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Monthly Archives: March 2009
Punishment
Hey ! Hope you like my blog ! Leave a comment if you wish :)
This is the third in ThrowWordsGetFiction format. I asked cousin to give me 5 words and I tried to spin a small story around it. To keep the readers curious, I ask you to identify the words 
As usual comments are welcome and appreciated. Also, what name would you suggest to the story ?
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The usual day of Borak was to lead sheep up the hill for grazing, or to the fields at its bottom, to sleep under the shades of a tree by keeping his pet sheep with him. Drink water at a near by pond, and if he packed and carried food for that day eat it. Most days, it is only water that quenched his hunger too. At dusk, his important task was to count the number of sheep. If they matched the morning count, he is quite relieved. Else, it is the search across the fields and the hill, the thought of the task itself was scarier.
His counting methods were simpler. He collects, in the morning, the number of stones as exactly as the number of sheep. So evening, he discards a stone for each sheep. These days, if only one stone is extra, he aborts the stone rather than reproving the search for the last sheep. The only problem, if it happens quite regularly, there is a chance his father might find out about it.
Some days would be different. Like the day when he met few children who were of his age, wearing all similar clothes, marched right across him and he stood amused. Where do all these people go together and why do they not have any herd behind them. From next day onwards he made a point to come to that spot right at that time, so that he could try to make sense out of it. Soon enough he learnt, they go to a place where they have lot of fun. But his father said that was untrue, and they were taken to be punished.
Some of those people were benevolent to him and gave their food to him. Those days he overslept. Often waking up from the nightmare of having lost more than one sheep. Those days he felt even more scared to return home than normal. His father was a drunkard who berated every action of Borak accusing him of making attempts to steal his clandestine belongings.
Stood besides the place where those children went to get punished was a rectory. Borak decided to follow the children that day and hid behind the rectory. He noticed later that there was nothing happening that remotely seemed like punishment except for an old man saying something loudly and other children repeating it. It didn’t seem like any fun.
He didn’t realize he had spent quite some time there, and along with it lost a few sheep too. More stones than the number of fingers were left extra. This horrified him. He searched for lost sheep till late, but found only one. He decided to part with his beloved sheep and made it a part of herd to be returned to father.
More agony was waiting at home. Not only his father beat him almost to death, accusing him of selling the extra sheep, the very act- selling the herd- which he was about to do.
On being woken up, Borak realized that his herd – along with his beloved sheep – and his father were missing. After crying half a day, Borak felt, his going to that place – where other kids assembled for punishment – was indeed a place of severe punishment. And his going there has definitely resulted in his punishment – what else could explain his current fate.
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Words were Berate,Benevolent,Reprove,Clandestine,Rectory
Mysterious Bird
This is the second in ThrowWordsGetFiction series. I asked cousin to give me 5 words and I tried to spin a small story around it. To keep the readers curious, I ask you to identify the words
As usual comments are welcome and appreciated. Also, what name would you suggest to the story ?
__
“Oh Sottu … come .. lets go there…I see a throng in the field” shouted Kitta on top of his voice over to his neighbour while keeping his eyes transfixed on the far field on an early morning. The early mornings for these kids, during this summer vacation, is the most exciting time of the day. Dads getting ready to office, mothers busy in kitchen, these kids are left to themselves – save the worry of homework for the later part of the day.
While most of their classmates preferred to wake up late, these two guys, as if competing with each other’s energy and enthusiasm, wake up early and find new ways to entertain themselves – be it a beach hockey played with a cricket bat, or a stroll to a nearby police station. Yes, police station – a place where any normal children would forbid themselves from going, these kids were brave enough to go near it. They overheard the conversation, came back home and enacted the same, often tried to find a solution by one acting as a police and the other as another party in the case.
Summer vacation, was perhaps the busiest time for these two kids. Often they built a castle from the empty matchstick boxes and cigarratte boxes they collected through out the year or sometimes just spent entire time reading a book together and enacting the story by themselves. Their passion and curiosity was uniform in fields ranging from science to astronomy to history to mythology.
Sottu, who was hurriedly brushing his tooth, swallowed half of it in a hurry and washed his mouth and ran hurriedly to mother asking her for a pair of dress. She was preparing pooris – his favorite breakfast. While watching her prepare, he also noticed, her work carefully. She was preparing the round shaped objects from the flour. In between she was stirring the delicious-by-smell sagu by left hand while using the right to fry the already prepared ones. He was quite awe-struct at the rapport and speed of her eyes and hands.
Lost in the observation, he was again alerted by the shout of Kitta, who was now shouting on the top of his voice and in absolute hurry. “If we don’t run now, we can’t see what others are already seeing… come fast, this is my last call for you, I am going otherwise.” Sottu quickly responded “WAIT, only a second”, without waiting for his mother to give him clothes, he put on yesterday’s and ran outside the house, neglecting his mothers question “When are you returning?”
Both ran towards the field where more people were joining every minute, this usually happens during an accident scene. But this was no highway, it was a big playing ground. Both the kids squeezed in between the people, shoved and managed to go to the front of the gathering. They were astonished by the sight ! It was a dead huge bird and not known to alive in this era. Sottu said “Oh my !! Was it hiding in our town ?” Kitta replied “This bird has been surely obsolescent..probably from dinosaur era”. Both were, like other people there, not stunned by only its gigantic size, but more about the mystery behind its finding in that field now.
While Kitta looked at the sky for some clues, Sottu looked at the lorry that stood at the corner of the field. The lorry looked dysfunctional and aborted. It surely wasn’t there previous day, recalled Sottu. He grabbed Kitta and pointed him towards the lorry suspiciously. They tried to look for any other hints at the spot. On finding more crowd and camera men coming to the spot, they both deserted and headed towards home – discussing the possibilities of that bird being there.
That night, Kitta said Sottu, let’s keep a watch on the lorry. Sottu had other star gazing plans, but that could be put off to some other day, he thought. They both went and hid themselves at a considerable distance for long time in the night. Nothing happened, they returned home with mosquito bites. Sottu suggested they could watch the lorry from home using the telescope he was hoping to use for star gazing. For next few nights they watched the lorry in the night, while searching for clues about the mystery in the day. They visited local library to collect the information about the bird, they tried to obtain the lorry registration information and also learnt how the bird was being moved out of the city to a museum in the capital city.
After nights of result less watching in night, in addition to the scoldings by their parents, they finally decided to try one last night. That day, the bird was moved out of the city. And finally some people came to take the lorry. Sottu and Kitta jumped out of house and followed those guys.
Rest, as they say is, history. The local lads had become world famous in the small town, thanks to the front page city news paper article “Kids help bust a smuggling racket in town”
**
Few lunch break after the school re-opened were filled with sessions of question and answers by their classmates. And their explanation of the story in animated style. “That night …we were sure some one would come and take away the lorry..we knew it.” “They pushed the lorry till some distance ..so that the sound of it does not disturb ..when they started it, we both jumped into it.” “It went for a long distance..we tried hard to keep us awake. Finally it stopped and we got down and hid behind the bushes…..”
In such detail their narration went. The newspaper article had put it briefly thus:
“Two kids who were suspicious of a lorry parked in the field for few days, decided to follow it. They found that that lorry was one of the lorries used to smuggle various illegal goods out of the city. They were waiting for this day when the entire police was diverted to the transport of the huge bird, which was a fake replica these smugglers created and planted in the heart of the city few days ago.”
Sottu and Kitta waited for their next vacation adventure !
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The words were : obsolescent, throng ,rapport,passion,forbid
Sadarame – Rangashankara
This is one of the plays I kept hearing about but couldn’t watch it before. Coming from B Jayashri’s team, this is one of those “typical” plays — from which the Indian movies can be said to have originated from — complete with actors singing, drama punctuated by songs/dances and sometimes with a laughter sidetrack.
The story is about a prince who opposes his marriage until he falls for a beautiful woman, Sadarame. Sadarame’s father & grandfather are cunning misers and demand to be crowned in exchange for the daughter’s wedding. King, very eager to get his son married, accepts to this demand. Sadarame and her husband, wander away to another province and find it difficult to survive having exhausted the money.
Sadarame’s husband approaches the prince of the land, who is lusty and lures Sadarame for marriage. She hatches a plan for delaying marriage and plans to escape with husband. Again, a thief overhears her plan and acts as her husband and takes her away and ask her to marry him. She again manages to escape from the thief and lands in another state, and remains impersonated as a man. She, having survived a challenge qualifies to marry the princess of the state. She discloses her true self to the princess, yet remains king until she finds her husband back. After which all three stay together (yeah !), and the cheats get punished.
Main plot as described above at times looked like a thin sketch, it was about other parts – often the side track, that evoked much laughter. For example, of course the masterly act of the thief by B Jayashri herself is priceless – her energy level, her lung power, her singing – and that of a male thief’s make-up was wonderful. And then there was a drunkard singing and mouthing dialogs – his acting was brilliant. The song sequences – the actors singing themselves with simple lyrics – were though good (esp by the hero), but it eloborated too much than required at places. Likewise a scene of bargaining and cheating by Sadarame’s father went on and on. Also I could not follow many Telugu dialogs spoken by him. But Dingri Nagaraj was fantastic and had the audience split with his timings and humour. I also felt, may be this play required more than 2 hours of time and they did considerable editing – especially the challenge which Sadarame wins, was just told in words and had no scene to it and looked abrupt. It reminded me of the TV channels chopping the scenes to accommodate advertisements. Wondered why there was no character introduction at the end of the play. Finally a mention has to be made about the colorful and eloborate stage preparation mostly with the apt giant screens.
Overall: As the pamphlet suggested, the play displayed “navrasas”, the humour being very strong. As such it was an enjoyable experience. The story let me down, but the performances were superlative.