What does it mean to lose someone?

Tags

book, fear, fiction, life, loss, memory, novella, story

For a long time I have been concerned with the question of loss, not in any sorrowful way but merely to come to grips with a loss that is irrecoverable.

One has experienced the loss of a loved one or a most prized possession or the time that was exuberantly spent. One has also probably suffered the loss in terms of losing faith in something one has believed in.

It is relatively easy to cope with the loss of personal effects, like money, jewellery or even a precious gift. It is also not so difficult to get over the loss of faith in belief because there is a plethora of beliefs to choose from. It is merely a matter of reorienting oneself to the new system that brings with it a new hope. But the loss of a loved one – this is not so easily forgotten, not so easily overcome, if at all.

This is the subject of my novella Magnificent Loss. I explored this idea a great deal. As I worked on the story, several aspects of this loss revealed themselves to me. The sorrow that the protagonist feels is not just the vacuum left by the loved one, but the many ways in which the loss manages to torment the one who has experienced the loss.

Several things became apparent as I grappled with this one most common, ubiquitous experience. The mind being incapable of handling something so terminal and irreconcilable begins to explore ways to escape from the fact.

– Time heals, we are told.
– Move, relocate.
– Turn to other things, say the psychologists, become involved with another.
– Exorcise the mind of the thoughts of the lost person. Let priests do the job.
– Accept the fate. Maybe you are not destined to be together.
– Develop new habits. Travel.
– Dreams and hallucinations are normal. Ignore them.
– Immerse yourself in work

These are some of the things that I explored in the book. I wish I had gone into it more deeply. I worked on the story for over two years, but tried to keep the story just over a hundred pages. This is the internet age, the age of the ebook, the fast-paced life that wants to read quickly. So I tried to capture the essence of the story while keeping the verbiage to the minimum. Folks at Indireads supported me with editorial assistance and long discussions.

It has been a year since the book was published. While I am working on other themes now, other books of long and short stories, this one book Magnificent Loss will always remain my serious attempt to unravel one of our many aspects of living.

Even if we have learnt to cope with a loss, there is still the nagging fear of another loss. There is no word in the language for ‘fear of loss’, which is what I have tried to convey in my story.

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Babu’s Fears

Tags

babu, boy, character, child, dread, fear, fiction, shy, story

Babu was both shy and fearful. He experienced fear more than shyness, which sometimes helped him hide the fact that he was afraid. When he cringed, people elder to him remarked that he was shy, when in fact he was shaking internally with a feeling bordering on dread. He often kept his mouth shut, for fear of saying the wrong thing. And people, the forgiving older people, invariably interpreted his silence as attentive listening, for most people crave for listeners, and dislike interruptions when they talk. Silence on his part also earned him the merit of obedience and one of good manners. He glowed internally at these kind remarks, and did not bother much about their accuracy. Gradually he began to accept his condition as a natural ally in building his reputation for being good. As he spoke less and less, the more introverted he became, and soon he lost touch with the social side of life. Even when he was among a crowd, he peopled his world with his imagination, which was ever active behind the silent mouth and the wide open eyes.

The greatest fear Babu faced, one that ran through his heart like a train hurtling on tracks, was the fear of the father figure. His father spoke little, to the point and never argued. He sometimes cracked jokes, around the dining table, which was the only time when his face did not sport seriousness. His mom shushed everyone into silence when his father was around. Babu never stepped into his room where, reclining in an easy chair, his father either read a book or a newspaper. When he was doing neither, he was seen at his desk hammering away on his Italian typewriter, the fingers flying with such rapidity that the key strokes sounded like staccato gunfire. When irritated, he felt his father’s voice grate on his heart, felt the pounding in his heart, and everything inside him stood still, clammed up. Babu feared the tone, the rasp in the voice, the irritation in the speech and above all dreaded the chilling effect it had on him. Any voice that remotely resembled it drove iron into his heart. Babu’s fear rose from a rasping male voice.

Fear became Babu’s companion. It was always there, round the corner, except when he was hiding behind his mother’s pallu. He pushed his mother first and straggled behind. She became his bodyguard, not that if ever anyone got physical with him. Not even his dad, though there was that one time when he got the jolt of his life, a lightning strike that seared across his cheek and spun his world into a tizzy. It was a morning like any other, but Babu felt disinclined to go to school. He expresse his wish to stay at home and his ever considerate mother gladly obliged. Babu’s father, however, did not take kindly to it. On the other hand, he demanded to know the reason for his son’s stay at home. Learning that it was nothing but truancy he became furious, strode up to the cringing lad hiding behind his mother’s pallu and smartly executed a vicious slap on Babu’s tender cheek. That left a welt and fever in the body and fear in the mind. Feeling Babu’s burning body, his father rushed him to a clinic and confessed his rash act and promptly received humbly the good doctor’s reprimand. That was the first time Babu felt his father’s hand and never again did he feel it, either in anger or in affection. The wound healed in no time, but the fear became stronger in time.

Babu’s fear expressed itself in one undesirable way. Like hurt brought tears to the eyes, fear filled his bladder. Unbeknown to him, urine shot out before he realized and held it back. Babu’s glands worked furiously, ever on the point of releasing their secretions. It so happened that while in primary school he wanted to sharpen his pencil. Without a moment’s thought he dashed towards the teacher’s desk and started using the new sharpening tool fixed to her desk. Suddenly, the stentorian voice of the teacher rose from behind him – what are you doing there? – and sent fear through his heart. Babu wet his shorts, felt weak in the legs and managed to limp back to his seat. It wouldn’t have troubled him if that was just a one time happening. It happened again when an older boy heckled him and threatened to slap him if he did not part with his marbles.

From Babu’s World

Tags

babu, childhood, fiction, growing up, indian, nostalgia, story, Writing

The sour taste is to the Andhra tongue what sweet is to a Bengali. A giant mango tree rose like an unmbrella over the house with its roots in a neighboring house. In the summer mangoes hung from its great branches in clusters. The mangoes were tantalizingly close to grab and yet, owing to the fact that its roots lay in another house, they were beyond the grasp. The owner of the tree, a certain Mr. Subba Rao, considered his sole right to every mango on the tree, even to those that were not visible from his own backyard. If anyone tried to pluck a mango he would shout abuses from his part of the land. The owner never came face to face with his neighbors but his booming voice was heard all over the neighborhood. The women of the house looked up at the bunch of fruit hanging like green lightbulbs, but could do nothing to possess them. Therefore, they whispered among themselves several nicknames and uncharitable words to describe their neighbor. The children were so much aroused by what seemed like unfair treatment by their neighbor would go around the house shouting ‘Dubba Rekula Subba Rao’; they lifted their faces at the tree and raised that slogan in chorus that meant nothing more than a caricature of the man’s name.

The little boy, fondly called Babu, joined his older siblings in denigrating what he considered the neighbor’s meanness. He often went up the stairs to the first floor and lowered himself to the balcony that had the neighbor’s wall on one side but had no guard rail on his side of the house. From that vantage point he took up the chanting in earnest, thereby believing that he had raised the sloganeering to a new high. He made sure that he was safely away from the unguarded edge of the balcony. He also made sure that he had his escape route clear of debris in case the offending neighbor chose to appear suddenly over the dividing wall.

The neighbor believed that any tree arising out of his soil belongs to him even though it spanned the neighboring houses. He did not apparently subscribe to the belief held by Babu’s family that anything that appeared with in the four walls of their house, from the ground below in the bowels of the earth to the limitless sky above, is theirs to take. Babu did not know which belief was actually correct; nor did he care. He knew clearly which side he was on and so went about aiding his siblings in raising the ruckus against the offending neighbor.

In matters concerning arcane beliefs Babu often consulted an octogenarian on the premises. He believed that there was a reason behind her sunken eyes and frail figure. She had no doubt seen much from the very beginning of time. She seemed to wail when she spoke, her gnarled hands rose in resignation and her toothless mouth opened and closed like a frog’s. She sat in a corner or on the stairs and in dim lighting she appeared like a ghost, for her dark skin blended in the surroundings. Babu listened to her as if she was giving a discourse on the Vedas, even as she interrupted her monologue with screams and rants at her daughter-in-law. She told him about the time when Razakars rode roughshod over the people. Babu could sense fear in her marble eyes and some of it entered his heart that had not seen many a summer. When she spoke of the bearded goons of the Nizam, her words trembled on her frayed and ugly lips. The beard for Babu became synonymous with terror. The old woman lived with her son and her daughter-in-law in the upper story of the house. Often Babu sneaked upstairs to peek into the esoteric life of this aging relic of humanity. Once he saw her draping a sari round her sticklike body; the crafty old woman caught him spying and shooed him away, gesticulating like a witch in a seance.

Babu went upstairs for several other reasons as well. For him growing up in life meant climbing those stairs to begin with. Lowering himself to the balcony promised a thrill that was unlike any other. It was not a place where children were allowed to wander about. Lacking the guard rail, the balcony meant danger. Looking down into the house from the balcony, especially in a casual manner, meant that he was staring danger in the face. It also sent a message to the elders in the house that he was brave. It also notched his esteem in the eyes of his siblings a peg higher than he would have earned it by other means. It also afforded him a way out to conceal his other fears even from himself.

From the balcony, on the adjacent side of the mango neighbor, was the Student’s Institute, a school whose windows opened on his side. Looking through them seemed like participation in a secret rite. For the children in the school, the windows were set high and couldn’t possibly notice a peeping Tom. He loved to hear them repeat what their teacher said. He memorized snatches of English rhymes and numbers tables and repeated them to his family members verbatim. The elders thought he was very clever and petted him: he became a hero among his elder siblings for he learnt subjects without books or going to school. He was very proud of his achievement and rose in his self esteem.

The balcony taught him many things, opened doors to new subjects and experiences.

The Lion Singh

Tags

fiction, ice-cream factory, Lion, neighbor, sardar, Singh, story

The troop bazaar lay in the crossroad leading to the marketplace of Koti on one side and the commercial centre Abid’s on the other. A narrow street branched off to Mozamjahi fruit market via the Rani park. Many by-lanes crisscrossed the area like multicolored threads in a quilt. In one such lane resided Avatar Singh who ran an icecream factory right from his home. When his Ambassador car moved through the lane no one dared to come out for it was so narrow that there was hardly any space left for even a mangy mongrel to pass.

Every morning wooden carts streamed into the lane to unload their burden of huge ice blocks. Workers then set to work on the blocks to crush them into tiny pieces suitable for stuffing into icecream containers. Gallons of milk, icecream powder and sweeteners were then poured into noisy machines that churned the liquid until the entire content turned into a coagulated mass.

From morning till noon the work went on; rickshaws come groaning with ice and return jauntily, while wooden trolleys roll into the factory and return heavy with their metal containers filled with ice cream and surrounded by crushed ice. The men shouted to each other and Singh the proprietor-cum-supervisor barked orders and cursed now and then when he finds slackness in work. The noise that arose each morning was enough to awaken the most lethargic of men from their sweet slumber, but Singh’s neighbors never complained. If they harbored any reservation on this account, they never let it be known to the architect of the morning mess. The ice-cream season would last two months, when the fiery Sun is in its ascendant in the months of April and May.

The ice-cream factory began from the far end of the vacant part of the house and spilled over the lane right up to the houses in front, leaving just enough for one person to walk gingerly over the place for fear of slipping on the pieces of scattered ice. For as long as the work continued, the spot shone like an ice rink, no, worse, for there was water all over the place and men moved about it all the time working and yelling at each other.

Singh stood on the front porch of his house, twirling his gargantuan mustache and the steel ring, the kada, on his wrist glinted like a sabre’s edge. He hustled the men, and often clenched his fist and raising his arm he pushed the kada with his other hand as far back as it would go. He had a gruff voice and a matching exterior that drove fear into the weak-hearted.

After the day’s work, he left home to conduct his business outside, which consisted in collecting money from men who borrowed from him or to strike a new business deal for his ice cream sticks and cups. It was then that the women of his household came out to meet the neighboring women, when all their men too had gone out to work. Singh’s women (wife, mother and aunt) were jovial, talkative and easily made friends with the women in the neighborhood. When Singh returned from work, his women folk were already inside making parathas, the delicious soft pancakes made from kneaded wheat flour, that go with the variegated curries that only Punjabis can make.

The neighbors included two families from the South both residing in two portions of a house opposite to Singh’s. One portion was occupied by a man who worked as a clerk in a government office and in the other lived two brothers. The clerk sported a waving shock of hair, black and shining, which he often had to push back with his slender hand to uncover his small dark face. When he stepped out of the house in the morning he wore a frightened look on his face until he exited the lane. And then the same look returned when he bolted back into it at sundown and it lingered until he entered the house. The brothers, on the other side, looked well-built in comparison and much taller. The elder one wore a serious mien, walked the lane as a professor might when he is crossing the courtyard of a University. He wrote for the local daily, kept to himself mostly and rarely exposed his mind by way of word or emotion. The younger brother worked for the railways, crossed the narrow lane like a steam engine rolling down the track and often swore at the workers for messing up the lane.

The brothers had just moved in with their wives and their children, having needed a larger house to accommodate their growing numbers. One of the new members in their family was a boy of four, the only son of the elder brother. Everyone doted on the boy, even the women from Singh’s family. The boy looked chubby and very fair for a Southerner – his Uncle even went so far as to say that he was of pure Aryan blood. The Punjabi women cuddled him and took turns to pet him. After the noise of the rush hour in the morning – grating and irritating – the squeals of laughter and wondrous delight from the Punjabi women more than compensated for Singh’s rude work.

This summer was especially hot, the women told one another, for never had they felt such heat in all the dozen years they had since migrated from the cold North. Little did it matter to the local women that the Punjabis made the same comment every year; it was a delight to hear them speak, for their words rolled out in quick succession like a mountain brook bouncing down a steep slope. But the reason they said it was that Singh brought in more ice, made more ice cream and consequently made more noise for the beleaguered neighbors.

One day the younger brother’s bicycle slipped and fell as he tried to navigate through the crushed pieces of ice. He cursed the men, kicked at the little rocks of ice and his rage building up shut the noisy machine down and removed the fuse from the power source. He then ordered the men to remove the carts and the trolleys from the lane and began pushing them inside Singh’s compound. There was no sign of the women. There was no sign of Singh either; it was unusual for him to be absent at this hour. The men left singh’s house after locking the place and handing over the keys to the occupants inside. The brother kicked some more ice, hollered for Singh and having got no response picked up his by circle and went home.

In the evening the clerk returned and heard about the younger brother’s foolhardy act. He became visibly agitated. The fear in his eyes leapt out and affected the women in the house. He said that once when his aging mother could not bear noise at all as she suffered from hypertension he had asked Singh to move his factory from the residential locality. He recalled that Singh became furious at this suggestion. He used the foulest possible language and asked the clerk to mind his own business. When he persisted, albeit diffidently, Singh’s fist clenched and the next moment he felt like he had been hit by a sledgehammer. He had swooned then, he told the women, and when he awoke he found himself lying like a crumpled flower beside his ailing mother.

When the elder brother returned that evening, he had said to his younger brother not to pick up quarrels in the neighborhood. We don’t want to get into fisticuffs, he said, let’s maintain some dignity. Singh is a ruffian and if you cross swords with him you become one too.

The younger brother remained firm and let it be known to all that whatever may be the outcome he is determined to see the matter to its bitterest end. He left the house and went over to Singh’s and called out his name. Still there was no sign of Singh. His wife pushed a curtain aside and told him that Singh is expected any time soon. The brother invited himself in and asked the lady if he could wait for him in the hall. The lady didn’t think that was a good idea and tried to dissuade the rebellious youth from his hotheaded idea. But the young man was resolute and determined to meet the lion of the lane.

It was quite dark when Singh returned home. The air hung heavy like it had been churned out of an oven. The neighborhood was silent, even the sound of the radio was not heard. The kitchens made no noise, nor was there any sound from the little boy in the house. It was eerily quiet and Singh unaccustomed to silence stormed into the house and shouted: Why this quiet? Are you all in mourning? No one spoke.

He walked through the door and saw the brother sitting on a sofa, legs wide apart and arms akimbo. Is this some kind of a joke? He said and immediately found himself pushed into his room. Before he could react, the brother rained blows on him so hard he could barely stand. He ducked to evade the blows but only managed to lose his turban, which went rolling down like a rabbit out of the magician’s box. When the brother was done, he left Singh slumped in a corner too weak to move or mumble.

The troop bazaar was neither a bazaar nor populated by any troops, but certainly became less noisy as Singh moved his ice factory out of it.

Germ of an idea

Tags

fiction, guru, Idea, league, seed, story, theme

An idea buzzing in the mind, importunate, seeking expression…

In the run up to the elections several contending parties made a pitch for votes through public rallies at the Parade Grounds in the city. The place had been booked months in advance, but an exception had been made in the case of Baba Gurudev, whose number had been bumped up on popular demand.

The motley crowd of middle class families, business community, youth and religious aspirants waited under the pandals for the holy man to arrive. Satish and Gauri hustled their son and daughter to a middle ground between the business class and the working middle class. An employee of Events Unlimited, owned and operated by Satish, had reserved seats for the family and signaled to Satish to come over and occupy.

Giant fans attached to the supporting poles whirred and blew in a dash of air at the seated crowd. Fluorescent lamps lighted the aisles and flood lamps at the four corners of the ground lit up the ground beyond the pandals. Satish thanked his employee for spotting him and locating seats close to the fans.

“Did you know I was coming,” asked Satish.

“No, Sir,” answered the man, a gray haired retiree from the accounts department. “I saw you entering the grounds and decided to hold some seats for you all.” He emitted an ingratiating smile and drew himself close as though he must allow his employer more space.

“Thank you,” Gauri said to the man, leaning over Satish and switched on a charming smile. I don’t mind standing, but the children, you know, and your Sir, of course, they can’t stand these rallies.“

The man grinned to expose his betel-stained teeth. “I am glad I could be of help, ma’am.” He shrank back as Satish waved his hand as if he had had enough of it. He fidgeted and became impatient at the delay in the arrival of the baba. He looked at his daughter. She tapped her foot on the sandy ground apparently to some music from her iPod in her hand and earphones hidden behind her silky hair. The son had clamped a giant headphones and held a play station in his hands. His fingers moved so fast that Satish had difficulty following their movement. Gauri adjusted her pallu time and again and looked around immensely pleased with herself. Satish could not contain his impatience any more. He dialed a number on his mobile phone and spoke into a device attached to his left ear. He was anxious about landing a contract for which his team had prepared a proposal for submission. Feeling a tap on his lap by Gauri, Satish looked at her in irritation. His eyebrows came together and his teeth bit his lower lip. Gauri made a face and pointed at the dais. Satish concluded his phone call and sighed: “why am I even here, I don’t know!” Gauri merely smiled and watched the scene unfolding on the platform.

Baba Gurudev presented a spectacle of Churchill’s half-naked fakir as he climbed the dais surrounded by loyal acolytes. The ash-smeared forehead, the ochre robe round the loins, the sacred thread across the chest and the long flowing beard – all this evoked the image of the sanyasi. Amidst chants of sacred mantras and the noise from the surging crowds behind the barricades, Gurudev took the centre stage and raised his hand, palm outward, in a blessing, which doubled as a gesture that commanded silence. Without preliminaries, the baba launched into his speech. The crowd settled down quickly and listened to The oratorical magic from the ace of India’s timehonored lineage of holy men.

“We live today in the age of rampant commercialism and utter lack of God in our daily life.” The crowd fell silent as the words weaved a magical spell of authority and divination. “We must work together to revive the tradition of Guru-shishya, learning at the feet of the master, the way of the Upanishads.” A sense of the reverence permeated the crowd at the mention of the holy scripture, the pinnacle of India’s achievements in the knowledge of the unknown and the unknowable. The baba scanned the seated aspirants row by row until everyone sat with their back straight and their tongue tied.

“We have lost our Gurus. We have become poor. We are witness to the drain of India’s heritage from its shores, to its export to the West, leaving behind a smattering of its former glory. The Gurus have headed West, ostensibly to transport the holy message to the far corners of the globe. We have become impoverished as a result of this transportation. In the olden days of the rishis, divine messages were teleported, but today we have lost that faculty. The Gurus have chosen the physical transport instead and carried over our precious jewels and left us impoverished.” The baba paused in his address. An aid issued a clarion call. Another sounded the conch shell.

From the press gallery, cameras flashed often accompanied by a thousand clicks. TV channels streamed the event live. Giant TV monitors hung on poles conveyed the event to those standing at the very edge of the Parade Grounds.

“We need to get our Gurus back, our Kohinoor diamonds, our wealth that is being splurged on masses abroad. Let them come here, the people in the West, and take back according to their capacity, according to their karma. We go to the West for the greenbacks, don’t we? So also, let the West come here to receive the Guru’s message. The wisdom of the East shall remain in the East. The West may borrow it when it so pleases. We have a monopoly over the sacred word, the sacred rites and the sacred techniques since times as old as the hills. Let us come together to make this great nation holy once again. Make holy from the feet of the masters, from the messages of the divine, echoed from this land to the far corners of the world.” The conch shell boomed again and the sound spread to all corners of the Parade Grounds and beyond. The pandals shook in the wind that blew across the attendees and lifted their spirits.

“I have a plan to restore our faith in our scriptures, in reviving the Holy Spirit of this land, so that our Gurus may return to this abode of the God, to this place where He revealed himself through the holy word OM. It is not just for the Gurus who forsook this land for the commercial glory abroad, but also for the many seers and monks and godmen who abound in this land. They too shall find a common ground to preach and further spread their divinity among the luckless zillions of this country.” The baba paused for effect. The silence under the tents was heavy, like a pregnant woman awaiting imminent delivery. The baba looked around at the eager anticipating faces in the crowd. He folded his hands in a namashkar, closed his eyes and stood still. The crowd waited with bated breath.

“I propose the Indian Spiritual League, a forum for bringing the spiritual master and the spiritual aspirant to a common meeting point.” To the loud blaring of the conch shell, the beating of drums and the clarion calls, the baba continued: “this nation shall become the spiritual center for the world, the lighthouse to the flailing seafarers in the ocean of sorrow, the sthal of all holy sthals to initiate the novice, to elevate the apprentice, to levitate the adept and above all to fulfill the hungering soul of every Indian with easy access to the divine treasures.”

Amidst the sounds from the dais, a low clapping started from a corner in the public stands and soon spread to the entire Parade Grounds. The waving roofs and the supporting poles echoed the clapping sound as it rose in pitch and intensity. Baba Gurudev raised his folded palms above his head in reciprocation. Two people broke through the barrier, jumped on the dais and rushed towards the baba. Gurudev visibly disturbed and agitated shrank from the rushing duo and sought succor behind his aids. Even before the security could react, the two men hurled themselves on the dais and prostrated before the baba, their folded hands high in the air, in supplication, seeking blessings.

Gurudev heaved a sigh of relief, dispatched the security with haste, grabbed the mike and said, “I am overjoyed at this response to my proposal. This land shall awaken to a spiritual dawn, the likes of which the world has never seen before. May the gods shower their blessings on you all.”

A band struck up and accompanied by a chorus that sang a kirthan. The crowd began to chant in unison. Baba Gurudev retreated to the back of the stage from where he was whisked away by his aids to his ashram located outside the city.

The Curse

Tags

bane, curse, fiction, India, jinx, scourge, spell, story

The bus turned noisily round a bend in the road and rattled along a canal that fed the farms, the hamlet and the livestock. I felt myself odd among the village folk. The men smoked beedis and the women kept up an endless chatter. I gathered that their lives were hard, even cruel since they spoke a lot about some disease which apparently became alarming in recent times.

Streaks of grey and black scarred the intense orange glow in the west. A concrete column from a long triangular structure emitted smoke that hung like an umbrella over it before drifting westward with the wind. In the foreground brick-lined cylindrical holes in the earth gaped at the open sky. A checkered pattern of farms contrasted closer to the eye with an occasional palm tree and a pond full of weeds and lotus blooms.

I noticed that I got a fine coat of dust as the bus rolled into a square where a village fair was in progress. Here the bus discharged almost all its occupants. A man thrust a bottle of mineral water at me through the window. I raised my hand to take it when my eyes fell on a colored patch on his arm. I recoiled, but pretended not to have noticed it and gently fobbed off the vendor with a lame excuse. I don’t need to buy water now, since the journey has ended and I would soon be home with Amit.

Several villagers greeted Amit as he drove me in his open Jeep to his medical camp situated on a knoll. A ramshackle government building served as the camp where he slept in the night and practiced by day.

“I am glad you came.” Amit smiled and his eyes gleamed in delight. “This is the first time I have ever had a companion during my medical practice outside the city.”

A chance acquaintance in a coffee parlour some months ago, Amit struck me as odd and even a bit eccentric. Contrary to his profession, he drank and ate like a glutton. For about a month in a year Amit closed his clinic and went to a village to practice. He called it a ‘combo tour’ of study and vacation, away from the noise and pollution of the city. He also spoke of some moral responsibility the logic of which eluded me.

I have never been in a doctor’s clinic except for consultation. It was indeed a rare opportunity for me to watch Amit conduct his medical business, no, his free check up of patients in this village that took me about seven hours to reach.

As the evening progressed, the patients came empty handed and returned with a prescription or some medicine. About an hour later the visitors stopped coming and Amit joined me in the veranda with a couple of beer bottles and a plate of roasted peanuts.

“It is a hard job for you, isn’t it?” I said. Amit nodded.

“Why did you choose this village?”

“This village is under a curse,” he said, echoing a local sentiment I overheard on the bus.

“Do you really believe that?” I asked, incredulous.

Much to my amazement, he nodded. “Did you notice the patients? They are suffering from a disease that is bleaching their skin in patches.” He popped a few peanuts into his mouth and began grinding them noisily.

“Is it contagious?” I remembered the vendor of mineral water. I couldn’t keep the note of alarm out of my voice.

Amit shook his head. “Relax. Just don’t drink the water here. This is all you need to drink as long as you stay here,” he said, pointing at the beer. “There is no dearth of it,” he assured me.

“What do you do for cooking?”

“Oh. There’s a sump full of treated water. That will do for our water needs.”

I am less inclined to continue this line of conversation. What am I doing here? All I wanted was a decent holiday and here I am, drinking beer where some weird disease stalks this accursed village. To top it all, I am holed up with a nerd I barely knew. He had sent me a letter or was it a prescription? A terse line of invitation scrawled on a prescription paper. And the image of an idyllic setting had floated before me.

He seemed to sense my mood, for he said: “You will have a wonderful time here, I am sure. Plus, you will get to see the countryside up close. You wanted to know about India’s villages. That’s what you told me the last time we met, remember, in that beer parlour.”

I downed the beer for the better to conceal the wince on my face. I nodded and managed a weak smile. I resolved to return home the next day and spent the night turning over ways of excusing myself without offending my host.

***

In the morning a young lady came to visit Amit. She left her sneakers in the veranda and entered the consultation room, closing the door behind her. She emerged after a few minutes and passed by in silence with scarcely a glance at me.

On enquiry, Amit said she was a client. That is all I could get from him about her. And my curiosity grew. The lady returned again the next day and this time the duo was closeted for nearly a half hour. This was more than I could bear. And the curiosity got the better of my resolve to leave.

One day on the pretext of a walk down the knoll I followed the woman discreetly. She stopped at a thatched hut and spoke something into it. Apparently someone responded, for she thrust a paper into the hut. I managed to see a man take the paper from her and bow in respect. She left without another word.

I followed her on to the other end of the village. She made her way round the holes in the ground to the triangular structure with its concrete column. I frowned and returned to the camp. I heard Amit cooking in the kitchen, whistling a Bollywood tune.

After lunch we set out on a walk through the village. Men and women worked in the fields, caring for the crops and scaring the birds away.

“Where are the children of the village?”

“You will find them in the tannery.” He waved his hand toward the place where the lady had disappeared.

“Are we going there now?”

Amit shook his head. “No place to be in for a tourist.” He dismissed the idea with a shake of his palm. “We will go down the stream.”

I looked once at the umbrella of smoke in the distance and followed Amit into the soft sand by the stream. We sat on a rock outcrop and watched the water flow by. A breeze stirred the leaves of a palm tree. It was quiet, save for the occasional shout from the farmers. I felt relaxed and gave myself up to the pleasant sensation.

Back in the camp, after the evening consultations, we sat on the veranda beer in hand. The quietness followed us; even the croaking of frogs and the distant cry of an infant did not disturb the silence.

A car drove up the knoll, its headlamps lighting up the camp. I looked inquiringly at Amit. He shrugged and took a swig from his bottle. Two men alighted and walked purposefully towards the camp. One wore pajamas while the other was dressed in trousers and a full-sleeved shirt.

“Doctor babu, stop entertaining Sneha’s foolish notions,” the burly man in pajamas said, accosting Amit in the veranda.

Amit went inside and returned with a bottle of beer. “Have a drink Mr. Vohra,” he said, and offered the bottle.

The man waved him away and said, “I have not come here to exchange pleasantries. I want you to stop it at once. I insist.”

Amit remained unfazed as he said, “I can’t refuse a client.”

“She is not your client,” retorted the man in trousers.

Amit looked coldly at him. He turned to Mr. Vohra and said, “I have not asked her to come to me.”

“Look here doctor. This is highly irregular. You must stop it. If you don’t I am afraid I will have to adopt harsher means to stop you.” With that Mr. Vohra stormed out of the veranda.

His follower sneered and pointed an index finger at Amit as much as to say: take care, or else.

After the men left silence returned like an uninvited guest.

***

As usual Amit was reticent about the whole issue. He merely divulged the fact that the burly man was none other than the tannery owner and husband of Sneha the lady in question. The follower was a government official from the pollution control board. My curiosity turned into worry as thoughts of a confrontation between Amit and the man over the lady gnawed at me. Once again I toyed with the idea of returning home, but curiosity held me back, especially when it was becoming interesting.

A villager turned up bearing a sealed envelope; Amit took it and thanked the messenger.

“Let’s plan an open air lunch today,” Amit said. We packed a lunch and set out to the brook. The Sun burned down from the open sky and the water was like molten silver. The quietness of the place and the shining brook mellowed my anxiety a bit. And the next moment the cause of my worry appeared in person. I caught sight of Lady Sneha approaching us with the messenger.

I nudged Amit to look. He smiled and his eyes brightened. She nodded at me and shook hands with Amit. The villager stood at a little distance from us.

Sneha looked at me and then inquiringly at Amit. She seemed reassured when Amit introduced me as a friend.

“Dr. Amit, the medicine you prescribed for this man is not very effective,” she said, pointing at the villager. “The disease is spreading rapidly on his body.”

“That is all we have got right now. I am afraid there is no sure cure for this sort of thing. From the number of patients I am seeing I can say that it is spreading rapidly in the village.”

“Is there no hope for this man, then?” She looked sadly at the poor villager. The patch on his arm reminded me of the mineral water vendor. “He lost his job and the respect of his fellow villagers. No one wants to deal with him. He lives in his own village as an outcast. Even his son left him to die.”

Amit looked grave. A somber mood prevailed over us for some time. The brook seemed to hold its breath, for its gurgling mellowed.

The villager stood motionless. There was no expression on his face, just an air of finality about him.

“It’s the water, ma’am,” Amit said, “and the soil and the poultry. Polluted. Matter of time before everyone is affected by it. The tannery has poisoned their lives.”

At this revelation from Amit, I saw the Sun in the villager’s eyes and his frame shook for no apparent reason.

“I will arrange a rehab for this man,” Sneha said, getting up. “I must get back quickly before my husband reaches home.”

***

Nursing a bottle of beer back in the camp, I asked Amit: “Why is she concerned so much about that villager when the whole village is in danger from this disease?”

“That villager used to work in the tannery. Mr. Vohra dismissed him from the job when he contracted the disease.”

“So it is not just an act of charity on the part of the lady. She feels she owes it to him.”

Amit nodded. “She tried to persuade her husband to do something about it. When he refused, she came to me. I told her about the heavy metal contamination from the tannery operations. She helped me gather samples from the pits and the soil around them. I have enough evidence now to start litigation against the factory.”

“Does Mr. Vohra know that his wife is colluding with you against him? Is that why he came to warn you the other day?”

Amit shook his head. “He suspects that his wife has taken a fancy for me.”

At once I felt remorse. Going by appearances, it was so easy to think of the obvious. “What about that other man, the official who tagged along with Mr. Vohra?”

“According to Sneha, he is the man who has taken a fancy for her. It was he who goaded Mr. Vohra against me to deflect him from his own dishonorable intentions. It is not difficult for you to understand why the tannery passed the pollution check.”

I fell silent. The palm trees swayed in the wind. Amit went in to whip up a vegetarian dish.

I stood up and stretched my limbs. In the distance the tannery seemed to come alive with a lot of activity. Unusual. At this hour the workers retired for the day. Smoke rose from the cylindrical pits. The triangular roof of the building glowed in the setting Sun. Soon the smoke spread to all the corners of the tannery. I saw that it was fire and not just the orange sunlight glinting off the steel structure.

I hollered for Amit. Fanned by the wind, the fire raged to the height of the concrete column. Within an hour the tannery became a heap of ash, burnt bricks and mangled steel.

“The curse on the village, my friend, is now removed.” Amit’s lips curled into a smile.

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[First published in new Asian Writing at http://www.new-asian-writing.com/‘the-curse’-by-anand-betanabhotla-india/%5D

As The Eagle Flies

Tags

child, Eagle, example, fiction, learn, nest, parable, soar, story, teach, world

“Eat, Nikky,” The mother said, pointing to a plate of bambino.

​“No.” Nikky was adamant. “I am NOT going to eat it.” He expected the mother to spoon-feed him. He was busy pushing a toy car. It wobbled on the carpet.

The mother insisted that he was old enough to eat on his own, but Nikky paid no attention.

The father watched the interlocution silently. Then he turned to Nikky and said, “An eagle lived with its four chicks on a mountain ledge.” He noticed that Nikky was all ears.

The ledge was so high from the ground that no land animal could approach it. In fact, it was not even visible from the ground. Everyday the mother eagle brought large chunks of meat to the roost. She broke the chunks into smaller pieces and fed the chicks. Whenever the eagle flew away on the hunt, the chicks eagerly waited for the mother to return with food.

This went on for a few days and the chicks began to grow fat and big. One day the mother returned without food. Two of the chicks flew off in search of food. But the other two remained on the ledge hoping the mother would hunt for them.

The mother did not bring food for them, but expected the chicks to hunt for themselves, as they were old enough to do. The mother ignored the chicks’ cries and refused to feed them anymore.

The mother eagle saw that the chicks were stubborn and continued to expect to be fed.

“You know what the mother eagle did to the chicks that remained on the ledge?” asked the father looking at Nikky.

“The mother killed them, of course,” said Nikky matter-of-factly. The father looked shocked and said, “Why would the mother kill the chicks after feeding them for so many days and raising them up lovingly?”

Nikky waited for the father to continue. He probably wondered what the mother eagle would do now.

The next day the mother eagle spread its large wings around the chicks and pushed them towards the edge of the ledge. The chicks thought she was playing a game, but soon realized that she was pushing them over the ledge. Ignoring their cries, the mother eagle completely encircled them in its great wings and swept them over the ledge. The chicks had no chance of escape. When they came to the very edge they opened their wings and flew off into the sky.

Nikky mumbled as he went near the plate of bambino. “I am going to eat that stuff with one hand AND push my car with the other.”

As the child began to eat, the mother felt relieved and smiled with surprise and joy.

When Stars Cross

Tags

fate, fiction, life, love, memory, sorrow, story

“Focus, Avinash. Focus!”

Avinash looked. He saw the Sun dropping beyond the horizon. The lake looked placid, ruffled occasionally by the wind. The crowd thinned as the evening advanced. Dark cumulus edged forward from the East and hung like a canopy over the darkening water.

“What do you see, Avinash? Please talk to me!”

“I see her,” he whispered. “She is on a boat with her friends, fellow picnickers in an alien land.”

“Look at me, Avinash. Do you see me?”

“I see you.” He responded. “And I see her. As clearly as I see you.”

“What am I wearing?”

“You are wearing shorts. You are looking at the bridge. The boat is going fast. You wanted to touch it.”

“Avinash! You are not looking at me. Is that what I am wearing?”

“You are like the leopard that is about to spring. You want to leap…No! Don’t do that!” His voice rose in anguish and despair.

“Avinash. Look. You need to look. Look at me.”

He looked again. He saw her stretched over the railing. Bent over it, and any minute she could keel over. Into the lake below. Into the hyacinth-infested murky waters. Into the hole in the ground from where the living don’t rise and walk the earth again.

“Hey! Get down, will you? I am looking at you.” Avinash sounded hoarse and rushed to her side.

“Look, Avinash. I am right here. By your side. What do you see now?”

He felt her hands, small, frail and delicate like a flower. The hollow of the palm was soft to the touch, like velvet. The painted fingernails arched like the thorns of a cactus.

“I feel you. And I can feel her too. She is right over there in the boat. About to leap into the air.”

“Why? Why would she do that? Why, Avinash, do tell me?”

His eyes shone like glass marbles. A film of tears screened them. And he looked, but what he saw was not what she saw.

“She wanted to feel the underside of the bridge. Feel the moss on it. Smell its mouldering walls.”

“Why, Avinash. Why would she want to do that?”

“She loves jumping about, Syamala, her feet are not planted on the earth. She loves to leap and fly, you know, soar like the eagle in the sky.”

“Here, Avinash. Hold my hand. There, you see?” She caught him by his arm and spun him. The two gyrated like tops on a concrete floor.

The Sun went down for good and the moon came up lazily over the horizon, casting a long shimmering column of light over the lake. The December chill set in and the last of the picnickers left, leaving the two careening in each other’s arms.

“Come, let’s get something to eat,” Syamala said. “I am famished.”

They went to an eatery overlooking the lake. The awnings flapped in the light breeze and the colors all around – the chairs and the tables, the pillars and the counters – all the colors dazzled and contrasted sharply with the dark sinusoidal flow of the waters below.

Avinash bit into the sandwich, let go of it and settled to nibbling the edges. Syamala looked at him and her eyes moistened, ready to brim over. She checked herself and quickly downed hers with coke.

Avinash looked at the sandwich as though he was seeing it for the first time. He gave her a weak smile and ate hurriedly. “Don’t waste your time on me, Syamala. You go to your hostel now.”

“And what will the master do here alone? Your children will expect an alert mind tomorrow?”

“Oh, I have only one class tomorrow and I planned to give them a test. You will need to get some rest, you know. Your have two classes to take tomorrow, remember?”

Syamala sighed. “I won’t leave you here, Avinash. Not when you are … You know … Er, please, at least let me drop you at your place.”

“Don’t worry about me. I am seeing a psychiatrist. Didn’t I tell you?”

Syamala shrugged and looked away. “Let’s talk it over, Avinash. We will try and get over it, together. Don’t just leave it to the shrink.” She paused, shook her head, and then she said, “It may not help you at all.”

“What do you know about them? You seem pretty sure about it.”

She squirmed a bit and looked at the lake waters lapping on rocky soil. Avinash regarded her keenly and for sometime the daemon in his head retreated, leaving him free to live in the present.

“It’s a long story, Avinash. Could we talk about it some other time?”

Avinash felt the utter lack of conviction in her voice. She seemed to hedge and he felt all the more drawn towards her.

She sensed the change in him and wishing it to continue played along catch-me-if-you-can.

“What is that book you carry in your pocket? Do you keep a diary?”

Avinash pulled out a little red notebook from his back pocket and put it on the table. “I keep some notes in it. I record the precious moments in my life and my thoughts surrounding them.”

“Interesting. May I see it?”

He pushed the notebook towards her, watching her eager eyes sparkle in the light from the lampposts. Her hair looked tousled from the breezes that rushed into the eatery from time to time. She kept pushing her chunni over her shoulders even as the mischievous wind played truant, exposing now and then the buxom fullness of her womanhood. The edge of her faintly orange kurta flapped against the table, revealing the white pajamas that hugged her long slender legs.

She opened the book at a random page and found a small folded paper snuggled in the middle of the book. She looked up inquiringly and found Avinash watching her.

She felt a strange sensation coursing through her body, like a wire suddenly coming to life when it is connected to a battery. She closed her eyes and felt the sleeping cells awaken in her body.

“Don’t like what you see?”

“Huh?” She opened her eyes and looked at Avinash. Following his gaze she saw to her horror that her fist had closed over the parchment paper from his diary. Flustered and thoroughly contrite she released her hold on it. Avinash picked it up as it rolled towards him.

“I am sorry, Avinash. I am terribly sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. He smiled softly and laid his hand over hers. “It’s nothing,” he said gently, squeezing her hand.

“Tell me; what is it?” She pushed her tears back and swallowed the lump in her throat.

“I found it in one of my father’s books when I left home. Nothing much to it really. See,” he said and held it out to her.

She rubbed her thumb in the hollow of his palm and took the paper. It was a fading photocopy of a boy in the garb of a mendicant – loin cloth, ash-smeared forehead, long walking stick from which hung a cloth bound bag, flat wooden sandals that had one ringless butt and the face, the face of a monk, of Little Avinash in search of the Great Truth.

“Wow! It is soooo cute.” She pressed it to her cheek and rubbed it gently, up and down, up and down. Avinash puckered his lips into a smile when she said, “need to remove the wrinkles you know…” and winked at him. What he said next shocked her.

“That’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

Her face withered like a flower. Her fingers trembled as she held the photo between them. She blurted out: “At least you would have been spared the torture of losing her.”

Seeing the look of intense sadness in his eyes, she grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the chair. She wedged the xeroxed monk between the pages of his notebook and dropped it into his breast pocket.

“Come, Avinash. Let’s stroll along this lake.”

He allowed himself to be led, but the eatery’s clock reminded him of the time. “You must go now, Syamala. It’s getting late.”

The moon played hide-and-seek as dark clouds loomed in the sky. The wind raced stronger and the chill intensified. The street lamps blinked, and momentarily mirrored the darkness on the lake.

She threw her hands in the air and mimicked a jaunty gazelle as she walked. “The night is young,” she declared, lifting her chin to the sky. Stretching her arms, she intoned: “Life is long. Let’s be strong.” She looped her arm around his and looking into his eyes sang: “March along and tarry not for the sunken boat.”

Avinash found her ardor infectious. “Did you make that up?” he asked a little incredulous at her spontaneous rhapsody.

She winked at him and the stars twinkled in her eyes. She pressed her face into his arm and interlocked her fingers with his.

Avinash felt the blood rushing through him as if a river bound were in full spate. Color rouged his cheeks. Shaking himself, he said, “what do you know about shrinks?”

“Aha, the shrinks. Don’t the Americans know what to call them? They shrink your mind into believing what they think is the truth about you. Don’t be fooled by their theories of guilt and sexual mumbo jumbo.”

“You must have been to at least one to be so categorical about them.”

She nodded. Her head bobbed up and down and up and down. Her chest heaved in unison. And a vein in his arm, now arrested under the heaving bosom, throbbed with each successive wave of emotion.

“I saw one when life became unbearable.”

“What happened?”

“I ran away from my husband.” She coiled round his arm and looked up into his eyes. He found them beseeching with an invitation to come and share her plight.

“You are a married woman,” he said matter-of-factly. The chill in the wind grew, but his voice utterly lacked it.

The pressure on his arm increased. The warmth flowed freely between them, like heat in an induction coil.

“He butchered me everyday, like I was a lump of flesh.”

He let his head hang on the back of his neck. The sky clouded over and the lake sprang to life from time to time lit up by flashes of lightning. A spot of wetness touched his eyes: he did not blink.

The road became bereft of passers-by. The lamps lost their intense glow. The wail of a suburban train pierced through the gloom as it rattled over the tracks. A bird had apparently lost its way for it hopped from tree to tree in desperation.

“Man,” he whispered. She was all ears. “Why did he ever leave the abode of God and build his own world? A world of immense suffering for fleeting moments of joy?”

A squall of thunder drenched the entwined figures. The water went into every nook and crevice in their burning bodies. It riled into his pockets and made pulp of the little book. It washed her face and filled her bosom. She felt clean and new and upbeat. For him, it was the answer. It was the cleansing of all that he held dear to his heart, all that he carried in his mind, all that he felt was elsewhere but here and now.

“Syamala, I see you clearly now.” He looked into her eyes and drew her closer. “Come. The storm has passed. Let’s go home.”

Head on the Wall

Tags

fiction, flash, story, Writing

Rohini watched her parent’s altercation silently from behind the door which was slightly ajar and shaking now and then from the violent vibrations in the room. Her large round eyes were distended, like one who had been crying for a long time. Cries and screams rent the silent night and awakened her rudely from a fitful sleep. She had heard them quarreling in the evening; it had gone on well into the night and now when she fell asleep out of sheer fright and exhaustion, she was again shaken out of slumber to witness her parents hurtling towards what seemed to be a calamitous ending.

She saw her mother slumped on the bed at an awkward angle while her father stood on the other side of the bed and berated her in unbridled fury. There was little that she could understand, but she knew from their gestures and looks that they were matched equally, the mother though in tears defending her position haughtily, and the father bristling with rage and a sense of righteousness.

Now her father smashed a glass vase by hurling it on the floor. The crash of the vase rang loud in the silent night and for a brief and perilous moment silence regained her position in the hot and livid spaces of their small bungalow at the corner of the street. Rohini saw her father stride across the room towards the exit. She hid herself behind the door, her tiny back pressed tightly against the wall, when he pushed the door violently as he stepped out. If it were not for the stopper, which halted the door just an inch from her nose, she would have been crushed like a mosquito in a handclap.

Father left the house in a huff and mother slapped her forehead in a fatalistic way. Then she got up suddenly, and driven as it were by a brainwave, she collected her things and Rohini’s on the bed. She packed two suitcases, shouted for Rohini who ran to her absent-mindedly, and they both left the house in the family car. When Rohini tried to draw her attention to the unlocked house, the mother shushed her and snapped, “keep quiet!” And off they sped to the airport and away they flew in the first available flight out of the city.

The quarrels were not new to the seven year old; the fact that they grew louder and lasted longer each time they occurred was also beginning to impress itself on the growing mind. But what she was not prepared for, or had not yet reconciled herself to, was a split in the family. She had been fearing it a long time, but like the ostrich that buried its head in the face of danger did not bring herself to confront the question. Neither her age, nor her equally childish bevy of companions, was equipped to deal with a calamity of this kind. So she kept her fears masked behind her large eyes, which sometimes appeared bloodshot perhaps on account of it; or, the frequent secret crying might have something to do with it.

Now as the plane took off she saw the fiery glow of the rising sun and the earth dark and silent and motionless below, soon to disappear from view as they flew into the rolling clouds. She shot sidelong glances at her mother, who seemed eternally occupied with something or other. Whenever the girl made an attempt to say something, she would either ignore her or ask her to wait. The plane leveled off a little above the clouds and seemed to be suspended in the sky motionless, like a hawk studying its prey. She saw a whole new world in the white vaporous substance of clouds; dark sepulchral cavernous shadows and catacombs created weird shapes that struck terror in her heart. A dense mass of cloud headed towards the stationary plane and soon engulfed it for a few interminable seconds in a shroud of dark miasm. Rohini shivered and looked at her mother who was absorbed in something she took out from her handbag.

“Where are we going, Mommy?” She whispered; her voice tremulous and eyes glowed with tears. But Mommy made no answer; she continued to busy herself with papers and numbers.

About a couple of hours passed since they left their home. She looked through the window and the clouds were no longer there; instead, she saw what looked like a stream glistening in the morning light hedged between towering rocks that rolled away into the horizon. She recalled her father’s face as he strode out of the house – it was livid with rage. He had hurried out and gone away godknowswhere, without looking back, without his wallet or his car, in a nightgown that hung loosely about his lean frame. She had spent very little time with him alone – he was always busy with his office work or engrossed in his avocations which were too numerous to list. But when he did find time for her, it was always with affection and tenderness, and she felt the remembered joy rising in her tender heart at the recollection of the few and eventful happy hours. Mommy was rarely seen indoors and this appeared to be the crux of the problem between her hapless parents. She had numerous friends and they sought her company even after dark; she sometimes spent the night with her spirited and talkative companions, leaving Rohini on play dates.

The plane landed on the outskirts of a dusty little town; beyond the airport tall reedy weeds skirted the boundary wall and a lone crow went cawing loudly overhead as if it were attempting to draw the attention of the mindless machinery or the heartless humans below. Or so it seemed to Rohini as she felt the pull of her Mommy on her slender wrist.

A tall and thin woman in pink slacks and dangling earrings received them outside the airport.

“Hi, Pramila! It is so good to see you. Dear me, little Rohini, you have grown!”

“Hi Samira.” Rohini noted that her mother responded without the ardor with which the taller woman greeted her.

And the trio got into her station wagon which rolled off in a cloud of dust. The two women spoke incessantly, scarcely looking behind where Rohini shared the space with their suitcases. Dust rose and swirled around the speeding automobile. The road looked ancient and lined on both sides with sun-soaked land where wild grass grew in patches in an otherwise arid land of unremitting flatness and emptiness.

Rohini felt the heat of the Sun as the morning advanced, and the clouds were no where to be seen, only a clear blue sky and an occasional tree on the featureless landscape. A gray-green butterfly, its wings a mottled red, caught in the rush of the racing wagon slammed against the glass on the window, lost a wing and slid down the pane to a dusty death. Rohini watched the spectacle with horror and felt something rise inside her and choke her throat. She looked at the women in the front row who appeared to have completely unnoticed the tragedy they had left behind only a minute ago.

The wagon came to an intersection and Samira took the turn where the roadside arrow pointed skyward. The signboard disturbed Rohini, but the woman never looked at it as she maneuvered the vehicle into the narrow lane that led off the airport road and into an unpaved path along which a thick cluster of row houses were seen draped in a spray of diaphanous dust.

The wagon came to a screeching halt in front of a house which looked like it needed a fresh coat of paint and the lawn that separated it from the wicket gate needed mowing. The gate creaked open and the tall woman led the way in. Rohini smelled the dust and felt its insinuating intrusion into every pore of her being. She looked at her mother who seemed completely oblivious to everything that troubled her daughter.

The door opened and a heavy man in a bowler hat stepped out; he wore jeans and a round-necked grey T-shirt. He looked as if he had just returned from his morning jog on the dusty plains, for the loose sandy soil still clung to his sneakers. Behind him stood a man in white bermudas and a navy blue top, holding the door wide open. Pramila nodded at the first man and shot past him to the second, who took her hand and with an arm round her shoulders led her into one of the rooms inside. Rohini stopped and looked at the man in the bowler hat. He stretched his lips in a silent greeting and pointed to a chair inside. He picked up the suitcases and left them in the room beside Rohini, and then disappeared into a room upstairs where Samira joined him after a while, closing the front door. Rohini watched the door behind which her mother was closeted with the man in the bermudas. She looked around the room wondering when her mother would find it appropriate to bring her little one up-to-date in her scheme of things.

The room had one large window and three rooms connected to it – one was probably kitchen, she thought, and the other the restroom. It was the third room immediately below the stairs that contained her mother and the stranger in bermudas. The curtain filtered the morning light, which seemed feeble and ineffective in this closed room; though there was nothing on the walls that was worthy of being seen. An old faded photo frame hung in a far corner of a wall, a little tilted to one side, and seemed to contain a picture of Samira and the man in the bowler hat. Beside it and a little away to the center hung an antler’s skull, its gouged out eyes sent a shiver down her spine. A round tea-table stood near a sofa set against the wall, its glass top chipped at the edges – it might have fallen on its side several times, mused Rohini, and rather hard perhaps to get the edges so jagged as to cut one’s hand if handled carelessly.

It was strangely quiet in the house, rather disquieting for her, especially after coming out of a noisy house where talking meant shouting and disagreement meant quarreling. Four adults in the house and yet she heard not a whisper, nor the sound of a furniture moving. The silence unnerved her. She longed to shout and even scream, but did not trust herself even to make a wimper, for there was a lump in her throat. Her large eyes roamed wildly across the enclosing spaces and the constriction inside her only grew stronger by the minute. She spied a wasp, solitary and desperate, it made several rounds of the hollow and airless confine, but could not locate the hole it had used to enter. And now it was stuck for good, thought Rohini, unless she opened the door to let her out.

Feeling a rush of sympathy for the winged creature, lost and inadvertently confined, she got up to help when the door opened and Pramila stepped out with the man in bermudas in tow.

“Rohini, this is Jay. He is going to be your step father,” she said pointing at the man, who suddenly seemed to have grown in stature; he loomed over her now and extended his paw-like hand to her.

Rohini turned away from the man and looked at her mother in astonishment, and then opened her mouth to protest. Pramila was quick to cut in smoothly:

“It is alright, Jay, she will take some time over it. Let’s make a move, shall we?”

Jay turned away from Rohini abruptly and loped upstairs. Pramila opened the front door. Light poured into the room and the far morose corners began to take on a deeper shade of gloominess. Rohini watched as the wasp took the path laid out by the light and took wing into the open air and beyond.

Jay returned with Samira and the man in bowler hat who answered to the name Sunny. Jay picked up one suitcase while Sunny took the other and they trudged out of the house towards the parked wagon. Rohini followed the women who once again fell into a monotonous chatter. Sunny took the wheel and Samira took the seat beside him. Jay went back into the house to fetch his own luggage and Pramila followed him saying she needed to go to the rest room.

Rohini swept a tiny finger along the walls of the wagon gathering dust and blowing it away into the hot and humid air.

“Why did she bring the child with her? Is she so attached to her?” Rohini heard Sunny ask Samira. She slowed in her track and waited for Samira’s response.

“No. She said nothing could hurt the guy more than separating the child from him.”

Before Sunny could say more, Jay bounced out of the house with his baggage.

“You have got a handful there, Jay,” Sunny said pointing at Rohini. “You have a head start for a family life.”

Jay leered and said, almost thoughtlessly, “unfortunately she is going to outlive us, you know, so you see …” and stopped as he saw Rohini loitering behind the wagon.

Pramila and Jay occupied the second row and Rohini once again hitched the ride among the suitcases, crouched like a stowaway. The wind slammed the canvas flaps, which rose and fell in a dull and thunderous monotony. She wished she had wings to rise and soar on the slashing wind.

About an hour’s drive later they stopped by an inn. The journey had been rough and the dust piled in generous amounts on the surface of the machine. Rohini ached to get out and run as far as she could without ever looking back again. They left her to brood over every possible and impossible means of escape. Alone and helpless, she looked along the dusty path that led to the inn and the land stretching away to the horizon in an endless monotony of weeds and solitary trees. Her sight fell on two large steel frames of a car’s headlamps. The frames were almost circular with a hollow interior which shone brightly in the sun. Rohini looked at them for a long time before jumping out to fetch them. She wedged the frames between the suitcases, making sure that neither the wind nor the bumpy ride would dislodge them from their place.

After a while the adults came out of the inn in pairs, guffawing over lewd jokes. Still shaking with laughter, Pramila gave Rohini an ice cream cone. Samira noticed the hollow frames between the suitcases, for the sunlight glinted off their smooth and shining surface.

“Where did that come from?” she asked aloud of no one in particular. Everyone crowded round the back to take a look and raised a questioning eye at Rohini for an explanation.

Rohini looked at each of the inquisitive faces before her and said in a flat tone devoid of all emotion: “I need them to frame the skulls of mother and stepfather after they are dead.”

Writer don’t sell soap

Tags

art, artist, creative, fiction, market, sale, soap, writer, Writing

I mulled over some questions for a while. I had to find the answers. Feel free to add yours.

Who is a writer? How is she or he related to the society? What are the responsibilities of a writer? What is the objective or objectives of a writer? Why do they write at all?

Writing is a profession, like carpentry or engineering, like a medical practitioner or a scientist. It is a role played by a person as much as a teacher or a labourer does. The writer produces something and there is a consumer base for it. The content of this production comes from the base and is offered back to the base. A writer observes the world and relates that observation in the mythical tradition of a story.

The story is as much about the other as it is about oneself, for one is part of the whole and never removed from it. But to get a perspective from the observation, the writer steps aside, as it were, from the subject and recounts as faithfully as possible, as skilfully as possible, the many interesting facets of the subject under consideration. It is hard work. It has its due diligence. It originates from the primary motive to share, to partake, of one’s observation and to look obliquely at oneself through the characters one creates.

While a story is a work of fiction, a figment of the writer’s imagination, the basic premises and tenets on which the story rests must necessarily reflect what is observed in the real world. This is the writer’s primary responsibility. To hold up a mirror, as it were, to reflect that which is seen clearly by the writer, that which is glimpsed darkly by the reader. The implication is that the writer is a seeker of truth, paradoxically, even though the entire work is presented as fiction. Fiction is not falsehood. Fiction is a way of presenting the truth in a manner that is easily received.

It is a singularly solitary effort. It is a struggle within oneself to bring out one’s deepest thoughts and urges on matters that concern the world in general. Matters that one glosses over in the immediacy of everyday life. The writer essays to shed light on the dark corners of our lives, those feelings and emotions and thoughts that we so feel deeply but never fully come face to face to study in silent contemplation. The writer does all the hard work and presents the kernel of observations as a simple lucid story. The skill of the writer is of paramount importance in engaging the reader. In revealing the observations little by little without smiting the sensibility of the reader.

Fiction writing is not the product of a formula. It is not the outcome of a series of planned and tested sequence of operations. It is not imitation, nor a novelty. It is not an invention based on sound scientific or theoretical principles. It sprouts from a seed, a seed that is born of long observation and contemplation. From the seed grows the sapling and if nurtured right becomes the tree that it is meant to become. The tree blossoms and bears fruit. It is for the fruit that every fiction endeavour is aimed at, the fruit that is the work’s culmination. It is this fruit that the reader is offered, bitter or sweet. All that the reader is expected to do is to go along the journey of this growth and receive the reward at the end. It is for this fruit that the reader comes to the writer. It is for this fruit that the writer works so hard to produce. It is this fruit that is advertised and sold in the market. It is this fruit that is overhyped or undersold, ignored or besmirched. It is this fruit that in the end, literally and metaphorically, fulfils the writer’s endeavour.

Where is the market for this fruit? Is it a wrong question? The writer must live of course. There are always the bills to pay. The fruit must sell. He is in the market with his basket of fruit. Are there any takers? The fruit is there on the shelf. The shelf is run by a professional seller. The seller knows which kind of fruit sells and which kind does not, of he or she is a good seller, that is. Eventually, the seller will find a way to sell all his fruit, for after all he or she is in the profession of selling. No stone is left unturned to figure out a way to sell his fruits. The writer’s fruit doesn’t age with time. It neither gets better nor gets worse, though sometimes it has come out in the wrong season, either too early or too late for the season. But it does not ever decay. It thrives on the shelf or simply removed from it and pushed into a corner. It’s time may come or not at all – it depends on the fruit and on the skill of the fruit seller. The producer of the fruit has disappeared: there are other seeds to nurture, other fruits to give birth to.