Short Story 21 : Late!

Theme : Dry Humour.

 I personally feel that writing humour is harder than penning tragedy. It is easier to make people cry, than to make them laugh, at least through written words.

Humour allows the writers to connect with the readers, because humour is amazing in its universality. It helps to lighten the mood and make room for readers to like the character, despite the obvious flaws. 

My last story, 'The Only Trusted One' , was a tragic tale. I have tried to redeem the smiles and retrieve the laughs for those of you who felt too depressed after reading the tragedy, with my next tale.

***

Late!

I’m gonna be late! I agonized as I exited my house. Damn! Why was I this way?

I knew the reason, of course. Procrastination, my biggest foe. I’d had ample time to reach the venue well on time…that reminded me about the topic of the seminar today.

Damn! Double damn! This had to happen. The bright pink letters of the banner I’d painted for the event last week, glowed mockingly on my mind’s eye as clearly as it hung at the entrance of the auditorium: ‘Time management: How to be early.’

I winced when I recalled the stern look on Arora’s face when he had warned us to be at least one hour early for the event. One hour! Was the man paranoid or what?

It was fate, it was my curse. My special curse. Perhaps, some big bad witch-demon had cursed me soon after birth ‘May this specimen be late for every important occasion, event or wherever she needs to go & in whatever she needs to get done in her life.’

And man, was it really working!

I kick-started my old scooty, with a renewed vengeance, as I recalled the parting look Ashutosh Arora had given me as if in a strict prior warning last evening, just before we dispersed from his chamber. After all, I was one of the three main organizers of his mega event, where he was the key speaker for Time Management. The TM Guru, so to speak.

Why would people pay to learn how to be early? I wondered. I mean, its common sense, isn’t it?

You gotta plan ahead every damn day to be on time for every damn thing that you do in your life. Simple.

Oh yeah, you gotta put up a time table all over your place, where you cannot miss the sheets, especially on the walls of your washroom, so you can pee just a little faster, to be on time to wherever you need to go after you’re done.

And yeah, you gotta paste your schedule for the week, on the refrigerator too, just to remind yourself to stuff yourself with food just a little faster, so you barely enjoy the taste of your nourishment, so you can be on time.

Plus, you never gotta forget to plan. Plan backwards that is. Never plan forwards, because according to Arora that is a sure way to fail in TM. Plan backwards from the last item on your itinerary right to the start, so that you may end up at least an hour early than required.

‘Better early than late’ Ashtutosh Arora’s voice boomed in my head.

Yeah, right. I smiled sardonically, as I honked at the cud-chewing marsupial, who had parked his cute ass bang in the middle of the one way street. ‘Be early, never late’ I turned to inform the cow, before my bike passed inches away from his nonchalant face.

One has to be early, like the time I arrived at Lalli’s wedding, one day early. The embarrassment of entering the pandal with a wide smile on my face, only to wonder why Lalli had lost so much weight in just the week I’d seen her last. Wondering why the way the bride smiled at me, while clutching my 570-rupee gift, as if she had no recollection of who I was. And then realizing that it was Lalli’s wedding at all…simply because her wedding was on the next day.

Wow! I gave myself a mental pat on my back. I have been early a few times in my life too. I was always early when it concerned food, right.

Wasn’t I the first one out the door the minute the clock stuck 1.00, every afternoon for lunch hour? The first one at the canteen queue, every fucking day? The first one to fill my cup at the coffee kiosk every teabreak? The first one to hit the counter at every Garden varelli sale twice a year?

I smiled again. Well. I knew how to be early, I really did. It all depends on where you need to go and how much you enjoy going wherever you need to go, to do whatever you need to do.

The key, is to always do what you love to do, all your life, so you’re never ever gonna be late to do it, every single time! Simple.

Who, for instance would wanna go early to a boring speech about ‘How to be early?’ One would naturally be predisposed to be late for something as cringe-worthy as that.

I reached the gates of the Casa Vista thirty five minutes past the stipulated time, after riding my scooty like the maniac I was. The bitch at the reception plastered the smile on her face, even as she pointedly looked at her imitation-Cartier watch. I read the delight in her eyes & ignored her ‘Good Morning, Jia’ before I rushed towards Hall#3, where the event was scheduled.

People still milled around the counter where the program executive Rubin and his team were ticking off names against a roster in mock exuberance.

Where was Arora? I searched around the room and wondered how I could pull off a smooth endeavor to ‘gel’ into the group of organizers who were helping the guests to be seated. Smooth, just as if I’d been there since ages, you know, since one whole hour…

I plastered the well-rehearsed smile on my face and walked with complete confidence to a couple who clutched the tickets in their hands, looking rather lost. Five minutes later, I was entirely at ease, helping hapless guests to get settled in their respective seats.

Where is Arora? My mind continued to sing in tense silence. Did the demon notice that I walked in half an hour beyond the specified time? I wrestled with a mix of fear and apprehension, the perpetual smile still impeccably in place on my aching face.

Damn, hope he does not use me as an example, a bad one at that, to start off his session!He is twisted enough to do just that; to teach me a lesson I’d never forget for a lifetime. My agony multiplied in an leaps and bounds.

‘Why do I even work for such a fiend?’ I asked myself for the umpteenth time, even as I cooed sweetly to a bald guy in the crumpled shirt to get him settled in the second row.

And then, I felt a tug on my arm. It was D’ Souza, our senior operations manager.

‘Jia!’ His voice was anxious.

I turned to meet the panic in his eyes.

‘Jia, he isn’t picking the call!’ he almost choked in despair.

‘Who?’ I queried absently, wondering why the noise level at the auditorium was so high.

‘Ashutosh, he isn’t here yet!’

What?!

‘Yaay!’ I almost screamed my elation.

‘Oh,’ I sputtered instead, barely hiding the glee in my voice. But D’Souza was too distraught to notice.

‘He is never late, is he?’ It was more a statement than a question.

‘Oh damn, he can’t be late to his own seminar on how to be early!’ I quipped in renewed joy.

‘I know, I know, I’m sure something is really wrong!’ Dsouza was going crazy.

‘Please Jia, could you go on stage and just keep the guests occupied until he comes? Please?’

I gaped at him. Huh? Me?

‘Well, I could conduct a seminar about how not to be early…’ I giggled.

‘Yes, yes, do it!’ He commanded.

I gawked at him again, what? Speak to an audience for two whole hours about how to be early? He has got to be kidding, right?

Wrong! Because, he’d already moved towards the door, the phone glued to his ear.

Hey, he hadn’t heard me at all! And two minutes later, I found myself on the stage, with the mike in my hand.

‘Good Morning, folks!’ I began, desperately striving to ignore the butterflies in my tummy.

‘Well, let me tell you something before I begin. I was thirty six minutes and fifty-five seconds late today.’ My voice rang out, loud and clear, across the auditorium.

I relished the audible gasp of their unchallenged attention, before I took a deep breath and began to speak.

***

Amazing!

Spectacular!

Awesome!

You were fantastic!

I tried not to smile too hard, even as the volley of praises continued to stream around my compliment-starved ears.

The applause refused to die down; someone even whistled their appreciation from the middle row. More and more people began to leave their seats and approached me to grasp my palm for handshakes.

‘Ma’am, thank you so much! Your stories were hilarious and very inspiring!’ gushed a lady in a bright red Kanchi saree, who was at least two decades older than me.

I tried to catch my breath, even as I tried to stem my exhilaration and thank the hoard of people who milled around me.

I caught D’Souza smiling at me with a thumbs-up sign, above the heads of the people and almost blew him a kiss in my exulted state.

Nearly an hour later, all the organizers bid goodbye to the last of the guests and gathered at the back of the hall, reveling in the huge success of the show.

It took me ten minutes to realize that Arora was nowhere to be seen, yet.

And then I spied him, as he walked in the door, in his crisp grey suit and red satin tie, his black leather shoes gleaming with multiple ministrations of shoe-shine.

‘So, were you guys able to handle the crowd without goofing up?’ his voice resounded with the same smug authority it always possessed.

I stared at his face, looking for something…at least a hint of apology or regret in his expression, and was flabbergasted to see that he actually behaved as if nothing had happened.

‘And you,’ he charged at me, all of a sudden, with renewed vigour.

‘Ah, here it comes.’ I squared my shoulders and stood taller, waiting for the accolades to pour in, from the man who had terrorized me for the last three years I’d worked for him.

‘You’re fired!’

I smiled, not because I didn’t hear him, but because I thought I’d heard him wrong.

‘Get out, before I throw you out in disgrace!’

I still smiled, except that the smile was now frozen on my face, in complete disbelief.

‘I heard about it from the receptionist. A full thirty five minutes late. I’d especially warned you yesterday to be an hour early, hadn’t I?’

‘But…,’ My mind began to work again, though my tongue still seemed to be tied up in knots.

Four minutes later, I found myself outside the hall, just like that, wondering what had just transpired.

And then, my mind cleared. The fog dispersed from my senses in crystallized clarity. I turned around to face the huge brown door that had been firmly shut in my face.

Arora was still talking to the team, firing questions at Rubin, a frown on his face.  D’Souza was the first to see my approach, confused chagrin on his features. I rewarded him with a dazzling smile, before the group around Arora cleared the way for me in hushed anticipation.

‘Well, Arora,’ I looked him in the eye. ‘I’ve been dying to do this for three years, two months and 14 days now. That’s how long I’ve put up with your crap.’

The collective gasps were barely audible, against the resounding echoes of the four slaps I delivered with unerring precision on Ashutosh Arora’s lean cheeks. My heels clicked a triumphant tune, as they ferried me out of Hall#3 of the Casa Vista hotel for the last time.

****

Picture: Google images.

The Pillion Fish - A Poem

The wild wind is her hair spa,

caresses crazy & carefree;

As she zips along the tarmac,

through my bowl, the world I see;

In a mini-ocean on her vespa,

I swim along in glee;

I worry not, if I shall be back,

I query not, where she ferries me;

We zoom along, as our chutzpah

sets us frivolously free;

She beats the tantalizing track,

a peculiar pillion, on a saffron scooty.

***

Surreal : Kylii Sparre

Book Review 5 : 'Dark Origins', by Anthony .E. Zuiker.

A Review 

One a day will die

Two a day will lie

Three a day will cry

Four a day will sigh

Five a day ask why

Six a day will fry

Seven a day

Oh, my.

For those of you in the dark (pun intended), Anthony Zuiker is the creator and executive producer of the famous television franchise, CSI : Crime Scene Investigation. This alone would be enough for all Crime fiction fans to make a beeline to read his book.

The added incentive of a website, Level26.com, where readers can log on to watch video clips of the story, as they go along reading the book, is a new, and perhaps welcome concept to allow readers to experience the story better.

Anthony Zuiker says in his interview that he took to writing because he wanted to take this medium and find a way to make to create new reading experiences with readers.

Has that been achieved? Well, for me, yes and no.

Yes, because this book created a new experience of creepiness, despite the fact that I’ve grown up on hair-raising choices of horror fiction for years.

No, because at the end of the day, it is a rehash of the same crap that seemingly goes on every odd psycho’s mind.

It seems rather convenient to make the key antagonist go exceedingly haywire with his killing sprees and blame it on ‘Psychosis’. Too easy for the author to explain away such inane human behavior, one would say.

***

The Key Characters:

So we have the protagonist, Steve Dark, who is true to his name and lives in a very dark place in his disturbed mind.

And we have an antagonist, Squeegel, who is the quintessential psychopath, except that he has been recognized as the highest ever grade in the taxonomy for psychos, a grade 26 against the existing highest grade 22, known to the world.

Sibby, is Dark’s wife, the romantic love interest in the story, and consequent victim, who suffers the worst of the situation. The reader’s heart goes out to her, and especially her baby, especially during their suffering at the hands of the said fiend.

Riggins, the aging investigator, is annoying as the puppet that is helpless against the forces that play his strings.

Constance as Dark’s colleague seems more of an add-on to make the story a little more interesting, although she has a fair contribution to make during the course of the investigation.

Wycoff is just too cliché. A powerful man misusing his authority is a done-to-death premise in most TV/ film offerings. But this guy is particularly more trying than most.

***

The Pros:

The only appealing (& perhaps, the saving grace) of this book is the deep love between Dark and Sibby. The scenes describing the fragile and yet, unshakable equation between them are endearing.

Horror lovers would enjoy being constantly scared for the characters. Each turn of the page alleviates and does ample justice to the reader’s fear. The grim fates that befall the hapless victims of a psychopath killer out on the loose, send multiple shocks up the spine.

The website is a good add-on for readers who like to live the experience of the horror on screen. It did help put a perspective to the appearance of the characters just as the author envisioned them to be, especially Squeegel. The white-suited apparition reminds the reader of the infamous Voldermort and a particularly flexible Michael Jackson, although his yoga-type movements are a bit over the top and almost comical, given the seriousness of the horrific situation.

Dark’s exceptional hunting skill of being able to shut out his personal grief to ‘empathize’ with the killer’s mindset, albeit in a horrible way, to be able to predict his moves and track him down inspire awe in the reader.

  

***

The Cons:

Squeegel is referred to as the monster throughout the book. Call it nitpicking if you will, but calling a monster a ‘monster’ is just unoriginal to the point of being amateurish. Perhaps the reader’s expectations of Anthony Zuiker’s offering were too high to begin with, but one would expect no less from the creator of CSI.

The tag line on the paperback is ‘Serial Killers aren’t made. They’re born.’ Well, agreed, that is supposed to indicate that there are certain classes of killers who do not need reason to kill. Why then, does the antagonist have fixed ideologies in his mind that progressively pivot towards certain kinds of injustice meted out by a certain groups of people? Does not make sense.

However it was the host of unanswered questions, or discrepancies that leave the reader with a sense of being left ‘hanging’ at the end of the novel.

The first question is why?

Why would a man want to go about killing indiscriminately? Agreed, you are allowed into his twisted mind enough to understand that he has a deep-rooted hatred for what he perceives as wrong, which in itself is rather vague, because the reason for his warped mentality, is not uncovered throughout the book.

He has a hatred for widows. Because, they cash their martyr husbands’ cheques, soon after their death and ‘cheat’ with other men? Twisted logic indeed.  So, he needs to kill innocent animals that were connected to war widows. I mean, seriously?

The reader is left to assume, perhaps incorrectly, that this character was subject to injustice by his mother/aunt/guardian sometime in his childhood…well, you never find out.

He has a loathing towards teenaged boys, because they drink and waste time when the parents expect them to be in college…huh? Seriously? So much so, that the scene where Squeegel rapes them into bloody mess of beseeching humans is disgusting in its brutality. But then again, why? Was he tortured by a man during his own teenage? No answers come forth in the book.

Another example of his twisted irrationality is the assumption that church priests need to be punished because they are child molesters. Damn, but then, generalizing a section of the populace is perhaps an evil that is highly consistent with realities of society we live in. More than one story has used psychos who kill a particular sect of people, because one among the group has harmed them in some way.

And yet again, the scene where he explodes cute little finches is horrendous, only worse than the episode where he slaughters beautiful horses breaks the heart. Animal lovers are sure to be disgusted with this madman, as perhaps is the author’s intention.

However, the recurrent exasperation for the reader, is as mentioned before:Why? Every little episode builds up the questions in the reader’s mind, and when the hapless reader is sure that the answers shall be revealed at the end, they never get answered.

Another major question that pops into the reader’s head is: What does this Squeegel character do for a living? How is he able to afford multiple credit cards, multiple safe houses and hideouts all over the country, latest state-of-the-art equipment to stalk his victims, jets to fly around…etc. when all he seems to do all day (and night) is stay cooped up in his horrid basement to plan the gruesome death of his next victim. It does not make any sense to leave such huge gaps in the story.

So, after closing the book, the reader is left wondering why and how Squeegel did what he did.

Perhaps the biggest discrepancy is that the timelines do not match up along the story. The editors of the novel seem to have skipped checking the fact that the protagonist is supposed to have stayed with Sibby a year before. But then, he also took a full year to try and heal himself from the repercussions of Squeegel’s revenge.

The origins of Squeegel also have inconsistencies; it is confusing and unclear because he is supposed to have gone uncaught for first twenty, and then around thirty years. What is that supposed to mean?

 ‘This made no sense to Dark - Riggins being here, the goons tailing him, the ticking clock. Sure if you screwed up in Special Circs, your career ended in one of the three ways: demotion, dismissal or death.

But death usually came by the hands of the monsters you pursued. Not the people in charge.’

Well, all one can say after reading this is, it makes no sense to the reader either. Other than the supposition that Wycoff misuses his authority beyond rhyme or reason, it seems too far-fetched that he would get every Tom, Dick and Harry eliminated to hide a dirty little secret that is almost commonplace in today’s age of Clinton and more recently, Trump.

 Another major qualm is when Steve Dark supposedly lost his mind when his family was brutally murdered, he seems extremely well-recovered at the end, when he loses the one person he cherished the most…and the reader wonders, really?

***

The conclusion:

It is one thing to have an open ended termination to the tale where imaginative readers have a thrilling opportunity to assume what they fancy. It is quite another to pose a bunch of questions throughout the book for the reader to mull about, and end up never answering them. Not a good premise at all. After all, readers are an intelligent species who like to be challenged, but certainly not kind enough to allow their intelligence to be taken for granted.

Today’s readers are spoilt for choice, with a perpetual stream of good books to read. One expects a lot better from a celebrated & seasoned crime fiction creator of Zuiker’s caliber, to have given us better, with his novel.

In conclusion, this is just too dark to be worthy of a purchase. Pick it up only if you are desperate to find something or anything to read, or if you truly enjoy a supposed horror tale, with senseless violence & puke-worthy gore.

***

Excerpts:

Will it end here? Are you the one who will bring death unto me?

They (Special Circs) work cases most citizens never heard about, would never want to hear about, and certainly did not want to think possible.

If they did, they’d never leave the house.

Not that they’d be safe at home.A high percentage of the really twisted stuff happened behind front doors all over the country. Like the husband who thought his wife had been running around with an old college boyfriend, then took a golf club and impaled her with it, from cavity to throat.

This was stuff nobody in their right minds wanted to think about for more than a few seconds.

This was stuff he thought about all the time.

He lived for the dark side of man.

But this case at hand and this snuff film they’d just watched…

Well, he could almost understand the silence.

 ‘Squeegel  is a Level 26 killer –the highest rank we now recognize , and about four ranks above what the rest of the world recognizes.

After hearing it, Dark found it difficult to unhear it. The words seem to dig through the pulpy mass of his brain, creating their own little echo chambers. You could silence the source, but you couldn’t stop the relentless echo.

 He thought of Dark struggling with his own barriers, especially the ones Squeegel had erected especially for his hunter.

This made no sense to Dark - Riggins being here, the goons tailing him, the ticking clock. Sure if you screwed up in Special Circs, your career ended in one of the three ways: demotion, dismissal or death.

But death usually came by the hands of the monsters you pursued. Not the people in charge.

The only way to catch him is to become like him. To think the sick little things that he does. To climb inside of his diseased mind and try to make sense of it all. But I can’t do that, not now…that’s what you do. I try to catch this monster, I’m absolutely fucking terrified that I ‘m not going to come back the same man.

No deductive logic. No reasoned guesses. No gut. No hunch.

I am the monster. What am I thinking?      

A holy peace came over him, as the blade took off his right arm at the shoulder joint. Then his leg, his mid-thigh.

He’d been trying to tell him one last thing.

He’d been trying to thank him.

*****

Photo: ©️Chethana

Solace - A Poem.

Gazing at the brave moon

that shines a crystal face, 

defying the clouds of monsoon 

to spread a silvery grace; 

In the glow of the radiant cocoon,

a lonely soul seeks solace; 

The beams are a blessed boon, 

that her spirit does embrace...

***

Image: wallpaperscraft.com.

Short Story 20 : The Only Trusted One.

Theme : Tragedy.

'There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting your hearts desire. The other is to get it.'

- George Bernard Shaw.

'Tragedy is like strong acid - It dissolves away all but the gold of truth.'

- D.H.Lawrence.

***

A Tragedy is a work of drama that involves some type of human suffering as its central premise. A good tragedy evokes fear and pity in the reader and lead to a feeling of catharsis or a purging of strong emotions.

There are two types of tragedies: 

1. Classical Tragedy: where the protagonist is the tagic hero who realizes his flawsa t hte end but it is usually too late to correct himself/herself.

Egs: Orphelus, Oedipus, King Lear, Othello, etc.

2. Modern Tragedy: Common people want common things and act through impulses and instincts rather than through some tragic flaw. The tragedy that befalls them is a result of social situations rather than divine justice being dealt. Modern tragedy adds the element of irony.

Egs: Devdas, The Great Gatsby, Jack from Titanic.

I have chosen to write a story that is a modern tragedy, complete with the element of irony in it. I do hope it tugs at some heartstrings and unleashes the tear-glands along the way.

***

The Only Trusted One.

Knock, Knock, Knock….

The raps seemed to come from within him, from deep within his fast beating heart. Sunil woke with a start.

‘Open up! We know you’re in there!’ The voice was harsh. Sunil recognized it at once, although he’d never heard this one before. After all, which thief doesn’t recognize the cold authority and arrogance of the men in power?

He had to hide at once!

Where? The attic? No that would be too obvious.

The bathroom? No, they would look there first. He had to get out of the house…

Munna stirred & muttered something incomprehensible in his sleep. Sunil ran a hand wistfully over the child’s head before he leapt up the torn cane chair. He reached up to remove the loose pink tiles that barely covered the corner of the tiny bedroom, even as he heard Shamala begin to unlock the rusted bolts on their door.

‘Coming, sir...,’ he heard her call out.

‘Nooooo, wait! Don’t open the door yet!’ he wanted to yell at her, but that would give him away to the men at the door. After all, they were only seven feet away, beyond their tiny room that passed for a hall-cum-kitchen of his house.

He had already raised himself over to the slanting roof and was replacing the tiles, when he heard Amma’s loud sobs from her wooden cot in the corner by the kitchen. The harsh noise of brash feet trampling the faded red-oxide floor of his home, made him want to turn around and wring the policeman’s neck, but he knew that wasn’t bound to happen. 

‘Sir, he is inside.’ Shamala’s voice was low, but those were the last words that Sunil heard, before he pulled himself deftly above the low wall in the backyard and ran out to the adjoining street.

***

How had they found him so fast? The question revolved around his mind even as he stopped to rest at the nook in the broken compound of the abandoned house on the street corner. Maybe someone saw him and informed the police or maybe there was a CCTV somewhere that he had failed to notice…

After all, he had left no clues whatsoever at the last place he’d burgled. He'd even discarded the clothes he’d worn at the last job at the other end of town.

Twenty thousand rupees was all he’d been able to make after all the trouble he took to open the lock of the parked car in the basement of that flashy apartment in Lincoln road. It helped pay for Amms’s arthritis treatment and the first installment of Munna’s school fees. He hadn’t missed the fleeting disappointment on the child’s face when he realized that he wouldn’t be getting new shoes, for now. Sunil wanted to tell Munna to wait for some more time, until he got another ‘project’ but then, how does one explain a job like his to a six year old?

Shamala said nothing, when he’d bought the monthly groceries last evening. She was unusually quiet; maybe her PMS was acting up again.

He felt a pang when he realized that he’d been unable to say good bye to her. God alone knew how long he would have to stay in hiding this time.

Shamala, the love of his life. She still had the figure of a teenager she’d been, when she’d eloped with him all those years ago. Being a mother only enhanced her raw beauty.

He was exhausted. Bone-tired. He’d barely slept a wink from the past three days…maybe he could catch a few winks in the house. It was the same house he lived in, every time he needed to go into hiding from the cops.

Sunil sneaked up to the back window that had a broken glass and carefully let himself in without touching the jagged edges, like he always did. Five minutes later he was fast asleep on the bare floor of the bedroom, on the first floor, with his arm folded under his head.

***

‘Sorry.’ That was all she said. Her voice was husky, a lot softer than it usually was.

Shamala tried not to sob, but failed miserably. Sunil said nothing. He didn’t even look up at her. He didn’t want to.

She wept for a full five minutes by the iron bars that confined him, until the policewoman on duty began to shoo away the visitors.

‘Sorry,’ her voice cracked under her sobs and when Sunil finally looked up, he saw her retreating back through the rods of his cell, her shoulders drooped and still racking under her agony, her long plait swirling like a graceful serpent around her firm buttocks. She had worn the red saree he had first bought for her after their simple temple wedding all those years ago.

He still could not believe it. Could not wrap his mind around the fact that his own wife, his only love, had betrayed him to the police. And for what? A mere fifty thousand rupees?

They had lied. The businessman had lied to the police that Sunil had stolen a briefcase with ten lakhs in it from his car. All Sunil had found in his fancy Audi was twenty thousand rupees in the glove compartment.

But then, who acknowledged the existence of real criminals, more ruthless than mere small-time thieves, such as himself?

The second lie was what did him in. They had not paid a penny, not even a thousand of the promised fifty to Shamala. Despite the fact that they convinced her that it was for her own safety, her child’s well-being…the businessman had promised to take care of Munna’s education for life, if Sunil was caught. And it had taken the police only half an hour to catch him from the abandoned house he’d been asleep in. After all, Shamala was the only one who knew his regular hideout.

Shamala, the only one he truly trusted in the world.

Sunil clutched the bars until his knuckles ached, as he stared at the door from where she had disappeared, long after she had left the station.

***

‘Come, get up.’

The constable gave him a look that Sunil could not comprehend. Pity? Sorrow? Or a mixture of both?

‘Where?’ Sunil pulled himself up slowly, trying not to wince at the piercing aches in various parts of his limbs where the overzealous inspector had pounded his lathi over him. The police were yet to get a full confession of his nonexistent crimes from him, but Sunil was adamant not to buckle under their relentless pressure tactics.

‘Follow me.’ Narayanappa’s voice was quiet. Sunil had known Narayanappa for many years now. The old man had served with the Arya Nagar police, from long before Sunil had taken to a life of crime.

He was almost like a father to Sunil, except that he was on the right side of the law and never forgot to remind Sunil of that, whenever he had the chance.

‘Saar, where are you taking me?’ Sunil asked again, when Narayanappa clicked the handcuff around his wrist before he hailed an auto.

The ride took only 18 minutes, despite the rush hour traffic of the early office goers on a Tuesday morning

They made the turn towards the slum where he had lived for three years. Sunil could not comprehend why they were taking him to his house in handcuffs…they wouldn’t have handcuffed him if he had been granted bail…right?

He noticed the crowd of people long before the auto ground to a stop in front of his house. His face lost color even as he thought in panic, ‘Amma? Oh no, God…not Amma!’

And then he saw them.

Three still forms, covered in white bed-sheets, on the hard ground, laid one next to the other, outside his door.

‘Poor girl, fed her son and mother in law with insecticide before she killed herself…’ the words faded in and out of his conscious. They were uttered by someone in the crowd to someone else he knew but couldn’t place, or couldn’t even see, because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the three lifeless shapes, that lay in the narrow street in front of his ram-shackled house.

The pungent scent of cow-dung water that Shamala had smeared on the ground outside their door that same morning, reached his nostrils, before the sickly-sweet assault of agarbathi smoke. She now lay on the dotted rangoli that she had drawn with her slender fingers…

Her red saree’s pallu stuck out from below the pale sheet they had covered her with. And jet black hair of his only child, the hair that he had so lovingly stroked less than 24 hours ago, peeked from beneath the tiny form, beside the body of his mother…

That was the last sight Sunil saw, before the murky green ground rushed up to meet him & blessed darkness closed like a cloak, around him.

*****

Image : Google images

Dawn of memories - A Poem.

Penned a short poem about memories that refuse to die.

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Background Pic: Google Images

Nature Trails 4 : Hosur farmlands.

I've been travelling to Hosur quite a lot, of late. The farmlands that I have visited have only a few houses as of now, thereby the place is unaffected by the hustle and bustle that accompanies the progress of city life.

One must always find the time to get away to the outskirts of the city to enjoy the peace and quiet that only the rural countryside can offer.

Perpetual pathway

The farm that we visited had acres of land used for cultivation of some colorful flowers and a host of vegetables.

But the long pathways amidst lush lining of flowering trees  were equally enticing. Some  pathways are so endless, that they promise a perpetual adventure.

Radiant hues

One of the first things that caught my attention was this lotus pool complete with a tiny stream of water that fed it.

Although no lotuses bloomed at that time of the day, the floating leaves and water took on a radiance hue that I may not have noticed if the lotuses had bloomed. 

Wildflower Wonder

This tiny little bloom was well hidden in the wild shrubbery but did not escape my scrutiny. 

Some exquisite things are hidden, wrapped deep within thorny packages indeed.

Pretty Plantains

Among the host of plants and shrubs that caught my attention were these plantain plants. The plantains looked more pretty against the backdrop of a cloudy blue sky. 

I especially love the plantain flowers, that eventually turn from deep maroon to dark green and then into bright yellow bananas.

Solace in the village.

I clicked this mud-walled hut from the moving car, while we were passing by a small village known as 'Gopanapalli', off the Denkinikotai road, in the outskirts of Hosur.

  

In addition to a little village school, the place has vast areas of wilderness that allows visitors to take in the distinct scents of rural Tamilnadu. 

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All Photos: ©️ChethanaRamesh