Originally posted by: sashashyam
First of all, let me wish you and the family, as also all our friends here, a joyful and auspicious Navaratri. In Pune, the emphasis is more on the Ganeshotsav, and then on Deepavali, but when I was at school in Chennai, the golu - for which we kids used to work for a week - and the crowds of ladies visiting our place for the sundal prasad and to sing bhajans used to be great fun. Of course in Bengal, the Durga Puja is THE thing.
I totally miss the 'Kolu' we used to keep at home too.. something my mom did even when we were living overseas in the Gulf.. it was a grand affair.. here it's just one day of calling ladies over for Haldi Kumkum😳
Next, I was very sorry to see from some posts here when I looked in after quite a while that your littlest menace was taken ill a few days ago. It is always very trying when small children fall ill - they cannot tell you what is wrong and you agonise helplessly over their condition. I hope it was not anything serious and that she is now on the way to recovery. Even if she is all right by now, it must have been hard on you, my poor poppet.
She's (touch wood) on the road to recovery... I hope!😊
The circumstances are not too propitious, for I seem to have stumbled, I do not know how, into an attack of food poisoning that has been very trying for the last 3-4 days. It is not too severe, but food poisoning is always debilitating, and all one wants to do is to crawl into a hole and pull it in after one!
It says a lot about the siren song of your tale that I have decided to crawl out of the hole for at least a few hours and post this one. It is not going to be one of my overlong efforts, I hope, and I also hope that it turns out well. Your comments on my posts are invariably so flattering, my pet, that I generally approach them with more than a pinch of salt!😉
Are you better today, Periyamma?🤗
Hatke pas de deux: Lashykanna, I have said this before, but it bears repeating. You do have the most extraordinary flair for determinedly unusual love scenes, that neatly circumvent all the social roadblocks set up against budding lovers in 17th century India. (I would have added exquisite, but of that more later.) I have listed the earlier examples in my take on Chapter 14, but this one takes not just the cake but the whole bakery! Let us see what we have here.
I laughed out loud at the 'whole bakery' aspect of it - but I am glad I've been able to keep some sort of a balance between realistic, sensible and novel - where the scenes are concerned... 😳
- One desolate temple, with a convenient set of steps on which our lissome, properly veiled heroine can park herself, and philosophise about the Almighty and the travails of the human condition.
-One woodland path right next to the above-mentioned temple, on which our hero just happens to be ambling by on horseback when he sights the aforesaid heroine. He naturally descends from his mount, with the entirely humanitarian motive of making sure that she was not going to be shot at by tribals or eaten up by wild animals. So far so good.
Loool😆
- Our heroine is delighted to see him - the extent of her pleasure not being quite clear even to her, though of course we readers know her better than she knows herself!😉 By now, she can practically sense his presence, and her partial vision is only a supplementary adjunct.
But however unclear the silhouette, that distinctly masculine frame could not be mistaken for anyone else's - the impressive attitude that stood out even in such a dense setting, the shoulders that sat proud above a robust physique. Yes, it was undeniably HIM.
Note the capitals for the Khan Sahib. Not to speak of the assorted and highly laudatory adjectives for him that precede it. The girl is clearly well on her way to becoming besotted with the gentleman!😉
Of course... in a way, she always was... right from the moment she heard that 'gruff' voice from inside her palanquin..
it was circumstances, the 'unknown' factor and decorum that kept it from blossoming into anything else...
But she is, naturally, unwilling to let him see how welcome his turning up is for her. Plus, she has more fun guessing his motive in stopping, and coming to make sure that she is safe, than if she had got the point clarified from the horse's mouth (not Bahadur's, though if he could speak, he would have been extremely useful!) So, while seeking to set at rest our hero's doubts about the adequacy of her security, she prudently refrains from asking him why he is so bothered about her anyway.
Imagine he gives her a rude answer to brush off why he stopped by... then her theories would all be debunked... so being the clever girl she is, she is happy to live with her own theories😆
Thus,
'What's on your mind, Khan Sahib? And what's making you...'She hesitated, unsure if she must complete the rest 'what's making you ...so protective of me... Khan Sahib?'Instantly, a small flutter stirred within the core of her chest, proving that she'd been right in hesitating to complete that statement. It was only a small flutter, but stronger than any such emotion she might have felt in the past. Strong enough to overpower any scepticism that might've been lurking in her mind.
-Our hero decides, again for reasons he will not acknowledge even to himself, to hang around till her escort finishes lunch and rejoins her. The most interesting thing about this move of his is that our heroine anticipates it accurately. Talk of telepathy !!
Till now, all is predictable - the desolate temple, the lovely young girl, the gallant young man, his full blown if unacknowledged protectiveness towards her. But here comes Lashykanna's super fertile imagination, in the shape of - no, not a tiger, or even a raging bull, for that would be too commonplace . She opts for a nattuvakkili, which is what the fearsome red scorpion is called in Tamil. I have, as a child, watched them crawl out of a disused well in my grandfather's estate near Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, with a horrified fascination that I can almost recall even today. They were the stuff of nightmares.
I can imagine.. brrr😲
So Lashykanna enters Sherlock Holmes territory - Holmes aficionadas would immediately remember The Speckled Band, or The Deptford Horror ( from The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, written largely by Adrian Conan Doyle ).
Periyamma... I see you had a good laugh as you wrote this review, didn't you?😆
Subterranean sensuality: What next? If this had been a pedestrian writer at work, the Khan Sahib would have warned Heera to get up fast and run, and she would, thanks to her limited eyesight, have stumbled down the worn out temple steps straight into her knight errant's waiting arms.
Eureka! All of those eagerly wanting the romantic temperature to rise, regardless of the age and its mores, would have exulted and reached at once for their trusty thermometers. 😆
So cute.. ROFL... of fever metres as Babloo puts it. 😆
But my Lashykanna is anything but pedestrian, and she pulls off a marvellous passage of verbal sleight of hand in what follows. In a scene where the visuals are G rated, she nonetheless manages to flood the narrative with a current of delicate sensuality, all the stronger for being for the most part subterranean.
having written both kinds of romance, this type is infinitely more difficult to write 😕
The mechanics of romance: The first hurdle is to work in physical closeness. How does Lashy achieve this without making it look downright unmannerly on Akbar's part. Why, like this! With the scorpion on the railing behind Heera, and
With thick overgrowth blocking every other access, the young man took one steady stride after another, headed for the only available approach - the steps she sat on.
So our Khan Sahib is now - and in a perfectly legitimate manner - coming closer and closer, and our Heera, scared as she is by the thought of the horror behind her, is even more unnerved by the sight of him advancing towards her. Every ounce of will was what it took to keep up a facade of normalcy, while her erratic beats quickened, and quickened.
No wonder periyamma called your review a report... I can actually picture you with a scale, measuring the distances between the two😆
Remarkable good sense: It is proof positive of Heera's commonsense that even as her veil starts slipping, she suppresses her instant impulse to grab at it. Instead, she asks him if she could move a bit to one side, and when the response is a stentorian 'DON'T move... if you value your health!', she does not resent its peremptoriness, but is instead grateful to him and relieved to have him in charge of what is clearly a dangerous situation beyond her control.
If anything, to have another person take charge of a situation - a man, who knew what he was doing - felt like a welcome change!
My heart went out to the poor child when I read this. She is so very young, is our Heera, and so beleaguered by responsibilities far beyond any single young woman's capacity to manage, no matter how brave and how determined she might be. That too in a situation of looming danger, more danger than she is even aware of. No wonder then that anything that relieves her of even a bit of her heavy load must have seemed like manna from Heaven. All the more so if this help came from HIM!
Yes ... I can imagine most of us feeling this way when swamped!
Nascent attraction: Now that all she can do is to sit still and let him do what needs to be done, she begins to rationalize her situation, trying to fit it back into the framework of propriety.
Poor thing she can't do anything else, ille? She's nervous, she's excited, she's confused, she's frightened, she has to behave properly, and she is attracted...
too many things happening at one go😆
As for the troubling issue of their growing physical proximity - well, Khan Sahib was being his usual dignified self, his attitude unaffected and business-like.
But what about herself? She proceeds to twit him, beginning with a teasing question about the threat behind her, for one and only one reason.
But Heera didn't know what else to do to keep her mind occupied. If she didn't, she was certain HE would soon be able to hear her beats that were now pulsing so hard, they drowned every other sound around her.
On most other occasions, she had a convenient excuse that would keep her thoughts diverted - the fact that she couldn't see him so clearly. But now, since that excuse wouldn't work, there was nothing to stop her from observing the angular facets of his features or his intriguing dark eyes. There was nothing to stop her being drawn towards the magnetism of his face - a face that somehow appeared more rugged, more handsome then when she'd met him first.
True, she'd only ever met a few men in her life, but she was certain nature could not have gifted many others with such charisma. Aha, see how sure she is on this vital point!
What an absolutely lovely passage, Lashykanna! So deceptively simple, but yet so redolent of the stirrings of a first love, the sensual pull of the nearness of the other, a tug at the heart of a young girl, a heart so full of unknown yearnings and unfamiliar emotions. Now this is the stuff of true romance, that can conjure up magic without even a touch!
Thank you so so so much... 🤗 Yayyy
Overwhelming temptation: We now come to Akbar. He is as busy fighting himself as he is focussing on the red scorpion. Not that this struggle is anything new, but this time it is harder than ever, and the reasons for that lie close at hand.
Unaffected? Business-like? How wrong was she!
Only HIS inner self was aware of how many fights he'd waged to maintain an aura of indifference - and how tough each of those fights had been.
For even when she was not in sight, this Sahiba had lately made it a habit, to haunt his thoughts - both, asleep and awake. One could only imagine his state, when she sat so close to him, in flesh and form. So close that he could nearly smell the rose on her skin and touch the silk of her hair.
No wonder then that it felt like he'd conquered the biggest hurdle in this unfamiliar adventure when he'd fought hard to bring his emotions under check.
Only to be tested by fate again - a cruel test to see how far he'd conquered temptation, when her veil had slid off. It was as though the Lord had just unveiled his most precious, most exquisite creation, just to see if this young man would overlook his morals and manners, and cast a glance at her.
It is not that he has not seen her without her veil; he must have done so when she was treating Bahadur, but then she was not so intoxicatingly close to him.
Of course... in fact he was at one end of the horse, and she the other side...
The fighter that he was, Akbar had somehow conquered this hurdle too. Till he heard the silent sounds of her smile - the kind of smile that finally broke his resolve and drew his attention to her.
One has to be a true lover, Lashykanna, to hear the silent sounds of her smile. This is what is called a symbiotic bond.
Yes...
A little later, as Akbar recognizes that this is a lost battle, and mentally concedes defeat:
He had lost the moment he'd allowed himself be lured into her mind games and now, he was paying the price of his devilry too. By losing himself. By falling into temptation - at the sight of her partially-lowered eyelids. At the sight of her demure grins. At the sight of her fair skin dipped in red. At the sight of her femininity.
Even if he might have ever been tempted in life before, he could always bring such urges under control. But for the first time, he felt like there was nothing he could do to stop the phenomenon as he experienced the sort of emotions that overpowered his morals. The sort of urges that warmed his blood and raced his pulse, leaving his lungs short of air. The sort of emotions that led him to observe a woman's quivering lips, and her flushed skin, as she blushed.
They'd barely ever spoken much, or even met, but this Lady had touched him in ways no one else had - emotionally, and physically. Worse, he was getting sucked in deeper and deeper, with every passing occasion that he knowingly or unknowingly let himself get close.
Now for those wondering why I am quoting such large chunks of Lashy's narrative , the answer is that this post of mine is turning out to be like one of those annotated commentaries on a literary passage, and for that to make sense, the references have to be substantial. Besides, one can enjoy the flavor of these eloquent passages all over again, so why not?
Awww😳
The aftermath: Heera: The panic that floods her being as she realises that Akbar has been stung by the deadly scorpion tells its own tale. As does her febrile rush to try and treat him and lessen the agony any which way she can, followed by the unabated worry about his health.
Then there is the way in which his almost throwaway comment: 'Don't worry about me... I've grown immune to such poisons and venoms... ' affects her. It is not just the natural curiosity as to how a businessman could have got used to poisons and venoms. It is as much or more a kind of shadowy fear, of deep concern that she feels about what his life might have been like. For everything about the Khan Sahib has now, at times even unbeknownst to her, begun to colour Heera's mood and her outlook on life.
What a romantic line, Periyamma... if only I could steal this now and add it to the original...
No wonder then that the sincerity that lay behind those three words of his: 'just stay safe!" ...had left her wrapped in their warmth, like a protective cocoon that could keep the rest of the world and its dangers at bay. No wonder she feels that his presence was becoming an elixir of sorts - temporarily relieving her from all her miseries, however terrible they might be.
It is truly amazing, the degree of emotional dependence that the cossetted, protected and traditionally raised Heera has developed on a man she has known for barely 10 days, a man who could not be more different from her in birth and breeding, in race and culture. This is one of the great mysteries of the heart. Luckily for her, she has chosen a man worthy of her affections. It could, as in her Jiji's case, have so easily have been otherwise.
Yes.. that is the power of attraction... of 'soft corners'... it compels, even very logical humans like AMK and Heera to overlook a lot of the pitfalls and dangers of this path... just for that one 'word' just for that one 'smile' that one 'glance'
But for now, we have Heera, uncomfortable about having perhaps behaved in an unseemly and too easy a manner with one who was, after all, practically a stranger still, resolving to make sure it did not happen again. Famous last words!😉
Loool you must read this update 😉
The aftermath: Akbar: Apart from the unceasing, racking agony inflicted by the scorpion bite, Akbar is being pulled to pieces by the conflicting demands on him: the pull of his loyalty towards his protector and mentor of over a decade, the Shehzaade, and of the by now equally strong pull of a hitherto unknown and combustible mix of emotion and passion, of fierce protectiveness towards and a sensual attraction for a slip of a girl he barely knows.
Yes... horrible this battle of mind vs heart... and it's worse when there's heart lodged in both places, mind battling for/against both places
It is fascinating, and deeply saddening, to watch him as he twists and turns helplessly, like a fish on the hook, unable to escape the torment of his predicament. At one moment, he reaffirms to himself that he can never be disloyal to his master, whatever his dilemmas, whatever his personal battles. Yet the very next moment he simply cannot bring himself to prove that loyalty by handing over Heera's scrolls to the prince, for that would amount to signing her death warrant with his own hands. And this he cannot do.
Of course... it's like taking the gun to your lover's head... just not possible, is it?😭
Akbar is nothing if not clear-headed, both as regards the limits of his influence on the Shehzaade, and as regards the prince's fierce determination to get the Parnagarh lands any which way. He tries to rationalize his protectiveness towards Heera by arguing that she is not an enemy of his master, that her fight to retain the lands that are hers is not directed against the Shehzaade or against the Mughal empire. But he knows that nothing of this would make the least difference to the prince.
I ABSOLUTELY loved how you've explained this in crisp words and outlined everything he feels/fears👏
On the other hand, Akbar is appalled by the unthinking naivete with which Heera has been sending out her appeals for help at the imperial court. But for Khalil's crass failure, and Akbar having been given the Parnagarh assignment as a result of that, Heera would have been destroyed by the evidence of one or more of her appeals, the ones sent to those who would have been ready to sell her out for their personal advancement. The dangers that threaten her are like a hydra headed monster, and he does not know how long he can keep on chopping off its heads.
I liken Heera's predicament to one of the tough journalists of today... they are brave/just and moral... but, have no real defence apart from the power of their pen... they write for the sake of justice, not knowing how much it'd achieve, but in the hope that it would achieve some good... they write against cruelties of society, not knowing when they'll be dragged out of their offices, assassinated and their offices set on fire! But they write, because it's what they do best...
It is as if he is , like the legendary Ulysses, being forced to navigate between a Scylla and a Charybdis. And we too are, thanks to the power of your pen, Lashykanna, forced to endure torments of anxiety. and at times cold fear, as Akbar seeks to somehow navigate the treacherous straits in which he finds himself. It is as well for me that I do not have a weak heart!
Thank you for this information on this story periyamma... very very interesting read it made!😳
That the fates help him out of at least a part of his dilemma by reducing Heera's scrolls to ashes is merely a temporary reprieve. It is not clear if Ibrahim has read those scrolls, but if he has, and he now learns that they have been conveniently burnt, I wonder what his reaction would be. That is another matter about which I am holding my breath. Lashykanna, you little wretch, do not push me too far!
Must read this update for answers...
Loved this one so much thanks a lot for it and happy navratri to you once more 🤗
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