The Golden Fruit

//The Golden Fruit //

Abhash Kumar Boral

Namu wiped his spectacle glasses.

He tried to clean the thick glasses with his dirt soaked cloth. He wanted it clean to have a clear vision over the fruit he wanted to see for these long years. It was the fruit of his dream since his childhood, since the time the enchanting man whispered it into his ear that this would be his only his achievement in life!

That was the time when he last saw him inside his cottage, in front of a sapling of waist height in an evening. He found him kneeling before the plant in the evening when he accidentally entered the outlines of the bush made fence. He stood there, behind him as a silhouette whose eyes were fixed on the body of the skinny man.

‘get the ball’ someone shouted from behind bringing him to senses that let him aware of his situation that he came for the ball that merely rolled into his compound from the field whole they were playing. He came here with his investigating eyes to search the ball that sneaked itself somewhere in the darkness.

He saw the outline of the man’s skin body in the thin darkness, where he kept standing behind him with his sweeping eyes fixed on him. He appeared to him like a clay mound heaved under a small tree below which he found the ball going to be hidden under the prevailing darkness of his shadow and the encircling darkness around him. He made himself fixed behind the man, waiting him to get up from his prayer. ‘Get the ball, we are not playing anymore..fetch it, we are going’ shouted a voice from his playing area. He turned his look to give a way of his helplessness to his friends and failed as he found his face struggling against surrounded thick evening to make a show to his expressions.

‘Here is the ball’, a sound passed through him. A shivered ran across the corners of his body. He felt fear in him. A will to escape out of the situation compelled to pick up the ball from the hand of this unknown man in front of him before a quick escaping run. He ran off quickly from the place so as to make himself reached his home.

The first work he did after reaching home was pondering over the situation he underwent recently. He could not make out for why the situation was a matter to him..It was something strange for him although the things were normal. Yet he felt an undercurrent went through him mildly. He thought over the matter on and on and never could reach any pointy of conclusion where he could have satisfied himself. Somehow he could get himself out of this chain of thoughts and diverted himself towards some other problems until the midnight.

He didn’t know the night was trying to open of the clues to the answers to the sets of questions he had been through and through since the time he met this man. As the midnight reached his laid body on the bed it unveiled the mystery in his sleep. It was in the form of a dream that reached him.

In the dream he saw the face of the man reaching him out of an aura. Initially he saw a blaze of light radiated to which he couldn’t resist. He closed his eyes in the dream itself save his eyes from the halogen or some such kind..He did so but couldn’t continue closing the eyes for a long time fearing that the light might have something more than what he had feared. He opened his eyes and saw a man in front of him. He was the same man whom he met during the last evening.

Hardly had he known of him. He had heard people talking about him. To them he was a saint; a man who had already lived his life for thousand years, who has obtained the auspicious powers which had let him lived these last thousand years. People were also saying that the man has his life hidden inside this plant which, though looks like a small sapling, has also the life of thousand years. It was a different kind of tree which was not found anywhere on earth. Some whispered too it was a tree from heaven.

The fuss and gossips were frequently resounding inside him and had altogether formed a peculiar image of the man and the tree in him. But he could not make out why these elements were the attractions for him and why he was dragged towards the objects on and on, until the evening he saw the man accidentally. He never imagined that he would be meeting him at a situation quite unknown to him. His genuine fear would not have allowed him for the situation. Even he never expected a dream. But he had it

He met the man in that dream from out of an aura or something until the man said him. The man nearing him said,- Don’t be afraid my child. I came for you as I have something very important to say to you for which I have been waiting since a long time. It is about the plant. The plant you saw in the evening is not an ordinary plant. I have been waiting here to say this to you for years and years. This is a tree that bears golden fruit.

Namu became surprised in his dreams. The dream gave him the touch of reality. He had no choice. He listened this man who was saying him about the secrets of the plant. He was saying,- the tree came up here as one of the seeds fell off the heaven once long ago. After a rain it germinated. A few leaves followed. And it started growing. When I was a child I also dreamed about its origin. I was asked to take care of as I was the only soul ten who could have seen the yield. I saw also told about the place of the plant and take care of it. I did it. I spent my whole life in a hope to see the golden fruit but failed. I was told then that I had to continue hoping until my successor arrives one day. This evening I saw you. You resembled with the exact picture I was described then of my successor. So my child, now its your turn. May be I failed to experience life properly for which I was deprived of seeing the fruit on the stem. From tomorrow on wards, the plant would be yours.

Saying so, the man vanished.

Namu winked for a moment after the man went in Namu’s last dream.. He felt fear and mild current shrilling his body. The throbs continued for another few moments.. then laid him to a following slumber till morning when he woke up and emerged in his regular routine. He had lost the last dream until his evening play time.

When the friends called him to go for the game he remembered the dream he saw last night. That too led his way to give clarity to his problems. He was sincerely trying to comprehend about his recent future while his movement directing him for the plant driven by an inner force. The surprise was ahead of him.

He saw the absence of the man and his cottage on the place where exactly he saw the man last evening before the plant. Even he saw the plant had grown up a few meters taller than the size he saw it last evening.

He returned back for the place in anxiety and fear.

The next day same thing happened to him. He trailed himself for the plant to avoid his curiosity and saw the same thing. The plant has grown up though there was no sign of the man he saw there. This thing continued. He could not resist himself from going to the place to read about the new changes that could have occurred to the place or plant. Every day he saw the quick growth of the plant in the absolute absence of the man. He gradually lost all his fear and became acquainted with the situation.

The kept on growing along with the growth of Namu.

In due course of time Namu took himself as the heir of the tree and took care of the plant by watering and guarding it. The tree became tall and taller to a height that nobody could have tried to bring damage to its huge trunk.. but no fruit came to the tree. Namu also grew up through the steps of time. He underwent his youth and man hood under its trunk.. and lost his years of maturity awaiting the golden fruit.

A time came when Namu had no work. He left working due to his post matured age. He only had a single work left-to see the tree when it would show him a fruit. During his last tenure of life he worked hard to see the day when the tree would have brought a smile to his face by showing a fruit. But the tree didn’t bring him any fruit.

He became desperate due to his thought that his time was slipping away from him. His anxiety compelled him to scold the tree one day. He scolded the tree for why it is proving itself barren! Why and what mistake of him had been the reason of the tree’s non yielding attitude. He scolded and chided. Then cried before the tree. He cried as an old father wants the child to show him his ability to earn. He cried and slept under it being tired.

No sooner than he felt the coolness of the breeze to help his slumber he heard the voice from the tree to wake up. He distinctly heard that the tree had voiced to see it. He woke up definitely but couldn’t know whether he was in the realm of a reality or a dream. He thought probably it that in the dream he woke up. Next moment he went on to rectify him saying that it was the reality indeed where he dropped his slumber.

In between the dilemma he woke up and lifted his neck upward towards te sky where he could see the end top of the tree. His age old eyes initially didn’t allow him to stretch his look to the far end of the top. It was huge and tall. He tried hard to adjust his eye muscles bringing several more wrinkles to his eyes corners so that he could have a clear look at the other end of it.

After his painful exercised he could see a dazzle atop the tree.

He tried to convince himself that it was the golden fruit he had seen in actuality. But his non cooperating eyes didn’t help him to get a firm hold over his thought. He remained unfixed in between vision and thoughts. Hence he decided to climb to the top where he could be confirmed of the tree’s first yield.

He started to climb. Despite of his painful weight of the body, despite of the helpless state of his limbs, he continued climbing..

He tried hard to get up through the thick branches and climb up. Every moment a fear was touching him that he might have a great fall. After climbing for an hour or so he felt tired and rested on a branch from where he had a glance over the patch of meadow from where he started his journey. He couldn’t see the patch clearly. He was panting and feeling restless, yet his desire to reach and see the golden fruit was becoming stronger and firm in him. He continued again climbing up over the branches.. He climbed and climbed and felt reaching nearer the fruit.

He became happy. A smile puffed off his mouth after seeing the glow of the fruit. He smiled again.

That was the last time he was seen on earth.

Paltan Padia,

Khudra-752055

// Beauty//

I met a woman

with flowers at hand,

I met her at noon

when the lights were

scorching her

with illumination

brightening her

beauty,

that held me for a while

for a wish to see

who could be more beautiful?

The woman who

carries the flower

Or the flower that

fills the woman’s hands?

The question still

hunts me within

for

I couldn’t make out

removing

one from the other

to define

What really the beauty is!!

//Signature –II//

Before the sunrise
I might not get up to prove myself potent
spraying a few rays of light
upon the sands or a paper
that would contrast my image
as a man.

I am aware of my petering from life
after the sketch is done
in a mathematical equation
in a musical note
musing to look at the light
that took away my song
one day.

I am aware of my resuscitating
from a song
whispered to my ears
sickening me of an
awkward pleasure
horrors tapping
before and after a day break
from a silence around.

It is natural that a man
runs a horse everyday,
inside him,
as a proof of his existence,
like me, petite and shrunk.
like an everyday man
towards his office or wage.


I run for manhood,
out of an impotent face,
a few studs is what I search,
to let a man exist in me
as the cabman pants
to reach at the day ends at dawn.

I have slept many last nights
thoughtfully
rolled in night’s darkness,
painfully,
for a sleep,

at the sunrise
and before a full stop
a signature.



[ Written time: 20 March 2010, 1.20 A.M.]

// Signature//

I am simply imbedded in a time now!

Beyond everything

the fingers of time

as a woman combs my hair

tying me with her only future

or

like a stranger with an umbrella

with a wrap and a spectacle

a smote on my door

of past, past and past.

despite the world changing in an obvious way,

I always remained in a womb

curtained that

folds and unfolds a story

as lullaby does

make me yawn for a blanket

a fear.

despite the world disinclined to its orbit

I have my slumber inside a womb

that hit me at the brain

dorsally, I dose off

before the story ends

as granny’s, as demon’s

and time blankets a slumber on me

thus the story ends.

Why does a slumber hit my cortex?

always at my door step?

hit me like a parable!

Why do I sleep upon the atlas,

spread like a woman!!

I meet my time bracketed

at a ticket counter or in a queue

enveloped like a letter

that scribbled an old love.

Well dear its me,

another picture in a magazine

a daily return to home at night

a signature hunchback

a sleep at the bookshelf ,unread.

I am a man slept

for a time unknown to him!

.

//Mask-4//

I was in class two then

when the boy sitting beside me

winked me with a smile

for a look, inside his bag

he opened for me

to see the darkness he had from home

To see the darkness he had in at home

the story happened some forty years ago

when darkness was the only wall for me

I wanted to cross

crossing

for the masked man

across the wall

who never made himself visible to me

in the light

once visited the wall side

with his mask on

and vanishes again

into nothingness

and created darkness

for me

so I wanted darkness

A bagful of darkness

for the man

for the mask

for the wooing horror

at the world other side

that had hid him

in the darkened tales

in the series of my mother’s tales

frightful proposals

That could cross

Without a mask

She told me

one wouldn’t have that road.

The quest won’t end up

with remaining light

darkness I quested

Hence For the road or mask

perennially, everyday day

inside the classroom made up

with light excerpts

of the day

Yet I saw a road led to

the school bag

stuff of darkness and a mask

I stole.

Then I was mere a child

with hues and cries

for that mask or road

Thus I return to my bags

my schooldays
which buries my childhood

along with a drawing

on a slate

of the mask.

///Colour///

There is colours for everything

For you and for me,

we have separated ourselves

into colours

like size, height and creed,

my colour discriminated your

whole being from mine

under the force of social mathematics

we call it love

as I cannot obtain your’s

nor can I obtain yours

what we call colours

but call it love. Colourless,

nonexistence, co-existence

in my loneliness

or sheltered under your many sighs

we exercise

with our painting each other

at the weekend

or whenever the world

doesn’t look at us

but separately

amongst many whistles

and panting machines

we cook our picture

in the outline of colours

I tried with many streaks

Drawn visible as your name

as you

invisibly divide me to wrinkles and expressions

I try to paint you in me,

and you too paint me in you

on the broad canvas of time

in the spectrum of a company

make my brush colour a time

a space created within

amongst the tress brushing over the sky

amongst the sea rubbing the muzzle on the earth

as I do

inside the foggy arena

of your wanted needs.

Between odds and evens

you are always lost

when I am in you.

//Wound//

When Nandu reached at his home after waking up from a three days death, his family members were astonished for all of the family members knew his death excepting him. He didn’t know even that he was dead and trying to reason out why he found himself lying in this deserted land. When he opened his eyes it was horrible experience for him:



Nandu opened his eyes with a pain. The pain was somewhere form his neck side that made him opened his eyes wide although the heavy light of the sky did not allow him widening his eyes. No objects seemed visible to him other than the illuminated blue sky where he could imagine the moving black spots could be flying birds. But his pain due to the frozen wound around his neck could not allow him to watch the broad canvas of the sky painted colorfully which he never allowed to escape from him until this time.

It was a different pain than other pains running throughout the body starting form the neck curve through shoulder. He tried to read, lying down as before, in order to know where actually the pain centers. He found, after deeply introspecting him that the pain comes out of the neck area due to fermentation of a wound. He lifted his hand thereby in order to touch the feelings that clustered at the area. His fingers touched a deeper than a normal wound due to a division at the folding area of his right neck at a span’s length. He felt two small mounds have been found installed around a thick hole, which had become rough with dry blood and dust pasted with sands. He tried to get up being surprised with the kind of the wound and how such wound could found on his body.

His whole body was agonizing like an old machine rumbling to function. He did not hear the noises though he was sure that his membranes are dried up due to some reasons unknown to him. Some how he pulled himself up to the sitting position. And made himself capable of looking at the big circle known to him as world.

The world, he found was extended up to horizon’s extreme that appeared to him like a radius of the huge circle, which had made him its center. He swept his eyes around him and saw the circle flat due to his sitting position. The scar of his wound didn’t allow him to locate this beautiful world. He wanted to know why he came to this place and how the wound could be found around him.

He thought introspection in to the memory could take him to the past world where he could get his answers of all the questions cropping up in him. But the psychological travel could at best take him to his domestic horizon. He remembered his house, his family and everything. He thought, returning to his family might get him back to his reasons.

He tried to lift himself like lifting a sack stuffed with heavy stones inside. Some how he could gather himself to his standing position and shook it thinking to move towards his home. He appeared to himself like an old ox driven cart that makes more noise than it s motion. His dragging could fetch him to the adjacent road, which he could manage locating soon after his moving in a particular direction and helped him identifying it along with the direction that leads him for his homestead.

This was a kind of experience he never had during his lifetime. He had never felt that he has a body and that needs to be carried always. This time his body gave him utmost pain hanging like the pinching nails piercing through out his body and expected to be out of its nailed area. But he dragged and dragged him until he could see a picture that resembled him with the picture if his home he had remembered a while ago.

He recognized his home and his compound that square his home and the plants that he had planed in the sapling form to yield him fruits and flowers for he years. He reached his gate that he himself had hung in order to protect the yard from the cows and other trespassers, which he opened slowly without any noise and reached at his door. His urge to open the door made his heartbeat quicker that he did with vain care due to his sole focused concentrated on what would be happening inside the house until he reached there and found normal.

The normalcy in the outlook of his home kept him in happiness until he found a gathering of clustered surprises seeing his presence at the house. The natural faces of his family glow suddenly went pale and dim. He couldn’t get rid of the fading away lights from those faces and thought of that its reasons might have some connections with his wound. Even his wife whom he found her coming out of the kitchen with a speed got stuck at her legs having him found with his accidental presence. He found her trying to conceal her face wrinkles that could bring her surprise seeing him. She somehow made the whole situation dramatized and adjusted the matter asking him when he came and were had he been!

He couldn’t answer her questions for he hadn’t found any of reason that could suffice his or her answer. He was thinking that she could have supplied some information on his wound or finding himself amidst the ground. But her hopeless question multiplied into many anxious folds on his face and he was thrown out to another world like thing purely unknown to him. He satisfied her first question answering with a simple word ‘now’. But her second question was more a dilemma for him and he joined with his family for skipping off the whole matter and the dilemma to be answered later, silently.

They all struggled to normalize the situation although their whole focus was not descending from the wound. His only son and wife showed much attention by cleaning him and giving him his clean dresses. His wife even went to the extent of cleaning his wound and asking him how he was wounded to which he only expressed his fruitless blinking as her answer until he was served with food to his hunger and left in a room for rest.

But soon his in coming slumber turned to painful disturbance as search for the cause and effects have not been reason out yet. The closed eyes brought many moving pictures related to his wound that just had stared itching and oozing. He wanted his wife to do the needful rub. But to his astonishment his wife did not turn up to provide him her company to his loneliness and help him to his relief. She instead of sharing with her husband preferred another room with her son.

Nandu waiting for some time emerged in his itching wound. He felt the remembrance of a few incidents that could have caused him the wound. He heard his wife chatting with her grown up son about something that he never had thought of before. She was asking her son for why he threw the man in the open field instead of burring him after his death. He had the jolt of a heavy shock shirring through his nerves that shook him. He did not know that he was dead which he came to know from his wife and son’s talk. They even were found discussing them regarding his lying in the open field for three day might have brought him breathing to life. From their conversation he got confirmed that during the last three days he was lying dead in the open field where he found himself.

He cold not imagine the truth that whether he could survive for three days even after his death. He wanted to leave. Leave everything that he thought as his own. His wife and son no longer remained as his own. They had already left him and resumed to their lives deducting him from their relation.

He was dead since last three days. But why? How? He thought of and thought of until he found the beginning of his wound. It happened once, long ago; form a rose thorn the thorn pricked him while plucking from its stem. And was that the reason for which he had been carrying the wound! It appeared to him illogical He still traveled further back to the memory.

Initially it was difficult for him to reach at its end where the thing began. But later he could churn out the exact picture. The picture of that lonely woman who had actually wounded him or he was wounded by the woman for a rose.

Did she it badly or he found her wanting from her eyes?





( to be continued )