Knot of Love E-Book

Pushpita Awasthi

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 189

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

This thought-provoking compilation of fables artfully deconstructs the human condition to examine its mysteries. Each story is a microcosm in which human nature is laid bare for reflection. Relationships, the concept of mother in modern society, the struggle for materialistic utopia and the journey towards inner peace are all concepts explored within beautifully crafted text. In 'The Key', Kishan reflects on the ability of people who have nothing to exist in a state of plentifulness. In 'Ghutiya', the life of an elderly mother is revered by her children, who reflect on the delicate state of mortality. Other stories explore the existential nuances of human life through simple allegorical tales, all of which gently command contemplation of self-honesty and inner truth.

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2024 novum publishing

ISBN print edition: 978-3-99146-524-9

ISBN e-book: 978-3-99146-525-6

Editor: Charlotte Middleton

Cover images: Pushpita Awasthi, Photojogtom | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

THE KEY

All the town’s buses had been painted yellow so that they could enter and move easily in the traffic-controlled areas without any restrictions. This made it difficult for the daily passengers who travelled by bus to recognise their buses. The eyes of unemployed roadside Romeos and street vendors selling their wares (footpathiya), gazing up at the young college girls on the school buses, used to be happy and they used to stare at them till the buses passed, but now all the buses were the same. Kishan used to watch this game of sadness and excitement daily while he waited for his routine bus or tempo (3-wheeler).

However fast you move, or run, time always passes in front of your eyes. Kishan remembered a proverb from his childhood – keeping his head at his father’s feet when he was laying on his cot, his father, looking at the stars, said that hair is always ahead of time. Son! Know. Kishan believed that in spite of his father’s instructions he could not hold the hair of time. And father had been taken away by time. He himself had gone.

The heat of the sun causes the seed to germinate and produce a tree which stands on the body of the Earth, laughs, blossoms and spreads its shade all around. As the sun becomes warmer the cotton plant fibres reveal their silken softness … so white and bright, slipping into hollow eyes to get absorbed in a corner of the fluttering mind. Silent! Like the tree, however much sunlight is absorbed by the body of a man, the more sensible he becomes. A man who has absorbed much sun is never quickly surprised. To tolerate heat becomes his habit. Fire becomes another name for light. As the road is heated by the sun it becomes more and more empty. The hot, dry winds (loo) of the Indian summer bring desert-like fear with them. The footpath becomes empty of the vendors, as if the vehicle announcing curfew has passed by. There is a silence everywhere. The sun melts the emptiness.

Kishan found that Ramadin, the parched grain vendor, and his almost permanently fixed punctured cycle-trolley had been pushed and hidden somewhere else. In the city the helpless find little or no patronage or shelter. Ramadin stealthily hid his rusted, jammed trolley behind the boundary wall of Kuber Complex and locked it to the strong iron mesh fixed there with his ten-rupee chain and five-rupee padlock, then without any worries went home to sleep at night. He did not run a tea stall, which had to stay open all night to serve tea to those people who came on their way to the station. Even while sleeping he stayed alert all night because he had seen his father’s murder. His father’s death had woken him up forever. His mother’s cries had opened his eyes. His soft hands held no dreams but only the boxes of matches he used to light his chulha (charcoal oven). While he parched the grains he dreamt of burning his father’s murderers.

He was short, much shorter than his age. Small, slim Ramadin had one ear much smaller than the other. Ramadin had converted his ear into a hook. He used to hang a key ring with an assortment of keys … old keys … strange-shaped keys with the appearance of a bunch of blessed tantric keys. His frayed bush shirt’s pocket was filled up like a box. The pockets of his shorts were also full and for this reason rumpled and in comparison with the rest of his shorts very dirty, stained and greasy. The bunch of keys hung safely on his ear. He could not weigh more than two hundred and fifty grams on his scales of chickpeas, peanuts, beaten rice, rice and soaked peas, which he promptly put into the iron roasting bowl (wok or frying pan) filled with extremely hot sand and salt and roasted them. He sieved the grains, poured them into a paper bag, added a small packet of coriander leaves and garlic sauce and handed them over to his customer.

Ramadin lifted up his eyes and asked for a reasonable amount of money according to the goods. He most probably did not charge any customer more than ten rupees. After all, most of his customers who chewed on the parched grains were generally the more needy labour class, who were like lost cattle roaming the street. Along with them were the fourth-class employees found in government offices. At a young age, Ramadin was very mature at his work. His small hands had become experienced much before their time. They had changed through the wear and tear of hard work from being soft to becoming rough and calloused. He talked little, probably as he had experience of a very small world. His whole world was his mother and her small womb-like and safe home.

Kishan took some time out of his job as a salesman in a large store in the newly built Kuber Complex to get a cup of tea. While he was sipping his tea he filled his palm with parched rice and chickpeas from the two-hundred-and-fifty-gram bag he had with him. He passed the time in the shop eating the mixture. One day he asked Ramadin why his coriander-and-garlic chutney tasted better than the parched grain mixture. Ramadin immediately answered, “My mother made it!”

Kishan thought, while passing his time in his new job, “After some time he will say – my wife made it.” But then would the chutney be just as tasty?

Kishan remembered the words of the laundryman, who had recently set up on the corner of his street, who, while pressing his clothes one day told him, “Pressing clothes is my business, but no matter how much my business increases my wife will never lend a hand. Today’s wives have become madams. Even though my father and my real mother used to wash, dry, press and deliver all the clothes to their customers together.” The character of the world today has changed. Kishan had, when all was considered, a simple mother, who had not studied enough to be able to get a job. She was not so shrewd as to be able to fit in with a joint family. Father had not left so much money that she could spend the rest of her life gossiping. All said and done, Kishan depended on her. Kishan thought to himself that if there was anything in this world it was his mother and her home. After the birth of her children, a mother still gives them protection. Mother would always be his armour, even though she was alone and orphaned. She maintained fasts even without water only for the sake of protecting her child. But how much does this starving world give protection? Doesn’t time change people in its own way?

Kishan’s daily habit was to visit Ramadin’s shop, where he used to break his silence and solitude with his questions. He used to pass the time he used to shorten the distance between himself and the answers. He ran the gauntlet of these questions. When Kishan asked where his father was, Ramadin used to answer, “I found out he was dead.” He lowered his eyes and head when he answered. At such a young age, answering this probably lightened the burden. How? “I came to know he was murdered.” Now he went further. One of his father’s customers did it. Why? An argument over the price of the parched rice. In the twinkling of an eye, the argument had become heated and they had started to fight each other, and with his own knife, Ramadin’s father had been stabbed in his stomach.

In this way Ramadin was heating his life in his father’s parched-grain shop. He could have done other work to stave off hunger, but his earnings were satisfying his life’s hunger. Kishan realised his pain that day.

Ramadin’s prudence was that his pockets were his safe corner. His keys, which most people used to keep very safely, hung from his ear beneath his military-cut hair. One day Kishan asked him why he kept his keys hanging from his ear just like people hung their keys in the courtyard of their homes in the village; most people in the city kept them hidden away safely. Ramadin answered immediately that they were imitation keys. “The real keys are with my mother. In my pocket there is one that is the key to the girls’ box. Brother, this bunch of keys hanging from my ear are my identification, how people will know me in this city.” Kishan’s eyes lit up with the realisation of this simple truth. The silence of truth stood by this young person and his small parched-grain shop. Standing close to the wall of the Kuber Complex, the air was filled with aroma of various grains like maize and rice being parched along with peanuts and other grains. Kishan remembered the parched-grain shop in his village. Unlike this one, they were situated inside the house, not unlike the homes of many rich people in the city having shops built into their fronts and also converted into small shopping complexes. It was the smell of the parched grain making the feeling of home and yet it had its floor converted into a place where grain could be easily parched in large iron bowls made only for this and the fireplace built into the ground. All this could make one recognise this as a place to get parched grain, just as the bunch of keys on Ramadin’s ear was his identification mark.

In the village the four parched-grain shops could be found in each direction. Each shopkeeper collected grain from the houses in their respective localities. Around three o’clock in the afternoon the ovens were lit. From the homes of poor people or the rich where people used to work as labourers, good people used to gather on the platform situated at the parched-grain vendor’s house. The village workers or masters used to gather there, where they used to exchange their problems or their happiness. They discussed their earnings and their losses. Relying on fate with its bittersweet promises, their faces reflected their faults and the sadness of being born in poverty.

In the meantime, amidst the happiness of riches and the helplessness of poverty, there were sometimes loud guffaws and other times soft voices advising people to forget their woes. Kishan was reminded of those times, from the early evening to its end at about seven o’clock. How many stories … how many truths … real laughter … real tears that he used to see and hear there. How the rich houses appeared so upstanding but were in fact only a farce, a lie and unreal. He could see that public platform strewn all over the place. That gathering of all classes was open for all to see, both truth and lies. It was in the labourers’ happy kitchen in the parched-grain merchant’s house where they could have sattu (flour made from parched chickpeas and barley) made. Sattu and molasses mixed with parched-grain sweets (patti) could be found there. In the evening everything was chewed up there. Nothing had changed in the village or the town. The oven, built in the floor, had changed into the oven on the trolley. Poor men became poorer and were bound by the simple fare.

The fate of children is not determined by their mothers’ wombs but by where they are born. The birthplace decides everything; the quality of the soil will decide everything. If it is marble-like ground then so is the demeanour and high quality of the person. If it is painted with cow dung then it denotes a lower category of person. Kishan used to go to work by auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk) where he earned his living. He spent eight rupees coming and eight rupees going home. He changed his auto twice. A young boy used to gather the passengers for the Vikram, a six-seat three-wheeler. Imagine, a child as the driver’s helper. Small children doing adult work for their survival, the buttons of their shirts open, exposing the immature chests which their mothers used to caress, now grimy with the daily work, hardened much before their time. Chests to be tickled by their fathers now becoming adult much before their time. Soft silken bodies hardened by the travails of life.

Dirty towels wrapped around their necks and mouths filled with betel, the red juice staining their teeth and even though they had not fully learned how to allow it to liquefy in their mouths still they had begun to liquefy their bodies. Waving their towels, they used to call passengers, like the street vendors selling their wares. Hanging onto the rod next to the seats and with one foot on the step they used to travel at speed along the highway without ever taking a seat, whereas the passengers would hold onto their children whilst sitting inside the Vikram. While calling passengers they spoke with respect: please come, uncle … auntie … grandmother, but then, as if they were the owners, they could be seen berating other vehicle drivers even though the owner of the Vikram was someone else often sitting in luxury somewhere else. They would seat four people in a place for three or keep their luggage on one seat. The passengers always complained to these children but their words fell on deaf ears, and the patience of these children, as their lives passed by, was something to admire. Kishan learnt this art of tolerance and patience from these children and realised how happy they were in their present existence chewing pan and earning money.

One day a middle-aged Muslim man sat in the tempo. He asked the tempo to stop before the regular stop, so the child tapped the roof of the three wheeler and asked the driver to stop. However, the passenger asked them to go a few yards more, near to the butcher’s shop. So once more the child tapped the roof, but when the tempo stopped again it had passed the shop, so the passenger gave the child one rupee fewer than the agreed fare. The driver left immediately, leaving the child behind. When the other passengers told him that the boy had been left behind, the driver told them that he would let him walk a while in the heat and learn the value of accepting one rupee fewer. Hearing this, Kishan became angry and asked the driver if he had any compassion. There were such strict rules. Like the military, there was no forgiveness for mistakes.

A person’s recognition never comes before they are old, and these were just kids. Kishan watched the boy running like a horse, trying to catch up with them. Inside, he was abusing the driver in his thoughts but was silent on the outside. The stopping place was coming up and the driver slowed down, and the child climbed aboard, laughing without any complaints. He probably knew that if he said more he would hear more abuse or receive punishment. Then a passenger sitting inside said that if that damned old man had got down where he should have and paid the proper fare, the child wouldn’t have had to run so far. Hearing this, others started making comments about religion, but this meant nothing to the boy, who thought that he could save the old man having to walk, but brother Vijay took him too far. But still he had to walk. Then at Golgudda, another Muslim man with a child in his arms climbed aboard, even though there was not enough room. It was just a matter of getting in. A female Hindu passenger asked the man to give her his child so that he could sit down. She told him that the child would have difficulty, but he could adjust himself; children are so fragile, she added. Kishan thought that the young boy helper was fragile too. It seemed that poverty did not allow him to be fragile. Along with Kishan, the other passengers looked at the woman and thought that women had no religion or caste – they had only love.

Sunshine … humidity. At nine o’clock that day the helper boy was not in the Vikram. Not only the vehicle but the whole road was empty. Then the tempo stopped. Kishan leaned forward to see past the driver. The road was empty, but to the left there were three women, their cheap make-up running down their faces. The driver would give them relief; their tiredness would be relived like a good night’s rest. They all sat beside the driver without asking where he was going or how much it would cost.

Kishan had arrived at his destination – Ramadin’s parched-grain shop. That was where Ramadin, with his key hanging from his ear, lived. That bunch of keys had no padlocks. It seemed as if he had put a lock on his ear and his tongue and hung the keys there. That is why he was silent and probably deaf too.

Kishan took out money to pay the tempo and turned towards the compound when Ramadin wished him to arrive. His hand was bandaged, probably because he had an injury. The night before he had been fine. Then the silk cotton tree in the Kuber Complex compound started shedding white balls of cotton, just like ice cooling, and being blown by the wind, they fell to the ground. Where would they fall? What would happen? The balls did not know, just as Ramadin did not know, nor Kishan, from the suburbs. Even the child labourers did not know. From the road, the pavement or the drain, if gathered and sold, they would be used to make some rich man a pillow to sleep on. Their flight would be captured. The people mouths would be closed and stitched up, just like the mouth of a cotton-filled pillow. How many lives are sewn up by others, as if they are living clothes just for the use of others?

HABIT

For several days the sound of the wind had not been heard in the room. The bell on the weathervane on the chimney above the fireplace was also silent. A thought that had been playing on Susan’s mind, that the sun would come out after a long time, came true that morning. Susan took the day into her lap and became totally involved in it. The day was clear. The breeze was filled with happiness. What more could the residents of a cold country want? Susan decided to enjoy the day’s sun. She really liked to walk on her own shadow. Her mind opened up just like her shadow, as if it were her dear Marko’s shadow.

Susan wore an overcoat. She wrapped a scarf around her neck to display her beauty more than to protect herself from the cold. She put her gloves on. Her gloves felt like her lover’s hand, as he had bought them, along with a cap from Moscow, as a gift for her. When it became cold in the Netherlands she always desired to buy a hat. Marko always told her that he would bring a cap for her from Moscow. Now these gloves and cap brought back warm memories of Marko, which never left her alone. They filled her mind and removed her loneliness. So she found any excuse to wear the gloves and cap so that she could feel Marko’s presence.

As always, Susan took Dorp Strat to start her walk. The cars in the park were covered by the sunlight. On the roof of one car, two cats dozed, taking a sunbath. They too had felt the need to enjoy the sunshine like all the others.

As she moved forward a little further, she noticed on the side of the road a woman whom she thought she recognised supported by a rollator and wearing a hat. From under her hat a lock of white hair hung in front of her ear. It matched her wrinkled face and complained of her increasing age. Susan lifted her eyes to the wide glass window in front of which the old lady was standing and saw three cats in various positions enjoying a sun bath. They appeared more mistresses than the real mistress of that building. There was a dialogue between them, even though their eyes were closed. Susan felt that the old woman with the rollator jealously understood their silence, because the cats were not alone, like her.

Susan turned her gaze to the face of the old woman. She saw that it was Ellie. She lived at the end of her blind lane – she had had a dog which had lived with her for fourteen years. Now it was no longer alive. But Ellie still did not accept that it was dead, no longer in this world. If anyone asked, she replied immediately, “It’s got lost somewhere. He’ll suddenly come back some day and surprise me.”

When the weather cleared up Ellie often went out for walks with her rollator. She spoke to everyone walking their dogs about her dog. He was her favourite. Those who have kept dogs as pets can understand the importance of Ellie’s words. She talked about her dog and carried a photo, which she showed to everybody. She gave his description and also handed out her visiting card with her address and asked them to send her dog there, but this year she was more alone, as her two pet cats had gone missing too – these formed Ellie’s family of four. She had a photo of herself with the animals. Crying out in tears she said they had left her behind.