Tag Archives: diamonds

Dec11

An honourable mention

Posted on by
Standard

Every now and then I wonder if my writing really cuts it. I know I’m not alone. From what I understand, all writers go through these self-doubts. They wonder, doubt, throw in the towel, pace the floor, read another writer’s words and say, “wow I wish I could write like that!”

To try and reassure myself I try and enter writing competitions. For the most part these are an expensive proposition as there are entry fees, waiting times, the nerves… and so I can’t and don’t enter that many.

For a long time now, I’ve been meaning to enter one or more of Morgen Bailey’s writing competitions. Last month I finally did. I didn’t win. The story that did, is one of those that elicit that response, “I wish I could…”

But, I am pleased to say, that the two entries I submitted received an ‘honourable mention’. For the moment that’s encouraging. I shall soon take one of Morgen’s online courses appropriately on Entering Writing Competitions.

Let’s hope I fare better next time.

The theme was ‘Fireworks’

Story 1: Dinnertime

Ma’s hand outstretched, indicating a dish. So busy talking, scolding, she can’t stop the stream of consciousness flowing from her mouth.

Meals at our home were like that. Ma at the ‘boss’ end of the table, Papa at the head. It must have been the head; guests sat next to him, when they visited or dropped in and were asked to ‘stay, there’s plenty,’ while we were told FHB (Family Hold Back).

Pa, eyes twinkling mischief, reaches across, shakes her hand, says, “Pleased to meet you.”

Ma, dumbstruck, silent.

We laugh, we laugh, until the lights are sparklers, gilding memories.

Story 2: Adamantine Anger

A tiny diamond in a silver ring, it caught the light, like a thousand twinkling stars, or snatched rays of sunlight shattering them into a kaleidoscope, the aching carbon screaming in silent agony at the exquisite pain of its creation. Its fury was a thing distilled – a jinn in a jewel prepared to battle humankind.

She entered the store. The diamond slung its lasso of light; caught her eye. “This one,” she whispered, slipping it on her finger. A facet slashed her thumb, and poison shot into her heart.

“One down” the jinn sniggered; laughter exploding into a myriad lights.

May1

Dai the Aries Cat

Posted on by
Standard

Last week at our Bahrain Writers’ Circle workshop, a number of us brought in and shared excerpts from pieces we had written. At the end of the session, we decided that if a piece is read out aloud, mush of its success depends on the reader. Certainly, as far as my contribution (below) was concerned, I felt this was true. As you can see, some words are a bit long and a bit of a mouthful, so the person reading it stumbled over these words. 

Did it adversely affect the impact of the story? This of you who were there, tell me what you think after reading this one!

“Just Another Day”

As anyone who’s ever known or had a cat knows with some certainty, from way back when, that a cat always has three names. There’s the name the family gave him or her that very ‘sensible everyday name’, then of course there’s the name by which the other cats know him or her, and then there’s that marvellous third name, which, as TS Eliot so cleverly called it, the ‘ineffable, effable, Effanineffable, deep and inscrutable singular Name’ which only the cat knows.

But, Dai, as the family called her, had only one name. “And that,” she said with a meoooowwwrrr, that rang all the way down that elegant street and struck terror into all the other cats and dogs and even some of the neighbours where her family lived, “is Dai!” She had to be singular. “Or else,” she purred, “what’s the point of being me at all?”

In fact she made the family call her Dai by grabbing the diamond bracelet that Angus had given Madeline the day they brought Dai home. She and the bracelet were Madeline’s birthday present. But Dai was the gift that Madeline loved most. Even the children Jeff and Tara couldn’t get away with as much as Dai could.

She insisted, by imperiously scratching at the door that the family make a separate entrance for her and fluffed out her fur and marched in and out whenever she wished. When she sashayed down the street with her tail in the air, everyone gave her a wide berth. She chuckled wickedly to herself when she did that, “It’s such fun!”

“You’re mean, you know?” her friend the street cat, who everyone called Katz, said. He was the only one who could walk alongside Dai and say almost anything to her as he’d chased off a nasty dog the very first day that Dai had ventured out alone.

“Am I mean to you?” Dai purred so low it was just a little rumble in her throat.

“Naah. You wouldn’t be.”

“Don’t tempt me Bozo,” Dai grinned as her whiskers twitched testing the sensitivities of passersby. Bozo as you may have guessed was Katz’ cat name.

Today was a stroll and check-it-out day, not a day when Dai and Katz were looking for adventure or stuff for Katz to eat.

So by the time they’d spent the day chasing pigeons, sitting on a wall and watching the street while the sun warmed their backs, climbing a tree, which Dai decided today was not the day she’d go to the top, and it was time to go back, the evening shadows had started to grow long.

“Ahhhhh!” said Dai as she stretched her slim body “Yawrrrr” she sighed as each leg was stretched so that Bozo just had to look the other way. “Let’s head home, I need some of that cat food Madeline leaves for me, and maybe I’ll demand a little cuddle.”

Bozo said nothing. He just sighed; sometimes he wished he had a home to go to.

The house was still dark as Dai slipped in like a soundless shadow through her private entrance, not a single light on. “That’s odd” Dai thought as all her senses became alert and she silently sniffed the air.

And then she froze. Madeline was tied to the kitchen chair and gagged. Angus wasn’t home yet and the children were still at their friends.

Dai just looked at her and went into the bedroom where she saw a man with a mask throwing Madeline’s jewellery into a bag and with it her diamond bracelet.

Dai a furious streak of flame leapt at his face, scratched his eyes and removed the mask.

Bozo, on hearing Dai’s yowls came rushing through the cat door and attacked the man’s hands.

He dropped everything and fled through the door and down the street just as Angus was driving into the driveway. Angus leapt out of the car, ran after the man and caught him before he reached the street corner.

By then there was enough of a hubbub. The neighbours came. Madeline was released. The police were called. Tea was made. The burglar was taken away.

Madeline told everyone how marvellous Dai had been but where was Dai?

In her favourite place. On the back of the sofa, fast asleep. Or was she?

Mar2

Are Diamonds Deadly?

Posted on by
Standard

Recently a friend of mine reminded me that ‘diamonds are forever’, this, for those who don’t know it, is a take on the famous De Beers slogan: A diamond is forever, coined in 1947 that has since then been hijacked by others. 

Diamonds are thought to wield powerful astrological influences over the wearer. This was something I didn’t believe in, until a series of incidents – very like those in this story – happened to me. Those incidents prompted me to write this tale, now here for yu to enjoy, believe in or not…

Diamonds are forever. Diamonds are for beauty. And diamonds are for death, despair and misery.

The tiny shards of diamonds were set in silver. A little floral pattern with, at the centre, a single, soft, lustrous pearl. At certain angles the diamond dust would catch the light and then it seemed as if a thousand stars burst forth twinkling and winking in a silver night sky. At other times a ray of sunlight would be snatched unawares and shattered into a prismatic kaleidoscope; flashing and burning, the aching carbon screaming out in silence at the agony through which it was made, then hacked at to produce a diamond to adorn some trinket to delight; whilst this, this bit of dust might just have been forgotten, had not the jeweller carefully collected it and positioned it into this flower, this ring of pain; to adorn or pay homage to a pearl—yet another product of injury.

No wonder then, that this combination of hurt and insult, pain and torture should bear a sullen grudge against humankind. Together this exquisite combination of diamond dust and pearls conspired to weave a deadly web. Spinning and whirling a million microscopic electro‑magnetic atoms were set dancing around first one flower and then another in ever widening ripples, unseen and unfelt by anything animate. This impassioned dervish like dance was somehow able to set off mild imbalances which could sometimes go off at a manic tangent…

The web was spinning. The trap was set.

The diamonds shone, in spite of being mere dust their combined sparkling could easily have been the envy of anything near a carat. Meanwhile, the luminescence of the pearls was like a softly beckoning beacon. The lady looked at them, passed them over and looked at them again…all of a sudden they seemed to be the most beautiful things she had ever seen. Was the angle right? Was a skein of light ever caught so daintily? Or, did a sudden alteration of electricity in the air set the ‘web’ spinning extra specially just for her? No one would ever know. But, one step in a certain direction leads fatefully to another and another.

Other pearls were seen. Garnets passed through her hands as though in a daze. Bright green emeralds, corals, more pearls, opals, rubies… opals, rubies… but her eyes and her hands kept straying back to that dainty set of pearls and diamond dust, diamond dust and…

”I’ll take it,” she said, “This and only this!”.

Clutching the set close to her, her heart beating just a little bit more rapidly, her eyes shining; she hurried home feeling slightly guilty as if she had done something wrong. But what it was, she wasn’t sure.

The malevolence of that beautiful combination went into action

the very next day. The lady woke up with a sense of unease, as if she had been involved in an illegal assignation. Alongwith it a mild headache. “Oh, It’s nothing!,” she thought, “Why should I feel so wretchedly guilty about it?”. And the diamonds were put impatiently out of her mind. Other more pressing problems were at hand and needed to be dealt with immediately. As the day wore on, and the evening drew near her spirits rose.

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes took on a heightened lustre. That evening she would wear the set. What should she wear to go with it?

She dressed, all a‑glow The pearly pink of her dress imparted a blush to her entire body and she exuded a kind of youth and ebullience she had not felt in a long, long while. The world was wonderful and somehow she was at its centre. And, holding her there on its silvery, sparkling, adamantine threads was her floral set of diamond dust and pearls—on her ears, on her hand and at her throat.

Later that evening, just at the moment when she felt that she had attained a pinnacle of emotion between herself and a kind of void that could only be thought of as the whole world, something snapped!

A minor quarrel with her husband. It marred the feeling of giddy perfection, as if a pin had scratched a mirror. Strangely. Indelibly. A sudden shrinking within herself was all that she could feel, or put her finger on.

Days came and went in a blur. Nothing seemed wrong, but nothing seemed quite right either. Deep within her heart a pin‑point of pain was minutely growing.

Her son fell ill. Something he hadn’t done for years. Feverishly she battled to bring the high night-time temperatures down. Every night for six nights she fought the fever with cold compresses and medicines. Pre‑dawn on the seventh day, from nowhere came the thought, ”Are diamonds unlucky?” Then, she said to herself, ”Nonsense, this kind of thinking is superstitious rubbish.” Her son recovered. He looked pale, but he did seem better.

Her daughter followed. A fever, a cold, a strange listlessness.

And the thought crept into her mind again: “Are diamonds deadly?” And again she brushed it off. Impatient with herself. But, now the thought bounced around in her mind like a fly. Like a fly caught in a web.

Mid‑sentence she stopped someone, mid‑sentence, discussing the weather, she shot it out, “Are diamonds unlucky?” Mid‑sentence, mid‑stream, mid‑thought.

“Yes,” came the astonishingly confident reply. “Yes”, it rang out like a death knoll clanging like a horrible bell through the hollow caverns of her being, ringing death and destruction, “YES”, then almost softly, ”I have heard something, do you remember the Hope diamond?”

Hope? There was no hope, never mind that hope was only a family name. There was no hope at all. It surely had to go. No. That was rubbish. Superstitious, foolish, middle‑ages‑type nonsense.

And yet the thought persisted, making her head ache.

‘Are diamonds unlucky?

Remember the Hope diamond?

But this is only dust.

But it is diamond dust.

Some diamonds are forever.

Is bad luck forever?

No.

Yes.

Diamonds are for death.

Diamonds are for despair.

Nonsense…Yes!

Rubbish…No!

The diamonds must go!

But they didn’t. They lay there. Silently maliciously spinning, weaving their intricate pattern of destruction. Rippling out quietly, persistently, continuously. Setting her world just slightly askew. No matter what she did or whatever happened, if it was undesirable, the diamonds would flash winking horrid and gleaming in her mind’s eye. And she would shake her head as if to rid her mind of an ever‑growing tangle that seemed slowly inexorably to mar her vision of the world.

A few weeks later her mother came to stay. Her heart grew tight as if with a sense of foreboding. Not more than two days had elapsed when it came down upon her heart with a thud. Her mother developed a sudden fever. Hack it went at her, ‘hack’ at her heart, “Get rid of the diamonds.”

Her mother’s fever rose in spite of all the medication. Bathe her brow. Give her water. Do something…Get rid of the diamonds.

It went at her like a hammer, sparkling in some stygian light, ringing out in the night, through her sleep, through her vigil, through the dark, through the light.

Finally she could take it no longer. She grabbed the tiny black box, ran with it back to the jeweller, and burst out…”Get rid of…get rid of it…” The tears streamed down her face. Her body trembled as if from a terrible effort.

The deed was done. And after a while a kind of calm settled upon her. That day the cause of her mother’s fever was diagnosed and treated correctly. But, not before the old lady was made to witness the spectacle of the shadow of Death’s face before she was flung palpitating, back into life. She was drained temporarily of all her strength, while her daughter watched helplessly aware of only one thing…a last malevolent flicker of diamond dust, still winking enticingly at her, before an empty darkness   settled into a corner of her mind.

Feb3

First Catch

Posted on by
Standard

I remember the jade green turbulence

Of the river Beas up in the Kullu valley

The summer I turned twelve and discovered rainbow trout.

When papa showed us how to bait the hook

And cast way out and stand on the rocky river bank

Making sure we didn’t stand in it as he did, knee deep in the water.

But on the side, waiting for the tug on the line

On my forefinger held against an already taut string.

Not for us the expensively bought silver flies

Imported from the UK because they didn’t make them here

And children learning to fish could so easily lose them

The Beas is a hungry river and runs almost as quick as thought.

And yet, we learnt to feel the fish as it nibbled squirmy worm

Painstakingly threaded onto the hook

Papa did that because the hooks might hurt our soft girls’ hands.

Stand still and quiet not a word, not a breath

The fish can hear us and will swim away

Instead look at the pines and the deodar silver green

Climbing silently up the Himalayan hillside smirking at us.

We watched them in the hush of nothing but the rushing river

And learnt to feel each breeze, listen to the birds

And the crickets in the growing evening light

And pay no heed to the insect that’s biting my thigh

A stern look from papa because I scratched

And then that creeping thrill when I first felt that other nibble

The one at the end of the line, different from the impatient tug of the river

The rainbow trout was having his last meal.

Tug, tug and reel it in, not all at once but slow

In the excitement I could wait no longer and pulled it all

Rod, line and fish arching over my head in a kaleidoscopic glitter

It caught the setting sun as it flew overhead scattering

Beas water clear as diamonds that came showering down on me

The trout landed on the grass behind

I ran to catch it

Papa at my heels – when did he reel in his line?

Now he was near me so that I wouldn’t try to get my trout off the hook.

Our first catch of the day was all of six inches long

And it was mine.

Palpitating gills and wide eyes.

We put it in a bucket of Beas water to keep it fresh

Later mama fried it along with the others we caught

Right there on the riverside in a pan on the primus stove

Everyone had a bit of my trout

The best fish I ever tasted, salted with success.

Note: The Beas is a river in the northern part of India that rises in the Himalayas and flows for some 470 km (290 miles) to the Sutlej River in the Indian state of Punjab.

Kullu, where my father took us on several fishing holidays, is located on the banks of the Beas River in the Kullu Valley. This valley, formed by the Beas, lies between two cities – Manali and Largi – and is famous for its majestic hills covered with Pine and Deodar Forest. Today, The Kullu valley promotes itself as a popular destination for trout fishing.  It is also the starting point of several trek routes into the Himalayas, white water rafting on the Beas river is also becoming popular. Back in the early 1960’s it was relatively undiscovered and as far as I recall, there weren’t any suitable hotels and so we camped in tents higher up the hill and walked down to the river every day in order to fish.