Pleasing Prakash talked through
books,
his shirts smelled of old books,
redolent of dusts and decayed of hopes.
The corners of his library would
lit up in glee at the sight of a rare reader,
But pleasing Prakash always stood at the threshold to please
his visitors with
the aroma of new and old books.
He would open up his library everyday,
to please two or three regulars.
He watched Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Eliot,Bronte and Woolf
being borrowed for little pleasures,
taking his regulars for a visit to different centuries.
Pleasing Prakash knew the racks and the covers and its exactness,
he waits for the visitors to comment over the books,
thus jumping into a deep discussion.
It was a Saturday evening when the riots broke out,
Pleasing Prakash with his firmness and political correctness,
was watching the police and the protesters,
he knows who is right and wrong.
The next minute he saw a rock , flying high up in the air
aiming the forehead of the policeman.
Charging orders were employed,
the fight broke out.
Prakash rushed to close the library,
at the sight one of his regulars
in the protest,
with a burning torch throwing it at the window like an expert spinner,
setting the library ablaze.
Prakash and a policeman ran to
stop the reader-spinner,
but something hit pleasing Prakash
right at the back,
like a piercing force,
it oozed out blood from his old smelly shirt,
turning and collapsing,
he saw the policeman with the pistol
behind him,
and the terrified reader with hands up in the air,
that caressed Dostoevsky last day.
Prakash felt his eyes shutting out
watching his pleasing-pleasure-abode
burning,
and many Shakespeares and Eliots and
Austens and Dickens and Joyces
crying out for help.
A.C
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