joie de l'écriture

The crescent moon shone brilliantly from it's celestial abode to hurt the vanity of the gurkha's just sharpened khukri at the mortal hands of a nearby churriwala (which he admired for long moments before allowing himself into a trance), with it's edges defined with impeccable perfection, carved against the velvet black sky but somewhat marred when the pinnate and wedge-shaped leaves of the tall mysterious trees that circumscribed the vicinity of the architectural grandeur cast their ugly shadows on the achromatic beauty. The wind moved as if to manifest the uneasiness that had begun to ferment in one of the trio as they slithered in through the narrow opening of the cracked creepy wall with grim growths spreading across it creating an eerie mosaic of little leaves, ruddy roots and tendrils that probably had never made it to the labyrinth of botanical jargon.

Man is a strange animal. He intermingles his pettiest desires with surmounting dreams, with his ignorant existence gives it the buzz word karma and sets out to achieve the unfathomable goals with a homogenous blend of insanity and mindlessness making life less life-sized. But this trio had always taken the road less traveled (Is that why their elbows were brushing against the crevices of the damp wall?) and had set out to unravel the small mysteries that dotted their everyday lives and answer the questions that bid a subdued adieu with the dusk but never failed to resurface with the break of every dawn. Tonight what they were about to quest would leave one less question for the following dawn. It's amazing what a bunch of sophomores in their salad days can do!

While one of them had sworn to just touch and go because he had taken up the gauntlet, the other two knew they were on a ride of their lifetime. In the cold dark of that night as they traced their way to the first floor, almost with an instinct, they could hear the faint howl of the canines in the background that were as much a family to the familiar surroundings as were these young men. The howl was soon muffled by their own breaths as they gasped for the thick air filled with the peculiar archaic stench. They stood at the foot of the winding rusted staircase that coiled mysteriously before it disappeared somewhere in the darkness of the poorly lit and flaky cathedral ceiling that probably was never mended since the time it was built in the early 1800s. They let a moment pass to capture in their minds the last visions of the enigmatic structure which had baffled them hitherto and whose secret path they were now about to explore. Curiosity thy name is young mind!

Then they took it... the first step on the dilapidated stairway, one small step for them but a giant leap for the curious mind! As they ascended the stairs the metallic creak of the forbidden stairway reverberated and bounced back on their ears as if the echoes had no where else to go. The snaky climb of a good 20 feet had left them feeling vertiginous in the abysmal darkness they were led to. The place smelled dusty, damp and dizzy all at the same time. His nose twitched. He knew it was coming. An earsplitting sneeze that sounded like a cannon that had been fired at them point blanc. There was something unusually different about the echoes they heard this time. They lasted longer and sounded like the entire town hid itself in the pitch-black darkness and unanimously sneezed to scoff at the frail figure that couldn't take the smell of dust that had settled there just two hundred years back. Even as they whispered they felt that a million microphones were hung from somewhere to amplify every single syllable they uttered and broadcast it on the radio to make the world aware of what three curious extraordinary minds had set to discover on that ordinary night and how the truth they were to ferret out would not astonish anybody as much as to even raise an eyebrow. They knew they were there- in the heart of The Dome! The gargantuan, majestic, mastodonic, colossal architectural masterpiece!

His hand fumbled into his pocket and dropped a dozen things that would have tinkled and rattled on the stony floor had it not been for the soft carpet of dust, till he gripped the torch and switched it on. The beam could not penetrate any deeper than a few inches through the thick air that was misty and hazy with clouds of dust and when it did it only revealed the intricately weaved cobwebs that were carefully set to play cat's cradle with anybody who dared to venture that far. There were queer looking canvass paintings of wealthy aristocrats that seemed to live to dress dandily in cropped coats and high boots. Peeling off layers of dust to emaculate one of those art works revealed in fine print
Proprietors- Victoria Jubilee Weaving Mills 1889

It was a warehouse of arcane artifacts that seemed eager to tell a tale about the mystic and obscure past after being silenced and shut in the dark corners for an aeon under the eclipse cast by nothing but time itself; so enormous that archaeologists could spend their lifetimes digging into the treasure and one day add up to the archives themselves. Neatly lined against the arched walls were lofty chests of dull tarnished heavy metal with embellishments that promised to encase nothing but rich heritage and untold secrets. Ignoring the established belief that opening boxes out of curiosity had always plagued people, he advanced, with the same amount of curiosity which Hera had given Pandora, casting on the trunk his eyes which were now heavy having fought the smoky air just like his choked lungs and signaled his accomplice to give him a hand at it.

Lo behold! A thunderous outburst swept them off their feet like a storm lifts a maple leaf, out of the squalid confines of the dome, back tracking the path, dashing against shafts of tall pillars, thumping against bricked walls, squeezing through narrow slits of ajar doors and broken sashes of fanlights, rolling on rusted railings of old staircases, through dingy corridors, at neck breaking speed traveling through space and time, defying boundaries of the fourth dimension, catapulted in a split second to land on a wooden bench, staring at mathematical derivations that looked like encrypted messages received from outer space just when the words "That's all for today's lecture!" fell on the numb ears and brought the wandered mind back to the present. He looked out of the window and it stood right there in broad daylight, looking as enigmatic as ever and a thought crossed his mind... What ever lies inside that dome? Surely, a thing of mystery is a haunt forever!