Human – A Montage by Arun Abraham John

Dawn breaks. As a crimson flag, birds streak the morning sky. Signaling the onset of another day in the ever monotonous timeline – just another day.

Wiping the sweat off his brow, he toils in the sun, waiting for neither anyone nor the autumn breeze. On his mind, the fear of mind numbing hunger. Even more the cries of his beloved child.

The land unfavourable he still strikes the ground. The plough blades give away but his persistence prevails.

Amidst all this misery he finds hope. He counts on the one that feeds the birds of the sky and the seemingly insignificant Hellbound beings. He counts on the flux of nature. The dew that runs down blades of grass, the wind that brings them to a trance. A tranquil dance!

The cry of a newborn. The young in the arms of his mother. The child’s sustenance owing to his mothers heart beat. The assurance, the promise eternal that gets embedded in the child’s emotional fabric.

Such promises force him to hope. It gives him the much needed resilience to move forward. As he went on to plough, as he broke the earth – a gash, a scar. It started escalating, the scar, into depths unfathomable. Alas! He falls into voids unknown, unreal. As he does, he sees. Life, passed and to come. Fates of the many intertwined. The misery, the glee, the ever humorous spree.

Rock bottom, he seeks but fate seems to turn her back on the poor soul. Unexpected as it seems he seems to have stopped…falling? Suspended, defying gravity. He looks around. Every imaginable direction, oblivion. Bewildered, he stares into the abyss, a horizon nonexistent.

Burdened by loneliness, by absolute nothingness, devoid of all known life, he closes his eyes. His choice, to forget and to dream. He decides to conjure a world of dreams, realms without boundaries.

He sees…water? From a stalactite falls beautiful drops of pristine water. Crystal. He can smell fresh grass greener than a tree frog’s mesmerizing eyes. The smell of mud, of mother nature’s care, almost palpable! As though his beloved caresses his cheek, with hands soft, he feels a breeze blow against his face, calming him, freeing him from agony and pain, the vanity of human existence if you will.

Cherishing this transient yet boundless love he stands still, forgetting everything. He hears something. A roar? Unlikely. It is anything but frightening. He feels the earth beneath him being torn by a force. Eroded? Yes the force at hand is making way for itself. An uncanny looming wall, an impending fall. It’s the raging tides! Tearing a valley, a canyon. It consumes him and he goes along with the marching waters. Never has he felt a force this overwhelming. He loses himself once more when he thought he had already, once.