rparvaaz
Barren land stretched far away. Parched earth, buzzing flies, the occasional background murmur of human conversations. He dug and sifted, a seemingly endless loop that lulled and soothed.
Shards of pottery, begrimed; jigsaw pieces that formed rectangular tablets. Hundreds of tablets, some whole, some fragmented - all inscribed. And as he dug deeper and wider, he wondered if they would ever be translated.
Is there a point to this? I write, and I bake, and I save what I have written. They ask me why my kiln fires seals that do not decorate. What do I say? Leaves from yesteryears, that is how I think of them. Memories sealed in clay and fire.
No one had expected a Harappan settlement at the location. Well, no one except a group of college students who’d thought it a lark to go digging here. And suddenly, there was one more pin on the map of the ancient civilization. Pottery and figurines, semi-precious metals, weights and measures - it was almost a standard Harappan site.
Appa’s boat came in yesterday. And he got me a gift, a queenly gift. Dark blue stones set in gold. He said the stones were worn only by the all powerful King and Queen in the land he had visited. He could have been killed, he said!
Almost a standard Harappan site, he thought. And yet there were niggling discrepancies. Nothing major, nothing that hinted at planted artifacts, or a fake site. Just a feeling he had, that the site was too old. A ridiculous thing to say, but he had spent his life sifting through the remnants of this civilization and had developed a feel for the layers. And these layers felt a bit too ancient. Comparatively speaking, of course.
I haven’t written for ages. No time to prepare the clay, or to write, or to fire it. The earth tremors had been bad - the river had changed its course and swept away men and animals, and entire buildings. And now, now the air is heavy with sorrow. But that is not all - there is something coming. Something terrible and dark. Something that will mean an end to our lives. I can feel it in the air; I can sense it in my bones. Or maybe I am just tired, tired of all the death and destruction, tired of missing the life I had.
And then there were the graves - shallow graves, no segregated burial sites, no ornamentation discovered with the skeletons. It struck him as wrong. But further investigations had to wait. Half of his team was ill - fever, aches and pains, chills - and he had sent them to the nearest city for medical attention.
Both my children died last week. And now I shiver and ache all over, just like they used to. I have swellings that bleed, just like them. And the promise of death is a sweet relief.
His phone rang. His team had contracted the plague.
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Shards of pottery, begrimed; jigsaw pieces that formed rectangular tablets. Hundreds of tablets, some whole, some fragmented - all inscribed. And as he dug deeper and wider, he wondered if they would ever be translated.
Is there a point to this? I write, and I bake, and I save what I have written. They ask me why my kiln fires seals that do not decorate. What do I say? Leaves from yesteryears, that is how I think of them. Memories sealed in clay and fire.
No one had expected a Harappan settlement at the location. Well, no one except a group of college students who’d thought it a lark to go digging here. And suddenly, there was one more pin on the map of the ancient civilization. Pottery and figurines, semi-precious metals, weights and measures - it was almost a standard Harappan site.
Appa’s boat came in yesterday. And he got me a gift, a queenly gift. Dark blue stones set in gold. He said the stones were worn only by the all powerful King and Queen in the land he had visited. He could have been killed, he said!
Almost a standard Harappan site, he thought. And yet there were niggling discrepancies. Nothing major, nothing that hinted at planted artifacts, or a fake site. Just a feeling he had, that the site was too old. A ridiculous thing to say, but he had spent his life sifting through the remnants of this civilization and had developed a feel for the layers. And these layers felt a bit too ancient. Comparatively speaking, of course.
I haven’t written for ages. No time to prepare the clay, or to write, or to fire it. The earth tremors had been bad - the river had changed its course and swept away men and animals, and entire buildings. And now, now the air is heavy with sorrow. But that is not all - there is something coming. Something terrible and dark. Something that will mean an end to our lives. I can feel it in the air; I can sense it in my bones. Or maybe I am just tired, tired of all the death and destruction, tired of missing the life I had.
And then there were the graves - shallow graves, no segregated burial sites, no ornamentation discovered with the skeletons. It struck him as wrong. But further investigations had to wait. Half of his team was ill - fever, aches and pains, chills - and he had sent them to the nearest city for medical attention.
Both my children died last week. And now I shiver and ache all over, just like they used to. I have swellings that bleed, just like them. And the promise of death is a sweet relief.
His phone rang. His team had contracted the plague.
Poll Rate this entry