‘What happened?’ Bolu asked as he walked towards her.
Then Bolu, Koona, Premu, Binu and Chhotu bathed by the well; Bhaira bathed by the hand pump. He kept a safe distance from Koona; she had told the others that Bhaira wanted her to ride the water bucket for a dip in the well. He wanted to put her in danger.
This episode gave Bolu a new idea. There was still half the vacation day left. What if they brought a pulley to the mouth of the hole in the mountain and climbed down, holding on to one end of the rope? ‘Let’s eat first,’ he said, ‘then let’s try using a pulley.’ He walked up to Bhaira and invited him to join in the scheme.
There was an unused pulley in Bolu’s house and no well. He had asked his mother about this a few days earlier. ‘We have a pulley,’ Bolu said, ‘but no well.’ She had answered that there were many wells that had no pulleys.
‘Why didn’t you give the pulley away to someone who could use it?’
‘How could I? It isn’t ours. It was here before we built our house.’
The pulley was a small size meant for a well with a small mouth. Could it have been designed for descent to the bottom of the mountain?
Breakfast consisted of garbanzos boiled in salt water, buttermilk, jaggery, a guava each, sweet puris, squash and plain rice. Everyone wrapped their jaggery in green leaves and packed it away for later. The friends ate quickly and ran to Bolu’s house. His mother was not at home. An iron bar and pulley rested against the side of the house. Bhaira hoisted the bar and pulley on his shoulder. Then the friends ran to the pygmy mountain, eager to get there before the grown-ups found out what the children were up to.
They placed the pulley over the mouth of the hole. It fit nicely. The bar lay securely across the hole, with the pulley attached to the center. Bolu walked up and down while the friends sat in the shade of a rock.
‘We’ll need a long rope,’ he said.
‘We have a rope for the well at home,’ Premu responded.
‘It’s a deep hole. The well rope will be short.’ He walked out of the shadows into the sun. ‘We’ll need a rope at least seven days long.’ He returned to where the friends were.
‘How do we measure length in days?’ Binu asked.
‘We start letting down the rope at dawn and keep letting down the rope till dusk. A rope that long is one day long,’ Bolu replied.
‘Does that mean you’ll stay out of school seven days?’ Chhotu asked in Guruji’s voice.
‘We’ll ask Guruji to excuse us, but first let’s find some rope. We still have half our vacation day left. Let’s get half-a-day’s length of rope. We can try the two rope makers in the village,’ Bolu said.
An old man sat outside a hut twisting twine. A heap of finished rope lay by his side.
‘We need a long rope, Father,’ Koona said, ‘seven days long.’
‘Since I was ten years old,’ the rope maker said, ‘I have been twisting this one piece of rope. I am ninety-nine now. The rope is eighty-nine years long. You can cut off a seven-day length if you want. But it may be easier for you to go to my brother. He makes a new rope each day. He might have a seven-day one lying around.’
‘Koona, we don’t need a seven-day rope, only a half-a-day rope. How will we transport a seven-day rope to the mountain?’ Bolu asked as they walked together.
‘My name isn’t Koona, it’s Sea. If we get shorter ropes, we’ll have many knots.’
‘Half a day is six hours. Let’s get two three-hour ropes. That’ll require only a single knot,’ Bolu said.
He began to sing:
How many instants to a one-minute string?
How many parts? How long each part?
Twine the instants of life together
Let down the bucket to quench the thirst
Unslaked thirst for the infinite.
Let down the bucket into the water,
Build the strength to haul it up.
They went to the younger brother. He, too, was busy twisting twine. Many coils of rope lay near where he sat. Bolu began talking as he approached, ‘Father, we need half-a-day’s length of rope.’
‘Son, a day from dawn to dusk is the length I make. Each coil is a day’s length. I have never worked only half a day. The ropes in the heap are one-day long. I never leave my work unfinished. You are welcome to a take a day-long coil if you like.’
‘We only need half-a-day’s length, Father. We only have half the vacation day left,’ Premu said.
‘I even have a rope that is two days and one night long. I don’t have just a night-long piece. The nights I can’t sleep I keep adding on to the day’s work all night. I add the next day’s work to the same rope. Tell me what you’d like.’
They couldn’t decide.
‘We’ll ask Guruji for an extra vacation day,’ Koona said, and turning to the younger rope maker she asked if they could have the two-days-and-one-night long rope.
The rope maker picked up a coil of rope and handed it to Koona.
Koona placed it on her shoulder.
‘This is such a small piece of rope,’ Bhaira remarked.
‘It’s not that small,’ Bolu said. ‘Maybe it’ll grow with time as we do. Meanwhile, the vacation day is passing. Let’s get back.’
It could be that the inside of the pygmy mountain was the inside of a dormant volcano. It was hard to tell what could have hollowed the mountain out. The elders who visited the mountain said nothing about it. They knew only that there wasn’t much mountain left to hollow out. If it was a volcano, it had spent its energy, and could be considered extinct.
What if it turned out, once the friends descended into the mountain’s core, that the volcano was still active?
There was a flourishing maulsari tree near the mouth of the hole. They wrapped one end of the rope around the maulsari, wishing the trunk had been less slender. The tree shook as they worked. Small orange berries dropped to the ground. The berries had hard crusts and thin layers of pulp. They tasted like unripe persimmons. The friends picked the fallen berries and stuffed them in their pockets for later.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Koona said while the others were securing the rope. ‘Can’t Bhaira hold the rope while Bolu and I start going down?’ she then asked.
‘We’ll all go down together,’ Bolu replied.
‘I want to go first,’ Koona insisted.
Chhotu imitated the snack-maker’s voice: ‘Then you’ll be the first to get stung by bees.’
‘I know the hive is empty,’ Koona said.
‘How do you know?’ Bolu said, climbing to the top of a rock. ‘Did you have a dream about the hive?’
‘I wish I knew how to dream. Nobody taught me how.’
‘We don’t know how to dream either. We just dream. If we knew the method we would teach you,’ Bolu said climbing down from the rock.
‘Time to descend!’ he announced.
‘I’ll go first,’ Koona said. ‘I want to hold this end of the rope. I will go down a day and a night and another day.’
The rope had been mounted on the pulley. Koona was the first to hold the rope. She was quiet as she descended. Bolu followed her. Their weight pulled on the rope. It began to let down fast even though the others tried to release it gradually.
‘Bhaira!’ the snack-maker called out. He had spotted Bhaira and the others as he looked up from the Bajrang Snack Shop. He had also got a good view of Bolu when Bolu climbed up on the rock.
Bhaira turned to see where the voice came from and loosened his grip on the rope. The pulley spun free.
‘Grab the rope, Bhaira!’ the others shouted.
Bhaira tightened his hold on the rope and stopped the pulley. The rope must have descended many hours.
‘We are hours behind Koona and Bolu now,’ the others said, except for Bhaira, who kept quiet.
‘The snack-maker will be on his way here. Father must be asking for me,’ Bhaira said.
Binu poked his head into the hole. ‘Koona!’ he called out.
She
replied from wherever she was: ‘My name is Sea.’
‘Are the two of you all right?’
‘Yes.’
She whispered to Bolu that he should not respond. ‘If you speak, you’ll wave your legs. We might hit against a rock.’
Koona was able to take advantage of her dream. She had no memory of the dream, but she remembered the experience.
Bolu wanted to say something. He couldn’t gesture easily; he was holding on to the rope. He gripped the rope tight with his right hand and signaled with the left. He mumbled, ‘Look!’ in Koona’s ear. A small plant with two leaves could be seen where Bolu pointed. If there was a plant, there must be water. The leaves of the plant were pale yellow.
It was Bolu’s mumbling that made the rope sway, but Koona thought the swaying came from two people weighing down a rope.
At the same time, they could feel cool air flowing up from below. Bolu mumbled again. ‘The mountain is breathing,’ he said, ‘and we are inside its belly.’
‘Is this really a mountain or a python in the shape of a mountain?’
They heard a rumbling sound. ‘The mountain is belching,’ Koona said.
‘We’ve been digested in the mountain’s belly,’ Bolu mumbled. ‘The mountain is belching satisfaction.’
‘We haven’t been digested yet. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to speak,’ Koona said.
The rumbling grew louder. ‘The dead volcano comes to life!’ Bolu said, more loudly than before. The rope swayed wide. They forgot that the swaying was from the movement of Bolu’s feet. ‘It could be an earthquake, Koona,’ Bolu said. ‘It sounds like an earthquake. Maybe there’ll be an eruption of lava and we will be carried out by lava.’
Koona didn’t react to being called Koona. ‘If the lava carries us out we will be cinder.’
They looked down to see if there were orange flames below. They needn’t have looked. The orange of the lava would spread through the darkness on its own. Rising waves of heat would cause blisters on their skin. The rope they held on to would ignite. Hot air would roast them before they fell into the lava. It was well-known that a customer coming close to the Bajrang oven would suffer thermal burns.
‘How are you down there? We’ve heard nothing from you.’ Was that Bhaira himself speaking or Chhotu using Bhaira’s voice?
‘Is that you, Bhaira?’ Koona asked.
The rumbling did not subside.
Bajrang Maharaj’s room was a scrapheap of darkness: there were old bits of darkness and there were very old bits of darkness. It was possible that a tunnel led from the cave-like room deep into the mountain.
‘Sea! Sea! Sea!’ Premu called down.
Koona was unable to hear him over the rumbling of the mountain.
The friends standing above could hear the rumbling as well.
Premu called out again: ‘Koona! Koona!’
Even though the rumbling continued, Koona was able to hear him.
‘What do you want?’ she said irritably.
‘We are afraid,’ Premu said.
‘We are afraid, too,’ Koona admitted. ‘I’m going to eat my piece of jaggery. I am hungry.’ She reached with her left hand for the jaggery in her frock pocket and began to nibble on it. ‘Eat some jaggery,’ she said to Bolu.
He mumbled to Koona, ‘Hold the rope tight. Don’t let your grip slacken.’
Koona became so occupied with gripping the rope that she loosened her hold on the jaggery. It slipped out of her hand. ‘My jaggery!’ she cried.
Everyone knew that a rock dropped from the mouth of the hole in the mountain fell at least seven days. People did not know what the maximum depth might be. Perhaps a great-grandfather knew. Some children jumped right over the hole. None of them, not even the children who couldn’t jump over the hole, fell in.
Each person could hear the sound of a rock they dropped into the hole. But if someone fell in, they would not be able to return to the mouth to hear themselves dropping down. They would be engrossed in their own falling and continue to fall. They would fall all the time they were alive. They would continue falling even after they had died. ‘What happened to them?’ someone might ask. ‘We don’t know. They’ve been falling for so long we don’t know whether they are alive or dead,’ someone else might reply.
What if somebody pushed another person into the hole? Would the person who pushed be able to hear the other person falling down? Let’s say Bhaira pushed Bolu into the hole. He might return to the hole seven days later to hear Bolu still falling, or might return much later, with the thought that a long time had elapsed and it might be interesting to hear Bolu’s fall. But half-way to the hole, Bhaira might change his mind and never return to the hole again.
There were many people who had dropped rocks into the hole and not returned to the hole for many days. The rocks hadn’t stopped dropping for that reason. In fact, the number of rocks that were dropping kept growing. It was possible that one day there would be a fair of people who were returning to hear the descent of their rocks. The fair would come to an end when all the rocks stopped falling. At present, only one or two people returned to listen on a given day. Upon their arrival, one or two rocks would separate from the rest and finish their descent.
The trouble with Bhaira was that he was taken to be deaf when he wasn’t so. He refused to hear. What would happen if he went to listen to Bolu dropping and refused to hear?
What if Bhaira was holding on to the rope by which Bolu climbed down the hole? What if the rope in question slipped from Bhaira’s hand? Technically, would Bhaira be considered to have dropped Bolu in the hole?
There were old people in the village who heard only a little of what was said.
They would hear only one of the seven days of falling. Would that spare the person being dropped from another six days of falling? In such a case, their bruises would be milder. There were some very old people who heard very little of what was said. They would hear only a soft sound, like the sound of a person placing one foot before the other as they stepped forward. The person they were listening to wouldn’t fall; he would merely step forward from the mouth of the hole to the bottom.
The others grew impatient after Bolu and Koona went into the hole. Chhotu was the next one to hold on to the rope and descend. He spoke in Bolu’s voice from within the hole, ‘We should all come down now.’ Binu and Premu followed Chhotu. Only Bhaira remained outside, trying to release the rope slowly while five people weighed it down. He didn’t succeed. The next thing he knew, the pulley was whirring fast and he, too, was riding the rope down the hole.
Some places inside the mountain were as wide as fields. Others tapered to narrow lanes. The friends were travelling through an entire city that was in the process of falling. The friends dropped fast, the city dropped slowly. The houses along the route of their fall went up; the friends went down. The rope shook unexpectedly, causing the little hands of the children to lose their hold. They travelled down the chute of a sideways lane. There was no other way to journey through the great unknown. They passed many open doors. Through one set of doors Koona saw a man sitting on a bed. Bolu saw the man lying down. Bhaira saw the man slumbering. Bhaira began to yawn.
The friends came across a vegetable market as they fell. The market may have accelerated in hopes of attracting new customers. Once it became clear these were not customers, the vegetable market resumed its slower descent while the friends sped down.
Bolu felt hungry. The friends were separated from one another. They would have held hands if they were closer. Probably they all felt hungry, but for now they were separated and on their own.
Would they have to stay hungry seven days if they fell for seven days? A house dropping slowly to the left of Bolu picked up speed to keep pace with him. A door opened. Two girls stood in the doorway, one older, one younger. The older girl reached out and pulled Bolu into the house.
‘Are you hungry?’ the younger girl asked him.
‘Yes,’ Bolu said, stepping inside.
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br /> He sat and ate while the younger girl talked non-stop about this and that.
‘Can you stay here?’ the older girl asked. ‘Why don’t you stay with us for seven days?’
Bolu noticed an open window across the hall. What looked like rain turned out to be a shower of stones. This was the usual view from the window. Sometimes the shower was strong, sometimes weak. Sometimes it was a mere sprinkle.
The older girl followed Bolu’s gaze. She put her hand out of the window and caught a red-coloured stone as it fell. She was careful to draw her hand back before other stones hit it. Bolu had finished eating.
The stone was round and shiny, smoothed down by years of falling. The older girl handed the stone to Bolu. He turned it this way and that. How could he find out if this was a stone he had tossed into the hole? If only the stone would tell him who had tossed it, where that person lived, and how he or she had felt about tossing the stone. The stone seemed to be slipping out of his hand. Was it anxious over being late? But the stone had not stopped its falling. It continued to fall, like the city that was falling, inhabited by people who were falling, whose ancestors had been falling, whose falling could no longer be heard because everything was falling together.
The older girl took the stone from Bolu and placed it near where it had been falling before. The stone rolled around and found its own place. The scene outside the window frame seemed to have been hung there like a picture. The empty space awaited the stone’s return. Once the stone was in place, the entire picture dropped below them.
What would the stone have done if the person who tossed it came to the hole while Bolu held the stone in his hand? How could the stone drop then? How could the ‘clink’ of its hitting the bottom be produced? Would the stone fly from Bolu’s hand and race to the bottom?
Bolu felt satisfied with his meal. ‘We have everything in our neighbourhood,’ the older girl said. ‘The school is not far from the house. You could enroll there.’
‘I should be leaving,’ Bolu said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ the younger girl said, but her older sister checked her.
Moonrise from the Green Grass Roof Page 9