They found him sitting near the goddess,
Cigarette in hand, gazing absently at a fire lit nearby.
Yellow crinkled pages turning yellower momentarily,
And then dying,
A sublime, unholy death.
A death every piece of paper-no matter what was written on it, deserved.
And got.
The highly ornamental book covers lay at a distance….
The smoke brought in unwanted memories,
Of a house burnt in riots 10 years ago in Gujrat,
With a young lady and two children inside.
His wife,
His little children.
Memories,
Of revisiting the house when the storm subsided,
And discovering a charred violin,
Their violin.
He took recurrent long drags,
And puffed,
Perfect smoke rings that somehow found their way to the goddess.
And instead of touching her the way we mortals do,
they hit her in the face.
Insolently,
Irreverently,
Defiantly.
“Smoke turning sacrilegious”, he thought,
And smiled.
It had to,
This was destined to end this way.
They beat him to death like a dog…
Parth
'Campus Writing' 