Sick on a Winter's day

It’s the bed unmade, its sheet crumpling and brittle, its curving creases like windswept canyons..

Not wanting to brush or bath or face the world but slumber deep to the winter sun, till noon sun warms my closed eyelids, sweet world doing its own thing - peripherals of traffic sounds from road, a prayer bleeds from  the nearby Mosque,

I struggle to the kitchen, face dry and pillow-lined and slept, body arched with ache of a crumbling edifice, heart full of the aroma of coffee on lips, like the longing of a muted mongrel on a hungry winter night on a star-lit street on a deserted Christmas night….

So many things to do - sit straight up watching the Bhim taal slurping light from Sun,  read Rumi this night of desertion, unsuperimpose the Vitrovian man images as a last act of rebelliousness, hear Nusrat stretch Bhairavi as long strands into the abyss of the night, talk to Aladdin about the futility of rubbing the lamp in the land of gold (why why?)..

….but for this bodyache and the silent energy drain of a “waiting for Godot” sneeze, but for the slow headache that slowly rose from ashes of a burning midday, but for the unrequited love that never goes away..

I switch on the light and wear the blanket and set the face mast to the winter sun, imagine the walk of Le Clezio’s people in the “Desert” , but the body has its own language for the sick – one can only stand and watch from the shore; I flip the channels and engross myself with Kramer’s spaghetti make in Seinfeld, with Byomkesh lost in thought in Ray’s Sonar Kela, with Arnold’s T2 scenes, but this is not a night of that ..it’s my day the body reminds…

This is a lonely path at the intersection of despair and pain, fighting pathogens with Cytokline storms, using steroids to suppress T-cells, CBCs and RBC counts, chills and  volcanic fevers, a shout in between..

So, that’s how day after day shall end ..with afterglow of so many things done with mind and distaste of cough rumbling at midnight.

A few more days before the Sun heats up the spaces and I can appreciate the lady selling her Ginger produce to the grocer at Someshwar bazaar…