Poetic Stories

The bricks were red and brown like the dust covered trees beside the road. Such red is the blood mixed with these bricks, the blood of the poor kids carrying them. They toil everyday and extinguish their dreams of going to school one day and move out the hell hole. The small kids who were supposed to be the future and backbone of the society are bent with weight of the foundation of civilization.

Karthik was the youngest son of Madhav, the paralyzed daily wage labourer who lost his mobility after an accident at a construction site. Karthik was studying in class five when the accident occurred. Madhav had safety gear but they were weak at some places near the waist. He sustained serious injury in spinal cord and has been bed ridden since then.
Kartik had to leave school after few months after the accident. The school teachers like Kartik even though he was not the brightest kid in his class due to his spontaneous and lively nature. He was always enthusiastic with every other events in the school. He he always dreamt of becoming a great teacher who teach all the poor kids of the village like his favourite teacher Shanti Babu. Shantinath Sarkar was a Rastrapati award winning primary teacher. He liked Karthik very much. He begged his mother to let him stay and he would take care of Karthik’s educational expenses. He already took care of studies of hundreds of students already. But kartik’s mother was a proud woman. Even though she worked in two houses doing all their chores and still couldn’t make the two ends meet. Karthik’s mother wanted Karthik to go to school, but Madhav’s illness required medicines regularly. And the price of medicines has been rising so high lately that it had been becoming possible to get a hold of the required medicines every month. So finally Karthik had to take charge of the household and went to work in a brick kiln near a town far from his village. And thereby the dreams of Karthik succumbed to the helpless situation.
Kartik is now working for two months there. He has gone home for three times in this period and only for two days each time. He got so changed each time he came back home that his mother couldn’t recognise him. First time when he came back, he brought money that he gave his mother to buy medicines for his father. He also brought a new synthetic saree for his mother. His mother was finally happy to see his son grow up and taking the charge of family. She was sad when Karthik was not home. She looked at his childhood dolls and toys which they had bought from a local mela every year. As Karthik grew up he grew out of his childhood prematurely, as his conditions were dire. When he returned home each time he never looked back at the toys anymore.
As tides came and returned back, to and fro the river banks, as the sun set and rose again, with each passing month and minute, Karthik became more and more less regular in homecoming. It was as if the string connecting his family with him was thinning and thinning. Karthik was growing up and the gap of communication between his family and him was widening each time he went home. He used to give excuses like “Malik doesn’t let me leave!”; or, he had to go at a different site to work.
After six years the string finally snapped. His father was working again and in good condition. But Madhav had not returned for two years. He sent money every month, sometimes wrote letters telling that he is ok, but never came back home. He is now a young man of sixteen. He had even forgotten what he had learnt in school, who his teachers were, but he kept in his heart the dream of becoming a teacher. He didn’t know how he will do it or wheather it is even possible anymore.
One day Karthik was returning to his shelter from work after working for long twelve hours. He was moving through a street which had a very bad reputation. The labourers head to go through the street to get back to their homes after working for twelve long hours. Most of the workers occasionally did not return home for the night. The went into the dinghy shanties, the stalls for pleasure, to do their night business. But Karthik never bothered to do any of that. He walked on the street everyday to look and spend time with a special someone. She was a little girl of four years old. She was someone’s illegitimate child. She was ostracized in the town for her unknown parenthood. Her mother had discarded off her when she was a few months old. Maybe because of shame of the society or she finally realised she is not old enough to be a mother. She was dropped off on the door of a prostitute, whom people with money rent for pleasure. The woman took the child in and nursed her. She became her saviour, she took care of her even after all her miseries.
Karthik always talked with her every time he saw that little girl. He played with her the silly games that he used to play when he was a child. The little girl was the only place where he could come to reminisce his secret childhood. She was his vent, she was his dream that didn’t came true. It is his dream to get her to school one day, to fulfill his own failures. The failure for which he was not himself responsible. He thought in his mind, the mind which is no longer of a child. She would go to school wearing a deep green frock and a pair of white socks and a pair of black shoes.
“Wouldn’t she look beautiful in it?”, he thought to himself. He smiled as he kept thinking. He would braid her hair and put a piece of red ribbon at the end of each of her braids. She would hold his index finger and walk beside him to school. In the evening he would take her back from school and cook her fresh rotis and a small bowl of dal along with some pickled mangoes or maybe one or two juliens of onions.
But everyday he returned home working twelve hours, tired and hopeless. With each passing day, his condition was getting worsening. He himself was bedridden with tuberculosis. Doctor has said it is common among the workers of brick kiln or, anywhere there is a lot of smoke. Doctor has already said he will not live for more than a few weeks now even after all the medications. And the little girl is being trained becoming an object of pleasure for the people with a lot of money and a hollow soul. She is being trained to be like her saviour.

Epilogue: Will the dreams of Karthik never come true? Will this cruel cruel world provide enough for the lives to ever be fulfilled?

The world is a stage, life is a passage.
You came, you saw, you departed.
                 —Democritus