Staple pins

I was lying in bed right up until a moment ago,going across the events of the past few days.
Feelings were swirling around inside me,much like stripes of airy, translucent strips of coloured paper in a windy void.

It had been two days of standing on the razors edge.

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream. That’s my nightmare. Crawling, swiftly, along the edge of a straight…razor…and surviving.”
( Colobel Kurtz, from Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'-a book that has lived in me since the day I read it.)

Indecisiveness, and not knowing where I stand. Wanting to be this and that, and stamping my feet in the clouds of dust under the signs at the crossroads.

I wanted to sum it up. I took a few long walks at night, and played electronic music at low volumes, and thought about love and loss and love again, and the inbetweens which we all have to make work out, for our own sakes.

And then I was taking one such walk, with a chance friend, and we came across a puppet show, put on-campus as part of a workshop.
The loud chuckles and merriment caught my attention, as did the crowd being drawn to the display of brightly coloured, tightly wound-up folk toys.
I drew closer, still lost in my own world, and the crowd around me grew thicker as the puppet-play rose to a climax.

A young boy caught my attention;gawky and hunched. He seemed not to know what to do with his limbs, and swung around restlessly behind his mother, a local. Covering her head with her pallu, she was caught up in the excitement of the play and must have presumed that her son was doing the same.

He ran his fingers along the noticeboards propped up around the play.They served as boundary walls, and had battered looking board pins and staples stuck at odd angles, stuck in the rough cloth. I was curious. His eyes were unfocused, and his mouth half open. People pushed behind me, and I craned my neck to watch him, wondering if he had a sight problem.

And then his palm flattened out,up and against the board. A square sheet of paper was moved carefully upward, while small fingers poked a bent staple pin into the top of the sheet.
His drawing was red and yellow and criss crossed into triangles.
He smiled, seeing it placed just where he wanted, pinned up on the board.

The play ended,
and I clapped
absently,
suddenly blinking
furiously,
and feeling like the luckiest, and most privileged person around me for miles.

I walked away at a snails pace,
dreaming of staple pins and paper.
and feeling secure.