by Payal Doshi
“All right,” said Rea. Beggars can’t be choosers, she thought. Besides, she had to be home before dinnertime, which was soon anyway. “We’ll go through Sanobar. And… hey, thanks.”
“Oh stop. Friends don’t need to thank each other.”
That word again. Thrice now. The word felt hollow to Rea. Like a chocolate she had received in school during a classmate’s birthday. It was big and in the shape of a bunny and she was so excited to eat it, but when she took a bite, the inside was empty. There was no yummy, gooey filling, no nutty surprise, only a chocolate shell of a bunny. That’s what a friend was—a pretty word to say, but in reality, there was nothing there. Rea hoped by ignoring the word Leela would stop saying it, just like how Amma ignored her questions about Baba until finally she gave up asking.
“I’ve been seeing posters of Rohan all over Tombu,” said Leela.
“Me too,” said Rea. “It feels like we’re looking for a lost cat.”
“Don’t think like that. At this point, any and every effort is useful. I’m sure someone will find him.”
“That’s what Bajai says. You know, she and Amma have been having these conversations about Rohan; I can hear them whispering, but they stop talking every time I enter the room.”
“What are they saying about him?”
“Yesterday, Amma cried out something like, ‘She’s never going to send him back!’ At least that’s what it sounded like through the closed door. It could easily have been, ‘He’s never going to come back!’ But I can’t help but wonder if they know more than they’re telling me?”
Leela stopped. “Really?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged Rea. “I tried asking her about it and she looked at me like I was speaking Sanskrit. And then she and Bajai began arguing about it being too late. I mean today’s only the third day. That’s not too long, is it? Or do you think they’re right?”
“Oh gosh, don’t say such things.” Leela hurriedly made some hand gesture and pushed Rea to touch a tree.
A funny sensation spread within Rea. It was nice to talk to someone about what was happening in their house. And Leela didn’t seem to judge her; she just listened like her tea shrubs did, and was always there when she asked for help. Before she knew it, Rea began confiding in Leela about her nightmare. Rea schooched her bicycle along, recounting her dream, and Leela walked beside her, listening with wide eyes.
“Do you think it means anything?” asked Leela.
“I think so. It keeps looping in my mind. I can barely sleep. It sounds silly, but it’s the only thing which gives me hope.”
“Like there’s more to the story?”
Rea nodded. “Not that it matters, but Amma won’t even listen to me long enough to hear about the dream, let alone help me figure out what it means, and I don’t want Bajai worrying any more than she already is. I can tell she’s trying her best to keep it together for Amma and me, saying Rohan will be back and to keep faith. But, sometimes it’s like I’m invisible. I don’t think either of them has noticed I’ve barely slept these last two nights.”
“I know what you mean,” said Leela.
“How could you possibly know?” snapped Rea. “Your house is full of family. You always have someone to talk to.”
Leela affected a chuckle but not in a funny way. “It amuses me how people tend to think that. The truth is sometimes you can feel the loneliest in a room crowded with people.”
Rea stopped and faced Leela, wondering how that was possible. Leela paled a shade.
“Last month, I ran away for three days to see if anyone would notice. I hitchhiked all the way to Kolkata, and no one realized I was gone. There’s so many of us in the house, Amma and Baba had no idea. Rohan’s lucky to have you looking for him.”
Rea parted her lips to reply, but she was at a loss for words. She hadn’t noticed Leela’s absence either.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I thought having a big family would be nice.”
“When you’re one of nineteen siblings and cousins, not so much. Half the time, Amma forgets my name,” Leela laughed, but she seemed a little sad at the same time.
“Isn’t the forest dangerous?” Rea asked, riding down a kaccha road peppered with abandoned shanties.
“I don’t think so,” answered Leela. “But if you’re scared, we don’t have to go.”
“Of course I’m not scared. It’s just some trees.”
The truth was, Rea had stayed clear of Sanobar forest her whole life, and didn’t think that entering a wooded area in the early hours of the evening was the wisest idea. On the other hand, going back the route Amma had taken would’ve taken longer, and she couldn’t risk getting home late.
“We’ll be fine,” said Rea, adding a fake bravado to her voice. “There’s still some light out.”
Leela pushed down the pedals and sped ahead, her face tilted towards the wind. “This is the first time I’ve ever done this!”
“Wait, you haven’t been to the forest either?” Rea called out, but Leela had disappeared around the bend.
As they rode up the hilly terrain, squiggly plants on the side of the road grew into bursts of ferns, lichens, and capacious walnut trees. The air grew cooler, and the road became narrower and slippery with the mists of the woods. When they turned the corner, the gravelly path disappeared, and a wall of Himalayan pines towered before them. Rea skimmed the ground with her toes to reduce her speed. She felt dizzy just looking at the soaring tree trunks.
The air inside Sanobar was thick with the smell of wood rot and withered flowers. Branches creaked in the distance. Unseen wings fluttered above, and dried leaves cracked like a bed of eggshells. Rea and Leela got off their bicycles and walked with them. They treaded carefully, taking care to skip over gnarled roots popping out of the ground and noodles of trickling water.
“One of my uncles said if you walk through Sanobar in a straight line you come out at Pokhriabasti,” Leela said, bending under a low hanging branch.
Rea hoped the uncle was right. The evening light had turned everything into a mossy shade of green and from somewhere within the forest an owl hooted. Rea scanned the lattice of leaves.
“Shouldn’t it be s-sleeping?”
“It’s probably an early riser,” Leela said and they quickened their pace, pushing their bikes in as straight a line as possible. “By the way, how did you think of Mishti Daadi? I’d completely forgotten about her.”
Rea’s arms itched from the mosquitoes and she scratched her skin. “The evening before Rohan disappeared, Amma went to see her.”
Leela’s eyes went wide and Rea instantly regretted opening her mouth. “Forget I said anything.”
“No, no, I won’t tell anyone. It’s just that your Amma doesn’t seem like the type to visit a fortune teller.”
“Exactly, she isn’t. She was acting strange that day, stranger than usual, so I followed her and ended up at Mishti Daadi’s house.”
“How exciting!”
Rea shot her a look.
“I mean, not exciting. It is weird. Do you know why she met her?”
“No. That’s why, with Amma secretly meeting her, Rohan going missing, and the nightmare I keep having, I feel like I have to see her. Maybe she can tell me what’s going on or where Rohan is or help me make sense of all this.”
To Rea, it felt like pieces of a puzzle. None of the edges matched yet, but if she searched hard enough, she was sure she would find the missing pieces to see the complete picture. Such strange occurrences in her otherwise-boring life had to mean something, right?
“If there’s anyone who might have some answers, it’s her,” said Leela.
Rea lowered her gaze. “Amma blames me for what’s happened. I blame myself too, but with every passing day it’s clear she hates me for letting Rohan walk home alone after the game… so if I can fix things, maybe she’ll…” Rea’s voice trailed away. She wanted to say, ‘she’ll forgive me and love me again.’
“She just wants him
back and is taking it out on you. Parents do that sometimes.”
“I guess. But shouldn’t she worry about me, too? She didn’t even ask where I was going today or with whom.”
“Hey, do you have any money?”
“Huh? Oh, shoot.” Rea dug into her pockets and found a crumpled ten-rupee note. “Now what do I do? Mishti Daadi won’t even let me see her face for ten bucks.”
How stupid had she been to forget a means of payment. Leela stuffed her hand into her jeans and retrieved a fifty-rupee note.
“We’ll plead with Mishti Daadi to read your palms for sixty rupees and promise to bring more if we need to,” she said.
“Oh, thank you! I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
A pitter-patter sounded against the leaves on the trees and a second later, a light rain fell. Rea and Leela hurried forward. The trees had turned larger and denser and as Rea tried to edge past an obscenely thick tree, Leela gasped.
A waterfall of sky-high ropes dangled in front of her. On closer inspection, they were roots, not ropes.
“A banyan,” whispered Leela, taking in the enormous tree. “In one of my favorite fantasy novels, an ogre disguises himself as a banyan tree and uses the banyan’s roots as his dreadlocks!”
It was the first time Rea had seen a banyan. They were common in other parts of India, but she didn’t know they grew in Darjeeling.
“This is so cool.” Leela marveled at it as though she had come upon a dinosaur fossil. “Did you know the banyan is India’s most sacred tree?”
Rea shook her head. Scores of mud-colored roots hung from the branches and surrounded the mammoth trunk. Venturing ahead, she stroked the roots, feeling their coarse, leathery texture under her fingertips.
“My hand!” Rea screamed. A root from the clump she was holding had slithered out of her grip and was coiling around her wrist.
Leela spun around.
“What’s the matter?” She gaped at Rea, waiting for her to give an explanation.
Rea stared at her hand and at the roots hanging limply in it. Did I imagine that? She rubbed her wrist and a spot of blood oozed.
“We need to get out of here,” she said.
A flash of lightning hit the trees and the branches crackled.
“Now.”
Chapter 7
Baccara Vintera Verafara
Panting, Rea and Leela emerged from the forest and found themselves on the road to Pokhriabasti. The village wasn’t a large settlement and after a few quick turns, they arrived at Mishti Daadi’s house.
Rea looked over her shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t see Tara and her gang. Thankfully, they weren’t there. The kids she had played hopscotch with were playing football with a ball made of plastic bags and twine. They shrieked every time it flew towards the pots of periwinkles lined up in front of the houses, afraid of breaking them and getting yelled at by the owners. Rea remembered how she had burst into ecstatic shouts when Rohan’s team lost, and she looked away.
The lemon-and-chili talismans on Mishti Daadi’s walls swayed in the breeze and Rea knocked on the door. A string of ivy had crawled up the wall and over the moldy eyehole. Minutes passed. She listened for the sound of footsteps, but none came. Rea knocked again, and jumped as the door swung open.
Rea and Leela looked at each other, and stepped forward into the house.
“Hello?” Rea called. “Mishti Daadi?”
The house was dark. Silhouettes of unseen objects loomed large, battling for space in the murkiness. Leela tripped on something and stumbled slightly.
“Smell that?” Rea tapped her nose. It was an agarbatti, an incense stick burning with the sweet, woody scent of sandalwood.
THUD!
The door slammed shut behind them and Leela and Rea spun around in the darkness. They started to run toward the exit when dim lights flickered on. The girls stopped and looked around in surprise. A sofa upholstered in floral prints sat in the living room covered in a mound of cushions. Paintings of flowers and idyllic landscapes adorned the buttercream walls and amoeba-shaped water stains peeked from underneath them. To the side was a wooden table with four rattan chairs; one seat had a cushion missing.
“Welcome, dearies.”
Mishti Daadi waddled towards them in a pale-yellow saree and an immense red bindi. Wrinkled skin clung to her face and hung in folds along her neck. A chunky silver necklace rested on her mottled chest and her earlobes were stretched long with a pair of jhumkas, their silvery hues worn to black. Flashing a smile, she beckoned them to sit. Rea picked the chair without the cushion, but she hardly noticed.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Mishti Daadi said. “How may I be of assistance?”
“Can we please have s-some water?”
“Of course, Leela dearie. Make yourselves at home. Rea, would you like some bandages?” A knobby finger pointed at her.
“B-Bandages?” Rea rushed to cover the scratches on her arms from the mosquito bites in Sanobar. “N—no, I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Very well.”
“Oh god,” Leela said, the moment she was out of sight. “I feel like throwing up a little.”
“Why? I thought you knew her.”
“I know of her. And how does she know our names?”
Rea’s heart forgot to beat for a moment. Had Amma told her about them? Or had she known through her powers of foresight that they were coming to see her? Both possibilities freaked her out a little.
“I’m sure you dearies are hungry after your journey here.”
Mishti Daadi reappeared, carrying a tray with two glasses, a jug of water and a plate of jam biscuits. She set it on the table. Rea gave her shaky smile while Leela gulped down her water and grabbed three biscuits.
“So, dearies, what can an old lady do for you?” Her bleary eyes rolled onto Rea. They had the appearance of rotten grapes.
“I... um... was told you can read palms and reveal answers.”
“And you have some important questions?”
Rea nodded.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place! I do pride myself in being a bit of a thaumaturgist,” she grinned, the gaps in her teeth showing.
“A bit of a what?” asked Leela, a glop of jam hanging from the corner of her mouth.
Mishti Daadi ignored her. “But first, I must get my things,” she said and left the room again.
Rea and Leela looked at each other nervously. A loud clanging sounded, and Mishti Daadi returned, lugging a heavy sack. Leela jumped off her chair to help.
“Not to worry, dearie. I’ll manage.”
Mishti Daadi dug her hands into the toast-colored sack and delicately removed its contents. Holding each piece to eye level, she admired them as if recollecting a memory, and proceeded to arrange them until the table was covered with all kinds of thingamabobs. There were relics, dusty scrolls, bundles of sandalwood sticks, sprigs of tulsi leaves, knotted balls of raven-colored petals, broken pieces of bone, sparkling stones, a dozen decanters filled with potions, and several other objects Rea couldn’t make sense of.
“Er... Mishti Daadi? How much will this cost? I only have sixty rupees.”
Mishti Daadi’s face softened. “You don’t have to worry, dearie. If I answer your questions satisfactorily, you can give me whatever your heart desires. I want to help, not steal from the desperate and frightened as some might think.”
A blush creeped over Rea. She was guilty of thinking something very much like that about fortune tellers in the past.
“Silence now. We begin the augury.”
Mishti Daadi tapped her fingers on her forehead and placed Rea’s arms on the table. She lifted the lid of a crystal carafe and drizzled a sapphire-hued liquid over Rea’s palms.
“To expunge the murkiness,” she explained.
The liquid was thick on Rea’s skin and a chill entered every pore of her body. She felt like an empty receptacle, clean and open. Satisfied with the ‘cleansing,’ Mishti Daadi plucked two of the darkest petals from
the flower balls and laid them on Rea’s palms. They looked like scraps of a moonless night resting on a pillow of snow. Rea glanced at the cuckoo clock hanging opposite her. She had an hour before she needed to head home. Mishti Daadi closed her eyes and tossed her head backwards.
“Baccara sintera verafara.”
An incantation in a peculiar tongue poured from her lips and the air around Rea tightened. With her eyes still sealed, Mishti Daadi picked a pair of shiny stones and swapped their positions in time with her chanting. In the swiftness of her movements, the light reflecting off their surfaces sent dazzling sparkles across the room. Her invocation grew louder, and a force pressed down on Rea’s palms. The petals levitated. Rea watched with wide eyes. Leela’s jaw dropped.
White hair unraveled from Mishti Daadi’s bun and her bony hands with bulging spider veins shook with great intensity. Rea desperately fought the urge to scream, the burden on her palms unbearable. She yelled for Mishti Daadi to stop, but the old woman did not seem to hear. Mishti Daadi’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. The chairs, the table, and all its contents shuddered violently, reaching a deafening crescendo. The lights died and Leela screamed.
Rea moaned, her mind blanking out. “Mi—Mish—ti Daa—di pl... sto... p... p...”
The lights spluttered back on, starkly bright. Everything came to a spine-chilling standstill.
Rea’s face lolled to the side. The horrible pressure on her palms had disappeared. Mishti Daadi’s eyes were wide open as if pinned to her eyebrows. Her irises were deathly black and in their center was a white dot.
“Speak, dearie, of what you desire to seek,” she said in a honeyed but distant tone.
A calm washed over Rea. Mishti Daadi’s voice was silken and sweet. All Rea wanted was to close her eyes and sleep. She tried to focus on the shiny stones to stay awake, but everything—the walls, lights, furniture, paintings, Mishti Daadi and Leela—dissolved into oblivion.
Men tipped their feathery hats. Women blew kisses at her. Pink, yellow, green, blue, orange, purple! Peplums of petals in every color twirled around their waists. She laughed. Children played. The sun beamed yellow as yolk. Wherever she passed, flowers of every hue burst open from the tips of grass. They flapped their petals to say hello. It was paradise.