Last month around I was in Ranchi, my home town. I had to visit the market place for some inane domestic necessity of urgent kind. I parked my bike in front of this shop with unattentive mind grappling with conceited fights concerning my own future. Fairly in unobservant state of mind I entered the shop, got the purpose fulfilled and returned to my bike to ride back home. Just then I saw by the side of the wall of that shop a man hardly in his late twenties in thoroughly unkempt state of being with insuffient clothing and his modesty thrown to the mercy of the passers was sitting with legs prostrate pointing towrads the wide main road looking at me with empty eyes.I started giving him a desolate returning look starting his face still in my own world of fantacies and comforts. The continuity of my thoughts was severly disturbed when my casual gaze reached his left foot. It was is an unimaginable state of decay. The foot was covered with flies , maggots and countless types of insects which live on decaying tissues eating upon his wound. Only the finger tips had nails loosely attached with the skin and some flesh. The skeleton of the foot was exposed , the veins and the nerves in a semi dry state were visble. A cold wave of fear ran down my spine and shook me from deep within. I suddenly took my eyes away from the foot but could not stop myself from rescanning him. He had pores opening all over his body. The next thing I tried to imagine was the amount of pain and discomfort he must have been experiencing. Whatever I thought, it casted no influence on him, whether be his posture or facial expression. He was unmoved by my presence. He had his deep grey green eyes looking straight into my eyes and I felt as if was standing naked to him. I was caught by a frightful feeling. I had never gone through such sudden trauma ever in my life before. Like the most well fed fashionably clad civilised urban people who seem to be very contented after tossing few coins as alms to the poor I felt robotically for my pocket gazing into his eyes trying to communicate with his feelings. I felt they said ' I too am Godsent and will soon die but you will not be spared either.' My frightful heart pleaded me to take a plight from there that very moment. Two notes of ten was all I had. Flies flew as he moved his hand a little and I reached to him to hand him what I had. He took it with clawed nails and such trembling hand that it sent jitters to my spine again, still looking at me with no change in his face what so ever. I returned.
By now he may have died. His gangrenous decay could have not let him survive more. His eyes his stare and the numerous inadvertent querries, they had put forth before me keep on living. Those deep grey green eyes haunt me. They chase me where ever I go what ever I do. I thank Allah for the state he has kept me in and pray to him to lift this state of indelible haunting off from me.
No comments:
Post a Comment