ABBA-JAAN

         

Tranquil undulation of flakes of perspiration,

Wrist serrated by arduous tasks,

Tender convexity of the mole, on his chin.

His gelid feet.

His faltering steps.

His torn skin.

His wrinkles.

His bemused glabella and furrowed brows.

Gentle zephyr tossed the dust,

Misting his eyes.

Living in the ghettos,

Beseeching for work, at every threshold,

To whisk aside his knee-deep destitution.

Rushed to the temple on a windy night,

to hold God accountable for all his 

misery.

Bouten,were razed by the orthodox ecclesiastical.

Wiping away tears with the corner of his battered rags, that welled behind his eyelids.

His betel-dyed lips looked blanched.

Draped the chamois loincloth,

to veil his vitiligo struck limbs.

Through his buttonless battered mackinaw,

Peeked his grief.

Sanguine-fluid mired ears,

heard only the opprobrium hurled at him.

Arid heart craved for philial pluvial .

Clink-clank of the spoon, ladles and saucers;

Articulated his inner disgust and agony.

For, his voice was throttled.

In telluric jars, he pickled his cogitations.

Rushed to the temple on a windy night,

to hold God accountable for all his

misery.

Scraped the bottom of the kadhai to plant the last morsel on his child’s plate,

Even as he goes hungry for days. 

Separated from his child, will inevitably, 

Have his ears perked up and his heart flutter .

Whenever he senses that his child is in danger.

Fighting many personal battles,

every trial and tribulation .

Yet , resilient enough to do it all alone.

To bring up his child.

Ever smiling, always approachable, 

Best friend to his child.

Pigeons coo'd,

Furiously scrabbling ,

with their hooked claws and gluttonous beaks,

To lacerate the flesh from his bone.

Their greed was monstrous.

So, was the community's.

He was bitten ,

by thousands of pismire, 

Leaving him; bleeding in gelid.

His wrinkled skin caressed the child.

His incinerated physiognomy sweeped aside all hardships,

Whipped away all haplessness,

hovering over the child.

His benevolent self screeched "I shall protect thou ".

Societal scaffold stripped him off livelihood.

Hurled abuses against him.

Castrated from the community.

Sweeped aside,

for his vocation, was considered a "moral cancer".

Marooned in the cruel chateau.

His tachycardiac-heart ached.

Laboured sound of her redolent breath ,

snarled at the throat, with some catarrh.

Descrying for penumbral shard

to nurse his child.

Compassionate glint in his eyes, 

glistened and grinned like a cheshire-cat;

whilst caressing his child.

His benevolent self screeched, "Thou are my child".

Brushing aside the societal astern cry.

He breathed his last.