Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories

by Janice Pariat

  Don disappeared beneath the stout, rounded frame of an Ambassador, Khraw continued tinkering with the engine. Banri wet a sponge and soaped the vehicle. Something in the air had changed, it hung clenched and heavy above them, tight as a fist. There was no teasing and chatter, the workshop was quiet. They worked without saying a word. Bah Heh strummed the guitar for a while and then put it away.

  Later that evening, Suleiman applied the finishing touches to his new kite after he returned from a quick shopping trip to the market. It had a bold red body with a neat collage of multicoloured paper in the middle and indigo blue seams pasted on the slim bamboo frame. He held it up by the string, and let it swing gently in front of him. Its shadow swayed across the floor. It seemed well balanced and strong, and would make a good fighter, he was sure. Maybe tomorrow, if the wind was right, he’d test it and find out. As he put the kite away, a shout from the street startled him. He was nervous today, more than usually on edge after he returned from the market. A group of Khasi youth had followed him, or so he thought. Or they could have been going somewhere the same way. It was hard to tell. He’d walked a convoluted route back home, and eventually lost them in the crowd. It wasn’t getting easier, he thought. How much longer could he… Suddenly, someone rapped softly on the door.

  ‘Ei, dorji…let me in.’

  Suleiman didn’t move.

  ‘Hurry, it’s cold out here.’

  He undid the latch, not opening the door very wide.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Let me in.’

  He stepped aside; Banri entered the room with a brown paper bag under his arm.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he repeated.

  ‘Well, I thought, you know, it’s been a good week…I won at thoh teem a few times. Even today, you were right. Well, you were half right. I won the first round. I thought we should celebrate.’ He drew out a bottle of rum.

  ‘No, no.’ Suleiman moved swiftly to the stove where a pot of rice bubbled gently. ‘I’m cooking dinner now.’ Banri pulled up a stool and sat next to him.

  ‘Come on, we must celebrate.’

  ‘I don’t feel like drinking.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘No, really…’

  ‘Just a little, no harm.’ Banri was brazenly cheerful. Suleiman detected the faint odour of alcohol on his breath; this wasn’t his first drink of the evening. His uninvited guest plucked two tumblers from the shelf and turned on the radio. It crackled to life with the local news:

  ‘…the shoot-out at Laban last week. There have been minor cases of unrest throughout the town, and encounters between the KSU and CRPF continue. Bah Lyngdoh, the Superintendent of Police, says security will be tight, especially with the KSU rally planned for tomorrow…’

  ‘Let’s find some music,’ said Banri. He fiddled with the tuner, but failed to coax out anything more tuneful than static and fragments of the news.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said the tailor. ‘You pour the drinks.’

  ‘That’s an old radio.’ Banri measured out generous amounts of dark rum.

  ‘It belonged to my father.’ He turned the tuner gently, and finally, it caught a station playing Hindi music. ‘He brought it with him when we came to Shillong in ’55.’

  ‘From where did you come?’

  ‘Lucknow…in Uttar Pradesh. You know where that is?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Near Bihar. Now drink.’ Banri slugged his alcohol like most other hardened drinkers in town. A few quick, neat gulps.

  Suleiman followed, albeit slower.

  ‘You came so long ago…why didn’t you go back?’

  ‘My father didn’t want to. He said our old hometown was filled with sad memories, and this was a fresh, new start.’ He took a sip. ‘My mother died when I was born.’

  ‘Ei, sorry to hear that.’

  Suleiman shrugged. ‘I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t even miss her.’

  ‘You’ve been around here longer than me.’ Banri poured himself a refill.

  ‘That might be true but it makes no difference; people still throw stones at my house.’ Suleiman gulped his drink. His eyes were slightly glazed. ‘They call me all sorts of names… bastard outsider.’

  ‘Don’t worry, they throw stones at me too, dorji.’

  ‘No, they don’t, you lie,’ he said with sudden vehemence. ‘Only at mine and others like me.’

  ‘What I meant was… Here, calm down. I’m sorry…’

  The candle spluttered and crackled, it was beginning to burn low. Banri handed the tailor a replenished tumbler. ‘Tell me about your father.’

  Suleiman stirred the rice; it was dry and almost done. ‘He was a radio operator with All India Radio; he worked for them most of his life.’

  ‘And now…?’

  ‘He passed away three years ago. In a way I’m thankful… before this trouble got bad.’

  Banri swirled his glass, watching the alcohol catch the candlelight. ‘I never knew my father. He died when I was three. Too much drinking.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be drinking so much then.’

  ‘What else to do in this god-awful town?’ He knocked back his drink. ‘Especially if you have no woman around. How come you live alone, dorji?’

  Suleiman thought of Christine, her plump arms, the dimple on her left cheek, and muttered something about not having found the right person.

  ‘Right person, wrong person…who knows until you try.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Suleiman, and then added that, anyway, he probably wouldn’t be in Shillong for much longer.

  ‘Even I want to get out, sometimes, you know, see a bit of other places.’ Banri hesitated. ‘Earlier today these KSU guys came to the workshop, to tell us about the rally, and he was talking about the future. You know, how they needed our support and it all depended on us…all the stuff I’ve heard before many times. Is the future built on these things?’

  Suleiman remained silent, an unlit beedi in his hand.

  ‘People keep asking me why I don’t join KSU…that it’s a cause for our tribe. They think…I see it in their eyes when they look at me…they think if I don’t then somehow I’m not a real Khasi, you know?’ He shrugged. ‘I mean I see their point and all—we don’t own any businesses here, or hold important government positions…but I don’t know,’—he struggled with his words—‘if this is the right way…fighting, beh dkhar…chasing outsiders out of Shillong.’ He pointed his glass at Suleiman. ‘Where will you go? Anyway, even if I join them who will look after my mother and my sisters? With my dad gone…we’re on our own, you know.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe I’ll go where you go, dorji.’

  The tailor struck a match and lit his beedi. ‘That’s the problem. I don’t really have anywhere to go. I was two when we came to Shillong. I thought it was the most beautiful place on earth.’

  ‘It is.’

  For a while they sat in silence and smoked. Then Suleiman took the rice off the stove. The coal glowed warm and bright, filling the room with a little more light, dispersing the meditative mood.

  ‘Ei, dorji, how do you do it? You know, calculate these numbers…’

  ‘I told you I see them in dreams.’

  ‘That makes no sense. If you decide to leave town, just make sure you teach me first.’

  The night settled around them in a shadowy haze; it was quiet now with few shouts in the street, and no patter of running feet. No stones pelted at Suleiman’s roof either. Perhaps for now the trouble had moved elsewhere. If anyone were taking a walk, they’d catch the smell of coal fires, and draw their shawls around them closer, for it was always cold in the hills. They’d pass darkened windows where candlelight bled around the edges, and the faces inside might be wary and fearful, not holding a glance, wondering why there was someone outside at this hour. In some rooms children may be listening to grandparents telling stories of a time that was simpler and kinder. From one house might come the sound of raucous, drunken laughter, drowning the music from an old radio. Ye
t this was not the occasion to be curious, it was safer to move on.

  Suleiman hung out the washing the next morning, and buried his face in a crisp white kurta. It lay wet, and cool and fresh against his face. His head throbbed, a restless demon trapped inside it, and razor-edge pain sliced across his forehead each time he moved. His face was still wrapped in the kurta when a voice called out behind him.

  ‘Ei, dorji.’

  Suleiman didn’t move.

  ‘Ei, dorji.’

  ‘What do you want now? You only went home a few hours ago.’

  ‘Yes, but, dorji…’

  If it was any consolation, Banri looked worse—his eyes bloodshot and dark-circled. But there was something more than ragged tiredness that weighed on his face.

  ‘I had a strange dream.’

  ‘You don’t remember any of your dreams.’

  ‘But this one, I do.’ His hands shook as he lit a cigarette.

  Suleiman moved to the shade of the guava tree and leaned against the trunk. The sunlight hurt his eyes. ‘What did you see?’

  Banri paced in front of him. ‘I was walking in a field, like a rice field I think, and ahead of me I see my grandfather. He died long ago; I barely remember him. But he was calling me, so I followed. And you were there too, dorji, on a cycle, I don’t know why. You cycled next to me. And suddenly I saw it wasn’t my grandfather but my father. So I followed him, into this forest, and you disappeared, and I think I was lost. Then in a clearing, I saw them all…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My granny, my grandfather, my father, my uncles and aunts, all dead and gone. Dorji,’ he clutched the tailor’s arm, ‘it was like they were waiting for me.’

  ‘My friend, it was just a dream. Sometimes, I see my…’

  ‘But isn’t it bad? They say it’s bad to see the dead.’

  ‘No, it’s lucky,’ said Suleiman softly. ‘Your loved ones come to visit you through your dreams.’

  Banri dragged on his cigarette. ‘I don’t know. It scared me. I woke up, and I couldn’t go back to sleep.’

  ‘If it makes you feel better, I can give you numbers.’

  Banri looked troubled. ‘I don’t know, dorji…maybe for this…’

  ‘The worst thing that’ll happen is you’ll lose…which you’re used to anyway.’

  The young man managed a small smile.

  ‘Do you want numbers?’

  ‘Alright, why not?’

  It was a cool, clear evening, the wind was just right—neither strong nor slack—and Suleiman’s kite barely lifted off the ground. He tried repeatedly, but it was difficult to keep the line steady whilst releasing the spool.

  He remembered something his father had once told him, that the kite held the soul of the person who flew it. ‘What does that mean, abba?’ he’d asked, and his father had replied, ‘What you feel flows through the string.’

  ‘Bah…’ said Suleiman in disgust as the line dropped yet again. If what his father said was true, it also didn’t help that his head, though better than in the morning, still throbbed with a dull, persistent ache. He sat down and silently cursed Banri, and himself. The air was hazy with the smoke of evening fires, and a light mist rolled down the hills in the distance. From his vantage point on the roof, he could see the town spread out before him, with its red tin-roofed buildings, dark pine treetops and tangles of wires and kite strings stitching the sky. On another afternoon, he would have headed to the gentle open spaces of the golf course, and walked along the edges of the forest until he felt soothed and better. Now, though, he was confined to this square piece of ground while kites prowled above him like birds of prey. He’d give it one last try, he thought. And this time, helped by a nifty breeze, the kite lifted. Soon, it was swooping through the air like a delighted bird. He laughed. Perhaps this is what his father had meant—that the kite mimicked his gladness. It flew higher, leaving the rest behind. Some of the smaller kites challenged him to a duel, but the battles didn’t last more than a few minutes. He was invincible. Finally, a large kite rose in the air and swirled around his.

  ‘Here’s the bastard,’ muttered Suleiman. At first he allowed his kite to be trailed, followed like prey; they swayed in the sky, their lines crossing but not breaking. He waited for the fighter to get impatient, make a mistake, move too soon. But he didn’t. He was as careful as Suleiman. Soon, in turn, his kite was the stalker, the string strained against his hands as he tried to steady the line. And then for a moment the kites were so still they seemed to have stopped moving, the clouds behind them ringed with the dying edges of sunlight. It continued for a while, this mid-air game, blown in the wind. Suleiman didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to keep it up. All at once, though, and, with some luck, he pulled and a line snapped, the other kite dropped, floating lower and lower until it disappeared into a cluster of treetops. Suleiman managed to hold the line steady long enough to bring the kite down. It lay in his hands, fluttering like a breathless bird. Around him, the town looked coy and peaceful, hiding behind long shadows, a few lights flickering on the hills.

  From the courtyard down below came the sound of running footsteps. It was Banri.

  ‘Dorji,’ he shouted into the tailor’s empty room.

  ‘I’m here.’

  Banri looked up, his face round and bright as a newly minted coin.

  ‘I won! Clean sweep! Both rounds.’

  Suleiman smiled.

  ‘What are you doing on the roof?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Let’s go drink. My treat…’

  ‘Allah! No, I told you, never again…’

  ‘Okay, we’ll go eat. There’s a good Muslim restaurant in Mawlong Haat.’

  ‘Near Iew Duh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But…’ He stopped himself from reminding Banri about the rally. Surely, by now it must be over. How long could it go on? And this evening, for some reason, he felt as though the town was his own.

  ‘Alright, let’s go.’

  He was ready, even in the smallest possible way, to reclaim it.

  That night, before going to bed, Suleiman once again climbed to the roof. Without his kite. It probably wasn’t safe to be there at that hour, so he’d only stay for the length of a beedi. The time it took from the first puff to the last. In the vast and infinite darkness, he could barely see the town that sprawled around him. Somewhere, within its sloping streets, he’d hear narrated on the radio tomorrow, a rally had been held that slid out of control, that pockets of violence had left many dead and wounded, outsiders and Khasis alike. He would once again consider moving away.

  Now, though, he was thinking of the evening. They’d walked to Iew Duh, and wandered its crowded alleyways lined by makeshift stalls that looked as though they’d been built and rebuilt by many hands through the years. They picked early winter oranges from a fruit seller’s basket, and coated them in salt and chilli. He bought a packet of freshly roasted peanuts, still warm and sandy to the touch. At Naz Hotel, they ordered mounds of steaming rice, buttery korma and heaps of kebabs sizzling in a bed of raw onions and lime. They even asked for dessert, bowlfuls of rich, creamy kheer speckled with almonds and raisins. He told Banri this was the best food he’d eaten in a long time. They’d walked back slowly, sluggish from a full stomach, emptying silvery packets of Pan Parag into their mouths.

  He was nearing the end of his beedi. A strong, brief wind rustled the leaves of the guava tree, somewhere echoed the empty clank of a loose tin sheet. Another day, he thought, another day is what the future is built on. He looked up. The sky, emptied of kites and wires, had unravelled and was full of stars.

  Laitlum

  Every other day, the world ended. Often within our house rather than on the streets of Shillong. Out there it was a riot between the Outsiders and the Locals. Yet what troubled my parents through the early ’90s, more than the antics of the KSU, the HNLC, the CRPF, and the government (both central and state), were the shenanigans of my elder sister, Grace. She w
as seventeen, and as unfathomable to them, and to me, as the stars.

  Looking back now, I’d say those were my generation’s glory days—of perpetually shut schools and closed colleges, of curfew-emptied roads where we played endless games of cricket, of blackout evenings filled with grandfather tales of bears and ghosts, and long afternoons in the sun dipping into bowls of soh khleh, pomelo and orange tossed with chilli and mustard oil. The grown-ups have remembrances of their own, of course—entire colonies burnt to the ground because their inhabitants happened to come from across the border, random shoot-outs in the night that killed so many weary innocent, the rush to buy food at six o’clock before shops ran out of bread and milk and eggs. Yet who cared, if you were young and life suddenly seemed like infinite summer.

  I was twelve, gawky, awkward, and dreaming of the day I’d perhaps turn out like Grace—effortlessly beautiful, so infinitely comfortable within her own skin, so shockingly bold. ‘I loathe you,’ was her standard response to any rules my parents enforced, which, to be fair, covered an alarmingly wide number of things—no late nights, no parties, no boys coming over, no alcohol, no going over to boys’ houses, no smoking, no torn jeans, no hanging around on the streets of Laitumkhrah, and so on.

  Grace casually flouted them all. Some at the same time.

  I suppose our parents were like any other in Shillong—aghast about how suddenly and irrevocably rebellious the youth were—but since they both worked as doctors at private clinics, they were more worried than most about what ‘other people would think’. The activity they hated most, for instance, was what I liked to term the ‘languid lounger’.

  ‘Standing on the roadside all day…as though you’re homeless,’ our mother would say, ‘and in those—’ she’d point to Grace’s ripped stonewashed jeans. ‘What will people think?’

  ‘They don’t care. They’re too busy chasing dkhars.’

  And then, as these scenes usually ended, she’d be sent to her room.

  Sometimes, for no fault of mine, they’d involve me. I’d usually be within earshot, pretending to read a book.