Harikumar Edasseri
2013
It’s the conscience that troubles me, she thought. I now have a guilty conscience. But it has got to be done. There is no other go. These days you have to live, and live happily too, for which, at least, you have to pay a deaf ear to this beat of the wings. You will be happy tomorrow when memory of this nightmare ceases to haunt you. We should bring our children back, she thought. I am missing them very much. Fifteen days seemed longer, and I can’t stand this solitude any more. I should have them around me. .........She overslept, and when woke up sunray crept into the room. On the floor she saw the dead cockroaches, hundreds of them lying on their back. She thought of the crumbled leaves which fall dry in the cold winter mornings from trees in her native home, and of her mother who passed away years back, and of her children, and of the tiny particle of life brewing in her womb, which was deprived of its right to exist, and she was sad. (Koorakal)
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