On the second floor balcony
I stood, holding the railing and
Wondering at what I saw
Beneath, a portion of the ground
Neatly paved with cement bricks.
‘Strange’, I judged, or else why
That area no one treads got paved?
But then, in the next moment
I realized that it was not a pavement
But a wall collapsed in last night’s rain!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
The valiant lizard and the slimy cockroach
I tend to stand by the prey, but this time my wholehearted support went to the predator.
On the white tiled dado with leafy patterns they struggled, one for life, the other for the means to sustain its life. When I saw them, a quarter of the cockroach’s body was in the lizard’s mouth. The roach was in no mood to give up, it put up a big fight often dragging and shaking the reptile. I watched the process keenly without battling an eyelid, though on the backyard of my mind were running all the chores that await me at office. At one point it seemed the cockroach would escape. I felt the lizard was dealing with something which was way beyond its capabilities. The whole affair brought back to mind two entirely different things from the past. 1 A scene from a movie in which the fisherman and his boat were dragged along by a shark. 2 A couplet from a Malayalam poem which I studied in school, ‘chakshusravana galasthamam darduram bhakshanathinnapekshikkunnathu pole' (like a frog that got trapped in the mouth of a snake pleas for food). I took my toothbrush, applied some paste and started brushing, all without taking my eyes from the battling duo. It was a slow process, the merging of two bodies - acquisition in corporate parlance - not as in sex, but in a different way in which, only one lives, to tell the tale. As time passed, the prey went into the mouth of its predator bit by bit. Though the resistance had not ceased completely, it was evident that the roach started to accept defeat. Once the lizard finished its breakfast, it raised that cute head, said ‘thank you’ to me for the silent support and scurried away.
On the white tiled dado with leafy patterns they struggled, one for life, the other for the means to sustain its life. When I saw them, a quarter of the cockroach’s body was in the lizard’s mouth. The roach was in no mood to give up, it put up a big fight often dragging and shaking the reptile. I watched the process keenly without battling an eyelid, though on the backyard of my mind were running all the chores that await me at office. At one point it seemed the cockroach would escape. I felt the lizard was dealing with something which was way beyond its capabilities. The whole affair brought back to mind two entirely different things from the past. 1 A scene from a movie in which the fisherman and his boat were dragged along by a shark. 2 A couplet from a Malayalam poem which I studied in school, ‘chakshusravana galasthamam darduram bhakshanathinnapekshikkunnathu pole' (like a frog that got trapped in the mouth of a snake pleas for food). I took my toothbrush, applied some paste and started brushing, all without taking my eyes from the battling duo. It was a slow process, the merging of two bodies - acquisition in corporate parlance - not as in sex, but in a different way in which, only one lives, to tell the tale. As time passed, the prey went into the mouth of its predator bit by bit. Though the resistance had not ceased completely, it was evident that the roach started to accept defeat. Once the lizard finished its breakfast, it raised that cute head, said ‘thank you’ to me for the silent support and scurried away.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
