The smoke, its garish fragrance and the screams overwhelmed her usually quiet world. The red and orange flames super charged the air with their heat. She could feel her sore lungs and heard the little mewling cry by her ears. She couldn’t recognise her own voice. But she felt the hunger more than anything. It gnawed at her belly like a ravenous wolf.
She always inhaled the sweet scent of Frangipani whenever she enjoyed her mother’s nectar. Even though it had dwindled to a miserly trickle of late. Even the sweat on her mother failed to dampen her enthusiasm in the least. She didn’t know that her mother always sat in the shade of a Frangipani tree by the temple whenever she fed her. Away from the ruthless sun that had created tiny trenches in the parched earth, to shield her most precious possession. The milk was kept from drying, just barely, by the meagre alms and food the devotees to the temple doled out to her. She supplemented the rest by walking on the dusty streets with an outstretched palm; totally oblivious to any dignity and respect that the world owed her. The other hand, a stick wrapped in skin, held her world closely pressed against her body. No exhaustion, no starvation could ever loosen that grip. Some gave her kind looks, some money, others invited her with pledges of money and kindness, but with lust in their eyes. She would always return to her temporary oasis under the tree.
The girl loved caressing her mother’s face as she took her fill, which was never enough. The coarse skin gnarled by the sun, wrinkles that furrowed the forehead, eyes that had drowned in their sockets: all familiar landmarks on a loving landscape. She could never tell the difference between the wrinkles and the scar that graced her mother’s left cheek, a souvenir of hatred and rage. Left by those who thought they had a moral right to eliminate those of a different religion, an inferior race.
The wind picked up, the flames lost their hues, the smoke drifted away, and the scent of Frangipani returned. But the wolf in her belly was baying louder and getting more belligerent. She missed her normal cradle and her sweet elixir. Suddenly her mother’s sweat found her nostrils. She crawled towards it, on all fours, her elbows and knees bleeding from the gravel. But she forgot her pain as she found her favourite breast and usual perch. The milk had reduced to a few drops, but she was happy. She began to drift in to a blissful slumber. Sleepily she groped her mother’s face, but she couldn’t feel it. It wasn’t there. A thick liquid wet her hand.
Her screams fell away from her throat, cut down by exhaustion. She didn’t need her mother’s milk anymore, she just wanted her mother.
A machete gleamed in the sun, its sharp blade stained with blood.
copyright@2017 Jude Perera