Guest Contribution: And There Was Dusk

For Fritters, in this really exciting first, my good friend Shayan Ghosh writes a sequel to my tragic narrative "And Death Did Us Part"...

The Salur Ghats are no longer the tranquil splendors as they used to be...The Vegavathi has also descended down in its raging aviatrix...There are now a dozen of “Chai” and supplementary shops that do a commendable business...A few roadside vendors disturbing the tone with their parsimonial drags in coarse dialects...The vision gets a little blurry due to the rampant pollution but still the place gives him shivers...He remembers that fateful dawn of his winter green...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

He looks around and finds no demography that suits a bald, freckled man in his eighties walking with an orthopedic stick...Young couples, bikers, street urchins and a few familiar stray animals were all that there was...The driver, in an impatiently rude fashion of his professional accord shouts “Daddu jaldi se paisa de do, mujhe abhi dusri sawari pe jana hai”...He spits in his mind, curses that unfathomable moron for disrupting his reminiscence, and throws away the requisite amount and moves out...The car zooms away brazenly...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

There is a sense of detachment that he feels from the neighborhood, the mood that there is, gives him an acrimonious taste of his age...He finds a rock, slowly drags his dilapidated self to seat in an unearthly fashion...The Vegavathi has also quieted down like him...Looking at it, brings back memories from the distant past like they were shades of a fading rainbow...He finds his life like a collage of pestering indiscretions...He thinks of what all he had done in his life...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

The abysmal usage of cocaine, ecstasy and heroin had been his amiable pleasure after the incident about which no one knew, no one cared...The rampant partying with infidels and orgies are the memories that flow in precedence to these thoughts...He had thought that all these will relieve him of that memory about which no one knew, no one cared...Then the fateful job opportunity that took him overseas to New York, the tainted paradise he experienced for a couple of years till his father’s illness brought him back...The hasty decision of his matrimony and the wife who never loved him, just his money and status...The death of his parents in a span of five years, that had left him with a lot of frenzy and liberty...The constant affairs that he had in his ten years of marriage...The stupendous moments of hate and violence with his wife that had led to the birth of his children, a son and a daughter who never loved him...He smirks,  thinking how his offspring were exact replicas of his wife...Not one of them was like him in any accord...Same money hungry snobs as his wife was...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

A gale arises suddenly and the thunder clouds drift towards them in speeding frantic...The vendors become busy in relinquishing all the display as thunder storms on the Salur Ghats meant havoc till this day...The shopkeepers relayed onto their last orders and closed down their shops and sped away according to whatever means of transportation they had at their disposal...The young crowds also hoarded onto the by standing autos and taxis often stacking together if their destinations somewhat matched...He looked around with a somber look on his face at the fleeting vigor and remembering how all these are so meaningless...The urchin bikers also took their last whiff off the cigarette butts before casting them aside and rendering a few insatiably inappropriate curses towards this advent of nature...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

By now the place has been cleared thoroughly leaving only a worn out dog as his companion...The dog too was like him, tattered and weathered old mongrel, too lazy to even find shelter...It came towards him in a deliberate motion and rested itself on the opposite side of the rock he was sitting on and let itself ease..."How ironic", he thought...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

Throughout his life he had tried to erase a memory, a memory of disgust that he thought at that time...The memory of the face of the dying woman who was in love with him...That dawn of the bloody sun...The tears of blood that encircled the face of the woman smiling away to non existence...Throughout his life he had sought pleasure, all kinds of it but he never could ever feel it at all...All the drugs, the sex, the money, the power never gave him that sense of calm...He understood that his painstaking life had been miserable compared to even the poorest of the poor...He was probably the greatest pauper he had ever known...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

Now after so many years he understood what was that he had been running away from and searching at the same time...He had failed as a son, failed as a husband, failed as a father, failed as a good human being...The only thing that he had, at this point of his life was nothing but regret...He came to a sudden realization amidst all the plethora of memories...He had been searching for that love that reflected on the face of that woman from many years ago...Suddenly he finds that his eyes become heavy and the setting sun smiles mildly at him...Now after so many years all the tears bound in his soul come out profusely...He finally understands what he had been searching for was simple; love, unconditional love for him that the sensual woman whom he had cast away as a repugnant memory, had...He finds himself now to give away anything for the look on the dying maiden’s eyes, the smile that even God could not fade although life was slipping away, the smile on the lips that surpassed dying pain, the love in the eyes that soared above the world...The greatest treasure which anyone could ever possess...It has been...Exactly 60 years, 6 months, and 6 days...

He looked around; tears and the rain with its mighty downpour had completely drenched him...He took off his glasses and his vision blurred...The Vegavathi had finally regained its former agility...Then suddenly amongst the raging waters he saw distinctly, the eyes, the smile and the serene face of the only person who had loved him...This time he didn’t make the mistake that he did 60 years, 6 months and 6 days ago...This time he did what his heart told him to do...He leapt forth into the hands of his Goddess, it felt so warm, it felt so beautiful, finally he felt love...

About The Author

The author is bald, rotund and sports the spunkiest pair of Wayfarers...Often confused with Satan (Shayan's yet to grow his horns), and bereft of charm from an young age, the author exhibits complicatedly wild streaks of genius and finds his calling in the Creative Arts, Goth and Weed and more Weed and some more...He comes back home to his poor parents in Kolkata, Poschim Bongol !

Shayan Ghosh can be reached at:

Shayan Ghosh Artistry

Sayanic Expressions 
&
shayan.nitt@gmail.com