"Mama, will you tell me a bedtime story?" Filip asked his mother eagerly.

The glowing moon, behind the silhouette of the tree's shady canopy, surged from the Rickmansworth's Aquadrome through their double-glazed window. Their first-floor apartment was on the Church Street overlooking the town centre of that borough.

The single-bedroomed apartment had a generous-sized living room, a fitted kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom that fit a double-cot bed with built-in wardrobes, and an improvised balcony to hold Filip's single-cot bed.

There was also a recessed terrace area to the front, which would often draw Filip to witness a variety of sunsets through the seasons in years to come. His favourite would be springtime when the extensive blooms of ragged robins, meadow buttercups, cowslips and oxeye daisies would be visible to the naked eye from the Aquadrome.

Filip would try to capture the world reflected in the little dewdrop hanging by sheer will against all the stronger forces of nature with his first camera —did he succeed in his endeavour and took up photography as a means to live his life henceforth, only time would tell. This quaint little house and the surroundings were instrumental in many ways of shaping Filip through the future.

For now, Mari sat on a plastic chair, while her 11-year-old son lay on his bed. With curly black hair, almond-shaped eyes and a v-shaped chin, Mari thought Filip got the best out of them and was indeed a handsome child. She just hoped he would grow taller and tower over them given both she and Pedro were on the shorter side.

Pedro, an Indian-born second-generation Goa resident immigrated to Lisbon using his Portuguese citizenship along with his family. He established an Indian restaurant that specialized in Goan delicacies like Chamuças and the Vindaloo. However by then, this grand scheme was a tried and tested formula that many immigrants had found success in; hence, his newly established venture did not fly as well as he had imagined.

They somehow chugged down for a couple of years earning enough to travel to London, which was always the plan. For the Catholic family, migrating to London through the Portugal route and renting this apartment for a reasonable price was an achievement in itself.

After a brief struggle with their settlement and living, Pedro and Mari had a date night without their son for company. They only had the luxury for a film, and he had taken care that it was of Mari's choice, for she took more pressure while uprooting themselves from the Indian shores.

That night, Mari was dreamily distracted having seen John Cusack, in 'Serendipity', act in the kind of role that he was born to do —the sensitive guy with a bouncer's physique. He was there to make even married women like her fall in love again. She was a romantic at heart.

However, she understood when Filip clung to her like a grapevine, seeking her attention with a soft request for a bedtime story that he outgrew long ago. It was a small token to pay for leaving him in their neighbour's care for three hours and that wonderful film.

She took a deep breath and started with the evergreen Bible stories, only for Filip to whine and turn her down, "Not again mama. Please? I hear enough Bible stories in Sunday school. Not anymore. Something else."

"What about Panchatantra? You were so fond of those stories," she suggested dunked in the memories of little Filip with his much longer curls bobbing up and down as his eyes popped out at particularly interesting happenings in the animal fables.

"I'm not that kid anymore mama."

"Then I'm sure you don't need a bedtime story at all. You are always pouring over those crazy American comics —those superheroes with bulging muscles and wearing their underpants on the outside. What is that fellow's name? Superman? Why does he need to do that?"

"You know I have a theory about that."

"Really? Let's hear it then."

"I think the superman used his regular clothes when he started with all this save the world thing, but they were damaged every time. He was running out of clothes. Superman must've noticed his underpants never got destroyed because it was stuck to him very tightly.

"He got an idea and made his superman costume with some expandable material that stuck to his skin like his underpants. He started wearing his costume under his dress and briefs. Every time, he took off his dress to save the world, removing the underpants became very tough, and so he left it on because it never got destroyed."

By the time Filip finished, Mari was laughing aloud, "That's a very interesting theory to mildly put it. But why would he wear his costume under his underpants? " she followed up with tears in her eyes.

He deliberated for a while and his eyes widened, "You mean, why he isn't wearing underpants under his costume?"

"Don't be gross, Filip. But yeah, that's what I meant anyway unless he is wearing two, which I'm sure he isn't. I'm sounding equally gross now," she laughed out merrily making Filip double-up as well. They looked at each other and laughed out again thinking about their collective silliness.

Filip sobered up and reflected, "If you put it that way, then I'm not sure. I need to come up with something very solid then."

Mari recovered from her laughing fits after a few moments and watched her son. His initial clinginess diminished to some extent. Back in India, they lived in a joint family, and Filip was never alone. In Lisbon, it was just the three of them. They hardly went out or entertained any of their distant relatives there. It was not as though they were wanting of company. Many of their relatives had moved to Lisbon ages ago. However, they scraped and saved to buy one-way tickets to London.

"I believe it has to do with printing and design-related thing to bring out his beefed-up musculature. I understand when we draw on paper there is no real way to highlight the torso even if they add all those abs. A simple belt could have done the job, but it may not be visible when the figures are very tiny. Hmm... the briefs sure break away the uniform blue dress he wears, adds an element that pops out. I think with this design's success, the other heroes were drawn the same way. Was he the first superhero from America?"

"Nah, that's Phantom. Now I can clearly see what you are saying. Phantom wears just one purple dress, but superman has this red and blue suit. Mama, yours is a better theory than mine," he admitted, looking at his mother in a new light. He never knew she paid such keen attention to comics but anything to do with colours, colour palettes, designs and aesthetics came naturally to Mari that even she didn't realise. Their mediocre food joint in Lisbon did whatever business it did because of her ace presentation skills.

"Do you still want the bedtime story? Or shall we talk about your highly creative theories?"

"I still want one. It's been a long time."

Mari thought for a minute, couldn't recall any story, and decided to make up something of her own. Entirely unaware, she borrowed a generous chunk from the film she watched that evening.

"Once upon a time, there lived a simple farmer in a small village. He didn't have a great many ambitions except to marry and have a family of his own."

"Well, that's a pity. You always say you need goals in life to succeed," Filip interrupted.

"Yes, I do. But what's success? Achieving whatever you want. If this farmer wants to marry and lead a happy life then that's his goal. When he achieves it then he is a success too. By the end of the day, everyone aims for a happy and healthy life."

"Yeah mama, but his goals are so...how should I say it? Very tiny, small."

"So? How can you judge someone's life? Now stop complaining. Do you want the story or not? I'm off to bed then."

"Ok fine. Please don't go. I'll not stop you anymore."

"That's better. This farmer wakes up every day and goes about his job: cultivating his farms, selling his yield, taking care of the livestock, cooking, and other household chores too."

"Now I know why he doesn't have a great many ambitions. He has so much work to do," Filip mused.

Mari smiled and continued, "One fine night, he goes to sleep and dreams of something very strange. I guess all the dreams could be strange at many levels. This was a very unusual dream almost bordering on reality. In it, he is running to his fields and digging it only to find something."

"Ah! Finally, some action is taking place. Good, good. Hope it is a pot of gold for his sake."

"Filip, stop interrupting me, or I'll forget the flow of this story."

"Ok, I'm sorry, mama. What did he find?"

"He digs out a wooden box and curiously opens it. There is a neatly folded parchment with directions written on it in an unknown script, and a tiny conch pendant hung from a thread woven in what he suspects to be human hair. Now this man is very much intrigued, but doesn't make head or tail of the language written there."

"This is all happening in the dream isn't it?"

"Yes. He wakes up with a jolt from the dream, digs in the same spot, and finds a similar box. Instead of the directions and the pendant, he finds a picture of a woman and nothing more. He brings the picture back home. Over the next few days, he takes the picture around asking everyone if they know her. None of them knows.

"Then someone suggests talking to an ascetic who lives outside the village almost at the edge of the forest. With renewed hope, he visits the ascetic. He looks at the picture, and tells the farmer that he needs to journey to some far of place —southbound and at least a few hundred kilometres away. He also adds that the journey might change the farmer's life. The trip to the ascetic proves futile since the farmer comes back with nothing much to work on. He doesn't know what would such a journey lead to. He is a practical man after all.

"He comes back home, keeps the picture in the same wooden box, and leaves it on the window sill, trying to forget all about it. Every day after work, he looks at the box and wonders what it would be like to go on that journey, but he is not an adventurous sort.

"A few months pass in the same fashion. It is wintertime, the farmer leaves his arable land to fallow for the next three months, and that night he dreams of someone sitting on a rock at the shores of the mighty ocean. In his dream, he hears the soft sounds of the conch at a distance as if beckoning him to come there. He wakes up from the trance-like dream and decides to embark on the journey, now that he knows where to go. It is as though fate was calling out to him. Even if he doesn't discover the mystery woman from the picture, he would at least glimpse the scenic ocean. With that strong resolution, he sells his livestock and leases his farmland just in case he doesn't return by the sowing season. With the acquired money, he sets about at dawn.

"He travels for many days far and wide but in actuality, he only covers a couple of hundred kilometres —to a villager on foot that's a great deal, as if a few continents have passed on. Throughout his journey, he asks about the woman in the picture. Some say she's the ocean princess and some say she's a sorceress, and some claim to have never seen her before.

"Finally, he reaches the ocean enraptured by the vastness of it..." Mari trailed looking at her son deep in sleep. She stroked his hair, kissed his forehead, adjusted his blankets and left the room. She thought for some time about the ending of the story, but sighed and went to sleep. She prolonged the scenes with many elements just to narrate for the sake of it to get her son to sleep. If Filip had asked about the story, she could've turned it into episodes like Sindbad the sailor —while the farmer was in search for the mystery woman, he had an adventurous journey all the way.

Little did she know the incomplete fable that she made up stayed with Filip for a long time to come and set his path back to the shores of India for an adventure of his own similar to the farmer in the story.

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WC -2138