The Handkerchief & Other Short Stories

By Sulakshana Sen

The Handkerchief and Other Short Stories is a collection of unique tales portraying human values from east to west, interwoven with innocence and pure love. The setting for most of the stories is in rural India, featuring encounters in the everyday lives of people and places.

The author depicts the lives of women, men, and children, their joy and frustration, failure and triumph, through vivid imagery of life through simple storytelling as real as it gets.

An intriguing story of a handkerchief lost and found by a monkey; the eternal bond reflecting love between a daughter and her father involving a red bindi; a pricey necklace saved inside a rice sack to fool the thief; the excitement of encountering an owl in two different places; a heartwarming story of two young girls and a "good" ghost on the top of a banyan tree; a mother finding a letter under the pillow of her daughter revealing her past; the tedious, painstaking process for adopting a daughter; the story of beloved Goldie, a golden retriever; a son's motive to kill an overbearing father; a teen daughter's quest of getting a boyfriend; and much more-all described in simple storytelling technique takes the reader to a different world, touching hearts every step of the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636928838

Book preview

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The Handkerchief and Other Short Stories

Sulakshana Sen

Copyright © 2021 Sulakshana Sen

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-63692-882-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63692-883-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Handkerchief

The Necklace

Hope

A Girl with a Red Bindi and Brown Eyes

A Twist of Life

A Letter

Ghost on a Tree

My Daughter’s Boyfriend

Motive

I Love My Wife

An Owl and Me

Spring Fair

Goldie

To My Father

The Handkerchief

After twenty years, I can still smell my dad’s sweat from his handkerchief. I had kept his handkerchief inside the glove compartment of my car since I moved to the United States. Every time I looked at the handkerchief, I could see my dad’s long face, bald head, sharp nose, and protruded chin. His ears looked bigger than his face, maybe because of his clean bald head. My dad was six feet tall. He was a trimmed man with roundish sharp eyes, which most times held a solemn expression. He wore a rare smile.

My dad’s name was Mr. Gangadhar Patnaik. His face turned sad every time he spoke of his dad, who he had lost when dad was only a five-year-old boy. Watching him, I wished my grandfather had still been alive. My father was an attorney. After his bath, he always combed his back hair with a thin comb made from a buffalo horn. The comb was as long as the base of his palm to his fingertips. He had long hands, I presume, because he was a tall man. When he combed his hair, he used a unique wooden-frame mirror that had been with him since he had been a teen. His mom had purchased the mirror for him from a village fair. The glass of the mirror had a brown stain spread underneath, which caused the mirror to show a blurry image, but he accepted himself as it was—the image reflected in his antique mirror.

The day I left India, I stuffed my green hard luggage as a carry-on for a long twenty-two-hour trip to America, but I carried my dad’s handkerchief inside my pocketbook. I recalled that the handkerchief belonged to my grandfather. My grandmother had given the handkerchief to my dad. I remembered how every day, in the late afternoon, when Dad got back home from the court, he went straight to his room, removed his dress clothes and shoes, and changed into relaxing clothes. Then he would come out to the veranda to wash his face with a bucket of water. He would pat his face with this handkerchief. While covering his face with the handkerchief, he would tap his fingers at various spots of his face—perhaps where his face ended or where the demarcation of his bald head started. He laid the handkerchief on his face for a few moments; he would move the handkerchief up toward his bald head, which glistened with tiny droplets of water, and pat.

As an everyday ritual, after using the handkerchief, he would hang it from a wooden clip on the hard metal wire fastened in the courtyard. Two bamboo poles dug into the ground to hold the thin but strong wire hanger. Almost every day, after washing his face, my dad would come to the veranda to enjoy his afternoon cup of tea, which Mom offered him on a small rectangular table. Having a couple of crackers with tea, he appeared relaxed, sitting on his heavy black wooden armchair next to the table. He talked with my mom about the happenings in court that day, and once in a while, he glanced at me. As always, I followed my dad once he arrived home. He presumed that I desired his attention. Sometimes he patted my hair with a gentle stroke. That was the world to me, coming from a serious man like my dad. Dad had a short temper; we were mindful not to ask him questions about what he considered irrelevant.

After having a brief chat with Mom, he would skim through the newspaper while glancing off and on at his handkerchief hanging on the wire. Sometimes he went up to touch the handkerchief to see if it had dried yet. The piercing sun of the late afternoon in the western sky fell on the handkerchief. My dad would linger there for a minute or two, staring at the big neem, mango, or bamboo trees at the end of the yard. He would forget where he was in his conversation with Mom. My dad made sure the handkerchief was dry. With much care, he would fold the dry handkerchief into a big square and then into a small square. I felt, and I guessed that my mother felt the same thing: Dad treated the handkerchief like a precious jewel.

The first day Dad got the handkerchief from a handloom store, he announced to everyone in the family that the handkerchief was sixteen by sixteen inches. I was uncertain if anybody wanted that information, but I remembered when he unfolded the new handkerchief and measured the sides with a tape. The handkerchief was distinct from the many I had seen. It was grayish-blue color with horizontal and longitudinal stripes that made tiny blue squares all over. My dad did not specify the thread count. With much satisfaction, he added that the handkerchief was handwoven by a great handloom factory. He narrated the factory’s reputation, reliability, and associated history. Sometimes he got carried away; he would talk with concern about the handloom society weavers’ strike. He loved to press the Gandhian ideology that everyone should wear handloom clothes and quit British-made clothes. After his court day or on Sundays, he would put on his long handloom shirt with a pair of handloom pants.

One day, my dad came home late from court. He skipped his ritual with the handkerchief; he came straight to dinner. On dark nights, bats stuck to the neem and the banyan trees close to us. We all fell asleep in the deep night. The whole night, Dad’s handkerchief hung outside. It might have moved to the center of the wire fastened to the bamboo poles in our yard. Nobody paid attention. The next day, Dad went to court early and finished his work early too. He looked relaxed. He started talking to Mom about the client, who had been accused of murder. Dad was proud, saying that the client won the case and would go home free. After a few minutes, he changed out of his court dress and came out to the veranda to wash his face.

Dad looked for his handkerchief. He could not see it on the hanger—there was only the wooden clip on the wire that he had used to hang his handkerchief. Dad’s cheerful face scrunched. He called out loudly, Aarun, Aarun. Before the third call, Aarun was there with his same old never-tired smiley face. Aarun was our servant. Since Aarun had arrived at our house, his teeth had gotten whiter. He combed his curly hair with sesame oil and started wearing a nice clean shirt and shorts that Dad brought for him for Durga Pooja.

My dad’s eyes rounded with displeasure. He asked Aarun, Where is my handkerchief?

Aarun replied, That was here on the wire. It may have moved…to the corner.

Dad asked, Where did it go from there? Did it have legs? Without following the extent of his seriousness, a flicker of a smile appeared in Aarun’s face—but it quickly vanished. I believed that Aarun realized how angry my dad was about the missing handkerchief when he heard Dad’s deep voice. Get the handkerchief.

We stopped our homework, came out, and searched here and there in the courtyard, even beyond and far off toward the thatched house where our cows lived.

A sudden khas-khas sound came from our mango tree. Aarun screamed, A monkey, a monkey! A monkey was sitting with the handkerchief in his fist. The sound came from his long gray tail as he tried to wrap it around the branch. We got excited; my dad went with a long bamboo stick toward the mango tree. We followed him. We were after the monkey. Aarun threw rocks at it. My dad could reach only a couple of branches high. He struck the branch to intimidate the monkey, but the monkey hopped to a higher branch. The monkey had a gray face, black mouth, big nostrils, and small eyes; he tried to hook the branch tighter with his long gray tail. He watched us. I believe that our attention amused him. The handkerchief was in his grip. When he realized that all of us were after him, he jumped to the next higher branch, hung his head down, and hooked his legs around the branch, anchoring himself. In his other hand, he was still holding the handkerchief tightly.

My mom called from the kitchen, Come back. If you provoke him, he will come and slap any of you. Monkeys get angry fast. We heard Mom. She was louder. Stop, Aarun, quit throwing rocks at the monkey. Mom asked my brother and me to get back to the veranda. Dad started scolding everyone in the family for our irresponsibility. He became indignant with frustration. Mom continued, The monkey will drop the handkerchief. Everyone believed her; I presumed that my dad believed her too.

Once we took off toward the veranda, we heard the monkey jump to the roof of the cowhouse. The handkerchief was still in his grip. He moved to adjust his seat and remained on the roof while making eye contact with us. Then the monkey placed the handkerchief on his skinny thigh and scratched his head as if nothing had happened. Our eyes were on him. After a minute, the monkey unfolded the handkerchief in both his hands as if he was gazing at the pattern. He looked at us, scratched his tummy, and jumped as high as he could, up to the huge neem tree—holding the handkerchief between his teeth.

The sun was setting in the western sky. As dusk engulfed the entire horizon, my dad sat on his black wooden armchair in despair. The evening turned to night with a few stars overhead. The monkey vanished. There was silence in our house—even Aarun stopped smiling. I guessed my dad had run out his temper. When he crossed our study room, he didn’t glance in to check if we were doing our homework. I heard my mom telling him, Tomorrow morning, Aarun will go to the neem tree, and he will find the handkerchief on the ground. She added, What would monkey do with a handkerchief? It is not of bright color, not made of silk or nylon fabric, and it is not a toy. They are nutty creatures. The monkey will drop the handkerchief after playing with it.

There was no response from my dad. I overheard Mom continuing to tell my dad how one monkey had slapped a young kid a few years back when the kid had thrown rocks at him. That year, flocks of monkeys were in our small town. The monkeys were on every tree and every roof, jumping and screeching. One or two of the monkeys carried baby monkeys on their back. Mom had to finish her story later; looking at the clock, she noticed we had passed dinnertime. She hurried to fix dinner for Dad. Dad finished his dinner and passed the veranda to his room with long steps. That day, we lost something that was more precious than what we had thought of as a mere handkerchief. Before going to sleep, I prayed to Lord Siva to get us the handkerchief back the next morning under the neem tree. My dad was strict and short-tempered, but he was my idol and my hero; I didn’t want him to lose what he loved.

The next morning, the sun peeked through the neem tree. Spending almost one hour under and around the neem tree, we did not find the handkerchief. We searched the neem branches with long bamboo sticks in our hands. I couldn’t reach anything; I hit the branch in frustration. Aarun and Dad searched farther away and came back empty-handed. Aarun said, We searched high in the branches in case the handkerchief got stuck or was hanging by any freak chance, but there was no trace.

I said, Dad, you can get another handkerchief from the same store. They have many of the same kind or of different colors. Dad didn’t respond. He flipped open the newspaper. Maybe he thought that the new one would not be the same handkerchief. He had lost his treasured handkerchief.

It was a cool, fresh morning in early winter with a bright sun overhead. A flock of yellow birds with black beaks visited our courtyard from distant lands; they hopped on the light branches of our lemon tree in the yard. My mom pointed her finger at the birds and said, Every year, these yellow birds come from somewhere. Brushing our teeth, we looked up to the lemon tree where the chirping sounds were coming from.

My dad said, They remember the direction and every year fly to the same place. Who knows where they came from? Mom got some rice from the kitchen and threw it toward the lemon tree so the birds would come down closer to eat.

While we focused on the yellow birds, we heard a sudden thud coming from the thatched roof. One of our cows said, Hmm. The birds got away with their wings flapping wide open, making a loud fluttering. The birds flew high, straight to the sky.

I saw a monkey sitting on our thatched roof. I pointed. Oh, look at the monkey. I guess the same monkey came. He has a black face, long tail, and gray body.

Mom said, All monkeys look the same.

But my dad stood up and said, This rascal was the same monkey, as if he recognized the monkey who stole his handkerchief.

Aarun added, Yes, Babu, he is the same one. Look, he has something in his hand.

I screamed with happiness, Oh my god. The monkey has come with the handkerchief. My dad rushed to the side veranda. I thought that he would get the longest bamboo stick out to hit him, but I guess he had second thoughts; he turned to the kitchen and came out holding a ripe yellow banana in his hand.

Dad called the monkey. Aao, aao…Choo, choo… The monkey saw the banana, looked to the side to make sure no one had a stick. Then he jumped down and came close to the veranda. He stopped and sat at a little distance away. He was not sure whether to trust us. Dad told everyone to keep quiet and threw the banana toward him. The monkey came forward one step, dropped the handkerchief on the floor, and ate the banana—holding it in one hand and peeling it with the other. When he finished the banana, he gave a meaningful look at the handkerchief that lay on his right. He turned and jumped back to the thatched roof, to the top of the neem tree, and gone from our view.

We danced and jumped. Aarun jumped the most while Dad stepped down to pick up the handkerchief. It appeared as if the monkey had taken good care of the handkerchief all the while. My dad smiled, as he did sometimes. He asked Aarun to get soap, a bucket of water, and his special brush that he used to clean the collar of his white shirt. Dad washed his long-lost handkerchief himself—wearing a smile all along. This time, he asked for three wooden clips before he hung them on the wire hanger.

A light touch of the afternoon sun with a soft breeze dried the handkerchief sooner than we thought. Dad sat on the black wooden chair, looked at my mom, and smiled again. I loved his smile and felt happy. The happiness spread beyond—I had no words to express it.

After the handkerchief dried, Dad folded it into a big square and then into another small square. Then he stepped toward his room, opened his leather suitcase—which had a broken latch—and put the handkerchief in its upper flap. I was not sure why he saved it; he never used the lost-and-found handkerchief ever again. The other handkerchiefs he used did not carry the same charm as the precious blue-plaid, monkey-stolen handkerchief.

Ten years after the event, my father passed away, leaving us alone for the rest of our lives. I reached into the glove compartment of my car and pulled out the handkerchief and smelled it. Before putting back, I folded the handkerchief into a big square, then into a small square. I was back twenty years down memory lane. I felt my short-tempered father’s long-lasting love. The handkerchief was telling me not to give up in life, as miracles happen.

The Necklace

Symran Das had caught the train at the last minute. She was wearing a blue sari and a matching blouse with easy-off travel shoes for the ten-hour trip on the train. The Puri-Howrah Express train had left the station at Puri an hour ago. Symran had booked the ticket when she received the acceptance letter. The organization had approved a second-class fare for teachers who had been accepted to attend the annual science fair. The Twenty-Sixth Annual Science Fair was scheduled to start on October 21 at Jagadish Chandra Bose College in Calcutta. Food and board were included for a three days’ stay at the college dorm.

Badri, Symran’s younger brother, had led her to a second-class cabin on the Howrah Express train. This was the last train to Calcutta leaving Puri station. Enormous crowds had filled up the station. Without Badri, it would have been hard for Symran to find her berth. Twenty-three million people in India take the train every day. Badri had lifted her travel suitcase onto the upper berth. Then he had taken a few quick steps to get down, pushing past the incoming passengers. He had waved before leaving, and the train had whistled and swayed as it crossed the platform.

Symran moved toward the window. She had noticed men and women with kids pushing and pulling people. The tea vendors had handed earthen cups filled with hot tea to the incoming passengers. There was no space left inside the cabin, yet still, some had struggled hard to squeeze in.

Symran noticed a young couple sitting cozy in the front berth. The boy was in his early twenties, and the girl seemed eighteen; they sat close together, leaving no space in between them. The boy’s right hand was around the girl. The girl leaned her head against the boy’s shoulder. They ignored the crowd, including Symran in the seat in front of them. The boy wore a light-washed pair of jeans with a brown shirt. His shoes looked new. He had a well-trimmed mustache on his square face and wore his hair back. The girl had an oval