Golden Town
Top writer in poetry, compulsive writer, I enjoy reading writing just about anything. I write daily, I have published a PhD, a book, few academic articles.
Last published just now
Dec 28, 2021
IN RESPONSE TO RAVYNE HAWKE’S DAILY PROMPT
The golden town
a story that memories and dreams are made of
The girl was 4 years old, and perhaps it was her first week at kindergarten, where she had come with her older brother, whose school was next door. The brother had been too much in a hurry to go and play with his classmates, that he had left her behind, still walking slowly on the main street, looking around for some distractions.
And the little girl had actually, stopped, as she didn’t want to go inside the school building, while there was so much to learn and see outside.
For now, she was fascinated by the mound of dirt growing rapidly, right in front of her eyes. Her eyes and her mouth wide open, she whispered to the little rat who was busy in this excavation on the roadside, “What are you digging”, “What are you hiding”, remembering the story her father had told her about the poor slow- wit villager in his village, who had caught forty thieves by chance, and won a big award from the king, and married his beautiful sweetheart.
In the story, the villager had been talking to his house mouse at night, “Kyun bhai kya khudanti” meaning “What are you digging”, “what are you hiding”, when the thieves, who had stolen the king’s jewels, were hiding behind his house. Hearing him, they thought that the villager knew what they were up to, and had left all the jewels in exchange for an escape from the village.
The memory of what had happened in the story tickled her and she stood there smiling and repeating, “What are you digging”, “What are you digging?” and enjoying her game, as she had also secretly decided to marry a king to get all the jewels. But then the teacher had come out looking for her and had taken her inside.
It was Bilaspur, the Old Town with its old temples, the Saandu ground, the Satluj river, the white palace, and the mud-brick houses with thatched roofs, and the rows of corns and pumpkins drying out in the sun.
The girl, with her two older brothers, was enjoying the golden days of her magical childhood in a big sprawling banglow with a fence all around.
Beside the house was an old and deserted temple, where in that spring, their hen would start to lay her eggs, without anyone knowing, and then after completely disappearing for a few days, she would come back as a victorious general, inflated with pride, with a small army of little yellow chickens marching behind her.
The little girl didn’t know it then, but one day, the people of this town would make a great sacrifice, to produce electricity for the whole province, their town was going to disappear soon. A majestic lake would be created by diverting the flow of the Satluj river, which would engulf the whole town, like the dormant town of the sleeping beauty, not frozen in time, but submerged in water.
And the time that the little girl had spent in that town, would also remain dormant like childhood dreams, to wake up at strange moments. Surfacing at the whiff of a familiar smell, a note of some music, a hint of some unspoken word, these memories, sometimes real, sometimes in her imagination would become the material for her stories. And, through these memories, Bilaspur would always remain in her imagination, alive, vibrant, and beautiful, along with the stories of kings and thieves, and marching chickens, the dancing shadows, and the golden long winter afternoons.
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