desire to rise does not die yet I see the field owners already uprooting the plants and raising a heap, they will boil the rice, warm the water and the wind ill blow away the ashes.

A wonderful book to read

I do not clearly remember the first story that had my eyes drowned in tears but I guess it was the story of Nicholas and Jacapo, I listened time and again sitting on the lap of my father. The last that had me choked was Mitch Albom’s Five People you meet in heaven just few months back. Then just day before yesterday I sat with lumps in my throat in my bed as the curtains flapped across the wind that was invading my room from the open window. I looked at the night searching for the moon just to see if it has seen lives as portrayed in the book. I knew it has been and will be spectator to so many hardships but the book was really harrowing. The book ‘The kite runner’ by Khaled Hosseini was something I picked by sheer coincidence. The other book I picked next also happened to be his. Both the stories from Afghanistan. I had read and heard about Taliban but just as a news just like any other news. One thing aroused my interest in the country when I saw the statue of Buddha in Bamiyan being destroyed by the Talibans. The issue had raised world wide concern and it had made me desire to know about them. A country I have always felt sorry for, people I have empathized and the cover page of a torn National Geograhic Magazine where a girl with eyes of cat looks into the camera in awe, fear and distress.
The book is a heart rending journey that brought lumps to my throats once again. The book is so simple, yet so penetrating and painful. I wanted the book to lull me sleep yesterday, but it left me awake wandering within my thoughts for a long time. Whenever we read a story we usually bring the characters to life, we form an image of their look and their expression, throughout my struggle to fall asleep the characters refuse to get away from my brain. I felt sorry and I felt betrayed. My heart was completely with one of the character. I have been a kind of escapist lately or should I say overly optimistic I have learnt to live with belief that everything will be fine in the due course and everything that is happening is happening because it has to. When there is something I don’t want to see I just turn away from it, hide my face, and I believe whatever I don’t see is fine and good. Probably this has been my approach with life lately. I might be living in hallucination so when I came across the first bitter experience in the book, I wanted to postpone the whole book. I was not prepared to feel bad not prepared to loose my sleep but I did. The book is so engaging that I can’t postpone it. There is one difference between a story and a novel, in story end comes after an incident but in novel such incidents come and go to be followed by another. A story is a pond while a novel is a river and this book ‘The kite runner’ is a holy one. I have yet to complete a book but I have already slipped it into the list of my best books. I am convinced that the story will unfold more wonderfully but even if it doesn’t whatever I have completed makes it my best book.
Many times good writings go un-noticed because they are so inter-twined but this one has a smooth flow. It is also one of the simplest books I have read, even a school going student in pre-secondary level will understand the book. It has a story of a country ripped by war and imperialist movement. A friendship springs in the backdrop, politics in the country changes the lives of its citizen but more than that its an incident that takes the story forward. It is such a convincing piece a must read.

Pooja

“Is it really her?” I had asked myself. I had watched her in surprise. I know she recognized me and I know this not because she smiled at me but her attempt to act indifferent was forceful. I didn’t smile at her. Pooja the most beautiful girl in my upper primary skill, two years senior than me, someone for whom there used to be regular gang fights. She had picked no one for herself, she was arrogant moreover there were no boys in the entire school whose smartness and look matched her. She dressed well, looked stunning, spoke softly but she was arrogant. She knew the fact that she was the most beautiful girl in the school. She had very few friends may be they were jealous of her or may be she didn’t want to have friends who were not beautiful. Those were not the days where a boy will go in front of a girl and propose to her at least the movies didn’t have such scenes where the hero would propose the heroine that way. It was the time of love-letters. Every next day we used to hear someone giving her a love letter. They said she would tear those letters before those who wrote it. She looked at boys with scorn but she had friends who were boys, the ugliest looking ones, those who seemed to have come to office straight after depositing the rags they have collected wandering around the city in the school. Why she had them, I don’t know. She returned home with them and sat with them in class. It used to be a risky business for boys to have her as a friend because her suitors might catch them anywhere and beat the hell out of them. Her admirers beat other admirers and there used to be frequent fight after school. Mine was not age to evaluate beauty and more than that she was senior, her admirers used to get regular beatings.
When I saw her today she was not what I expected her. Her body had grown out of proportion as if the flesh in her body wanted to burst through her kurta. Her face that would embarrass the full moon in a clear night had patches like the ones women usually get during pregnancy. Her hair which used to be well combed and tied rested on her shoulder like the Medusa’s hair. Her lips drooped; they looked bigger and uglier.
Whenever I used to read stories of fairies, and angels I always thought they must have looked like her. When they told stories about mermaid princess I assumed probably she was one when mermaid princess really existed. One of her classmates had said that she will get the most prosperous man around and he will get luckier to have her around. It didn’t look thus. I would not have been surprised had I seen her in a car and ignored me like I ignore the beggars in the streets of Thamel but no she tried to ignore me because of shame because of guilt. A bus came on, she disappeared inside it and I walked on with pity.
Why is beauty so ephemeral? To expect good, to expect better is no crime. Why would she feel for every guy who fell for her? What had happened to her? I kept pondering. I wondered what had washed away her beauty. How could time be so cruel to that mermaid princess of mine? Was it her arrogance; the ignoble air of self-centered attitude? Does behavior influence one’s physicality?