The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

The Kottayam Police. A cartoonplatoon. New-Age princes in
funny pointed helmets. Cardboard lined with cotton. Hairoil
stained. Their shabby khaki crowns.
Dark of Heart.
Deadlypurposed.
They lifted their thin legs high, clumping through tall grass.
Ground creepers snagged in their dewdamp leghair. Burrs and
grass flowers enhanced their dull socks. Brown millipedes slept in
the soles of their steel-tipped, Touchable boots. Rough grass left
their legskin raw, crisscrossed with cuts. Wet mud fatted under
their feet as they squelched through the swamp.
They trudged past darter birds on the tops of trees, drying
their sodden wings spread out like laundry against the sky. Past
egrets. Cormorants. Adjutant storks. Sarus cranes looking for space
to dance. Purple herons with pitiless eyes. Deafening, their wraark
wraark wraark. Motherbirds and their eggs.
The early morning heat was full of the promise of worse to
come. Beyond the swamp that smelled of still water, they walked
past ancient trees cloaked in vines. Gigantic mani plants. Wild
pepper. Cascading purple acuminus.
Past a deepblue beetle balanced on an unbending blade of
grass. Past giant spider webs that had withstood the rain and spread
like whispered gossip from tree to tree.
A banana flower sheathed in claret bracts hung from a
scruffy, torn-leafed tree. A gem held out by a grubby schoolboy. A
jewel in the velvet jungle.
Crimson dragonflies mated in the air. Doubledeckered. Deft.
One admiring policeman watched and wondered briefly about the
dynamics of dragonfly sex, and what went into what. Then his
mind clicked to attention and Police Thoughts returned.
Onwards.
Past tall anthills congealed in the rain. Slumped like drugged
sentries asleep at the gates of Paradise.
Past butterflies drifting through the air like happy messages.
Huge ferns.