Uncle

[A tale for children who grew up too soon]

Once upon a time there used to be an uncle. He had a house. But much more importantly, he had two nephews. They were born on the same day, in the same minute of a same hour, in split seconds. But they were not twins. They were born to two separate women. Incidentally, both of them were the uncle’s sisters. Therefore, the uncle had two nephews.

The uncle had come to know of the birth of his nephews a few days later when the two letters arrived…. Each from one of his sisters who proclaimed they had become mothers to a little pink angel. The uncle smiled twice in a strange fulfillment as he read the two letters. He found himself longing to take them in his arms but both his sisters stayed in far-off places. So, he decided to send them two of his best roses chosen from his garden.

Before the mail containing the roses would arrive in their respective destinations, a telegram reached the houses of the sisters. Telegrams were the harbingers of ill-fate. So, the sisters cried before they broke the seals of the telegrams that still smelled, freshly of their brother’s garden. They had to sweep off the tears to realize that telegrams are written by businessmen – someone had proclaimed their brother’s death as if closing a deal. One of the sisters, picked up her newborn son in her arms, held him close to her breast and cried. Miles away, at that same instance, the other sister did the same too.

“Your uncle was a clever man,” they said to their children “he left behind no clues to his death.”

In a few days after the telegram, two more envelopes followed, each containing a rose, to the two sisters’ house. The roses were dry. And yet, they were the most beautiful roses that one had ever seen. The sisters walked straight towards the room of their children to let them have the roses which their Uncle very apparently had sent for them before he had passed away. It was the first and the only gift from him for his nephews. They must preserve it well. But whilst they wished thus, they were stopped by the maids. They said the children shouldn’t be exposed to the gifts of a dead man.

“’Tis a bad omen”, they whispered.

“No, this is the blessing he had left behind” the sisters retaliated, caressing the petals.

The roses, ever since, were kept in two precious silver boxes on the right side of the pillow on which the infants slept.

The infants grew up as the roses dried further, crumbling into themselves. They learnt to walk, talk and silence others with their innocent gestures. All day through, the two neighborhoods would reverberate in their giggling sounds. Falling silent only when they went to sleep in the night. Times when they rendered their obstinacy to their mothers, whispering their tantrums into their mothers’ ears. They wanted to listen to no fairytale, no folklore. They persisted on listening to stories about their uncle who used to live in a garden. And in a house surrounded by all the different species of plants. A house in which you had to always keep the lights on, throughout the day because the trees ensured the shadows of darkness rolled through the walls. And uncle lived in a damp, damp room which had three windows on three of its walls, each opening to some trees nodding their head in the perpetual breeze. The breeze, it seemed, never stopped and the garden danced to its sweet melody. The uncle sat in his room, late into the night, taking notes. But he never showed what he wrote to anybody. Not even to his sisters.

And their mothers’ ignorance was the seeds of curiosity sown in the mind of the children. Questions that rose up like smoke and lingered as mist.

And mist enveloped the times in which the children grew further, every night trying to look more deeply into the petals of the ancient roses, kept in two precious silver boxes on the right side of their pillow. Careful not to touch them, else they’d scatter like dust. And what constituted the dust that often flew about their room? And why must flowers turn to dust on being touched?

One morning when the mothers woke up they couldn’t find their sons any more in any of the places they would have been.

10:30 PM,

Dreams have been falling since yesterday. My garden’s all wet with its colors. I hear them. Colors saddened by the hues of emptiness. I’ve mastered the art of promising. Insensitive. I still see the horse. Its martyr fallen. I whisper into my dreams. A fresh gust of air. Never understood. Like forever. I stand with a torn cloth. Rubbing the strains off. Strains on the bark. Centuries rose upon my dreams. Like towers. Unchallenged. Never compromised. Unlike. Leaves of an autumn tree. Oh my children! I melt forever into sounds. Become shadows of the voice. I can touch dreams. Hold infinity. My garden’s a premise. A Premise. My dream’s the argument I held up, above my head, to restrain it. There’s sense in everything since yesterday. Sense. Touch, hear, taste, smell, look. Essence. Feel. Dreams have been falling since yesterday. Last night, I realized that all the darkness I had collected was drenched. Too drenched. All my fault. But I had nothing to cover my garden. No blanket. And yet there was no rain in the garden inside. Left dry. Dying seeds. When will the two meet?

The two sisters were meeting after many a years. Breaking their vow of never meeting again. And there were tears in a corner of their eyes. A few dead autumn leaves rolled over their feet. The wind was something between a breeze and the storm. They could feel it in the salty tears that washed their eyes. A cold touch that groomed their loss.

Two mothers who had lost their children recently met in a place equidistant from both their houses. The exact centre where they had met the last time before they had disappeared in directions, opposite. They said –

“Our children have ceased to be. But we had tried everything. Done all we could. And yet, can’t we be anything more than helpless?”

Inside, deep down, they wished that at least one of the children would return. And each wished that it’d be her son. They watched with keen observation at the dead autumn leaves that rolled over their feet, trying to find out which way the wind had been blowing.

10:15 PM,

Yet into the unknown they went floating. The log of wood in the river. Carrying the memories of a fall. Disseminate me into you. Lately the promise of a few seeds has been forgotten. But for the replenishment. The replacement that’s natural shall follow. Hand in hand. Arms. And disarmament. The restoration of natural order. The eternal return. Nietzsche. Cyclic time. To satiate the fallen martyr shall the horse return. To remove the strains on the bark shall the past. To remove the strains on the dark. Light. Lightness. Undo detachment. Bring down the fire. Bring down sun. Religion. Religion. Legion.

The two nephews reached the fields exactly when the dusk began that day. They were frightened to see each other, for they looked alike – exactly like the other. And even though they had never met before, only having heard of the existence of the other from their mother, they didn’t find it at all difficult to recognize each other. And they each knew that the other was equally conscious of The Invitation.

The consciousness of The Invitation never had a beginning for them. It was like a strangely sweet breeze that had been visiting their room all these years, in the night, when they tried to sleep. The breeze played inside their room for a long while and later, invaded their heads. A few dreams would float in those canvases of winds. An undeniable silence would converge at its center. And nowhere was a silence they’d found denser than this. And then, their mothers told them the stories of their Uncle’s garden in which the shadows rolled through the walls and an Uncle who captured those shadows in his diary. Silently.

11:00 AM,

Lately, the ink shall disappear from my pen over and over again. But the night leaves back her darkness in my garden. I pick some of it up to fill pages. Darkened pages. The strangest hues of intangibility. The keeper of the weapons have hidden a few arms in it’s darkness. Thought I’d never find. Thought they were intangible too. They’ve filled their guns with religions. And filled my sacred darkness with flashing sounds. I know…. I know they’re here for the fallen martyr. They’ve planted mines in the earth. My innocent plants - they take in the poison everyday. I can see the scars running deep into their boughs.

My dear sisters, you’ve infected yourselves with bravery. Where shall the meek go?

The nephews were infants when the first telegrams had arrived. It carried the news of their fathers’ death. Both of them had died on the same day, in the war field. As heroes. Telegrams had become the harbingers of ill-fate for their mothers ever since.

When the last telegram had arrived last evening, they knew it contained the carcasses of their last hopes. The death of their children, proclaimed by a businessman. Both of them had died on the same day, in the war field. As heroes.

“Our children have ceased to be. But we had tried everything. Done all we could. And yet, can’t we be anything more than helpless?” they said, as they met this evening, after many years. Breaking their vow of never meeting again. They had tried to keep the two children’s past apart. They wanted no more soldiers in the family. No more telegrams. They had created an uncle for their children, made him live and die in a serene garden. Done all they could. Done. Completed.

Nothing they did was enough to take away the consciousness of the invitation. The presence of a religion they needed to fight for. The holy scriptures. The pride. The bullet.

10:30 PM,

Dreams have been falling since yesterday. My garden’s all wet with its colors. I hear them. Colors saddened by the hues of emptiness. I’ve mastered the art of promising. Insensitive. I still see the horse. Its martyr fallen. I whisper into my dreams. A fresh gust of air. Never understood. Like forever. I stand with a torn cloth. Rubbing the strains off. Strains on the bark. Centuries rose upon my dreams. Like towers. Unchallenged. Never compromised. Unlike. Leaves of an autumn tree. Oh my children! I melt forever into sounds. Become shadows of the voice. I can touch dreams. Hold infinity. My garden’s a premise. A Premise. My dream’s the argument I held up, above my head, to restrain it. There’s sense in everything since yesterday. Sense. Touch, hear, taste, smell, look. Essence. Feel. Dreams have been falling since yesterday. Last night, I realized that all the darkness I had collected was drenched. Too drenched. All my fault. But I had nothing to cover my garden. No blanket. And yet there was no rain in the garden inside. Left dry. Dying seeds. When will the two meet?