To the Lives of Ages

To glamorous beginnings. To satisfied rakes. To the knowledge of a thousand scholars did that age belong. To satiation of skin and intellect, and the swell of the sword. To power and courage and beyond chivalry. To idealism and negligence and blind faith. They lived in a sort of oblivion till one day matters came to head. That day they were undone and judged before a panel twice as ambivalent as their crime. They hummed the tune of a reminiscent death- a hanging, that which sophistication called an ‘execution’. It mattered little, the evidence that gathered dust. But the will to kill was strong. The age turned its primal ugly head at the miscreants. The age of love had suddenly turned to the age of hate. And lust. They wondered at the shadows their big buildings cast. The fair skinned smiled at their ignorance, the dark skinned boiled at their interference. They had middled their existence for the longest time. Right until they had to choose. Between life and existence. Between choice and fate.

They ran as fast as they could, past all the disguised pity and concern. They could’ve made a pit stop near the corner that read ‘heaven’ but the technically perfect welcome scared them off. The truth was they smelt a rat. They kept running towards the golden light of salvation, only to find that it was a big billboard of the sun. They’d copied everything, the bastards. From the windows of a once illuminous home, they blessed the children crossing the road to school. They waited in patience for them to return, but instead found that the children had taken leave to become rich and successful. And forgetful. The telephone hadn’t rung for twenty years. May be it was during all this hapless time that they’d turned the sun into a billboard. They stepped out in search, but found themselves utterly lost in a world of flyovers. They took the train down to their favourite restaurant. But instead they found a hollow hole, something that a war had made. When they asked questions and looked puzzled, the people threw an army of glances at them. They almost hurt and they almost bled. Their minds wept as they turned home, the snow of cold heartedness blinding their eyes. Once home, they found that Sanctity had turned whorish and zipped her pants and left. They tried to use the telephone to cajole her into coming back and strut around the house, if only for a little while. But the children refused to pick up. All they got was a plasticky blankness. They hadn’t seen it coming, though heard it often over the radio that played a song about a father, a son and a cat and a silver spoon. When it began to rain, the age finally seemed to be coming around. The fields seemed rich with colour again. But the flood won’t let them be. For days they sat on upturned furniture and waited for the skies to open and propel aid at them. They sat like that for hours, despondent at the thought of mopping their own tears. They’d never named hurricanes in their time. They only sound as fierce as females they were named after. Once the billboard was back, the climbed out of their hideouts and waved frantically in the fresh air. Soon the waving changed to a dramatic gesture of dissent and anger. The tiny white hairs at the nape of their necks shook with fury. They pumped the air with their fists and made victory signs. After all this was the age of ignorance. The last time they’d done that was for something they’d heard in college, while rolling a joint. It was for people on the other side of the world. The empire was spreading its claws, all over ‘Nam. Little did that help. Little would this help.

They ran past experience, they ran past old age, they ran past freedom. They stuck their tongues out at democracy. They mooned the flag and pissed all over the imperial lawn of patriotism. Such was their crime, in the glorious era born of the aftermath of a thousand deaths. Where they hang listlessly now, once stood the ruler of the free world.