Nimisha

In her layette, she looked fair. ‘Nimisha’, the parents called her. When aged five, the polio plucked the strings that her legs moved. As a stringless violin, her legs rest. In the wheelchair, she grows up along with her mother’s tension, and father’s anxiety. The rustic children wish her but nobody takes her to the festival in a shrine rural. She wears new dress but as the butterflies in her frock, she also cannot flit to the shrine yard. Cough waves, today also, shake her lungs so. The distant drumbeats and the holy music move her fingers in the wind rhythmic. The clarion does resonate and ripple the divine thoughts in her ears. She never knew pneumonia packing her soul. Serenity of the twilight collapses as, again, the drum storm develops. Few knew Nimisha swooned. Later, the people intoned, “Being holy, an apt day it is.” In emptiness infinite, her parents knew her truly.