Last ten week long summer vacation, which I spent away from home and thus which lasted as long as decades; and yet ended so soon, I re-read Salman Rushdie's Midnight children and was once again caught by his "Magical Realism". The genius in him manipulated the fool in me to think of writing something of my own. Yes, after spending a considerable time of over an year with “Plausible Contemplation” I have begun fooling myself into thinking myself as a “to be author” of some accord (howsoever miniscule).
Thus I thought of starting with a short story, deciding not to stretch it over more than five pages, but the creative juice in me kept on overflowing and thus the “to be a short story” transformed into a “novella”, which fueled by the enthusiasm of having written something creditable was further elongating itself into a novel just before the long vacation regrettably ended. The dreary routine which invaded my life after it dried all the juicy emotions and thus the work ended in between.
Now the only valuable purpose which the curtailed work of a once an enthusiast fool could possibly serve is to augment the number of post on his blog and thus I have decided to pursue the intelligent decision. So below are few extract from different incomplete chapters, which now I could just imprudently dream to complete one day.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Chapter 1
Tick tock tick…....as the clock’s hand budged alongside its elliptical fringe my heart throbbed at an accelerated pace, fuelled by anxiety. With departure of each fleeting second the hour of embarrassment was arriving nearer and closer. Silently, like a ghost, its shadow looming over me, from the depths of uncertainty, larger and clearer. In fact I already felt embarrassed like a shy lamb, but only in private. In a little while a recently earned dignity would be thrashed publicly by ignominy, and shame will infiltrate inside through the bruises. And worse….entire school will witness that.
The disgrace will not be an ephemeral one ……..Poorer.……. it will be tagged on and echoed in my ears for quite some time to trail, voiced by the co-victims of my sloppy attitude towards this particular failed responsibility. The same soft ears that occasionally my mother uses to pinch and seek my instant shriek to confirm the righteous virtue of her son’s soul …….irritating me at times, she entertains just one of her many superstitious fantasies. I doubt her reaction if someday I don’t shriek. Returning back to the ears, the ears those, at the moment, were tense, tepid and taut like a pink question mark, bulging out on either side of a head. A head that was intimately clasping a mind…… or rather say minds….. shattered into anxious pieces by jagged unnerved thoughts…. How will I face it?... Oh! that geek, she will enjoy all of it…. And that bloody wing legged traitor I will…..If I could avoid it anyhow… Could I? The answer was an inevitable NO.
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Reaching home with an appetite pulverized with fury and shame, I did not cared to bother mother for lunch and went straight into my room, without her even knowing that I was home. And by the time she realized my arrival I was deep asleep, almost dead to her any request to eat, and so she didn’t. She knew me well and guessed the probable reasons.
She almost always was right in reading me, as if I was an open book to her and she could anytime look in my thoughts through the pages. Whenever I marveled upon her magical power of so implicitly reading me she had a set reply......“Being a mother I can”. Was this power special to her or is it so with all mothers? And if it is so why aren’t fathers too that understanding? And if they are, why I was not blessed with a father like that? Though there are no plausible answers to such questions yet my contemplation consoles me by believing that I am no unfortunate and only mothers have exclusive natural rights over this miraculous power. As if though immediately after birth the umbilical cord joining child with mother is physically detached but still - an umbilicus less- wireless connection exists between them, unlimited lifetime power, but sadly only one way.
The disgrace will not be an ephemeral one ……..Poorer.……. it will be tagged on and echoed in my ears for quite some time to trail, voiced by the co-victims of my sloppy attitude towards this particular failed responsibility. The same soft ears that occasionally my mother uses to pinch and seek my instant shriek to confirm the righteous virtue of her son’s soul …….irritating me at times, she entertains just one of her many superstitious fantasies. I doubt her reaction if someday I don’t shriek. Returning back to the ears, the ears those, at the moment, were tense, tepid and taut like a pink question mark, bulging out on either side of a head. A head that was intimately clasping a mind…… or rather say minds….. shattered into anxious pieces by jagged unnerved thoughts…. How will I face it?... Oh! that geek, she will enjoy all of it…. And that bloody wing legged traitor I will…..If I could avoid it anyhow… Could I? The answer was an inevitable NO.
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Reaching home with an appetite pulverized with fury and shame, I did not cared to bother mother for lunch and went straight into my room, without her even knowing that I was home. And by the time she realized my arrival I was deep asleep, almost dead to her any request to eat, and so she didn’t. She knew me well and guessed the probable reasons.
She almost always was right in reading me, as if I was an open book to her and she could anytime look in my thoughts through the pages. Whenever I marveled upon her magical power of so implicitly reading me she had a set reply......“Being a mother I can”. Was this power special to her or is it so with all mothers? And if it is so why aren’t fathers too that understanding? And if they are, why I was not blessed with a father like that? Though there are no plausible answers to such questions yet my contemplation consoles me by believing that I am no unfortunate and only mothers have exclusive natural rights over this miraculous power. As if though immediately after birth the umbilical cord joining child with mother is physically detached but still - an umbilicus less- wireless connection exists between them, unlimited lifetime power, but sadly only one way.
Chapter 2
Once father told us that as a youngster he wished to be a businessman, however, due to lack of support from his father, which I distrust, and, more importantly as I consider, lack of proper tenacity he took law as a safe route of life and enrolled in one of the best Law school, to learn the very basics of twisting and breaching law and to gain consummate skills in finding loopholes in the lengthiest constitution ever written. The astuteness of a once aspiring businessman and the skilled interpretation of a bright law grad formed a deadly combo, and within a short span of years my father surpassed the entire sexagenarian veterans of his field, in terms of both riches and the respect it brings. After every win photographs of him, flanked by his senile counterparts long parched of success; quenching their thirst of fame by sharing trivial side positions, emerged in newspapers, which hailed him as a champion lawyer. But the profession which showered him both fame and fortune, and the way in which it brought them, prohibited my conscience from giving him the reverence a father ought to have.
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At that time I couldn’t help but feel vortex of new anger whirling with the already pending ones inside me. However hard I tried to suppress it, it kept bubbling up. I tried to compromise the unfettered emotions but they refused to bow, and strained against my heart. This entire furious wave on a single day pulled me back, curtailed my spirit and made me even more peevish. Suddenly, the insulting shame imposed on a recently earned dignity, the concealed guilt of being a looser, the whirling anger waiting to be spilled, the hurtful professionalism of a heartless father and the sudden absence of a steadfast admirer; all came together. Unable to contain all of them in a vicious concert in the likelihood of facing the lawyers another possible lecture on the value of commitment ……. I left in the middle of the conversation. With nothing to do, I went to the place where I go with nothing to do, and the place where everything worth doing and saying is done and said, without having to do or say.
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At that time I couldn’t help but feel vortex of new anger whirling with the already pending ones inside me. However hard I tried to suppress it, it kept bubbling up. I tried to compromise the unfettered emotions but they refused to bow, and strained against my heart. This entire furious wave on a single day pulled me back, curtailed my spirit and made me even more peevish. Suddenly, the insulting shame imposed on a recently earned dignity, the concealed guilt of being a looser, the whirling anger waiting to be spilled, the hurtful professionalism of a heartless father and the sudden absence of a steadfast admirer; all came together. Unable to contain all of them in a vicious concert in the likelihood of facing the lawyers another possible lecture on the value of commitment ……. I left in the middle of the conversation. With nothing to do, I went to the place where I go with nothing to do, and the place where everything worth doing and saying is done and said, without having to do or say.
Chapter 3
In the privacy of the faceless crowds at its shore there lies solitude, so profound that you can truly listen to your inner voice. An exalted I, preferred to converse with an amiable Ganga only to witness my excitement leveling; and when poignant, I yearned to embrace a caring Ganga, only to perceive my melancholy getting dissolved in its flow. It once had the divine motherly offerings of eternal wisdom and edifying solace. Truly living to its claim, it was a confluence of death and life; It offered those looking for salvation every opportunity. I had always got what I had pined for. I have died and reborn various times at its bank. I have witnessed the cremation of my ego at Manikarnika, and resurrection of my internal sagacity at Dasaswamedh. At that time I wished never to grow up….. a childish wish, a wish that was soon denied.
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Assi, an integral part of the name Varanasi. Varanasi is derived from Varuna and Assi, one a small tributary to Ganga in the north and the other a rivulet cum drain in the south, both running parallel to other, fostering the older city in-between. The ghats, the stony flight of steps, extending from the crowded narrow winding lanes flanked by roadside shops and scores of Hindu temples, and descending into the composed shores and thus acting as a buffer between bedlam and equanimity, continuously abuts the river bank. Without leaving an inch gap inbetween, from the double-deck truss bridge at Rajghat, and stretching over three Km till the mouth of Assi, the ghats counts eighty-assi- in number, and thus the name Assi. The thing which distinguishes seraphic Assi, the south cornered eightieth ghat, from rest Seventy Nine is its majority populace of professional painters amateur photographers cerebral scholars effervescent students seeking foreigners and young and old lovers over that of priests, making Assi more youthfully spiritual than untidily religious, a fact which makes it a core of foreign tourists in Varanasi.
Like every other evening, that day too Assi was covered black and white with equal populace of Indian inhabitant and foreign vacationer. It was always amusing to come across the white people, burned to red skin by the scorching heat, wandering about the city in their sorts hauling heavy rucksacks, in hunt of its culture; only to be bamboozled into shredding cash by the ‘pundit’ posed touts, and to be tricked by the middlemen into buying cheap stuffs at soaring rates at the handicraft shops, and to be confused amid the narrow alleys by the prolonged rickshaw drives, and to be misguided by the hin-glish words of the uninformed guides into believing their own self emanated history of the very aged Kashi. I wondered…. ‘What draws them to India?’
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Assi, an integral part of the name Varanasi. Varanasi is derived from Varuna and Assi, one a small tributary to Ganga in the north and the other a rivulet cum drain in the south, both running parallel to other, fostering the older city in-between. The ghats, the stony flight of steps, extending from the crowded narrow winding lanes flanked by roadside shops and scores of Hindu temples, and descending into the composed shores and thus acting as a buffer between bedlam and equanimity, continuously abuts the river bank. Without leaving an inch gap inbetween, from the double-deck truss bridge at Rajghat, and stretching over three Km till the mouth of Assi, the ghats counts eighty-assi- in number, and thus the name Assi. The thing which distinguishes seraphic Assi, the south cornered eightieth ghat, from rest Seventy Nine is its majority populace of professional painters amateur photographers cerebral scholars effervescent students seeking foreigners and young and old lovers over that of priests, making Assi more youthfully spiritual than untidily religious, a fact which makes it a core of foreign tourists in Varanasi.
Like every other evening, that day too Assi was covered black and white with equal populace of Indian inhabitant and foreign vacationer. It was always amusing to come across the white people, burned to red skin by the scorching heat, wandering about the city in their sorts hauling heavy rucksacks, in hunt of its culture; only to be bamboozled into shredding cash by the ‘pundit’ posed touts, and to be tricked by the middlemen into buying cheap stuffs at soaring rates at the handicraft shops, and to be confused amid the narrow alleys by the prolonged rickshaw drives, and to be misguided by the hin-glish words of the uninformed guides into believing their own self emanated history of the very aged Kashi. I wondered…. ‘What draws them to India?’
Chapter 4
I’m such a cynical observer of many things around that sometimes I doubt whether I’m hopeful of anything at all. How passive an attitude I carry. And even after realizing its shortcomings and trying hard to overcome them, I am yet to convalesce from it. My pathetic attitude is sturdy enough to wrestle with my conscience this long……and thus the recognition of the weakness did not made it shrivel like vampires in the light of day. Truly, Old habits die hard. I still remember the day I instigated this attitude recuperation expedition of mine. It was a day later, after the shame was inflicted and the subsequent wisdom was injected …….. I’m glad my time keeping disability hadn’t blurred this remembrance.
That day was the last working day for St. Xavier’s Academy before winter vacations. I could have bunked and evaded the blaming eyes, for one full fortnight, long enough for their ephemeral memory to be drained vague of my crime. And I would have surely pursued that, only if not for the transformation I felt within ….. the transformation which reduced my so thought crime to a mere peccadillo, in my psyche. An impulsive transformation which had such an influence that once it entered the subject it changed the subject entirely.
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The success of the new attitude thrilled me and strengthened my faith in the newly espoused ideology and infected me with the weakness (or disease..?) of optimism. That was the time I was least cynical of anything and everything. I was intoxicated by my optimistic hallucination …….but as like all drugs it’s effect was time bounded and unfortunately I was destined to be sober soon. Mark my words: Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you……… be it commitment to God, principles, things or the most precarious of all – a person. But let’s talk of things only as they come. Let’s stay intoxicated for the time being and not worry about the imminent hangover grievance.
An inebriated I returned home that triumphant day eagerly expecting the return of my unyielding admirer from her sudden unexpected disappearance, to tell her the details of my triumph and no more to slap her alone for our joint carelessness. I found her gates still locked together which meant that even on a triumphant day I have to live admirer-less. Since I have to wait for her arrival to take the story ahead let me make use of this standby time to draw the cloak of anonymity from my steadfast, unyielding admirer who had at a triumphant day made me admirer-less, Isha-less.
That day was the last working day for St. Xavier’s Academy before winter vacations. I could have bunked and evaded the blaming eyes, for one full fortnight, long enough for their ephemeral memory to be drained vague of my crime. And I would have surely pursued that, only if not for the transformation I felt within ….. the transformation which reduced my so thought crime to a mere peccadillo, in my psyche. An impulsive transformation which had such an influence that once it entered the subject it changed the subject entirely.
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The success of the new attitude thrilled me and strengthened my faith in the newly espoused ideology and infected me with the weakness (or disease..?) of optimism. That was the time I was least cynical of anything and everything. I was intoxicated by my optimistic hallucination …….but as like all drugs it’s effect was time bounded and unfortunately I was destined to be sober soon. Mark my words: Devotion can either render you victorious or destroy you……… be it commitment to God, principles, things or the most precarious of all – a person. But let’s talk of things only as they come. Let’s stay intoxicated for the time being and not worry about the imminent hangover grievance.
An inebriated I returned home that triumphant day eagerly expecting the return of my unyielding admirer from her sudden unexpected disappearance, to tell her the details of my triumph and no more to slap her alone for our joint carelessness. I found her gates still locked together which meant that even on a triumphant day I have to live admirer-less. Since I have to wait for her arrival to take the story ahead let me make use of this standby time to draw the cloak of anonymity from my steadfast, unyielding admirer who had at a triumphant day made me admirer-less, Isha-less.
Chapter 5
Looking back, I don’t think our friendship started on the day when we first literally spoke to each other, through eyes and hands, our tongue still oblivious of artistic motion of language. Because at then it felt as if we had already known each other since long. But how?.... may be by some mutual extrasensory magical power that we might have developed from that day in the maternity ward of the hospital, when I was few hours old and she was being brought in this world in a neighboring room. But wait if we actually had some mutual extrasensory magical power than why we would have waited for that long. Because if physical proximity was all that was required for our clairvoyant talent to experience each other, then we were far closer on those cloudy winter afternoons when our respective pregnant mothers together attended the routine womanly congregation, seeking comforts of sun basking and fulfilling basic necessity of gossiping, while performing involuntary act of knitting sweaters for the upcoming offsprings. So there is a possibility that while our mothers were engrossed in their comforts and necessities, I and Isha too were active in discovering each other, inquisitively but inconspicuously.
Anyway let me come out of the supernatural world of mystical possibilities and limit myself to the surreal world of realism and certainty (err…or uncertainty??). Leaving aside how we were introduced -mystically or ordinarily- I move on into the world we lived in together as friends and later something more than that ….. something terrible. Once we had a beautiful and carefree world of our own, where trust was as profuse and free as air, where joy gushed at liberty as perennial river, where childish shades of imagination painted reality white and chaste as clouds, where at times we felt so together that I was her and she was me, and when who was what seldom concerned …..as there was no I and her, simply we.
We wasted the majority of our early days collectively. I read her my comic books and she read out her observations and dreams. A dreamer she was, she dreamed ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if...….’. A precocious realist I was and held ‘Isn’t it already funny that …...’.Her sweet voice tirelessly filled my ears with the narratives of all her microscopic and senseless girlish observations, as if that was an absolute fact, a serious matter of life, a matter as grave as death , to correspond. Always confused with no indication of ever concluding, her naïve dreams usually made less sense to my pragmatic head but still I listened with no sign of fatigue and no loss of interest or patience………if you have that kind of orotund noise around you it makes you playful about life.
Anyway let me come out of the supernatural world of mystical possibilities and limit myself to the surreal world of realism and certainty (err…or uncertainty??). Leaving aside how we were introduced -mystically or ordinarily- I move on into the world we lived in together as friends and later something more than that ….. something terrible. Once we had a beautiful and carefree world of our own, where trust was as profuse and free as air, where joy gushed at liberty as perennial river, where childish shades of imagination painted reality white and chaste as clouds, where at times we felt so together that I was her and she was me, and when who was what seldom concerned …..as there was no I and her, simply we.
We wasted the majority of our early days collectively. I read her my comic books and she read out her observations and dreams. A dreamer she was, she dreamed ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if...….’. A precocious realist I was and held ‘Isn’t it already funny that …...’.Her sweet voice tirelessly filled my ears with the narratives of all her microscopic and senseless girlish observations, as if that was an absolute fact, a serious matter of life, a matter as grave as death , to correspond. Always confused with no indication of ever concluding, her naïve dreams usually made less sense to my pragmatic head but still I listened with no sign of fatigue and no loss of interest or patience………if you have that kind of orotund noise around you it makes you playful about life.
Chapter 6
So once again, this time accompanied, I was at the ghats, but this time neither
to die nor to reborn……simply for breathing a gentle wind warmed over the holiness of ganga by the departing half orange sun; and gulping delicious banarasi lassi on Abhishek’s pocket at ‘Pehelwaan Lassi mahal’, a lassi shop ran by a man thin to the point of emaciation. Earlier I used to question what fanatical idea amused this skinny vendor to label his shop as ‘Pehelwaan’s shop’, a wrestler’s shop, before grandpa silenced my query one day.
The history behind the label: Once upon a time a renowned and elderly professional wrestler, waning with time, decided for a new profession before going moribund. Lassi being his darling drink swayed him into opening a lassi shop. Despite being uneducated he had gathered ample managerial sagacity from wrestling organizers regarding brand marketing, and hence titled the shop on his well known moniker ‘Pehelwaan Ranabahadur thakur lassi mahal’. The strategy worked and he lived economically joyful ever after before the day he died of his third and final heart attack while laughing. The shop was then for a while managed by his only daughter, who after marrying to a non-wrestler handed over the responsibility to her husband. The son-in-law embarrassed to run a shop on father-in-law’s name shortened it to ‘Pehelwaan lassi mahal’, retaining the tag pehelwaan for himself. Although with a brand name shortened by the heir’s embarrassment, the inherited shop thrived, and the son-in-law lived even more joyfully before succumbing to his very first heart attack. First one on third and second one on first; the thinning resistance was a result of change in legacy ………wrestler to non-wrestler. As if to exemplify this shifting legacy even more distinctly there came a visual evidence, a skeleton of a child, as the next heir to the dwindling legacy. The wrestler’s daughter and her non-wrestler companion collectively spawned this current owner, a man thin to the point of emaciation, an all skin-andbone wrestler, a haddi-pehelwaan.
Though the legacy of the proprietor declined with subsequent generation but the quality of lassi persistently sustained against putrefying effect of time, and pluckily survived the challenging impact of market globalization, which as per grandpa in case of lassi would be coca-colaization of Indian thirst.
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Brother Paul is the public relation officer in St. Xavier, a fool-of-a-man semi-reverend though. Too old to be a brother as he lost his way up the echelons of priesthood by frequent imprudence in priestly matters. He was a self made brother who owed his lack of success to nobody. Anyway his unmatched temper, which graciously refused to loose itself on the unintentional as well as intentional insulting sarcasm from others, landed him to a job in Public relation office. An office where the wing legged has been rebuked plentiful times since kindergarten, in front of his worried parents, by semi-reverend brother Paul, for putting his naughty legs in and over numerous monkey business.
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Son-of-an-owl is surely an idiot on all measures but one; this ungrateful son has got brains enough to trick the owl, his father. The owl had inherited enough money to make it work for him instead of working much himself. He owns a lot many petrol pumps in and around the city. The owl never wanted his riches to spoil his son-of-an-owl after a limit, and therefore provided Vibhor with as little pocket money as possible but the son was free to full his bike’s tank at any of his owl’s pump free of cost. Now there was the loop hole to exploit and was exploited. Vibhor got his tanks filled to max at one pump only to sell it to acquaintance at significantly lower price before reaching the next pump for a refill. That alone would not have made his pocket deep if the owl had only two three pumps or if the son played this trick once in a while, but blessed was the owl and an industrious was his son.
to die nor to reborn……simply for breathing a gentle wind warmed over the holiness of ganga by the departing half orange sun; and gulping delicious banarasi lassi on Abhishek’s pocket at ‘Pehelwaan Lassi mahal’, a lassi shop ran by a man thin to the point of emaciation. Earlier I used to question what fanatical idea amused this skinny vendor to label his shop as ‘Pehelwaan’s shop’, a wrestler’s shop, before grandpa silenced my query one day.
The history behind the label: Once upon a time a renowned and elderly professional wrestler, waning with time, decided for a new profession before going moribund. Lassi being his darling drink swayed him into opening a lassi shop. Despite being uneducated he had gathered ample managerial sagacity from wrestling organizers regarding brand marketing, and hence titled the shop on his well known moniker ‘Pehelwaan Ranabahadur thakur lassi mahal’. The strategy worked and he lived economically joyful ever after before the day he died of his third and final heart attack while laughing. The shop was then for a while managed by his only daughter, who after marrying to a non-wrestler handed over the responsibility to her husband. The son-in-law embarrassed to run a shop on father-in-law’s name shortened it to ‘Pehelwaan lassi mahal’, retaining the tag pehelwaan for himself. Although with a brand name shortened by the heir’s embarrassment, the inherited shop thrived, and the son-in-law lived even more joyfully before succumbing to his very first heart attack. First one on third and second one on first; the thinning resistance was a result of change in legacy ………wrestler to non-wrestler. As if to exemplify this shifting legacy even more distinctly there came a visual evidence, a skeleton of a child, as the next heir to the dwindling legacy. The wrestler’s daughter and her non-wrestler companion collectively spawned this current owner, a man thin to the point of emaciation, an all skin-andbone wrestler, a haddi-pehelwaan.
Though the legacy of the proprietor declined with subsequent generation but the quality of lassi persistently sustained against putrefying effect of time, and pluckily survived the challenging impact of market globalization, which as per grandpa in case of lassi would be coca-colaization of Indian thirst.
-------------
Brother Paul is the public relation officer in St. Xavier, a fool-of-a-man semi-reverend though. Too old to be a brother as he lost his way up the echelons of priesthood by frequent imprudence in priestly matters. He was a self made brother who owed his lack of success to nobody. Anyway his unmatched temper, which graciously refused to loose itself on the unintentional as well as intentional insulting sarcasm from others, landed him to a job in Public relation office. An office where the wing legged has been rebuked plentiful times since kindergarten, in front of his worried parents, by semi-reverend brother Paul, for putting his naughty legs in and over numerous monkey business.
--------------
Son-of-an-owl is surely an idiot on all measures but one; this ungrateful son has got brains enough to trick the owl, his father. The owl had inherited enough money to make it work for him instead of working much himself. He owns a lot many petrol pumps in and around the city. The owl never wanted his riches to spoil his son-of-an-owl after a limit, and therefore provided Vibhor with as little pocket money as possible but the son was free to full his bike’s tank at any of his owl’s pump free of cost. Now there was the loop hole to exploit and was exploited. Vibhor got his tanks filled to max at one pump only to sell it to acquaintance at significantly lower price before reaching the next pump for a refill. That alone would not have made his pocket deep if the owl had only two three pumps or if the son played this trick once in a while, but blessed was the owl and an industrious was his son.
Chapter 7
Rakesh is my distant cousin and is a fine prototype of those kinds of people who were almost rendered destroyed by love before they were pulled back from the edge of the abyss. A year ago Rakesh was madly in love with a Menakhsi, the dream girl of Mahrauli, who sadly belonged to a different caste and thus was decidedly objectionable to my distant uncle (who happens to be his father). After winning a prolonged battle against many talented contenders in wooing Menakhsi, Rakesh was immediately tangled in an even longer one against his father and his traditional ideology. Poor impatient fool hadn’t taken even a momentary hiatus to get pleasure from his conquest of Menakhsi, and notified his father of his yearning to marry her. Uncle as expected reacted callously to this unscheduled notification and presaged “If you marry her it’s either you or me in my house” Even after knowing that eventually it will be he who has to vacate Sarada Niwas, howsoever hard Sarada devi, his mother, tried to keep him in, Rakesh dared to go ahead with his plans. He foolishly dreamed of starting a fresh life with his Menakhsi, but sadly the dream girl Menakhsi had a realistic approach to life and thus she refused to be a part of his imprudent dream, and decided to break the relationship discovering his injudicious side (as she put it). She said she won’t marry him anymore because he was crazy and he surely was crazy because he still wanted to marry her. Thus the dream of commencing a fresh life shattered the present anyhow existing life of Rakesh the warrior-fool. Thus Rakesh was pulled back from the edge of the abyss by his own imprudence, which helped him turn to the faithless part of his venetian blind love. But anyway once a fool always a fool; Rakesh like many of his kinds tried to commit suicide too. Once when Uncle and sharada aunty were busy shouting to each other, in an attempt to make him listen from behind the close doors and realize how wise for him their harsh decision had proved to be, the warrior-fool Rakesh entered the arena and asked Sarada “Keep quiet for the time being and once I am gone yell as much as you… ” and was knocked down to ground vomiting white foams before even completing his request. The lion hearted warrior-fool had swallowed a rat killing concoction. He was instantaneously rushed to a hospital where the life reviving drugs overcame the concoction permanently, and after returning home with time his good sense overcame his foolishness…..for the time being.
The day when finally Menakhsi, the dream girl of Mahrauli, was knotted to a NRI each and all bachelor of Mahrauli wept invisible tears except Rakesh. No don’t think otherwise, as I told once a fool always a fool; Rakesh lived to his name, his tears were blatant. An indifferent parting Menakhsi, as people say, was an epitome of stately cheerfulness each time she cried. When the dream girl was parting cheerfully flanked by invisible fond tears, blatant unreciprocated tears and howling feminine tears my uncle was eventful offering sweets to lord Hanuman at Sankat Mochan, thanking the monkey God for insuring his reputation by taking Menakhsi overseas, far away from Mahrauli.
The day when finally Menakhsi, the dream girl of Mahrauli, was knotted to a NRI each and all bachelor of Mahrauli wept invisible tears except Rakesh. No don’t think otherwise, as I told once a fool always a fool; Rakesh lived to his name, his tears were blatant. An indifferent parting Menakhsi, as people say, was an epitome of stately cheerfulness each time she cried. When the dream girl was parting cheerfully flanked by invisible fond tears, blatant unreciprocated tears and howling feminine tears my uncle was eventful offering sweets to lord Hanuman at Sankat Mochan, thanking the monkey God for insuring his reputation by taking Menakhsi overseas, far away from Mahrauli.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Chapter 8
Although it was late and her gates were locked yet I had my own ways to meet her, if only she was not dead asleep. I went upstairs to check if her lights were still on which fortunately were. After making sure that all, counting shyamlal, were engrossed in deep lifeless comfort I moved ahead to make my way. Within next few minutes I was successfully done with crossing the long verandah soundlessly holding slippers in hand, unbolting the heavy door by integrating countless minute pushes of dx length each and covering the lawn along the inside boundary in crouched position to avoid being caught in a suspicious move inside my own residence by an outsider. After maneuvering my body meticulously and skillfully to her window I once again made certain no one was witnessing my illegal moves……… no not illegal just a little bit naughty.
Now after all this prolonged waiting only a five feet wall was all that stood alienating me from her glimpse. I unhesitatingly began to scale it. While I was half way in my endeavor with one leg lying on the top of the wall and other searching for a hole or crack in the sidewall to fit into to push myself up, I for the first time saw the most beautiful face in my life carrying the saddest expression I ever witnessed. She was sitting with her back facing me and till than was oblivious of my very existence but I was able to see her face in the mirror on the wall facing both of us. Yes no point for guessing, she was not Isha and till than I didn’t knew who she was, yet I forgot to be afraid of my incongruous placing. Her cavernous eyes shedding teary falls were too mesmerizing to let me think of even life or death let alone the fear of being caught like a lizard on the wall opposite a long time friend’s window. She was simultaneously weeping and writing something in a diary. Captivated both by her seraphic beauty and my meddlesome curiosity I was thrilled and the unprecedented thrill was sweeping my consciousness away. I could have hung there like that forever, or at least until some newspaper man or milkman would have spotted me in the dawn in that unlawful gesture on lawyer Saabs periphery, but my fervent empathy which had started reaching her, obliged hers to reach mine and she turned back. I initially became transitorily glad to be able to look straight into her deep eyes as if that was all I wanted, but then very soon I was startled and brought back to the consciousness of my unapproving condition. She read my embarrassment and thus realized hers too and immediately swept her mellow cheeks dry of the glittering tears.
I horrendously waited for her next reaction but she didn’t reacted for a long time as if she was profoundly bothered with something too momentous to mind my petty naughtiness. That inflated my curiosity even higher. I didn’t knew what to say as I had never talked to an angel before and that too a weeping one.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Add world: Behind d Screen
manvendra2610: abe saurabh
manvendra2610 is busy.
saurabh: haan bhai bol
saurabh is idle
manvendra2610: bhai kal hai mega launch website ka...!! yaar ek kaam kar
saurabh: kya bol?
manvendra2610: http://www.kampus.co.in/ ye url apne blog pe daal le..
saurabh: ok..
manvendra2610: okay...ab thanks kya bolu..
saurabh: arre..bilkul nahin bey
manvendra2610: haan wahi soch rahe the..
Sent at 11:18 PM on Friday
Sentence correction exercise: Bellow is the choice between next right and wrong move... so go ahead !!!
Now that you have been (spending/wasting) so much of your (precious/idle) time (following/ criticizing) my (fabulous/moronic) blog, it would be an (intelligent/excellent) investment to hit the above link and have some really (great/smart) R.O.I. And my (angle/self-interest) in this move is may be Ur greater number of clicks hand me some more such (stuff/stuffs) and I too could make some bugs in future as my R.O.I. on the time (spend/wasted) emanating my (blog/sort of blog)
saurabh: abe manu yeh sahi rahega bey...??
manvendra2610 is busy.
saurabh: haan bhai bol
saurabh is idle
manvendra2610: bhai kal hai mega launch website ka...!! yaar ek kaam kar
saurabh: kya bol?
manvendra2610: http://www.kampus.co.in/ ye url apne blog pe daal le..
saurabh: ok..
manvendra2610: okay...ab thanks kya bolu..
saurabh: arre..bilkul nahin bey
manvendra2610: haan wahi soch rahe the..
Sent at 11:18 PM on Friday
Sentence correction exercise: Bellow is the choice between next right and wrong move... so go ahead !!!
Now that you have been (spending/wasting) so much of your (precious/idle) time (following/ criticizing) my (fabulous/moronic) blog, it would be an (intelligent/excellent) investment to hit the above link and have some really (great/smart) R.O.I. And my (angle/self-interest) in this move is may be Ur greater number of clicks hand me some more such (stuff/stuffs) and I too could make some bugs in future as my R.O.I. on the time (spend/wasted) emanating my (blog/sort of blog)
saurabh: abe manu yeh sahi rahega bey...??
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