The Dreaming Tree

And the story goes on..or does it??

Parth tagged me on an interesting tag doing the rounds. A story-building exercise - each person pastes all the previous 'branches' of the Story Tree and then adds their own 'branch'. My branch is so neutral...it adds neither twist nor character...It could be the end of the story, or a good in-between pause before the next chapter. I made a conscious effort to do two things I suck at:

1. Sticking to the word limit (it's exactly 100 words!)

2. Try and take it in a positive direction

I don't know whom to tag, so Aparna, Tarun, and other assorted regulars (and others dropping by!) , consider yourselves tagged. If you want to take it up, follow the rules which are pasted at the end.

P.S. With my love for Dave Mathews, I rechristened the tag after one of their songs! Completely optional if anyone cares to take this up and change it!

He thought it would be an ordinary journey. Standing behind the pillar he watched the train snort arrogantly into the station. With each snort he was reminded of his grandfather's words "You will fail in the city and return penniless"; with every heavenward whistle, he heard his cousin, "Don't worry. Come here and I will get you a job at the construction site." Now he had a 34-hour journey to prove one of them wrong, and he expected the excitement at the end of the journey. He looked at his ticket once again: compartment S9 berth 23.

Pushing his luggage under the seat, he sat close to the window. "Papa, when will you be back?" - his four year old daughter Munni asked innocently. He stared into those soft brown eyes of the motherless kid. He held her frail palms in his, through the window. "Munni, Papa will get you a nice gudiya from the city..Say tata," his sister spoke to the kid, to avoid an emotional outburst. In a minute, the train pulled forward, and Munni's little fingers parted from between his. "I need to go..", he thought, "I have to, at least for Munni's sake.."

The humid summer breeze and the rattling train coaxed him into an uncomfortable state of drowsy consciousness. He dreamt that Munni ran away, the closer he ran to her, the farther she was, like a mirage. He woke up with a start and squinted at his watch."What is the time please?"A smallish woman, a meek voice as if she was scared that her existence would annoy someone. Her only noticeable feature was her rather large, expressive eyes."4.30"Something made him look at the woman again. He had stopped noticing women long back. Ever since Meenakshi passed away...

Four long years. His daughter’s birth. His wife’s death. Joy and sorrow in an instant. A heady cocktail. He had hardly recovered from it. He barely had a chance to. You can’t be a poor farmer in Andhra Pradesh and have time for emotional upheavals.Life betrayed him once with the death of his wife. Life betrayed him again, three years in a row, with the failure of his crops. Every year, the debt increased and it felt like a noose tighten around him. Tightened till he could not breathe. He shivered with the memory of the night, where he took a bottle of poison in his hand …
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
He threw the bottle away when he heard the small voice behind him, “Papa, what’s beyond the big well? Sanju says that’s where the world ends.”
His then-preoccupied answer had satisfied Munni’s innocent curiosity, “No, beta…That’s the railroad to the city…There’s a lot of world beyond the big well.”
He had repeated the answer to himself, “No, it’s not the end of the world”.
Maybe some of that same innocence in this woman’s voice or eyes made him rephrase the answer to her question. “What is the time, please?”
In a crystal-clear flash of certainty he realized…
“It was time.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Everything below the dashed line above should be copied and pasted with every accepted tag)This is a Story Tree and is best nurtured as follows:
1. A blogger can add only 90-100 words (not more or less) at a time
2. All previous snippets of 90-100 words need to be copied before the new set of 90-100 words are appended.
3. Each entire snippet should be linked to the respective author (and not just the first sentence or so)
4. Characters, scenes, etc. can be introduced by an author
5. Bizarre twists, sci-fi, fantasy sequences are best avoided.
6. A tag must be accepted within 7 days else the branch is a dead branch
7. After appending 90-100, the Story Tree can be passed on to at most 3 bloggers.
8. If more than 1 branch leads to a blogger, s/he is free to choose any one of them but cannot mix the snippets of the individual branches.
9. The Story Tree is best left to grow than concluded
10. Please attach the image of the Story Tree below with each accepted tag (the link address can be copied and used)