Sunday, January 31, 2010

Incomplete - 12 Murdered in Love - 5

Locked inside the house for so long, it was time for Sharada to breathe a new week beginning and venture out. Fear plays a big role, and its true, the more the distance and running away from reality will bring it even more closer and proximate. As inside, nothing had changed outside. The day started the same way as it used to 20 years back. She recollects the early morning mist/ fog, Sharada and Rema collecting milk, running around the village, enjoying little games of marbles etc
The real world had coffee shops, malls, pubs, beaches and all these in villages were susbstituted by temple premises, water pond shores. These were predominantly places where women gathered and gossiped. Some visible changes were women had started driving and riding, once dominant with high caste so called “brahmins”, the line houses were also rented out to “hindus”. Festivals in the village were widely encouraged, participated and appreciated by all hindus. The monopoly, isolated, rigid tag for the community as a whole had vanished. Overall the originality, the smell of the sand, the camphor fragrance, the raw temple floors stood same without much modernisation. With slight changes in the basic structure of so called upgraded village everything remained unmoved, unaffected, passive.
Sharada had ruffling up in the store room, was looking for something and there she found, her cycle and the walking stick. Her memories of Grandfather was very little, and one was this. She was glad that she was the only grandchild to have been able to protest grandpa and get things done in her favour. It was her eight grade, Kerala was a vacation destination and it was then when cycle was introduced to her; she was the first girl to bravely pedal; grandfather was just against all these and especially girls / women- the rationale behind this is nothing to do with suppression, it was about general fear of accidents. On that account he hit her with the walking stick.
Sharada would not dare to do it now, however, a child in her would’nt stop and she stepped out with her cycle, of course this time not pedalling but strolling it along. Her dream was to walk along the way to her college. The roads led to a brick making factory, the smoke and emission gave a weird smell, however, the girls loved it. None knew how it was made, but the heating process and the pyramid made out of all this raw materials excited her. It is still the same, Sharada amused to herself. A verternary hospital; queuing up cows, bulls, some had dogs this time. As she climbed up the hill towards her college, she remembered how some girls had entered an isolated big house only to steal mangoes. With a smirk on her face she continues. A weird feeling, as Sharada stood in front of the college gate, strikes were a very common phenomenon earlier and so was the case even now. As she touched the gate railings, she stood motionless without expression.
Sharada moves back as all the memories are action replayed. Some places are not meant to be retunred because they always remain with you. If not for the suspension, things would have been different for Sharada. The sub plot in her life to get murdered in love, would have been a late entry.

1 comment:

  1. For some reason... i loved this statement... "the more the distance and running away from reality will bring it even more closer and proximate." awesome...

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