by Nillu Nasser
“You came,” she said, her voice wooden. “Do you love me?”
“I....”
“Are you here to leave me?”
“I don’t know,” said Akash. “Can you let me in?”
“You love her?”
“Yes.” He shrank from her gaze.
Jaya barely moved. You don’t love me. A scratching sound, and then a brief flare. “Then what else is there to say?”
Akash screamed as fire swept around the hem of her dress and the orange flowers caught alight.
Now you have an excuse not to touch me. She stood in the midst of it all, her face contorted as she burned. Her flesh began to melt and the tortuous flames ripped through her until there was nothing else, only agony.
What have I done?
She gave herself to the pain. Her skin peeled, curling, and the fire spread upwards. Shouting somewhere on the periphery of her consciousness sought to anchor her in the here and now, but she paid no heed.
The fire cleansed her.
Chapter 2
Her skirt turned a seething red and hung in threads around her calves. For a moment, she became a goddess, but Jaya’s story did not follow Hindu legend. Sita’s flames bloomed into lotuses; Jaya’s blazed.
She burned—for hours or perhaps a few seconds—in a hell of her own. The flesh of her legs singed as if she were a newly slaughtered lamb lain over hot charcoal. Every nerve ending protested against the onslaught. She writhed in pain, her world dissolving into one moment: this trial. Fiery teeth raked her skin, blistering her once smooth limbs, branding her with their mark. The smell of meat cooking down to the bone rushed into her nostrils and she convulsed. A warrior cry, anguished and other-worldly, erupted from her smoke-filled throat that bore no similarity to her own voice.
By the time her sister Ruhi dashed into the confines of the kitchen, Jaya had collapsed onto the floor, her lower body ablaze. She lay in a heap as Ruhi froze, horror painted on her face as she took in the angry fire licking up Jaya’s legs, her nose instinctively scrunched up against the pervading smell of oil and cooking flesh in the room. Too slow, Ruhi’s reaction.
A scream erupted from Ruhi. “Jaya! Jaya!”
Ruhi snapped into action, jerking a towel from the clothing rack, sending it scattering in her haste. She wrapped Jaya in it.
Jaya’s mind bled.
Her sister rolled her into the living room, away from the oil remnants and the oxygen flowing in through the slither of open window. Still the flames refused to be spent. The thin, frayed towel stuck to Jaya’s skin. The flames raged, like Jaya’s internal world, seeking vengeance where they touched, peeling back her skin like a deft chef skinning a vegetable.
Would Akash be sorry? Would this shame him how he deserved to be shamed?
Her sister shuddered and covered Jaya with her own body. Jaya moaned as they rolled together amongst the legs of furniture, in sight of the altar where they prayed together, one a burning rag-doll, the other sobbing with terror.
Ruhi cursed, smothering the flames, using her own hands to pat out the fire until it died.
The armour of Jaya’s sundress had almost entirely disappeared save for a panel around her singed torso. Her legs had taken the brunt of the fire. The skin bubbled and stuck fast to the towel. Soot clung to her. Beside her, the pale blue statue of Vishnu watched. His arms encircled the room. Jaya closed her eyes, the shallow inhale-exhale of her breath a roar in her mind. She sizzled, and finally, mercifully, slipped into unconsciousness.
Akash banged the window. “Jaya! Jaya! Somebody help me!”
He ran to the front door, pounded it with his fists, and tried in vain to shoulder it open. The door would not budge, and nobody came. Her screams followed him, and the stench of cooking flesh filled Akash’s nostrils until the horror became too much.
He ran, the images of his burning wife searing his brain. He ran past heaving market stalls and darting rickshaws, away from the Bombay that was familiar to him, until the phlegm built up in his throat. He ran—he ran until his lungs ached and his ribcage heaved, until he reached the cooling banks of the water, where he vomited.
He stopped to lean against a wall, shaking his head to free himself of the horrors lurking there. Then he sank down and cried. Shame hung around his neck like a medallion, heavy and cumbersome. Had Jaya really set herself alight? He squeezed his eyes shut. Perhaps if he took a deep breath and reopened them, the images would fade and he would realise it had been a nightmare.
Is this a dream, Jaya? Did my mind play tricks on me?
He opened his eyes as his stomach churned. Still, he could not escape the horrors of the present.
Did I really run away from you while you burned? What kind of man am I?
Her screams echoed in his head, and his shoulder throbbed from where he had tried to break down the door.
I could have tried harder.
Reality crushed him, so he retreated into hope, foolish though it was. Maybe Jaya was still alive. He could go back and try harder to make his marriage work. He could forget Soraya, but every fibre in his body protested against cutting Soraya out of his life. But neither could he forget his wife—his responsibility.
None of the blame for the disintegration of their marriage could be laid at Jaya’s feet. They had both agreed to an arranged marriage. An aunt on his father’s side, an insufferable woman with a hairy chin and protruding belly, had arranged for their families to meet. Jaya represented the perfect match, his father said: the right caste, elegant, unassuming, a good wife.
But Akash was not ready. Jaya’s wit shamed him, as did her warm nature, so forgiving of his inadequacies. He felt as harassed by her faith as by her smiles. How could he tell his family he rejected their way, the old way?
So they married, dazed amidst excited relatives and clashing colours. Jaya became a dutiful wife; Akash an emotionally-absent husband. He went through the motions—waking up with Jaya, their bodies occupying opposing corners of the bed, attending lectures, returning home to have dinner with his wife and parents, touching his wife when the lights went out, but everything felt perfunctory rather than passionate. The foundations of their marriage had seemed irreparably damaged as his hope for the future seeped through the cracks in their relationship.
Not until he met Soraya did he realise he was capable of romantic love.
He jumped through his memories as if they were a yellowed film reel to 1980, the summer after he had married. He’d been slouching on a slow-chugging bus, seated next to Jaya, when he spotted Soraya the first time, tearing through the dusty streets towards the university gates, her hair drenched by the musty rain, her features obscured—a girl who took no prisoners. He couldn’t pull his eyes away. His shirt stuck to his back in the sticky heat as Jaya’s thigh pressed against his own, yet everything dropped away except for this stranger. He turned awkwardly, twisting his neck like a giraffe to watch until Soraya disappeared into a tiny speck in the distance.
From that first encounter, he’d never been able to shake the thought of her. For him, she was a promise, a drug—a slow, inescapable venom, poisoning his relationship with his wife. He felt the brush of Soraya’s fuchsia scarf as she rushed past, imagined the taste of the rain on her chapped lips. Even before their affair had begun, she became a persistent ghost in his marital bed.
Their friends and family would have gasped had Akash and Jaya divorced. His parents were staunch opponents of divorce and separation. With years of a harmonious arranged marriage behind them, they would never have understood, and Akash would have been incapable of facing them if his marriage failed. A remarriage remained unthinkable unless one partner had been widowed, let alone a love match between Akash and Soraya, a Hindu and Muslim.
Did I really watch you burn, with only a bruised shoulder to show for it? Did I give my marriage to you a chance? Am I completely rotten to my core, incapable of loving my wife?
Round and round his thoughts went, like a carousel.
All you wanted was t
o hear I love you. I could have stopped you from lighting the match.
He was responsible for it all, as surely as if he had lit the match himself. He clung to the hope that she might still be okay as he sat, crumpled on the pavement, one thought consuming him as daylight turned to dusk.
I have to make this right.
Jaya floated back into a body that did not feel like hers. She groaned as whispers and the hum of machines reached her ears, followed by her mother’s voice.
“Oh, Jaya, what did you do?”
“How can one sister burn while the other sleeps?” said her sister, piercing through the haze of nothingness.
Jaya opened her eyes. The faces of her family swam before her as fluorescent hospital lighting buzzed above their heads. Her parents and her sister stood vigil at her bedside in a cramped ward. Ruhi rushed to hug her, features twisted in worry, but Jaya winced at her sister’s touch. She shut her eyes and wished for darkness again. Waves of pain crashed over her like none she had experienced before, a throbbing and clenching she could not localise.
“Jaya?” said Ruhi, her voice lined with tears.
Jaya struggled to remember what had happened. She opened her eyes with trepidation and looked down at her body, still detached from the consequences of her actions. Starched hospital sheets entombed her form, and something cool lay on her legs and side. She reached under the sheets and her fingers found thick bandages. The pain of a flurry of knives shot through her. She couldn’t move her legs.
Ruhi reached for her hand and said, “No, no, don’t touch anything. I’ll let the nurse know you’re awake.” Her sister’s hands were wrapped in light bandages.
Jaya remembered the flames and Akash’s betrayal with a rush, and cried out. She waved her hands at her family, wanting to be alone, then glanced again at Ruhi’s bandages and remembered through the haze that her sister had rescued her, not Akash.
He is not only a cheat, but a coward.
Ruhi disappeared into the corridor.
Jaya’s fingers traced her face, her heartbeat accelerating, fascination and panic interlacing, as the recent past came flooding back to her. Her face felt normal. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where am I?” The words came out as a croak.
“KB Bhabha Hospital. Do you remember what happened?” Her father’s voice was heavy with sadness. He rested his hand gingerly on her arm, just above where an IV line pierced her skin.
Jaya reached for the truth but the complexity of the answer eluded her. She remembered lighting the match, but she didn’t recognise the woman who would have done that. How could she not know she had been capable of such an act?
It was easier to lie. “I don’t remember.”
He searched her face for answers. Beside him, her mother sat still. “Was it an accident?”
“I was cooking samosas.” She recalled her feeling of hopelessness, which dogged her even now. All because of Akash. She had wanted to press reset but the world had remained the same.
I should have died.
“My daughter, what will become of you now?” said her father. “Where is Akash?”
So he has not come, not even to the hospital.
Jaya didn’t respond. The skin on her legs seemed to sizzle and pulse as if she were still shrouded in flames. She longed to tear off the bandages, to see what had befallen her, to itch her skin until she found some relief. Yet the physical sensations bore no comparison to the emotional ones. She remembered Akash’s face at the kitchen window.
He left me to burn. Instead of punishing him, have I freed him to be with his lover? How can he not be sorry? If he cares at all, he would have tried to save me, and he would be at my bedside now.
She felt his absence keenly, and the shame wrapped itself around her like a blanket of thorns. In that moment, her emotional core—the part fed by love and promise—transformed into a block of ice. What remained was simply a carcass of the woman who had stepped from her marital home that morning.
She could find no answers to soothe her parents’ worries.
Ruhi hurtled into the room, followed by the more sedate entry of a doctor wearing blue scrubs and a serious expression.
The doctor pinned Jaya with a stare that stripped away her pretences. “It is good that you are awake.” She turned to the rest of the family. “Can I have a few minutes alone with my patient?”
“Jaya would want us to stay,” said her father, squeezing Jaya’s hand.
“It really is better this way,” said the doctor.
Ruhi glanced from Jaya to the doctor. “We’ll be right outside,” she said, and ushered her parents into the hallway.
Jaya fixed her eyes on the doctor’s hair, a frizzy mop tinged with the orange of fading henna.
“I’m Dr. Tarpana. How are you feeling?”
If she had to answer questions, it relieved her the doctor happened to be female. Who knew how a man would judge her? “Uncomfortable.”
Her legs had been elevated under the sheets. Their mass appeared greater than they should, even under the thick bandages, as if they belonged to someone else, someone not as slight as her. She tugged at the sheets with her hand.
Dr. Tarpana stilled her movement with her palm.
“You went through a huge ordeal. Being caught in a fire is an attack on the entire body. Can you tell me what happened?”
Jaya snatched her hand back and focused on the soot underneath her nails, uncertain of how far to trust this woman. Blisters dotted the pink skin of her palm. “I was in the kitchen cooking. The oil caught fire.”
“I see.” Dr. Tarpana paused. “Jaya, your sister’s intervention saved your life. The burns on your legs are the ones I am most concerned about. They penetrated deep into the skin. It’s going to be a long journey from here.”
The words floated over her. How she wished it had been Akash who had saved her. As it stood, Jaya didn’t know whether to thank Ruhi or hate her for not letting her die, but in the bright light of the hospital ward, her heart lurched to think she might never have seen her sister again. She tried to sit up, but the doctor held her in place, and her legs refused to obey. The effort caused her to cry out in pain.
“I’ll get the nurse to bring you some more morphine. It’s best to stay still for now, if you can. We want to inflict as little trauma to the affected areas as possible.”
Jaya motioned to her shrouded legs. “They don’t feel like mine.”
“They’re swollen. You received second degree burns to fifteen per cent of your body. We had to cut away the dead tissue and clean your wounds. We had to amputate two of your toes. The ones that survived are splinted. We’ve applied cooling gel and thick dressings to give your skin as great a chance of recovery as possible.”
Jaya heard the words as if through a filter. Each word dipped with weight, until Jaya could no longer understand the sum of its parts. The information was too much.
Amputation. Dead tissue. Burns.
She jolted as the flames seared her mind, as real as the bed she lay on.
Across the ward, a man with what looked like acid burns gazed at her, pity on his face.
Dr. Tarpana’s face loomed again through the haze, talking about administering electrolytes and antibiotics. She kept on, but Jaya caught only fragments. She nodded periodically, as words swirled around her: the risk of sepsis, compromised immunity, physiotherapy. This alien world was not hers. She had not caused this.
“You’ll need skin grafts. We’re just waiting for the theatre to be free. Massage from a professional is key. Too much contact, and we risk disturbing the healing process. Too little, and your skin and muscles will become unsupple, risking reduced mobility.”
Too much. Better to live in fantasy than to be confronted with harsh truths.
She longed to unhear her diagnosis, but there would be no going back. She was nearly at the finish line. Surely it could not get any worse.
Jaya focused on the doctor’s face, her solemnity, the steady hands in contrast
to her own trembling ones. “I want to see. I want to see what I look like.”
Dr. Tarpana considered her for a moment. “It’s better to wait. It’s too soon.”
“I need to see. Please.”
All because of him, and he isn’t even here. I wish he could see what he’s done to me. Would he worry about me or would he wash his hands of me? Was there ever anything there?
The doctor called a nurse, and the blood rushed into Jaya’s ears. Together the doctor and nurse peeled back the sheets and removed the bandages from her legs with infinite care, first one and then the other.
Now Jaya could correlate her pain with the physical symptom. She gasped and her vision swam. A moment of disassociation: a lifetime of consequences. The smooth skin of her legs had been replaced by raw, open sores. Where her skin had been almond in colour, it was white, as though the pigment had given up in face of the onslaught, melting like a wax figure in an oven. It glistened under the harsh hospital lighting, and there was no place for Jaya to hide. Two of her toes on one foot were no longer there. She flinched from the sight, shutting her eyes, but still the image of her new body played underneath her closed lids. She willed the gods to take mercy upon her, to rewind the tape.
“Jaya,” said Dr. Tarpana, bending close, trying to project empathy that failed to reach over Jaya’s walls. “It might not seem like it, but you’ve really been very lucky. The fire has done minimal damage to your muscles. Much depends on how fast your body heals, but I see no reason why you won’t be able to continue life as you know it.”
Jaya blinked her eyes open. Her wounds remained. Her foot did not magically become whole. She could not imagine a humdrum life like her mother’s, one borne of duty rather than passion. She had never wanted a pale imitation of love, and now even that had been axed from her life. She had wanted change. Couldn’t fire bring renewal? Instead, she had fuelled the flames. Who would want her now? “Life as I know it? My life is over. What have I done?”
Chapter 3
