Monday 3 June 2013

Revisiting the past

The rain, the ebbing and falling of the paddy, the grandma stories and many more situations comes into reality once he visits his past and finds out how his life changed since the days, that passed by.
The distant horizon looks untruly far and seems to be a place out of reach. The hot scorching sun seems to be burning away everything on its way.  Even after hours of walking, the horizon still remains the same; maybe he can hire a bus or rent a bike to reach the place.
But wait!!  What is this place?
He has been walking for hours, without noticing that it is not the place that he stays or the place he has ever visited.
So what is this place altogether?
Now, Arjun takes into account of the surrounding around him. It doesn't seem to be a pavement that he is walking but it is rather much more comforting.
What???-he exclaims to his wildest amazement it is the sky he has been walking on for a last few hours. Bewildered and confused of the world he is in, runs in the direction of the sparkling light.
It has been quite a while he has been running and his feet could no longer carry him any further. He stops running and collapses of the clouds. And it leads to simultaneous outburst of thunder and lightning.
                                                            The sudden lightning and thunder wakes him up, only to find him on his bed sweating. It has been raining in this part of the world for a few days along with the strong winds. He clouds seemed to move faster than and faster with the winds blowing them away.
He tries hard to remember what had happened to him in his sleep but without much success. He makes his coffee and get on the bed and takes a sip of his coffee.
                                                            Waking up in the bed at the middle of the night, to have fallen asleep in the middle of his working hours, have been happening for some days now, after the deadly accident, which nearly killed him.
The doctors declared him brain dead in the hospitals. But, on his funeral day he jumps out of his coffin and gives a wave of shock and frightens everyone in the funeral.

                        Ever since then he has been feeling dizziness and has found something as a broken link and emptiness, as he finds it hard to remember of what he dreamt. It seems as if the delusions of the past have found a way to his present, and he finds it hard to connect he broken link with the present.
                        The night is long and it is long before the first rays of the sun shines in the eastern horizon with the sweet chirping of the birds. The coffee and the warm bed lower his adrenalin flow and he his back to normal.
                       
Arjun relaxes on his bed and starts reading his newly delivered novel “Inferno”, by Dan Brown. It hasn’t been long he has fallen asleep, before he suddenly finds being caught in a wind storm, with not less than a velocity of 70-80 km/hr, engraving he rice sacks kept in the fields to be kept in the warehouse. “Bring in the covers, fast it is going to rain heavily today”, shouts his grandfather from a distance. Everyone in the nearby run to and fro to save the rice sacks form being wet. The rain started after the entire heap had been covered and is now safe from being wet and wasted.
Now he realises that he has been transported 10 years to his past. The hours dreaming of a place in the clouds, was a story being narrated by his grandma 10 years ago. And he felt as if he is in the imaginary place created by grandma 10 years ago, so that he goes to sleep.
                                                Back in his bedroom he is smiling, dreaming of those place and the moments cherished.
Arjun is again awakened by the knock on the door and the alarm ticking. The dream seemed to fade away at this instance and he felt to be taken away from his village.
                        It was a Sunday and the knock on the door was the milkman. It is already 8 o’clock in the morning, but was till dark outside. He was felling sleepy and it was cool outside, and the accident has caused him to doze off more often than he did before it.
                        It is a bright sunshine and the aerial view is amazing. He finds himself on a tree plucking ripe
mangoes and eating them too. The ebbing and falling of the golden paddy and the lovely essence of the flowers in the garden nearby add to the beauty of the place. The cow herds, the boats near the riverside, kids jumping into the river, and the golden sunshine gives you a treat to your eyes and a peace of mind. This is only to be found on the country side, far away from the hustle bustle of the city.
                        Arjun’s brother comes running and shouting, “A group of monkeys are approaching, get down from the tree.”
In a hurry he jumps off and finds himself on a ship running after his mom. He was on a ship that came from Malaysia, to deliver the goods and in exchange to take coal.
                        It had been 10 years since he had ever gone a ship, and he was a kid back then, and was amazed to see the length and breadth of the ship. It was quite long and big even. He followed his uncle with the captain of the ship into the vast room of switches. Arjun, accidentally switches on a switch which starts of something and it blew an alarm. Thanks to Captain who switched it off, who was closely monitoring the curiosity of the young mind, in search of something new on the ship and to find out which switch, switches on what.
                        It was fun playing with the switches and the Malaysian toy the Captain gifted him.
The amazing past he had, had been a wonderful world. He wakes up in the morning just to find that the past he had visited was just a dream. The past and the present of his are altogether two different worlds. It was those moments of the past that made him of what he is in the present.

“Past is a good place to visit but definitely not a place to stay”, he says to himself. But he wishes to continue visiting his past only in his dreams.











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Written By : Kishan Chand Swain
Originally Posted at : Levying Kishan

1 comment:

  1. HI, KCS, I like your story, the narration progresses in a smooth flow and then ends up in the past. The reader gets a nice feel of the past too and need not to say that the concluding message is very interesting.
    So your story is based on a theme; please show that too, so that the reader can easily connect it with the story.

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