Once there was a rainbow and she was tired of being so many colours and by being whisked around by the rain and buffeted by the clouds so much and poked and prodded by the bounty hunters. So she went away and sulked and sulked. And it poured and she didnt come out. And the birds sang and she didnt come out. And the world spun like everything was okay, but something, something was missing....
You see rainbow didn't want to be ordinary, a mongrel, anymore. She wanted to be - well somebody! "Maybe she could pick a colour to be?" (the helpful west wind suggested). Mongrel rainbow picked red. She went very very red, and wanted all the cherries to bow to her. But then she washed out completely when the sun went down, and the sky looked like it was tearing in two! And her friends the trees stopped standing on their tippy toes to melt into her greenness, and she longed for molten gold to glisten through her yellowness, and drip into the pot at the end of it.
And while she went from red to blue to indigo, and tried every new colour in front of the mirror, and twirled to see how gorgeous she looked, somewhere, someone she knew began to forget her.
.... one day, as she sat a wierd shade of purpley blue, not likingher new look at all (it made her eyes look sunk in her mother complained), raindrop came calling. Could she, please, consider, returning to a diffused state of whiteness? You see, people, birds, insects, couldn't quite see the raindrop anymore, and cursed him so, for catching them unawares.
And rainbow looked up at him and knew, that somewhere we fall in love with only those parts of people that are the colour that we are ourselves. And to have the colours of the whole world within you, you must needs be a mongrel, with no home, and at the beck and call, and push and prod, of people who look up to see, yes they belong too, to a part of the whole of this mad whirl of colours across the world. And rainbow took raindrop's hand, and became, oh so ordinar, just-diffused-whiteness again.
The end.
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Fiction: The first apostle
When the winter winds had blown the sands of the great Sahara across the cities and towns, and brought the harmattan early, an old innkeeper and his wife, joyful even at the end of a tired day, despite what they saw everyday as the curse of their childlessness, hurried to shutter the windows to keep the sand out of their eyes. The old man, in the wind, heard the cry of an infant child. Rushing to see what mother and child could be out at a time like this, the innkeeper found to his dismay, an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, thin, and on the verge of death, fingers turned blue from the dry cold, with only the blazing light in his dark dark eyes - as black as large, fresh olives - left on the doorstep in a reed basket.
Praising god, and the welcome aid to their old age, the inkeeper and his wife, took the child in, and on the following Sabbath, threw a great feast for the people of the town, emptying their meagre coffers to spread their joy.
And it was all good. For the boy, under the loving care of his foster parents, grew to be simple, and strong, and a sturdy support for them in their old age. And no job was too difficult, or came too late, nor was he ever too tired, or too angry, or too busy to do their bidding. And the animals were fed, and the floors were washed, and the tables cleared, and the customers attended to, and the food served to them warm at nights.
And the boy would retire to the manger, where he nuzzled the cows and felt the warmth of their breath upon him protectively. And when his father looked in upon him at nights he would notice that his son had not slept. But rather kept open those bright bright eyes, as if still waiting.
And the worried father, in his quiet moments wondered if he was too harsh on the child. For he was never seen playing, or laughing, or doing things that other boys did. And while the other young men went to the village dances, or teased the maidens, or played on their lutes by the village fire, or drank the wine, and prepared for their futures, the child - now a young man - when his tasks were through, went to the back of the inn, and stood there, as though waiting, waiting, waiting, eternally.
And one day, the census was announced. And the travellers came thick and fast. And they were all tired, and were all hungry and they had all travelled long distances to be counted. And the hall was filled with men who had met their mates after years of being away, and so was filled with raucous laughter and free flowing ale. And the innkeeper and his wife, and his son, were tired from it all, and yet the night was filled with the energy of so many people, happy to be home, that neither the innkeeper nor his family felt the tiredness.
And when it was all almost done, there came a knock on the door. "No room for more, no more food" said the innkeeper, tired now of repeating it, thoguh he had never had occasion to say it before in his life. "But she is with child" said the young man, nervously, quietly, not beseeching, just tired of hearing "no".
When he felt a tug on his shirt sleeve. "But there is room".
And the guests looked at into the olive black eyes gratefully, and with many blessings in their gratitude, while the innkeeper wondered, but said nothing.
While his mother rustled up some bread, and the few leftovers in the kitchen that she had been saving for the boy's breakfast, and poured some warmed milk into a glass for the mother-to-be, the boy laid thick rugs on the straw of the manger floor, that still smelt of warm fresh dung, despite having been washed only that morning. He quietened the animals, the donkeys, the cows, their two roosters - all excited by the presence of stangers. And opened the top ventilator of a window so that some fresh air and moonlight could stream into the room, but not the fine, fine sand. He brought them some water warmed in a jug, with which to wash their hands and their faces. And set another bucket outside their door. He gave them the freshest linen, taken from his mother's camphor chest, and smelling of cinnamon, and other spices.
And then he sat outside in the moonlight, and strummed his lute, and waited no more.
And when the dawn was born, there was the cry of a child, and the lowing of the cows, and the sounds of mirth rejuvenated from the inn within. And the innkeeper called and called out to his son, but the boy did not come.
And some said, in the days that came, that he had been spotted playing his lute over in the mountains, where the sheep grazed, near galilee, in the east, where the boats docked. And some said he was found, and then lost.
And though the boy was lost, and the census was over, since that day, the people flocked to the town, which grew by its curious pilgrims, to be a town, and then a great city, and the fortunes of its people paved over the now-in-ruins inn with the blessings of prosperity that its people once never dreamed of. For it was a city made sacred by the meeting of many wise and the learned and devoted, the simple and the strong, the seeking, and the found, for the people, though they spake in different tongues, knelt in many different ways before the self-same god.
And it is said in this city to this day, be not unkind to any child, any man, any woman who comes to your door - for you know not whether it may be god, or the child of god, or his servant sent to pave his way. And may your homes and your towns and your cities and the futures of all its people be blessed, if you do not turn a child, born or unborn, from your door.
Praising god, and the welcome aid to their old age, the inkeeper and his wife, took the child in, and on the following Sabbath, threw a great feast for the people of the town, emptying their meagre coffers to spread their joy.
And it was all good. For the boy, under the loving care of his foster parents, grew to be simple, and strong, and a sturdy support for them in their old age. And no job was too difficult, or came too late, nor was he ever too tired, or too angry, or too busy to do their bidding. And the animals were fed, and the floors were washed, and the tables cleared, and the customers attended to, and the food served to them warm at nights.
And the boy would retire to the manger, where he nuzzled the cows and felt the warmth of their breath upon him protectively. And when his father looked in upon him at nights he would notice that his son had not slept. But rather kept open those bright bright eyes, as if still waiting.
And the worried father, in his quiet moments wondered if he was too harsh on the child. For he was never seen playing, or laughing, or doing things that other boys did. And while the other young men went to the village dances, or teased the maidens, or played on their lutes by the village fire, or drank the wine, and prepared for their futures, the child - now a young man - when his tasks were through, went to the back of the inn, and stood there, as though waiting, waiting, waiting, eternally.
And one day, the census was announced. And the travellers came thick and fast. And they were all tired, and were all hungry and they had all travelled long distances to be counted. And the hall was filled with men who had met their mates after years of being away, and so was filled with raucous laughter and free flowing ale. And the innkeeper and his wife, and his son, were tired from it all, and yet the night was filled with the energy of so many people, happy to be home, that neither the innkeeper nor his family felt the tiredness.
And when it was all almost done, there came a knock on the door. "No room for more, no more food" said the innkeeper, tired now of repeating it, thoguh he had never had occasion to say it before in his life. "But she is with child" said the young man, nervously, quietly, not beseeching, just tired of hearing "no".
When he felt a tug on his shirt sleeve. "But there is room".
And the guests looked at into the olive black eyes gratefully, and with many blessings in their gratitude, while the innkeeper wondered, but said nothing.
While his mother rustled up some bread, and the few leftovers in the kitchen that she had been saving for the boy's breakfast, and poured some warmed milk into a glass for the mother-to-be, the boy laid thick rugs on the straw of the manger floor, that still smelt of warm fresh dung, despite having been washed only that morning. He quietened the animals, the donkeys, the cows, their two roosters - all excited by the presence of stangers. And opened the top ventilator of a window so that some fresh air and moonlight could stream into the room, but not the fine, fine sand. He brought them some water warmed in a jug, with which to wash their hands and their faces. And set another bucket outside their door. He gave them the freshest linen, taken from his mother's camphor chest, and smelling of cinnamon, and other spices.
And then he sat outside in the moonlight, and strummed his lute, and waited no more.
And when the dawn was born, there was the cry of a child, and the lowing of the cows, and the sounds of mirth rejuvenated from the inn within. And the innkeeper called and called out to his son, but the boy did not come.
And some said, in the days that came, that he had been spotted playing his lute over in the mountains, where the sheep grazed, near galilee, in the east, where the boats docked. And some said he was found, and then lost.
And though the boy was lost, and the census was over, since that day, the people flocked to the town, which grew by its curious pilgrims, to be a town, and then a great city, and the fortunes of its people paved over the now-in-ruins inn with the blessings of prosperity that its people once never dreamed of. For it was a city made sacred by the meeting of many wise and the learned and devoted, the simple and the strong, the seeking, and the found, for the people, though they spake in different tongues, knelt in many different ways before the self-same god.
And it is said in this city to this day, be not unkind to any child, any man, any woman who comes to your door - for you know not whether it may be god, or the child of god, or his servant sent to pave his way. And may your homes and your towns and your cities and the futures of all its people be blessed, if you do not turn a child, born or unborn, from your door.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Adventures of Madhuri - chapter 1
Chapter 1: Off the roundabout Madhuri Murungakay swung off the back of the double decker bus just as it swerved in a swooping arch around the sainted circle. Chiffon chunni gaily dotted with yellow daisies, smaller versions of the larger and brighter ones on her salwar below, and edged with orange piping that reflected off the stripes of the kurta and her cotton tiffin bag lined in plastic, Madhuri, for some reason irksome to the bored Monday morning multitudes around her, was happy.
She positively twinkled with joy, and her shiny glass bangles coloured in a metallic tint no less, and purchased only yesterday morning at the front porch of her grandmother’s leafy Matunga home, one of the few to still have wither leaves or porches to boast of – reminded her with each twinkle of the fact that no Monday morning training programme could impinge on her good humour.
The roundabout braced itself for the careening overloaded bus, and seemed to shrink back in anticipation of who would take the jump this morning. The wrapper from Vela Venkat’s chocolate bar lay on an aloe vera plant pot at its rim. A twelve year old boy was sticking up posters of the job fair around it and had decided to take a nap under the left over leaves stacked on the cans. The idle black and yellow taxi drivers rimmed it with their beedi butts, and the roundabout would have liked to tell them it was meant for and built for greater things in South Mumbai – Mercedeses and BMWs skirted it gracefully, and elegant young women pointed their polished nails towards its magical fountain stones while asking the way to someplace or the other. But of late, over the past ten years or so actually, the riff raff had grown and the respect had decreased. The roundabout was feeling extremely defaced. And it wondered, like the officers at the Vidhan sabha beyond who gathered round to share-a-cab at 5.15 every evening, would this country ever change?
Landing ever so lightly on her unheeled chappals with the deftness of a seasoned commuter, and letting go of the central pole of the bus in motion at just about the right time, Madhuri tossed her braid behind her, tossed her ticket into the hoary garden of the roundabout and walked in the general direction of somewhere intelligent, like a gymnast whose performance is to be rated by the elegance of the walk away. Taking a mental note of the appreciative glances of the bleary eyed boys in the corner tea stall, much woken up by this vision of sprightliness before them, Madhuri marched off to ask the way to Tulsiani chambers well in time for her interview.
Shankar Shana had woken up on the wrong side of bed that morning – literally. Instead of waking up on his right, he placed his unusually large feet on the left of the little wooden cot. Not only did the cot groan, but Shankar’s little sister, Shendi, got his foot squarely in her face. She was not in the least pleased. Shankar merely removed his foot, looked around the one room kitchen in Dadar, the Godrej cupboard his brother had got as dowry when he married five years ago with a suitcase used for trips to nani’s house in Pune, and sighed. He could not go into the kitchen to brush his teeth until bhabhi had finished dressing for work, so he went to the corridor like balcony that ran the length of the building, and that connected the Shanas to their ten neighbours homes, taking care not to step on the brightly coloured rangoli little Sowmya next door painstakingly drew out every dawn, and foamed away at the mouth in full public view. At least, he thought to himself, Sunita or whatever her name was in the window opposite would need to change her clothes for work in about a minute or two.
Baba would be back from his night shift in an hour. He had taken voluntary retirement from a mill company – one of the fortunate few to have been offered any compensation at all – and now worked as a night security supervisor for an industrial unit at Mhape. Bhau, Sundar bhau, was at the local shakha most of the time. He was under training to be a local politician and took care of affairs of the neighbourhood – water shortages, garbage collection, procuring ration cards and school admissions for the neighbours kids, etc, etc. But frankly, as long as the family did not have to pay his debts or fight off his creditors, they were pretty much happy to not know what exactly it was he did.
All the peace in the house, and there sure was plenty of that they all acknowledged, was thanks to Savita bhabhi. Ever since bhau had married her their fortunes had changed. She was fair, tall, and sweet natured. She was convent educated and worked as a typist in a local IT office. The IT company handled clients from overseas – America and the UK, and when bhabhi worked late, and air conditioned car dropped her to her doorstep. It was a matter of great prestige. Even the boys at the maidan knew – Shankar’s bhabhi was a class apart.
His cell phone rang, it was Lala. But Sunita had just come to the window and he was too distracted to talk. He quickly smsed back "Mt at rndabt. Will go frm there" it said, and quickly turned back to await the proceedings of the day. Today the boys were heading for the job fair at the Bhaut Bachta maidan. There were going to be present companies from more than ten cities. Shankar had heard of boys whose lives had changed overnight at these places – jobs in America, accommodation, fat salaries, cars, happy marriages, everything could fall into place on a good day. Today was a good day. He instinctively looked away as Sunita across the road changed her clothes, and he felt the virtue well up inside his heart and choke his throat, obliterating any memory of his sister’s yelps as he had had landed one of his large feet on her face. He was a good man, and on good days, good things happen to good men.
Usha Uttam was in no mood for jokes or pranks this morning. She wrinkled her brows at the taxi men and conveyed her sentiments to his request for change. She need have said no more. Indeed, she didn’t. Ramram Bhole, migrant from Bihar, was used to the Mumbai madam. He could spot them by the clack clack of their heels, the labels of their jeans pant, and the way the clasps of their bags were always turned inwards towards their bosoms, ample or otherwise. The pickpockets steered clear of them too, particularly at peak hours, where one too many an eager pilferer had been bashed and ear twisted by hoards of window seat hungry home going women. The second season in which to stay away, Bhole could have told you, was the monsoons, when each armed herself with that weapon of mass destruction – the pointy folding umbrella that jabbed easily into an eve teaser’s side, and the plastic rainy chappal – bound to sting and rebound even, when used as a slapping device. These were the women who, on the flip side, always carried change, and produced reams of gossip uttered in loud and clear tones in the backseat of the cab. They also took down your taxi number and licence number in a pinch. Ramram had been wisely well taught never to argue with them. He merely picked the coins off the dashboard and turning to madam said "Rs 7 madam, have nice day."
Usha, late for her morning round of interviews at the head office, and expecting another set of fresh graduates over enthusiastic and under trained, merely grunted in the most polite fashion possible and pulled up the latch of the door, as if it were a reluctant fate unwilling to do her bidding. "Test B" she thought to herself viciously to herself for no apparent reason, "the hard one!"
Sure enough, the elevator line to the left, the visitors’ line, was almost like a candidate shopping grocery shelf. Usha eliminated them as her line shortened, "but" she said, sucking in her stomach, "we shall give them one fair chance, each."
Madhuri nervously gripped her folder to her chest and sat as primly as she could. She had read that the true sign of a well bred woman is one who never crosses her legs in company, merely her ankles, and as uncomfortable a pose as it was to hold, she held it now, hoping it made her look composed. And she fervently hoped no one knew how nervously numb she was feeling at this moment.
Vela Venkat, sitting across from her listlessly, was watching her every move and the continually contorting facial expressions, wondering if she was in some sort of pain. He was just about to ask when Usha Uttam, clattered noisily, but purposefully, into the room to make an announcement.
‘Thank you all for coming," she said, looking at nobody in particular. "You will shortly be handed a written test for which you will have twenty minutes to complete." We will speak to you individually after your results are discussed. Now, please take coffee from the pantry."
Even Madhuri, who had never tasted coffee before, obediently filed out of the room to find the shelter of the coffee machine.
The coffee machine, one that dispensed three flavours of cappuccino no less, and all for free, was lodged against a glass door that cordoned off the rest of the office from the vestibule that held the newcomers. It loomed and waned, it waxed and grew in importance, even mightier than the bumbling graduates that bowed before it, trying to figure out the instructions in more than three languages-two too many than they knew-on it. It was probably the most crucial part of management recruitment strategy, but Madhuri didn’t know that, to overawe newcomers and beat down the asking price. After having seen the always glittering glass room – air conditioned, with more computers than any of them had ever seen in a room before, impeccably dressed and confident executives barely older than they were bubbling with enthusiasm, confidence, purpose, and more importantly, obviously money – who wouldn’t want to join. By the time the mandatory coffee break was done, Madhuri, Vela Venkat and the rest of them, were ready to be plucked.
Usha Uttam could have sharpened her brain with a sharpener that morning if there was such an appliance and it could not have been sharper, or have shone more menacingly than it did now. The company was growing, and she had in front of her a target of recruiting 1000 new graduates to fulfil the companies need within the next six months. This first phase was going good, and as the graduates filed back into the room eager to be picked, it was almost as if she could smell fresh, young blood.
She positively twinkled with joy, and her shiny glass bangles coloured in a metallic tint no less, and purchased only yesterday morning at the front porch of her grandmother’s leafy Matunga home, one of the few to still have wither leaves or porches to boast of – reminded her with each twinkle of the fact that no Monday morning training programme could impinge on her good humour.
The roundabout braced itself for the careening overloaded bus, and seemed to shrink back in anticipation of who would take the jump this morning. The wrapper from Vela Venkat’s chocolate bar lay on an aloe vera plant pot at its rim. A twelve year old boy was sticking up posters of the job fair around it and had decided to take a nap under the left over leaves stacked on the cans. The idle black and yellow taxi drivers rimmed it with their beedi butts, and the roundabout would have liked to tell them it was meant for and built for greater things in South Mumbai – Mercedeses and BMWs skirted it gracefully, and elegant young women pointed their polished nails towards its magical fountain stones while asking the way to someplace or the other. But of late, over the past ten years or so actually, the riff raff had grown and the respect had decreased. The roundabout was feeling extremely defaced. And it wondered, like the officers at the Vidhan sabha beyond who gathered round to share-a-cab at 5.15 every evening, would this country ever change?
Landing ever so lightly on her unheeled chappals with the deftness of a seasoned commuter, and letting go of the central pole of the bus in motion at just about the right time, Madhuri tossed her braid behind her, tossed her ticket into the hoary garden of the roundabout and walked in the general direction of somewhere intelligent, like a gymnast whose performance is to be rated by the elegance of the walk away. Taking a mental note of the appreciative glances of the bleary eyed boys in the corner tea stall, much woken up by this vision of sprightliness before them, Madhuri marched off to ask the way to Tulsiani chambers well in time for her interview.
Shankar Shana had woken up on the wrong side of bed that morning – literally. Instead of waking up on his right, he placed his unusually large feet on the left of the little wooden cot. Not only did the cot groan, but Shankar’s little sister, Shendi, got his foot squarely in her face. She was not in the least pleased. Shankar merely removed his foot, looked around the one room kitchen in Dadar, the Godrej cupboard his brother had got as dowry when he married five years ago with a suitcase used for trips to nani’s house in Pune, and sighed. He could not go into the kitchen to brush his teeth until bhabhi had finished dressing for work, so he went to the corridor like balcony that ran the length of the building, and that connected the Shanas to their ten neighbours homes, taking care not to step on the brightly coloured rangoli little Sowmya next door painstakingly drew out every dawn, and foamed away at the mouth in full public view. At least, he thought to himself, Sunita or whatever her name was in the window opposite would need to change her clothes for work in about a minute or two.
Baba would be back from his night shift in an hour. He had taken voluntary retirement from a mill company – one of the fortunate few to have been offered any compensation at all – and now worked as a night security supervisor for an industrial unit at Mhape. Bhau, Sundar bhau, was at the local shakha most of the time. He was under training to be a local politician and took care of affairs of the neighbourhood – water shortages, garbage collection, procuring ration cards and school admissions for the neighbours kids, etc, etc. But frankly, as long as the family did not have to pay his debts or fight off his creditors, they were pretty much happy to not know what exactly it was he did.
All the peace in the house, and there sure was plenty of that they all acknowledged, was thanks to Savita bhabhi. Ever since bhau had married her their fortunes had changed. She was fair, tall, and sweet natured. She was convent educated and worked as a typist in a local IT office. The IT company handled clients from overseas – America and the UK, and when bhabhi worked late, and air conditioned car dropped her to her doorstep. It was a matter of great prestige. Even the boys at the maidan knew – Shankar’s bhabhi was a class apart.
His cell phone rang, it was Lala. But Sunita had just come to the window and he was too distracted to talk. He quickly smsed back "Mt at rndabt. Will go frm there" it said, and quickly turned back to await the proceedings of the day. Today the boys were heading for the job fair at the Bhaut Bachta maidan. There were going to be present companies from more than ten cities. Shankar had heard of boys whose lives had changed overnight at these places – jobs in America, accommodation, fat salaries, cars, happy marriages, everything could fall into place on a good day. Today was a good day. He instinctively looked away as Sunita across the road changed her clothes, and he felt the virtue well up inside his heart and choke his throat, obliterating any memory of his sister’s yelps as he had had landed one of his large feet on her face. He was a good man, and on good days, good things happen to good men.
Usha Uttam was in no mood for jokes or pranks this morning. She wrinkled her brows at the taxi men and conveyed her sentiments to his request for change. She need have said no more. Indeed, she didn’t. Ramram Bhole, migrant from Bihar, was used to the Mumbai madam. He could spot them by the clack clack of their heels, the labels of their jeans pant, and the way the clasps of their bags were always turned inwards towards their bosoms, ample or otherwise. The pickpockets steered clear of them too, particularly at peak hours, where one too many an eager pilferer had been bashed and ear twisted by hoards of window seat hungry home going women. The second season in which to stay away, Bhole could have told you, was the monsoons, when each armed herself with that weapon of mass destruction – the pointy folding umbrella that jabbed easily into an eve teaser’s side, and the plastic rainy chappal – bound to sting and rebound even, when used as a slapping device. These were the women who, on the flip side, always carried change, and produced reams of gossip uttered in loud and clear tones in the backseat of the cab. They also took down your taxi number and licence number in a pinch. Ramram had been wisely well taught never to argue with them. He merely picked the coins off the dashboard and turning to madam said "Rs 7 madam, have nice day."
Usha, late for her morning round of interviews at the head office, and expecting another set of fresh graduates over enthusiastic and under trained, merely grunted in the most polite fashion possible and pulled up the latch of the door, as if it were a reluctant fate unwilling to do her bidding. "Test B" she thought to herself viciously to herself for no apparent reason, "the hard one!"
Sure enough, the elevator line to the left, the visitors’ line, was almost like a candidate shopping grocery shelf. Usha eliminated them as her line shortened, "but" she said, sucking in her stomach, "we shall give them one fair chance, each."
Madhuri nervously gripped her folder to her chest and sat as primly as she could. She had read that the true sign of a well bred woman is one who never crosses her legs in company, merely her ankles, and as uncomfortable a pose as it was to hold, she held it now, hoping it made her look composed. And she fervently hoped no one knew how nervously numb she was feeling at this moment.
Vela Venkat, sitting across from her listlessly, was watching her every move and the continually contorting facial expressions, wondering if she was in some sort of pain. He was just about to ask when Usha Uttam, clattered noisily, but purposefully, into the room to make an announcement.
‘Thank you all for coming," she said, looking at nobody in particular. "You will shortly be handed a written test for which you will have twenty minutes to complete." We will speak to you individually after your results are discussed. Now, please take coffee from the pantry."
Even Madhuri, who had never tasted coffee before, obediently filed out of the room to find the shelter of the coffee machine.
The coffee machine, one that dispensed three flavours of cappuccino no less, and all for free, was lodged against a glass door that cordoned off the rest of the office from the vestibule that held the newcomers. It loomed and waned, it waxed and grew in importance, even mightier than the bumbling graduates that bowed before it, trying to figure out the instructions in more than three languages-two too many than they knew-on it. It was probably the most crucial part of management recruitment strategy, but Madhuri didn’t know that, to overawe newcomers and beat down the asking price. After having seen the always glittering glass room – air conditioned, with more computers than any of them had ever seen in a room before, impeccably dressed and confident executives barely older than they were bubbling with enthusiasm, confidence, purpose, and more importantly, obviously money – who wouldn’t want to join. By the time the mandatory coffee break was done, Madhuri, Vela Venkat and the rest of them, were ready to be plucked.
Usha Uttam could have sharpened her brain with a sharpener that morning if there was such an appliance and it could not have been sharper, or have shone more menacingly than it did now. The company was growing, and she had in front of her a target of recruiting 1000 new graduates to fulfil the companies need within the next six months. This first phase was going good, and as the graduates filed back into the room eager to be picked, it was almost as if she could smell fresh, young blood.
Chapter 2: Exodus
Ch 2: exodus
For days after the hearing staying the legislation against the recognition of any form of sexual activity that was not heterosexual, the civil administration watched for reactions with a menacingly raised eyebrow. But there was silence. It was most uncharacteristic. There were no demonstrations, no appeals, no impassioned calls for freedom, no threats of appealing to international courts of human rights. The social organization that had floated the petition whistled their way about their regular day jobs as if embarrassed to be reminded of the attempt. When eager press people thrust their mikes and cameras into their faces, they appeared puzzled, confused, bemused even, and offered no screaming sound bytes worth the replay, and soon faded from public memory. The writers, the musicians, the artists, the designers, the film stars, the politicians, the editors who had chosen to ignore the deadline when the buzz died down, turned the other way, pretended it had never come to pass. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, and it seemed as if the turn of events had never quite turned to begin with.
And then it began. The first reports came in from the north eastern hilly states. It was innocuous enough. A girl, and her lesbian lover, had defied the village panchayat’s orders of marriage and run away together. It was presumed they had traveled to one of the big cities. Local news agencies caught the report and ran it for a few weeks.
A missing person’s report was filed, both in their village, and in the Big City. The Big City chief police inspector had tugged at his belt, brandished his lathi and assured the girl’s father that if they were found in this jurisdiction, they would surely be "deposited safely under my own personal assurance I give you." Ha ha, raised eyebrow, wink, wink. "We know how to deal with these types. Don’t worry sir, we will sort it out. You go back, sir, and make preparations for her safe arrival."
That frightened her father a little, and he hoped fervently his daughter would be found closer home, and reluctantly to himself, even more fervently that she would not be found at all.
Months later, it was closer south, in a little district of thatch roof houses where reporters had never yet ventured. A labourer tribal, and his best friend had held hands and walked off into the moonlight. It was suspected that they were under the influence of locally grown weed and had stumbled into a forest trap, to be mauled by its prey instead. The villagers had stopped their half-hearted searching by the weekend, and the collector closed the file and, tying it with fraying flat cotton thread, put it away in the stack of red and white cardboard files in the storage shed.
It was only when Salvatore arrived by flight IC243 for diplomatic work and disappeared mysteriously from a Big City farmhouse that an inquiry was instituted. But investigating officers on the trail were looking at unraveling a potentially career breaking political conspiracy- a theory that would take him to exotic foreign locations and safely off the right mark for quite a few months sniggered Andrea to himself, standing in shabbiest Big City bus depot he had ever stood in, still jetlagged from his turbulent ride over from Italy, but looking forward to ending his dual life.
Over the next few months, the various Big City police chowkis across the country remained oblivious that they were collectedly registering a calculatedly minimal increase in missing people’s reports at systematically periodic intervals – runaway teens, boys, girls, mothers, high ranking professionals, artists, foreign nationals from local ashrams. A local newspaper did a Sunday feature story on how more and more executives were losing interest in high paying jobs, quitting at a days notice, and heading for sabbaticals, years off, solitary retreats. It was termed the quarter-life crisis by a panel of dignified city psychologists on a local chat show and spawned a series of self-help books, a column, and a franchise of yoga classes for a year to come.
And then for some days, those who surreptitiously watched the newspapers warily breathed a sigh of relief, for there was nothing. Their silence was as palpable as their own. There was apparently no one in clickety clack editorial, bureaucratic or regional administrative offices who noticed anything askew.
And one by one, day by day, they folded their papers at breakfast, drained their cups of tea, kissed their wives and mothers and sleeping children goodbye with exceptional warmth, and walked out of doors never to return. They piled into rickety state transport buses, took circuitous train routes switching from meter to broad gauge to toy trains to backtracking cart rides and hitching lifts on the backs of passing trucks.
One by one, they arrived. Some under cover of darkness. Some still in the shirt sleeves they would have presented papers to boards of directors in, some in the clothes they went to bed in the previous night. None had stopped to change, to rest, to eat, to be clean. It didn’t matter anymore. They had to reach before they were found and stopped. Before this moment in time changed. Before their spirits were broken. Before the inevitable story was broken.
One day, it broke. There was a small wire report, in the small one cc block tucked in besides the classified ads of an overbooked glossy travel supplement, in a local vernacular newspaper-a quiet eastern hamlet had been reporting a boom in tourism from all over the world. Three months later, tt was picked up by a foreign news channel looking for exotic stories in third world countries, and soon enough, the first TV news crew sporting a dish on its red roof rumbled its way past the deodhar tree, looking for signs of a tourist boom. It helped that heavy construction, migrant settlements, and lack of infrastructure hid the settlement from prying eyes, making it an unlikely visit for anyone more than a local district farmer going up in life. And the immigrants held their breath, crossed their fingers, blew each other good lucks kisses, and carried their prayers, their deepest desires, their innermost dreams, their hope against hope, deep in their hearts, with candles lighted in their mind’s eye, and the tension taut across their insomnia-furrowed, jet-lagged, bumpy-bus ridden brows.
And from that simultaneous pause in breath, and the common prayer, Mannat was born, and led them, it was said, to it.
------
Mannat was one of those almost a small town and not quite a village stops off a not quite a road and not nearly a dirt track leading up from National Highway 54 en route towards a small hill in the distance. The new bits of the village-town had grown up and around its foothills and clung on like a vine to a scraggly old tree.
Anyone could see that it had the makings of a handsome town albeit a higgledy-piggledy one. The bungalows in the center had obviously, though worse for want of qualified architects, been constructed on lavish scales, with no thought to limitations of space or design or time. Some were traditional havelis, or fisher cottages from the coast—clear replicas of the kinds of houses the immigrants once lived in and edifices of their nostalgia; others were shabby rebuilds of English cottages borrowed from magazines and books, or from the scatterings of colonial design that still spotted the countryside in the hills; others were makeshift art deco, with polished wood and a sophisticated pageantry that tuck out oddly in an already hotchpotch town. In between were the simple mud and brick two-storey structures with brick grills for ventilation, painted in candy floss pink, and decorated with gaudy hand murals.
The administrative offices were the same as administrative offices anywhere – plain rectangular boxes of regulation brick and mortar, chipped away at parts where dulling paint had been patched over with whitewash in as short a time as it had taken to construct them- but inside they were gaily decorated with warli art, bandhini curtains, flowers, and a couple of comfy armchairs for the visitor and administrator alike, and most oddly, an antique writing desk cum library sourced from Cochin’s Jewish quarter – all donated by friendly residents, when refurbishing, or when a family member had passed on. It was more a recipient of welfare than one that could dole out any, but yet seeming cheerily confident that it could more than manage to do so.
Mannat had a square and a walkway around it where the watermelon sellers still sat under canopies as if painted into a lithograph of a time gone by. Next to them on the perpendicular axis the walkway was rimmed with hot food sellers who came on stage one by one, greeted each other, exchanged a few pleasantries as they set up their makeshift stalls whose wafts filled and flavoured the already musty evening air--kababs, rolls, boiled eggs, skewered pineapple tandoori, and roasted corn and peanuts.
Couples strolled in the now evening light, arm in arm, as if dressed for fiestas, the men in their formal and stately best, the women, elegant and anything but casual—some in long skirts, full sleeved blouses under their saris, and some in trousers, beneath which their open toed sandals peeped bright splashes of coloured nail or ornate figure sketches of recently filigreed mehendi.
In the twilight, you could barely notice the faces, but you could smell the clash of expensive perfumes, by now in their second notes of the day, and men’s clashing with women’s. Some of the women wore the bright blossoms of the frangipani in their hair, some of the men wore them in their Cambridge shirt pockets, and if one looked closely enough the streetlight bounced off the pancakes off the couples faces where the make up was hastily applied, and some of the lipsticks gleamed glossy in the twilight air. There were black men – tall, hardy, gleaming skin hand in hand with little timid Caucasians. There were fat women, of all sizes, strolling some with each other, some with a male partner, some with castaway runway models, and dandies with moustaches, older women with younger men, sugar daddies with their eye candy on their arms, alabaster queens with pumpkin pies, and two distracted youth, barely out of school.
And they were chattering, prattering, sharing jokes, nodding la politesse to each other, gently touching, watching each other as much as themselves for new signs of expression, giveaways of warmth or discomfort.
Most had returned from mundane jobs they were unqualified for. Jojo Mukherjea, the lawyer, was teaching math in the newly set up school. He was also its administrative officer, and canteen supervisor at this point. And since there was no recognition forthcoming from any sort of external government, he also pondered along with a group of well meaning but ill qualified men for the task, the status of its board and curriculum. Sylvester, his man at arms, was involved in the more arduous task of finding land for the new settlers, for he knew, and pressed it upon everyone else to know, that it was only a matter of time before someone somewhere demand deeds of land holding, rights of occupancy, questioned the legitimacy of his unplanned mass exodus, immigration – the first of its kind in he history of man.
In the corner, already collecting around him a gang of cohorts, was Sunny. He was young, and cheerful, and his smiles hid twinkles of pain, and his jokes hid his longing to see his parents again. And Schauna, the architect, who could not bring herself to mingle, or work, who held her knees and sobbed into her plate at the community mess. She would get herself together, it was just a matter of time. Or Maitri the doctor, who looked as though she was not even here for her freedom, but because the town had forgotten in might need a doctor, for the children, and the aged, and the tired, and the dehydrated. She had come with medicines, with bottles full of colours and textures that spoke only to her, and went from door to door, full of quiet confidence, and simple advice.
Already, the town was grouping, forming, finding its binding elements, and cohering to create its core of strength. Already it seemed as if these people had been here forever. Already, there were seniors and juniors, and leaders and followers. And already, while some took in the scene with pride, others looked upon it with worry.
Durga Soudamini, who had more to worry about than even land, could not stroll, even on a night like this. Alone in her still shack – she put behind her her raw sense of betrayal at a lover who had not found the courage to come, and assuring herself that it was only a matter of time- in her lighted balcony partly up the hill, she paced two for every one the crowd beneath her in the square took.
She had taken upon herself the tasks of commander-in-chief of the army, chief of police, and maintainer of law and order. It was the lesser of the settlement’s priorities – plumbing and drinking water more on the chief’s mind, and finding a perennial source of fresh fruit and vegetables without having to trudge down to the nearest bazaar 5 miles down, on everybody elses, but Durga knew deep down inside of her, everytime someone spoke of finding land or even hoisting a clothesline, that they would come, sooner than later for their land, for their people, for the protection of their institutions – school, law, marriage. They would come angry and unwilling to listen, hurt by the rebuttal of their centuries of authority, thirsting for redressal, and seeking to be justified. Insecure, wounded-the worst kind of enemies to do battle with.
And when they did, and when the new laws, and the constitutions, and the education, and the reason, and the wall of men had all failed, as Durga, silently avowed they would, she would be the one who would have to ready for them. And she looked at the land stretched out beneath her, with its strolling people, and their strolling dreams, for themselves, for their children, for their world, yes, even for the people of the Big City who so wantonly had hurt them, denying them their basic right to be, and she was never more sure that she would die fighting for their right to be free.
For days after the hearing staying the legislation against the recognition of any form of sexual activity that was not heterosexual, the civil administration watched for reactions with a menacingly raised eyebrow. But there was silence. It was most uncharacteristic. There were no demonstrations, no appeals, no impassioned calls for freedom, no threats of appealing to international courts of human rights. The social organization that had floated the petition whistled their way about their regular day jobs as if embarrassed to be reminded of the attempt. When eager press people thrust their mikes and cameras into their faces, they appeared puzzled, confused, bemused even, and offered no screaming sound bytes worth the replay, and soon faded from public memory. The writers, the musicians, the artists, the designers, the film stars, the politicians, the editors who had chosen to ignore the deadline when the buzz died down, turned the other way, pretended it had never come to pass. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, and it seemed as if the turn of events had never quite turned to begin with.
And then it began. The first reports came in from the north eastern hilly states. It was innocuous enough. A girl, and her lesbian lover, had defied the village panchayat’s orders of marriage and run away together. It was presumed they had traveled to one of the big cities. Local news agencies caught the report and ran it for a few weeks.
A missing person’s report was filed, both in their village, and in the Big City. The Big City chief police inspector had tugged at his belt, brandished his lathi and assured the girl’s father that if they were found in this jurisdiction, they would surely be "deposited safely under my own personal assurance I give you." Ha ha, raised eyebrow, wink, wink. "We know how to deal with these types. Don’t worry sir, we will sort it out. You go back, sir, and make preparations for her safe arrival."
That frightened her father a little, and he hoped fervently his daughter would be found closer home, and reluctantly to himself, even more fervently that she would not be found at all.
Months later, it was closer south, in a little district of thatch roof houses where reporters had never yet ventured. A labourer tribal, and his best friend had held hands and walked off into the moonlight. It was suspected that they were under the influence of locally grown weed and had stumbled into a forest trap, to be mauled by its prey instead. The villagers had stopped their half-hearted searching by the weekend, and the collector closed the file and, tying it with fraying flat cotton thread, put it away in the stack of red and white cardboard files in the storage shed.
It was only when Salvatore arrived by flight IC243 for diplomatic work and disappeared mysteriously from a Big City farmhouse that an inquiry was instituted. But investigating officers on the trail were looking at unraveling a potentially career breaking political conspiracy- a theory that would take him to exotic foreign locations and safely off the right mark for quite a few months sniggered Andrea to himself, standing in shabbiest Big City bus depot he had ever stood in, still jetlagged from his turbulent ride over from Italy, but looking forward to ending his dual life.
Over the next few months, the various Big City police chowkis across the country remained oblivious that they were collectedly registering a calculatedly minimal increase in missing people’s reports at systematically periodic intervals – runaway teens, boys, girls, mothers, high ranking professionals, artists, foreign nationals from local ashrams. A local newspaper did a Sunday feature story on how more and more executives were losing interest in high paying jobs, quitting at a days notice, and heading for sabbaticals, years off, solitary retreats. It was termed the quarter-life crisis by a panel of dignified city psychologists on a local chat show and spawned a series of self-help books, a column, and a franchise of yoga classes for a year to come.
And then for some days, those who surreptitiously watched the newspapers warily breathed a sigh of relief, for there was nothing. Their silence was as palpable as their own. There was apparently no one in clickety clack editorial, bureaucratic or regional administrative offices who noticed anything askew.
And one by one, day by day, they folded their papers at breakfast, drained their cups of tea, kissed their wives and mothers and sleeping children goodbye with exceptional warmth, and walked out of doors never to return. They piled into rickety state transport buses, took circuitous train routes switching from meter to broad gauge to toy trains to backtracking cart rides and hitching lifts on the backs of passing trucks.
One by one, they arrived. Some under cover of darkness. Some still in the shirt sleeves they would have presented papers to boards of directors in, some in the clothes they went to bed in the previous night. None had stopped to change, to rest, to eat, to be clean. It didn’t matter anymore. They had to reach before they were found and stopped. Before this moment in time changed. Before their spirits were broken. Before the inevitable story was broken.
One day, it broke. There was a small wire report, in the small one cc block tucked in besides the classified ads of an overbooked glossy travel supplement, in a local vernacular newspaper-a quiet eastern hamlet had been reporting a boom in tourism from all over the world. Three months later, tt was picked up by a foreign news channel looking for exotic stories in third world countries, and soon enough, the first TV news crew sporting a dish on its red roof rumbled its way past the deodhar tree, looking for signs of a tourist boom. It helped that heavy construction, migrant settlements, and lack of infrastructure hid the settlement from prying eyes, making it an unlikely visit for anyone more than a local district farmer going up in life. And the immigrants held their breath, crossed their fingers, blew each other good lucks kisses, and carried their prayers, their deepest desires, their innermost dreams, their hope against hope, deep in their hearts, with candles lighted in their mind’s eye, and the tension taut across their insomnia-furrowed, jet-lagged, bumpy-bus ridden brows.
And from that simultaneous pause in breath, and the common prayer, Mannat was born, and led them, it was said, to it.
------
Mannat was one of those almost a small town and not quite a village stops off a not quite a road and not nearly a dirt track leading up from National Highway 54 en route towards a small hill in the distance. The new bits of the village-town had grown up and around its foothills and clung on like a vine to a scraggly old tree.
Anyone could see that it had the makings of a handsome town albeit a higgledy-piggledy one. The bungalows in the center had obviously, though worse for want of qualified architects, been constructed on lavish scales, with no thought to limitations of space or design or time. Some were traditional havelis, or fisher cottages from the coast—clear replicas of the kinds of houses the immigrants once lived in and edifices of their nostalgia; others were shabby rebuilds of English cottages borrowed from magazines and books, or from the scatterings of colonial design that still spotted the countryside in the hills; others were makeshift art deco, with polished wood and a sophisticated pageantry that tuck out oddly in an already hotchpotch town. In between were the simple mud and brick two-storey structures with brick grills for ventilation, painted in candy floss pink, and decorated with gaudy hand murals.
The administrative offices were the same as administrative offices anywhere – plain rectangular boxes of regulation brick and mortar, chipped away at parts where dulling paint had been patched over with whitewash in as short a time as it had taken to construct them- but inside they were gaily decorated with warli art, bandhini curtains, flowers, and a couple of comfy armchairs for the visitor and administrator alike, and most oddly, an antique writing desk cum library sourced from Cochin’s Jewish quarter – all donated by friendly residents, when refurbishing, or when a family member had passed on. It was more a recipient of welfare than one that could dole out any, but yet seeming cheerily confident that it could more than manage to do so.
Mannat had a square and a walkway around it where the watermelon sellers still sat under canopies as if painted into a lithograph of a time gone by. Next to them on the perpendicular axis the walkway was rimmed with hot food sellers who came on stage one by one, greeted each other, exchanged a few pleasantries as they set up their makeshift stalls whose wafts filled and flavoured the already musty evening air--kababs, rolls, boiled eggs, skewered pineapple tandoori, and roasted corn and peanuts.
Couples strolled in the now evening light, arm in arm, as if dressed for fiestas, the men in their formal and stately best, the women, elegant and anything but casual—some in long skirts, full sleeved blouses under their saris, and some in trousers, beneath which their open toed sandals peeped bright splashes of coloured nail or ornate figure sketches of recently filigreed mehendi.
In the twilight, you could barely notice the faces, but you could smell the clash of expensive perfumes, by now in their second notes of the day, and men’s clashing with women’s. Some of the women wore the bright blossoms of the frangipani in their hair, some of the men wore them in their Cambridge shirt pockets, and if one looked closely enough the streetlight bounced off the pancakes off the couples faces where the make up was hastily applied, and some of the lipsticks gleamed glossy in the twilight air. There were black men – tall, hardy, gleaming skin hand in hand with little timid Caucasians. There were fat women, of all sizes, strolling some with each other, some with a male partner, some with castaway runway models, and dandies with moustaches, older women with younger men, sugar daddies with their eye candy on their arms, alabaster queens with pumpkin pies, and two distracted youth, barely out of school.
And they were chattering, prattering, sharing jokes, nodding la politesse to each other, gently touching, watching each other as much as themselves for new signs of expression, giveaways of warmth or discomfort.
Most had returned from mundane jobs they were unqualified for. Jojo Mukherjea, the lawyer, was teaching math in the newly set up school. He was also its administrative officer, and canteen supervisor at this point. And since there was no recognition forthcoming from any sort of external government, he also pondered along with a group of well meaning but ill qualified men for the task, the status of its board and curriculum. Sylvester, his man at arms, was involved in the more arduous task of finding land for the new settlers, for he knew, and pressed it upon everyone else to know, that it was only a matter of time before someone somewhere demand deeds of land holding, rights of occupancy, questioned the legitimacy of his unplanned mass exodus, immigration – the first of its kind in he history of man.
In the corner, already collecting around him a gang of cohorts, was Sunny. He was young, and cheerful, and his smiles hid twinkles of pain, and his jokes hid his longing to see his parents again. And Schauna, the architect, who could not bring herself to mingle, or work, who held her knees and sobbed into her plate at the community mess. She would get herself together, it was just a matter of time. Or Maitri the doctor, who looked as though she was not even here for her freedom, but because the town had forgotten in might need a doctor, for the children, and the aged, and the tired, and the dehydrated. She had come with medicines, with bottles full of colours and textures that spoke only to her, and went from door to door, full of quiet confidence, and simple advice.
Already, the town was grouping, forming, finding its binding elements, and cohering to create its core of strength. Already it seemed as if these people had been here forever. Already, there were seniors and juniors, and leaders and followers. And already, while some took in the scene with pride, others looked upon it with worry.
Durga Soudamini, who had more to worry about than even land, could not stroll, even on a night like this. Alone in her still shack – she put behind her her raw sense of betrayal at a lover who had not found the courage to come, and assuring herself that it was only a matter of time- in her lighted balcony partly up the hill, she paced two for every one the crowd beneath her in the square took.
She had taken upon herself the tasks of commander-in-chief of the army, chief of police, and maintainer of law and order. It was the lesser of the settlement’s priorities – plumbing and drinking water more on the chief’s mind, and finding a perennial source of fresh fruit and vegetables without having to trudge down to the nearest bazaar 5 miles down, on everybody elses, but Durga knew deep down inside of her, everytime someone spoke of finding land or even hoisting a clothesline, that they would come, sooner than later for their land, for their people, for the protection of their institutions – school, law, marriage. They would come angry and unwilling to listen, hurt by the rebuttal of their centuries of authority, thirsting for redressal, and seeking to be justified. Insecure, wounded-the worst kind of enemies to do battle with.
And when they did, and when the new laws, and the constitutions, and the education, and the reason, and the wall of men had all failed, as Durga, silently avowed they would, she would be the one who would have to ready for them. And she looked at the land stretched out beneath her, with its strolling people, and their strolling dreams, for themselves, for their children, for their world, yes, even for the people of the Big City who so wantonly had hurt them, denying them their basic right to be, and she was never more sure that she would die fighting for their right to be free.
Chapter 1: Exodus
When Parapritika bent over at the river, her cottonflax-swirling hand-tacked pleat-encased bottom was as perfectly rounded as the pot she delicately balanced on the shapely curve of her childish hip. And when she staggering under the weight, turned around, putting her obviously sun-kissed leg up on the rock before hoisting the pot with well-worked brown arms onto her small head of widow cropped black hair—it wasn’t only Shailaja who noticed that it was as though her almond eyes were a perfect match for the space between her semi-parted lips.
It was well whispered that Parapritika was a girl gone wrong. True, she was beautiful-evenly dusky as though her colour was constantly deepened by massaging with foreign nut oils that everyone knew her mother could ill afford. But her eyes sparkled, and her voice rang shrill through the little settlement by the river at any time of the day or night. These, the village elders sighed despite their own instinctive affection for the child, were bad omens.
The child lacked Adakkam – the subduing of temperament that allowed her to be moulded into the good woman and wife and child bearer that she needed, with all her beauty, to be. It was thus self-evident, at least to all the women near the watering hole, that Parapritika, at 12 was a child-woman gone wrong. She was not in the least conscious of her body, her gradually developing breasts bounded about unfettered underneath her still child choli, and on the days when she did not get her period, she still ripped off her clothes with no small amounts of immodesty appropriate to a woman-to-be-married her age, and jumped shieking to be noticed, from the mound off the east bank, into the deepest part of the river.
She had been chided. And she had laughed, peeled off her clothes, and dived in none the less. It was beyond decency to expect her father to intervene in such matters, and when her mother would come out of pardah long enough to be spoken to by the panchayat, one could get no more than gentle nods by way of assurance from her. And the angrier everyone got, the more it would seem her eyes would sparkle with whatever mischief she had planned for the next morning.
One day, an unclean Parapritika was swinging in from the tree above the old women’s heads as they finished their ablutions, forcing them to run back, muttering cleansing chants and curses; another, it was to not bathe at all, and run through the main street with abandon that caused old men to toss their canes and jump back in the nick of time to spare being polluted. On other days, when she climbed trees with her brothers despite having her periods, her father’s wisened eyes would dull and shimmer with all the things he wished he could have said to her, and didn’t for she was his dark eyed, doe like, only daughter, born to him after the long line of seven sons. And he would turn away so she would not see the hurt in his face at what others said, and she could continue to run like the wind through the trees of her childhood. For he knew it was only a matter of time when she would be married, and gone away, along with her laughter and her shrieks, and her hugs and her noise, with sad downcast eyes, and bridal tears, and that was not a sorrow his old heart would bear thinking of.
And it was thus that Shailaja saw her first, one afternoon, when Parapritika lay hidden in the river, holding her breath until all the women had taken to their corners, bursting out of the water like a purple common water lily that had bloomed all too soon – bursting in spots with colour, and in others paling into the deep jamun coloured folds of skin that were forming nipples, small shafts of hair beginning to show under the upwardly outstretched glistening wet arms, and the streaks of red blood running down her oily yet shapely thighs. One leg lifted in merriment out of the water just long enough for Shailaja to follow with horror struck eyes the linear curve from her perfectly carved ankle round the back of her calves and upwards, into the pink flesh that Shailaja of her own had only probed and guessed what it might look like in the middle of the night, when her family was asleep, and assumed the rustling was the rats in the grain sacks.
For hours later, when the commotion had ended, when the old ladies and her aunties had cursed and spat and dressed and gone, to complain again; when Shailaja had gone to the corner and retched her twelve year old disgust away in a pile of phlegm under the bitter berry bush; and long after the resolve to never again enter the polluted river had melted away, Shailaja still sat, holding her stomach, her knees drawn protectively under her chin, still in a state of partial undress, her hair still damp, and her toes still duck webbed by being left hanging in the water too long, Shailaja was still quivering, and pressing down the butterflies of desire in her lower bell.
As the sounds of the voices of boys floated down from over and across the other side of the hill, Shailaja recollected herself, put on her clothes as quickly as she could, and darted past them on the road out, clutching her long silky tresses of still damp hair in her hand, her downcast fair as wheat face a burning red like grains dry roasted for halva.
In the middle of the road stood the tree. It was old and brown and knarly and thick. It twisted up, around itself for a while, when suddenly bursting free of its own knots as it reached the second storey before it leaped freely into a canopy of branches, increasingly slender as it reached the peripheries and knocked against buildings, balconies and telephone poles.
Few on the road beneath saw the tree. As in, not really. It stood there, as it had stood for centuries, when the road was not a road, when the city was not a city, and when men had chest hair, and women had stood under its leaves to swoon over them. Today, marked with the spittle and gum of passing roadside romeos who stood underneath to swoon in mockery at the women, and the clandestine cruise point for fugitive lesbians, the adulterous married, the abandoned grandparents, the noon spoils of the children’s beggaring trade, and the occasional unemployed but lying executive, the tree still stood stoic, but its head, if one had looked up shook and swayed ever so gently with every passing breeze, as if listening tenderly to the world unfolding beneath it.
"Is there some reason that you are angry with me?"
"No"
"You are not saying anything"
"it is not necessary for some people to say everything that crosses their mind"
"Very well, if you don’t like it, don’t listen to me again."
"I didn’t know that option was open to me."
"Oh, you are impossible."
"Nothing. I’m thinking of nothing. The Buddhists call it sangham."
"I believe that there is, but you are so selfish, that you will burn alone rather than tell me."
"I tell you everything,"
"That you choose to…. I take it I have not yet merited your trust, nor even your heart. No matter, it is probably a lack in something that I do. I trust you will kindly give me the time and space to right my wrongs"
Shailaja tossed her braided tresses back over her shoulder with the exaggerated sarcasm of gesture that underlined her words before storming off with raised eyebrows, and a seductively feminine gait.
Parapritika nervously glanced at her lover with raised eyebrows before supressing a smirk, and jumping out of the way of a passing cart. Just as she gathered up her skirts, and adjusted her silver anklet off her heel, to run after Shailaja, she thought she glanced baba turn the corner and head this way with the men of the panchayat, and both women scurried to get out of the way.
The women were sixteen, and both had been betrothed in their childhoods-to whom they did not know-and they had spent many an afternoon at the forbidden Friday bazaar wondering which of the fair traders come from the neighbouring villages might take them back with them on their next trip. The excitement was infectious and a group bond between all the girls of the village. It was all they spoke of as they worked the fields, and washed the clothes, and grew their hair, and learned to cook, and wash down the courtyard, and yet in all, and more so in Shailaja and Parapritika, lay the hope that doing their chores with sincerity, and pleasing god and the elders, would keep away the inevitable.
It was far easier for Shailaja, for womanly graces came very easily to her, even though, by all standards, she was the stockier and the more hardy of the two – but she had fine child bearing hips, and a no nonsense attitude that made her the more comely in weight of gold to a husband looking for a suitable goddess of good fortune to bring into his home.
She was fair, and even in complexion, with arms and feet, it was said, as soft as the malai her mother set aside for her from the cows in her father’s tabela.
It was now widely whispered that it was the good fortune of Shailaja’s company that had turned the errant Parapritka into an obedient child worthy of her soon-to-be-husband’s home. And this had only sent Shailajas own repute and her acclaim worth its harvest. What could she not do if she could do this? No mother-in-law, surely, would be match for her. And while Parapritika seethed and simmered, Shailaja would pat her hair, and while braiding it in the open courtyard, run an index finger gently up and down the nape of her neck to soothe her throbbing nerve. The two were by now inseparable.
And in time, Shailaja had taught Parapritika to grow her hair, subdue the fire in her eyes into more fruitful uses, whisper into her ear instead of shout across the courtyard, and act coy instead of brazen. There was little to be done about her walk, her habit of climbing trees, and sitting on the roof of her house when she got upset, but the very alteration of Parapritika’s personality was enough, and the silence about the duos comings and goings from the riverbank, spoke volumes of the miracles that had been performed.
And it was seen, and it was blessed. And it was held to be good by all.
For many days the spaces around the old deodhar tree seemed missing an aura, but it was not noticed by many. But when the breeze blew and descended around the trunk, it found a heated argument less, a spirited fight less, and a joyful screech of laughter less to cool. And it wondered what it was the two friends had argued over, and why they did not return to discuss it, and thought that they would meet not here but in the open courtyard that surely must connect their two homes.
And when Srimoyi, the village gossip with her loyal entourage came by at the end of the week, the restless breeze dropped and knew, like everyone else did by then, that Parapritika, she of the dark, almond eyes, and short cropped hair, the loveliest child widow in all the discovered lands, and sharp spoken, and the best langdi catcher in the girl’s team at the pathashala, had hung herself by the freyed ends of her blue and white dupatta from the deodhar that stood just outside her window, when she heard she was to be sold as helper to the old man with seven children in the town at the other end of the dust track.
Srimoyi said it was not the old man that worried her, but the children. And the tree added a wrinkle to its already furrowed brow when young unmarried Shailaja sat beneath her boughs, and clung to her knarled rooted feet and wept and wept until she shook, and the tree shook, and the breeze died, and the world, unshaken, came by to pick her up and take her home to fix her wedding to the same old man, who needed a child wife to look after his children, and cook his meals and press his feet, and stare at the ceiling, or out the window, as he pressed himself into her, and she bore him an eighth and a ninth and a tenth, god willing.
And god willing, Shailaja soon forgot, in all the tending and the cooking and the parenting, and it was only when she passed by the tree, which was rarely ever, that she remembered. But only for bit-when the twinge in her met the twinge in the tree-and the both bowed their heads and scurried past the memory that increasingly became fainter than a lover’s touch.
Except occasionally when Shailaja moaned by mistake when touched in her sleep, or thought that she had been so, would Parapritika come floating back to her in a night’s memory. Only to be lost to the morning.
Later, much later, when Shailaja had spent a lifetime in acquiring wisdom, she would berate her children for playing in dark spaces with her neighbour’s children, and boys could not play with the girls, and the girls could not play with the girls when nobody was there in the room.
And she grew wiser, and her lines deeper, and her eyes keener, and her tongue sharper, and the children and their wives, and the children and their husbands would scurry away their intentions at her slightest displeasure.
When she died they called her matriarch, stalwart, hub of the household, and they stuffed cotton in her nostrils and her ears, and tied her feet and as the funeral procession went past her childhood home, through the market place, and past the venerable old tree, the tree looked away, for he thought he saw Parapritika move from her perch in the old Deodhar, stir with life, and dance again with abandon in her boughs, as her beloved Shailaja would now come to join her.
For the rest of its life, the tree regretted what it had done – looking away, for it was said for centuries to come – that the tree became the symbol of the freedom of the sexes, the trans sexes, the bi sexes, the over sexed, the undersexed. It became a tree of sexual liberty, for travelers who sat underneath its boughs when the village was razed to dust by passing marauders and nothing stood of the people it once was the pride of, not even their graves – it mysteriously gave old men lust, and young men love, it made peace amongst warring couples as fresh as a good night’s sleep, and it found lover’s hands and held them together, and it was not always good. For fathers who had bestowed their daughters elsewhere would bemoan at the foot of it, and rich men lost to poor girls would be cursed by mothers who wished better fortunes on their sons. And wives who had lost to their husbands best friends and who knew not how to compete with men for their men came by and tied threads of passion around the trunk of the tree to pray for the secrets that would bring them back their men.
And the two sprites on the tree danced with mirth and giggled with joy when a prayer floated up to them amidst the boughs. And they picked some to answer, when they were moved to tears by the supplicants, and they picked some to disdain, when they were met with aims that did not suit their own free ones. And they mischievously turned some around so they wounded the answered, and created trouble where none was intended.
And thus old men ran away with their neighbours’ granddaughters, tailors with the milk men, and brothers with their sisters’ beaux. Children-little boys played with little boys in dark spaces – and their mothers were away tying threads around the tree trunk.
Soon enough was chaos – for the orders of marriage broke, and vows of the promised meant nothing. And when elders went to speak to other elders of the family, they found grandfathers holding hands with their boyfriends, and mothers happy to be part of threesomes from which children could never be born.
So in the lands between the two hills, under the tree of threads, and of many secrets, grew towns and villages and settlements where sex was, and passion and lust were free. It was free between genders, between ages, between societies and castes, between the colours of the skins and the kinds of bodies, and those who heard of the village, and who had loved and had no courage to speak their love came here to be unhidden, and unbidden.
They came from all over – some with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and despair in their hearts, some with everything they possessed – some came with lovers, some came alone. Some came with skills, some came with no clue of how to fend for themselves, how to earn for a living, where to find food, or how to cook it even. Young girls came in pardah, some in burqa, men in kurtas, some shirtless and dhoti clad. Muscular labourers blackened by the sun under which they baked their ardour, and nawabs in turbans and pearls and silken handkerchiefs.
And of the trees in the vicinity, the tree was the broadest and the oldest and the most sprawling. So some built tree view homes, and some built river view homes. Some set up shops in a merchant street where they could barter with their neighbours and haggle with the wholesalers. Some built dharmashalas to feed the constant flood of new arrivals. Others made foods, maps of the city, others sewed, swept, built houses, wrote letters back home to tell them not to worry, not to look for them, for they were safe, and happy and were not coming back.
But they soon realized they needed an army and a police force, and jails and a judge, for all the men who came weren’t honest, and all the women who came weren’t truly in love. Some came for money, some came for convenience, some came for the love of doing what was unbidden unto them. Some came for curiosity and soon their boredom bade them unto fresher pastures. Some of the men who came and proclaimed their love for their same sex lovers soon sheepishly went away back to their wives and children.
For love is not so rapturous as when it is forbidden. Some girls ran back to their homes, and being cast out for having run away joined the whorehouse in the dilapidated town squares as bi sexual prostitutes who sold their charms for what would barely buy bread.
Some returned to claim later to broadsheets that they had gone in as spies working for government agents and decried the moral state of destruction, the degeneration of moral fibre, the age of the fall of man.
One national leader won a landslide victory in his constituency by instituting counselors to weed out national menaces, teach correct sexual conduct, burning copies of the kamasutra.
But Parapritika and Shailaja wove a gauzen cover of innocence around the hamlets around the tree, and the news neither filtered in, nor if it did, did it affect the peace of mind, of those who lived under its silken frenzy.
It was well whispered that Parapritika was a girl gone wrong. True, she was beautiful-evenly dusky as though her colour was constantly deepened by massaging with foreign nut oils that everyone knew her mother could ill afford. But her eyes sparkled, and her voice rang shrill through the little settlement by the river at any time of the day or night. These, the village elders sighed despite their own instinctive affection for the child, were bad omens.
The child lacked Adakkam – the subduing of temperament that allowed her to be moulded into the good woman and wife and child bearer that she needed, with all her beauty, to be. It was thus self-evident, at least to all the women near the watering hole, that Parapritika, at 12 was a child-woman gone wrong. She was not in the least conscious of her body, her gradually developing breasts bounded about unfettered underneath her still child choli, and on the days when she did not get her period, she still ripped off her clothes with no small amounts of immodesty appropriate to a woman-to-be-married her age, and jumped shieking to be noticed, from the mound off the east bank, into the deepest part of the river.
She had been chided. And she had laughed, peeled off her clothes, and dived in none the less. It was beyond decency to expect her father to intervene in such matters, and when her mother would come out of pardah long enough to be spoken to by the panchayat, one could get no more than gentle nods by way of assurance from her. And the angrier everyone got, the more it would seem her eyes would sparkle with whatever mischief she had planned for the next morning.
One day, an unclean Parapritika was swinging in from the tree above the old women’s heads as they finished their ablutions, forcing them to run back, muttering cleansing chants and curses; another, it was to not bathe at all, and run through the main street with abandon that caused old men to toss their canes and jump back in the nick of time to spare being polluted. On other days, when she climbed trees with her brothers despite having her periods, her father’s wisened eyes would dull and shimmer with all the things he wished he could have said to her, and didn’t for she was his dark eyed, doe like, only daughter, born to him after the long line of seven sons. And he would turn away so she would not see the hurt in his face at what others said, and she could continue to run like the wind through the trees of her childhood. For he knew it was only a matter of time when she would be married, and gone away, along with her laughter and her shrieks, and her hugs and her noise, with sad downcast eyes, and bridal tears, and that was not a sorrow his old heart would bear thinking of.
And it was thus that Shailaja saw her first, one afternoon, when Parapritika lay hidden in the river, holding her breath until all the women had taken to their corners, bursting out of the water like a purple common water lily that had bloomed all too soon – bursting in spots with colour, and in others paling into the deep jamun coloured folds of skin that were forming nipples, small shafts of hair beginning to show under the upwardly outstretched glistening wet arms, and the streaks of red blood running down her oily yet shapely thighs. One leg lifted in merriment out of the water just long enough for Shailaja to follow with horror struck eyes the linear curve from her perfectly carved ankle round the back of her calves and upwards, into the pink flesh that Shailaja of her own had only probed and guessed what it might look like in the middle of the night, when her family was asleep, and assumed the rustling was the rats in the grain sacks.
For hours later, when the commotion had ended, when the old ladies and her aunties had cursed and spat and dressed and gone, to complain again; when Shailaja had gone to the corner and retched her twelve year old disgust away in a pile of phlegm under the bitter berry bush; and long after the resolve to never again enter the polluted river had melted away, Shailaja still sat, holding her stomach, her knees drawn protectively under her chin, still in a state of partial undress, her hair still damp, and her toes still duck webbed by being left hanging in the water too long, Shailaja was still quivering, and pressing down the butterflies of desire in her lower bell.
As the sounds of the voices of boys floated down from over and across the other side of the hill, Shailaja recollected herself, put on her clothes as quickly as she could, and darted past them on the road out, clutching her long silky tresses of still damp hair in her hand, her downcast fair as wheat face a burning red like grains dry roasted for halva.
In the middle of the road stood the tree. It was old and brown and knarly and thick. It twisted up, around itself for a while, when suddenly bursting free of its own knots as it reached the second storey before it leaped freely into a canopy of branches, increasingly slender as it reached the peripheries and knocked against buildings, balconies and telephone poles.
Few on the road beneath saw the tree. As in, not really. It stood there, as it had stood for centuries, when the road was not a road, when the city was not a city, and when men had chest hair, and women had stood under its leaves to swoon over them. Today, marked with the spittle and gum of passing roadside romeos who stood underneath to swoon in mockery at the women, and the clandestine cruise point for fugitive lesbians, the adulterous married, the abandoned grandparents, the noon spoils of the children’s beggaring trade, and the occasional unemployed but lying executive, the tree still stood stoic, but its head, if one had looked up shook and swayed ever so gently with every passing breeze, as if listening tenderly to the world unfolding beneath it.
"Is there some reason that you are angry with me?"
"No"
"You are not saying anything"
"it is not necessary for some people to say everything that crosses their mind"
"Very well, if you don’t like it, don’t listen to me again."
"I didn’t know that option was open to me."
"Oh, you are impossible."
"Nothing. I’m thinking of nothing. The Buddhists call it sangham."
"I believe that there is, but you are so selfish, that you will burn alone rather than tell me."
"I tell you everything,"
"That you choose to…. I take it I have not yet merited your trust, nor even your heart. No matter, it is probably a lack in something that I do. I trust you will kindly give me the time and space to right my wrongs"
Shailaja tossed her braided tresses back over her shoulder with the exaggerated sarcasm of gesture that underlined her words before storming off with raised eyebrows, and a seductively feminine gait.
Parapritika nervously glanced at her lover with raised eyebrows before supressing a smirk, and jumping out of the way of a passing cart. Just as she gathered up her skirts, and adjusted her silver anklet off her heel, to run after Shailaja, she thought she glanced baba turn the corner and head this way with the men of the panchayat, and both women scurried to get out of the way.
The women were sixteen, and both had been betrothed in their childhoods-to whom they did not know-and they had spent many an afternoon at the forbidden Friday bazaar wondering which of the fair traders come from the neighbouring villages might take them back with them on their next trip. The excitement was infectious and a group bond between all the girls of the village. It was all they spoke of as they worked the fields, and washed the clothes, and grew their hair, and learned to cook, and wash down the courtyard, and yet in all, and more so in Shailaja and Parapritika, lay the hope that doing their chores with sincerity, and pleasing god and the elders, would keep away the inevitable.
It was far easier for Shailaja, for womanly graces came very easily to her, even though, by all standards, she was the stockier and the more hardy of the two – but she had fine child bearing hips, and a no nonsense attitude that made her the more comely in weight of gold to a husband looking for a suitable goddess of good fortune to bring into his home.
She was fair, and even in complexion, with arms and feet, it was said, as soft as the malai her mother set aside for her from the cows in her father’s tabela.
It was now widely whispered that it was the good fortune of Shailaja’s company that had turned the errant Parapritka into an obedient child worthy of her soon-to-be-husband’s home. And this had only sent Shailajas own repute and her acclaim worth its harvest. What could she not do if she could do this? No mother-in-law, surely, would be match for her. And while Parapritika seethed and simmered, Shailaja would pat her hair, and while braiding it in the open courtyard, run an index finger gently up and down the nape of her neck to soothe her throbbing nerve. The two were by now inseparable.
And in time, Shailaja had taught Parapritika to grow her hair, subdue the fire in her eyes into more fruitful uses, whisper into her ear instead of shout across the courtyard, and act coy instead of brazen. There was little to be done about her walk, her habit of climbing trees, and sitting on the roof of her house when she got upset, but the very alteration of Parapritika’s personality was enough, and the silence about the duos comings and goings from the riverbank, spoke volumes of the miracles that had been performed.
And it was seen, and it was blessed. And it was held to be good by all.
For many days the spaces around the old deodhar tree seemed missing an aura, but it was not noticed by many. But when the breeze blew and descended around the trunk, it found a heated argument less, a spirited fight less, and a joyful screech of laughter less to cool. And it wondered what it was the two friends had argued over, and why they did not return to discuss it, and thought that they would meet not here but in the open courtyard that surely must connect their two homes.
And when Srimoyi, the village gossip with her loyal entourage came by at the end of the week, the restless breeze dropped and knew, like everyone else did by then, that Parapritika, she of the dark, almond eyes, and short cropped hair, the loveliest child widow in all the discovered lands, and sharp spoken, and the best langdi catcher in the girl’s team at the pathashala, had hung herself by the freyed ends of her blue and white dupatta from the deodhar that stood just outside her window, when she heard she was to be sold as helper to the old man with seven children in the town at the other end of the dust track.
Srimoyi said it was not the old man that worried her, but the children. And the tree added a wrinkle to its already furrowed brow when young unmarried Shailaja sat beneath her boughs, and clung to her knarled rooted feet and wept and wept until she shook, and the tree shook, and the breeze died, and the world, unshaken, came by to pick her up and take her home to fix her wedding to the same old man, who needed a child wife to look after his children, and cook his meals and press his feet, and stare at the ceiling, or out the window, as he pressed himself into her, and she bore him an eighth and a ninth and a tenth, god willing.
And god willing, Shailaja soon forgot, in all the tending and the cooking and the parenting, and it was only when she passed by the tree, which was rarely ever, that she remembered. But only for bit-when the twinge in her met the twinge in the tree-and the both bowed their heads and scurried past the memory that increasingly became fainter than a lover’s touch.
Except occasionally when Shailaja moaned by mistake when touched in her sleep, or thought that she had been so, would Parapritika come floating back to her in a night’s memory. Only to be lost to the morning.
Later, much later, when Shailaja had spent a lifetime in acquiring wisdom, she would berate her children for playing in dark spaces with her neighbour’s children, and boys could not play with the girls, and the girls could not play with the girls when nobody was there in the room.
And she grew wiser, and her lines deeper, and her eyes keener, and her tongue sharper, and the children and their wives, and the children and their husbands would scurry away their intentions at her slightest displeasure.
When she died they called her matriarch, stalwart, hub of the household, and they stuffed cotton in her nostrils and her ears, and tied her feet and as the funeral procession went past her childhood home, through the market place, and past the venerable old tree, the tree looked away, for he thought he saw Parapritika move from her perch in the old Deodhar, stir with life, and dance again with abandon in her boughs, as her beloved Shailaja would now come to join her.
For the rest of its life, the tree regretted what it had done – looking away, for it was said for centuries to come – that the tree became the symbol of the freedom of the sexes, the trans sexes, the bi sexes, the over sexed, the undersexed. It became a tree of sexual liberty, for travelers who sat underneath its boughs when the village was razed to dust by passing marauders and nothing stood of the people it once was the pride of, not even their graves – it mysteriously gave old men lust, and young men love, it made peace amongst warring couples as fresh as a good night’s sleep, and it found lover’s hands and held them together, and it was not always good. For fathers who had bestowed their daughters elsewhere would bemoan at the foot of it, and rich men lost to poor girls would be cursed by mothers who wished better fortunes on their sons. And wives who had lost to their husbands best friends and who knew not how to compete with men for their men came by and tied threads of passion around the trunk of the tree to pray for the secrets that would bring them back their men.
And the two sprites on the tree danced with mirth and giggled with joy when a prayer floated up to them amidst the boughs. And they picked some to answer, when they were moved to tears by the supplicants, and they picked some to disdain, when they were met with aims that did not suit their own free ones. And they mischievously turned some around so they wounded the answered, and created trouble where none was intended.
And thus old men ran away with their neighbours’ granddaughters, tailors with the milk men, and brothers with their sisters’ beaux. Children-little boys played with little boys in dark spaces – and their mothers were away tying threads around the tree trunk.
Soon enough was chaos – for the orders of marriage broke, and vows of the promised meant nothing. And when elders went to speak to other elders of the family, they found grandfathers holding hands with their boyfriends, and mothers happy to be part of threesomes from which children could never be born.
So in the lands between the two hills, under the tree of threads, and of many secrets, grew towns and villages and settlements where sex was, and passion and lust were free. It was free between genders, between ages, between societies and castes, between the colours of the skins and the kinds of bodies, and those who heard of the village, and who had loved and had no courage to speak their love came here to be unhidden, and unbidden.
They came from all over – some with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and despair in their hearts, some with everything they possessed – some came with lovers, some came alone. Some came with skills, some came with no clue of how to fend for themselves, how to earn for a living, where to find food, or how to cook it even. Young girls came in pardah, some in burqa, men in kurtas, some shirtless and dhoti clad. Muscular labourers blackened by the sun under which they baked their ardour, and nawabs in turbans and pearls and silken handkerchiefs.
And of the trees in the vicinity, the tree was the broadest and the oldest and the most sprawling. So some built tree view homes, and some built river view homes. Some set up shops in a merchant street where they could barter with their neighbours and haggle with the wholesalers. Some built dharmashalas to feed the constant flood of new arrivals. Others made foods, maps of the city, others sewed, swept, built houses, wrote letters back home to tell them not to worry, not to look for them, for they were safe, and happy and were not coming back.
But they soon realized they needed an army and a police force, and jails and a judge, for all the men who came weren’t honest, and all the women who came weren’t truly in love. Some came for money, some came for convenience, some came for the love of doing what was unbidden unto them. Some came for curiosity and soon their boredom bade them unto fresher pastures. Some of the men who came and proclaimed their love for their same sex lovers soon sheepishly went away back to their wives and children.
For love is not so rapturous as when it is forbidden. Some girls ran back to their homes, and being cast out for having run away joined the whorehouse in the dilapidated town squares as bi sexual prostitutes who sold their charms for what would barely buy bread.
Some returned to claim later to broadsheets that they had gone in as spies working for government agents and decried the moral state of destruction, the degeneration of moral fibre, the age of the fall of man.
One national leader won a landslide victory in his constituency by instituting counselors to weed out national menaces, teach correct sexual conduct, burning copies of the kamasutra.
But Parapritika and Shailaja wove a gauzen cover of innocence around the hamlets around the tree, and the news neither filtered in, nor if it did, did it affect the peace of mind, of those who lived under its silken frenzy.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Chapter 1: The Symphony
The first violinist was only ever so slightly slouched over in her chair when the found her. But for the rest of her, it was as though she was still awaiting her cue. Her hands were folded over in her lap. Her bow clutched lightly, between the thumb and forefinger. And if you drew an imaginary line from the pupils of her still open eyes to her notes, they wiould fix exactly on the last note of the page that awaited dog-eared turning.
The only thing in fact, that gave it away, was that unlike all the other violinists, she had not in fact turned the page, and the Verdi had ended for her, on the penultimate page of La Traviata, even as Alfredo held ioletta in his arms and begged her forgiveness.
"I hope I never go like that," shuddered golden-bobbed Julia, flautist, later. "It would haunt me -- those last few hanging notes," and a shiver ran down her flute-like spine, her mouth as always, slightly ajar.
The other orchestra members had not lookes directly at her when they waited for her to stand first and take the bow. They had at first thought it was the customary coyness that it is proper for a first violinist to show when the calls for encore began. "Of course, these days who even knows hat is customary anymore, eh?" Gusieppe asked, walking around between the porp chairs worriedly. "They encore fools like Amandeglio and not twice but thrice! We must not take it as a complement when they encore us," he wagged his finger at the lost crowd of faces before him, before turning in dramatic pause to the slouched over figure that now awaited medical confirmation, "I thought that, like me, she had decided she had had enough," he said, his voice now barely above a whisper.
Anthony, bright eyed from New York, cut through the melodrama in his thick country cut southern accent, "What a load of rubbish! The poor girl's had a stroke, and it's terrible, just terrible, that none of us noticed a note going wrong. What does that have to say for us as an orchestra? Tell me that? And what's worse - what does that say of the maestro, eh?"
"Surely in America, the maestrois not sued for the death of the first violinist too," laughed a sneeringly sophiosticatedly Parisian Victoria, "After all, you do, do you not, like to put blame, or you as a nation do not know what to do with your free time," she scoffed.
The only thing in fact, that gave it away, was that unlike all the other violinists, she had not in fact turned the page, and the Verdi had ended for her, on the penultimate page of La Traviata, even as Alfredo held ioletta in his arms and begged her forgiveness.
"I hope I never go like that," shuddered golden-bobbed Julia, flautist, later. "It would haunt me -- those last few hanging notes," and a shiver ran down her flute-like spine, her mouth as always, slightly ajar.
The other orchestra members had not lookes directly at her when they waited for her to stand first and take the bow. They had at first thought it was the customary coyness that it is proper for a first violinist to show when the calls for encore began. "Of course, these days who even knows hat is customary anymore, eh?" Gusieppe asked, walking around between the porp chairs worriedly. "They encore fools like Amandeglio and not twice but thrice! We must not take it as a complement when they encore us," he wagged his finger at the lost crowd of faces before him, before turning in dramatic pause to the slouched over figure that now awaited medical confirmation, "I thought that, like me, she had decided she had had enough," he said, his voice now barely above a whisper.
Anthony, bright eyed from New York, cut through the melodrama in his thick country cut southern accent, "What a load of rubbish! The poor girl's had a stroke, and it's terrible, just terrible, that none of us noticed a note going wrong. What does that have to say for us as an orchestra? Tell me that? And what's worse - what does that say of the maestro, eh?"
"Surely in America, the maestrois not sued for the death of the first violinist too," laughed a sneeringly sophiosticatedly Parisian Victoria, "After all, you do, do you not, like to put blame, or you as a nation do not know what to do with your free time," she scoffed.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Evolution as known to chocoholics
Many many years ago, it is believed by the Mexicans, the earth was created from chocolate. The earth's crust was a delicately baked and crisply definite slice of buttery Lindt wafer. Above it, it upheld a frothy, angry, creamy mass of the most arduous bitter chocolate that man had ever seen. The topmost layer was embedded with fossiled dried fruit, pieces of nuts and raisins, sealed in by a lighter milk chocolate that was fertile enough to create and nourish the entire yet to be born world.
One day, god, who unlike the gods you and I adore, was potbellied and jovial, and was infinitely smart enough to have created absolutely no evil forces to be dealt with and hence enjoyed his chocolate in piece...er..peace.... stopped chewing. In the middle of negotiating a particularly large lump of butterscotch that tended to stick in his teeth (he had also, in his infinite mercy, seen to the non creation of any cavities), god paused. Now, unlike when you and I pause, which is pretty much all of the time, and the larger part of our evolutionary status, when god pauses, the silence can be quite horrific, anything, but anything could happen.
So anyhow, god paused. The chocolate paused stirring. The wafts of cocoa stopped emanating from the nougat filled cente of the earth. The silver foil moon stopped crackling and everyone looked askance at the Lord to see what on the chocolate filled earth could cause this pause.
And for the first time since god had created the earth, he spoke. "I cannot possibly eat all this chocolate on my own," he said. "It would never end, and how infintely boring would that be." So he stopped, and pushing the soft brown earth between his fingers, using the smaller bits of fruit for eyes and the larger bits for various unmentionable appendages, god created man.
At first man could not move. And then, lest he sink back into the creamy puddle from whence he came, god pushed him to eat, and he ate from the far-from-forbidden fruit. It was paradise. And that is why they say paradise is chocolate.
And they all grew fat and round and jolly. There was so much chocolate inside and outside of them, that there was no violence, no cheating, no snitching, no swiping, no pilfering, no sharing. Life was simple and chocolatey. And then, one day, some smart alec said, let's share further. Let's send newsletters around the end of the world to share our joys with others. And the first scribes were born. They toiled and slaved, carving the words out on the skin of a extra large cocoa pod and sending it out to the ends of the world.
And thus journalists and chocolates created the beginnings of the modern world, which is why Mumbai hacks pass the parcels of chocolate round the office with so much bonhomie on diwali day.
One day, god, who unlike the gods you and I adore, was potbellied and jovial, and was infinitely smart enough to have created absolutely no evil forces to be dealt with and hence enjoyed his chocolate in piece...er..peace.... stopped chewing. In the middle of negotiating a particularly large lump of butterscotch that tended to stick in his teeth (he had also, in his infinite mercy, seen to the non creation of any cavities), god paused. Now, unlike when you and I pause, which is pretty much all of the time, and the larger part of our evolutionary status, when god pauses, the silence can be quite horrific, anything, but anything could happen.
So anyhow, god paused. The chocolate paused stirring. The wafts of cocoa stopped emanating from the nougat filled cente of the earth. The silver foil moon stopped crackling and everyone looked askance at the Lord to see what on the chocolate filled earth could cause this pause.
And for the first time since god had created the earth, he spoke. "I cannot possibly eat all this chocolate on my own," he said. "It would never end, and how infintely boring would that be." So he stopped, and pushing the soft brown earth between his fingers, using the smaller bits of fruit for eyes and the larger bits for various unmentionable appendages, god created man.
At first man could not move. And then, lest he sink back into the creamy puddle from whence he came, god pushed him to eat, and he ate from the far-from-forbidden fruit. It was paradise. And that is why they say paradise is chocolate.
And they all grew fat and round and jolly. There was so much chocolate inside and outside of them, that there was no violence, no cheating, no snitching, no swiping, no pilfering, no sharing. Life was simple and chocolatey. And then, one day, some smart alec said, let's share further. Let's send newsletters around the end of the world to share our joys with others. And the first scribes were born. They toiled and slaved, carving the words out on the skin of a extra large cocoa pod and sending it out to the ends of the world.
And thus journalists and chocolates created the beginnings of the modern world, which is why Mumbai hacks pass the parcels of chocolate round the office with so much bonhomie on diwali day.
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