Skip to main content

Destiny

Fiction

“What are you thinking of so deeply?”  Anita asked her husband as they were walking up the narrow street leading to the school where they were going for a walk-in interview for teaching jobs.  The bus that took them from the suburban rail station had dropped them at the foot of the hillock that was majestically crowned by the school building.

“I was thinking of our destiny,” answered Sridhar.  “I’ve just a few years left for retirement.  You have a few more years.  And here we are hunting for a job.”

“What is in your destiny, no one can take away.  What is not in your destiny, no one can give you.”  She laughed glumly.  She was repeating exactly what Sridhar had told her the other day when she grieved the death of the school where they both had been working for years.  

Their school was founded by an industrialist.  He now wanted an amusement park in its place.  The city needs relaxation, he argued.  People who were not very kind to him said that the school failed to bring in as much profit as an amusement park would.

Sridhar shared his wife’s gloomy laughter.  “This street strangely reminded me of my village and my walks to my school and back home,” he said.  “Wild shrubs and brambles with carefree flowers on the sides.  No traffic.  Only the hum and buzz of some insects and the rustle of the leaves.  Rustic serenity of kongini blooms.”

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness...”  Again Anita was teasing him by quoting one of his favourite lines from Thomas Gray.

“I was thinking whether we could give up this job hunt, return to our village in Kerala and settle down there.”  Sridhar ignored her taunt which was actually meant to liven up his spirits.

“I’m ready,” she looked at her husband eagerly.

“But we can only return to the place.  Not to the time.”

Sridhar’s heart was roaming the streets of the village of his boyhood days when Anita asked him what he was thinking of so deeply.  His memories had conjured up pictures of farmers pedalling the water wheel, women carrying water in pots balanced on their heads as well as hips, children throwing sticks to fell mangoes from the trees...  Ready to let go the water wheel when a howl for help rises in the air, let go the pots and sticks... Letting go.

“Destiny can only move forward?”  Sridhar could not make out whether it was a statement or a question. 

“What is destiny?” he asked his wife in return.  “Who shapes it?  The industrialist who converts a school into an amusement park or the economist who computes the worth of human life in figures of profits and losses or the Man-god who draws the Lakshman rekha for human potential or the politician who dangles all of them and us on puppet strings?

Sridhar and Anita had reached the school.  “You stand outside,” the security guard ordered looking at Sridhar. 

“But...” he explained that he was a candidate too.

The guard looked at Sridhar’s grey hairs and laughed.  “At this age?  Moreover,” he chuckled, “only ladies.”

As Sridhar fiddled with his smart phone while he waited outside for Anita to come after her interview, the ring tone sang John Lennon’s lines: There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.



Comments

  1. Life evolves in cycles. I think a day will come when village life will be valued and so will grey hairs ....this will happen sadly after a lot of pain because only then will people realise the true value of some things in the past. Not all, but some

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, some. Also agree on the cyclical nature of human processes. It's spiral, when the point arrives in the cycle we'll see a vast difference from what it was the previous time.

      Delete
  2. Nice fiction...I have thought of destiny a synonym of decisions...choice, chances we take, could relate to the story in my own way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Destiny is shaped by many factors: one's nature, people around and dominant ideologies. Strong people find it easy to make their own choices. Others have choices forced on them.

      Delete
  3. “But we can only return to the place. Not to the time.” A harsh truth. Destiny is a man-made concept to boost his ego.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To boost confidence, to reduce anxiety... Another drug like religion!

      Delete
  4. Just back from a trip to kumarakom and I would say it is still a beautiful and calm place to be back :) I actually envy those who had some form of connection from that place for if you see my hometown you'll cry :) The boatman who rowed us around his village looked happier and content than us city folks !!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kerala is a wonderful place in many ways. But the changes that have occurred in the last decade are not very desirable.

      Delete
  5. A wonderful story which made me think deeply. Destiny is really a complex subject.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Each one of us may define destiny differently according to our experience.

      Delete
  6. I am sure your destiny wants to see you at some better place. I wish to see you as a popular novelist. What do you wish to see yourself as? I believe that what you think and believe in, becomes your life.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well-written. But, it made me sad. Schools should be revered, experience valued. Now- a-days, the only things valued are money, and arrogance. :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. School is now a woman's affair, I think. Wherever I go, I come across women dictating terms at schools.

      Delete
  8. A wonderful story, realstic & reflecting the times we live in...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you liked it, Rajeev. It came from a real experience, in fact.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser