Parud One Shot---THIRST (New--22nd March) - Page 4

Beautiful poetry in prose. Loved the way the story unfolded - the pace, the seamless connect, the new curves and that final twist. Outdone yourself Napster!! And loved how you gave it back to that ingrate Mythili. Loved Dilsher's words to Rudra. And absolutely loved Paro's quiet exit. Made my weekend!! Thanks.

Originally posted by: napstermonster

THIRST

Your lips and hands quench
The thirst of my flesh
Your caress feeds my passions' flame.
Yet your touch cannot quench
My heart's true thirst for belonging
Nor can you tame the yearning
Inside of me.

For Love is my longing, my thirst.

The thirst to know both the bond and the freedom love means.
I love. And yet I won't mourn yesterday, when I lived without you
Nor be anxious for tomorrow, when you'll be gone

----Joseph Faegan (Haiku for Living)
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Rudra refused to give his parent the chance to die... So they stayed---the Ranawat men, one inside, one outside. Bound by a twisted, deep love, and a fear of unspoken promises broken, of strange companion-ships shredded and ended.

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Rage swirled, drowning out the fear. Rudra welcomed it...the old friend that it was, the cleansing scarlet blur of fury behind his eyes was far more preferable to the shivering blackness of the fear of loss, of betrayal.

She gasped for breath, as his eyes, merciless, burning and almost evil looked at the lines of pain etching onto her face.

She understood his intention, before he did. The look in his eyes, malicious, cruel, told her what he did not himself say.


So she did not flinch or move back when he dashed the entire glass of cold water into her face.

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Small droplets fell behind her as she left, and a fanciful part of him imagined those little droplets, trailing from where he sat to where it dripped from her wet face and hair as a chain of sorts. Linking them. Ephemeral. Easily dried up, easily rubbed out, yet a chain connecting the quiet woman and the grieving man in here now.
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Slowly, as if it had not been Rudra himself who had done this, he looked at Paro, almost accusingly. As if she had done this to herself, as if he had no idea how this had happened. She looked back at him calmly, only a trembling of her lashes indicating her pain.


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Paro, her last hope totally extinguished, looked at the man on the bed. Helplessness was sounding a reverberation of jangling bells within her heart. She had waited, for Dilsher. She had taken everything, for this one moment with this man right here. If he, the victim, believed she had done this...

Now, silently, the "murderess" helped Dilsher rise up against his bed, tenderly giving him a small sip, and wiping the water from his slack mouth. She smoothed Dilsher's clammy hair from his face, her fingers trembling a little as she carefully adjusted his pillow, laying him back down gently. Dilsher accepted her ministrations as if he didn't even notice them, such was the natural way they interacted.


The victim and the supposed killer shared a look and a small smile, and Rudra felt almost excluded. His father's eyes, hawkish even in the midst of searing pain, looked at his son, the vulnerability, the sheen of tears. Letting Parovati go, Dilsher stretched his hand weakly towards Rudra-dev. The hand had been so often shaken off, tossed aside, or roughly flung away, that hand now trembled, ready to be rejected again. And, shaking with fear and love, Rudra, just as weakly, just as hesitatingly, took that offered hand into the warm clasp of his own.

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But nothing could stop her from greedily, desperately drinking in the sight of the younger man at his father's bedside.


Every emotion, every change on those harsh features seemed to pierce her very heart, filling that battered organ with wave after wave of pity, compassion and..yes..love. Choking down that one emotion she had no right to feel, Paro watched Rudra as he mumbled words to his father, and as he buried his face into his Bapu-sa's hands.

Fathers were precious things, Paro thought.

Her future had now vanished, or, rather, had changed its course. Once more it twisted away from her, unknown, like a willful snake cutting across the desert, the sinuous movements mystic and unexplained.

. She had been called a daughter, she had called him a father. She had fulfilled her part of the blessing she had received---and given that father his son. There was no more left for her to do, after all. She had fed both thirsty men a glass of life saving water, and given them to each other, for the first, and she prayed, not the last time. She had fulfilled the thirst for a parent in Rudra. And she knew that longing as it was---the most painful, most devastating thirst of all.

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If Dilsher had to leave, he would now do so knowing how much he had been cherished, how much he had been loved. The end, if it came, would no longer come with shards of jagged regret and unspoken longings. Relieved of a fear and filled with a strength that was as unexpected as it was empowering, Rudra looked around for the woman who had brought him to this crossroads, guiding his steps into this path with Ranawat.. Bapu-sa.

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The water glass, the one he had drunk from, was there, incongruously still lying upturned on the floor. Empty, dry. The droplets of water on the corridor that had fallen from Paro had faded, as if they had never been.


Rudra felt his heartbeat accelerate, panic a flutter of white wings in his chest. Parvati ---the quenching rain, the only answer to the thirst his soul craved ---was gone.

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I'm hoping this One Shot gave you some closure, some peace too. I look forward to hearing from you--Please comment and tell me your reactions!

This os is so brilliant.