Willow N' Cherry

By Kamal Abdul Nasir

"Willow N' Cherry is an "unfictional" E-novel to forge a global medium -the narrative belongs to a new cross-media fiction-unfiction actually-using text, web, audio and video. Incidentally cricket is available across these media platforms too! This is not the first novel to celebrate sports or literature about cricket but perhaps the first to co

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Oct 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9789360495725

Book preview

Prologue

P

raises and glory to God.

No storyteller can create trillions of unique characters in flesh and blood, flora and fauna, elements and abundance of creation and contrive and sustain a story for so long and continuing……God has made humans, Homo Nerrens or storytelling species.

Honeybees can signal the location of nectar-bearing flowers through elaborate dances and chimpanzees can learn rudimentary hand signals. But only humans have been endowed with the power to tell complicated tales about the past, present and future. None of the species have names and are content, just replicating them but only human beings have this urge to linger on into eternity through their names.

Read, Watch, Browse, Listen, Chat, Play and Write….

This is an unfictional E-novel to forge a global medium –the narrative belongs to a new cross-media fiction-unfiction actually-using text, web, audio and video. Incidentally cricket is available across these media platforms too! This is not the first novel to celebrate sports or literature about cricket but perhaps the first to coax the latent writer you….

The game comprises of a secret group of Puppet Masters who are author-readers who manipulate the storyline, related scenarios. The blank spaces, blogs and specific literary groups on social media are the hubs ….so let your creative juices flow and unleash your fancy and imagination. After all, literature is an acquired art, much like mastering sports or a musical instrument!

This novel also reflects in some fashion the 21st Century milieu and use of gadgets and gizmos.

The players automatically gain entry on purchase of the e-Novel online at willowncherry.woprdpress.com or in the email.

The creative moving of the plot or additions may be mailed to [e-mail] from where the Web Master can upload Trans- media content –Word, Pictures, CD, and PDFs to the ongoing story on the website-www.willowncherry.wordpress.com

Lurkers are readers who follow the interactive story on chat lines or social media without directly participating.

Willow N’ Cherry

-An interactive E-novel-a trans-media/genre ’Unfictional pastiche narrative, using text, web, audio and video…..

-To celebrate the global spirit of World Cup Cricket, 2011

-To celebrate the writer in you… and unleash your fancy and imagination and

-To forge a global medium to participate in the human saga on planet Earth.

Welcome aboard……  Join the carnival, add a twist, turn a phrase and keep the plot moving…....

So we begin with the Rabbit Hole-The initial site, page or clue …

Torontonian Expats

T

all, svelte, no-nonsense and down-to-earth-that’s Richa Singh Richie. Beauty and brain, irrepressible and committed, she was born to Randhawa Singh ‘Jerry’ from India and second generation Italian, Janet in Toronto.

After school, she took off, without much of a plan, to spend months, camping around the scenic Canadian prairies and Rockies, in her motor home. A Thoreau aficionado, she naively wondered why more did not speak up? If environment affects everyone, why doesn’t everyone express their concern and also do something about it? She reflected on these searing questions as a teenager, beneath a soft voice and outward gentle demeanor. Richa strongly believed that the well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on earth have intrinsic value and human beings have no right to reduce this richness and diversity or interfere in the filigree work of this finely balanced ecosystem. She wrote bold articles for e-magazines and journals and also started her own blog.

Richa dabbles in eco-activism, Indian and Western dance, cooking and bar-hopping with her friend, Tom who plays cricket for Sussex County in England during the season and might be capped as a cricket player in the National Canadian cricket team. His friends think he is weird because everyone is playing ice hockey! Tom loves Ice Hockey too and watches on TV and sometimes in the stadium.

She seems to match his savoir vivre too! Like most Torontonians, Tom too has a mixed lineage-British and Indian. He is tall, kind of lanky with a muscular and wiry frame. His real name is Shaabaan Ghani and Tom, his Canadian name. Randhawa Singh Jerry is a good friend of Tom’s father, Khaleefa AG who hails from Delhi, India.

Tom hobnobs with his club players on the weekend and discusses cricket with his father who studied English Literature at Oxford and moved to Canada with his class fellow and later, wife, Margaret Shanks. AG has a rare collection of books on cricket, especially crick- lit as well as other eclectic themes.

AG is an entrepreneur and made his first million by investing in gold mining in Yukon. He has recently invested in space mining too and the good news is that the planet where the explorer space shuttle made a smooth landing has got only diamonds! But this space-invading is a top secret.

Randhawa Singh Jerry came from India 40 years ago when he was a twenty one year old English Literature graduate from Punjab University. He met Janet when he called for a rented accommodation. She looked after a house and lived in one room in lieu of house-keeping. When she answered the phone, her honey-dipped voice convinced Jerry that it’s a cinch.

She lived on Mcowan and King in a fairytale cottage with two bedrooms on first floor, a living room and kitchen on ground floor, a pool in the backyard and a decent lawn where she loved to grow roses. She also owned a motor home which was parked somewhere else but the placard for ‘Motor home for Sale" was erected in the lawn.

‘Welcome, Jerry", a tall blonde ushered him in and he immediately sensed the abundance of ubiquitous pink color in the decor.

$400 was a reasonable rent to pay for this cozy cottage, he thought.

What do you, like, do, Jerry, she asked, sitting across from him in a sofa.

‘Well, I have just arrived a week ago from India and am staying at a Bed n’ Breakfast, just off Yonge Street. I hear that this is longest street in the world.’

It is. What would you like to do?

Well, I am basically a farmer and know how to sow seeds and grow rice and bushels of wheat. I studied English Literature so I just know West through English and American literature. I am a part-time writer too and plan to write a novel, a love story, kinda rom-com, maybe a mock-epic, dunno. Meanwhile I won’t mind becoming a bartender to pay my rent and buy my grocery.

‘Hmmmm, interesting; I am originally from a sleepy town called Goderich.  I moved to Toronto to play drums in a local band and also have my studio, where I teach drumming for $20 an hour. I can’t play here at home because of high decibels and neighbors but sometimes I do, during the day, in the basement."

Awww, there is a basement….

Yes, would you like to see?

Sure as eggs

The basement was big, with a drum set, a washing machine in a corner and a big billiard table bang in the middle.

She picked up the sticks and belted out an energetic improvised piece in a crescendo.

It was love at first sight for Randhawa Singh. He had read about Italian nymphs and even seen photos in glossy magazines but had never seen one from so close. Her golden ringlets frolicked on her rosy cheeks as she displayed her prowess on drums.

Wow Jerry felt energized and said I’d like to learn too. Maybe you can be my tutor.

"Sure, why not but..But…$20 an hour…cools?

Jerry felt like kissing her when she said cool, pretty coolly. She sensed and closed her eyes and leaned back.

Should I kiss, Jerry twirled his moustache and thought. His inner voice, always a prudish twit, tweeted:It’d be too early in the code of courtship to.

I like to meditate and do yoga too. She woke him up from his dilemma.

‘I can teach you yoga. So swap yoga with drums, Ok?"  and sauntered up to see the walls, lined with shelves containing all kinds of toolkits, DVDs, photographs, posters of Beatles, Rolling Stones, Metallica and some Country singers.

So $ 400 is OK, pretty reasonable.Jerry tried to say something unromantic, not to sound like someone who wears his heart on the sleeve.

Yup, so when’re you gonna bring your luggage?

Yesterday! Randhawa Singh chuckled, actually I am paid up till tomorrow forenoon at this bed n’ breakfast so I guess I can move in tomorrow.

It’s cold, Janet went up to a shelf near the door and offered him gloves, here, do wear these mitts cuz its cold out. Randhawa Singh felt he did not need but she shoved the gloves into his hands. He accepted the offer.

"You can call me Jerry, my western name.

Jerry, do you know my grand mom was one of Indian Maharaja’s wives. She shuttles between Bologna and India now though.

"Maybe, I’ll visit them on my trip to