The Invisible: A Special Child by Santosh Bakaya, Ph.D.

 

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The Invisible: A Special Child

The stage was now all theirs.
The VIPs were in their full element,
spitting, oops, spouting out a litany of
promises. 
Well-prepared. Well-attired. Well-bloated.
Smiling beatifically all around.  

A tiny boy in the audience 
was also smiling at the men on stage.
Guileless. Innocent. Cherubic. 
To him, they looked good. 
He smiled and looked at his mother.
But why wasn't she smiling? 

 

He loved his silences.  But his eyes spoke. 

.  
"MOMMY, are you feeling hot? Were
they talking about me?"  
He shook her forearm. Vigorously. 
Very vigorously.
His eyes became more talkative now. 

 

"Am I a no - hoper?  A no - coper? 
A no- scoper?

 

"No! You are not." Said the mother
through clenched teeth.  

"Why am I tied up in knots?  

Why do they blot me out of
their line of vision? 

Avert their eyes from my face? Am I some
disgrace? 

Some pest?" The tiny boy continued to speak.
Through his eyes.
They were very eloquent, 
though not as eloquent as the men
on stage.

  
The men on stage beamed.  Self- obsessed. 
Narcissistic. 

 

“Focus on my face. “ Said the chief guest,
trying to make eye contact with the photographer.  

Another fixed his tie and smiled - For the camera. 

While hitching up his pants, one almost stumbled 
on the stage, his smile in shambles! 

 

And out they trooped.
Swaggering, 
Staggering  

“You spoke well."

“Especially that ‘invisibility part' was 

well articulated. 

It had the right impact."
 "No one can deny, I am an impeccable 
orator." 

The chief guest laughed in
self-congratulatory mirth  

"How they talked about us-

About you and me - with what glib
empathy!  
Fork-tongued, they went on.
And on and on about inclusion.  

We face condescension, exclusion, and
humiliation
every day.  Day after day. 
One day, you will also realize your
full potential, son.
Come, let's go." Said the mother to her
beloved child.

On the way back,
the chief guest gave the child a
patronizing smile,
tousling his hair.  The child smiled back. 

The turbulence in the mother's heart
was lost
in the applause that followed the
awe-inspiring speech.

Showing great agility, 
a photographer clicked a photograph
for posterity. 
"This should be the top news." 
He nodded enthusiastically 
to the Parthian shot of the smug
politician. 

The mother recalled the time when
she had wanted 
someone to understand the special needs
of her child, 
but they were asked to vacate the plane 
because the pilot felt ill at ease.   
She wiped her brow.  The pain had
resurfaced. 
The child clung to his smile, soon
lost in the crowd. 
Invisible.  
Visible only to his mother.  

This poem was written in response to a prompt in the Facebook Group The Significant League.

© Santosh Bakaya 

Enjoy other posts by Santosh Bakaya HERE.

Dr. Santosh Bakaya

Internationally acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu, Dr. Santosh Bakaya is an academic, poet, novelist, essayist, creative writing mentor, and TEDx speaker with more than thirty well-received books to her credit. She writes a weekly column, Morning Meanderings in Learning and Creativity.com, and her TEDx talk on The Myth of Writer’s Block is very popular in creative writing circles. 

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