Crimson Curry

It was a sultry afternoon,

usual for Januaries in Calcutta.

A restless boy of eight 

and a newly adolescent girl of thirteen 

had sat for lunch

with their parents, 

when the four heard a tire explode

over steamed rice and fish curry;

usual for Januaries to Decembers in Calcutta to Calicut.

The doors were bolted 

because civilisation had discovered 

building a home wasn't enough to keep it one. 

The windows were shut

because the rooms needed to be 

just cold enough for a quilt-laden sleep. 

A tire exploding is usual enough

that on nine out of ten days, 

not one of the four would have bothered 

to move anything but their jaws, 

crushing those fish bones.

But the boy of eight had wheels for legs.

Or his mother often remarked, 

he had poppy seeds under his feet;

proverbs aside, he was a cat on a hot tin roof, 

metaphors aside, he was always on the edge.

And, a cat on a hot tin roof doesn't walk, doesn't run;

it sprints before you can get a good look at it.

Before the others could react, 

he had slowly opened a window ever so slightly, 

and before they could speak a word, 

he was back on the chair assigned to him.

"Someone's spilled organs on the road, baba!" he exclaimed, 

"Shhhhhhhhhh.. keep your voice down" baba told him with measured caution, 

and a dismissive look that said 

it didn't quite approve of his unhinged imagination.

A couple of hours later, the police arrived. 

The one with a gun latched on to his belt told them, 

a man had been murdered;

shot point blank, with a silencer-fitted gun.

The man's skull had cracked open, 

spilling his brains out like gills of a fish.

There was blood 

splattered across the front wall of their house,

and that's the day an eight-year-old learnt:

blood is never blood red, it's dark crimson;

it stains quick and smells of fishes, 

and that a human head splits open 

to the same tune a tire explodes.

The wall has been broken, rebuilt, and painted five different shades of a pastel box,

and the boy is old enough to have had an eight-year-old of his own, 

and yet every time he sees the wall, he can't unsee the blood on it, 

and yet every time he sees the street, he can't unsee the scattered brain matter on the dusty concrete.

I pray, someday the boy finally lets go of the man. 

I pray, someday I can finally stop being eight.