The Applecombes

Chapter 2

It was a sleepy, sunny, Sunday afternoon in Sleeperstown the day the Applecombes arrived for the summer. They arrived in a red roadster with silver rims and mint coloured luggage towering high. They also arrived fighting. Try as they may the Applecombe's couldn't have a conversation without one or the other completely losing it. This time Marissa seemed to be complaining about Rick's lack of direction sense. With Sleepstone Manor being a couple of miles from Sleeperstown, one could not really blame Rick for having not found the well hidden, overgrown dirt road that took them there.

The towns people had all come out to check out the commotion. Mr Pierce was re-opening his convenience store right across from them and volunteered to take them all the way to the Manor. Brash and loud as they may seem, Marissa and Rick were good of heart. Sensing that Mr. Pierce would not take too kindly to repayment of any kind, they decided to purchase their stores from his store before heading to the Manor. The townspeople had wanted just that.

Marissa Applecombe was first to step out and she was a beauty. Her hair was the sort of colour that caught the sunlight. It shimmered and fell over her shoulders, all the way to her waist. For lack of a better description, her hair was the colour of rust, mixed with brick dust and a particularly brilliant African Serengeti sunset. She was of average height and her skin was tanned from all those trips to the beach. But unlike most women with tans, she was unfreckled. Her face provided the perfect canvas for her haunting grey eyes. People had always said that she could never lie because her eyes gave her away. They became cloudy when she was sad, clear and full of light when she was happy and darker when she was angry. She wore a coral, full sleeved dress that puffed at her shoulders and stopped at her knees. From the moment she walked out, everyone was entranced. Marissa Applecombe was by no means thin. Infact, she worried about her weight constantly. She wasn't fat either, she was rounded and looked all the better for it. She walked with the gait of a child, fast paced and almost skippy and chatted easily with Mr. Pierce about the ride into Sleeperstown.

For a moment, everyone had forgotten about Rick Applecombe. Until, he stepped out into the late afternoon sun. He looked like he had stepped out from a magazine. A magazine whose content talked of aristocrats, fashion and travel, for Rick brought to mind all those things. He was a tall, dark haired man with an almost sadistic glint to his eye. Eye's that were as black as tar and as dark as All Hallowe's Eve. He wore khaki trousers and a white shirt that was casually tucked in at one end. Where his wife just looked tanned, Rick's tan made him look like he came for a long lineage of strong Italian men. Italian or not, he did have an aristocratic lineage. His grandfather had been a nobleman and he had been given the best education money could provide. Much to his mother's horror, Rick had never confirmed to the stuffy ways of that education. He had taken off to back pack around the world, in search of adventures and new friends. In fact he had met Marissa during those travels and they had immediately taken to each other. He had a quiet confidence about him that made him stand out. Rick Applecombe was the sort of man who had never had to ask for someone's attention, his very presence demanded it.

He followed Marissa and Mr. Pierce quietly into the store with a genuinely sweet smile at his audience. As he disappeared into the store, the people of Sleeperstown stood dazzled.

Eat Well. Travel Often.

I used to love watching travel and lifestyle television, flipping through the Conde Nast Traveller, watching Discovery and reading National Geographic. I felt renewed wonder at how vast and beautiful our planet is. So much to see, do, eat and so many types of people to meet! It was one part (a major part) of my day dream world. And i day dream a lot. Leave me alone a minute and I slip into some alternate made up reality (ya I know it sounds like I have a problem! I wonder at it myself!). I get back from work and I first switch on Discovery Travel & Living before I begin with dinner and it usually is only replaced by a really good movie or book. No matter what I'm doing in the house, it runs in the background.

So you can well imagine my surprise when I switched on the telly sometime in December last year and was totally depressed! Infact, I can't stand to watch the channel anymore, unless I can't find anything else to watch. Guess what the problem was? I had realised that while I sit in my office, in front of my computer day after day there are people (like these) who are travelling, seeing the world, eating yum food! And I don't get to do anything. Bitter envy had set in!


So I made a resolution (it helped that the New Year was round the corner) -  I would travel and eat and I would travel often and eat well. I worked hard enough, I drank and ate away my money all the time. I have zero savings, not because I don't try but because of the meager salary i get! So to make things simpler, my resolution is to visit one place a month. They're budget trips, but trips all the same. I sample new cuisines and meet new people. And though their weekend trips, i'm eternally thankful that India is such a large, varied country. I come into office Monday morning bone tired but inwardly happy. It makes life so worth living! I'm so absolutely thrilled that 5 months into the year i've stuck to it! Maybe you only stick to the resolutions you want to stick to after all!

My detailed travelogue is on http://footloosefancyfree-subhashreedas.blogspot.in/search/label/travel. Check it out!

That's not to say I watch travel channels with zest now. I do watch them sometimes, but they still depress me! Maybe someday when I've seen all the places on my Pinterest page (http://pinterest.com/subhashreed/places/) i'll be at peace and they will become my favourite channels and magazines again! I alreadt have a list of places to go in a 500 km radius of New Delhi http://www.journeymart.com/city-getaways/holidays-near-delhi.aspx. Trips for the year are all lined up with the exception of June, July & August! The heat makes it difficult to venture out! Suggestions are welcome!

Till then I travel vicariously through friends and family and a little on my own. And that will have to suffice.

Sleeperstown

Chapter 1

Detective Nevinski was a small man with a rather large nose. Mrs. Hilton often commented to the ladies of her kittie party that there was no job better suited for the man, than a detective, because he liked to poke his nose in other people's business. And she was absolutely right. Detective Nevinski's nose would poke its way into everybody's conversations long before they realised the rest of him was also eavesdropping.


Unlucky for him, Sleeperstown was a rather dull little place for such a keen detective.


Everyone knew everyone and had lived there for generations. By nature and nuture, the people of Sleeperstown never had felt the urge or ambition to venture to the city in search of fame or fortune. They knew of only one girl who had run away with a passing muscician to become an actress. She'd changed her name and even appeared on television. In a year or two though they had found her dead on a drug overdose. That seemed to keep everyone more inclined to stay in Sleeperstown and live out their quiet little lives. They went about their chores and parties and work as they had for decades.


Until, a young, fairly rich couple from the city took Sleepstone Manor for the summer. Marissa and Rick Applecombe had not been married long but young love had already given way to mistrust and neglect. Their friends and a shrink or two had suggested they go away to a place where they were unknown to rekindle their now lost love. Neither was too happy with the suggestion because both still had one thing in common - they're love for entertaining and being entertained. Needless to mention the obvious, Sleeperstown had no social calendar to speak of. They consented in the end to run away from concerned, often inquisitive friends and family. They consented to keep everyone's mouth shut.

Sleepstone Manor had been shut a very, very long time. Only the elderly and senile could remember the previous inhabitants and they had very dark tales to tell.

Life Lessons

I learn my lessons slowly and I don't learn them very well but what I do know is this -


Though some mistakes you are bound to repeat, there are others you are forced to commit, forced to pay the price for. When the time comes to give a pound of flesh, the best of us know that it is seldom easy, always painful and eternally scarring. But pay the price we must and ironically commit the mistake nonetheless.


I have often thought, that though my very existence maybe a mistake and with every fluttering heartbeat that mistake intensifies, I was aware of where this was taking me and how far I was willing to go. But I have walked  this path and walked through it again. Weary as I am, I know i'm too scared to try another.

Flight to my fancy

Where land meets sky, halfway distanced, neither making more of the effort. Molten lava, amber and fiery gold, spills over the horizon. The earth one giant volcano.

Grey, white and black clouds tower above like faery mist, as crescent moon and solitary star look down upon them from deep blue upturned oceans onto land as black as coal.

I sit at my vantage point, halfway distanced. Suspended between earth and sky, transfixed by Nature’s effortless beauty.

I sit in a man-made bird that gives flight to my fancy.