by Sakiv Koch
“I had to sit facing Raj and Sona in the train compartment. I noticed that she could go really long without blinking. She would stare fixedly at some point in space for a long time. Whenever she shifted her gaze to another point, she would regard me dreamily with a sweeping glance. In broad daylight, with Ravi sitting besides me, I didn’t fear her and returned all her looks coolly.
“The rocking motion of the train made her boy drowsy. Every time the train changed directions in its wide, sweeping curves, his little head would loll from side to side, and small pendulums of saliva would oscillate at the ends of shiny threads suspended from his mouth. Raj was also there, but he seemed to be somewhere else. In fact, he appeared to be nowhere, not even somewhere else. He sat with his legs stretched out straight before him, blowing smoke into the compartment and dangling an arm out of the window.
“That arm was in considerable danger of being crushed or torn by the bent-down iron spikes of the wayside fences at railway platforms. Raj was clearly aware of the danger, but he wouldn’t pull his limb back into the safety of the compartment — he had never been a levelheaded person, but his latest stint in the prison had evidently deranged him further. Ravi forced him to shift to a non-window seat. Raj sulked but complied.
“We reached our resort in the afternoon the next day. It was situated on an exquisitely beautiful tableland. A dozen cottages stood around a sparkling oval lake nestled in a wood of blue pine. On one side, jubilant hills clothed in forests of cedar, oaks, spruce, and rosewood stood on their toes to embrace the handsome, blue sky. On the other side was a lush-green valley with a mountain river flowing through it.
“That spot wasn’t very popular, due to the dual difficulties in accessing and affording it. The tariffs were exorbitant and only rich recluses went there. As a consequence, we were the only tourists there, which suited us perfectly. Besides us, there was an old, cranky man who cooked and cleaned for the guests.
“Ravi surprised me pleasantly by taking the cottage farthest away from the one that Raj and Sona had chosen. As in most things in life, we were literally on opposite shores. That first evening was an evening of feasting — we feasted our eyes on the endless beauties of the Himalayas, our hearts on our togetherness in such blissful beauty, and our stomachs on a surprisingly delicious meal that the old caretaker, Sukh Lal, prepared for us.
“I woke up at dawn the next morning. My very soul was tingling with words that needed to be written down. They were so powerful, those tumultuous thoughts and ideas and expressions, that they nearly lifted me off the ground and carried me away.
“I put on a heavy coat. I put my fountain pen, an ink-pot, and my beloved notebook in the deep pockets of the coat. I took a picnic sheet and a bag of apples with me and went out.
“A small stream fed the resort’s lake. I followed the stream to a secluded dell about half a kilometre away from our cottage and spread my sheet on a carpet of lush-green grass. My pen moved over the paper with the fluidity of the water that flowed over the stream’s bed. Excuse my self-praise, but I wrote so beautifully for two hours that a majestic range of literary mountains started forming in the pages of my beloved notebook.
“A noise of approaching footsteps made me pause in my unspeakably fulfilling act of creation. I looked up to see the source of the disruptive sound: it was Sona, walking into my dell with her boy in her arms. I capped my still-thrumming pen and closed my still-eager notebook, not knowing that the most exhilarating dimension of my life was about to die, not knowing that I’d never uncap that pen and never open that notebook again.
9: Thorns and Bones
“May I?” she asked my permission for sitting down with me, as if she were a refined lady. I looked at her with a mix of surprise and distaste. I wanted to bluntly say no. I wanted to ask her to get lost. I wished she were fifty miles away instead of the few feet that separated us. I would have been a little riled even if the intruder had been the person I loved the most in the world rather than the person I detested the most. But Ravi had brought Raj and Sona along, after all, and being rude to her would be equivalent to a disregard for his wishes.
“‘Sure,’ I muttered somewhat bitterly, intensely wanting to immerse myself back into the world I was creating before she came along like a cataclysm. Sona paid no mind to my acerbity. She set her boy down on my picnic mat and then sat down besides him. She wrapped her arms around her legs, placed her chin upon her knees, and gazed at a swarm of butterflies frolicking over a patch of marsh marigolds growing on the other side of the stream.
“Neither of us said anything for several minutes. I was imagining what the rather headstrong heroine of my emerging story would have done in suffocating moments like these when Sona spoke.
“‘May I see what you were writing?’ she asked, without looking at me. I was dumbfounded. An awkward second ticked by in silence. She laughed, the peals of her merriment ringing out slowly, surely. ‘Don’t bother to answer,’ she said, ‘I was just trying to be funny.’
“I fiddled with my pen in the ensuing silence and decided to go back to the cottage. ‘I’m sorry for derailing your train of inspiration,’ she said, amazing me once again, not only with her apt use of that metaphor, but also with the traces of sincerity in her low, lazy voice.
“Her demonic half-smile was nowhere on her mouth today — a full smile of frankness bloomed on her lips, revealing her small, even teeth. The smile extended, for the first time ever, all the way to her eyes, driving away their habitual hardness.
“With the crusts of her hostility and bitterness removed, she was an exceedingly pretty woman, with her large brown eyes, her glossy black hair, her small nose, cutely upturned at its tip, and her rosy, sensitive mouth. I caught myself staring at her openmouthed, as though I were looking at an absolutely charming stranger for the first time.
“Abashed, I turned away from her and looked at the little boy, sitting a little behind her. He was sampling the taste of the local soil and had the head of an earthworm jutting out from one small fist.
“That magical place and its magical atmosphere were working their magic upon us. There was something so vitalising in the golden sunshine, which cherished each individual blade of grass, devoted an exclusive ray to each leaf, stalk and flower, that a wild hope began to sprout in my heart, too.
“After all, Raj had transformed into an entirely new person after his return from prison. Not an ideal human being by any stretch of the imagination, but not a complete wild beast, either. Why couldn’t his wife change a little bit, too? As far as I could see, she had no real motive for her poisoned behaviour and her evil intentions towards us. I surmised, within the space of a few peaceful minutes, that the way she lived her present life was shaped by her past existence, which had been hard and cruel by any standards. I concluded that her mind and her heart, both of which had been entangled in a confusion of inferiority complexes and faulty defence-mechanisms, were now breaking free of their corrupted bonds, were ejecting their bitterness and enmity.
“As soon as I started to think this way, I began to see Ravi’s point of view: that, with enough time and space, the couple will come around to gentler, loving ways. And as soon as I looked at them through my husband’s eyes, they didn’t feel like just a woman, a boy, but as two people closely related to me — my sister-in-law, my nephew.
“In that unexpected surge of warmth, I can’t exactly say whose hand took the initiative, hers or mine, but both of them rose in air and our fingers intertwined. Just like that, without uttering a dozen words between us, we had erased a long, acidic history and written a new chapter of amity.
“‘Listen, didi,’ she said, calling me a sister, lowering her eyes and pressing my hand a little. ‘About that night, I want to —’
“No, no, Sona,’ I stopped her mid-sentence. ‘I am the one who should apologise. I know I said some extremely brutal things that night. Please forgive me. I am so, so sorry.’
“She brushed something from her eye with her free hand. She t
urned her head away and blinked rapidly. A prismatic teardrop on her long eyelashes caught and split the sunlight into a tiny rainbow. My eyes watered, too, and for a long minute, we shared a warm silence brimming with wonderful possibilities. The intense itch to write and the attendant irritation at not being able to do so subsided. For a moment I wondered if what I was experiencing was too good to be true; I wondered if I was still asleep in my cottage and dreaming this impossible situation up.
“‘Doesn’t this feel like a dream?’ Sona asked, evidently reading my mind.
“‘Yes, exactly!’ I exclaimed. Amongst the myriad of other feelings that ran and ricocheted inside me, I felt immense pride in my husband’s foresight. He had been predicting this very outcome for a long time. I had always thought he was deluding himself and told him so several times.
“‘In all the world, only Ravi Bhaiya desired this bonding; only he believed in its possibility,’ she said, once more divining my thoughts. ‘You neither thought it possible nor desired it.’
“‘Correct,’ I admitted. ‘And I believe the same to be true of you.’
“You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what power brought me here today. It wasn’t easy, particularly after taking so much abuse that night —”
“‘Please, Sona, I’m sorry for my behaviour. I’m ashamed that I said so many hurtful things. That allusion to - to - your late father’s profession was particularly nasty.’
“There wasn’t anything remotely funny in my genuine remorse, but Sona began to chuckle. I thought she’d probably recalled something humorous and I smiled nervously with her. Her laughter started to grow in both intensity and volume. It swelled into an uncontrollable fit in a few moments — raucous, breathless, malignant. Her grip on my hand had grown painful suddenly. She crushed my palm with uncanny strength.
“She fell onto her side in the paroxysms of her merriment, kicking her feet in air like a clinically insane person. Teardrops, of a different nature than the one she had produced before, squeezed out of the corners of her tight-shut eyes.
“I was terrified suddenly. I tried to jerk my hand free, but she held on to it pretty tenaciously. The prettiness, the softness, the warmth that had taken me in so easily vanished one by one, as though she were stripping off mask after mask from her face. Her mouth and her eyes abandoned the full smile in favour of the truncated version.
“As realisation hammered into my stupid head like a stunning blow, a strong wave of nausea flooded my stomach. ‘Stup-, stupi-,’ she tried to state the obvious, but her vehement laughter wouldn’t let her speak for the next several moments. ‘Super stupid woman,’ she finally managed with a quick, explosive exhalation of breath, wiping away her tears with her her left hand while her right hand continued to hold me captive. ‘Please always be like this: unbelievably naive, quick to beg my pardon, and superbly entertaining.’ She made to pick up my notebook, but I swatted her hand away. ‘Ha, ha!’ she laughed again. ‘You are so spicy, sister! Tell me, are all your stories as stupid, as pathetic, and as entertaining as you are?’
“I didn't answer her, of course, but the creative satisfaction that had enveloped me so joyously such a short while ago turned into a nagging doubt. I now felt that I had produced painfully ordinary work. The sickness in my stomach intensified.
“The little boy had probably never seen his mother laugh before. He sat with his soil-filled fist arrested halfway to his soil-smeared mouth, staring with big, terrified eyes at his mother. She suddenly turned upon him and grabbed his ear. ‘Don’t eat soil,’ she hissed at him. The poor boy started to cry without making a sound.
“‘I’ve fought with street-hardened ruffians throughout my life; you can’t break my hold over your hand, didi,’ she told me, frustrating my latest attempt at pulling my hand free and getting away from her. ‘Just as you can’t break my husband’s hold over your husband’s heart. Ha, ha! I know you are thinking you’d soon get rid of us by moving to your new house. Let me disillusion you: we’d follow you there sooner than you think! We’ll always be thorns in your sides, bones stuck in your throats.’
“She gave me the time to absorb the implications of this nightmarish promise. ‘You may repeat all this word for word to your husband; he’ll believe you, too. His enjoyment of his vacation will wilt just as yours has wilted. But, unlike you, he won’t be able to give us up. He just can’t give up.’ The sickness in my stomach deepened even more. She was completely right and she knew it. ‘That man is such an impossible optimistic,’ she went on, ‘he’ll never give up his hope for a ‘turnaround’, particularly now that his precious brother is showing all the signs of reforming. I don’t know who is the greater fool, you or your blind, pig-headed husba —’
“That’s as far as I let her get. I took a very nasty revenge upon her. My stomach heaved; I leaned forward and deliberately threw up all over her. She froze, pricelessly shocked, disgusted, incredulous. Her vomit-soiled fingers grew nerveless, releasing my hand at long last. I sprang to my feet, slapped her face with all my might, and ran away as fast as I could.
10: Footsteps on Water
“My eyes streamed as I fled, but there was a modicum of satisfaction in my despair. Sona was not going to forget my stinking payback in a hurry. There was a poetic justice in her having been splattered with the sickness she herself had caused.
“That small speck of solace also disappeared as I realised that I had left behind a piece of myself with her: my notebook. My steps faltered with the certainty that I’d never see it again, that the magic that had gone into its pages was lost forever to me. I thought of turning back for it, but the required courage didn’t come with the intention. Going back would be of no use, I told myself. She’d never give it back to me. She was not following me; she must have been tearing my notebook to pieces at that time.
“I cleaned my dirtied hand and forearm with water from the lake and went back to our cottage. The woman who plodded in with a heavy step and stooping shoulders was not the one who had literally danced out of it just a few hours ago. Although what had just happened was a loving pinch as compared to what was about to happen, Sona’s toying with my emotions had hurt me colossally.
“Ravi was sitting in the lounge’s window seat, reading a book. He rose when I came in and took my hands in his — how different this handholding felt from that one! He led me to the window and made me sit down. I was torn between telling him everything and keeping everything from him. I sat with my head bowed, unable to look at him while my mind continued to waver painfully: I could neither bear to conceal anything from him nor sadden him by relating what had happened.
“‘I saw Sona going the way you had gone at dawn,’ he said, startling me. When I left our cottage in the morning, I had been sure Ravi was asleep.
“‘She harassed you, didn’t she,’ he stated. I still couldn’t look up. A couple of drops fell from my downcast eyes onto the backs of his comforting hands. ‘Oh, Nina,’ he said. ‘I can see she’s hurt you deeply.’ He let go of my hands and took me in his arms. ‘It’s entirely my fault. I knew you needed some time by yourself, but I still let her go after you. I suspected she would indulge in some mischief if she were to meet you alone, but I didn’t stop her. I thought maybe, just maybe, she would—’.
“I put a finger on his lips to stem the flow of his self-accusation. Being pressed to his heart was the most effective cure for all my griefs, hurts, and deprivations. ‘It’s okay. I am not a child,’ I said, although I had behaved like the world’s most gullible baby. I decided not to tell him about my own retaliatory action, which necessitated my not telling him anything else, either. He didn’t press me for any details of my ordeal.
“The severe pain of having lost my literary treasure first dulled to an ache and then vanished altogether. The magical rhythm of his heartbeat filled me with the surety that I could easily recreate my work, maybe even surpass its quality.
“Time, who had become lame a little while ago, recovered his health and sprinted w
ith the swiftness he acquires in beautiful moments you wish never to pass away. I had experienced, within the course of half a day, undiluted joy, deep distress, and a deeper happiness.
“Ravi made tea for me, for the first time ever, that afternoon. It was so good I drank three cups in a row!”
“Is that why you don’t drink tea now?” Smast asked, finally understanding the reason for his mother’s outright abhorrence for the beverage on the few occasions it was available to them, mostly at community feasts in the town’s temple.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice was growing hoarse and her throat evidently needed a break. But she wasn’t about to resume the silence she had given up after fifteen long years. “I was sick again that afternoon. But it was a different kind of nausea. This corroborated something wonderful I had been suspecting for the past few days.
“I communicated the news to your father.” Nina’s exhausted voice somehow revitalised itself as she said this. “I told him he was going to be a father. He scooped me up in his arms and leaped two or three feet in air, laughing with an abandon I had never seen him laugh with before.
“The caretaker of the resort, Sukh Lal, was passing outside. Although he was employed in the hospitality industry, that man’s face wore a permanent frown at all times. It was hard to believe his mouth could possibly perform the stretching requisite for forming a smile. But Sukh Lal did smile broadly at hearing your father’s infectious laughter.
“While Ravi swirled me around, rather unadvisedly in my situation, I chanced to look out the window. I saw Raj and Sona stopping abruptly in their stroll on the other side of the lake. They had evidently heard Ravi’s voluminous, joy-maddened laughter. They were far away and I was kind of rotating through the air, so I couldn’t be entirely sure of what I saw, but I thought they stiffened and flinched as though the peals of that laughter were disembodied slaps to their faces.
