Artists Painting Women in Natural Beauty and with Free Brush

MY MOTHER'S PENCIL SKETCH
Topic: Short Stories

 AUTHOR : NAVAL LANGA

                     THIS IS NOT HIS first attempt of running away from home. First time he did it when he was thirteen, studying in standard eight. He had run to the bridge, but failed to beat the cold that had sent tremors to his spines. 

He had again tried it in first year of college. This time it was for the reason of Sheena. Sanity recovered in two days. Retired hurt. Sheena still lives in the street, in the same house in whose back yard they had passed hot afternoons. Her windows are still transparent, but her big brother keeps hard cloth curtains.

But today is a different day. He determines to be homeless, finally. He has no plans in mind, no weight in the pockets. In his bag he takes a few things. One pair of clothes, one pair of football shoes, and an old photograph of his mother, his dead mother.

Past. The word makes him uncomfortable. Why people can’t live with the past? Though his stepmother, Bijaya, has never hurt him. Nor she has considered his presence as upsetting, despite his poor record in schools and never attending college properly. But that is not enough. She never helped putting off his shirt after he played in rain. She neither scolded him on coming late at night, nor she shed tears when he was ill. His mother, before she died, did all these things.

But today is a different day. Bijaya removed the pencil drawing of his mother. She wanted the space for an embroidered wall-piece. His mother was a drawing teacher and the pencil drawing, a self-portrait, was her work displayed on the wall. For Amit it was like a relief. When surrounded by loneliness, he would go near to the pencil drawing, put his nose on the frame of the portrait, and smell his mother’s presence.

Today the smell is shifted, from drawing room to storeroom.

When caught in a web of worries, people remember their relationships, old relationships. Amit goes to Sheena. Now he can meet her freely. She lives in PG Hostel, as she has got admission in a post graduation course. Amit could not. While giving admission, they consider only the marks, and not the height of the students.

“It’s not a good ground for leaving home.”

“Sheena, I know. But I… I want my own life now.”

“Okay, I will tell my brother to find out some job for you.”

Amit still dislikes her brother’s face, especially his fan-like moustache. But he prefers silence. 

Read More>>>> MY MOTHER'S PENCIL SKETCH

THE SALT OF LIFE : A SHORT STORY BY NAVAL LANGA
Mood:  happy

 

 

“MAMA YOU DON’T know how hard it is to earn money.”  Sammy hurries for reaching his factory.

“My child, it’s your father’s death anniversary. I need some money for offering puja at the temple.”

“You can do it here in a temple of the city, too.” Sammy’s wife suggested a practical way-out. Sitting on a high cot, she dangles her legs and looks at the old woman as if she is a recurring cost. Vijaya the old woman sits back. She is on a costly sofa, but with a rundown face. The amount she needs is a peanut for her son, a reputed exporter of garments. For him his father is a thing of past, and to chew the past is ‘wasting of time’. He remains so busy, so occupied, so unconcerned about family. 

But for the old woman Vijaya, her husband is still the present, present like the tears in eyes, which have not dried yet. She remembers how they were caught in the fire of worries. She recalls how jointly they had recollected the lost tunes of life and composed a song of happiness. She rubs her eyes first, and then rubs her spectacles. Her cleaned glasses help her to see the scene of her past.

 

THE BELLY OF THE dam was torn open. Water had run into in the streets, the homes, and the destinies of the villagers who were not left with a single cloth dry. The Rain God had displayed its wrath. And the wrath was flooding everywhere.

What worried Sampat was the stock lying in his shop. The entire stock was weak against water. Water is Sampat’s enemy in a novel way. Here a touch of it, and his whole trade would meltdown. On seeing the oozing flood in the street, his face turned white as the crushed rice. He feared for the loss. He feared for the struggle ahead. Vijaya, his wife was still driving out the water from kitchen.    CONTINUE READING>>>>>

http://cleanfiction.blogspot.com/2008/11/salt-of-life.html

 

 

ARE YOU TRAVELLING WITH YOUR WIFE? GOD BLESS YOU!
Topic: Humour

ARE YOU TRAVELLING WITH YOUR WIFE? GOD BLESS YOU!

I do not like travelling much. What I dislike is the railways’ angry engines, whistling as if they are warning the whole universe to remain away from their way. Though I like to look at the coolies who wear red shirt matching their temper; who take labour charges equal to the half price of your luggage; and who drink country wine that makes them smiling at every one they see. But I dislike travelling. During vacation period what I wish is the successive cups of tea with half a dozen Sunday papers on my table.

Though it invites my wife’s high-pitched anger, I always keep my teacups on a newspaper. And as the fume from teacup goes higher, I keep looking at the rising fume. With that fume my thoughts about the current affairs of country goes higher and higher. (Had I been a smoker, my thinking would have been of much higher level.) But before I settle on any concrete idea on the news I read, my better half would find out a reason to drag me out of my stance.

“In this vacation we will go at a hill station.” She unfolded her resolution. She is very cost-conscious while spending money. So she is economical in using the words, too. In very few words and short sentences she talks. You know, the bullets have no big sizes.

On hearing her, at first, I did not come out of my brain-business; but on hearing the word ‘hill-station’, I began to think about how challenging it is to make a station on a hill. You know, it’s called the law of association. Like, whenever we recall our primary school days, we remember the head master’s stick. So whenever I hear my wife’s travel plans, I remember the word ‘challenging’.

Soon I had to come down on the earth, leaving the situations and conditions of country there in the pages of newspapers. But I was sure she would decide on a good but comparatively cheaper destination.

She remains always alert in cutting the extra costs. Last year, after finding herself turning from fat to fatter, she was worrying much. I still do not understand why the innocent fat gathering around their waists, the hands, legs, and et cetera bother the women so much. But it bothered my wife. The days came when she had to use soap for getting her golden bangles off. Cost-conscious is she; so for cutting the cost of the soap, she had resolved to have a new pair of the golden bangles. You know, the married life is not costly at all.

She is very proud of her cost-cutting virtue. One more example would be a sufficient proof. Last month one of my lower teeth had revolted and had decided to go out of my mouth. Hence it had started making its presence painful like a naughy peon in an office. I had to go to a dentist for removing and fixing a tooth.

She was with me like the shadow of a big tree.

As the dentist took a fork in his hand, I feared that he would make my mouth-opening wider than the God had designed for me. Before proceeding further he said, “It would cost Rs. 5000.”

Before I speak anything my wife asked him, “Can’t you make the bill reasonable?”

“Yes, ma’am. I can fix three teeth in just Rs. 10,000,” the dentist was a good salesman, too. The dentist is a person before whom the greatest and the strongest of the men lose teeth.

Cost-conscious is my wife: so she had decided to buy the three-teeth package for me. Resultantly I have to lose extra two teeth. But she was pleased, as she had managed to snatch a prudent deal from a hard professional like a dentist.

During last vacation she had decided to convert me, a lawyer by skin, into a dharmik (religious) person.

“Shall we go to Kedarnath?”

“Why are you asking me?” Buried under the heap of surprises, I tried to decode her polite-looking query.

“You know, you also have right to say something.” I had never found her voice so liberal, so democratic. Though quite prudently, but she has always embroidered every affair of the household with her authoritative needle.

But before I could exercise my windfall liberty, even for a moment, she raised her hand and said, “Okay, no more discussion. The tickets are booked. “ Order. Order. Order. My right to appeal and dissent was overruled, unquestionably.

Next twenty-four hours passed peacefully. No disputes. Her experienced hands, her exclusive control over the purse, and the good administrative skills she owns did not take much time to get both of us on the railway platform.

Unfortunately the tour was not a good start for us.

On very first day of the wee-klong tour to the sacred places, Badrinath and Kedarnath, the muscle pain caught my wife’s right leg. It forced her to take support of my shoulder while climbing steps of a temple, too.

We have to underwent the entire tour with the shoulder-to-shoulder combination. The rest five days were full of ecstasy. It was joy of enjoying the pain and pleasure jointly, as the situation had thrown us back in the days of our youth when we were used to walk hand in hand. Moreover it made both of us to realise that ‘if we can walk with such a shoulder-to-shoulder support, every tour is a pilgrimage; every step put ahead is a step towards happiness; and every word whispered is a song of life’.

But after that episode, if anyone asks my wife about the tour, she would reply that, “If you want to really see your husband’s love for you, then go to Badrinath and Kedarnath.”

After that tour, one noticeable change has also occurred in our life. Now sometimes while walking in a garden, talking about homely matters too, if my wife’s hand goes onto my shoulder, I feel it great. I feel that I am not alone in this world.

And for that I thank Lord Shiva and the pilgrimage to Kedarnath.