‘Reach out for the stars’-
That was all he read,
Before his vision turned fuzzy,
And he gave way to the damping wet…
The tears felt cold in his shriveled face;
And everything came back to him,
The wintery fate he had been forced to embrace;
Soon enough, the hardness of the earth stung him,
And he wondered, ‘How long can a broken leg keep running?’
The battering winds laughed, mocking him-
‘Those such as you, how dare they dream?’
The thought was stifling, and fear pinned him,
What was the price life demanded for his dream?
He tripped and fell, and the concrete whipped him,
His head felt wet and unusually warm;
His hands followed the dust trodden road, finally reaching his head,
And there he saw, his sweat had somehow turned red…

The night sky sparkled with stars, and yet some,
He thought, were brighter than others.
‘How would the undermined stars have felt,
If they knew how to feel?’
And how he wished then, that he didn’t know how to feel too…
Staggering to his feet, he looked down,
Redness dominated the earth, and he got-
The slightest hope, the faintest smile groomed his face
He was finally winning the war he had always fought…
Earth had surrendered before his blood,
‘If that was the price, then,’ he thought,
‘You better be prepared for a devastating flood…’

And the coldness of the night saw,
An unsuitable warmth in a spirit that was almost dead.
Where were his broken hopes now?
Where were the pieces of his shattered fate?
Where were the fears that crucified him every night?
Where were the tears that took away all of his might?
Have all of them fled?

At a distance,
A man looked through the transparency of the thin sheet-
Glass- That divided his world from the rest.
He withdrew his eyes, soon enough-
Not to notice the shriveled, warm eyes focused on his world.
To the man, the day was over,
But to the eyes- the night had just begun….

When the man returned, a sweet note greeted him,
A note he well identified,
Horror won over him and he turned in desperation,
Only to find that he had lost his possession;
Rage filled his soul and he felt a sense of hatred,
Greater than anything he had ever felt,
He loathed the culprit, the one he knew very well-
And he condemned himself for the very same;
Infuriated, he followed the sound,
And he promised to himself,
This time he would gift the culprit an incurable wound…

The notes that decorated the air,
Little cared about what could come there,
The teardrops that wetted the skin of him,
Were not of fear, anger or desperation,
But for the joy of reclaiming his dream,
The wood felt unusually comforting in his scrawny hand,
Which were used to the harshness of the unforgiving sand;
The dust in his hair clung tightly,
For the swaying of the curls seemed too much for them,
The gown of the night seemed to know what was coming,
And it did not abandon him, although it knew it was useless consoling…

The man stood in front of him, and in his eyes,
For the tiniest moment the hatred seemed absent,
Before he redeemed it with a philosophy,
The past is past and one’s duty was the embrace the present,
And he didn’t seem to care whether the eight year old body,
Now lost in a sense of bliss,
Was a creation of his…

A few hours later,
The same tiny, bony face-
Sat on the pavements of the urban settlements,
Lost in a smile that none of the travellers could interpret,
Although the man had kept his promise-
And the wound wearied him down,
A sense of victorious joy swept him every second;
He imagined the colours of the poster that was in front of him
‘Reach out for the stars,’ he could perfectly see,
Written in a bright golden cloth, across the tamarind tree;
The boiling water had only taken away his sight,
But what is darkness for some,
For others isn’t it light?