For the Dead

Realm of the walking dead is indeed vast

Their deathly dreams are big and just

They want to build their gilded castles

Amidst the slumber of their death

They walk around with those downcast eyes

Trying to find a cure for death

They sniff and grope to find their folks

To exchange their morbid stinking breath…

Deathly dreams and entombed lust

Fly around when they congregate

The oldest corpse among their guild

Rants and raves of warmth and fire

Incense and perfumes are thrown around

To mask the stink of walking dead

Fires of sandal are lit here and there

To mimic the warmth of living dreams

Out they came… the walking dead

With a plastic skin to mask the death

They felt happy with their new found smell

And went on to build their gilded tombs

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My journal if I can call this one so begins on this chilly night of my twenty sixth year of existence. Reasons are many for this decision of mine to note down the details of my unremarkable life. Any ways I wouldn’t dare to note down those despicable and malignant reasons, for I wish to read this journal during those interminable years of the future which I am sure to endure. When I sit down to read this jottings ion those dreary barren lonely nights of future , I don’t want to remember the spine chilling baseness which acted as a catalyst in sparking my endeavor to write this memoir. Above all I need this as a grand epithet of my ultra sensitive existence. Enough on the reasons of mine to not note down the reasons let me begin, of course in the next Para.

Today I walked with a frail old man through a worn-out monstrosity which many had the audacity to call as a palace. He was with his loved ones and I was walking as if in a trance carrying my camera. This man of seventy was in a good mood, smiling with a twinkle in his eyes and cracking jokes as if to shrug off the ornaments of senility which time had dutifully deposited on him. Ignoring the innumerable ancient blood clots in his body he avidly observed the relics of war and the fading gilded towers of the palace. He walked barefoot braving the parched cobblestones to visit the private quarters of a long dead and possibly demented king. He told me to take countless photos of him standing near his loved ones and the palace. With a sarcastic and knowing smile I obliged. The bout of nausea which I invariably get when I see someone moved and inspired by trifles was threatening to rip my sensitive innards apart. I held on fixing a plastic smile on my face, because I needed to know the reasons. The reason behind this old mans apparent self deception, false bravado and cheerfulness, his display of vitality as if to defy the nastiness of old age. Find out I did, and was utterly and deeply touched by the freshness of those reasons, yes I found out the reasons when a lone teardrop fell on my hand which was holding the camera. ..

He was leaning over my shoulder watching the replay of the pictures which I had clicked on my camera. His stroke ravaged left hand was put over my shoulder. The lone tear drop had its origins from his cataract infested eyes…

Though I was silent that lone teardrop spoke to me, it spoke of those violent passionate nights he spent with the women he loved, it spoke to me of the joy when he saw his babies for the first time, it spoke of the grand loneliness which he had the fortune to endure…Above all it also spoke to be of his awareness of that finality called death, whose proximity was making his weary old bones to brace for one final fight. In fact that lonely burning teardrop spoke of a chapter of his lone, cheerful and ultimately victorious fight which he had fought right here in the palace, which I had earlier termed as a monstrosity. I saw the full grandeur of the great drama called life through the eye of a teardrop…I saw its hero too…the frail old man...