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Short Story from New Release -Happiness is a Collage.

Gita V.Reddy

Active Member
Release Date: August 04, 2018
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This collection of fifteen stories leads the reader into a world that is at once Indian and universal. The stories explore love, life, loss, and relationships.
I'm sharing the first story. Given below is the opening paragraph and the google doc link to the complete story. Thank you for reading. Please give your feedback in the comments.


The Search
I was four when my father was lost to me. I saw him dragged away to the boat, away from the village, away from me. I never forgot the scene. Thick coir ropes, the ones we used to pull in the fishing boats, snaked around his arms and chest. There were many people on the riverbank; my mother was there too, and the summer afternoon was a haze of white heat.
Shouting and cursing filled the air. The noise was a living thing, thrumming, pulsating. Someone hurled a broken oar at my father. It struck him and a red patch spread on the white sleeve of his shirt. The crowd jeered. I flinched but my father did not even glance down at his arm. His eyes were fixed on me. Every time he strained against the biting thick ropes, he jerked towards me and the shout that left his lips and was lost in the coarse noise was my name.
When the silence came, I still heard him calling me.
I have no memories of my mother from before that day. I know I lived with both my parents but I don’t remember my mother at all. All my memories are of my father. I remember fishing with him in the middle of the river, and lying in a hammock from a tree twisted over the water. He would shimmy up tall coconut trees, using a harness looped around his shoulders and another around his ankles, gripping the bark with his bare feet. Nothing has ever tasted as good as the soft, sweet, milky coconut kernel he scooped out and fed me.
We made wooden toys. My father whittled them out of driftwood. Though I did nothing but lean against his shoulder and watch, he insisted I was of great help. “I wouldn’t have known what to do without you,” he would say. I remember the look of concentration on his face and the flash of his quick smile. I remember his hands, the fingers long and deft, but I don’t remember the toys. They are long gone, flung into the big fire my mother made out of my father’s things.

Read the rest of the story at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RZEh9PLt9A5YhTGHhxHUv9LUSePnt3kC3Qa2xKqz6ak/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you!
 
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