Shot to Shame

Sometimes it rains.It then seems that god in his infinite benevolence is showering us with sustenance and faith.It seems his word is being heard as a few,if at all,raise their faces to heaven, as the tatoo of cleansing grace rises over the filth around us and washes away our sins,greatest of all is to be alive now,spectator to the rape.It seems as if the pain and anguish is come to an end and the sun at last, is going to rise.It seems that hope itself is around the corner and the nightmare of reality is finally to be brought to trial before the jury of divine retribution.It seems,just for a moment, that it is a dream.Hence it is cruel to wake up.

For as the dust settles in the aftermath of the downpour, the stench of insanity overwhelmes.It does not fail to arouse pity and tears.It does not fail to reveal humanity, as it was certainly not meant to be.

His family was murdered before his eyes;brutally,non-chalantly,his life spared by the cruelty of chance.A lifetime of turmoil and daily worthless deaths he had lived through before puberty.The scarring images of a inhuman warring nation were already his inheritance.Then,his destiny drove him to this camp where his world now revolves around the single meal he gets daily and the extra bowl of water that he can sometimes scavenge.He lacks an arm and sports an infected eye.I find it difficult to see how he can last this year here.His first.He looks up,however, as it starts raining,thinking no doubt, about his emancipation.Or the extra bowl of water.He smiles.Unaware as they pour in more misery and sorrow.

He is lucky yet;well, luckier than most in this city of a million.A million dead souls rotting in ghoulish bodies.The land has been scarred by death and destitution for so long and with such vengeance,that virtues,blessings,goodwill and prayers do not tread here anymore.

But cloth stashed over his shoulder,covering his skeletal frame,stump of a limb held limp with confusion,his prized bowl and his ghostly face,his gory past and his unfathomable future get captured in one unflattering flash of my camera.This will go into my journal.And i will be one of the many, shamelessly sterile to help,except through pointless prose and inadequate journalism.It is one shot.And that is enough to glimpse only the shamefully emasculating nature of reporting genocide.powerless to help.POWERless.utterly useless.

He is standing there still.Like all the worthless souls around him.In the godforsaken camp.Right Before me,but in the deepest dark of tartarus, on the darkest of continents.

At least it rained.

Steeping Emptyness

He was trudging along the path slowly,being jostled by the multitudes of uneven humanity brushing past him.Cursing his lethargy.He looked around to see scowling faces around him.scowling at him, pushing at him, clearly blaming their problems on him.As if he was the cause of their misery, whatever that was.He could not bear it, so he looked up to the sky.But what he saw was a smudged old piece of rag masquerading as the heavens.Even the gods were displeased.
It was raining.His new suit was sodden and clung to him.His shoes complained with every step.His shoulder felt infinitely burdened and he seemed to shrink under the stern gaze of fate.With the rain,it felt like it was his sorrows raining down on him all over again.It washed him clean of hope and left him craving for the comfort and warmth he had always found at home.At the end of a killing night, a roof, a hearth, a quiet corner to wipe your tears in, and mother.

He had a Home.He had just left it in order to attend to his mindless wanderings.Well, not entirely mindless.Because he also had one purpose.He lived now to fulfill that.to achieve that solitude he had craved so badly recently.To be alone.Once and for all.Alone with himself and at peace with the world.Or so he thought.
Purpose gives light to some people.It guides them not, but it gives them determination.It transcends hope and faith.Purpose is the ancient part of our existence that is more basic than humanity.Purpose outranks destiny.Indeed, purpose moulds and creates our individual destiny.The purpose of our existence and eventual death seems to hold some purpose in the greater scheme of things.It is pleasurable to think so.For him though, purpose was life.Distilled and unadulterated.And he walked on...purposeful, but as yet unaware of the fact.

It was raining.The smells of a sinful, revulsive city rose up to mock him.He met them with equanimity.He was no more than a shell now.It could be rain running down his cheeks,because his tears had run dry.He had nothing left in him to pluck out and wager for his life.He did not know what he was doing.He no longer cared.And so it was that when he climbed the rails and jumped, he did not know that the bridge had made the final decision for him.
As the slush rose up to met him, he was not thinking of his purpose, of the resulting destiny or of his ailing mother at home.His last expression was that of a mask straining against itself to achieve an etching of a smile.A crooked wretched look that oddly enough suited him.He was thinking how the colour of his suit matched the colour of his coffin.

It was raining.And he was falling with it.