Of Birds and Bees

I

The window-sill was encrusted with decades of bird shit. The eaves overflowed with straw, the result of arduous efforts of uxorious husbands. Roof tiles and shingles vied with each other in their attempts to prise off their neighbors and rattle hauntingly in the slightest breeze.

II

The breeze sat on the window-sill debating whether to enter the house or not. Should it enter as a disruptive gust, leaving havoc in its wake, or should it flow softly, like lapping waves, kissing the baby’s hot cheeks and drying the mother’s tears.

III

The mother’s eyes were riveted to the window pane. Layers of dust and grime coated its surface. She traced a pattern with hesitant digits. Two eyes and a smile gazed back at her. A sigh escaped her lips and moistened the face on the window.

IV

The eyes in the window stared at the baby in the cot. It was a beautiful baby- with a golden halo and blue eyes and pink lips and white, oh so white, skin- the angel child spawned by the Devil himself. Beads of perspiration stuck to the down on its upper lip, its tiny fist crumpled into a ball and pushed against teeth not yet emerged. Its dimpled knees winked at the face in the window causing it to smile wider. The baby gurgled.

V

Little gobs of drool trickled down its chin. The baby opened her eyes and saw the creases of worry on her mother’s brow. Hers crinkled in replication too. The soft skin learnt the first lines of worry that appeared there and then smoothened out. The furrows would be etched deeper with age and there was no hurry to reach there just yet. The baby looked at the face and smiled back.

VI

The smiling face, reminiscent of a laughing Buddha she had caught a glimpse of in the toy shop that he had taken her to when they had first met at the local fair, where they’d tumbled into each other’s arms and intertwined legs and locked lips and made ‘her’- an “offspring” of their unbridled passion, now looked at her mournfully.

VII

She raised a finger to dry her tears but found that the soft breeze had caressed them into submission, rousing her to the same passion of that long forgotten night. It rustled through her heavy tresses and the flaxen curls on the baby’s head, bringing with it a brief respite from the agony of burning shame which remorselessly haunted her.

VIII

The breeze went back to brood on the window-sill and wondered afresh about the close proximity of hives and nests suspended from the eaves in mid-air in a time-space continuum. The birds and the bees hummed and buzzed while she reflected on birds and bees and thereof.