Category: Stories

Pier Paolo’s Idyll

By Paul Mirabile

In order to build a new low-cost residential complex twenty kilometres to the West of Rome, hundreds of hectares of low-lying hills, orchards, several depopulated hamlets and unplanted vineyards had been cleared by an army of bulldozers, cranes and cheap labour with picks and shovels. In the 1960s, housing construction in Italy had mushroomed out in an erratic, rampaging spectacle beyond any public or private circumspection.

Pier Paolo and his middle-aged mother benefitted from one of these new, but hastily built residential flats on the tenth floor of a fifteen-storey tower. His father had abandoned the family four or five years ago, forcing the boy’s mother to work as a seamstress for the hundreds of residents of their tower. He himself had dropped out of school to work at a nearby wine factory in the industrial zone. Their meagre incomes paid the rent, permitted them to eat two or three meals a day and dress decently.

Everyday, Pier Paolo shuffled lazily to the factory at eight o’clock. To reach the small factory, he crossed an immense horizonless, treeless esplanade paved in the most banal ugly grey paving stones. What caught his attention, however, was a low rising stretch of grassy dirt mounds which ran for a lengthy distance along a high, barbed wire metal barrier which separated the dirt mounds from a rocky embankment leading downwards to a newly build avenue. These low dirt knolls, according to the season, blushed a poppy spring red, a leafy, autumnal brown, a wintry white then a lush, verdant green in the summer. On his off days, he would walk through the low hillocks from one point to the other. They covered an area of about twenty-five metres by ten metres. His constant crossings in this forgotten pile of dirt had traced footpaths in and around the knolls, the low bushes and over broken roots.

Pier Paolo enjoyed these pleasant promenades. Below, on one side, buzzed speeding vehicles. On the other, lay the empty, treeless esplanade where hardly a soul appeared, save a few workers, housewives pushing carts of food, flowers or trinkets to be sold in the neighbourhood market, one or two old school comrades and stray dogs. It was at that particular movement of contemplation that Pier Paolo experienced a tinge of excitement, a mounting commotion that would endorse and embolden his existence, would prompt his escape from the boring walls of a suffocating flat, the ugly concrete and metal of their block residence …

Returning from the factory one afternoon at the beginning of June, Pier Paolo walked briskly over the range of shaggy mounds of piled up dirt for an hour or so before finally deciding upon a spot that would suit his adventure nicely. Hidden from the eyes of those who crossed the esplanade, a small concavity in the rim of a grassy hillock would afford him a place to sleep. He only needed to erect a make-shift lean-to, not to protect him from the rain — during the spring and summer months it never rained — but from the scorching heat. Yes, Pier Paolo resolved to live with nature on this diminutive tract of earth that had miraculously survived the building contractors’ bulldozers and cranes.

He hastened home to his mother who was busy sowing a marriage dress for her second storey neighbour. Pier Paolo excitedly explained his adventure. It would last through not only for the summer months, but also through autumn before the heavy rains set in. She listened passively, her mouth agape. Had her son gone completely daft? No, he appeared quite normal, even serious. He would rise with the rising sun, have his breakfast at the café near the factory, lunch at the factory canteen, and as to diner he would buy deli meats, olives, cheese and bread at the grocer’s.

“Why not eat diner here with me?” his mother suggested in her soft, meek voice.

“Of course I’ll eat with you mummy, but only on weekends. I must live permanently in my new environment. I’m eighteen year’s old, and it will be an adventure to sleep out in such primitive and natural surroundings without neighbours’ screaming and shouting, loud parties until four in the morning, lifts breaking down all the time. I want to breathe fresh air, if that is all possible in this godforsaken dump.”

His mother flushed at these last words, but held her tongue, astonished at her son’s resolution. “You see mummy, I want to look up at the stars and not at the cracks in the ceiling of my room.” His mother nodded her head, thimble on her thumb, needle and thread between her index and middle finger. He was right, there were many cracks and fissures in the ceilings and walls of their ‘new’ flat ! Well, he did show ingenuity and imagination. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and besides, he wouldn’t be far from home …

So Pier Paolo packed a few belongings in his back-pack, rolled up his sleeping bag, kissed his mother on her wrinkled forehead and strolled to his ‘earthy paradise’ as he facetiously called his up-coming ‘residence’.

The first two weeks Pier Paolo did eat with his mother on Sundays and also gave her his clothes to be washed, cleaned and dried, made ready for work on the morrow. However, the following weekends he did his own washing at the launderette for a few lira, and ate sandwiches at his hilly home instead of with his mother. It certainly was not out of anything against her. He loved her very much. But Pier Paolo wished to be on his very own, especially on his off days and at night, lying on his sleeping bag outside the lean-to, observing the stars and the moon as they moved slowly across the universe. Up till then, no one had disturbed him. A stray dog did sniff about his installation on several occasions, but the animal seemed friendly, and Pier Paolo threw it some slices of salami and pepperoni. The only other ‘visitors’ to his comfortable solitude were the sparrows who gayly pecked at the crumbs of bread that he scattered for them just below his shelter.

Oh how after a hard day’s work at the factory he relished those calm, starry evenings, the light whir of vehicles below beyond the barbed-wire barrier, the absolute silence of the esplanade behind him! He really felt quite at home amongst the natural elements; the ants building their ant-hills, the bees doing their dance amidst the honeysuckles, the birds chirping in and out of the bushes. The poppies and daisies were in bloom, too. Alas, many of the grassy knolls and thorny footways had been littered with coke bottles and caps, beer cans or liquor bottles, yellowed magazine and newspaper pages, cigarette studs, all thrown there by returning workers from the industrial area or gangs of drunken adolescents. Pier Paolo, struggling through the prickly weeds, would clean the mess the best he could, but invariably the same lot or other litter-louts would fling whatever trash they had into his ‘paradise’ as if it were a huge rubbish bin. Did these individuals know that Pier Paolo had taken up residence in those piles of grassy mounds? Even if they did, nothing would have prevented them from tossing whatever they had into it, accompanied by drunken guffaws and mindless giggles.

The sea must not have been far off, or so he imagined. For at times he heard the whir of a winged seagull. He stood to catch sight of it, but only the blurry orange glow of the high rising tower lights far off at the end of the esplanade marked the sky. The towers resembled so many indistinct parapets of flickering light-bulbs which loomed ominously at the end of the soundless esplanade. That vastness of ugly emptiness had always frightened him, and at those times he would turn his back to this sinister, featureless urban landscape and dwell upon the images of faraway scenes that crossed his imagination. No, those electric lights would not chase away his stars …

One star-filled night, he envisaged pink and amber sands of a horizonless desert whose barkans[1] and chots[2] left him breathless; the heat of the sands made him sweat under the blazing hot sun in an azure sky of pure, unpolluted, untainted opal. In another vision, he pictured himself deep in a chain of snow-clad crested mountains, trekking with difficulty over ribbed glaciers and ice-laden passes, the blues of the mountains inviting him to penetrate ever deeper so as to discover the arcane entrance to the subterranean kingdom of the King of the World.

Pier Paolo’s imagination soared to new heights night after night following a hard day’s work. It were as if he had mounted a magic carpet which floated under rainbows, over wide forests and turquoise seas. These fantastic images slid him slowly into a deep, healthy sleep. He awoke refreshed and vigorous, ready for a hearty breakfast at the café and work. In fact, he had never worked as hard as he did now, loading the train cars with heavy cartons of wine, working rapidly at the conveyor belt packaging wine bottles.

Many of the workers admired the young Pier Paolo for his renewed energy, his replenished stamina and spirit. At the sound of the whistle, he showered, bought some prosciutto, pepperoni, provolone, olives, pistachios and bread from the grocer’s, then returned merrily to his shaggy-mounded home. His muscles ached, but gradually relaxed when the stars began to pop out forming clusters of scintillating comfort …

He saw himself on the Niger River somewhere in Mali, drifting in a canoe on the slow moving current, wild geese cackling on the wing, hippopotami bellowing and rumbling in the deep waters, camels grunting from the arid sand-filled shores. He drifted and drifted as the heat bore heavily upon him, lying upon sacks of corn, munching on dates, tomatoes and boiled fish …

A sudden barking! It was the stray dog. Pier Paolo shook himself out of his dreamy stupor, threw the poor scraggy creature a slice of pepperoni, then closed his weary eyes and slept soundly. Darkness crept over the hilly mounds, mantling their denizen in another tranquil night of peaceful repose.

Oddly enough, after having devoured the slice of pepperoni, the dog never returned to visit our grassy-mounded denizen. He had other visitors, however — a motley lot of out-of-schoolers who seemingly scented the presence of someone living amidst the abandoned lot, and who endeavoured to confirm it. It was a Saturday afternoon. Pier Paolo was busy reading an interesting detective story when suddenly he found himself encircled by three ragamuffin boys and two very buxom girls! They all sized him up, noses in the air as if sniffing the warm breeze of a July day.

“Who are you mate?” a skinny boy questioned with overt contempt. He appeared to be the ‘chief’ of the pack. Pier Paolo stood up. He was much taller than any of them and more broad-shouldered. The others held their ground, but one or two scraped the dirt with their worn-out shoes, biting their lips.

“I’m the king of these mounds. What of it?”

“The king?” guffawed the skinny chap out of the corner of his distorted mouth.

“Yea, the king,” repeated Pier Paolo, heightening his voice with an added tinge of condescension.

“Very well, king. Then what if we were to dethrone you and turn your monarchy into a democratic state?” The others sniggered at this show of rhetoric, albeit hesitantly.

“Go ahead, Mister Democrat!” responded the monarch, tightening his fists, smiling through clenched teeth. No one moved. The warm breeze made the democrats sway in their fixed positions like a herd of paper tigers.

“Ah, let it go,” interrupted one of the girls. “Let him rule over his trash-filled kingdom.” And she turned to leave, followed shortly by the other girl then the three boys, who exchanged menacing glances with Pier Paolo. The ‘chief’ bowed in affected reverence to the ‘king’ and mumbled something unintelligible. When they had reached the esplanade, Pier Paolo scoffed at this unexpected intrusion, crawled under his lean-to and went back to his afternoon reading …

The August heat dried all the perfumed poppies and dainty daisies that Pier Paolo had planted around his lean-to. The heat had become unbearable, driving through the palm-leaf roof of his make-shift shelter. It was holiday for most of the workers at the wine factory, but Pier Paolo volunteered to work the whole month, not only for higher wages, but for showering and the afternoon hot meals. He did visit his mom every now and then, but was living mostly on deli meats, olives, cheese, fruit and bread. Because of the heat, he showered every day and took his clothes to the launderette every two days. It’s true that this kind of a diet began to bore him, however, his solitary refuge had really become his royal paradise!

Every Saturday and Sunday, he roamed through his ‘kingdom’ searching the nooks and crannies for unusual objects: a broken tombstone dating from the seventeenth century judging from the Latin inscription, a yellow-paged book of verses by a poet unknown to him, several of which he managed to read but hardly understood. He discovered a rusted compass and magnifying-glass, half-buried in one of the weedy mounds. In a riot of dead roots he rummaged out a photo of a young girl dressed as if to go to church, all in white with a huge black crêpe de chine hat. He collected these treasures and put them in a box for safe-keeping. They represented objects reminiscent of some by-gone era.

One day he stumbled upon a huge footprint, much bigger than any print he had ever seen.

“A dinosaur?” he thought excitedly.

He scoured the knolls for any dinosaur bones but found none. Where did that enormous footprint come from? Pier Paolo grew somewhat apprehensive. His kingdom indeed enclosed a myriad mysteries. And this one drew him further before the advent of humankind …or so he thought.

One fine sunny morning, the black dog he had fed, suddenly appeared with a huge bone in its mouth. Pier Paolo threw it a few slices of salami he had been munching on but the dog shook its shaggy head and plodded off behind a knoll. He raised a quizzical eyebrow. Did the dog not like salami? Perhaps that bone was a dinosaur bone. He shrugged his shoulders sniffing the hot air.

During the month of August he hardly visited his mother. He hardly spoke to his colleagues at the factory. They eyed him nervously. The boy seemed so estranged, aloof with a distant look in his eyes. He would look straight through you and beyond, somewhere far, far away. His gait too had slackened. This being said, he carried out his tasks as usual.

He let his hair grow long, dishevelled. He grew a wispy beard, uncombed. His clothes, although clean, hung on him like a bag, and a bit bedraggled to boot as if he had slept in them. Which he always did, needless to say. All he yearned for was to return to his solitary retreat in the evening, lie down and stare at the emerging stars. They drew him upwards and outwards. The sun having set, the heat ceased to vex him. The crickets discontinued their August chorus. Other sounds, alien, rose to a high pitch in his head…the tinkling of camel bells across the sandy wavelets of the Gobi or the Sahara deserts. There he was again, riding atop a camel, a white, gleaming, silken turban wound about his head, his body protected by a satin djellaba. He had sailed the high seas for many moons before disembarking in this ocean of ergs[3] whose vibrant colours made his eyes squint. The cleanliness of such an expanse delighted him, such a contrast to the concrete ugliness and filth of all those horrid towers! As the ship disappeared over the rim of the watery horizon, he stood between the vastness of the desert and the sea, the first in front of him, the second behind, ready to penetrate unknown territories. Above, a translucent blue sky. The camels plodded onwards; a sudden crispy sound alerted him to a change in the landscape, the camels’ hooves now trudged over stetches of slaty black sands that the dried lava of a volcano eruption had deposited thousands and thousands of years ago. The camels trudged and trudged ; the crusty slaty sands crunched and crunched until Pier Paolo fell asleep …

Pier Paolo, after five weeks of not visiting his mother, spent a Sunday with her. So happy was she to see her son that the cheerful woman cooked him his favourite dish: eggplant parmigiana. She bought him the best provolone and caciocavallocheeses that she could afford, and served him a vintage Chianti wine. As a special treat for dessert, she fried him Sicilian sfince[4]. How he wolfed those delicious delicacies down! Pier Paolo hadn’t eaten such sweets for over three months. He had become so thin, his long hair and beard framed an emaciated face, whose bulging eyes bore a wild look. Yet he remained very polite, mild-mannered, even tender towards his loving mother throughout the afternoon. When he closed the door behind him, she held back her tears. Would she hold them back when his final hour came?

It was a warm September afternoon, 1975. Next to his lean-to, Pier Paolo sat reading a novel by Alberto Moravia, ‘Gli Indifferenti’[5], the 1929 edition. He sniffed the cool autumn air, admired the pleasant scents of the poppies and honeysuckles around which the bees were busily buzzing. From behind the mounds, he heard a few vehicles screech to a halt, followed by many coarse voices. The boy stood, walked over the mounds and noticed five or six men in ties and two policemen staring up at him. A big fat man, probably a building contractor by the look of his clothes, waved to him to come down. With overt disdain, he turned and returned to his novel. Shortly after, though, he found himself surrounded by these intruders to his privacy. He stood, miffed to the marrow!

“You’re trespassing, sirs. And encroaching on my afternoon reading.” This was stated with calm but obvious scorn. All the men laughed so loud that it brought a series of yowls from the stray dog, who had been observing the scene from atop the knoll where Pier Paolo had built his lean-to. It was showing its teeth, yet uttered not a growl.

“Clear out boy, you’ve had your fun for the summer. The neighbours are complaining about you. Anyway the city is about to level all this and pave it clean.” The fat man certainly gave himself airs, puffing out his chest.

Pier Paolo, with a thin smile, replied wearily: “What neighbours? No neighbour has ever said anything about my being here. They don’t even know I’m here.”

“Listen, don’t muck about with us. I’m telling you to push off or we’ll be forced to drag you off,” the other said in a offensive tone, his face turning a beet-red.

Pier Paolo clenched his fists: “This is my kingdom, fatty. I and only I decide when to leave!”

The dog yowled again. The fat contractor kicked down the lean-to in a spate of anger. Pier Paolo, taken aback by this display of uncalled for violence, lashed out at him with two or three well-placed blows to the face. ‘Fatty’ fell backwards to the ground, spitting out a tooth and much blood.

One of the policemen grasped Pier Paolo by the shoulder ; the young boy showing unusual strength knocked his arm away and struck the policeman’s jaw with his elbow, then continued to strike him in the ribs with a volley of punches. Just then from above, the dog leapt into the crowd barking hysterically. It fell onto one of the men biting into the neck. The dog had gone mad. The other policeman took out his pistol and shot it dead.

Pier Paolo, stunned by the gunshot and the dog lying limp next to his broken lean-to, flew into a rage and attacked the policeman, seething like an animal, gnashing his teeth. He struck blow after blow, uncontrollably. Now the rest of the men pounced on the boy beating him mercilessly to the ground, kicking him in the head. The policeman broke up the beating, handcuffed the half-unconscious Pier Paolo and dragged him off to the police car …

The badly beaten boy was taken to hospital. Upon his release, he was immediately arrested and charged for assault and battery on the two policemen and on two municipal civil servants. At the trial the accused, who had no defence, was sentenced to two years imprisonment and a 50.000 lira fine, which he refused to pay on the grounds that neither he nor his mother could afford such a sum. The judge slapped on another year of imprisonment.

Confined to stare at four concrete walls many hours a day, Pier Paolo gradually slipped out of the reality of his circumstances. He took no food nor spoke to anyone. He merely lay prostrate on his little cell bed like one awaiting death. No more wonderful images of deserts, mountains and seas crossed his benumbed mind.

Death stole upon Pier Paolo in violent spasms on the evening of the second of November, 1975. Apparently, he had starved himself to death.

His lonely mother sewed and sewed, no longer able to retain her tears. No neighbour came to comfort her; no religious authority to commiserate with her grief.

As to Pier Paolo’s kingdom or paradise, on one dreary November day, several bulldozers levelled the shaggy mounds. The area that had been his home now became an extension of the paved esplanade up to the barrier of the embankment.

[1] Crescent-shaped sand dunes.

[2] Large lake-like salt deposits.

[3] Large wavy dunes.

[4] Made of ricotta, unbleached flour and unsalted butter, rolled into balls and fried. When cooled, sugar powder is sprinkled on them. They are generally eaten on Saint Joseph’s day in Sicily.

[5] Translated in English as ‘The Indifferent Ones’ or ‘The Time of Indifference’ by Alberto Moravia(1907-1990)

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Tags Alberto Moravia, Asia, France, Italy, Paul Mirabile, Saint Joseph, Sicilian, Sicily

Stories

The Buyback

By Devraj Singh Kalsi

Ten years after selling the ancestral house, Anoop returned to his roots – to the small town he was eager to leave, to grow big and flourish where a plethora of opportunities lived. Finding a new building constructed on what was once his inherited land, he stood outside the entrance in awe, pulled out a postcard-size photograph from his shirt pocket, and tried to match the similarities between the past and the present.

Gazing intently to observe the elements that stood firm despite the ravages of time and circumstances, the heavy iron-gate that guarded the grand entrance to the bungalow was the solitary link to his forgotten past. With a fresh coat of paint of a different shade, it looked ready to embrace visitors with the same warmth that it exuded earlier. As he pushed it gently to enter the premises, the creaking noise that used to irritate him was music to his ears now, capable of bringing a wistful smile to his face that conveyed a lot about his changed mindset.

Trudging along the cobbled path leading to the porch, Anoop decided to thank Girish, the present owner of the property, for showing the rare spirit of preservation. There were several similarities adding up, carving the image of a liberal owner who did not exercise the freedom to overhaul everything for a complete makeover. The jackfruit tree close to the boundary wall and the alcove with the tulsi plant stood green and abundant as it did in the past, offering ample evidence that he maintained a fine balance between legacy and modernity.

Anoop was sequencing the thoughts he would share as soon as he was welcomed in. A dilemma prevailed over whether he should take time to unfold his actual purpose or quickly get to the agenda that had ferried him here. The tension was palpable as he pressed the doorbell with the arrogance of a feudal landlord who was still not ready to wake up and accept the new reality.

His roller-coaster journey was a classic example of the story of an unexpected downfall, followed by a meteoric rise in no time. He felt it was his responsibility to erase the era of his decline because the lost ground was recovered. He made it a mission to acquire everything he had lost during the lean phase. With confidence in divine support, he knew a miracle was waiting to happen, to turn the tide in his favour and bestow upon him the status of ownership of this property once again.

Not quite confident of an enthusiastic welcome, Anoop had come alone to strike a deal that did not carry the support or consent of his family though they shadowed him wherever he went. This would be the first occasion he would get full credit from his wife and son if he achieved success in what appeared to be a challenging task: buying back the house he had sold.

The question that remained unanswered was whether Girish would agree to sell. Anoop was aware that such a proposal had rarely been made and was unlikely to be accepted. Even though the odds were high, Anoop was prepared to make it lucrative. As a businessman, he believed deals are sealed only when they are attractive and the greed for more money envelopes the wisest.

Guests and visitors turning up without a prior appointment were fobbed off. The big bang of his arrival was met with a louder response as the afternoon siesta was disturbed. A mumbling, grumbling Girish opened the teakwood door and recognised Anoop standing at the threshold with folded hands. His expression of annoyance changed to a warm, receptive tenor, inviting him in with a quick shower of queries related to the absence of his family. Anoop was accorded the deferential treatment he deserved as a former owner of the property.

“Seems my arrival at an odd hour has impacted your rest,” Anoop apologised after making himself comfortable on the leather sofa.

“Not at all, brother, I was about to go out for a stroll in the garden before having my evening tea. Now I will have your company,” Girish sounded courteous as he sat opposite Anoop who looked around to admire the aesthetic beauty of the interiors and could not resist asking him whether his spouse had done it all.

“She is an artist, and whatever you see here is her choice or creation,” Girish attributed the pervasive beauty to his beautiful wife Amla who was waiting to be introduced with a glowing compliment. She emerged from the bedroom in her casual dress and flip-flops, flashing a radiant smile, and reached out to Anoop for a warm handshake. Anoop stood up to greet her while Girish sat cross-legged and kept his fingers crossed while watching their handshake that stretched unduly long. The connection was instant as Amla had a preference for well-dressed men wearing good perfume. His body language suggested he was far superior to the host in every possible way including mannerisms.

Amla sat on the other side of the couch where Girish spread himself, adjusting her curls and waiting for Anoop to throw a question at her. Before he could ask for anything, Girish ordered Amla to bring tea and snacks for the guest.

Anoop seized the moment with an offer that compelled Amla to remain seated. Employing sharp, concise language to outline his decent proposal, Anoop opened his briefcase and took out the cheque book. The couple, unable to guess what he was up to, looked at each other with curiosity that was settled once Anoop offered Girish a blank cheque and clarified, “Actually, I am here to buy this property. At the price you quote.”

Having dropped a bombshell, Anoop waited for some time to see how they reacted. He put on his dark shades to prevent them from reading his mind, reposing full faith in the power of money to deliver the best deal in his favour. The swiftness of the episode was making it difficult for Girish to internalize it. But the reality of a blank cheque was nothing less than winning a lottery. It was a tough contest between the greed of ownership and the greed of wealth – the seller had to resist the temptation of growing richer and the buyer had to get the property at any cost. Anoop did not want to engage local heavyweights to apply pressure tactics on Girish, to compel him to sell. He chose to come to the suburban town to ink the deal with the most lucrative offer Girish could ever get during his lifetime.

“Other than the price factor, there are aspects you must realise. For example, my willingness matters first. What made you think I was going to sell it in the first place? Did I buy this property from you with the condition of selling it to you after a decade? Even if you shell out the highest price, I will not sell it,” Girish made his decision categorically clear and looked eager to show him the exit door.

Unwilling to lose the opportunity, Anoop tried to soften his stance with an emotional pitch, citing a bright future in the autumn years. “Stop being a fool. I am paying you as much as you want. Do you have any idea of how much this property means? I did not spend the money to buy in Mumbai or Dubai. This piece of land is of greater value to me. You can take the amount you want and buy a fancy penthouse in any posh project. Wake up and grab it,” Anoop rallied forth like an aggressive dealer.

“I am well-settled here. My wife and kids are happy. Why should I sell it? Just because you are paying an exorbitant amount? Or simply because you need it now? It appears your memories buried here have become more important after you turned rich. If you did not have excess wealth, I’m sure you would not have bothered to come here again,” Girish went ahead with much greater conviction and candour.

The abundance of wealth made Anoop keen to get back in touch with his past. Girish was accurate in his analysis and chose to defend his right to refuse the lucrative offer.

“Let me be honest since you have put it right. I am here because the house, more than a century old, belonged to an illustrious family that had migrated from the Punjab during the British Raj and built an empire. Four generations lived here. Eleven members died here. Fourteen were born here. I am the last survivor with two kids with the burden to preserve the heritage. Something I cannot explain, and you cannot understand. You cannot rationalise a blank cheque for this property that was sold for peanuts to you because the circumstances were different then. You gained because of my misfortune, and you paid much below the market price but I am offering you many times more than the current market price. It is not just another piece of land for me,” Anoop put it bluntly, to make his position clear.

Girish was a first-generation entrepreneur introduced to wealth in recent years. He rose from a middle-class family background and slogged hard to garner success. He was pricked by what Anoop said to make his accomplishments look tame.

“You have come unannounced and thrown a blank cheque, with no regard for the thing called consent. This is undemocratic even if you offer the best price, thinking I will not have the choose to refuse because you offer the highest price possible. Remember, you were in debt when you sold this property. You accuse me of paying less than the market price but it was the highest price you got. Exploiting people in trouble is nothing new. We all do it to build our fortune. Before you add another word related to the memory of your ancestors here, just think that my kids are growing up and creating memories for themselves. Tell me, are the memories of the dead more important than the memories of those alive? No compulsion prevails in my life as my circumstances are skewed in my favour. Forget the idea of buyback. Scout for something else. You are possessed by the idea of fixing the past. But this property is not up for grabs,” Girish gave his final two cents.

The conversation was losing mutual respect, with a distinct possibility of unilateral withdrawal. Girish was not sure how long he would be able to essay the role of a good host despite being insulted and lured by the guest who had the singular agenda of securing possession of the property. Amla had been a patient listener throughout the exchange, without interrupting the flow with her opinion. Before Girish asked Anoop to leave the house, Amla chose to engage with Anoop without her husband’s consent.

Sensing this as a god-gifted opportunity, Anoop took interest in her words. Unlike Girish, she wowed the offer and was glad to get it. Showing her hand to stop Girish from interfering at this point, Amla silenced him and took center stage. “I am his better half, and I must think better. He has grown attached to this house in just a decade and you are naturally attached to this property as you have spent almost your entire life. You have a valid argument in this regard. This is our first property as we lived on rent earlier. But I do not mind selling it since your offer is fabulous. So, let’s do like this. You can issue two cheques – in the name of the husband, and in the name of the wife. You can split the amount equally – 25 crores[1] for each.”

Anoop could not believe this deal would click with her intervention. He did not have to try coercion or anything like that. Amla co-operated and took complete charge while the argumentative Girish was now a meek lamb, unable to utter a word against her decision.

Anoop wrote the cheques as he was asked to write by Amla. Girish was still unable to comprehend why she accepted the deal with Anoop. He knew Anoop was paying far more than the market price and Amla facilitated it without his consent. Girish had every right to ask her why she did so, but the aspect of marital turbulence weighed heavy on his mind.

“So, you got the property quite unexpectedly. It is a small price for something precious like the Kohinoor. Girish wouldn’t have agreed to sell. It is profit and gains for both parties. We should celebrate it,” Amla proposed, with absolute disregard for her husband who could not recover from the shock of his wife’s unilateral decision. He regretted making his wife the co-owner of the property.

It would take a month to complete the formalities of transfer and the ownership would return to Anoop. He was eagerly looking forward to the day when he would become its legal owner once again. He had no changes in mind except the installation of the marble statues of his father and mother. He felt this would be the best honour as he thought the only child would make the lineage proud, thanks to the solid principles inculcated during his childhood years. To safeguard the future of the property from his own son, Anoop created a trust to maintain the ancestral property and deprived his son of the right to inherit it. Besides, the price he had paid for its buyback would never become the market price, even in the next hundred years.

The entire town got to know about the buyback, and how Anoop had returned to strike a deal. Usually, the old gives way to the new but this was an odd case where the new paved the way for the return of the old. The revival of the past caught the imagination of the young and the old. He wanted to be ready with a convincing narrative for those who were interested to hear the story of his turnaround although there would be some skeptics who would never buy the idea of a vision that propelled him to rebuild his life.

The burden of guilt was off his chest and Anoop thanked Amla for making it possible. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she wanted to look at the world with new hope through a firmly supportive financial window. Her reaching out to Anoop helped her fund her dream venture and begin life anew while he got back the property without facing a struggle. The divorce from Girish would happen without a long-drawn legal battle as she would not have to claim alimony from him. Amla realised this was the best opportunity and encashed it.

In her subsequent exchanges with Anoop, Amla mentioned she had moved to the West to pursue her dreams at forty. Anoop gave full credit for this buyback to Amla who wanted wealth and freedom at the same time. At times Anoop felt bad for Girish who lost his house and wife around the same time, but Amla assured him that Girish was not the kind of person worth shedding tears for as he had hurt many people in his life without a tinge of remorse.

[1] Rs 250,000,000 – Crore is an Indian unit for ten million

Devraj Singh Kalsi works as a senior copywriter in Kolkata. His short stories and essays have been published in Deccan Herald, Tehelka, Kitaab, Earthen Lamp Journal, Assam Tribune, and The Statesman. Pal Motors is his first novel.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Tags Assam Tribune, Deccan Herald, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Kolkata, The Statesman

Stories

The Thirteen-Year Old Pyromaniac

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date April 15, 2024
No Comments on The Thirteen-Year Old Pyromaniac

By Paul Mirabile

Tommy sat down to dinner with his parents. Roast beef and mash again. He grimaced. His mother, a cashier at Lidl[1], and his father, a travelling salesman, threw him cursory looks: “Tommy, you should eat, meat is so dear,” his mother lamented.

“Eat up boy, money doesn’t grow on trees you know,” barked his father, wheezing irritably, followed by a huff that brooked no further comment on the subject.

Tommy slouched over his plate and wolfed down the food without a word. He left the table, as always, casting a contrary glance at his father, who ate his meal in silence, a ritual to which he demanded both his wife and his son to observe scrupulously.

Tommy slipped outside into the warm breeze of late summer, sitting down on the steps of his parents’ (the bank’s!) town council flat. How his father unnerved him with his tyrannical rules and stentorian ditties. “He’s gone almost half the year selling his cheap, nasty wares, and here he is laying down the law like a bloody dictator. Poor mommy does all she can to meet his inept demands, but when she can’t she cries her eyes out,” he fumed inwardly, clenching his fists.

Tommy took out a box of matches, lighting each one, then flicking them into the yellowing grass of their front garden. He enjoyed watching the little sticks sail into the night air all alit, only to fall extinguished on the stone walk-way or grass. He loved the sulphurous smell of the sparks, the vision of the orange flame. They aroused a shiver of excitement in his belly and spine. The door opened. His father snorted: “Whatever are you doing with all those matches ? Matches don’t grow on trees.” And in a heightened voice, “Stop wasting them …” He slammed the door shut. Tommy clenched his fists, his lips whitening in constrained animosity …

Tommy began his incendiary career at school. Armed with a box of matches that he had pinched from the local grocers, he set fire to the large rubbish bin in one of the maintenance rooms on the first floor of the building, causing billows of smoke to fill corridors and lungs of children and teachers as they rushed about either to escape or extinguish it. The fire was not serious in itself. However, the bin contained plastic substances whose horrible odours and ochre-yellow fumes made everyone retch or choke. Several children collapsed from smoke inhalation. Since no one had suspected Tommy, or any other child for that matter, the school board of directors concluded that it was due to an act of negligence. Hence, the elderly maintenance man was promptly sacked!

The thirteen-year old Tommy’s maiden exploit filled his lungs with pride, and would incite him to bigger deeds of daring …

And bigger deeds they indeed were: Southwold’s supermarket fell prey to Tommy’s insatiable fiery appetite. He had spotted an area outside the supermarket where hundreds and hundreds of wooden boxes, crates and cartons had been stacked all along the wall. This storage area was fenced off from a vacant lot which ran the whole length of it. In full daylight, the defiant Tommy sprinkled gasoline all along the mass spread of boxes, crates and cartons, then tossed matches into them. He ran and lay low under the scant bushes of the lot as the fire took hold and spread. Soon the flames were licking the wall, arching high over the roof of the supermarket (it wasn’t Lidl where his mother worked!), casting sparks into the hot, August air.

Tommy crawled away to safety into a nearby woods where he observed the now roaring flames with gratifying glee. Sirens drowned out the shrills of clients and supermarket personnel. The young arsonist dusted himself off, pushed back his tousled hair, and like all seasoned arsonists have done (and will always do), stepped gingerly into the gathering crowd that watched the fiery spectacle, listening to them conjecture unintelligently on the origins of the fire. He covered his mouth, concealing a victorious smile, mesmerised by the grandeur of the blaze. The thirteen-year-old Tommy eyed the spectators with disdain, his shrewd mind already kindling his next performance for all to see — one that would ‘bring down the house’, as his father would always jeer with that gross guffawing of his.

In that nearby woods which separated the shopping mall and the school from Tommy’s neighbourhood, a gang of ruffians had built a huge tree-fort in an aged oak, whose horizontal growth provided an excellent setting for their fort. It was very long, sloping upwards into the large leafy branches, built with brand new wood stolen from the construction sites and roofed with a huge metal sign that the rowdies, no doubt, had pilfered from some warehouse. The fort was furnished with stolen furniture, pieces of carpet, framed pictures, curtains and all sorts of knick-knacks. Tommy despised this gang of thugs who constantly stopped him on his way to school on the wide path that divided the woods in two, either to filch his lunch money, which they deemed ‘toll fee’ for passage through ‘their territory’, or simply to slap him about a bit ‘just for fun’. Tommy could have gone around the woods, but that would have implied a forty-five minute trek. Class began at eight.

Tommy’s heart, aflame by these extorting blighters, especially by their crass, vulgar laughter, carried out his revenge with ardent savagery and meticulous precision …

Four days later, at five o’clock in the afternoon, gigantic flames spearing upwards from the clearing of the woods were seen miles away. Even the heat was felt in the nearby neighbourhoods. Indeed, Tommy had thought out his plan of action with methodical mania. He knew when the wretched hooligans would be out of their lair of lechery, all eleven of them, out on ‘errands’ as they snickered; that is, stealing, extorting, fighting. He spread two small jerrycans of gasoline, siphoned from his father’s car, thick over the tree-fort, trunk and branches of the oak. He felt a pang of sorrow for the aged oak … but what must be done must be done, right ? When these preliminaries had been accomplished the rest was child’s play. The dryness of the tree and the wood of the fort produced a conflagration that even took Tommy by surprise, all the more as it spread at an incredible speed out of the clearing into the surrounding wooded areas. Alarmed but fascinated by the raging, arching, yellowish-orange flames, he threw more and more brushwood into the sweeping blaze, screaming at the top of his lungs – “Feed the fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire!” But this unexpected madness nearly cost him dearly, for at that very hysterical moment, one of the ruffians who had probably seen the flames from afar on his way back to the tree-fort, overheard Tommy’s uncontrollable cries and spotted the arsonist on the edge of the clearing, flinging dead wood into the flying sparks that shot out from all quarters of the main blaze.

“Hey you!” the lad shouted. Tommy didn’t need to turn around. He recognised the voice. He took to his heels through the twisting paths of the woods which had not as yet been touched by the lapping flames, running as fast as he could. He heard the other pacing after him, yelling at the top of his voice words that struck fear in Tommy’s little heart. But Tommy knew the woods like his hand. He veered off the path and darted into a pocket of thick thorny undergrowth, his face and hands pricked and slashed. The pursuing lad stopped, out of breath, hesitant to follow, for now the unfurling blazes were curling up in front him! Knowing that the criminal had escaped, he back-tracked, hoping to escape. He did, for the morning newspapers reported no deaths from the tragic incident. As to the arsonist, he battled through thorn and thicket, managing to flee by way of a tiny footway which led him behind his neighbourhood. He waited in a copse of willows and, under the cover of darkness, made for his parents’ flat, looking furtively at the rising flames, which by then had all but devoured the woodlands. At ten o’clock he reached his doorstep, seen by no one …

Sirens screamed well into the night, accompanied by the coarse calls of clusters of men, apparently out in search for the culprit.

Tommy, exhausted by the fire and his flight, silently opened the front door, slid in and tip-toed upstairs to wash his face and hands, smelling of smoke and streaked with dried blood from the thorns. Once this operation completed, he stepped outside, then stood on the steps of the flat, watching the crimson glow of the conflagration light up the sky. Many neighbours were doing the same, some standing and talking in the middle of the high street. His father and mother stepped outside to watch the spectacle.

“How awful! How terribly awful!” wailed his mother, hands cupped over her mouth.

“I hope they catch the animal and skin him alive!” his father yelped in a burst of his usual condemnatory judgement. “I’ll be the first to lend a helping hand,” he added in a angry voice, spitting out a cigarette stub into the garden flower-bed. Tommy listened, a slight grin spreading over his aching face.

“Tommy, what are you doing here on the steps at this hour?” his mother suddenly enquired rather nervously, as if she had just emerged from some trance.

“I’m doing what you and everyone else in the neighbourhood are doing, mommy, watching the fire.” This pertinent answer prompted no reply.

The next morning at breakfast, Tommy explained away the scratches on his face and hands because of their cat, whose viciousness was quite known to them all if caressed the wrong way.

“Please don’t muck about with the cat, dear,” his mother lovingly reprimanded. “Look at your face and hands.” Tommy shrugged his shoulders at this show of motherly concern, thanking his stars that his father was out early that morning at some sales show in connivance with his associates to fleece their clients. His mother harped on about the woodland fire and all the rumours and gossip that conflated it. Tommy hardly listened.

The three devastating fires that broke out in the wheat and rye fields and in the orchards of the neighbouring villages and hamlets west of Southwold during September convinced the police that they were not dealing with some feckless firebug, but a shrewd and odious serial compulsive pyromaniac. And since there had been no rain for months, the fields and orchards went up like ‘a box of matches’ as the expression goes. And yet, not one single shred of evidence could be brought against him (or her?). No one had seen anyone near the fires, nor had that ‘anyone’ left a clue of his or her identity by inadvertence. The adolescent who had pursued Tommy in the woods, when interrogated by the police, admitted that because of the smoke and the hood over the fugitive’s head he could not give any clear portrait of the heathen.

Meanwhile, vigilante squads had been formed to track down and ferret out the beast, corner him (or her?) in his or her lair or den …

Tommy read or heard all these trumpetings with considerable apathy, working hard at school, keeping to himself, playing the shy, reserved boy during recreation or when out with a friend or two. His conscious was clear … his keen sense of survival, too. How he jeered inwardly at all this fuss over him: Little Tommy Harper, the pyromaniac! It did indeed hoist his pride. His mother and father talked unceasingly about the misbegotten pyromaniac at dinner night after night, his father booming out his usual commonplace clichés, his mother, those exasperating soughs and sighs. As to Tommy, he remained silent, meditating on the fact that his father had suspended his sacred ritual of silence at the table — at least for this major event– but more importantly, mulled over his next exploit, one that would go down in the chronicles of their precious sea-side town. What Tommy did not know, and this goes without saying, that this chronicled exploit –for indeed it was chronicled– would be his last …

The origin of the daring deed lay in an ugly tussle between Tommy and one of his classmates over a boat-outing at the boy’s father’s boat some five miles or so from Southwold on the River Blyth. It seems that the boy’s father, for some unknown reason, had taken a disliking to Tommy’s father, a dislike which then tainted Tommy. When the classmate invited several mates on his father’s catamaran one Saturday morning, Tommy was overtly excluded. He demanded an explanation for this unfair ostracism. He was given none! The boy merely smiled in unconcealed contempt. Tommy, fists clenched, knocked him down and began pummelling him with vicious blows until two or three teachers came to the battered boy’s rescue. The incident occurred during recreation and created quite a stir at school.

Tommy was, henceforth, not only shunned by his fellow mates, but was suspended from school for three days. His father in a spurt of terrible wrath, took the belt to him, beating him so hard that the boy’s mother had to intervene to avoid her son from fainting: “I’ll have no blood in this house ! No blood!” she raged and ranted, putting an end to the thrashing. The red-faced father pushed his son to the floor and marched out of the house …

A week later Tommy had thoroughly refined his plan. Nothing would curb his revenge. How sweet it would be… He would reduce that boat to cinders! Everything up in crisp, crimson flames! Everything: yachts, catamarans, the boat-house and club. Everything! That’ll teach them all what it means to be humiliated, banned like an outlaw. “Fire for fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire!” he repeated to himself raving.

On one very warm night, at the beginning of October, Tommy slipped out of the flat at midnight. His father had gone off on one of his ‘travelling tours’ and his mother was fast asleep. He dressed all in black, a hood hid his blond hair. As always, he had three jerrycans of gasoline stuffed in a backpack, siphoned from a neighbour’s car, along with two or three large boxes of matches and his father’s pruning shears.

The walk to the waterfront took him over three hours, but the effort would be worth its weight in gold. He had studied the area inside and out, had even drawn a map of it. The pruning shears got him into the enclosure. From there, the rest would be easy. First targets: the boat-house and club. He saturated their walls with enough siphoned gasoline to ignite the Tower of London. Then to the yachts and catamarans he skipped gayly, the berthed vessels dancing lightly in their slips[2]. Yachts, motor boats and catamarans were soaked with what was left of the gasoline, Tommy jumping from one to the other in a state of uncontrolled dementia. Above him, a full moon girt with a golden halo seemed to fuel fire to the leaping lunatic, giggling and choking with laughter at each wild hurl of gasoline: “Feed the fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire!” he howled into the darkened air …

Suddenly hurried footsteps! A torch carved out a hollow tunnel of hazy light in his direction. No time to lose; it was the watchman on to him. He had not counted on that. He lit several matches, igniting boat after boat. The torchlight swung from left to right, the footsteps hurried here and there as flames burst into the blackness. From the boats Tommy then jumped onto the floating dock, hurrying to the boat-house and once there threw matches randomly at the saturated walls. A curtain of flames shot up, spiralling speedily towards the rooftop. The whole house went up like a rocket ship out of its launch. Two small explosions followed.

“There must have been demijohns of gas inside,” Tommy thought. As he raced to the marina club-house to complete his crazed ravaging two or three gunshots rang out, one of which ricocheted metallically off a crane just to the left of him next to a boat ramp. “He’s shooting at me the bloody git!” Tommy lashed out, scowling. He ran and cringed for cover behind stacks of buoys and coils of rope. The marina club-house still lay several feet to his right, but here the desperate arsonist hesitated. He had no cover to reach it, and worse still, because of the dark and the spiralling smoke he couldn’t see the watchman. Could the bugger see him? Tommy had never been confronted by such a perilous predicament. Escaping from pursuing ruffians was one thing but dodging bullets was another. This was no police or action picture. Tommy realised that one bullet could put an end to his life in a split second.

Tommy baulked at the idea of running to that awaiting target, but completely obsessed with it, he was about to take the risk. However, something unexpected happened. Unknowingly he had hid behind the buoys and coils of rope that had been piled up on a pontoon moored to one of the many floating docks on the river waters. The ropes that moored the pontoon to the dock had been burnt away by the flames racing out of the marina boat-house, flames that had all of a sudden surrounded Tommy. About to dash towards the boat-club to escape the approaching flames, he realised that the pontoon was moving out into the river, slowly. The River Blyth that led out to the Broads … then to the ocean! A few more shots rang out in his direction. He caught sight of the watchman, it was good Mister Knowles, the father of one of his classmates. The man, well over his fifties stumbled then fell, lying still as the flames seemed to engulf his body. Tommy screamed in despair. An arsonist he indeed was… but a murderer ?

Sirens rang out in the heat of this dreadful night. Firemen and police had since entered the marina battling through the blazes and stifling smoke with tons of water sprayed at random. Had they seen Mister Knowles body? Would they be able to save him?

Torchlights swept the marina then swerved into the river. Hidden securely behind the buoys and rope the cringing boy could not be seen, yet the police were training their torches on it as if suspecting something. “They’ll get the rubber boats out after me,” Tommy fretted. “I’m done for !” As his father had said, they would skin him alive! Already the lynching squads were out in the nearby streets, tracking the heathen who had struck again. And those blokes were no choir boys.

The pontoon moved quicker and quicker towards the Broads where the fierce swells tossed and rocked the fragile vessel. Tommy thought of putting on a buoy but he couldn’t swim, and anyway the vigilantes would be scouring the marshes along the river in search of the fugitive; he could hardly stay in the water, floating about like a cork in a pond or an apple bobbing up and down in a barrel. Thick grey, fleecy clouds slid athwart the halo of the moon. Tommy was suddenly swallowed up in a shroud of gloom as the pontoon bounded out beyond the Broads into the rising rolls and swells. The thirteen-year old Tommy Harper screamed for his mommy. A scream that no ear heard!

Further and further out the doomed passenger, stranded on the pontoon, was borne into the darkness and distance …

After months and months of searching for the pontoon, the naval patrols and the local police abandoned their hunt. All that they were able to find were two or three floating buoys. As to the sudden disappearance of thirteen-year old Tommy Harper, it was said that he had absconded from home. Oddly enough, the police never suspected the boy of the fires, believing his disappearance, and the end of the series of tragic conflagrations, a mere coincidence. Furthermore, the only person to have had a clear view of the criminal, Mr Knowles, had unfortunately died of smoke inhalation, the firemen arriving too late to resuscitate him. When neighbours of dubious doubts questioned Mrs Harper about this ‘coincidence’ over a cup of tea at bridge she would reply in lachrymose accents, wringing her knotty hands: “Why would my Tommy ever do that ?”

One or two neighbours of the Harpers believed that they had caught sight of a boy who bore a remarkable resemblance to their son in Amsterdam, walking up and down the streets, handing out leaflets. This information, however, was never investigated. Besides, Mr Harper, ravaged by all this gossip and hearsay about his son threw up his hands and declared :

“I’ve washed my hands of that boy. Let him go to the devil!”{ His poor mother on the other hand, cried and cried every day and night, praying that her only son, her little Tommy, would cheerfully come walking through their front door …

He never did.

[1] A German founded discount supermarket chain located in many European countries

[2] A docking area for boats in a marina.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Asia, European, France, German, Paul Mirabile

Stories

Viceregal Lodge

By Lakshmi Kannan

It took a couple of days to sink in, the serene beauty of the place on Summer Hill, Shimla, and the quiet atmosphere of the campus. Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), now housed in the regal ambience of the Viceregal Lodge[1], still wore its grandeur well, filtering into interior, the corridors, foyer and the conference room that had a stamp of history. Momentous decisions had taken place in this very room. The sylvan surroundings seemed to have rubbed off on the people too who worked in the offices, for they functioned with a quiet harmony, like it was an unstated requirement.

Tulsi Shankar’s paperwork went off smoothly in the office. She was given the keys to her allotted flat, a man was assigned to go along with her to help, and she was asked to tell the housing department if she would need anything more for her flat, the kitchen and the washroom. The man helped her unpack her big boxes of books and folders and set up her laptop. The vessels in the kitchen were minimal and very basic. She added the small items that she had got from her home, a saucepan, a ladle, spoons, cups, mugs, tea, coffee, sugar and milk powder. That would do. The man offered to fix a milkman who would deliver fresh milk every morning. The mess served two meals in a day, so there was nothing more to be done except rustle up an occasional upma or poha[2], if one fancied a change.

Tomorrow, she would explore the books for her area of research in the library, and start her work. She sank into her mattress and made a mental list of the reference books but soon slipped into a deep slumber.

The next few weeks rolled by in a rhythm of studies, notes, typing points on her laptop to draw a skeletal sketch of the chapters for her book. Little did she know how the details she sought would soon rain down on her and submerge her overwhelmingly in. They were right there, within her reach, in the huge library. Sure enough, there were some gaps, but she could always visit the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at Teen Murti Bhavan in Delhi to fill them up.

She met the three other Fellows who were also working on their manuscript for their books. Whenever they met, at the dining area in the mess, or while strolling back to the institute after meals, or their shopping trips to the mall, the four Fellows exchanged notes about how much easier it was when they wrote their dissertation for Ph.D. years ago. They knew exactly what was expected from them — their chosen topic in itself ‘set limits’ for their scope and research took them forward with a controlled sense of direction. But a book? A BOOK? Good Lord, it seemed to be like entering an unchartered territory. It felt adventurous, thrilling even, but alternated with bouts of uncertainly and panic. It often loomed like a road not taken, yet to be explored. Exciting, and scary at the same time.

They decided to help each other with their research for the background. Sudipta Banerjee who taught history, offered to help Tulsi with Hari Mohan Maitee’s notorious case of brutally raping his eleven-year-old child bride, Phulmani Dasi, causing her death. The case was committed to the Sessions Court in Calcutta in 1890, but Justice Wilson let off Maitee lightly by saying that he had just committed ‘a rash and negligent act’. It was Gidumal Dayaram, a reformer from Bombay, who relentlessly pursued the case of Dasi. On his recommendations, Sir Andrew Scoble based his in 1891. Tripti Sharma from Political Science was equally interested in the steps that led to raising the ‘Age of Consent’ from ten to twelve years, from a legal angle. She had a project for which she needed to know more Sir Andrew Scoble (1831-1916), and the legal aspects of his contribution.

And all three of them took some lessons in yoga from the fourth Fellow Namrata Tripathi in her flat, just before dinner. She had trained in the Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre. Namrata often warned them – and herself – of the hazards of sitting down on a chair for long hours to read or write. ‘We’ve to move our limbs and walk, or else we’ll become stiff,’ she laughed, even as she herself spent hours poring over her books for her research on the ghats in Varanasi. Sudipta, Tripti and Namrata looked to Tulsi, a published author, for help in writing their drafts.

“Please, Tulsi,” said Tripti. “We’re painfully conscious that we’re not here to write a Ph.D. dissertation. It is a book, a BOOK, for God’s sake.”

“Yes,” said Sudipta. “We’re anxious that thechapters are readable and don’t come across as boring information. You’re a creative writer, so you can tweak our lines.’

Then there were the Associate Fellows (called AFs) who could visit the IIAS three times in a span of three years or more, and were allowed each time to stay for one month to consult books in the library and work towards their M.Phil thesis. Hopefully, after their M.Phil, they would be admitted to Ph.D. programmes in their colleges. Each AF was given a single room in the hostel.

The women were nearly through with their lunch. Over the dining table, they whispered to each other about the time they would meet Namrata in her flat in the evening, for yoga lessons. Also learn some tips for meditation, a most elusive practice for them.

The Associate Fellow sitting across two tables was loud. No surprise. Ever since he came from Hyderabad, he has been the most vociferous critic of the food served by the Mess. He was unsuccessful in forming a lobby to join him in his protest and ‘do something’ about the ‘atrocious food’. The others AFs heard him out, some nodded in agreement, but carried on with their work.

Tulsi and her friends considered all that as noise and hurried through their meals.

The man from Hyderabad came over to their table.

“How can you stand this horrible food?” he asked.

“Well…it’s a change, certainly, from what we are used to,” said Namrata, in a placatorytone.

“A change! It’s appalling. You can do something about it. Each one of you haveakitchen in your flat,” he said.

“What!” said Sudipta, getting up from her chair.

“You’re four ladies. You can easily take turns and cook,” he said, glancing at the other AFs over his shoulder.

[1] Viceregal Lodge, formerly the residence of the British Viceroy of India, is the present Indian Institute of Advanced Study that has a library with archival acquisitions that go back to the times before the British rule in India. The magnificent building is also a tourist attraction for its stunningly regal structures designed by the British architect Henry Irwin, built in the Jacobean style during Lord Dufferin’s tenure as Viceroy.

[2] Upma—Semolina based savoury dish: Poha – A savoury preparation of flattened rice

Dr. Lakshmi Kannan is a poet, novelist, short story writer. Her recent books include Guilt Trip and Other Stories (Niyogi Books, 2023) and Nadistuti, Poems (Authors Press, 2024). For more details, please see http://www.lakshmikannan.in and her entry in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Indian Writing in English (2023).

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Tags “Age of Consent” Bill, Delhi, Guilt Trip and Other Stories, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Lakshmi Kannan, Lord Dufferin, Nadistuti, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Niyogi Books, Shimla, Sir Andrew Scoble, Summer Hill, Teen Murti Bhavan, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Indian Writing in English, Viceregal Lodge

Stories

Hope is the Dream of a Waking Man

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date April 15, 2024
No Comments on Hope is the Dream of a Waking Man

By Shevlin Sebastian

There is a large grey wave painted in the middle of the canvas. It is falling over a large group of people standing on the edge of a seashore. Many men wear skullcaps. The women have black burkas. The group has widened eyes and open mouths. Some have turned their backs to flee. Others have raised their arms and clenched their fists, as if they are about to break into a run.

At the bottom of the canvas, on the left, there is another group of people. They are also standing on another seashore, with windswept hair. There is a woman with a large sindoor in the middle parting of her hair. A young man, in jeans, has a necklace with a gold crucifix. A boy stands with a placard showing a dove with a leaf in its beak. The words, ‘Let’s all live in peace,’ are written in bold, red letters. Others raise placards with slogans like ‘Say No to communalism’, ‘Syncretism is in our DNA’, and ‘We are all brothers and sisters in this great nation’.

Painter Ashraf Mahmood steps back and stares at the image. A slight smile plays on his lips. He had woken up that morning and this image had come floating into his mental screen. Ashraf kept staring at it, eyes closed, lying on his back. His wife had got up and gone to the kitchen. Alia liked to make her tea using Tata Gold. He preferred Brooke Bond Red Label. So they made separate cups.

When he entered his studio on Mira Road, in Mumbai, at 9 am, he got down to work, using an easel and grey paint.

He worked steadily. It was silent inside. But Ashraf did register the outside sounds of a typical Mumbai street. The horns blowing. Tendrils of smoke from exhaust pipes floated in through the window. His nose twitched as he noticed a foul smell. It seemed as if somebody had thrown garbage on the street. Ashraf closed his nose with the tip of his fingers for a few seconds. “The crazy smells of Mumbai,” he thought.

He grew up near Mandvi Beach in Ratnagiri (343 kms from Mumbai). The air was fresh, and the wind blew constantly. The only sound was the roar of the waves and the beautiful sight of seagulls making circles as they flew above the sea. Ashraf’s father, Mohammed, was a government school teacher. His mother was a homemaker. He had two elder brothers and three sisters. Ashraf was the youngest. He displayed artistic talent from his school days.

Unlike most fathers, Mohammed encouraged his son. His father took him to an art teacher, who taught him how to draw and paint. Ashraf’s major breakthrough happened when he got admitted to the JJ School of Art in Mumbai. After that, there was no looking back…

It was evening when he finished the work. His soles ached. Ashraf had been standing for hours.

This image reflected all that he felt. The grey resembled the growing intolerance towards Muslims. This seemed to be overwhelming especially in places like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. There was the rise of majoritarianism. And the fracturing of relations between people of different communities. And yet, Ashraf felt that the DNA of the people over centuries was syncretic. A ready acceptance of people of all faiths.

It was only the hate campaigns, through speeches, social media, and songs, that had swayed the people. He was sure the fever would die one day. Syncretism would rise again. “After all,” he thought, “throughout human history, love always conquered hate. But it took time.”

Ashraf wanted to tell the viewers of his work not to lose hope. And hence the pigeon and the symbol of peace. For the title, he used a quote by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, “Hope is the dream of a waking man.”

Ashraf rubbed his chin a few times and walked to a table on one side. A packet of fresh buns lay on the table. Ashraf opened a fridge. He took out a container which contained butter and a bottle of strawberry jam. He sliced the bun into half with a stainless steel knife, placed butter and jam in between, and began eating it. These were fresh buns from a nearby bakery. Ashraf had bought them when he had stepped out for lunch. He made tea on the gas stove. Then he sat on a stool near the table and sipped it.

This was his 35th year as a painter. Now, at 55, he could look back with reasonable pride. He took part in regular exhibitions and won a few awards and grants. Profiles of him appeared in the newspapers and on social media. His paintings sold, thanks to his realistic and simple style. An art sensibility was only gradually building up among the people. Ashraf knew that images drawn from his unconscious mind had a pulling power. Why this was so, he did not know. He remembered how one art critic described a David Hockney painting as having a ‘psychological charge’. Hockney was a renowned English painter. Ashraf realised that art needed to have a psychological charge if it had to have an impact.

But Alia had already made an impact on him. He met her when she came to view his exhibition one day at the Jehangir Art Gallery. She was slim and tall, with curves that were accentuated by the chiffon saree she wore. Like Ashraf, she came from a small town. Through grit and perseverance, she passed competitive exams and got a government job. They went for dates. Ashraf was smitten. Within a year, he proposed and they got married.

Alia was a superintendent in the sales tax department. She would earn a pension once her career got over. She had another ten years to go. Their two daughters had married and settled down in Aligarh and Delhi. Both had two children each, a boy and a girl.

Alia wanted Ashraf to earn more money. But he was not a hustler or a man who liked to build a network. If a buyer came and offered a decent price, he sold it. Most of the time, he remained isolated. Sometimes, he met other artists at exhibitions and art seminars. He would chat with them. But that was all.

He was not keen on extramarital flings or experimenting with drugs or drinking too much. Ashraf led a steady life. In many ways, he was happy with the way his life had turned out.

He washed the cup and the pans. Ashraf placed the cup on a hook which hung on a wall. He had yet to finish the bun.

He made his way back to the painting. It was 5.30 p.m. In half an hour, he would close his studio and walk back to his house, fifteen minutes away. The couple owned their apartment. Alia, with help from Ashraf, had cleared the bank loan over 15 years.

At this moment, he heard a murmur of voices from outside the door. Ashraf wondered what it was. The sound arose. “Was there an emergency?” he thought. “Is the building on fire?”

He came to the door. Ashraf saw that the lock was coming under strain. It seemed to be bulging backwards towards him. Somebody gave a violent kick and the door sprang open. Ashraf moved to one side.

A group of young men rushed in. Some wore red bandanas. Many were in T-shirts and trousers. Some had thick, muscular arms. They were shouting. It seemed like slogans. In his shocked state, Ashraf could not register the words. They rushed to the canvas on the easel. One man, using a long knife, sliced the canvas into two. He pushed the easel. It fell with a clattering sound to the floor.

There were a bunch of finished canvases placed on one side. Ashraf had been doing work to showcase in an upcoming solo exhibition. The group spotted it. They rushed there, pushed the canvases to the floor, and began ripping them one by one with their knives. Within a few minutes, the work of several months lay ripped out. Ashraf remained by the side of the door. He had not moved.

“Hey you Muslim kutta (dog),” one of them said. “We will come again if you carry on working. No art for Muslims. Clean the sewers. That’s the only job you are good at.”

Ashraf half-expected one of them to stab him. But they didn’t. They left as quickly as they came.

Ashraf felt as if a large, round ball had settled at the base of his throat. He could not swallow it nor could he spit it out.

He blinked many times. Ashraf wasn’t sure whether this event had actually happened. It took place so fast. But there was no doubt about the ripped canvases lying all over the floor.

He felt a pain in his heart. Ashraf rubbed the area. “I hope I am not having a heart attack,” he thought to himself, as he took in lungfuls of air to calm himself down. Employees from other offices on the same floor came to the door. They entered. Most had goggle-eyes.

“Sir, what happened?” one young man said.

Ashraf shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Who were these people?” a woman said.

“No idea,” Ashraf said, as he surveyed the damage.

“Sir, you will have to call the police,” another man said.

“Yes, I will,” said Ashraf.

A couple of men shook his hand.

All of them surveyed the damage silently. Work was calling them. “All chained to their desks,” thought Ashraf. “At least, that way, I am free. No boss on top of me. No attendance marking every day. No targets to meet. No one shouting at me. But then, no steady income. And no camaraderie. Large amounts of time spent alone.”

Then he returned to the stool, returned to the present, and placed his head in his hands.

‘What’s happening to this country?’ he thought. ‘‘There seems to be a collective madness. Indians attacking Indians. And these young people were ruining their lives by working for political leaders. They will be used and discarded.”

He had not seen them before in the locality. They might have come from some other area. Was it a deliberate ploy to send a shock wave through him and the community? Who knew how they thought?

What should he do now?

Ashraf realised he had to think rationally. He stood up and went to the door. He realised immediately, he could not do anything immediately. A carpenter would have to be called tomorrow.

He called Alia and informed her about what had happened. She said she would come directly to the studio from the office. Ashraf called up his media contacts, both in the print and visual media. They said they would arrive with their photographers and cameramen. Ashraf took several photos and videos on his mobile phone, documenting the damage.

He would have to report the attack at the police station and file an FIR.

Ashraf realised his work had been ruined, but he would recreate it. He had photos of all the canvases.

To prove to himself, he had returned to normality, he went back to the table and finished the rest of the bun. He put the butter and the jam back into the fridge. He washed the plate and the knife.

Fifteen minutes later, Alia arrived.

In silence, she stared at the canvases lying on the floor. Ashraf saw her press her hand against her open mouth. He realised it was a silent scream.

In the end, she came up to Ashraf and said, “They have tried to violate your dignity as an artist and a person.”

The couple hugged.

After a while they broke away.

“Don’t keep the canvases here anymore,” she said.

Ashraf rubbed his chin with his fingers.

Finally, he nodded.

“There was something strange about the attack,” he said. “They didn’t overturn the table or the fridge. And for some reason, they did not assault me. It seemed to me they had to leave in a hurry. So I got saved.”

Alia said, “They are keeping a watch on everybody.”

“Yes, I read online there is a pervasive deep state,” said Ashraf. “In every neighbourhood there are spies who report about all that is happening.”

“What is the next step?” she said.

“I am waiting for the media to come. After that, I will file the FIR,” he said.

At that moment, a few print and TV journalists arrived.

Ashraf spoke to the reporters. The photographers and cameramen began recording all that had happened.

They left after half an hour.

The couple then shut the door, as best as they could. But there was a small gap at one side. They went to the police station. The police allowed an FIR to be filed against ‘unknown persons’. He faced no hindrances because, as Ashraf surmised, the police were aware of his reputation as an artist.

The couple took an autorickshaw and returned to their apartment.

Alia changed into a nightgown. She washed her face, and informed their daughters about what had happened on her mobile phone.

Ashraf changed into a T-shirt and shorts. He made a glass of whisky mixed with water for himself. Every night he had one peg.

As he sat on the sofa, nursing his drink and staring at the TV screen, he felt the pain arise in him. It was an ache in the middle of the chest. To see his work treated in such a callous manner was a calamity. He wondered whether he would ever overcome this fear that had come into him. Work on a piece the whole day and in the evening, somebody could come in and rip it up.

Closed doors did not offer any protection. It was a time of lawlessness. People with criminal behaviour could operate with impunity. Leaders wanted to instil fear in people.

And would he be able to recreate these ripped-up paintings with the same intensity? He was not sure.

On the screen, some leader was having his say. His eyes enlarged, he made violent movements with his hand, and spoke with a loud voice. “Horrific,” thought Ashraf. “How do you create art in this environment?”

Yes, indeed, how do you?

But it did not take long for him to tell himself, “But we must, whatever be the cost. Art is the candle that brings light to the darkness.”

Shevlin Sebastian has worked for magazines like Sportsworld, belonging to the Ananda Bazar Patrika Group in Kolkata, The Week, belonging to the Malayala Manorama Group, in Kochi, the Hindustan Times in Mumbai, and the New Indian Express in Kochi. He has also briefly worked in DC Books at Kottayam. He has published about 4500 articles on subjects as varied as films, crime, humour, art, human interest, psychology, literature, politics, sports and personalities. Shevlin has also published four novels for children.

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Stories

Prison Break

By C. J. Anderson-Wu

The thirteenth month. Late autumn.

The roughly hewn walls are damp, with patches of mold and fungus growing in the crevices. Water stains streak down, and the air is heavy with the scent of mildew and decay. The bricks are discoloured, their edges slicked by humidity. The dank, musty atmosphere lurks in every corner of the cell, sprawling to the skin and weighing down the spirits of the people living within.

These walls bear witness to the despair and suffering of those who ever had been confined in them, generation after generation. They hold their memories; hope, fear, determination, and regret. Their fabric is so coarse and patchy, it seems to seep in each man’s unfortunate personal history.

The thirty-seventh month. Is it spring?

Tiny ferns break through and grow out of the crevices on the walls. Their delicate fronds, in vibrant green, fan out like miniature umbrellas, waving gently in the rare breeze blown from the high window. Their stems are slender and wiry, weaving in and out of the cracks in the walls.

I was a journalist, and I am a political prisoner, for my freedom-of-speech and anti-authoritarian-regime campaign*. I lost almost all contact with the outside world, and don’t know how much longer I will be here.

I imagine the ferns clinging tenaciously to the rough surface of my cell, their roots burrowing deep into the cracks, and eventually shattering down the walls.

These ferns are my will of survival, my prison break.

*Author’s Note: According to the Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF), as of 2022, there are 533 media professionals imprisoned all over the world. China remains the biggest jailer of journalists, followed by Myanmar and Iran.

C. J. Anderson-Wu/吳介禎 is a Taiwanese writer, her short stories have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit Flash Fiction Competition, and the Invisible City Literature Competition.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Tags C.J.Anderson-Wu, China, Iran, media, Myanmar, Reporters Without Borders, RSF, Taiwanese

Stories

Monsoon Arc

By K. S. Subramanian

There was a time when monsoon was known to be either parsimonious to Chennai or simply indifferent.

In the sixties and seventies, water scarcity was a byword in every household. The city evolved from independent houses to matchbox apartments extending its periphery to suburbs and beyond in the name of burgeoning real estate, but water scarcity continued a mole on the elbow.

Like in all commercial activity where promises mean more than performance, real estate developers too promised enough water supply to ensure bookings and until the housing was handed over. Few years after the handing over, the old complaints returned and the problem revolved around deepening or digging more bore wells manipulating the cross currents of water flow…….in the process digging their own grave.

In due course bore wells became economical with water, not costs.

They were not to be blamed strictly either because it was in the nature of demand and supply. Essentially it meant, rather sounded the missive, that planning was all fine on paper but when it came to reality, commercial exigencies and lobbies took over. It became then a case of passing the buck.

The city had long since graduated from the parsimony of monsoon. Now it was regular, buoyant and often uncomfortably bounteous. So much so that parked cars in the stilt space of apartments went for a swim in roaring waters that stretched to a height of 5 to 10 ft in some places.

One of the inmates from her window of the first-floor apartment saw her car transported to God knows where and screamed knowing full well she was helpless……could not get down into the vast sheet of water that left no sign of anything — let alone the road. And she hoped to find her car when the water level receded.

Just the night before, Ganesan, a young software engineer holding a senior position in a prestigious IT firm, had boarded the train to Srivaikuntam, a holy town close to Tirunelveli where Lord Vishnu held court. A devout believer and practitioner of sacraments that drilled into him the belief that men could succeed and achieve on the merits of brain and diligence but there was always a pervading force that guided him, he had prayed before boarding the train to Tiruchendur.

Four days back, the forecast of a formidable downpour had unnerved him but he wanted to see his parents after a gap of two years. They looked forward to it as much as he did. He was loath to cancel or put off the trip on the prevarications of nature. It could be sunny if the low depression changed its course at the last minute and veered away…not that he wished ill for his brethren in the neighbourhood.

So he took a chance, went ahead with the trip and saw the Tiruchendur Express chug slowly out of Chennai Egmore.

The weather was murky, stubbornly ominous. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled.

“It’s all in the game. Let us leave it to the on High!”

On the way the starless sky got darker still. Dark clouds raged viciously to pour with the chilling owl-like howl of the wind. It was December and the cold wind hitting the windowpane of the train chugging in a monotony of extreme caution, made Ganesan’s arms shudder. He could see nothing in the dark and barely could imagine the procession of dense vegetation and fields obviously drenched in the downpour.

He put on his sweater, but it proved to be no protective cloak and so he had to put on more. “God! It’s frightening… hope I reach my place in one piece.” His thoughts were as intimidating as the weather outside.

Thankfully the lights were on. All the shutters were down in the coach except his, where the glass pane was tightly secured. The biting cold penetrated the inside of the coach though there was balancing warmth due to radiation of body heat.

An elderly man, in his early sixties, was travelling with his wife. There were several families busy chatting about their kin or the functions to attend in Tiruchendur, including the celebrated Murugan temple, though inwardly their minds were filled with queasy churnings.

“Where are you bound, sir?” asked the elderly man with hesitation. Ganesan smiled though he could smell the palpable concern in his voice.

“Vaikuntam sir….to be with parents. I am visiting them after two years.”

The old man returned the smile. “I am a resident of Tiruchendur, have got land and a rice mill there. My daughter is in Chennai. We came on a holiday to be with our granddaughter.”

There were two families in front in the three tier AC[1] coach. Both the families had taken their dinner early in the evening as they were too wary of railway catering. The elderly man, who introduced himself as Muthuraman, was not finicky enough to insist on home made food and shun rail service and had, therefore, ordered. So did Ganesan.

As they dug into the dinner, Muthuraman broke the silence, aware that the inclement weather could make anyone off colour. Silence made it worse, of course.

“Sir! You must be in touch with parents. They would be worried. The cyclone had hit close to the Chennai coast a few weeks back but now it is pure monsoon fury. The earlier one affected Chennai badly and a lot of them are yet to come out of the trauma. I am worried about the open drains, small dams and culverts and lakes in southern part of the state which are all vulnerable.”

Ganesan, listening to him in rapt attention, said, “I know. A place like Vaikuntam cannot face up to persistent rain for a few hours, let alone the whole day or days. We own land very close to our home and the paddy will be submerged. My father told me just now he is bracing up to some severe loss of crop and money this year. We have been facing it regularly. A curse in what is otherwise a holy and fertile belt….”

Muthuraman’s wife nodded with lines of worry in her face. “What else could we do other than pray to Perumal?”

Muthuraman spat out in disillusionment. “In cities, they lay roads which cannot stand a day’s rain, metro rail and residential skyscrapers where a guy in the balcony is no proof against a bust of breeze. I know of a lady who lived on the 14^th floor and wanted to enjoy the scene. She opened the door and stood close to it when the gust of wind, slammed the door on her face knocking her over. She fell into coma and died soon after. I mean…a city is unable to cope with the pressures of money and commercial lobbies which have their way. So, the less said about a rural town the better.”

“God! It is horrible to hear. Such occurrences are hard to believe,” said Ganesan. “Migration in search of a job across the country is inevitable and it adds to the pressure. You need to have a footing somewhere and if all things go well settle down there. You need to build a roof unless you are lucky enough to get back to where you belong.”

Just then, the train had halted at Villupuram for more than 45 minutes before easing into motion. The passengers were blissfully unaware of it, having been preoccupied in their own uncertain world.

“We didn’t even know we were tagged here for this long,” said an exasperated Muthuraman. Ganesan, who was equally chagrined, didn’t reply.

Most of the stations en route wore a deserted look except for the idle tea stalls, The passengers too, especially senior citizens, didn’t venture out even for a hot sip of tea apprehending wet and possibly slippery platforms. Inevitably the train ran late by an hour considering possible presence of water or even flooding of the track. Thankfully, signals were in place though the menacing purr of the dark outside continued with the trundle of the train.

“Are we closer to Kumbakonam?” enquired Muthuraman.

“We are, possibly will reach in a few minutes,” said Ganesan. “But the persisting rain worries me, sir. In some places ahead of us the track would be flooded, and it could delay us longer.”

“If the train drops us at our destinations, I will be more than happy, in fact thank God for it. It will be a blessing,” said one of the members of a family in front.

None of them however had any assurance that they would be blessed in some way.

Ganesan slept fitfully as he was accustomed to during train travel at night. “Cool, undisturbed sleep is a luxury,” he thought. Most of the passengers in the coach appeared to have slept well perhaps as a relief from the ordeal of the weather.

He looked at his watch and saw it as 6.30 a.m. He pulled up the shutters to see how the weather was and it was dull, wet and pouring. The train had stopped and he had no way of knowing the duration of the halt. He knew the train should have reached Srivaikundam by now but the stretching flooded farm fields on either side with sparse houses indicated that it was off schedule. There was no evidence of roads or pathways — had there been any.

“Srivaikundam is just a km away sir,” said a passenger who was bound for Tiruchendur. “The train got an alert and has halted. Seems the ballasts are off. I hope it will start moving again.”

Ganesan gave a sigh of near relief though he was not sure whether the train would move. He could see a sheet of water submerging the fields though the track appeared to be navigable. He could not help blurting out his concern though.

“The scene is scary sir. We can neither get down nor remain in the train.”

Muthuraman, who had got up, was slightly sullen, looking clearly unwell. “Mr. Ganesan, I am glad you are close to your destination….we are still 30 km away.” His wife looked crestfallen, at the end of her tether.

“He is a heart patient. I am only concerned about him.” To Ganesan’s relief the train creaked, began to move. It trundled at a snail’s pace and reached Srivaikundam.

But his relief was only palpable and short lived as the message came through that any further movement was risk bound and foolhardy. One of the railway staffers came to the coach to inform them that the train might remain there for some time before the weather eased or the flooded tracks were restored to usable.

The train had already been delayed by more than 90 minutes. Ganesan was embraced by his father who had managed to come to the railway station in his car driving through flooded roads in the town in meditative hermitlike composure and caution.

Ganesan found someone tugging at his shirt and turned back to find Muthuraman”s wife apprehensive and scared.

“Son! He seems to have symptoms of cardiac attack. I don’t know what to do….”

Ganesan’s father rushed into the coach while Ganesan ran into the railway staff room to look for instant health care.

A stretcher was brought to take Muthuraman and rush him to the nearest hospital. Thankfully Ganesan knew of a specialist hospital close to the station and took him there, having forgotten to even speak to his fretful mother about what had held him and his father back. He knew his mother would continue to worry but there was no time to even ring her up.

“We must know first this man is all right or is recovering,” he muttered. His father took care to let his mother know that an emergency (not related to their family) had occurred and it had held them up at the station.

Ganesan also came to know that the train would not proceed further and that the passengers were holed up there.

A crisis had come home to roost.

All the passengers shackled to Srivaikuntam for no fault of their own put it to a matter of a few hours but it seemed to stretch before the shadows of the night crept in. There was no let up in the rain and the southern belt was not equipped to handle nature’s unmitigated fury.

Thankfully the cafeteria run by a local rose to their needs and gave them breakfast but the railway catering service was not prepared for this eventuality. About 500 odd passengers, including the geriatric, needed round the clock vigil and sustenance though some were near breakdown amid symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea.

Ganesan and his father were faced with a task not of their own choosing and of the magnitude of a mountain to climb. They could not let it go either. The roads in the town were clogged with knee-deep or waist level sheet of water, hindering their drive to do their best.

“It is a test of our nerve, my boy! We have not spent all our lives to creep back into our shell and watch them suffer, possibly die. It was your good fortune you reached along with others but the rest of them are braving it out. We have to show we are not heartless, nor do we rely on external agencies for help. There is no time for it. Rather we help ourselves.”

Ganesan, who had learnt forbearance in his stint in IT firm and not given to wasteful emotions, nodded and raised his thumb to his father.

His father used his decades old connections in the town, comprising hoteliers, vegetable and fruit vendors, nursing staff to help the distraught.

The message from the railways was distressful and alarmingly ominous. “Sorry ladies and gentlemen. It will take a day or two. The track restoration is on in full blast and the signal system is in place. Please, please bear with us.”

The railway station was abuzz for the next prolonged hours with supplies of food, medicines and equipment being rushed to the respective coaches where the need was greater. It pertained to those who had symptoms of sudden dehydration, stomach disturbance, diarrhea and fatigue and stress related syndromes.

Ganesan and his father were on their feet all the time coordinating whatever they could with local connections of suppliers who rose to the occassion. Commerce took the back seat relatively to an extent.

Muthuraman showed signs of recovery a few hours later in the evening having gone through a CPR and defibrillation by the railway staff as was done in the event of unforeseen emergencies. His wife spoke to her daughter in Chennai who was almost ill with perplexity and worry since they left the city.

The news that the train had halted at Srivaikuntam and might not leave for a couple of days was less painful than one of father’s cardiac arrest which left the family in tatters. She could only hope her worst fears would not come true.

Muthuraman opened his eyes, took note of his wife’s presence before locking his hands in gratitude with Ganesan.

“No sir…this is no time for thanking me and my father. You must thank all the locals who rose as an army to support and bring relief to so many who are stranded in the train still because they are unable to move out. We have arranged a big hall where most of them could be fed in turns. I am amazed sir… unable to believe it. But I have learnt a world of things from this experience. That alone matters sir.”

His father laid a reassuring hand on Muthuraman’s shoulder. “They are still at work. Possibly the train may leave tomorrow morning. I hear the track has been restored. If you wish you can return in the train itself or you can have somebody from Tiruchendur to take you in a car.”

Muthuraman’s wife said “It will take three days as per medical opinion to discharge him. We will ask our cousin to take us home in a car.”

“We will take care of you till you leave for home,” smiled Ganesan.

He took leave of the couple as one of the hotelier’s employees came up to him. “Sir! We have the next consignment of water cans ready for the station. Care to join us?”

“Of course,” said Ganesan and hopped into the front seat of the van.

A cool breeze blew across the vast fields from a distance. The weather had improved beyond expectation two days after the train came to a halt at the station, looking sunny, soothingly warm and reassuring after the terrible onslaught of the monsoon the day they left Chennai.

Suddenly, nature seemed to have recovered from its surge of fury and had become benign and benevolent. But anything could have happened in the passing hours when the fury was in full swing and the aftermath would have been horrible to imagine, much less experience.

But what gave him succor and regeneration was the unstinted display of human kindness and concern in times of adversity. The whole village worked as an army to guard, nurse and redeem the afflicted from the depths of despondency.

“There is always a light in the tunnel” thought Ganesan with a smile. “If I had any cynicism about the milk of human kindness it is gone.”

[1] Airconditioned

K.S.Subramanian, a retired Senior Asst. Editor from The Hindu, has published two volumes of poetry titled Ragpickers and Treading on Gnarled Sand through the Writers Workshop, Kolkata, India. His poem “Dreams” won the cash award in Asian Age, a daily published from New Delhi. His essays and blogs can be found under his name in http://www.boloji.com.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Tags Chennai, K.S.Subramaniam, Kolkata, Monsoon, Murugan, New Delhi, Perumal, The Hindu

Stories

Terrace

Written by Rakhi Pande

This was her second week in Siolim as a resident, in her aesthetically pleasing, slightly bohemian, rented two bedroom flat. The flat itself gave very tropical vibes with a host of plants – both real and artificial, enhancing the outdoorsy look. Though her building was part of a bigger residential complex, it was miraculously not blocked by views of other buildings. Instead, the windows at both ends of the flat faced east and west, providing stunning views of the morning sky change colour as the sun rose over the dense grove of coconut palms and as if that were not already enough to drive up the rent, a peek of the setting sun, from the opposite end. No less than three spacious balconies with French doors offered an unobstructed view of the quaint sloped roof homes of the ‘locals’, the villagers, bordered by paddy fields beyond.

Except for one house in their midst. From her bedroom balcony that faced east, Anika noticed the one slightly better and bigger home, built with concrete walls and a concrete flat roof, functioning as its terrace. It was not directly opposite but slightly to the right so that she could only see it only from the window or the balcony.

Every morning she would look out in hope of spotting the big fawn dog – the unknown ubiquitous mixed breed — on the terrace. She was always entertained by his movements. He would strut about for a bit, peering over the edge while woofing his alpha dominion over other dogs and cats he spotted. At other times, thinking himself unobserved, he would lie down flat on his back, utterly vulnerable with his legs up in the air, squirming about, tongue lolling, making her laugh.

She had seen the other residents occasionally: two teenage girls who would climb and sit together leaning against the water drum conversing in the evenings as the sky deepened it hues, probably out of the hearing distance of the lady who would sit by herself at the far end staring at the horizon. Anika imagined that this might have been her only place of escape from the endless chores and hubbub of daily life. At other times, a much younger boy of about five followed a slightly older girl, probably his sister (or cousin) of about seven. As she sat to read and do her homework, he would entertain himself skipping about the flat terrace or lolling about on a mattress placed there. After dark, however, the terrace was the domain of the men of the household. Though there were no lights on the roof, the occasional clink told Anika that feni or urak had been smuggled upstairs.

Local families here tended to be ‘joint’ ones with aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins included in the same household. Daily, a slim, capable lady would briskly hang clothes to dry on strings stretched out from stakes. So many clothes every day! The only times Anika didn’t spot too many visitors to the terrace was on extremely sunny days when cotton sheets would be spread out with a brick at each end. They would dry fish on the sheet. She could never identify which of them it was — kokum, shrimp, jambul — from the plethora of spices, fruit and and fish Goans loved to sun dry.

She would have loved procuring some of it straight from them but was still conscious of being the non Goan outsider. She had already experienced all types of opinions. Those who were hypocritical and contradictory – people who welcomed European expats but looked down upon Indians from other states. Those who lamented the growing population due to migration – yet, uncomplainingly, raked in profits from the meteoric growth of the square foot rate. She had also experienced the warmth and hospitality of the majority of the Goans who would go out of their way to help you settle in and make you feel like family.

The lady who sat by herself was back today sitting as usual at the very edge. She had the terrace to herself. Something about her intrigued Anika, who realised she had been staring at her instead of being at work on her laptop for the past few minutes. Was it because she was the most frequent visitor? She spent a lot of time staring out over the other end. Or was it because even if others were there, they barely acknowledged her, not even glancing in her direction, or exchanging a friendly word. Likewise, she too ignored them for most part. The only one who paid her any attention was the small boy, too innocent and young to pay heed to family politics, who would wave and go running towards her when he saw her. She seemed to be the family outcast yet was outwardly unperturbed, never getting confrontational, at least on the terrace, from what Anika could observe.

On this day, she was back, presumably ruminating about life. Hailing from a nuclear family herself, Anika mused over the conveniences that a joint family surely had, from shared expenses and chores, to child supervision and upbringing. As she looked at the lady on the terrace, she also thought about the difficulties that living in a large group in a confined space probably entailed, with no privacy, varying opinions and multiple imagined slights.

Today, she seemed restless as she was strolling on the terrace. Anika stepped out onto the balcony to get a closer look. The south-west corner of the terrace with the water drums was the closest point to her balcony. The lady was whiling away time by walking along the perimeter of the terrace. As she wandered closer to the south-west corner, Anika finally got a good look at her.

Her personality was apparent even from this distance, from the way she held her body upright to the confident yet feminine walk. She was neither slim nor thickset but somewhere in between. There was a certain sophistication to her gait. Anika watched as she turned the corner and continued her solitary stroll around the edge of the terrace.

The sound of loud arguments in male and female voices interrupted her work the next morning – the family members had reached the downward curve in the sine wave of highs and lows of joint family existence. Adding to the cacophony was a girl’s full-throated wail. Perhaps a fall, burn or injury, with the elders blaming each other for the oversight?

The staircase that the family used to ascend was on the far east side and never visible to Anika. She now saw a small head make an appearance at the flat edge followed by the body of the boy who had climbed up unobserved. His sister as the designated minder was the injured one then. He looked for the assortment of toys that always lay in a heap in one corner of the terrace. Soon he was revving the toy car and following it about as it raced forward a few feet. Anika was a little concerned and stepped out to the balcony. What if the child wandered too close to the edge? The roof edge was unprotected by any railing or boundary wall. She stood undecided and hoped that someone else would arrive soon. That’s when she saw the lady walk towards the boy. Anika sighed in relief. She had probably been sitting, leaning against the other side of the water tanker, that’s why she hadn’t spotted her. The boy would point the car in her direction and she would then send the car revving back to him. The game continued until she heard shouts and the mother climbed halfway up the stairs gesturing at them to come down. The lady and the boy complied. Anika noticed that as usual she didn’t convey her gratitude either by gesture or a word to the lady who had kept a watchful eye over him. She wondered what had caused the breach in their relations and felt the lady deserved at least some acknowledgement. Maybe she sensed her empathy because suddenly she turned and looked directly at Anika. Anika felt a voyeuristic warmth flush her ears and stepped back inside her bedroom.

Anika noticed over the next few days that the lady had started sitting closer to the south-west edge, closest to her balcony. She would occasionally glance towards Anika. Her eyes were dark, so dark that you couldn’t distinguish the iris from the pupil. Anika felt a little sorry for her unfortunate circumstances. The only time she noticed her smile was on the rare occasions the boy wandered onto the terrace alone. With nobody to stop him from interacting with her, he would sit beside her presumably listening to stories or they would chase each other.

Anika wondered why she didn’t leave this house – perhaps she had no independent income. Anika had been doing the cleaning herself in her apartment but now she took a decision.

Anika stood at the gate of the concrete house. One of the teenage girls came to the gate. Anika did not know Konkani, the local language, but it had similarities to Marathi and with that including a mix of Hindi and basic English, conveyed that she was looking for a daily help to sweep and mop the floors, do the dishes and some light dusting. Would anyone from this household be interested? “Okay! I tell to my mother, give me house number,” she replied. As she wrote down the apartment number behind a schoolbook she had got from inside, Anika tried to find a diplomatic way to say that the sturdy looking lady on the terrace who played with her younger brother would be better for this kind of a job instead of anyone else from the household. However, as the girl looked at her uncomprehendingly, she realised that this was a task beyond her communicative abilities and left.

It was not quite dusk when her doorbell rang. The younger, slimmer lady Anika had seen so many times on the terrace, stood at her doorstep. Julie spoke English quite well and understood it even better. Anika took her on a brief tour of the flat stopping at the balcony that overlooked her house. “I really enjoy your dog’s antics early in the morning!” she said, to break the ice. Julie laughed.

Anika noticed that the boy had found his way onto the roof again and was lying on his stomach with his head in his hands, absorbed in the story the lady was no doubt telling him. She sat cross legged in front of him, using gestures and making faces while telling the story, hugely entertaining him. Julie noticed them and her face changed to a scowl.

Anika gestured towards them, “What about her? Doesn’t she need a job? I have seen her on the terrace by herself so many times. She doesn’t seem to be as busy as you are — that’s why I approached your house to look for help.”

“Who? Her? Sheela?” Julie looked thunderous. “Look at her! Wasting time, always sitting on the terrace!”

Anika’s face looked a question. “Well, she seems to look after the boy so well.”

Julie turned towards her – the scowl changing to a confused look. “Her boy? How long have you stayed here?”

“Oh, this is my just my fifth week.” And now, leaping to her defence, Anika continued, “I’ll tell you something you don’t know, that boy has come to the terrace so many times on his own and if it were not for Sheela’s presence, God knows what accident might have happened! Why do you all treat her so badly? Look, even now only she is there with him on the terrace, no one else is supervising him!”

I knew I had probably crossed a line with this as it was none of my business to comment on their affairs.

Julie was struck dumb by my outburst, but her eyes changed. The anger was fading. “Boy?” she repeated. “She lost her five-year-old son three months ago. He drowned in the well behind the house.”

The anger had faded completely from Julie’s eyes to be replaced with fear. “Look at her — she keeps playacting like she’s doing now, as if she is talking to him and can see him, scaring the children — that’s why we argue. She spends all her time sitting on the terrace from where she can watch the well.”

Anika turned back to the terrace. Sheela had noticed them watching her and walked closer. She looked up at Anika with an appeal in her liquid black eyes, almost as if to say, “You can see him too, can’t you?”

Rakhi Pande, an experienced education professional, transitioned from a brand management career to become an award-winning teacher and school leader. An avid reader, she tries to write whenever time permits.www.linkedin.com/in/rakhi-pande

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags English, Feni, Goa, Hindi, jambul, Kokum, Konkani, Marathi, Rakhi Pande, shrimp, Siolim, Urak

Stories

Felipe Jimenez’s Quest of the Unheard

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 14, 2024
No Comments on Felipe Jimenez’s Quest of the Unheard

By Paul Mirabile

Ever since his boyish days at the Seminary in Zamora, Spain, Felipe Jimenez acquired an unsual passion for mediaeval Visigothic architecture. A passion rarely shown in the mid 1800s. Another passion, too, swelled Felip’s heart and pride, one seemingly incongruous to the first: his fascination for the Quinta del Sordo, or the Villa of the Deaf; the villa or country-house where Francisco de Goya[1], a famed painter, alone and dwelling in his soundless world, drove out the fears and torments that haunted his sleepless nights by depicting a series of the most incredible frescoes that any painter up till then had painted. Frescoes that came to be called ‘pinturas negras‘[2]. Why Felipe Jimenez had associated these two passions into one maniacal life project is the drama of his heart and of this tale …

In the mid 1800s the only means of exploring the Spanish countryside with any speed was on horseback. Felipe prided himself as an excellent horseman. He loved horses, especially his own, whom he named with endearing irony, Rocinante[3]. As he roamed Northern Spain in search of the three extant Visigothic churches, he himself questioned his love of mediaeval art: Was it his voracious readings of mediaeval castles and knights? The glorious battles between Visigoth Christians and Muslim Arabs? The silent stones of ruined churches, castles and hamlets to whose voices no one wished to lend an ear?

And Goya’s frescoes? The deaf Master’s tortured figures and thickly layered pigments impressed on the solitary walls might have reflected the bleak, lonely landscape that Felipe was now traversing speedily. Reflected the bleakness, too, of his soul for a reason that he could not understand. He thought, spurring his steed faster, that the oddity of his passions might have been kindled, unknowingly, by the unexpected encounter of two very apparently contradictory visions, yet out of which Felipe had been magically touched or enlightened because of their estranged association, because of their incompatible commonalities.

With a genuine thirst to sate these emotions, our rider rode on and on until he came upon the seventh century Visigothic church of San Pedro de la Nave in his own region of Zamora. A pure joy to lit up his eyes when he saw the sculptured capitals[4] of twittering birds and intoxicating flowers, of the beloved Daniel in the Lion’s den, soothing the roaring beasts with his melodious chanting, of Saint Philip’s outstretched hands conducting his chant to Creation. These tickled Felipe’s ears as he listened to their concerted canticle. He had never before experienced such fineness of hewn stone and arched forms.

From his shoulder-bag he procured a sketchbook and began drawing the animated capitals, one after the other, carefully noting each cry of the bird, each chant of Daniel and of Philip. When this task had been meticulously completed, he stepped outside into the blackness of night, breathed in the thick air, then retrieved his bed-roll, rolled it out and slept peacefully against the outer wall of the church, whose stones, still hot from the scorching afternoon sun, afforded him warmth against the chills of the early autumnal night. He awoke refreshed, bathed in the swathes of a pure, reddish, morning glow.

Now if these treasures aroused enthusiasm in Felipe’s heart, greater would be the treasure trove that awaited him to the south of the great city of Burgos, when some weeks later, he discovered the seventh century chapel of Quintanilla de las Viñas, perfectly intact. Dismounting from his trusty but fatigued steed, in awe he admired the outer friezes[5] of exquisitely sculptured partridges and peacocks, feasted his dust-filled eyes upon festoons of interweaving vines and clusters of hanging grapes. They were almost real to the touch those plump clusters! He listened in a sort of dazed ecstasy to the imagined screams of the partridges and peacocks as they paraded their plumage and fanned their tails inside the frieze. The sweetness of the grapes dripped off each pregnant cluster. How Felipe longed to quench his thirst by picking each one out of its stony bezel.

Unable to enter the chapel, the door being barred, Felipe brought out his sketchbook and reproduced those screams and sweet drippings as best as his artistic talents enabled him. He was an excellent artist. As he closed his sketchbook, a sudden thrill shot up his spine — a thrill that he had never experienced before. Felipe rode off filled with wonder, the early autumnal sun setting red and round over the arid plains of northern Spain. Had it all been an intimate communion with those birds and grapes? Had others bore witness to those storied stones? Felipe patted Rocinante’s jowls affectionately: all these questions remained enshrouded in the mystery of Spain … his own story within Spain’s …

Over the scorching plains Felipe galloped wildly in search of the last Visigothic church, San Juan de Baños, locatedin the region of Palencia. He arrived after five or six days of riding under the blazing sun, sleeping under the gelid stars.

This jewel outshone the other two: the basilica-plan church’s naves[6] were supported by the most perfectly intact groined vaults[7]: they left him breathless. He began sketching them in feverish excitement. But what really astounded the drawer was the triumphal arch that welcomed the church-goer within. An arch that he had never laid eyes on before.

Just then Rocinante began pawing the hard soil with the hoof of her foot. She snorted and pawed with steady blows in an unusual way. Felipe ran over to her. He noted that her horse-shoe had been displaced. As he bent to reshoe his horse, it occurred to him that Rocinante’s iron shoe bore an exact resemblance to the welcoming entry arch of the church. When he had finished the shoeing, he resumed his drawing, marking every detail of this incredible arch: It can’t be compared to the Moorish arch or to the Roman one- he mused. He then decided to coin this novelty the arco de herradura[8]; that is, the horse-shoe arch, for indeed unlike all the arches found in Spain, the opening at the bottom of this one was much narrower than its full span. But what attracted him most about this original work of art were the two abutting ends of the arches supported by the tops of the columns which gave the impression that they sought to join together to form a circle. Of course this impression was one of an artist’s …

Overjoyed by his coined expression, thanks to his trusty dark-maned Rocinante whose shoe had been properly shod, Felipe spent the rest of the day studying the church inside and out. When twilight set in he pulled out his bed-roll, lay down at the apse[9] of San Juan de Baños, imagining in his head his next and last halt, Recaredopolis, the only Visigothic town to be founded by the migrating Northern-Germanic peoples, built by King Leovigilda’s excellent craftsmen in 578 and finished by his son, King Recaredo, the first Catholic Visigothic king of Spain, baptised in 586. According to his map, Recaredopolis was located eighty kilometres from Madrid in a hamlet called Zorita de las Canes. According to several learned acquaintances, he had been informed that the hamlet lay in stoic silence, ignored by archeologists, unvisited by the curious. He liked that. He would ride to it at the red of dawn …

Five days later, the dark-maned Rocinante carried her exhausted rider, face-blistered and throat-swollen into Zorita de las Canas, then straight to Recaredopolis. Here the silence of the still standing stones welcomed the quester. Trotting through the remaining edifices he pulled up his steed before a horse-shoe arch, more or less identical to the one that he had admired and sketched at San Juan de Baños. The domed roofs of the churches and chapels had fallen into decay, but the untouched stones rang of a superior, magnanimous craftsmanship. This sixth century town had withstood the upheavels of History, the turbulence of Time, although the two-storey palace had lost its second storey entirely and the granary had been reduced to two walls and piles of heaped up stone.

The horseshoe arch at Recaredopolis. Photo Courtesy: Paul Mirabile

Felipe let his horse roam about looking for a good feed whilst he meandered in and out of the moss-clad walls of the dilapadated palace, granary and sanctuary, filling his sketchbook with copy after copy of this fabulous mediaeval architectural trove. It seemed to him that no one, besides the villagers, had stepped foot in these ruins. Felipe felt estranged from himself, staggering about in a queer trance-like state from wall to wall, all so silent, yet deafening to his ears, so lyrical, so ecstatic that they strove to enter into communion with him. He sketched until the advent of night …

The ever-standing mediaeval sanctuary walls. Photo Courtesy: Paul Mirabile

Felipe built a fire and cooked a few potatoes and green peppers over it on a make-shift spittle. Lying on his bed-roll as he had done for so many star-studded nights, hands behind his head, he scrutinized the Autumn moon’s face mottled with huge black spots, listening to the deep, warm silence that surrounded him. He suddenly sat up: Had he not heard a runeful moaning skipping over the dry, empty plains? He bit his lower lip. The night air began to chill him. He continued to listen, attentively, his heart pounding painfully. Nothing. No one. Something frightened him: The horrors of war. Of famine and poverty ? Of old age creeping up upon him ? Or the ugliness of human depravity ? But why are these thoughts plaguing him at this very uninvited moment, as he lay so peaceful in this lieu of broken stones and tales ?

The sanctuary rising over the dry, grass-swept plain. Photo Courtesy: Paul Mirabile

He counted the stars, mentally tracing the curved contours of the waxing alabaster moon. Nothing stirred. No breath of wind, no call or cry from animal or bird. Felipe felt a surge of loneliness here as if the slow decay and negligence of the ruins resembled his own, physically and mentally … He was well over fifty, and the hardships of aging were slowly creeping up on him. His hand trembled when he drew. His back hurt from riding. His mind thought thoughtless thoughts, adrift between the past and the present in some sort of dark chaos.

Felipe ignored the fact that no thought arises by thinking. Thoughts burst upon you at the most unsuspecting moments. They dance and whirl about then penetrate as quickly as that! The thinker must welcome them no matter how abrupt, unforeseen, painful. Yet, Felipe was keen on welcoming them, eager to decipher their subtle choreography.

He awoke in a dull trance. The sun rose lethargically over the voiceless ruins, the curling, misty plains. He watched its entrance into the world whilst the dancing thoughts that had spun him about during the night, and at present were jarring him out of sleep, grew brighter and brighter into figures of acts to be enacted. He threw dirt over the embers of the fire, rolled up his rug, saddled the munching Rocinante, and with a last glimpse of Visigoth Spain, galloped at full speed towards Madrid.

However, not to the big city. What had he to do with big cities ? No, Felipe Jimenez spurred desperately to Manzanares, twenty kilometres outside of Madrid, where there, the enigma of his quest would be resolved, or so he hoped! For a wild, dancing thought had overwhelmed him last night. A thought so feral that it would surely unlock the door to the mystery of an overt sense of hopelessness. Felipe imagined that hidden recess, heard its muffled invocations. To Manzanares he thus rode hard. To the Quinta del Sordo (Villa of the Deaf) where those welled up voices would overflow and spill forth the truth of centuries and centuries of silent exuberance, ecstasy and crime … To him and him alone ? That sacred communion remained to be seen …

Francisco de Goya’s voice, one that the great painter no longer heard since his deafness had severed him from the rest of the world, lay dorment in that villa; or so it was said. The great Master heard only faint murmurs of the Other World, murmurs that conducted his hand, steered his strokes, governed his unbridled imagination.

To those strange frescoes Felipe flew, thrilled that the hidden recesses of somber existence would be laid bare at that villa, illumined by the fourteen pinturas negras (black paintings), those black, ochre and brown pigments telling a tale that no historian, no archaeologist, no artist has ever told. Muteness, deafness, voicelessness — beacons of existential raison d’être …

Three days later, Felipe Jimenez and Rocinante arrived at the villa as wreaths of fog were lifting off the slow, rolling wavelets of the River Manzanares. He dismounted, tied his horse to a tree and stood for several minutes in front of a quaint, two-storey country house behind which rose a range of shaggy hillocks hardly visible in the morning haze. Between the wisps of mist he noted that the front walls were in a deplorable state, suffering no doubt from the humidity and heavy rains. The alabaster sheen of the roughcast had crumbled off in large, mossy patches into a front garden overgrown with yellowing quitch grass, spiky thistles and thorny nettles. Flower beds had become weedy, rank.

He walked up to the front door and knocked: once … twice … thrice: No one.

Felipe laughed and thought: “Of course, he can’t hear. He’s deaf !” Mustering a bit of courage, he pushed open the heavy door; it had been left unbarred. He peeked inside, then slipped in quietly. Once inside, the silence frightened him. All the shutters had been shut in the dining room. There was hardly any furniture. A foul odour of dissolution made him dizzy.

“Señor … Señor Goya?” Felipe called in a feeble voice unlike his own, the echo filling the room and his ears with unfamiliarity. “Are you out ? Yes, you must be out!” he assured himself, after which he rapidly threw open the shutters allowing streams of greyish, morning, misty light into the Master painter’s dining room. He gasped in disbelief. Painted on the dirty, unpapered walls were six frescoes that glowered at him in irate mockery. Yes, they eyed this intruder, this interloper’s every gesture with incensed scorn: there, the toothless guffawing of two old men hunched over their bowls slurping soup, fleshless faces sneering in gnarled lechery. Whether it was the dull light or the artistic acuteness of Goya’s brush work, their faces gave the impression of being embossed with warts or malignant tumours. Their clothes drooped on them like tattered rags (Dos viejos comiendo sopa)[10] !

Then Felipe approached a most peculiar scene: the mythological god of Time, Saturn, its eyes popping out of its sockets, was chewing one of his sons alive in bloody gluttony, the ruthless, long-haired creature believing that if he devoured his sons, one by one, he would never be dethroned by them, thus interrupting the course of Time (Saturno devorando uno de sus hijos)[11]. To his left, the most frightening of all frescoes: El Aquelarre[12]. Felipe drew closer. Yes, this was the Master’s most horrid depiction of his mindset: a black mass! It was a huge depiction of a motley crew, attired in tatters, gloating, mottled faces tormented, distorted by unhealthy beliefs, listening in starry-eyed reverence to a goat-like creature, yes, Satan himself, robed in black, horns held high in haughty hallowedness. Upon these dank, lonely walls Goya expunged from his tortured mind the two pillars of his psyche: the ecstatic and the grotesque …

In a state of feverish agitation Felipe took out his sketchbook and traced the six frescoes one after the other like a madman attempting to capture each frightful feature, every desperate detail, each and every harrowing stroke of the Master’s demoniacal brush.

Sketching as best he could, given the dusky dimness of the late morning light and the dark pigments of the paintings, Felipe, after having drawn the downstairs frescoes now rushed head-long upstairs to Goya’s study. He shrank back in a dazed shock overwhelmed by the sight of the other eight masterpieces. All of them depicted the dark recesses of a man’s deranged mind, a mind enmeshed in darkened recesses, questioning and questioning and questioning. Felipe went from one to the other gaping at the cheerless existence of an artist, whilst the artist’s cheerless figures gaped at him, at this unwelcomed stranger. With much difficulty he discerned two warty, bizarre figures suspended dreamily in mid-air as if set free from Earth’s weightiness, sailing over a battlefield where they observed the drama below in ecstatic grotesqueness. In the background upon a hill an embattled castle lent a glum foreboding to the outcome of the scene (Visión fantástica)[13]. And there, on the back wall, two men, buried up to their knees, battling to the death with cudgels, a delightful technique that only the Spaniards could have invented. (Duelo a garrotazos)[14].

“Hobgoblins, all of them!” Felipe cried out involuntarily in crazed delirium. He had lost control of himself, sketching and sketching the figures that glowered at him, talking aloud in an effort to expurgate the evil that gradually filled his soul. The horrors of war, death, violence.

The most phantasmagorical visions had been assembled here in this dreadful villa during the restless nights of a his heart, painted by the Master of painters who had shunned all contact with the outside world. A solitary, mute communion had occurred within these demented walls, whose commerce wallowed in the mire of old age decrepitude, of sickening lust for glorious butcheries and triumphant slaughtering. Did Francisco de Goya love the smell of blood?

Felipe hardly understood the obsession that had nettled him for so many years whilst he sketched until his wrist ached. The mute stones … the deaf ears … the pounding silence that had entombed the landscape with courtly crimes, pogroms and despot debaucheries, all of which had crumbled into speechless stone, into hollow, unspoken edifices. Indeed, all had fallen into decay, a slow decay, like the colourless figures painted on these waning walls ; like Goya’s mind ! “And mine ? Yes, mine too ! Ecstasy and grotesqueness : the mindset of our national character …” he acknowledged ingloriously.

Felipe, utterly exhausted, completed his sketching just before nightfall. He tip-toed down the stairway to the front door that he had left ajar. A last glimpse behind him saddened his heart; he had not met the Master. Yet, at the same time, a faint voice told him it would have been a fruitless meeting: the deaf have no one but themselves to converse with.

Furthermore, perhaps that meeting would have divulged the dreadful truth of Goya’s painted visions, and more importantly, the truth of those stones whose own untold story might have spoken a truth that only Felipe would have comprehended, enwrapping him thus in many veils of a strange, naïve self-satisfied truth. A truth that went beyond human reasoning, struggling in a twilight zone of Felipe’s own story within the quagmire.

It stands to reason that Felipe Jimenez had experienced what some call the ‘sense of the past’. A troubling experience that may occur at any instant of time or by incessant galloping between the past and the present. Nevertheless, it must be recorded that Felipe never really believed that he would fully join or unite the stony vestiges of a lost kingdom to the ‘black paintings’ by Francisco de Goya. Perhaps this sentiment or fantasy can be compared to the horse-shoe arch whose two bottom abutting stones sought to conjoin in a circle … in vain …

Be that as it may, our heroic Felipe died without friends or family. Only three of his sketches have been preserved. Oddly enough, they were discovered on the inside cover of a 1780 Royal Spanish Academy edition of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha written by Miguel de Cervantes[15], edited by Joaquin Ibarra. In this same edition were also found several scattered notes in the margins presumedly jotted down by Felipe.

Felipe Jimenez’s tomb has never been located. Does this obliterate his existence ? I for one believe he did exist. However, many historians contend that he never existed at all …

[1] Francisco de Goya (1746 – 1828) born in Fuentedetodos, Spain died in Bordeaux, France.

[2] ‘The Black Paintings’.

[3] Don Quixote’s mangy horse was named as such. Miguesl Cervantes’ Don Quixote was published in 1605.

[4] Head or top of a column or pillar.

[5] A horizontal band of sculpture usually filled with animal or vegetal motifs.

[6] The central aisle of a church.

[7] Arches supporting intersecting vaults or arched roofs.

[8] ‘Herradura’ means ‘horse-shoe’. It comes from the Spanish ‘hierro’ ‘iron’.

[9] A large domed recess at the end of a chapel or church.

[10] ‘Two old Men eating Soup’ (1819-1823). All the frescoes were painted during that time period.

[11] ‘Saturn devouring one of his Sons’.

[12] ‘Witches’ Sabbath’.

[13] ‘Fantastic Vision’.

[14] ‘Duel with cudgels’.

[15] The Ingenous Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Tags Arabs, Asia, Christians, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, France, Fransico de Goya, Joaquin Ibarra, Madrid, Miguel de Cervantes, Paul Mirabile, pinturas negras, Recaredopolis, Rocinante, Spain, Visigoth, Zamora

Stories

The Temple-going Snake

By Devraj Singh Kalsi

Every morning, around 9 a.m., the brown snake emerged from its cosy pit, slithered across the lush green grass, and found its way out of the bungalow through the lower rungs of the iron-grille door. Every evening, before sunset, around 6 p.m., the snake took the same path to return to its pit.

Adarsh followed the same routine without knowing that the resident snake was a keen follower of his schedule. One day, while taking the car out of the garage, he noticed the snake as it was moving out of the gate. He took his car out of the gate and looked around to trace the snake. But it was impossible to locate where it had gone.

While driving his car, Adarsh was worried that the snake would bite several people, regretting that he should have made some more efforts to find out where it had vanished. When he reached his office and took the elevator, he shed his skin and transformed into a toxic agency head smitten by the urge to lord over the subordinates. Despite the heavy workload, he could not clear his mind as the snake kept his slithering into his thoughts. He decided to find out whether it was just a one-off incident or whether the presence of the snake in his compound signified the growth of enemies and unrecognised threats.

Being curious to know more about the snake, he was ready to leave the house around the same time. The snake was also punctual and gave Adarsh had another encounter. This time, he was ready with the motorbike as he was prepared to follow the snake more closely and avoid getting stuck in a traffic jam.

As the snake slipped out of the premises and took the main road, Adarsh geared up his bike and tracked the snake moving at its leisurely pace. When he came close to the canal bridge, he saw the snake crossing it along with pedestrians, keeping to the concrete edge. So many people were walking but they were unaware of the snake taking the same route.

When he crossed the bridge, he looked around for a while, unable to see where it had slipped. Then he stood near the milk booth and asked the shopkeeper whether he had seen a snake. Before he could get any response, Adarsh spotted the snake moving up the stairs of the temple across the road. His curiosity doubled up now and he parked his bike right in front of the milk booth and rushed to the temple.

It had been several years since he had entered a temple. The pursuit of a snake had brought him close to the divine abode. He was eager to know why the snake frequented the temple – almost taking it up as an assignment to get to the bottom of the mystery. He hastened up the stairs to ensure he did not lose sight of the snake. For a few minutes, he pondered whether it was right for him to enter the temple atall as he was a man who, he felt, due to his profession had become poisonous, negative, and toxic. He wondered whether it was befitting for an evil guy to enter the pure, sublime space. Drawing solace from the fact that if a snake could enter the temple despite carrying venom in its body, he could also do the same without harbouring any guilt as the sac of poison resided in his mind.

Instead of folding his hands for prayer, he rang the bell and looked around for the snake. Considering it prudent to alert the priest, he said, “Pandit ji, I saw one long snake entering the temple so I came inside to inform you of the danger.”

“Oh! A snake has brought you here, Shriman[1],” the priest sprinkled holy water on his bald head and offered him flowers. He cupped those flowers in his palms, went ahead to bow down before the deity and offered the floral obeisance. Although he felt awkward doing this exercise, he did not know that this would bring him closer to the snake relaxing inside the sanctum area. Scared to find himself so close to the snake for the first time in his entire life, he gave a loud cry and made a quick attempt to rush out of its reach.

The priest was observing his nervous reaction. When he came out and stood in front of him, he was able to gather his composure.

“So, you finally met the snake you came looking for after a long search?” the priest poked him.

Adarsh did not know how to respond to this question. This question raised many other questions. But he touched the feet of the priest and sought his blessings. This act of surrender made the priest answer the most probable questions in his mind.

“You wanted to know what the poisonous snake was here for. Before I answer that for you, can you answer what you do the whole day? Hiss, sting, bite, bare fangs, to get work done or worse perhaps…”

Adarsh was silent for a while. His silence confirmed that the guess was correct. His job profile listed such toxic activities daily and there was nothing noble to mention with a glint of pride. It appeared that the priest was reading his dark mind and focusing on what had died within him over the years. He felt like running away to escape this examination. It would be equivalent to running away from the truth. His curiosity made him look for the snake, but the priest said it was the wish of the Lord that he came after a snake because the Lord wanted him to reform. Such a hard-hitting interpretation of a simple act of curiosity was as unacceptable to Adarsh as the will of God.

The priest continued despite Adarsh showing no interest, hoping that this information would make him rethink. “You wanted to save people from a poisonous snake and you wanted to know where it goes. You are not a bad human being at all, only driven by circumstances and environment to commit sins. Look at this truth now. The snake sits inside the whole day and when the temple doors close, it goes to the place where it comes from, without disturbing a single person along the way, without biting a single person despite carrying so much poison. Take it as an inspiring lesson that though there is poison in the mind, one can still keep it under control and ensure no harm is caused to fellow human beings. Perhaps the snake is in good company and has reformed its nature. Read it from this angle. You should also come to the temple every day and spend time here. The Lord will be happy to see you. He gives more blessings to those who are most unlikely to come.”

Without answering the priest, without promising anything to the priest, Adarsh turned around with folded hands and retraced his steps. While coming down the stairs, he remembered his recent misdeeds. He went home and dwelled on the priest’s words in his mind. The next evening, he left his office early and visited the temple. He met the priest, and the snake. There were many devotees singing bhajans and taking prasad. He sat alone in a corner for some time. The ambience seemed to have a transformative impact on him. For an hour, he discovered a new self – shed his old skin and found himself in a happy frame.

Inside the office, Adarsh was a reformed person as he became polite and respectful. His juniors and peers were surprised to find a new boss in just a week. Adarsh continued with his daily trips to the temple and he was close to achieving a month of decent behaviour at the workplace. He followed the path shown by the snake and felt lighter inside. However, he did not know whether he could retain this new avatar without divine intervention daily, fearing he would return to his previous self if he stopped visiting the temple. He imitated the habit of the temple-going snake.

After a few months, he asked the priest some hard-hitting questions during one such visit: “I did nothing wrong since I started coming here. But how long does it take to change one’s nature? I am a practical-minded person, and today, despite coming to the temple, I ended up sacking an employee I did not like to work with, on a very flimsy ground. I knew I was doing it wrong, but I could not stop myself from doing it. The evil had returned to me. I don’t want to nurture guilt, but I think I have failed the test I don’t know why the stupid snake keeps coming here. It should go and bite people, enjoy its toxic life, and keep sending people to hell instead of trying to change its basic character. I’m sure we all are not here to do good. Being good is so boring.”

Without waiting for the priest to answer, he stepped out of the temple premises. As he was coming down the stairs, he received a phone call from his office, and he was shocked to hear the urgent message. He slipped and fell, rolled down the stairs, landing in the hospital bed where he was declared to have suffered a severe spinal injury. Being wheelchair-bound, he sat in the blooming garden and observed the snake slithering out of the lush green cover to visit the temple, envying its luck every day. A poisonous life had turned pious whereas a life supposed to be pious had turned poisonous. The steps of the temple Adarsh was eager to climb down now became the steps he was eager to climb up once he got back on his feet again.

[1] Mister

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Tags Assam Tribune, Deccan Herald, Devraj Singh Kalsi, Kolkata, The Statesman