BLUE

Written By: Shradha Shah
I finally ceased the play…the final brushstroke came into effect…the blues jaded…for it had to be perfect…that’s how I’ve always been…an incessant striver…nothing less would do….and here it stood…A picturesque landscape reminiscent of a wintry panorama…of soaring altitudes…the silhouettes closing the summit neatly foiled against the iniquitous hues of bluish white… -”Discovery 10 pm Summit Everest”
I looked at the silhouettes…It occurred to me…It was my story…
They must have been inseparable-to be together on the highest point in the world. But that’s not what one saw…A black anatomy lay desolated while the other blacks maneuvered towards the summit. The air was all blue, as his soul made the final transit…so close to the crystalline blue, ironically, the ethereal skies…
They had received a message. A blizzard in another 10-12 hours…with limited, and slowly becoming scarce, supplies of water, food, oxygen and the adrenaline pumping hard…they knew that taking him back to the base camp meant the end…there was no coming back…they weren’t disposed for such a crisis, were they? This did not fit in their utopian idealism. He had to be left behind…
And so it was death, not of a soul…but of faith… a faith that is sacred… it was an end… of their blood brotherhood…a benchmark to be set soon. An unconquered height surmounted… it was their beginning…
I felt blue. The truth finally sank in. I had also been left stranded, by people I called friends, crippled with disease-a stigma, so they called it. A faithful signature obliterated my existence, I so unknowing of their discernment of my condition. I was scandalized!
Art had always been my passion-today it is my crutch. I paint hoardings; the scrimpy remuneration serving to buy a notebook, a pen for my son… while we scavenge at the hotel where I wash crockery. I want my son to be learned-as I was. The little investments I make will take him to college after I depart.
Here he is. He looks at the hoarding and exclaims-”Discovery 10 pm Summit Everest”- his tryst with education is on… I’m delighted… satisfied… The journey is on…
And the blue ink forms into neat letters in his precious book… a miniscule blue silhouette alongside… just like the one I conjured up on the billboard… After all, they couldn’t take away our blue-blooded endowments! I don’t feel blue anymore…