Atmakranti

Having shed the veil of monotony I for a change lifted the curtains from my window. The world outside to my relief and awe was a dark blue with a tinge of crimson and scarlet bright paving through which shadowy birds flew towards a land man has only dreamt.

Gazing down from the heavenly skies the streets were impaired with a thousand conflicts where people fought over bargain, petty egoism and sheer sadism with the magnificent sky losing itself to a lost dream. I for a while found myself away from it all and rejoiced in my heart as if those shadowy birds in the prism-like twilight skies.

All was well until I found that mongrel emerging from the shadows alert yet fearless amidst the blind mob. He made his way through the restless legs not even grazing one as rantings and cacophonous shouts filled the air and corrupted all forms of silence.

Carts filled with fruits and green, beneath which lay endless filth were his resting spots where he seemed to lay for decades before embarking on his way yet again. Men overwhelmed by spite spit and swayed their legs to kick him but not a sound did he make walking on all fours like a lion of pride and honour.

A hefty man who seemed to own an insignificant shop in a corner got hold of a stick as long and thick, keen on raining his frustrations on the poor soul who lived off the street through filth, and as rare as the eclipse a kind patron who fed him. The stick fell on his back a thousand times, yet he didn’t squirm or run like a sage keen on expiating all his past sins.

I pondered whether his skin was that of steel numb to physical pain. As I fixed my gaze on the dog for once and for all shunning all other dramas that unfolded about, the dog made his eyes sparkle for the man at the ice-cream stall to see. The man like any other depraved of his kind swayed his leg and screamed blasphemies as if an outcaste in line to become a king of all Jambudvipa.

Yet like a lion indifferent to the countless barking foxes and hyenas he briskly moved away with not a tear or scowl on his face. Reaching the door of a slaughterhouse, he sat upright with depth in his eyes suffused in the smell of the carcass.

A man with beard and blood in his eyes swayed his machete to make him flee like a man with riches turned homeless overnight by invaders; yet not a slight hint of fear for losing his skin, he walked away with a silent roar which those with sixth sense could perceive.

The tide of the chaos characteristic of many a street was ceasing as the moon took his seat on the throne of the darkness. Men vile and wild had begun to close their shops, push away their carts oblivious to the filth they had proliferated about to the delight of that poor mongrel who rolled himself in it from time to time.

Though the earth had become silent, and finally a poet could say that the sky and the earth had become one like the heavens of myths but, that brave life who could endure like no other, and if born a man would have been crowned as the lord of sages sat silent and straight with hunger growling within.

Though I rejoiced as the one who was away from all that filth and chaos, I just couldn’t see myself distinct from that mongrel who had forgot to bark even in the most abysmal of life’s works. Somehow the filth had receded, and I could only see the richness of his relentlessness that failed many a stout heart born with everything on a platter.

The ugly, the poor, the lost and the famished give in to their fate with bitter tears and violence, but to my awe that mongrel being the most ugliest among the ugly, poorest of the poor, lost since birth and eternally famished snuggled in the filth, and walked about with cares in the wind as if a conqueror of conquerors.

Under the painted night-sky I fed and brought home a friend from the streets — a dog who forgot to bark yet has made my life anew with trust and camaraderie.