Short Story: The Harvest Festival (1/2)

[I broke the short story into two posts as I was unusually and unexpectedly busy this month and I needed two posts per month.  Hope you like the story!!!  Cheers!]

(to read the full story please click here)

The ever-green mountain ranges turned dark as the auburn ray of the setting sun filled the evening sky.  It’s October, and an air of festivity filled the atmosphere.  Each step taken in haste, each word spoken in jest, with every passing hour, the laughter got louder as their voices rang in elated eagerness.  It was the time of the year the villagers look most forward to –the Harvest Festival.

The harvest was not good this year, but the villagers wanted to celebrate it with much pomp, as it always was.  They expected the harvest to dwindle down for a few years now, but until this year, it always was unexpectedly good.  The past few years have seen the mass exodus of the youth that drained the work force.  But the festival is also the time to pray for the safety and health of ‘the foreigners’, and the fact that they have less harvest been the least that bothered the villagers.

Nu Lun thought she was the only one not eager about the festival as she ruefully eyed the run-down barn.  She had wished for long to repair the barn, but Pa Lian was sick for most part of the year, and with all her children spreading across the globe, there’s no one to repair it.  From her seat in the porch, she could make-out the meagre stock of corn, millet, yam and pumpkins lying in the corner, but the meagreness of the harvest or the old barn doesn’t bother her as much as she longed for her children.

Of late, Nu Lun confined in religion more than ever and God is the only one she can confide in.  She used one of the deserted bed-rooms in their big-dingy house for prayer.  She preferred praying in solitude rather than going to the church as she used to, as she was aware that the words that come-out of her mouth had been different for some time now.

Watching the setting sun from her porch, she was lost in her head until someone cooing name awoke her.  She looked across the uncle’s house and saw it’s one of the aunts, which reminded her that she hasn’t feed the pigs. The last time when one of her children was with them, they hosted the feast and killed two pigs.  The meat lasted for only two days, so this year she reared three pigs even though none of their children are home.  She had hoped that at least one of her children to be home for the festival.

…
A year ago, Nu Lun was a lively boisterous woman.  She loved her talks, she loved her gossips and she loved bestowing every young men and women that passed by with her famous ‘dollar blessing’.  Till a few months ago, her words were the loudest and her laughter the most striking, and she still bestowed her trademark blessing with the utmost joviality.  And she was also pretty vocal about the remaining young men who still stayed in the village; too poor to afford the trip or unlucky enough to be caught on the way. All those are past now.

Of her six surviving children, three have settled in the US.  Her eldest son was rehabilitated from Guam in 2002, while the two youngest sons joined him from Malaysia last year.  Her eldest daughter was rehabilitated from India and is happily married in Australia with two children while a son and daughter lived in South Korea and Japan respectively.

…
Nu Lun awkwardly walked towards the Uncle’s house with an empty three-tier Indian tiffin-box to bring some food for Pa Lian.  She had never been a guest but the Host when it comes to holding the Feast.  But this year, the Uncle requested the feast to be held at his house.  It was uncustomary for a younger brother to host the feast while the eldest brother is still alive.  Apart from that, Nu Lun thought, since Pa Lian is bed-ridden for most part of the year, it would have been most appropriate if tradition was followed, but Pa Lian had consented to his brother’s proposal.  Initially Nu Lun was disappointed but she took some comfort in the fact that the Uncle accepted one of her pig for the feast.

The wind was cold and furious, the cloud swiftly fly past the horizon.  She looked up the blinding ray of the setting sun wishing she could pull up and glue it in the middle of the sky.  She wondered why the sun looks so lonely when it is the right thing that the bright and majestic should be adorned with more stars than the moon.  After all, more people surround the powerful than the powerless.

…
It was nearly a year since her last children left home, but Nu Lun still think that her life hasn’t changed much.  But she was changed.  For instances, when she heard that she wouldn’t be able to communicate with her grandson in the US as he spoke only English, she took it as a personal catastrophe and whined for days.  But today, her biggest fear is not to see her grandson before she died. 

A few months ago, she talked to her two grandchildren in Australia when she visited the plain, and it had been her only topic of conversation in the months that followed.  She cannot stop marvelling at the shrill voices she heard in the phone, while trying to place those voices to the faces in the photos they sent.  She must have unconsciously missed hearing those ‘annoying’ shrill voices as she often caught herself lost –watching children play in her immaculate courtyard where no one was hardly ever seen playing before.