narrative of a real-life native legend.
Malaika
The_Prologue
I recommend to keep Sia’s divine maestro vocals played while you read on.
I
A literal bird’s-eye view. A tiny black bird perches on a bamboo jutting out of a house under construction, twitches its head, tilts it in the fashion birds used to do, and her tiny brain may take in all that it sees in flashes. The soil, alluvial, but quite sandy here that has to do with the ongoing construction is as deep as required to leave a print on it if someone walks over. The head tilts rapidly. Now it sees a flash of the blue, dispersed with smoky grey. Now the sandy-alluvial ground. It follows a series of footprints on it now. If the tiny brain had known the art of deduction it’d have noticed that the prints belonged only to a single sandal — single sided prints from a wooden footwear, that frequented at intervals, and on the other side, the right, are the irregular pressed designs, as formed by crutches pushed down while using them to walk on soft soil. The bird’s view follows the one-sided prints of the steps to their origin, now moving faster, faster… but before it could catch the source, a wind brews up, and the bird flies away — now a tiny black dot, almost a blind spot in the eternally stretching smoked blue, that at times can itself act like God’s eye.
Entranced within a
lapis lazuli — a crane
dreams of longevity.
II
20th April, 2000. A certain small town in Northern India.
More than a decade after the civil war, a bunch of little kids, aging nine to twelve perhaps, play by the side of the road which once was alluvium adulterated with sand. They are playing ‘catch me!’: as one of them run after others just to touch them so that he’d be safe, and the one touched would repeat his role then on. Quite figurative. These children, running in all directions, away and toward themselves, have never heard of any kind of war! chances are they won’t until much later in their lives. They have no idea what sacrifice refers to. Nor of any violence, or of any savior. How could they: their elders never told them, and besides, they are in that young stage of life which could be compared to Adam’s conscience before he tasted that fruit. That purity which, other men in their later years often long, and only dream of. One of them stumbles upon himself and falls ahead, down, as the one who touched him laughs, now free of duty, and begins to run away. From within a nearby house, a shallow but clear-shrilled voice rises over these children’s laughter, reciting the Holy Quran, in Arabic, “Indeed, you will be reinforced with a thousand Angels, rank after rank.”
As wind sways the white
cloak she used to drape herself with
a dove extended its wing, mid-air.
III
In this tiny village, originally composed out of only twelve houses, which gave it the name, located in a tiny town in some remote northern part of the subcontinent, dwellers used to escape out of their houses, heading towards the only Mosque that parishes them all, whenever an earthquake or as of recently, a civil war would hit them. During the former, the first thing to be heard along with the screams dictating to quit the houses, and the earth’s trembling, used to be a transmuted magnified voice of the Imam, giving out the Aazan — the call of God. For in Islam, we have enough proof from our holy scripture that it is the Almighty who causes the quakes, and here Moslem believed that this call could passify the anger of the earth. While in the later case, as seen during the times of the riot, women with their children were cajoled to the same anger-subsiding monument, which then act as a refuge giver and a sheltering haven. This central area of a rising variant civilization should be guarded at all costs, so that faith and the future could survive, and stand erect.
‘I was raped in an
earlier life’ — a nightingale
weeps from the top of a minaret.
Writer’s Note: This is prologue to a story to come; and it all may appear weaved fiction but it re-tells real happenings of my hometown, (a real Mythological city from an Epic…can’t reveal everything yet) during the Civil War of 1989. For the upcoming future-past, keep watching this space!
Gratitude to Ada's Poetry Alcove or her gorgeous and concrete haibuns which ‘Mused’ me the idea to tell this story in this form.
Etymology: ‘Malaika’, plural of the Arabic word, Malak, meaning, Angel, obviously.
