Fiction

 The  days are passing by and  the  time is wilting away...it blooms only in my dreams  when it  loses its dimensions,  treading  back and forth . forming new equations yet weaving on the past moments.  The past is etched in her consciousness. In her waking state it vanishes and gets dissolved in the present moments which in any case are as mundane as can be.  It's early noon and  the hawkers have left the neighbourhood. But everyday she waits for that  lone cry of a particular hawker who sounds  like a boy whose small muffed sound  disturbs  her. It  is a tired sound  with an insistent shrill . One day she decided to  have a look on him. He was quite an adult of small built. It was quite hot and the dust laden road made it more intolerable, his broken cart  carried  the seasonal vegetables  which  were shrivelled up due to heat and dust.She looked at him and her brain raced to ...

 A pall of silence descended on her after the commotion, raised by her maid  died down ,who at every swish of her broom wanted the validation from her as being the most efficient worker in the area. But it was always to strike a conversation on her part  which  inevitably turned into gossip and rested only at slandering. She was beyond all this now having been into it long before.  The time seemed to stand still.The room resonated with the unheard yet deep buzzing sound which filled the room. Now her mind  at ease she let the images filter before her eyes.The small girl with a spring in her feet marched ahead holding her hand while she in the background shielded her like a wide tree with its outstretched  limbs. The little girl loomed large filling the entire space with her presence obliterating  every object in her vicinity.  She got up and left the room. She went to the balcony. Cool breeze was blowing and the tall trees swung in the free f...

  There was no sign  of any endorsement  of  her  bits of  reflections  as she  checked  her portal. Her heart sank.  "But what is the compulsion"? She sighed with  exasperation ! "This is living on the edge" she moaned . Around her the routine activities were going on. The maids were washing and cleaning and her  husband  instructing them and also  giving his two bit advices which he had garnered in his life time of living.  A continuous monologue which went on till the maids left the house. She never could  engage with all this  because for her it  would be  getting into mundane while she soared in the vast  expanse of the  Space showing  outside her wide window. She had  perfected the sly art of  dissembling which  turned her inner world opaque  to the outsiders.   "Let me check again may be there is a drop of 'manna 'there on the portal"!  ...

 Her  restlessness knew no reason yet it was intense. Nothing diverted her. The opaque  sky couldn't filter the cool shades of the spring Sun ...the smog smothered it. Perhaps this annoyed her so she drew the thick curtains to block the dismal light.    Her eyes meandered around the objects in her room ,they were the mere  objects  now having lost the lustre of their youthful era. 'Era ' no doubt since it seemed decades when she had  fretted over them, their quality and their cost which attracted the envious eyes of her friends. Before her now , beamed the  big screen of the t.v. It  was blaring  the routine 'breaking -news 'of the pre election crescendo .The mushrooming of parties made it difficult to discriminate among them. She could only hear the blabbering voices of the myriad  groups  and  those of  budding  anchors of the  vastly sprouting channels  which  were  always at loggerhea...

 The  life was becoming impossible for her to restrain herself from expressing her strong resentment to a sort of coup against her by her own mother and brother.  She was very close to her grandmother and presented a cuddly figure of a well pampered  baby sharing her space with her elder brother in the close proximity of the imperial lady who was  the P.M of the country at that time .Both the children lead a guarded life . It was of absolute importance to watch for their  safety. The daughter was tutored  at home  and  not much was known about her brother .   The time took a terrible turn. Indira Gandhi was no more .The wizard  of Indian  politics was  shot down  mercilessly. The whole country was mourning  and the revenge gave rise to  terrible  blood bath  in the entire country. The sibling  lost their dear grandma and in this scenario  the  scion of the family entered the politica...

 Recently  I  chanced  to listen to the interview shared by the two  literary luminaries : Manju  Kapur and the budding writer Devika rege. The contrast was exceptionally revealing so much so that the former  got  completely overlapped  by this  young writer in her effervescence and the highly strung intellectual din. Her multilayered exposition of the plot of her story seemed to be messed up in the various genres . In contrast the senior writer seems  to  lie in  hibernation waking up into the safe environs  of family or friends and some  obvious social inequalities .The basic treatment  of her plots is at  the basic where the subconscious lies almost unviolated . The yawning gap between both the writers  depict the present day  condition of the humans who are pawns in the present day  complex and ruthless political systems which defy simple treatment of the plot.