A Promise Kept

Pen poised, I waited

For verses to flow.

Two crystal beads raced their path

Through the uncut stone.

This is my poem for you,

My own;

Two drops, fellow tributary

Of pure, unadulterated
Love.

About Steven... and me

Sun-proofing, that is one great invention that humanity has to be thankful for. All the world is just a blue-hued blur as you speed past the tanned bare-backs bearing the brunt of the mid-day sun. You do not see the sweat, the tears nor the million hued dreams that fly in the swirling dust outside. Your world is cool, comfortable and cosy. Just as you step out of the air-conditioned car, attendants rush to your aid with umbrellas and a mint-cooler awaits you in the parlour. Life is the same for you, lad born in the lap of Luxury, wherever you are. In some countries you are a majority but in lesser privileged ones, you are a towering minority, the few ravenous mouths that eat up the major chunk of the pie available to hungry millions. I spot you in over-priced malls buying up solitaires the size of a nut, you grin at me from the cover pages of magazines – news-makers you are, you are all around us, but I feel your presence most profoundly in the tears that spring from scarcity, those that flood the huge ridge of inequality you have created. You are our pride and our sorrow. I can pick you out from the teeming many, by the sheen of your dress and the glow of your skin. (both of which have had a price to pay) I pick you out Steven, for this is all about you.

Steven never knew that I was following him, nor did his better(worse)-half. If they had known, they would not have went about spilling oil to their bed chamber just when I had a match lit. It was not the cobblestones in their path nor the walls, that surrounded them as they went about with their dark deeds, which betrayed them; it was their careless mouths which led them to their doom, I just made your voice resound in the streets. He was the fodder that my curiosity fed on. How could someone with a brain the size of a pea earn millions every single day when thousands toil for him in his huge establishments, earning hardly 50 bucks a day? I had to find out. My eyes followed him as he met the bureaucrats in star hotels, as he trudged his way back home; I watched with amusement as his obese wife and overfed children fawned on him with all the love in the world only to curse him behind his back the very next second. His dark deeds made my unblinking eyes clamp shut. Steven made his castles from thousand rupee notes that have a black smudge on them. He was a master at work, snatching every grain of food from the mouths of the hungry millions, stuffing them in his granaries and selling it at prices that even he could not afford to pay. Steven dealt in your hunger and mine; he was the reason for the thousands who die of hunger, for the children who suffer from malnutrition and for the sickle-bearing hands that disappear into oblivion every single day.

As we watched him trample on us to his throne, a mother cried out, “The all-seeing eye is watching, you can't trick Him”. The flood of misfortunes I showered on him began as a tiny trickle; I overheard one of Steven’s confidential chats with a bigwig in the cabinet and I could not resist spilling the beans to all who would listen. The whole nation woke up to his grinning face in the newspapers, to his raspy voice in televisions and radios, I made him a notorious celebrity. In the days that followed a pack of hounds hunted him down and, with a little help from my part, tore away the mask covering his ugly face and made him stand nude in the view of the whole country. Within days Steven’s repute lay in the dust, his castles were razed to the ground. He stood, burning in the nation's ire, wishing me a dire end. I became an obsession for him. He would not speak without searching the surroundings for me, though he never really knew me. Maybe, he hoped that my appearance would give some cue to him, maybe he hoped that I would leap from behind a bush and proclaim that I am the reason for his doom. I was one among the many pairs of hungry eyes that were around him, but he never knew which. All the while I laughed.

Steven smiled, yes, a smile of contention. It was then that realisation sunk in that I am addicted to his tears and that I cannot live without it. That was a shady smile too, I could not help noticing the red rose in the background. So what do I do? The next day morning, mothers all over the nation took care to see that their children did not see the newspaper or television. But for old granddads and grannies, it was a hot topic for their evening discussions. Infidelity is a far greater crime than murder, if not it is undoubtedly the most sensational. You can never say that I never did him a favour; bags packed, his wife and children stood at the doorway and sped away in the only car that he had taking with them what remained of his fortune. His fury found its target in a wine bottle which lay in pieces on the leopard skin carpet in the living room; alas, it could neither quench my thirst for his destruction nor could it douse his hatred for me. As Steven went out on his evening walk people spat on his face, women pointed at him and giggled, his friends acted as though he was just another face in the crowd, he could have asked me then to stop, but he did not, he just cursed me.

Sleep is the greatest luxury, poor Steven, he realised that too late. In the dark he saw my hands groping for him. He heard my voice proclaim all that he never wanted to be known. He felt my gaze wherever he went, he took care not to leave any footprints as he trudged his way to the place that would witness his final showdown. It was somewhere in the romantic mountains, I saw him with a spade digging on and on panting and chanting curses at me. He slowly unearthed a wooden crate which contained a small fortune. Whistle-blower, I proved worthy of that name! As he gloated over this fortune and the possibility of an escape to a better future that it seemed to offer, a siren rang somewhere in the distance and a group of khaki clad police officers appeared on the scene. His face was a picture of enraged helplessness if there is such a condition. The officers dig a bit further and found similar crates and cartons of hidden fortune. Steven is just one thread that has been successfully taken out from a tangled mess of dirty threads. There are many more to come and they might not be so easy to untangle. But I will never stop trying nor prying.

Stevens in our country, this is my voice you hear. Some of your lives may have been touched by me and the others, I might be a recurring nightmare for you. In any case I am as familiar to you as your own self. I am no divine providence who keeps watch over you, no god. I have only one religion: truth and I preach it in every breath of mine. Wrong-doers you are and I will make you suffer. Do not search for me. You will never find me, for your sight is jaundiced by the lustre of gold. You will see me only when you have something known as compassion. You will see me only when you learn to see the millions who toil for you, to provide you the creature comforts you take for granted. I am always with you, though I never stand by your side. You never noticed me, I was by your bedside, on your table, on some mantelpiece, somewhere, I am just an hourglass.