The Spinster

 

“Look at her! she is in her forties, and till now, she is an unmarried one” a woman extended her arm towards the left, grabbing a piece of samosas.

Devyani listened with all ears up to the gossip queens playing Koffee with Karan with her. She was craving peace of mind. But women around her never stopped. They continued with their giggling and bragging about their materialistic happiness.

Her inner consciousness voiced out her rage buried inside her heart, “I will go crazy- She closed her eyes and tightened her fist. And now, this is high time!!! I need to go over the hills”. She made an excuse to save herself from all those troublemakers. She headed towards her escape room and closed the door without bolting. She opened the windows to let in some fresh air. And immediately, hasten to grab her father’s picture frame.

“Why you left me? They all blame me for your death. Do I look like a murderer? I am your only beloved daughter. You tell me- Is marriage that important to you or society? But father, what about my happiness? Is it wrong to settle for something that makes you happy? And like this society, if you thought that I am the reason for your death. Then I can marry anyone by killing myself as an individual. I will never end up in the happy married life that you dreamt of for me. Please, I beg you. Come back, please. Let them know the truth”. Her watery eyes said it all. But she kept it inside her. Suddenly, she felt like a person with Dysarthria. She could hardly breathe. And her body shivered from head to toe. There is a sudden urge to kill herself.

She started searching for her pocket knife. The pocket knife was in the left pocket of her jeans. She heard those voices around her “That spinster killed her father. And she will do the same with her mother”.

Another said, “She is just baggage in our lives. Let’s get rid of her by marrying her off”.

She broke out in cold sweat and put the sharped edgy side of the knife on her wrist. In a blink of an eye, her mother called her. She quickly hid her pocket knife and wiped her tears. She looked herself in the mirror and carried that poker face. “Where were you? Everyone was looking for you. And listen, your aunt wanted to have an important conversation with you. Go and talk to her first. Remember not to act like an ignorant being in front of her. She wants your happiness”. Her mother instructed her to walk into hell.

She realized that there is no point in killing oneself. And she lost herself.

The Red Door

 

“Open the door!” shrieked Michael, perhaps for the first time in his life, for his life has always been distinguished for softness.

I tried to wake him up, but he got carried away far into an illusionary world of dreams. He broke out in cold sweat. And the colour of his face faded away like a snapper fish.

Suddenly, he woke up and started babbling like a runaway patient from an asylum. His eyes were all watery. At that moment, I tried to comfort him.

“Don’t touch me!” he yelled. His face was pale like a death. “I told you that there is something fuzzy about that red door. I was right. It is the gate of hell. I don’t want to go nearby that door ever again in my lifetime”. Michael continued narrating the whole story. And he begged me to save him. I tried to convince him that dream gave him these heebie-jeebies.

He grabbed my hand tightly. We head towards the ground floor; a sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed his retreating steps. We reached towards the red door. It makes my blood run cold. The door that ought to be a lock for years; is now welcoming us.

The clock in the drawing-room struck twelve; the strokes echoed through the room one after the other, and everything was quiet again. The door closes on its own. All of a sudden, Michael loosened the grip of my hand. And an involuntary agitation took possession of him. He was standing like a ninety-year-old man with a hunched back. There was a sudden increase in the room temperature. His bloodshot eyes were staring at me without blinking an eye. He started limping like a zombie towards me.

I felt numbness in my whole body. I tried to run, but I couldn’t move an inch. I was scared out of my wits. In a blink of an eye, he started blathering in a foreign language. “Don’t touch me!” I warned him repetitively, and he turns into a deaf ear.

He gradually comes nearer to my face and whispers in my ears, “Get out!”

I felt a sudden rush of blood in my nerves. I ran towards the door. I tried to open the door, but my efforts were in vain. I screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘Open the door!”. I was sweating out a fever and shivered down my spine. In a turn of events, he started banging his head on the wall. I tried to stop him, but he pushed me away. I fell. And it was a blackout moment for me. I felt like the walls of the red room moved closer towards me to take me in.  I tried to escape that situation by covering my face with my bare hands.

“Help me, help me, someone please!!!” And I woke up. Michael was staring at me with a petrified look.

She Keeps Moving

 

A good life is a symphony of balance; a bad one: a cacophony of wrong choices, frozen in time, I consoled my younger sister. She cried like an infant. Her face was red as a sea lobster. 'How can I be such a stupid ignoramus being?' She said that after covering her swollen face with her bare hands. I comforted her and said it in grief,' There is no point crying over spilled milk. You should be focusing on what is next?'

Sumitra was a born scholar since childhood. She carried that rage in her heart to achieve her aim as soon as possible. But she is just a child at heart. And it is a beautiful trait of human nature to trust people around you, but not excessively. One day she told me about her new go-to person. I saw her eyes glittering like a star. And, just warned her not to shed her walls that much easier. But she ignored it. 

I started worrying about her because she got blind by the light. In a blink of an eye, she came running into my room. She seems like on cloud nine. Her words stuck in her throat. In the end, she said that she got the opportunity to study abroad. I was astonished to see her excitement, not because she grabbed the opportunity but how she can survive in this world of wolves?

I tried to alarm her regarding her world of illusions. But she repeated the same error. She believed that an untrustworthy friend of hers comes with a bunch of lies and deceit. Just don't do this because you will regret the decision in the long run- I told her a hundred times. But she failed to decode the true intentions of her friend.

We had a major fight on this discussion that day. She was burning with anger and said, "How dare you say that? You try to ground me with your rules. I know why you are doing that. You are just jealous of my accomplishments because you never had the same in your life." I felt that my heart sank for a moment. But I gathered myself up and tried to calm her down while hiding my pain behind that smile. I believed that one day, she would get out of this bubble of fakeness. 

And she lost all her savings. She felt empty like a vessel. She felt a loss of words in front of me. I advised her to move on from it and take a lesson from it. I put my hand on her shoulder and said,' Sometimes one needs to fall into the pit of success to achieve something. That is part of life, it never stops, and you learn and grow. And never forget to balance your things because excess of anything is not beneficial for our health.'

That first drop of life!!!

 

He looked at his father and hugged him warmly. The long summer night passed away imperceptibly. The clock stuck at four o'clock in the morning before father cleaned up the barn. "Supper time!" passed my mother's instruction to my father as a messenger. He nodded with a fainting smile and continued his daily chores. 

I ate with a good appetite, but my father sat absently looking at an empty plate. In a blink of an eye, my mother appeared with one bowl of cornflakes and a jar filled with milk. The mother signaled me through her big eyes vacant the room immediately. However, the conversation became more animated, and both took part in it.

'And, how will we survive, John?' asked mother

'I lost everything. I must confess that I am an unfortunate one: I tried my best to save these crops, I want to stay calm, but now I am losing my faith,' vocalized father pessimistically.

'And you did not once allow yourself to ask for a helping hand?... Your firmness astonishes me,' mother softly gripped his hand.

I got teary-eyed after the involuntary participation in their secretive conversation. It was an irresistible urge to search for my answers.  So, I just bolted down a glass of water and reached amid cropland. I looked at the sky for a moment and asked that supreme power residing above the clouds- 'Why?'

Suddenly, I felt something on my left cheek. I saw my father standing motionless with a gaze riveted towards the sky and his face the picture of a flabbergast. He tried to speak to the mother, but no sound would come at first. 

 'John, my love, mother called to him. But he was standing like a statue. Then she rose and tottered towards him. She panted once more, clutching his arm; God heard our prayers.'

He gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and was weeping for joy. He showed a water droplet that was shining bright like a diamond. 

He broke down and screamed his lungs out 'that first drop of life.'

The Void

 

The other day, I was sitting on a veranda and wrote some text for a website. A big mug of green tea stood on a footstool and figuring out the universal question, "What to choose between my family or oneself as an individual?" I looked at the green colour of the tea and inhaled a deep breath.

She's always had anything in the world she wanted, and when she disobeyed her parents. The alarming sound of the society rang in her ear now and then. She felt abandoned. "But what I did? The audacity to knew me. Is it a sin to know who you are?" It rages fire in her heart.

In the good old days, when she performed as a lead dancer in the school function. Her parents got tear-eyed. She felt something change in her. The thirst to attain her passion went endlessly. But her world turned upside down in that one moment. When her mother blows her top and said: "I'm thoroughly ashamed of you." Her heart spoke, "But of course she wasn't. She had a conversation with her mother's soul while sealing her mouth; I wish you could see it. She replied rigorously, Why Mommy, Samaria adopted, I can prove it."

After having my last sip of green tea, I thought, "Can I escape into this natural world of greenery to forget my miseries. But what about this real world? Does this void will ever end? Then I recapitulated the entire life in front of me. And I found my answers in front of me. It was crystal clear that how my parents perceived life, the way they lived it. And now one can't change it. But to fill this void, "You accept, perceive, and work to make it better because, without suffering, there is no winning."

It's found out! Earth is actually Flat.

 

Children rushed for the school. It was eight 'o clock in the morning. There was no sun or promise of sun, and there was not a single cloud in the sky. It was a clear day. Like another ordinary day, the school bell rang. Preeti ran and put her hand on the shoulder of Prateek. He turned around and looked at her. She was blooming like a flower.

"You got Idli-vada for lunch today", and he extended his arm towards the left of her shoulder. She looked at him disappointingly and said to him in a subdued voice: "You forgot". Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: "Today is our Intraclass drawing competition.

Prateek was astounded. He banged his head and said to her: "I completely forgot". He pleaded with her to share her stationary with him. She nodded with a pleasing smile.

The competition started at twelve 'o clock sharp. Preeti had butterflies in her stomach. The class teacher entered and wrote down this one word with the chalk - "Earth". Preeti and Prateek looked at each other and smiled.

The bell rang at one o'clock straight. Teachers collected the drawing sheet from each child. Preeti handed down her sheet with an alluring smile. Both eagerly waited for the result. 

The class teacher set foot in the class and shared a mischievous looked with Preeti.  She announced the result in a fraction of seconds. But when it comes to telling the name of the winner. She smiled to herself and showed the drawing to the class. Preeti felt out like a light. In the drawing sheet, the earth was half divided, and a girl was looking at it. And children were playing on that flat surface. The teacher announced, "It found out! Earth is actually flat".