NOVEL~*Hiding behind a Stranger*~Thread 9 - Chapter 14 - UPD 29th Aug - Page 132

Originally posted by: lashy

Good Night Periyamma... 🤗

GN Baisas and Banjaras...

Bond Kanna it's this Sunday for sure 😆

Originally posted by: cute.manasi

😆😆

Originally posted by: lashy

Good Night Periyamma... 🤗

GN Baisas and Banjaras...

Bond Kanna it's this Sunday for sure 😆

Originally posted by: Kalgi22

Periamma first diet and now Virat?🥺 😆 Periamma wanted take away my chappy cheeks😆😉

Originally posted by: harshu27

good night lashy sahiba🤗waiting fr ur update 😉

Originally posted by: lashy

<font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif">I don't know if these boys had a strong institute like the Gopichand institute backing them because they seem to come from humbler backgrounds... they (and maybe their families) must have also put in a lot of hard-work... in fact overcome a lot more than a normal person would have to, since their disabilities are such...</font>

<font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif">My question... Will they be given a Padma Shri award too?😊</font>

Originally posted by: lashy

hope my update doesn't make it a bad morning... 😲 😆

@Harshu... you didn't send me a pm abt your FF

Originally posted by: karkuzhali

it's even better darling...

Chapter 14: An advance and a retreat

Lashykanna,

I have been in two minds about this one for a while now, wondering if I should follow my usual pattern of covering two chapters at a time, ie Nos. 14 & 15, even if they are not on the same day. There was also the backlog of Nos. 11 &12 which made me feel guilty, for all that any take on those chapters would by now be long past its expiry date!

For one thing, your gargantuan threads for a single chapter now give me the willies. Truth to tell, I am so psychologically intimidated by the sheer outpouring of comments, poems ordinary and extraordinary (like Saraswathi Akka's haikus ), and enormous pictorial menus that make one scoot to the kitchen pronto (they also reinforce my conviction that those who observe vrats actually eat more than normal folk, only they eat different things!😉) that I thought of skipping this post altogether. My take is in any case more than likely to be lost in the next lot of posts that is surely going to take this thread past a double century before you put up you Chapter 15.

Lashykanna, this is not just Sehwag on a good day. It is way, way better, a super success of the kind assuredly never seen before in the history of the IF!👏

But had I skipped this chapter too, I would have felt even more guilty. So, largely for this selfish reason, I am going ahead after all, and let us see how it comes out.

Overlapping halves, diverging reactions: For me, the chapter falls neatly into two halves - the first centred on Heera, and the second on Akbar - that overlap in the middle during the lunch. What is very interesting here is that the impact of the overlap on the two halves of our twosome is diametrically opposite.

Let us begin with a rundown of the event.

After Heera and Akbar both spend a good bit of time niharofying each other, she discreetly and he circumspectly, Akbar moves to unprecedented action. He does an adab to her for the first time ever, with a slight hint of a smile as a sort of bonus.

Heera, who has been trying to pretend, even to herself, that she has not been staring at him for far too long (if her maids had not been busy imitating a flock of chaffinches, they would have spotted right away that their baisa was up to something) blushes for the first time ever. And on one of the rare occasions that she does so, wishes that she could see better, and could make sure that it was really a smile. Then what?

Starting with Heera, let us first go back a bit to the part where she is acutely depressed and almost ready to break down, which is not surprising seeing the crushing load of misfortune and responsibility that the poor child now has to carry all by herself.

She is a sensitive soul, is our Heera, and that is a cross she has to bear all the time. She can feel the sufferings of others, not in a superficial manner, but almost under her skin, and Mohan Banna's agony gets to her, all the more so as she is not able to relieve it despite all her skill and her experience as a healer. That is why they say that nurses and doctors cannot afford to get emotionally involved with their suffering patients, for that leaches out of them the strength they need to cope with the rest of those who depend on them.

But for Heera, Mohan is not just a patient, he is almost family. On top of this, she has to dredge out of the inner recesses of her being the strength to scold him, to pull him up by reminding him of his duties, to somehow make him hold on to life while she organizes the inevitable, an amputation, all the while tamping down the panic rising within her so that it does not show on her face.

The strain must have been terrible. No wonder then that by the time she takes refuge in a plaintive appeal to the one person with whom she does not have to pretend, her Durga jiji, she is not just tearful. She is desperate., for there seems to be nothing but darkness all around.

At this point, in comes Gokul.

I liked it that we are here shown once more how good a leader and boss Heera is. Earlier, it was when she listened to something she already knew, about the orphan kids Akbar was supporting, as if it was a fresh input, so as not to discourage this very Gokul . This time again, she curbs the exasperation welling up in her at this untimely interruption, and listens to his announcement: Khan Sahib arrived.. a short while ago.

A rainbow in the sky: Lo and behold! Her heart leaps up with hitherto unknown alacrity. 'So he DID come?' More is to follow. Her worry lines gradually lightened - a sign that the befuddled thoughts in her mind had begun levelling out. The last line: Heera wouldn't disagree - the news had left her a little surprised, is pure self-deception or, to put it more bluntly, poppycock. It deceives no one, not us, and very likely not Heera either.

NB: The rainbow bit is a riff on Wordsworth's My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky..

This passage was, to me, far more revealing than all that followed about the lunch and the Khan Sahib's pre-departure gesture. In any good relationship, pleasure at a special sign of regard from the other is normal. It is not a measure of the strength, or of the special nature of the relationship.

It is when the very presence of the one can lift the other out of a valley of despair and endless night, when just the mention of the name of the other can calm a roiling mind, that it is time to sit up and take notice!

I was charmed by Heera's pleasure in listening to the energetic chatter of her maids about the Khan Sahib. I am sure she must, by the end, have been able to flawlessly recite the full list of all the delicacies he had eaten with such obvious relish! 😉

This too is another unfailing sign of a budding romance, the secret delight in hearing about the other. In all our classical tales, the heroine had a bevy of sakhis for the express purpose of talking about the hero; here Heera has her chatterbox maids!

A perfect little souffle: While we are still here, Lashykanna, I must tell you how pleased I was with this segment about the maids. It has come out perfectly. Their enthusiastic recitals are so natural and so convincing, and then there is the eternal maternal instinct in all women, young or old, that seeks to pamper a young man, to feed him well, and derive a special satisfaction from watching him eat with relish.

'Khan Sahib enjoyed the meal...'

'He ate it all...'

'He liked most of it...'

'But baisa, what he loved the most, were Maharaj kakasa's laddus... he must have eaten at least 4 of them...'

'And the khoba roti too... kakasa made fresh khoba rotis, especially for Khan Sahib...'...

Then the typical female protectiveness towards someone they have come to respect and like, that surfaces in the desire to ward off an evil eye that might affect him even inadvertently. The indulgent satisfaction voiced in

'I agree... he is a well-built young man... he must have been hungry...'

'Moreover, this is a household without women in it... he mustn't have tasted the kind of feast he tasted today...'

Lovely stuff. It is easier to do intense scenes than to pull off such a perfect little souffle. Take a bow, my pet!

Breathtaking surprise: To come back to our Heera, one has just to collate what she says to herself. For it is Heera, struck by a second wave of surprise, whose thoughts you have recorded here. Not yours.

The young man who was at the centre of it all, looked a far cry from the 'lone stranger' she'd met a week ago. Instead, he looked every bit like the head of a large household, like the lofty 'Sahib' of this haveli...

However, today, he didn't seem averse to all that ruckus either - at least, not as averse as she assumed he'd be...

His sharp features had somehow forgone their severity too, trading it for expressions that were more peaceful. Expressions that made him appear charming. And refined. And gentlemanly.

One would have said she was carefully observing and assessing Akbar in this unfamiliar new avatar, and docketing the info away for future use. To add to the shadings, the nuances of the mental portrait of him that was there somewhere in her zehen, being touched up whenever there was any interaction, direct or indirect, with him. Till now, all the shadings had been bright; there had not been a single dark spot.

Even so, his parting adab almost takes her breath away, for it is as unexpected as it is graceful and courtly. From a man of the world at the imperial court such a gesture would have been the merest commomplace. From the aloof Khan Sahib, it is nothing short of a revelation.

A revelation which Heera would have later assessed, consciously or sub-consciously, and tried to draw her own conclusions from it. The pity of it is that she has no one with whom she can discuss this matter, any more than she could have asked any of the maids if the Khan Sahib had indeed accompanied his adab with a smile.

There is Gauri of course, but she is the last person with whom Heera would have broached this topic, for Gauri literally radiates strong if unspoken disapproval of Aidabad and its inhabitants, and only a little less of the master of the haveli. Heera, who is nothing if not intelligent and perceptive, is quick to grasp the real reason behind Gauri's haste to be gone from Aidabad, because of which she almost sidelines Mohan Banna's parlous condition. Well, Gauri is right from her point of view, but we cannot share that to any degree, for if we did so, kya hoga hamari kahani ka?

The other half: The comical interlude between Akbar and his vet is deceptive, for it is meant as deliberate light relief, a lollipop to compensate us in advance for what is to come. There is a broad hint already, while we are still at lunch with the Khan Sahib, that the skies are going to darken again very soon.

Before returning to his desolate existence; he wanted to look her in the eye, and thank her once, for bringing a few rays of sunshine into his dim world. ... for giving him a glimpse of how a real home felt.

There they are again, up front and centre, the rootlessness, the emptiness, the loneliness that perennially darken his existence. And once Akbar is back in his room, these black shadows, possibly alarmed by the unfamiliar peace that now seems to pervade his being, the strange sense of serenity ( lovely alliteration, Lashykanna! This is what is called the anupraas alankaar in Hindi grammar), rush to reclaim his mind and his soul.

That scene is so vividly written that one can practically see it as a film, with the two Akbars debating fiercely with each other. But before we get to that, there is a searing description of his bare body, scarred and scored with the marks of lashes, of brutal blows, of the other ill treatment he has suffered as a young boy. Scars that cannot be removed. Scars that disfigure his body, but are also a metaphor for the even worse scars that disfigure his heart, his mind, his soul.

These indelible scars, and the dangerous life he has fashioned for himself after escaping from the hell of his early existence, are, for Akbar Mahmoud Khan, his sole reality, from which there can be no reprieve.

As he drags himself back to this reality by main force, there is another, even stronger emotion that hastens his retreat to his dark, unsafe world. This is the fierce protectiveness that he feels toward the Sahiba he has come, in just one week, to respect, admire, to care for. Care for so deeply that his one aim now is to shield her from every danger, every ill wind. And in the first place, from himself and his fate.

Whence the voice of his alter ego, speaking bitter truths that will not be denied.

What would you gain by knocking on this door now? Is it to find out if she holds the cure for this never-ending pain of yours? Even if she has the secret remedy, you'll never live to enjoy it... you'll die and get her killed too!

We do not as yet know what is this life, this mission to which Akbar is committed to the exclusion of all else. I use the word mission deliberately, for I remember him at the hukkah joint, musing that the planned meeting with Chota Faizan was important because his duty called for it. And there was a hated rival as well.

I do not expect you, Lashykanna, to open up those cards very soon. But it is clear that it is a lifestyle so dangerous, that it has no place for women in it. Whence his stated determination to keep Heera out of it.

Never mind. Akbar ko jo sochna hai soch le, jo karna chahta hai, kar ke dekh le. Is Sahiba ka saath to itni aasaani se chootnewala nahin hai.

Either she will still be there when he gets back to Aidabad after two days, or some emergency involving her will surface before Akbar's planned departure. Then we shall see who comes out on top, Akbar 1, the one alive to new, budding hopes and emotions, or Akbar 2, the one who wants to close the door firmly in the face of such unforeseen temptations. I have already laid my bets! And don't you, Lashykanna, dare trip me up!😉

Shyamala Periyamma