@ sashashyam
Chapter 17: The sense of sanctuary
Lashykanna,
As I wrote earlier, I have read this chapter thrice, trying to get at the one key aspect in it that I could use for the title. I have not yet been able to do that, so let me see what I put down there before I post this. For now, there are two conflicting strands in your tale that are most likely to govern its immediate future.
One, the slow but unstoppable growth of a sense of belonging together that both Akbar and now, with even greater immediacy, Heera feel. The emotional pull that Heera exerts on the Khan Sahib, and, gently but insidiously, vice versa, has been touched on earlier, but not with such heart-stopping immediacy as in that lovely interlude under the tree.
Am so elated/encouraged that you read it thrice.. and lovely interlude ❤️ what a gem-of-a-term!
Of that little gem, more later, as also of that amazingly revealing passage in Heera's boudoir that follows. Lashykanna, the two taken together were a tour de force, and the combo would have, all by itself, as one says in film parlance, merited the price of the entry ticket!
❤️ 🤗 thank you so much
The other is the way in which Akbar is being dragged, willy nilly, into betraying the one who has come to mean more to him than anyone else in his life, his beloved, his heart's desire.
For a second, I read this as Shehzaade... and till you mentioned 'beloved' I assumed Shehzaade...
in a way, it's true... as of now... if his heart had to choose between Heera and the Shehzaade... I don't know whom he would choose...
This corrosive heartache that this engenders comes thru beautifully in some of the last lines in this chapter:
Those were the smudges caused by her kohl tinged tears when she'd mistakenly grabbed his sleeve instead of the kerchief, causing his heart to briefly soar then, just as it did during every instance that he tried not to think about it thereafter. It was the most beautiful mistake she'd done - allowing him to savour the first gentle touch of a woman he cared for. HER gentle touch.
In another life, he might have then taken those stumbling fingers in his hands. Supported her delicate palms within his secure clasp, promising never to let them stumble again.
But that was the story of another life.So let me begin.
Glad you liked it...
Despair dispelled: What struck me, and clutched at my heart in the opening section, was the way in which fear - not for her own life, but for the fate of those very many who were under her care - was beginning to creep into Heera's innermost being, like a miasma that strangles all coherent thought and cloaks the mind and heart in black despair.
Who would not understand that and empathise with her plight? In a matter of less than 3 weeks, tragedies unimaginable have been visited on the poor child - and she is still little more than a child, unaccustomed to shouldering such heavy burdens of responsibility, that too for the lives of so many. No wonder she almost buckles under the strain when her mind, following the strand of logic that is, in this case, so misleading, comes to the conclusion that it is Khalil and his men who have seized her letters.
Wanted to add a note here periyamma..
Before I wrote this scene, I put myself in her shoes... and tried wondering if how far it made logical sense (without the attraction she felt towards AMK) to suspect that her scrolls were being seized by Khalil's men...
and truly speaking, it makes more sense for her to suspect Khalil (a known devil) than AMK the unknown (whose 'hidden' good side is all that she's seen)...
because, she doesn't know that Khalil has been removed from the case or banished to Kabul... according to her, he is still actively on the hunt for her...
The last statement Khalil made before he left Parnagarh was that he'd come after her to finish what had been left unfinished...
The man is a known powerful general with his network of spies...
The headache that closes like a vise around her temples is but a symptom of the hopelessness that closes in on her heart, and the fear that threatens to paralyse her. As she thrashes about for succour, it comes in a form that says more about her existing bond with this stranger than long declarations of love and fealty could have done.
😭 Yes... and I like the description you've used to describe her trying to get out of the hopelessness...
But what came to her rescue instead - was a voice. A stern voice that replayed in her mind, over and over, drawing her out from the suffocating jaws of helplessness
'Just stay safe...'
This is the emotional lifeline that drags her back from the brink of psychological collapse, and gives her the strength to start planning again. Planning how to outwit the trap that she surmises had blocked all her earlier attempts to get the messages out to potential supporters. And so she starts over again, with hope restored.
Again... there are so many ironies in this scroll business that... as Adwi put it... as long as she was with AMK she was safe (even though she had no idea he was seizing her scrolls)... the minute she steps out... (the minute there's no one to stop her scrolls from reaching their destinations)... who knows what'll happen!
Such is the power of an attachment that still dares not speak its name.
Yes it is indeed! ❤️
A sense of sanctuary: Heera might not yet be up to acknowledging what she feels, but she can grasp what it is, and what it has come to mean for her.
......the stranger didn't seem so unfamiliar anymore. And the dull walls of his mansion didn't seem so unknown anymore. In their sanctuary, she'd gradually begun experiencing a comforting sense of familiarity, a sense of security. A belief that no one would harm her here, that nothing could touch her as long as she stayed within. So much so, that it somehow felt less unsafe to stay here, than it felt to abandon this warm shelter for the cold wilderness that lay outside... Obviously, she never knew she would feel this way when she arrived. She never knew she could feel this way about ANY place other than Parnagarh. But now - especially since the time had come to leave it all behind - she did feel that way.
Sanctuary. A sense of sanctuary. With all the undertones and overtones the word implies. Not just safety and security, but also, and above all, a sense of belonging.
Yes... 'home' and this feeling of 'home' will be even more apparent in 18
With a stranger she had never set eyes on till 2 weeks ago. The ways of the heart are indeed passing strange.
It is the confusion these feelings evoke in her heart that makes Heera long, with an intensity far greater than usual, for someone to whom she could open her heart - its feelings, its hesitations, its fears and its hopes. Her jiji, her sole confidant in the days of yore, is no more, and the loneliness that afflicts Heera in her absence is like a vice closing around her heart. It suffocates her. So on to the outdoors, and the tree that has been chosen by fate to be the witness of the next scene in the ongoing tale of unacknowledged love.
Sometimes we tell our secrets to anonymous friends than we do to our closest ones... one because we don't want to burden them, and two we don't want to be judged...
Both these factors were what made Heera (in addition to the many other 'emotional' factors she was already feeling) to divulge her 'I am afraid' to AMK!😭
Heart to heart: This, Lashykanna, is one of the cleverest and most oblique, and yet truly enchanting mis en scene (stage setting) that you have so far contrived for a further rapprochement between Akbar and Heera .
Really? Thanks Periyamma...
One more thing, I see now that your nattuvakkili (the red scorpion) is doing double duty in its role as a most unlikely mini-Cupid. First, it made Heera more grateful than ever before towards Akbar for saving her from it at the cost of being stung himself, and also made her realise how concerned she then was about his health. Secondly, now, precisely because its venom is still affecting him so badly, he has a dizzy turn just as he is getting ready to leave her alone.
Here, they've started calling him the red caped cupid periyamma😆
Unable to move from there, Akbar thus becomes the recipient not only of Heera's concerned queries, but also of her unexpected confidences - of love and of loss and of the loneliness such losses bring in their wake. Confidences that act like a magic key, a key to the innermost recesses of his own heart. Confidences that call forth reciprocal confidences from him, confessions of lasting pain, of wounds unhealed and unhealable. Confidences that he had never before made to anyone, nor could he have even contemplated making them.
Awww... what a beautiful read, the underlined made for!
'These wounds never truly heal... which is why the pain never disappears completely...'we put on a mask of normalcy because people depend on us to be normal... we divert ourselves with our daily lives... days go by... weeks... months... years... till the mask becomes who we are!... I wonder why God gives, if he must take away?'
And an answering cri de coeur (cry from the heart) from Heera about the cruelty of the Divine will that had left her alone in the world...'Surrounded by many who care for us... but no one can understand this pain... no relationship that can fill this void easily...'
Yes...
Lapse all unthinking: It is then that it comes. The one lapse, all unthinking, on Heera's part that will lead to consequences of which she has as yet not the slightest inkling.
She is bone tired, the poor child, wrung out emotionally, and her mind is stretched to breaking point like an violin string that has been tightened too far. She needs to unburden herself of her fears, of the tensions that beset her, to someone other than the near and dear ones before whom she cannot betray the slightest weakness if they are not to collapse. There is no one at hand but the Khan Sahib, on whom she has, over the last few days, learnt to rely as on an unfailing source of support and strength. No wonder, then, that she does what she does. Or that what happens thereafter happens.
I think she almost felt relieved that she said it out loud.. for once... to a human who could listen (even if not reciprocate).. relief to say it to someone rather than something - like, speaking to God's idols or nature or the diamond ring on her finger... what a climax/crescendo of emotions it would have felt to unburden such a heavy thought she'd been carrying..
'I'm afraid Khan Sahib...'
So it all comes out in one fell rush, her words and her memories of the old days tumbling all over each other, and with it, the insider joke of the poem with which Heera used to tease her Jiji during their hide and seek games in the Parnagarh haveli. And it ends, as could be expected, in a cry of pain:
...now, I'm the one left searching... while she's found the perfect hiding spot, gone forever...',
and the welcome release of a torrent of tears.
😭 Paavam!
A local habitation and a name: Lashykanna, you have had a sick horse, then a red scorpion, and now you have a muslin handkerchief that wasn't. Each of them - as different one from the other as could be - serves its immediate purpose admirably. In this last case, the impact, on both Heera and Akbar, of this unexpected and unprecedented nearness between them lasts far longer than the very brief, actual contact.
Yes it does..
As for you, my dear, you have, as you always do, woven enchantment out of an airy nothing. You could well be the one of whom the Bard wrote:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Thank you so so so much ☺️
Here, the local habitation is a pair of hearts, and the name is love.
A Promethean fate: But Akbar has also heard what he has heard, and his sharp intelligence has already started analyzing and dissecting these new inputs he has gleaned from Heera's outpourings. He then arrives at a conclusion that will - and this regardless of the guilt and the sense of self-loathing that gnaw at his innermost being, as the vulture did at Prometheus chained on the rock - take him straight to Parnagarh and, as he is almost sure, the precious farman itself.
Yup... also it helps that he's been the more 'aware' , more world-wise and experienced of the two..and thus, the more 'guarded'... besides, he approached her during this interlude, more formal/ out of humanity rather than anything else... (especially after he got 'bitten' during the scorpion fiasco) thus, he was more 'awake' all through.. picked on the clues immediately!
Come to think of it, the Prometheus parallel is closer than it would seem at first sight. Prometheus was the Titan who, in defiance of the gods on Mount Olympus, brought fire down to the earth for the benefit of the mortals, just as Bhagirath brought the holy Ganga down to earth from the heavens. The enraged King of the gods, Zeus, had Prometheus punished by being chained to a rock, with a vulture forever gnawing at his body and eating his liver. But as Prometheus was immortal, the liver was regenerated over night, and the torment continued eternally.
😲
If Akbar finds the farman and hands it over to the Shehzaade, he will end up stretched out on a rock, or a rack (a medieval instrument of torture) of his own making, with his conscience gnawing eternally at his heart and mind like the vulture in Greek mythology.
Ouch! I've seen it in the Tower of London...
NB: For those readers horrified at the cruel fate that befell one of the greatest benefactors of mankind, you can relax. For years later, the Greek hero Herakles (Hercules) slays the eagle and frees Prometheus from the eagle's torment.
Phew!
Temptation triumphs: Lashykanna, what a lovely way you have with emotions, and with the words in which you clothe them!
The scene of Heera indulging in a warm (not hot! ) fantasy in front of her mirror is an exquisite take on the dawning physical attraction that is part and parcel, though not the most important part, of love.
Thank you periyamma☺️
She is such a young girl, that too one raised in such a cloistered environment, and less forthright and bold than her sister in all things. In spite of all these constraints, that the desire to feel the warmth of the embrace of the man she has come to love (even if she does not yet realize it) floods thru her being like an irresistible tide is as revealing as it is enchanting. It speaks volumes for the strength of the bond she has already developed with this stranger, who now feels closer to her than those who are her own.
Yes... that is the power of attraction...
Even as I write this, a cold hand seems to brush against my heart.
This is one of those sentences that will stay with me forever... and might use henceforth too ... cold hand brushes against my heart
The agony that Heera will feel when she discovers the truth - about Akbar's identity, about his loyalty to his master the Shehzaade, and about the betrayal of what is dearest to her heart - Parnagarh - that follows automatically from that loyalty - will be soul destroying. As will the sense of shame and self- condemnation that she will feel when she realises that she had given her trust and her affection to one who was, as it would then seem, a betrayer throughout. One shudders at the very thought of what she will then go through.
Oh God... I can imagine
The terrible thing for Heera is that she literally has nowhere to turn. There is betrayal everywhere. It was what one would expect from someone in her situation, but her plaintive appeal to Mahendar makes a chilling impact. I wanted to shout out to her that she should beware, that with Mahendar, she was heading for a vertiginous fall. Of course I could not, which was as well for you, Lashykanna!
Really yes... 😭 it's heartbreaking to see her making this decision... but the toughest/most intelligent leaders have fallen prey to the jackal-like betrayal from their own... and she is but a lone 16 year old..
It remains to be seen if her new stratagem succeeds. It would be far better if it fails, at least as far as the messages to Mahendar are concerned. But then, as the old ditty has it,
Que sera, sera,
Whatever will be, will be!
🥺
Reassuring loyalty: Among all this, and Akbar's own deepening gloom at the prospect of what he would have to do for his master, it was reassuring to realise that contrary to my fears, his Three Musketeers - Ibrahim, Azeez and Sayyad- will be loyal to him and to him alone should there be a confrontation with the Shehzaade. 
CID
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