Week 5 , Storytelling, Ari and His Gators

Image: Arjuna and apsarahttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arjuna_and_river_Nymph.jpg

"Ari, it's about time you showed your ugly mug man! What the heavens were you up to? The pictures I got on the cell phone were pretty interesting though." Karl, Ari's brother heckled him. The two boys did not grow up together but they were cut from the same cloth and enjoyed many of the same interests. They had found each other at school and immediately bonded.

"What pictures?" Ari seemed confused by the comment. Honestly, he was a little confused as to what exactly he had been doing lately. Very vivid dreams of gorgeous women, or was it a dream?

"Seriously? I really thought you were sending them on purpose to show me how much fun you were having without me... five gorgeous...here. Look for yourself, it's just mean." Karl was smiling and enjoying the discomfort that Ari was feeling. It's a brother thing.

"Five....wait...oh man it was real. I thought I must have been dreaming. I  know how mid-term stress can really mess with dreams. Wow, I can see why you thought I sent these on purpose brother." Ari was stricken with awe and humor.

The pictures that had been sent to Karl's phone were proof that this elaborate memory was real. Would Karl believe the rest of what he remembered? Would he believe that those women were gators? By the toenails of Indra, no one would believe him. They would surely believe he had been hitting the lotus blossom a little to hard to be believed. Ari himself was not sure if he believed it.

Ari was so far from home. He and Karl, who was like a brother to him, were attending Florida State University and they were on their own. Their parents had sent them out into the world to get an education and find their way in life. The school was great, really great. Karl and Ari both excelled in academics and athletics. They lacked time to dedicate to romantic relationships, but they did not lack eyeballs nor hormones. Even though they lived in modern times, their parents still lived in the traditional ways of India and of arranged marriages. So chasing beautiful women was not something they really thought much about because it was out of their control.

Karl and Ari shared an apartment close to campus. Everything is within walking distance of campus, like the bars. That is what Ari and Karl were up to last night. They were at the rowdy and crowded sports bar grabbing portabella burgers and beers. Nothing seemed all that different than any other Friday night. They had split up for the night when Karl said he was headed to the library to pick up the latest issue of the Indian comic books they read and head home. Ari decided to walk home and on his way home he decided he would stop at the gym and go for a swim to work off his meal of carbohydrates.

 Olympic sized pool image; shalamche.com

Ari liked to swim at this time of night because it was usually deserted. He liked the alone time to relax his mind. This is not the scene that Ari found that night. As he stood by the olympic sized indoor pool, nostrils assaulted with fumes of chlorine, his attention was drawn to the movement in the pool. Five alligators were in the swimming pool. Floating, hovering with their cold blooded eyes peering out of the water. The movement Ari had seen were the eyes of the gators snap open and size him up.

Gah. Ari's blood ran cold. His respiration sped up, senses heightened in fight or flight when the timer went off and the lights dimmed and then kicked on some that had been off for power saving purposes. That didn't help to calm things down. When Ari's sight adjusted, the scene was somewhat different. His pulsed still raced, just not for the same reason.

Five beautiful Florida State Gator cheerleaders were in the pool. Scantily clad. Exceedingly delightful. They all turned their attention on Ari. They were like Sirens of ancient mariners lore that led their victims to their death. Their voices were melodic and inviting.

"Hey, the water is perfect for a dip. Come and join the fun. We won't bite too much!" the voices of the Gators chorused and taunted seductively.

Ari was at a loss for what happened after all that. Without the photos he had sent to Karl, Ari may not have believed it was real. Partly because it sounds a little bit like the story he grew up hearing from his parents. The epic hero Arjuna is supposedly one of their ancestors in the stories of the Mahabharata. Their family is descended from divinity. Arjuna had also had a go with five gator women in his time. Maybe those Gators also had ancestry of water nymphs! You never know, right!

Ari laughed out loud after having a few moments of reverie reviewing the photos on Karl's phone. He smiled and handed the phone to Karl. He paused to rest his hand on Karl's shoulder before heading to bed at 8 o'clock in the morning, the walk of shame.

"I have seen things I cannot un-see. I have done things I cannot un-do. Namaste Karl!" Ari said.

Author's Note and Bibliography: This story is very loosely based on the PDE Mahabharata, Arjuna and the Apsaras,Source; From The Indian Heroes by C. A. Kincaid (1921).

I chose to focus on retelling this story of Arjuna as a hero rescuing five beautiful nymphs who were cursed to be alligators until the fate of Arjuna would rescue them because it seems so different in nature than many of the other stories of Arjuna in this part of the Mahabharata. The whimsy of Arjuna not believing the warnings of the elders that the water could be dangerous and in his hubris rescued the cursed nymphs.

I wanted to retell the story in a more modern way, and with a twist of comedy. I thought it would be kinda fun to have Ari send photos of the five water nymphs having a good time since he was basically unable to resist their charms. That is something that I added because a modern person would think to send pictures of an unbelievable situation. I wanted Karl in my story to be sorta like the brother of Arjuna, Karna. I also wanted to kind of run a thread of reincarnation parallel with Ari being ancestral and reincarnated version of Arjuna. The Gator cheerleaders for Florida State University are a metaphor for the nymphs that were cursed in the original. They are where I drew a lot of my story from. The story nearly wrote itself from there. I am not a follower of any sport, nor do I favor their university, just as a disclaimer!

(word count 863) (author's note 261)