Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Balwant Rai Mehta committee-Chapter VI(Twist in tale)

Tony’s grandfather wanted him to be a Sardar with difference and different was he ;thin wiry body , beak like nose, long legged with short beard and long pony tail.Tony did cut impressive figure till the time..till he opened his mouth and than came out squeaky shrill voice with lots of air, to get out this squeak lots of contortions of mouth happened alongwith chuckling/hissing which almost sounded like nuts/bolts banging inside an empty box.
Tony wanted to shout at the Himanchali bumbling fool he had just employed but by the time nuts and bolts were still working inside his mouth Ballu had already entered the Kitchen, Tony squeaked to Kharagbahadur his manager to chuck our earliest this good for nothing, Kharag as usual could not hear anything but being a sharp observer knew what his boss wanted, Ballu came out the Kitchen door precariously balancing tray with food dishes,Kharag wanted to warn Ballu but was cut short by Chuckling/hissing ..nuts /bolts banging against empty box, startled by the shrill squeak Ballu fell !
Thrown out from the restaurant, Kharag bahadur helped Ballu, armed with a word of recommendation from owner of ‘Tinku poultry farm’ in sangrur whose friend Bhagwan lal had been running a poultry unit at Haldwani, Ballu eagerly boarded the night bus for Haldwani, by early morning he reached Haldwani safely till the time at the gate of Bhagwan Lal’s poultry farm at Haldwani he fell again!
Barely out of his teens within a span of year ..Kharagbahadur with Old fashioned name but fresh analytical mind had risen from a waiter to the manager of ‘Tony Restaurant’ , wizard with mathematical figures his school teachers, friends alike in ‘Sangrur govt school’ were mightily in awe of this son of a poor poultry farm Nepali worker, darker in complexion than both his parents, Kharag had this filmstar like handsome looks and presence but he could never get hang of hostility in fathers eyes till the time he passed away when he was nine .Abject misery of his surroundings made him resolve to get out of this quagmire at earliest after passing his XIIth in 1997 immediately he moved to Chandigarh in search of job, now within a year his mother was staying with him and he had already passed B com Ist year by the correspondence and In this new world different from the poultry farm existence in Sangrur, he was waking up his soaring ambitions knew no bound and he was restless ..restless in all sense because his mother was sad, his precious mother ‘Padma’. (Purely a work of fiction any resemblance to persons living or dead is incidental)
( 'Soaring in Sky' painting by Joshita Rawat)

2 comments:

Alok J said...

I am kind of losing myself in the jungle of names and locations and characters. Hard to remember who is what. But then I always had this difficulty with novels. I typically figure things out only when I am reading the last paragraph or watching the last scene of a movie. Reading up "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri these days. Simple english, easy story but complex characters nonetheless.

Drawat said...

Serialised stories have this issue, Characters maketh a story, i am surprised also how story is turning out and how many characters have sprung up.

To tell you few like Chironji/Batuknath/Padma on fringes here will have a seprate story line of themselves, maybe ordinary souls live life which can be saga to some.

You can always quote to your freinds that thses days i am reading 'Balwant Rai mehta committee" by Dinesh Rawat