The Eyes Of A King

There are days when you wonder what has happened to this world that- in context of the recent occurrences- it seems tilted towards the negative aspects of life. Now negative, in itself, is a relative term. What with its broad meanings varying with the demographics, if I use a slightly bugging scientific term for the very description of human populace. Nay, it varies from person to person. However revolting we, and I speak for myself and like-minded people, birds of a feather as we may be called, may find the act of cannibalism, it did exist. And with my tongue pressed between my teeth, I tap the dreadful rhythm on the keyboard- we seem to be cycling back, the wheel of time revolving, a differing form of cannibalism but retaining the aforesaid qualities, if they be called such, that defined it. The current situation of rising crime rates seems to make Saturn, the devourer of his own son, look like a cute toy-story character which, if I may be as prudent as to say, evince humanity much better than the above-mentioned mythic character, and the humans minus humanity we see in the dream we call reality.

                                                    I, contrary to the belief that you, the reader, may have formulated over the course of reading the above lines, am not here to discuss crime in general. Neither am I here to shell out solutions for the ostensible and the real problems. With a chocolate in my hand, the five fingers of which seem to be in a hurry to let go of its possession in favour of my mouth, I am not here to give tongue, my tongue, which seems to savouring the chocolate for the moment, to the most apposite of all questions- Crime: What, why, how, and all the other Ws and Hs attached to the afore-mentioned. I am here with a special- chocolaty, pardon the pun- emphasis on the crime which has shaken this world better than a Gangnam-style could ever dream of. This crime, which has jolted the foundation of the valves of our mental, mechanical as some, including yours truly, call, flow of fluid. Thus begins the latest chapter of the book named crimes. Well readers, let us take take a ride to the land of Sodom, and back if we can possibly hitch one. Let us behold the most flagitious of crimes. Let us perceive slavery as what it was ,and there exists a possibility- slim, but present nevertheless- of what it could possibly be. From the eyes of a slave, I present

The Eyes Of A King-

 A man, better labelled such than referred to as a tramp, is bleeding in a dark alley, off The Styx Street. No one gives him a second glance though that may partially be because of the dark shadows that cover him, hiding him from the glares from the adults and stares from those who do not know better. The shadows verbalise the state of affairs his life is in- shadows within and shadows without. He gives his head a shake, his unkempt hair falling on his face, fetching more contemptible looks from the passers-by, as he moves out of the shadows. Had his appearance not been so disgruntling to an untrained eye, he would have appeared as a handsome man, somewhere in his early to late thirties. Thin, to the point of privation, tallish, as some would call him, and the brooding eyes. Those haunted eyes are what draw attention.The lifeless stare, the emptiness, the darkness and the suspicion in them, accompanied with his unruly and wild look capture the fickle attention of the people passing by the alley. Bleeding from his wounds, he staggers through the alley and into one of the houses, that being a formal word for what appears to be nothing more than a shack. Born in a well-off family, the wealth of which matched and outdid any wealthy merchant in this land, how far has he fallen. Always haunted by the same thought- what could have been but is not. Lost in the thought, he remembers his wife, the lovely woman, both in looks and in heart. How she would welcome him home with a warm hug and an even warmer meal. How she would chide him for his carelessness, the agape love and compassion she brought into his life- barren as it was before, and is after, she is gone. His child. The very memory  moistens his eyes. His son, who would have turned eight this year had he but been allowed to live, the brightest star on the horizon he called his life. Then approaches the dream that has haunted him for the past three years, the three years better referred to as hell. The dream of the dark night. The approaching people  having, a till then unheard of, skin as white as lilies that grew in the pond near his home. They had implements which spewed fire and killed one every time their mouths coughed out a flash like the lightning in the sky. Standing against them, the townsmen and their plans of defending the town, amateurish as they were, were completely thwarted and a surrender is what followed. Then began what would haunt him for all the years that were left in him. The wills of the women taken from them, they were subjugated to the desires of the monsters right in-front of the men of the town. Among them was his wife. The one person who would never harm another was brought into servitude in the worst possible manner. With that, the the fire that burnt within him was extinguished, the life that he had had till then, and the life which he dreamt of as would be his, was lost- totaled with every scream that rose out of her throat. All the women and children were struck down. His son, the one thing that he valued more than anything,was the brightest star that blinked out of existence. He died as a man that night, that fateful night. Snapping out of his reverie, he smiles, ruefully, to himself. Tired, with life and all that it entailed and entails, of the will of the fates, three in number, and what calamity they brought upon him, his family, and friends, and above-all, of living the life which was bereft of the love that he cherished so much, he lay down to dream of what could have been. Before they close, his eyes gleam, seeing his wife back at home, awaiting his return on a dusty evening, his son, playing with his toys at the footsteps, laughing at a joke only he could grok, his town, as the sun recedes down the horizon and the black blanket gets pulled over the sky, dotted with buttons of  glistening silver stars which fill the sky above. His eyes, about to close, are those of a king; a king in his land, a land where he lived.