Faces In The Water

Ranjit Lal

Description

What do you do when you discover an unspeakable truth about your parents? The Diwanchand family boasted of having only sons, no daughters. The water from a magical well in their farmhouse was the reason behind this good fortune , they said. One day, fifteen-year-old Gurmi sets out to look for the well and what he sees changes everyone s world forever. The faces of three girls look up at him from the water, and draw him into a world of fun, games and cyber magic -and Gurmi has to face up to an unnerving truth as murky as the surreal well. What terrible crimes have been committed behind the walls of the rambling Diwanchand family home? Will Gurmi and the ghost-girls be able to avenge the evil that has taken place and prevent yet another unspeakable atrocity from occurring? Funny, yet sensitive and immensely powerful, Faces in the Water is the story of lives lost to appease our society s insatiable hunger for male children, and the price families pay for its sake.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 12 avril 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9788184758108
• Langue: English

Extrait

RANJIT LAL
Faces in the Water

PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Copyright Page
PUFFIN BOOKS
FACES IN THE WATER
Ranjit Lal has written fiction and non-fiction for both adults and children. His most recent books for Puffin were The Caterpillar Who Went on a Diet and Other Stories , When Banshee Kissed Bimbo and Other Bird Stories and The Battle for No. 19.
This book is for Meena and Mala-naturally!
1

There are two things my family is very proud of. The first is the fact that only boys have been born in our family for generations-they say no one can really remember when a girl was born the last time. The second thing is that we all keep tip-top fit-again, no one can remember when anyone in the family fell sick-we don t even have a family doctor. Of course people in the family do die (my dadi was the last)-but they re usually about 102 by then and simply fall down and die one day or fail to wake up. No long, lingering illnesses and stuff like that. Actually this can be quite a pain if you ll excuse the use of the word-I mean I haven t been able to take a single day off from school for being sick and so far haven t had any of those exotic diseases like chickenpox or mumps.
This good health thing is thanks to the water we drink-it s from a special well in the family s huge ancestral farm. I ve been drinking this water since the day I was born, and we get it delivered in big containers to our home in Delhi every week. The well is very deep, and it is thought that exotic health-giving minerals leach into the water turning it into a sort of elixir. Actually the farm isn t all that far away-it takes about an hour and twenty minutes to drive there (and it takes forty-five minutes to reach school from home) and is located at the base of the Aravalli Mountains, which they say are the oldest in the world. My father and my two uncles-his brothers-aren t farmers or anything like that; they re businessmen and have a huge factory that makes all kinds of small, powerful electric motors, both AC and DC, many of which are used in toys like remote-controlled cars, SUVs and robots. Actually it s great because my father often imports fleets of these cars from places like Japan, China and Korea and rips out their motors and replaces them with those of Hanuman Motors-and then gives them to me and my cousins to test to destruction. (Of course it would have been even better if he didn t have such a lousy temper and shout at us when we do smash up the cars.) My great-grandfather, however, was a farmer as were the guys before him. But the farm has been with the family for aeons and there has never been any plan to sell it thanks to the water in its well. As my father puts it, even local hooch tastes like a twenty-four-year-old single malt Scotch when mixed with it. He should know; he drinks quite a lot of the stuff-and I collect the bottles.
Strangely, I never went-or was taken-to the farm and our ancestral house (simply called the Badi Kothi ) until I was fifteen. Actually even Mama and Papa rarely visited the farm, and if they did go there it was only for an hour or so. And now I think I know why. Not that I missed it or anything, what with school, cricket, computers and hanging around the malls and multiplexes, who had the time; and anyway, what would one do out there? Stare at the sky? As Mama said, It s not all that far away, but it seems so remote-like it is in the middle of nowhere.
Actually I have been to the farm at least once, not that I remember anything about that visit. You see like my grandfather and father, and uncles and cousins, I was actually born there, which I guess is another reason why it s never going to be sold-that s yet another tradition of the great Diwanchand family. But why not born at a hospital, like other kids, you might ask. Well, I don t know about the other members of the family (my father and uncles I mean), but I was brought into the world by Surinder aunty-Balvinder uncle s (my father s elder brother s) wife-who is a qualified gynaecologist, specialized in bringing babies into the world. She looks like a warthog with a painted face, what with her orange hair and small black eyes, and can be as dangerous and unpleasant. (It s amazing when you morph her face with that of a warthog on the computer: how naturally they merge into one another!) She s got this wheedling voice, as annoying as a dentist s drill, and will have her way at all costs. My mother said she had set up an entire operating theatre in one of the rooms of the house, and that s where I was born, as were my cousins, Arnav, Varun and Donny. Oh yes, I m a single child, no brothers (yet) or sisters (god forbid-never!). I m nuts about computers, not only games and stuff but more about fooling about with images-for example, giving people faces I think they ought to have (like the warthog mentioned above), though this can get you into trouble if you re careless. And of course, I m also into making and testing to destruction radio-controlled models, especially of planes and SUVs.
One morning, shortly after the summer holidays had begun, my mother just informed me cool as you please, Gurmeet, you ll be spending the summer at the farm this year. You know the house here has to be renovated. Papa is, as always, busy and will be travelling a lot, and I ll have to oversee the renovation work here. You ll stay at the farm, with Rama and Negi. It ll be nice for you. I could see by her face that there was no arguing with her-she d probably been snapped at by Papa again because she had that sourpuss bitter expression on her face, which she exuded pretty much most of the time. My mother looks a bit like a large, round, soft cushion which was probably why she was always being sat upon by both Papa and-Surinder aunty all the time. Some people say she had a sweet cherubic face, and she does look very pretty in her wedding photos. My father is pretty hefty and bristly, six feet three inches tall and built like a heavyweight boxer, with a flattened pakora nose and a snarling temper. So it is pretty sensible to stay out of his way when he s in a mood to snap and bite, which is pretty much most of the time. (His bite is certainly worse than his bark.)
So, I was to spend the summer at the farm. Sure, I thought shrugging sarcastically, it would be so nice to spend something like three months in the back of beyond; I d probably be bored to death in three hours flat. I mean what does one do at such a godforsaken place? And that too with only Rama and Negi for company! Rama was the maid my mother had employed to look after me-do the bed, wash and iron my clothes, be a nuisance really-and she tended to follow me around everywhere I went (sometimes with a glass of milk and two Marie biscuits, I tell you), nagging shrilly, which could be extremely uncool when you went to meet your friends. She had been with the family for as long as I remember. She was fat and waddled, and sounded like a duck, so it wasn t too difficult to outpace her. Negi was the dogsbody who usually drove-me around and also kept me company pretty much all of the time, like a bodyguard or something. But he could be useful for sending on errands and summoning up enough of the staff for a game of cricket, when my friends weren t around. Best of all we had an understanding: as long as I didn t tell Papa about his habit with the hooch bottle and gutka pouches, he mostly let me do what I wanted. I decided I d take my remote-controlled Spitfire along; it needed some repairs after a recent crash-landing, so I could work on it and test-fly it; and my two current favourite SUVs-a Humvee and VW Touareg, recently equipped with the most powerful motors to come out of Hanuman Electric Motors Pvt. Ltd.
Well, we drove out to the farm-and by the time we reached I was, I admit, a little curious and excited. We d left the main highway and driven along a narrow country road and suddenly there was this high stone wall, like that of a mini-fortress right in front of us. There was a black iron gate punched in the wall, through which we drove and up the long driveway, shrouded with huge trees. And there on a slight hillock, surrounded by trees, stood the old stone mansion, like some ancient hulking mausoleum built of iron-coloured rocks, with creepers crawling up the walls and deep verandas running all around it.
My god, that s the house? I said incredulously. It looks like a holiday resort for Dracula.
Mama sniffed sharply. Don t be disrespectful. This is the house where you, your father and grandfather were born.
At the door, about eight servants, or rather farm hands, stood at attention to welcome us. Satvinder, the caretakercum-manager, was a small hunched fellow with a couple of yellow crooked teeth sticking out of his mouth and rheumy yellowish eyes; he looked like a hunched hobgoblin about a hundred years old. But he had been running the place tip-top for donkey s years.
So where s the magic well? I asked my mother, looking around as we sipped the ice-cold nimbu paani that was promptly offered. The house was built around an open courtyard and had a broad wooden-floored veranda running around it on both the floors. You entered a lobby, there were doors leading off on either side, and straight ahead was a broad wooden staircase leading upstairs. Just ahead of the stairs were the doors leading to the open courtyard. I moved towards the courtyard and looked out hopefully
Is the magic well in the courtyard? I asked again.
No! And wherever it is, you re not to go there, my mother said sharply. I don t want you falling in. You re to keep away from it, understand?
Parents are so stupid sometimes. Naturally that became number one on my agenda of things to do. My mother rounded up all the staff and told them th