Code Blue

Parvez Sandhu

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Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 23 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781669877820
• Langue: English

Extrait

Code Blue

A Collection of Short Stories







Parvez Sandhu



Copyright © 2023 by Parvez Sandhu.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2023909440
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7783-7
Softcover
978-1-6698-7781-3
eBook
978-1-6698-7782-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Code Blue
A Collection of Short Stories

Parvez Sandhu
2966, Robinwood Avenue
Clovis, California
[e-mail]
© Author

Translation: Dr. S. N. Sewak, A. Kumar

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.



Rev. date: 05/22/2023


Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
827070













To Gurpreet Dhaliwal
My best friend, patron, and guide.









The sources of my strength
Baljinder Sandhu
Savi Sandhu
Jaydee Gill
Selena Uppal
Kamal Deol



CONTENTS
About Myself
Prologue
1. Mother
2. Birds
3. My Husband’s Mistress
4. Man’s Shoe
5. Heaps of Cotton Bolls
6. Lunch Box
7. Sacrifice
8. The Box with Mirrors
9. Pieces
10. Coins of Expectations
11. Sugar Ma’ama
12. Code Blue



About Myself
I don’t know what to write about myself. I have a deluge of words inside, but I don’t know where to start. When I looked at the past account of my life, my thoughts turned to my previous books.
When my first book was published, I did not have any bitter experiences in life. I did not know what pain meant and how its feeling hurt. When I sent my second book for publication, pain had crossed over my threshold. I hardly knew earlier that pain could thus devastate a person.
I have lived my life on my own terms. I have explored my own paths, caring not for the ways of the world. I had come across many evil persons in life. In sheer innocence, I suffered from betrayal by many a man, but I have never fallen prey to regrets and repentance in life. It was my own life, my own decisions. Now when my third book is under publication, many changes have taken place in my life; I have a lot of pain and many regrets within me.
The greatest pain of my life is the untimely demise of my beautiful young daughter, Savina, who I could not save from the clutches of death. Sometimes my soul curses me that I could not be a good mother to save my daughter from the pain of death and that she left me for a distant, unknown world.
Another regret in my life is that I could not be a good daughter to my mother, who kept on begging for a visit to her village home for twenty-odd years. When she was in good health, she took care of her grandchildren and virtually served in the houses of her son and daughters. As her health deteriorated, the houses of her son and daughters appeared to be alien to her, and she started longing for her village home. She began to complain, and often, she was be angry. But she was helpless. The grand houses of her children looked strange to her, but her failing health prevented her from going to her own home back in Punjab. And toward the end, she was admitted to a center for old people, where she passed away, leaving me utterly helpless.
After the demise of Savina, I had only two options—either to spend the rest of my life weeping and crying or face life with courage using a pen. I do not write for fame; it is a kind of therapy for me. When I am expressing myself in words, Savina and my mother appear before me. The closest relationship in the world is that of a mother and her daughter—I am devoid of both of them today, but I feel they are providing me with inner strength to move on. Perhaps it is the suffering from their loss that gives me the courage to smile.
I have now only my pen which enables me to spend the day meaningfully. Some other loving relationships also motivate me. My elder sisters (Gogi and Guddi), my elder brother (Daljit Kang), and the young Hardeep Hayer also help me. My friend, Harjit Arora, assist me in bringing out my books with her hard work and loving attention. I don’t know my literary standing but this work of mine is very close to my soul. It reflects the true feelings of my heart. I have always ignored the head and have listened only to my heart. While writing these short stories, I have followed my heart alone. It is now for the readers to decide how they take these feelings of my heart.
I acknowledge, with love, the cooperation extended by Mrs. Davinder and Jasvir Virk in the publication of this book.
—Parvez Sandhu



Prologue
Parvez Sandhu does not write stories.
She tells them.
She uses short sentences, weaving words in a sweater
to connect relationships and express warmth
She asks the innocent child in her
why she does not speak and urges her to say all the truth.
If you do not express all your bitterness and pain,
you will not live.
Say all frankly; hold mirror to the listeners.
Be free of guilt, don’t carry this burden.
Parvez does not write stories
She melts like iron in the burning furnace of mind.
Her stories are like poems!
She seems to be asleep, but she is ever awake.
She exposes herself as well as the world like a goddess.
There are rows of graves inside her,
ever silent, ever close, ever patient.
When they speak out, they undo all the knots.
Her stories contain broken rows of birds.
In an alien land, friends become foes.
They inflict such wounds as are invisible.
In her stories, Parvez snubs others, but gently.
Her words and sentences pierce the mind subtly.
She turns her own self to flour in grinding pots
and makes a dough of herself
to make loaves to serve.
Her daughter, Savina, a gentle butterfly,
left her, but ever remains in all her tales.
The fairy-like daughter disappeared with feathery dreams.
She recalls her with each of the beads in her rosary.
Parvez does not write stories.
She writes letters instead.
From
Parvez
To
All
Medium
Words
Content
Pain
Intention
Sharing

—Gurbhajan Gill



Mother
I can see the features of my mother in the words I have written in my diary. She was very short in terms of height, just like the words penned by me, sometimes serene, very quiet and fearful, and sometimes trying helplessly to fly, just like birds, sans peace … restless … and on some occasions, my mother emanates out of the words written on blank pages as a subtle story in front of me. No! This is not a story. Rather, it is a small bundle of feelings of my mother that is buried under myriad layers of my soul. Reluctantly, I sometimes open up this bundle of feelings. Some sighs of my mother, some regrets, and a few of my compulsions are packed in this small bundle.
My mother, who has crossed her eighties, is settled in Surrey, a fine city of Canada. She seems happy, even as she showers encomium on his son, daughter-in-law, grandsons, granddaughters, and newly born grandson and granddaughter as well as the great-granddaughter. These last days of my mother are passing comfortably. Her old age is not like that of the other old persons in this country who are stranded here and there. She sits on the fine bed with white linen in a beautiful bedroom and waits for her final moment. Her bedroom is located on the first floor of the grand house that was built by her son and daughter-in-law. She is being provided with everything by her son and daughter-in-law to make her comfortable. She has only one son and he is very noble. She gets food from her daughter-in-law even as she sits on her bed. What else does she need at this ripe age?
I ponder over this issue many times …
Mother is not able to see clearly with her eyes. The optician had given her the certificate of being legally blind many years ago. She has been a patient of diabetes for many years. She takes her medicine and gets her injections regularly. She uses a walker to move around. Yet her sharp memory can put the memorizing abilities of many a young man to shame. There are many issues that are not remembered even by us. Those incidents, which occurred from our childhood days till the present, have been kept by my mother in the deepest corner of her heart. She vividly recalls those very incidents and appears to be a mobile book of history.
Even today, if a marriage ceremony is organized somewhere, my mother is invited to sing sithnies , puns meant for marriage party. She is breathless even as she does the job and somehow man