Hey guys...
Well, I am inspired by one of my favorite writes Alexandre Dumas...I love 'Three Musketeers' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo'...I don't know I have this fascination with the English ways, the gowns, lavish living and hidden secrets, it's just too appealing. His stories have everything, romance, drama, hatred, friendship, revenge, repentance, realization a perfect blend of everything...I wanted to write a full-fledged, complete story inspired by his story...The writing style will be different, with sudden flashbacks and drifting patterns between past and present, so any problems, I am open to answer them anytime!!!! Hope you all will like this as much as my earlier attempts?!!! I am really in dread of words; I feel the dictionary is getting smaller (Every 4.soemthing minutes a new word is discovered)...HA!!HA!!Weird ME!!! I have actually put a lot of thinking to this, I usually think a lot for everything but this one is a notch higher.
I had written the first part and before I took a break, I may not continue it regularly?as I need to assemble my story properly?for now tell me about this part!!!!!
***People who want to read my earlier stuff, I am a PM away, will forward you the links!!!
ENJOY!!!! Will be eagerly waiting for all your lovely comments!!!
XXXX
A Heap of...
Broken IMAGES...
? ?for you know only
A heap of broken images
And a dead tree gives no shelter? ?
{T.S. Eliot's 'Wasteland'}
PART-1
Kerala
India
The south-west monsoon was about to break, it was early June, and the next three months would be of wind and water with short spells of short, glittering sunshine. The summer was about to end in Idukki, a small, almost un-locatable town situated in the Northern Travancore. The summer season was usually hot, broodingly humid, the days long while the short nights were restless but cooler. The shrunk rivers would be over flooded with water once the rain showered in full force. The countryside would turn an immodest green... ...
It was raining when Jai came to Idukki...almost three ago when he was air-lifted, the ride which he didn't remember...drenched in blood, his legs unmoving...his mind had only one picture in mind...of...Her... even after all that which happened...it was only...Her... He could still picture Her... All these horrifyingly tormenting years he watched her recede into the past, each successive moment of her passing before his eyes and being lost forever, surviving only in outer space in the form of escaping light-rays. This is what loss was, what death was: an escape into the luminous wave-forms, into the ineffable speed of the light-years and the parsecs, the eternally receding distances of the cosmos...
The wooden door creaked as jai pushed it open...the rains had started...just in time...he looked leaning back...the far off boundaries had blurred as tapioca fences took root and bloomed...brick walls had already turned moss-green...pepper vines snaked up the electric poles...wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spread across the water puddled potholed roads...he could spot the long boats coming back not venturing into the dangerous sea, the fishermen carrying their nets retuning homes...the house was old, many decade old, the ancestral house of the man who gave him new life, he called him Appa out of love and respect...it was on a small, less heighted hill-top, Kerala lying near the centre of the Indian tectonic plate; most of the state was subjected to comparatively little seismic and volcanic activity...the high mountains, gorges and deep-cut valleys, it was breath-taking view from the window...the house wore its steep, slanting, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hut, it was a huge house, long in length, typical of the area... the walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft, and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The wild, unmaintained garden which lay in the front of the house was full of the scurry of invisible hiding small lives...the house itself looked empty. The doors and windows closed except for one which jai opened during the mornings, till evenings and then he shut them tight. The front veranda was bare, unfurnished. The wooden chairs which once took pride in sitting in there overlooking the once artistically kept garden had rotted by the excessive rain showers, drenching their naked bodies... ...after Appa's death, the house had almost taken up the reputation of a History House, the one children usually got scared hearing about in the bedtime stories, many people still didn't believe that someday has come a few months ago and was residing there...in complete silence...Appa's last words would remain etched in his mind...forever... ...
"I know you have been wronged..." he was breathless by now, the countless machines and pipes attached to his body doing nothing to give him life... his time had come, as one day everybody's time would come...
"Appa...nothing will happen..." jai gave him false hope, but he was too intelligent to cling onto that falseness...
"But...do good child...do good..." the machine beeped and then stopped...Appa was free...for practical purposes in a hopelessly practical world...
He hadn't shed a tear, there was nothing left inside him to even cry...the only thing which was still very much alive and breathing was his anger...the sole purpose of his existence... and he knew once that anger was unleashed like a destructive tsunami, he would be free too... ...
Appa laid in the medium-sized coffin...the brass handle shined under the morning sun...His kind face was pale, wrinkled like that of a washer man's a thumb from being in water for too long... The congregation gathered around the coffin and the yellow-painted church swelled like a throat with the sound of sad singing. The priests with curly beards swung pots of frankincense on chains and didn't smile, they way they usually did.
The long candles on the altar were bent. The short ones weren't.
An old lady masqueraded as a distant relative whom nobody recognized, put cologne on a wad of cotton wool and with a devout and gently challenging air, dabbed it on his forehead, who took all these worldly rituals with his ever encompassing smile... He smelled of cologne and coffin-wood. It was hot in the church as the gathered mob read out hymns from their hymnbook. He was clueless about what he should do; he just stood there, with a bent head, saying a haphazard, unconstructed prayer, which was not a appropriate way to bid farewell to a dead man but was nonetheless straight from his heart...He would miss Appa...
"I will do good appa...I promise but not before...what is to be done..." he said to himself as he witnessed the rope being lowered and the coffin rested in the ground in the little cemetery behind the newly yellow-painted church...one by one the holy priests dropped a fistful of soil over the light bluish coffin, like ink diluted with water... Appa was salvaged... jai looked up skywards, behind the dome of the church...he could him smiling down...a moment later the image dissolved like the drifting clouds...
Jai blinked his eyes, if like before; he would have loved to capture the sensual nature dancing in front of him Synonym au naturel... in its full glory in his lens...but life was not what it was before... his life had a size and shape now. A definite time was set. All those boundaries, brinks and limits which never existed had appeared from nowhere. Gentle half-moons had gathered under his eyes, telling him that yes, the time was nearing...Thirty-One...a few months...a few days...Not too old...Not too young...But he was awaiting it, he was aware it would come slowly, it would take time...but come it would. Has to. But before it came he had some unfinished business left.
The dusk had set rather early, it was still raining, beating the roof with loud clamor disturbing his silence, he closed the window. Walking towards the dining room...
On the old, almost ready to crumble dining table, Tony sat, the vinegar-hearted, short-tempered, Appa's midget assistant and cook, even after Appa's death Tony, the loyal had stuck to him like an appendage...quietly, standing there, looking at him...he would never be able to repay him...may be in his next birth would be born as his son. Tony sat rubbing the thick, frothy bitterness out of an elderly cucumber. He wore a loose clothes, a over-sized white shirt over his old-fashioned pleated trousers, the over-washed white shirt littered with turmeric stains, under the table his feet didn't reach the cold floor; he swung his feet, like a small child on a high chair. He was fifty-nine, stuck there...his eyes spread like butter behind his thick glasses, the glasses which he refused to change ever since he knew. He had stopped him, requested him not to follow him, he wanted peace, but nonetheless he had wanted to follow him like an appendage, he at times felt he withdrew his concern...it was not possible that he was not affected by all this...but he made a great show of not expressing it...he accepted him unconditionally, and that scared him...this increased his debt, he had to be born again to repay her...the thought of life made him squirm...
"Ente makan (My son) come...let's have dinner..." Tony said in a cheery way...so characteristic of him...
"Hmm..." he said unmindfully...
"You need not come with me...tomorrow..." jai said as he seated himself...he heard Tony mutter something under his breath in Malayalam...
"What will I do here...???Turn into a ghost..." Tony sputtered angrily...
"I mean..."
"Shut up...I will pay for the ticket if you want..." Tony said with self-pride musing over the meager money he had saved for nothing basically, he didn't have anyone to call his own...
"Okay fine...no need to pay for the ticket..." jai shook his head...Tony nodded his head, breaking into a toothless smile, most of his decaying teeth were missing...
****
The river had risen, its waters quick and black, snaking towards the sea, carrying with it the cloudy night skies...in a while the rain slowed to drizzle and then stopped. The breeze shook water from the trees and for a while it rained only under the trees, where the shelter had once been. A weak, watery moon filtered through the clouds... ...
By tomorrow he will leave this place... an unknown land which had become his home, which never asked anything in return...ostracizing himself from these thoughts he booted the laptop...he opened the document folder... reading with concentration...
Appa, Mathews Fernandez, was an extremely wealthy man, who owned proverbial acres of tea estates in Nilgiri Hills (Tamil Nadu), Munnar and Central Travancore (Kerala)... He had a huge tea processing factory; he usually bought the tea leaves from small growers who sold their tea as 'green leaf'. After processing, which converted the green leaf into 'made tea', most was sold through regularly scheduled auctions in Coonoor, Coimbatore and Kochi. And major part of Nilgiri tea was exported, or usually found its way into blends used for national and international tea bags... His factory was mainly specialized in making the expensive hand-sorted, full-leaf versions of the tea like the Orange Pekoe (O.P.) which were highly sought after at international auctions making it unaffordable for most locals.
He remembered the time when Appa took him to one of his tea-plantations...he was enamored by its vastness...The Nilgiri Mountains also known as the Blue Mountains were endless with a cool and moist climate and stout tea bushes grown at elevations wide and spreading...Nilgiri tea was a dark, intensely aromatic, fragrant and flavorful tea...Appa's favorite...even though he was a sugar patient he never missed his morning tea...at times jai strictly didn't allow him his tea and Appa would be grumpy all day until he tasted his little tea.. .if anybody would cut my veins, it was not blood but Nilgiri tea that would flow out in abundance... he would crack a joke on himself... and laugh with the excitement of a child...
"This very special leaf is characterized by its elegant flavor and fragrance. The best Nilgiri tea has excellent body and flavor, quite unique in the world of tea..." he used to say proudly, inhaling its heady scent...
Mathews Fernandez was a loner, widower, childless...but that didn't take away his zest for living...he romanced life and tea...He believed in charity and the goodness of man, he saw God in everyone...he was content with life even though it was not perfect...
"Perfection is so boring jai...then there is nothing left...only when there are imperfections do we care to improve them..."
Jai would be handling his business now...but he had other plans...big plans...and the countdown started from tomorrow... ... exactly six years later... ...he would revert back... back to the heap of broken images...
****
God bless
Dhani
Hindi TV Shows
Anupamaa
