To Dust A Man Off by Ahimaaz Rajesh

He remained where he was left — the chair in the drawing room — and now, there he’s been well past two weeks. He’d get up and go every now and then to take dump and to pee. That was it; otherwise, he remained where he was left. She’d bring him food from time to time, and snacks & tea. That was pretty much it.

“You don’t feel the need to come fetch him?” she once asked a friend on the phone. Her friend, she comes to visit now and then, and every time when she leaves — or most of the time — she leaves something she brings along behind. It could be a feather hat, it could be an empty wallet, or it could be a pearl stud —just something she’d leave behind, taking with her the left behind.

‘I don’t really know,’ the friend answered, failing at her reminiscing, sounding reasonably honest. Every time — or most of the time — when the friend would come back the following week, she’d find what she’d left behind right in the same spot she’d left it, and it would — most often — be clean, dusted. You know how swiftly the dust settles on any and all things, especially in cities.

‘This thing, it gathers dust awful swift,’ said the moving man from Dusters & Movers. It would be prudent, she’d thought then, to have him moved back to where he belonged. She’d be leaving home for a while, and this thing isn’t like other things. You know how a ball or a book, when left in one place for too long, never gives you a look when you return home. This thing isn’t like those things, not at all like them. It looks at you, like there’s something terribly wrong with you.

‘I would’ve dusted it myself were it a pen or a notebook,’ replied the woman just so the moving man wouldn’t feel the brunt of the task at hand. For the mover man, though, nothing about the situation seemed strange or in any way unique.

She smiled and thanked the moving man in earnest, and then he was gone, the wheeled casket-basket fastened to that chariot called truck. The thing inside of it, dusted and wrapped, was to be paid for by the recipient.

© 2012 Ahimaaz Rajesh

Ahimaaz Rajesh lives in India, works for bread, writes to breathe. Visit him at his blog: minimalust.wordpress.com

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