Eagam Khaling
A thin but fair looking girl was constantly staring outside from the bus. The noises of the passengers had awakened her up. The bus was refilling air in its tires. After a few minutes, the bus started taking its motion. She was able to see a feeble man from her window working in a field far away. She even did not know why she felt waving her hands at the man. She enthusiastically waved her hands, but the man did not see her. She took out her scarf and flapped as much as she can, but the man again did not see her, and the bus quickly left the place and reached another stoppage.
The girl watching her two hands, shaded tears silently uttering the word ‘Ram!’ from the bottom of her heart. Her eyes started to flashback: “Ram and she used to fly kites in the winter from the top of their village, and in the end, they used to release them by breaking their threads. After that, they used to watch the kites till they disappear from their sights. After the disappearance of the kites, they used to wait for their hands to itch. But that never happened.”
After some hours, her hands suddenly began to tickle and itch. She started crying in joy, and keeping her hands on the chest, said to herself, “Ram! I know you are coming to rescue me because my hands are itching now!”
A man who was with her slapped her hard. She quietly wiped off the blood of her nose with the scarf. A scared woman was watching her from the outside with some unknown sympathy in her eyes. After a few minutes, the bus started again. She turned her eyes towards the woman and chuckled, then said slowly in a trembling voice, “Mother, I am going now! Goodbye!” After that, they waved their hands long until they can’t see each other. The woman dropped some worm tears on the cold ground, but she did not know that.
[Eagam Khaling hails from Darjeeling. He has published an anthology of poems in 2001. Since then he has been publishing his poems in local, national and international journals (and e-sites). He is a teacher and a research scholar at the Department of Philosophy of North Bengal University.]