It was blurry… but I remember it clearly. Old hands like my mother’s but she wasn’t my mother, then why do I see her? The place is cold and that is how I feel until I look at her, I feel cold and wet as if I didn’t run away from that day’s hard rain. Everything around was cold and wet that day and so was it in my dream. That day when I was strolling in the park I saw a black sparrow… Francis said he would rather be a black sparrow than fight in the war. I saw the black sparrow, and I left the park.
She is sitting on a wheel chair, she is wearing black. Today, when I picked up the burnt paper, I crushed it without knowing why; my hands can still feel the smooth blackness. But she was surrounded by a harsh blackness, she was in the sun, but everything was crude and dull. I hate myself for crushing the burnt paper, I can feel the crude blackness now.
Francis collected stones all the time, he had strange hobbies. Stones he said are beautiful unless we give them a shape. The old lady, someone’s mother, had an image in her eyes; a dull face as if sculpted, and I agreed with Francis that it looked utterly dead. It scares me every time I see the dream.
I am there to help you old lady. Who is it that you are holding in your eyes? What are you whispering? I can’t hear you? She isn’t looking at me Francis, she is looking somewhere else. Francis I can’t see you. I can’t see the black sparrow. I am tied to the dream. I see her eyes Francis… her eyes… there is fear in her eyes.
The huge tree under a crimson sky. Image – Pixabay.
Papa said, ‘I am not a negative thinker’. I almost clapped in approval, but then I saw him drinking at 9:45 in the morning. I dared to speak and I did, reminding him of the 80% blockage in one of his arteries. Gulp! ‘No negative thinking’, he advised me.
His red eyes and newly ignited soul went into the garden to work. After a few hours, I checked the fresh hairstyle of the garden, it was almost bald. Papa said, ‘Plants should grow this way’.
Which way you must be thinking? Whichever way Papa wants to grow it, you fool. He replied so, I am just quoting it.
My sense of understanding is weak; I am the wrong person to walk left when the right is right.
I am also stupid if I don’t remind Papa, thrice, that he wanted to drink tea, which invariably loses all its piping hotness and turns dead cold by the time he returns from the garden.
Kindly ask everyone in the street not to stare at me. So what if I look like an outgrown, zigzag tree, my Papa will prune me.
I have the whole life’s agenda, second wise, installed in my brain. I am to wake up early every day and run to the office, work and be good in it and come back home to get recharged for the next day.
Every hour I am to be alert; I am allowed even to worry about security. I again dared and asked Papa, ‘Security from what?’ ‘That thing… that… something…’ he said.
I understood zilch about it. Patience please, I am a slow learner.
Every minute of the hour, I am to relish the complexities of the present. It is to be like the dogs, they are so cute and hold only one feeling at a moment – hunger, aggression, love or anxiety.
I reluctantly told Papa about my opinion. He laughed and then shooed me away like a dog is shooed away.
For your benefit, I am sharing that it is not a wise thing to do. Homo sapiens sapiens can do better. I have read so in a book. Of course, I didn’t say a word about it to Papa. Do you think I am stupid? Ha!
Every second of every minute, I am to remain lost in whatever shit crazy thing I am doing. This will result in an unhealthy body, but a good position and a reasonable flat after a few years travail.
I am a middle-class being, this means to me what nirvana means to that mad ascetic I once met.
Do you know what the ascetic told me? He asked me to sit under a huge tree, pointing in the jungle’s (point decimal of what is left) direction. That’s it!
What am I supposed to do there alone, I shouted behind him and he shouted back, ‘Think’.
Confused, I asked Papa about it one day – a day that showcased crimson clouds from the window. He didn’t say a word.
I looked at the crimson clouds once again. Then I stared at Papa. I didn’t know there were four clocks in his room, one on each wall, until that day. I was sweating when Papa suddenly opened his eyes and asked me to get some water for him. He coughed badly.
He is coughing badly right now. From that day the crimson clouds haven’t left the window. I mostly stay near Papa and only occasionally go to sit under that huge tree.
“Civilization begins with distillation said William Faulkner….”
The way he wrote it on the blackboard, I first felt as if I am in a management class and I should note it down, word to word… later, I did note it down but the feeling wasn’t the same. The white chalk on the blackboard and the handwriting suddenly changed and I felt I had heard a secret that William Faulkner said long back. It happens a lot and though it’s strange, I enjoy these secrets… no I don’t understand the secrets, all of them, immediately, no, I just absorb them quietly.
I generally don’t remember all of them, especially on the occasions when there is a need to quote them but nonetheless a beautiful, warm and sweet feeling stays, the secret stays, forever.
The ink on my paper also talks to me but I rarely pay attention. And when I do, the ink has nothing to say. When it has something to say and when I also listen to it, a tear falls and erases it. Yes, tears can erase and paint beautifully.
I don’t know why, but I use the word beautiful a lot. There are so many other words like charming, pretty, gorgeous, lovely, graceful, even heavenly… how does it matter anyway, every word is beautiful. I scribbled some lines on the last page, it goes – ‘how beautiful the scene was but when I tried to capture it…it died.’ On that page then, I couldn’t write anything, not a word, I just doodled.
The flowers, the creepers, the sky, the moon and the sun close to each other along with the stars circling them, a small boat and a butterfly all danced their way towards what I wrote and then stopped. I darkened the moon, till it looked very deep and I have plans to colour the butterfly.
‘What page is it?’, ‘I don’t know!’, ‘Forget the topic, tell the page number.’ [Source – Pixabay]
*
What is he saying? What are we talking about? Have I missed something important? I flip the pages and peep at someone else’s book. To confirm! Ha! It is the same page, nothing has changed, he has been talking and talking; I felt for a moment that ages have passed, time rushed some centuries back and forth for me, swinging in different worlds I almost always forget to live in the present.
Everything is so cold for some never ending seconds, then why will I not want the warmth of the other worlds? The last page…and I float again.
Oops! The duster fell from his hand and we all smiled. I shared my smile with a guy sitting next to me. How stupid is that? Laughing without any reason…though I generally do that a lot.
I have a story in mind… it’s an image that has stayed with me for a time I can’t recall.
An old man, he is tall but thin, his wrinkled hands and tattered clothes tell me something different from what his wrinkled face expresses – a smile.
He is always smiling or is it because the wrinkles have taken such a shape… or is it just my imagination. We are on the same bus and I never think about the bus fare because I just don’t, but the old man with a wrinkled smile fixed on his face seems to be thinking about it a lot. For two-three minutes, he requests the conductor to allow him to travel without the bus fare and then from his invisible pocket of his torn coat, he takes out some coins and gives it to the conductor.
I can’t hear the exclamations of the conductor, I am too engrossed to see the old man with a wrinkled smile fixed on his face.
‘What are you reading?’, ‘Page 144’, ‘Oh, you’re still the same.’ [Source – Pixabay]
*
The pages are turning, millions have written in it, the ink is dry and still alive… a lot has been said and there is still a lot to say… the blank page looks exciting and it says the most and aloud. I am listening. Are you listening?
‘Are you listening?’ Yes, I nod! He has written something else on the board, but I didn’t see him writing again.
“All truths wait in all things – Walt Whitman.”
Wait… for there is some truth waiting to get revealed in everything.
I wrote this on the blank page, there I also drew a time machine, then the whole universe danced its way towards what I wrote and then stopped. I plan to colour it with light.
Granny’s smile has lots of secrets and lots of memories in it. She is always smiling, beaming; we can also count her wrinkles rising from her cheeks to her closed eyes; eyes shining with childlike brightness, watery eyes speaking the language of love.
It is early morning and everyone in the house is running hither and thither. Mummy is cooking food and packing the tiffin-boxes. The children are late once again and Daddy is going to give them a lift to the school. But Daddy himself cannot find his tie and the green file and somehow Mummy is managing everything right from the kitchen.
In this daily drama we see Granny sitting in the balcony, she is combing her grand-daughter’s plaits; Granny talks about her late grandmother who use to tie her plaits, to which her little granddaughter giggles up and says, ‘Granny you also had a Granny?’
Mummy shouts from the kitchen as the clock declares it is 8. Everyone is late!
In this relay race, this cute family is asked to stop and pose for a photograph. Daddy says no but the children agree and Mummy is caught between them; while everyone else hesitates only to agree in the end, the granddaughter brings Granny inside and both of them settle comfortably on the sofa for the photograph.
Say Cheese! Click!
Daddy is awkwardly smiling with a bad tie-shirt combination making him look funny; Mummy is smiling nicely and is hiding her apron behind her; the children are looking full of life and sleepy at the same time; the granddaughter is hugging her Granny and saying cheese loudly; Granny is smiling peacefully.
Daddy, Mummy and the children wish Granny a good-bye, she waves back at them from the balcony. They leave in their car and get mixed with the ‘bhroom-honk-honk-bhroom’ crowd on the road.
When Granny is asked about the brightness in her eyes and the secret behind her smile, she laughs musically and says, ‘thank you very much’.
Enjoying the scene from her gallery she seems to be waiting for somebody. She walks slowly to the kitchen like there is no need to hurry, this is how blessed she is, maybe this the reason behind her smile.
When we are about to leave the house, she calls us and asks us to meet her friend. Back in the gallery, Granny is feeding a stale roti to a crow with extreme joy in her eyes.
She indicates us to take her photograph with the crow. She is already saying cheese. Click!
Me: Of course you should, how many times will you think about it?
Or…maybe you should reveal the truth to Neena first.
Me: But if Neena knows the truth then things will not be the same…what if she calls Vikram?
Me: She is not talking to Vikram, she is not ready to hear a word about him, then why will she call him?
Me: But what if she calls just to shout at him?
Me: First, she will not call him and even if she does, no one will receive the phone because by then you would have killed Vikram, she’ll get more furious and that will be good for us.
Me: Yeah! Right! But then….
Me: But what? Don’t think so much…just go ahead with this plan and we’ll see how things will turn out.
Me: Because Vikram and Neena are not talking and they are lovers and I’ll kill Vikram…doesn’t it sound obvious.
Me: Then kill Neena…or both of them…it is so irritating…it has been like hours and you haven’t written a word on the paper…you are just thinking…bugger off!
Me: Hah! You can’t talk to me like this.
Me: Shut up! I can!
Me: Don’t be so grumpy? You know what, Vikram and Neena are lovers they should not be separated but I think Sanjay….
Me: Great…change it…from thriller in the beginning to a love story in the middle and total nonsense by the end.
Me: What!! Oh! Please! (Stretches back on the chair and sees something on the wooden ceiling) Hey! I have wondered so many times about this shape on the ceiling…you know it looks like a bird…I mean the shape is like that of a bird…like a woodpecker in fact…it so fascinating…I mean why is it here…I wonder if a family of woodpecker lived on this tree which was cut down and…hey I can write something about it…I mean it will be something different and I’ll start right from the shape in the ceiling…there will be a touch of the metaphysical in my story and….
Me: Oh really? But do you know how you’ll end it? Let me tell you…It will end with you taking a nap and later losing all your interest in the metaphysical or the bird or the thriller.
Me: Hah! But you are right here…I will take a power nap…come on…my creative mind needs a break…it deserves some rest. Ha ha ha ha!
Endless footprints following footprints/
When suddenly a few of them rise/
To bloom like a flower.
Greetings!
A storyteller, following the ancient tradition of cave chroniclers, standing in vrikshasana (the tree pose) on a hill top (it is sunny, but windy), breathing in and out stories (relishing it all, but at times overwhelmed), declares animatedly that she will continue to – tell stories, share rare story gems, and connect with the pacy universe while also keeping the website ad-free.
Big thanks to my readers. Stay tuned!
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Ya-hoy!
Chiming Stories (formerly Home Chimes)
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