Apr 16, 2013 Current Affairs / General Interest, Original Poetry
For the Sake of Life Itself
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 16th, 2013
Call me a coward.
I didn’t tell my eight-year old
That an eight-year old died
Yesterday, standing, waiting
To cheer the people who ran.
And his father, who might have run,
But did not, on that fateful day,
Can run and run from now
Until the end of time
And never catch up.
And the beautiful child that son
Must have been (for how could he be otherwise?)
Died in mid-cheer.
He was eight years old.
He held a poster that said,
“No more hurting people. Peace.”
His name was Martin.
How can one explain such a thing
And how can one still stay intact?
For, in that moment when the world blew up
And an eight-year old flew into the air,
Becoming one with the stars and the atoms,
One broke into a million fragments.
But we carry on, for all the other
Children, who wait for us, eyes wide with trust
Believing that there are good people among us.
And we turn to them, in relief and grief.
And I turn to my beautiful
Angel-child, for the sake of love,
For the sake of all the little ones,
And for the sake of life itself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Life, #Love, #NaPoWriMo, Boston Marathon, children, eight-year old, grief
Apr 1, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries
Indifference?
©By Vijaya Sundaram
April 1st, 2013
You want to see pure indifference?
Talk about work to a person who has not slept for forty-eight hours.
Talk to a starving person about morals.
Talk to an angry teenager about duty.
Talk to a woman in the throes of giving birth about the dangers of population explosion.
Talk to a painter about toxic substances in paint.
Talk to an Isaac Newton about weightlessness.
Talk to a dancer about sitting attentively in a classroom.
Talk to a Climate Change activist about the profit margin in polluting industries.
Talk to a caged animal about why it is safe and better off in the cage that you’ve created for it.
Talk to a child and explain to her why she shouldn’t play, and attend to her homework instead.
That’s all for now, folks!
Too sleep-deprived for a bigger, fancier blog-post.
~Dreamers of Dreams~
Tags: #indifference, #NaPoWriMo, Artists, caged animals, children, Children and Play, dancers, dreamers, musicians, Play, Pointlessness, Work
Feb 22, 2013 Original Short Stories
The Horse With No Shame – A Transformation Story
©By Vijaya Sundaram
January 24, 2012
I’m going to turn my teacher into a horse! thought Jim, as he watched her writing more words on the board, for them to copy and practise for their spelling test.
He squeezed his eyes shut and wished hard, then opened his eyes again. Nothing happened. His teacher wrote on, oblivious. The other students stirred restlessly, glancing at each other, hands fiddling with objects on their tables – a ruler, a pencil, a paper airplane that someone had surreptitiously made. Their feet tapped, their eyes dreamed on, minds elsewhere.
The hum of the electricity coursing through the lights in the room made his ears hurt. He gazed out the window, and saw a man throw a stick to his dog in the distance. A train rumbled by, and he watched that.
His teacher turned around, and caught him dreaming.
“Jim!” she snapped. “Focus on your work. Stop wasting time! There are all these big words to learn. Copy them down. Are you listening?”
He looked back at her, with his face wiped of any expression. Turn into a horse, he begged in his mind. Come on! Turn into a horse. You can do it.
“Well?” said his teacher, looking at him.
Then, the class gasped. There, before them, a transformation was taking place.
Jim felt all eyes on him, and stiffened in terror. He felt taller. Strange sensations coursed through him. He looked down, and instead of shoes, he saw hooves. Four legs had sprouted out. He felt an irrepressible urge to eat hay, or an apple. He flicked his ears back, swished something, and whinnied.
The teacher fainted. The students cheered.
Then, he trotted to the door, looked back once, and cantered out. A smile hovered mysteriously in the air where he had left.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~TheEnd~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Original Short Story, children, horse, Mysterious Transformations, school