The Fairytale I never Dream Of : A Rikara Story [ ✔ ]

Chapter : 36

"I felt my heartbeats stop at once, as dread caused fluttering in my stomach and fear tingled my skin with goosebumps."

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'Mumma see!', Rikara put up a earthen doll in her hand, her face, hands and clothes splashed with colours and her thick black bangs falling on her face.

'Its very nice sweetie, I love it!!', Gauri ruffled Rikara's hair.

'Grandpa Pal, can I keep it??', Rikara showed the doll to the old man.

'Sorry dear, I have to dry it before you take it, else it will lose its colour and paint your hand eventually', He took the doll carefully and kept it with other dolls to dry in an oven.

'Grandpa Pal!! How long are you going to give me those dolls to paint only?? I'm five years old now and I'm big enough to make a doll by myself!!', Rikara whined.

'Its for safety reasons dear', the old man patted Rikara's head, 'I don't want you get hurt by the splinters in the soil. But since you are asking so much, I'll give you a freshly refined dough for clay modelling, okay?', he handed her a ball of greyish pile of alluvium, freshly collected from beneath of the river Ganges.

Gauri wanted to protest, but the old man smiled at her assuring. Gauri gave off a hesitant smile, she came to know by living here that the alluvium collected from river Ganges was very sacred and they were used for making idols of Gods and Goddesses only. But this old man loved Rikara so much that he gave her that alluvium for practising.

Rikara was trying to make a shape out of the dough, but every time it collapsed on the ground. She pouted for sometime, watching the stubborn dough, her eyebrows squinted. Gauri chuckled at her troubled daughter, but raised her hands in air surrendering, after receiving a glare from Rikara.

*****

Omkara was strolling in the dimly lit alleys, snapping photographs of the unfinished idols, tall, intimidating. Some of the idols had only clay smeared over the main structure of bamboo and hay, some were painted in all white - the base colour, some were painted in different monotones as, pink, yellow, blue, green, etc. There was a lot of touch ups needed for them.

This alley was the unofficial studio of a clay modeler, namely, Sri Jatin Pal. As he crossed the alley covered by large polymer canvases, making the whole area darker than it actually was, he stepped in an opening. The area was quite big and many idols, stood there for a sunbath to dry their clay smeared skins up. At a distance, a small girl was trying to make something out of a pile of greyish clay. The bangs on her forehead kept falling on her eyes as her lady companion, maybe her mother, traced them back behind her ear and took out clips from a little sidebag to tuck them away from her forehead. The girl was around five, her little hands, and the front of her dress was smeared with clay. Time and again, she showed the twisted and deformed masterpieces she made to the lady and the old man. He could see only the chocolate brown curtain from behind, shaking as she nodded at the girl vigorously, increasing the little girl's enthusiasm. He smiled fondly at them, glowing in an orange aura of setting sunlight, a sense of fullness covering his heart as a comfortable blanket of happiness. He felt a tug at his heart, but he retreated from there, but, after clicking a pic of them.