Long walk to home

Sun shines in her golden hair,
hope and despair lives silently in those sullen eyes,
she hums verses of Gita under her breath,
Sometimes she stops and speaks to ujjala,
she glances at the coconut trees, she drifts.
Lost in the quest of questions, she digs inside.
Her hand searching a ring in the mud,
she could feel his hands too.
Subash was singing a song,
Her cousins and friends were enamoured by him.
She remembers the 'hare krishna hare rama' song,
her father had taught her on way to school,
on his bicycle, where he carried his black umbrella.
It rained,the day her father died.
He spilled blood from his mouth in his final days.
The doctors had denied to admit him.
She and her brother had carried him to a local Malda govt hospital.
The cachar cancer hospital is clean.
Here nurses are tribals.
They often talk silly while injecting chemo.
The skin of her veins had gone black,
a dusky black which fall on her room,
every night when pinky tugged her in the bed.
The kaliphosh were yet to kick in.
The night outside the window was more silent,
a thousand mute questions all speaking at once.
Sopna brings her a glass of D-protein,
Pinky had just boiled some local eggs,
Chintu was drinking his morning tea.
Jhuma was chopping the fresh spinach she had bought.
D-protein tasted worse then sugar water.
She can't have sugar. Her father-in law had sugar.
Nice biscuits were his favourite.
He stole and hide them under his pillow.
He had bedsores and used to shit on his bed for months.
The pungent smell still hurts her stomach.
She had given up food for many years.
She can't eat now. Her stomach aches.
Subash had stomach ulcer. He had given up hope.
He cried on his way to Chennai five years back.
He only ate boiled vegetables and local fishes for years.
Boiled food makes her puke now.
Even the spicy fish curry tastes like anesthesia.
She was administered local anesthesia during her eye operation.
It was an eye clinic near Premtola.
Her father-in-law had a cataract operation at red cross,
in the adjacent building Amit was born.
On a rainy night, Chinu was born in Ellora nursing home,
he was under weight then.
Pinky could not sleep for nights when she had her  asthma attacks.
She slept by her bed for nights.
They have all grown up now,
like the coconut trees which soared to the sky.
They have strong roots yet rootless now.
Its going to be a long walk to home now,
The nights are going to be longer too,
days windy, and the sun less warmer.
She hummed Gita under her breath.
Sun shone in her golden hair,
hope and despair lived silently in her aged eyes.