PLACES DON’T EXIST: 2. Window
If you’ve just landed yourself out here, I suggest you start the voyage from the beginning —
Papa calls me a dream. Or a nightmare.
He can’t decide.
They’re equally frightening, he says.
And I can’t decide
if I should take equality for a French Revolutionary term.
But equality is complicated. Being uttered
in some gullible stance, it’s just another curse word.
And this poem is meant for children;
so we shall not be taking the liberty
of digging deeper for the roots, just as
I don’t dig for my pennies when they’re lost in the sand.
Instead (and since this poem doesn’t end here)
let’s concentrate on a different word –
Fraternity.
When I was six years old
Papa had made a paper plane out of me
and glided me out of the window.
It had been a breezy morning.
The wind rushed forth to me from all directions.
I was one of those planes that went in circles. In loops.
Revolved for too long in mid-air.
Stayed far too long in mid-air.
Until the fall.
I could feel papa’s glance on me.
Like the string to a kite,
it followed me with an unwavering constancy.
As I whirled and twirled in mid-air,
he never lost sight of me.
Ensured I was okay with the gradual descent.
I landed on the right palm of my mama’s corpse
still smelling freshly of a new-born death
in the garden. Her right palm fluttered once as I fell on it.
She must’ve mistaken me for some fly. Or an insect.
You jerk your wrist at such instances out of fear.
Like papa says, I was a dream. Or a nightmare.
And it is equally frightening either way.
See, yet again we step into the murky waters of equality,
but we shall not fall for its schemes. We know better.
And in any case, we have yet another diversion of explore.
Liberty.
Papa wanted to make paper planes out of Mama as well,
and follow her slow descent into the darkened gardens.
But Mama, for the way she always was,
refused to be a paper plane.
Paper planes are just slaves of gravity,
she said, and therefore, they’re no planes at all.
I don’t know why, but she always threw tantrums,
when I should’ve been the one doing that.
She was plain stubborn. Things always had to be her way.
Papa couldn’t glide her out the window.
So, he pushed her after he glided me into the freefall.
Heavier for not being a paper plane, her fall was faster.
She overtook me mid-air. Landed before I did.
but she ensured still that my fall didn’t hurt.
That I settled on the softness of her palm. A known touch.
But Mama, for the way she always was,
didn’t want to go down easy.
This isn’t real freedom, she said,
if it doesn’t let you choose your way out.
She clung onto the window pane as Papa pushed her.
And even when she fell, she kept
holding onto the window frame. Ensured
she had taken down Papa’s window along with her.
Papa is still stuck inside the window Mama brought down.
Your Attention, Please! Next Stop…
