I am miserable at short fiction, and this is my first time writing something under a 1000 words! It's not perfect, but I've tried my best. Here it is!
There?s a house on the hill, buffeted by a wind that?s hardly ever still. The mango trees surrounding it are a rich, dark green and in the hot muggy heat of the summer there will be rich, yellow-red mangoes on the trees. Radha likes mangoes. She likes the tart ones more than she does the sweet. There are sprigs of wheat growing like weeds strewn across the aangan, but she doesn?t mind them. She enters the little house. It is beginning to fall in on itself. She should be careful, but she doesn?t care. She trusts the gods to keep her safe. After all, one of them loved her once.
The hills are blue. They remind her of him. Shyam sundar, they called him. Beautiful like the dusk. She wonders why he picked her. She is not the most beautiful of all the Gopikas, nor the wisest. She is not even the kindest. She is simply who she is- Radha, jealous and spiteful and desperately in love. She hates to think it might have been simple chance that drew him to her, but that is most likely.
He is a god now. When she met him he was only a cowherd. She spurned him at first, because he was so much younger than her and she was afraid she would break his heart. But he was so indescribably beautiful, radiant like the sun and as charming as fresh dewdrops on flowers. She could not help but to love him. No one could. Not the ladies whose butter he stole, not the demons whom he slew.
They came here often. They would hide away from his parents and hers, the Gopikas and the cowherds. He made her forget the world. He was playful and clever, and she revelled in his attention and love. She does not doubt he loved her, but he is a god. He loves everyone from the leaf on the tiniest plant to the king on his golden throne. He loved her like he loves everyone, but that is not enough. Not for her.
When he left- she does not want to think about when he left. She understands why he left, but she does not understand why he left without her. Shyam Sundar- Yashoda Nandana, Dwarakanath- he has many names now- why did he love her at all? Why did he give her everything and take it away? Perhaps he could not help it. Perhaps he could. People remember Gods can be kind, but they often forget they can be cruel as well.
He never promised her he would stay. He never promised her anything at all. She cannot fault him there. It was her heart- her own, treacherous heart that made her believe they would be together, forever. She had known, somehow- even then she had known the great joy he had given her was only hers for a time. But knowledge and belief are two different things. She knows that now.
Her parents married her off soon after he left. She railed and wept and raged, but it was to no avail. All of Gokul knew of her love for him, and her reputation was soiled. She didn?t care- oh, how could she care when he had gone away? But her parents cared, because she is their only daughter and Gods do not make good son-in-laws.
She trails her hand over the dirty, sodden walls. They cannot be more beautiful to her. He has touched her here, he has taken her into his heart here and she has given him hers here. She wishes she could linger, but she cannot. Her husband will beat her if the chores are not done, and so will her mother-in-law.
Krishna. She breathes his name here, in the sanctity of the silence. Krishna. The name she knows him by, and the only one that matters to her.
Krishna.
She leaves the house, and breathes in the cold evening air. The leaves on the trees will fade to yellow and brown- the sky, so much like him, ever changing, will turn from blue to black and orange to mauve. But the hills are blue and always will be- and unlike his love for her, Radha?s love for him will last an eternity.
Topic: Loving him (Read 1891 times)