Hole in the Air

© 2011 by H.L. Agnihotri. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 06/06/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-8402-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-8403-4 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Disclaimer

Preface:-

CHAPTER I

SHADOWS THAT HAUNT

CHAPTER II

LULL BEFORE THE STORM

CHAPTER III

SALUTING THE SUN

CHAPTER IV

BIRDS IN THE CAGE-I

CHAPTER V

BIRDS IN THE CAGE-II

CHAPTER VI

MAKING NEW EQUATIONS

CHAPTER VII

BIRDS IN THE AIR

CHAPTER VIII

MAKING A NEST

CHAPTER IX

HOLE IN THE AIR

CHAPTER X

IN A DREAMLAND OF ROMANCE

CHAPTER XI

A SOARING FLIGHT

CHAPTER XII

TACKLING IT WISELY

CHAPTER XIII

SOME BITS AND ENDS

CHAPTER XIV

THE THUNDERBOLT THAT FELL

CHAPTER XV

THE PILLAR FELL AT LAST

CHAPTER XVI

CATCHING AT A STRAW

About the Author

I am of this view that in a work of fiction, both imagination and intellect combine to tell the story of ordinary human life in its true colours. ‘Hole in the Air’, in this respect, is a living picture of life. It is the story of an uprooted Indian Brahmin family which has to pass through the pangs of all kinds of sorrows and sufferings to make its mere existence possible against the inhuman forces working in our society. Its members seem to be the real persons with all their natural shortcomings, who are struggling for making a foothold in the hard ground of realities. I congratulate Mr. H.L Agnihotri on this rare attempt and express my good wishes and blessings for the success of ‘Hole in the Air’.

Dr. R. D. Sharma

State Award Winner

I feel highly beholden to my brother, Dr. R.D. Sharma, under whose benign guidance and blessings I have been able to accomplish this task. I feel that I shall be failing in my duty if I do not mention here with thanks the names of my dear sons, Rohit & Neerad, and my daughter-in-law Neelam who also helped me a lot in this work.

H.L. Agnihotri

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents depicted in this novel are imaginary and fictitious and they have been drawn without having any motive or intention to injure the feelings of anyone irrespective of one’s caste, creed, rank or community. If, in any case, these characters and incidents bear resemblance to any living or non-living person of any status, or events or locales, it should be considered nothing but a co-incidence.

H. L. Agnihotri

Preface:-

Hole in the Air is a hole somewhere in our system. It may be called a sickness of our social, economic and religious system that needs to be cured for the health of our social structure. It is my first attempt in the literary field of English Fiction. This simple narrative is the story of an expatriated poor family consisting of a set of human characters that are seen in their continuous fight to make themselves free from the man-made chains in which they are bound tightly, and which are cutting deep into their hearts and souls. They are struggling hard to make their living and existence possible against the socio-economic and socio-religious forces, which are always playing havoc upon their basic human rights. Rousseau, a well-known French thinker and philosopher, once wrote a powerful historic line, which ignited the whole furnace of French Revolution in 1789, and that line was Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. This precept of the great thinker needs to be rightly and justly answered by the Masters of human society.

The characters depicted here in this narrative are ordinary human beings with all human frailties and weaknesses in them. They are all caricatures with their essential shortcomings drawn from make-believe human society. They have to stumble and stagger from pillar to post to make a safe foothold in their social, religious and economic surroundings in which they live. However, these fabricated social, economic and religious chains are so strong that these weak characters have to suffer heavy blows in their fight to shackle these man-made chains and ultimately they have to come to their humiliation and defeat. Rishikant and his family have to run leaving their household property and shop. Both Rishikant and Shakuntala have to sacrifice themselves in the name of community. Even the old parents of Shakuntala become the victims of communal violence. Vasudev, Gayatri and Harisharan have to give a tough fight to their cruel and worst enemy, which is poverty. They have to die everyday for living an honest and honorable life. Everyday they have to play the dice with a hope that some Messiah with a miracle will come but that Messiah never comes, nor there happens any miracle, and only hope sustains their poor life. The gap between the haves and have-nots goes on increasing, and nothing happens to fill that void. The suppressor remains suppressor and the suppressed remains suppressed. The rulers rule the innocent humanity crushing them under-feet with the help of their rules and laws which they themselves make keeping in mind their convenience and interest.

In this narrative, it has been my effort to give bent to the hopes and aspirations of various characters, who to fulfill them work in the garb of their ego, pride, hypocrisy, jealousy and selfishness, whether these characters are the part of our education system or our police system. All the rich and powerful persons wherever they are and in whatever situation they are, play the game of the cat and the mouse with the poor and the powerless who live hellish life under their yoke. How long this game of the cat and the mouse will go, and how long these Masters of the so-called society will hurl calamities upon these poor weaklings, has become a vital question today.

a.   What was the fault of Rishikant and his family that they had to run from the village to save their lives leaving their well-furnished house and shop?

b.   Why both Rishikant and his wife, Shakuntala were mercilessly slaughtered in the name of their community by the custodians of so-called religion?

c.   What was the fault of Harisharan that he was rendered parentless and he had to live an orphan—like difficult life?

d.   What was that something essential missing in young, handsome, wise and intelligent Harisharan, which made him incapable of attaining his love?

e.   Why was Urvashi helpless to accept Harisharan’s love?

f.   Why Sonia, the wife of a poor carpenter, had to sell her body as a food to satisfy the sexual hunger of many?

g.   Why was Sonia maligned and harassed by the police officers at the police station?

h.   What was the fault of Sonia’s poor husband that he was tortured and humiliated at the police station by the law-keepers?

i.   What was the reason that the scholarly teacher abused, ridiculed, and humiliated Karamu, a poor outcast, among his classmates.

All these are vital and the most urgent questions to which we shall have to seek answers somewhere within us.

The structure of the novel has been woven both in the present and in the past, and it has been left for the readers to imagine what they can expect in the future. The first chapter begins with flashback technique and continues to be in the present. The second chapter opens in the past: and the third again shifts to the present leading the fourth to the past again. In this way, almost first half of the narrative swings both in the present and in the past. Ultimately, I have merged them both together making the rest of the story run smoothly in the present leaving the judicious readers to imagine what happens in the future.

As far as the English language is concerned, it has been my sincere effort to find out and use the most appropriate and suitable words to give expression to the thoughts and feelings of various characters delineated in this novel. I have also tried to use the simple words to make it a language of the common person. This language glorifies the different characters adapting fully to their nature and circumstances in which they have been placed.

H.L Agnihotri

09417205098

CHAPTER I

SHADOWS THAT HAUNT

It fails my mind to think how could I stand all that! How could I really compromise with that disgusting situation! How timid and selfish I had been in accepting that insensible homicide and in putting my stamp on all that inhuman and horrible bloodshed that was caused by the mad fury emanated from ill-gotten notions of ethnic superiority of one community over the other! I am really depressed and ashamed of my role that I played under those circumstances, though, no doubt, my jumping in that fray was not without inviting many risks and troubles of various kinds for me.

Resting his arm-pit on a big cotton pillow and supporting his head on the palm of his right hand, Vasudev, an uprooted and expatriated Brahmin, was half-lying on the raised seat of his grocery shop on an afternoon of April, 1951. He was ruminating over the past shadows, which haunted and wounded the very texture of his mind and soul and flashed on the screen of his mind like the depressing scenes of a tragic movie. The heart-rending situation, in which his real brother Rishikant and sister-in-law Shakuntala were found lying in a pool of blood after being ruthlessly murdered, had left on his mind some indelible scars, which would often cause him irresistible pain whenever the winds of past reminiscences tickled his mind. When he was all alone in a thoughtful mood, he found himself fortified by these gloomy shadows because Vasudev had passed through the holocaust of Partition.

Sonia, a young woman of about thirty, who demanded half seer of jaggery from him, interrupted Vasudev’s daydreaming. She took two Annas from her purse and put them on Vasudev’s hand. Sonia, who was the wife of a poor carpenter, was living in the same street at a distance of about hundred steps from Vasudev’s shop. Vasudev gave her the jaggery and put the change in a container kept for this purpose. She left Vasudev’s shop with a wantonly smile on her well-shaped face.

After the death of his maternal uncle Purshotam, Vasudev was living now with his wife Gayatri and nephew Harisharan in Adarsh Nagar, which was