posted by Dipankar | 6:46 PM
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0 comments
Far away and Long ago
It is a novellete. A story of a girl, her trial and tribulations. A story of womankind. A story that takes place every day, everywhere, at all times. It could be your story, or mine. Your neighbour's daughter's, or mine.
About Me
- Name: Dipankar
- Location: India
A simple bloke, with simple interests and simple lifestyle, simply fed up with the so-called simpletons who are tyrants in simple garb. All this has made me conclude that life is not that simple. It has taken me three score years on this planet to conclude that one has got to take up the fight....
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Far away and long ago…. Ah, yes, s-o-o-o-o far that they seem s-o-o-o-o near…Long, long ago, and yet it seems that all this happened just yesterday!
People, events, places ….. all jumbled up…a collage of diversity…a palette of meaningless babble…a harmonious canvas of irreconcilable contradictions…
Malini looked around the room…everything was swinging – the walls, the picture of her Goddess in an oval frame, the fan on the wall, sometimes looking down and askance at her, sometimes looking away from her and straight, not in any rhythm, far from it.
Malini looked around the room – once again…everything was still swinging – the lamp hanging from oh! so slender a wire intertwined in itself, a wire so slim it looked about to snap any moment…that is how it had always looked to Malini all this time…but now, suddenly, the same piece of aluminium encased in plastic and God alone knows what, seemed oh! so strong as it swung around the mid-sized room, not lengthy enough to touch the walls and crash, yet extended enough to impart a mesmerizing sense of déjà vu, it seemed to Malini…the swing, the rhythmless, patternless swing of the lost soul… hanging by just the thread of a heart that will not stop beating…a heart that no longer hurts…a heart that does not take heart from her everyday surrounding any more…a surrounding so wicked that her own little cloistered world seemed like heaven…a little piece of heaven on earth.
Her world was still swinging. Her room, that fan, that picture of the Goddess, that lamp that hung by the slender, strong entwined wire. The more fixed Malini tried to hold her gaze, the more everything swung. What is it, she wondered. Is it the earth that was trembling and moving, trying to swallow everything in its vortex in one last swipe at the meanness of man? Is it the demon in my head, she asked herself, that is desperately trying its best to leave its home of the last few months, only perhaps to confront me to my face? Literally? She trembled at the thought. The demon within she understands, she understands what makes it behave the way it does, she understands what moves it, if not the how, at least the why, the when, the whence. But the demon without? Her whole body was shaking now, shaking like it had never shaken before, outshaking all the shakes and the shocks she has endured all her life of but a couple of scores in years, a life of a couple of centuries in experience.
She tried to steel herself, stealing a glance at the same time at the fan and the wall and her Goddess and the lamp and its wire of a thread. Still there was no let up in the shaking…of the room, of the walls which made up her world, of her own little big world…of the real big big world outside. Ah, the real world outside…A thrill went through her body, along her spine, from one end to the other, a thrill that spelt a strange concoction of comfortable warmth and biting chill. Ah the uniqueness of this thrill of all sizzling thrills! The orgasm of all orgasms! A dollop of freezing ice cream in steaming hot cappuccino!
She tried to get up, to stand on her own two legs; long, once firm and muscular and toned but now weakening and unsure, two legs that have borne the load of her body longer than has her still-shapely rump. Or so she thinks. As far back in time as she could look, it had been always been like this. Running, running, running. On her own legs! Running from…. No, she says to herself. She will not look back, she will not, at least at this moment, be distracted from her goal, her focus, her one point agenda. Which is: to get up from the floor, to stand up, to remain standing and start moving, to start moving towards the thin sliver of brightness her eyes could discern in the gloominess surrounding her, her only hope of salvation.
She faltered, felt faint. What is happening to me, she mused. Her head reeled; the five walls and everything within seemed to swirl even more now. Halfway up on bent knees, she desperately grabbed at the first thing she could lay her hands on, tried to hang on to it for dear life…but the firm upright erect column of the evening air she clung to would not allow her to achieve her immediate goal. That of merely standing up. Standing up on her own two feet. She was back once more at the starting line – on her backside, legs at an angle, her skirt up around her knees, body balanced by her palms resting on the floor behind her, spread on two sides. A funny look on her face said it all. It was one more of those small little war games that she had always been thrust into, one more little defeat in a series of them she has always taken extremely sportingly.
What else could she do? Life had left her with little choice. She had but to battle on…her own battle… other peoples’ battle…nobody’s battle. All, as she had all along believed or at least she thought she believed, part of the GREAT WAR she had to win. Each battle, each little skirmish, every insignificant encounter, she was convinced, was a part of life’s jigsaw her MAKER had laid on for her, a puzzle she had to unscramble, a trial she had to come out of with flying colors, each combat a fresh baptism…by fire, through hell.
A fighter if there was one, Malini once again decided to get up, to stand up…if for nothing or nobody, at least one last time for herself. Putting her whole load on her two hands, palms flat on the ground, face puckered with grim determination, she raised her bottom slowly off the floor till she was on her haunches. Once there, the next step for her was to put both her hands on her knees, and with extreme effort, raise her body further and straighten her knees. And she was in no time standing. And feeling (and seeing) the world going round and round about her. She, the SUN, the center of the Universe, the pivot, the fulcrum, around whom everything (and everyone) revolved.
She took her first wobbly step, first one foot, the right one, and then the second, the left. Body swaying wildly, trying to keep balance and yet move forward, she made what seemed to her one mad lunge at nothing in particular, to find unexpected support from the wall, the doorframe, the slightly ajar door panels. And her day (or evening) was made. She had made it. At last. On her own.
She pushed open the door further and peered out. The evening rays of the setting sun seemed to her like the glow at dawn. Dawn? When was the last time she had enjoyed the beauty of dawn? The sight, the smell, the feel, the virginity of dawn?
She was almost blinded, unused as her eyes had been recently to brightness or light. She closed her eyes, opened them, and closed them again, only this time to open them and let them remain open. To take in whatever was laid out before her eyes, this early evening, at her doorstep…
Doorstep indeed! What else? She was now standing (nay, hanging on for dear life) at her own, her very own door, at the doorstep of her own world. A vantage position, if there was one. From this position, she was in a most enviable situation physically: she could, just with a selection of the right corner of the right eye look in at her own little world within or look out at the wide, wide world without.
She was feeling the strain. Of the intense physical efforts of the last few moments preceded by the killing cerebral distress of the last few days. Malini did not want to believe that she, Malini, was about to let go.
And this when, after a long, long while (or so it seemed to her), the swirling, turbulent, restless world around her did not seem to be as swirling or as turbulent or as restless now as in the recent past. She did not know how long this ‘recent past’ was, a few minutes, one hour, a few hours, half a day…? She had lost all sense of time…and she did not care! She was beyond all care and caring.
Malini knew that she would now be letting go. She had to let go. She had reached a point of no return. It was the peak of excitement. Excitement which had been building up inside her over time, excitement which had gone from one rung to the next, spreading out to every nook and corner of her being, to the extremities of every nerve, sending a tingling, pulsating sensation all over. This must be it, she thought. Nirvana -the ultimate pleasure state.
Suddenly she was feeling so relaxed. So carefree. She was floating. Not a care in the world. She was once more her own little dreamgirl.
She closed her eyes, so that she could take it all in better. Because she could see so much more now. And also feel so much more now. The pleasure, the excitement, the post-pleasure relaxation.
She was now letting go. She had reached the peak. Nothing more to strive for. Nothing more to expect. She had seen, done and felt it all. Now she could relax…..
Arms akimbo, head drooping, her long waist-length hair emerging over her left shoulder down to her belly button, Malini gently slithered down against the erect doorframe till she was not standing any more. Was some old spark trying to ignite once again this very moment? One would not know. Malini certainly would not know. What she would know was that she had tried her best to defy the force of gravity, she had tried to lean back against the door to prevent herself from falling.
The door panel which was ajar opened unto itself. Malini fell back, went a little bit along with the door and then the door moved away and she was lying on her back.
Halfway in her own world…halfway outside …in the big, big world outside.
II
It had been a very short day. Very, very short indeed. A day of but just a couple of hours? Much unlike her normal days in the recent past of probably forty and more.... Way back in time it was. One does not remember straightaway the date or the month or the year. Yet very well etched it is in the memory blocks of the dramatis personae. But it was no drama, believe you me. Neither was it planned in any which way. But happen it did, as the scenes unravelled in her mind's eye; her two lovely eyes that had announced her magnetic presence to everyone around all along now closed...droplets rolling along her cheeks, droplets of tears. He was a very young boy, not yet reached his teens, in a white sleeveless undershirt and colored shorts. A wisp of a boy, out of his home, at the local Mom & Pop's, out to buy one remembers not what. And there she was, sweet and fair and sprightly, purity and innocence written all over, pearly white teeth peeping out between thin pink lips, also just stepping out of the front door of the house in which they lived. Boy child met girl child. And that moment would signal that neither would remain a child anymore..... "Is this how it all happened", the boy had wondered years later, after he had been through the ringer more than once, when one evening, after a pretty wild afternoon, his mind had gone back to that splendid quickfire moment.
People, events, places ….. all jumbled up…a collage of diversity…a palette of meaningless babble…a harmonious canvas of irreconcilable contradictions…
Malini looked around the room…everything was swinging – the walls, the picture of her Goddess in an oval frame, the fan on the wall, sometimes looking down and askance at her, sometimes looking away from her and straight, not in any rhythm, far from it.
Malini looked around the room – once again…everything was still swinging – the lamp hanging from oh! so slender a wire intertwined in itself, a wire so slim it looked about to snap any moment…that is how it had always looked to Malini all this time…but now, suddenly, the same piece of aluminium encased in plastic and God alone knows what, seemed oh! so strong as it swung around the mid-sized room, not lengthy enough to touch the walls and crash, yet extended enough to impart a mesmerizing sense of déjà vu, it seemed to Malini…the swing, the rhythmless, patternless swing of the lost soul… hanging by just the thread of a heart that will not stop beating…a heart that no longer hurts…a heart that does not take heart from her everyday surrounding any more…a surrounding so wicked that her own little cloistered world seemed like heaven…a little piece of heaven on earth.
Her world was still swinging. Her room, that fan, that picture of the Goddess, that lamp that hung by the slender, strong entwined wire. The more fixed Malini tried to hold her gaze, the more everything swung. What is it, she wondered. Is it the earth that was trembling and moving, trying to swallow everything in its vortex in one last swipe at the meanness of man? Is it the demon in my head, she asked herself, that is desperately trying its best to leave its home of the last few months, only perhaps to confront me to my face? Literally? She trembled at the thought. The demon within she understands, she understands what makes it behave the way it does, she understands what moves it, if not the how, at least the why, the when, the whence. But the demon without? Her whole body was shaking now, shaking like it had never shaken before, outshaking all the shakes and the shocks she has endured all her life of but a couple of scores in years, a life of a couple of centuries in experience.
She tried to steel herself, stealing a glance at the same time at the fan and the wall and her Goddess and the lamp and its wire of a thread. Still there was no let up in the shaking…of the room, of the walls which made up her world, of her own little big world…of the real big big world outside. Ah, the real world outside…A thrill went through her body, along her spine, from one end to the other, a thrill that spelt a strange concoction of comfortable warmth and biting chill. Ah the uniqueness of this thrill of all sizzling thrills! The orgasm of all orgasms! A dollop of freezing ice cream in steaming hot cappuccino!
She tried to get up, to stand on her own two legs; long, once firm and muscular and toned but now weakening and unsure, two legs that have borne the load of her body longer than has her still-shapely rump. Or so she thinks. As far back in time as she could look, it had been always been like this. Running, running, running. On her own legs! Running from…. No, she says to herself. She will not look back, she will not, at least at this moment, be distracted from her goal, her focus, her one point agenda. Which is: to get up from the floor, to stand up, to remain standing and start moving, to start moving towards the thin sliver of brightness her eyes could discern in the gloominess surrounding her, her only hope of salvation.
She faltered, felt faint. What is happening to me, she mused. Her head reeled; the five walls and everything within seemed to swirl even more now. Halfway up on bent knees, she desperately grabbed at the first thing she could lay her hands on, tried to hang on to it for dear life…but the firm upright erect column of the evening air she clung to would not allow her to achieve her immediate goal. That of merely standing up. Standing up on her own two feet. She was back once more at the starting line – on her backside, legs at an angle, her skirt up around her knees, body balanced by her palms resting on the floor behind her, spread on two sides. A funny look on her face said it all. It was one more of those small little war games that she had always been thrust into, one more little defeat in a series of them she has always taken extremely sportingly.
What else could she do? Life had left her with little choice. She had but to battle on…her own battle… other peoples’ battle…nobody’s battle. All, as she had all along believed or at least she thought she believed, part of the GREAT WAR she had to win. Each battle, each little skirmish, every insignificant encounter, she was convinced, was a part of life’s jigsaw her MAKER had laid on for her, a puzzle she had to unscramble, a trial she had to come out of with flying colors, each combat a fresh baptism…by fire, through hell.
A fighter if there was one, Malini once again decided to get up, to stand up…if for nothing or nobody, at least one last time for herself. Putting her whole load on her two hands, palms flat on the ground, face puckered with grim determination, she raised her bottom slowly off the floor till she was on her haunches. Once there, the next step for her was to put both her hands on her knees, and with extreme effort, raise her body further and straighten her knees. And she was in no time standing. And feeling (and seeing) the world going round and round about her. She, the SUN, the center of the Universe, the pivot, the fulcrum, around whom everything (and everyone) revolved.
She took her first wobbly step, first one foot, the right one, and then the second, the left. Body swaying wildly, trying to keep balance and yet move forward, she made what seemed to her one mad lunge at nothing in particular, to find unexpected support from the wall, the doorframe, the slightly ajar door panels. And her day (or evening) was made. She had made it. At last. On her own.
She pushed open the door further and peered out. The evening rays of the setting sun seemed to her like the glow at dawn. Dawn? When was the last time she had enjoyed the beauty of dawn? The sight, the smell, the feel, the virginity of dawn?
She was almost blinded, unused as her eyes had been recently to brightness or light. She closed her eyes, opened them, and closed them again, only this time to open them and let them remain open. To take in whatever was laid out before her eyes, this early evening, at her doorstep…
Doorstep indeed! What else? She was now standing (nay, hanging on for dear life) at her own, her very own door, at the doorstep of her own world. A vantage position, if there was one. From this position, she was in a most enviable situation physically: she could, just with a selection of the right corner of the right eye look in at her own little world within or look out at the wide, wide world without.
She was feeling the strain. Of the intense physical efforts of the last few moments preceded by the killing cerebral distress of the last few days. Malini did not want to believe that she, Malini, was about to let go.
And this when, after a long, long while (or so it seemed to her), the swirling, turbulent, restless world around her did not seem to be as swirling or as turbulent or as restless now as in the recent past. She did not know how long this ‘recent past’ was, a few minutes, one hour, a few hours, half a day…? She had lost all sense of time…and she did not care! She was beyond all care and caring.
Malini knew that she would now be letting go. She had to let go. She had reached a point of no return. It was the peak of excitement. Excitement which had been building up inside her over time, excitement which had gone from one rung to the next, spreading out to every nook and corner of her being, to the extremities of every nerve, sending a tingling, pulsating sensation all over. This must be it, she thought. Nirvana -the ultimate pleasure state.
Suddenly she was feeling so relaxed. So carefree. She was floating. Not a care in the world. She was once more her own little dreamgirl.
She closed her eyes, so that she could take it all in better. Because she could see so much more now. And also feel so much more now. The pleasure, the excitement, the post-pleasure relaxation.
She was now letting go. She had reached the peak. Nothing more to strive for. Nothing more to expect. She had seen, done and felt it all. Now she could relax…..
Arms akimbo, head drooping, her long waist-length hair emerging over her left shoulder down to her belly button, Malini gently slithered down against the erect doorframe till she was not standing any more. Was some old spark trying to ignite once again this very moment? One would not know. Malini certainly would not know. What she would know was that she had tried her best to defy the force of gravity, she had tried to lean back against the door to prevent herself from falling.
The door panel which was ajar opened unto itself. Malini fell back, went a little bit along with the door and then the door moved away and she was lying on her back.
Halfway in her own world…halfway outside …in the big, big world outside.
II
It had been a very short day. Very, very short indeed. A day of but just a couple of hours? Much unlike her normal days in the recent past of probably forty and more.... Way back in time it was. One does not remember straightaway the date or the month or the year. Yet very well etched it is in the memory blocks of the dramatis personae. But it was no drama, believe you me. Neither was it planned in any which way. But happen it did, as the scenes unravelled in her mind's eye; her two lovely eyes that had announced her magnetic presence to everyone around all along now closed...droplets rolling along her cheeks, droplets of tears. He was a very young boy, not yet reached his teens, in a white sleeveless undershirt and colored shorts. A wisp of a boy, out of his home, at the local Mom & Pop's, out to buy one remembers not what. And there she was, sweet and fair and sprightly, purity and innocence written all over, pearly white teeth peeping out between thin pink lips, also just stepping out of the front door of the house in which they lived. Boy child met girl child. And that moment would signal that neither would remain a child anymore..... "Is this how it all happened", the boy had wondered years later, after he had been through the ringer more than once, when one evening, after a pretty wild afternoon, his mind had gone back to that splendid quickfire moment.
posted by Dipankar | 3:58 PM
|
1 comments
