The cycle rickshaw still held sway on the streets of Ratanpally. The quiet neighbourhood was yet to surrender its tranquility to the honki...
The cycle rickshaw still held sway on the streets of Ratanpally. The quiet neighbourhood was yet to surrender its tranquility to the honking hullabaloo of the pre-curfew rush, and at this early hour it was a real ghost town. The usual steady trickle of maidservants were heading to work. In their flowing saris they moved with a patina of serenity, benevolent djinns slipping silently over the red-dirt roads, only their wind-blown shadows betraying their worldly presence.
Reverend Morris had passed the old manor house countless times, blind to the spring’s relentless advance. Today, as he glanced up at the flame vine over the white portico, its progress was palpable. The winter blooms had all but disappeared, but the leafless tree at their flanks was aflame with a vivid saffron-red – flowers of different biological heritage but same brilliant hue. Clinging by their parrot-beak petals they were a veritable clamour of colour against the hard, cloudless sky.
It was a majestic performance of death and rebirth. A promise of vernal abundance from the bountiful winter creeper, lending its spent, fiery flesh to the skeletal limbs of a kindred soul. A consecrated offering to the sacred Palash tree. To those fire-licked arms. There held the flame...
