The Highway

Today I will tell you a story. It’s not a long one, but it’s a little scary. So before reading further, be prepared. Shut the doors, the windows. Tighten the tap of your bathrooms so that the dropping sound of water doesn’t scare you. If someone is with you it is better, and if you are alone then I can’t take the guarantee. Keep a torch or a candle with matchbox nearby, so that you can lighten it at the moments you need so. In such situations the electricity goes for a tour. Full you stomach and cut down your nails, so that you can’t bite them while reading the story. Keep a bottle of water with yourself and if needed empty yourself in the bathroom. I am telling all this because these activities will need very less effort before reading the story. Once you complete the story, you would be in a complete scare. So if you are ready with all this, let’s proceed.

This is a story of a highway between two villages in Haryana. Let it be day or night, no driver of a vehicle crossed it alone. And if he was alone, he had to drive the vehicle at max speed of 90 or 100. No one could stop on that part of the highway. 20 to 30 trucks crossed it simultaneously, without stopping in between.

One night with a full moon, an army Colonel was about to cross that Highway. He already knew not to stop on the highway but he did not know the reason. Therefore before starting he instructed his driver to drive the car more than the speed of 90 and not to stop the car in any damn circumstances. It was the month of October, therefore the night was somewhat cool but the road was clear, with a dense forest on the either side of the road. There was a cool breeze and pin drop silence on the highway surroundings. There was no vision of any vehicle from either side of the highway. The road was in a bad condition since it was rarely taken by any vehicle. Since this road was a short cut of about 120 kilometers, therefore sometimes, rarely people used it in some urgency.

After giving instruction to his driver, Colonel occupied the car and the driver raced it to ninety. After some half an hour of driving, they saw a women clad in a white sari, with hairs open by the side of the road. From far she was waving her hands to stop the car. Colonel instructed his driver to increase the speed of the car as more as possible. The speedometer turned to hundred and the women was screaming to stop the car and it seemed that she was in trouble. As soon as the car reached the women, she jumped and grabbed the window of the car and started running with it. For about ten kilometers, at the speed of hundred, she ran holding the window of the car, screaming to stop the car. But as the driver was instructed, he did not stop the car. When the women understood, that they were not going to stop the car, she stopped and retraced back. The Colonel and the driver reached to their destination safely.

Now you think, is it possible for a human being to run holding a car with a speed of hundred for ten kilometers? If it seems possible to you, then you should not worry on a lonely highway.

But if it seems impossible to you, then you should know to drive the car at the speed of hundred.

The Smell of Memory

I have decided to rename my forthcoming novel-“The Onion Tears” as “The Smell of Memory”. But I am still a bit confused between the two. If the whole novel is analyzed, the second title suits it more but after all the initial title has its own value.

This novel is about a boy named Farhan who leaves his house after tenth class for higher studies. Although the novel starts from his eleventh class but it’s really about how he reaches his eleventh class from nursery classes. It tells about the affect of the incidences and memories in form of smells in his grown up life.

It is about the chaos of his mind, his friend Anees, his girl friend Yasmeen, his foe bitch.

It is about his feelings which started from his immature age till the semi mature one. It’s about the beggars, the markets, the books, the studies, the songs, the internet, the chatting and many more.

The following is an extract from one of the chapters of the novel.

The quarter dipped moon in his thoughts showered the donated light by sun on the fruity flowers, roaming rivers, tall trees, macho mountains and frenetic Farhan. The leaves smiled shyly, the flowers sung the song of desires, and the trees trembled with temptation. The air had variations in its smell and temperature. It had effect on Farhan’s nostalgic thoughts of the childhood days. Sometimes it smelled like rain on earth, sometimes like rain on leaves, sometimes like fog on flowers and sometimes like fog on smoke. It was sometimes cool, sometimes cold. It was sometimes damp, sometimes pleasant. Those smells and those feelings time travelled his brain to the past parodies. But that lasted for very less time. He went to the past and returned to the present.

Periodic pains & pleasures. Like sine cos curves.

Brain battered. With flashing memories.

Smells sucked. Through the hibernating nose.

Feelings frothed. When they fell in liquid emotions.

Sounds saturated. By the noise making thoughts.

Rain reverberated. Around the nature’s dryness.

Temperature twisted. In the isothermal space.

Sometimes they pained him profusely and sometimes they gained him happiness. The smell of the burning wood in the early mornings and the late evenings made him happy. The smell of the burning tires in night made him sad. The smell of the open sewer lines scared him with unknown fear. The sound of the blacksmith’s hammering on the red hot iron bar reminded him that now it was his turn. The sound of the crickets in night created more silence in the atmosphere. Who they called, he never understood. It was all black and blank. Brown smudge were distributed on the skin near his ankles. They were harder than the nearby wheatish skin. Sometimes he scratched them and could see pure red, like ruby, the red part of himself. He always thought not do that again but he did it repeatedly.

The smell of the rotten wood logging in water. The smell of the water with rotten wood. Succumbing stems, lusterless leaves, bleating branches and tranquilized trees under water. Lay lifeless, decomposing, dying, crying without noises under the breezing rain. The smell of the fresh wood cut by saw. The smell of the gradually decomposing coiled up wood chips born from wood planer. Sometimes they rolled due to slight breeze in search of their original parent woods. The smell of the wood powder. A layer of soft puffed wood powder on wet soil. The smell of the wet soil under which the dead insects lay buried without coffin. The green grass hoppers converting to brown bugs and then to black burials. The ants tried to carry them away to their dining tables but failed to free it from the grips of soiled deaths. The smell of the green to greener & greener to greenish leaves soaked with water. The smell of some old thoughts and the scare of those smells. Those old thoughts swelled inside his nose & made their permanent place inside his brain in the form of smells. Smells in the form of memories and memories in the form of smells. Different smell for different memories. Thoughtful memories. Memorable thoughts. They were hidden, sleeping which were activated by the smell outside the body. Outside smells attracted the inside smells. Like a magnet. Like a North Pole attracts the South Pole. Like a horse pulls the carriage. Like a sea carries the sand. Like a snail carries his shell. Like a breeze carrying the rain and rain carrying the breeze. Like hydrogen carrying the oxygen in a water molecule. Like a lub carrying the dub of the heart. Like an electrostatic force. Like Newton’s law of gravitation. Sometimes they hit the dead memories so hard that his whole body shivered undulated.

Dreamy disorders. Dwindled his peace of mind.

Doubtful breaths. Smelled like shit mixed with scents.

Everything faded like a night fades the evening and the evening fades the morning.

Farhan could feel an invisible drop of moisture on the tip of his fingers. It extracted the heat out of his fingers and evaporated in the air. Like this a number of drops covered his whole body and gave him the feeling of numbness and cold.

Everything froze.

Like an ice, which melted, deformed, froze and reformed again.