by Nag Mani
But the most interesting problem was that present in the house. Manoj never said it openly, but it seemed that he heard a woman singing there on various nights. Sometimes he had strange dreams. Aditi guessed it was one of the reasons he stayed in the bank so late – so that he could stay away from his house. He was a firm believer of gods and attributed his dreams to the one thing he didn’t do when he entered the village. There were the ruins of an ancient temple in the village. Though no one worshipped there, many villagers had told him that since he was a newcomer, he should go there at least once and bow in front of the Devi. He wished to, but never got the time. It was only a few days before he came to Purnia that something happened one night – he never told her exactly what – and he ran out of the house, screaming. He told Aditi that he came out to raise an alarm for he thought it was a dacoit and that Razzak offered him to spend the night at his place. She knew it wasn’t a dacoit, for the very next morning it was not the police but the Mukhiya himself who paid him a visit and escorted him to the temple and watched over as he bowed in front of the shrine.
Aditi felt guilty that her husband had to go through all this while she stayed back at home. Many a time she suspected that he was just making it all up. But the guilt lingered. So, little by little, Manoj obliged her to shift to Ufrail. Though, he never asked her to come.
She packed her clothes and her books. Tore off the study pan. The “Daily Routine” fell to the floor and the maid swept it away some day. She cut a few stems of her red roses and wrapped them in moist mud. The house was rented to another banker with a fat wife and an ugly son. Manoj came back a month later to take her. She sat silently on her way to the bus-stand. He slept all along in the bus to Araria. But she couldn’t sleep. She thought of her flowering garden. She had paid the maid to take care of it. Her plants were her best friends. She didn’t miss her neighbours. Just her garden, and her house.
It was going to be a tiring journey. She found a local magazine stuffed somewhere in Manoj’s bag. She was just skimming through its contents when one of the articles caught her attention. Growing up in a village, the story was not unfamiliar:
Once upon a time there lived a rich man who had no son. He consulted old books, practiced traditional techniques and bought exotic herbs from any nomad claiming to know the secret to conceiving a male, but his wife bore him none. It was only after his sixth daughter that he heard of an ancient temple in a remote village. It was said that the devi of the temple granted any wish if she was promised a sacrifice worthy enough.
He immediately left for the village. The temple was built on the roots of a very old and large peepal tree. The base of the trunk was coated with holy cow-dung. A pair of eyes were painted with vermilion and sandalwood, depicting the devi who had been residing in the tree for over a thousand years. After donating a ridiculously large amount of money to the priest, he knelt in front of the red eyes and promised the devi heads of eleven young goats if his wife gave birth to a son.
By the end of the year, he was blessed with a baby boy.
The family rejoiced the birth of the new born child. His sisters kissed him and fought with each other to hold him. His mother loved him the most and never let him out of her sight. His father threw parties to herald his birth. Everyone was absorbed in lavishly raising him. And the rich man forgot his promise.
A year passed. Friends, neighbours and relatives gathered to celebrate his first birthday. A candle was placed upon a big, delicious cake and the youngest daughter lit a match-stick. But the candle wouldn’t burn. Then tried her elder sisters. One after the other, they lit match-sticks, but each failed to light the candle. The rich man scolded them and tried himself. Still, it wouldn’t burn. The guests eyed him impatiently. He was about to call for another candle when he noticed his son – his eyes had turned red… red like the vermilion eyes on the peepal tree.
The baby was sick. His mother cried uncontrollably, but he remained silent in her lap. He did not cry, or move… or blink. He just stared at his father with his red eyes. The best of doctors were summoned, but the baby died before anyone could arrive. His eyes were still open. They were still staring at his father.
Within a week all his business activities came crashing down. Helpless and bereaved, he held his head one night and slumped to the floor. But before tears would form, his wife came running to him. His youngest daughter had fallen sick. He rushed to her room. She was staring at him with the same red eyes. He did not call for any doctor. He arranged for eleven young goats and left for the temple immediately.
The goats were washed and worshipped. Vermilion was smeared on their snouts and garlands were put around their necks. The youngest goat was chosen to be sacrificed first. Its legs were tied and head locked between two iron rods on a wooden post in front of the shrine. The priest began to strike the temple bell continuously. The red eyes watched. A swarthy man bowed to the goat and raised his sword…
…but it wouldn’t fall.
Something held it firmly!
The devi wouldn’t accept the sacrifice.
The swarthy man let go of the hilt, dropped to his knees and held his ears. Onlookers gasped and retreated, for the sword hovered in mid-air. The priest let out a scream. He knelt in front of the eyes and begged forgiveness. The blade fell clattering to the ground. The goats were released.
The rich man somehow knew what he had to do next. He sat in front of the peepal tree and cut his palm. He collected his blood in a bowl and poured it on the roots of the tree. He sat there for eleven days, offering a bowl of his blood daily. His family pleaded him to come home. But he stayed. His youngest daughter revived on the twelfth day. But he couldn’t see her. He died on his way home.
Aditi sighed and reclined on her seat. That was what happened when they dealt with powers beyond their control. From the many stories she had heard growing up, she knew that these powers didn’t interfere with anyone’s life unless given a reason to; but if someone did give them a reason, he had to live by the rules set by them.
The bus stopped at a crossroad in Araria. There were small shops that sold local water-bottles and home-made food. A few vendors sold fly infected jalebi on the roadside. Young boys ran under the windows of every bus that stopped with peda and burfi stacked neatly on plates held high above their heads. Aditi watched buses and auto-rickshaws halt at the crossroad to pick up passengers, then linger a little to pick up a few more and drive away, continuing either straight or turning left. None of them turned right.
Her bus stood at the right turn.
The road ahead was narrower than the main road, but in better condition. The bus passed through a small, busy market with grocers and cloth-shops and hardware stores. Then the settlement gave way to a vast expanse of greenery. The road was raised and lined with tress on either side. Men, women and children worked on fields. The sky was blue and mostly clear, with only one dense white cloud resting in the west. A few colourful houses passed now and then. Then there were huts and brick-kilns and toiling people. The air was hot and marginally humid. The conductor shouted something, probably the name of the stop about to come. Manoj was sleeping on her shoulder. The road was a mere clearing in the fields and greenery around, when all of a sudden it turned and stopped at another crossroad with another sprawl of huts and shops and faded signboards. A small waiting hall had been erected what seemed a long time ago for weary travellers. Only a dog now slept on the crumbling seats.
The conductor approached them. Though she was wide awake and eyeing him enquiringly, he chose to wake up Manoj. “Sir, here. Your stop. Forbesganj.”
They stepped down from the bus parked carelessly in a congested market and marched to the rear. The conductor pulled out two suitcases, five bags and five large cartons. An auto-rickshaw was hired and they set off again. She held onto a plastic handle hovering above her. Up and down went the auto-rickshaw, bouncing through busy markets and narrow lanes. The land opened out again and they made their way in between fields and farms.
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nbsp; They came out into a clearing and halted abruptly. A river cut across the land in front of them, its water brown and swift, confined to the deeper part of a wide bed. The road broke into patches of grass and weed and ran ahead over a red, rusted iron bridge that projected out almost till the middle of the river before twisting around and coming to an adventurous end. All that remained of the bridge on the other side were broken ends of four concrete pillars. The driver restarted the engine and rolled the vehicle to the right. A little way up the river another bridge had been built, but instead of concrete pillars and red coated iron, it was made of large bags of sand placed skilfully over hollow cylinders of concrete, held in place by sections of bamboo poles tied together. Up ahead near the middle of the river, Aditi noticed that there were no cylinders, instead the sand bags were piled on thick wooden planks. Heaps and heaps of mud had been placed over the bridge, and what once must have been a fairly smooth road, now seemed on the verge of caving in. On the other end of the bridge, a mud-path rose steeply at least twenty feet to meet a brick-road that led to the village. There was no rickshaw on the other side. The rest of the journey seemed to be on foot.
The driver began to take out their luggage. Aditi saw an old man sitting on an abandoned pillar, watching them curiously. Few children were playing by the river bank and a herd of cows and goats grazed in the shade of a dense bamboo thicket further up the river.
“Driver sahib,” the old man called out in a hoarse voice. The children stopped their pranks and looked up. “Madam will walk all the way to village? And you will sit in your useless tempo and watch her?”
“The bridge is dangerous to cross, baba!” the driver shouted back. “It’s all so heavy. Three people. Luggage.” He looked at Manoj, probably asking him to reason out with the old man. The fact that the deal was to drop them only till there didn’t seem a valid reason. “Vehicle will fall in the river!”
“Shame on you, driver sahib,” retorted the old man. “Our guest is walking all through the village. Carrying her bags. You should rather let your tempo sink to the bottom of the river!”
The driver was in a dilemma. He again looked at Manoj, who just stared across the river and settled his belt. A motorcycle appeared making its way down the muddy slope from the brick-path on the other side. It stopped before the bridge and the man in the pillion got down. And at that instant, the driver made up his mind: it was better to risk his life than let her, his guest, walk all the way to the village. He asked them to cross the bridge on foot, carrying as much luggage as they could. Aditi slung two bags over her shoulders and lifted a suitcase – and the old man shouted again, “Oye, you boy! Girl there! Stop meddling with the waters, you pigs and mules and useless creatures, and carry these bags to that side!”
The children didn’t waste a second. It was as if they had been called for a treat. Like in a competition, they raced towards Aditi and snatched every luggage she was carrying. The ones who reached a second later, got to unburden Manoj and the slowest ones lifted the boxes and ran across the bridge, carrying the luggage in a variety of comical positions. The rider of the motorcycle, who by now had come quite some way down the bridge, got down and let them pass. Aditi smiled at the old man, who folded his hands in return, and carefully made her way across the treacherous bridge. Manoj was behind her. Once the motorcycle had crossed, the auto-rickshaw driver started the engine, and muttering prayers to some deity, followed them. The old man watched them cross the bridge. Then, he returned to keeping an eye on his goats and cows.
Aditi bumped her head twice on the iron frame of the auto. The brick-road gently curved away from the river. The village began to unfold before her. The first house had a very big garden with wooden fencing through which grew wild cacti. She saw bright green leaves of onions sprouting in a line. Another plot with tiny green tomatoes hanging from their shrubs. Flowery leaves of cauliflower with the white vegetable just beginning to appear in the centre. The road smoothened out as they reached the main market. The bank was to her right. The building was old and unmaintained. A rusting signboard of “State Bank of India” was pinned above the ledge of a window. In front of the bank was a wide clearing, shadowed by the foliage of the trees that grew around; and in one corner was a wicker shade from which emanated a rapid puff-puff sound accompanied with black smoke. From that shade, came out a black wire that ended at a single bulb hanging on a bamboo pole. In the clearing, beside the road, was a gumti, a small cubicle built with wooden planks and placed on four poles. A man sat inside the cubicle with a wet red cloth spread over a bundle of paan, or beetle leaves, his face hidden behind colourful packets gutka and mouth-fresheners hanging from above. In front of the gumti, a small band of men sipped tea or chewed on paan or chatted around a wooden plank placed over two columns of bricks stained with crimson spit. They all stopped whatever they were doing to look inside the auto-rickshaw. Aditi held her head high and let their gazes judge her.
The market was centred on a crossroad. The road ahead degraded into a narrow mud path that ran between shops and huts and disappeared into the dense mango trees behind. The plantation became denser as it crawled to the right, away from the market, towards the river. On the left, it ran parallel to the road, obscured by the irregular outline of the market.
The driver turned left. As the market thinned out into lone shops and patches of grounds littered with whatever the absent hawker sold, Aditi had a clear view of the forest for the first time. The road was built on a higher ground. The ground fell six feet into a wasteland torn with bushes and shrubs, in which stuck articles indicating the presence of human establishment. The mango trees stood silently at a distance. The trunks were gnarled and matured and were quite far apart, but the foliage was thick. They spread and mingled with each other, letting no sunlight reach the ground.
The auto-rickshaw turned right, and after a few hundred metres, right again. Huts and houses sprouted from the ground in random fashion, various smell of cooking wafting out. Children ran out to the see the new visitor. Women peeked from windows. Cows mowed and buffaloes swished their tails. A white goat hopped onto the road and then swiftly ran back.
It was late afternoon, hot and humid, when Aditi stepped out of the rickshaw and looked at her new house. Its yellow walls were stained and greyed. A big patch of cement had fallen off above the main door. A skinny cream-coloured dog with big white patches was resting on the front veranda. He sat up the moment the auto-rickshaw stopped and watched the driver unload the luggage. She stayed outside as the men carried the luggage in. A cornfield was resting across a narrow mud path in front of her house. There were two windows – one opened into the veranda and the other overlooked the field. On her right, where the path branched off the main brick-road, was a three-storey building with brightly coloured doors and windows that had been unskilfully erected amidst cow-sheds, huts and tin-roofed houses. She turned back and saw the forest in the backdrop of her house. For no reason, its presence darkened her spirit. It seemed ever so close…
Someone was watching her… by the window of the bedroom! The one that faced the cornfield. It was slightly apart. Aditi saw a figure standing there, shrouded in secrecy by the darkness in the room. For a moment she thought it could be just anything… maybe a piece of cloth hanging by the window…
But then, it turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 4
THE NEIGHBOURS
“Excuse me, Miss!”
“Yes?”
“Miss?”
“Yes?”
“Miss, this boy is saying he wants to marry me!”
The class had started laughing as This-Boy looked at Miss in terror. Miss had slapped him and made him stand on his chair holding his ears. This memory had dwindled over the years, but was the only one Aditi had of her U.K.G. But what she remembered clearly was the letter This-Boy had written to her years later. She had secretly kept it with her all along. It was only after her marriage, when the page had yellowed and its folds begun to tear, that she tore it an
d gulped the pieces down with water.
“I have to leave,” This-Boy wrote in his beautiful writing. “It was not your fault. It’s just that… ours was not meant to be. But I will meet you… someday… when you have become a district magistrate… travelling with a flashing beacon on your car… a VIP… I might be married by then, maybe even a father! But I will come. Don’t forget me, my Sonjuhi!
P.S. – Take care of our rose.”
Aditi hadn’t cried after she had read the letter. Instead, she had emptied her anger on utensils while cooking dinner that night. And it was the sound of utensils being indignantly handled that woke her up. She didn’t remember when she had dozed off, but it was certainly after five in the morning. She watched her husband run around in a towel loosely wrapped around his waist, his tummy protruding, water dripping everywhere he went. As usual he was late, and even though it was her first day in the new house and she was tired from the journey, he expected her to be up before him and cook his breakfast and ready his things so that he could reach his office in time. But his dear missus was fast asleep and he even had to cook his own breakfast! She had neglected her sacred duty of feeding her husband.
May gods shower their wrath on such women!
The fragrance of incense-sticks and burnt rice wafted around the house. Aditi lay in bed for ten more minutes after her husband shouted that he was leaving and banged the door shut. Though he usually went to the bank on foot, today he kick-started his Rajdoot and drove off in a hurry. Then the restlessness began to grow. There was endless cleaning to be done. The corners of her room were infested with spiders and dead or dying insects trapped in their web. The white ceiling had turned grey with moisture and age and black spots of mould thrived here and there. The bed-sheet had turned dark and shiny where her husband slept – dark due to deposition of dirt from his body, shiny with all the slipping and wriggling. She wasn’t going to clean it, she had decided the moment she saw it. It couldn’t be cleaned. She would just throw it away. But the worst of her anxiety came from the need to check out the kitchen. The smell of burnt rice was tingling in her nostrils.