Skip to main content

The Queen of Spades

 Fiction

Only heroic people can absorb constant failures with nonchalance.  Sanjay was no hero and grew increasingly desperate with each failure.  He had tried out a number of ventures in business and failed in each one of them without exception.  It’s not true to say that he was an utter failure;  he always managed to break even.  Recently he developed the habit of visiting the casino in the city with the hope of learning the secret of winning at gambling.  There seemed to be no secret in it, he concluded after many weeks of keen observation.  You win or lose without any pattern.  Winning and losing are haphazard whether in business or gambling, Sanjay muttered to himself morosely. 

It is then he overheard a conversation in the casino.  Somebody was telling a group of listeners a story about Lakshmi Lalwani, the aged widow of the renowned industrialist of the last century.  In their younger days, when Lakshmi and her husband were in Paris, the lady had indulged herself with gambling in one of the casinos and lost a fabulous sum.  Her husband bluntly refused to pay such a sum of money in spite of all the strategies employed by the lady whose charm was a match for her cunning.  When neither the charm nor the cunning succeeded in persuading her husband to part with the money required to salvage her honour, Lakshmi sent for a family friend who had business in Paris.

“If I give you such an amount of money, you will never know peace in the future,” said Albert Ezekiel the family friend knowingly.  “So I suggest that you gamble again and win back your money.”

Albert gave her a secret.  She had to talk the casino owner into letting her begin the game on a loan.  Then she had to put her stake on three particular cards, one by one.  He specified the cards.  “But you should never again gamble in your life after this,” warned Albert.  Lakshmi followed the counsel and the miracle happened.  Her cards won.

The lady never gambled after that, said the story teller in the casino.  Nor did she reveal the secret to anyone.  Except once.  Some thirty years ago one of her grandsons whom she loved unlike her other relatives got into a huge debt by gambling.  Finally, when he had no other way, he stood before his royal grandmother like Shakuntala who had lost the ring given by her royal lover.  The lady relented for the only time in her life.  The man went away with the secret and won back all that he had lost.  He never gambled again.

Sanjay knew where Lakshmi lived.  He also knew that she was a morose nonagenarian who never met anyone except in some parties which she presided over all bedecked with jewels and anti-wrinkle creams.  There was no honest way of getting to meet her.

But honesty is not a business person’s cup of tea.  Sanjay found a way of entering Lakshmi Lalwani’s palatial home after he took a few strolls on the Lalwani Avenue that encircled it.  Some trees and the darkness of the night were his accomplices. 

Lakshmi Lalwani lived alone in the palace after the death of her husband many years ago.  People said that her husband had died because of her constant nagging.  Neither her son nor her daughter wanted to live with her.  Rather Lakshmi did not want any of them, not even the grandchildren.  She lived with a retinue of maids who flattered her whims and fancies untiringly and competitively in the hope of getting as much money as possible when the witch would die. 

Stealthily Sanjay climbed down the staircase from the Lalwani terrace and walked through some halls and corridors until he discovered the room of his sorceress.  There she was sitting up in her bed against a huddle of pillows watching an ancient Hindi movie on the TV.  She flinched on seeing the stranger but recovered quickly. 

“Who are you?  Why are you here?” She asked.

“Pardon my audacity, rajmata,” said Sanjay with folded hands.  “I had no choice but do this.  Only you can save me.”  He narrated to her the tragic tale of his life exaggerating it to make it as poignant as he could. 

“Tell me the secret, rajmata, devi, so that I can recover my losses.  Otherwise I’ll be a doomed man.”

“There’s no secret.  It’s only a joke,” said Lakshmi both annoyed and amused.

When all his pleading and cajoling failed to move the lady, Sanjay pulled out a pistol from the pocket of his trousers and held it straight between her eyes and said, “Your life or your secret.”

The lady did not utter a word.  Amitabh Bachchan continued to rage on the TV screen.  The eyes of the sorceress continued to stare without batting an eyelid.  It took a few moments for Sanjay to realise that she was dead.

Lakshmi’s ghost haunted Sanjay throughout the night as well as the next day.  But the night after that brought the real surprise.  Lakshmi Lalwani appeared in Sanjay’s bedroom in the middle of the night wearing a white sari and white blouse. 

“Your secret cards are 3, 7 and an ace,” she said in a guttural voice.  “But never gamble after this once.”

Lakshmi Lalwani disappeared as easily as she appeared.  “You are the queen of hearts, Lakshmi,” said Sanjay to himself exultantly.

Filled with joy and expectation, Sanjay went to the casino the next afternoon with all the money that he could gather.  He had mortgaged his house in a bank in order to get the money.  He placed his stake on 3 for the entire sum of fifty lakh rupees he had.  The miracle happened as he knew it would.  He then staked the one crore on 7.  Lakshmi’s secret was sterling.  Finally the stake of two crore rupees on ace. 

“You’ve lost it all,” said the gambler to Sanjay.  “It’s not an ace; it’s the queen of spades.” 

Sanjay collapsed as he saw the gambler sweep away his dreams into a leather bag.  Before collapsing, however, Sanjay had noticed one thing.  The Queen of spades on the card had winked at him.  And the wink had reminded him of Lakshmi Lalwani. 



PS. Adapted from the novella, The Queen of Spades, by the great 19th century Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. 


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Comments

  1. Haven t read the original but this is quite a story!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The original is far, far better, Nima. Obviously :)

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Indeed, Namrata, and the credit should go to Pushkin.

      Delete
  3. Replies
    1. Glad you liked it. When I read the original it captured my fancy so much that I brought it here in this simple form.

      Delete
  4. Oh good one I say! Really liked this one

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Happy that the story found its way to many hearts. Pushkin can be glad in his grave.

      Delete
  5. Wow sir.... liked it very much... and the ending was amazing... hats off

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pushkin has given a short post script to his version. According to that, the protagonist went mad and the girl whom he was courting with vested interests married a better person... I have made the story much simpler.

      Delete
  6. Nice ! Russian short stories are truly amazing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One of my beloved writers is a Russian, Dostoevsky. I read Pushkin by chance when a neighbour who was shifting his residence left the copy with me since he thought I was the only one around who would appreciate Pushkin :)

      Delete
  7. Wonderfully narrated...it gives a hint of the original too!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wonderful story! I thoroughly enjoyed it!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Replies
    1. The fact that Pushkin so interesting was unknown to me, honestly. Thank you.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Parish Ghost

Illustration by Copilot Designer Fiction Father Joseph woke up hearing two sounds. One was his wall clock striking the midnight hour. The other was totally unfamiliar, esoteric. Like the faint sigh of someone too weary to knock at heaven’s door. Father Joseph thought it was the wind. Until the scent of jasmine, oddly out of season, began to haunt his bedroom in the presbytery which was just a few score metres from the parish cemetery. “Is someone there?” Father Joseph asked without getting up. He was more than a bit scared. He never liked this presbytery which was too close to the cemetery. But he had to endure it until his next transfer. “Yes, father,” an unearthly voice answered. From too close, not outside the room. “Pathrose.” “Pathrose who?” A family name was mentioned in answer. “But that family…” Father Joseph’s voice quivered, “no one of that family is alive as far as I know.” “You’re right,” Pathrose said. “We perished because we were too poor to survive what our...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...