M&M FF: Will-O'-the-Wisp - On hold indefinitely - Page 2

With one bent hand tucked behind his head, he playfully squinted at the beams of light that petered its way down through the sheaves of leaves and branches above him.

Arey yaar!

He sounded just as tired with frustration as his body was from taking the beat of the long journey from Mumbai to Lucknow. All that distance from the one place he didn't wish to sleep another night and she was right up the stairs from the cot on which he was lying down. He pushed himself down onto the cot and the ropes dug into his back. For a moment, the pain felt deserving, but soon his mind was far from it all and instead it focused on going over her face once again with utmost care.

Her hair curled at the ends, but this one had it all straight, some flowing and some tucked behind her ears. The eyes that he recollected from this morning had Kohl black in its lining and that was just about all the make-up he could see on her fair skin. Whereas, the devilish dark eyes that'd taken up monstrous billboards in Mumbai had all the colors of the rainbow going between the crease of her eye-lids and her brows. There was hardly any centimeter of skin that was showing on the little girl's mom, swathed in all of the Lucknow's woolen when the runner-up of Ms.Beautiful Skin Maharashtra thought it was a heinous crime to cover up anything non-essential to the view.

Despite the morgue attested, indisputable proof that she was dead, he could picture himself corner the little girl's mom against a tree or a wall, while flinging a black burkha over her head just to be able to stare only at the brown of her eyes. That would give him the answers, make the clustering heaviness inside him go away in a moment's leap.

Eventually, the heaviness did leave and the light in his eyes dimmed down to a faint glow until the smell of smoldering coals and spices roasting wafted around and his nose began to twitch. He woke up after what seemed like ages of numbness, for when he let his feet touch the ground, he could again feel the rope burn over the skin of his back. He stretched, twisted around a bit before he walked off to the pit where his Chacha was readying a large thali of ground meat.

His Chacha's Gulauti kebabs were to die for and the recipe was a secret and unbeaten to-date in all of Lucknow. It was only expected that his sweetheart Chacha was going to prep up their 100 yr old Choola in their garden to commemorate the return of his prodigal son.

Prodigal...He hadn't exactly been a runaway, but he'd surely vowed to never return to the old town with its leeching memories of his childhood, of his father and mother who passed away even before he could fully comprehend what passing over to another world meant. Chacha had seen to his small hole-in-the-wall eat out that served Lucknow's specialty kebabs and walked him to school until the day he could cycle all the way to his school in the center of the new city. His teen years had passed in a flicker of his eyes, invariably spent on whistling at slender Lucknow girls celebrating their glorious beauty and milky fairness under a burkha and lazing around the gardens of Bara Imambara for any which cheap hookah he could lay his hands on. He'd been tall and bulky, standing out in all of the mischief his thicket of friends involved him in, Guru being one, which earned him the title of the town scoundrel and a permanent place in many a girl's dreams as the perpetual badass.

The problem is that he still was...with the exception of the grey streak that he was under at the moment.

He only had to wait for another day or two, until word got around that he was back in town. Momentarily imagining all the ogling he would be handling soon, he was reminded of his missing shirt. His eyes drifted up to the terrace, where he'd taken his clothes to be dried after the house help had washed them from weeks of having needed to be laundered.

But all he saw was an empty clothesline...

And it wasn't even evening yet...

Neither could his Chacha afford to climb up the two flights of stairs to get his clothes down, given the rheumatoid pain in his knees...

Arey yaar! Not mirchi madam again, he muttered under his breath before he walked off to where his Chacha was sitting on his haunches and handling the coal in the pit.

"Chacha...What? Now she can't stand to have my clothes put up in the terrace that's been rented to her?...This is my home too"

His eyes were red both from the afternoon nap and from having her face surface into his thoughts yet again. Now in the haze of sleep, the image was vague and he couldn't tell who this was, but it was real enough to send a pulsing down his heart.

His chacha didn't react as fast as his words slipped past his tongue with a caustic dislike for the new tenants.

"That, I'm assuming, is something you ought to have remembered all these years you never came back here..." His Chacha twisted his neck to face him, a sly smile lacing his features.

"You could have asked me once...just once before you gave off my room. For all the times we were on phone, you never once mentioned them...She and her bacha party..."

"I think Nanhi is only right in her place to call you AB man...that is what she said, when she got your clothes down..." His face twisted now while one of his hand rose to rub the back of his neck, "From tomorrow onwards, just have your clothes dried in the backyard...You should know that the women will not feel comfortable to have 12 of your langotiya facing their door"

"Argh!..." He bit into his words as he spoke again, "its called boxers. That too Calvin Klein boxers. Not Langotiya Chachaji"

"How does it matter? When they all have the same job?" His chacha was on his feet now and before he could anticipate the elder's move a sharp pain shot up from his ears.

"Argh" he screamed even as his Chacha continued on his daily dose of lecture, "I know you did it on purpose...What have you got against them?"

He let his ear go and now shifted places to sit on a stool and knead the meat with his secret spice powder and besan. "If anything you can dry your langotiya in front of my bedroom window..."

"Chachaji...I'm sure there is no lease or contract like Mumbai.Why can't you have them leave? I can't take all the food smell, you know that..."

All of the initial meat preparation for the store was done at home, in the large expanse of their courtyard and kitchen and the 100 odd spices that were always either being dried or ground which made their home smell like it was a spice heaven for those who could see it that way. For him, it burned his nose and turned it into a pink tomato.

"Nahi..." His Chacha sounded firm in his persistence, "You can sleep at Guru's terrace if you want. I'm certain he will not mind all that catching up that has been years overdue"

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his Chacha and instead stood towering next to him, his hands plastered to his hips, low, just were his jeans began.

Shaking his head, he looked up and his gaze went past the parapet wall and onto where his old room began. The windows came about and in the shadows behind the fluttering drapes he saw the silhouette of someone fixed and steady. The form was tall for the little girl and he was decided now that it could only be her. He looked for a while longer and he saw a hand clutch at the rod by the bottom of the window.

It struck him as odd that she didn't run back or hide from the fact that she was staring at him from a vantage point at his bare upper body, especially the part he took immense pride in. Certainly a teeki mirchi...

All said and done, he was going to get his room back. If he had to play a twisted psycho, he was game for it. He was going to sleep in it and dream there...whether she liked it or not.
Edited by 6th.Element - 12 years ago

Read all the parts in one go. Sounds interesting! Also your style of writing and use of language is too good. 

I'm just hoping that the story would fit in here as well...Fingers crossed.

Let's just assume that this Mohan is tall and has musculature as Kunal Kapoor of the big screen, because that is who I have in the other FF...

@ Sunna_Deewani: Thank you...Glad you like it...

H
Edited by 6th.Element - 12 years ago

Originally posted by: 6th.Element

I'm just hoping that the story would fit in here as well...Fingers crossed.

Let's just assume that this Mohan is tall and has musculature as Kunal Kapoor of the big screen, because that is who I have in the other FF...

@ Sunna_Deewani: Thank you...Glad you like it...

H

Sure...Each to their own...

And I can only hope the details still fit Mohan...I will try my best to keep it as neutral as possible.

Didn't know this show has caught your eye as well... 

you are amazing writer ..keep writing 

Part 4 The Ghosts of his writing past

In the five days, ever since his arrival in Lucknow, he could only manage to eat and sleep. During the day, the walked over to his Chacha's eatery and sometimes sat at the counter, mindlessly taking charge to tender change for receipts and cash brought to him by the boys who served the customers. Sitting just past the entryway to the joint had taken care of spreading the news of his presence back home, far and wide, through the infinitely twisted and reliable network of gossip. In the afternoons he aimlessly took long walks, absently crossing over the noisy part of the town, only to be lost in the drone of silence as he walked to Bara Imambara. Once there, he would sit in the beam of light that carefully lowered into the bowli through its oval opening unto the sky, his favorite hide out in the old city and there he practiced a detached meditation from everything that chased him all day long. Well, at least he tried, but then his past was just as intimate and binding as his shadow was. And so they remained silent and ignored at times; starkly drawn out as chalk lines on a blackboard at others.

He still couldn't tell what'd driven him to take Journalism and the three years had happened in a blink of the eye. Before he could have a full realization of his spur of the moment choices, he was already working at Prabhat Leher under Pratik Ghosh, who as years passed, however unacknowledged, had also turned out to be his mentor. While rolling pan in-between his palms, with thick, bejeweled gold rim glasses and a cloth satchel lending him the unmistakable identity of a senior reporter, Pratik raised the bar for him. That same arcane style of writing of Pratik's, Mohan inherited and made his own, layering them with nondescript pun and ridicule for the political satires he began writing under a pseudonym. He still hadn't grown a full beard by the turn of the first year, but he already had two headline articles and five other stories he was working on - ones that had full potential to turn into unprecedented exposes.

When he wasn't writing, he went in search of the bottom feeders of the Mumbai crime scenes. The ones who usually turned a new leaf over a near death incident or loss of a loved one and sought out vengeance on their own gangs. Now, finding them weren't a problem, although earning their allegiance was. He was new and his youth gave him a semblance of someone who veered in his motivation if the men who permanently lived in the shadows were to be unrelenting. It took him all of two years to break two men down from the gazillion gangs that were always hungry for a share of the city.

That night when he'd come back to Pratik's desk with the news of his new informers, he'd laughed. "You thought they were testing you for two years?"

"Of course...What else? They needed me to be trusting, not give away their identities in case I'm caught working their stories in their territory"

Pratik snickered and leaned forward, crossing his arms at his wrist on the desk, he said, "Well, I could bet it was you who was testing them...with your half-blanched college kid looks until last month, you think they will trust you with their stories, when all they wanted was a reporter who looks half as serious and perseverant as you do now to bring their stories to light...I say, don't lose the beard and the long hair..."

Ever since Pratik's insightful retort, his face never again had the pleasure of having the steel edges of a razor be drawn over it, lending him that serious dark aura his job demanded. Then the stories flooded and his writing shifted and jumped around restless from one behemoth of Mumbai to another. It was a wonder he wasn't dead for the number of times he was bashed to a pulp and sent to board up a hospital for months. The goons didn't know that when they bagged him in a sack and beat him until blood darkened the brown jute, they were bleeding him for stories already told to a beguiling city. That it was only meant to make him come back that much more renewed and severe, justified in his impenitent prejudices he carried against them.

His work usually took his mind away from any or all worldly obligations for 18 hr stretches at times. This tight rope schedule he could manage. But what was left of the day, in the prickly silence of his 22nd floor studio apartment seemed untenable. He hardly slept there, waiting for any speck of light to show up at the horizon as an excuse to get off bed.

"Silence I could take..." He once told Pratik in a bar, after four rounds of scotch and a basket of fries, "but then in that silence, there is an eerie disquiet...something ominously hollow about it...I don't know what will make that fade, sir" Pratik had been at a loss for words and simply patted him then, compelled to order another round of drinks to service all traces of awareness they were left with.

Shortly after that night, he'd found his answer in another bedroom, four blocks away from his own studio apartment. Rashmi happened to him, in the short span from when the elevators doors closed at his office floor to until it jauntily let them out again at the ground floor. While the elevator had been at its steady descent, the duo had exchanged all of three glances and one measured genial smile. But that was all it had taken for her to stop by the glass doors at the entry way and turn around to face him.

"There is a Thai place down the street that serves couples night on Tuesdays" She said, her eyes gleaming with a thrill.

Running a finger over his satchel that ran across his chest, he said "But its Thursday today", seemingly delighted at the abrupt conversation.

"Yes..." She said, shrugging lightly, "I thought we could still make up for not having met each other on Tuesday.."

He smiled then, looking away momentarily while he gathered the moment in its details, suddenly wrapped in an air of self-importance, preoccupied and eager. Certainly women of his age had found him attractive before and he had in turn entertained them with drinks or dinner, parting even without so much as contact numbers once they were out on the road. But the lady in-front of him was something else, older and managed to sound tactfully needing without a hint of being needy, her cadence careful in its echo of her purr.
 
"Pardon me..." He walked forward, stopping close to her, "I was being obtuse in not figuring out which Tuesday we were going to make up for", he said and ran his hand through his hair that was shooting past his neck, while his stubborn beard, from not having kept up with his grooming routine, had thickened from a slight stubble to a savage black. He precisely saw then what was inviting about him, which needed much less reinforcing when his otherwise unkempt looks was also fetching him stories from the underworld without him having to lift a finger.

After dinner, he found himself walking up the cloistered stairway to her apartment. Rashmi was gloriously in her primes, unbidden and glamorous she smiled, holding a cigarette between her fingers, while one strap of her negligee slid down her shoulder. In bed, he was secretly glad  in the economy of words they needed going about each other, she being arduous and demanding, while he was equally unforgiving, their bodies fatigued and yet enlivened from the thrill of pleasure.

"You sure you didn't use voodoo or black magic into making me do this..." He asked, jumping into bed with her once he returned from the bathroom.

"Like you needed any...And tell me Mohan, how does it matter anymore?" She threw a pillow at him before she rolled on top of him for another sinful kiss, dragging her nails playfully over the mound of his chest. Much later, he watched her sleep for a while; she was small and distant in her sleeping form, the intones of her breathing finally filling the dread of the silence he so fought to catch a wink. That night, he slept with no quiet to keep him awake.

When Rashmi moved on, off to marry a textile mill owner in the heart of Gujarat, there were others, whom he sought only if it was nothing more than a mutual convenience, a way to fix the stillness that came with the night. His chase for his stories and the women kept him floating in a thin fog of unreality, practically necessitated by the carnage and realism he worked with. Another four years passed, until the day when Pratik sir, in a casual passing mentioned his leaving Prabhat Leher owing to his wife's frailties.

"I'm of course recommending you for my position...but I'm also duty bound to tell you this..."
Pratik, handed him a cigarette and lighted his own.

"Each time a story comes our way, there is something it takes and something that it gives back...It's all only rewarding until there is no imbalance in that give and take. There will be times you will be asked to give more of yourself...more than what you could afford. Do you think you will be ready then?"

"Are you kidding, sir? Its such an honor...really" He'd rushed to tell Pratik then, even as Pratik realized his urgency,  keenly noting his enthusiasm that had altogether missed the wistfulness of his tone.

His vigor increased ten fold in his new position and that only took away what was remaining of his emotional quotient. Ruthless and scouring he was in his searching and perhaps deserving in some ways, the phone call that came to end all that he believed in, making him reflect much later on Pratik's last piece of advise, that was in every sense, really a warning in after thought.

The brother had been the one to ring him, possibly the first person he was dialing even before an ambulance or the police was summoned to the site.

"Do you know that she wanted to have a baby girl someday?" In the loud uproar of the brother's cries, little made sense, but soon the context and the inevitable news bore him down making his knees and limbs weak with a drowsy exhaustion. He awkwardly fell onto the edge of the bed and his body failed all efforts to move in any degree or direction.

"How do you know..." The brother gasped and struggled for coherence in his utterance, "How do you know she wasn't doing it for love...that she was sleeping with those low-life' to keep someone else alive?"

He'd known about it too, but that - in his opinion - would have made his expose weak, nearly  turning it into a tragedy of sorts. There had been gang wars too as an after math of his articles. However, never had it been a case such as this; with the gore and haunting that surrounded a willful taking of one's life.

There was a stark silence in the line and yet he could sense the mute anguish of the brother, the scalding misery that struggled to rise up his throat and the suffocation there. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, he heard the sobs, the screeching in the rasping there, the accusations that didn't leave his tongue...and then the phone line died...just like something else inside him too had, fading into an inescapable oblivion...
               
                                                           ~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Right then, he woke up, his head hitting hard against something smooth and small and hard, his heart vanishing into a thousand beats against his chest, when he heard a small exclamation of pain.

Looking down, he saw her raised on a scratched elbow, while the other hand rubbed her temple, looking rather surly and threatening, her small pout capturing him even as he felt assaulted by the haze of the dream. He wanted to run from the prick of heaviness that descended into his chest, although his feet wouldn't move and he stayed half stretched over the bed.

His head fell back and he gasped for a full pocket of air, when he saw her walk into his sight, her eyes inquiring and assuring. She walked to the cot without a word. Moments later, he felt a small hand rest against his forehead, her palms comforting him as that of a cold compress.

In those seconds as she looked on, he saw a strange understanding there, the tiny nubs of her fingers unwaveringly soaking up the sweat on his forehead.

She pressed a little on his head and in response he closed his eyes, her thumb stoking his skin  as if it was her lullaby, and he slept on...falling into a dreamless sleep for the first time since that day the call had come in.

Edited by 6th.Element - 12 years ago

I have not read the part yet. But i was waiting for your update. Thanks yaar. I will comment after reading the part. 

Ah! I see...

I'm a little occupied with office stuff...so I can update only 3 or 4 times a week. That is still being very optimistic...😆

Thanks!