The cries had drowned away. The flowers lay limp as the sun ate their fragrance raw. It had been just a day back when they had still been alive, breathing and perfumed.
Chakkarai and Aandi walked with a burden unwarranted. They didn’t mind it though. They weren’t allowed to. They had done it a hundred and twenty three times already. So said the charcoal tallies on the platform.
They heaved under the frightening sun. Their limbs cried. The already brown skin of their shoulders seemed leathered under the weight of every bamboo. Every man’s bamboo.
The place reeked of everyone’s dirt and sins. Of ashes and woes. They stirred the bones back onto the crackling leaps of fire and watched on as another man burned.
The man lay calm, oblivious to his bamboos. Oblivious to his little journey. In life and death. He had gotten nowhere. He had smelt the sins before. He had felt the dirt too. On him. Nothing was new. So burned the all-knowing man.
Their eyes burned though. So did their lives. The lives of two men. Young and raw.
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