RADIATION

Subhransu Maitra

(For Dr. Shilpa Bhartia)

A notice outside the X-ray room reads:

Radiation area, only authorised personnel allowed,

do not enter the X-ray room,

do not stay inside. If required to help patient,

insist on protective apron….

In the doctor’s chamber a few yards away,

Radiation of a different kind assails your eyes

and then makes a lodge in your heart,

dissolving at once all the constrictive,

restrictive barriers erected by our

laptop-life priorities.

Perhaps you’ve occasionally, only casually

seen such things at home,

hurriedly flipping through your child’s sketchbook

before returning to your laptop

(almost grudging the minutes spent on the sketchbook),

just to make sure—as busy parents make sure–

that your son or daughter is getting on well at school.

Now go inside the chamber and

see the pictures adoringly arrayed on the wall.

An extraordinary gallery, in fact.

Paintings by child patients–

Artists duly authorised by daring and defiance.

About what they want,

what first kindles their glad shaping wonder–

children are never wrong.

Even when threatened by disease and pain,

their sanctifying eagle imagination seizes it beak and claws

and the subjects—

a portrait of Tagore may be, or sunrise,

birds in the trees, an owl on a bough,

child Krishna standing guard over his pots of curd,

a temple complete with porch and stairs

or a more daring image of the only one earth

battling pollution—

quietly acquire a transformative intensity,

a creative mystery achieved in pen and ink

or oftener in a splendour of colors—

radioactive pictures won from darkness and gloom.

They emanate a radiant mournful joy

brought from copious, unravished orchards

known only to children.