Akram

Akram is dead. Brutally dead.

Painfully dead, Maggot eaten dead.

Was he human, for the world around him?Who knows?

For he died like an animal, Screaming and rotting.

He had a mother, a sister a brother.

But most of all, he was mourned by his hen.

For his mother, his sister, his brother and his friend,

Were exhausted of his pain, his screaming and his stench.

But the hen knew none of that, just his touch.

His call and the little pieces of meat he fed.

And so when I went to say goodbye,

The hen wept, as all others sighed.

For the hut was leaking, thatched and patched.

And Akram had laid, a third of their land.

Pinned to the floor by a cancerred leg, gnawing and gulping the flesh elsewhere.

A cancerred leg that sucked all blood, every ounce of energy his cells made,

His shoulders and neck, now just bones wrapped in skin

Were all he could move as he laid there bare.

And so I forgave and accepted, the sigh – of relief

For their debts would no longer pile up

Their food would no longer feed a cancerred leg

And the tiny, flesh eating maggots it bred.

That morning, I had gone to say hello.

He seemed angry – was it strange? Hell no!

But I still asked why and he said I didn’t give him that toy car.

And so I got it, for he could have asked..

For all my health and wealth and life,

And I’d have dealt with the devil to give him that.

For to see a child, any child, like that

Is a burden no sane life could have shed.

They smiled as they showed me the car next to his picture,

With the garland and incense and a tiny lamp.

They said he had played till he slept forever.

And I held back a tear, shouting, raging, unfair.

That picture, from a year back, beamed.

A boy of fifteen, puffed up cheeks, smiling,

Not the wailing wraith I had found, when I first saw him.

A normal kid, eyes gleaming.

Death has no dignity – someone had written somewhere.

Neither does life, for so many, many, everywhere.

For those born poor, to those who don’t care.

For those born, with a name unfair.

Would it have been the same if he was a Ram?

Oh no! That’s not how cancer works, Ma’am.

They told, and I didn’t tell them what I knew.

The documents that could have added a few…

A few more smiles or months or weeks.

A little respite from the endless trips.

From hospital to hospital, bed to bed.

To that broken one third floor, half dead.

He fought, from that floor, with a phone and hope.

He called and called, crying in pain, desperate.

He knocked on doors, adamant, till he found mine.

And no good that did, for it was too late.

Didi, I’m in pain – help me!!! His voice.

Would give nightmares to those who wrote policy.

If only they opened their doors a crack,

To these helpless voices that gnaw and hack.

But to be hacked and gnawed or poked even,

You’d need a soul. A soul that feels, and hears.

Shrieks of pain from a child with a cancerred leg.

But the souls of policy are long long dead.

Rotten, like,

Akram is dead. Brutally dead.

Painfully dead, Maggot eaten dead.

*Written as part of Write Club Bangalore’s session on “Sing about me, I’m dying of Thirst.”