Sticky

Once in a while, a blister used to appear
Between the fingers
Like children playing with jackfruit gum
I played with it, sticking and stretching
Whenever I felt uncomfortable
I went to see the doctor
And tried various medicines
Still, one day, the two fingers
Stuck together,
Proclaiming that there was nothing commendable
About functioning as two.
I paid scant attention to it,
As life was possible
Even with two fingers stuck together.
It took only a week or two
Three, four, five fingers
Declared solidarity with the stickiness movement
Plunging me into a crisis

You need surgery, said the doctor
By that time, the same tendencies
Had spread to my left hand too
Then the doctor said,
Let us wait and see
How far it will go.
It is one month since then
There was a kind of stickiness
In the armpit and the joints
One day, up on waking up,
Both the hands
Had stuck to the body
I needed someone’s help to do
All the things the hands did
Saw the doctor
Did various tests
All the doctors in the locality got together
And did many tests
One day, angry at becoming an experimental object
I left the place
Next day, both my legs got stuck to each other
Unable to get up from my cot,
I fell down
I stayed on bed for a month like that
Feeding me in time
And cleaning my piss and shit, my wife stayed home
One day, she discovered that
Her fingers too feeling sticky
Within a week, she too was like me
One morning, she crawled her way
To my cot
And both us cried calling each other
I fell down to the floor
We went on kissing
After a long time
We felt like making love
But it was impossible
So, we just lay beside each other
When we woke up
Our bodies had got stuck
We didn’t know
How to react to this misfortune
We didn’t cry, but our eyes were brimming
Our chests were heavy
We, who had become one body,
Crawled to the front door
Somehow or other
Biting it open
Went out to the front yard
Crawling...
 

Translation: C.S Venkiteswaran