Charu's Parody

The stars disappear and she no longer sees the sparkling crystals in the sky. The streetlights, house lights, and even the small lights went blank and there was darkness all around. The cold night made hair all over her body raise in panic and fear. She was confused about the place she was in. In the darkness, she saw that girl in a white dress over a bike that just camouflaged the darkness. Amidst the noise of the engine and rumbling of the thunder she heard her say,” I am not a human from your generation but a character from your creation”. All of a sudden the lights flickered and the streetlights, house lights came into life. She looked above and the stars glittered in the sky. She followed her way back and went to bed skipping the dinner as all she wanted was to lie down peacefully.

Charu was informed that her grandmother was seriously ill. It has been six months since Charu started her studies at NYU Law School, which she had joined amidst many refusals and objections.

Her family was very orthodox and was averse to western culture and the advent of modernization. Their family had the typical patriarchial structure wherein two years earlier her grandfather wielded the reigns of leadership of the family. After his demise, the reigns passed onto her dad. The age-old tradition and stereotype that women were meant for family rearing were very predominant in her family. There was this emphasis on the dual role of women and gender stereotypes and Charu hated these traditions and practices.

She took the immediate next flight from New York to her native place Fort Kochi and landed at Cochin International Airport. She always felt uncomfortable with the rattling sounds and vibration in the flight journeys and she never got used to it.

Charu never liked her life at Fort Kochi. She lost her mother when she was 12 and it was her grandmother who raised her. Her father, Mr. Mani Oomen, was a carpet exporter. He has two stores at Fort Kochi and one at Ernakulam. When Charu disclosed her interest to study law, he refused her decision outright. Her mind was full of thoughts and she was in no mood to think about anything else except her return date from India.

She reached home and went directly to her grandmother’s room and saw her, there were many machines attached to her. There was a nurse behind her grandmother’s bed.

The next morning she took a stroll to David Hall Road. On David Hall Road, she saw the library open. There was a bookstore attached to the library.’Old books for sale. Rs.250 per kg” aboard declared before the gate. She picked seven books paid for them at the counter and headed home. After she reached home, she started checking the books.

The fifth book’s cover intrigued her, it was a beautiful abstract painting of women with no eyes but had tears, nose, and lips. It was a cover that she had once designed for her unpublished book. A woman who stepped down from a wagon, the circumambient crowd looks at her differently. There were two shades of background embarked by a thin line, the left had a golden color that represented relative prosperity, a period of social and political stability. The people on the left were dressed in linen suits and traveled in limousines. On the right was a pale sour cream color that indicated misery and disorderliness. People on the right were dressed in ragged clothes and were protesting on the streets. There was no author name nor publisher and publication details on the book cover. She tried searching the net for the title that was mentioned as ” The unkempt parody” but no results matched her search.

Further, as she skimmed through the pages. On page 67 there was a polaroid photograph of a villa. She took out the photo and examined it. On its backside, there was an alpha-numeric code written with a small map that showed directions to the villa. The code read: MV02FK09. The map had a starting point at Hotel AB….and extended till the villa. The photograph created a bug in Charu’s mind.

It was the same villa that she set her story in. She was thrilled and wanted to explore what this was all about. Charu took her microchip and scanned the photograph and started her sedan. She inserted the chip into her handheld self-guide dog. The self-guide dog was the greatest invention of 2035, any unknown destination can be traced with just the smallest hint. It uses the most advanced image processing technologies and GPS systems. It took few seconds for processing the image and the navigation display came to life. Considering real-time data on vehicular and pedestrian traffic gave her the optimal path to reach her destination. The roads were lonely and it was getting darker. Charu’s intuition felt that she was being followed. She adjusted her reflecting mirrors to look who is behind. She could see a woman appearing and disappearing alternatively. It made her feel spooky and she pressed the pedals of her sedan hard.

It took her 45 minutes to reach the place. The villa that once would have been very magnificent stood there dilapidated with creepers crawling all over it. The place was very silent except for the occasional howls from dogs and other unknown animals. The place was aloof and she found it eerie as she could sense an impending downpour. Charu wore rubber shoes to make minimal possible noise as she slowly walked the pathway that led to the main door. There was something in the air, the stench of human sweat and ashes along the pathway that made her believe the place had some sort of activity.

She slowly opened the rusty main door and she entered into a big room that was air-conditioned and had arrays of headless systems like a server room. She slowly walked past the room and it led to another storage like space, it had big processing machines, tubes running from giant-sized machines, it was an illegal drug production factory. The neon lights made her feel uncomfortable. Suddenly she noticed a shadow approaching her. She turned fast and with her car keys extending outwards from her left fist, she thrust it on her opponent’s face. The keys made a deep cut on her opponent’s left cheek extending from the corner of the eyes to the tip of his lips. But it didn’t make him get lapsed for a second. He tried to kick her on the face which she avoided by ducking downward, simultaneously she balanced stepping backward, and drove her right knee to his groin region. He fell down and grumbled from the pain of the impact.

Another man groped her from behind and Charu started to throw elbow hits continuously and alternatively. As she felt the grip on her waist loosening, she used the space to turn around and gave a groin kick with full force making the opponent fall on the ground with a huge thud. In the fight, she forgot a needle pricked onto her right arm when she tried a palm strike with the first person. Slowly she began to lose consciousness.

Slowly as she regained consciousness she found herself tied onto a chair. turned her face from side to side out of discomfort as the ropes were burning her skin. There were a number of gigantic people with a long beard and tousled hair. There were a number of people on her left sealing and packing packets of powders. On her right, there was an equal number of people busily glued to big screens typing and chatting among themselves. Charu heard a click of a loaded rifle. A gun was pointed at her face by a huge man, she couldn’t raise her head to see who it was.

The only hope she had was to pray for some mystery to happen to save her from here. All of a sudden the large screens flickered and burst into flames exploding with a deafening sound. The lights went down, water tubes in the walls exploded, the entire place rattled with sounds. The place was covered with smoke and there was complete silence. Charu coughed in suffocation and she felt a choking sensation. Slowly as the smoke disappeared she saw a silhouette of a woman. The same woman in the book cover, with no eyes, tears flowing down her cheeks, her face was covered in turf.

Charu’s mind played tantrums, her name was… Sheryl… Sheryl Anthony…she couldn’t remember. “Sheryl Varghese” the name resonated the walls. The woman had replied and her voice was extremely sweet and very polite. Charu looked around and all others were on the ground convulsing in muscle seizures. “It was an E-Bomb I dropped”, Sheryl replied. “What?”, Charu asked in an undertone surprised and as well afraid. ” Increased the electromagnetic field in the place. “, she replied casually.

In another few seconds, they were on the road, the road was much darker except for the streetlights and the stars and occasional house lights. The thunders rumbled and Charu asked her,” Who are you?”. Suddenly the lights went out and amidst rumble she heard,” I am not a human from your generation but a character from your creation- Sheryl Varghese”.

“Sheryl Varghese….”, Charu muttered as she lay on the hospital bed and Dr. Abbas was looking through a screen on the machine from which a number of wires were attached to Charu’s head. “She is suffering from some kind of Delusional confusion where she believes her dreams are true and impersonate characters based on dreams or assumes incidents in her dreams are real.” Dr. Abbas said to Charu’s father Mr.Mani Oomen.