The Divine Comedy

Did you hear of the little girl who constantly talked to herself? She once confided in a little boy, whom she much admired, “You know, I constantly talk and joke with god.” “So, does God joke back?” He asked him. “Well, no, He is always silent.” The girl had replied.
It is said that one day she started crying and did not cease to cry for two days continuously. The little boy, who was her constant companion, was sought by her folks who said to him, “Do you know what she saw, or heard or did?” He said, “Well, she was much given to being jocose in divine company, I used to tell her to improve upon herself, but she would not listen to me.”
“What?” Mrs. Elizaebeth, the girl’s mother didn’t have any idea what the boy was babbling about.
“Well, your husband has a great book in his library, Mrs. Elizabeth, — whazzit called? ah, yes — The Divine Comedy, I suggest you read that one!” Leaning forward, he stressed greatly on the word ‘that’ as though all of him, along with his tongue, had rolled and said the word.

***

G-oody F-allen

somewhere in 2050+, on the eve of the death (may he never die!) of Woody Allen

The evening was upon them, and it was time to depart. She didn’t want him to go, so in order to engage him in further talk, she said, “Did you hear of that movie director who passed away last Saturday. Well, his death made great news, more so the little note he left.”
“What of him?”
“Dude, he made great movies! They said he was one of the best directors ever. His movies would generate years’ long debates and discussions. All over the various e-desks of the ethernet, people would sprout their faces and talk and talk and just talk!”
“Hmm. I see. Well, what did he write in that note?”
“Well, no one s quite sure, for immediately when he had written it down, he lit his final cigarette, and burnt that paper, too.”
“But you just said that there is much talk about that note he left, isn’t that supposed to mean that what he had written people came to read, and so there was news?”
“Well, yes, and no. Because, there is speculation regarding what he had written, and more so because in his last days he was very alone and very sad. Now, I saw all his movies at least ten times, so I have my own version.” The girl smiled triumphantly as though she actually knew what that great film director had written in the note. This smile was not lost on the boy and so he said:
“Hmm. I see. Well then, dear, let’s have it.”
“I think he had written down in the note something of the nature of, ‘for the love of god, come to disbelieve in the world!‘”
“Well, dear, I am a Taurean, remember?” He quipped.
“Yeah, but I am a Piscean remember?”
“Yeah, but, that film director was an American, remember?”
“Yeah, but we were having our good bye-kiss, remember?”
“Shut…”
But before he could shut her up, she had already shut his mouth with hers!

***

Cousins

Did you hear of those cousins who loved each other deeply? As children they ever followed the other as the other’s shadow. For if there was some movement in her, it would produce a ripple in him too. They had deep, mute and invaluable sympathy for each other. It is said that once a teacher in class had deeply embarrassed her when she was nine years old; she could not say a word, and she had said, ‘I don’t know, I am sorry’; he had goaded her from behind, with encouraging words; had said, ‘it’s not your fault!’. It is said that she ever spoke, ‘I don’t know, I am sorry’, and he ever said, ‘it’s not your fault.’

Silly Boy

Did you hear of that boy, who gave his all?
It is said that he was silly
And that on top of that
He had heard a pretty girl say, ‘lol’
That silly boy, well, he gave his all

The Mountains

 

Many years before, everyday, I would walk by the mountains that towered above me; their shadows would fall on the way ahead which would fill with darkness. Even when I would not see I would pretend there is a road and I would keep walking ahead. Each day of my life, I have dreamed new dreams and have made longer that road between my office and home of yesterday.

 

 

The Harley Davidson Dude

 

One day, a Harley Davidson riding moustache bearing man stopped by a road-side cafe, that stood by the road that came and went to nowhere. There were some road-signs but it seemed they had been put just for fun by riders themselves. One of them read, “May you meet the woman you have been trying to avoid all your life down this road.” On both sides of the road, the desert spread far in the horizon.

 

The mustached man was rather peculiar with his calculations and especially doubtful about his age. Sometimes he would think he was forty, sometimes he would think he was sixty, and at other times, he would think he was born in the fifteenth century as Count Dracula. He would think that he had waited for an eternity for his love to come. He would think that last night he had been Count Dracula, and had now come in the guise of a man to search in the world his beloved. A lady came by the road-side cafe, she seductively said to him, “Hi.” The mustached man towered above her, in his hoarse baritone, that sounded like a pipe torn in the middle, and taking away his sun glasses, he bore his blood-washed eyes deep into the eyes of the woman and said, “And, now, I shall bear my teeth in your body and make you like mine, when you shall love me for eternity.”

 

When the woman died, she donated her eyes to the eye-bank.

 

 

The Boy and Girl

 

1

 

The boy and the girl played in childhood together a simple game of chess which the boy lost.

 

Many years later someone made a movie, which all remember as Jumanji.

 

 

2

 

He brought her roses from the flower garden, she who would look in the shadows and dark corners of life. When one day he lit a cigarette, she smelt something of the subterranean in it, a scent it was of her own dreams she feared to dream. She recoiled in sheer horror at the ash that burnt at the tip of the cigarette and was ever more alight when the boy pulled the smoke in his lungs. The boy was about to recite a poem, when the girl left him.

 

 

Eyes

 

Believe me for I never spoke a lie: I go in the next moment and with my eyes will this world to be. Then I write a poem and read it to you.  

Saturday evening never brought such delight for Mrs. Mukherjee. She was out on a date with a man in his early twenties. The lamp was lowered slightly and the visages of all the men and women appeared as though they had all worn a veil. The idea delighted her and she thought to share it with her young friend, but then, for some inexplicable reason, she thought the better of it. He seemed to be a man of fine taste and good learning. She noticed the slightly humped nose, the perfect hexagonal cut to the lower part of his face when he smiled, the brown eyes with a little glint, the auburn crop of hair, the little bull-lock that kept falling on his forehead.

The dinner was early, and so Mrs. Mukherjee offered apologetically, 'Well, I do really get hungry for dinner at eight.'

'I see. Those words by the way remind me of that Sinatra song, have you heard it?' He said.

'The Lady is a Tramp? O yeah, I have heard it.' She was delighted to have hit the right note.

'Fine taste you have.'

She smiled, 'I have been around, kid.'

As though to excuse himself, he sipped his wine. He concentrated on the light that circled in the wine glass, as though trapped in it. She looked around to see the beast of the evening, which had brought together many young lovers, old lovers. She returned back to the thought that they had all been accorded veils, and private spaces, and lowered lamps, and whatever they could make of it rested with them. Her old spirit rose to the occasion. Her whole being zinged with a delight, in little flashes she thought of all the wonderful and witty thoughts she had cultivated over the years in her mind.

'So, you like classics, I see. Sinatra, and let me guess, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Mae West, possibly?'

'Yes, all of them, and more. I am old fashioned that way.'

'I see. And in what other ways, are you old-fashioned?'

Was it a lead-on, he thought.

'I am old-fashioned, ma'am, in every way you can imagine.'

'I see.'

They finished dinner and he offered to drop her home. When he was about to leave, she said, 'Oh, I had bought a gift for you, but I seemed to have forgotten to bring it along with me. Would you, just for a minute, come up; I can also fix you a drink, if you like It will wash down the chicken.'


***


Together in bed, their bodies soon reached a slow frequency, and when they came, it was like a revelation. But she seemed to be content to just have enjoyed the act; she didn't want to toast it with any words. He was young; he wanted to, so he said without thought, and with a simple and clear conscience, 'So, this is what Sinatra was all about.'

She combed the hill of throw-away articles with the little cane Rajiv had given her. She liked Rajiv. He was an urchin just like her. When she had met him the first time, she had been very young and had had no name. She could not remember how she had lived before she had met him. In a corner of her mind, she probably believed that she didn’t exist before she met him. So when she could not remember the past it was just as good. Rajiv had found her a shelter in the backseat of a broken, abandoned car. It was even a better shelter than the one Rajiv had because it kept off the rainwater. But then, Rajiv always said that the rainwater didn’t trouble him, it was the traffic noise that did. As for her, she said that the noise of the traffic kept away other noises in her head.

Something hit the cane with a metallic ring. If it were a tin can, it would fetch her a whole rupee. She kept the cane aside and groped with her hand in the garbage pile where the cane had hit metal. She stuck her hand in till her face stuck to the wall of garbage pile. She would not have thought second to stick her head in but she felt the metal. Patiently, and with some effort, she pulled out the tin can. It was a Pepsi can; dented and broken. Some boys had probably played football with it. She put it in her bag and continued to comb the hill of dirt for more cans, plastic water-bottles, paper, newspapers and other items sellable to the garbage-collector. She packed in bits of all of them. She had collected a Kinsley water-bottle, a Pepsi can, a five litre capacity plastic container, and the day’s newspaper which bore the headlines: ‘Change has happened’.

The Testimony — a very short story

 

'I heard him and I saw him escape' screamed the daily, The Dawn. The day was 11th July, 1976, and underway was what was to be the murder trial of the decade or perhaps even the century. Newspapers, public gathering places such as parties and pubs, were equally abuzz with the speculation and discussion of the case. Henry, a twenty one year old boy, who had spent all his life doing indecent chores, been a victim of sexual abuse not just by runaway crooks but by his own father, was accused of murdering his father; of stabbing him with a knife down the man's throat. The circumstantial evidence left little room for doubt, and the little it did, was filled in by the testimony of Mr. Walters, an old man, who lived in the apartment downstairs to the apartment where the crime was perpetrated. He had said in the court room, under oath that he heard the boy shout, 'I will kill you' and a split second later, the sound of a man falling to the floor directly above his apartment. He had further stated that he was sure the voice was of Henry, since Henry was in somewhat friendly terms with him, and that ten seconds later, through the window that opened to the hallway that overlooked the stairs, he peeped out when he heard rushing foot-steps and he saw Henry descend down the stairs to presumably escape out of the building.

The trial ran and evidences were presented. All evidence presented, and all points debated upon, the jury retreated to a private room and brainstormed for much too longer than expected. The final verdict was, however, guilty. Reasonable gentlemen in the jury who had reservations against circumstantial evidence found themselves silenced by the testimony of the old man. His was the last word, and the last thought, when they presented their decision to court. The boy was proven guilty by the court.

The court was adjourned. Mr. Walters got hold of his cane, and got up, pressing down on it. His old years had made him weak, and his loneliness had worn him off. In his left hand he was carrying a copy of the day's issue of The Dawn. His mind ran through the life he had lived, stopping only at very important stoppages, which weren't many, perhaps one or two, and which hadn't affected anything in the world; and as he saw his name quoted in the daily, he couldn't help anymore ' he smiled like he had never in his life.

The wind coming uphill would bring with it the smoke of roti being cooked on earthen griddles, of heaps of leaves burning, in the settlement lower below in the valley; of rotting pines, baked cakes; and would carry along the mournful song of the monkeys that lived in the forest that covered the hill in their lush carpet. Every day, with the sun going down to hide behind the hills in the west, the pungent smoke, like a saturnine, old friend, would climb uphill and bid us back to our homes, telling us that food would be ready when we would tread downhill and reach home. So, we, Binni and I, would head on our pathway and would get down sooner than the other children who played in the hill. We knew every little lane, we knew where the grass was lush, where it thinned, where the ant-hills were, where the thorny bushes were and where the mulberry and the camellias grew; we had recognized the harder rocks for the grainy ones and the slimy ones. Halfway downhill from where we played, there was the highway and from there on the settlement began and thickened as one went further downhill. As the forest would end, and the settlement begin, we would step on our school teacher's house ceiling, climb down the steps below, and head out through his front door. We would do this through many more houses whose residents we knew and cut our time.

Every day, when our school would be over at one on clock, Binni  and I would meet by the end of the road along which our houses stood and head uphill to our play. We would play chor-sipahi and sikdi. She taught me the latter game and would prefer it since she was good at it and I would prefer the former game because I could run faster than her. Sometimes we would group with the other children and acting as monkeys' army play 'lanka haran'. We children could play there uphill only because of the presence of the wood-cutters, the tea leaves' pickers, and other workers whose daily life depended on the hill's flora. On the northern side, the hill's slope was dotted with pines that raised their hands high to the skies. We would roll down that slope that had soft, thick, brown grass, even when it would be very hard labour to climb up again. Our ligaments would stretch and calves' muscles ache with pain. The pines would form a ceiling and block away some of the sun, so there would be checks of shade and sun in the ground; we would sit reclined against a pine and share the mulberries we had gathered alongside the pathway to that slope. We had been instructed not to gather or play with the gum that stuck on to the pines' trunks. Our school teacher said it had been 'privatized' and belonged to the hair-oil factory that hummed over deep in the western side of the hill, and where father worked. So we would eat the mulberries and stare into the azure sky even as crows would call each other raucously and squirrels and other small animals would hiss in the bush.

Downward the eastern side of the hill, a plain stretched, overhung in between the hill where we played and the adjacent one. On the other side, it was lined by the highway, stopping by which, I had often seen tourists watch and sometimes film the herd of horses that ran amuck in that plain, which was with some admirable bravery, also shared by a herd of domesticated sheep. There were two unruly horses in particular - one a blackie, and the other one with brown skin - who would fight and play all the time. They would bite, stand on their hind-legs, 'box' each other with their fore-legs, then let their fore-legs fall to the ground and immediately kick one other with their hind legs, and run along the circumference of the field, teasingly calling each other. Sometimes, one of them would run in between the sheep, dismissing them, perhaps to tell them they were unwanted.

The open fields were married to those horses; the hills were married to the pines and the trees and bushes that dotted them, and my soul was married to them all. Toward evening, when the pungent smoke would beckon us back home, sometimes, for no reason, my heart would cringe in my chest; once when I was a little sick, and yet, on Binni's persistent requests, had gone to play on the hill with her, the smoke brought tears to my eyes. I told about this to mother who said something, that with time, I have only vaguely begun to understand; she had said, 'Mitthhu, you are an old soul. People cry when they think of old times, but sometimes, wise people shed tears when they know that something, in the future, will make them look over their shoulders, back to the road they have taken on life's onward journey.'

One evening when our play was over, and I came back home to eat, mother asked me if I cared for Binni. It seemed to me a strange question and I replied that I cared for her because she was my friend. 'Would you care if she was sent to another village and you would not get to meet her again?' 'Yes, I would care about that. And where is Binni going, mother?' I asked her. 'She is going to her real home.' 'Real home? But her real home is here, already, which other home does she have?' 'The home of her husband.'

I decided to ask Binni about the matter, the next day. I did not talk to her during school but she was relieved to see me at one on clock at our usual meeting place. As was her wont, she did not begin to talk since I had not talked to her since morning. We quietly climbed uphill and reached the spot of our daily play. As she chalked out lines on the grass for our play, certain lines appeared in her face, eliciting from me what I wanted to ask of her. I had long given up thinking what magic it was that told her everything going in my mind, of how her face would contort pre-emptively, and be prepared to receive the blows of my verbal assault. So, since it was elicited, I finally asked her, 'So, you are going to your 'real' home, eh, Binni?' as I leaned on the word, 'real'. Binni continued to chalk out the rectangles and kept quiet as though she had not heard. But indeed she had, because as I said so, more lines appeared on her face as it contorted and the lines on the grass became more curvilinear. When she was done, she picked up a white stone lying by and gave it to me, looking at me straight in the eye. I tossed the stone to a far rectangle and began the play, and we did not speak about that matter again that day.

After a few days Binni stopped coming to school and to play, because she was sent to her 'real' home which was in the village that was overlooked by the hills where we played. The houses there looked tiny as ants and nothing seemed to move. I asked mother if I could visit Binni. She told me it would take a day for the back and forth journey and I was much too young for that. Soon, without the company of Binni, I began to be weary of the hills; as I would walk them, my calves' muscles would ache doubly and every track I would take remind me of her and our plays together.

To put an end to my loneliness, I asked father to send me to the boarding school in the city, which he did. The city was a far cry from the mountainous life I had lived all my life, without ever visiting the plains. I did not like the materialism of the city-dwelling man, and the life propped up and made of concrete, cement and stone. It perturbed me to the point that I would at every given opportunity return to my beloved hills. But in each visit, try as I did, I did not get a chance to meet with Binni. Her visits to the village never coincided with mine and I thought it frivolous to ask mother to ask Binni to do something about it. Years passed by and I grew up to be a young man of eighteen and about to enter college. Like every year, I visited the village during summer but continued to be there till the onset of winter, the time when Binni visited the village.

One morning, as I ate the chapatti and moong dal, mother had cooked; she let me know that Binni was in the village, in her father's house. 'So, can I meet her, mother?' I asked. 'Yes, you can, only remember she is a married girl now, and you are not children anymore.' I listened to mother thoughtfully, and finished my food. Later, toward the end of the day, as soon as the glistening, orange sun was bearable to look at, I went by our old familiar pathway and climbed uphill. After many years of living in the plains, the journey was arduous and my calves' muscles hardened and ached. I drank a lot of water and lay still on the grass. My body knew that though the ground exuded the heat of the day, it would soon be bearable. All the while that I had climbed uphill, I had kept from myself my heart's secret desire - of meeting with Binni. Somehow, and magically, I wanted her to be there. In fact, so was my belief that I would see her there that I would be completely surprised if I were to not find her. My heart beat with anticipation as I waited for her as though she had promised that she would come; as though it would be an act of betrayal if she were not to come.

I lay on the ground and looked at the moon that had already arrived, as sometimes a lover impatiently enters his beloved's room, to find her still dressing for him. A shadow fell on me and blocked away the sun. I turned my neck round to see Binni standing behind me. She had kept the promise we had made one another in the silence of our collective memories.

I got on my two feet and looked at her from head to toe as she looked at me doe-eyed and with lips slightly parted. Her hair glittered gold to the sun behind her; she stood at a distance, near, and yet afar and I immediately remembered the dream I recurrently had had in all the years I had been away. I remembered that I had always seen her like this - in my memories too, she had been just this way - doe-eyed, her hair glistening to the sun behind her, and a desire balanced delicately, in between the world of silence and words, at her half-parted lips. Looking at her then, my heart skipped a beat and I realized, after all these years, what desire it was that lingered and waited in our hearts.

I moved towards her and took her by the hand. We sat on the ground and talked. I unconsciously spoke in the language in which I had begun to think - which was English - but Binni did not know English; I felt her wince as I switched from English to Hindi. I felt her wince more and more; our hearts were close, and so the fear that lay close to her heart, reached mine. I felt her every heart beat. Binni seemed lost, and I was at a loss of words. I decided to drop the discussion on the political situation of our town and it's relating economics that affected everyone's life and talked instead of the childhood we had had together. I was surprised to observe Binni's heart grow cold to that memory. She did not seem to react to anything in word or in thought, only her heart's beats would speed up or slow down; her eyes would blink at a varying rate, as would her breathing slow or speed. I realized with a start that Binni had not grown up like a normal human being. She had not gone through the cognitive processes through which every human being passes which develops him into a societal being.

We talked as I let her speak what she wanted she speak and I listened to her patiently. She told me about her husband and about the life she had lived. Her husband was a businessman and took care of her. But when pressed, and in a bad mood, chide her. The lines that contorted her face, the tone of her speech, did not conform to the content of what she spoke. She was communicating but in a civil code that did not belong to the world where I had grown up. That she could intuitively know what was going in my mind had always been her strength, and something that had fascinated me, but not then; that we shared a common consciousness became her weakness and a curse then, which she bore like an animal - stoutly and coarsely. And something made me think that that was how she had born all her marital and other troubles - and that she had born many - like a donkey, stoutly, impassively and coarsely.

As the sun when down and stars dotted the sky, the old familiar pungent smoke climbed uphill to bid us back to our homes. As that smoke filled my lungs, I remembered in a flash all the years I had spent with Binni and all the years I had been away. I felt a searing anger in my heart, but I do not know against whom - Binni, her parents, her in-laws, myself, or the world in which we live. The anger I felt cut me in two pieces. I whispered good-bye to her, turned on my heel and started walking. I wondered what happened to the Binni I knew. Where had she disappeared? Where had she gone? Why had she not grown like the other people I had known in my lives? I did not take our old pathway, I treaded down by a different route slipping on slime and wet grass in the dark, and when the road came I took it and began walking down it. Rain-washed and black, it stretched endlessly like disease and bended to some curve about which I did not care to think.

 

PS As I post this story, I would like to introduce you to my fave storywriters (or storyposters?) on the internet. One is PF – read, Chocolate Chocolate. One is Jolly, whom you probably know. One is Sandy. And one is Supriya, (read The Final Frontier of Lust, etc.) and the one I personally believe has the maximum talent and is the best of the lot (– something PF begs to differ with). Supriya has writen a new story, ‘Acts of faith’, which I found highly entertaining. 

If you love reading stories on the blogosphere, then it is worth visiting their blogs!

Mad Aunt loved children only they would never come near her. They would not because of the children she already had ' her three dog-children who would constantly bark at us children whenever we would go near her house, as though in perpetual possessiveness of the love of their 'mother', too afraid to share it with anyone else. Sometimes when she would lull them or tether them, she would draw a mustache across her mouth with charcoal and chase us around her house. She was a constant source of fun for us. We would play hide-and-seek in her house. I vividly remember the place I would often choose to hide: I would lie down flat beneath the sofa in the drawing room and shift the adjoining table to cover it, something which would indicate to her my presence and she would find me. When she would shift the table and peeping beneath the sofa say, 'boo!', I would giggle with ecstasy.

Insurgency started in Kashmir in '89. As a result, the Indian army was deployed in our town in the early nineties. The Indian army soldiers would patrol our streets all day and keep a strict vigil. They were apparently for our protection. But they would also built bunkers in the hill that overlooked the town, and ceremoniously shoot at people moving down below in the streets. Mad Aunt would every morning count the army vehicles coming in the town in their long serpentine convoys. She would make lewd gestures at them without fail and her dogs would bark too. The soldiers would be indifferent to her but occasionally, a soldier would remark something back, to which, infuriated, she would raise her hands to the heavens and curse the soldiers. Locals would laugh at her but only to cleverly underplay her remarks and to take the sting out of them. Although she was not afraid for herself, they were afraid for her.

She would say in Kashmiri, 'If you hurt my children (her dogs), the mountains will close on you. Gulzaras banayiwe khar, su myon Rab'ul Alimeen (My God will turn the flower gardens into thorns for you).' And, 'the hills will explode under you.'

My father told me that Mad Aunt was very close to God. He told me that she was once a very good wife. But she never had any children. Her husband died of an incurable disease. But those close to their family knew that his heart was broken because of their childlessness.

Although she was friendly to me, my sister and other children in the neighbourhood, she was not in talking terms with my father and his friends. We were Hindus who had crossed the border during Partition in '47, and settled in that town ever since. She would look at our parents with a wary eye. And since the death of her husband, she had kept the whole community at a distance. She had lived her own life. They would say that since her husband's death, she had grown haughty and proud. It was then that people had begun to call her 'Ishq Cheetin' or the One Torn in Love. During some periods which we would call 'her spells', she would even reprehend us children and deeply hurt us with her cutting remarks. She would say in Kashmiri, 'Little Devils! Get out of my house!' We would then not talk to her for weeks on end and forget about her. Then she would send for us with the message that she had made too many shish kebabs which had to be eaten. The mere mention of shish kebabs would make us forget all our grudges and head back to the familiarity and warmth of her house. She could not as easily make up with her other neighbours so they would talk only very little or not at all.

On my insistence, father once accompanied me to her house and while we played hide-and-seek, Mad Aunt and my father sat in the drawing room and apparently exchanged only pleasantries and kept mum. She did not say anything probably because she did not want to insult my father in my presence. Even as a small boy, I quietly understood the dynamics of their relationship, and decided not to ask my father to accompany me to her house again.

My father told me later that day that they had in fact talked. And they had talked after a very long time. It was only when he had been a small boy that she had talked to her more often, but when he had grown to be an adult, she had stopped talking. She had said to my father, 'You look more like your father each passing day.' Father told me that she had served him shish kebabs, which were so tasty that he had insisted giving her in return anything she asked for. Mad Aunt had replied saying that she would think for a day and give her answer. And for that, we had to visit her again the next day.

So, all properly dressed, I, my sister and father went to Mad Aunt's house the next day. Mother had made gulab jamuns for Mad Aunt since she always insisted to never go empty-handed to anyone's place. It was visiting Mad Aunt that afternoon that the sight of the camellias that formed the hedge in her small aangan got imprinted in my memory and continues in my recollections to be the pictorial symbol of my childhood. Mad Aunt opened the door and greeted us saying, 'Adaab'. I and my sister fondly replied 'Adaab' properly gesticulating the Islamic greeting, and were overlooked smilingly by the two elders present.

We sat down at the sofa and Mad Aunt and father started talking. The knot that would perpetually be tied at her chin, whenever she would face other neighbours was loosened. She did not even have the same proud look about her face. She spoke in Urdu, 'Rakesh, I have lived a beautiful and fulfilling life. The only regret I have had has been to not have children of my own. My days are numbered and I shall soon one day go to my God. My regret would be to leave alone the three dog-children I have now.' My father immediately understood what was implied and intervened in between, 'Wahida-ji, I will take care of your dog-children after when you are gone. I will feed them every day and look after them.' On hearing this, Mad Aunt took my father's hands in hers and kissed them. She shed tears and after some time, she spoke again, 'I am a very poor woman, Rakesh, and have nothing to give you or anybody. And today, you have given me all I could ever have asked for.' I had not seen Mad Aunt so humble before. As a small boy, I did not immediately understand the sudden change of heart.

Mad Aunt died a week later and we buried her under Islamic laws with help from our Muslim neighbours. We brought home her dogs that by then had grown friendly with us. My father later said to us, 'She was a great lady. People as strong and proud as her are not born every day.'

I did not understand my father's remark until many years to come ahead.

 

*******

PS I built on the story related in this blog, adding my own fictitious events.

Present Day

 

He sat by Hedvi beach and looked at the reflection of the neon lights of the city that rippled on the water surface. Something similarly hazy within him felt oddly at home and so he let himself be, permitting himself the comfort of the moment. The evening sky overhead was a haphazard blend of different soft lights and hues, and yet, somehow, a single theme seemed to emerge out of it. However, there was a particular luminous streak in the sky it was a shade darker than the rest, and seemed out of place. Looking at it, he was reminded of something that he had been thinking something of grave consequence; he briefly tried to recall but gave it up. He was not sure if it was something that he had thought and forgotten only a moment ago or several years back. A speeding car that went by on the road behind him gave him a sense of motion. At that moment, on a sudden impulse, he picked himself up and started walking towards his car. He turned on the ignition; the car's headlights cut through the darkness. Ten minutes passed before he realized that he was going down the road that he would have taken eight years back, at the time when he was not separated with his wife. The realization of it did not come with a shock, and he did not turn his car.

*****

In his heydays, Rajan had been a huge star. Barring the first few, almost all his movies had done excellent business. He was loved by his fans and acclaimed by his critics. He had cleverly retired at the peak of his career. Time had marked deep furrows in his face which could no longer be hidden with any amount of make-up, and his voice was deeper and much too broken than it had ever been. A movie he had recently acted in had been a huge hit. He had known that that was the right time. The cracks in the façade had already begun to show. But critics had been kind and had not given any flak. For once, they seemed to have cared for collective public sentiment and memory. It was a subtle gesture by them which he did not altogether understand.

 

After a decade or less, he returned to start all over again. It was not difficult for him to retrace the path he had once taken, although a long time ago. A lot had changed during the time when he had been away. But the studios still had the same smell to them. A smell that made him think of savagery and success at the same time. The head of a major production house, an old friend, signed him for a low-budget movie as director. The movie was well publicized as the directorial debut of Rajendra Chauhan, so it could cash in on the successes Rajan had had as actor. The movie did good business. The film was followed up with a flurry of movies each cashing in on the success of the former. Success parties made him happy. He was not alone, anymore, but in the company of the only people he had known and loved all his life. Each day, he met old acquaintances who brought with them a plethora of memories. And for this alone, he was so grateful, he forgave them the savage jealousy he saw cross their faces in that first moment of meeting, just before a friendly grin washed it away.

His success was meteoric, both in its blaze and in its death. A much anticipated movie failed to ignite any spark in the audience. There was no hope for it in any city, his producer told him. It had already begun to be pulled off the screens in major cities. He wanted to leave because he refused to be defeated. But he had nowhere to go. In that moment when he felt the first tide of pain crash in his brain, he stiffened and denied that pain his body. The need to go some place else rose in him like physical craving. He took his overcoat and picking the car keys, headed outside. He hit the highway immediately and drove for a long time. He stopped only when he reached Hedvi beach.

 

*****

In the many years when he had been away, Sheela always remembered how she and Rajan had loved; how they had been happy together as only those can be who know they are made for one another. Theirs had been a successful marriage. Only, she could never conceive. In the beginning, Rajan had accepted the fact stoically and told her that he would always love her and be with her. But age saw what youth had never known. At the age of forty-two when Rajan left the industry, they settled for a quieter life in Malabar Hill. It was then that the craving and need for an offspring was greater than it had ever been.

 

In the beginning they were only small fights and minor tantrums. His old and familiar eccentricities that in their first year of knowing each other had endeared him to her. But strangely, now, there was an anger beneath his anger, and a different voice beneath his voice, so, when he spoke, she heard different words beneath his words. There was an edge of hysteria in her response to his accusations and complaints. She spoke like a defendant whose loyalty was being questioned. They were alone and except a few friends in the city, no one asked after them. They knew they would grow old one day and be gone without any posterity for the time to come after them. They would die alone while the world, as they saw it, would continue to be. They never mentioned it between themselves. But the undercurrent of it laid low in a dark chamber of their collective consciousness. Sometimes, when she would make an overture of a smile to make-up after a fight and sit besides him, she would see him simmer and would flush. She sometimes thought if he punished her for accepting the inevitabilities in their lives.

On the morning when Rajan quietly left the house, she woke up to find a note by the side of her bed. Reading it, she felt a searing pain in her chest. Like so many other things that she had hid from them both ' the old love-letters that he had written to her proclaiming his undying love, and the notes they had exchanged during the period of courtship, she had also hidden the pain of childlessness beneath layers and layers until it was lost to be never seen again by either of them. Now, alone, there was no need of a veil, so, she felt the pain of a heart broken a long time ago. It cut through her being like a sharp blade and split her in two. There was a constant hum beneath the pain she felt in her brain that was stinging. She dimly realized that it was the memory of how she had believed that they would grow old together and bask in the twilight of life. She collected herself, refusing herself the smallness of self-pity. As time went by in months, and then in years, she forgave him and briefly, she tried to find a new truth that would absolve her body and soul of the pain of loneliness and set her free. She had long accepted the separateness and distance to their destinies.

*****

 

Present Day
 

Rajan stepped inside and crossed the veranda. He stood looking at the grandfather's clock and an old painting of folk women that adorned the wall adjacent to it. He looked around and saw the play of a shadow on the wall in a room whose door was open to the veranda. It was dark and he could not say if it was the silhouette of a woman he saw. He was transfixed; held in time and unable to move. The shadow moved and lay horizontal on what was presumably a bed. He went across the veranda and stood at the door to the room, looking down at the woman who lay at the bed. His wife looked like a ghost of her previous self. It had been many years. She now had a double chin; her hair was thinning and was grey at her temples and was unkempt. Her skin was sallow around her jaw, and furrows lined her once clear fore-head. Only her mouth and her eyelids retained the softness that had always made him think of rose-petals. She was asleep. He loosened his tie and took off his shoes. He placed them on the shoe-rack adjacent to the almirah. Noiselessly, he got into bed on her right. He pulled the sheet over his body and put a canopy to the stream of thoughts that welled deep somewhere in his mind. He tried to sleep. When he heard her words, he did not answer her in the first moment because he thought he had been dreaming. 'What made you come back?' she had said. He breathed deeply and spoke:
'Aren't we the kind of people, Sheela, who go through life in circles, in search of something we never had, could never have, something we were never made for?'
He looked at the grey of the empty ceiling overhead and spoke again, 'I wish to just be besides you, in this house.'
He only whispered and she heard only some words that were stressed more than the others. But, somehow, she had understood. They did not speak again for the rest of the night. There was so much to say, and no language to say it in.

The loose strains of a song playing in the neighbourhood came in through the window and they dimly heard the words through the maze of thoughts in their minds. It was an inky, crisp, and velvety voice, that, like many other things, they had together fondly loved an eternity ago. Now, that same voice mercilessly teased the thin veil of silence they had drawn between them, and bore several holes in it:

 

Kiska rastaa dekhe,
Aye dil, aye saudaai;
Miilon hai khamoshi,
Barson hai tanhaai;
Bhuli duniya kabhi ki-
Tujhe bhi, mujhe bhi;
Phir kyun aankh bhar aayi?

(It might take a bit of time, but it will play. Perhaps you will have to push play a no. of times. Consider viewing this page on Internet Explorer. Or, listen the song here. )

The evening light was ebbing and the only glow that remained was of a small lamp lit at the table of the woman he had decided to approach. She sat by herself; the ex-pression on her face was not of wait but of a resignation. 'Hello', he said with a smile cheerful just enough to not offend the melancholy that hung in the air about her. She looked at him and parted her lips to speak but instead only gestured him to join her. She must be fighting back tears so would not speak, the thought hung vaguely to an incomplete sentence in his mind. 'I am a painter', he said. 'And I am a model,' she replied. Then it was not uncommon for two of their kind to meet, he thought. He called for the waiter and gave an order for drinks. She said that she would have vodka. He ordered for his favourite brand of whiskey. He sat watching her intently. He noticed the perfect nose without a hump, the clear forehead without any marks or lines, the eyes and the magical play of soft lights in them; he noticed how her hair cascaded, falling evenly on her shoulders; some loose strands of her hair flickered in the wind and flirted with her face; he noticed the eyebrows swirled upwards, the thin upper lip and the fuller lower one; he saw her collar bone and the cavity above it and his gaze followed the line of her neck and finally rested on her jaws. She had a full face; it had the kind of frame that had been clipped to the word woman in his mind since he had been a boy of sixteen. Suddenly, she burst into laughter. There was something in his narrowed gaze that she had seen that had amused her; she was reminded of something from her past, but before she could fully recall it she had laughed. He was visibly hurt, though he could not understand exactly why. He winced while she continued to laugh.

When they had finished drinking he decided to ask her the question. It would not matter if she would say no. He could ask her again, some other day, to paint her. That she would not deny, he thought; and he could again take it from there. 'I would like to paint you. Would you like to come to my home?' For a brief minute he had convinced himself that he would paint her when he would take her home. Only that way could he have said it evenly. She promptly agreed.

In bed together, she was more direct than she had been in the café. If not the act, he was dissatisfied with its directness. She had made love to him like no other woman had, ever. It had been magical. But, there was something in him that remained ungratified. She had refused to meet it. She had refused to acknowledge.


When he awoke the next morning, he was alone in his bed. When he had slept, he remembered that he had dreamt of waking besides her and smelling her hair. He jumped off the bed and fixed himself breakfast. He decided to paint her.


He painted her as he had seen her in bed. Her head was thrown back in ecstasy. As he worked with her facial features, and her body, he felt he was with her again, in bed. She had the most perfect body, and he had known of her heart well the previous night. He painted her as he would have her; as she had not given herself to him. What had remained of the act in bed, he completed it in his painting. When it was done, and as he looked at it, he felt a strange gratification. He painted her exalted, giving herself fully in love. In his painting he had given an end to something within her; an end, not finding which, he knew, she had not given herself fully to him. When he had worked with the painting, he had unconsciously put the pieces together, like a craftsman skilled in his art, and had made the right form. When he had given it the end it sought, he had known its secret.


As he lay in bed that night, he wondered if he had the capacity to love her more than she hated herself. As he looked through the glass ceiling, his chest swelled as his heart bloomed to the expanse of the night sky. The crescent moon looked like a woman cloaking her face in self-disgust, turning and hiding her face in the chest of her lover. At that moment, something moved in his mind beneath the other thoughts but he did not wish to give it the form of a sentence, silently fearing that it would be caged. He knew that he had made peace with himself and so he fell asleep. He awoke next morning to the thoughts of her, as if she were just around.

She had reddened cheeks. So, I would often call her Scarlett. I do not have a good memory of her because it has been more than ten years since her. We were fourteen years old. She was impetuous, impatient, and carefree; she was as elemental as fire and as free-spirited as the wind that blew atop those mountains. The mountains that were her life, and her family's livelihood; she belonged to her beloved mountains like one its own elements.

She had a fascination and a passion for roses. She would caress their leaves, and there was something to her touch; I would know that the roses were kindled in her soul. Perhaps, the roses had a fascination for her as much as me. There was an orchard of roses in my backyard so I would bring her a bunch of roses often. They were no proclamation of love as the reader might mistakenly think; indeed, we were only friends and that was a constant gift I would gift her. She passionately loved the rains. She loved to be drenched in rainwater. She would often be visibly irritated by my slow, measured movements. She did not understand deliberation. And more than that, she never understood my composure. Perhaps, she would have liked a bit more friendliness. But that was not my disposition. She would be hurt; it was the pain of not understanding something, a pain elemental and blunt. But she would hide it beneath her smile and her cheerful disposition. She could never cry; she liked to be brave. She did not know that she had kindled in my heart her own fire. And I hid it from her as much as I hid it from everyone else.

I believe that when her love for me died, it turned to cold stone in her heart. I could see it in her constant gaze, and in the way she would sit composed, one leg on another, and unmoving like she had acquired a part of me. The part that was solid stone. But, she did not acquire it completely. She did not know that she had lit a fire in the heart of those stones.

I often forget about her and she does not come to my memory for months together. But sometimes, unbidden, on a moonlit night, she descends down from the land of the crescent moon, and comes in my dreams. My heart is warmed and illumined like the night is illumined by the moon. And then when I awake the next morning, I know how much I love her. I am disturbed because she bids me on towards a different course. Her voice in my dreams shatters all my dreams and makes my life a lie.

These are the recollections of a fictitious character.