हर सुबह

किरने रश्मि की स्पर्श करती हैं
हर सुबह
उड़ेल कर भर कटोरी रंग सिन्दूरी
आकाश में ;

अंक में माँ के लेटा शिशु चहका
आँखों में थी
रात भर के संसर्ग की सम्मोहिनी शक्ति
और
मुंह था जिगर के पास में;

बूँद बूँद टपका दूध
लपक लेता है वो
माँ के जिगर से
और दिख ही जाती है संतुष्टि
उसके प्यास में;

हर शिशु न श्याम जैसा
न हर माता है यशोदा
पर यही संबंध
दिखता है उन सबों को
जो हैं वात्सल्य के तलाश में !

-- श्याम प्रकाश झा (सालों पहले की रचना)

A Brief intro of Charlie

(This is some part of my upcoming novel and all characters in this small story are fictitious)

While naming him "Charles Chhutkania", his parents never thought that his name will be a great topic for his engineering days. As soon as Charles joined college, his friends nicknamed him Charlie. Charles never got offended with his nickname until Chachwa who was weak in English took out a English-Hindi dictionary and found the literal meaning of word Charlie in Hindi. Once this meaning was shared within the group, none of these BIHARAT members called him Charles. They teased him and sometime offended him by repeatedly calling him Charlie. Charles who was initially popular among his group member because of his 6th standard school love story could observe more attention in his nickname from his group members very soon. The first name Charles and last name Chhutkania was lost somewhere in that boys hostel.....

Once Malik and RD observed a cartoon in some newspaper where the cartoon character was named “Uncle Charlie” and the caricature was really funny. Both of them started collecting this cartoon and sharing with other group members. In Charlie’s absence, all of them would sit together and go through that cartoon with different analysis and sometime visualize that their friend Charles is in that cartoon over a couple of cigarette shared among them. It was REALLY very funny for them. Laund was a person whose imagination will always be revolving in last orbit like an electron waiting for threshold energy to go out of orbit. This new cartoon character indeed worked as threshold energy for Laund’s imagination and he hatched a plan to make fun of Charles Chhutkania. Few marker pens were bought / borrowed and Malik started practice to draw that cartoon character on paper. Once he got proficient, all the hostel inmates from the same floor were taken into confidence to make this plan successful. The D Day arrived soon. Everyone was ready to contribute. Late night after Charlie was fast asleep, Malik drew this cartoon character with markers on all the mirrors (hanged over wash basins) in washroom area. Some of the other people signed the drawings and wrote their funny comments below the caricature. Totally unaware of the proceedings going in washroom, Charlie was sleeping in his room and two boys were standing out of his room as guards to restrict Charlie going to washroom if in case he wakes up and go to toilet. The half an hour operation was successful.

Next day, like every morning at 7:30 AM, Charlie woke up, took toothbrush and toilet mug in his hands and ran towards the washroom. He was surprised to see all the four toilets were available for him to use. Usually he had to wait for his turn and mostly he had to kick the toilet doors several time till the person relieving himself will come out of toilet. Actually it was well planned that no one will be in washroom area when Charlie will enter. A little surprised Charlie entered toilet. He could sniff some conspiracy but was not sure. He was still in half sleep mode when he came out of toilet and stood in front of wash basin. He washed his hands and looked at the mirror. He saw some caricature and comments on the mirror. Oh…. Its Uncle Charlie drawn with some interesting comments. He rinsed his eyes to have a better vision. He could still see Uncle Charlie caricature. He tried to clean that from mirror but in vain. He turned and had a look on other 3 mirrors. Everywhere he found same stuff. He understood that there is something very fishy here and he is the target today. All of the sudden few of his friends appeared there and started showing sympathy to him. They all were looking very disturbed with what had happened with Charlie. His friends lambasted the unknown planner of this incident and consoled him that they will thrash people behind this humiliating stuff. Charlie was aware that this is done by them only and he was not interested in false sympathy. He was upset and angry. He didn’t utter a single word, didn’t brush his teeth and vanished. As soon as he left, his friends assembled in washroom area and started laughing.

Whenever Charlie would get upset, he will start studying very hard. After this episode same thing happened. He stopped going out with his group members and mingled more with other people in hostel. It continued for weeks and then slowly his friends started feeling bad and one day they erased all the cartoons from wash basin mirrors. After this Charlie could not continue his “boycotting the group” attitude for long and came again in same fold. That semester, Charlie scored more in almost all the subjects :)