Dear Sukorians,
I am sorry for a delayed Sukor OS. My mom was ill last week, and I had to take care of her.
Thanks to God, she is much better now.
Anyway, as I had promised before, I have finally written a romantic Sukor OS based on my favorite Sukor scenes at the village, where they spent a night on their way to Delhi. Of course, I weaved in my imagination into the scenes… so it is not exactly as it happened in the real show.
I hope you would enjoy this Sukor OS, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
With Love,
Aqua.
P.S The tile of this OS is a verse from a poem called Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
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Eternity In An Hour:
Suraj slumped down on the cold earthen ground, he sat with his back supported by the post to which he was chained. He drew in some deep breaths. Night had already fallen fast upon the land. No more than an hour ago the sky was painted with hues of red, orange and pink, but all colours had faded leaving only a matt black canvas with no stars to be looked upon.
All the lights in the Haveli were turned off, only the lights from the street was making it’s way into the cowshed.
It was a dark, cold, moonless night, he could feel the hairs on his arm raise from the declining temperature; Suraj wrapped his arms tighter around himself, pulling his jacket close and tucking his chin downward into his jacket collar. He desperately missed the warmth and comfort of his room and his bed.
A cool breeze ruffled his hair and made a rattling noise as it passed over the loose dried grass that was lying next to his feet.
By this time, the rancid, decaying, musty, pungent, nauseating smell of the cow-shed has already become tolerant to the olfactory center in his brain, though it still tinged his eyes. The horrid smell and dust blowing in the dry air was suffocating Suraj. Not being able to drink water made the condition even worse.
He felt very lonely sitting there on the ground, out in the open in this long winter night. The reality of a slave– he thought.
Suraj turned to his wrist stigmatized by the tattoo, and traced the swelled heaving around the area with his fingers of the opposite hand. The skin was still very tender, though he could not see in the dark, he could assume by the feel of it, that his skin was still very raw and pink from the piercing.
He thought to himself, when he a grown adult man of, 6 feet, 80 kg screamed so much in pain, how could the children of Azadganj tolerate it? Then, his mind wondered about, Chakor– how did she tolerated it? She was only an infant…only few days old!
A tear formed at the corner of his eyes and made its way down his cheeks as he thought about the torture the infant Chakor had been through.
He had teased her on so many occasions, calling her his bandhua wife; he tried to put obstacles in her path to freedom at every opportunities he had. Each time, a champion as she is, always triumphed over them.
Though, Suraj had tried to tell himself, ever since they became friends that he understood her pain and that he was remorseful for every trouble he had caused her, but today for the first time he actually felt it in his heart, what it truly mean to be stripped oneself of the cloak of dignity, honor and freedom to become a Slave…
Many random thoughts were racing through Suraj’s mind. He could not sleep, how can one sleep in such condition! He hopelessly thought of ways to get out of this barbarism; until his eyes caught a tiny spherical object on the ground by his feet. It gave out a pearly-silvery reflection from a nearby street lamp.
Suraj stressed his right leg as much as he could and tried to drag it near him to have a look at it. He, thought how silly of him to aim for such a nonsensical thing, but what else he could do? He could not sleep. At least this task of aiming at that object gave him the motivation to do something rather than to dwell in his own misery.
With much effort, he was finally able to drag the object to the reach of his hands. Suraj picked it up, and for the first time since the ordeal of tattooing had occurred earlier in that afternoon– a smile creeped up in his pale, exhausted, dehydrated lips…
It is a tiny silvery spherical bead, and he knew very well whom it belonged to—it was from Chakor’s Dupatta. It must have fallen off when she was dragged out from the cowshed by one of the Kamal Naryan’s thug.
The light that was reflected from the tiny bead illuminated Suraj’s heart, for it gave him strength to hope for a better future… Chakor is his hope and his strength.
Feeling for the smoothness of tiny silvery bead between his fingers, he reminisced about the night, unlike this night, he wanted that night never to end… the night at mud hut in a unknown village.
Flashback:
Suraj was accompanying Chakor on their way to Delhi for her urgent meeting with the sports association committee, but of course, like always, though he hated to admit it, he disrupted the plan, which resulted in missing to board their bus at the Dhaba.
One thing Suraj disliked the most, is dealing with an angry Chakor, because when she is angry, she can be difficult to handle. Like that night, after throwing her tantrum at him, which he deserved completely; she decided to hitchhike in a truck heading to Delhi. What a crazy woman! He had thought.
Before getting onto the truck, Suraj had already predicted something will go wrong, and of course, quite precisely it did!
He had to be the first man on this planet who fought with thugs, by keeping his life at stakes to save his so called, fake wife! After bashing the goons in a shirtless, Salman Khan’s Dabaang style, Suraj and Chakore had decided to take a shelter at a nearby unknown village .
Suraj, would have never thought the crazy night with so many misshapen events would end-up being the best night in his life…
The villagers, like many villagers in India, were very humbled and welcoming people. They had welcomed Chakor and Suraj with their arms-wide open. Only request that the villagers had for the couple, was that they be the chief guest in their sacred re-creation of the wedding of Ram and Sita. Suraj and Chakore agreed to participate, since it was safest and the best alternative, than to spend the night fighting with KN’s goons.
Two village ladies dressed in red ghagra-choli led Suraj and Chakor to a mud hut, and asked them to change into their traditional village-ware for the ceremony. It was an akward moment for both of them, since they did not accept each other as husband and wife in the confinement of their four walls.
Suraj was to wear a blue suit with a sandy-yellowish brown dhoti, he asked Chakor to keep herself turned facing the other side to avoid seeing him dressed. On any other day, dressing front of people wouldn’t really matter for an alpha male like him, but on that very night he felt strangely shy… and he thought the awkwardness would end at that, until he offered to help Chakor to tie the knots in her blouse!
He covered his eyes with the handkerchief and paced slowly towards her, with his hands feeling for the air. She stood motionless with her bare-back turned toward Suraj and her hands nervously clasped at her chest… he placed his two hands over her shoulder, hovering with his fingers to find the first thread of the blouse. As he gently traced down through the warm, smooth, silky skin; though he could not see, he could sense a change in her breathing pattern…she was taking in deep shallow breath with every of touch of his fingers… finally he tied the last knot. Suraj felt aroused to the thought of his power over her breathing.
He uncovered his handkerchief and with a blush, he turned towards Chakor…and was mesmerized by seeing her in the traditional parrot-green ghagra, candy-floss blouse and the mustard-yellow dupata, with tiny shimmering beads adorning the the outfit, like tiny stars that was brought down on the earth to be placed upon her dress…. He was amazed as how he had been in the same room with her for months and yet he did not notice her beauty till that very moment.
She had a tinge of redness around her cheeks, Suraj though probably from the event that occurred minutes ago—they exchanged compliments to each other with a shy smile, incapable to make eye contact.
After complying with the villagers wishes to re-create the marriage ritual, Suraj and Chakor next, participated in their dance ceremony.
Chakor danced smoothly to the dhol beats, swaying her hips and swirling on her toes gracefully. Suraj loved watching her dance, he could not see anyone else beside her…his eyes were fixated upon her, his eyes moved to the direction she moved… His heart swelled with pride thinking this beautiful, charming, self-sacrificing, yet at the same time a Amazonian warrior-like Wonder Woman, was his wife.
The festival came to an early end, when the rain began to trickle down. At first the rain came down in single drops, within few minutes it hammered down on them. People rushed in frenetic chaos toward the shelter of their homes.
Suraj grabbed Chakor’s wrist and ran to the mud hut that was provided by the villagers for them as a shelter for that night.
They stood on the porch. The sound of rain drumming on the rooftop made a soothing harmonious romantic symphony. Suraj for the first time understood the rain scene from his childhood movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai…
Suraj watched Chakor with her hand stretched out, supporting herself by the bamboo railing, as she tried to catch the raindrops into her cupped palms. Suraj thought to himself, this place had a magical power… it engulfed him and made him see things he never noticed before…. A lantern hung beside the door, it provided a yellowish luminous glow over Chakor’s figure that radiated her sun-kissed skin. The drops of liquid crystal water from the wisps of her wet hair; her wet clothes hugging every curves and crevices of her body; her almond shaped orbs of mischievous eyes as she splashed the rain water at him…brought a different kind of Chakor, the kind he wanted to keep on glancing at her in awe and drinking in her beauty. The kind he wanted to held in his arms, the kind that had the ability to freeze time and had the control over his heartstrings; the kind that was intoxicating– like an opium to his soul. Everything felt very surreal to Suraj, for he never felt this way for any girl before, not even for Imli, whom he had professed he loved so dearly. Suraj could not explain the longing he felt for Chakor… He felt so near to her and yet so far… like a mirage on a desert.
Chakore’s beauty blurred his senses and stole away his worries of KN. In that moment he only felt alive in the present, as if all thoughts of past and future swiped away into a distant puddle with the rain water.
Suraj wanted this night to stay like this forever frozen in time, on this dreamlike rainy night, in a land of their own, free from the troubles, just the two of them- he and his Chakor.
Just as he thought about “forever” a dark cloud cast a shadow over his smile and he asked with a lump in his throat: “Umm…Chakor, once we are separated, will there be someone with whom you would like to spend your life with, both this life and the next?” desperately hoping she would refuse to re-marry or let anyone come close to her, and admire her beauty as he was doing right there, in this very mud hut, on this very peaceful rainy night….
Chakor arching her left eye brows, asked “ Why do you ask such questions? What’s in your mind?”
Suraj trying to mask away any feeling of desperation, he cleared his throat,“ Ahmm…well I was just wondering, I mean who else knows you better than me?” he continued with a grin “I have to warn the fool who would marry you, to let him know how you bicker and fight all the time.”
Irritated by Suraj’s playful reply, Chakor moved towards him with her fist in the air, but he caught her hand in the knick of time and avoided being hammered by this beautiful, fierce athlete he has as his “fake” wife.
Her touch ran an electric current to his heart and accelerated his heart rhythm.. Lub Dub Lub Dub… as he looked into the hazel honey-glazed almond shaped eyes, her plumped rosy lips with melted diamonds like droplets of rain settled over Chakor’s face …her beauty reminded Suraj of a red rose which has been freshly plucked from the garden that was still moistened by the condensation of the morning dewdrops.
Suraj felt a swirling of desire to pull her into his arms, and lock her lips into a magical kiss and drink up the rain droplets which he thought was luckier than he, to be able to find it’s place over this angelic face.
Controlling his horses of desire, he unclasped her hand from his grip and turned around, while letting out sigh of relief and gave a mental pat on his pack; because last thing he wanted right now is to get beaten by his tigress-wife.
Chakor in a matter of fact tone, “I don’t need anyone! I am great on my own! I don’t fear anything or anyone!” She hurried herself into the hut.
Suddenly, Suraj had a lightbulb moment. He a took out his cellphone, and played a roar of a wild beast blasting through the speaker, he said to himself with a smirk, “Let’s see how fearless are you, my fearless wifey?”
Just as he entered the hut, Chakor ran into his arms, almost knocking him off his feet…and she said in a frightened child-like voice , “Ssssuraj, did you hear That?…It sounded like some sort of wild animal…come hurry-up… sleep here” pointing to the bed next to her. Chakor looked around nervously, as she locked the door and pulled the two beds together.
Trying very hard to not to burst into laughter at the sight of his fearful, nervous, adorable ‘fake’ wife, he assured her “Don’t worry I am here for you, I will protect you” and laid on the bed next to hers.
Chakor nervously curled strands of her hair into rings around her finger, glanced at the door and quickly shut her eyes trying to avoid an imaginary hideous carnivorous beast that was lurking for her on the other end of the door.
Suraj enjoying every bit of this new Chakor, he shouted “CHAKOR! Goodnight” Startled Chakor replied in a jittery whisper “umm gggoodnight”
Next morning:
Suraj became first aware of the coolness of the air and it’s sweet earthen musky fragrance that was left behind after a night of heavy rain. Golden-orange rays of sunlight burst through the cracks in the mud wall and he could hear the chirping of the morning birds outside, which produced a soft melody. Slowly and reluctantly he opened his eyes from the peaceful slumber.
Instantaneously remembering, Chakor’s meeting in Delhi, he tried to sit up, only to be stopped by an arm that was wrapped around his chest. He turned to the owner of the arm, and smiled seeing her sleeping face resting over his shoulder. Suraj, wondered was this all a dream?
He gently put her arm by her side while brushing his fingers across her bangles. He swiped the mahogany hair strands behind her ears and placed a gentle kiss over her forehead. Carefully to not awaken her, he tucked her with the quilt and got out for the bed.
Suraj took couple of steps towards door before turning around, he glanced at the sleeping Chakor, and made a sincere wish from his heart for many more morning like this, where the morning started with Chakor in his arms. With a smile and heart filled with contentment he headed out to plan for the their Delhi trip.
Flashback ends:
Suraj fell into a sleep, holding on to the tiny bead in his hand, clasped to his chest, dreaming about that elegant night where he lived an eternity in an hour…
….To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour…………(William Blake)