Fading Aphonics

In his beaming orange jacket, wearing a yellow helmet, he keeps digging the hole, onto a decided site land, until he reaches the jotted lines. He knows it’s warmer than last year, but he can’t get off his heavy jacket, shoes and other gear, coz it’s the job that he gets paid for, and it’s the job, which feeds his family afar. Teary eyed, sweaty faced, he keeps his struggle up right, coz he wants to finish it before lunch and start another site hole until his evening hunch.

Amidst the bleak land mass, he keeps finding plastic debris, but just like other site workers, he pushes it aside, ignores and keeps on digging until the evening when he is relieved. He coughs as the grey dust in the air soars, but doesn’t complain because it’s remorseless, just like their site constructor, helpless, doing their job, just like all the rest.

Peeping at the side building which is finished, furbished and dauntless, he feels irony and agony at the same time, considering that he is never appreciated for the job he does, and is never really appraised by an incremental pay check or a place in the apartment, however hard he struggles. Barging onto new green lush lands, he keeps ongoing his construct, hoping someday, he’ll raise the bar of his family class, by the decent pay check that he earns.

Just a few miles apart, confused, concussed standing and cracking his head, the teal eye-spotted beast is finding it absurd, a sudden change in his lush green landscape, is hard for him to adjust. His road amidst the open forest ground has suddenly vanished and is replaced by unknown grey concrete walls.

The more he screams, the more crowd he attracts, himself being the Indian national bird, he is unable to hide from the surrounding ever-growing phones flashing camera lights. Confused in his navigation, he is unable to navigate through these concrete parking lots, he keeps trying to imagine the afore landscape mass that was here before. He wants to fly high, find his lost grass ground and go back to his dear, but only humane decisions and time will tell, whether it will ever be possible or will he loose them forever.

On a new built road, few miles across, an orange young starts to scavenge for his hunt. As tiny he is, as cunning he is, as shy he is, the orange fox sneaks in parking lots across the streets, uncertain where to look for, he keeps lurking in dark, sneaking leftovers in the dust.

Before it were the leopards and eagles which preyed on him, but now it is the street dogs, which are more concerning. It were the bushes to hide and burrows to sleep-in before, now he has to rely on cement pillars and stray wooden boxes to live-in with all of his family four.

This new road, new site, also brings with it many more streetlights, which keep burning 24*7, irrespective of sunlight. A mighty knight who owned his nights, used to fly quietly, hunting prey by hindsight. This black eyed owl, is now finding it difficult to estimate the time of dusk, he keeps waiting for longer time, only to realise, that these lights never go off at all. His vision relied on nocturnal dark, his ears relied on the slightest of sounds, unable to find both, he now feels a need of migration from his forever home. His day is deprived of sleep, so are his nights unveiled, by the ever-growing sound of horns and machines, his heartbeats skip. Uncertain, untamed, he doesn’t know where to migrate, for he is uncertain of the extent of this humane invade, he can’t speak it out, nor can he sit it out, but he has to adjust now and try to live it out.

It is we, who trespass, it is we, who graft, without thinking of them, we lure through and invade! They are mute, but not dumb, they have hearts too which are falling numb, their voice is unheard and stays low, it was their time before, but now they implore.

Our ever-growing fist of investments, and our ever-growing greed of materialistic development, brings them onto their verge, where they implore for our glance, a hope, another chance to rethink and restore. They find it hard to adjust, hard to ignore, because we have penetrated their forests and we break it all, just for self-pride, increased standard of living and to make a game show of all.

Before they fade and just become stories, we need to act now, there is a need to rethink on our infrastructural development and it is time to innovate more now. We need to find a way to live and let by, instead of cage and evade by.