The Patron

He was sitting on the terrace,
his legs hanging over the parapet,
His left palm was busy wiping the
beads of perspiration on his forehead and
The right hand was writhing like a snake;
It went inside his right breast-pocket.
He had dealt well, a decent bargain
he thought, and smiled in contentment.
Like a curious little child, he gazed fixedly
at his ‘new purchase’.
Hesitant fingers were having trouble in
opening the ‘buy’ up,
But he finally was successful.
He whiffed into the pale dust that
Lay bare in his palms;
The paleness spread to his mind.
The limbs became bloodless, weightless too,
He felt numb.
The breeze was now his couch and he,
Was lying smug on it,
Undisturbed, unperturbed, unfettered
in a parallel world.
He regained his senses a long-time later;
It was a time well-spent,
He decided readily.
And he wrapped up his ‘buy’ for
another bad day.
Seconds passed like years, time stood still.
Every time he breathed in those pure, spotless particles,
He inhaled with them the elixir of life and
The beauty of death too…
He was a proctor of that world;
A world with all the pleasure he craved
And thought he deserved…
…he was unappalled, unbridled, uncontested there.
The real world had played tricks with him-
Mocked at him, shunned him and then
Finally left him to meet his fate.
Five years from the day he'd taken his,
first whiff, he hung his legs
over the parapet, once again...
...but the magic powder did not
appeal to him anymore...
It was night-time, almost midnight;
His hands were writhing again.
A while later, he placed the day's 'buy'
on his lap.
This time his fingers, untrembling and resolute,
opened the wrap and he blew air
into the white stuff inside...
Tiny specks, white dust it was, flew southwards
with the breeze... It resembled
the flight of a fallen star, perhaps from
his ‘other' world...
He prayed to God that night,
he hadn't in years...
...and jumped from the terrace...
He dropped like a shot-quail on the dusty,
brown road below,
A halo spread beneath his head.
'Drug' had given him pleasure, but snatched
away everything that he called his 'own'.
He decided to make a new friend
and this time, he chose 'death...
… it was perhaps the better friend too…
‘cause it lulled him to his
final sleep, the most peaceful one
in years…
…and also bid the ground that he’d
walked on all his life, to kiss
him the ‘final goodnight’…
…but the white dust had scattered
by then…spread over
The world…and every person
who whiffed it in
Always found a new friend…
…death ungrudgingly lulled
Them all to sleep…