Breadcrumb #586
SANYA KHURANA
While I worked at my loom, pedalling methodically, two bare brown feet on my right pedalled not mechanically, but rhythmically. They moved buoyantly and seemed to dance. But the hands — the hands, which weren’t at work, were surprisingly festered with fresh open blisters, tender white skin trying to form over them in vain. The hands looked like they had been scrubbing, slaving, scraping. But the feet were beautiful. Although they had corns and hard, cracked carcasses, they were strong with beautiful rippling muscles.
As I was observing this pair of brown feet, I heard the clicking sounds of master’s sandals nearing and all the white feet began to pedal faster. But not the brown feet. The two brown feet began to fumble in their dance, like a graceful aerial dancer whose ribbon tears, sending them spiralling to the floor. Along with the sounds of master’s sandals came one more pair of new white feet.
Master came directly to the brown feet and ordered them to walk to the other room and work with hands so that this new pair of white feet could work with the machine. I glanced up and saw the tender, dry brown lips try to protest by fluttering like paper. But before the lips could part like two pages that engulfed words of promise, master slapped the book shut.
“I glanced up and saw the tender, dry brown lips try to protest by fluttering like paper.”
“GO,” he yelled. And the two brown feet scurried out.
I saw through the glass partition between the machine and handiwork rooms: two brown hands and two white hands working on a king size bedsheet. It didn’t look strange that brown and white were working together like one pair of hands, grappling together at a web of threads in myriad colours. The needle in the clean and soft white hands nodded sturdily. They were beautiful hands, like the hands of a piano-player. And the two colours of the hands looked beautiful as they danced together, like the juxtaposed keys of a piano creating graceful music. But the brown hands seemed to be dancing to a different music. The needle in the sore brown fingertips trembled like a leaf, dancing like the shivering brown lips.
Brown hands, white hands, yellow and cracked nails, clean and trimmed nails were working on the same sheet. Within a few weeks, it was ready. I could see it through the glass door. It was resplendent with an intricate, kaleidoscopic all-inclusive Persian border and a prosaic, western center. It was scintillating with a spectrum of colours. Seeing this the smiling white lips said, “in this bedsheet’s design, your thread is wound up in mine.”
The brown and white hands began to shake out the imprints of their palms from the bedsheet. And although the bedsheet had already braided the brown and white hands in such a tight plait, the brown hands continued to quiver. It was easy to smooth out the imprints from the sheet, but the matter of the mind different. The brown hands had hand been whipped and slashed and crushed by so many white hands that the mind was much more creased than the sheet and a gentle white hand’s pat wasn’t enough to ease it.
If only those brown feet would return to the loom at my right and I could point out to them that our pedalling was parallel. If only I could show them that although brown hands, white hands, brown feet, white feet in semblance seem apart, their temperament, their nature and their skill have the same heart.