Unravelled Past

An elegantly built hospital sits on the road. It is painted blue from outside and has only two but big windows. The area around is inhabited by the British who had settled in India. Light slowly filters through the steel rimmed windows of the hospital. A ten year old girl runs her hand to feel the tiny atomies which were visible due to the sunlight. A tattoo on her hand read Ratna. A doctor with quiet footsteps comes and says, "Sorry, but Kamala Devi is not alive."

A lady sitting beside the girl acted fast. She stood up and took the girl by her hand to a small hut nearby. She made the girl sit on a bench and started digging hastily under the earthen pot. The cottage was very dark. The lady took out a paper which was brown in colour. It was very fragile. She gives it to the girl who hastily keeps the paper in her golden laced Gujarati frock. She reached a green place and the lady fades away.

She bumped into the pillar with a thud. She was travelling by metro. Everybody else in the white and stuffed metro looks at her in a manner as if what-the-hell-is-she-doing.

She has reached the station and comes out of the metro. Walking down the aisle she gets flashbacks of the illusion she just had while taking a cat nap in the metro. She had always got them. Her next destination is a multi storied white coloured symmetrical building named the Indian Archaeological Research Department. She enters it. Soon she is greeted with a voice of a robot.

"Hello Ashini. You have been assigned this work by boss. So you should have a look at this file."

"I will do it right now," says Ashini.

She opens the file and on it, the paper reads, "The remains of Kathiawari and its queens." The page was filled with a lot of pictures and information. She flips the page. It was covered and laminated. As she was scanning the page, her smart watch rang. "You are being called to the research department," a voice said.

Ashini winded up the file and kept it aside and went off as instructed by the call.

In the night after an exhausting day, Ashini is back in her small cottage. It is in the centre of a society and is painted white. It has solar panels, covering most of the surface area. The door was a sound proof one to prevent the high noise in 2030.

Her eyes were weary and her body reflected tiredness. She went inside her room and fell asleep immediately.

A lady placed a paper in a girl’s frock’s pocket and took her to a blurred green place and faded...

She wakes up sweating. She stood up and had some water. She was breathing heavily. She tried to calm down and went back to sleep.

The paper was brown made of jute, linen and silk...

She once again wakes, breathing heavily. She rubs her fingers. She knows that texture. She has felt it somewhere. She acted quickly. Took up her car keys and rushes to the archaeological department. She went to her room. It was all dark and only moonlight lit the objects. She took out the file, her boss had assigned her that day and took out that paper. A map is on the paper. She doesn’t know from where she had to go. She goes to the only banyan tree in the city. She went close to the tree. It was a windy night. There were no horns honking. She runs her hands on the trunk and finds an opening. She lifts the flap of wood with mushrooms all over it. Inside she could see something wrapped in a red cloth. Ashini decides to take it to her cottage.

Once in her cottage, she slowly unwrapped the cloth. And the cloth unwraps - golds, shimmering rubies, sapphires along with a crown. There she sees a paper. It said, "The crown belongs to the posterity of Kathiawari Queens. To Kamala Devi, Ratna Devi, Ashini Devi and further generations." Ashini was dumbstruck. Now she knew the reasons for her illusions.