The Mowgli Girl

These hazel coloured sockets can scare even a werewolf in pitch dark, that sun-kissed skin seems as if hiding many burns within, and greasy-hair that wants to shine even if the light cancels itself... she is like any other aspiring girl which in many ways she isn't. And what she isn't is what defines and defies her.

Her last name is Gandhi. Alas! Her traits are all antithetical. On any given day, she can run behind a dog, match its pace, fight with it, scare it, and steal its bone without breaking into much sweat; and the very next day, she narrates you that story in such an animated way… as if she is Didi and you are meant to be her Dexter. With so much passion she narrates her stories  that sometimes you just sit and wonder… what her life would be without stories... and if... stories had any life without her! Stories are so much a part of her life… such… that together they seem like a pair of conjoined twins, and might forever bury the ‘art of story-telling’ with her demise.   

She may not have given a thought to the purpose of her life… but may be… just may be… it is her destiny to transcribe stories of nature, sing songs of a perishable yet fruitful life, dance on the face of despair or a fair, and gather all the scattered happiness and throw it in air without any wrinkle on her brow.

She has a unique gift of switching between talking sense and nonsense; with such effortless ease that at times it is tricky to distinguish in which state she is in. And the real trick is not to guess it. Rather just flow with it.

But all said and done… she’s the girl-next-door for one and all… however… sometimes people love to negate her. Assuming she didn't have a vocal chord... she might have as well come across as an animal. Such is her Mowglish connect with these creatures sometimes… that she can any time demonstrate the audacity of lifting up a piglet sucking its mother’s nipple; put her finger into a yawning Alsatian’s mouth, bite a kitten’s earlobe and even sit on a crocodile and demand a ride.

Phewwwww… it’s hard to close-end her personality type… and this piece is getting boring anyways. But then you know whom to put the blame on.    

Letter

Moon had stopped reflecting the light from the sun. Trees were waiting with bated breath to begin their photosynthesis process. Even the dewdrops had finished their job of silently staining the earth. However, the room still wore its nightly shade. It looked like a dungeon- like a womb- like the underneath of a bed that was refrained from getting exposed to light.

Suddenly the bell rang, cruelly shaking the soul of every particle.

He woke-up with a jolt. His night’s jerking didn’t do much trouble with any laid thing other than his dreams, but this sudden jerk didn’t share the same story. In this instance, the bedside table became the casualty. It toppled, making all things on it get wings for a little of a second. The unlit lamp, the milk glass, and the rose- all took the floor as their new dwelling.

“Preposterous!” he screamed, his voice reaching the ceiling fan and whirling back at him.

 He took a few blind steps, crushing the rose on his way, and opened the door.

The light entered, quickly colonizing every region it could.

A native woman, revealing a deep valley underneath her transparent sari, was standing with a letter in her hand. Stealing a look of him submerged in her tempestuous depths, she shyly managed to recall her purpose of visit. She quickly pushed the letter in his hand, and made an abrupt exit. But not before dropping a sweat in her cleavage and putting a smile on her face. And why wouldn’t she? Arousing Nehru wasn’t an every day affair. Atleast not for her.       

He closed the door, cancelled the darkness, sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed his thumb on the initials on the letter- Lady Mountbatten. For that moment, the wetness on his stained dhoti suddenly led a newfound life.  A smirk, trimming of the nose & ear hair, oiling the eyebrows, and other romantic essentials took the better of him.

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Some few miles away, in another room, the night had no cousin called morning.  There were a few distant siblings like power and greed, but they came-by in a masqueraded avatar. Such, that their presence or absence could never be certified.

The set of rooms adjoining our protagonist’s room could easily be an inspiration for an Edgar Allen Poe’s next piece. But for the moment, the possessor of this abode was our main contention of thought. Not that Poe is of any lesser significance, but then this place was called Jinnah’s House.   

Like the name, the exterior, the interior, anterior, posterior, and every weir, carried a peculiar, austere, and a given and taken autonomous feel. Here, life had so much sedated, that recognition had given way to a set of virtues that only a numb mind could fathom.

It was a quixotic scene.  Jinnah was inspecting that dot of dirt on his fingernail on the hand that was holding the scotch. Inspection was just an excuse. Just a few minutes back, a letter was dropped on his door. Not that letters were an unwelcome, but one with Gandhi’s initials was a source of happenstance. The tone of the letter was so full of humble and apologetic undercurrents that anyone opposed to the thought would forever take the pages of history as a bad guy. Gandhi was thus, a khadi wearing snake. An error of birth. A subject-verb agreement blunder. And no amount of personification, no amount of text, could describe the animosity which Jinnah carried for him.

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Letters. Depict. Emotions. It is a workaholic carrier. Of a scent. A romance. A fume. A rage. A beginning. An end.  It can easily be flown and be shredded, and used to pronounce fate. It’s always been a token of destruction- be it good or bad. And the more you want from it, the less you get from it. Satisfaction, was never a letter’s cousin. 

An Elegy for my Lost Diary

(My papa had once mentioned that my grandpa while traveling in a train had lost his briefcase that carried his literature- all his work, his thoughts, and maybe his reason to live disappeared in that very moment never to be found again. This elegy is therefore as much dedicated to him as much as to his grandson who met with the same fate, though not as fatal.)

I carry your blood, grandpa.
And have probably inherited your destiny as well.

I never saw you, but my papa sees you in me.
I neither carry your pencil moustache
nor your debonair persona. Nor your ambition

or your Oxford knowledge.
Haven’t touched your literature, forget about reading it.
Infact, I don’t even know your language,
and Varodara for me is as alien as my Bombay dwelling.

All I know is, I despise you for reasons aplenty.

You left my dad just as Harilal was left, in order to follow Gandhi’s footsteps. Why, I want to ask.
Didn’t you have the courage to bring up a family? You coward!
Weren’t you brought-up in one by my Great granddad; with a silver spoon in your mouth, if I may add. 
The decision of yours to change my religion from a Jain to Vaishnav Hindu does not matter to me. But leaving your family in disarray shouldn’t have been yours alone.
I haven’t lived your life and seen your times and witnessed your life-episodes and met the people who've influenced you.
I don’t know whether there’s any truth of your high morals or were you ‘high’ every time you stepped outside.
Your contemporaries of illustrious people whom I read of today, were they really your circle of trust or were they only eyeing your fortune?

But I do know there are many secrets buried in the family which do not want to see the light of the day. Nobody wants to talk about them. Only brag and boast about the affluent past and die cherishing it.

Your son never complained. But his son is not your son. If I ever want to carry forward any legacy from this family then pride will be the last thing. I only want to carry your boundless yearning for literature.

I only want to meet your once. Not in Ganga but maybe in Chanod or wherever you’re comfortable to make me pee in my pants.

And want to ask you just one question- were you responsible for my lost diary? For making me lose that ambitious poem of mine which I’ll never be able to recreate. The kind like Kubla Khan was for Coleridge: though that work was lost and later found in a mystical way and published. Can you be that Dorothy for me?

P.S. In no way this piece looks down upon any one in particular. It is entirely a work of imagination.