The half moon was lost somewhere in the clouds; the darkness, almost a perfect pitch-black. Three figures, seemingly impatient and speaking to each other in muffled voices, were on one end of an old, derelict bridge.
“What if we got caught? Will we be expelled?” Nare asked, leaning against the railing.
“No one is going to get expelled. Gyane was simply bluffing. He doesn’t have the balls to do something like that. And if he does, we’ll make sure he won’t remain principal for long,” Kaale quipped, as he threw a pebble into the dark waters and listened to the little splash it created.
Reaching inside a bag, Gople spoke with a stoical air, “No one is going to get caught. I have just the thing with me here.” Slowly, he pulled out a pint-sized Coke bottle from his rucksack while Kaale and Nare peered into the darkness. Unlike a typical Cola bottle, the one Gople had just taken out contained a long, kerosene-soaked wick. It had been forced inside through a clumsy little hole in the bottle cap.
“We’re going to hit them with coke bottles?” asked Naresh, quizzically.
“Sshh..!” whispered Gople as he put his forefinger on is lips. “Gentlemen, I give you the Molotov cocktail.”
“What does it do?” Kaale asked.
“It’s a weapon. We light up the wick and hurl the bottle at the bastards’ den, and then, we watch it burn,” said Gople, as his breath reacted with the cold air to disappear in a plume of vapour.
Back from hell
Something moves on the pyre. The few chunks of wood that have been laid over the body fall to the ground. As the very air begins to chill, the dead body awakens. Revived and living, it sits up on the pyre, breathing calmly.
They soon build up a pyre and lay the body upon it. The only thing delaying the cremation is the dead boy’s father. He is yet to reach Aryaghat. He had left the Capital for Pokhara the day before.
When the father arrives, he is visibly moved by the loss of his son. The body, which is about to be cremated according to Hindu ritual, had belonged to a boy who’d died the night before.
Something moves on the pyre. The few chunks of wood that have been laid over the body fall to the ground. As the very air begins to chill, the dead body awakens. Revived and living, it sits up on the pyre, breathing calmly. The body wakes up as if the day were its first on earth.
But a vague sadness falls on the boy’s face as he looks at his wrist. “My hand! My hand! Help me, please!” he starts pleading.
His mother falls to the ground unconscious while Amar, who has strangely ‘resumed’ life, continues shouting. “Somebody please take me to the hospital,” he screams.
Nobody has the slightest idea what is going on. All, understandably, have been taken aback. No one has the courage to properly look at, much less say something, to Amar. His brother, Ashok, somehow manages to address him, “Are you really alive?”
The Artist
I am sitting quietly on my wooden rocker. The sound of the wind astounds me as I watch the stars, just emerging as if in mystic troops above me, in the rose-purple sky. From here, I can see the horizon clearly; shades of orange, pink and violet appear as beautiful as a painting created by a masterful artist, an artist who lives behind those cavernous cliffs, up on the ethereal clouds.
The artist has managed to meticulously clash all these beautiful colours—one against the other, almost opposites shades in the spectrum—to create the perfect image of dusk; the kind in which light blends into darkness creating ‘the dawn of the night’ as some call it. I have known people who have believed that each day is special, a creation of his divine hands, crafted into existence on leisurely afternoons. I have known people who have worshipped the artist for all the splendour he’s bestowed upon our world, and those who have always believed the artist hides in his mythological abode, invisible to all, their only reverence to him being their belief in his existence.
I too have known an artist, very much unlike the one who paints the sky and fuels the sun. I have known an artist whose words don’t rhyme at all. I have known he who doesn’t know art and has no secret hideout. He is a dreamer and his dreams are all masterpieces, unleashed, one after another, in the gallery of his mind. He is my artist; the solemn deity I worship.
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