Creative Writing: Magroo's Life

The winter wind was cold and bitingly merciless. The dawn had yet to make its presence in the horizon, as it was still too early for the sun to rise; still, good three hours from four o’ clock in the morning

Magroo’s village was still very far, some odd ten kilometers away. Maybe five may be seven. He could not recollect how far. Then the memories of his parents, his siblings, friends and the village he had left in the Barthana district propelled him onwards.

He had left them when he was young, in fact very young. On the fringes of the adolescent years, where heavy tides of sentiments muddle the mind and the analytical since of differentiating between what is right and wrong is lost. He had ran away from his home, away from his loved

Nothing much had changed. The rural country side was still the same, but the road now instead of being dust and a broken down bullock cart path had been brick laid. The walk, therefore, except for the cold was not so excruciating. The impatient desire to see his dear ones acted as a balm against all the present hard ship he was suffering.

He passed through some villages, some familiar, some forgotten, may be because of lapse of so many years from, from those early misguided years. Still, even after those many years, the faint out lines of the country side, the fields, and the occasional flickering lights in the huts of the villagers was a welcome sight. All this gave him a sense of belonging, turning back to his roots.

Impatient anxiety increased his pace. He walked on. How long, he did not know. The desire for a smoke .Search of his pockets did yield a cigarette packet, but not the matches. He remembered that he had forgotten to take them back from the fellow passenger in the train. No matter, he thought, perhaps, he will meet an early villager or farmer, who might have the matches. This additional miniscule thought, prompted him further

Yet still time for the sun to rise, to cast its early golden rays across the fields. Magroo did, yet, catch some thing golden, a glow, and warm, not warm like the early morn. Off the road, in the middle of an empty filed he saw couple of evenly spaced bonfires. Some burning brightly, others in the ember stage.

The desire of a smoke nagged him. It gnawingly nagged him. To addict desires one yields. Yes smoke he must.

Without giving a second thought, Magroo left the road, towards those bone fires, little realizing that those were the funeral pyres of the dead and departed. It was still dark for him to differentiate. He knelt down besides one brightly burning bonfire, pulled out a burning log of wood, lighted his cigarette, threw back the burning log, and gave out a satisfied puff of smoke….

As he walked towards the road, to continue his briefly interrupted journey, he saw man on the cycle approaching from the opposite direction. Magroo was barely on the road, the cyclist gave him a horrified look, turned deathly pale, dropped his cycle and ran as fast as his legs could carry him in the direction he had come