Fate

Not so sure if this story really works. But here it is anyway. Comments much appreciated.

We meet, as appointed, in a park in the center of the city. You survey our meeting point with a lifted, quizzical eyebrow. I see your lip curl, from the look on your face I know that you don't think that this dry, brown strip of land, bounded by a low gate and roads on either side, could be called a "park." Buildings rise, blocking out the sun. The few plants that grow are stumpy, withered things, accustomed to noise, pollution and darkness.

But it is not this that I wish you to see. Look - here, this is the spot. Right under that dessicated stump of a tree, that looks like an ogre's fist, branch-like fingers rising from the earth. Bend with me, here. Kneel. Thrust your fingers into this dark barren ground, and dig.

You ask me why we dig. I tell you that when we dig, we will find the answer to the question you asked, a year and a day ago, as we watched the silver hood of a mercedes, glistening with blood, crumple as it smashed into a wall. There was a body, dead in a car, and another one, sprawled on the ground, innards spilling onto the tarred road.

You had shook your head, as you snapped a picture ("For tommorow's newspaper" -you told the policemen who pushed you away).

I watched you walk to the other side of the road. You had bought a cigarette from the tiny kiosk on the corner of the pavement. As you lit your cigarette, you exchanged words with the kiosk-owner. You both wondered at fate, at tragedy. You had asked, as you watched those young, fragile bodies borne away - strangely, bodies of the same age, faces, that despite the blood and the broken bones, looked distrubingly alike - you had asked whether a man's fate was ordained from the moment he was born, or whether it was something he made?

The kiosk-owner had shaken his head. He didn't know. You didn't notice me, standing in the shadows, by your shoulder, listening to you speak. Even then, I knew the answer to your question. I have dogged your steps for a year, even as you forgot the sight of those crumpled, bloody bodies, the answer on my lips. For a year and a day, I have waited to tell you.

And the time is now.

Yes, you've found it. That piece of plastic, torn - and that condom, dirty and brown, after twenty-five years in the ground. It was this packet, this condom, that Ashok Lal carried in his pocket, as he drove past this park.

I see you frown. The name rings a bell. Who is Ashok Lal, you ponder, and why is he important?

Step with me into the past. The years swirl past us, and now we stand on green, verdant grass. The ogre's fist is hung with leaves. The park is bigger and wider. Couples stroll. The sun is begginning to set, and the couples start to disappear into quiet, dark corners.

Walk with me to the edge. You see that woman? The one in the pink sari, with matching pink lipstick? Look at her closely. Memorise her face, her shape, her smile.

Careful, don't step on that bush. See, it shakes, in the twilight. There's a couple on the other side. You can hear them groan.

Aah. Here he comes. Ashok Lal, in his red maruti 800, with a sputtering engine. He doesn't look like much, in his faded trousers and white-grey shirt. I see you start, as you stand next to me.

Yes, you've recognized him. He has changed his name, to the far more numeralogically correct and astrologically favoured Kumar Ashok Lal Singh. He looks different in your time - the years have fattened him, lined his face, thinned his hair - the years have turned this diminutive looking young man into the stout, fat, khadi-garbed politician, with a following of thousands.

But right now, as he, steers his maruti 800 onto the bylanes of the park, he's plain Ashok Lal, a sales manager in a tiny export office. But his day will come. His cunning, miserly mind will help him plot his rise. His hard work will see him promoted. Eventually, he will seduce his boss's ugly, impressionable daughter. He will marry her and inherit his boss's small business. Under his leadership, the business will grow, lakhs will turn to crores, as he seeks shadier, illegal means of making money. His belly begins to grow, keeping pace with his bank balance. When you finally see him, for the first time, he has completed his metamorphosis and turned into the politician you hate and revile, whose perfidy you seek to expose.

But now, watch him as he slows his maruti 800. Yes, he's looking at the women clustered by the pavement. They are all whores. He stops by the one in the pink sari. Her name is Rani - but that's not the name she was born with.

Ashok Lal stops his car. He gestures to Rani to get in. She shakes her head - only yesterday, her friend, Pinky, suffered a bad experience with a client in a car. Rani is wary today. Ashok Lal parks, puts on a steering-lock, and rolls up his window. When he's locked the car, Rani and he walk over to the tree, the one shaped like an ogre's fist.

Yes, you lean forward, eager. You can here them whisper, fiercely. You wonder what they talk about. Nothing much, I can tell you. Ashok is trying to beat down Rani's price.

After some haggling, they disappear into the shadows by the tree.

I know you want to hear, you want to see. But the darkness is too thick, and the air too heavy with sound.

No matter. I will tell you what happens. Ashok lifts Rani's pick sari. He presses her against the rough tree trunk. As his breathing quickens, he reaches for the condom in his pocket and tears open the packet. But, in the darkness, Rani moves and the packet falls from Ashok's grasp. He curses. Rani curses. For a few moments they grope the ground, to no avail. They fail to find the packet, lying on the other side, tucked under a root - the same packet that you dug up.

Rani tries to move away, but Ashok has grabbed her shoulder. Rani shrugs. It's happened before. Why forgo good money, she thinks?

You can guess what happens next.

A moment later it's over. Rani holds her hands out for the money. Ashok refuses to give her the price agreed upon. They stand there, arguing, even as Ashok's sperm swims up Rani's womb.

Rani's voice rises. A moment later, Ashok is surrounded by a bevy of whores. They outnumber him. He looks around - only clients and whores, there's not a policeman in sight. He scowls and hands over the money. He walks away, hands thrust in his pocket, muttering curses under his breath.

Rani tucks the note into her pink blouse. She straightens her sari and returns to the pavement. Ashok is the only first of three clients that night.

By the time dawn comes, she's exhausted. She's no longer in the park - that's her 'freelance' work - she's in Number 8, G B Road, a brothel. By the end of the night,
she's forgotten Ashok and their altercation, even though his sperm has fused with an ovule, and a fertilized ovum now drifts through her fallopian tubes, towards her uterus. She forgets to take her 'medicine' - the nasty concotion Ronny, her pimp, has given her to take immediately after unprotected sex, to prevent pregnancies.

The next day she's in bed with a cold. Ronny, although disgruntled, knows a sick whore won't have any takers. She spends the rest of the week in bed. The ovum takes hold in her uterus and, by the end of the week, a tiny heart has begun to take shape.

By the time she realizes she's pregnant, two months have gone by. Three months go by before she works up the nerve to tell Ronny. She knows he will be upset. A friend suggests she tries an concotion, made for her by the neighbourhood quack, that will definately induce a miscarriage. Rani tries it. She gets a bad stomachache and bleeds. That's the end of the matter - she thinks.

But it isn't it. The child inside her clings to life. It's only a month later that she realizes that she hasn't miscarried. There's a definfate bulge around her midriff. Ronny notices. He beats her that night, but not hard enough to dislodge that little life growing inside her.

See? Can you see? You can't. But I can see that heart, beating inside her, that tiny head, those veins and bones and muscles forming. I can see Rani's smile on that tiny face, I can see Ashok's clever, cunning eyes.

Ronny tells her that he will take her the following morning to Koki Bai, the woman who lives on the next street, who performs all manner of services for the residents of GB Road, services that involve, according to rumour, twisting one, sharpened end of clothes-hanger into one's orfices.

Rani is terrified of this, terrified by the memory of Silky, the nepalese girl with almond-shaped eyes, who bled for five days after this procedure was done to her, then disappeared. Ronny said she had gone home - but what Pinky and the others tell Rani is that Silky died.

Rani packs her clothes that night, and when Ronny is asleep, drunk, the other whores sneak her out.

Rani has some money, from her 'freelance' clients like Ashok Lal, stored away. For a few months, she shelters with Aunty Lilavati, a former prositute at Ronny's, who has now gone solo. Despite Lilavati's advice, Rani refuses to abort. The clothes hanger, with it's twisted, pointed end, haunts her dreams. She is scared of dying, scared of pain.

But two months later, during her seventh month, her labour pains start. She's taken to the hospital. Just as she's wheeled into the delivery room, another couple enter the hospital.

You stiffen beside me. You recognize the man leading the pregnant, sad-eyed woman inside the hospital. Your breathing quickens. I hear your heart beat a tattoo in your chest.

You watch him hustle her, tenderly, into a wheel chair. You watch her grunt, with pain, tears coursing down her face. You watch her in the delivery room, as she finally squeezes out a frail, tiny scrap of flesh. A baby, two months premature. A nurse rushes with an incubator. You watch the baby, gently lowered in. You watch as the sad woman, sweaty, tendrils of damp hair plastered to her forehead, cries. She turns her head to watch as the baby is wheeled away.

Come, tear yourself away. Come with me, to the ward next door - where Rani is, her feet splayed, a head emerging between her thighs. A shriek, and the baby slips out. It's two months early - but it's still a lusty, bawling thing. Rani sinks back onto the pillows, weakily. Her eyes close, as the baby cries.

A moment later, just as the nurse exits the ward, baby in hand, she is dead.

It's midnight now. The nurse on duty, watching over the premature infants, is the one who assisted at Rani's labour. She frequently glances at the the baby in the right crib, a weak, fragile child - the one born to the sad-eyed woman.

A few minutes past midnight, and the machines connected to the right crib begin to beep. The nurse darts across the room, leans over the crib. There is nothing she can do. She sighs.

It's then that she looks at the baby in the adjacent crib. Rani's baby.

A thought flickers.

Should she? She resists, for a moment.

She bites her lip and glances at the crucifix hanging over the door. It could be a fault of the flickering tube light - but it seems, in that moment, that the body nailed to the cross, moves, the head lifts, and the eyes stare at her directly.

She jumps back, startled. She looks, a second later, at the crucifix. It is still now, a piece of dead wood. Did she imagine the movement?

But her mind is made up. Her arms extend of their own accord. It is almost as if she in a dream, or a hallucination. In a minute her work is done - the infants have been exchanged, and Rani's child has taken the place of the dead baby.

It's then that nurse hears a gasp. Startled, she turns around - to look into the bespectacled, myopic eyes of the sad woman's husband, father of the dead child.

The minutes tick by. Finally, the man turns, to look at the squealing infant who has taken his son's place.

He nods - curt, brisk - and walks away.

The nurse exhales, finally, relieved.

I feel you tremble beside me. You pull away. Your eyes are filled with pain, with hate. You tell me I lie, you accuse me of distorting the truth.

That's what they all say. But I look at you, and in the pain in you face, I see doubt.

Come, take my hand.

The walls shake, the lights flicker, the ground moves. The years tumble past, as we travel through time. Finally, the movement stops. The walls have been repainted, the floor is smooth marble instead of rough concrete. It is day now, people scurry past. The cries of new born infants and women in labour fill the air.

We walk past rows of infants, and ascend the stairs. The floor above is filled with the scent of death, filled with wasting faces, inert bodies, beeping machines and IV drips.

You beg me to stop. You grip the bannister with one hand. You tell me that you can't continue. You try to wrench your hand from my grasp.You plead with me to desist.

I can't. You must know. I pull you to your feet, pull you past the dying. We stop in front of a door. I push it open.

Inside, your father lies on the hospital bed, thin and shrunken. His words are a whisper, his breath a rattle in his chest.

I see the tears stream down your face, hear sobs choke your throat. You stumble. I hold out my hand and you grab it. You turn your face to mine - and I see it, tear-stained, stricken.

You see yourself, sitting by his bedside. He beckons you to come closer. His breath is hot on your cheek, as you lean over him.

He speaks, but you can't make out the words. He moves back, stares in your face. The machines start to beep. He still stares at you. It's only when the nurse rushes in, followed by the doctor, that you realize that he has died.

But even then, as you stumble out the room, tears blinding you, you feel his eyes following you, his glance burning your back.

What was he trying to say?

This gift I give you - his answer. His shade comes to us, stepping forth from the shadows, wearing his gaunt, withered face. He raises his bony hands to touch you. He speaks now, the words have lain waiting on his tongue for years, the words that he feared to speak, the words that came too late. He tells you now that you are not the son who was born to him.

For years he believed, that this knowledge would not alter your fate. He loved you. Did the truth matter? But now, in the presence of death, he realizes differently. He realizes that you can not escape fate, that it will pursue you to your end. The fabric of his life is spread out before him, the things unknown and invisible revealed. He knows a man's life is shaped by his birth, and that your fate is impossible to escape. There is a neatness, a pattern, a shape to it. By with-holding the truth, he has condemned you to your fate.

Come, take my hand. Time flashes past. We return to the park, a few moments before we our appointment.

Look up. The sun dazzles your eyes. But do you see those figures, meeting on the rooftop of that building? Look closely. You see yourself and you see Kumar Ashok's henchman, Chand Lal.

And there - in the distance, do you see Kumar Ashok? His bulk seems to block the sun, throws a black, menacing shadow. His face is impassive, although sweat drips down his forehead. There is venom in the glances he darts at you, there is pure hate in the look you return.

He hates the pieces you've been writing about him. The ones that accuse him of corruption, of nepotism, of bribing the electorate. The pieces published in Indian newspapers and foreign publications. He pulled strings - he's got you removed from your job. He thought that would silence you. But it hasn't.

You revile him. He has come to symbolize everything you fight against. The way the 'system' works in favor of the plutocrat, victimizes the down-trodden and enriches the already rich.

But it's more than that. In fighting him, you feel you are avenging the ignominious death of your father - an honest man, a small man, who lost his job as an engineer in a factory due to Kumar Ashok's wheeling and dealings. You fought for him, you used your pen and your camera to evoke his voice, to capture his despair - the despair of the individual, lost in the larger scheme of things, of a small life destroyed by the whims of conglomerates and Big Business.

And yet, you both fail to see the similarities - the clever, cunning eyes. The persistence that characterizes every endeavor. The ambitious, ruthless streak. Father and son. It's genetics that causes you to confront each other, to battle for supremacy, that has equipped you with the skills to fight each other. But you don't know that.

And it's fate that has brought you here.

Chand Lal opens a briefcase. It is filled with wads of money. He pushes it toward you.

You take it. You turn, to the parapet, and shake the briefcase. The wads of cash fall out. You see an urchin, far down below, jump up as he tries to catch a note, as it flies past, borne by the wind.

Kumar Ashok grabs you from behind. He is furious. His veins bulge, his face is contorted in a grimace.

Your eyes are bloodshot. You're at the end of tether. You wrestle him to the parapet.

For a moment, you are lost from sight. Next to me, you squirm, impatient, eager to discover what happens next.

You pull out a gun.

The sound of a gunshot rips through the air.

A moment later, a body falls from the rooftop, past eleven storeys, and lands, face down, in the park below, by a tree shaped like a fist.

Come, come with me. Help me turn this body over.

We turn over the body. Blood stains your hands and mine.

You start. You scream.

It's your face, squashed and broken, staring back at you.

You hit me. You scratch at my hands with your nails. You curse me.

I'm used to this. Your hands, your curses - they have no affect on me. Every one screams, at this point. Everyone curses.

Eleven stories above us, Chand Lal checks for a pulse on Kumar Ashok, and tries to staunch the blood flowing from the wound in his chest. Some one else calls for an ambulance. It's futile, I can tell you. I have an appointment with Kumar Ashok in a few moments.

You stare at your body on the ground, and then at the tree shaped like a fist, a few steps away from us. You finger the broken, brown packet in your pocket. You see the beginning and the end of your life, a few steps away from each other.

You asked, a year and a day ago, whether fate is ordained.

You have your answer.

Fate is cruel, you say. I call it a sense of humor.

You ask me who I am.

You don't need to ask. You've guessed - haven't you?

Luck

Arjun is a lucky boy, his father's chauffeur tells him every morning as they drive through Bangalore in a shiny new honda accord. Arjun looks out the window, as the chauffeur speaks, at the slums and the houses made of corrugated metal sheets that line the streets to his school.

He wishes the chauffeur would talk of something else.

At a red light, the car comes to a halt. A young boy, in a tattered shirt and a grimy pair of shorts, rests his grubby palms against the car window as he tries to peer in. The chauffeur rolls down his window and shouts at the urchin. The boy, smiling cheekily, disappears..

Arjun sighs, a little wistfully, as he stares at the handprint, smeared across the tinted glass.

At school, Arjun is slow getting to class. His backpack, filled with heavy textbooks, weighs him down as he climbs three flights of stairs. Arjun heaves a heavy sigh as he reaches his classroom. He doesn't like school much.

Arjun is diligent, his teachers inform his parents at the PTA meeting the next day, but not brilliant. No, not at all.

After the meeting, Arjun can't bear to look at the grim expression on his father's face. No one talks in the car, as they return home. In the spacious, four bedroom penthouse they live in, Arjun's father quickly hustles his mother into the master bedroom. The door is firmly shut. Soon, Arjun hears voices rising in argument. He presses a ear to the door.
"It's not his fault," he hears his mother saying. "You heard the teachers. He tries hard. He's diligent."
"It's not good enough," his father retorts. "I've given him the best education money can buy. The best of everything. If he needs tutors, we'll get him some."
"Ashok," Arjun's mother says gently. "I think..."
"He doesn't get it from my side of the family." Arjun's father speaks scathingly. "We're all brilliant. In fact, he probably gets it from your side of the family. That good-for-nothing brother of yours..."

Arjun knows that this is the time to step back from the door, to quickly rush into the living room. He opens a textbook just in time. A second later, the bedroom door bangs - his mothers strides out, tears streaming down her face.
Arjun can't help feeling guilty. He wishes he was smarter, like Orijit or Ashish or Prerna, who always top the class. Perhaps then his mother and father wouldn't fight so much.

"Eat up," his mother says later, at dinner. It's just the two of them tonight - it often is, as his father comes home late. Arjun looks at her face. The tears have disappeared, but the skin around her eyes is still puffy and swollen. She notices him looking and flinches. "Eat," she repeats, her tone rising.
"I'm not hungry," Arjun says, pushing the food around the plate - a roti roll filled with spinach sabji, some dal on the side. But Arjun has lost his appetite, after the PTA meeting and the argument. He is tired. He doesn't want to eat.
"Eat now," his mother says, a third time. When he looks glumly at her, her expression changes. "You better eat. Think of all the children who starve while you have all this on your plate. All those children in Africa- you've seen them, skinny, starving, just skin and bones. You're lucky to have food to eat!"
Arjun forces himself to finish eating, thinking of the starving Africans. He wants to tell his mother that he has seen children like that here in India, at the traffic lights - little girls and boys, with swollen bellies and thin faces. Hasn't she seen them? - he wants to ask. But he doesn't.

At night, he dreams of the Africans, children with enormous eyes, and stick-like limbs, women with long, drooping breasts that touch their navels. The women and children surround him in a circle. The sun is hot, relentless. Arjun feels frightened. There is menace in their eyes.
"Eat," they say, voices melding in a rhythmic chant, "Eat. Eat. Eat."
He wakes up screaming. His mother soon rushes into the bedroom, in a clinging nightgown, followed by his father. His mother clucks and fusses over him. His father procures a glass of hot milk.

Arjun falls back asleep soon, and dreams pleasant dreams.

The next day, Arjun wakes up early in the morning. It's saturday, and the chauffeur drives him first to math tuitions, and then to a science class. It's lunchtime when Arjun returns home. After lunch, his father promises him a treat.
"What would you like to do? Would you like to go for a movie?" His father bends down to ask. " Or for a swim?"
"The circus, please," Arjun replies, his face lighting up. He has seen the posters plastered all across town. Russian Circus, only for a month. Four shows daily. Acrobats, Disappearing Girls, Tightrope walkers, Bearded Women, and Lions! Entry Free for Children below Five. The posters are colourful, featuring an acrobat in mid-air, a large bear and a dwarf dressed in a sequined red suit.
"The circus!" His father repeats, astounded.
"Wouldn't you rather go to the movies?" His mother asks. "There are some good movies. Ice Age, Madagascar...lots of others as well." She looks for the movies page in the newspaper. "Wouldn't that be more fun?"
His father nods, looking relieved.
Arjun, suppressing his disappointment, agrees to go see the new Ice age film. As relief spreads his father's face, Arjun wonders why the circus is such a bad thing.
On the way to the cinema, they drive past the circus. Arjun notices the long line in front of ticket booth. He stares, in rapture, at the ferris wheel in the background, cotton candy machines, parents and children strolling across the circus grounds.
"Aren't you happy we didn't go?" His father turns, in the front seat, to look at Arjun in the back. "Absolutely garish! It's a real low-class kind of circus," he whispers to his wife, when Arjun fails to respond. "Not appropriate at all." His wife nods in agreement.
But Arjun isn't listening, he's transfixed by the sight of a man, in a faded blue suit and tophat, on a pair of stilts.

In the evening, his parents leave early for a dinner party. His mother breezes into the dining room, as he eats dinner, to say goodbye. She looks stunning in a silk saree, a diamond bracelet fastened on her wrist. She kisses him, carefully, so that she doesn't smear her lipstick. Arjun clings to her, breathing in the smell of her perfume.
When they leave, he stares outside, at the children playing in the park opposite. He wants to play, but doesn't ask. He knows what the cook, who has stayed back tonight to mind him, will say. "Chi!," she will scream. "You can't play with dirty children."
He continues to watch, even as the sun sets and the street lights flicker on. In the distance, he makes out the shimmering surface of a large puddle, a tiny lake, formed by the rains in a vacant site further down the street. His excitement quickens as he notices a tiny figure splash in the water. He grabs his expensive, new binoculars and notices that the figure is a little boy, his age, completely naked.
A minute later, something else attracts his attention. A fat woman, in a nylon sari, stands at the edge of the small lake. She wades in, splashing water and grabs the boy, who tries to wriggle out of her grasp. She thrashes him soundly, as she herds him home. Arjun winces, but he can't help notice the expression of glee on the little boy's face, despite the beating.
For a moment, Arjun wishes he was the little boy. Then, he remembers that he is lucky, as his father, mother, the chauffeur and the cook constantly remind him, luckier than that little, dirty boy. He should be thankful, he tells himself, to be so lucky.

But his luck is a heavy weight that bears down on his shoulders; a noose that coils tightly around his neck.

Stories About My Family 1: My great grand aunt

My great-grand Aunt Sita's name is written, in an elegant, firm hand on the fly-leaf of each of the gold-embossed, leather-bound volumes of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica that occupy the lower two shelves of the book shelf in my grandmother's living room. Underneath Sita's name, I can decipher the remains of another name, carefully, precisely, scratched out. When I was young this perturbed me. Whose name was it? Why was it scratched out? Who had scratched it out?

There's a picture of my great grand aunt, tucked away in a moth-eaten photograph album in my grandmother's antique side-board. At a first glance, Sita doesn't deserve notice. She is featureless, indistinct - could be any one of the hordes of blank-faced young girls, wearing silk saris with elaborate folds, hair dressed in a demure, boring style that was popular in the early decades of the last century. But then, with a closer look, one can distinguish a pair of distant, dreamy eyes. Sly eyes, that belie the innocence of that otherwise unremarkable face.

Sita was also brilliant, which was a difficult thing to be for a girl born in 1910. Her birth was good. Her parents, themselves, were nothing more than middle-class, but they counted amongst their blood relations members of the most influential patrician families. They enjoyed a comfortable, respected place in society. A middling place, a suffocating place for Sita, who was brought up amidst a tribe of other girl-children (there were no boys), gently reared and bred for marriage. But even then, that seemed a state Sita was ill-suited for. No one could deny there was something - something a little different about Sita. Was it the strange dreamy eyes? The gawky gestures? The glasses perched on the end of her snub nose? Her mother, my grandmother tells me, despaired. Her fortune wasn't good enough to attract suitors, and her studious, dreamy air repellent to those who wanted a housekeeper for a wife.

When a suitor finally came calling, Sita, for the first time, asserted herself.

He was an ambitious young man, from an impoverished family, who hankered after a post in the civil services and thought that marriage to Sita, a daughter of a respectable but well-connected family, would improve his chances.

The conclusion was already foregone, by her mother. There were two other daughters to dispose off, a heavy burden in that time. And Sita's father, a tired, mild-mannered man, lacked the strength and will to oppose his domineering wife, and often disappeared into his well-stocked library.

I hold one of his books in my hands. It is over a hundred years old, published in 1908, but the binding is still in good condition. It has a red cloth cover, and I dimly discern the book's title, in faded gold letters. The second Volume of Plutarch's lives. There are holes in the pages - tiny black holes. I see my great-great grand father's name inscribed in slanting, cursive handwriting on the fly leaf in watery blue ink. I have other books of his - a copy of Cicero's orations - with curious pencil markings in the text - words heavily underlined, a few annotations in the margins - and a threadbare set of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. A curious man my grandfather must have been - a timid Indian tax official, a strictly orthodox brahmin, with a taste for Roman history and oratory.

These same books adorned the shelves of my great-grand father's sanctum sanctorum, his library. It was to this same room, that his wife descended, to demand that her husband assert his paternal rights over his recalcitrant daughter.

And so, Sita was summoned.

Under the sternorian scrutiny of her mother, and the weak, bespectacled gaze of her father - Sita blurted out "I want to study."

Her mother stared, goggled. Who ever heard of a girl studying? Studying? What use was this to a girl? No! It was her duty to get married!

But it was the myopic tax official who turned to his wife and, in his mild fashion, inquired "Why not?"

This isn't the end of the story. It's quite long, so I refrained from posting it all here. If you'd like to read the rest of it, let me know, and I will send it to you.

The Monster

There used to be a monster under my bed. He was made up of pieces of nightmares, dreams and parts of old toys. He was a strange and special creature, his veins were filled with magic, not blood.

He told me that once, a beautiful djinni princess, who lives in the palace of clouds, pricked her little finger with a needle. A drop of blood trickled down her finger, dropped down through the light, fluffy clouds and spilled onto the peak of a snow-topped mountain. There, buried under snow and ice, the drop of djinni blood froze into a single, sparkling ruby. That ruby was the right eye of the monster under my bed - it's his special, magic eye, the eye through which he sees the shape of a person's thoughts.

"I know what you're thinking," he whispered to me one night, as I lay in my bed, warm under my thick comforter.

I was a little scared, I was always afraid when I lay in bed alone at night. At night, it was only me and the monster, and he scared me.

"You needn't be scared, really," the monster told me. "I can't come out from under the bed. So you're safe from me."

I was curious now. "Why can't you come out?"

"I can't come out," he said shamefacedly, "because I can't do much. I can't eat you or do anything nasty to you. I can only live under your bed." The monster coughed, then. It was a dry, wheezing cough, and it was then that I realized he had a bad cold.

"Do you have a cold?" I asked him.

"Yes. It's cold at night, and it isn't very warm under your bed, especially with the windows open." He sneezed again.

The next night, I closed the windows before I went to bed. It was stuffy in my little room, and I threw off the bedcovers, as I became hot in my bed. I was about to climb out of bed and open the windows, when the monster spoke.

"Thank you for closing the windows," he whispered to me. "That was very kind of you. And thank you for the scarf you left under your bed. It's really handy, now that I have a sorethroat."

I tossed and turned, I couldn't go to sleep. "Can you tell me a story?" I asked the monster.

So the monster began to tell me a story.

He told me how the moon's youngest daughter, the brightest star, fell sick. She twinkled less and less, fading as the nights wore by. One night, as the moon rose into the sky, she was saddened to find a patch of darkness where her youngest daughter had sparkled. A single tear dripped down the moon's pockmarked face and fell down to earth.

An egyptian queen caught it, as it fell to earth, and she made it into a pendant and fixed onto a gold necklace. She wore it always, and for every day she wore it, she became more beautiful than the day before. Many wars were fought, many kingdoms fell because of her beauty. But one day, as she swam in the waters of the Nile, the clasp of the necklace came undone. The pendant swirled away in the waters, and even as the queen tried to reach for it, it floated out off her grasp and was borne away by the current. The pendant drifted down the river, until it was swallowed by a fish. A fisherman caught the fish, and slicing it open, found the tear. It was a beautiful, sparkling thing and he gave it to his baby daughter to play with.

"And then what happened?" I asked. "What happened to the tear?"

"I found the tear," the monster told me, "under the fisherman's daughter's bed, as she slept. Now I wear it on a chain wrapped around my heart."

I was impressed. "I want to see the tear," I said.

"Shush," the monster whispered, "not now. Morning is coming, and I'll go away soon. Perhaps tommorow or the night after."

The next night I asked him - "Where did you live before, before me?"

"I've always lived here, under your bed," he said. "Even before you were a boy, I've been here, waiting for you. This is my home, my only home."

"Can I see you?"

"But I could eat you, or scare you, or turn you into a radish," the monster argued. He started to cough, his cold still hadn't gone away. "Aren't you scared of that?"

But I wasn't. "I'm going away," I told him. "I'm going to visit my grandparents in another city."

"Will you be gone for long?" The monster sounded worried.

"Just for a short while. I'll be back."

"Will you get me something?" He asked. "Just a bottle of cough syrup, because my cold doesn't seem to go away."

I nodded, and pulled my comforter closer, and closed my eyes.

The monster sighed, a tired sigh. "Oh, all right," he said, just a bit grumpy. "You might as well see me before you go. But you'll have to come down here, under the bed. I can't come up there."

So, I leapt off my bed, rolled onto my belly, and like a snake, slithered under my bed.

The monster was there, under the bed. He was made of darkness and shadow, dreams and nightmares and broken things. I looked at his right eye - the ruby eye, from the blood of his djinni. And his left eye, taken from my oldest teddy bear, given to me on my first birthday. His heart was made from cotton candy, and his lips were fashioned from the first kiss my mother had given me. His right hand was the broken arm of a tin solider I used to play with, and on his left wrist he wore my old wristwatch. And around his heart, on a golden chain, I saw the moon's tear.

As I watched him, a tear rolled from the corner of his teddy-bear eye, down his cheek.

"Why do you cry?" I wanted to know.

"Because you will grow up and forget me...and I will disappear."

"No!" I cried, "I'll never forget you."

"But you will still grow up," the monster said, sadly, "and I will still disappear."

The next day I went to spend the summer with my grandparents. At night, I peeked under my bed, but there was no monster waiting for me. I missed the monster, but many things happened that summer, I grew older, I had many adventures, I learnt many things. A week grew into two weeks, and finally into a month, before I returned home. When I came back, I could hardly wait for it to be night, so that I could tell the monster about all the things that happened to me.

"Monster!" I said, "I have so much to tell you. I missed you very much! Did you miss me?"

There was no answer.

"Look!" I said to the monster, "I brought you a bottle of cough syrup. It will make you feel better."

But still the monster didn't say anything.

I pulled off the bedcovers and raced under the bed.

"Monster, monster!" I cried out, worried now. "Where are you?"

But there was only darkness under my bed.