Elephants in the cottage

They hustled and bustled in the cramped room, the floorboards of which creaked but the sounds got muffled in the laughter.

The musty smell pervaded the two-room cottage but the lady in the apron shuffled around carrying an aromatic freshly baked bread with strawberry jam, avoiding the feet of the crowd.

Two sneaky teenagers exchanged looks from the far corners of the room, which were not that far if not for the people blocking the sight of the two restless young men, who jumped at the sound of a siren somewhere far in the curious little town.

A suspicious rat scuffled under the rickety dining table, sniffing away to glory.

The men with cigars in their hands were having a rather serious debate on politics and drifted from the topic every once in a while, being painfully aware of the presence of each other's wives' in the room, who could spill more than they needed at any point in time. They could not resist resting their gaze at the lady in the apron and then sharing a smirk when the wives were looking away.

The racket at home, thanks to the two families that had come to meet the lady in the apron, was a welcome change. The friends rarely met to avoid facing the elephants in the room.

The lady stuffed bits of bread in the mouths of her children and hummed away as she made her way to the kitchen garden, picking up the potted plants that needed to be packed for her journey.

She was soon to leave the town for the city with her two children.

They all thought the man of the house was out of town.

Only she and the young men knew. Some secrets were better off buried in the kitchngarden, where many weeds had made their place on the freshly dug out soil.

-x-

 

That night, it had rained.

Rain was not falling diagonally that night, she was thinking. It fell like tear drops, patient and painful yet a salve. her eyes brimmed too as this was the only time she could flee from the chaos of daily life. Otherwise, she had made a habit of fleeing from herself. Romantic or sad, she did not know such clichés. maybe that is what made it difficult for her, the realism. For her, rain was still.

A cat, cold to its bones, yowled on her windowsill, startling her out of her thoughts. Lights went out and she could no longer see the rain from her window. She did not like sounds that were not accompanied by sight. She gathered herself and shut the windows. The knock that followed was unexpected at that hour of the night.

Dark Beauty

A regular consumer and connoisseur of dark chocolate, he could smell the percentage of cocoa in every chunk. “No one understands my passion,” he said to himself as he bit into a dark beauty, staying up the entire night, high on caffeine.  

The Lucky Charm

Going from door to door, he would whistle incessantly. They called him the Whistling Messenger who would hand them the letters and cycle back to town, leaving behind a haunting tune.The letters never carried any saddening news.

He was their lucky charm until the day he delivered a postcard with news of death. The Messenger’s whistle was never heard again. All that was found on the lane drifting back to town was a bicycle, a khaki uniform, and a handbag with a skull.

Happiness sealed in the letters used to be his lucky charm. 

The Picnic

As we lay our rug beside the river and settled down, looking forward to the much-awaited Spring picnic, the sound of rustling leaves was difficult to ignore. It did not take me more than a few seconds to back up and drive away in my Jeep, before the merry group could get suspicious. I saw the sleek body of the panther, playing hide-and-seek in the vegetation. Everything was happening according to plan. 

Marriage

He had presented her a dictionary, the page bookmarked said that marriage is the relationship that exists between a husband and a wife. The dictionary lay torn in the bin as she wrote down with pen her own definition of revenge on the divorce papers blotted with tears. In this one year of marriage, he had taught her that marrying her teacher was not a good idea.     

Heavy Baggage

Sweltering heat hit the face of the petite school girl as she dragged her feet on the red bricked lane. Steam escaped from the lid of the boiling earth from the stove of the blasphemous earth. An avalanche of heat overflowed in copious amounts from the perspiring goblet of summer.Drenched in sweat, clad in her crimson and cream school uniform, the girl whiled away the trying time by getting engrossed in humming a playful tune, not bothered about her disheveled appearance.

 An occasional thud could be heard on the hardened soil, as she was walking back home from school. The afternoon sun bit her skin and she could not help but wonder from where the sound was coming from at that time of the day in the vehement heat of July. After spotting a colossal old banyan tree, she stopped for a while in the generous shade . The sound still echoed in the silence. Out of curiosity, she started walking towards the source of the raucous sound. A poignant sight melted her heart, which had remained strong in the formidable heat. 

A pit had been dug beside a mustard field, about eight feet deep and the sound that had aroused her curiosity, was that of a rusted spade, escaping into the stillness of the air, whenever it sunk into the grumbling earth. A frail old farmer clad merely in a torn dhoti, wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, enveloped in mud. His bones peeped out from behind his wrinkled skin that spread over the bones as a mesh of cobwebs woven together in place. But, hidden behind the pallor was his youth. A youth that had been forced to age into a diminutive old frame, strong physically yet weak in stature.

The girl stood absorbed in the moment, with her hands cupped  over the eyes to be able to see clearly. To her utter surprise, the farmer looked up at her wearily and smiled. He asked her gregariously if she needed any help or if she had by any chance lost her way.

A sea of pity gushed into her heart but with heaviness in her heart she politely refused. On the other hand, she inquired about the reason behind his heart wrenching plight. She came to know that the leviathan landscape was in the hands of a wretched landlord, who had hired the farmer to slog for him, only to sell of the mud dug out by the end of every week. The farmer was a prey of selfish motives. This was merely because the indignant farmer had once been unable to pay off the debts of the landlord. The story tugged at the strings of her heart and she implored him out of the pit, to sit under the shade of the banyan tree. She watched him scraped off the leftovers from her lunch box that had a slice of bread and butter left in it a few seconds back. After the meal, he told her about how the town used to be a village once and promised to delve into details about the long lost culture, some other day.

He walked back to the field but his shoulders no longer drooped as before. Even the shoulders of the girl no longer felt tired under the weight of her bulky school bag. There were heavier things to be worried about and taken care of. Today she had walked back from school from a different route but she knew that she would follow this path everyday and no longer crib about the heavy baggage upon her shoulders.