APPLE TREES By Sobhan Pramanik.

3

"APPLE TREES"

A short story.

By Sobhan Pramanik.

To see you wander in the orchard, swift through the trunks of apple, filling your trug with the ripened fruit; I walk all the way down the hill. Staggering along the twists of the clear stream, hearing its clear waves roll over the pebbles. Right at the neck of the valley, where the sun kisses the mist goodbye, I stand and watch you pick the apples.

There was this happiness in me in your contentment. You rubbing their red skin, inhaling the ripened smell, gently keeping them in the trug, teasing at the drops of dew that vulnerably clings to leaf margins and the smile of satiation that beamed on your face against the climbing sun seeing your efforts develop into sweet smelling fruit, was unmatched.

I went there every day, just to witness your happiness. Every time you retired to your house, walking through the ringing trees and across the creeper strangled path, balancing the apple filled trug in the bent of your elbow; I promised myself to come here again. I promised to come...till you will be there.

One winter day when i saw villagers dig up the snow laden earth and lower a coffin in the shade thrown by the branches of apple, I knew walking down the hill won't have the same flair.

Still...with the fall of summer as white buds of apple started to open on the lap of fresh green leaves, I promised to go there till the trees continue to flower. Because despite the hurting fact, my conscience can still see her walking through the trees, teasing at the dew.

Decades later when i visit the place and find that the hills have been dynamited and wide asphalt roads now cut through the plains with no trace of trees, I found myself making up my mind to visit the place till the mighty sky stands above it.

I decided so when I saw by the wide roads a little boy sitting on the knees. His head ducked and hands lifting chunks of soil with a trowel.

Sweat drips from his forehead and then suddenly before his face, I saw the swaying of a sapling's branches. White buds on fresh green leaves. He continued to pat the loose soil at its roots as his mother sprinkles water from a pitcher.

The boy's smile confirming that there will be apples next summer for sure...:) ^_^

© Sobhan Pramanik.

A FATEFUL MEMOIR by Sobhan Pramanik Part 5

2

A FATEFUL MEMOIR

(Based on incidents post Indira Gandhi’s assassination)

Sobhan Pramanik

Part 5

Daylight, a faint shade of yellow streamed through the crack of the window to scatter on the floor. The buttermilk sky faintly visible behind the draping of the curtain, gently flutters along the frames. Outside, singing in chorus in the trees were herds of sparrows, their scales camouflaged against the bark. At the far end of the courtyard, on blades of high grass growing wild at the foot of the walls, glistened the morning dew. Along the roads that ran parallel to Mehran’s house, were heard the hoofs of buffaloes and the heavy wheels of the carts pulled by them, tumbling over pieces of stones.

Mehran taking the steps down the veranda could foresee her in his mind, somewhere down the streets to the city. He could hear the jingling of her anklets in the wind, the anger in her doe eyes in the rising sun. Cheeru listening to his footsteps over the walk in the courtyard, squawked in acknowledgement. She was in her cage, swinging over a metal wire as Mehran fills up her drinking bowl.

That morning he was happy to see his mother healing. She stood by the walk in the courtyard watering the rose bushes. The burns on her forehead and chin hidden behind the veil of the burqa as she sprinkles water from the pitcher. Fresh pink buds greet the sunshine as the flowers ooze a sweet fragrance along with the smell of the wet earth that predominantly hangs in the air. The onset of winter could be felt in the brush of the dry winds that blew across the plain and the descent of thick white mist in the far west, along the slopes of Aravali.  Their peaks amid the floating clouds as the sky seem to vanish behind those age old mountains.

It was when Baba took to the shop after having fed the goats and his mother retired to flame the chulha for the lunch that he stepped out of the house. With Cheeru on his left shoulder, he took long strides along the narrow roads of the village cutting through huts with sagging roofs and walls slapped with dung.

*****

The sun in the eastern sky has climbed quite a bit and its rays beaming through the curtain of mist along the slopes of Aravali that Mehran reached the road connecting Kishangarh with the city. He then sat under the shade of a pomegranate tree and frantically looked up and down the roads hoping to see her. Along the city roads were vehicles hurrying past and at distances stood armed forces to prevent any further massacre. Thousands of Sikhs were reported to have taken shelter in police barracks to escape the assault. A month had passed since that fateful event but still now reports of killing, inevitably made way to news headlines.

Having waited for long, he stood up and started to make a hurried walk by the road. Perspiration in beads roll down from the sides of his face. His disheveled hair flutter in the wind. It was when he had walked quite a distance back into the village that he caught sight of her. In a cautious walk she was approaching Mehran with the turn of the road. On her hips was a trug filled with packets of baked gram seeds that bounce every time her bare feet tramples over a pebble. The scarf of her dress partly pulled over her head against the sun and on her lips is the humming of lullaby. Braids of her hair bounce on her droopy shoulders as the wind blowing in her face tend to push back the scarf. Behind was the sun lit sky stretching endlessly over the calm village of Kishangarh. 

Mehran standing up from the sides of the road, marched towards her. With Cheeru squawking on his shoulder she took his notice. She pauses. The lullaby ceased. Their silhouettes merged into one on the ground and all that tinkled in the blowing of the wind was her anklets, as she shifts her bare feet on the heated earth.

“Can I have some gram seeds?” Mehran asked smiling at her.

“They are for the city market” PERIOD “Please get out of my way…”

“What if I not?” He chuckled. “You will call you mother again? But this time I am not running away…”

“What do you mean?” She reciprocated shifting the trug on the elevation of her hip.

“There’s something about you that brings me your way, every single time…” He looks down upon the dusty road. Upon her feet that stings to the sun’s scorch.

“In the dark papa’s stone missed your head the other day. Else you wouldn’t have been able to come back a single time. Now leave my way.” She shrugged and walked over to a patch of grass to avoid the stinging soil.

“There’s something about your doe eyes that makes me imagine the sky pour even when it is this scorching. You are the rain to all my summers…and will be my patch of comforting sunshine in the shivering cold.” Mehran rambled in a trance. His lost gaze painting images of ecstasy in the canvas of her vision.

“Ever since you broke the pitcher I was wondering whether you are crazy. Today you just confirmed…” She replied almost instantly, hardly paying attention to all Mehran has to say. The wind now howling in the foliage of the pomegranate tree.

“There’s something about the jingling of your anklets which made it my favorite music, ever since I saw you…” He followed her at heels against her desperate attempt to walk away faster. Strong wind was splitting the clouds in the blue sky above. Cheeru made flapping sounds on his shoulder but didn’t fly to the trees. Sounds of vehicles speeding along the city highway fading in their ears as Mehran bravely confronted the emotional battle.

“If not anything…can you please come to the lake every day to fill water?  I won’t break your pitcher, I promise.” He pleaded.

“To play skipping stones with you?” She smiled. It was these little display of emotions that Mehran has been so addicted to. Like the flower that brings a bee back every time it opens, she, for Mehran was the flower and her display of emotions, the nectar. Something that can make the bee in Mehran, live gracefully for days to come.

“I wouldn’t mind playing with you. But seeing you every day at the lake, hunched by the sides with your thin hands dipping into the waters to fill the pitcher, the billowing of your lehenga and the glide of your wet ankles over the broken roads as you retort to the village…are such images I would live tirelessly, again and again”

“You lived in me as an image for all these days. But what’s the name of this image?” He continued.

Only a sudden roar of voices could be heard in response. Far behind, in the haze of dust hovering high over the streets, was seen a group of men in a chase. Thumbing of their feet, like the gallop of horses, distinct in the calm afternoon. With the bend of the road, Mehran could get a clear vision. The chasing men seem to have bamboos stashed in their grip. One of the few even carries an axe. They run like insane. Slurry shouts and hurried breathing, seem to intensify every second. Pieces of rocks flying down the streets comes to settle at their feet.

It was when she screamed for mercy that Mehran knew what they issue had been. Staggering ahead of the fierce mob was the bald man he saw at her house the other day. The corner of his lips leaking blood that dilutes with the sweat on his face and hurry down his neck. Beside him was the woman, the one who baked the seeds. She looks to faint soon. Her head falling back on her shoulders as the man pulls at her arm constantly to keep up the pace. It was soon she collapsed onto the ground…and the insane crowd mercilessly went over her.

“Maaaaa….” She screamed and ran towards her. The trug on her hips fell onto the ground, scattering the packets of gram seeds. Cheeru frightened by the circumstances flew from his shoulder onto the pomegranate tree. It was when Mehran could figure a thing in his head that she had went running a long way.

“Don’t come near beti. Run….” Screamed the old man as a thick bamboo comes down hard on his back. It threw him off the road, rolling over pebbles onto a patch of grass. The ransack then triggered the attention of the forces standing far along the highway. They startup their jeeps and head towards this direction.

Mehran hurried himself to pull her away from the massacre. But she was fast. She had already lowered herself on the ground to help her father as the crowd stops around them. Through their legs behind, Mehran catches glimpse of her mother lying by the road. A stream of blood from the back of her skull losing way on the barren earth. Pairs of shoes lying over her for the stampede she underwent. Her hairs, freed from the bun lies smeared in mud. He concentrates on her wounded face. Her jaws dropped, perhaps trying to inhale, he wondered. But then her jaws never retorted. She wasn’t inhaling…she just exhaled her last. The blood gradually pooling around her lifeless body.

Mehran ran towards the gathering with a sense of fear impending high. Pushing through a few he caught sight of her crying, her arms begging for plea and alternately beating on her chests. On the ground lies her father as she tries to embrace him around his waist. Two of the people kick his ribs hard, he moans in pain. Agony trickled from his eyes as he blinked. With every tear, her begging for her father’s life intensifying. She thumps her chest hard, spittle bubbling on her lips as she shouts for forgiveness. 

The jeeps carrying army men have just hit the village roads. The roar of their engines, shooing birds from the trees. Mehran caught hold of her hand and started to pull away. But she is rooted. She doesn’t want to leave her father. People hastily talk about how they have raided their house and discovered pictures of Sikh gods adorning the walls. In his mind he recollects the images of that evening when he had went to their house searching for Cheeru. He remembers the man shaving his son’s head and then he knew it all.  It was this rampant that had forced them to shed their religious features for the sake of life. And today at this moment, even after everything, life was literally at stake.

“Hurry up. The army men are nearing. The traitors shouldn’t be spared…” Someone declared from the accumulation as others join him in his decision of not sparing them. They throng their calloused hands in the air in support.  

With the man’s limbs pinned down, his legs throwing in the air, a boudlerstone was then attempted to be dropped over his head. The target was missed. It brushed the side of his face sending fragments of broken incisors back into his mouth as a wave a blood covered his face. He was still very much desperate in pulling her away. His hands locked against her hips as she laments in a yelp. Her fingers linger along his dad’s chest that rise and shrink to a faint breathing.

The jeeps stop with a screech as they open fire at the dispersing crowd. Loud roars resound in the air as the tip of the muzzle shows the departing of thin smoke lines. The dust clouds were yet to be settled and in that haze Mehran felt a stream of warm fluid being splashed on his face. He rubs and re-rubs his face. In the backdrop was the roaring of guns and with the scorching sun above shining radiantly in the clear sky, they were lying in the high bushes along the roads. 

It was when the dust settled that he faced an emotional death. He saw her on the ground and on her back, piercing through her spines was a dagger. On the green grass beneath, accumulated fresh blood in drops. Ahead was the frisking of people towards the village as they were fired upon by the army men.

Unable to move with a bullet in his right thigh, Mehran saw people descend from vehicles and carry her away. Her mother, pressed to the earth lifted onto the same stretcher as the carriage drew away with a fading noise.

*****

30 years later.
January 2014.

Mehran woke up with the smell of blood on his face. Gripping onto his crutch, with a gaited walk, he staggered towards the verandah. Birds sung on the branches on Jamun, his father dropping fodder before the goats and his mother watering the rose bushes. Nothing seemed to have changed till he spotted Cheeru’s cage in one corner. Its grill rusted and worn off, rests on the floor behind the door of baba’s shop. She died a year or so later after that fateful incident. Now Mehran has a pair of white pigeons. They are in a different cage as he drops grains of wheat at them because some spaces in your life can never be filled by a second someone. All you can do is to allocate a new space for that new someone. Cheeru’s space can never be filled by the sparrows. That space in his heart remain occupied by an absence just like the space occupied by someone whom he had seen die in the haze of dust.

He still remembers everything about her. From the first swing of her braids to the smell of the last splash of her blood. All he doesn’t know is her name…or may be after three long decades he has assigned her a name. In his solitude Mehran remembers her with the name, Memory.

THE END

Authored by - Sobhan Pramanik

   

 

                        Many thanks for taking time to read. Feel free to share your views. 

A FATEFUL MEMOIR by Sobhan Pramanik Part 4

1

A FATEFUL MEMOIR

(Based on incidents post Indira Gandhi’s assassination)

Sobhan Pramanik

Part 4

Wiping his face with the back of his palm, he jumped from the branches. It was late noon and the sun, a brighter orange shone low in the western sky where tailed colorful kites made merry to the tune of the breeze. Glints of the orange light caught in the ripples of the lake ahead.

The militants have left the place, says the broad marks of tyre on the loose soil disappearing towards the main road from the truck that was brought to carry away the burnt remnants of the Gurdwara. The echo of the winds blowing across the plain ring in the trees. Their leaves chattering against the shrill chants of the birds inhabiting them. Mehran looking frantically through the braches crisscrossing above his head, whistles again. The notes of which made quite a few birds emerge from behind the foliage and flapping their wings, flew high into the sky. But none amongst the flapping flock was his parrot, Cheeru. Clueless of where it went, he hurried towards the sides of the lake. Peeking from his eyes was a sense of panic.

Looking across the village by the lake, flanked on either sides of the dusty road along which he lovingly saw the girl along with his mother stroll back, were mud houses. On their slanted roofs grew large pumpkins and the walls strangled with creepers unknown. Their tendrils hanging in fresh green spirals, support violet flowers. From behind a series of house with sunken roofs, rose thin lines of colorless smoke that quickly disappeared in the air. The broken road then bent towards the left from a patch of yellowed grass on its sides and disappeared behind yet another series of huts.

The quack of ducklings tailing their mother over the still lake and the mysterious bend of the road from the yellow grass had something in it that Mehran decided to visit the village in search of his parrot. 
Taking the roads to the village sounded a task for patience for him. For the panic that was raging in him, he decided to swim across the lake.  

*****

Cold wind dashing against his wet body let his skin break into spikes of goosebumps as he walked the narrow road into the village. With the sun hung low in the horizon behind, his shadow ahead was nothing more than an elongated darkness with limbs merged. The gravels alongside tossing and twisting below his hurried march.

Nearing the bend of the road he whistled again hoping to hear Cheeru’s squawk or spot the green of her scales flying in from amid the orange sky, but nothing of that sort happened and only a darker shade of glum then descended across his face. Looking over the huts through the pumpkin creepers he found the white smokes still rising from behind the walls. The curls of it gradually uncurling to the breeze.

Walking a few more steps he stood on the yellowed patch of grass from where the road took left and just ahead of the hut liberating the white smoke. Standing closer to the hut, Mehran literally smelled the smoke. It was a known smell. It was the smell of gram seeds being tossed over the flames. He whistles again and waited. Just when he curled his lips for yet another whistle, he heard Cheeru’s squawk. A faint one from behind those mud walls he stood ahead of. From the hut that evoked thin white lines of smoke. 

Mehran attempted to climb the sun dried walls. He couldn’t make any grip on them and struggled to set his feet. With his palms firmly curled against the topmost rise of the walls, he fought to pull himself up. His knees brushing hard against the wall caught brown stains of soil on his pale white trousers. Finally placing a broken brick beneath the press of his toes, he pulled himself up and with his chin against the top of the wall, he was happy to see Cheeru.

He hunched himself on the edge and kissing the Tabeez across his neck, exhaled in relief. In one corner of the hut’s courtyard was a bald man dragging a razor atop the head of a small boy. With every drag fell onto the feet, chunks of the boy’s dark long hair. The man switches between spraying water and dragging the razor. 

A little ahead was a woman sitting behind a chulha on which was kept a broad container. Her left hand, the skin of which appears dark, fans at the flames beneath. Far across, against the sagging walls were laundry lines on which dried clothes fluttered in the wind and just below was Cheeru, pecking at gram seeds spread on a sheet on the ground.

Mehran then whistles and with it, he caught the people’s attention.

“Hey boy! What are you doing there?” she paused with her dark hands making airy gestures. “Chor…chor….” Started the boy who was getting his head shaved.

The man then stopped with the razor and folding up his dhoti up to his knees shouted, “Chori karta hai. Nalayak!”  Period. “One slap will make all your teeth fall out. You son of an owl.” He ended displaying his cracked palm.

“I am not a thief” Mehran stammered against the fright of the bald man. Just the sight of his weary palm and he could not feel his jaws anymore. “I came for my parrot” He declared pointing towards Cheeru who happily munched on gram seeds spread out on the sheet.

“No he is thief. Beat him…” Interrupted the young boy who sat on the chair with water dripping from his half shaved head. Mehran made a face at him in reply.

This time when the woman dashed towards Cheeru in a hurry trying to shoo her away, Mehran remembered her dark hands. She was the one whom he had seen from behind the braches of neem. The one who came with the girl to teach him a lesson for breaking her pitcher. He affirmed himself as the woman to be the girl’s mother. Her hands dark, probably because of fanning at the flames for long hours as she baked the seeds.

He could feel waves of excitement dash against his shy shores. He smiled to himself at the remembrance of her wet feet and her swinging braids.

“Youuu??” Said a familiar voice from the foot of the walls. She has just moved out from the hut and stood glaring at Mehran on the walls. In her clasp were packets of gram seeds.

“What happened beti?” Her mother exclaimed shooing Cheeru.    

“Maa….this is the boy who broke our pitcher.”

“I told he is thief…” Once again pitched in the boy. This made Mehran aware that either he is mad or doesn’t know the meaning of thief. The latter being the more probable one.

Darkness had just started to set in that Cheeru came flapping to perch on his shoulder. The sun has long plunged in the far west. The winds blowing over the lake turning colder and stronger as the tree tops bend to its current.    

“Beti you go in and finish the packing. Tomorrow you have to deliver it to the market in the city. We will see this jerk…” Said her mother as she walked inside. The jingling of her anklets ring in the cold air.

“Today I will teach you a lesson…” she marched towards the gate in anger as the man, pulling up his dhoti, followed her.

Mehran by then had jumped off the walls. His legs in a run, thump hard against the ground. He could hear their cursing from half way down the dusty road. The high pitched yelping had made people come out of their houses on to the dark road. Dangling down their hands, meekly glowing kerosene lamps.  

He looks back only to find the bald man chasing him madly. His dhoti billowing and fingers tightened against a rock. The last Mehran wants is the village to chase him as a thief in this darkness. He gasps of air, breathing heavily from his mouth. His cotton shirt sticking to his back in the perspiration as Cheeru flaps on his shoulder against the hurry.

A rock from behind landed striking on his heels and that hurried him even further. The man had just reached the lake chasing Mehran that he heard a splash of water and a bird flapping. Locating nothing in the darkness, they ultimately had to give up the chase.

Mehran swam across the lake as Cheeru flew overhead.

*****

That night he kept himself awake, tossing in the bed, recollecting images of her angrily looking at him. Her wavy eyes and braided hair in the light of sundown hovered in his head as Mehran makes up his mind to catch up with her the next day on her way to the city market to deliver the gram seeds…

To be continued...

Authored by - Sobhan Pramanik 

Next Part - Part 5

Previous Part - Part 3

A FATEFUL MEMOIR by Sobhan Pramanik Part 3

2

A FATEFUL MEMOIR

(Based on incidents post Indira Gandhi’s assassination)

Sobhan Pramanik

Part 3

That morning, the first of the winter breeze had started to blow across the village drifting through the canopy of our Jamun in a sullen puff. In its shade lies freshly shed leaves of the tree amid a pattern of light and shadow, as the soft glowing sun peers through the leaves.

Baba as usual was in his shop, engrossed in his regular morning trade. The front of the shop occupied by a cluster of people. They casually lean over the brick walls on which broad cracks shelter millipedes or on the foldable wooden doors wearied by the termites, chattering away how cruel the act was of assassinating the prime minister. In their eyes a shade of hatred for the accused, Satwant Singh and Beasant Singh and their shoulders erect with determination to fetch justice. They occasionally calls out to Baba, declaring which part of the meat they should be given. Hind legs being the preferred choice due to its high fleshy content.   

From above their shoulders, Mehran catch glimpse of his father sitting behind the Sal trunk. His face glistening in perspiration as his muscular forearms stained in patches of dried blood comes down hard on chunks of meat resting atop the trunk; the steel chopper in his clutch sharply moving through flesh and bones. Clinging to his body is a yellowish vest, the skin of which worn with usage acts as a translucent drape over his broad tonsure and a round Taqyiah cap on his head, which he occasionally adjust as its slips from his sweaty scalp. In the backdrop was the buzzing of flies that hovered over pieces of meat lying scattered on the floor, the collective bleating of the goats tethered to the Jamun and the faint playing of the transistor radio that hung from the fragile doors of the shop. It aired songs from the latest flick, Amitabh Bachchan’s Sharaabi. Baba nodding to the lethargic tune of the song relentlessly chops meat on the wooden trunk as beads of sweat trickle down the sides of his face.

Someone from the cluster stretches his hand out and tunes the knob of the radio. It is now set to a news station where a nasal voice rants about the massacre across the nation. Suddenly the murmur of the crowd ceases, glum faces strangely hangs on each other. Sound of baba’s chopping now much more distinct against the befallen quietness. One of the customer collects his meat and turned to leave the place. At the tail of the queue he pauses with an agitated expression.

“Government should handover Satwant to the public. Hanged to death, is a punishment to sober for the heinous crime he has committed. He should be shoved up his ass a flaming iron rod. ” He ended up spitting a mouthful of chewed tobacco on the loose soil and clenching his jaws with brown stains of tobacco juice distinct against the white of his teeth, he trotted towards the gate. His elongated shadow trailing him like a devoted slave.

Mehran sat by the veranda smearing an herbal paste on his mother’s burns. She lay on a jute cot ahead of him in a grey burqa, the curtain of which flipped back over her skull as he gently applies the paste. Her face contracting and relaxing against its sting. Through the translucent linen of the burqa, is visible the metallic earrings pressed against the rise of her mandible and the brass bangles clinking on her slender wrist every time she shakes against the pain of the wounds.

Cheeru sat by Mehran all the while, occasionally squawking at the sight of the squirrels that frisks through the hedge of marigolds at the other end of the courtyard across a grassy bed. Its buds, slightly sunken against the approaching winter. In her claws are sliced green chilies, she pecks at them with her bent beak splattering tiny white seeds all over the place. Suddenly she takes a leap down the veranda, jumping down clays steps before flying to the branches of Jamun. In her beaks held firmly the sliced chilies devoid of seeds. Comforting herself on the branches, she sat with her tail dangling, munching at the chilies as the winter breeze kept rummaging through the branches. The leaves whimpering in a gossip.         

 Mehran having emptied the bowl of paste and making sure she is comfortable on the cot, pulled up a woolen sheet till her waist. He then slipping into his sandals, walked briskly passed his father’s shop where he still continued to chop meat as a fairly thick crowd of customers impatiently awaits their turns.

He was sure to visit the lake for yet another round of skipping stones today for the glide of her wet feet over the broken path to the village somehow didn’t fade before him. Halfway down the road Mehran whistles. Its shrill note floated across to the courtyard in the wind and Cheeru came flying to perch on his shoulder as he continued to walk.

*****

Peering from behind the trunk of the neem with his palm against its bark, he knew he won’t be able to play skipping stones. A group of army men strolled the place as labors lift the burnt remains of the Gurdwara onto the back of a truck to clear the place. Mehran, still with the hopes to catch sight of her, climbed the branches of the tree and waited behind its heavy foliage with his eyes fixed on the broken path unwinding towards the village. He tore a packet of baked gram seeds and started munching as Cheeru picks up a few grains from his palm.

With the soft streaks of sun making way through the branches, warming him against the cold breeze and the rustle of the leaves certainly didn’t fail to lull him to sleep much against his wishes of staying up.   

When he woke up, he had anxiety rolling down from his forehead in tiny beads of sweat…

To be continued...

Authored by -- Sobhan Pramanik 
                                    

Next Part - Part 4
Previous Part - Part 2