I’m going to say it like it is unedited, we all got in the way of each other. There was not one saint left, no pretending sweet mouthed padre left standing there, just all of raving,spitting fire,fury at its ragged best. We were being assaulted,we would give it like we got it in jaw, lip, rib, shin,elbow, chin. That corridor to the platform became war zone. I searched for a pin and found it snuck in my sleeve,how it got there I’ll never know. Maybe I’m a pin planter by night. Maybe I’m a wrestler too. I wrestled with our assaulter, he looked no more than 19,20? Cherub faced darling teen, skin like sifted creamed gold. Why’d he want to get our bag? Did it look like money to him, it had some eats. Was he hungry? Didnt look it, he looked like he’d had a good breakfast too, we hadn’t had anything except watery tea and some dying potato chips from last night’s junk food binge. Train cuisine isn’t the best, I’ll say. Fried rice and chicken was like sauteed thermocol dipped in old oil. The kind of old oil aunt Maye had stowed behind her growling four burner. I wasn’t about to tell you about aunt Maye but I should someday, she was a warrior in a sari, if you ever saw one. I always thought she’d be best as world president: she harvested rain water, she grew food and a seasonal bee hive. Maye even had a wasp’s nest in her fav candle stand. (Will/must tell you about that one some time. Later.)

In the few seconds of fight with sweet faced railway station thief, my friend Koli grinned. Mid fight, she began to grin, it paralyzed thief, and Hatish and me. Not over, Koli began to look nice and kind. Think of it, Koli and aunt Maye began to merge into one form of art. The art of Loving kindness. I might never recover from what happened next. In a few swift exchanges, Thief boy was now shown the insides of said bag, and asked if he would help us empty it, we weren’t hungry Koli said. Hey there was more than chips there, never mind if they were dying, there were some pretty great Mad Angles, there was our collective bag of Thises and Thatis, but Koli was into it. Into the act of being hands of the Beloved>God. Her small practical hands looked like that, mid station with hundreds of human milling about us and the pungent scent of phenol cleaned floors.

The young gold cream skinned thief looked with worry at Hatish’s scratched arm. Four long scratches like a wild cat had gone at him. I was certain I had a fractured femur. Koli’s hair had wrung itself out in fantastic twirls. We all looked amazing must say, like Grace on fire. But Gold face, he was tazed. Tazed with the hands of a brand ambassador of God. Koli.

Left to me, I can’t say what I’d have done, maybe report him to say the least.

Thinking hard on this, here’s a theory.

We, I mean us as the human race, are really wholly totally used by evil as it’s easy hostage. The boy was used as one,we got back at boy. War begins; there are sacred desecrations that happen in this field of bloodied justice.

We are human and capable of divine love, and we are human and capable of being held hostage, leave alone being coaxed very swiftly into assault.

This isn’t about universal justice and what one should do with wider aspects of the law. I’m talking between us, in our homes and staircases and corridors, between families of citizens and tribes of everyday people, there are two terrible truths staring me in the face.

1. We are capable of anything when held hostage by a certain kind of deficit.

2. We are capable of divine love if we have received it, (yes esp if we’ve witnessed it). If not, then perhaps there’s zero difference between us and our perpetrators.

That’s three truths?

…….

(Sigh. That was my first attempt at short story after eons. Koli and Hatish and the goldskinbed boy thief do not exist, but Maye was a type of my grandma Rara…I do have pieces of her stashed in me somewhere in journal and 206 bones. Don’t you have a grand person in life that’s impressed a thing or two about living, and it messes your own brand of truths? Ay, tough being ambassadors, we get to choose too. Have a great day wherever:).