Original Konkani Story:
Parjatam… Parjatam…
Author: Meena Kakodkar
Translator: Aditi Budkuley
They all keep hiding this stalk from Shashi. But Shashi is not one to admire a Parijat by holding its stalk… he looks at them while placing them upside down on his palm… the palm seems bright red… Looking at those palms mummy laughs…
“You don’t look at flowers upside down, silly!”
“Why not?”
“What is in the stalk?”
In lieu of a reply, Shashi’s query gets a counter question from mummy. Of late, this keeps happening.
Shashi’s questions don’t get proper answers.
Shashi repeats his question to Nisha
“What is in the stalk?”
“Why! You tell me…”
“A drop of blood”
“Silly! A drop of nectar…”
Shashi wonders…a nectar drop in the flower-stalk and a love drop in the heart! It is perhaps this love, which gives man the strength to endure it all…
He then says to Nisha,
“You know Nisha, my Mummy, Daddy and Bhaiya, all are like the Parijat.”
“You, too, are like the Parijat…”
“Time to fall off already…”
“Even if you do, yet, the fragrance will continue to linger on…”
The fragrance of memories…! Just like the fragrance of the fond childhood memories that fills Shashi’s heart. Childhood memories… memories of school…memories of the college days…the memories of a moonlit life… Now there is but the sear! But even in this scorch, those moon-beam memories make for a little shade into Shashi’s life. After I’m gone, will memories about me help lighten my family’s sorrow even just a little?
Shashi wonders…
Shashi’s bhaiya paints beautiful pictures. He is a doctor and an artist too… His fingers have magic in them. Just his gentle caress across the forehead and Shashi feels repose. Everyone praises Bhaiya’s paintings. Shashi, too, has a high regard for him. And yet, at some vague moment, he feels envious of Bhaiya.
At one such moment Nisha said to him, “Hey, why don’t you draw? …”
“I cannot draw pictures having the confines of a frame.”
“Then, draw those beyond the restrictions of the frame”
“The sky is my canvas.”
“So paint the skies.”
“Where from, can I get so many colors?”
“I’ll get them.”
“As many as to paint the sky…?”
“As many as to never be over…”
Later, Nisha returned carrying a raindrop on a Colocasia leaf,
“Here, take…”
“What is this?”
“Colours! Now paint the skies to your heart’s content!”
“These colors?”
“Yes. I’ve captured the rainbow in the sky in this… now it’s all of the colours, at all of the time…”
Shashi preserves that drop. It is not the time to paint the skies yet. When it’s time, he must remember to take that drop along. The envious mood is long since washed off. Nisha is very important to help get out of those foul moods.
Shashi can no longer bear the pain now. Day by day the physical pains are constantly on the rise. What is more, concealing them is getting increasingly difficult for him. And forcing a smile has become even more difficult.
Everybody else’s masks are just as they were. Shashi’s mask, however, has come close to falling off. He now has no spirit left to play pretend. The hope of recovery is long gone. Even the will to live is coming to an end… All he wishes now is for the pretence to end before his mask falls off completely. He feels that it should all end in that very instant so that his own, and with him, the sufferings of his family ends. But is life going to end whenever he wishes it to…? Yet, living until it ends, is like staying drowned in the pitch black darkness… It is Nisha who sustains through that darkness. She just does not let him remain silent.
“Shashi, say something man…”
“What do I say?”
“Say something… speak, so it eases your mind.”
“I’ll narrate a story.”
“Go on.”
“Once there was a loner…”
“Who’s that?”
“Some loner…”
“His name?”
“Keep any that you like…”
“Shashi…?”
“He was very bright. Everybody liked him. He, too, was fond of everyone. He walked on the path of life with brilliant dreams of the future. But…”
“But?”
“He suddenly took ill. He suffered from blood cancer. And… And then… His footsteps were directed on to a path of no return.”
“And then?”
“Then he got lost in the dark. Now he has no future. His life is now reduced to living day to day, moment by moment…! Survived today… will he see tomorrow… spent on such thought…”
“This is your own story…”
“So it is.”
“Then how come I’m not in it?”
“Silly you! You are me, aren’t you? My own imaginations. You are my very thoughts. You are the optimist that appears to embolden the pessimist in me. You are the harbinger of that little spec of moonlight in this dark life. Nisha!”
But now Shashi’s optimism is entirely over. Perhaps, the Nisha from his thoughts may not even come. Shashi’s power to usher her in, has vanished. Ultimately, there has got to be some limit as to how much one should have to suffer…
Off late, the doctor avoids his gaze. Bhaiya, mostly stays at home… probably since no one knows when Shashi may deteriorate… Mummy and Daddy have lost their smiles. Their gaze, dead. Only their touch is living! And which comes alive within their entire being when embracing Shashi to caress him. Shashi has understood everything. His entire life force has concentrated in his eyes. His eyes are telling his mother… I can bear it no longer. And yet, for your sake, I feel like I want to live. But Mummy, please let me go now… let me go… But before he leaves, he wishes to see everyone cast away their masks. He wants to throw away his mask too. No more hide-and-seek in the final stage, please. Let the floods flow as freely as is… And at such a moment, he should fall off like a blossom into the palms of lightfooted death… The Parijat tree from the garden should spread a coverlet of Parijat blossoms over him and in their fragrance, he should proceed to paint the skies, taking along the raindrop given by Nisha…
Shashi becomes heavy-eyed. After a very long time he is beginning to feel slumberous…
All the windows of Shashi’s room are open today. Somebody has painted the sky reddish blue. Everybody’s masks have fallen off. The red stalks are oozing like fresh wounds. The tears are flooding. No one is trying to conceal anything today. The one, from whom they had been hiding it, has gently fallen off like a Parijat blossom… Hiding his own wounds from everybody, has gone far away… With the breeze, the Parijat blossoms continue to shower over Shashi’s body. But Shashi is not aware of anything anymore.
He is off to paint the skies with the raindrop… from darkness to radiant illumination…!
(The End)
