HUMAN EGGS
“There is a sorrow that lingers in old parks,” the old man said, looking around wistfully. He is yet another fallen leaf from the branches of the family
By Mushtaque B. Barq
A sleaze ball fancy giggled the partially parched mind; the current that was so strapping from the back doors of the semi-consciousness settled in. What a metamorphosis! This majestic globe was just precise to a dot in the park wherein grass and grasshoppers were nakedly narrating their naughtiness. With their weird and strange gestures, a few leaves from the nearby tree had shed their frills. And down the lane, a few wanton boys followed, as their playmates had long been locked. The weather took an ugly turn. The sun moved like a kid under the breast of clouds to share the grief, and thunder broadcast the agony.
“There is a sorrow that lingers in old parks,” the old man said, looking around wistfully. He is yet another fallen leaf from the branches of the family. This feeble frame was too heavy to be carried on. The grief on his face had settled down as his wrinkles were narrating the saga of his sadness. A fallen leaf on his shoulder was not all a mismatch but a pictorial representation of his integrity. “Let somebody lift this mountain of me,” he yelled. Because there were only kids around, and everything in them was exciting. He was flocked around and examined by those innocent eyes carrying a ray of naughtiness to tease when compassion would have been employed. He was lifted like a sac and bundled in a corner under the tree that, like him, was shedding leaves occasionally.
The wandering kids had their half pants at their bases torn and, like an older man’s shirt near his shoulders, covered by withered leaves. What a harmony between hunger and heed. The fallen leaves shrouded both need and heed. A few shamelessly glued their bases but failed to stay on the shoulder. Shoulders must have been put to toil, and the fragility around them was just an accidental whiff. The rain brought down a few postcards reading his tale of worries, and the storm with its carry bag knocked on every door to drop the mail.
Most of the people failed to read between the lines because their eyeglasses were already broken into pieces, and the roar of the clouds scattered their own pieces. These clouds are scary; they take the life out of the cage. Merciless! Moreover, sad coins from the city of Ether banged the already bald head of the older man waiting for an out-of-order umbrella. The weather brought back unrest in the park, where the older man and the kids had nothing to fall back upon save the giggle and the glare.
Kids are funny things. They weep and laugh for reasons they only know. In one voice, they made a coil around the older man, beating the rain and fighting the storm. One is holding the other, giggling at the other, teasing the other, one is pulling the other, and one is naughty enough to reach the privacies of the other, making a human fence. The movement in the bowl and the wrestling down the dale were poles apart, sending a message of relief. He cried, “Where must my sons be?” His words irritated the vacuum of the kids, and in response, a few made ill faces, a few laughed, and the rest of them continued to roam in fancies to portray the fate. The naughtiest among them responded, “They, like our parents, must be ignorant.” The older man raised his head, and they fixed their eyes on him. He was about to say something when a spell of chill suddenly turned his words into a vapor, and he only sighed.
They made around him a pulsating umbrella. The older man under the umbrella of love looked like a hen in the pen, ready to incubate the eggs. Eggs, of course, are not of the human race but aliens. Human eggs have no shells; they move with the flow and leave, leaving their own race. Human eggs have a rich yolk but fragile shells. We are all but eggs; the lucky ones find the pen and hatch; the unlucky ones are on to peck from the dust heap and produce a race that performs inhuman rituals in the temple’s backyard. And produce for the dust bins.
What a discovery! These dustbins in a corner of the park are still waiting for the morsels. In their infinite belly baskets, the sins and sensitivities are nursing the worms, these scavenging tiny balls that finally fill their miniature bellies and compel the decomposed tissues of a sinner to travel through the darkest and the longest pathways of their innards to mark the end of the man who leaves the older man in the park.
He opened his arms and broke the rim of the umbrella. A boy immediately grabbed his arm and yanked him to his chest. He felt his pulse; it was not at all different from his own, full of desires, abundant with needs, and equally painful.
“Are you looking for eggs in my bony breast?” the old man asked.
Laughter under the human umbrella died soon when the boys reached into their pockets to find what they needed. His pockets, like him, were full of agony, empty and wet.
“We hate eggs,” they responded.
Where is our yoke? Where are our shells? “Let you show us?” the naughtiest asked.
“If at all I tell you, you will break your shells, and your yoke shall only serve the worms,” the old man announced.
They looked at each other, and suddenly, they unfolded their arms and exposed the old man under the weeping sky. “Don’t go; stay here,” he tried to plead with them. The wind hardly read the post.
“We are looking for the yoke to save our shells,” the naughtiest remarked.
The wind beat his stripped body, bringing down a limb of the tree to break the shell of yet another human egg.
