The Trickster

by Vinaya Bhagat

  ‘I am sorry about the other day,’ Raghav said as they made their way around the mountain.

  ‘There have been some unexplained thefts on the estate and I just wanted to be careful. In any case, it was rude and uncivilized of me.’

  ‘No worries,’ Diya said.

  ‘If only I had known. I am embarrassed by my behaviour. After all, other than my father, you are my closest family. My mother passed away when I was young and I don’t have any siblings.’

  Raghav’s frank confession surprised Diya. Maybe he was more than just a privileged brat.

  ‘I know how difficult it is to lose a parent. I am sorry you lost both your parents. Every day I live in dread that something might happen to my father,’ Raghav said.

  Diya nodded, pushing back a rising lump in her throat.

  ‘But why am I talking about such morbid things? As my father says, today is about joy and celebration. I cannot tell you how happy I am to meet you, Diya. I feel like God has finally heard my prayers for a sibling. Even though I am more than twice your age, I plan to treat you like a younger sister, so you’d better get used to my teasing.’

  ‘I am happy to meet you and your father, too. I only wish it was in happier circumstances.’

  ‘But that’s life – a cycle of joy and sorrow. Let’s be happy today so we can deal with the sorrow that befalls us tomorrow.’

  The words sounded bookish, but Diya couldn’t deny their wisdom.

  ‘Now, you can forget that I am capable of such silly sentimentality and go back to thinking of me as a shallow, self-centred brat.’

  As if to reinforce his words, Raghav increased the volume on the car stereo, the blaring music drowned out the possibility of any further conversation between them. The car careened down the serpentine mountain road at breakneck speed.

  Diya braced herself against the dashboard at the sudden change in gears.

  In less than ten minutes, they screeched to a halt in front of the huge gates. An archway spanned the flower-festooned gates topped with a huge board that said: Welcome Home Diya.

  Diya took a deep breath and braced herself for the day.

  FLAMES AND SACRIFICES

  D

  iya had expected at most a dozen guests, but over hundred people were in attendance.

  ‘I thought your father said it would be a small party, with just family members.’

  ‘Nothing my father ever does is small,’ Raghav laughed.

  Raghav escorted her to the house where a group of women, decked in silk saris and jewellery, were waiting. A woman in a yellow sari came forward, carrying a gold plate with a lamp and flowers on it, dotting Diya’s forehead with kumkum.

  ‘Dear ladies, meet my granddaughter, Diya. You all know how dear her mother was to me and I vow to make sure that she never feels her absence.’

  Gowrish took Diya by the hand and introduced her to the women. The only name Diya could remember was Mangala, who was Gowrish’s half-sister. The rest of the names and faces were lost in the tangle of complicated relationships.

  After they exchanged pleasantries, an awkward silence fell on the group. Diya was painfully aware of the questions they were eager to ask but were either too polite or kept in check by Gowrish’s presence.

  Diya felt uncomfortable under their curious glances. One of the women even gave her an unflinching head-to-toe stare and fixed her beady eyes on her face.

  ‘Your mother and I studied together,’ the woman who had subjected her to the scrutiny said. ‘She was, in fact, my best friend.’

  ‘I am glad to meet everyone who knew my mother, I hardly know anything about her early life.’

  ‘Meera was very dear to me. I hear she was a professor in America?’

  ‘Yes, she taught Chemistry.’

  ‘Chemistry? But …’

  ‘Pardon us ladies,’ Raghav said in his usual breezy manner. ‘The priests have arrived.’

  Diya followed him to a covered pandal in the garden where a group of priests clad in white sat on the ground in a circle.

  ‘You may not believe in these rituals, Diya, but your existence is a miracle and I just want to make sure no evil befalls you. Bear with the whims and fancies of a foolish old man.’

  Gowrish was once again teary-eyed.

  ‘Sure, Gowrish,’ she smiled.

  One of the priests put another large dot of vermillion kumkum on her forehead and asked her to sit down near him.

  Wood crackled and flames leapt upwards accompanied by a crescendo of chants. The ghee-fed flames gained strength and burnt steadily. The priest thrust a large silver plate in Diya’s hands. It was heavy with offerings for the flames.

  Diya flinched at the sight of the merrily crackling flames whose stronger, more muscled avatars still stalked her nightmares. She wanted to run away from the suffocating, scorching heat of the havan, but knew it would be impolite.

  Heat dampened Diya’s forehead and rivulets of sweat ran down her nose. She itched to wipe off the kumkum.

  While she sat there, Gowrish made the rounds of the crowd, stopping by her frequently to smile reassuringly before disappearing again.

  The priest sitting next to Diya picked up a bundle of dry twigs tied with a yellow string and flung it into the fire. The greedy flames licked and devoured the sticks mid-air. Despite the heat, Diya shivered.

  It was only a small fire, contained in a pot, dependent on them for survival, but Diya could not control the tremor of fear running up her body.

  The priest steadied Diya’s plate; the touch of his hand was cold and clammy on her skin. When Diya looked up, he smiled at her; his lips parted in a grimace to reveal an uneven row of reddish-brown stained teeth. His eyes were hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses that only reflected the leaping flames. To Diya, he looked like a grinning monster with fiery eyes.

  She looked away and focussed her mind on the chants instead, trying to understand them.

  There was something about destruction and renewal, but the words came too fast for her to understand more than a phrase here or there.

  Once again, the priest reached over to the plate for yet another totem to toss into the fire.

  It was a flat two-dimensional wooden figure with an evil grinning black mouth in a red face. Two black horns jutted upwards from the face while its red shoes pointed backwards.

  The priest dangled the figure over the fire, holding it with a string tied between its horns. The figure pirouetted in a macabre dance with the crackling flames.

  The priest was once again staring at her from behind the barricade of flames reflected in his glasses.

  He twirled the doll and dropped the Chakwa into the flames.

  Was this just coincidence or was there a special significance to the sacrifice?

  Diya chided herself for being afraid of a mythical monster. Hadn’t the nightmarish chase through the mountain proven that there was more evil in the human heart? It was foolish to attach importance to isolated events.

  She gripped the plate and sat up straight.

  Diya was glad when the rituals were finally over. Her legs shook from sitting cross-legged on the ground.

  Just as she stood up, as if on cue, a crowd of strangers gathered around her. She began to feel dizzy from hunger, heat, and the constant parade of new faces. She’d never be able to remember all the faces or names if she met them again.

  Finally, Diya spotted Sunny and Ronnie.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ she asked.

  ‘Grandma is not well, so Ruth had to stay back. Your uncle was showing Rini the house,’ Sunny said.

  Diya was dying to talk to Ronnie but Gowrish took her away to seek the priests’ blessings.

  ‘You must touch their feet and ask for their blessings,’ Gowrish said.

  Diya felt awkward, but complied. The bespectacled priest was missing from the group. Was he afraid to show his feet? The thought came unbidden in her mind and Diya balled up her fist, irritated with herself.

  Hadn’t Shyam said that the
Chakwa plaque was there to keep evil away? Maybe burning served the same purpose. It must be a routine symbolic ritual to burn or in some other way destroy the Chakwa doll during a puja.

  Her father must have heard about the Chakwa from her mother, and stitched together a fable when he could not bring himself to tell her the truth about his parents.

  ‘Diya!’

  Rini bounded across the grass. ‘Where are Uncle Sunny and Ronnie?’ Diya asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen them. Listen, I want to show you something.’ Rini lowered her voice. ‘Look over there, do you see those steps?’ Rini pointed to a set of steps next to the giant cactus.

  ‘Yes, but what is so interesting …’ Diya began to ask, but her words stopped flowing at the sight of a severed head with blood around the neck suspended mid-air.

  Diya’s breath froze at the gory sight.

  The head moved and the bespectacled priest came in sight. He had exchanged his white shirt for a red t-shirt. She had mistaken the turtleneck collar of his shirt for blood.

  The priest came down the steps and started walking away from them. Diya looked down at his feet, but he was wearing red leather shoes and the ground was too dry to leave any footprints.

  He seemed to know that she was looking at him, because he turned back and stared at her for a moment before vanishing around a corner.

  Diya scanned the crowd, now desperate to talk to Ronnie, but Rini was tugging at her arm. ‘Sorry, what were you saying?’

  ‘Your uncle, Raghav, showed me around the estate just now. And guess what you will see if you go down those steps?’ Rini said with a huge smile.

  ‘What?’ Diya was still stunned.

  ‘That’s what I was showing you. Down those steps and to the right are two tennis courts, one grass and one hard. Raghav has invited me to come and practise whenever I want. He is going to introduce me to a coach he knows who will guide me for free!’ Rini said in a breathless flood of words.

  ‘That’s very nice of him.’

  ‘He says I have real talent and I can turn professional if I have the right coach! Isn’t that exciting?’

  ‘Yes, Rini,’ Diya smiled.

  ‘Bye, I am going to play a game on the hard court!’ Rini said.

  Rini looked so happy. Diya hoped Raghav was serious about the coach.

  She spotted Ronnie under a tree.

  ‘Where were you?’ she asked.

  ‘Lunch.’

  ‘Did you bring the car?’

  ‘Why?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘I want to come home,’ she said.

  ‘Tired of the rich relatives already? I thought you were planning to enjoy their hospitality forever,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I did not ask them to invite me, but they did. It’s not my fault that my mother came from a rich family.’

  ‘No, but it was your choice to contact them.’

  ‘I was looking for my grandparents or my mother’s siblings. You know this very well, Ronnie.’

  ‘Diya, listen, I think your mother had a good reason to stay away from all this.’ Ronnie pointed at the coffee-covered mountains and the big house. ‘There must be a reason she gave up all this voluntarily.’

  ‘Yes, that reason was my father. They were in love; in case you have forgotten. And anyway, she was planning to come to India to meet her family.’

  ‘Is this the same family she had not been in touch with for two decades? Did she tell you anything about them?’

  Diya felt irritated that instead of being supportive, Ronnie had chosen to attack her decision.

  ‘I don’t know, and that’s why I am here to find out more about my mother,’ Diya said.

  ‘And their being rich has nothing to do with it?’ Ronnie grimaced.

  ‘It sounds like you preferred me as a poor orphan who had no one in this world.’

  ‘You think I am jealous?’ Ronnie demanded.

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘But you thought it.’

  Diya stayed silent, tears stinging her eyes. What could she say to this accusation?

  ‘Gowrish was saying that you have agreed to stay here, and maybe even marry some friend of his son, that idiot who accused us of being thieves.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Diya asked. ‘What makes you think …’

  ‘Here you are, my dear,’ Gowrish’s booming voice interrupted her. ‘I was searching for you everywhere. I want you to meet my best friend Vignesh …’

  Ronnie left without a backward glance.

  ‘People are leaving now,’ Gowrish said. ‘I want to make sure everyone gets to meet you.’ He pulled her once again into a crowd of new faces. Later, Sunny and Rini came and said goodbye, but Ronnie was absent. She had not accused him of envy, but maybe he was jealous, which is why he thought that she would ditch him for a rich boy.

  Clouds of misery finally settled on Diya. She was tired of talking to strangers who were only interested in gawking at her.

  ‘I want to go home before it gets dark,’ Diya finally told Gowrish. She had no idea how she would get there, but she needed to meet Ronnie and nip this stupidity in the bud.

  ‘Go where?’ Gowrish looked puzzled.

  ‘To my uncle’s home,’ she replied.

  ‘But you just came. You can’t leave so soon!’ He looked shocked. ‘We have not spoken more than two sentences today. I want to talk to you about so many things.’

  Diya could sense his disappointment and felt guilty. After all, she had come here to learn more about her mother. But could she afford to wait to talk to Ronnie? Maybe it would also give him a chance to calm down and come to his senses.

  ‘Ok,’ Diya agreed.

  THE GUEST

  T

  he number of guests diminished to a small party of family members who would be staying overnight. The only outsider was the professor who’d claimed to be her mother’s best friend. Now, the woman sat alone in a dark corner surrounded by empty chairs, like the last survivor of a council whose other members had deserted. She was so still that Diya wondered if she was asleep.

  As if answering Diya’s question, the professor stirred and beckoned her.

  Diya headed towards the woman, but Gowrish ambushed her to say goodbye to distant cousins who were leaving.

  Diya glanced back at the woman. Her sari was hitched above her ankles, and her muddy shoes were visible. How had they gotten so dirty? The ground was grassy and dry.

  In the fading twilight, the woman seemed to disappear into the background as the dark shades of her clothes blended with the dim hues of the marquee.

  When Gowrish accompanied the guests to the gate, Diya took the opportunity to approach the professor. The woman got up and retreated farther into the dark. She stopped at the edge of an opening in the marquee and beckoned her. Diya glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and followed her mother’s friend through the gap in the marquee.

  The professor was climbing down a flight of stairs. Diya followed her.

  The professor paused briefly when she reached the bottom of the stairs to glance back at Diya. Then she turned left and disappeared into the dense woods.

  A patch of muddy ground lay between the stairs and the trees behind which the woman had vanished.

  In the dusky evening light, the trees looked mysterious, full of dark creatures with darker intentions.

  Diya hesitated, hoping the woman would come out of the woods. They could talk here in the open. She waited for a few minutes but the woman did not return.

  There had been an urgency to the professor’s invitation, as if she was waiting to unload a vital secret. She had seemed like an intelligent woman: She would not have gone into the dark forest without a good reason.

  Diya stepped around the muddy patch and entered the woods.

  Faint light filtered through the leaves but instead of providing illumination, it made the lurking shadows darker and more m
enacing.

  She walked further into the woods but there was no sign of the professor. It was as if the woods had devoured her.

  Should she call out? She didn’t remember the woman’s name and was also afraid of giving away her own position.

  Something rustled in the undergrowth. Diya whirled around, but there was no one.

  So close. So close, within arm’s reach. He must have patience, must savour the kill.

  Fear clutched at Diya’s heart. It had been stupid of her to follow a strange woman into the dark woods for a secret rendezvous, away from the safety of the brightly-lit house.

  Diya felt her breath constrict in her chest. She wanted to run back, but something seemed to be keeping her rooted to the ground.

  ‘Diya!’

  Someone was calling her; the voice was faint, as if reaching out from the end of a dark tunnel.

  ‘Diya, where are you?’

  ‘Here!’ she called.

  A sharp beam of light pierced through the trees and Diya stumbled back towards its sanctuary. Just then, something wrapped around her ankle and she almost fell, but a hand reached out from behind the light and steadied her.

  ‘What in the world are you doing here in the dark?’ Raghav’s voice was concerned.

  Her heart was pumping like a piston.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Diya tried to speak but she couldn’t.

  ‘Why were you going alone into the forest at this time? You probably don’t know but there are some nasty creatures in the woods.’

  ‘You say you saw me alone?’

  ‘Yes,’ Raghav said. ‘Were you with someone?’ A sly smile curved his lips.

  ‘When did you see me? When I was just going into the woods?’

  ‘I saw you coming down the stairs, and I wondered why you were going into the woods.’

  ‘And you did not see anyone else?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, but the twilight can be tricky. Was there someone else in the woods with you? Maybe your boyfriend, Ronnie?’ he smiled.

  Even though he had just rescued her, Diya felt annoyed at Raghav.

  ‘Do you remember my mother’s friend who came for the party?’