by Parth Pandya
“You are three months late …”
Went the letter that he kept away.
With slouched shoulders, the defaulter
Walked out of his apartment.
He felt breathless, suffocated, boxed in,
Squeezed by tragedy’s relentlessness.
A house he may lose, a wife he already lost,
No prospects, no love, no lovers, no money.
And then, the skies opened up,
On misfortune’s favourite child.
In despair he took flight to reach
His beloved place of escape.
The store welcomed him.
With books on endless shelves,
The mass of human knowledge,
Brimming, toppling over.
Books were his lodestone
On sombre unsettling days,
Where words were his balm
To remedy the bruises on his soul.
He walked along the aisles,
Skipping past Philosophy, Art,
And that ever alluring History.
None drew him in today.
He didn’t give a second look
To the Cooking section
Or the absorbing treatises on Politics
Or the holy tomes on Religion.
Enough, he thought, of this world
In all its gory complexities
And its gruesome grimness
And its excessive dose of reality.
And so, as light as a feather,
He skipped to the end of the store,
To the colourful racks and the bright pictures,
To the lively and bright Children’s section.
He collected ten books on a whim.
Stories dipped in pixie dust,
Simple fantasies, uncomplicated lives,
Unburdened souls, Uncluttered morals.
He read them all, not realizing the irony.
Here was an adult escaping into
A world written by other adults,
Who were attempting to do the same.
