FF: Will-O'-the-Wisp - On hold indefinitely - Page 8

Glad you liked it . Did like the Lucknowi flavor you are adding to this story, nice to learn something new.

Thanks for Part 2.

And Nanhi's serious interrogation about who the stranger is very funny.

No Hamini...We are keeping it as we discussed. They are truly strangers.

With one bent hand tucked behind his head, he playfully squinted at the beams of light that petered its way down through the sheaves of leaves and branches above him.

Arey yaar!

He sounded just as tired with frustration as his body was from taking the beat of the long journey from Mumbai to Lucknow. All that distance from the one place he didn't wish to sleep another night and she was right up the stairs from the cot on which he was lying down. He pushed himself down onto the cot and the ropes dug into his back. For a moment, the pain felt deserving, but soon his mind was far from it all and instead it focused on going over her face once again with utmost care.

Her hair curled at the ends, but this one had it all straight, some flowing and some tucked behind her ears. The eyes that he recollected from this morning had Kohl black in its lining and that was just about all the make-up he could see on her fair skin. Whereas, the devilish dark eyes that'd taken up monstrous billboards in Mumbai had all the colors of the rainbow going between the crease of her eye-lids and her brows. There was hardly any centimeter of skin that was showing on the little girl's mom, swathed in all of the Lucknow's woolen when the runner-up of Ms.Beautiful Skin Maharashtra thought it was a heinous crime to cover up anything non-essential to the view.

Despite the morgue attested, indisputable proof that she was dead, he could picture himself corner the little girl's mom against a tree or a wall, while flinging a black burkha over her head just to be able to stare only at the brown of her eyes. That would give him the answers, make the clustering heaviness inside him go away in a moment's leap.

Eventually, the heaviness did leave and the light in his eyes dimmed down to a faint glow until the smell of smoldering coals and spices roasting wafted around and his nose began to twitch. He woke up after what seemed like ages of numbness, for when he let his feet touch the ground, he could again feel the rope burn over the skin of his back. He stretched, twisted around a bit before he walked off to the pit where his Chacha was readying a large thali of ground meat.

His Chacha's Gulauti kebabs were to die for and the recipe was a secret and unbeaten to-date in all of Lucknow. It was only expected that his sweetheart Chacha was going to prep up their 100 yr old Choola in their garden to commemorate the return of his prodigal son.

Prodigal...He hadn't exactly been a runaway, but he'd surely vowed to never return to the old town with its leeching memories of his childhood, of his father and mother who passed away even before he could fully comprehend what passing over to another world meant. Chacha had seen to his small hole-in-the-wall eat out that served Lucknow's specialty kebabs and walked him to school until the day he could cycle all the way to his school in the center of the new city. His teen years had passed in a flicker of his eyes, invariably spent on whistling at slender Lucknow girls celebrating their glorious beauty and milky fairness under a burkha and lazing around the gardens of Bara Imambara for any which cheap hookah he could lay his hands on. He'd been tall and bulky, standing out in all of the mischief his thicket of friends involved him in, Guru being one, which earned him the title of the town scoundrel and a permanent place in many a girl's dreams as the perpetual badass.

The problem is that he still was...with the exception of the grey streak that he was under at the moment.

He only had to wait for another day or two, until word got around that he was back in town. Momentarily imagining all the ogling he would be handling soon, he was reminded of his missing shirt. His eyes drifted up to the terrace, where he'd taken his clothes to be dried after the house help had washed them from weeks of having needed to be laundered.

But all he saw was an empty clothesline...

And it wasn't even evening yet...

Neither could his Chacha afford to climb up the two flights of stairs to get his clothes down, given the rheumatoid pain in his knees...

Arey yaar! Not mirchi madam again, he muttered under his breath before he walked off to where his Chacha was sitting on his haunches and handling the coal in the pit.

"Chacha...What? Now she can't stand to have my clothes put up in the terrace that's been rented to her?...This is my home too"

His eyes were red both from the afternoon nap and from having her face surface into his thoughts yet again. Now in the haze of sleep, the image was vague and he couldn't tell who this was, but it was real enough to send a pulsing down his heart.

His chacha didn't react as fast as his words slipped past his tongue with a caustic dislike for the new tenants.

"That, I'm assuming, is something you ought to have remembered all these years you never came back here..." His Chacha twisted his neck to face him, a sly smile lacing his features.

"You could have asked me once...just once before you gave off my room. For all the times we were on phone, you never once mentioned them...She and her bacha party..."

"I think Nanhi is only right in her place to call you AB man...that is what she said, when she got your clothes down..." His face twisted now while one of his hand rose to rub the back of his neck, "From tomorrow onwards, just have your clothes dried in the backyard...You should know that the women will not feel comfortable to have 12 of your langotiya facing their door"

"Argh!..." He bit into his words as he spoke again, "its called boxers. That too Calvin Klein boxers. Not Langotiya Chachaji"

"How does it matter? When they all have the same purpose?" His chacha was on his feet now and before he could anticipate the elder's move a sharp pain shot up from his ears.

"Argh" he screamed even as his Chacha continued on his daily dose of lecture, "I know you did it on purpose...What have you got against them?"

He let his ear go and now shifted places to sit on a stool and knead the meat with his secret spice powder and besan. "If anything you can dry your langotiya in front of my bedroom window..."

"Chachaji...I'm sure there is no lease or contract like Mumbai.Why can't you have them leave? I can't take all the food smell, you know that..."

All of the initial meat preparation for the store was done at home, in the large expanse of their courtyard and kitchen and the 100 odd spices that were always either being dried or ground which made their home smell like it was a spice heaven for those who could see it that way. For him, it burned his nose and turned it into a pink tomato.

"Nahi..." His Chacha sounded firm in his persistence, "You can sleep at Guru's terrace if you want. I'm certain he will not mind all that catching up that has been years overdue"

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his Chacha and instead stood towering next to him, his hands plastered to his hips, low, just were his jeans began.

Shaking his head, he looked up and his gaze went past the parapet wall and onto where his old room began. The windows came about and in the shadows behind the fluttering drapes he saw the silhouette of someone fixed and steady. The form was tall for the little girl and he was decided now that it could only be her. He looked for a while longer and he saw a hand clutch at the rod by the bottom of the window.

It struck him as odd that she didn't run back or hide from the fact that she was staring at him from a vantage point at his bare upper body, especially the part he took immense pride in. Certainly a teeki mirchi...

All said and done, he was going to get his room back. If he had to play a twisted psycho, he was game for it. He was going to sleep in it and dream there...whether she liked it or not.

Haye haye , third update already , by any chance are you watching Govinda's Chappar Phadke television show!!!!!!!

Hamini...Your comment is very affirming, given my history with humor and all...😆


Nope I don't watch shows only soaps at the moment. (Mahadev and NBT NMKK only) I hardly have time for others...

Thank you :)

Originally posted by: 6th.Element

Hamini...Your comment is very affirming, given my history with humor and all...😆


Nope I don't watch shows only soaps at the moment. (Mahadev and NBT NMKK only) I hardly have time for others...

Thank you :)

Mahadev that reminds me are'nt you going to continue O'Shive?

Interesting that you mention Shive...

Mythology cannot be written like that...I merely picked on a scene and re-told it in my words.
Now I could write more like that, but again that will all be just re-framing the scenes from the show in my own way. Now, not many would want to read that, would they? 😉

Originally posted by: 6th.Element

Interesting that you mention Shive...

Mythology cannot be written like that...I merely picked on a scene and re-told it in my words.
Now I could write more like that, but again that will all be just re-framing the scenes from the show in my own way. Now, not many would want to read that, would they? 😉

Ofcourse they would want that, not that the show does'nt fulfill it, but the writings make it look complete, as you know that most of emotions are spoken through eyes between them , which makes it quite difficult to conclude exactly what they are thinking, so your story helps us grasp more and improve our knowledge about them too.