FF: Flowers of Despair Last part 13-pg17 - Page 2

dhani beutiful part but it is losing the touch of godavari the character of kamlina was strong headed and jovial

Wonderful update Dhani... Nishikant is such a bad person...!!

hi,

for the past 1 anf half day my left eye doesnt stop blinking...dont no why...hehe...

Alekhya, I know the character of bani has been changed by me, there is a difference in the time so the variation has to come, kamalini was a modern urban girl, so her attitude was different, you have to wait till part-3 to see what happens, of course bani is strong, in a different way, a more subtle way, she is not loud, as for jovial, she will be friendly…I am stuck somewhere so I am watching the movie again …meanwhile any ideas you want to include just PM me.

Part-2

2A

Between the rows of flowers, the ground was carpeted in papery petals and she scooped them up in handfuls, dropping them into her basket. A week or two before, she would have taken care to creep sideways, so as not to disturb the flowers, but today she all but flounced as she went and was none too sorry when her swishing sari swept clusters of petals off the ripening pods. The expansive backyard was shaded by two enormous mango trees, which had just begun to sprout the dimples that would grow into the first buds of spring. Lolita stood on her toes, to peep above the not so high boundary wall made of stone blocks…with just stood for the sake of it, ready to crumble down like a pack of cards…It was time he came out…just as her gorgeous eyes swept across, they found him, coming out immersed in a fat, black, bound book…he was such a book –worm, even thought he might have revised hundred times but still he would read the same thing again, she shook her head smiling to herself as she plucked another scarlet hibiscus putting in her cane basket…she watched him stand for a second, so he was waiting for her, he never left without her wishing him, it was ritual.

But he won't turn around…

"Jai…" Lolita called out…he didn't turn around…

"All the best…" she wished him in her honey sweet voice…saying a silent prayer that his last exam goes well, though she had no doubt it would but still…

"Thanks…" he muttered and went off…burying his face in the book again…Lolita sighed, she knew the reason for his anger but it was high time he accepted the reality and be practical…but for a man who thought with his heart it was difficult to apply his mind…a trait which she loved as well as hated…

"Etho raag… (So much of anger)" she mumbled to herself…

"Lolita…" he grandmother's voice came from inside the huge house,

"Aashchi… (Coming)" she replied back the basket was full, she carried it back into the house to hand over to her grandmother for her morning puja of Goddess Durga…
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The day began like any other day…the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic's tidal surges, the prayer chants in the distance, the cheap film music rising from the radio hung to the bamboo pillar of a roadside tea-shop, a child's cry, a mother's rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations imprinted on the walls defaming them, the jasmine sellers, the hustling urchins, the roar of the buses, the sniffing hungry dogs, a green wing flashing in a tree… …Jaidev Chattopadhyay travelled all these, passively observing them, the ever bust and claustrophobic Calcutta, confined to the window seat of the local bus, this was a regular scene which he witnessed while covering the distance from his home to his law college… like everyday…but today was a bit different, the last day of his examination, the final paper, he would be a certified lawyer in a few days…

He found Law to be a funny profession; he was just pursuing it for the sake of his father…How could truth be defended, it was truth after all, and you required testimonies to prove which was the truth, and how lawyers defended the wrong, very well knowing that it is wrong, twisting and turning the case as per their wish, how something be so dichotomous, justifying the false deliberately…

"You have to do your job, it is the judge who will decide the true or false not you…" his father's practical preaching…yes, he was true but then isn't there something as a conscience, a voice inside a person which stalks us whenever we do wrong…He knew he was not meant for Law, it was too dynamic and unconvincing to his principles, but he had to study something which he hated for the sake of his father and probably for the sake of her…

His eyes looked out to see a group of people huddled across the footpath, wearing white carrying red flags, a man standing over an elevation shouting his lungs out,

"Comrades…Shvatanrata Bharat… (Independent India) Zindabad…" revolutionary groups rallying against the British Rule and also supporting communism as a form of the next government…another group of young students carrying different colored flags emerged; they were rallying against communism…

Flags were bits of colored cloth that governments use to first, shrink wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead…British monopoly will have to be eroded soon, Colonialism or Communism, either way, change will come. If not the British then the Communist, even though he favored Democracy more. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depended on us.
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Indirani Choudhary, Lolita's mother paced about the house, trying to decide the menu; she frowned as she saw the specks of dust over the alternate white and black tiled flooring…

"Beena…" she called out for the maid…beena hurried inside form the front entrance, she was late today. When she saw beena's face in the doorway, her temper raised…

"So late?" she snapped

"Where were you? Kamokaj na hoi? You think there's no work to be done?" she yelled…beena lowered her head…

"Now go and clean everything…tadatadi koro… (Do it fast)" she said, been went inside, getting hold of the mop she fetched a bucket of water and started cleaning.

"Why are you shouting in the morning Indira…" an old lady, Shakuntala Devi called out, carrying the aarati palte…

"Kichuna ma… (Nothing)" indirani replied, coming towards her taking the aarati and the prasad…

"All the arrangements have started…" shakuntala asked…

"Yes ma…help with the menu…I am so nervous…everything should go well hey Druga…" she folded her hands, looking upwards…

"Chinta kaino korcho…shob theek hoyejabe… (Why are you worrying, everything will be fine)"

"Didi… the maharaj (cook) has come, tell him what items to prepare…" manasi asked…

"Let's go…" indirani hurried inside the kitchen…
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Bikramaditya Choudhary was one of Calcutta's best lawyers, the most sought after one, and also being part of the British administration his contacts were widespread and was easily the most influential people of Calcutta. Money, power he had everything, but his want for more never ceased. He was a zamindar by hierarchy, his father being an extremely wealthy moneylender of his times; he had done his law from foreign and returned back to India. He was married to Indirani when he was a teenager, and she a young girl, after finishing his education and when he started practicing, indirani was re-returned. After many years of their marriage indirani conceived Lolita, and since she had became the apple of everyone's eyes. She was pretty and fragile like a jasmine, brought up in all possible comforts. Bikramaditya lived in a joint family headed by his widowed mother Shakuntala Devi, along with his brother, Pranob who managed the zemindari (farms), his wife manasi and their two twins, a girl, Kajol and a boy, Dhrubo.
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God bless
Dhani

hey dhans,

i think beena is bani

Part 2 is all about jai, so no bani. From part-4 the actual story will begin. No please beena is not bani… …

2B

Lolita, all of nineteen by now stood before the mirror, picking up the silk sari laid out for her on the bed by her mother, with all the necessary chemise, blouse and petticoat, she wore it one by one, careful not crease the silky texture of the sari…

"See and learn…" Lolita said to Kajol who was watching her get dressed, just about sixteen she still didn't know how to wear a sari.

Finishing her task Lolita examined herself, she looked pretty, without doubt, clad in a vermillion red sari she looked like a bride even though it was not her marriage today, the groom and his family was coming to see her, but more or less the marriage was fixed, their fathers were thick friends and they were also a well to family, she glanced at herself again, something was amiss…yes, the flowers, she picked up the short gajra of jasmines, she loved these flowers and their heady smell, too romantic. She twisted it and tugged it around her perfectly made juda/Khopa (bun). There, it was perfect now…

"The groom will forget to breathe…" kajol commented slyly, Lolita widened her eyes…at times she talked more than her age…

"Kajooll…chup…" Lolita said…

"What…you look really pretty…"

Lolita smiled through the interface of the reflecting mirror…Girish Roy Burman was his name, the groom, had just returned from the states obtaining his law degree, he was from a wealthy family, tall and good-looking (as told by her father to her mother, and she had eavesdropped), cultured, what more could any girl ask, she was fortunate enough to get him as another family was also eyeing him, she would get a lifetime of happiness there…but… …her face blanched as she let her heart speak…
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Beena gathered the dry twigs into a heap and putting them in the burner made of mud, she busied herself in stoking the fire and heating a heavy khadai, she poured the edible oil to get heated, in the meanwhile, she made ball of the kneaded atta and rolled out a few luchis (puris). Indirani and manasi adjusted the dishes on the dining table, begun bhaja (Brinjal fry), tender and melting, ladyfingers flavored with tamarind and coriander, chicken stewed with cloves and cardamom, pomfret curry, macher jhol (fish dal), fully boiled rice, pickles of three different flavors, mango, chilli, mixed vegetable, two varieties of sweets, sandesh, roshogulla, and lastly mishti doi (sweet curd).

Indirani entered the kitchen to find beena making the puris.

"Everything is over…" she enquired…been nodded tired.

"Didi, you go and change, beena will fry the luchis…" manasi said…

"Oh yes, they will be coming anytime…just go and look if Lolita is ready or not…"

"Okay didi, now go…"
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The poppies ended at a sandbank that sloped gently down to the Ganga; warmed by the sun, the sand was hot enough to sting the soles of his bare feet .He saw people doing their evening prayers, empty boats strew across tied to the banks. A pace or two from the water's edge, he heard some people shout an invocation to the river – "Joi Gange…" and gulped down a draught of air, before throwing themselves in…

He didn't want to go home, it was his human weakness, he couldn't bear to see the sight, after his exam he deliberately took the long route, roaming around half of Calcutta and finally reached the river.

It was the time of year when, after the initial shock of contact, the water soon reveals itself to be refreshingly cool. Although the full heat of summer was still several weeks away, the flow of the Ganges had already begun to dwindle. Turning in the direction, in the east, the people hoisted aloft, to pour out a handful of water as a tribute to the holy city. Along with the offering, a leaf flowed out of a child's cupped palms. They turned to watch as the river carried it downriver towards the ghats.

So did Jai.

The walls of Opium Factory, was partially obscured by mango and jackfruit trees but the British flag that flew on top of it was just visible above the foliage, as was the steeple of the church in which the factory's overseers prayed. At the factory's ghat on the Ganga, a one-masted pateli barge could be seen, flying the pennant of the English East India Company. It had brought in a shipment of chaln opium, from one of the Company's outlying sub-agencies, and was being unloaded by a long line of coolies.

There was a big boat. His eyes suddenly conjured up the picture of the immense ship with two tall masts. Suspended from the masts were great sails of a dazzling shade of white. The prow of the ship tapered into a figurehead with a long bill, like a stork or a heron. There was a man in the background, standing near the bow, probably the captain. In the aftermath of the Second World War, sharply alternating cycles of boom and depression forced the pace of mass discontent in Bengal. Immediately after the war, attracted by the expanding opportunities of employment offered by the abnormally inflated conditions of industry, a large number of workers crowded into the towns form the countryside and were left stranded by a depression which came in all of a sudden. Calcutta was living through 'the greatest and the most widespread period of depression that has ever been experienced'. Conditions were especially acute in jute mill industries and opium trades.

He got up and sighed, how long will he be able to avoid it. The sooner he accepts it the better. He picked up his shoes which were lying at a distance, he didn't bother to wear them, liking the feeling of his feet getting soaked in the wet silt which the river brought with itself.
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Jaidev Chattopadhyay was the second child of Shubroto and Mrinalini Chattopadhyay; he had an elder sister Paromita who was married was living happily in Tripura, whose husband worked as the estate manager of the tea-gardens owned by a White. Shubroto was a respected man in their locality, who worked in the printing press, he was the chief editor. He was recognized for his honesty and principles but he did possess a sense of practicality and his accommodating nature let him survive in his profession, when there had been immense pressurization from the British authorities of closing the press because of the articles published against the government, he had patiently endured them and finally saved the press form being shutting up. They had been neighbors to the Choudharys since twenty long years; their fathers had been neighbors, so were they.

Jai was four or five, or four and half exactly, when Lolita was born. They had been friends since then, they practically lived in each others' houses. They were inseparable, as they both progressed into youth, the feeling went deeper than just being sublime, and love was taking course. They did hide their feelings from each other, often behind pretty words, or silence them to avoid violating social conventions. The discordance between desires and words caused all kinds of communication. They knew they liked each other a lot. It was a known fact, but they didn't dare to say it aloud…and when Girish's proposal had come, jai was annoyed and bluntly proposed to her, but Lolita never gave an answer, he stopped waiting either… …
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God bless
Dhani

hey dhani