chapter 3: Damn!The Dame Lost its e! (chap1&2n below)

CHAPTER 3:

68, Albany Avenue,
The Annex, Toronto,
Canada.

He opens his eyes. He sits up and shakes his head in desperate jolts that could have only one plausible explanation: serious attempts to shake off the still image of those pleading green eyes. It confuses the hell out of his stirred soul; this woman who deserted him so long ago is now fighting back into his very being. His soul feels heavy, as if struggling to stay afloat amidst the musty beads of anxious perspiration on him, his pajamas and his sheets.


The oak wooded cozy room is so gilded in detail, so quiet and charmin that it oozes with ultilmate opulence. Right now, it seems like a room he never had been in before.Tall ceiling, original wide oak mouldings, large oak crown dentil casting, oak picture molding, oversized 6'H oak window, oak doors, and beautiful original art work making this a splendid, cozy cocoon. Red and green holly hues

predominate the colour scheme, interplaying antique silver and beautiful Old World fabrics. Various dramatic, hear-wringing stills, straight out of his camera, adorn differnt pockets of the wall spaces.

The blue velvet curtains are drawn close and he couldn’t really say night from day here. The night lamp feels like a faraway star, its light so soft and golden. His groggy eyes search for the familiar clock on the opposite wall, in order to jerk away the haunting image of those damning eyes. The hands of the clock are almost aligned in the same line; crawling towards 6 pm.

He jumps out of his bed and into the real world, pulls open the blue curtains and stares into a beautiful skyline. Ah, Beauty! The cavalcade of absolutely perfect shots zips across his mind. ‘One hell of an amazing panorama! I simply must find a spot as bonnie as that waterfall. It would imbue the Innu documentary with a haunting melancholic strain ,’ he thinks.

The evening is fast losing itself to darkness. He suddenly remembers that Amelia, the maid had asked permission to retire early, on account of her grandson’s poem recital. Every brain cell calls to mind the cherubic face of his little ducky, Ila. She is the only woman who is privy to the real Dharesh; his heart, soul, values, camera, and life concoct an ‘in the flesh’ ode to his little elf- the only one who ever looked beyond Darry, a name most people knew him by.

It is her bathing hour now. He walks into her room. She is neither at her desk nor in her big blue tent. Her little rustic bed is also neatly tucked into temporary emptiness. He quickly pushes opens the adjoining bathroom door that stands slightly ajar. For a minute, his limbs go into a state of unjustified rigor mortis.

Ila lies fast asleep in the little bear-shaped tub. The Little Twig citrus-rosemary scented bubbles have somehow found their way a little above her tiny nostrils. The tiny bubble keeps popping in and out of them. Her eyes remain shut.

Dharesh shakes himself out of his temporary rigidness. He stumbles forward with flailing arms, steadies his torso right above her, pulls her out of the bubbling mass of water and carries her to her bed. Every coherent thought escapes his frigging thought process. He lays both hands on her chest, one above the other in a cross forming pattern, in an effort to thrust out any water that might have been swallowed.

For a heart stopping moment, there is absolutely no movement. Then, his heart lurches out of his mouth and dives back just as quick. ‘Papa,’ she whooshes, as he finally pulls her in a huge bear hug, simultaneously letting out the huge aching pressure that had almost exploded in there. The symbolic cross he just laid on Ila by chance had probably saved them both from an imminent, horrific accident.

Jalsindhi, Madhya Pradesh,
India.

Two huge invisible hands take her by the sagging shoulder bones. She continues staring into the vast emptiness. The nonentity forcibly draws her out of her floating reverie. She stares on.

Suddenly, the pain in her chest sends out a shooting pain that reaches her toes in one spine chilling shot. She expectorates the congested water in one huge cough, followed by two smaller ones. Completely exasperated, she wonders what pushed her into this benumbing experience.

‘Toya, what happened to you? I’ve been looking all over for you,’ screams Lolita at the top of her lungs. She puts an arm around Toya and helps her out of the water. ‘The forest is ours. The soil is ours. The waters are ours. We will drown, but we will not move an inch,’ is the slogan being rammed out of the raging bodies around her. This is what had pushed her over the cliff and under the waters. She once againventures into the waters with inexorable resolve .

The police are very close. All of a sudden, she begins speculating on the faraway boat and the invisible hands. Her hand goes flying to her mouth. She swallows it all into her trembling body. While swallowing, the larynx usually closes to prevent the swallowed material from entering the lungs. And right that second, her slogan gets trapped in her larynx as she swallows ‘him’ in.

The posterior cricoarytenoid, quite abruptly gets incapacitated on both sides, reinforcing the inability to pull the vocal cords apart, causing her a breathing difficulty of a different kind. The familiar yearning gnaws at her. She is engulfed by his loving, strong, masculine presence; as strong as it had been the last time she saw him, on that fateful day- May 15, 1992.

chapter 2: Damn!The Dame Lost its e!

Chapter 2:

June 20th, 1999.

Unidentified No., ‘By the Unchartered waters’ Avenue,
Jalsindhi, Madhya Pradesh,
India.

She steps into the deliciously inviting waters. Her unconditional, unrelenting,umbilical fixation with the mystical rivers, before her involvement in this cause had always been an innate obsession. The waters had never been of any real threat to her. Until today…

However, as she absently props a tiny kid with bubbling phlegm popping in and out of one nose into her arms, her thoughts quickly shift gear. The waters were never a threat before the huge ‘engineering marvel’ had been ludicrously erected by the conniving ‘Iron Triangle.’ She muses, “The water always loves and gives; its ferocity is only kindled by the notorious acts of selfish men and kindred.”

The police are moving towards them with a brutal body language suggestive of the use of lathi and maybe even harsher means of repression. As if spurred on by the impending danger, she joins in the resilient chanting with a renewed sense of invigoration : “Bachao. Bachao. Narmada Bachao. Bhag Jao. Bhag Jao. Police waalé bhag Jao!” (Save the Narmada. Run away Police Men)

Approximately 200 people rub shoulders with her. Lohari and his family shout the slogan from the bottommost pits of their stomachs. This family would always feel like the snuggest sweater she wore back home in Mumbai.

Then, her eyes meander to the woman, the keystone of this protest; a lady whose simplicity and small frame belie the powerhouse of empathy, energy, fire, passion and purpose within. Medha Patkar is the exemplary ordinary Indian woman who became the extra-ordinary ‘queenpin’ of this group of people: the most unseemly alter-ego of divine deities who adorned the greatest temples as much as they occupied the common man’s mind spaces.

They are of various makes, these people, including her: electrons, protons and neutrons; nevertheless, electrons, protons and neutrons that make up the same atom. Like atoms, they might be considered the smallest particles of matter in the huge universe of people who seemingly didn’t care about them. She carries on the internal debate: “When atoms share or lend electrons with other atoms, they make a chemical bond. There are those varying atoms out there in the outside world who still did not know them. But, a bond could definitely be made. Time and dedicated efforts would be a catalyst towards melding the bond.

She now turns her attention to the little child in her hand. She smiles at the pop-up phlegm. Boom! The bubble bursts all of a sudden. She absent-mindedly wipes the greenish viscous stuff off with her Dupatta, cleans the stained Dupatta in the waters and passes the kid on to its mother, all the while thinking of that little angel Ila. Children in this valley, especially ones with bubbling phlegm always blew her inner maternal instincts out of proportion. She then wonders where Ila would be at this very moment. This particular direction of ‘wondering’ would always lead to the insistent resurgence of ‘troubled waters’ in her mind.

And surely, troubled waters were here to stay…..

The water rose with every question…

How many more children would have to lose their childhood?
Would these children’s birthright to live be snatched right after birth?
How would delusory displacement of people in the Narmada Valley finally marry effectual, real resettlement?
How long would the hapless Adivasi feed his life to the Euphoric, rich Indian?
How long would the Government hoodwink its hideous underbelly; an underbelly that is fed with dreams of a golden corridor industrial belt?
How long would the engineering wonder continue transmuting into a natural disaster?
How long would radical activism take to activate the passive citizens of the country?
How long would the Damn continue damning the lives of harmless, guileless people?

The water didn’t really rise as much with every question as did her body submerge into it. Like in a trance, she slowly, but surely melts into the water. The sugar when dissolved in black coffee melts into it with absolutely no physical evidence of it ever have been there.
People around are so immersed in the protest that they hardly notice her becoming one with the black waters.

Her curvaceous hips whip out delicate ripples. They are succeeded by the weed like waist and the bountiful bosom. The delicate neck follows suit. The Cupid pout kisses the water. The black mole above merges into the lake’s black hole. The aquiline nose literally nosedives into the lake. Finally its jus the eyes; the open green eyes are gazing back at her own unanswered questions. The whirlpool in her eyes is as deadly as the whirlpool she is getting sucked into.

She sees some faraway man in an incoming boat look at her. However, it is only for a split second she notices him. After that, he gets lost in the mindless oblivion surrounding her.

Lohari’s wife Bobita looks for Toya the very first time in an hour. The police are closing in on them...