Original fiction
Apr. 29th, 2005 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottishlassI have decided to re-write a piece of original fiction. I will change the setting and the names. After all the story itself is very biographical and I really don't want to wake sleeping dogs. So India it is :)
AND! I suspect some of the story line will sound very Veer-Zaara but I haven't seen it and hopefully won't anytime soon (apart from drooling over SRK as a fly boy).
Prologue
Satrangi Re (from the movie Dil Se, music by AR Rahman; lyrics by Gulzar
terii jism kii aa.nch ko chuute hii The flame of your body
meri saa.ns sulagane lagatii hai fires my breath;
mujhe ishq dilaase deta hai desire urges me onward.
Chapter One
She was from the UK, her parents NRI, and mom had told me to be nice. I really didn't know why I should be nice to a girl who was younger than me, she would probably follow me everywhere and I really didn't want that. Me and my mates wanted to roam the countryside and I really didn't care about a little cousin trailing me everywhere. We had manly stuff to do.
With a sigh, I tried not to fidget around too much as my family and I waited at the main station. It was a nice day, but I hated to stay here, in the sun, waiting for some stupid cousin when I could run through the park with my friends just behind our house.
The train pulled into the station and even though I tried to keep my cool with all of my almost ten years, a shiver ran down my spine. I tiptoed to see over and around the people that were disembarking the train, but all I could see were the masses of backpack tourists that seemed to crowd the city every summer from all over the world, as well as journey weary travellers from the countryside visiting family and friends. My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me forward while she greeted another woman cheerfully. Staring up at the woman, I dismissed her immediately. She wore her hair short, almost as short as my dad, and her suit was quite rumpled. She didn't look at all like my mother who wore modern sarees to work and at home. This woman looked so European, and not Hindustani at all.
I felt my neck prickle as if someone was watching me and when I let my gaze travel down the figure of the woman I noticed a small pixie face peeking from behind the woman.
The jolt running through me surprised me, and left my hands sweaty. So this was my cousin, Malini, from the UK. I was surprised that she looked very much like my granny. The same brown-black curls were rioting around her head, and she had the same green-brown soulful eyes. Eyes like the small pet rabbits my grandfather kept for me at his house in the country.
She looked younger than I had expected and from her appearance I could judge that she was more acustomed to the climatised surroundings of London than the more laid back Punjabi household of my parents here in Mumbai. She wore jeans and a sweaty t-shirt. Granny would say her blood was too thick, being born and raised in such a cold country as Great Britain, but I also hated the heat, so I couldn't hold that against her. But the way she looked at me, open, unblinking, was different from anything I had ever experienced. The sisters of my playmates were all coy, being raised as good Hindu girls supposed to be, but this one ... she was different and yet something deep inside me called out and latched onto it. It felt almost as if something was pulled out of me - something I could not comprehend, and might never do in all my life.
I was hook line and sinker before I even was aware of the term ...
1990 - somewhere south of the Pakistani border, international seas - Zulu Time
Ravi Malhotra woke up with a start. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he listened to the steady starting sounds of the aircraft on deck. Like any of the 21 pilots currently stationed onbaord the INS Viraat, his bunk was directly underneath the flight deck. He was luckier than most who had their sleeping quarters directly underneath the take off platform of the Sea Harrier FRS.51s, and as though as Squadron Leader he was entitled to a single bunkroom, he liked bunking in the squad room containing six bunks each.
Without switching on the overhead reading light, his hand touched each of the photographs he had lined up on his wall. Most photos showed himself in various stages of childhood and adolescence, together with his close family. His grandparents, his mother smiling into the camera with her arms around him when he was fifteen years old, his father in flight uniform of the IAF grinning like a loon as he carried his wife Gauri and his young son Ravi.
Ravi frowned slightly as a fingertip trailed over a picture that showed him and his cousin Malini. His dream came rushing back to him and he had to smile. Squinting against the dim light that came through the dark drapes of his bunk, he watched the familiar lines of her face.
With the dream still fresh in his mind, he remembered the first few days where he had tried not to like his little cousin Malini. But little by little and day by day he had grown fond of her, and now after 15 years she had become the closest of his family.
He had to grin when he looked at the picture again. It had been taken on his last R&R, when he had come back to Mumbai from Dabolim, Goa to visit his family and friends. It had been a short break, but all the more memorable as Malini had come over from the UK and both had roamed the city and countryside of their childhood together.
"Hey, Rav," a voice from beyond the black out drape sounded and with a grunt, Ravi turned to peek through the drape.
"Thought you were up," Flight Lieutenant Arjun Singh offered. He was a tall man, but thin as a reed as he stood in the glaring light of the overhead lights. "The old man wants us to do a recon on the border. There has been some air to air attacks ..."
With a nod, Ravi swung his legs out of the bunk. Air to air meant one thing, showtime for their Sea Harriers over the vast deserts of the Pakistani-Indian border zone ...
AND! I suspect some of the story line will sound very Veer-Zaara but I haven't seen it and hopefully won't anytime soon (apart from drooling over SRK as a fly boy).
Prologue
Satrangi Re (from the movie Dil Se, music by AR Rahman; lyrics by Gulzar
terii jism kii aa.nch ko chuute hii The flame of your body
meri saa.ns sulagane lagatii hai fires my breath;
mujhe ishq dilaase deta hai desire urges me onward.
Chapter One
She was from the UK, her parents NRI, and mom had told me to be nice. I really didn't know why I should be nice to a girl who was younger than me, she would probably follow me everywhere and I really didn't want that. Me and my mates wanted to roam the countryside and I really didn't care about a little cousin trailing me everywhere. We had manly stuff to do.
With a sigh, I tried not to fidget around too much as my family and I waited at the main station. It was a nice day, but I hated to stay here, in the sun, waiting for some stupid cousin when I could run through the park with my friends just behind our house.
The train pulled into the station and even though I tried to keep my cool with all of my almost ten years, a shiver ran down my spine. I tiptoed to see over and around the people that were disembarking the train, but all I could see were the masses of backpack tourists that seemed to crowd the city every summer from all over the world, as well as journey weary travellers from the countryside visiting family and friends. My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me forward while she greeted another woman cheerfully. Staring up at the woman, I dismissed her immediately. She wore her hair short, almost as short as my dad, and her suit was quite rumpled. She didn't look at all like my mother who wore modern sarees to work and at home. This woman looked so European, and not Hindustani at all.
I felt my neck prickle as if someone was watching me and when I let my gaze travel down the figure of the woman I noticed a small pixie face peeking from behind the woman.
The jolt running through me surprised me, and left my hands sweaty. So this was my cousin, Malini, from the UK. I was surprised that she looked very much like my granny. The same brown-black curls were rioting around her head, and she had the same green-brown soulful eyes. Eyes like the small pet rabbits my grandfather kept for me at his house in the country.
She looked younger than I had expected and from her appearance I could judge that she was more acustomed to the climatised surroundings of London than the more laid back Punjabi household of my parents here in Mumbai. She wore jeans and a sweaty t-shirt. Granny would say her blood was too thick, being born and raised in such a cold country as Great Britain, but I also hated the heat, so I couldn't hold that against her. But the way she looked at me, open, unblinking, was different from anything I had ever experienced. The sisters of my playmates were all coy, being raised as good Hindu girls supposed to be, but this one ... she was different and yet something deep inside me called out and latched onto it. It felt almost as if something was pulled out of me - something I could not comprehend, and might never do in all my life.
I was hook line and sinker before I even was aware of the term ...
1990 - somewhere south of the Pakistani border, international seas - Zulu Time
Ravi Malhotra woke up with a start. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he listened to the steady starting sounds of the aircraft on deck. Like any of the 21 pilots currently stationed onbaord the INS Viraat, his bunk was directly underneath the flight deck. He was luckier than most who had their sleeping quarters directly underneath the take off platform of the Sea Harrier FRS.51s, and as though as Squadron Leader he was entitled to a single bunkroom, he liked bunking in the squad room containing six bunks each.
Without switching on the overhead reading light, his hand touched each of the photographs he had lined up on his wall. Most photos showed himself in various stages of childhood and adolescence, together with his close family. His grandparents, his mother smiling into the camera with her arms around him when he was fifteen years old, his father in flight uniform of the IAF grinning like a loon as he carried his wife Gauri and his young son Ravi.
Ravi frowned slightly as a fingertip trailed over a picture that showed him and his cousin Malini. His dream came rushing back to him and he had to smile. Squinting against the dim light that came through the dark drapes of his bunk, he watched the familiar lines of her face.
With the dream still fresh in his mind, he remembered the first few days where he had tried not to like his little cousin Malini. But little by little and day by day he had grown fond of her, and now after 15 years she had become the closest of his family.
He had to grin when he looked at the picture again. It had been taken on his last R&R, when he had come back to Mumbai from Dabolim, Goa to visit his family and friends. It had been a short break, but all the more memorable as Malini had come over from the UK and both had roamed the city and countryside of their childhood together.
"Hey, Rav," a voice from beyond the black out drape sounded and with a grunt, Ravi turned to peek through the drape.
"Thought you were up," Flight Lieutenant Arjun Singh offered. He was a tall man, but thin as a reed as he stood in the glaring light of the overhead lights. "The old man wants us to do a recon on the border. There has been some air to air attacks ..."
With a nod, Ravi swung his legs out of the bunk. Air to air meant one thing, showtime for their Sea Harriers over the vast deserts of the Pakistani-Indian border zone ...
