If you have plenty of free time, you can’t predict at any moment where are you going to waste it. Since last few months I’m trying my hands on writing, so started blogging. This September my blog page will turn two, but it remained indolent for quite some time and also the posts were not so good to lure people to read it. I had been to many blogo-sapiens’ (courtesy lefty) pages and tried to observe their style of writing which catches people’s interest. Many a times I have read beautiful carved stories on those pages and many a times I also thought to try my hand on story writing. I have written some Hindi poems, but only few. Can’t say why and where my rhetoric mind has been dormant since ages, which always loved creating romantic satires, I believed. Yesterday night, I was trying to create a plot for story, and penning down here. Hope to some extent I might be able to see a path for further improvement in this regard.
* * *
People rarely believe on intuitive minds. But one in a million intuitive minds sometimes sees a reality. Ana had been suffering from mental illness since last couple of years. Nobody knew how she became mentally ill. Her near ones only thought that she might have met with some severe accident.
* * *
Since her graduation she was living alone in a small cottage in a rarely dense location. She had some friends over there too and those people most often spent their evening together, at someone’s cottage or at some picnic spot. Ana was very creative and her hands were finely carved for very good paintings. She did not develop it as her profession. She just did it as a dilettante. Sometimes her paintings show a beautifully carved romanticism; sometimes those were dreary and sometimes frightening, creating a real horror. On a beautiful spring morning, James proposed to go for a picnic at a place around 200 kilometers from their living area.
James: Guys! Any specific plan for today or Ana, are you planning to show us again one of your frightening colorful mysteries.
Russel: James! Mind your tongue dear! If you can’t admire an art you don’t have any right to abuse it. You can’t imagine how beautiful she paints.
Sassi: Stop fighting you morons.
Ana: Well, true you my love, I’m not going to spoil this lovely morning in painting inside this cottage. Guys! Why don’t we go for a picnic today?
James: Ana! You cheated me. I mean, you just snatched the words out of my mouth.
James: Well, I was just to tell you about a lovely picnic spot I figured out in my last return trip from city, around 200 kilometers from here. So start packing up and get ready.
Sassi: Two hundred kilometers, means two hours run by car. James! Bring your car and ensure that everything is ok with it. (As a warning to everyone) you have twenty minutes to finish everything here.
After two hours, they are at the spot.
“Wow! A nice place to hangout, this beautiful morning.”
James brought his music system out and again the same, their all time favorite hip-hop. But for a while Ana looked mysterious. It felt that she was searching for something. When everyone started glaring her, to avoid further questions she decided to make another painting. As she took her accessories out, James exhaled, “here goes again the crap, Hunh!” Ana replied with a faint smile and found her place for putting her accessories. Everyone was enjoying as they wanted to. Ana was doing her painting, but a glare of Sassi on the painting frightened her. Seems she was doing some mistake. While painting she was lost in some thought. For a while she stopped painting and turned back to her friends.
Ana: James! Do you remember my painting which you took for the art exhibition in your college, around 5 months ago?
(Everyone is starring at her)
James: Oh Yes! Off course, dear. The beautiful green field at the exit of a small dense forest of a land lord. And, Ya the small hut at one side of the forest, probably where the landlord lived (laughingly).
Ana:
“At the center of green field you quoted some mystic place, I guess” James replied. “Yes! My dear and we are standing at the same mystic place” words just fell from Ana’s mouth.
“What!” “Please don’t spoil our day Ana.” “I’m not at all in a mood to spoil our day my love. See; at least have a glance around you. This is what mystifying me since the time I entered this place” Ana defended herself. She packed her accessories and took others to observe everything in the surrounding carefully. Then they returned to Ana’s cottage and searched for that painting. Everything looked perfectly matched.
Russel: You mean, you had intuition about this place?
James: Oh! Come on. It’s just a coincidence and nothing else. Don’t make it further mystery by adding intuitions.
That night they stayed there only. Ana fell back in her day’s imagination and completed her painting, another frightening one. So, she just kept that one with others and everyone took rest.
* * *
Two weeks later.
Ana was driving her car to the city. In the midday she thought to stop somewhere for her lunch. She saw a small roadside cottage and there were two benches lying outside. She stopped there and thought to ask for permission for having her lunch there.
“Is there anyone inside?”
Silence.
(To herself) “May be they would have gone nearby.”
She sat there and had her lunch, in the midst of observing the satire, “a good piece to paint down, I guess.” She started looking around and went inside. There was another gate in the far left corner. She went near the gate, knocked and a while later when it didn’t open she just pushed the door a little. It was open. It opened into a graveyard. She went a little inside and it again mystified her. She became lost somewhere or was trying to recall something. “Yes! It’s the same.” She observed everything round each and every corner. “Oh my god! It’s the same.” It was another painting of hers showing a lonely graveyard where a solitary old man was digging out graves. She looked for the old man. Forcing her memory she recalled the location of the grave in her painting and went around searching it. Suddenly she saw a grave already dug and stepped slowly nearer and nearer and what she saw shook her completely and she just ran to her car. There was the old man digging it further. She left the place for the city, little frightened, little lost in thoughts. “Why is it happening with me? How can I draw those places where I have never been to, those things which have never happened to me before?”
* * *
On return, she told everything what happened that day to her three friends.
Russel: Oh my god! It means you draw intuitively. Then your other paintings may have some clues. I think we should look for those.
James: Oh shut up! Idiot! It’s just another coincidence and nothing else.
Sassi: Why don’t we try for observing her paintings? May be if it is intuition then we can have some clues?
They started arranging her paintings at least in hope to find some clues. Suddenly Sassi shouted “I’ve been to this place. It’s around two hundred kilometers from this place, in north east. I think we should look for this place’s mystery.” “Good idea. We can hope to get some more evidences.”
Next morning, they all left for the place and the exploration did nothing else than to strengthen the intuitions. Ana was looking upset those days. Hunt and hunt for the places, she had painted. She had stopped painting further. Was worried about what actually these intuitions want to tell her. All paintings seemed in some sequel. All places found were in some coordinated arrangement, trying to convey some message. Twenty five paintings; and till now twenty four coordinated places found. What was the real mystery? May be twenty fifth painting will tell.
* * *
One day she had to leave for the city for some urgent work. Because of her illness Sassi wanted to give her a company, but Ana decided to go alone. She gave her cottage keys to her friends, who decided to stay there to figure out some clue using all the sequence of paintings. They took a location map and tried to figure out something using the places found.
* * *
Ana returned next morning. She asked for Sassi, James and Russel. Silence. “They might have gone to her cottage or to the last location to find the final clue” she murmured. She tried to knock at the door of her cottage but it was left open. Inside her bedroom she found something disordered. “Oh ya! They have left all the painting disarranged at my bed. That’s good.” But a glance at the arrangement shook her for a while. Twenty four paintings were placed in a circular manner symmetrically and twentyfifth one was at the center. There was a location map lying around and each of the twenty four places was marked, making exactly a circle. But another thought thrilled her completely as at the center of that circle, she was standing right then. Then she glared at the painting at the center. Yes! It was her bedroom with three bodies at the center and one some kind of vacant spot. That spot was nothing but the place where her bed was. Completely shaken with the horror of unprecedented she tried to displace her bed and got another shock. There was some thing covered. Terrified from within she lifted the cover and what she saw just forced her to run towards the door and she just ran shouting and crying and crying. There were lying the bodies of her three friends brutally murdered and a vacant place, probably for her but she survived. She ran towards the city completely terrified, completely shaken and met with an accident in her mental instability. Since then she was in hospital. No body bothered actually to find out about her cottage. No body knows, where are her paintings.
