Tag: Poetry

Posted in Poetry, Tiny stories

Pieces

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

You picked my pieces

from the ruins,

dreaming to put me

together

on the pedestal

of perfection–

A place where I could

never belong.

Angry, you pushed me

off the pedestal

Shattering me into

Countless pieces

of heart.

Every day.

Posted in Nature stories

My Neighbour: The Fearful

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Kara was sitting on the water tank on the roof with the lost look on his face, that I have become accustomed to, ever since his latest batch of eggs hatched. This time I decided to ask, “Hey, what’s with the long face?”

For the few seconds he took, I thought he wouldn’t reply at all. When he did, there was a sigh in his voice, “I’m worried about the youngest one.”

“What happened? Did he fall off the nest?” That would explain his worried face. But he shook his head, “No, he is careful and obedient–just the child any parents would ask for. I just think, he’s not getting the right role model.”

I thought if the number of times I had thought the same about my baby, “Don’t be silly! You and your wife are dedicated parents and a loving couple. How could you not be a good role model?” He hesitated and I could see he was considering whether to just take off without answering. “Yeah! But our voices are…rather different from him. He tries to imitate us but fails…it leaves him frustrated and sad.”

Out of everything I had expected, thus wasn’t in the list. I was confused, “I think I’m mising something here. How could your voice be different from your child’s? Is it because he is still young and his voice unbroken? You can tell him it is just a matter of time…”

A pregnant silence ensued before he answered the question, sounding hesitant and repentant, as if he was sorry for having talked at all. “It isn’t that. His voice is…shrill…Ever heard of a cuckoo? They often break one of the crow’s eggs and leave their own egg behind. There was a cuckoo in our area when our eggs came about…”

That must have been difficult, to suspect having raised the child of their baby’s murderer, “So, you suspect your youngest is the cuckoo’s baby?”

Resigned, he admitted, “We know he is. Knew it from the first day. Both I and wife saw the broken egg below the tree, but what could have we done? Thrown him out of the nest, out of our lives, like his own parents did? Let him die without experiencing love?

We thought we are doing the right thing by taking him in. But now, we are worried if we are the right role models. All the kids laugh at him at his inability for crow-speak, when he coos in the weird cuckoo voice. We try to rationalise it in front of him, but I think he is beginning to understand that he is different and it hurts him.” He was speaking more to himself than me. “We have been arguing over whether to tell him the truth. The wife is afraid the truth will hurt him deep. She’s afraid to lose him.

But I feel he is already hurting too much–the constant failure to become what he clearly isn’t, to conform with family, to accept himself with all the differences–is proving to be too much for him. I want to tell him the truth before we lose him altogether.”

“But you haven’t. Why?”

When he answered, tears bubbled up in his eyes, “What if he decides that he doesn’t want us anymore? I’m afraid to lose him…”

Posted in Random Thoughts

Life with Love

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

You think life is difficult without love…the loneliness, the biting silence, the sense of worthlessness. This excerpt from Three Men in a Boat (1989) by Jerome K. Jerome proves how life can be difficult with love in the air…

Have you ever been in a house where there are a couple courting? It is most trying. You think you will go and sit in the drawing-room, and you march off there. As you open the door, you hear a noise as if somebody had suddenly recollected something, and, when you get in, Emily is over by the window, full of interest in the opposite side of the road, and your friend, John Edward, is at the other end of the room with his whole soul held in thrall by photographs of other people’s relatives.

“Oh!” you say, pausing at the door, “I didn’t know anybody was here.”

“Oh! didn’t you?” says Emily, coldly, in a tone which implies that she does not believe you.

You hang about for a bit, then you say: “It’s very dark. Why don’t you light the gas?”

John Edward says, “Oh!” he hadn’t noticed it; and Emily says that papa does not like the gas lit in the afternoon. You tell them one or two items of news, and give them your views and opinions on the Irish question; but this does not appear to interest them. All they remark on any subject is, “Oh!” “Is it?” “Did he?” “Yes,” and “You don’t say so!” And, after
ten minutes of such style of conversation, you edge up to the door, and slip out, and are surprised to find that the door immediately closes behind you, and shuts itself, without your having touched it.

Half an hour later, you think you will try a pipe in the conservatory. The only chair in the place is occupied by Emily; and John Edward, if the language of clothes can be relied upon, has evidently been sitting on the floor. They do not speak, but they give you a look that says all that can be said in a civilised community; and you back out promptly and shut the door behind you.

You are afraid to poke your nose into any room in the house now; so, after walking up and down the stairs for a while, you go and sit in your own bedroom. This becomes uninteresting, however, after a time, and so you put on your hat and stroll out into the garden. You walk down the path, and as you pass the summer-house you glance in, and there are those two young idiots, huddled up into one corner of it; and they see you, and are evidently under the idea that, for some wicked purpose of your own, you are following them about.

“Why don’t they have a special room for this sort of thing, and make people keep to it?” you mutter; and you rush back to the hall and get your umbrella and go out.