small bird

There are so many of us here right now who are spending their last few years on Earth in this hell hole, within the confines of these four walls. Tragically there are some who can, or let me put it this way, but for many reasons just continue to be here till they are carried out on their bier.



Right now, sleeping right across on the other side of my bed, is this young emancipated man of thirty something. He has only four or five years of his sentence left after which he is free to go home. But he is in the middle stage of AIDS and has just as many years to live. If his relatives get him out on bail or get him Governor’s or President’s pardon who is going to pay for his medication? And when he gets to final stages, which will be two or three years from now, who is going to look after him? So with that he has been left here by his family, his friends and the society to slowly waste away and die. They will not even come to perform his last rites when he finally goes away from this materialistic world.. Yet he smiles now and then. Plays a hand or two of cards. Has his meals with the rest of us (yes! And drinks from the same pot of water!) And seems to be quite resolved with his fate and the last few months of his illness hasn’t fully struck him. May to God that he doesn’t either. It’s such a shame that the last few years of his life, no matter how painful, couldn’t be spent outside, as free as bird. With the wind on his face, and the horizon spreading out into infinity. That is the least that life could have given him before his final journey into the void. Not the claustrophobic four walls of his isolation ward. So why am I the only one sitting here shedding tears because of the similar fate. The temptation to go across and transfuse some of his blood is strong. At least it would make my final days come sooner. And who knows I too may be able to fly free from the last years of my life.



There is yet another one in the ward next to us. Who looks no less than a bird. At least he couldn’t be heavier than one. The peacocks that flitter around in the evenings must be heavier. Our friend looks as harmless and as timid as one too. The only time I get to see him is when he comes to collect his meals. His movements are so light and gentle that you get the feeling that if you were to say Boo he would just fly away. He couldn’t possibly be more than all of four feet in height. He must have been and looked much taller than what he is now. His flesh has all but disappeared and he looks just like one of the survivors of the Jewish camps. Skin tight against his bones his head looks like a skull, except for the small wisps of mouse coloured hair sticking out. His eyes look dull and unduly large and because his movements are slow and his eyelids blink once in way, one gets the feeling of being in a museum with a mummy that just stepped out of one of the showcases. You feel like stretching out your hand to hold him lest he collapses into a heap of skin and bones. But you don’t. You don’t know why he is here and what rare decease he has. And you are right because for that matter even the doctors don’t know as to what his decease he has. They think that he has some rare kind of tuberculosis but of what kind and where and which part of his body, they don’t know. For the last four five years he has been given every kind of medicine for TB, but he has not responded to any. He has slowly and steadily been wasting away. So they have given up on him. They have just left him to die. They say that he is not likely to live for more than six months to a year at the most. So he too can leave these prison walls. But to go where. He wouldn’t know where to go or who to go to. He is not more than twenty or twenty-one. His whole life has been spent within the confines of these prison walls. He was nothing more than a child of seven or eight years when he was picked up for vagrancy, twelve thirteen years ago. This has been his home ever since. Two blankets and a tin mug, his whole possessions in life. He doesn’t even have a name to call his own. His parents... did he ever have any? If he had, they fled from his mind over the days when he was brutalized and sodomised by the drunken policemen from one police station, to the other, till he found his home in the prison walls. Sitting on his bed, listening to his story, you are not ashamed of the odd tear as it finds its way down your cheeks. But his eyes? They are dry. And they are looking at something far away. At a place where there are no tears to shed.