Anthem n Enigma
I

The ochre of skies had turned to violets, the once dark mane of the tiger had gone thin and pale with age, but the joy of leaving a place mixed with the anticipation of his onward journeys was still a part of nachiketa s travels. He wandered irremediably, just like the mythological satan who had been cursed with having no ground under his feet. But alas!our wanderer of yore did have his feet firmly on the ground, else how was he to feel the pulse of humanity running all around him. How was he to gauge the sparkle in the eye of the ragpiker child when he had casually given away his burger and fries to her at the signal, or how was he to touch the flame within the being of an ancient-lighthouse-caretaker seeing him live the same day of switching on n swithching off the huge light since as long as memory could stretch.He surely could'nt have,had he been a creature of the floating world;and so his feet were firmly on the ground looking for edges and cliffs from where he'd take flight and soar into the horizon of human possibilities and freedom and feeling, unhindered by prejudice,presumption or malice. Such was the nature of each cliff he stood on, before leaving an old dwelling place and travellng to the next. His journeys alas!were limitless mysteries unfolding into visions that made him see faces,eyes,colours and incidents as beautiful, surreal blotches on the fabric of an ever-moving, ever-changing humanity. But at times (in those visions) he also managed to distance himself far enough to be able to see the 'face' of an infinite human spirit. And that was the point.
'What is your name?',asked Kala, the mahout, glancing at our protagonist, sitting at Bumba's back, the tusker with pink teeth and heart-shaped patches on his ears. Bumba had been born with wings in the valley of Khyal, but the day he crossed over to the town of Dil, his wings had been clinged on by a million dust particles, turned brittle and broke. Those heart-shaped patches on his ears were an undying legacy that Akriti had left to him, her love songs whispered into his ears once upon a time, but alas! the fastidiousness of Dil had swallowed away her beauty into its belly of circuses n zoos and what not. In the end, her voice had ended up as heart-shaped patches on Bumba z ears, whilst her famished body been abandoned in the sleepy swamps of Majnu-ka-tilla around the northern pretincts of Dil.
Even before, Nachiketa was done pronouncing his name, the mahout tricked Bumba to kneel before our protagonist, in anticipation for a few green notes. Nachi obviously mistook it for some sort of beastly outburst, dropped his shutterbug at Bumba's feet and fled for life. In the midst of such mayhem, he rammed right into the blind hawker of black roses, breaking the biggest black bud and spillling a whole lot of ambrosia all around the walls of the old city. In an instant, the elixir of youth wafted all around those graffiti-ridden walls, bringing to life one painful graffiti after another. And there danced in front of him all the romeo-juliets and laila-majnums who had once tried to immortalize their names by etching them on the belly of this immortal wall. Nachi, lost in the midst of so many formless, floating couples whispering sweet nothings to eachother, suddenly realized that not all of them spoke of love, or poetry, or consummation in our typical-hooded style. Rather some of them quarreled, others shoved and jostled eachother, and others still damned the gift of immortality they had granted to themselves. One such formless couple quickly made their way into Nachi's rucksack.
Wasting no time on these sundry trivialities, Nachiketa quickly plucked a few petals from a nascent black rose-bud, hopped upon Bumba z back and pleaded Kala to take them away.
"Stop!", yelled Nachi, for his shutterbug still lay on the ground, and its reel recorded the bizarre quagmire that the whole bazaar had sunk into. But the tusker only took orders from his master, who was too busy counting the notes in Nachi z wallet. The elephant was fast, and even before Nachi let go off the last strands of hope of rescuing his life z works, Bumba had entered Pathardil, the swanky, concrete portion of Dil. Nachi sighed and looked at a million tiny lights of the city move whilst Bumba soared into limitless horizons, and the formless couple made silent love amongst the bed of black rose petals inside Nachi z rucksack. .....................................