People Of Tomorrow

The sun was particularly harsh today but the pickles seemed happy and bubbly, yawning as I opened the lids of their jars to spread them out. Their cheerfulness rubbed off on me too. The secret consignment of mangoes that I had received that morning was also partially responsible for my joy. It had been raining for days on end, a spell that made one wonder if the sun had somehow been extinguished by a gutsy gale. But it had now returned and brought along with it the hope of father's return. 

He had been gone for a month now. Clearly, the celebrations must have extended beyond her birthday, as they usually did except the two times my siblings had died. Those years had been quiet. I hope father hadn't landed on one of those. For all its magic, the court astronomer was yet to fix the year selection on his machine. At least it got the day right. I couldn't bear to think what would happen if he landed on the fateful night of my mother's death. It had been one of my recurring nightmares, which was strange considering I had lived through it.

***

I can't forget the screams that pierced through the air as my mother fought to give birth to my baby sister. A few hours later, she fell quiet. The life drained out of her along with the blood. And along with the four promises she made him make, it seemed like she took father's spirit away too. The burial was harried and not something a empress of her stature deserved. But that's all I could arrange for. My father had locked himself up in his chambers and over the next year, all we heard of him were shrieking cries. Only his trusted aide was allowed to bring him food--a simple fare of rice and lentils that he would have scoffed at earlier. 

The day he emerged from his hiding, he was a mere shadow of the man. His disheveled hair was a shock of white and his eyes dug deep into their sockets. He looked like a madman, bent at the waist, dressed in tatters with eyes that flitted about in all directions. The first day he held court, he couldn't form a coherent sentence and whispers of a dethronement reached me soon enough. That's when I jumped in. Acting on his promise to my mother to build her a mausoleum, I took along the court architect to visit him. 

Over the next 18 years, architects and artistes were commissioned from all over the world to help complete a piece of paradise, as my father put it. I saw, built before my eyes, a marvel in white marble. I saw the joy returning to my father's face as he disinterred my mother's remains and had them placed in a place he had painstakingly selected. I also saw how it took a toll on the royal coffers. 

But it was a sight to behold. The poets wrote verses on its beauty and the sick said it healed them. The rich said it humbled them and the poor said it gave them hope. But to me, it was only a pretty looking, expensive building that had kept my father distracted. In hindsight, I hoped that he had instead had the time machine commissioned to meet his beloved wife. Because within a few years of the mausoleum's completion, he felt gravely ill. 

For my brothers, it was excuse to claim the throne which is what they did. To my dismay, the brother who won the battle, was someone I had always disliked. True to character, he had father placed under house arrest immediately, under the pretext of his treatment. Over the next few months, I nursed him back to health but he was never welcomed back to the palace. 

That was when I learnt to sneak in father's favourites for him. At first, it was just medicines and fruits that he needed but was denied. Later on, I could bring in people without anyone suspecting anything. The guards hated my brother anyway. And it was one such evening, during a party with secret guests, that my father wished that he could travel back in time. The court astronomers, each a scholar in their own right, took it on as a challenge. Four years later, we had a contraption that could traverse the waters of time.

I had tried it first but due to the anomaly, was thrown to a birthday when I was a mere toddler. After having my parents fuss over me for weeks, the return home was disappointing to say the least. My aged father had shrunk further with worry about my return. But once I had ascertained it was safe, he could wait to climb in and go. This was his third trip. 

***

The room with the open roof was empty, as I had kept it since my father's departure. Landings were never his strongest suit. The last time he was visiting mother, he had spent the whole time there tending to his injuries. But she had been happy to see him keep yet another promise--that of being there by her side on every birthday.

The day was darkening and the mausoleum appeared to be a blush pink. I was just about to start lighting up the lamps when I saw a glimmer in the sky which grew and grew until it hit the room's floor with a terrifying thud. I couldn't immediately rush in because the astronomers had warned us of contamination but as soon as the warmth of the landing subsided, I went in running. Father was in a really bad shape. One of his eyes was closed shut by the grotesque purple swelling and the gash on his lips was bleeding. His face was a mask of pain and terror and for the second time in my life, I was sure I'd lose him.

***

That night I smuggled in an army of medicine men, who tended to his injuries and tried to bring his temperature down. But by the time the first light of morning broke, father was sound asleep.

When he woke up that night, he was still a man possessed. While his eye and lips were in a much better state now and he didn't have fever, he was a study in worry. I sliced up some mangoes and brought it to him. When even the yellow flesh of his favourite fruit couldn't bring him out of his misery, I knew something was amiss. Perhaps he had landed on one of the bad years and couldn't return due to the clouds. But no amount of prodding yielded answers. At some point, we both dozed off, staring at the monument that shone like a pearl under the moonlight.

"I didn't do it. I'm not a barbarian! I didn't do it!" 

I was jolted awake to father's screams and had to shake him into consciousness from whatever nightmare he was stuck in. Even when he sat upright, he seemed like he was still far away.

When he did look at me, it was with the pained expression of a man lost. "They have made me into a villain, daughter," he cried. 

"Who, they? Brothers?" 

"No the people of tomorrow. They think I was a cruel ruler," he was now sobbing.

I had never seen my father break down this way. Even when mother died, his grief had been private. For a few minutes I didn't know what to do. Who was he talking about? Was he slipping into the madness again? The royal coffers wouldn't entertain one of his whims to build again but perhaps it will put him in a good mood.

"Father, I'll call the architect tomorrow. We'll build something even better than the mausoleum," I offered.

"No!" his face was a raging red now. He got up from his bed and stormed over to the window that overlooked the monument, started at it for one full minute before shutting it off and returning to bed. 

I couldn't believe what I had just seen. Ever since he had been imprisoned here, at the fort, he had insisted all windows facing mother's mausoleum be kept open at all times. I had shivered through several winters because of this. Something was seriously wrong. 

The next time he looked up, his bloodshot eyes motioned me to sit next to him. "Father, please tell me what happened on your trip…did you land on the year of mother's death?," I jumped at the opening, determined to find for myself.

"Worse. I was thrown into a time yet to come," he whispered, searching my eyes for reassurance. 

"The future?" I gasped, "Can the machine do that?" 

"Yes, I went ahead by centuries. It was a world I didn't know, people I didn't know, places I didn't know," he shook his head. 

"You could have asked for the mausoleum. It must have been around?" I half ask.

"Daughter, it was around. But it was surrounded by rude, angry people who wore weird shoes to walk on it. They smiled and laughed and ate all around my beloved's grave. Do you know I'm placed there too?"

"How can that be? We are building one for you. God forbid when it's your time to go, that will be your resting place. I'll ensure that," I offer, completely forgetting he had seen that it wasn't to be.

But he didn't tell me that. Instead he continued to recount the horrible things he'd heard there. "They call it a 'building', as if their's are better. Theirs are nothing in comparison, daughter, that's why they paid to see mine. Yes, paid, but with paper. Can you believe it?"

I couldn't but I could see he was getting worked up. I began to get up to offer him water, but he pulled me back down needing to share every last detail lest he forget.

"There were so many people milling about there, daughter, and here in our house too, right here" he looked around.

This I found creepy but he continued. "And they weren't our people too. They weren't our descendants and yet there were some people who were telling our story like they knew us. Do you know what did they claim, daughter?"

I just stared back. 

"They claimed I had cut down the hands and gouged out the eyes of all the architects and engineers and workers who had worked on creating the mausoleum," he shrieked, his voice quaking with rage and defeat.

***

When morning broke, we were still sitting next to each other, unable to move. He couldn't forget what he had seen and I couldn't fathom it. 

If what he had said was true and our legacy had been tarnished like this, surely it would be a shame. My first thought was to inform my brother, the emperor, our captor. But drunk on power and blinded by the throne, he'd think it was a ploy to distract him. 

By afternoon, between supervising the meals being cooked for father, I had decided to go to the future myself to find out why people thought what they did. But father was scared of the machine now and it would be a while before he agreed to let me go.

It was finally in the evening, as I went around the fort, lighting the lamps, with the mausoleum a dim gray behind me, that I had an idea. I couldn't let a monument decide the course of our legacy. 

"Father, I have an assignment for you," I announced in a chirpy voice that betrayed the fear I felt within. "I want you to narrate every last detail of your life to me".

"Why, you already know everything," he dismissed.

"I do. But now I want to write it for the people of tomorrow".