Scribbles by Sudhansh

Loo struck from all corners in a fairly dry Northern Indian summer…
The scorching sun baked the air into silence,
Ratan sat or say, half laid on the worn out rug…
In the professor’s study, a room heavy with books,
Novels, memoirs, theoretical texts, film readings…
His laptop hummed softly, an oracle with no skin hanging from its forearms,
As he polished the edges of his research article,
Words on postcolonial echoes in forgotten texts,
Chasing shadows of a lost empire through ink-stained pages.
The senior professor, a grey haired master of one…
Slumped in his armchair, eyelids drooping like wilted leaves.
Ratan glanced up, words bubbling from his throat:
“Professor, in Tolstoy’s tale, ‘God Sees the Truth, But Waits’
That merchant, Aksionov, framed for murder,
Enduring Siberian chains, the weight of innocence unspoken.
Doesn’t it mirror our own silences, the truths we bury?”
But the professor’s breath came slow, a distorted tide,
Half-asleep, or perhaps lost in some private Siberia of his own.
No reply. The room gulped down the question like a single malt …
Ratan rose, stretching limbs cramped from hours bent low,
Paced the corridor, shadows lengthening like doubts.
Past the bedroom door, ajar like an invitation unintended,
He glimpsed the professor’s wife, curled on the bed,
Chest rising and falling in the grip of unnatural slumber.
Her linen purse lay open on the dresser, careless as a sigh,
A five hundred rupee note peeking out, crisp and indifferent.
The animal instinct weighs heavier than the human…
A thief’s swift grace, pocketed in a heartbeat.
Heart pounding, he retreated to the study,
Justifying the act in the purgatory of his conscience.
He remembered his father’s bowed head at the school gate,
Embarrassed whispers to the principal, promises of payment tomorrow,
Always tomorrow, while debts piled like unread manuscripts.
His mother, dividing rotis into unequal shares,
Eating the smallest herself, claiming no hunger,
Her eyes hollow as the plates she scraped clean for her three sons.
This note, this small betrayal, was restitution…
A balancing of scales tipped against them for years.
Months unraveled like a spool of thread,
Ratan’s thesis defended, degrees conferred,
A letter arrived – Assistant Professor, his own classroom waiting.
Elation bloomed, and with it, a box of sweets!
Laddu golden and sticky, peda dusted with pistachio.
He carried them to the professor’s home,
A pilgrim returning to the shrine of his making.
The door opened to familiar warmth,
The professor’s hand on his shoulder, firm as approval.
“God bless you, son”
But the wife’s face was a mask of gray clouds,
Eyes distant, movements slow as if wading through water.
Ratan inquired, voice soft as turning pages:
“Aunty, what shadows your light today?”
She sighed, eyes circling around a framed photo on the mantel,
A boy, perhaps twenty, frozen in laughter, forever young.
“It’s his day, Ratan. Eight years since the accident,
That car, screeching metal, a drunk driver at the wheel.
Our only son, gone in a blur of rain-slicked roads.”
The words landed like stones in still water,
Ripples spread through Ratan’s chest.
He saw it now, and he saw it all
The extra plate at dinners past,
The professor’s lingering gaze during late-night discussions,
The wife’s quiet gifts of tea and concern.
They had poured their orphaned love into him,
A surrogate son stitched into the fabric of their grief.
And the theft? That fleeting sin in April’s heat?
The professor must have known…eyes sharp beneath those eyelids,
Perhaps glimpsing the shadow of a hand in the corridor.
Yet silence. No accusation, no expulsion from this makeshift family.
God sees the truth, but waits, Tolstoy’s echo returned,
Aksionov’s forgiveness in the face of the true killer’s confession.
The wife’s slumber, not laziness, but pills for insomnia,
Battles fought in the dark against memories that refused to sleep.
Ratan stood there, sweets melting in his palms,
A thief redeemed not by confession, but by unspoken grace.
Outside, the city hummed on, indifferent to revelations,
But in that room, truths waited no longer…
They bloomed in the quiet, like rain after drought,
Washing clean the parched soil of a scholar’s soul!