Skip to main content

Boy

 fiction

The end of a party leaves you with a feeling of emptiness.  The people leave after the singing, dancing and eating.  The noise subsides.  The balloons burst in the heat. 

What remains are the plates and utensils to be washed up.

“Put Raman to bed while I do the dishes,” says the exhausted wife to the husband.

The husband is very understanding.  He knows that his wife is even more exhausted than he is.  They are a working couple.  The corporate bosses suck both their blood in equal measures from the waking time of 5 am to the bedtime of 12 midnight.  The time at home is also dedicated to answering emails of their respective bosses and transferring the profits to the bank balances of the bosses or the bosses’ relatives or the relatives’ relatives. 

The son’s birthday party was just over.  The children of the neighbouring flats were invited.  The least they could do for their only son who had just turned five. 

“Tell me a story, dad,” said Raman as soon as he tucked himself beneath the bed sheet.  The cooler whirred at the window.

Mum always put the boy to sleep with a tale, he knew it.  A fairy tale, in all probability.  Mum had a lot of dreams.  Those who dream a lot have a lot fairies in their stories.

“Once upon a time,” he started.

“Oh!” said his son, “don’t tell me those stupid stories, please.  No more kings and queens.”

“No, sonny,” he said.  “Not about kings and queens.  It’s about you.  You and me and mum.”

Raman looked at Dad as if he was the biggest fraud in the world. 

“Once upon a time,” said Dad ignoring his son’s eyes, “there was a boy.  The boy was good.  Too good.  So good that nobody liked him.”

Raman’s eyes lit up with a sparkle that was almost blinding. 

“His friends thought that he was an idiot.  They teased him.  They called him names.  They called him Chamcha.  They called him Mama’s boy.  They called him Boy.  He didn’t understand any of those names.  He didn’t understand why his classmates or any other boys never allowed him to join their company.  They seemed to hate him.  So Boy went and sat under a tree.”

 “Like Isaac Newton waiting for the apple?” asked Raman.

“Who told you about Isaac Newton?”  Dad was surprised. 

“I read in the Children’s Digest.  Cartoon strip.”

“Oh.  Yeah.  Like Isaac Newton.  And Boy dreamt.  Like Isaac Newton.  He dreamt of a world of apple trees on the mountains.  Dreamt.  Dreamt of golden marigolds in verdant valleys.  Of the silver brook that babbles down the pebbly mountain into the verdant valley.  Of the fish that swim and birds that sing.  Of wheat that sways in the wind and jasmines that dream in the night ...”

“You’re a good story teller,” said Wife when she came in having completed her work in the kitchen.   “I never managed to put him to sleep so quickly.”

“Jasmines are dreaming in his mind,” said Husband. 

Let him dream.  Let him dream until his mind will be stripped of the dreams.


He hugged his wife.  They kissed each other.  And they forgot their weariness. 

Comments

  1. Dreams are good but how far? Even the Mom and Dad are too innocent it seems. Complex story. But good from daily living.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have always wondered why an episode from actual life should be complex. Have I understood life all wrongly?

      Complex, yes. But isn't life complex?

      Dreams, yes. Can we live without dreams?

      Innocence is the theme of the story. Can there be innocence without dreams and can there be dreams without innocence?

      Delete
  2. I was listening to the story like the kid and didn't sleep at all.. do complete it :)
    Btw, the couple resembles my husband and me :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow! I like this. I was wondering if my wife and me were some exceptions in this funny world :)

      And thank you a lot for asking me to continue that story. I would love to. But... let me see. Actually one story comes only once. I'll try nevertheless.

      Delete
  3. It's good to dream. It allows us to look at life with hope. Although, daily life seems bleak and hopeless at times.

    This story reminds me of the one I read in my HS English text. However, I don't recall its title.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Daily life is bleak for most people, I think, Namrata. It is becoming worse by the day. But people manage to make it delightful. That's the beauty.

      Is it "Should Wizard Hit Mommy?" that you are reminded of? In fact, I was teaching it the other day. Probably, it played a role in my subconscious mind as I wrote this.

      Delete
    2. Oh yes! It was that very story. :)

      Delete
  4. That's what is so special about a child, right? Ignorance is bliss. We lose it as adults. Forever. And suddenly someday a 'nothing' of life stares back at us. Then we know, the party is really over.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Innocence rather than ignorance. But, of course, innocence and ignorance are related too - though one can retain innocence in spite of awareness. The "boy" (child) should continue to dream within us.

      I salute your understanding of the story. You got it really well - esp the party being over.

      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

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af