Ashes

• Arriving at Kiratpur Sahib

• Trouble opening the urn

• The rain coming down as soon as the ashes are spilled

• The dogs and rocky bathroom

• The old man being fed

• the cup being bought

• What is the desire line?

• Protag no longer feels grief as it’s been many years since father died

• Wants to forget dad who was abusive

• who is there with him? wife, mom, driver

• the story should be mystical with imagery and supernatural stuff happening

• The men in the story are his father at different ages

  • He is his dad as a preteen - subservient to mum
  • the cup seller is his dad at a young man, eager to become a man
  • the driver is his dad as a middle-aged man, subservient to wife
  • the granthi is his dad as a elder man, confident enough to talk back
  • the beggar is his dad as an old man, drunkard and withering away

• Is she his mum or wife? His mum, but he starts to get a sense of how she was as a wife and that messes with his brain.

• Mum orders the driver around, which is how she ordered dad around. The boy opens the glovebox on the way to the roadstals and sees a bottle of liquor with a glass cup over it, a signal of how his dad used to drink

• The roadside stalls were commerce attached to the business of death, like crows feasting on a carcass after a wolf killed it.

• Arrival

  • Monkeys
  • Showing of affection which is rebuked (start of conflict)

• Getting to the bridge

• Scattering

• Ardaas

• Langar

• Rabid dogs

• Begger

• The Cup

Draft

The boy missed his dad and their hired driver looked just like him.

A man drives a white SUV down the road. The woman sitting in the backseat puts her hand on the boy’s knee beside her. He holds a bulky bag. They pass monkeys on the side of the road. Chilling, playing, roams for scraps. The monkeys look like little people but behave like wild dogs.

The man pulls off the road and into a large concrete slab of a parking lot. The woman takes the hand off the boy’s knee and clasps it flatpalmed with the other. She puts the combo to her forehead which she tips slightly to meet them in a bow.

“Waheguru,” she exhales.

The old man talks to him.

“Your Punjabi is very good beta, but I can tell you are an NRI”

“Yes”

“Don’t tell him,” says the driver.

“You like it here?” the old man ignores him

“I like the fields”

“Yes. This is where the fields end. You can walk to the border from here. Punjab becomes Himachal. The growing fields end and the ground starts sloping upwards to the mountains and the sky very quickly. ”