On A Fever Day

 

We three- Inshal, Insha and Inzam

[This is something which I started as scribbling my childhood stories, but I ended up writing an amalgamation of self-experience, a story, and a poem by using technique of time travel. I ended up in an imbroglio position wherein I am not able to categorize this piece into any of the above.]

Fever days were always creative for me, at those times, I assume, I overthinks a lot. Whether it is dog's barking, full moon's charm, or it is tutti fruity on the top of a bun in red, green and yellow colors, or People's ‘blablabla’ outside your window, every miniscule sound and pictures attracted me as if I am a magnet.

I kept tried to sleep, by hugging my cute pillow, by rolling this end to that end of my bed, by trying to blur lights on my cornea, but I failed shamelessly. Yet body pain wasn't sympathetic towards me, it kept tried to eat me from head to toe. Meanwhile I made a 'B-plan' to escape consciously from my room, as a corollary I went back to my roots, I pushed myself to imagine dearest ones I had on my life.

Within a blink of time, I took a flight to my childhood, I rapidly searched for me there, after a relentless effort, I found myself there. I was happily eating banana fritters (‘pazhampori’) and sweets bought by my grandpa from teashop on the roadside, after returning from his daily cycle journey to the teashop situated just beside the huge jackfruit tree. I was trying to imitate my grandpa by copying his lifestyle, his style of riding cycle, his exaggerated way of storytelling and so on. I was crazy angry at him for his unstoppable habit of hidden smoking. I was literally following his daily routines there, going to masjid for namaz, evening habits of feeding and running after baby chickens. I joined him in repeatedly thrashing on areca nuts (‘adakka’) using a hammer, to sell them in market to make money out of it. I was astonished to see the resultant dust rain in front of my eyes as well as sweat and wet dust on my grandpa's spacious forehead. But I was irritated by sounds of peacocks who lives on a banyan tree next to the backyard of my home, but often shown on top of roofing tiles (terrace) of Neighbour and coconut trees.

I got surprised by hearing lies told by my father that “these plants are given by my friend, and I didn't purchase them” (he brought numerous plants, pots and plastic baskets to our home daily even when he was jobless because of his unstoppable love towards plants and colors.) On every special occasion, my mother doesn’t forget to make Malabar rice pancakes (‘Kaipathiri’ / ‘Orotti’) and most of the times she bought clothes for me as I was as lazy to go for shopping. I was not even knowing size of my clothes. I loved rain with a contradictory hate, I happily enjoyed lovely smell of a new rain, I wrote poems on rain. I wondered about the rain drops falling through the tiny holes of the roofing tiles, and often dreamed about walking bravely on the roof without breaking the roof. I wondered at the transformation of flowers of passion fruit into fruits. Then later, I cursed the scorching rain when it tried to eat my playground, my courtyard, and killed my favorite chilly and passion fruit plants.

I heard gossips from neighborhood-grandpas who sits on masjid after namaz, regarding unceasing sea attacks. My Grandpa was fed up with fishing, I thought he joked. I thought it was a hoax as cliché as end of world. While I was astonished to see grandma still murmuring about growing electricity bill and teasing grandpa secretly for being unemployed. I was often furious towards her because she started switching off the fan while I sleep, reason being to decrease electricity bill. Despite of my discontent it became her blood habit to switching off the fan. She was proud about me because I killed cockroaches falling from the roofing tiles during monsoon. She was very happy when I pick up irritating millipede ('theratta/cheratta') inside the home and throw them away from the premises of home.

I laughed inside when my brother gets beating from my father as a reward for his debauchedness. The foolish imitation of WWE stimulated masculinity within us, in a scene, my brother was breaking my nose by a hard punch on my soft nose, and resultant blood bleed as river flows. However, we always teamed up in hiding album containing snippets of cricket players, in collecting matchbox cards, WWE wrestling cards and in gathering glass pebbles ('goli'), which were often found by parents from our hiding places, and they keep throwing these things into the pond next to the courtyard. I and my brother continued fighting each other out of silly reasons such as defeat in games, meanwhile my little sister keep crying seeing all these hilarious acts of ours.

In between, we three started catching dragonflies and treated it as slave as compelling it to take small stones from the soil. Again, I started finding new habits in school such as counting bikes and cars on the road, playing with the first standard students, playing with Jackie Chan's magical stones as if we were its possessors, hitting daily on your classmates' shoulder blade as a part of bet and so on.

I keep dreaming of catching a bucket full of fishes from a nearest pond and further petting them in a small bucket, but more we tried, more fishes died. We, beach boys always enjoyed usual mandatory teasing by our Neighbours for playing cricket in their lands without asking permission. Regardless of this, I was fulfilled with the proud feeling I got on seeing small, tiny, new hairs came out on my moustache. I was surprised to see a black mole on my left cheek, eyebrow and chest while my sister has its own her forehead. I used to find happiness in countering my parents, pretending as I am an adult. I found entertainment in peeling off skin from healed wounds on my legs and hands. I feel very proud on the hunger strikes I had against my parents to pursue my demands. I found adrenaline rush in myself when I was afraid of my parents finds out my hiding on farm fields to bunk my madrassa classes. Even though I was enthralled by stories said by ‘ustad’ (teacher) in madrassa I was terrified of unsympathetic hard hit on my hands, by a bamboo stick wrapped with green and red insulation tapes for not studying and coming late to the class.

Even at those times, I was surprised when I thinks about safety pin, I used to bind together the two broken ends of my chappal, White tiny calcium deficiency indicating dots on your nails akin to crescent moons. I was at the peak of mountain, zenith of happiness when I gave a gift to my sister on her birthday bought by my own money.

I was amused by the heat on my head, dying breath and nasal discharge I felt after a long run. I advised my teacher not to hold my hand while crossing road as pretending as I can do it alone, when we were on the way to competition in arts Festival. What else?

Oops, 404 error, I miss my 'I' badly, as you all do, especially those most cringes moments I had on my life. Now every tiny moment passed like a non-stoppable passenger train in front of my eyes, in a blink of time. A train: a passenger train filled with different versions of mine might have given a hi-fi to me. Or was it a bye? I don't really remember, the train passed in thunder speed even without getting time to be astonished. At that moment, I was dumbstruck as always.

Suddenly, lying down on my bed, the child in me cried for the moon to not let the train go to its ultimate destination, as cute as a child cried for milk from his mother, lying softly on her lap. As I realized the train went and cannot pull it back; I will cry my intestine out as I can't get freedom from these four walls with a simultaneous craving to live in the past perished. But I won't die as moments did.                                                                          

I will repeat the same process, hugging my little pillow, to get a good sleep, with a new craving to travel to the future, to escape from my quarantined suffocating room, to break and come out of my dusty window, to fly out of this world by achieving my freedom after killing all the tyrants who horrendously torture the weak aka the oppressed. Then I will laugh, I will laugh my intestine out. By the way, can I ask you something? After all, will I be in peace?

Portrait of an art form, Kathakali ('chuvanna thadi vesham) 
possessed most ruthless, cruel and ferocious acts.