The Haveli
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1- Chapter- 1: The "Ancestral" Village
Although he was still, as always, deeply vested into the cause he believed in, but the lack of intent and support in any form from the very people he was trying to help; had begun to shake his, otherwise unwavering, resolve for his people. It had been over a year since his quest to lighten the flame of literacy amongst the illiterate, poor and backward villagers, but all he had received in return was disarray and frustration.
Finally, the time had arrived, for my father to take a firm stance, as lately, indulgence in his social cause had kept him so occupied that he had been seeing a very little of myself and mother. Upon repeated outcry of my mother, father eventually did concede to her and agreed upon accepting one of the offers from Delhi.
Call it destiny or just a coincidence, the day we left the village for Delhi, very same day the Second World War was officially declared as “ended” as the Allied Powers came triumphant over the Axis Powers. Here my mother rejoiced for coming out victorious in her own puny “World War”, while United States of America and all its allies celebrated for theirs.
Whatever said and done, I still feel enchanted and nostalgic, thinking of those times. Twenty years, yes, twenty long years, it has been between my village and myself and yet my affinity towards it hasn’t changed.
All thanks to my mother’s satyagraha (truthful obstinacy), I have returned to this place as a celebrated ”Fiction Novelist”. If it wasn’t for her, I would not have achieved, what I have been in my 25 years of life. Adam on the other hand wasn’t as fortunate, for one, his father wasn’t educated himself to appreciate the importance of it. And secondly, he didn’t have a mother like mine, who could have forced her husband to contemplate the future, and migrate to a place where Adam could have gotten a formal education in any stream.
I was going to stay in my ancestral haveli (mansion), majority of which has remained closed, ever since my grandfather’s passing away, roughly nineteen years ago.
The time was only 7 o’clock in the evening, and the view of the village from my room’s window, which happens to be on the second floor, enthralled chills in me. The darkness of night had already draped the whole village, with not a single beacon of light in sight. On the conflicting end was my room which was brimming with brightness, by the traditionally forged cast iron lantern, fuelled up in kerosene. This room, needless to say, having opened for use after years, needed a lot of TLC. The colour of walls had changed into grey, from white, with the accumulation of dust. And the roof, particularity the area over the hook where the lantern was hanging, had got charred with the deposit of smoke, emitted by the kerosene. The wooden flooring had got scratched and browsed with some apparently visible trails formed. Overall, it wasn’t as conductive a place to spend a night, as I was used to. But my very objective of this trip, to my village, was reconnect myself with my roots, and experience the way of life that my ancestors once lived.
As I moved away from the window, to get into my bed, the door of my room opened with a jerk; Adam forced himself into the room. With hardly a word spoken, but with gestures of his fearful eye, he waved his hand indicating something towards the window. This whole incident happened so quickly, that it hardly made any sense to my conscious mind, whereas my subconscious mind had already triggered, a bulk load of pheromones into my blood stream. I was completely taken aback and my brain was trying to comprehend the plethora of events that had just unfolded before my eyes!!
