The Gold Amulet

This poem has been published in Silver Birch Press, an independent publisher located in Los Angeles.

(https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/the-gold-amulet-poem-by-pallabi-roy-lost-and-found-poetry-and-prose-series/)

It was not just a pricey yellow metal
that still berates my soul
for not holding on to it.
It was rather to me an empyrean that housed
an angel sent by you, Ma,
to ward off all the evils around me.

I deplore losing it,
not for its elegant and antique design,
but your prayers etched on its surface,
not for the sparkles and glitters,
but your blessings shining through it.
I could not treasure it, Ma!
When it hanged around my neck
like a buckler in a war.

Ma, it was a legacy of love
bequeathed to you by Grandma
that you had hoped to live on.
But it could not cling to my heart
like I always did to its.

That gold amulet
broke up with me,
and taught me a lesson.
Losing is not about ruing when it is gone,
it is about cherishing when it is our own.

The Reunion

Toby gallops through the house, howling anxiously, acting strained. He’s not even neared the food bowl since morning. In one moment, he jumps up on the couch and looks out the window of Sarah’s room. Then in the next moment, he scratches at the old wooden door of the living room, tearing away splinters of wood. And then in the next moment, he runs into the kitchen and tries to reach the countertop standing on his hind legs. And all this hasn’t slipped away unnoticed. Samantha is busy preparing lunch. Occasionally, she checks the clock and hollers at Toby. Sarah should be home soon. Just then, her phone kept on the coffee table blares. Toby startles and brings the phone to Samantha. He whips his tail in excitement while she talks on the phone. She looks worried. Something is amiss, he senses. He sees her getting her index finger to work, to select phone numbers from the contact list and to start dialing, one after another. Next, he finds her rushing into the kitchen and stuffing his favorite Kong with food. She keeps the Kong near his small round bed. He gets busy with it for a while. Then he hears the front door closing heavily. He drops the toy and gives chase. But by then, he’s left alone in the house.

*****

“Where is my daughter?” Samantha calls to ask the school as she bolts out of the house.

“We can’t find her,” a staffer finally admits.

She hails a cab from her Sherwood Forest home to search the neighborhood around the school. She phones every friend, every relative nervously, disturbingly. Mike files a missing person’s report at the 12th Precinct. Their daughter, Sarah is no ordinary kid. She’s autistic. She’s no friends. She’s four years old, but she doesn’t speak yet—she just makes some slurred, indistinct guttural sounds. And she’s a tendency to run when she’s high anxiety. She attends this special needs school. And now, she’s missing.

Police arrive and begin combing the school from where Sarah fled. School staff inform that Sarah’s paraprofessional, Sophie left early today. She’s then put with a group of kids, but she’s left unattended. A security camera picks up Sarah for a few seconds as she slipped out a cafeteria door of the school. She appears to head north onto the busy Seven Mile Road but then almost immediately goes off camera. Police encourage residents to look around and near their homes. The number of volunteers turning out has the search team at capacity, but with no trace of Sarah until darkness fell.

*****

Sarah is no ordinary kid, and she received no ordinary dog. She got a dog for Christmas last year. Toby, her service dog. And Sarah has been calmer ever since. Toby calms Sarah when her anxiety rises. He is tethered to her at home, so he keeps her from running. But he’s not allowed in school.

Toby suffers his first lonely evening in darkness. He sits behind the front door all through the evening. He wonders why his family is not home yet. His loud cries now turn into whimpers. Then he hears a car horn; his ears perk up, he spins around, he prepares to launch himself into his owner’s arms. He waits for the car to pull into the carport. The door opens and the light goes on. Mike enters, Samantha follows. Toby jumps up on Mike tail wagging and tries to lick his face.

“Off,” Mike commands with an authoritative, deep voice.

Toby steps back. He senses their feelings of sadness. He looks around for Sarah. But she’s not here yet.

*****

Two days later.

Toby and Sarah sit on the couch of her room, her left arm draped around his neck, both enjoying the warm sun and view out the window. Happy and reunited.

In the living room, Samantha and Mike happily watch the heroic act of Toby being telecasted on TV.

That night when Sarah didn’t return home with her parents, Toby sneaked out the back door. He tracked Sarah’s scent around the neighborhood all night, sniffed out her sitting on a park bench and finally dragged her home.

Image Credit: Writer’s Digest Your Story #79

The Irrational

The larceny investigations are on. State Police have sought public assistance in identifying the suspects. The number of crimes reported on the college campus has risen over the last few weeks.

When Larry enters the classroom, it’s already filled with fellow students clacking away on their laptops. He’s late for class. He quietly walks up to the back row, chooses the seat next to Jamie and sets his book bag down next to the desk. Professor Baker lectures on prospect theory, on how to make a rational decision. While he has done all of the assigned readings for the day, he still finds the lecture hard to understand. His mind is just not into it. Brain fog seems to have the effect. He takes a look around the class. Nearly every student who’s showed up to the class sits through the hour-long lecture without batting an eye, takes notes and most importantly, takes it to heart. Professor Baker leaves the classroom, with students following him into the hallway. Larry becomes the last one to leave.

“Can I join you?” Larry asks Jamie at the coffee shop, a place she frequently visits for hunkering down and doing some studying after class.

“Thank you.” He sits, without giving her time to say no. “So, have you made some headway on the research project?”

“Well, not really.” Jamie picks at her salad.

“Oh, come on, Jamie! You always manage to get right to the part we can’t even figure out.” Larry is all praise for Jamie. She’s a fine student after all.

Jamie smiles her thanks.

He begins getting her to talk about herself. By this time, they’re really hitting it off real good conversationally.

Jamie finishes her salad and cold-brew coffee, gets up and says, “Hey! I’m sorry. I’ve to leave now.”

Both exchange goodbyes.

The next day Jamie reports to the State Police that her wallet has been stolen. The wallet contained a credit card, a small amount of cash and personal documents. Her card was used at Walgreens the previous evening.

Police show Jamie the surveillance camera video of the suspect retrieved from the drugstore. Oh! There he is. It’s Larry. But she leaves without revealing the name to the police. On her way, she recalls the conversation she had with Larry the day before, about his ailing mother and no financial support. She now understands why Larry found the prospect theory so difficult.

Image Credit: Google Images/politicalhat.com

The Mean Road

This flash fiction has been published in 404Words, an online literary magazine dedicated to publishing palm-sized pieces of short stories!

(http://www.404words.com/the-mean-road/)

John drives that lonely stretch of road every day on his way back home. The jungle-fringed road is poorly lit, and very few cars pass through. But he does because it saves him some good miles. He occasionally makes the stereo play at a very high volume to ward off any spine-chilling thoughts. Because those vanishing hitchhiker legends and ‘road gang’ robbery stories have been around.

Today he expedites his office work and leaves an hour early. It’s his wife’s birthday. He has to pick up a port, a cake, some flowers and a gift. He wants to surprise her with a piece of jewelry. He lands up at the jewelry store and buys a ruby and pearl necklace. He’s sure it’ll pull off one of the sweetest surprises ever for her. He hurriedly leaves the store and gets into his Commodore.

He’s out on that lonely stretch. There’re fewer cars today. He belts out along with the catchy tunes and drives a few miles. There he spots a woman falling on the side of the pavement. He decelerates the car to see if the woman has injured herself. But because of poor lighting, he can’t see anything. Just then he remembers the loot incident narrated by Steve, a colleague, a day earlier. Steve told him how a man, posing as a young woman, robbed one of his cousins while heading down a similar road. John comes to his senses. He assumes the woman is drunk. He starts to drive away. He gives a quick and rushing look in the wing mirror. The woman looks in pain, seems to be uttering something, maybe ‘Help’. He’s not sure. He doesn’t want to land in trouble. He speeds away.

“One woman killed by car while crossing Asheville road,” reads the front page of the newspaper the next morning. John reads the news aloud. A high-speeding car hit Stephanie Johnson while she’s crossing the road and fled. No one came forward to contact police or help tend to the wounded. The news also has this chilling image of her whom John left to die on the road last night. Grief and regret pour out of him.

A few days later…John stops his car at a pedestrian crossing of the busy downtown street. An hour more to reach — double of what it used to take earlier. But he no longer takes that road, the road with no humanity.

Image Credit: Google Images

The Silence of the Sky

The windshield wipers were moving fast to fight off the heavy raindrops. The hairpin bends in the road were refusing to end. Darkness was starting to set in, much earlier than usual. All these were posing a big challenge for Neeraj. He was trying to brave the incessant rains; his eyes were constantly on the odometer to check how much distance was left to reach the downhill. But they had merely covered 24 kilometers; still 72 kilometers were left. Nervousness started to build up in his mind.

But little did that bother Nimisha. She kept seating there nonchalantly, unfazed by the hostile weather conditions outside. Putting her feet on the dashboard, she was busy sliding the mobile screen up and down ─ shortlisting the photos clicked in this trip, which she planned to upload on Facebook.

Neeraj and Nimisha are both techies, working in big multinational software firms in Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi. Married for 3 years, they are doing really well in their career and life. With a big 3 BHK apartment in a posh locality of Gurgaon, overly fat paychecks and a huge bank balance backed by their wealthy backgrounds, they have quite managed to become objects of envy among their friends and colleagues. Popular as travel bugs in their social circle, they say work hard, travel harder is their success mantra. And they religiously chant this mantra once in every quarter. This trip was also a part of this devotion. Taking 2 days off from work and clubbing it with the weekends, they had planned a 4-day trip to Nainital and Ranikhet. But this time all the planning went wrong.

Neeraj cursed Nimisha’s manager in his mind. Had he not called Nimisha in the morning and urged her to cancel tomorrow’s leave, they would not have had to cut short the trip. They had planned to spend the night in Ranikhet today and return to Delhi tomorrow morning. He thought, Nimisha could have said no. This trip was planned and informed to her manager a quarter back. So there was no point submitting to his pressure in the middle of the trip. When the news of client visit was not communicated to her earlier and the manager was giving a poor excuse of forgetting about her leave plan, she could have clearly refused. But Neeraj already has had an argument with her on this after the call. And she shut him up with the alibi of her mid-year performance review.

It was a peak monsoon day. It was drizzling since morning. But after 15 minutes of checking out from the hotel, it started raining heavily with the sky lighting up with massive bolts of lightning. And now in the midway, Neeraj had no option but to continue the drive.

“Nimi, can we stop somewhere for chai?” he asked, bending his head forward and looking for a dhaba through the windshield.

“Hmm,” she said, still engrossed in her phone, “but please stop at a hygienic place, ha!”

Her reply made him feel like shouting at her — at all her nonsensical cleanliness tantrums. He could hardly spot a dhaba or a cafe in the road. And the only few that existed were shuttered. Maybe the owners knew there would be no customers in this showery weather. So they had planned to pack and leave.

He badly needed a chai to relieve himself of the tension. But with no place open, he focused on steering the car around the curves. Just then a dim light in the distance filtered through the windshield. He tried to figure out what it could be.

“What’s that? Is that a dhaba?” Nimisha asked, having winded up her phone affairs and pointing at the light.

“I guess so,” he replied.

“This road is very isolated, isn’t it? Are we on the right road? We should confirm from someone,” she said.

“This is the only road that goes to Ramnagar. I have not come across any other diverted route. When we stop for tea, I will still confirm,” he said, adding “We should not have started so late. You remember na, the hotel manager was also asking us to avoid driving in this road at night. And just see the weather. It is only getting worst.”

“From Ramnagar, the roads are good. So we should reach Delhi on time,” she tried to divert the topic, “Do you want me to drive?”

Neeraj did not reply. He did not want to start the argument again. He knew her ego will never let her accept the fact that they have made a wrong decision.

The dim light seemed to get brighter. They could see a shanty, some 100 meters away. Neeraj decelerated the car. Nimisha rolled down the window to confirm what it actually was. It was a small shop that precariously balanced itself on a steep slope. Few chips and snacks packets hanging on the display stand signified that they might get some chai here. Neeraj stopped the car. Asking Nimisha to remain seated, he stepped out of the car and moved forward to look for the shop owner.

“Hello! Is there anyone out here?” he almost shouted out, with nobody to be seen inside.

“Hello?” he said again.

After 2-3 minutes, a man in his 40s banged open the back door and hurriedly entered the shop carrying a small transistor in his hand. With the door wide open, Neeraj could see that it was connected to a staircase that probably led to his house down the steep.

Seeing Neeraj outside the shop, the man who looked like the shop owner paused for a moment, then asked, “Yes!”

“Will we get some chai here?” Neeraj asked.

“What are you doing here in this rain?” the owner asked, ignoring his question of chai.

“We are going to Delhi,” Neeraj replied.

“In this weather? Don’t you know that there is a landslip some 5 kilometers ahead from here and the road is closed?” he asked with an angry tone, “Are you a tourist?”

“Yes. Actually, we had gone up to Nainital for a vacation. But we have to reach Delhi today itself. And no, we do not have any news of landslide,” Neeraj said.

“The government has issued an advisory to shut this road and urged the public to stay at home. I am closing the shop,” the owner said, gathering the goods put on display and dumping them at a corner inside the shop.

“Are you sure the road is shut down?” Neeraj asked.

“The news is airing on radio.” Looking straight into Neeraj’s eyes, the owner commanded, “Bhatrojkhan is 1 kilometer away from here. You will find few hotels there. Spend the night at a hotel. Don’t expect to drive in this rain. The roads become very dangerous. You, tourist people, don’t abide by the rules of our hills. So mishaps happen.”

Saying so, the owner shuttered down the shop from inside, switched off the light and went down to his house from the back door.

Neeraj came near the car, bent down and gestured to Nimisha to roll down the window.

She asked, “What was he saying?”

Neeraj replied, “He said the road ahead is closed due to landslides. We should spend the night here and start tomorrow morning.”

“No, no. You always get influenced by what others say,” she grumbled.

“But that man was also telling about some government advisory. We do not know how the roads ahead are. There might be more landslides,” he tensed up.

“Had it been like that, police would have barricaded the road in Ranikhet only. And anyways, we are not over speeding,” she tried to win over.

“Are you sure?” there was a hesitation in his speech.

“Yes,” she affirmed.

Neeraj opened the door and started the car. He was still not sure if he made a good decision, tuning out the advice of the two denizens of the place. All he was to do was to comply with his wife’s wishes. And he did just that.

He kept on moving through the curves. The road looked smooth as contrary to what the shop owner and the hotel manager were saying. A feeling of relaxation set in Neeraj’s mind. He tried to enjoy the Arijit Singh melodies that were playing on the stereo.

Just then Nimisha spotted a few big stones rolling down the road.

“Neeraj!” she called out, her eyes popping out in horror.

A blindfold wrapped around his eyes. He sped up the car to get away from the landslide point. But the debris just crashed burying the car within seconds. A long silence prevailed. And the sky looked down to witness this never-ending silence.

Image Credit: Google Images

THE FIVE LILIES

Paul was swamped at the moment, partly to finish a cover story for the upcoming issue of the magazine when his phone rang. The caller, a law enforcement official, asked, “Do you know Karen? Does she live with you?” Paul answered in the affirmative to both as his heart started thumping fast. He learned that Karen was admitted to a hospital after being involved in a gruesome car crash on her way to office. He hopped in his vehicle quickly and headed to the hospital.

Karen and Paul, the couple had been together for about five years. She had hoped to spend the rest of her life with him. But he was a man with no commitments. He was just going in with no plans to settle down anytime soon. One day he loved her; the next day, that love vanished. He was, in fact, starving her emotionally. But still she loved him the most — far more than he deserved. All the opposition from family members and heady advice from friends seemed to have gone in vain. She knew one day he would be at her side to never leave her alone again. In fact, she was pretty sure of that.

Karen has been lying in the hospital bed for 24 hours now — unconscious with a broken rib cage and a huge gash, a contusion on the right side of her head. Prayers and recovery messages are pouring in. But that is not doing any miracle. She is slowly losing the battle. Doctors have advised Karen’s family to start funeral preparations as her brain stem has been severely damaged.

“Karen, you can make it!” Paul exhorts, squeezing her hand to make sure she hears him.

“See! I have brought your favorite lilies. Please open your eyes.”

“You have made a promise I know you won’t renege on. Please my love, wake up! I will never hurt you again.”

Tears run down his cheeks. He opens the diary that the police officer handed him soon after he reached the hospital. There are these five dried lilies pressed between two wrinkled pages, with a note beneath:

Honey, these gifts from you on our anniversaries bring a joy that I want to make last. Love you forever. Karen.

Devastated, Paul makes one last attempt to salvage his hope. He shakes her gently. But by then, he loses her to death’s cruel and cold hands.

My Lost Love

Old days are gone,

But the memories are not.

Wounds are healed,

But the pain is not.

Tears are dried,

But the anguish is not.

The nightmare is passed,

But the dread is not.

I could forgive you,

But could not forget you.

I could hurt you,

But could not hate you.

I could love you,

But could not leave you.

I could dream of you,

But could not detest you.

My love is lost,

But my dream is not.

My heart is broken,

But my wish is not.

The Onset

Do not stop the mind,

It wants to fly.

Let it reach,

Beyond the sky.

Where love lives its life,

And moon gives its light.

Where exists no spite,

And stars twinkle at night.

Let us all unite,

To fetch peace and delight.

Let us forget,

All the combat and fight.

Let us plow ahead,

And spread the mirth,

Let us set out,

And save the earth.

Limit the Search

I counted on flourishing,

And I landed up wandering.

I sought miracle,

And I braved debacle.

I wished gladness,

And I drew gloominess.

Then I freed my wills,

And I got my wings.

I learned to fight,

And I reached new heights.

I learned to give,

And I got to live.

I limited my search,

And I enriched my march.

Fire of My Wrath

The flames rose high,

And engulfed my sigh.

It swept away my peace,

And burned down my ease.

Tears of rage,

Escaped my eyes.

Rash of umbrage,

Transformed my guise.

Then came the child,

Wearing a sinless smile.

It melted my wrath,

Like a serene strath.

Love doused the fire,

And bliss nabbed the mind.

Warmth calmed the ire,

And peace unveiled the shine.