A ‘CLICKS FOR KERALA’ INITIATIVE
KERALA DIARIES #02 (realistic fiction)
‘GOD’S DISOWNED COUNTRY’
By Neel Anil Panicker
“God’s own country? That’s the tagline, right?”
Paulose slurps tea from his half broken stain smeared glass, then turning to the man seated beside him, nods his head.
‘God dammed country’s more appropriate’.
The question’s rhetorical; does not beg an answer.
The two men, both vigorously pushing the enervating eighties, knows what they are conversing about.
Both stare ahead, like two mad men__their souls deadened, their minds benumbed.
The aftermath of the devastating floods stare back at them.
Two weeks ago, stood, shoulder to shoulder, two dwellings. One___the rich man’s__Heaven’s Gate__a sprawling ten room two storied all marble villa whose air conditioned luxuriously laid out rooms and halls boasted of the latest state-of-the-art equipments that are picture post cards of high end living.
The other was a single room thatched hut made from the barks of coconut trees and discarded plastic sheets.
Both the houses were homes filled with the chatting, crying, and laughing of people.
Today, there’s only stultifying silence; the ground’s flattened.
In one single night the sluice gates of Hell opened, sweeping away everything in its wake__man, woman, children, home, house and hearth.
‘Nature’s a great leveller’, says the once rich man, sipping his cup of tea.
The poor merely nods, yet again.
Their cups of woes are full to the brim.
#neelanilpanicker #keraladiaries#02 #realisticfiction #sundayphotofiction ThreeThingsChallenge #215words
TO READ PART 1 click IT’S A DATE
https://sundayphotofictioner.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/sunday-photo-fiction-august-26-2018/
Three Things Challenge, 25 August 2018
https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/three-things-challenge-25-august-2018/
neelwritesblog 
Fabulous story telling, it certainly must seem like being in hell for those elderly individuals who have lost everything in the monsoon floods. I particularly liked how you conjoined the rich man with a poor man. Just great.
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Thanks a lot, Michael.
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You don’t show the prompt photo, Neel?
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Yes Ceayr, I decided to show some pictures of the actual tragedy that is unfolding though i did take inspiration from the photo prompt.
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This is much more than a story. Agree with the spirit of it.
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Nature doesn’t discriminate. It certainly is one if many tragedies that must make a believer question what God is up to…
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