The Freedom calld Life

The rain was beating down the window for the past 36 hours…the roads of the area were already water-logged…”Bhutto” – the pariah dog was having a bath probably after a few months…the few people who had gathered underneath the peepal tree had already lit their small hookahs with the local variety of “ganja” and “hashish”… in the other corner of the dim-lit park were a group of four were cheering to the sound of the local variety of liquor bought at 5/- a liter…the boys at the club were not to be heard today…only the sound of the wooden coins striking against each other were heard…the kids at the Aggarwal’s were silent…their teacher had come… a tall lanky fellow… the local gossip was that the chap had an illicit relationship with the younger daughter-in-law of the house… truth be said she was a nice woman… but also not the kind you generally familiarize yourself with an illicit relationship… The old Granny of the Sircar’s died today evening…her death was more like a welcome relief in the family already ravaged by her ear splitting and vociferous screams every morning… But the other Granny’s in the area were sure to miss their favorite gossip maker…

Atin was sitting on the window-sill… his leg stretched over the small table… a white canvas was waiting by his right while the rain and the romanticism veiled through the cigarette smoke waited on his left… he has been smoking all day… there was no one to nag him till he stopped… he lived here alone…with all his paintings and a cloth covered tall mirror… in a one room apartment with a small kitchen and a even smaller wash-room… the room was covered with green moisture from the ceiling… a patent of all the 800/- rent rooms in Kolkata… and the mixture of paint, damp moisture, and cigarette smoke gave the room the aura of a true studio…

The paintings of Atin was strange… they all had a kind of similarity in them… as if the same blood was running in the veins of all the portraits…and it seemed that you could have touched them if not for the smokescreen that veiled all his portraits…
But Atin was yet to draw his masterpiece… he was waiting for it… like a Little girl waiting for her daddy to come home with her new baby doll…

Today Atin was happy…quite strange though… his parents passed away a year ago… his Nandan evenings a few months ago… and his days at the gallery a month ago… and sometimes when Atin looked at his frail but long hands he felt surprised that life has not left him yet… he dipped a 10no. brush in small puddle of red paint and let it flow from the top of the canvas…the blob made its way down the canvas and through it…
And then a few brush-strokes here and there… he could see the form it was taking…the same familiar form all his paintings take…

He finished it in a matter of minutes … A strong gust of wind moved the cloth from the mirror… Atin groaned…he had to get up again to put it straight…Atin did not like moving from his cozy chair through the evening unless absolutely needed…and this needed his immediate attention…’cause he simply did not like staring down at his reflection as it made him feel that the person staring back at him was the same person but at the same time a stranger…

He got up and went in front of the mirror…and clutching the cloth he…

He could not help but stare at his reflection…the portraits around the room were the same and looked just like his reflection… A skull with a fabric of skin pulled over it… Atin stretched out his hands and reached for the reflection as if trying to dissolve it in a puddle of colors and veil it through a veil of smokescreen….

Somewhere in Atin’s past a guy sat by a window and made perfect rings of smoke…and as Atin stared down the rings he knew that these rings were perfect… So much so that even the painter Atin could not make such perfect rings…

The guys underneath the peepal was still smoking but have already turned the flip side of sombre…and so had the guys on the other side with the local liquor in their hands…The guys in the club still tried to hit the wooden coins into the pocket with their plastic striker… the younger wife of the Aggarwal’s was lying in the arms of the tuition teacher of her kids… her petticoat open and lying breathless… The Sircar’s had all gone to the Ganges… to remove the last remnant of the their Granny… and will then call it cremation… even the small kid who used to sit at the local garage would miss her more than the her eldest son…

Atin was still holding a half-burnt cigarette in his hand and staring down a reflection which he felt afraid to call his own…

~~FIN~~

P.S :: THIS IS PIECE IS INFLUENCED DEEPLY BY A PIECE READ IN A BLOG CALLED “Roshni’s Inner-World”..