Sleep or the Sixth Birthday

When it rained, he really couldn’t tell if it were morning or evening. The clothes he had pegged a couple of days back, still hung limp and surrendered and vulnerable on the nylon strings. The warm bath buzzed in his ears as he stared out into this time that he could not place. The wrought-iron gate open-sesame-d without the traditional creak of rot and dried up lubrication. The rain-fresh slush peanut-buttered the sidewalks that smelt of earthworm manure and germs from up there that were slapped to the earth by the merciless rain.

Brown and black butterflies exploded in surprise from their rotting fruit stopovers, as the tree overhead seemed to shed a one and a two and a three of overnight’s treasured raindrops like tears onto a graveyard of tree-eggs below. And he walked by.

A simple brown dog with sunny eyeballs and drenched sprouts of whiskers shivered by, sniffing at the road and scurrying in reflex disappointment. Riverside sand piled in cones under construction sites spewed onto the black road like misplaced vomit. The road ran along a river that ran with it. A river that ran gray and black and polythene and revolting, as he balanced on the ledge of the canal to avoid the stickiness of the walkway. He could tell that it was morning, from the displeasure on the faces of morning children that waited like mourning widows at a funeral, for their rickety school buses that took them away from life. And he waited with them; not knowing that he was carelessly aping their expressions. They seemed representative of the world; both stuck in predicaments that weren’t too disparate.

He wished he could go back to sleep or to his sixth birthday. They were the only consolations that the rain offered. Lullabies in the comfort of the overnight warm fug indoors, and memories in the embraces of motherly fawning that came with rain-fevers.

And his bus stopped by. It took him away from life.

Comments

Akshaya said…
I am proud of you my boy :P!

Awesome.
Anonymous said…
surreal...i like it..but don't you think the alternative reality thing is getting a little too prevalent? nice stuff...but i'd really enjoy it if humor made a comeback...here's hoping something inspires that!
Arun Sethuraman said…
@akshaya: :D
@jay: i know...getting too morbid no? let's see! should work on something...!thanks anyway!
N said…
@ agree with Jay! ;) but a brilliant one nevertheless! :) "it took him away from life" another one of those first last lines :P sooper!

write on!
Arun Sethuraman said…
@nivy: shhearrrr![:D]
oh and update your unspokenreflections blog i say![:)]
N said…
@ machi, total tensions happening. will update soon :D
kjdsbckjwbck said…
Boss,
Your Imagination and the way of streamlining those imaginative thoughts with high profile words has stucked me with wordless comments here :)

Your high profile english makes me to ask a crappy question, "R U an ENGLISHian r TAMILian" :P...

Excellent is the word sir :)
Arun Sethuraman said…
@sathia:lol!thanks a ton!read on!
and am very much a tamilian; stunted at imagining in my mother tongue though...a lifelong regret.
some day...some day![:)]
kjdsbckjwbck said…
Book marked your blog sir :)...

Here read on :P
There write on :)
Sap said…
liked it! the rains you know...
Arun Sethuraman said…
@sap:thanks![:D]
Moonshine said…
blog-hopping brought me here....buddy! haha....given a choice i'd surely set the clock back to my sixth b'day....good one!
btw the bus you talk of....is that the same one that takes you to work...everyday?! lol
Arun Sethuraman said…
@murali:yup!the same rickety old bus...[:)]
oh and thanks!and do keep coming back!
siddharth b said…
brilliant, its bn said but i hv to say it again. and now my bus stops by and takes me away from life back to bits!!
Arun Sethuraman said…
@sid:thanks man![:D]
and i know...inescapable predicament called life...[:)]

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