Bombay Symphony.

It was raining; it was always raining in this city. She had to go out to complete her assignment and meet the deadlines, but how was she supposed to take photographs in such a rain, with so little light. She had wondered initially that why do people come to Mumbai, its ugly and dirty, it is expensive, it is full of slums, and has narrow lanes, there is not enough space for anybody, and it is always raining, but within a week’s time she had known she could call no other place home. Surely something was attracting millions here, to this city. She noticed that everyone here was running away from loneliness; she saw it on trains, on the street, in the pubs and bars which were spread everywhere to assuage this feeling.

She found out that without the distraction of beauty, people find respite in each other. Yet the sparks between the two could never qualify as companionship. In Mumbai, people do not offer too much talk or touch, rather they look each other in eyes, like soldiers, wounded and brave and crazy. And lucky to be alive, if not happy.

It had stopped raining, she rushed out of her tiny flat, and began walking, she had to reach Bandra and take photographs to complete her assignment for the magazine she worked – ‘Lifeline’, and then she saw him, the old beggar, it was third week of March and celebrations of Holi were long past. He was walking, yet he was lost, he looked defeated, as if the life itself had sucked out the essence of life from somebody, but it was not this that caught her attention, his white hair were still light pink from the colours of holi. Colours which were now too old for everybody else but still lingered through him, which washed from the fresh rain was dripping a drop at a time on his dirty white make-shift vest. She took out her camera, with a firm hold, ready to shoot. As much she liked all her photographs in black and white, this one had to fulfil its objective in colour, and she trapped him for her collection, forever.  Labelled – Leftover from Holi.

It was Mid-April, she reached the Versova beach looking for her potential subjects, she looked at the guy selling bhel-puri in paper plates made of Marathi Newspaper, she looked around, and then her eyes rested on him, sitting there on the sand, his face towards the sun, yet his eyes closed, as if he was trying to remember something, she kept looking at him, he was wearing a cheque blue shirt, a jeans and had a lean yet strong body, she looked at his narrow waist and his black hair, she was drawn to sincere youth in his body, yet he looked too elegantly mature. He opened his eyes and turned and looked towards her as if some greater power told him about her, their eyes connected for a moment and he got up and started walking towards her, when he reached next to her, he said to her “Are you here to shoot somebody “, she was taken aback, he pointed towards the camera hanging from her neck and said- “Normal people don’t roam around with camera that bulky” and she smiled. He started walking signalling her to follow him, and she started following him, he pointed towards a couple sitting there, they must be in their late fifties or early sixties, man was wearing a white shirt and brown loose pants held tight by a worn out leather belt, his hair were completely grey, he was wearing glasses with big black frame, the couple reeked of middle class, she looked at them and imagined their life, their children must be in some other city or somewhere else, having left their parents alone, soon the couple will go back to their home in a dirty chawl and the woman will cook something for both of them, she was wearing a blue sari, her hair were dyed black with grey roots coming out, she was smoking a bidi , and smoke was coming out from her mouth. They were not talking to each other, just sitting together, looking into something distant, unknown, and just knowing they had a shattered yet fulfilled life.

She at once steadied her camera to take the shot, and as she looked through the view-finder, she saw the woman passing the bidi to her husband, and she at once released the shutter. The same photo-graph would be published in near future as – Aged Solace.

She turned back and looked at him looking at her, she came back to him and said “Thanks”, it was his turn to smile,

“Are you going to publish it? Do you work for some newspaper or magazine?”

“Yes, I work for Lifeline and No, this photograph is for my own collection, I am just taking random photographs to document Moods of Mumbai, I have no plans to publish them” she replied.

“Moods of Mumbai” He repeated, and then stood silent for long time, and then he turned and started walking, he didn’t look back.

“I want you to photograph me” were his first words when he called her around a month later; she was shocked and surprised. Curious when he reached home after that day at the beach, he lied awake thinking about her. Next day, he went out and bought the latest edition of Lifeline , he browsed through the magazine carefully to look at all the photographs, trying to guess which one are hers, there was only one female photographer credited in that edition. Each time he saw photo credited to her he saw what he had suspected on meeting her: her incendiary talent, so huge and rambunctious, in coming month, he bought all the previous editions of the magazine trying to find photographs shot by her.

“I want you to photograph me” he said.

“What?”

“I remember you telling me, you are documenting Moods of Mumbai, let me help you.” she remembered telling this to only one person till now, could it be him, it has to be.

Two days later, she boarded the local train to Bandra She got up and went to stand at the gate of women’s first class coach, and she saw that little boy, sitting in a corner in the train near the gate, he was scared and vulnerable, there was sadness in his eyes. Did he even know where is he going? She noticed all the women giving him a dirty look. He was sitting with his knees next to his chest and holding his knees from his arms, taking as little space as possible, his fear and sadness looked so real and pure, it felt they are bleeding out of him like monsoon of august sky. She wondered why nobody else could see that. She took out her camera, focused it on him and took the photograph and mentally named it – The ticketless traveller.

He was waiting for her out of the station, his hair longer than the last time she had seen him, he smiled when he saw her and she smiled back, she looked at the carefree way he was walking, he lit a cigarette.

“I told you, I can’t shoot you” she said,

He smiled and said “Yes I know, I need to be either news or moods of mumbai”.

“Where are we going?” she asked, and he just smiled back.

While walking through the maze of criss-crossed narrow lanes, she stopped at once, in front of her, on one of the walls; there was a hand-drawn poster of an old classic, Roti Kapda aur Makan. Poster was showing poorly drawn faces of Amitabh Bacchan, Manoj Kumar Jeenat Aman, Shashi Kapoor and Mausami Chatterjee. On the top of the poster, in hindi, it was written in white Roti, Kapda aur Makan, but somebody had crossed aur with coal leaving black smudge marks and had added aur paisa in the end, making the name Roti, Kapda Makan aur Paisa. She kept looking at the poster for few minutes and then looked through her view-finder to take the photograph of the poster, heroes of an old classic now fighting for the things required to survive in this world Roti Kapda Makan aur Paisa.

After walking some more, he finally pointed towards a chapel outside Carter Road, without saying a word, he bought a dozen candles from an adolescent vendor in a coca-cola emblazoned tee-shirt. He passed six of candles to her, and started walking to light the candles inside the church. She had never been to a church before, she didn’t know what to expect except for what she had seen in movies. When she entered the church, she saw a person, sitting in a wheel-chair, moving the wheels of the chair with his hands, he reached next to the statue of Mother Mary, and he took three candles out of his lap, and gently placed each one of them in a metal tray. He then lit the white tapers using a match stick. Candles burned bravely in the rapid wind, melting into sooty, gnarled heaps on the metal tray. He then closed his eyes and started praying. She wondered what he must be praying for. She took out her camera again, and took his photograph; to remind herself in the future at least, if not to god: his candles, his closed eyes, and his prayer.  3 Candles, one matchbox and some Faith

-----------x-----------

“I want you to take my photograph” He said again.

It was 2^nd week of July, they were meeting for the fifth time now. They were sitting on the marine drive since last half an hour, she looked at him and smiled and shook her head and turned and started looking at the sea again, at the distant sun and she listened to the noise of waves crashing against the tetra-pods. Understanding it is better to be silent, he didn’t say anything further.

After some time they got up and he took her to the Leopold café, she ordered a rum and coke and grilled veg risotto.  Even for a Thursday, the café was full of people and their vibrant energy. She looked at him and felt a ridiculous attraction for him, they passed the night flirting lightly and after few hours in that loud environment, they came out of the café.

He drove her back, and invited her to his flat in Colaba. His flat was in a quiet neighbourhood, on 22^nd floor. She stood waiting in the side while he unlocked the front door, she took the keys from his hand to look at the key-ring, a stick figure sitting alone, she looked in his eyes then, it was unquestioned that they will part yet, unquestioned, though they hadn’t met for more than 4 or 5 times, but they knew something precious had been stumbled upon, a new born connection that could not be left unattended. The apartment was nothing like her tiny flat; it was a big lush apartment, overlooking the sea outside from French windows. They started kissing in the balcony, he kissed her roughly and aggressively, it was nothing like school-boy kisses she had had before. He started un-buttoning her jacket and removed her shirt uncovering her breasts and causing the keys in her hands to fall on the marble floor with a loud noise.

Later that night she stood naked bending by the window looking outside at the sea. He looked at her, her small hair finished right at her neck, he looked at her lean body, she had smaller than average breasts, and had long legs; with her hands kept on the window and supporting her, she was looking at the brightly lit city, and could hear the faint sound of vehicles passing down below on the road. She saw a group of friends laughing and smoking near the sea.

He sat in the bed and lit a cigarette, while taking a long drag of the cigarette, he started talking, without even looking at her, he told her, around 14 years ago, on 7^th December 1992, his uncle had rushed back home late in the evening, soon the house filled with relatives, everybody was panicked, having his school suspended, he was at home, he could not understand the reason of all the chaos in the house. In the coming years, when he learnt the whole bus in which his mother was travelling was set to fire, he re-lived each and every event that occurred in that day; trying to understand the aftermath of the same. He accepted it would be wrong to say that this day was the pivot when his life changed, but he still remembered it. Surprisingly he could not remember much of his mother. He didn’t object when his father planned to re-marry. He collected all the photographs of his mother and put them in a small box.

After few years, one morning, after breakfast, he left the home and walked around the town, carrying that box of photographs. He reached a beach and sat down there. Sky was a different colour that day, but it was the water which seemed more unforgiving, violent enough he knew to break him apart. He roamed around in the same state for a week, he had never been out on himself, and he liked it, no-one in the world knew where he was, and he felt at peace. It was like being dead, his escape allowing him to remember the simple melodies his mother used to sing him.

One evening he reached the Versova beach, he found a spot in the middle of the sand and sat there, he felt the wind strong enough to rip apart and chew everything. For a long time, he watched the approach and retreat of the waves, their thick caps crashing apart against the rocks, that eternally restless motion had an inversely calming effect on him. The following day he returned to the same spot, this time bringing with him the box of his mother’s photographs. He sat on the ground, opened the box, and began going through the pictures one by one, as if they were pieces of mail that he was quickly scanning and would read later on. But there were too many pictures, and after a few he could no longer bear their sight. A slight lessening in the pressure of his fingertips and the ones he was holding would have blown away into that wild sea. But he could not bear that either, and so he put them back in the box and began to dig a hole. The hole was not impressive, but it was big enough to conceal the box, he covered it with some sand and stones. The moons first light was shining down when he was done. He remembered the melody his mother used to sing to him, called Bombay Symphony. He murmured it softly and walked back. He felt that love between two people was frequently betrayed because it was inherently imperfect; however an acceptance of the imperfection and betrayal could go long way in securing its vitality, perhaps even its permanence.

He continued – “I had long forgotten that melody, the other day when we met, I was sitting over there, trying to remember it, and after years, it finally came to me, I finally sang it, and then something made me open my eyes, and I looked at you and the melody once again vanished from the clutches of my brain.” He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ash-tray.

She was still looking out at the sea, and in some unknown way; she had offered him the balm of sensible and comforting silence, respecting and providing all the spaces that ought to remain un-vandalized by language.

She looked at that group of friends; they had stopped laughing and smoking by now. Tired of the day, they looked for a taxi and soon boarded one, all of them rushing finally to their own home.

He got up in the morning to notice she was gone. He went to the washroom, and while brushing his teeth, he looked in the mirror, paused for a moment and decided today he is going to convince her anyhow to take his photograph; he didn’t yet know how he is going to do that, but he had decided he is going to do it anyhow.

Later, he sent a text to her ‘I will convince you today to shoot me’. She looked at the text, smiled and ignored it. She had a dead-line to meet, she looked at the time in her cell, it was 03:37 PM, 11^th July 2006, she had so much work left to do, and she got back to her work, thinking about him in the back of her mind.

She received another text from him asking if she is free for dinner. She again smiled and replied Yes, and you can’t bribe me to take your photographs.

“I am coming to Borivali Station, I will reach in 20 minutes or so” He said later in the evening when she picked up her call.

“I will come to pick you up then, I have been thinking about you the whole day.” She replied.

“Let’s meet in few minutes then.”

She looked at the time, twenty minutes past six; she got up and left for Borivali station. She decided to walk rather than to call for a rickshaw. She had been walking for 10 minutes now, and then she got a call from her editor, thinking he must be calling about the photographs that she had to submit, she contemplated whether to ignore the call, after letting the phone ring for 30 seconds, she finally picked it up, wondering what excuse she should give for not submitting the photographs.

“Where are you?”,  came a very panicked sound from the phone, “there have been bombings in the local trains 10 minutes ago, friends have confirmed bombings in three trains till now, do not get into locals right now, and sorry for being an ass, but see if you can take any photographs.”

Her mind stopped processing things for a moment, she thought it’s some kind of joke, but she knew her editor better than that, after a minute, she started running towards Borivali station.

She tried to call him once again, but by now, phone’s servers didn’t let her though, her heart was about to give up when she heard “All lines to this route are currently busy” once again, she looked at her cell, it was 18:37, 11^th July 2006, and she entered Borivali to a rush of people, running screaming.

After sometime, she saw a burning and blasted train in front of her, and after looking for 20 minutes, she found him, his dead body, it was not burnt much, she kept looking at him, in a shocked state. Her phone rang once again, it was her editor, once again showing concern, but asked her to see if she can take any photographs. She didn’t say anything and hung up.

She took out her camera, zoomed it on his body, looked at him through the viewfinder and clicked through for a series of photographs.

---------x-----------

It had been 11 months since the incident; she was sitting at the same spot at Versova beach where she had seen him for the first time. She had a copy of the book she had finally published, of all the photographs she had taken to document moods of Mumbai. The title of the book read, “Bombay Symphony; for what was once forgotten”. She had dedicated the book to him, and it read “May be I will never be able to give you your Bombay Symphony back, this is just an attempt. ” She turned few pages to look at the first photograph again, his photograph that she had taken, and closed the book again.

She started looking at the distant sun, and started humming an unknown tune; she liked to believe it was Bombay Symphony.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time, there was a boy and there was a girl.Now they met, and they didn't connect in the beginning, but the boy noticed her, her long hair, the way there was dimple on one of her cheeks when she smiled, and she felt it, and she noticed him too, and they both knew it was gonna happen.

They came together, close, and for sometime they both forgot the million other things that existed in the world, million other things that make people think "I dont like this person" ..  "Oh she is not my type.."  Instead, it was perfect, they were perfect, and that's all there was to know about it.

Only soon, she forgot it, and then he forgot it too. Memories come back only in bits and pieces.
Maybe soon everything will be erased, but i still hope they will always carry their pieces of it, so that nothing is ever lost, when they were just few miles away from infinity and everything was just ..... perfect.

Memories

In a parallel universe of monochrome, he sits on marine drive looking at the enormous waves crashing to the tetra-pods and smoke curls escaping his parted lips.

It was raining.
Smoke winds through the raindrops, dispersing into mist.
He kept looking ahead.

And then he bends down and puts his black fountain pen to white paper kept in his lap. Covering it with his own head to save it from the rain.
Stringing lines together like beads, thoughts flow in black inky veins from head to hand to black pen to black ink on white paper.Shapes curling out to fill a page,mind, soul and memories laid bare on paper.

He picks up the sheet and watches as raindrops distorts memories, never to be like before, as this all changes to something nobody can recognize.
He looks at the paper until the picture on the paper changes to something even he cant recognize.

He brings the cigarette to his lips and leans back and lets the smoke curl away into the rain.

Beginning

He loved being busy. He didn't want many vacant hours in the day to think about all the things that had befallen him, or rather all that hadn't, about this emptiness in him for which he didn't have the word. His incompletion, his unfocused life, his beginning waiting for an end, or was it his end waiting for a beginning, his story waiting for a new plot.

Sleep

At eleven in the night, he stood under a pounding stream of cold water, his face help up to it. The pressure in the pipes was very good, so he lingered under the shower, moving the sting from one shoulder to the other.

A memory buried deep down in his mind and discarded long back came back to him.

Once while walking back from school, a white dog became his companion. That dog smiled at him and allowed him to tickle himself behind the ears and then complacently walked next to him for a while, stopping only to have his ears fondled again. They began a silent conversation and there was a twinkle in their eyes. At an intersection, the dog abruptly trotted off to the other side of road, and looked back a few times to see if He had followed. But that wasn’t his route, he stood there, transfixed, wondering if he should follow the dog. He didn’t follow. He stood, watching the dog walk away. That dog stopped, turned and looked at him, surprised, puzzled perhaps, amused may be. He wanted to go the dog’s way, to follow him to his vision. With a shrug of the shoulders dog was off, while he kept standing there.

He took a breath and moved his head so that the solid thrust at the centre of the flow pummeled him between the eyes. The lashing noise of it filled his head.

Outside in the drawing room, it was very quiet. There was no sleep yet, however tired he was and despite his yearning for it, he knew.

He lay on his sofa, with a bottle of Blenders Pride whisky and one of soda on the table in front of him. He drank in accurate sips, timed regularly. He allowed himself three pegs at the end of working days and recently had been resisting the urge to go to four. He was sitting with his face towards the window so he could watch the sky, lit still by the sky.

He had taken only 2 pegs till now, yet he was crushed, pulped by lassitude. He was barely able to get up and pull the table in front of him towards himself and lie flat on his sofa with his feet on the table.

A deep breath, and then another, and the edge of the table cutting into the back of this thigh receded, and in the swimming drowsiness he was able to forget details, and the world became a receding white blur. Yet a sharp undertow flung him into anger, and after a moment he was back in this world, able to remember he was restless about something.

He got up from the sofa and walked stiffly to the balcony. Beyond the fizzing fluorescent lights in the compound of the neighboring building, there was the darkness of the sea, and far ahead, a sprinkling of bright blue, white and orange that was Bandra. With a good pair of binoculars you could even see Nariman Point.

He remembered playing Cricket on the streets, the fast ‘pok’ of the tennis ball and the faces of friends and the feeling that he could hold the whole world in his hands.

Had it really existed? Those small empty streets, clean for children’s cricket games, or had he stolen it from some grainy black and white footage, too blur to remember now? Given it to himself in gift, the memory of happier place.

Sometimes loneliness spoke its iron hum of locusts behind his eyes. It was a suffering undiluted and pure. It was something monstrous he used to hide, even from himself. But he felt it, late at nights, at times like this, hidden under the contours of his eyes, which he touched with one hand and felt it, as if it were a mask.

He leaned against the railing of the window. He leaned out, trying to find a breeze. The horizon was hazy and far, with lights burning hard underneath. He looked down, and saw a glint in the car parked far below, a piece of glass, mica. He thought suddenly how easy it would be to keep leaning over, tipping until his weight carried him. He saw himself falling, his tee-shirt flapping frantically against his body, his leather slippers tumbling, the feet rotating and before a circle was complete, the crack of a skull, a quick crack and then silence.

He got back from the railing of the balcony.

He felt a sudden ache in his chest. It was as if two blunt stones were grinding against each other, creating not fire but a dull steady glow, a persistent and unquiet desire. It rose into his throat and before he knew the decision was made.

Twelve minutes of fast driving took him to the highway. The open stretches of road and the wheel slipping easily through his fingers were exhilarating but somewhere in the back of his mind, he was even more restless now. He was suddenly angry at himself, and wanted to turn around and go back. The question came to him: What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?

But it was too late, the journey half done, even though the first glad momentum was gone, he drove on.

By the time he pulled up and parked his car and walked to the Fizz Club it was one and he was too tired, but here he was and he could see the crowd around the door.

They parted for him and let him through. He got curious stares and silence as he stepped through. May be his T-shirt, His pajama, his leather slippers gave him away.

He squared his shoulders and found a corner in the bar and ordered a draught beer. With a beer in his hand, he had something to do, so he turned to face the crowd. He was hedged close, and it was hard to see anything more than a few feet, and everywhere they were talking animatedly, leaning close to each other and shouting against the loud music.

He drank his beer quickly, wondering what he is doing here. Exactly at a kind of place he so much despises. He tried to listen to the conversation on his left. They were talking about music, an American band that he had never heard of, a girl with her back to him, said loudly, “Its video was really cool, you just didn’t understand it, you dumb bitch.” And he lost the response from the pony-tailed boy facing her.

He upended his mug and wiped his mouth. The desire that had brought him across the city had vanished suddenly, leaving a dark residue of bitterness. It was late and he was finished.

He paid quickly and left. There was a different lot near the door now, but again the same silence, the same stares, same beaded necklaces, tattoos and piercing and practiced dishevelment and he understood, that he is an outsider there, that he doesn’t belong there and everybody knows this.

He walked towards his car, but lampposts, car, everything seemed far away and wanted very much to close his eyes.

He went home, and fell into his bed. The sleep that had seemed a very distant possibility sometime back, slid heavily onto his shoulder, like a choking black landslide and he slept.

May be hoping to wake up in a different world, May be not. Who knows.

True Joke

She looked at his face, trying to find emotions of pain,hurt, but there were none. He was back home after a break up, a bad one.. He had loved his girlfriend with all his heart.
She sighed melodramtically " And now you will never fall in love again, brother."
He grinned and said, " On the contrary, I plan to fall in love more and more often now. True love is a joke and I am a funny guy."

What ?

I think i should come back to this page.
I think i should blog again.
This distance that I have made, i should really fill it back.

Soon. I am going to write something soon.

Noise

We're all noise. We're all discordant, radiating ourselves into space until we fade away. In this chaos, we find harmony in others sometimes. All of us at some point find at least one other to comfortably coexist with, to blend with, to resonate with. Sometimes, the lucky ones find more. We find groups of us that get along. A bunch of us who can all completely be ourselves around each other. A bunch of us who now carry parts of each other within ourselves. A bunch of us who can remind each other of who we are. A few people I could call family sometimes. Harmony is always transient, contained in a larger chaos. But it feels like the harmony can outlast us. Maybe we'll hold together.

To an outsider we'd be as refreshing and intangible as a song or a symphony. Some of you may listen. Fewer still, will wonder what holds us together. And it might even be possible someday that one more finds his place within us. After all, how did we find each other? Floating through the noise, something caught on and made sense and stuck around. I still believe that we're all noise though. To much of each other and you'll hear it.

Yeats. Chapter 7.

Link to Chapter 1

Needless to say, the wedding got cancelled, Percieval's mother convinced him to never marry her.

Few months after the incident, a parcel post marked from Ireland arrived into the mail. Keeping it aside, she painted for next few days to gather the guts she needed to open that brown package, because already she could smell in the contents inside his blue, blue eyes. Finally a fortnight later, she tore open the package in the belief that this particular incident of destiny might remind her who she was, and how that version of herself had so gracelessly abandoned the entirely honourable love of a young man, and his hesitant poetry recitations.

My dear Painter,

Apologies for the delay of my response to you, but the last few months have been absolutely chaotic and have altered my life in a way I had never foreseen. The same, I imagine, must hold true for you: married and settled, you must have moved into your new life with great enthusiasm. Hearty congratulations on your wedding ! I am writing to you from a wee little apartment in a house. The amazing bit of news is I throughly detested Trinity - so campy and crooker - and we are leaving Dublin for England in a week. It took a while, to come to terms with how I could want something for all of my life - and then when I finally had it, I realised that its reality was for too bitter to be swallowed.

Last week, Mother, who is doing plenty better here, got a canary for herself. I dont know where I will go. You were right, we walked into the path of other people's violations. Some nights I sit next to the window, and look at the clouds moving away from here. Turning into tears in between, and sometimes into snow. I believe someday they will reach where ever you are, and you will be able to feel the touch of those drops, and for a brief moment we will be together. Unfettered by time and distance and fact. How odd are the ways heart finds its intimacy. I wish you infinite happiness with Percieval, and wish that your art finds its discerning audience, its reasonable critics. 

This will be my last letter to you.

Did you ever wonder why I was so bent on finding a cure for Cian Incurablis. I'd never imagined it could be so difficult. I'd never known its incurable and it runs in family. Farewell and all that. The moon here has, as Yeats rightly pointed out, 'dark leopards' which no one can reach. Far away and fierce, its beauty brightens the closer you get to them: but come too close and you leave blinded. Underneath the ounce of regret, guilt and the grief, there is a clearing I know for you. A place to come to after everything, when you need nothing at all and everything too. I leave you now, hoping you find faith in the morning, and compassion at the dusk.

 Yours,

Irishman.

Along with the letter came the finest pair of black felt gloves with the message: For Paris; and a copy of The Complete Works of Verse: W.B. Yeats with an inscription, For life.

She opened it at the page where deckle edge had been folded over, and it was written there.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face...

 

Yeats. Chapter 6

Link to Chapter 1 

On the night before her wedding, She caught a timid knocking on her door. It was Anuradha's son. He asked her innocently "Where... are you ..going ?" She replied " I am just going to Worthington House. You can come to my House any time you like my tiddy-bitty. You will adore it. It's got thirty-six bedrooms, and I could easily find a place for you."

"But just why'd you want to live in a house with... with.. thirty-six bedrooms? Do you really like Percieval ?"

"Percieval ? What does he have to do with My marriage ? My dear baby, one thing I never told you is people tear. Did I ever tell you that ? We break and tear. Like cloth and furniture and everything in between." Her voice was a curious blend of reverie and disdain."Awful truth is, we are in this alone. And there is no help coming. Of course I dont have any answers. But getting someplace with thirty-six bedrooms to hide in is definitely the way to bet. Isn't it ?"

Next morning, She got up and announced "Ok, world - here I come!" . Soon it was time.

Guests were now waiting for her to step out of her bedroom door and walk down the stairs and to her place: alongside Percieval Worthington.

She threw open her door., picked up the ends of her sari, went out to the landing and down the stairwell. Instantly a conspicuous hush swept over the proceedings.She looked illuminating. The pallo of her rouge red sari was brought over her head, and its delicate gold tasselled hem fringed her forehead: you could only half see her face.While she was walking, some three hundred plus guests were gazing at her, and an unnamed part of herself begged for him. Not for either consolation or attention but an acre of their simple understanding in which she might throw back her head and laugh like a witch at the gall of her own affectations. Perhaps he was the ony one who understood her act enough to accept it. A shared code. His blue eyes, to swim in, to never rise out of.

When she sat next to Percieval and pandit asked for her hand. She looked at him. Why he looked so much like her father. She knew her father is here, the same Hand to knock her down.She frantically yanks back her hand with a gasp everyone hears.

Seconds later, a frothy faced, angry lipped, famished Fit of epilepsy sits up inside her and rattles her from her soles all the way up to her skull, causing her to foam at the mouth and howl like a rabid beast. She shudders violently, and understands this is the inexorable moment when Fate has chosen to fold in its wings and roost in her, to never leave, and to assure her that no matter what you do, how high you fly, how low you drop, what magic you pull off, the truth of the matter is: you are never safe.

Yeats. Chapter 5

Link to Chapter 1 

Since her wedding and his departure were roughly a week apart, he dropped by to her on the day before he was leaving from Bombay harbour on a ship called Patience, which would briefly berth at Singapore on its way to Dublin. They sat at the back of the house, where after the tailor birds hushed their song, he promised to send her a wedding present from Dublin. She nodded. Somehow she didnt seem all that keyed up about her own nupitals. She touched the earth on which they were sitting. This, she remembered, is where she had painted him. This was where they had discovered a wry, invincible affinity for each other. Could she have ever become the artist she was today if he hadn't sat for her with heart-melting patience? As he was telling her something, she interrupted him with a sigh of ineffable regret: "Some days I'd give my arm to start over. Clean slate and all. I only want to be safe. I only want to be safe. How did we go so askance ? And wham into the path of other people's violations. Only to get blown into pieces that'll need several lifetimes to collect"

"Thats why you're knotting down with Percival ? Safety !?"

She looked away.

"Here,"he said, taking her hand and putting it upon his chest.

"This is my heart.. Just so you know"

She listened with her skin. Memorised that beat. Its abiding sincerity.

"Remember the first time you came to this house ? Did you know someone died inside of it ? Waiting for

love."

"There was a book in your hands. Red gown. Anuradha hollered out for you.Aw, you were so nasty to me. He died for waiting love. Which never came, right ?

"I was not! And it was a play of Ibsen, if i recall it right. Yes his love never came. I almost banishd you from the house, didnt I ?"

He laughed. Maybe she was right. His mind raced to what she had told him ages back: Miss god put me down to bring joy and sunshine into the lives of millions. Was she ?

"I didnt know better ,"she owned up a minute later."We do what we see. But I'm standing on my two lovely legs, and most mornings I dont ask for more."

He said that his ship was leaving the dock at seven the following morning, and his mother, for one, was eager about returning to Dublin. She said that she was quite 'looking forward' to married life - and all that it entailed. Byt their lame, haphazard talk was a hedgegrow of syllables. Formal. Divisive. Because neither knew how to bid farewell to such sweeping innocence. Like shutting your eyes to the broad blue sky for its beauty is too much. How could you part from someone who loved you not for your secrets but in spite of them?

Before their exchange acquired any burden, he got up to leave.

She followed.

At the water fountain, he takes the tips of her fingers and presses them into his palm.

"Will you watch for me, Irishman ?"

What is the thing next to love? Or above it ? She feels that for him

"Always. And with the Yeats."

"Promise me you will do something about your hair?"The despair in her voice was liquid, the bravery of her gaze formidable. "Try hair wax. Or a salon. Something. Look at this way, We will probably never save our souls - but hell, at least we will get our hair sorted."

Yeats Chapter 4

Link to Chapter 1

Years passed. Slowly. Fast.Three, Four or five I cant say. Depends on how you percieve them. Nothing much changed.

She still painted him, they talked for endless hours.They laughed. They cried. Then in their life came Percieval, its difficult to say whether she brought him into their life or he just stumbled. He was richer than the richers. When She saw him for the first time - The worthington heir - she thought he looked like one of those Boarding School Sods who took a week off to recover from a shaving cut.

She waved at him, he blushed and looked away.

Percieval was not made for her, if not for the money. She was not made for Percieval, if not for her own ambitions.

Her painting sessions with him,became irregular. He always wondered where is she ? She was always with Percieval, trying to woo him, seduce him. Percieval never understood why a girl like her gives so much importance to a guy like himself. Pea sized brain he had.

In the meantime, in her absence, He applied for schools in Dublin, hoping soon he will flee to Dublin along with her and his mother. Little did he know, none of this was going to happen. He will be disappointed from everything he wanted in his life.

Is it coincidence ? The day he got reply from trinity, the day he wondered if She will come with him to Dublin! If she wont, is he going to stay here with her. The same day she made it all easy for him.She announced her wedding with Percieval. With a boy, she knew, who wont be able to get it up even on the wedding night.

Nobody saw him for weeks. Its hard to say if he was missed. In coming weeks he returned, With the house sold and his bags packed, all there was room for was nothing: his house, like his mother's heart, was bare, and it was for this empowering bareness that he learned to develop a lifelong fondness.Perhaps that was the true nature of life:things boiled down to their essence.

Love defined by the depth it may never occupy.

Yeats. Chapter 3.

Link to Chapter 1 

Next time, he came to meet her, he asked her about that gash under her chin. And she was lost, looking at him, his innocence. Is she supposed to tell him.How? Is she supposed to tell him. Why? All she had to do was trace her finger over the tiny, unhealed, chin-under gash-and she could clearly summon to her mind its vicious, entirely unforgettable arrival into her kismet and over her body. Only she knew, Why was not for the gash but for love or to be said in a better way. Why not ?

Her parents once deeply and madly in love got over it faster than they fell into it. The only thing that happened in between was a marriage and ofcourse She. Their life would follow a routine, her father a Doctor left for work early in the morning. Her mother awoke at nine, and set to work on her paintings.Somewhere inside all of this was She. Watching. Listening. Memorising. Her father would return at lunchtime only to recommence an argument with his wife that he had abandoned the night before, and they opened with the very words they had broken off at, ending over lunch. They resumed work and met at the dinner table at eight, where they ate in an eerie hush since they were still brooding over their hastily concluded noonday argument.As always, the meal was fairly inedible, because a grotty meal - a charred roti;a daal that tasted like a salt pan - doubled as the gracious harbinger of a quarrel that could rise now and continue well into the night and be consummated at noon the following day.

At night she would often hear them shouting " If it wasnt for her , my daughter I would have left you ages ago", " If it wasnt for her, I would not have married you into first place", he replied. establishing that indeed it was she who was to blame.

As for that gash under her chin.

Well, now that was instituted in astonishing circumstances:during a fight that started- When her father came back after spending five wonderful months in England. When her mother announced that she was pregnant.Eight months pregnant. When it was too hot outside, and she was cuddled up in her room.

She hiding in her room, could hear her father yelling so that the glass panes shivered to his masculing timbre, which insulted his wife three generations back, describing her father a castrated pig, her mother as a cheap village whore, her grand mother as a lower-caste drain-cleaner and so on untill their invectives were overlapping and redundant and, in despair that he might run out of things to say, He started to beat his wife, first with a soup laddle he picked up absent-mindedly from the table, then with the back of his hand. This went on with merciless delight. She tolerated as much as a woman with an infant in her womb could.

In the darkness of her room, She hurried up to her door and pressed her ear to it:what now ? Who was being pulled ? What caused those screamings ? Animalesque. Unearthly. Were they going downstairs? She hurried back and hid behind the curtains, thoroughly petrified that the Hand that knocked her mother down was also waiting for her.

But no. Oh no,no,no! It was far worse.

When she looked outside of her hiding place,she saw, through the window, her mother on her all fours near the tree in their garden, just outside the main door. She heard steps of her father coming back. He started playing Beethoven. She looked at her mother again, panting and beaten into a pulp. She heard her mother shouting for her... save me please.. save me from your father.. for god's sake, I'm a pregnant woman.. and the baby is here.. your little sibling. But she was too scared that her father would hear her and grow mad at her, she ducked under the window.

Convinced that her daughter has abandoned her as well, Doctor's wife was back on all fours, digging with her hands, like an olive ridley turtle digging up a nest. Intrigued by her mother's sudden silence, She peeped up to watch. And she saw her mother spit out a child.Tear away from placentra.Rip out the chord.Small and dirty it was, but it was lifting up its so soppy arms and wailing forcefully. Breathing. She saw her mother lean down and kiss the bloody face before she.... she... why! she chucked it into the hole she had dug to the tune of Beethoven ( the small mercies in life:good music to bury your baby to). He was bawling and begging not to be burried, but only She other than her mother, watching intently understood that her mother had done the right thing. That night, She felt, this could not be, that this was not the life of a seven-year-old child should have to encounter and decided: never be a child.At that instance, her feet melted and she fell and smashed her chin on the marble-topped table whose sharp carved edge indented into her, for ever, the memory of the night when her mother was left out howling for her to help me please right before she burried her infant brother with her hands, and all she did was faint, to fade like the echo of a wail that rises from the deep gut of the Earth itself.

That was the first time she had got a seizure attack of epilepsy. She didnt know then how many has yet to follow.

Yeats Chapter 2.

Read Chapter 1 before reading this.

He came to meet her, this monday, the following monday, and then nobody knows when he started coming daily. Her faithful subject. He smiled with her when she was happy and held her arms when she was disturbed.At first, She was surprised that he had taken her worries to his heart, and wondered why he even bothered;if the situation were reversed, she certainly would not take his load on her back. That was when it became obvious:the boy was irrefutably, dangerously and insanely besotted with her. She smote her head in the awareness that she had no small hand to play in this love-locha. She had used every guile in the book to make him bring books from library with the provison that if ever brought her either Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontel, she would never allow him in this house again, for introducing the wags into this home whose only ambition in the life had been to marry well. She also directed him to pomade his hair. And yes, she had him mug up so much of Yeats that his mind was crammed with verses, he even said them aloud in his sleep, prmopting his mother to be believe their ancestral ailment - cian incurabilis - had, alas, infected her son.

Aware, that he will get to talk to her during those sittings, he endured the awkwardness of posing without his shirt. Every other day, he came to her.

A painters model.

With a dogged eye and a steady hand, she captured the colour of his edible lips;the solitude of his earlobe;the musky pink of his aureole.

The day when she was rather disturbed about the unfortunate events going on in this home, she sketched over sheet after sheet,thoroughly dissatisfied with every result, and frantically tore off the papers. And this all left him in knots, what was the matter with her ? He asked silently,"Something on your mind ?"

As usual, she told him half of what was happening around. How much this house was troubling her.

"Well, if it all gets too much.. then you know you can always come and live with us, can't you?" She could not explain why her heart beat so hard. Maybe because she was overcome with the simple nobility of his affections? She looked away at once.

"What will become of you?"His gaze was enquiring.

"Paris. That's my real destination. Where I belong.With all the other artists. But before that, I will marry well. Into some proper pedigreed family. With pots and pots of money!"

"You will marry?" he looked puzzled as he recalled her hatred of Jane Austen."But i thought you despised women whose only ambition was to find a husband?"

"Do you think this world would be half as interesting if we were all obvious?"she said, "sure, i want to do the struggling artist thingy.. but lets face it, me and penury does not tango too well."

The rattlesnakes of confusion and despair and envy stirred awake inside him because he had never even once thought that she would consider anyone other than him ( just how he was so sure that she would settle her easel and insanity with him, he never knew).

"No,No," he contested her designs on Paris. "One day, we shall be married.And you will live with me in Dublin."

If only she could explain why her heart beat so hardly once again.

Yeats

* If you are not going to read it full, dont even start, I mean it *

On monday evening, a wooden bagghi carried by horses stopped in front of that white mansion, and out she stepped, to their new home. She was awestruck. Oh what a home it was !  In the coming week she indulged herself with books and solitude in her room. Her cousin Anuradha left her to herself. Anuradha had known her for long enough to know when she wants to be left alone. 

On friday evening, the same week, when Anuradha answered the hesitant knocking on her door, the last thing she expected to see was an endearing white lad on her threshold, his hands behind his back. He introduced himself as their neighbour, and explained that a kite that he had been flying high into the sky was now, embarrassingly enough, stuck in the branches of a tree in their backyard. Could he, he requested, rescue it from their balcony. Anuradha smiled, and hollered for her cousin. 

Upstairs, in her room, as she layed sprawled out on her back in the bed, the depth of her concentration in a play by Ibsen shattered like pottery shards: Now what? Is there no solitude in this world ? She rose from her bed, stuck her thumb in between the pages of the Ibsen and arrived down the whorled stairwell. That was the first time he saw her, an Ibsen drama betwixt her hands, arms all bony and head at an annoyed tilt.

When explained everything by Anuradha, she reluctantly took him up, wishing for him to vanish away. 

"Wont stay a minute", he said to her hesitantly, and she replied at once "Are you Irish ?".

"Only when asked." He chuckled shyly.

Although she had been keen to write him off as only another pedestrian kite-flyer, she was, admittedly, quite riveted by his looks.Was it his tanned skin, its divinely polished brown lustre? Or the imminent muscles in his arms, such as one might associate with a gondolier? Those blue eyes, dreamy pools to wade inside, to never emerge out of. She leaned forward and corrected that errant slip of his dusty hair;her touch unleashed a 

tremble down his back.

"There!" She said with a smug smile. "I've restored you into a human being."

They talked their for sometime, he told her he was eighteen, and when he asked her her age, she frowned "Me?I'm timeless, I am the beedi smoking beloved of the art world. The darling of darlings, and soon I will be in paris, after ofcourse winning the whole world"  and she laughed at her own histrionics, and confessed she is just sixteen.

Then she asked him pointing to a little cottage,
"That is where you live !?" 
"Yes, with my mother.",he replied hesitantly

"What does she do ?"

"She is... She is... " Now he was really stumped.

"She is quiet after my father left. Very quiet." 

"Ah!"

"She is quiet and sad and broken," he blurted."Actually it runs in her family.Her mother had it and her mother had it."

"What're you on about?" she asked with a puzzled look on her face.

"Cian incurabilis "

She thought over the phrase, translating it, Incurable sadness, and asked him, "Do enlighten me my darling,  what is Cian incurabilis?" teasing him.

"A condition of the heart.They say the heart can break.That someone can dent it, or gouge it.And then, it is never the same. Some of us recover.And some, like my mother,never do.But that is what I want to change.",he said with a zest flashed into his blue, blue eyes. "I'll train to be a doctor and then I'll study Cian incurabilis .... and then.. I'll find a cure for it."

She started laughing at him, she fell into her bed, and continued to laugh. She didnt try to stop herself from laughing at him in his face. He kept looking at her. Silent. After few minutes, she stopped. She looked at him, and her laugh vanished, he was standing their, just looking at her- her laughing at him.

"What do you do here all day ?"  He asked her, in a different tone this time.

"I read. I think, and Miss God put me down here to bring joy and sunshine into the lives of millions, and I paint, So i may become the artist I am." she tried to smile while saying this.

"Can i swing by sometime ?" he asked hesitantly again. 

She asked him whether he would get her books, he put his hand on his heart and promised he would. 

"And do you know any verses of Yeats?" She asked

"No, only sissies knew poems, right ?

"You vulgar, schoolboy, she ticked him off." The warmth on her face made way for frustration. "Let me be, then, and no, I'll never let you in here."

How could he not know Yeats, she thought, and it that were the case,why was he even alive ?

Knowing there is nothing left ot say, he turned and left for home. Now it was certain he would never get to be with her.Just then at the door, he remembered the few lines he had heard once.

Wine come in at the mouth,

And love comes in at the eye

She swung around, gripped by his voice. 

And that is all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die

I life my glass to my mouth,

I look at you and i sigh

"Come back on monday," she waved, "After school, I need some subject. To paint. And get some more Yeats, please. "

Oh! She knows how to play Counter strike :P

* Is it your birthday ? No, Then this post is not for you, go away*

Once upon a time, there was this little boy ( Oh he still is) , who lived near a jungle. Jungle would always fascinate him, but he was not allowed to go down there. Once he saw some gypsies and some other people, dancing and playing with fire, and going into the jungle, he looked at those gypsies and silently followed them, he entered the dark jungle, thinking he has people with him and around him, but soon gypsies and everybody else disappeared, lost in the jungle. The boy was scared, but he kept looking into the jungle,wandering inside, deeper and soon he met her, who was also lost in the jungle, the same way boy was lost. She was a bit younger than him, but oh was she sweet ? Sweetest ever :). No they didnt fall in romantic love, No they didnt get married, but yes they held each others hand, they guided each other, she was always close and near to him whenever he was scared or felt lonely, and he always tried to be there for her as well. They sang songs together, they played together, and yes they promised never to leave each other. They were best friends. They are still in that jungle, but now the jungle is not that scary. It gets dark at times, but they know how to get through it, morning comes, and they know they are there for each other. 

Happy Birthday Sweetheart :) A very very Happy Birthday :)

We chased our pleasures here 
Dug our treasures there 
But can you still recall 
The time we cried 
We broke through to the other side.

:D

I always came on this page when i was sad, upset, lost, but today i have remembered this page in the moment of my extreme happiness. Yes, I am happy today, and not just happy, very very happy.

Reason of happiness will be posted in sometime. :D 

I am looking for something, which has already found me.

I cant explain what i felt, after a dormancy of 2-3 years, few days back i had this sudden urge to sketch, it was so urgent and violent, that it was absolutely necessary for me to sketch. I had thrown my sketching set from third floor 2-3 years ago, and tired in absence of pencils i resorted to pen, i tried looking for black pen, but found none, and in the end, i took a blue point pen and started drawing on an A4 paper, within minutes of drawing, paper gave up, and it was torn by harsh and cruel strokes of pen ( or my hand ), i felt lost, i planned to go out and bring pencils and paper at once, but then i realized its 2 or 3 in the night.. 

That image is still fresh in my mind, but i dont know if it will ever come to the paper again, may be the moment has passed. I dont know. I had never predicted such a moment will come back again, so I dont know. 

Tired and hopeless i started looking at my previous sketches, after a long time, and this sketch caught my attention, this particular sketch which i had made long ago, it was so perfect at that time for the situation, for what i was feeling in those days, yet for some reasons i didnt show it to a lot of people ( except few , some of those really close, some of them who could actually understand it ) ( for the same reason, that sketch was never posted on this page ) , and as i looked at it, i felt something

it was like i had not made that sketch for what i was feeling that day, but for today.. it made more sense now, i cant explain, its like making a painting years ago, only to understand its meaning years later. all these years, it was wings sequel, now i wish to rename it as

where she belongs ? 

May be i am breaking the chain or series of wings, but I dont care. They are always about what I feel or think. Its always about me, these sketches are one place where I dont compromise at all

Where she belongs ?

Fire

A few years later, the investigations conducted by the department of disasters showed that the fire had originally broken out in the northwest end of the town quite close to the harbour, where a youthful owner of a broken heart contemplated burning all the letters he had received from his beloved the previous year, on the wooden floor of his room on the upper floor of a villa in which he lived. The fire, it transpired, rushed out gleefully from the villa, chattering in its usual crackling voice which was heard by a few of the surviving neighbours, and may be by a lot more who did not survive, and set ablaze the pyres in the harbour and the timber wharves of the port that had existed a long time ago but was fondly remembered by a few old people, before it burned down the two hundred odd wooden ships that had dropped anchor in the secret reveries of the poor, many of them being workers at the port or the shipyard, orphans or prostitutes. The fire then crossed the river on a long wooden bridge  and got back to the island town to consume everything that had the quality and density of desire and desperation pressed into defined forms and inhabited the imagined areas of the lives of the townsfolk dead or alive; elaborate teak coffins that the poor wanted to buy for their dead parents, the large crucifix and the altar made in rosewood, that the Bishop always hoped would be gifted by rich sinners some day, hundreds of books that the local poets dreamt of publishing, countless pretty dresses that generations of native girls kept themselves pre-occupied with through the rainy evenings for centuries, a large number of carts, wagons, boats, wooden coconut-oil presses, copious quantities of sun-dried fish, and warehouses full of pepper and other crops that the farmers, traders or fishermen always longed to produce or acquire being among a few things worthy of recording, not to mention thousands of human victims, women or men that dwellers of the town had imagined of, so as to fill various needs of their lives, and infants that had been earnestly anticipated but had never arrived, for these are the things usually not expected in any report by fire investigators. 

P.S. This post is again special.

Fly Over

The fly-over seemed to be there before my memories of the city started, though I had never driven on it since I had never visited that part of the town, and probably wouldn't ever do so but for the-girl-in-red-canvas-shoes I had recently met inside the smokers' room at the airport. When I drove onto it for the first time—it was a winter night a few years back—I noticed it was steeper than anything I had seen before and appeared to be the most spiraling structure ever made without doubt, since it never stopped curving to the right. I also realised it is a very long fly-over indeed; I called the-girl-in-red-canvas-shoes to say I was surprised by the length of the fly-over which she apparently took to work everyday, though I did not expect to be any delayed, since I was able to drive fast, mine being the only car on the fly-over. She said indeed it was the longest one to the best of her knowledge, and it would take me a while to put it behind. She was right; It took me 13 years 4 months and 22 days to cross it, through which I called her 127 times, the last call made a little after 6 months since that winter night, since she told me not to call her anymore for I was a bit too delayed and the wine she had kept for me wouldn't keep that long. The good thing was, after a very long drive which certainly appeared too long to cross a fly-over of any kind, I reached the end of it, past midnight on a hot day, and I should say I was surprised to see the fly-over had ended at the peak of its height, as if someone had forgotten to build the part of it which descented down to earth. Against the stars that now seemed annoyingly close, thankfully, I spotted a traffic warden, who told me the only way forward was to fly over the city that looked like a faint recollection of everything that I had experienced in my life before I had ascended the fly-over. I told him I would rather go back to my part of the town from where I had started the climb, to which he softly answered, with a kind yet callous kind of strictness in his tone, that the fly-over had been made for one-way traffic.

P.S. This one is special.

Punishment

Gods are angry with me. They are punishing me, and all these villagers, He thought while walking back to his little hut. It had almost been 3 years since it last rained. He came back to his little hut, to whatever little of it was left, and looked at his wife, lying down on a tattered piece of cloth, her body was burning with heat, and he could feel the heat radiating out of her body. He felt helpless sitting across her sick wife and felt a strong urge to cry, but he could not, as there was not enough water in his body to even produce tears, he could not remember when was the last time he had drank water, or for that matter, anything. He thought  Its not going to rain, if only it rains, everything will become so better. She will die if he wont do anything. It was time. 

He went out and looked at Moti. Moti was a lamb he had brought for her wife four years back. When he and his wife could not produce a child after a lot of years into their marriage, his wife had started being upset all the time.

She would look at the children of other people with a hope and sadness in her eyes. Often she was found holding babies of other people in her hands. She would think to herself how she would give anything to have a child of her own. Deep into her despair and guilt she was loosing the hold to the real world, and then one day out of nowhere, he brought her a little lamb. She looked at it, it had yet to open its eyes, and tears were falling down from her eyes. She took to its care, and soon Moti became a part of the family. She forgot looking at other peoples children, she lost the sense of the world and her world would revolve only around Moti and to take care of him. 

It was time. He looked at Moti once again and went back inside, he looked at his wife and told her, he will be back by evening. She opened her eyes, and tried to smile but he could see even smiling took ardous efforts.
She asked him " How is Moti ? "
"Everything is okay, you just rest " he replied, and she closed her eyes again.

He came out and took Moti without looking at him, inured by circumstances, he held him and walked on. Moti simply followed him, bound by a rope. He looked at the sky, it was a clear sky, with no clouds, and he kept walking.

He knew what is going to happen to Moti, maybe he will be butchered to become feast of some rich seth, or if Moti is lucky, he will end up with some rich enough farmer which could provide for him, but one thing was for sure, he wont be loved anymore. He entered the place, he looked at Moti and felt his eyes gazing into him, as if they were asking him innocently, What all is going on ? He at once looked somewhere else, he had only so much strength to sell him without going insane.

He looked at him one last time, and came out, he is going to be butchered he thought. He had forgotten the world and he kept walking towards home in a half sleep like state, his thoughts revolving around Moti and his wife,  and then a drop fell on him. Surprised if he is crying, his hands reached for his cheeks and eyes. Nothing. Then another drop fell on his bare body. He looked upwards. It was raining. Another drop, then another and then yet another.

Tapp
Tapp
Tapp
Tapp
Tapp

It was raining. Soon it engulfed everything around. People started dancing in joy, and he ? his legs started shaking and he dropped on his knees, and now he could feel water coming out of his eyes. He was crying. Indeed. Gods are angry with me. They are punishing me he thought, and he kept on crying there.

.

It was cold while coming back...

Intermingled. Chapter 1. Memories

Chapter 1

Memories

He did not know why he suddenly thought of the oak tree. Nothing had recalled it. But he thought of it and of his childhood summers in his kingdom. 
 
The great oak tree had stood on a hill , in a lonely spot of his kingdom. He , aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.  

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. He saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside—just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.  
 
His shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayal—the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, nor his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound, then he walked back to the castle. He never spoke about it to anyone, 
then or since.  

Today while climbing up this mountain his memories were showing loyalty to him and each memory was coming back slowly to him, and he still didn’t know what he should make out of this all, but he was going to get answers to all of his questions, to all of his restlessness since last 15 years. 
 
Its called Mountain of satisfaction, and the person who told him about this mountain also told him that every person can find the answers to all of his questions here, he will find the ultimate satisfaction here, and all the things he want. The only thing prince thought that moment was he doesn’t know what he wants, but he knew that’s the place where he had to go. 
 
There was pain ebbing in that part of his body which controlled his speech, He had not spoken a word in last 15 years until yesterday, not because he cant speak, but because there was nothing there to speak.