Winter in a summer mind......

‘Coooo..oooooo’. The tone dipped and rose. A sinusoidal musical chirp. The cuckoo cooed unusually long. The little boys’ sunken eyes scanned the sky. His gaze couldn’t hunt her out from the trees either. But he believed in his treasured mimicking skills. ‘coooooooo…oooo’. He tried to replicate the composition. The charm in his music was absent. She wasn’t in a mood to join either. His vacuous eyes cursed the air around. Maybe not for carrying his voice till the bird mysterious. He gawked. But his ears stood sharp. ‘coooo…ooooo’ .There sings again. Is she teasing his failure? He looked straight at the lush green spread of the muringa. She stood in poise lost somewhere inattentive. His eyeballs followed the soloist’s gaze. Yes, she is studying the family next door cuddling the chicks at home. Papa crow was feeding the nestlings. Mama crow romped around in cautious anxiety, shuffling her feathers in a frippery pose. The blacks stood stacked in assembly like the pleats of Akansha madam’s saree. The child remembered his Hindi teacher and the stories he by hearted, more out of the fear of her cane in his buttocks. So that is the matter, he gulped. Akashna madam had said, Cuckoos egg in the crow’s nest. Callous motherhood born out of laziness. He annoyed more of himself thinking of the orphanage…the parents of those orphans he met… The cuckoo in their mother had left. But why and what bothered her to leave a treasure in them? In a range were the reasons murmured, many a time behind his ears in parlance so implicitly explicit. He still waited for a crow. And his gaze wandered from the muted melodies of his inner self to the road yet to be traversed. A long winding path in dusty patches lay in front of his orphanage. Does it lead to truth or sacrilege? Questions bothered him more than the answers. ‘cooooo…oooooo’. He bent and pelted a stone at the muringa. Was it belligerence against the cuckoos or the society that left him to stray? The cuckoo flew away. Sob he did, thinking of the mother who may be cooing in sullen pessimism for stagnating the infertile fertility she bore.