Grief | A Drabble

Grief

Grief has an odd way of hitting people at the most random times possible. 

It may not be of much importance. 

It may be the chirping of a koel at the break of dawn, which reminds one of chiming anklets. It may be the sudden waft of warm payasam and the taste of sweet raisins at the back of one's mouth. It may be the bright burst of sunflowers swaying softly against the cerulean expanse of an afternoon sky. 

It may be a stranger selling marbles at the blistering heat of a midsummer's day. It may be the faint melody of a flute playing in the distant past and a chatter of urchins roughhousing at the end of the dusty street. It may be the occasional call of the vibrant peacocks crowing in unassuming delight at the first hint of the monsoon showers. 

It may be a small, broken, wooden chariot having been hand carved with meticulous care gathering dust in the corner of the room. 

Today, it was a yellowed parchment that slipped out of a heavy roll of manuscripts that were basically manuals of complex war formations written by ancient strategists and stored in the royal treasury as part of his personal arsenal. The paints extracted from vegetable and flower dyes were splattered in a faded pattern of a child's amateurish attempt at picturising a rudimentary landscape. The smell of decaying flora and rotten leaves had long been overpowered by the merciless ravages of a time long past. 

Yet he could easily close his eyes and get transported back to the day his dusky prince had declared his latest passion of art. 

"An archer's son and he is more fascinated by a brush than a bow." 

His older brother's gentle teasing had only made him smile wider as the mop of raven hair on his chest gave way to a pair of delighted copper eyes, so facsimile of his dark skinned wife that it hurt, intelligent curiosity warring with the distinct pleasure of knowing that he could manipulate his father into having his own way with hilarious ease. 

"I wish his heart remains set on the brush. He doesn't need to lift the bow. Not as long as I am breathing." 

Musical laughter and a warm clap on the back, the love bubbling sweetly beneath his breast, gave way to a metallic cloying coppery taste. The blood coagulated from mutilated viscera, and the foul stench of death sent a sharp tang of bitter amusement straight to the chest, ripping his wizened heart in half. 

What a fool was he. 

Arjuna crushed the fragile spidery parchment to his face, trying and failing to catch a whiff of Srutakarma's milky saffron fragrance. 

All it smelled of was the rank odor of gut-wrenching failure, the sour aftertaste of a pyrrhic victory. 

 Grief has an odd way of reminding people that they have been long dead, their bodies surviving on the pretense of a meaty cage of loathsome despair and acidic regret while their soul had already been burnt to ashes on the pyre of their children.