The Unheard Elegy (Flash Fiction in exactly 100 words)

She was a silent beauty. She could walk in a crowd not drawing much attention, but when she looked at you, you would forget yourself in her eyes. She was conceived right out of a poem, its verses her body, slender and fine. She walked in rhythm, the little ringlets of golden hair swaying. When she laughed, there was a twinkle in her eyes, a spot of mischievousness discernible, here now, then gone. Confusing, bewitching, maddening! Such happiness! 

In her religion, women never showed their face to strangers. Her life remained an unheard elegy to unseen beauty.

Running from Demons

From the many maladies of seniority, a little respite may be found in the company of one's grandchildren. To laugh at the little one's antics or to lift them fondly into your lap and lose oneself once more in that sublime innocence of childhood. When you fetch those bedtime stories from the prime of your adulthood, which had once awed your own children, and deliver it now with the added spice of seniority, then your mind is put to better tasks than wallowing in self pity and lost memories. Such were Ravi's grandpa's thoughts and hopes.

Eight year old Ravi came home from school, eager to meet his grandpa who had come to visit him. Though Ravi had met him once earlier it was much before his mind had started retaining people and places in his memory. When all his friends used to speak about their grandparents and the lavish pampering they received from them, Ravi would become very sad, unable to remember any happy memory of his own grandparents. Today was the day he would begin compensating for eight years of lost grand paternal company.

The moment he got out of his school bus, he crossed the little broken lane that served for a road, and ran all the way to his building, scaring a few innocent stray dogs along the way. He was too eager to even wait for the lift to come down and instead preferred running up 3 floors of the building and pressed the bell a couple more times than usual.

"Shush dear, Grandpa is sleeping", said his mother in response to his loud query when the door was opened.

A very sad Ravi after gulping down lunch, preferred to wait noiselessly in his grandpa's room, till he awoke. He quietly slipped into the room and saw his grandpa lying on a bed snoring gently. From the arms and chest that protruded from the white banyan, Ravi concluded that Grandpa looked quite thin and frail and it seemed as if a really good hug from his end might do grandpa more harm than good. He kept in mind this fact, lest his enthusiasm got the better of him.

He then went and quite absentmindedly sat in the brand new rocking chair his father had bought the previous evening especially for grandpa's visit and had almost rocked himself to sleep, when he heard a voice crying, "I am sorry, I am sorry, please forgive me"

Ravi looked up startled, as was his habit when he was unnaturally roused from the brink of sleep.

It was his grandpa who seemed agitated on the bed. At first Ravi thought that grandpa was talking to him, but on further observation he realized that grandpa was addressing an unknown person in his sleep. He seemed to be pleading forgiveness from this spectral entity. Then his voice died down, but the agitation continued. After a while he became still and resumed sleep. This happened three times, each time his grandpa would speak to a bodiless person and entreat forgiveness or mercy.

After a while, his grandpa woke up and Ravi immediately went and sat by his side. He gave him a gentle hug remembering his earlier resolve.

"Grandpa", said Ravi to the old man, "Why were you crying in you sleep, who were you talking to, whom were you apologizing to?"

"Oh really? Was I talking in my sleep again dear?", said grandpa with the indulging air of a grandparent.

"Yes. You really seemed very sad then."

"By the time one is of my age beta, one has been through a lot of life.", said Grandpa in a tone graver than he had intended to use with his grandson. "There are several mistakes that I have made, several people whom I have hurt both knowingly and unknowingly."

"Why so ?", asked Ravi.

"Because when I was younger, I did not have the courage many a times to do what was right. It required being strong and fighting people, I took the easy way out. Now all my past mistakes have come chasing after me. They don't let me rest. There are demons who chase and torment me, especially in my sleep when I am the most vulnerable."

"What demons grandpa?", asked a visibly scared Ravi.

"Demons of the people whom I have wronged. My childhood friend who had a walking impairment and I joined in teasing him with the other kids. I cannot forget the look on his face as I was laughing at him with the others. The girl whom I did not marry after giving her my word that I would, I can never escape from her eyes, they follow me everywhere. The man whose innocence I knew, but shut my mouth in fear when everyone pronounced him guilty. The insensitivity I have shown to my wife on several occasions. Several more such instances, the memories of these people whom I have hurt, they have followed me like demons out to destroy my mind. They gnaw at my soul and do not give me any respite. I have been running from them all my life.  Earlier I was strong and I could hide from them, but now I am a weak old man and much too tired to run anymore. I am waiting for that one final sleep when I shall have escaped all these demons and be peaceful once more."

"What sleep is that grandpa?"

"Death, my dear boy. That is the final sleep of peace."

"Grandpa", said Ravi in a low voice.  "In my school they say that death is not the end of it all.  They say that there is life even after  death. What if these demons follow you forever in the after-world?"

A very disturbed grandpa, his lips quivering as if someone had revealed a particularly unpleasant, almost horrible piece of information, managed to whisper, "I... I hadn't thought about that until now"

                     

 ***

"Beta", said Ravi's grandfather to his father that evening, "Book my tickets for tomorrow. I must go back. It doesn't suit an old man to be away from his home."

Life in a Village

There was once a village and a pretty big village it was. It was very far from any city. As villages went, it was quite a good one. There were trees yielding mangoes, jackfruits and coconuts. There were green fields of rice and wheat, there were lakes, streams and rivers. The sun shone bright during the day and in the evenings the wind blew in the cold air from the sea. The three seasons arrived duly each year. Summer brought rescue from the cold of the winter, which in turn gave way to the rains that quenched the parched earth followed by the soft cloak of winter. There was, in short, every form of nature that should make living a very pleasant affair, except of course for the mosquitoes and the humans. Both the mosquitoes and the humans, the former because of it's inherent nature and the latter also surprisingly because of their inherent nature, took it upon themselves to make the life of humans around them miserable. The villagers had learnt to control the mosquitoes and keep them at bay by several measures, but the humans - they were free to roam around.  

Now no one knows when it started or how, but it was general wisdom in this village that a good girl should have started her daily household chores in the kitchen before the earliest pink rays of the sun spread over the land. This wisdom, as is with all other wisdom, was passed on for generations - man to son, woman to daughter, man to daughter and woman to son. It was etched into their minds,  mischievously woven into bedtime tales and repeated most religiously by the village elders. There was unfortunately no timing prescribed for men to get up and so that poor sex, miserably confused as they were, left the getting up part wholly to the natural discretion of their bodies.   

Accordingly, the women in this village rose before the cock crowed, they milked the sleepy cows, they cleaned the stone cold floors and prepared breakfast for their families. They bathed in the cold, cold, moon-chilled water of the village pond. They dressed and looked pretty, all by the time, the rest of the family realized it was morning. 

Now this little piece of advice was not the only bit of wisdom that the village lived by. For indeed, if a village were to be running smoothly and plants were to be growing well and children were to be running fast and men were to be smoking beedis, there had to be but a whole set of rules. A book of rules if you may say so. And since it was a very old village and because many of the rules were made by the now-dead ancestors who weren't very fond of reading or writing, either due to a genuine lack of interest in the written form or due to good old illiteracy, these rules were passed on to each generation by the means of oral instructions and reinforced by hidden pinches, dark stares and even a good hearty slap across the face.

One of the unwritten rules from the rule book was that a woman was not to show her face to men except her husband and sons. This was an excellent rule for it was meant to keep the women safe from the covetous, libidinous stare of strange men. And of course women would trip, having had covered their face with shawls and dupattas and that was brilliant because that gave the opportunity to enforce the third rule - that women needed a little physical discipline. A slap was the most accepted convention, though some for better enforcement have even tried, with success, a lash with a whip or a cane and even a few kicks and blows. The villagers also extended their literary skills to redefine certain obsolete words like dutiful, obedient and respectful to slave-like, spineless and subjugated.

And like in all other villages of this time, birth, was a very interesting affair. When the midwife proclaimed that a child was born, there was great fanfare, much distribution of sweets and celebration. And of course, by child I meant boy. And if the midwife announced the birth of a girl, the celebrations consisted mainly in letting the child live.

Now all this was very much accepted. They were the rules of good conduct, it was the wisdom of the ancestors. It was possibly even handed down by the Gods, it was what kept the village running.

There were however a few occasional rule breakers. There were a few men who thought different. There were husbands who didn't think it necessary to have slavish wives. There were fathers who were not very appreciative of their daughters being hit. There were mothers who felt it necessary to keep alive their infant daughters. However, the rest of the village attacked with much ferocity these heretics who dared defy their sacrosanct traditions. And so in private, in hidden rooms, in hushed conversations did these heretics act and talk, afraid to rouse the fury of the villagers.

Then things changed, times changed. Kings came and went. The sun replaced earth as the center of the galaxy. Science developed. Electricity was discovered. Chariots broke and were replaced by motor cars. Horses began to be ridden only for sport. Democracy came and shook up the whole scenario. Man learnt to fly. Man visited the moon!

But the little book of rules was left untouched amidst all this activity. No one dared to amend the ancient wisdom of the centuries. In different forms and under different pretexts existed this age old tradition and still does today.

In recent times, people from other villages have started calling it a misogynistic, patriarchal society.

The villagers however just renamed their village - India.

Janey's date with fate

She stood contemplating suicidal thoughts on the edge of the cliff. Did she really want to die that day, at that moment, no one would ever know. For her feet slipped on the loose soil and she fell. She fell before she knew what she wanted to do. She fell before it was late to do anything more. It must have been a deep cliff, for during the fall there were enough seconds for Janey to think. As her body plummeted down and her insides lurched, Janey was very scared. She tried to position her body such that she would land safe, maybe like a cat.

In those final moments she thought about her parents and her childhood home and how happy she was as a child. She saw her papa coming home from work, bringing with him a small paper bag of biscuits for her and her brother. How they would eagerly open up those little treats their papa bought home. She could smell her mother's cooking and the sound of the ladle stirring against the kettle. Her mother was feeding her little morsels of food. Her elder sister was holding her.  Her papa was telling them stories about work. Her mother was then cuddling her. 

She was safe, she was protected and nothing could harm her there. It was with this warm, nostalgic and happy feeling that Janey crashed onto the ground below. 

Call it a miracle, call it luck, call it whatever you may want to, because Janey survived the fall. She was alive! She rose up on her feet. It was difficult, painful, but she did. How she thanked the heavens, the earth, the air! Everything that existed, she was thankful to. For in those few seconds, in those few pulses of time, she knew she did not want her life to end. There was still a lot to live for. She could live for those wonderful people in her life. She wanted to live for all those wonderful moments that were yet to come. She walked as quickly as she could, away from that horrendous place. What had come over her, she wondered. She repeatedly kept thanking her luck with every painful step she took. It was a very difficult task to walk over the rocks. She was limping and crying. She wanted help with her broken leg. Her body ached. There would be more broken bones that just her leg, she thought. But however, she was alive and could start anew. Her mind jumped with the ecstasy that her body couldn't manage.

She saw a couple of people heading her way.  She must have been in a bad shape after the fall, for they looked very worried when they looked in her direction. They started running towards her. Janey was so tired that she rested her leg, until they could reached her and managed to lean against a rock, still very grateful for life. As they got nearer Janey called out and assured them that she was okay.  She held out her hand for assistance. But they didn't look at her, they hurried onwards. She was confused. She turned to look in the direction the people were heading towards. 

No person alive can describe what Janey felt at that moment, when she saw her own face with a crooked smile, hanging from her tangled body lying in a pool of messy blood.

The Freedom of Choice

On that cold quiet evening, Siti moved around her little rented apartment in slippers too large for her feet. She walked around the kitchen making hot coffee to energize herself. She poured it into a steel cup and carried it over to the window and perched herself on the edge of a tall chair. Siti felt at peace as she sipped the coffee, listening to the rain, from her safe sanctuary. The cold elements of nature and the heat of the coffee were an excellent combination. Her excited thoughts wandered along the canvas of her mind just as her eyes wandered over the breadth of the view before her. 

As she sat by the window, every object she saw had an added charm to it. The trees seemed to be gladly shaking off some heavy burden with each drop of water that dripped off their leaves. The grass was nodding in pleasant conversation with the raindrops. The streets lay open and wide inviting anyone to come and run over them. The air was welcoming and fragrant with the smell of earth. Each whiff of it provided a lungful of heavenly freshness. Siti alternated between smelling the earth and the coffee that she held between her hands. The bare naked smell of the earth and the rich roasted aroma of the coffee beans were both heavily intoxicating. The soaked canvass of nature, the frenzy of the rains, the assuring heat of the coffee, the positivity of her thoughts and a future of bright possibilities all coalesced into a whirlpool of delights that made Siti’s mind dance in thrill.

As if responding to a lover’s call, Siti moved closer to the window and exposed her face to the wind which blew over the soft features of her face. The wind, delighted at this new object put in its path, put in much mischievous effort to tug at tendrils of hair that were carefully tucked behind her ears and graze them seductively over her smooth cheek. It tickled her with each move, until she lifted a nude arm to secure it back in place. The arm that she lifted revealed the finesse of an unparalleled creator. It was neither a very fair colored arm nor a very dark one, but the kind of rare shade that must have resulted almost as a happy accident when the creator must have been mixing colors. It shone gold in the light of that evening’s setting sun.

If you were to pass by her someday, nothing much out of the ordinary would strike you about her at first. She wasn’t the kind of beauty that would blind you at first sight, but the kind of bewitching madness that would slowly grow upon you until it mercilessly consumed you wholly. For not in her face alone was beauty and not in her body alone was grace, but in every movement she possessed a delicate feminity, be it in the look of her eyes or in the curve of her lips, in the rising of her hand or in the crossing of her legs.

Siti took another sip of her coffee. It paid to be optimistic, she thought. She had truly believed that her future would bring her prosperity and that time had come. Happiness was only an arm’s distance away. Had happiness been palpable then at that instant she could smell it, feel it and drink it.

As she sipped on her coffee, her thoughts wandered off to that wonderful afternoon when her life changed for the better. She was sitting on her sewing machine at her workplace in the dingy backroom of a large shopping complex, sowing a design on a beautiful silk fabric, when her boss had come in with a couple of important looking men. It was not the first time that she was meeting new clients, they were men from the fashion industry and they came with new designs for their labels. One of them was short and round with a balding head of hair. It was the other man that had fascinated her. 

He was tall and lean with broad shoulders and an easy smile which he liberally used. His eyes mischievously twinkled, which suggested to an onlooker that there was always something interesting going on in his mind. His hair was curly dark brown like hers. Siti had rightly figured that he was in his early thirties. At one point, Siti was asked to help him with some measurements, which she did, but not without some faint pink color rising in her cheek. That faint pink on Siti’s face had the effect of the sunrise on the sky; it gave light to her soft eyes and color to her lips.

The next day the man had come again with more designs and Siti had helped him yet again. She remembered the exact moment when their eyes had met and how he smiled at her. Siti had managed a shy smile in response but what effect that smile had on that man was impossible to tell, for at that instant Siti’s boss had come in and the man turned to look at him. He had kept coming every day for a week, each time with new designs or with changes to a previous design. Each time he had smiled at her and she had smiled back too. She knew right from the start that he liked her and she liked him too.

His manners were gentle and refined. He had opened doors for her when she came carrying the sewing material. Siti was certain that he came from a good family with good breeding. His smile was contagious and his face handsome. There was something about his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. They were deep and mysterious. But it was this mystery that attracted him to her all the more.

Then she thought of that wonderful evening when she left from work by the usual backdoor and had seen him standing outside. Her heart had given a sudden ecstatic twitch. On seeing her, he waved at her. On her asking why he was there, he had mumbled about some work that he had to finish and offered that for a reason. It had been very easy for her to tell that he had been lying. Siti remembered how she had laughed at this apparent lie. She replayed the conversation in her head.

“What? Why do you laugh?” the man asked, blushing red. It was very rare for a man to blush, Siti thought and felt all the more pleased at herself for making him do so.

“Nothing”, replied Siti, suppressing her laugh, which had still lingered on as a badly concealed smile.

“Alright, if you say so!” he said, and laughed too, “I have been caught, I confess, I was waiting for you to come out”.

Siti had given him one of her bewitching looks.

He seemed unable to form a complete sentence and blurted, “Coffee”.

“What?” asked Siti, though she knew exactly what he meant.

“Coffee, would you like to have coffee with me?” he asked. She smiled.

Their friendship had grown with each cup of coffee. They had discussed their childhood, their ambitions and their dreams. He said he worked for a renowned fashion designer. He had offered her a chance to try out as a model. He was convinced she could make it to the top, for she was very beautiful. He offered to arrange for a audition.

How Siti’s eyes had danced at this news. A good, strong man beside her and the opportunity to become rich and famous! Life was going to be alright after all. All the luxuries she had dreamed of would finally be hers. The palm reader had told her that the future had something great in store for her. Siti now believed it.

Tomorrow was the day of the audition. She decided to sleep in early to be fresh for the morning. She carefully selected her best dress, ironed it and laid it on the chair. After giving her pillow a little fluff and drawing down the shades, she slept contently on what would be her last night as a poor seamstress.

He accompanied her the next morning for the audition all the while holding her hand and encouraging her. The audition place was a little deserted. There was no long line of girls waiting outside the door for their turn. They told her she was late and that everyone was already inside. He said he would wait outside and urged her to go in. Siti hesitated, but he encouraged. She stepped in but something seemed strange to her. Just before the audition room’s door closed, realization dawned on Siti. Her chest pounded, her mind blanked out in horror. She turned to look at him through the gap of the closing door, blinking back at the sudden moisture that seared her eyes. Her last look at what had been a free world for her.

He saw her look at him in disbelief, in shock, in sorrow. He turned his face away, clenching the wad of currency that was just handed to him, as if the money could redeem him. He did not see her run to the door just as it closed. He did not hear her banging her fists at the door, while someone much too big for her cruelly dragged her in.

*

It was that very moment that Hell’s fires flared and burnt more viciously than usual. Yet another soul had been claimed to its treacherous, dark horror. The devil feasted on it. For with each human soul, the devil grew stronger. It had been so easy, he thought, to get the man’s soul. All he needed was something the humans called money. He laughed at the Creator who couldn’t safeguard his creations.

In heaven, the guardian angel wept over the lost soul. It wondered just why the Creator would not allow it to tell the man everything. Why did the Creator not let it stop the man from selling the girl? It wondered why it was restricted to only whispering good thoughts in the man's head. It cried out its thoughts to an older angel, who consoled him. The older angel then showed the younger one every opportunity that the man had had to stop himself from committing this act, all options that were before him, but chose to ignore.

“Do not forget”, said the older angel to the younger one, “Humans have the great gift of choice. They themselves choose what happens to them. We cannot stop them from doing what they want to or else they would be slaves to the Creator and He loves these humans so much that He wants them to be truly free!”  

Devi...

The winter wind had once again begun blowing at night, enveloping every thing it touched in an icy shroud. The little town on the hill stood almost frigid and unmovable, scarcely preserving its vitality, by means of small fires that crackled in furnaces, seen through glowing windows of houses with sloping roofs and gray stone walls.

Devi tugged at her shawl and pulled it closer around her, the last bit of rich clothing that served as a reminder of her former days of opulence and beauty. The fire hissed and crackled, dancing merrily, the branches of the bare trees outside cast ominous shadows on the walls, that were suggestive of spectres and phantoms to a lonely old lady huddled in a shawl.

Devi cried again, wishing for the companionship of an old lost love. If only she hadn’t tossed it all away, if only her pride had taken a bow before his love. But great beauty when coupled with vanity had given rise to such haughtiness within her, that it took years of crying solitude and loneliness to get rid of. Devi managed to rock herself to sleep, blotting out the creepy shadows by shutting her eyes and gradually the old memories faded away as she slipped into oblivion.

The next afternoon, the wind was milder in its icy wrath. Devi managed to settle herself in the verandah. She spotted the neighboring boys again playing cricket in the street. The pesky kids were too much of a nuisance. Always creating a ruckus when she wished for was peace and quiet. The winter sun shone mildly as she drifted off into a nap.

The sudden noise jolted her. The troublesome kids had once again thrown their ball over into her yard. And a couple of kids had ventured in to retrieve their possession. Devi thought that this was the perfect opportunity to intimidate them from coming any further.

She stood up from her chair. The boys halted in their track, uncertain of what to do next.

Devi rose her wrinkled hand and yelled at them.‘Don’t you boys ever dare come into my yard again. I will not bear noise here. Go away from here’,’

The boy called Rohit answered, ‘Aunty we just need to get our ball’

He was a brave boy. A lad who was far mature for his age. He sensed in the old lady, a longing for companionship and friendship.

Undeterred by the scowl on Devi’s face, he persisted. ‘We are tired aunty, could you give us some water?’

Devi was stunned. It was after a very long time that someone had asked something of her.

She recollected herself and for some reason that she couldn’t understand, went in to get water.

This went on for a few more times, each time Devi gave them a drink.In fact each afternoon she began eagerly looking forward to seeing the kids

Young kids are possessed with so noble a heart and so engaging a disposition, that old people cannot resist their buoyancy and vibrancy.

One day Devi prepared cookies for them. The boys soon swarmed up around her, talking and laughing and asked her many questions. Devi managed to answer some of them.They talked and played about her and chomped on the cookies.

This turned into a daily affair. Each day Devi looked forward to the kids. Each day she prepared something nice for them. They in turn chatted with her for hours, narrating incidents from school and their families. Devi found the link to the world that she had lost many a years ago.

Her solitary home now turned into a beautiful abode for the young children. The old lonely lady now became the kind neighborhood aunty who loved children. Devi never had a family of her own. These children had become her family.

Devi now experienced for the first time in her life, what is was to love and to be loved back.