gothic
10-10-2007, 08:26 AM
This is my second attempt at short story writing. Keeping in mind the suggestions that I got from the lit-netters, this time I've tried to improve on my skills. Your comments will tell me how far I've succeded.
So if you are patient enough to read a 5 pages' story, I'll suggest you to go for it! All kinds of suggestions and criticisms will be appreciated.
Uncivilized
We called those hyenas the ‘Military’. Though I’ve never seen a hyena, their activities bored a vivid and everlasting image of hyenas on my eight years’ old mind- hyenas were animals with yellow teeth, vicious green eyes which didn’t glow in dark, if they did, it could be easier for us to detect their presence and flee in time, which we never seemed to do with much success. They didn’t have any teeth; they didn’t have to have any. They had enough heavy weapons to devastate their preys within a second, whereas teeth and nails would have taken unnecessarily much more time. And despite everything one thing would always haunt me around, those inhumane faces of the beasts. Altogether, this could seem quite a ridiculous portrayal for a creature to someone, but to me it was always the same ghastly.
Yes, this is how they ought to be, the hyenas, if they really are to resemble the ‘Military’.
Then one day while we were all asleep, they attacked our village too; as they were expected to, most unexpectedly. I don’t remember anything clearly but people screaming everywhere, loud bursts of bombs and continuous ear-piercing sounds, at which my mother kept shrieking- ‘Oh God, help us! What do we do now! What do we do…’ and she tucked my head so tightly into her breasts that I could barely breathe.
I don’t know when father brought us out of the house, avoiding the eyes of those hyenas, who were probably so intent in killing our neighbors that hadn’t noticed the three still animate creatures sneaking out of a house. Then we were running, running for our lives…there were a loud sound and then a bloodcurdling scream; a scream that would be ever echoing in my head. I couldn’t refrain myself from looking back and seeing the scene. A woman was holding a little child so firmly to her chest, as if she was seeing the death himself shadowing the two of them. A man in a dark green dress and helmet lifted the mortal weapon in his hand and shouted out something that got drowned by all the deafening noises, but still, I could see him with my wide, watery eyes. I could see him shoot at her, I could see a black liquid oozing from the boy’s stomach, from the woman’s neck…we were running away and away but still I could see it- the fluid black liquid streaming on and on…
“Man is a civilized being. He is the only creature who can feel and work for others…”
I heard my teacher chanting inside my head, feeling totally overcome with a sudden surge of fever and began to jabber unconsciously those thousand-times-read and hundred-times-written sentences and at last, with God’s utter blessing, silently fainted on my mother’s lap.
* * *
I remained unconscious all the way while my father led us up the hills, the hills that were covered in woods and that we didn’t use to explore that much. The only thing that I knew about the hills was, dangerous creatures lived in there, some of them were even like humans but could not be called so, because they didn’t cook their food properly and they wore leaves and branches for clothes. They were uncivilized.
I came into consciousness to find my face all wet with water, blinked my eyes hazily and mother’s teary face came into my view as the first thing. And as second, a mass of peculiar men and women, who stared back with a strangeness that might be etched on my face too.
Mother read my mind and said quietly, “Don’t be afraid, dear” wiping her eyes she tried to smile, “They live in the hills. They’re going to give us shelter for some days.” I turned my head to look at them, finding them staring at me with the same bizarreness. Their silhouettes went on trembling upon the floor, as the flame danced with the wind somewhere outside the hut.
* * *
My father believed that the ‘Military’ wouldn’t bother to come up searching the hills; they had enough plain lands to raid yet, why would they? Besides, the aboriginals were not involved in this war. It was between us who had occupied this country later and those who wanted to occupy it now. They didn’t have any role in this war and they didn’t even seem to understand much of it. Whenever any of us talked about it, most of them would look blankly at us, except for the old man with white hair and completely shrunken skin and his family. It was at their house where we stayed those days. The old man seemed to be kind of a head for them as they always used to treat him with a reverence that might also be nourished with fear. My father called him ‘Their Sardar’. He talked surprisingly fluently in Bengali and would keenly talk to father now and then. They would talk for hours sometimes and afterwards father would come and tell mother,
“They know nothing about farming, really. All they know is hunting and making clothes on their own. No knowledge about the outside world…” he would shake his head and sigh in a wise manner. I would grin at him as he patted my shoulder saying, “Our Kochi knows better than them.”
Some of the children always followed me everywhere I went, but ran away whenever I called them. I would roam around all alone, watching their houses that were almost like ours, only weirdly taller than the ones I used to see in our village; the women in their colorful clothes that looked like a blouse and a petticoat without sari, I silently watched them wondering- why I ever heard that they wore leaves and branches?
Wandering alone like other days, I intuitively drifted away a bit from the locality that day and found myself strolling in the woods. That was the first time I did so. So I allowed myself for a while to give into my secret inclination to seek for a slight adventure. I played alone, exploring the woods for my own. The woods were dense but not stubborn enough to block out the sun that kept warming it till the dusk and it was then when the spell broke and I came back to my senses. It was getting dark so rapidly that I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was standing all alone in a jungle devoid of the slightest idea about where I was and how to return to the natives’ village.
I don’t know how long I stood there as if I’d grown roots before I heard the whispers.
“ Kochi! Ay, Kochi!” I looked all around me frantically in vain, it had become totally dark by then and I couldn’t even see my own hands. My knees started trembling vigorously and I couldn’t stop it. Then there was a rustling sound behind and I froze at once.
“This must be the ‘Mamdo’ ,” I told myself, shutting my eyes as tightly as I could. Mother said they always chased around alone people and broke their necks on the very first chance they got. Then a hand touched my shoulder and I shrieked with all my might. Someone yelled over my voice- “Kochi don’t be afraid!” I stopped abruptly, ’cause I understood the words spoken.
A Mamdo speaking in Bengali?- I thought to myself, and may be I thought it too loudly because the next thing I heard was- “What’s a Mamdo?”
* * *
“So, you can speak Bengali too?”
I asked as I pushed through the dense darkness along with him and looking aside to see his face, though the night didn’t help much with my attempt.
“Hi, I can. A little bit.” He spoke in a strange accent.
“Your whole family learnt it? Why?”
“My grandfather always says it’s essential to know the language of the people you live around with. It helps you to communicate well and to keep good relationships with them.” He spoke slowly, hesitating after every two or three words, putting them together clumsily. But I had no difficulty in understanding them.
“Your grandfather? You mean, ‘Their Sardar?”
“Hi?” He sounded confused.
“I mean, the old man with fully white hair- is that your grandfather?”
“Hi, hi. Yes.”
“He’s a wise man.”
“Yes, he is.”
After some moments I sighed, saying- “I wish everyone understood the importance of keeping good relationships like him.”
There was no answer from the other side for a long time.
“Grandfather also says we should not hurt others, not even the animals, they’re also our friends, and they also help us to survive. He doesn’t let anyone to kill an animal unnecessarily.” He said again slowly in broken Bengali, choosing the words carefully.
“Your grandfather’s a very wise man indeed!” I said again, sounding more awed than before.
The rustles of our steps kept ringing through the night, adding another sound to the various queer noises of the jungle.
“Have you ever seen someone being killed?”
“Ani. No.”
“You shouldn’t also. You’ll never be able to forget it.”
“You have?”
“Yes. While we were escaping from our village.”
There was silence again and it soothed me utterly. I was already feeling suffocated by the mere remembrance of the incident.
“Have you ever seen a war? I mean, did your tribe ever fight another?”
“Ani. I haven’t seen any war ever since my birth. Never heard anything like that either. We’ve been living in here for hundreds of years.” He stopped for a moment. “And we love this place with all its…inhabitants. It is beautiful.”
We walked on with the moonlight pouring over us. An owl hooted somewhere up in the trees. Our shadows reluctantly followed us all along and disappeared at last leaving us on our own while we reached the very edge of the village.
* * *
We had nothing to pack up, since we conveyed nothing along with us, except our own lives. The war had ended and we were going back to relish our triumph, resisting the deaths of our numerous relatives and neighbors, stamping on the corpses of our enemies.
They all stood amassed, bidding us goodbye. The fact of our victory didn’t seem to stir them much, but our early happiness and excitement of returning home after such a long time surely did. ‘The Sardar’ gave a little boy with us to show the path down the hill and we started for our village.
The path was slippery from the last night’s heavy rain. We had to watch our steps and time to time call the boy to wait up. Suddenly mother squeaked- ‘ Look! A snake! Oh my God…’
Father wildly looked around, “Where? Where’s it?”
“Akaro kumin.” The boy chuckled, baring his white even teeth. And he started to walk again. We looked at each other questioningly and followed him again.
“What did he say?” mother said, frowning hard.
“I think he said it wasn’t venomous,” said father.
“Weird people, these natives, won’t you say?” My mother said again. “Living such a hard life up in those woods…totally unessential, isn’t it? They could easily live a better life with us, having neat and secure houses and fields of their own, without having being chased by all those wild animals. The more you live around with them, the more like them you become.” She scratched her ear. “I heard, according to their system, after marriage the girls don’t go to their in-laws’ house, the men do instead. How do they do so? The women don’t even care to cover themselves properly! So uncivilized!”
My father said in an agreeing tone- “So they are.”
~ ~ ~
So if you are patient enough to read a 5 pages' story, I'll suggest you to go for it! All kinds of suggestions and criticisms will be appreciated.
Uncivilized
We called those hyenas the ‘Military’. Though I’ve never seen a hyena, their activities bored a vivid and everlasting image of hyenas on my eight years’ old mind- hyenas were animals with yellow teeth, vicious green eyes which didn’t glow in dark, if they did, it could be easier for us to detect their presence and flee in time, which we never seemed to do with much success. They didn’t have any teeth; they didn’t have to have any. They had enough heavy weapons to devastate their preys within a second, whereas teeth and nails would have taken unnecessarily much more time. And despite everything one thing would always haunt me around, those inhumane faces of the beasts. Altogether, this could seem quite a ridiculous portrayal for a creature to someone, but to me it was always the same ghastly.
Yes, this is how they ought to be, the hyenas, if they really are to resemble the ‘Military’.
Then one day while we were all asleep, they attacked our village too; as they were expected to, most unexpectedly. I don’t remember anything clearly but people screaming everywhere, loud bursts of bombs and continuous ear-piercing sounds, at which my mother kept shrieking- ‘Oh God, help us! What do we do now! What do we do…’ and she tucked my head so tightly into her breasts that I could barely breathe.
I don’t know when father brought us out of the house, avoiding the eyes of those hyenas, who were probably so intent in killing our neighbors that hadn’t noticed the three still animate creatures sneaking out of a house. Then we were running, running for our lives…there were a loud sound and then a bloodcurdling scream; a scream that would be ever echoing in my head. I couldn’t refrain myself from looking back and seeing the scene. A woman was holding a little child so firmly to her chest, as if she was seeing the death himself shadowing the two of them. A man in a dark green dress and helmet lifted the mortal weapon in his hand and shouted out something that got drowned by all the deafening noises, but still, I could see him with my wide, watery eyes. I could see him shoot at her, I could see a black liquid oozing from the boy’s stomach, from the woman’s neck…we were running away and away but still I could see it- the fluid black liquid streaming on and on…
“Man is a civilized being. He is the only creature who can feel and work for others…”
I heard my teacher chanting inside my head, feeling totally overcome with a sudden surge of fever and began to jabber unconsciously those thousand-times-read and hundred-times-written sentences and at last, with God’s utter blessing, silently fainted on my mother’s lap.
* * *
I remained unconscious all the way while my father led us up the hills, the hills that were covered in woods and that we didn’t use to explore that much. The only thing that I knew about the hills was, dangerous creatures lived in there, some of them were even like humans but could not be called so, because they didn’t cook their food properly and they wore leaves and branches for clothes. They were uncivilized.
I came into consciousness to find my face all wet with water, blinked my eyes hazily and mother’s teary face came into my view as the first thing. And as second, a mass of peculiar men and women, who stared back with a strangeness that might be etched on my face too.
Mother read my mind and said quietly, “Don’t be afraid, dear” wiping her eyes she tried to smile, “They live in the hills. They’re going to give us shelter for some days.” I turned my head to look at them, finding them staring at me with the same bizarreness. Their silhouettes went on trembling upon the floor, as the flame danced with the wind somewhere outside the hut.
* * *
My father believed that the ‘Military’ wouldn’t bother to come up searching the hills; they had enough plain lands to raid yet, why would they? Besides, the aboriginals were not involved in this war. It was between us who had occupied this country later and those who wanted to occupy it now. They didn’t have any role in this war and they didn’t even seem to understand much of it. Whenever any of us talked about it, most of them would look blankly at us, except for the old man with white hair and completely shrunken skin and his family. It was at their house where we stayed those days. The old man seemed to be kind of a head for them as they always used to treat him with a reverence that might also be nourished with fear. My father called him ‘Their Sardar’. He talked surprisingly fluently in Bengali and would keenly talk to father now and then. They would talk for hours sometimes and afterwards father would come and tell mother,
“They know nothing about farming, really. All they know is hunting and making clothes on their own. No knowledge about the outside world…” he would shake his head and sigh in a wise manner. I would grin at him as he patted my shoulder saying, “Our Kochi knows better than them.”
Some of the children always followed me everywhere I went, but ran away whenever I called them. I would roam around all alone, watching their houses that were almost like ours, only weirdly taller than the ones I used to see in our village; the women in their colorful clothes that looked like a blouse and a petticoat without sari, I silently watched them wondering- why I ever heard that they wore leaves and branches?
Wandering alone like other days, I intuitively drifted away a bit from the locality that day and found myself strolling in the woods. That was the first time I did so. So I allowed myself for a while to give into my secret inclination to seek for a slight adventure. I played alone, exploring the woods for my own. The woods were dense but not stubborn enough to block out the sun that kept warming it till the dusk and it was then when the spell broke and I came back to my senses. It was getting dark so rapidly that I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was standing all alone in a jungle devoid of the slightest idea about where I was and how to return to the natives’ village.
I don’t know how long I stood there as if I’d grown roots before I heard the whispers.
“ Kochi! Ay, Kochi!” I looked all around me frantically in vain, it had become totally dark by then and I couldn’t even see my own hands. My knees started trembling vigorously and I couldn’t stop it. Then there was a rustling sound behind and I froze at once.
“This must be the ‘Mamdo’ ,” I told myself, shutting my eyes as tightly as I could. Mother said they always chased around alone people and broke their necks on the very first chance they got. Then a hand touched my shoulder and I shrieked with all my might. Someone yelled over my voice- “Kochi don’t be afraid!” I stopped abruptly, ’cause I understood the words spoken.
A Mamdo speaking in Bengali?- I thought to myself, and may be I thought it too loudly because the next thing I heard was- “What’s a Mamdo?”
* * *
“So, you can speak Bengali too?”
I asked as I pushed through the dense darkness along with him and looking aside to see his face, though the night didn’t help much with my attempt.
“Hi, I can. A little bit.” He spoke in a strange accent.
“Your whole family learnt it? Why?”
“My grandfather always says it’s essential to know the language of the people you live around with. It helps you to communicate well and to keep good relationships with them.” He spoke slowly, hesitating after every two or three words, putting them together clumsily. But I had no difficulty in understanding them.
“Your grandfather? You mean, ‘Their Sardar?”
“Hi?” He sounded confused.
“I mean, the old man with fully white hair- is that your grandfather?”
“Hi, hi. Yes.”
“He’s a wise man.”
“Yes, he is.”
After some moments I sighed, saying- “I wish everyone understood the importance of keeping good relationships like him.”
There was no answer from the other side for a long time.
“Grandfather also says we should not hurt others, not even the animals, they’re also our friends, and they also help us to survive. He doesn’t let anyone to kill an animal unnecessarily.” He said again slowly in broken Bengali, choosing the words carefully.
“Your grandfather’s a very wise man indeed!” I said again, sounding more awed than before.
The rustles of our steps kept ringing through the night, adding another sound to the various queer noises of the jungle.
“Have you ever seen someone being killed?”
“Ani. No.”
“You shouldn’t also. You’ll never be able to forget it.”
“You have?”
“Yes. While we were escaping from our village.”
There was silence again and it soothed me utterly. I was already feeling suffocated by the mere remembrance of the incident.
“Have you ever seen a war? I mean, did your tribe ever fight another?”
“Ani. I haven’t seen any war ever since my birth. Never heard anything like that either. We’ve been living in here for hundreds of years.” He stopped for a moment. “And we love this place with all its…inhabitants. It is beautiful.”
We walked on with the moonlight pouring over us. An owl hooted somewhere up in the trees. Our shadows reluctantly followed us all along and disappeared at last leaving us on our own while we reached the very edge of the village.
* * *
We had nothing to pack up, since we conveyed nothing along with us, except our own lives. The war had ended and we were going back to relish our triumph, resisting the deaths of our numerous relatives and neighbors, stamping on the corpses of our enemies.
They all stood amassed, bidding us goodbye. The fact of our victory didn’t seem to stir them much, but our early happiness and excitement of returning home after such a long time surely did. ‘The Sardar’ gave a little boy with us to show the path down the hill and we started for our village.
The path was slippery from the last night’s heavy rain. We had to watch our steps and time to time call the boy to wait up. Suddenly mother squeaked- ‘ Look! A snake! Oh my God…’
Father wildly looked around, “Where? Where’s it?”
“Akaro kumin.” The boy chuckled, baring his white even teeth. And he started to walk again. We looked at each other questioningly and followed him again.
“What did he say?” mother said, frowning hard.
“I think he said it wasn’t venomous,” said father.
“Weird people, these natives, won’t you say?” My mother said again. “Living such a hard life up in those woods…totally unessential, isn’t it? They could easily live a better life with us, having neat and secure houses and fields of their own, without having being chased by all those wild animals. The more you live around with them, the more like them you become.” She scratched her ear. “I heard, according to their system, after marriage the girls don’t go to their in-laws’ house, the men do instead. How do they do so? The women don’t even care to cover themselves properly! So uncivilized!”
My father said in an agreeing tone- “So they are.”
~ ~ ~