Dafan

I wanted to write this for a long time now. The words describe my observations on a burial ceremony I attended about a year and a half ago! It's a description of a widowed Muslim woman who is about to give birth to a child. Here it goes

Black veils silence the swollen eyes 

As she peeps through the edifice

Gasping for breath, yearning for direction

Blinded by tears and blackened predilection

But why doesn't she understand?

Clueless, among many veils, she stands

Waiting for skull cap signal to arrive 

Can't she decide? Why is she waiting for the signal to arrive?

Why is she crying so loud?

Holding the crease of the shroud

Have the others earned this right?

To stay strong and upright?

What about her? 

Whose womb is yet to bloom

Will she really be inside a four-walled room?

Is her life doomed?

Inside the growing and falling concrete, will she be subsumed?

As the mind leads me to unknown ways

Ending with long sighs

The strongest, signals "Chalo, Dafnane Ka Waqt ho gya hai Bhai"

The surge of strong shoulders suppress the wails

On these, the soulless flesh sails

Windvane signals the dead land

Where they say, the flesh would mix with the sand

When she tries to outpace the shoulders

She is told that she doesn't belong

That she should stay inside, should stay strong 

That she isn't allowed to shoulder this throng

In a small nook

A little wonders 

Her small little book

Doesn't explain these thunders

Her pristine mind throws a question

"Abbu, why do only skullcaps get to attend the cremation"

The old man whispers "the dead fantasize girls nude"

Instructing the tender eyes to follow hence

The confused eyes think it makes sense 

As she accepts it with loads of innocence

In another corner "A confused face turns red"

He thinks "Fella if your logic stands

Most men should be called dead"