Devi

by Nag Mani

  Was it a coincidence? She wanted to tell herself no. She the Literate One. She who became Not-So-Literate when she did what the village didn’t approve of. But how could she not do it? Not cling on to the faintest ray of hope… the slightest chance of bringing order to the chaos her life was in? Not at least give it a try when they said that the Devi granted wishes, even if it meant paying a price…

  Arvind had not come to change the battery that morning, and she had beaten Bachcha that night, the night of Amavasya. But in the afternoon, she had been free. Bhagvati had gone to visit her sister. Manoj was in the bank. Aditi had told the three sisters not to come. And then she had gone to the temple. She had walked initially, carrying a packet of incense-sticks and a match-box in a wicker basket, until an auto-rickshaw filled with straw and hay in the back happened to cross her. She told the driver she wanted to go to the temple – the new Kali temple he had assumed and the new Kali temple was where he had dropped her. She went inside and prayed to the goddess. Having done that, she quietly made her way to the old temple.

  She had to admit she was nervous. She knew she was being a fool to believe that the Devi would actually grant her wish. Or the fact that she was actually going to ask for something. Dark clouds had covered the sun by the time she walked in through the arched gates. The temple was quiet. Still. No one had seen her yet, and she wanted to keep it that way. She stopped at the steps for a moment to look around, then to look inside the shrine.

  Nothing. Just darkness. She sat down, crossed her legs and folded her hands. Something seemed to have crept inside the empty shrine. She had an unsettling feeling about it, as if someone was watching her. She leaned forward to have a better look.

  No. Still nothing.

  Just as she closed her eyes, she caught a glimpse of a face hovering inside.

  She jerked her eyes open.

  Again, nothing.

  The rain came all of a sudden and disturbed the silence. She closed her eyes again and prayed. She wanted a child, that was what she said. She didn’t know what the price would be. She was uncertain. What could it be? Heads of five goats? Eleven? She could sacrifice eleven goats if the first child was a boy. She was sure Manoj couldn’t agree with her more. Or leave it. Twenty-one goats and free meals to twenty-one Brahmins for twenty-one days. She was still not sure. She hoped that the Devi would understand. That, being the first child, she was willing to pay a good price. That she was an amateur in these things and did not mean to offend the Devi by any means.

  She ignored the movements that began to grow around her, unaware of the featureless face that had reappeared in the shrine. Ignored the smell of blood. Then came the sensation of someone breathing over her shoulders. The coldness of the breath froze her heart. She tried to move, to open her eyes, but couldn’t. Something was pressing upon her.

  Then all of a sudden, the weight lifted. She jumped up. Her heart seemed to beat again, emanating warm blood with each pulse.

  Someone was on the other side of the shrine. She could feel it. Sense the heaviness it carried. She didn’t dare to go around. She wanted to run, run away, anywhere, but away from that cursed temple. But damn this rain! Her muscles tensed as she saw two men on the road, hurrying somewhere. Just as one of them turned to look, she slid towards a pillar. The man froze. Next moment he was screaming and running as if death was at his heels. His partner didn’t waste time looking back. He tried to run, but slipped and fell, and began to scream. He crawled on the wet mud for a few yards in his desperation to get away, before regaining his balance and making a dash behind his partner.

  Aditi spun around to see what had frightened them. Nothing. The temple was as silent and intimidating as it had always been. Then it struck her – it was her – she, a woman half hidden behind a pillar in the ruins of the infamous temple. She shook her head and waited on the steps for the rain to lighten, standing in full view for everyone to see. If anyone did see her, she didn’t want to appear as if she was hiding. And of course, she didn’t want the villagers to believe that the Devi had returned, in flesh and blood.

  The rain intensified. Her mind began to drift. She imagined her neck being locked in that wooden plank. What could have been the view from there? The shrine? With an idol blessing her, its hand raised. The cemented surface? Which would soon be covered with her blood. The crowd? How much pain would she feel? And what if the blade didn’t cut her neck in one blow? What if it had to be hacked again and again? Would she see, even if for a fraction of second, her own severed body hanging limply over the plank? See her blood flowing down the drain?

  She was still staring at the platform when the men walked in through the gates. Manish, the Mukhiya’s youngest son, was leading them, holding a black umbrella over his head. Two more men with umbrellas followed him and behind them, drenched to skin, were the two men she had seen earlier. Aditi stood up, pulling her aanchal tighter over her blouse. “Not the place of my choice to enjoy the weather, Ma’am!” Manish said as he approached her. The other men stayed back.

  “Certainly not my choice either! I was stuck in the rain.” She hoped against hope that he would not ask what she was doing there.

  “That did come unannounced, didn’t it? Those two there,” he pointed backwards, “they thought they had seen a ghost. One of them was almost dead by the time he reached us. Someone had seen you coming here. That was how my father knew it was you, and that was why he told me to personally come here and bring you home.”

  Aditi let her eyes linger on his face for a while, observing his sharp features and unruly hair. He wasn’t tall and bulky like his father. Rather short, but smart. “Thank you. But I just want to go home right now. My husband would be returning. As it is, I have wasted enough time here…”

  “Do come along. I will get you an auto back at my house. There is no point waiting here.”

  Aditi nodded. For an awkward moment they just looked at each other. What was the point of waiting all along when she had to get wet walking to his house? Then it hit him. He turned around. The men didn’t need to be told. One of them came forward and handed her his umbrella. The two men, who Aditi now assumed were farmers returning home, murmured apologies and mocked their own stupidity. They had almost reached the back-gate of the Mukhiya’s campus when Manish eventually asked, “By the way, what were you doing there? It’s not safe you know, going there alone. It’s a deserted place, you understand what I mean? We could have sent some women to accompany you.”

  “I just happened to visit the Kali temple,” Aditi replied immediately, “and then I thought why not come here as well. Pay my respect. One quick business, that was all. But then came along this rain…”

  Manish nodded his approval. The others exchanged looks, but remained quiet.

  Was it a coincidence that a life was taken after she had asked for a life?

  *

  Zeenat’s body was buried amid rains and tears. When the men had gone out carrying her body, Aditi opened the outhouse and shouted at the well. She only wanted a child, an innocent request by any standard, but never had she imagined the price to be the life of someone else. She didn’t know why she was shouting. She somehow felt guilty even though she knew she had nothing to do with the death. Or maybe…

  Her strength that seemed to have drained away never returned. Aditi sat in her room all day long, lethargic and feverish. Bhagvati knew something was wrong. She brought Aditi her meals and made her bed. She even massaged her feet with warm mustard oil with chunks of garlic. Aditi watched the events in her neighbour’s house unfold through the window. The Mukhiya visited on the second day of the burial, the day when the sky was covered with growling clouds and winds roared through the farms. That night, a rain came down as if venting out all the anger it had acquired through ages. Aditi lay awake in her bed, watching the stained ceiling, hoping it would hold. The following morning, she found the backyard inundated. Water had crept till the first step of the veranda. The first thought that came to her mind was how she was going to
relieve herself in that chaos. The toilet was built relatively higher, but not high enough. Its floor was submerged under water. So was the platform around the hand-pump. She cursed Manoj for bringing her to that damned village, and then for everything…

  The second thought was that of her plants. Her tiny peas and her little tomatoes. She needed to unclog the outlets as soon as possible. She lifted her sari, tied it around her knees and stepped into the water. The third thought hit her after a couple of strides. The chickens!

  Maybe it wasn’t the first thought because she could not see the coop when she came out. But now that she was in the backyard, emanating waves with each step, the coop revealed itself an inch or two under the undulating water. She saw something colourful and feathery floating just below the top mesh. Further away, a beak was stuck in the steel wires, probably trying to breathe the last of air as the water level rose. The water receded for a moment and she saw a puffed, closed eye. Then it was hidden again.

  All this for showing pity and not killing them the day Arvind brought them. What a waste! It was eventually Bhagvati who cleared the outlets, threw the dead chickens over the wall and brought tea for Aditi in her bed. “The cat can finally feast,” she said.

  “What is happening here?” asked Aditi as a fresh session of wailing erupted from the neighbouring house.

  Bhagvati lit a pair of incense-sticks and watched the flames dance on the tips. She had taken to muttering prayers with a diya lit in front of the gods ever since Zeenat had died. She would carry the diya to all the rooms, holding it in one hand and gently pushing the air around the flame with the other. She thought it would cleanse the house of evil. “What has happened has happened,” she replied in a hushed voice. “Let’s not talk about it...”

  Like talking about it could have irked the Devi again. But what had angered her in the first place? What had been that taunting that she had killed an innocent child? Was it indeed the price for the wish? Aditi waited for Bhagvati to return from her ritual of cleansing the house. Cleanse the house from what? The Devi who roamed the house humming a song? The Devi who killed innocent children when she was angry? The Devi who…

  It was he Zeenat had said, not she. He has come to take me. And it was a he Aditi had seen staring through the window.

  When Bhagvati came in, Manoj followed her into the room. He lowered his gaze and began to pull out something from a stack of files on the bed. He put on a grim, irritated appearance so that Aditi wouldn’t nag him about his transfer.

  “I saw this man that day. There was something unusual about him,” Aditi said, as if to herself, but she could not recollect the oddity.

  Manoj suddenly looked up, his face vivid with surprise. He might have said something had the pages not slipped from the open file in his hands. Instead, he quickly squatted on the floor to put them back in place. Bhagvati directed the heat of the diya towards Aditi before putting it back before the gods in the small niche. She didn’t say a word. There seemed nothing unusual about unusual men.

  “Didn’t Zeenat say he is coming to take me? He. A man.”

  This time Aditi had her attention. “What are you implying?”

  “Was it the Devi?”

  Bhagvati took her time to consider. “These things are beyond our understanding, my son. They call the forest haunted for a reason. There are spirits, evil spirits, ready to kill at the slightest provocation. And the Devi is their queen.”

  Aditi eyed her husband for his opinion. She knew that he would choose to remain quiet. And he almost did, ignoring her and leaving with the file. Then he turned at the door and said, “Don’t meddle with things. This is not our affair.”

  “Not our affair?” Aditi shouted back at him. “The poor girl just died the most horrific death. There is this bloody god-damned Devi who lurks in our house while you snore and fart! What do you know…”

  “I know things,” he cut her out. “I know many things. But I choose to ignore them. And that is how I spent one year here, without you, all alone.” His face hardened. He came closer. “There are these officers posted in the Seven Sisters, many in Arunachal Pradesh. Every now and then someone turns up at the bank and puts gun on their table. No, they don’t come to rob. They come to ask favours. They come to borrow the bank’s cars. They return it in a day or two. All washed and cleaned. They thank and shake hands and leave. Just like friends do when you help them with something. And do you know why they borrow these cars? They borrow it to kill or settle a score with someone who lives far away. I knew someone who refused. A week later, two men knocked at his door and shot him dead, in front of his to six-year-old son.”

  He paused to let her ponder. “I have been to places and I have seen things. Not just crimes… dark things. You think you know! You have been here less than two months and one woman to talk to and you know! The hundreds of men I deal with every day might not blabber as much as a woman, but the one thing I know for certain is not to meddle with local affairs, and no one will meddle with you. You do your work and you get out. That is the only thing you should know.” And then he left the room.

  The evening brought a fresh wave of rain. Aditi sat in the front veranda amid shreds of leaves the wind had deposited from farms. Zoya and Zeba were looking out from one of the windows on the first floor. Aditi waved her hands and called them. Of all the people, she pitied the two girls the most. Before their sister’s death they didn’t get along well. Zeba kept shouting at Zoya, hitting her, slapping her. Zoya took her revenge by complaining to their mother. When their mother failed to dispense justice, she would take matters into her own hands. This puerile revenge and re-revenge never ceased to stop, until…

  Now they stuck close to each other, as if the world around them was sinking and all they had but each other’s support to stay afloat. The adults were busy with their grieving and social customs, leaving the girls to mourn on their own. The two sisters hardly talked to each other, just stayed close together and watched whatever was happening around them.

  When Aditi saw the two girls hurrying down the path, she ran indoors to prepare snacks. She was sure Laila had instructed them not to visit her. She felt her face burn. What was it? Humiliation? She let the feeling pass. Bhagvati greeted the girls outside and ushered them into the bedroom. They sat on the bed, stiff and erect. Bhagvati lit a diya and a few incense-sticks and placed them in front of the gods. She closed her eyes and muttered some prayer. “These poor girls,” she said as she waved the diya in front of their faces. She made them hold their palms above the flame and rub the warmth on their faces. “What has befallen their family? What a sweet girl she was, your sister! But good people never last long here. This place is not meant for them.” She put the diya away and then circled the incense-sticks around their heads. “For they are soon called to heaven. And there is where Zeenat now is. With Allah. Looking down at us and smiling.”

  The girls didn’t stay for long.

  Aditi was in the backyard washing some utensils sometime near dusk when the screams began. The clouds were content with a slight drizzle. The ground was wet and slippery. And there, right in the centre was a wide hole Bachcha had dug while Aditi was attending the two girls. The mound of mud on its sides was slowly sinking into a compact mass.

  Aditi went to the front door and peeped out. A woman was wailing. Was it Laila? Aditi took uncertain steps towards their house. More men had come from far and near, some from the fields, still holding sickles, some from their naps, still tying their dhotis. The door opened. It was Salman. He was trembling. He held the door and, with a barely audible voice, managed to sputter, “Help us!”

  The men didn’t need explanation. They ran upstairs. Bhagvati too came running from the house. Then more women. The family members stood huddled outside a small room overcrowded with clothes. On a small bed in the middle of the room was Zeba, black streaks running across her pale face.

  “You,” Laila shouted at Aditi, “what are you doing here? One girl was not enough?”

  “Sh
ut up, woman!” Razzak growled at her.

  “She has no child! So she goes around eating others’!”

  “Shut up!”

  Zeba kicked, then banged her head on the bed. Laila paid no heed. “I will not shut up! First ask this Madam what she asked for in the temple! Ask her what price she agreed to pay!”

  “I did not agree…”

  By then Razzak had had enough. A slap resonated across the room. Though he was thin and frail as compared to his wife, the impact sent her sprawling against a wall. Women rushed in to help her. Leaving them to deal with it, Razzak looked around, daring anyone to utter another word.

  “Abba?” Zeba slowly raised her hand. Her nails were black. Razzak took them in his hands and sat beside her. “I don’t want to die! Please save me!”

  “Nothing will happen to you. No one can harm you. Allah is with us!”

  “But he is here…he has come to take me!”

  “Who?” There was anger in Razzak’s voice, as if he would tear that entity apart even if it was Allah himself.

  “He…” she pointed towards one of the corners, right across the room. In the dim light of a lamp, the corner was nothing but flickering shadows.

  Razzak turned back to tell her that there was no one there. So did the others. Laila let herself fall to the floor and began sobbing. Like the previous time, she had accepted the fate of her child. “Take her to the temple, please,” she pleaded, “only the Devi can save her!” No one contradicted her this time.

  Not even Aditi, for she was busy staring at the corner where the shadows were dancing.

  There was a general murmur in the room. Quick instructions were given. Words were exchanged. Women rose urgently to do their part, men exchanged more words, planning and arranging for the quickest way to the temple.

  All that was brought to an abrupt halt when Aditi said, “There is someone there!”