Hasini đ¤...thank u for the awesome update...the starting where Dhruv was thinking about Leher was really interesting...so our hero thinks his feelings for her are not just lust but something more â¤ď¸...,awww Nanhi and her nautanki đ...who can resist the cutie...no wonder her AB man went running to the rescue... ...what lengths he had to go đ˛...literally 𤢠đ... to bring the smile back on her face ... .. it was so sweet of him ...and now he has become her Spiderman...well the smile is totally worth the effort...
Edited by --Ratna-- - 14 years ago
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I'm sure you would have guessed that Nanhi was hinting at anything but a four weeks baby...
Imagining this while I write was really intense for me, but I guess it didn't come out so much as expected.
It did seem like she was hinting at a baby till she showed the dog to Dhruv...i had a small doubt when she said it was 4 weeks old...the name Hari Prasad was one reason it sounded ike a human baby...wondering if there is a story behind those names... Hari Prasad and Chameli... and her comment about the former not helping in finding Bholu...this part says so much...
He looked on, still keeping their places, but he crouched once her face tipped forward and had her eyes on the ground while big drops of tears ran down her cheeks to make thick brown circles on the mud in front of her feet, "Hari Prasad won't help Chameli...", she said shaking her head, her movements signifying a lost hope not just for Bholu but for her too.
There was something starkly pricking about her choice of words. Possibly he was reading too much, but as he gazed into the child's eyes, he could see a part of him who had lost himself in the same roads when he'd been five. Perhaps, even now he was still searching, looking for the white ambassador that would never return and he realized nothing had changed in all those years of growing up he had to do. Nothing at all.
After a long shower and an hour of scrubbing with coconut fibers handed to him by Guru, the mild burn persisted on his skin, making him feel that his skin was smoldering under hot embers and given enough time it would peel off his musculature sooner or later. He walked out of Guru's bachelor pad - with its one room that substituted as a makeshift bedroom, living room and a kitchen that was required of every home, the bathroom squarely having built in the far corner of the terrace - with a towel in his hand and only with his night pants and a black vest. The evening had dimmed down drastically in the time he'd been showering, taking away the lumens of the day to start another perfect grey night.
Taking a few turns about the length of the terrace, he thought about the madness that had taken over him when he'd looked long into Nanhi's eyes. It wasn't an abyss of haunting as he saw in her eyes, but in Nanhi's there had been a certain flicker of a glow that he'd seen beginning to fade. Fading from a long wait, weary from a despairing wanting to have someone whisper strength that everything would be ok one day.
He shook his head, thinking that coming over to Lucknow had incapacitated him from practicing the indifference he'd worked long and hard at mastering all those years and that he was instead resonating with motive and emotion he saw behind everyone's personal reasoning. When he'd identified all that he'd been as a child with Chavanni, he took notice that she was no more than a mirror image of the kind of man he'd become now. Though time scales apart, there were too many of his clones walking around all chasing different ghosts and he decided it was best if he kept to fighting his own battles and not wage their private wars.
Or be heroically sappy and go down man-holes full of shit for that matter.
But things were never just as one wished - particularly him - and he could already hear the little one's grunts, disturbingly painful at whatever it that she was struggling at, reach his ears from all the way downstairs. He once again, for the second time in that evening, leaned over the parapet wall to catch her dragging a big bag up the stairs, seemingly having filled its entire content with rectangular red things that swayed in all directions.
Not again...His head lolled with frustration and with a roll of his eyes, he went around the wall and down the stairs to help her with the bag.
He stopped a few steps away from her where she'd come to a stop and sat down on the concrete footing, hoping that the little sprite would not pass further into whatever that is left of his sanctuary in Lucknow, given that they'd taken over his little haven on the top floor of his Chacha's house. Oh! he wasn't letting that go, at least not without a fight...
"Here..." She said before he could start with his questioning and thrust the rectangular bar into his face making his head jerk back a little, "Lifebuoy...I bought the entire lot they had at the store"
"For me?" Now that was rhetorical at best, he realized.
She gleefully nodded and he thought, whatever it was with mother and daughter to be obsessed with his bathing and hygiene routine, not forgetting the personal remark she'd made through Chavanni the last time he'd visited them.
"Yes..." Her naive mind dignified him with a response, "You can stink, you know, if you fall into a naali...Ma says you bathe with one whole soap everyday until the smell goes..."
A small laugh shook him, his bare shoulders rocking from the tickle of her innocent sense of humor. "Thank you..." He said and left it at that, ignoring everything else that came into his mind. Indeed, her Ma would take over Lucknow and have them all bathe with one whole lifebuoy, if she could.
"But where did you get the money?" He took her bag from her hand and began climbing unto the terrace.
"I killed Dolly" Was her answer and he stilled for a moment feeling the faint rise of bile from his stomach. Another beat passed by as he remembered Ramprasad, Chameli and Bholu and he sighed before he began moving again.
"Wait, you are not going to ask who Dolly is?" She squeezed into the gap between his gargantuan legs and the rail and went ahead of him.
"No..." He said matter-of-factly, "Because I'm sure you are going to tell me all about the horror even if I don't want to hear one bit about Dolly"
She ran and perched herself on his cot, a wide smile from the unspoken welcome of not having driven her out already. "Dolly is my piggy bank...Ma gifted it to me last birthday. I had one hundred eighty three rupees and 75 paise...See, I bought two chocolates too for us..."
He heard her give him the full story while he had his back to her and for a moment he thought he couldn't breathe. He simply wasn't equipped for that kind of boundless attachments. The bag landed close to his feet with a thud as his hand let go of the cloth handle when it had suddenly become heavier with her sentiments, her hopes that she had already coined for them and the purity of her intentions. He knew exactly how this worked. There was no longer anything right or wrong he could do to fall in her eyes. That absolute and limitlessness of her wonder and affections irritated him further. He also knew, he will never be that child again.
Turning after a few seconds and he went to sit by her. She handed him the chocolate and he took it without resistance. They ate, chewing the toffee as its gooey relish filled their mouths slowly and when they were almost done, she twisted around to face him and nodded eagerly with delight.
"Do you know who Dolly is?" She asked, jumping to stand by his side.
He shook his head. Having already spoken more than his usual, he mildly hesitated to let her do all the talking. It was another risk he couldn't afford either, but it was still better than having to find words when he thought they have been avoiding him like the plague off late.
"Dolly is the first sheep that only had a mother and no father..." This caught his attention and he saw her scratch the side of her head. Eventually her face bloomed with recognition and she yelled, "Haan...clone"
He let out a long breath then and nodded approvingly, "Who taught you all this?"
"Ma did...she also told me about Snuppy the puppy...and all about how babies are made" Her cheer drew up a notch.
Lord! He'd not see that one coming. With all those years of writing to his name, he could never do justice to that one topic when he knew only one way to go about it and that was certainly not PG certified. It was more like an A, rated adults only.
"Ok...now its time for you to go home" He said maneuvering her off that topic and he pulled her by her wrist. To his surprise, she wiggled her thin frail arm out of his hold and ran to the far end of the terrace from where the stairs was placed.
"Ma is not home..." She was yelling now, but he wanted to tell her that her voice was pitched shrill to be perfectly audible even from that distance. But soon enough, she cut in with more details about her mom and it only silenced him further. "She has gone to the city and won't come back until late night. I'm sleeping with Dadaji today and he hasn't come back from the shop either"
He'd heard all about her mysterious little trips and escapades to the city that sometimes lasted for two full days. According to the local Guru broadcasting communications, it had all been around the 20th of the month. If this wasn't story material, then what was and he reclined back into his cot, deciding against his initial move to drop her off home.
"So, isn't your Ma going to be mad when she finds out that you have kil...no broken Dolly?"
She came sprinting and fell beside him, creating a small ripple of vibration with her weight which compared to nothing next to him, "No...its mine. Ma said I can do anything with that. And I even brought three soaps for her as gift when she comes back from the trip" She was shaking her head wildly then, the joy of gifting her Ma ruffling her small smile from before and stretched it over her lips as a wide smile "She will use it"
He was laughing then, "Why?..Do they not have bathrooms where your Ma goes?"
"No..." Chavanni's face flushed dark, her eyes turned sullen and her voice had come up with a tinge of disgust as she continued to speak, "I don't know...Ma says she fells into the naali in the city...she bathes with those soaps until the smell goes away..."
Clearly, Chavanni's allusion didn't escape him and the sudden lump that had come up in his throat made him sit up from his lazing posture.
"Ok..." He said, even as his brows knotted from what he'd heard, "let's go find Chacha now. That was enough talking about Naali's for one night" She held onto his hand then more readily and they walked astride to go find his Chacha. It was just his luck, that his Chacha was stranded at the restaurant from a meat order gone bad for the next day's sale. By her dinner time, Guru came by as his saving grace and he let Guru handle her for that time, allowing himself the small reprieve from the heavy talks they had exchanged all evening. But he was once again left to deal with her, alone and defenseless to her charms when Guru left for his Urdu class instructed by Amanat Saab himself.
The things he'd had to endure that night...
He walked her to their room and tucked her in her bed and waited by the foot of the mattress for her to fully fall asleep, until what seemed like the makings of a snore rattled the air in the room. It felt as if he was burdened with not just his own soul then, but her secrets too and also unable to bear with Chavanni's breach into his fortress, he walked out needing that rush of fresh night air into his lungs. For the rest of the slow passing of time, he waited on the outside cot and much later stretched himself on the thread bare arrangement which threatened to give up on his weight any moment and stared blankly at the random assortment of the stars in the greying night sky.
Ma says she fells into the naali in the city...she bathes with those soaps until the smell goes away...
He pictured her then from the previous evening, her eyes that shade of brown with its share of secrets which, he realized now, so artfully belied whatever it is she washed away with those whole bars of soap. Strangely, he was unable to shake off the stillness around him and he twisted around to lie on his side. His eyes took in the darkness that floated around and he couldn't help but appreciate the uniformity of black that the night spread thin. For it was always bearable when there was only light or when it went dark altogether. But there were times when those revealing thin beams of light descended into the black of the night, giving away whoever that was sheltering there. It was just the same when darkness swirled within the vast stretches of light and the two equally exposing events always took away the perceived armors that the solidarity of the untarnished day or the night offered.
And then there were those who lurked in the corners where the contrast blended and life happened on a grey scale. It wasn't all lost on him that he was one such being and he couldn't just tell yet, if she was one too...
It is like she is here to give him hints about her mother,buying soaps for him was such a cute gesture. I feel like crying and the next moment, killng Dolly!! you really made me laugh.
@ Hamini: I was going for that reaction...glad you wrote that down. Now I can sleep better. I don't know why but that point where you made us cry and laugh both at same time, it reminded me of a movie of Kamal Hassan, only he can do that you know, I usually don't cry in movies no matter what the situation is, but his acting is the only thing on screen which can make me cry, you won't believe that I cry whenever I see Sagara Sangamam,( I have seen it >25times) and still CRY like a cry baby. Your writing is equalising with his acting skills.
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