Code Blue: A Collection of Short Stories

By Parvez Sandhu

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669877820

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Code Blue

A Collection of Short Stories

Parvez Sandhu

Copyright © 2023 by Parvez Sandhu.

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.

—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 manages her Patiala shalwar while singing during a marriage or betrothal ceremony. Whether my father could become a good husband or not throughout his life, his present concern revolves around my mother alone.

Since morning, what food Mother has to take, what medicines are to be given to her—I have the illusion that my father is a well-dressed nurse for my mother. She has a fine home to live in, a good husband, a devoted son, and a good daughter-in-law. What else does my mother need! I keep on thinking. But my mother becomes sad despite the fact that she has so much at her command. Sometimes she gives a deep and painful sigh while talking. This inner agony of hers chisels away the layers of my soul and vanishes into nowhere.

Mother, are you all right? I ask her reluctantly. I know very well what Mother is about to say or ask.

I am fine … but I remember my village many times …

Mother, all of us are here. Then why are you sad? I say this very sentence every time.

I am the only sibling of my family who lives in California. All others live quite close to my mother. But still, my mother remembers her village.

When my mother was fourteen years of age, she was married off. The muklawa (send-off ceremony) was arranged when she was sixteen years of age. My mother tells me all this as an incident of yesterday.

My maternal uncle had liberally used the canisters full of ghee (clarified butter) on the occasion of my marriage, she says even as she proudly recalls her maternal uncle who was a lambardar (village official). My mother was reared in her maternal home. Her maternal uncle did not have any child then. My mother had therefore been adopted by him. She would proudly say, Later, my maternal uncle had three sons and two daughters. My mother’s maternal aunt thought that I was very lucky for her family. That is why my maternal uncle and aunt loved me a lot. My mother still cherishes the memories of her childhood days, as if they were her immediately past moments.

My mother is not the most beautiful woman in the world. She is hardly five feet in terms of height. Her complexion is dark. She is illiterate to the core, just like rural mothers. She used to throw ash in the backyard of her house and hardly learned the letters of alphabet of the Punjabi language. But nowadays, she is able to speak many a word of the English language.

We girls used to go to study at Shivdwala [temple] of our village. Whatever I have learnt is an outcome of that very institution. Then I got married into this family. All people were literate in this family.

My mother was married off with great pomp and show. This was the first ever marriage of her village, and the procession had come aboard a bus to complete the solemn ceremony.

There was a curtain on the front seats of the bus. I was made to sit on that seat. When I came to the place of my in-laws, I observed that there was a singing box there. Later, I learned that the singing box was called radio, said my mother.

She tells us about her childhood days with innocence beyond compare. My mother had come from an ordinary family into a family where people used to get up in the early hours of the morning and practice on harmonium. The entire family used to sit together to listen to classical music. In this family, daughters-in-law did not wear the veil. My mother had never seen a sari and …

When I was told to wear a sari for the first time, I wore it upside down, she says in a fit of laughter.

My mother has a store of memories like this one. If I start writing about all those memories, I might write a complete book. But today I want to write only about my mother who is sitting in Canada and having a dream that cannot be fulfilled, which makes her sad.

My mother saw many things after her arrival in the house of her in-laws. She saw what she had never dreamed of. She had come from a small village, but she saw Gujarat, Madras, and many other cities. The memories of all those places are still fresh in her mind. While recalling those memories, her eyes become visibly bright. My baba ji (grandfather) was a mining engineer. Thus the entire family used to go to the place where he was posted from time to time. In the early years of her life, my mother got many experiences and preserved them in her mind forever.

Besides her many experiences, Mother had to struggle very hard in life. The walls of the house always remained high for her, far higher than her short height. They did not do justice to her as a housewife. I have already said that my mother is not the most beautiful woman in the world, but she is certainly the most beautiful human being. She has always ignored the excesses done toward her with her positive thinking. She has looked at the virtues of other people.

Since her early days, my mother had a passion for dancing. She and her friends used to take part in the Giddha dance with such fervor that they would break the soil on which they danced. My mother used to forget the shortages and problems of her home and sing as well as dance. The villagers used to especially invite my mother’s Giddha group to present the dance. Probably, my mother knew how to convert the harsh impingements of life into a few moments of happiness.

My mother was fond of wearing beautiful clothes. This fondness is still alive, even as she has crossed her nineties. My mother remains happy during marriage ceremonies and other festive occasions, even now. Today, Mother is unable to walk, but even now, she utters bolis (folk songs) and sithnis, and thus becomes the cynosure of all eyes during the course of a Siddha dance.

But today, a feeling of regret dwells in the wrinkles of her face. It reverberates in her speech and breath throughout the day. My mother remembers the village a lot.

We are foreigners in another land and recall our motherland on some occasions. The memory of our motherland makes us cry. We remember our village—the streets, the outer paths, the footways, and the people of our village daily emanate out of our mind and appear freely in front of our eyes. If we have time, we go to our motherland and pay our respects to her. A moment comes when we become so much engaged in our daily chores that our minds are full only of the struggle here, and the