The fall of a stubborn kid
A country was born quietly on a sunny day in March. No loudspeakers announced the arrival of a new world order, no evangelist proclaimed the imminent arrival of doom from tarred rooftops, no traffic intersection witnessed anomalous order in the deluge of vehicles. A perfectly calm, searing, lonesome day, the sort of which leaves damp newspapers crumpled at the edge of a barbershop door, or the sort that winds up on a sweaty mass of swaying workers rubbing grease and dirt on each other's brown flannel shirts on the slow bus home. This was the epitome of a dream left halfway in tatters and never reconsidered.
The borders of this country that had just been ushered into the harsh sun, were rather tricky. A faction that called themselves the "reds" had claimed ownership over districts, erstwhile kingdoms, nuclear wastelands and quiet suburbs that really only cared about the fluctuating price of bananas and the fall of a certain kid into a deep well. The authorities censored its name, address and details of the fall, hence all that the people talked about was that it was such a shocker and how sad and lonely the child must be. Some debated on whether a helicopter and a winch would work better than a group of firefighters that had been deployed to the site. Some debated on whose fault it really was, the parents, the careless principal, the contractor who had built the well or the authorities that had sanctioned it. Some sighed in unison each time anybody mentioned "fall" or "well" or even "bananas", because banana peels couldn't be ruled out as an agent that led to the fall. And some discussed the price fluctuations of bananas.
All this while, a war raged on far from the sleep town with the fallen kid. Highways turned into a scorched row of burning cars, entire streets became warzones and militia rationed food from districts that had to be taken back by force. Taken back from whom, the establishment or the new rule? It didn't matter. Something had to be done about someone, and war was the only answer. Peasants ditched pitchforks for guns, teachers ditched books for pamphlets, and pilots dropped both from their aircraft over bakeries and theatres that had now turned into holdouts of the enemy. The old had clashed with the radical new, and the new had clashed with a regressive body that had to be shed. Neither side conceded, and yet both did. Bullets flew and yet peace became the highest-valued commodity by the hour. Children stayed indoors, and parents fought for the future of a nation where they'd be free. The children huddled underneath floorboards and beds, rattled by the loud cheer outside each time a rival bombed its enemy. The price of bananas blew through the roof.
Nobody knew the child. The ones that knew, had no clue what led to the fall. The well was cleared by the brave men in their Hazmat suits with their powerful flashlights. The politicians announced bounties for anyone who could find the kid. The people debated about helicopters and winches, and the inflation in banana prices. In the east, the reds marched on towards the suburbs, camping in the forests and relishing banana pies and honey. The child vanished from the well and was never found. Its shoes and clothes were sold off, its memory was eulogized over somber funerals and memorial services, and a wall was erected over the well with a carved marble block of its outstretched hands. When the crowd died away, in the quiet of an autumn dusk, a robin settled on one of its fingers. It pruned its feathers, stared around and did usual things that robins do.
And then a bullet pierced its chest into smithereens, and the marble hands of the stubborn kid cracked and disintegrated into jagged white pieces on the slab. A steady stream of boots emerged out of the wood and trampled the bird and the stone, marching into town with the promise of peace after a long, imminent war. The first things to be rationed were bananas. And the reds dug in for a fight till the end.
The stubborn kid had fallen, still stubborn after the fall. Still in reluctance to find a foothold in this nation that had just taken birth, it retreated deeper into a secret passage underwater where breath and air vanished into an ancient lullaby of silence. The passage led the kid somewhere, but we do not know anything about that and shall leave it to speculation. The journey of a newborn nation unfolded above the ground, and grass and moss eventually reclaimed the remnants of the bird and the hands.
Many years later, another sunny day in March, an old man in a red coat got up from his chair in the barbershop and threw his newspaper to the corner and emerged into the sun. With trembling hands, he took a banana out of his right pocket, peeled it and took a bite. In the distance, sirens blared on, and a helicopter hovered over a suburb. He looked at the banana, half-eaten, brown and covered in mayflies. A remnant of a fall, he thought to himself.
"The markets have been kind".
A robin sang away on a willow branch, as his footsteps receded into the sun.