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It gives me great pleasure to welcome my mother back to the blog. She is a far better writer than I am and helped me out by writing this short story. Give it up for my mother people!
The Bilge Master
It had been a scorching day. The relentless sun had punished the city and its surrounds as never before. But now the ochre-ish ball of fire had slowly been immersed into the pool of hellfire underneath the horizon, where it was going to recharge its power all night for the next day. The moon had been waxing for more than 13 days now and its timid face would soon spread its soothing balm and grant a little respite, or so she hoped. She came out of the room and took in a lungful of air. It was dry and dusty. Was a slight breeze blowing, or was it just her longing that made her skin quiver? She waited for a while before trying out her bare feet on the exposed courtyard and found that it was just about cool enough to hop across and climb up to the terrace above. She spread the torn robe that she had brought with her on the north-east corner and looked around her. A ghostly sight indeed! She could make out the lightless dwellings and streets which had once reflected the light of hundreds of lamps. Nor were there any sounds or smells of people gathered around their hearths. The empty brick kilns were no longer aglow and in the distance the granary and the bath were also on the way to being unearthly becoming mausoleums.
She turned around to the south to look with despairing eyes at the fruitless fields where there used to be lush green plantations of crops that were now just covered with dust. The forests too had disappeared leaving only a few stumps shrivelled and as she knew to her cost, too brittle to be used even to feed the ovens. There were no more smells but that of death and desolation all around. The River was flowing a long way off now, having changed its course and leaving only a deep furrow with crumbling banks in its place. Everyone had packed up and moved with it and she wondered for the umpteenth time why she hadn't accompanied them. There was no logical, coherent reason of her having remained; just a foolish sentiment of a life spent in the city with its perfectly planned houses, roads and streets, runny symmetrically at right angles to each other. She had come to it a mere child and its concise perfection and smoothly running orderly life, with plenty everywhere had given her a thrill of admiration and pride to be part of it all. As she had grown into womanhood, her beauty had been extolled all over the city and she had learned to dance with grace and beauty from her masters appointed for her by none other than the Lordly One. She had danced and entertained and won accolades of all. On feast days, the Lordly One had graced the occasion only to watch her dance. He was mighty and strong with his large eyes, crispy curling mane of hair and beard, regal and proud. She had lost her heart to him like scores of others.
He had ordained his best artist to capture her in stone to keep with him always and had also so oft looked upon her with expressions of tenderness and love. She had been the envy of the womenfolk of the city and had reveled in it. But the Lordly One was gone now, far away from this world to the valley of flowers where people went after leaving their earthly bonds. Her bubble of happiness had burst and as the funeral rites progressed amidst loud lamentations, she had stayed in this house in her room, her youth and beauty gone forever. So when everybody left she had been cajoled over and over again to go with them but she had not been able to do so, but had remained grieving at His passing even after so much time had elapsed. She was old now and she knew that she would not have to endure this life for much longer. So why go? Why start life afresh with a benumbed mind and time worn body?
They had left her enough baked grain cakes and water to last for a month or so. She had hardly eaten for the last eight days since the last of the denizens had left. She had rationed her water just wetting her lips and only drinking when thirst made her reach the point of desperation. As she stood on the terrace, looking upon the silvery lighted surrounds, she suddenly knew tonight would be the night. Before the cruel sun rose again she too would join Him in the valley of flowers. The people had gone to find life along the changed course of the River and would be far too busy setting up life once more to remember Him or her for long. She took a deep lungful of air and lay down on the robe and wondered about the meaning of life and how time, the passing of which eradicated all that had been and only progressed to all that would be. She was getting colder and colder, her limbs powerless to move and the last thought before her last breath was that of His face looking at her fondly.
She was not to know that several centuries later, this abandoned city would be found, quite by accident and her stone figurine, the Lordly One's statuette, all the artifacts, the streets, the great baths and the granary would be excavated and fill the world by wonder of such an early civilization with such scientific precision. The writing on the everyday seals would not be deciphered even by the most sophisticated computers and so remain a mystery. The banks of the Indus would be dotted with such civilizations and be discovered too and she would have been very happy to know that she would be very aptly named “The Dancing Girl”, and her beauty immortalized forever
