Mirages

Short Story of a Woman – Mirages

Neela, ravishing in looks, hailing from a middle class family, is an extremely accomplished danseuse and singer. A woman with   compassion and concern for the less fortunate gives performances exclusively for the cause of helping the poor.  And never for her own aggrandisement, is this according to her the real purpose of life.

Giridhar is a professional lover and has to his credit or discredit a number of young and gullible women whom he regularly betrays.  He is the son of Janardhan. Janardhan is an unscrupulous man with a criminal background and also the mayor of city Municipal Corporation.  It is no wonder the offspring of the affluent Mayor who views politics and power as the most profitable profession, is a character like Giridhar.

Giridhar’s sole aim is to get possession of the pretty Neela but she is made of different stuff, as she is a woman with an undaunted courage and conviction.

He manages to become a friend of Neela after somehow giving her a false picture of his being a dedicated soul in the service of the poor. After successfully hoodwinking her into believing that he is a champion of the poor, he proposes marriage with her declaring that he is madly but sincerely in love with her.

But true to her nature and character she would not succumb to his proposition. One day he manages to get her alone and in an inebriated condition molest her in a moving car, himself at the wheel although she fought with all her strength to ward him off. In the course of this encounter Giridhar loses control of the steering and the car get dashed against a tree. In this accident the car overturns resulting in critical damage to Neela’s both   legs while Giridhar emerges unhurt.

Later these two persons were removed to a leading private hospital where treatment is given. The city mayor rushes to the hospital only to feel relieved that his son Giridhar is absolutely safe and unhurt,  As they were leaving the hospital, the authorities inform the mayor about the critical condition of the other accident victim. But both the mayor and his son express their unconcern and even plead ignorance of who she is.  After they leave the hospital, the authorities are in a dilemma as to who would foot the bill for the treatment of the woman and who will face the consequences in case she is dead. Unable to come to any conclusion the hospital authorities decide to deposit the body somewhere on some obscure road.

As the once divinely beautiful Neela, now lies uncared and unwept on an obscure roadside. A rag picker happens to pass that way, and shocked at the site of the body he hastily transports her to the nearest government hospital for attention.

Few days later, there was a devastating fire in the nearby slum, in which forty people are dead and hundreds of people injured before the fire was controlled. There was also an urgent instruction to the hospital to vacate as many beds as the number of people injured being brought for treatment. The hospital authorities lose no time in asking the patients to get away from the hospital and make their own arrangements. Among the patients evacuated thus, pretty Neela happens to be one. As she tries to quit the bed on which she is lying she realises that her legs are amputated. She then regains full consciousness and recollects all that happened since she was tricked to get into Mayor son’s car.

As she crawls from the hospital and takes a space on one side of the road she happens to see a beggar woman also with no legs sitting just on the opposite side of the road. At this moment a cycle rickshawala, Narayana who is passing that way transporting some domestic wares such as chairs, dressing table glasses etc, notices her.

Incredible it may seem.   This cycle rickshawala earlier is a victim of the same City Mayor Janardhan who amassed unlimited money in apparently real estate business but in actual practice by grabbing lands of the poor people and slums areas, by burning them and making them appear as fire accidents.  Accidentally on one occasion Narayana stealthily climbed six floors to detect small racket launchers being fired at a nearby slum from the terrace of the multi storied building. Mayor’s men happen to see this and dragged him to the Mayor. Enraged over this he orders Narayana to be burnt alive in a sort of torture room in the same building.  Faithfully the Mayor’s men dump Narayana in the room and douse petrol on him and throw a lighted matchstick at him and close the door. Three days later when they open the room they were shocked to find Narayana still alive but with lot of burns on his body. He was then tossed on the road with a strict warning that his family will not live the moment they come to know that he has revealed his experiences to others.

Pretty Neela in her hay day driving in a street happens to notice the badly damaged body of Narayana. She then takes him to the hospital in her car and gets him treated.

It is this incident that returns to his memory that the woman before him with her two legs mutilated lying in a miserable state on the road is none other than Neela.

Narayana puts her in his rickshaw and takes her to the Mayors house.  She enters the drawing room and the Mayor appears before her. She tells him now she is prepared to marry his son who has always professed true love and readiness to marry. And also she reminds him that his son Girdhar is responsible for the accident resulting in the loss of her legs and also destruction of her life and career.

Quite expectedly the mayor ridicules her proposal and orders her to quit forthwith.  Mayor’s men then dump her on the roads.

Undaunted in a daring effort to rehabilitate herself she manages to reach a famous dance school in the city whose authorities welcome her to help the school in providing training in this art form. Even though she doesn’t have legs her creative faculties remain intact.  She composes anumber of beautiful dance episodes and teaches students.

As ill luck would have it, after some time the mayor gets her delinked from the dance school.  Poor Neela was forced to the roads. Thereafter the mayor thwarted all other efforts made by Neela to rehabilitate herself.

To humiliate her to the extreme, on one occasion he engineers a few coins to be thrown in front of her on the road to reduce her to the status of a beggar and look like one.

Then the mayor starts thinking about getting his son Giridhar married. Naturally a number of marriage proposals from rich socialites and ministers are received.  On one occasion when a rich industrialist comes to see the boy, a number of people and relatives are on the scene. The Purohit is seen to be whispering some thing to one of those present and the mayor overheard that to say that the dancer Neela would have become his daughter in law in normal circumstances, but for the subsequent developments.

This enraged him and the following day issued orders that the city be cleared of all beggars, in view of the visit of some foreign dignitary from a European country.

At the same time the climate unbearably hot and reports galore are aired on TV, radio and newspapers heat wave deaths and enormously high temperatures recorded in various parts of the state and the country. People are also advised not to venture in to the streets during day time unless absolutely essential

The concerned departments of municipality are busy picking beggars from the roads and leaving them a long way off far away from the city limits.

One morning the police and municipal vans collect all the beggars in the city including Neela drive out beyond outskirts of the city and mercilessly drop them there like garbage. Unable to bear the heat of the day quite a few beggars are dead while a few others in their eagerness to survive manage to escape the scene.

In the circumstances the great dancer/singer once divinely beautiful is now left to the vagaries of nature.  Unable to bear the heat Neela is in terrific agony thirsting for a little water.  As she crawls out of the road she sees a vision of water and when she reaches the spot it proves to be a mirage. This happens not once but many a time. As she was crawling the skin of her hips ruptures against the rough surface of the road leaving traces of blood, as she chases the mirages.  It so happens that a limousine passes that way and the inmates who were foreigners throw out empty bottles of beer and one of the bottles darted against her forehead resulting in profuse bleeding adding in to the intensity of horror of the scene.

At the same time elsewhere in the city Narayana is busy acquiring an old van with the intention of using it as a mobile stage for Neela to sing and entertain the public and incidentally making a honourable living.  In fact Neela earlier decided on this and asked Narayana to get things ready this is the only way to desirable instead succumbing to the evil plans of the enemy. The good must triumph and not allow evil to get the better. The idea is to equip the van and decorate with cut outs of Neela dancing and singing in her best years.

Narayana in a gay abandon and fully charged with optimism and vision of a happy future, is cruising to the city imagining a thunderous applause to Neela as she sings to city audiences with the orchestra from the improvised stage on the van.

At that moment three huge trucks transporting new motorcars are moving that way. And in the hassle of the traffic Neela stops breathing staring at the sky.

Narayana is happily driving the van lost in the imagination of Neela singing to an enchanted audience, little knowing that he passes the spot where the remains of the beautiful lady are lying.

__END__

——Tranaslated by Mandalika Satyanarayana

from the book “Marige Thaarusarovaram” (Telugu)