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Short Story About A Sixteen Year Old Girl: Deafening Silence

August 14, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Short Story About A Sixteen Year Old Girl Deafening Silence

A sixteen year old girl sits besides the window of her room, staring at the raindrops falling upon the sill; her long flowing brown hair covering her blue shiny eyes clouded by thick drops of endless tears. Her pretty pink lips, totally in contrast with the pale face that has lost its usual rosiness, are crying out the word “Please..”  into her mobile phone. The voice at the other end felt to be rather cruel, or so she felt at that instant, almost unaffected by the glaring pain that this girl’s heart was so full of. The boy hung up. With trembling hands, she put down the phone, still not being able to take what the caller had just said. His words had been too much for her to bear, for she loved the boy selflessly. And to part with him was to lose a part of her own self.

She was all alone. Not that she didn’t have any friends- her contact list was three hundred and fifty nine contacts strong- just that she couldn’t muster the courage to speak, so in shock she was.

Her heart was pounding, her hands were sweaty, and her face wet. She looked around the room, and she saw his bright picture on the open laptop in the otherwise dark ambience, smiling at her. It was taken at a time when all had been well. At a time when she felt she was complete. When she was loved. When the guy’s heart had none other’s but her name emblazoned on it. When the world seemed a better place to live. When the fragrance of the flowers outside her window filled her mind with blissful joy. When the rain was just another occasion to rejoice.  Not anymore.

All had been lost. All at once. Her heart pleaded. And screamed. She collected all her courage and questioned him, asked him why she had been subjected to this unfairness. All she got back was silence. A silence that cut through her very ribs.  The pain that made her numb for a split second; that second when everything inside her became calm and quiet. A moment of utter clarity. A second of self judgment. She had been wronged. She did not deserve that. She had been a faithful lover. An obedient daughter. A loving friend. A caring sibling. A hard working student. She had been too good all through to deserve it. She wanted an answer. She needed an answer. All she received was silence. And a barely audible note of apology.

Love is time, love is understanding, love is connection. She was told. Now he had this comfort with some other friend, this deepness he shared with some other girl. Love is about evolving. And letting go. Love is making the other person smile. She understood love. She appreciated love. She decided to let go. It was the pain that she couldn’t part with. It was the hollowness, the emptiness that had crawled inside her that refused to go even after years. She believed that you can love once, and she had had her share. She treasured and cherished the loving moments they had shared, the sweet words they had spoken, the occasional glances at school that they had exchanged. She held them close to her heart.

People survive. So will she. You never can let go off the pain. Only one day you learn to carry that pain along effortlessly.

Filed Under: Short Stories Tagged With: alone, ambience, daughter, Deafening Silence, faithful, Friends, Girl, love, pain, raindrops, self judgment, Short Story, sibling, Sixteen Year Old, student

Short Story About Friendship With A Girl: Sunshine’s Her Name

August 1, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Short Story About Friendship With A Girl Sunshine’s Her Name

It was the Year of Buttercups for Kiah and I. Walking the playground on the cool Autumn morning at school, our hands intertwined, Kiah was telling me the story of Buttercups in The Princess Bride, about her trepidations and her trials in love. Kiah was excited and as she would read more, she’ll come and narrate it to me… and we would be lost in the world of Buttercups, feeling her pain, living her love-sickness, hoping and wishing that she finds her love in the end. There would be a catch in Kiah’s voice as she told me about Westley whom Buttercups loved, and how he would always respond to Buttercups with an ‘As-You-Wish’!

It had been a full year since Kiah joined my school in fifth grade. Ours was a girl’s convent of the catholic order. Kiah had just returned from Ireland, where her parents had worked for some time. She was fair as snow, had big dark eyes and straight black hair. She was bright and intelligent, honest and fair and she never spent her time deriding other people! I took to her instantly. I mean I would feel special n all if she’d drop by and say hello… my day would be all made! It was a beautiful delicate feeling of commonality and bonding, of friendship, of cherishing special moments together!

I wanted to sit with her, talk to her, go to her home, invite her over, study with her, play chains with her, read novels together, act in plays together… in short pretty much, I wanted to share my life with her… wanted her to become my best friend! In the endless essays we had to write in school, I always wrote on ‘My Best Friend’ and I always wrote on Kiah! Just the feeling of being together was so special for me… to have lunch together under that Peepal tree… to hold hands and walk together to the school water tank after lunch every day to wash hands… or to sit on the same bench in class… or to wait for her birthday and present her with a handmade card or to wait the whole year round to gift her sweetmeats on my birthday! Her friendship gave me confidence and security, her love was simple and unconditional… The purpose of life became to lend a smile to each other’s face just by being together!

We would talk endlessly about the things we read. Reading was a shared passion… it connected us. And therefore, that Autumn, Buttercups managed to turn our world upside down! She provided the potion which sparked off our imagination… A thing called Love was being unfolded to us, in its full grandeur… with all its beauty and pitfalls… and like any growing up girl, not even registering the perils, we saw only the glory and the wonder of love! We marveled at the feelings it ignited, getting revealed to us through the medium of literature, as we gradually moved from childhood to teenage.

We graduated to the next year in school.

“The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding–riding–
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.”

We were sitting in the English class on a cool April morning. Today, our lovely English teacher was going to teach Alfred Noyes’s poem – the Highwayman! Kiah and I had read that poem millions of times by now, and each time had been a teary event! We were disturbed by the poem. Distracted by love, we were devastated to see the tragic ending… and we were not the only ones; there were quite a few girls in the class who’d be devastated as the session progressed! We wondered and shared the pathos of Bess’s tragedy, reliving her trauma, feeling the palpable loss of her lover almost like a physical stab…

Kiah and I identified with Bess, her life obviously became ours in no time, as we romanced her tragedy… floating around life in a forlorn, love-sick manner… waiting for our Highwayman and the imminent tragedy to befall!

“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart; I’m after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light.
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”

In time, we created and perfected the art of classroom recitals and on those special days when we could stay back after school waiting for our Dads, we would entertain each other (and a host of other students!) enacting our favourite dialogues and poems. It was a highpoint in our lives those days. This was Kiah’s idea and we had loads of fun doing this. We would stand on the classroom dias and just transform into a Buttercups or a Bess or a Juliet! It was the kind of drama we loved to love!

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Kiah and I were growing up. It felt beautiful to dream and live on them. The line separating the real world and the dream world became thinner and thinner. Dreams became reality, and all reality shaped around dreams. Love had hit us like a sharp blue comet coming from the outer space and our souls began to search for that one brief moment in time when we would experience love! Totally enamoured, we wanted to find our love and fall for him… Once I saw (I actually did!) two lovers standing and embracing each other atop the golden rim of the sun during sunset and it was the most fantastic image I had ever seen… a sort of dream in waking life… On sharing this with Kiah, we were both filled with wonder, and belief in our special existence was reinforced… our man was just round the corner… this had to be a vision!!

Someone inside me smiles even today at those memories etched in time… The joy of my growing up would never have been the same without Kiah’s sunshine presence. Days passed and years passed… Kiah and I grew up and as we pursued our destinies, we remained secure in the knowledge that no matter what happens, in this world of continuously dissipating relationships, we had an eternal friend in each other. Someone who we could call up in the middle of the night to share the slightest of things and finish the call with I Love You!

Filed Under: Short Stories Tagged With: Autumn, classroom, friend, friendship, Girl, moonlight, Name, playground, poem, Reading, Short Story, Sunshine, sweetheart, trauma

Short Story: And So Goes The Song Of Life

November 22, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment

Short Story And So Goes The Song Of Life

PEEPPP….. PPEEE…. DHOOOOOSHSHSHSH…… PEEPPPEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!! All around the vehicles are screeching… I must cross the road… Damn! Where’s the signal?? I can hear the honking all around me… must cross now… Why in the world my sandal strap’s coming lose now???? I step on the road… and the signal turns GREEN… the vehicles advance…. menacingly….

I wake up with a start to sweat beads. The alarm’s ringing and… Oh my God! Didn’t I just sleep?? It’s already 7:00 am! Must remember to drop the phone check on my way today…. My head aches as I open my eyes to see the sun beams lighting my window sill and I see dust… what Robert Fulghum would call stardust, casting a beam all over my room… it’s very beautiful.. but no time now to really stand back and admire the ways of nature… so I drag myself out of bed and head straight for a bath.

In the meantime my mental checklist is bombarding me with all kinds of reminders… the phone check to be paid, the newspaper headlines, the milk to be boiled, the clothes to be soaked, the stale bread lying in the refrigerator, the dust bin to be cleared, the visit to the bank, instructions for the maid…. Mind is in a chaos… grappling with all this…

Tick Tock! TICK TOCK!!!

After my bath, I find myself ironing the clothes…. Another five min for my checklist to rattle off… the client meeting to be arranged, the quality checks to be streamlined, the roster to be put in place, the reports, the 200 odd mails to be checked…. 200 odd mails…!! Each day and everyday. My mind refuses to stop giving me instructions… things to do… very important things to do. As if these things would never get done if I don’t do them… But hang on… I was told nothing and no one is indispensable… So where did this thought come from? Blame it on the morning chaos…

Ironing is over and kitchen needs to be attended to now… just then I notice some pigeons on my balcony, feeding on bajra seeds, strewn by my guardian angel… they seem so utterly peaceful and content. They have their sun, their morning peace and their breakfast… all readymade… while they bask in the glory of the gilded sun rays… My eyes rivet to the wall and the grandfather is telling me it’s already 7:45 am!!

I rush to the kitchen and quickly fix up a make do breakfast of Maggi and a glass of milk. I am told, if all and every one of us were to start their day with a glass of milk, our world would be a much happier and healthier place to live in… So I believe… therefore the stress on milk…

Ding Dong!!     DING DONG!!

My breakfast reverie shatters… now who’s this?
“Newspaper bill Madam – Rs. 107.50/-”
I hand over Rs.110/- and politely wait for the change…
“No change Madam.”
Now I know I don’t have Rs. 7:50/- so I snap back, “Get it from the shop downstairs.”
And he also snaps back a denial…

CALM DOWN…. Now a good idea to start a day with snapping back… Not a good idea at all…!

I close my eyes. Breathe easy and ask him to keep all the money… You have to grant me this… I didn’t snap back… just politely muttered through clenched teeth “Keep the change”.

He leaves… leaving a bad taste…

I am back in the kitchen and try to gulp down the dried up remains of my breakfast… I drink water and am ready to leave for the station to catch my usual 8:15 am Church gate Fast local…

I collect my keys, wear my shoes…and just then… Oh No, Not AGAIN!

Ding Dong! DING DONG!!!

This time it’s more complicated… I open the door and guess who’s there… It’s like you are marooned and famished and the only option at hand is to have cold tea with stale dry bread and that too, only 2 measly pieces… THAT’s the way I feel when I look at this man… and right now, he’s at my door, looking alarmingly agitated. Meet My Landlord!

He’s accompanied by the building Secretary, who’s usually a quiet and indifferent kind of guy, but as of now he looks capable of murder…

They want to check my kitchen water connection… The secretary is upset. It has been leaking all over his house for the last 2 days. His house is in a mess and his wife is not so happy about it… though his 5 year old son doesn’t seem to mind this indoor swimming pool… My Landlord is upset. He’ll have to shell out precious money to fix this up… and I am upset… I don’t have time for all this!!! I’ll get late to work… The only thing on my mind is 8:15 Churchgate Fast… I hold my tongue and suggest, I think politely, “Can we do this over the weekend please?”

No takers for this however…

I suggest, “Look, I am in a hurry. I’ll get late to work.”
The Secretary says, “Madam, you are away the whole day and I need to get this fixed. My whole house is in a mess and my family is very upset…and I can’t wait for the weekend to arrive!”
My Landlord quips in, “Look Madam, I am a very important man and I can’t afford to come for these kind of ridiculous things every day. This has to be done today and I mean TODAY and I mean right now actually…!”
“But I just don’t have the time right now. Why didn’t you intimate me about this in advance?”
“Look I am the landlord and I decide. I can’t come over every day.”
“This has to be done today.”
“OKAY… Fine!! You do what you have to do… I am leaving… Kindly close the door on your way out and don’t make too much noise!”

Sitting in the auto, all sorts of security hassles enter my thoughts… On one hand I think… these men are so unreasonable and anyway, there’s nothing in the house worth stealing… but then again I think… what if they close the door and leave the key hanging on the door… keys can be so easily duplicated…

Am finally at the station… 8:15 is long past gone… It’s 8:27 am Churchgate Slow I’ll have to settle for… Bad! Very BAD..!!

I’ll get desperately late and maybe even miss the morning meeting… Phew… and to think that the day has just begun! The train arrives and I board, squashed like a fly amidst swarms of people. There’s sweat and there’s perfume and I can’t figure out which one is more nauseating… The trains lilting rhythm has always made me snooze. Just then…

“Main koi Aisa Geet Gaoon… Ke Aarzoo Jagaoon… Agar Tum Kaho…
Tumko bulaoon… Palkein Bichaooon… Kadam Tum Jahan Jahan Rakho…”

A group of young girls on their way to college are playing Antakshri on the train…

“Aaye Ho Meri Zindagi mein Tum Bahar Banke… Mere Dil Main Yunhi Rahna… Tum Pyaar Pyaar Banke…”

The frown on my face is waning… I can sense a quietness, a soft release… my mind taking a back seat…

“Jab Koi Baat Bigar Jaye.. Jab Koi Mushkil Par Jaye… Tum Dena Saath Mera… Mere Humnawaaz…”

I feel a catch in my throat as the image of my guardian angel flashes in my mind… who I hope is still sleeping peacefully… above all the mayhem… dreaming the song of life…

“Aa Chal Ke Tujhe… Mein Leke Chaloon… Ek Aise Gagan Ke Tale… Jahan Ghum Bhi Na Ho… Aansoo Bhi Na Ho… Bus Pyaar hi Pyaar Pale… Ek Aise Gagan Ke Tale…”

My mind wakes up…

Terrorist Attack Imminent – US Under Threat Again // Korea Tension High amid War Drill // Iraq arrests over 12 over Church Siege // Suicide Bombers storm Afghan Police Headquarters // Ethnic Clashes in Myanmar kills 100 // Swine Flu reaches Asia

“Bharat Humko Jaan Se Pyaara Hai…. Sabse Niyara Gulistan Humara Hai…Janmbhoomi Hai Humari Shaan Se Kahenge Hum… Sabhi Hain Bhai Bhai Pyaar Se Rahenge Hum… Hindustani Naam Humara Hai… Sabse Niyaara Desh Humara hai…”

26/11 Round the Corner – Nation on High Alert // Riots Break out All Over the Kashmir Valley // 700 Crore Telecom Scam Unearthed // Human Bomb explodes killing 79 // Mass Suicide by 50 farmers due to inability to pay back debts // 27 die of floods in Bihar // Naxals Plunge in Blood Bath killing 23 Jawans in Garhchiroli // Maoists Intensify Anti India revolts // sfruls bruaisber easabf // zskg auwegasehligaw // skeg lawegj…….

“Humko Man Ki Shakti Dena… Man Vijaya Karen… Doosron Ki Jai Se Pehle… Khud Ko Jay Karen…”

I hum along… despite all else…

…And the Song of Life continues…

Filed Under: Short Stories Tagged With: auto, day to day, India, landlord, Mumbai, Robert Fulghum, Short Story, Song Of Life, songs, tales, trains

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