The Signs

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Who was telling the story? And whose story was it anyway? The words fluttered and flew in the wind. They entreated as they fought the heavy air in the tremulous room, the words. They cried out to be heard, acknowledged and acted upon. But the listening silence was cautious, wary of committing and implicating the speaker in any manner. It was the calculative smarts of an ambivalent, modern professional. The school after all, ran on donations, its policies and decisions dictated by a cautious environment. There was a ball park figure to chase and livelihoods on the line. It was a standard operating procedure for everyone to watch and wait until pushed by a crisis. The question was, “Did anyone possess the empathy or the vocabulary to know the signs of one?” 

The counselor shifted in his chair, drawing back from the teenager

shrinking across his table. Garima Tandon had given up on her gritty brown eyes. The tears slid at speed down defeated cheeks. She sat perched on the edge of her seat, the right toe reaching for the door, ready to bolt. Hers was an earnest young spirit, flickering bravely through the heap of shame and humiliation dumped on her by bullying friends and class mates. “How do you feel at this time?” Her lips quivered at the careful voice of objective professionalism. She dragged her spiky eye lashes and darted an injured gaze at the falling drops outside the office window. Her slender frame snuggled deeper into the chair. “You were saying you feel empty and numb. Have you spoken with your mother?” the counselor prompted. “No. I just don’t see the point anymore. I don’t feel anything at all. I want it to stop.” The two locked their eyes briefly, startled away by the invasive ring of the telephone. Garima made to haul out of the chair, reaching for her knapsack but the counselor waved her back, raising the mouthpiece and banging it down to disconnect. It took him a while to focus back on the distress unfolding under his nose. “I am thinking of ordering the helium hood kit”, the high school senior mumbled under her breath. “What is that? Is it a video game?” He frowned at the curl in the girl’s lips. “Listen, don’t do anything stupid alright. Whatever is bothering you will settle down, I promise. It always does. You are very young. Also, our time is up now. Remember, I am always here should you wish to talk. Come and see me next week, alright? You take care Garima!”

Garima labored out of the dismissive office and through the hallway of the school, deaf to the buzz and chatter around her. No one paid any attention to the laden figure as she walked out of the building for the last time. The school guard at the gate nodded at her tentative smile, not knowing the desolation it hid. There were others of significance in the life of this beautiful young woman who had missed the cues. During an exercise in the English class three days ago, the teacher had conducted a poetry writing game. The anonymous pieces of expression were slipped into a small box and students took turns pulling one and reading it out aloud. The teacher had paused briefly at a particular poem that read, “I don’t want to share my life, if I could just give it away” before shaking her head, scanning the faces in the rooms and moving on to the next submission. Garima’s friends were, if anything, even more obtuse. At their after school parties out of the sight of their parents, they whispered about Garima, “What is with her man? She drinks too much and is easy. So ok dude, she is in pain. Well, isn’t everybody? We are all suffering. The earth is crying. Animals are dying. Children are starving. Get over it for heaven’s sake!”

“Listen, talk to your parents,” a friend had urged her on occasions.

His suggestion would be met by a sad shake of her head, “They think I am a good kid. It would break their hearts to know I have become the bad kid they always warned me against.” Garima had been distancing herself steadily from her loving parents, their pride and expectations and concern too much to bear. From proactive participants in her life, they had been reduced to being mere spectators. Their child was with them only in a physical sense. They had poured themselves into her upbringing and welfare but unknown to them, she was losing her heart and mind and soul to the perilous labyrinth created by peer parenting and the virtual space. Unkindness online, exclusion from groups, tiny betrayals, emotional rejection and an ever present sense of not being understood would have been enough to break an Atlas. She was only a golden waif. 

“There were no closed doors when we were growing up Garima.

 
What is this personal space and privacy you are constantly haranguing about?” the mother had no clue what more could a young woman want other than a loving family and fiercely proud grandparents. “I don’t want to meet the relatives. They judge too much, ask too many questions. I hate being queried about my life plans. Hell, I am figuring it all out still. What is the tearing hurry?” Mum would screech in alarm, “Language Garima!” The censure would be greeted with a violent bang of the door as the teenager flounced off with a wail, “Have the heavens fallen with one abusive word? There is no freedom of speech in this house. What do you want from me? Did you not take any parenting lessons before having me? Have you any idea what is happening in my life?” The dinner table in their hurting house often creaked under their conscious and manufactured care with words, “Bete, you know you can talk to us. We think your friends are not been responsible enough. Perhaps we should meet their parents. Bring all your friends home. We were always very happy to have our friends meet our parents. Why do you get so upset if we try to connect with any of yours?” The paternal patter would fade away at the horror on their daughter’s face. And for weeks now, she had stopped coming to the dinner table at all. Garima was fighting her demons behind closed doors, her same age peers for guidance and support.

And then one day, the heavens came down. There was no warning. At least the parents were caught completely unprepared. As it happens in such cases, they were the first on the scene. Their daughter did not even leave them a good bye note. She used an orange colored stole that her grandmother had bought her for a school dance drama she was participating in. There was no one at home that morbid of all days. Stealthy as a shadow, death paid the Tandon home a definitive visit that heartbreaking noon and a youthful life full of potential was nipped in the bud. What followed was an avalanche of disbelief and despair. A veritable storm broke around the family and friends. Candle marches, cries for justice, horror and shock on the social media, the deluge of wretchedness refused to abate. There was an angry frenzy to the aftermath. How could she be lost forever? She was such a fabulous talent. Where did she get this horrendous idea and courage from? Why did she not share her anguish with anyone? Could the family and friends and teachers have reached out more? What were the pressures she was struggling with? Did she have a school crush? Did anyone shame her? Was she being bullied on facebook? Did she plan the self-harm or was it an action born of impulse? What could her immediate environment have done differently?

Stung with guilt and grief, when the parents began to lash out at the
school and her friends, the picture perfect life of a young, talented child, deeply loved by her family and studying in one of the city’s best schools began to unravel. The horrific, yawning chasm between Garima’s reality and what her parents fondly imagined her life to be was every modern parent’s nightmare. “We gave her the best of care and opportunities,” her mother wailed. “I never put any pressure on her over her academic performance. She was a gifted artist and we always thought she was quite happy at her school”, her father sobbed inconsolably. “How come we were the last to know that she was facing harassment from a group of her class mates? She did mention once that a couple of teachers had counseled her regarding her report card but we treated it as just and rightful that a teacher confront a student with a constructive feedback. In fact, we made light of it with her, urging her to pay heed to her teacher’s words,” shared the mother.

With the case grabbing headlines, the media enveloped the family

completely. There were cameras galore and mikes constantly being thrust at their grieving faces. “Did you not meet with the counselor ever?” a reporter quizzed the parents. “Yes, I did once,” relented the mother. “I was concerned about Garima’s growing estrangement from us. She was moving away emotionally. It felt she had found an anchor elsewhere but I couldn’t be sure. We were always confused over the style of parenting she needed. Our parents’ formula did not seem to apply. Where to draw the line, when to concede…these conflicts were crushing us. There was no place to go, no one to compare notes with. Everyone else seemed happy and content with their kids.”

The shock and silence Garima left behind was soon taken over by the din of defense.
“I had no idea the Helium Hood Kit was a self-help suicide kit!”

“How could we know her sadness was sadder than the regular blues?”

“We presumed too much, we should have been more alert to her environment?”

“Did she have a boyfriend? No way. Not Garima. She was not that sort!”

“A lot of young people experiment these days. Could she have been in unfamiliar and threatening waters, with no one at home in the know enough to guide her?”

The ache at the criminal waste refused to heal. Lawyers, activists, politicians, loyalists, family, journalists, counselors, policy makers, teachers took up vantage spots in this arena of unbearable loss and sadness. While they wrestled, a powerful phenomenon called ‘time’ stood by and surveyed the maudlin madness. It whispered in the wind, “This is my story India. And I have changed. My values, my aspirations, my expectations are nothing like you could even dare imagine. Hark, my words are fluttering still.” But no one was listening.

Caddie (Fiction)

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Shamminder Kaur had started playing golf at thirty years of age. It made her stand out amongst the majority Indian women on the courses around the country who were either in their late teens or past their forties when they first picked up a club. “Don’t copy me, I have learnt it all wrong,” she was fond of saying. Her self-deprecating statements confused her playing partners; the words just did not go with the spectacular flights she sent her drives on from their flying tees. Many a mouth would follow agape the stunning trajectories her driver smacked the balls onto.

They made for a brittle bunch, the women pushing against the velvety fairway with bodies past their primes, spongy egos and spirits leveled by life’s ravages. Barely beneath their polite masks lay something raw and stinging. It called for a curious mix of stubborn courage after all and bruised sensitivity to step onto a public space such as the golf course, a complete novice. For even in the civilized world of the gentlemen’s game, there was caddie chatter, stolen looks assessing one’s golf swing, triangular updates on how the game was progressing with the others and unsolicited advice from the male golfers. For the odd woman that flowered, she did so under a cloying cloud of low expectations and that indulgent air.

“You know, they should have prizes for every lady in a tournament. This way, everyone goes home happy. Better to distribute it all than to give only one lady the trophy.” In this conspiracy of the mediocre, it suited everyone to keep peace, for women did make for bad losers. They came to golf at such established phases of their lives that it made it difficult for them to come to terms with their temperamental golfing. Many preferred to play with the non-judgmental men for this reason rather than with another woman and her strong sense of the right and wrong.

So there it was, one pearly daybreak on the Clover Greens, a drama unfolding in this world of unmet challenges. The polished exterior of the Golf Club just about kept from the public view, the gladiatorial desire of everyone from the Manager downwards to see Shamminder pitted against Aarti, the only other woman golfer of self-belief there. A late bloomer, Aarti negotiated the golf ball with pure will, no skill for her. “Just keep hitting, I barely spent one month in the practice bay, it comes by playing,” the feisty one was fond of sharing her hands-on experience with the tentative new entrants to the game. Having played several years as the club’s sole woman golfer, it had become hard to tell self-delusion from an undeniable talent. “I carry home most of the trophies,” was a refrain of sorts with her. Blessed with a tenacious desire to win, Aarti had one flaw.  Even in a game where players blamed any and everything for a bad score, Aarti had made an art of dumping each of her golfing misfortunes on her caddie. Little wonder that Teepu’s face had come to arrange itself in five dimensions, each of them confused on what to hold and where to stretch.

Like two combatants fighting for the post of Prima Donna, Clover Greens, Shammi and Aarti would stalk each other on the course most days, assessing and waiting to prove their superiority. Before long, the opportunity presented itself in the form of a Pink Golf Tournament for a Cause. The club inhaled deeply, then waited to exhale. Would Aarti take the bait and pair up against Shamminder?

Everyone got to work, forces were drawn up and the penultimate day schedule launched. Adequate rest, special putting ball, sunscreen in place, glares firmly sitting on the noses; the two took their places in ceremonial golf slacks. 

“I want a caddie who will not open his mouth at all today,” Aarti faced the Caddie Master, a fidgety Teepu skulking near the tournament bulletin board. Shammi’s regular caddie was accompanying her; a buzz had begun though, over Teepu’s replacement. Equally suddenly, the din subsided around the ongoing arbitration. Aarti interrupted the Caddie Master’s embarrassed stuttering rudely, “It’s alright. Let it be. I will take Teepu but he better not squeak today!”

And the game was off the tee with two clean, metallic notes. Like the two seasoned golfers they were, Shammi and Aarti made rhythmic progress. One played with joy, the other with a burning desire to win. Shammi had to curb her usual impulsiveness whence she would stop and wave at the wild life on the beautiful landscape. Aarti staying focused, swinging and pitching with power and precision. A day would come, like it did for every golfer, when their bodies would not cooperate but in the heat of the competition, that sobering thought was farthest from their minds.

Even in the tense scribbles on the scoring cards, the meditative nature of the golf course reigned around them. A fuzzy rich moistness curled upwards to their nostrils, the sun dithering in the wings, not ready to step out in all its golden glory yet. It was a charmed hour and all was right with the world.

Aarti drew in a sharp gasp all of a sudden; the ball had caught the shaft end, ricocheting into a dismal slice. She glared at Teepu, her eyes flashing. “Run ahead and wait for me near the ball!” her voice commanded with urgency. The caddie scrambled ahead in a mum flurry. His player though had beaten him to it and was already addressing the wedged in ball, “Watch me now, I am going to punch it well out then hit past that tree ahead to take the dogleg,” she called over her shoulder.

True to her word, Aarti went to work, executing her plan with force and resoluteness. Releasing her breath with relief as she looked up at the ball in flight, she turned to Teepu with an uncharacteristically goofy grin, “How about that? You can speak now. I give you permission. Come on, how did you like that shot? Speak a bit louder. I can’t hear you.”

Teepu cleared his throat and repeated himself, a shade louder the second time, “That was not your golf ball Mayam (Teepu lingo for Ma'am)!”

Other worldly (Fiction)

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The diary entry went back seven years. Reema fluffed up her favourite bolster and settled down with the camel coloured journal, inviting her daughter Chehak to the space besides her on their well-loved sofa bed.

“Sitting in gyan mudra under the Terminalia Arjuna, I felt scrubbed clean. My skin hummed in the light streaming down from its leaves. The red of my blood swirled into their luminescent xylem. I had just finished reading about phyllotaxis. Placing the book aside, I looked up at the canopy to see how the leaves arranged on a stem so as to intercept optimum sunlight for photosynthesis.  The longer I gazed, the brighter it became around me. It began to feel unusually warm. The brilliance in the air exploded like the 1000 skyshot, with its multi-coloured Diwali flare. I lost all sense of life and limb. The only certainty was about being where I floated: in the nucleus of the sun! There was no fear; just a tiny niggling worry about the Ethnobotany semester exam the following day and what missing that would do to my semester grades. It felt unconstrained, quite unlike my claustrophobic body. 

Sensations of expansive connectedness alternated with an effervescent lift. There were no lungs to fill and yet I breathed in deeply. I saw no form but my arms spread wide to embrace the indefinite space radiating from my centre. I was the centre and the circumference. It was finally fun being me!”

Reema drew a ragged breath and looked over the journal sheet at her newly wed daughter. Muted sounds of domestic appliances kicking in were the only other signs of life in the green home library, outside of which, the world went about its daily business of self-delusion.

“Ma, I have left my body twice since this episode.”

Reema leaned back and crossed an arm over her eyes, the journal nestling on her sternum. Her mind went back to Chehak’s school days. The English TGT Mr D’Costa, during one of the parent teacher meetings had asked to see the parents in private, “Ma’am, your daughter is an evolved soul. I don’t know how spiritual you consider yourself but she often voices concerns about the nature of existence. I think she senses I am open to metaphysical debate and feels at home challenging views of reality in my presence.”

Other frames crowded at Reema’s feeble attempts to fight them off. She took her arm off the eyes and grabbed Chehak by her hand, taking care not to chafe the bridal red bangles. The air between them blistered with unexpressed anguish, “You have just entered a new phase of life Chehak ….the last thing you need right now is to go any deeper into that head of yours. This is the time to be laying the bricks of a happy home so you can start your family soon and fulfil your social role.”

“Mum, don’t worry. I understand that completely and am entirely up to it but you wouldn’t expect me to wish away the Tunganath temple darshan last week now, would you?” Chehak protested calmly. 

Reema released her arm and fell back on the comforting upholstery. There was no denying the event that had taken place in that tightest of sanctums high up in the mountains and barely a week ago. The groom was walking away after the obeisance but the bride had stood rooted to her spot facing the deity. As Reema made to prod her, the priest had held up his hand with a look of warning. Reema remembered well his ring finger frozen in a crook, sandal paste dripping as he waited. Unknown to the rest, Chehak was in the grip of a most personal darshan with Lord Shiva. “It was like a faucet of twinkling blue tridents hailing over me”, Chehak had recounted dazedly to her stunned family outside of the precinct. It brought a smile to Reema’s face, the memory of the priest’s hand finally coming to rest on the devotee’s broad forehead for the anointing. Several eyes had seen the tilak turn strangely fluorescent in the shivery air.

Chehak drew patterns on her henna covered hand, “Mum, it is a continuing conflict but you must relax. I may be detached but I have no desire to run away from my humdrum commitments! I am here, right beside you.” The two hugged each other, bound by their wondrous disquiet at these brushes with the unknown.

“It has puzzled me to see how people fight shy of looking into each other’s eyes long enough, other than the smitten folk of course”, Chehak felt emboldened enough to further vocalize.  “Have you tried holding someone’s gaze? It is shocking how revealing it can be. A strange energy circuit builds up and the barriers all dissolve. It feels like everyone is connected in some form of shared union. And yet, it is discomfiting in that fluid intimacy.”

“There is coffee in the percolator, Malabar blend. Let’s get some!” Reema heaved herself up from the couch, casting about mentally for a sane resolution to this spiritual intrusion in their family space. She cursed herself and her husband silently for discussing the fifth dimension, cellular transformation and TV serials like the Fringe and X-Files at the dining table with their children. What’s more, it had often been said at home, within earshot of the siblings that the fundamental sanity of Indians sprang from a belief in the afterlife and the notion of destiny!

They had been foolish in their parenting. Reema winced at the taste in her mouth.

“Mum, I need to segregate my stuff; can’t take all of it to my married home. Where are my school papers….all the teen letters and the slam books?” Reema pointed Chehak to the garage and laid out the coffee mugs. She debated a visit to the Parapsychologist, “No point discussing this with anyone else, they will think we are crazy!” Lost in an intense reflection, the metal grip slipped off her hand, spilling hot milk violently at a jubilant shout from the backyard. Chehak entered the roomy kitchen, holding aloft a red coloured diary, “Look Mum, read this note from Padmaja…you remember her of course, my closest friend in college. I had forgotten all about this. Here, read please.”

Reema rinsed her stinging fingers under the running water from the

tap, taking time to wipe them dry before reaching for the book. The green ink winked at her from the passage of time, “Chehak dear….as long as I live, I shall remember the day you returned from your study hour on the hill. You were shining like a brilliant lantern. I wanted to ask you where you had been but the dinner gong went off and then events took over. Remind me when we meet again to get to the bottom of that unearthly glow around you. I am surprised they didn’t call the fire brigade. Always in memory of your radiance that oddest of days, Padmaja!”

Her mind now made up on meeting a professional, Reema got down to assisting Chehak depart for her new home. There was nary a household item she did not want her daughter to have. The two were kept busy until post tea when she finally stood waving a white handkerchief at the receding tail lights of Chehak’s car in the distance. She was just about turning in from switching on the porch light and wiping a tear when the front gate clanged open with the rudeness of familiarity. It was the family doctor, on way home from his evening health run, having decided to stop by for a hot cup of tea.

“Don’t tell me! Are you crying?! Here, let me see. Already missing our Choosy, are you now?! Come here, give me a hug,” Reema allowed herself to be held, feeling conflicted and emotional. In that weak moment, she decided to come clean with the dear doctor on Chehak’s other worldly experiences.

The doctor took no time and did not mince words, “It is dehydration, plain and simple. The weather is turning; these modern kids do not drink enough water. Plain hallucinations! A parched brain deactivates the visual cortex which in turn ignites the part that drums up kinaesthetic imagery. Send your helper along when I leave. I will give him a dozen ORS packets. Drown her in the oral rehydration solution. But first your spicy cardamom tea; two spoons sugar please!! 

Limerence (Micro Fiction)

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Photo credit: Shashi Nayagam

The ripple in his white school shirt had the power to turn her knees to water. She only had to shut her eyes and that tensile walk would come back, a rolling sort of stride. He was tall, salt and pepper shock bouncing in the hill breeze on those rare occasions he swiveled in her direction.  

One did not turn and gaze back, you see. It was the 1970s and well brought up teenagers pretended the other gender did not exist. There was awkward shame, a sweaty palpitation, neurons hissing and crackling if you were caught staring at your object of interest. Glances had to be stolen, furtive and flickering. At fifteen, you were fighting a losing battle against hormones. And all they did was, call it puppy love!

She thought of mountain peaks every time he came into her line of vision. His frame intruded into her sleep laden eyes at night as she lay imagining what it would feel like to fly off a cliff, diving into the open skies. Just once had they gotten close enough during a class picnic photograph for the whiff of freshly cut grass to take root in her nostrils.

When the teacher droned in class, lessons simply ebbed against the roar in her ears. Her body faced the blackboard but her spirit would be aligned with the right hand corner where he sat, focussing hard on the instruction. It was no use fighting, her skin blushed all over and thin fire washed the pores.

This state of dopiness would have continued unabated had her half yearly report card not come in to her parents, all covered in red ink. Here she was as a direct fall out therefore, ensconced in the family car, ruminative of the chain of events at home leading to the drive today. She snapped out of her reverie as the driver killed the engine and turned to her, “Your appointment is in five minutes, baby.”

She walked into the building bearing a blue sign: Dr. Asmita Pathak, Clinical Psychologist and Self Esteem Expert.

Pindari Berth (Fiction)

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Her friends called her crazy. 

Who takes leave at the financial year end to go visit a house that was home thirty years ago? But word had come from her school alumni association that Pindari Berth had been served demolition notice. Pachmarhi, the Queen of the Satpuras, was coming into its own as a tourist destination and frenetic construction work was in progress. She winced at the thought of a greasy crane flattening a lifetime of memories into dust. She had to say goodbye.

Pindari Berth! Named after a glacier in the upper Kumaon Himalayas, the white structure seeped into her view as she stared out of the car at the ghats swishing by in a green blur. She inhaled the air deeply, letting the pungent scent of mahua wash over her lungs. The mango trees were laden at Panarpani where her cab stopped for a tea break. She wandered away from the hissing kerosene stove to reach for a raw green fruit, holding it to her nose…..it whispered of her childhood, of bicycle rides, frilly frocks, birthday bashes and family picnics. A quick nick and her teeth stung with the tangy juice. Urgency took hold of her to reach Pindari Berth.

Dusk had fallen when they sailed into the claustrophobic hush typical of hill stations. The car wheeled into peeling green gates, door banging shut. She slowed at the shadow of a young girl, swinging on freshly painted rails. With a shake of her head, she turned to the cottage, “Phantasm!” A lantern was coming into view, swinging eerily and slowly. It was Mr. Devasher, he was hobbling with age! They embraced and she drew back in alarm at his smallness. He felt papery, wispy and light, a far cry from the gregariously avuncular neighbour she remembered. She peered at him, reluctant to let go the sleeve of his brown Burberry . He disengaged himself gently, “Let us go inside, I have brought the keys. I cannot fathom a hotel coming up here.”

The two shuffled through the rooms, the air thick with reminiscences. There was dust and cobwebs, door hinges creaked and groaned. Her host held up the lantern to significant points, “You see here, your Dad had his bar set up in this corner. And there, beyond that is the area your Mum used as her studio.” She felt drawn to her room. It was just a space, she told herself, concrete and bricks and stone and mortar. But it was coming alive to her, right there as they looked on at nothing.

She heard sibling bickering, all huffy and irate. She smelt childish hurt mixed with disappointment. She sensed her own laboured metamorphosis. A hundred emotions waltzed in the air and there was more! In that window glass besides the bed was her Dad’s concerned watchfulness. On the mantle was her Mom’s nurture. Near the steps outside lay her sister’s cautious affection! Her ears rang with laughter, screams, and shouts. Her nose twitched with smells from her growing years; the Ponds cream whiff, the merest zephyr of Fluffy, wafts of fresh baking. She wanted to spread out her arms and hug Pindari Berth close.

“Shall we go home for dinner? Your aunt will be waiting for us. The builders are coming at 9.00 am,” the voice was tentative.  She turned to pick up the lantern Mr Devasher had left on the portico ledge. He shook his head, taking it from her and leading by the hand. 

She nearly missed a step at the sight outside. The lawn trees were alight, a thousand fireflies twinkling in their lush leaves, like twines of X-Mas lights.

She stood gripping the wrinkled hand, tears rolling down her face. “Goodbye Pindari Berth,” she whispered to herself.

All photo credits to Shashi Nayagam
http://sewingwithmoonbeams.blogspot.in/

http://www.moonbeamworld.com/

Paralysis (Micro Fiction)

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Pic by Aqseer

Simranjit Kaur scrunched her dupatta to the nose, widening her eyes to stave off the itchiness.

Paddy fields were deadly incubators. The pesticide combined with stagnant water making toxic fumes that rose over the railway tracks, curling into her second class compartment where she sat alone, numb and unmoving. She willed the train to move. “Sixty, fifty nine, fifty eight” went her ninth round of reverse counting.

Her mind was treading sluggishly, images fogging and swirling. She recalled her mother, distraught at the birth of a daughter and the harm it would do her social status. There she was again, waving at Simran to come help in the kitchen instead of riding the farm tractor. A steady stream of sepia shots permeated Simran’s throbbing head...memories of plucking gourd with her grandmother and trailing her feet in the tube well canal as the motor pumped rhythmically into the narrow canal wending farmwards.

“Was that the ghuggi bird trilling, the local dove?” she would wonder from under the dupatta covering her face, on many a meditative noon spent prone on a jute cot under the Kikar tree. The dull shuffling of buffalo hooves returning from the river invariably kept pace with the darkening sky. Twilight on the Sangha Farm was bleak, made sadder by the moans of the muttering hens, picking their way into the coop.

Just as the family women made busy over the makings of supper, her grandfather would stride in, holding aloft a brown paper bag of hot jalebis. Indulgent in the aftermath of a profitable day, he would rib her on her ambition “How can I set you up in a petrol pump? That now, is your brother’s privilege. He will bring us a plane in dowry at his wedding while I will have to gift you one, at yours.” 

She smiled thinly at the image of the hot clay oven that the family women used to singe their arm hair while sticking in the rotis, no waxing needed at the beauty parlour! Inhaling greedily on the cold air now, her thoughts wandered to the farm dogs that would be trotting in from the fields for their last meal of the day. Strangely enough, there was nothing in her mental rerun from her joint family married home.

The train belched, metal clatter jolting her back. She heaved up slowly, peering cautiously through the grimy window of her coupe. No sign yet! The horn wailed raucously, signalling departure. A movement caught her eye, right there near the entrance gate. Simran ducked swiftly, adrenalized out of her dark stupor. She hurried into the train toilet, her mind racing. Her brother-in-law would have found the body! Jaswinder had been her only support through all of her marital torment. He had finally put his foot down that morning at the family’s eternal denial mode, offering to visit them and counsel his older brother.”

“Too late!” she flinched dolefully, dropping her bloody kirpan through the rickety toilet bowl.

The Legacy (Fiction)

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“I am Napoleon!”

Arupa Basu looked up. There was something about the volume and pitch; a shade of surety she did not associate with ten year olds. Her eyes locked on him briefly before turning back to the admission forms on the worn table, faintly irritated at the hot blast from the window. The Resource Center was on the top floor, a sauna in summers and a cellar in winters! Lunch was an hour away and she was only half way through the first day.

She furrowed her shapely brows, “Tell me YOUR name. Your full name!”

“N-a-p-o-l-e-o-n. Just Napoleon,” the young voice enunciated deliberately. She snapped him off, shaking her head and muttering darkly, “Parents!”

In her thirty years at this highly selective school, Arupa had seen the gamut of student body. She did not expect to be surprised any more. There may have been a time, during her first few years of teaching, that the uniform subjugation of free wills called education bothered her but twenty years of having taught the same syllabi, over and over, had put her in a pleasant stupor, primed for an equally long and predictable cruise ahead.

“Napoleon!” What kind of a name was that?! It grated on her ears. She tried curling her lips around the nomen. “This kid is a loser with that title. What a pretentious moniker! People will dismiss him at hello,” she told herself, turning the ignition key of her Sunlight Orange diesel Micra. A mere fifteen minutes later, she was letting herself into the quiet home, glancing at her husband’s garlanded portrait in the hallway as she slit open the envelope she had pulled out of the mailbox. It was a fund request from her son’s Ivy League school. ”Why would they bother sending these to parents of students on financial aid?” she pondered.

Arupa suffered fatigue nowadays. The government’s child friendly policies had turned the teachers powerless to check truancy. In any misjudgement, both the management and the parents stood firmly by the children. From an authoritative delivery of bookish knowledge, the school day had become about staying safe. It was important to be popular with the students. But with Napoleon, no way! What a name! “I must remember to air it in the staff room,” she turned in, reaching to switch on the air conditioner.

Teachers all over were struggling with an evolving role. In addition to the challenges posed by technology, the modern teacher was doing a lot more than teach. The relentless roulette of correction work, record maintenance, continuous evaluations, secondary duties and lesson preparation paused only for some moments of dark humour, invariably at the expense of students or the establishment. And with a name like Napoleon?!

Her reaction was barely logical, she knew. But the name put her teeth on edge. She declared to her colleagues in the corridor at work, “India ought to have baby naming rules just as Denmark so no name becomes a burden to the bearer.”

Days melded into months and the year avalanched on; the calendar term chock-a-block. It was during an inter school event that Napoleon beeped on her radar again. Their school registration was due that day and with all the noise in the classroom, Arupa was struggling to be heard at the other end. “Tanmay, Rishi, Priyanshu and Napoleon…yes, yes…it is Napoleon. N-a-p-o-l-e-o-n….you heard right. Napoleon as in Napoleon Bonaparte,” she glared at him, standing still by her side. “Why did your father name you Napoleon?” she demanded in the brusque tone of a veteran teacher, swiping her phone off. “I will ask him,” the boy stated gravely.

Before long, the march of the wall calendar swallowed up Napoleon. He moved to the senior wing, dropping entirely out of sight. Leaves continued to turn relentlessly until the day of Arupa’s retirement party, a decade and more later. It was attended by an uninvited guest.

“I am Napoleon’s father,” he was holding out a book to her. She squinted at the transparent cling wrap uncertainly.

The jacket read:

The other Napoleon

How my name shaped my destiny

Winner of the Man Booker Prize

She tried to focus on the echoing voice; the room felt oxygen-less, “I did not want my kid to fit in. I wanted him to stand out. It was my idea to give him a unique google legacy.”

Driving off, for the last time, from the black iron gates, the words rang in Basu’s ears, “Imagination rules the world,” Napoleon Bonaparte.

Note: Pics by author; art by students of AFBBS Jr. Wing