New Voices [04]: Chipping Rocks
Chipping Rocks
Salim’s nails sparkle, but they are mostly black.
Chipping a rock with his sharp metal stick,
he wipes his drippy nose with the back of his hands,
his matted hair is caked in Mica dust.
While the barren Jharkhand hills parch in the sun.
Four feet away from him, a scorpion sleeps.
He dreams of Mica later when he sleeps.
Translucent in the Jharkhand light, shining watery black.
Brittle like glass in his small hands, it twinkles in the sun,
like gold and silver both. He needs a pickaxe not a stick
he thinks, if he must hack away at hills in the dust.
And a cotton scarf to cool his head and jute gloves for his hands.
What have become of his young calloused hands,
or his Mica filled lungs, ragged breaths while he sleeps.
In the morning again off to the dust.
Cracking small rocks to a million pieces, black
feet embedded in a Jharkhand hill, the stick
keeping a scorpion at bay. The relentless sun.
Fifty Rupees at the end of the week. Spent in the sun
with his scorpion friend. Perhaps that jute glove for his hands
he might buy and sweetmeats for his brother that stick
to the top of their mouths. The mica travels while he sleeps,
in cardboard boxes wrapped in cling film. No longer quite that black,
but a shimmering powder carefully weighed. Rocks turned to dust.
To foreign lands to be shipped, this mineral dust.
To conveyor belt factories that’ve never seen the Jharkhand sun,
its treeless thirsty hills or Salim’s own black
fingernails. Mica rocks cracked by Mica hands,
the solid rip he hears ringing when he sleeps.
Or his raw red fingers from gripping a makeshift metal stick.
On a conveyor belt, a pinch of Mica sparkles a lipstick.
Or adds moonlight to a tray of eyeshadow dust.
Bottles of glittering nail polish on department store shelves, while Salim sleeps
coughing out Mica clouds. At the store, a girl in a yellow dress for the sun,
holds up a bottle of silvery polish in her hands.
Salim would have never guessed such beauty by looking at his own, black.
He’ll only hack away with his stick in the sun
tomorrow. Dust hands working on a blinking Jharkhand hill.
Till he sleeps again at night, to dream of black Mica.
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