Aug 15, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Tanglements
©August 15th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

When the string comes unraveled,
It’s time to die.
It’s when it gets entangled
That life struggles forth.
And if it’s not complicated,
Is it worth it?

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Complicated

Tags: #Complicated, #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost

Aug 15, 2016 Original Poetry, Senryu, The Daily Post

Reach
©August 15th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

She reached for the stars
But got a handful of dirt.
In every grain, Life.

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Reach

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Reach, #TheDailyPost

Aug 15, 2016 Original Short Story, The Daily Post

Song-Bird (A Fragment)
©August 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Every day, Kavita sat at her window, and gazed out, waiting.

What she was waiting for, nobody knew – not her mother, not her father, not her sister, or brother, who were twins, and five years older than she was.

Kavita was five years old, and mute.  There was a sweetness to her, an air of abstraction, and her family was protective of her.  They had already decided not to send her to school, and since they lived in a part of the country where nobody paid much attention to whether children went to school or not, they were safe from the prying reach of a meddlesome school board.

Kavita would hum tunelessly under her breath, and trace little patterns on the wall with her finger while she waited for her father to come home after work.  She would hum tunelessly while watching for her elder brother and sister come home from school.

Kavita watched the animals on the street go about the business.  Dogs running, barking and defecating, cats strolling with tails high, leaping onto walls and glaring balefully at everyone, cows strolling about, secure in their holiness, but starved just the same, eating whatever little grass they could scrounge up.

Dabbawallahs would sail by on their bicycles, carrying tiffins to schools and offices.  An occasional fight would break out on the streets, and people would intervene in the dusty scuffle and flying of fists.

And Kavita would hum.

Her mother watched over her.  The humming did not bother her.  It was like the music of her days.

Kavita would turn to her mother after the midday meal, and point to the back door of their  one-story house.  In the back, outside their high back wall, a gutter flowed, filled with stinking sewage water.  A few white hens with red eyes and red crests puck-pucked, rooting about the dusty soil inside the yard, bored, but ever ready to eat bugs.  A few, straggly tomato and brinjal plants grew there, and a jasmine bush was heavy with flowers.  They had a little patch of spinach growing, too.  There were chilies and capsicum, too.  Her mother had grown up in a village on a small farm, and knew about growing food.  This brought relief to their family, because her father worked as a clerk in an office, and brought in just enough to keep his family housed, fed and clothed.  Thank goodness, they owned the house, which had belonged to his father and his father’s father before him.

Kavita, pointing, would ask to go out to the back, and there she’d sit under the shade of a dusty mango tree, and watch the chickens and their three goats.  Her mother knew she was safe there, because the wall was high, and there was no gate in the back, so she’d let her sit there, while she went about her chores, washing the clothes, hanging them up to dry, sweeping out the house, watering the plants.

No one knew quite what Kavita was thinking.  She hummed and hummed, and did not say a word.

Her mother would listen to All-India Radio while she did her chores, and the sound of it soothed her tired spirit, for she was always tired.  The constant worry about her youngest child, a worry which she hid from Kavita made her bones che.  She’d sing along.

And Kavita hummed along.

Music flowed in her body like a river.  She was surrounded by it, she thought in music, she dreamed in music, and loved in music.  And she loved her mother for giving her this music that poured out from the magic box, and made her happy.

And unhappy.

For she wanted, more than anything, to sing.

(Perhaps, to be continued)

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Obsessed

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Obsessed, #OriginalShortStory, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost

Aug 12, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Surface

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Surface, #TheDailyPost

Aug 10, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

This, Maybe
©August 10th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

You walk along the path together,
Cocooned in yourselves, and growing,
Looking out at the reservoir nearby
Flashing silver amongst tall trees.

The birds are muted, lonely,
The trees noisy, conferring.
The underbrush hints of hidden
Creatures, crawling or hopping.

Legs flash by, all in a hurry
To get somewhere, do something.
People running, dogs alongside.
The sky bends tightly over them.

You talk of life, politics, books,
You don’t talk of love, longing.
You swim in the silence of possibility
Wondering of a future life together.

This is the time of learning
This is the magic time before
Understanding blooms in your heart,
And you think, This is it, maybe.

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Maybe

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Maybe, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Possibility, #Postaday, #Romance, #TheDailyPost

Aug 9, 2016 Original Flash Fiction, Original Short Story, The Daily Post

The Merchant and the Mendicant
©August 9th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

A merchant clad in fine silk came stumbling along the mountain path.  Dust covered his clothing, and so were his feet, though he was shod in good sandals.  His brown eyes were stark and staring, his neatly trimmed hair and beard were dusty, and his breathing labored.

“I cannot walk any more,” Rajat thought.  “This heat is killing me.”

He reached into his cloth bag, and took out a container of nuts and dried fruit and a stoppered metal container filled with water.

“At least, I have food,” he said aloud, to no one.

Someone answered from behind a tree.  “Yes, you are fortunate.  Could you share some with me?  I have eaten only bugs and jamun for two weeks, and I would be grateful for some food.”

Rajat started visibly, but contained himself.  His instinct was to cling to his food, but looking at the emaciated man who emerged from behind the tree and stood before him, dressed in dusty orange rags, with a rough growth of beard and matted locks, his selfishness wavered.  He noticed that the man held a begging bowl in one hand, and a gnarled walking stick in the other.

“Yes, come join me,” said Rajat, and tipped a handful of nuts and dried fruit into a cloth handkerchief that he pulled out from his bag.  He also took out two chappatis and two oranges, and offered one of each to the emaciated man, who refused the bread, but took the orange.

As the mendicant came forward and squatted beside Rajat, he could not help but notice the man’s radiant calmness.  There was a stillness in his golden eyes.  It perturbed Rajat.  Watching the poor man eat slowly, Rajat was unaccountably touched by the trembling slowness of his movements.  Rajat had never before paid any attention to the poor.  He had spent his life making money, and tending to his family’s needs.  When he’d passed the poor, he’d tossed a coin or two into their tin cups, but had never thought of them as people.  Now, seeing this starved man, he was struck with a strange wonder, and a rising curiosity.

They did not converse while they ate.  After eating, they took turns drinking from the stoppered tin bottle of water he carried.  Rajat drank, passed the other his bottle, and was glad to see the mendicant holding the bottle away from his lips.  Quietly, they passed the bottle to each other.  A few drops fell to the ground when the mendicant drank with slightly shaky hands.  The thirsty earth swallowed it up and left no trace.

And still, they said nothing.

Silence prevailed.  Little lizards crept out from under the shade of boulders, and scampered across, making little puffs of dust. A staccato sound of a woodpecker broke the silence.  Somewhere, they heard the almost-sweet call of an osprey.  The earth panted in the heat, and the only cloud in the sky was loose and fluffy, like poorly carded white wool.

“Where are you going?” asked the mendicant.

“I don’t know,” said Rajat, staring into the distance.  “I left my home, my wife, my brother, my son, my aging mother, my business.  I’m just going, but not sure where.” 

He sighed, and felt a stab of pain somewhere in his stomach.  Perhaps, it was the food.

He realized that the mendicant was looking at him, waiting.  There was a question in his eyes.

“‘Why did I leave,’ you want to ask?  Because I’m sure my younger brother slept with my wife.  I’ve seen how familiar he is with her, and I see how easy she is with him.  Now, I’m not even sure that my son is my own.  I couldn’t bear to be around them.  I was afraid I’d kill him – or her.  So, I said some harsh things, but controlled myself after that.  My wife wept and denied it.  My brother cursed me for being a suspicious and heartless beast.  I didn’t believe either of them.  I took my horse, my share of whatever money we had, bid my mother goodbye, and left.  I grateful that my mother cannot see or hear very well, and that she doesn’t know what happened.”

The mendicant glanced at him, and was quiet for a time.  Then, he spoke.  “What about your son?” he asked.

“My son cried, and begged me to take him with me, so how could I not?  But then, after the sun beat down on us, he cried again, and said he wanted to go home.  What could I do?  I set him on the horse, and told my horse to take him home.  He knows the way.  He’ll be all right.” Rajat tried to summon up indifference, but his voice shook a little.

To make up for this lapse, he reached in again into his bag, and offered him some flat bread again.  “Want some?”

“No, thank you.  I am content.  This food was a luxury.  I thank you for your kindness and your company,” replied the mendicant.  His formality seemed incongruous, and didn’t suit his attire.  His ribs moved as he spoke, and his eyes were hollows.  Still, his words of contentment rang like a bell in the silence.

Silence fell again.  The merchant laid a cloth on the ground under a tree, and lay down.  The mendicant still squatted in the dust, now tracing patterns on the ground with a stick.  Raj opened an eye, and said to the mendicant, “You can lie down, too.  I don’t mind.  What have I to lose?  I have already lost everything of value.  I am truly poor now.  There is nothing left to live for.  Perhaps, I should become a mendicant, like you.”

“Are you  poor?  And is this what you want?  What you really want?  Sometimes, I think men are fools, fools!” said the mendicant sharply.  His eyes were bright in the sun, and his look stopped the merchant’s flood of self-pity.

Rajat was taken aback by this outburst.  “What about you?  he asked the mendicant.  “What are you running from?

“The question is:  What am I walking towards?  I have given up this world, but I do not despair, like you do.  I have no one and nothing to hold me back.  I seek contentment.  Rage does not fuel me,” replied the mendicant.  “I was once a man of means.  Then, I was ruined.  I didn’t mind.  It helped me see clearly for the first time.  Still, I wish I had a family or children.  I’d have liked that.”  His tone was wistful.

“Well, you can have mine!” quipped Rajat bitterly, but stopped laughing when he saw the mendicant’s calm look.  “Well, I’m going to sleep  You may lie down on this mat with me, if you wish.  You’re a strange one, but I like you.”  He closed his eyes.

The mendicant said nothing, but quietly laid himself down at the far end of the cloth.  The sun beat down less fiercely as a few hours passed.  The hot, sticky afternoon wrung itself dry into evening.  Purple patches appeared before Rajat’s closed eyes.  Green ones followed.  He couldn’t sleep, but lay still, hardly moving a muscle.  He was sore all the way down to his soul.

Little scampering noises added to the oppressive stillness.  A squirrel sat on its haunches, and nibbled a groundnut they had dropped.  Its tail flashed in the sun, like a semaphore.  Rajat didn’t see it.  He had fallen into a swound.

The stars were bright in the sky when Rajat came to with a start.  The night air was cool.  It came to him in a flash that he had met a mendicant, and spoken with him.  He turned to his side to see if the fellow was asleep.

There was no one there. A smell of sandalwood hovered about the place.

Where the mendicant had lain was a pattern of shaved sticks of wood.  The sticks pointed to the direction from which Rajat had come.  Near it, in the dust was a picture of a house.  A little boy and a woman stood beside the house, waving.  Beside them stood an old woman.  She seemed to be crying.  On her other side was a distraught young man.  He seemed to be calling out to Rajat.

Rajat stood up, shocked, staring at the pictures on the ground.  He looked around, and began to call out for the mendicant, but stopped.  He hadn’t even asked him his name.

Heart beating faster, he packed his ground-cloth, and his food and water in his cloth bag.  He knew he was wanted at home.  He reached down, and looked again at the picture.  Underneath it, was a single printed word.  It read: Luxury.

And Rajat started back down the path that would lead to homewards. 

As he receded from view, a new picture seemed to emerge from the dust.  It showed a man walking homewards, towards love. 

Just then, a sudden gust of wind rose up out of nowhere.  It blew away the sticks, and the pictures in the dust.  Nothing remained, not even a footprint.  A patter of raindrops fell.

In the distance, an emaciated mendicant walked away, his begging bowl in his hand.  No one saw him walk into the gathering clouds.  In moments,the horizon swallowed him up.

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Luxury

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #Luxury, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost

Aug 9, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Joke No More
©August 9th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Why don’t you do us a favor
And jump off a bridge?
No one likes you, they said.

She made her heart a stone
And wrote a note
And shed no tears
As she walked to the bridge
Fragile and pale
A wraith in the dusk.

And she did what
They had told her to do.
Her life was a mistake,
She said to herself,
A joke, and she was just
Composing its punchline.

A bird soaring into a sky
With wings of lead,
And leg-irons, she sailed
Off the bridge,
The waiting river received her
With more welcome in death
Than any she had seen in life.

And when they were questioned
And prodded in court,
They said, puzzled and innocent,
It was only a joke.
Who knew she’d take
Everything so seriously?

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Joke

Tags: #bullies, #bullying, #DailyPrompt, #Joke, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost

Aug 7, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Painted World
©August 7th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

If I took a broad brush,
Dipped it in no colour,
Whispered a prayer to the moon,
Bent my head to the sun,
And slashed the air around me,
Would I erase all ugliness
All pain, all horror from the world?

What of all its beauty,
All that pouring light,
All that blinding blue,
All its music and movement,
All of its innocence and joy?

Would I filter its discoveries
Back into my paint-pots
And guard them jealously
So, I could start over?

And what of its ambiguities?
What of its doubts?
What of its struggles?
What of its dreams?

Would I siphon those into tubes
Ready to squeeze out
When things get old
Or tired, or tedious?

And would I be able to paint
A whole new world
From scratch?

And what would I paint?
And what if I were 
A terrible painter?

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Paint

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Paint, #Postaday, #TheDailyPost

Aug 5, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Crossing
©August5th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

Come, lift your hands in praise.
Praise the woman who stands
Smiling, calm, unbent in the gale,
Maligned and slandered.

Praise the steely strength
The resolve that could move mountains
The centre of peace that allows
Her boat to bob on the waves
As she rows, tirelessly
To unknown terrain, but which exist,
For she mapped them out.

Praise the larger purpose
Which is her rudder, and her guide
The larger purpose and the greater good.
Beyond her own needs, the needs of her kin,
Lies the greater good of all,
And she will not be satisfied until
She works till the end of her life for it.

Praise her, and help her.
Guide her, too, for she is not infallible,
And she sometimes mistakes the way.

Praise her, and help her.
But while she has no need of praise,
She has deep need of help.

And while the other side is mapped
There’s still the Crossing ahead,
And there are Scylla and Charybdis
Waiting to devour her and her boat.
Slay them.

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Praise

Tags: #DailyPrompt, #GreaterGood, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #Praise, #Rudder, #Strength, #TheDailyPost, #Women

Aug 4, 2016 Free Verse, Original Poetry, The Daily Post

Grape-Craving
©August 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

I crave grapes.
Yes, grapes!

Rich, luscious, succulent,
Tight-skinned, green-gemmed
Bursting-at-the-seams
Grapes!

Like chrysoprase cabochons
Strung together, grapes
Shining in the light, those
Green gems so tight,
Make me crave them.
Their translucence drives
Me sick with desire
And their sweetness
Causes me to swoon.

Grapes that ripen slowly
In the hot sun,
Inviting greedy raccoons
To feast at night.
Ah, those grapes!

Grapes, which, when you pluck them,
Give out an audible sigh of desire
And say, “Yes!  Oh yes!”

And I imagine silken curtains
And sylph-like ladies
Passing them out on burnished plates.

And lazy, overfed Romans lying about
Eating the clustered globes
Filled with nectar that would
Intoxicate if they were allowed
To ferment into wine.

Now, as I write this, I arise,
Open the refrigerator,
Grab a container of washed grapes
And eat them, two by two,
Four by four.

I am sick with sweetness.
Drunk with greed.
So … sick, so drunk.
(Why did I do this?!)

(Why bother with wine
If you can have grapes?!)

No! I am not Lucullus,
Nor was meant to be;
I’m just a lowly grape-eater
Hedonist before bedtime.
My dreams shall be sweet.
And I shall be well-satisfied.
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Craving

Tags: #Craving, #DailyPrompt, #No!IamnotPriceHamlet, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #Postaday, #T.S.EliotReference, #TheDailyPost