Mist Fading

He will agree to let you read some of the stories he wrote after all the coaxing and pledging you will do. There will be a story that will read like nothing you have read in a long, long time.

He was a writer; wrote mostly short stories, shorter than those that appear in magazines and newspapers, barely more than a few hundred words; thought he couldn't carry a story for long.

If you ask who he likes, the first name he will utter will be Kafka. He'll say that there never existed a better coalesce of everything. He'll argue that Metamorphosis is still the best story. He'll underline for you how Metamorphosis has been “plagiarised” by writers like Steinbeck, and point to Of Mice and Men. You will consider that and you will be dumbfounded for a while, and then you will start to see some connections; but you will not be convinced. You will say that nothing from a story completely belongs to the writer. Then he, feeling the need to defend his hero, will get started and you will have to back down.

Any and all intimations that hint at your unwillingness to talk about Kafka with him will be ignored. He will make a point to talk all the same; even if it is Kafka on the Shore that you inadvertently allude to. You will talk about Shore's surreal edge and the magic it carries with it, and then you will see how the conversation meanders to Kafka, in due course. Sometimes, he is too garish, you will say. And he will do the hatchet job; not for you, on you.

You like Kafka too, but it's rather for stories like Judgement, you will argue. Also for In the Penal Colony. You will praise and say better things about him (things that you will not completely mean) and he will be contended, that grin plastered to his fat lips.

Lonliness

Time and circumstance separated us, and it was at the moment of our separation that I realised I had no control over my life. Life has its own way, its own flow and rhythm. We are nothing but instruments to time.Loneliness is eating away at me. We are meeting after a gap of two years.

Time and circumstance separated us, and it was at the moment of our separation that I realised I had no control over my life. Life has its own way, its own flow and rhythm. We are nothing but instruments to time. It fulfils its motives through us. We are all marionettes; time is the puppet master. If conscious choice existed and I had control of life, I would never have introduced separation to the lives of newlyweds. We are only slaves of time and circumstance, though, and if we accept this fact and go on with life, we become happy slaves. If we do not, nothing works as we imagine them to work and we end up unhappy slaves. And so I accepted my separation from my wife and became a happy slave.

Since then, I have always been vaguely aware that I must never try to alter the course of time; it will only cause misery and chaos. Life will be more peaceful otherwise. The separation from my wife also taught me what words like 'acceptance' and 'surrender' really mean.

“You look sad...and you seem to have lost weight. Is everything okay?” she asked me when we finally saw each other, after two years, in our living room.

“Loneliness is eating away at me," I said, in a stifled voice and gave her a warm hug."

“You needn't worry now that I'm here," she said encouragingly. She stroked my hair and patted my back.

I nodded my head, and without another word went outside to the veranda where I needed to spend time with myself.

Rainbow above the house

As a child Pareet loved to eat, especially dairy products. He was also very fond of rainbows

It is already 3 pm and Pareet has not eaten anything. On his way back from the hospital he is thinking of the good food—cheese pizza, fried rice and tomato pickle—that he had last night but is not able to decide what to eat today. As he enters his house, his eyes suddenly land on the old sketch that has been hanging on the wall of his sitting room for the past three years.

This picture has sentimental value for Pareet. He takes a moment to look at the picture carefully and as he does this, he is definitely not aware of his hunger. He closes his eyes and lets the beautiful bygone moments attached to this old sketch unfold.

•••
Pareet grew up in a middleclass family. His parents could not provide all he wanted as a child but they certainly did their best. As a child, Pareet loved to eat, especially dairy products. He was also very fond of rainbows.

When he was six, he had asked his mother, “When will we get a rainbow above our house?”

Musings of an ex-rebel

It rains daily now. Business is slow and there is nothing to do for him except sit and ruminate, inside his shack of a hotel by the earthen roadside. “The rains came earlier this time. It’s all due to climate change, gift from capitalism to the world,” he thinks to himself. Slurping the hot milk tea, he plunges into nostalgia.

The rebels had stopped at his village, en-route to Rukum. Their cultural troupe had performed revolutionary songs, dramas and dances on the school ground. His home had been selected as the place that would shelter the platoon commander for the night. They were supposed to leave early in the morning.

The commander asked his father to tune into radio Nepal for the seven o’clock news broadcast. The rebels listened to the news gravely, in pin-drop silence. There was no news of fighting and death that night. The news programme was soon over and food was served. At around eight they finished eating. They washed the dishes themselves. Some of them went out to stand sentry while others settled down for a discussion. The commander struck up a conversation with his father.

He was an old retired Indian Army man. He had had his share of ups and downs in life. Though not highly educated, he was a smart and experienced person. However, he did not understand politics; rather, he was not interested in it. Being a lahure had been lucrative and practical in his time but not anymore. He knew that education was the only means of getting up in the world and wanted to educate his two sons, as far as possible. He didn’t feel the same responsibility towards his two daughters. They had got enough education to find able husbands and were both already married.