Strewn Petals: A Potpourri of of Tales and Tattles

By Ponung Ering Angu

Strewn Petals is a collection of memoirssome narrations, poems, and short stories, where some of which have been drawn from some real-life encounters garnished with a bit of fiction.

Some of you might find the prose part too lyrical and winding, but that is the essence of petals!
Most of the stories and poems relate to the life you can find in the smoky green mountains of the extreme northeastern part of India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Mar 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482846676

Ponung Ering Angu

The author of this book hails from Arunachal Pradesh, which is nestled in the far north eastern part of India, where she is serving as an officer under the department of women and child development.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Ponung Ering Angu.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

A Prayer

Pages from the story of the Eves

Among the voices in the dark

Onne

Malati

Jeena

The Girl in the Pink frock.

It all started with that Kick…..

And they bowed and prayed to the neon Gods they made…

The Nut Seller

Innocent Ignorance by Christopher

Memories that came unstuck from a past

My days with Grandma

The River and the fishes

The Swings

The Green Bottles

Chapter I     The Train Journey

Chapter II

Chapter III     On the road to Mariyang

An encounter with the here and the other world

The Life After

The story of Rashmi

The tale of the Titimiri or the Koya bird

The boy in the Enchanted Forest, a story of a lost boy

Food for the heart & the soul

A BOUQUET OF POEMS

The Journey’s End

The Raped

The Rose

The Drums

One Autumn’s night

Mindless Spirits

Wretchedness

Questions of a child

The woman damned

A Dilemma

The Swings

Mind control

A Song of Praise to the Lord

A toast

Night

Positive thoughts

Petals

There is a place where my soul often wanders

A place strewn with petals from an old peach tree

Along a path of cobbled stones

Where tranquillity speaks in dulcet tones

Beneath the shade of those old peach trees

On those paths I tread with the petals strewn,

with the sounds of crunching stones beneath

Beating a cadence with every step I take

Prologue

I consider life somewhat like a collection of petals…. an amalgamation of different shapes sizes and colours, tinted with moments of humour, wonder, happiness, sorrow, failures and successes and that is why I chose ‘Petals’ as the title of this book.

It is a metaphor for life itself!

Strewn Petals is a collection of my memoirs some narrations, poems, and short stories some of which I have drawn from some real life encounters I have come across garnished with a bit of fiction and some grandmother’s tales which I am narrating from hearsay.

Some of you might find the prose part too lyrical and winding but that is the essence of petals!

The characters and names in the stories I have mentioned here are fictitious and bear NO resemblance to any one in particular.

If inadvertently, there may have been any similarity in the stories or names that I have narrated here, I reaffirm that the stories are fictitious and not based on any person in particular and that the names and incidents have been picked and drawn at random.

Dedicated to all my loved ones,

Special mention goes to Judojong Padung

and Liam my grandson

A Prayer

Lord raise us at this hour of need

When decay and damnation surround the hours

Tow us across these troubled waters

To your exalted haven where peace does reign

Desert us not at this hour of need

When all but you, have left us not

Release us from this bondage of doom

And lead us through the bridge of life.

Lend us wings to find our way

Grant us strength to fight the dark

Through strife and storm through sun and storm

Stay by us to guide us forth.

No dread of death, nor sorrow and pain

What do we fear when you are nigh

Your love shall heal our wasted souls

and bring us back from the throes of hell.

Pages from the story of the Eves

(To all the eves….. living and dead)

Women today have flung away the age-old shackles of restrictions and bigotries and cut inroads into a world earlier dominated by men and have successfully made rapid strides on the ladder of social standings and in the work places. This can be found in all sections of the society….. at all social levels and classes.

Quietly and firmly many of the female of the species have made their places in their own social strata and ranks today.

But sadly in spite of all this, most women still suffer violence and ignominy within the four walls of their home and many more merely live out their lives dictated by a two faced society who on one side worships goddesses while on the other hand, rape, murder abuse and discriminate women and the girl child in all possible ways.

The stories narrated here are about the troubles and the travails heaped on ill-starred fictitious woman who silently bear their hapless lives to the very end. May it be of high, middle or low class origins they all share a common thread of hurt and humiliation and that of passion and strength.

The names of the protagonists and incidents in the stories narrated here have been picked at random, and bear no actual or intentional reference to any person, community or incident that may have had happened.

Among the voices in the dark

My mind was winding in and out between consciousness and dreams…. my eyelids drooping while I struggled to keep awake as the car raced through the night, with the speedometer showing a speed of 100 t0 120 km/hr on the dark highway with just the headlights focusing on the road and trees that seemed to have a life of their own.

Shadowy figures with crooked bodies silently raced with me fading into the inky darkness that swallowed them up one by one…..

This was when a bandh (strike)was declared in the Dhemaji and Silapathar districts in Assam and I had to journey back alone with my driver risking everything you could well imagine at that hour of the night.

It was late into the night…. or rather a very early dawn…. And I wished for nothing more than to be safely tucked in my bed.

I wistfully looked at the dimmed lights on either side of the road as we whizzed past through a settlement… with a deep yearning to rest, to crash into a dead like sleep on a warm and comfortable bed.

The light of the burning lamps escaping between the slender spaces of the thatched huts creating a glow of ribbed lights, sparked off in me those memories of a yester year when I was posted as a teacher with my husband to a place where there was no electricity……. where we had to walk for 3-4hrs, all uphill after crossing a giddily swaying bridge……

Yes it was in Bameng a remote place in the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh, where I was teaching in a relatively small high school.

It was a nondescript hamlet then, when I had been posted as a junior teacher, with my husband who was serving as an administrative officer there.

Bameng is a beautiful tiny place which seems perpetually wrapped up with a thick cloak of fog in the early and late hours of the day. Followed