“In this beautiful night of Dhanteras*, why is it that you are sitting all alone covered in silence and gloom?” the goddess asked smilingly.

“What use is this festival of Dhanteras* to me, I have no money to celebrate,” Draupadi spoke with a jerk in her tone.
“But you have the two kids, isn’t your family enough to celebrate togetherness on this day?” she asked.

“Look at them, they don’t have proper clothes on them, no food in the house for one meal, what will I do with this measly togetherness,” Draupadi snapped.

“If it is that what you need then I assure you there will always be more than enough in your house from today,” and saying this she vanished.

                                  *                                             *                                         *

It was exactly one year to that fateful day when a servant came running to her in the village council, “Babu is not feeling well, he is complaining of stomachache.”

“I have no time for this, can’t you see I am busy with some important village work here, thousands are being transacted, why don’t you go and take him to the hakim,” she replied haughtily.

And only minutes later she received the news of her son’s death.

“In this beautiful night of Dhanteras*, why is it that you are sitting all alone covered in silence and gloom?” the goddess appeared again and asked smilingly.

*Dhanteras- an Indian festival to celebrate success and prosperity.

(This is actually a true story of my great-great grandmother. A legend which has gone down the family from one generation to another. And this is as told by my aunt (Jyoti Shukla Agnihotri )to me )

Connecting it to the amazing seven day Write Tribe’s festival. Day one prompt being nine sentence fiction.

                            *                                                *                                            *

Don’t forget to tune in to #blogchatter every Tuesday at Nine PM IST. To read more about this twitter chat you can click here.


Have you found ‘The Philospher’s stone’ on facebook?  If not then click here

And subscribed to our newsletter? Do fill in your details below:
                                                         Subscribe

%d bloggers like this: