Glimpses of Eternity -Part 1

-

Author: Divya Saksena

Glimpses of Eternity
********

“Stop! Look out!” he shouted as he suddenly yanked me off the cobbled street to the uneven, raised walkway with a heavy and purposeful hand. Startled, struggling to recover my balance, I wriggled round in his grasp to gape at a complete stranger. Well...not quite. I’d observed him earlier, waffling along at a sedate pace, seemingly absorbed in his scrutiny of the ruined splendor all around us. He’d been gazing with rapt attention at the friezes on the remnants of the overhanging arch of the Forum in a hideously academic manner that had made me nearly ashamed of my vulgar touristy curiosity about this place. I had felt almost like an intruder, desecrating the still venerable sanctity of Jupiter’s fallen Temple. Now he was staring at me wild-eyed, his hand tightening its grip on my shoulder. The concern writ large on his face was too obvious, too palpably genuine to be a fraud...or was it?
“Are you all right?” he queried anxiously. “Hurt anywhere? That was a narrow squeak, you know!”
“Er...no, I mean I’m fine, er...”I mumbled awkwardly, hopping from one foot to another on the cobblestones, now trying to recover more than one kind of balance and maintain some poise at the same time. I noticed a slight, not unpleasant accent in the clearly educated modulations of his voice. A couple of hand-holding, largely self-occupied tourists tossed us a mildly curious glance before perambulating on along the street. I looked back at my companion, craning my neck a little because of my lack of inches, a medley of thoughts running haywire in my head. “Thanks...er...Mister, um...?” my voice trailed away.
A shadow of doubt mingled with some considerable embarrassment had begun to creep over the aquiline features of his face and into his eyes. I watched with a peculiar fascination as one finely-shaped hand stole up to ruffle the streaky-dark hair already tousled by the early morning breeze. “Julien.. Dr. Julien Alastaire,”he supplied the name absently, as he turned to gaze in an abstracted manner up the street behind us. The Via Dell’abbondanza, stretching all the way back to the Forum. Then, rather lamely, he apologized, “I’m awfully sorry I gave you such a shock. I could have sworn...”Leaving what he could have sworn hanging unsaid between us in the soft air as yet untouched by the heat of the sun, he swung away from me, evidently wrestling with his own thoughts.
Teaser   Start    Prev    Next  End

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Glimpses of Eternity - Part 2

-
Author: Divya Saksena “ Mad, ” was my annoyed unspoken judgment, “ clearly insane, poor fellow. His people oughtn ’ t to let him wander about, jumping people like this. ” Shrugging my bruised shoulder and wincing at the slight twinge of pain, I too turned away to resume my interrupted perusal of the ancient thermopolium entrance. Slowly, forcing myself to relax, I let my gaze travel over the heat-cracked but still brightly colored paintings of the long-departed owner ’ s family gods on the inside wall of the tabernum , down to the deep, beautifully tiled ovens for the earthen vessels of hot food, waiting so many centuries for the customers that would never come. Were the gods still here, waiting too, for the offerings denied them for so long? Unbidden, an unwelcome picture that I had been resolutely shutting out thrust itself again into my mind. Jerking it away with a toss of my head, I straightened my tee-shirt, readjusted the shoulder-strap of my bag and put my best foot forwar...
Read more

Glimpses of Eternity -Part 3

-
Image
Author: Divya Saksena We stared into each other ’ s faces, oblivious of the exasperated snorts and shoves of the populace whose progress we were obstructing. Then, very slowly, he put up his hands to straighten the clasp of his cloak that had gone awry as he had pulled me off the road. He looked around us as though waking out of a stupor and then addressed me again. “ Well, if you ’ re sure you ’ ve suffered no injury, we may as well try and pick up what ’ s left of your basket and its contents, ” he observed. His voice carried the arrogance of a man clearly accustomed to having his commands obeyed and without delay. But I knew I was responding to that unconscious assumption of my compliance contained in his casual “ we. ” He bent down to retrieve the few flat loaves and olives and fruit that had not been trodden on by the impatient pedestrians pushing their way around us. His helmet had tumbled off and rolled into a recess at the foot of the small drinking fountain that gush...
Read more

WE SHARE... Part 1

-
Image
Author: Divya Saksena en.wikipedia.org Browning bent his head to his task, methodically scrubbing the gravestone with his handkerchief that he had wetted at a garden water-tap. The sun beat down, its searing rays finding their way through the spotty shade of the few trees clustered in the small churchyard of St James’ Church, Kashmere Gate. It was the first church built by the British in Delhi, and had suffered much during the War of 1857. Numerous monuments to the richer members of the British community stood crumbling among overgrown patches of dry grass. Surprisingly, compared to the other graves, this stone and the space around it was relatively clear of the weeds and thorny plants that sprang up so willingly in the humid Indian pre-monsoon weather. As each letter of the inscription emerged from the protective obscurity of dust, the splintered shards of memory began whirling through his mind.              ...
Read more