To the Stranger By all means you will like those paths.You will like them by all measures. You will even remember a few. Some Junoesque decent ones.Rubenesque rounded ones. Some fragile, thin ones too. By all means..You are my country man.. We walked by the same paddy fields. Both our paddy fields were ripe in golden hue. Our sisters and girls were chuckling, and were all strolling towards the K_river.(We were upbeat, even our sweats were fragrant.)The steep tramp to the river. I was a child then. I could feel from the depth of my nerves. After 40 years,I flung down that precarious walk,closing both my eyes,still my steps did not flump , my gait only got momentum, it is just like seeing and knowing, Even I didn’t have the foggiest knowledge that my body had such a memory. Not my brain. But my body.See, I had capered down that circuit many times with my mother and elder cousin. When they were washing garments by the waterway, I would sit on the bank and watch ,or sometimes throw a pebble into the water and see the rings looming larger and broader….It was a modest barranca, still a curvaceous zaftig one, that a new fellow could easily flump and break his teeth if he is not wary . Beside the tiny path grow tall grasses in turfs on open greensward and they told that snakes lived there. ..My elder cousin was buried in a cemetery close by, they told. I was far away and could not attend the funeral. So I visited this locale not to see the cemetery, but to see the river. The burial ground tale was like a surprise… But by all measures, I could walk along and feel the curvaceous path,you may not believe, even I didn’t accept till it was over. When it was finished , the immediate past was like a miracle whose pugmarks hung on for a long while …There once we caught fish by dipping the towel in deep water….And my elderly relative was an expert in this art.We were shrewd and the poor fish were ignorant. This and that. My sins never end. This was the relative with whose daughter I was to elope after numerous years. We both did not know that then. I was a child and he was a man and his daughter was not born. He was, I think, not married even. If he had such a premonition that day, he would not have come angling with me. The relative was clever. He, in his country side , would catch fish when it was raining and the water would be roily and the fish could not see. He also knew the habitats of fish, their secret dwelling places in the cleavage of rocks. He knew many such things..That day the river was clear. Still he caught fish with a simple towel. I did not know that day that one day, he will be my dad in law. Some stories are funny outside, but deep down they are not so. They are just sad. A few stories are inevitable. They are caused, so the end should occur, now or later. Some stories have inklings that even the scribe who wrote them could not fathom . Some stories are composed on notice boards,some others on wallpapers , and some others jotted down carefully in note pads of wonderful pages. And some other intimate ones are written on tissue papers, and the waiter who supplied them could not speculate their actual use.It was written by the writer to the writer. And it could have been applied to wipe the tears off the lineament,but she instead, chose to write a great story. They are not for publication. They are just for the moment…The best stories are written on tissue papers, by the writer to herself.Not to her lover or reader, but to herself.They are holy. They are not for the stale print to stain it and deprive off its sanctity. If you are that writer, I am your fan. …………………
