Kiran Bharthapudi is a freelance writer lost in New York City. With his writing, he effortlessly converts what seem to be brilliant ideas in his head into total fiascos. This is his first completed attempt at fiction.

KIRAN'S INFLUENCES

CONVERSATION WITH A WAR VETERAN

by
Kiran Bharthapudi

He abruptly unrocked the swing of his rocking chair- froze like a mahogany pendulum clock in a museum of colonial art, resigned into history, tired counting million minutes of an unacknowledged time. He leaned forward, held the ground under his feet, clasped his walking stick and gazed at me like a photograph with forgotten stories in his eyes.

Twenty-eight years of shielded life failing to fully erode my naiveté, I asked again, “What do you think of the war?”

An emotion, as detectable as the silence between us surged through his gut, swept past his lungs, swayed his heart, battled and died between his vocal chords.

“I mean, Iraq?” I clarified.

‘Ah,” he gasped, exonerating the remains of his sentiment. He then spoke, “a nation inflicted by war is like a man plagued by cancer.”

Was he a speechwriter during JFK? Were these famous words of a famous renaissance in history echoed by an old man on a pointless afternoon in upstate New York? Or may be it were just the moist blue eyes in the sanctuary of a corrugated face exaggerating the depth of his words?

“Sorry, sir?” I asked, baffled.

“Cancer, “he said, “sometimes the only conversation at the dinner table, slithering from the broken bread.”

The 400 pound gorilla in the room - tumor in his head - looking, asking, threatening, and mocking: “Will you be here to see another spring? another birthday ? another thanksgiving? …Will you? Won’t you? … Will you? Won’t you? … Will? Won’t? … Will? Won’t? ...

“What about the war?” I asked, upholding the callousness of a newer generation.

“Five years,” striking a higher cord, he said, “imagine how long five years are in anyone’s life? That’s five Christmases, several missed family unions, thousand terrifying telephone rings and children never born, now learning the alphabets W, A, R, from their electronic toys in the absence of a parent who is in combat.”

“Should the U.S. withdraw the troops then?”

Will your son safely comeback from Iraq? Will he? Won’t he? … Will he? Won’t he? … Will? Won’t? … Will? Won’t? ...looking, asking, threatening and mocking.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he moved his eyes toward a picture on the shelf behind me. The turn of the head was all it took to chronicle his youth that dripped out of his flesh and skin. A 22 year old man in the picture, weeks before his trip to Vietnam, gleamed at us with promise and hope.

“Is that you?” I asked, only a rhetorical question by then.

“I’ve a headache,” getting up unexpectedly and turning away from me, he said,” You may leave now.”

The vacant chair rocked again, like a pendulum- faster at first, excited by the momentum he left behind. However, it slowed, pace by pace, inch by inch, every new swing replaying the earlier one in slow motion.

It swung for one last time, almost as slow as eternity, and then it died.

***

Inspired by a conversation with a Vietnam war vetram, with a son serving in Iraq

© Kiran Bharthapudi
Reproduced with permission