Write...Edit...Publish...Halloween Special Flash Fiction Challenge 2024

 

Hello, hello! I am so glad to be back at the Write…Edit…Publish… Halloween Special Flash Fiction Challenge 2024. Life has thrown up its own, rather unpleasant, challenges at me in the past several months. There have been two shocking, untimely deaths in my extended family and among my school alumna back to back. We've lost long time members of WEP too - both Sally and Nancy will be missed. And here in my hometown, we're still dealing with the fallout of the terrible rape/murder of a young doctor. It's been a stressful time. This  hereunder is a diversion and an  escape route. 

October is an insanely busy time as the main festival season starts from the 2^nd in India and ends with Diwali on the 31^st/1^st Nov. Whatever it is you are celebrating – Durgapuja, Navaratri or Halloween – happy festivals!  

Btw, the worship of Durga, the underpinning mythology of this entire festival is the battle of righteousness versus evil - Durga, the warrior goddess descending to earth to vanquish a demon symbolising sinfulness.  

It's beyond ironic the exponential levels of casual misogyny and crimes against women forming the backdrop of a festival worshipping feminine cosmic energy. 

Anyway, here is my entry for this Challenge  - 

The Other Side

There are always two sides. The story tellers tell and retell a single version a million times till all others seem impossible.  Endless repetition makes even a lie sound like truth. And the real truth slowly dies out, unspoken, unwritten, unperformed, its fire reduced to ashes and dispersed to the winds till not a trace remains.

 

***

 

We met through the theatre. A brooding, handsome man, widowed with motherless twins. An accomplished performer, he played the role of Othello with a passionate and spellbinding artistry. Night after night, he killed me on stage. And then he killed me offstage too. He made love to me with a starved tenderness that was simultaneously terrifying and irresistible.

 

At the wedding, I smiled at the children. They did not smile back. I was too euphoric to mind. I noticed their eyes though. Positively ancient eyes in young faces, too still, too opaque, way too knowing. Dark coloured like deep waters, beneath which unfathomable secrets lay.  They could stop any friendly overture dead in its track at hundred paces. It made me vaguely uneasy, but it got swamped by the music and the mood as I stepped onto the dance floor.

Write...Edit...Publish... December 2023 : Over to You

Hello writers, 

I can't believe the year is over, can you?! Personally it has been tumultuous, mixed is an understatement. As I discovered during the first Covid year, time flies whether one's having a good time or bad. I am back at Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is "Over to You." It's an open prompt where the writer chooses her/his favourite film/title for inspiration. I have so many favourites and they are all in different languages so it's a fairly impossible task to pick one. Therefore I decided to use the phrase itself as a prompt - btw, there is a movie called Over to You, which I haven't watched, not very helpful. :) 

So here's the final instalment of Chiaroscuro, which began in Dec 2022 with the Roberta Flack song 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.' I didn't think the story would get so lo-o-n-g,  I'm glad I can bring it to its conclusion finally, phew! 

What's happened so far:

The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead. 

The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.

He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship in the past. 

He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown and shares the findings...which naturally shocks the granddaughter. The MC assures her that the secret is safe with him and he will support her through this bombshell discovery. They say goodbye but he feels she will not want to see him again. 

The MC goes to Sam's ancestral house situated a little way away from the city and finds the furniture that's used as props in the Janhobi's portrait - the radio, the table etc. He also chances upon an old tree engraving that clearly indicates Sam and Janhobi spent time in the house. Mukta does not get in touch as he had feared.

The old radio goes berserk in the middle of the night and Shovan doesn't get much sleep due to a stream of spooky electrical events. In the morning he finds further evidence of Sam and Janhobi's presence in the room from many years ago. His phone beeps meanwhile - it's from Mukta. 

Now please read on: 

Write... Edit... Publish... October 2023 : The Phantom of the Opera

 

Hello!

It's October and it's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is the iconic musical The Phantom of the Opera. It is also splat bang in the middle of the main festival season in India, I have family visiting from abroad as well as from other Indian cities, so...I'll be reading with a lag, please bear with me. 

This post continues the story of Shovan and Mukta, Sam and Janhobi that began last December. What's happened so far:

The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead. 

The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.

He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship in the past. 

He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown and shares the findings...which naturally shocks the granddaughter. The MC assures her that the secret is safe with him and he will support her through this bombshell discovery. They say goodbye but he feels she will not want to see him again. 

The MC goes to Sam's ancestral house situated a little way away from the city and finds the furniture that's used as props in the Janhobi's portrait - the radio, the table etc. He also chances upon an old tree engraving that clearly indicates Sam and Janhobi spent time in the house. Mukta does not get in touch as he had feared.

 

Read on to find out what happens next...

Chiaroscuro VI :

It was pitch dark at the window.

 

My transition from dream to reality was so gradual, so seamless that at first I did not realise I was awake. The noise of the static crackled in my ear just as it had minutes ago in what I assumed was a dream, but now I was not so sure, was it?

 

Inside the room, the eye of the old radio flashed on and off, bathing the ceiling above in an eerie apple green. My cell phone matched it at every beat, the screen lighting up and going dark every odd second, emitting its own peculiar bluish glow. I bent and switched on the pedestal lamp someone had placed next to the bed. The light came on for a few seconds and then it too joined the strange, ongoing sound and light show. In this weird pulsing light, I could see the ceiling fan was turning one way for some seconds, coming to a stop and turning the opposite way for an equal time. I had never seen anything like it - I came bolt upright, the last traces of sleep wiped clean from my eyes.  This was no dream.

 

***

 

I had got back from the discovery of the tree engraving last evening and found that I had been given the room with the radio to sleep. The low divan had been made up with a formidable old three inch thick cotton mattress, spotless sheets, a pair of ruffled pillows and a traditional woven coverlet. I was quite pleased – as I wanted to have a nose around and see if any further evidence of Sam and Janhobi could be unearthed. Though why I bothered I don’t know. Mukta had not been in touch, she had probably gone back after her holiday in the old hometown.

 

I looked at the window again, it was dark still. The phone as it lit up showed the time, still some way to go till sunrise.  I swiveled around and put my feet on the floor, thrust my feet into my slippers. The wide verandah connecting the rooms on the floor was dark and quiet. No other room was pulsing and buzzing like mine. I paced up and down to make quite sure, there was not a single crackle of static, not a pinpoint of light anywhere.

 

There was no moon, no shadows, not even the friendly wink of a single star. The trees loomed against an amorphous sky on the far side of the courtyard – darker shapes in the darkness grading from a chiffony charcoal grey to indigo to pitch black. An owl hooted somewhere. Moth wings fluttered against my face for a second and ricocheted away, I felt the velvety movement on my skin but could not fathom their direction. Only my shut door was thinly outlined in a pulsing green glow – fainter, brighter, fainter, brighter, fainter, brighter – as if the beating of my own heart had been transformed from sound to light and projected into that room behind that closed door.

 

I groped for the switch of the verandah lights and yanked the heavy old Bakelite job on. Nothing happened, not one of the lights came on. I felt my way down one flight of stairs to the landing, where the large, multipaned window opened out on the street and peered outside, the streetlights were not on either. No joy there. I am not easily spooked, I do not give much credence to other worldly happenings – good for a fireside tale on a winter evening of course, but not much else. There must be some sort of electrical snafu, only I hadn’t come across radios switching on and off by themselves, cell phones and fans echoing them without missing a beat. Confined to one room too while the rest of the house was minus power. At least the fan inside would produce some sort of air circulation. It was muggy and hot out on the verandah and apart from a long wooden bench there was nowhere to park. I pushed the glowing doors open again.

 

The static from the radio had resolved into some sort of music – like a number being played at the wrong speed, slower than it should be, the words weirdly garbled, the bass too deep and way off the mark, interspersed with lucid intervals. In dreams he came…that voice which ca… do I dream again?  The fan…is there in sigh… your mind… The music went on, half unintelligible, half clear, the song just hovering on the edge of recognition.

 

The table on which the radio sat had two small drawers, one of them was glowing and pulsing the same way the door had, as if some light emitting source was trapped inside. I went to it and yanked it open. A bunch of pulsing pinpricks of light fluttered out and weaved across the room, finally settling on the ceiling. It took me a few seconds to figure out they were fireflies, not exactly some alien spirit beings from some other world. The sound suddenly cleared up fully and the music played out at the right pitch, the lyrics crystal clear and recognisable – the Phantom of the Opera is there inside your mind… The song drew to its end and the music faded out. A couple of crackles of static and then the green power indicator went dark, the radio switched off and fell silent. I tried the light switch – it worked this time, the lamp flooded the room with dazzling light. The fan was whirring normally again. Whatever weirdness or electrical fault it was, it seemed it had righted itself. I switched the light off, heaved a sigh of relief and went back to bed. The fireflies were still on the ceiling. I fell asleep watching them glowing on and off.

***

I woke past eight, the sun was up and hot. Last night felt unreal. Had I dreamt one of those hyper real dreams?

 

Only thing was the drawer below the radio was still open. I got out of bed and walked to it. A card lay on top of a pile of papers, the whole dusty and yellowed with age. I picked it up – it was one of those fancy invites, gilt borders and lettering…The President of the Cine Club cordially invites Jahnabi Roy to a special screening of the Phantom of the Opera...

My cell phone suddenly beeped, startling me. It was Mukta.

WC : 1077

FCA

Tagline : An old radio goes berserk in the middle of the night...

Read the other entries here:

 

Write ... Edit ... Publish ... August 2023: Chocolat

Hello writers!

It's August and it's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is the delightful film Chocolat based on the book by Joanne Harris. Mine is a scheduled post this time as I am relocating from Fiji back to Calcutta, so forgive me if I am a bit late with my reading and commenting.

This post continues the story of Shovan and Mukta, Sam and Janhobi that began last December. It's turning out to be a kind of double scoop sundae romance story in a story... 

What's happened so far:

The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead. 

The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.

He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship in the past. 

He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown and shares the findings...which naturally shocks the granddaughter. The MC assures her that the secret is safe with him and he will support her through this bombshell discovery. They say goodbye but he feels she will not want to see him again. 

Read on to find out what happens next...

Chiaroscuro V : Engraved

The surroundings deepened in colour as one travelled out, even as the bridge was crossed. The skies were incredibly bluer, the earth verdant with a million shades of green and  the air was a clear invitation to breathe deep. I had been so firmly embedded in urban spaces that I had forgotten how beautiful everything got once the city was left behind.

 

Sometime in the 17^th century, a merchant forefather of my mother’s had prospered on the back of the European jute trade. He acquired a tract of land and built a modest home close to a bend in the river. His descendants were to live there and carry on the family business happily ever after. A few centuries down the line however, plastics happened, jute declined, first the World Wars and then Independence and Partition changed the old order.

 

The descendants had quietly eroded away from the river bend to the city. The land had had to be portioned and sold off, but the house remained. By the time my mother got married, the old homestead only drew occasional visits by the family. I had only ever been there as a child, just a hazy memory.

 

Two weeks had passed since Mukta and I had met. It had ended as awkwardly as I had feared. I desperately wanted to ring her but did not know if it would be appropriate. This entire molehill-exploded-to-mountain was quite unnecessarily stressful. Getting out of the city was an escape too.  

 

*** 

 

It was smaller than my memory of it. Entering through the gate into  the traditional courtyard everything felt cramped, the columns not as lofty, the dust adding its own dingy colour to the doors, the round knockers pitted with rust. The front room with its low divan was bare of any mattress or pillows, the old teakwood armchairs were shrouded in yellowed dustcovers, brittle with age. Footsteps echoed eerily on the floors, voices seemed to ricochet round the walls. Mother got busy with her helper in making things habitable. I drifted from room to room, the bustle of people gradually receding as I climbed to the upper floor.

 

A long verandah ran the entire length of the house connecting the rooms. I walked along it into the last one. It was dark inside but I rattled a window open. Light poured in and picked out an arrangement of furniture that felt vaguely familiar – a Victorian table with an empty vase, an art deco radio, a chair with curved claw-and-ball legs. I dusted it off and sat down. Where had I seen these before? It eluded me for a minute. Of course – in the photo! In Mukta’s profile picture, her grandmother’s B/W photo. I sat frozen to the chair.

 

Twilight came and laid a gentle hand over the village in a crescendo of birdsong and a fluorescent arc of lilac light. The peak hour traffic rush was substituted by the field workers winding their way home from the paddies. The post office staff on tinkling bicycles, a distant local train’s chugging making the air throb vaguely without any perceptible sound. Peace made almost tangible. But on the outside only.

 

My thoughts rolled around my brain like pebbles in a shoe, sharp and uncomfortable in whatever positions I jockeyed them to. I jackknifed up from the chair –  the walls closing in suddenly unbearable – and ran down the stairs.

 

Someone called out behind me. I threw an answer over my shoulder.

“Take a torch.” My mother pressed one into my hands. “It’s dark.”

 

Indeed the lights were quite dim, quite a few were missing bulbs. The sky was bright with stars though. The house abutted the river at the back, just a couple of hundred yards from the waterfront promenade. If it could be called that with its half tumbled brick parapet, missing paving stones and ever present litter. The birds had fallen silent giving way to a chorus of crickets. Peace lapped alongside the river, the water ran with a low, continuous chuckling. The moon rose and prodded the waves with a shining finger of light. A breeze started up from somewhere. It was enough.

 

The path back was narrow and dark, surrounded by thickets of bamboo. I switched the torch on. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because the gates were nowhere to be seen. It should not have taken this long. Had I really wandered this far? Lights broke though the gaps in the foliage, there was the buzz of voices somewhere, so I kept on mechanically, mulling over this new discovery of the room and its contents.

 

The groves thinned out after a while revealing the house just ahead. There was a huge neem tree against the boundary wall, planted more than a century ago. Its branches soared up many feet above the house, dribbling its leaves over the roof, casting deep shadows on the grounds. My feet stopped of their own accord. I shone the torchlight over it.

 

The beam played up and down over the great trunk of the neem and caught a gleaming speck, it flashed gold as the light fell on it. I drew nearer – it was a chocolate wrapper, plastered flat against the bark by the breeze. I slapped my hand over it. My fingers sank in unexpectedly. Underneath the fluttering wrapper was a small hollow – a piece of bark had been stripped off.

 

As I lifted the foil away, the torch revealed the mark scratched on the trunk, one of those eternal acts of love, or vandalism, depends on your opinion – names carved on trees. This one looked decades old, the edges had healed completely, the exposed wood buffed and smoothened with age. The letters had been slashed deeply, vehemently, into the grain.  They  were now blackened with accumulated grime, but no less emphatic than when they were first made – Janhobi + Samudra, shaped into an elongated but unmistakable heart.

WC - 987

FCA

Read the other entries here :

We have heaps of great stuff going on at WEP - there's the How To Series on various aspects of the writing life. The Anthology Page is now live so that's something we are all super excited about - go check that out for details and get writing! 

And there are always the Challenges, the next prompt is in October and it's based on The Phantom of the Opera - how nifty is that for the Halloween month?!

 

WEP was also at IWSG earlier this month figuring out the fascinating links between chocolate, writers and books. That's worth a shufti too if you're into chocolate, or writing, or both! 

We at WEP are passionate about writing and storytelling in its various forms. If you like the work we do, please do share the posts on your social media platforms and help us to spread the word(s)!  Thank you for your support!

Numbers mean nothing

 

Mariner's Reach, Denarau, Fiji.

How many nights must you spend under a roof,

before you can call it a home?

Some say just thirty, others a thousand,

but I say to you – listen closely, my friend,

there’s no magic number, no theorem that proves

the time span that seals your claim.

A few aches are certain every time you move.

Thirty or thousand it’s all the same.

 

But there’s that horizon, oceans that heave,

a pink sky so breathtaking,

and a bird call can fling your life open.

Home has its place, but the wider world beckons,

your feet forget themselves and pack to leave,

done with walls and the same dawns breaking.

One step. And two. Dust eddies round your feet

and somewhere a welcome is waiting.

 

There’s that long horizon, pathways that twist

in and out of unknown forests.

The light is a tunnel that lures like a trap,

the ribs of leaves are rivers on a map,

the breeze writes gently on your back and lists

the things that can unravel rest.

And somewhere a welcome is waiting amidst

strangers’ smiles to the east or west.

 

Here it is cosy, the smoke from the stove

spiced with cinnamon and anise.

Secret garnets in the depths of tamarind,

the slow unfolding music of the winds,

butterfly wings in someone’s mango grove

in some weird definition of bliss.

The paddies are furred and rich, seen from above –

the world has its place. So has this.

 

So that’s it – you’ll sway, swing back, twang away,

the horizon just out of range.

The airplanes will keep flying overhead

to different cities with others instead.

The ships will weigh anchor and go on their way –

you’ll always be chasing change.

And you’ll wonder how many nights and days

make home and what makes a roof strange.

 

All your days you’ll fritter away in research

and find that numbers mean nothing.

Only the movement of road, car and coach,

the aerial view of a strange town’s approach,

the spiral of descent, the craft’s thrilling lurch,

the horizons in blues and pinks.

Only being out and away by and large

gives roofs their final meaning.

Welcome to M-i-V! - now based out of Kolkata! Hopefully, for good. I thought I'll post a bit early since I've been away for so long...and say things in...um...slightly more expansive wordcounts. It's also been the longest time since I wrote anything more than a 14 liner. In fact the last long-ish poem I wrote was in 2017 - Remembering Zeinabu. 

The pandemic years have made me shrink in many ways, this is one of them. However, it's time to put that behind me and open up a bit - it's the fourth year of the Big P and my store of small p patience was never really robust. Neither is my word (limit) control. Expect longer stanzas, line counts, ramblings...thank you for reading and your time!

There's lots happening this month, both on the personal front and online. The offspring has come home for a few days and the aforesaid home looks like a disaster zone, but who cares? It's good to have the family under one roof, even if it is only for a fortnight. I hope to be back to regular posts here, also get back to my normal reading as and when I am able to straighten the house out. A few aches are certain every time you move...I'm finding many layers of meaning in that line. The bookshelves are full, even though in complete disarray, a hodgepodge of Bengali, English and genres - Emily D is next to Asimov and just looking at that is freaking me out... :) There's no way anyone can ever locate a specific book in this current mess. That's a job that needs tackling pronto but will have to wait till son flies back to uni. 

Online, there's WEP, the Chocolat Challenge, I can't say enough about that deliciousness however many wordcounts you allow me... so excited! And looking forward to what people write for this one!

I hope the month has started well for you and may it continue throughout. Have an awesome August! See you soon.

Write... Edit... Publish... June 2023 : Close Encounters of the Third Kind

 

It's June and it's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is based on the iconic sci-fi movie by Steven Spielberg - Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There is much going on at WEP apart from the Challenges, we have a series of 'how-to' articles relating to writing, publishing and flash fiction, we are actively working on the modalities of the antho, so do go check out the site and keep your eyes peeled and ears cocked.

Re the Challenges, let me repeat here what I've said on the WEP site also - the prompt being drawn from a movie poster doesn't mean the writing has to reflect the movie in any detail - not the plot, not the genre, nil, zilch, nada. Use any element that you want from it, whatever inspires you, whatever small or big part helps your interpretation come together. You don't have to watch the movie and/or know a single thing about it. 

That said, I'm myself using the prompt only tangentially to continue the story that I started last December. With a minor change of voice, as I find the mixed first and second POV I had started with  has got too restrictive, I had no inkling the story would grow to this length. This is the 4th part, done in a simple first person POV. Read the other parts here (Chiaroscuro I),  here (Chiaroscuro II : The Evidence in Black & White) and here (Chiaroscuro III : Colour it Beautiful)). 

~~~*~~~*~~~

For those who don’t have the time to read previous entries, here’s a brief synopsis -

The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead. 

The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.

He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship. He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown... Read on to find what happens next.

~~~*~~~*~~~

Incidentally, this here is my 1000th post here on M-i-V (I know! Who'd have thought, right?) For some, not-so-strange reason, it pleases me exceedingly that it's a WEP entry! 

Thank you for being this massively enjoyable, grounding, supportive, cherished and meaningful part of my online world!

Chiaroscuro IV : River Flame

 

“Are you done?” Mukta smiled. “I’m supposed to be the one with the questions, aren’t I? What did you find?”

 

There was no good way to tell a granddaughter that her obviously idolised grandma had been in a lifelong, illicit relationship and had at least one child, if not all her children, from it.  In fact, there was my family too – Sam Gain’s nieces and the nephews-in-law. It had occurred to me that if Kaustubh was truly Sam’s son – and so far the signals were he was highly likely to be, then the studio belonged to him rather than my mother and aunts.   

 

I looked around the café. It was one of those spanking new ones, all muted geometric wallpapers, spiky chandeliers and futuristic décor combined with retro sci-fi film posters. On my right was one from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, across the room on the far wall were posters from Fantastic Voyage, Things to Come, Forbidden Planet – all ominously apt. It was bristling with afternoon crowds – too much noise, too many people, it did not feel the least like the ideal ambience for the breaking of bombshell news.

 

“Do you really want to know?” I stalled. “It might make sense to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“That’s crazy, no way! Of course I want to know!”

“It’s complicated. Not a feel-good story, Mukta.” I called for the bill. “We’ll have to find a quieter place. I’m not saying anything here, c’mon.”

~~*~~*~~*~~

 

We found ourselves one of those ancient eateries in a bye lane off Esplanade. The ones which had those curtained off cubicles for so called ‘family’ seating, used more as hideaways by couples reluctant to go public. It was emptier – unmarried couples had far less reasons to hide from public view now. On second thought, maybe not, what with the love-jihad gangs – perma-outraged right-wingers pouncing on any couple unfortunate enough to be mixed faith. Intercaste had got substituted by interfaith nowadays, that was all.

 

“What was her  name?” I asked as I handed over the letter.

“Janhobi. Janhobi Jyoti.”

She read the letter and sat silent for some time. “There’s no signature. How can one be sure?”

I was prepared. “There was a bunch of photos.” I whipped out my phone – opened the cropped versions and handed it to Mukta. “In the same envelope.”

“Still. It’s not ironclad.”

“Pretty much. Your Uncle and Aunt being named Kaustubh and Amrita, exactly as she said…”

“Where are the originals?”

“They are works of art. I thought I’d ask before I brought them over. They’re nudes. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see them.”

She looked at the cellphone for the longest minute, silent. “Talk about digging up a snake thinking it’s an earthworm! She was a strong woman though.” The smile had vanished from her voice. “I can’t quite wrap my head around the lie that’s involved, that’s so out of character. So unlike her. Scandalous, in those times.”

“It’s scandalous now too. I don’t think our society’s broad minded enough to accept pre-marital relationships, or children resulting from them. Folks would still go up in smoke. Your relatives won’t be best pleased for sure. The man you know as your father or grandfather all your life is suddenly not, how can that not be earth shattering? I’m so sorry, Mukta.”

“This is just beyond belief. Does that mean my father is also not my grandfather’s...?”

“Listen, we could just forget this ever happened.”

“I don’t think I could. I can’t unread that letter, unsee the photos. I wouldn’t forget in a hundred years. Would you?”

“Possibly not. What is bothering me is also that your family likely has a greater claim on my Great-Uncle Sam’s property – his studio and the buildings and whatever else was there. Not exactly a fortune but still…a whole heap of legalities would be involved if there’s a claim.”

“Good heavens! That also means we, me and you, share ancestors. We are some sort of cousins or half cousins or something.”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “That’s really the least of our problems, I’d think.”

“Will you come for a stroll with me? I don’t think I can go back right now.”

“Sure. Do us both good.”

 ~~*~~*~~*~~

The afternoon had lengthened into evening. We walked out in silence through the narrow lanes, crossed Esplanade and finally onto Red Road. The streetlamps came on and dappled the pavement with leaf shadows the size of my palms. I looked up at the great trees lining the boulevard, filled now with returning birds, always a poignant metaphor whether homing, migratory, nesting or flying off.

 

The silence felt like a metaphor too. This wasn’t going anywhere. Should I have said nothing, pretended the search had just fizzled out? Such a huge lie, though. Is a pleasant lie ever acceptable over an uncomfortable truth? …Priyam cha nanrutam bruyat esha dharmah sanatanah…Do not speak a falsehood even if it is pleasant, that’s the path of eternal righteousness.

The traffic thickened all around us as the rush hour gripped the city in its stranglehold. She broke the silence at Victoria.

“I think I can manage now. Thank you, Shovan. For being honest with me. For everything.”

“I’m sorry. This was drastic.”

“It’s not your fault. And you did give me the choice not to know. Definitely drastic!”

“Think about what you want to do. And know for sure this won’t go any further. I’m only a phone call away. In this country and over there as well.”

 

She nodded, waved crisply, then turned and walked off, the set of her shoulders incredibly vulnerable and lonely among the knots of waiting commuters. I would not blame her if she got home and ghosted me forever.

 

WC – 954

FCA

Tagline : How not to meet an online friend face to face.

Read the other entries below.  

Write... Edit... Publish... April 2023 : Life is Beautiful

 

If you're here looking for my A-Z post, that's P for Palm...click here.

It’s April and there’s the A-Z and the WEP, embarrassment of riches! - and I have family visiting from India here in my home-from-home in magnificent Fiji, so life is indeed beautiful – also busy right now. I’m a sliver over the word count. I truly tried to wrestle it down but it’s the best I can do under the circs.

 

For this challenge our prompt is based on the Roberto Benigni award-winner Life is Beautiful. I am continuing the story that I started last December, this is the 3^rd part, read the other two parts here (Chiaroscuro I) and here (Chiaroscuro II : The Evidence in Black & White). For those who don’t have the time to read previous entries, here’s a brief synopsis -

Chiaroscuro I – The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead.

 

Chiaroscuro II : The Evidence in Black & White  – The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.

Optional Reading

For those unfamiliar with Indian culture and mythology, a few words about the context of the next installment:

1) India has a hierarchical caste system, loosely based on professions, from thousands of years ago. While it was done away with in the Indian constitution, intermarriage between the castes, between a so called higher caste and a lower one, was taboo and stigmatised during the mid-20th century. 

2) Samudra, Arnab and Sagar are Indian names for males, originally from Sanskrit. They all mean sea or ocean. 

3) 'Samudra-Manthan'  means 'the churning of the ocean' and is an important mythological tale where the primal ocean was churned by gods and demons and yielded both treasures and toxins. 'Amrit' was the elixir of immortality, 'Kaustubh' was a gem,   both were among the treasures dredged up in the churning. 

Chiaroscuro III : Colour it Beautiful

I put down the photographs and scissored my hands into the envelope - folded paper, smaller than the  enlarged prints, a couple of sheets. Expensive, thick, suede finish. The kind that was used to write letters on decades ago. I opened them and smoothed them out.

 

“Dearest,

I am being locked up. I cannot come to you. Ruby has agreed to deliver this. I am not allowed too many visitors, but I guess refusing them all also looks suspicious so they are suffering one or two of the neighbourhood girls to call on me. It is a challenge to slip her the letters, but this is the only lifeline I have left.

 

I have loved you for so long that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t. I really can’t remember a time when your voice in the front room didn’t make my heart race. The sight of you and my brothers sitting at your games of carrom brightened up my evenings. None of you took any notice of me – go  away and find something else to do, what’s an unruly girl doing here among us, don’t be a pest, get us some tea…

 

You came and went during the festivals, for the rehearsals of the amateur theatre group, for the dumb charades, for the evening addas during the long summer breaks. I hovered everywhere without anyone catching on.

 

Things changed the day I found you and my brother smoking in the small room off the terrace. You both had graduated, you’d already joined Bourne & Shepherd’s. I had grown up too, I no longer looked like the pest you knew, no more a tongue-tied twelve-year-old girl in two tight plaits and a shapeless frock thrown on anyhow.

 

I had retreated to the terrace upstairs hopping mad because Father had summarily dismissed my request to get admitted for higher studies. I’d gone there to lick my wounds and regroup for the battles to come.

 

I had got a place in the best institution in the country! Yet the family refused to even listen, because I was a female, how illogical!

 

You’d smiled thoughtfully and slowly came up with options. It was pleasantly surprising that you didn’t parrot the elders’ lines. In the end, I did get what I wanted. I always do.

 

We met quite often after that, in the room off the terrace, sometimes out in the open among other people where we could just blend into the crowd. My brother figured somehow, he wasn’t best pleased.

 

He tried to warn me off. They’ve given in on the college, alright, they’ll never agree to an inter-caste marriage, if you think that, you’re less smart than I thought. A non-Brahmin, a professional photographer without two pice to rub together, what are you thinking of Sis?

 

We think that Independence means change, along with the imperialists we have thrown off the centuries old rotten systems, all is fresh, all is new, we can chart our own course as we please. In some ways, we can, we are. But the social divisions, they are not going to change just because the Union Jack is gone. 

I’d told him to keep his opinions to himself. I’d won one battle, I’d win the next too.

 

So I knew from the start that this was going to be rough. I’d have to fight for every inch of ground. But what I have, what we have between us is worth fighting for.

 

I don’t know yet how I will do this, but I will give birth to our child. I will name him Kaustubh if he is a boy, Amrita if she is a girl – the supreme treasure of my own Samudra-Manthan.

 

It does not matter if we can marry or not. I can’t be any more married to you than I am now. It does not matter who they might marry me off to. And whoever it is they trick or cajole into being the groom, he will possess neither my body nor my heart.

 

Life doesn’t feel beautiful right now, dearest, but I swear to you, I swear by all that is holy, it will be. It will be beautiful again, no matter where I am and where you are.

 

Yours, and yours only

 

It ended without a signature.

 

My brain turned into a tangle of jumbled, writhing thoughts, pulling in different directions. Calm down. Calm. There was an unborn child. All this letter proved was that Sam and the lady were in a relationship when it was written.  What about the photographs then? Surely they meant the relationship had continued beyond the letter, exactly as the writer had sworn it would.

 

I had wanted to connect a few dots. What I’d got was a bombshell instead. I wasn’t sure how welcome it would be either to my family or to yours.

 

***

Slightly anxiety inducing call  - too many horror stories of online friendships falling flat the moment an effort was made to meet offline. It was evident you felt no such qualms though, you were easy, confident.

“ How am I to know you? You never change your profile photo, it’s still your grandmother on there?”

“Ooh, shall we wear matching exotic orchids or something on our lapels?” There was always laughter lurking behind everything you said.

“No, seriously. How are we to recognise each other?”

“Don’t stress. I’ll find you. Your profile pic is bang up current, isn’t it? Unless, you’ve grown a beard recently?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Cool. By the way, folks say I look like my grandmother. So you’re not as much at sea as you think.”

When you removed your sunglasses and sat down opposite I saw exactly what you had meant. 

“Tell me about your grandmother.”

“She was quite a character, actually. She fought her menfolk, you know, very conservative stubborn macho types in those days, went to study in Presidency. The first woman graduate in her family. Didn’t take any nonsense from anyone, did exactly what she wanted and how she wanted. My grandfather always deferred to her opinions. Quite the matriarch.”

“How many children did she have?”

“Four. Three sons and a daughter.”

“What’s the first-born’s name?”

“Kaustubh. Then my Aunt, she’s called Amrita…are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine...go on..”

“The last two brothers are Arnab and Sagar – that’s my father. She used to say that her offspring were the treasures from churning the oceans of life…her rewards for her own personal Samudra-Manthan…”

~*~~~*~~~*~

WC - 1080

FCA

Read the other entries here.