The last bus to G scuttled past him like an over-fed kitten. He could have run behind it. But he chose to stay back and see it disappear into the darkness of the hills. A few shops were still open near the police beat-house. A lonely policeman sat guard at the station with an AK 47, looking bored and sleepy. He had often toyed with the male instinct of fondling the rifle, as he would whenever he saw a voluptuous woman. He used to tell her these weird but honest details of his thoughts during the beginning of their relationship. She was incredulous at first. Once he told her, how he mentally made love to one of those wiry Srilankan women whom he had met at the juice shop, where it was innocuously scribbled: “All Kinds of Juices Available”. To his surprise and exasperation, she burst into tears. He thought better not to tell her what goes on in his mind. Those thoughts were his, entirely. He pulled a zipper on his thoughts after that.
A shopkeeper pulled down his shutter, which rattled all the way down in the darkness, switched off the lights and walked away noisily. The darkness was a sight. It blindfolded him and he had to peer into its hurt self to make sense of his path. He had never seen such a deep darkness in his life. He was not scared of it, but there was something densely stifling about it. It was like a mob, crowding your senses and smothering you at times. Then it took you on flow with its dark rhetoric. Detesting its ebony dark matter, he longed for the first ray of morning light on moonless days.
The moon was capable of a whipping up a melodrama whenever it appeared. Their house, where they used to stay together during the first two years of their marriage, faced the seven, blue hills. Many a day, the moon rose from the hills majestically, casting a white gauze-net on the dark, fish-like foliage. Both of them sat in the balcony, sipping wine and she smoked with the balcony lights switched off. She loved the emancipation of smoke rings she blew. She always told him making a smoke ring made her feel like a man, but she didn’t want anyone to see her smoke. While she sat there staring at the moon, he fried dried meat strips in an open skillet.
While he waded through the darkness, his feet heavily plodded the squelchy, damp streets, and there were no street lights. Each and every star grimaced with an unusual twinkle deepening the spookiness. He didn’t have a torch with him, but the sky contoured the edges of the black, stray clouds by salvaging a wee little bit of greyness left behind by the day. Though he was wary of manholes in the moonless night, he paddled the darkness with a knapsack on his shoulders, and instinctively retraced his steps back to the house, which was once upon a time ‘theirs’. It was hers now, solitary and shielded by the lovely blue hills.
He hesitated before knocking, and first, he thought of crouching near the door for the rest of the night till the next Sumo scheduled early in the morning. But, he wanted to be inside to feel the warmth of their hearth, his lost paradise, which he called his home once. He knocked gently, and he heard her cautious footsteps.
“Sa va? , Who is that?” She called out.
“It’s me”, he always talked to her in English, all their ‘dangling conversations’ were in a language that gave them a degree and fed them.
“Holy Mother of God! You missed the bus?”, she opened the door and asked.
“Yes, I couldn’t make it, probably I will take the early morning Sumo to G. Thank God, the train to the University is only day after tomorrow”
He saw her face in the pale zero watt light that was lit in the prayer room. Her eyes were swollen. She had been crying, and she hesitated to switch on the light. He sat down on the sofa and left his luggage in a corner. They just had a bedroom and he didn’t want to reclaim his lost space in the house.
“Aren’t you hungry?” No one knew better than her that nothing excited him like food.
Not waiting for an answer, she walked into the kitchen, switched on the stove, and placed a skillet on fire. He sensed that she was relieved to have him back in the house. He never thought about it, but he sensed how lonely she had been. In the hills, the entire town turns dark around six in the evening and people huddle into their homes when the last bit of sun sank in the horizon. He loved to roam around in the twilight, and that habit used to make her nervous. Her fears were allayed when once he was mistaken to be a Bangladeshi migrant and a group of garrulous tribal men questioned him armed with machetes and sickles. He escaped his with life due to the fortuitous appearance of his landlord who explained who he was to them and saved him from blows.
Another incident which left them shaken was the night of the Hundred Drums Festival which occurred in the guise of a tourist routine in November.
She appeared with a cup of steaming tea and asked him, “Do you remember the Hundred Drums Festival night?”
Many a time they were connected by the analogy of their thoughts, they could sync in their thoughts almost at the same time. One of them think a thought, the other one would start laughing and they knew that they had the same thoughts many a time. He started laughing, and she frowned into the depths of the night.
“That day scared me out of senses. We didn’t sleep for a week , remember?”
He stopped laughing, he felt the chill of an AK 47 on his temple. He felt the mixed feeling of a heart-quaking fear merged with the desire to fondle the gun. It was on his insistence that both of them ventured into the deep hamlet that was just a stone’s throw away from the Hundred Drums festival venue. The previous year, during the same festival, his friend took him to a shanty and treated him with home-made rice beer, and there he got drunk . The village nokma (head) also fed him to a feast of sticky rice and a pungent and spicy dried fish curry called nakham. On that fateful day, he took her to the same shanty, but she felt something uncanny and spooky about the place. He was quite annoyed with her for cautioning him and mothering him in ways which were devoid of any reason.Even before he could express his acerbity; two young, armed men came out of the shanty, which once doled out rice beer and sticky rice to him and whisked them into the dark dingy room inside. In the darkness, he could smell the musty and rancid odour of fear. They were pushed down to a dingy bamboo floor, and they could see many captives like them. In the dim light of a kerosene lamp, he could see the mortified eyes of a Naga girl, who was guarded by a gun-carrying militant, who forced her on the ground with his knee. There were also a couple of Nepalis and a Jaintia couple who were dumbstruck by fear . The militant leader, the man who sat on a wooden-log in the center, looked at them with a smug, intimidating stare. He was visibly angry and shouted orders at his men while giving a long lecture on how ‘outsiders’ pollute the tribal villages of the hills. They waited with eyes downcast and took care not look in his eyes and provoke him. They waited in the shanty for many hours and at the end of it, the leader whispered something to his men. One of them took out a whip and started whipping the captives. One.. two… three…. The leader counted with a glint of retribution in his eyes as the scourged ones cried out loud. Women were whipped five times. When it was his turn, he glanced at her, startled. She knew that he found even a pin-prick unbearable. He didn’t cry out, but he was visibly shaking and he convulsed involuntarily at every whiplash. She couldn’t bear the tearing pain, she wasn’t as brave as him, and she cried out in pain when the lashes hissed and stung her skin. When she was done with, she flopped on the floor like a dishevelled toy.
Before the police came, they were let off in the darkness, and they ran for their lives.
He remembered that she was shaking all night, till he held her close to his chest and glanced out of their window panes with fear. The next day, she was taken to the doctor as she bled profusely. They told him she went through an abortion the previous night. They laid her on a table and scooped out a red-veined crescent from her womb, a-month-old sexless slice of flesh which clung to her desperately even after its last spasm of life was scraped off from her. They clenched the forceps into her and wrenched the foetus out, and then, they cleaned her up rather shoddily. She wasn’t brave there as well, and she called out his name and cried.
She read his thoughts, as usual: “It is good that we don’t have the child with us. It would have been tougher for him.”
“Him?”, he asked. She smiled wistfully.
He didn’t touch the tea, dried meat was sizzling on the fire. There will be some fresh bread around, she always purchased freshly baked bread from Uncle Lobos. She loved the cinnamon flavoured one, she thought it smelled heavenly. Something like manna, she thought. She brought along a plateful of dried chicken strips and some cinnamon bread. She opened a bottle of Sula, and emptied his untouched tea into the sink.
She toasted , “ In the memory of our old days, when we were mighty drunks, nasty smokers and reluctant dopeys.”
She raised her glass and so did he. Somewhere the heavy cloud that hung between them slowly lifted its veil and they talked of the good old days. He loved her draw the cigarette deep in and blow it out with style. It looked like a statement and that always made him laugh. They finished the wine between them and they were quite tipsy.
For the first time that night, she asked him about his lover in his university. He dreaded this question, but alcohol made him brave and less inimical. He could see that she was relaxed too. Alcohol did this magic to them, they were calm in its grip, more relaxed and honest.
After a brief stint in the Northeastern foot hills of the Himalayas where she was working in the university, he went back to his university in the South where he was continuing his research. He was on a fellowship and he rented out a house, for absolute privacy and expected her to join him during her vacations. It was then S joined his university. S was his dorm mate in his school and they were thick friends till one day, in their 9th grade, when they were both ill and confined to their dorm, they stripped and danced enjoying themselves. S said they were closet gays. He hadn’t talked to S since then. S was back in his life. Once during her vacation, she found that S was living with him as his partner. In fact, even before she asked him, he confessed, expecting a big drama. He didn’t want her to leave him and he even promised that he will severe his relationship with S. She cried out in the same manner when she was whipped by the militants and cleaned up in the clinic. Then she packed up and left, telling him that it was over. And the, it was over.
The separation proceedings began, and it ended after a couple of years with him visiting the hills again to pack up his books and other precious pieces of his past life he left behind in their house. He sent all his books to his university in the South, and missed his last bus to G. And here he was telling her that S moved in with him as he got his quarters in the university. Though the university was agog with rumours about them, it was also unconventional a space which let them stay together. She looked unperturbed. She got up, piled up the used plates and moped the table clean. She gave him a blanket and a pillow, he slid into the TV room couch and slept. He woke up after an hour or so feeling terribly lonely in the darkness. By then she had already moved into her bedroom. She was snoring gently and her chest heaving up and down like a trapped bird. He felt a pang, slid into her bed and embraced her. She turned to his side and snuggled to his chest, like in olden days. A wounded bird, she looked so delicate and brittle. He thought of S for a while, and held her tightly, and slowly relaxed his grip. He was comfortable with her lying next to him, her body rocked by her inebriated, yet, gentle snores. For a moment she meant a world to him, though he knew that their universes were far away. For once, he thought of getting back to her, but then he wondered what she did all these days without him. Did she take a lover? Or did she turn religious? He felt a disconnect with her life. His thoughts took him in their grip and gently rocked him to sleep and he drifted into a dream, dreaming something simple, pure and pleasant. He felt no desire, but a tenderness and an urge to protect her. She too slept peacefully near him, like a fragile dream.
She woke him up in the morning. She reminded it was time to go. He had nothing to pack, his knapsack remained unpacked. He got ready with a heaviness. She made him some tea, he was so parched with the hangover. It was quite foggy early in the morning, with a chill drowsing under the blanket of fog. After he finished his tea, she waited silently for him to leave. He got up and hugged her, “I am sorry”. He felt her unforgiving heart beat fast, and faster.
It was meaningless, but he had to say sorry. She stood there like a ragdoll. He never for once thought of her agency, her feelings, her lonely life. Now, all of a sudden, he never wanted to be part of her sadness which dispersed like the dense darkness on the hills. He walked down the granite steps, into the mist that engulfed him. Somewhere she would be watching him walk away from her life, he knew and he didn’t want to go back to the helplessness of the hills. The hills heaved a heavy sigh of smog in the darkness, and he plodded through his blindness carefully, hoping to reach the main road fast. On the road, he saw the fog light of the Sumo,that blinded him for a minute. He was at last free of the darkness and smog. But as he left, he felt the hills witness his plight mistily, as the sun rose from the clouds with the red-veins of a torn foetus .
Babitha Marina Justin is from Kerala, South India and a Pushcart prize nominee, 2018. Her poems have appeared in Eclectica , Esthetic Apostle, The Paragon Press, as well as many other journals. Her first collection of poetry, Of Fireflies, Guns and the Hills, was published by the Writers Workshop in 2015. She is also waiting to debut as a novelist with ‘Maria’s Swamp: The Bigness of Small Lies’.