The Jar

Note: For those unfamiliar with the Old Testament, this is a retelling- well, re-imagining-of the story of Elijah and the widow at Zarephath, as recounted here. 

Give me, he said, some bread, and then added

please.

This is the last thing, I said, that I have to give.

Give me, he repeats, and this time adds, the jar will never run out.

He presses his lips together then, something startled in his eyes, as though unused to opening his mouth to speak a blessing, and unsure of its consequence.

*

Perhaps that is why I decide to give him the last meal, that, and the bone deep weariness that is also anger that is also sorrow that is also the jar that never runs out. 

To have come this far, to have begged and stolen, and worked my knuckles raw, while they threw the acid of their piety on my body, another layer of scars, to have endured all this, and come at last, in the end, to die in a strange land.

Perhaps, I wish to believe, that the jar also contains one last act of kindness, or indifference masked as kindness, whatever it is, it is close enough to what he needs, which is bread. 

*

The jar doesn’t run out.

*

Sometimes, it seems, even blasphemy is a form of prayer- heard.

*

I have known what it is to be fugitive, and so I let him stay, though I think, what he runs from, is bigger than mortal queens and kingdoms, and stone walls and silence can only do so much.

*

My boy makes him smile, and one day, laugh, the sound loud, and hoarse. He stops abruptly, and leaves the child mid game to retreat into his room.

*

He stays there for two days.

*

I know who he is of course, though he gives me no name, and does not ask for mine.

*

The jar does not run out.

The ground cracks beneath the azure sky.

*

Thank you, he says one night, as we break bread under the stars.

For some reason, shame rises like bile in my throat, and it must show on my face- he looks surprised- thank you, he says, softer, Miriam.

It only makes me angrier.

*

I promised myself once that I would never again be beholden to anything above or beneath this earth.

I have not been able to keep that promise, and I know that everything has its price, especially promises.

*

I find out this price when my boy dies.

*

He twists my hand so hard, I’m forced to drop the knife.

Then he uses it to tear off a bit of his robe and bind my wrist.

Is this why you came, I whisper, because I cannot bear my voice.

Is this why you came, to make me pay for my sins? Because know this, if I had to do it all again, I would.

His eyes fill with tears.

*

He brings me back my son.

I look in his eyes, and see, for the first time, no fear.

Marginalia

Last evening, N gifted me a book.

It isn’t the one she wants to get me, but later she sits staring at the flyleaf for a long time because she feels the needs for words, and then finds she has none, at that moment.

I picked that book- Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing- because when I flipped it open to a random page, it was to find words jumping at me through fading yellow-green highlights.

That was the feeling I had all the time I was married; in the air, going down, waiting for the smash at the bottom.

told her about the baby;

pictures of it

                                                it doesn’t exist

                                    was taken away from me, exported, deported.

                                                                                    Lapse, relapse, I have to forget.

I flip to another page.

                                                                        Her artificial face is her natural one.

And facing that

                       

            Dead people’s clothes should be buried with them.

“I’m trying to find a pattern” I say aloud. Although the truth is, I’ve already jumped to conclusions, there’s already a story, and I can see her wrist, slashing through these words.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to tell” says N, and she probably means- not everything is a story. But she’s the one who said last week, every gesture has meaning.

A hand moves across a page leaving trails of ink.

This is not fiction.

Message in a bottle.

SOS in fluorescent yellow instead of Morse.

I want this book.

Later, in the sanctuary of my home, I open it again, this time starting from the beginning. She -I see her wrist, the shell of her ear, the tilt of her foot as she sits with her leg on a windowsill while snow falls softly outside, covering everything over, covering everything up- she’s marked random phrases, sometimes just page numbers, sometimes both the words and the page numbers. I wonder why the page numbers. Did she come back to them? Did she recite the numbers to herself when picking up the paper towels in the supermarket?

50, she says to herself, and that can allow her to make it to the checkout counter.

81, she whispers and she can sign her name on the credit card receipt.

125, and the laundry is neatly folded piles of his and hers.

Everything doesn’t have meaning, everything doesn’t need meaning.

Why do I suspect that if you cut me I’ll bleed blood and alphabets?

I think we’re all just stories we tell ourselves.

Stories that begin with I.

Stories that involve you, we, they, us.

Sometimes we let other people tell those stories for us, because we don’t have the vocabulary.

Maybe that’s what she was doing, watching the bare branches dripping, twisted, as quiet, quiet, winter melts around her into the noise of spring.

 Margaret, be my voice,

sister ,mother, friend, ally ,lover.

This is what Margaret says to her, for her.

Do you have a twin?

                                               

                                                Now we are on my home ground, foreign territory. My throat constricts, as it learned to do when I discovered people could say words that would go into my ears meaning nothing,

Anesthesia; that’s one technique: if it hurts, invent a new pain. I’m all right.

That won’t work, I can’t call them “they” as if they were someone else’s family:

                                    But they’ve cheated, we’re here too soon and I feel deprived of something, as though I can’t really get here unless I’ve suffered; as though the first view of the lake, which we can see now, blue and cool as redemption, should be through tears and a haze of vomit.

Has he come back yet?

I thought there might be something about me

But this isn’t where I live.

  What impressed him at that time, he even mentioned it later, cool he called it, was the way I took off my clothes and put them on again later very smoothly as if I was feeling no emotion. But I really wasn’t.

                                                            If he’s safe I don’t want to see him. There’s no point, they never forgave me, they didn’t understand the divorce

                                               

                                                which wasn’t surprising, since I didn’t understand it myself.

                                                my attractive full-colour magazine illustrations, suitable for framing.

why it wasn’t really mine.

My friends’ pasts are vague to me and to each other also, any one of us could have amnesia for year and the others wouldn’t notice.

                                    The feeling I expected before but failed to have comes now, homesickness, for a place where I never lived, I’m far enough away;

The fence is a reproach, it points to my failure.

                                    I never identified it as mine;

It was my husband’s, he imposed it on me, all the time it was growing in me I felt like an incubator.

                        I couldn’t prove it though; he was clever: he kept saying he loved me.

            It’s turned grayer in nine years too, like hair.

                                    When she died, I was disappointed in her.

                                    It’s unusual for him to ask me anything about myself:

I’d turn into a part of a couple, two people linked together and balancing each other, like the wooden man and woman in the barometer house at Paul’s.

                                                                                                here everything echoes.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I love him.

                                    It wasn’t even a real decision, it was more like buying a goldfish or a potted cactus plant, not because you want one in advance but because you happen to be in the store and you’ve seen them lined up on the counter.

                                                nice if he meant something more to me.

                                               

                                                Impossible to be like my mother.

I can imitate anything.

Everything I value about him seems to be physical: the rest is either unknown, disagreeable, or ridiculous.

“Did you believe that stuff when you were little?” she says. “I did, I thought I was really a princess and I’d end up living in a castle. They shouldn’t let kids have stuff like that.”

                                                            later I became an escape artist of sorts, expert at undoing knots.

Perhaps I’m growing old at last, can that be possible?

I stand there shivering

                                                                        push myself reluctantly into the lake.

I needed

 a different version.

Oranges

Bump. Bump.Bump.

Screeeeeeeee...bump, bump, bump.

I wonder if my bones will ever be free of this shudder.

If this is a road, then I am a beautiful blonde, the Helen of Troy variety.

Although, Helen was probably a brunette.

Except in that stupid movie.

Bump, bump, bump.

Poor Christine.

Yes, I do call her Christine.

No, she’s not homicidal.

Neither am I.

Although, that might change, if this goes on for long.

Yes, I am lost. And no, my car doesn’t have GPS.

And yes, it’s the classic horror movie setting: a dark, moonless night, a luckless 20 year old in a battered blue sedan, a dirt road leading nowhere at the moment.

Oh great.

The dirt road ends and now my headlights pick out the roads ahead.

Yes, roads, in plural. And real, honest to goodness, tar and cement roads.

Only: no signboards.

There’s only the comforting purr of Christine’s insides.

Sigh.

I turn off the engine, leaving the lights on.

The silence, to use a cliché, is deafening.

Which way?

Does it matter?

The luminous dial of my watch shows: 10.30pm.

The most I can hope for is to find a place for the night.

If there was a cat, I would follow it.

There is a cat.

It stares at me with golden eyes, unblinking, still, in that cat way.

Cat stares at me, and then takes the road to the left.

I’m crazy enough to think this is a sign.

Of what, I would prefer not to speculate.

The road is smooth, silk, even, and Christine glides along.

It’s just trees on both sides, tall, really tall. And really wide.

Wow, how big is that tree?

I should be scared. A little, at least.

But I’m not.

Fear requires imagination.

I’m damnably prosaic, most of the time.

There’s the earth, the sky, the water, the trees.

People, who are shitheads, most of the time.

These are facts.

I look at the moon and think of the cold hard rock.

Millenia passing in a lonely orbit around life, trying to have a conversation with water.

I feel tired, all of a sudden.

There’s no sign of life anywhere.

I curse the cat.

And here, the road ends.

A wrought iron gate, slightly ajar.

Further up, I can see the silhouette of a building.

No, it’s not a castle with spires.

The gate opens without a noise.

See?

Somebody lives here.

Hallelujah.

As I drive in, my nose is assaulted by a most unexpected smell.

It’s distinct, and completely unmistakable.

Oranges.

Maybe there’s an orchard somewhere here.

Although, it is June, and don’t oranges come later? Or earlier?

In the headlights, I can barely make out a hedgerow. As I pull up in front of the house, I can feel the gravel crunch beneath Christine.

I stare at my find.

It’s a two storey house; probably dating back to the early twentieth. There’s something very colonial about it- the latticed windows, the stone façade, the tiled roof.

There’s no light from within.

For all I know, this is a deserted property.

Great.

If I was lucky the door would open and-

The door opened.

I won’t deny that I’m..startled.

Oh, alright, I nearly jump out my skin.

A figure with a lamp, the old fashioned kerosene type.

I’m in the middle of a Ruskin Bond story.

She-for now I can make out it’s a woman-raises the lamp a little higher.

An old woman.

‘Who’s there?’ she calls out in a quavering voice.

It talks! In a quavering voice!

Ghosts do not quaver; that’s left to mortals.

Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch under my feet.

I put on my best lost boy look.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m lost and was looking for a place to spend the night. Your gate was open, so..”

In the lamplight, I can see her face, a brown wrinkled raisin. She looks me over, and then over my shoulder,

‘Oh’, she nods.

Good old Christine.

The woman stepped back and indicates that I should follow her, which I do, down a short passage. I see that there are two arches that probably open out into a drawing room and a dining room, but she’s heading toward a flight of stairs.

“There’s no electricity’ she says, ‘Been gone for days. Unreliable.”

‘Yes, that happens where I live too.”

‘Where?”

“Uh..Bangalore?”

‘Oh, the city.”

‘Yes”

“Are you hungry?”

I am, but it seems rude to take advantage of an old woman’s hospitality.

“No.”

“Alright, I will show you to your room then.”

Up, up, up creaky wooden stairs.

She shuffles, I step with care.

There are three doors on the landing, two to the right and one to the left.

She opens the door to the left. It’s a big room, bare except for a single bed and a chest of drawers pushed against the wall on the left. The room smells musty. There’s a window in the wall facing the door, so I walk across to open it. The hinges squeak, and I can feel the dust on my fingers. I breathe in the night air and turn back to her.

‘Do you have an orchard here somewhere? The oranges smell so sweet.”

Something flickers in her face, or it may be a trick of the lamplight.

“There’s an orange tree in the garden.”

She turns around and shuffles away, leaving me in-well, almost darkness.

The moon is up, I realize, probably the trees were obscuring it on my drive; but now the moonlight gathers in a puddle on the floor. The aroma of the oranges wafts in and swirls.

I’m tired.

The bed looks hard and uninviting, but you know what they say about beggars not being choosers. As long as there aren’t any bed bugs, I’m going to be fine.

I fall asleep as soon as my head touches the mattress.

I don’t know what it is that wakes me up, but suddenly, I’m wide awake. The ceiling is high and a patchy cream. Where on earth am I? There’s a half light in the room- dawn. I squint at my watch, 6.30 a.m.

Swinging my feet off the bed, I survey the room- wallpaper- peeling and faded, but faintly recognizable pattern of fading bunches of primroses; my feet are on a dusty, but fairly lovely wooden floor. Outside the window, there’s a light mist, fading even as I stick my head out. A straggly lawn; the grass grown wild, and few broken pots to the side; a brick wall borders the far end; and at one end, a really magnificent orange tree. Even at this distance, I can see the bright oranges; the smell of them had never entirely gone.

My stomach rumbles.

I should get going. But first, I’m going to pluck me some of those oranges.

I pause for a minute at the landing. Silence. Perhaps she hasn’t woken up.

Old women are allowed to sleep in.

But it wouldn’t be nice to just disappear without saying thank you, at least.

I knock on first one door, and then the next.

I don’t know her name- she never asked me mine either, I realize now- so I try calling ‘Ma’am?’, softly first and then louder. Maybe she was deaf. Although, it hadn’t seemed like it last night. Maybe she is a heavy sleeper. All this knocking on hard wood doors is making my knuckles sore.

5 minutes more and I give up.

Downstairs, the drawing room- floral wallpaper again, this time daisies, more dusty wooden furniture- looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. Maybe the old lady doesn’t get many visitors, and god knows, domestic help must be hard to come by in this place.

Through the dining room- huge solid oak table, six chairs- and into the kitchen, which turns out to be really large, with an honest to goodness fireplace and all that. There are shelves, but I don’t open them. There’s a tap over the cracked porcelain sink. I open it. Muddy water spurts and then trickles. If I didn’t know better I’d say nobody had lived in this place for years.

I’m not sure what to do, but I’m going to settle for leaving some money on the table. Impersonal, I know, but I don’t have a paper or a pen or a pencil, and I’m sure as hell not going to find any writing implement in this place! So I leave 300 bucks on the dining table- what? It’s quite enough for a mattress and a dusty room- and let myself out of the front door.

Christine is there, dew drenched, the first rays of the sun dappling her roof.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

I make my way around the side of the house. Across the lawn, the orange tree stands, its branches extending on one side over the brick wall. The grass is still wet, although the sun grows bolder by the minute. The smell of the oranges is strong enough to almost knock me out, this close.

I reach out a hand to pluck the nearest one.

‘Did you ask permission?’ asked an accusing voice from mid air.

I freeze.

A rustle of leaves and something lands in front of me.

A girl, about eleven, I would guess. Dressed in a nightgown, turn of century-that would be 19^th-all ruffles and lace around the collars. She’s staring at me reproachfully with hazel eyes set underneath straight black brows. Her black hair is tied back neatly in a plait, the blackness in startling contrast to her pale skin. She looks like Orphan Annie.

“Er..I didn’t know whom to ask. There wasn’t anyone…” I gesture toward the house.

“Grandma’s a heavy sleeper”, she agrees.

Aha. Grandmother.

Thank God, I was beginning to wonder if I’d imagined her.

“You live here?”

She gives me a look as though to say ‘duh’.

Ok, peachy.

‘So, may I?”

She gives me a considering look.

“Only if you help me.”

She was kind of sweet, the way she was acting like a twenty one year old, instead of ten.

“What kind of help?”

“I can’t reach my cat”, she pointed upward. “I climbed after him but he kept going higher and higher.”

I tilted my head up following her pointing finger. From this angle, the tree seemed taller than it seemed. And up in a branch, around midway up the trees, sat the cat.

Damn me, but it’s the cat from last night.

The same baleful golden glare.

Alright, it might not be the same cat from last night; it was way too high up for me to know whether it had golden eyes; but-it was black, and hey, I thought it was the same cat, and that my friends, sent a shiver down my spine.

A cold hand tugged at mine.

‘Well?”

And damn me again, if she didn’t give me the sweetest smile, the kind that Bella gave when she’s pleading with me to join in some childish game that involves dolls and rabbits.

Bella, bellisima, Dad would croon to her.

Bella, bellisima, cold and white.

And so I haul myself up to the lowest branch. It creaks under my weight as I nudge toward the trunk. It isn’t a hard tree to climb, thank the Lord. Nevertheless, the bark scrapes my hands raw, as I haul myself up two more branches.

Meanwhile, Bella-well, not Bella-the girl says “Just a little higher” and “ Don’t scare him!”

The cat hasn’t moved.

He lets me get two branches higher.

Hey kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty.

It isn’t the same cat. This one has green eyes. Quite a beautiful creature, really.

I have to admit, I’m relieved.

I reach out a hand, tentatively.

He leaps, a lithe ballet dancer, onto the branch above.

I sigh, look down below.

I’ve come up much higher than I’d thought. Really, are oranges trees this tall? It hadn’t looked this tall.

She stood, a face upturned, a tiny figure, anxiety in her stance though I couldn’t see her expression.

Lifting my eyes, I look around. Here, in the heart of the tree, all I can see are little strips of sunshine through the green of leaves. I can’t see the house. It’s so quiet here. The stillness of a mountain, of a desert afternoon, an empty heart.

Meanwhile: the cat.

It was looking at me, slightly supercilious.

Cats.

I go for authoritative this time.

‘Cat! Get down here at once!”

No movement.

So that’s the way it’s going to be, huh?

I scramble onto the branch where the infernal cat has decided to perch. Surprisingly, this time, he doesn’t climb higher, but moves to the edge.

I go back to cajoling.

Hey kitty, nice kitty, give you a dead mouse, kitty.

Kitty isn’t having any of it.

Smart kitty.

You don’t have to be a cat to know humans are an untrustworthy species.

I try to slide along the branch a little.

Kitty doesn’t move, a good sign.

“You’re almost there, mister”, Bella’s-the girl’s voice- comes floating up.

A final lunge.

I think I grab a bit of fur as I fall.

My life, as they say, flashes before my eyes.

I blink a couple of times as the light strikes my eyes.

Close them again.

“Are you awake?” says a voice, slightly unearthly.

I move my head a little.

Bella is sitting there, eating an orange.

I’m not dead.

Dead couldn’t possibly hurt this much.

Gingerly, I flex first my fingers and then my toes.

Then I raise my hand to my head, which feels like an elephant was sitting on it.

No bumps on the forehead. But maybe a cut or two. There’s a little wetness somewhere.

Alright.

We can get up now.

I raise myself on my elbows and the world swims a bit.

Close eyes and try again.

This time, I think I’m sitting up.

I open my eyes and move my head toward Bella.

She’s looking at me interestedly.

‘That was quite a fall.’

‘It was.’

‘Does it hurt?’

One would expect even a child to know that if you fell, like, twenty feet and were not dead, yes, it would hurt.

What do they teach the kids these days?

‘Yes’.

A thought occurred.

‘Where’s the cat?’

‘Oh, he wandered off.’

Oh.

What?

She offered me another orange, fully peeled.

‘I peeled it for you.’

‘Thank you, I guess.’

‘Are you going now?’

‘Should I?’

‘Yes, I think it would be better.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated.

‘You’re nice.’

Heck, yeah, but that didn’t make sense.

‘So?’

‘Well, um. Things happen.’

Yes. Like I wander into a loony bin, complete with mysteriously disappearing grandmother and a troublesome cat.

Also:

‘It’s not the season for oranges.’

There’s something slightly sad in her eyes now.

‘But I like them.’

‘They grow now because you like them?’

‘Something like that.’

Oh.

She looks a little forlorn now.

I eat one.

They’re incredibly sweet.

I’m either incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid.

Perhaps neither, perhaps both.

‘You should go.’

There’s an urgency to her voice now, and she suddenly gets up and yanks at my arm.

It’s surprisingly strong, that pull, and I’m up on my feet.

‘Go!’

So, I go.

I turn back to look at her as I reach the end of the lawn, but she’s gone.

Bella, bellisima.

The air is still, and the sunlight warm, but now I’m running to Christine, my feet thump, thump on the gravel. Slamming the door, I rev up the engine and reverse out of the drive. Don’t even bother to turn. The gate is open, but I’m convinced it’s going to close any minute. I know it’s going to close.

I’m barely out of it, when it clangs shut.

I’m so stupid that for about two minutes, I just sit there staring.

Nothing happens.

And then: it’s all gone.

All of it.

The gate, the house.

No sound, no whirl, not even a slow fading.

It was there, and then not.

There’s just me, sitting in the car, gaping, my heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of my chest.

After ten minutes, I get out.

Where the house stood is just weeds, wild flowers.

I look toward the side, where the garden was.

Just more weeds, no wall, no tree, nothing.

So I get back in my car, turn it around and drive down the road, and in ten minutes I’m back at the crossroads.

In the light of day, I see a small signboard, practically in a ditch that points down the road to the right. In faded, half eaten black letters on yellow: Kodagu, 35kms.

I draw down the window, and turn on the radio. Static, but a couple of twists to the dial lands me at a farmer’s education programme.

The dial on my watch says 8.45 am.

The funeral’s at four.

There’s time.

A light breeze follows me down the road, bringing with it a faint whiff of oranges.

Doubt

She knew the exact moment when she had first had that thought-and shivered, buried it a thousand fathoms deep, from which place she dug it out, three months later, still raw and red, and turned it over in her mind, as she went through his credit card statements, every pocket, every book, every paper, even ATM receipts that he would throw around;she smelt all his shirts,was that hers?,no, smelt like soap, she was an idiot, why should she think this, but somewhere, somewhere, she knew, knew it, and this was driving her crazy, this doubt, and she should just confront him, she should, and now it's six months later, and he never comes home late, and he always calls, but she knew it, knew it, and what's to be done, the children love him, and so does she, and now she has clippings of ads by detective agencies, a whole scrapbook of them, numbers circled neatly in red, but she hasn't called even one, and oh, this is crazy, and the magnets on the fridge seem to form a strange haiku, a meaning only she can decipher, and then one day, he says, we need to talk, and oh, the relief, when he says this may come as a shock, and I know you'll hate me, but I don't love you anymore, and she asks, her voice steady, why, is there someone else, and he can't meet her eyes, and she knew it, knew it, and it's over, and she's delirious from the relief so she smiles at him, the happiest she's been in months, and he looks at her like she's crazy, and maybe she is, but god, it's over, and now the world is solid again, and red is red, green is green, and she can only smile at the man who's broken her heart.

Festival of Lights

It was the Festival of Lights. Father had said he would be home that day. Siva played in the patch of yard outside the tiny house, his eyes darting every now and then toward the road. For a while he swung on the small wooden gate that Father had put up last summer. From the gate you could see all the way up to the banyan tree that stood along side the main road. The main road was the only pucca road in the little village where Siva lived. It had been laid two years ago.
Siva had stood, with his two best friends, Raju and Vishnu as the workers had poured the hot, black liquid onto what had once been a path of smoothened gravel. The Road, it had been heard, would bring prosperity to their village. Managalapatnam would now appear as a small dot, a bus stop on the road between Salem and Madras.
Not everybody had wanted Mangalapatnam to be put on the national road map. Ramasami Gounder, through whose land this wonderful road had cut through had tried his best to stop its construction. He had made several trips to Madras and, it was rumoured, spent considerable sums of money in these efforts. At one point, it seemed as though he would succeed, that the road would be diverted several kilometers, so that his land would be untouched-and Mangalapatnam. But some of the villagers, led by Siva’s father, had made a representation at the Engineer’s Office, situated in the next town. When Siva asked his father why the Engineer had listened to them-after all, the Gounder had money to back his whim-his father had said that the Engineer was a Good Man. It was the highest praise that Father knew.
So, a year later, amidst some fanfare, The Road had been finished. The Head of the Panchayat had made a speech, the Engineer was a special guest (a short, bald, dark man-Siva couldn’t imagine anybody who looked less like a Good Man), sweets-little sticky orange toffee- were given to all the children. Gounder had not made an appearance.
And so the road stretched out, right in front of the Big House, a daily reminder to Gounder that the power he and his family had enjoyed over the generations was slipping out of his grasp.
The sun was dying, a last burst of orange filling the sky. The birds made a racket as they flew back to their nests. Siva liked to watch them everyday. He thought that someday, he would be like a bird, and fly away. Only, his feathers would be steel. He would be flying those one of those giant birds, an aeroplane. He said the word aloud, sometimes, just to feel it. Vishnu had taught him the word. He cast a last look up the road, and set off toward the Big House.

Vishnu was Gounder’s son, but he liked to play with Raju, Siva and the other boys in the village. He was an only child, and his mother had died when he was two years old. He didn’t remember her at all. Gounder sent him to an expensive private boarding school in Ooty for 8 months of the year. It was only during the holidays that he came back to the village. Vishnu hated boarding school. His classmates were from rich families all over India, several were sons of landowners like his own father; nevertheless he felt out of place in the school. As he tucked into breakfasts of porridge and toast-and-marmalade served on worn china, he would dream of eating dosai with sambar and chutney; and it seemed to him that this was the forced vacation, the four months he spent in Mangalapatnam-that, that was his real life. Vishnu envied Siva his freedom from the strict routines of boarding school life. If he wished, he could play outside all day, climb the mango trees or try to catch fish in the river. Siva had no bells to listen for, no strict house master who checked whether his shoes were shined- actually, Siva had no shoes at all, only some threadbare chappals, and ran barefoot all over the place most of the time.
Vishnu poked his head around the kitchen door. Nobody was around, thank god. His father’s voice boomed. Hastily grabbing a few of the sweets made for the feast, he slipped out. He had an assignation to keep.

‘Vishnu! Vishnu!’
Drat the boy, where was he? It didn’t take much imagination to guess. Vishnu’s association with the village boys annoyed Gounder, but despite his strictures and the occasional thrashing, Vishnu still sneaked out to play with them. Well, thought Gounder, at least he was away most of the time. The boy had nothing to do here, that was the problem. From next summer, he would send him away to his sister’s house in Madras. Let him spend some time with his city bred cousins, and eventually he would not care much for his village playmates.
The sun was setting across the fields, as Gounder sat on his porch, smoking his cigarettes, (foreign made, especially brought from Madras for him). In the distance he could hear the temple bells. The diyas had been lit around the house. He himself had no interest in the celebrations, but it had been the custom of his father, and his father’s father before him and his great grandfather before that, to hold a feast on the festival day. Some traditions were meant to be kept. The villagers would all be there, and there had been some ‘entertainment’ arranged. A drama troupe would perform the traditional Ramakatha. He wondered if Seetha would be presentable woman. Last year, she had been a buxom woman with hard eyes, wide mouth, shrill voice and surprisingly soft hands. She had been worth the five hundred rupees. Ah well, there were other things to take care of tonight. The tip of the cigarette glowed in the falling dark.

Siva and Raju were already at the appointed meeting place, the old cowshed that was some distance behind the main house. He could see their silhouettes against the rising moon.
‘You’re late,’ said Raju.
“I overslept, said Vishnu, sheepishly, ‘but look what I’ve got!’
The sweets were a bit squashed, but welcomed, nevertheless.
‘Did you get it?’ Siva asked, licking his fingers.
‘Yes,’ he replied, and pulled out a set of huge keys from his other pocket.
‘Well, we’d better be going then..’
‘Not yet’, said Vishnu, ‘they are still getting into costume. We can’t risk being seen.’ ‘Rubbish, you’re just scared.’
‘ Am not.’
‘Are too.’
‘Oh stop it you both’, said Siva, ‘Vishnu’s right, we should wait a bit.’
‘Did your father come?’ Vishnu asked.
‘Not yet, but the last bus comes in only at 8.’
The fireflies had come out. Raju tried to catch one-it was easy enough to do. Raju liked to catch everything-butterflies, dragonflies, moths. He liked to put them in a jar and watch them. Even though he made small holes in the jar to let the air in, they inevitably died after a while.
Vishnu said, ‘Oh, let them be!’
‘Why?!’
‘They look prettier out there.’
‘Listen to him, talks like a girl. Pretty, can you beat that?’

Siva had other things on this mind.
‘Let’s go through it again’, he said.
‘Oh come on’, said Raju, ‘we’ve been through it like a hundred times already. You think too much.’
Siva ignored him.
‘You’re sure there won’t be anybody there?’
‘I told you, during the third act, they’ll all be on the stage,’ said Vishnu, in his patient voice. ‘They don’t have enough people. I watched them rehearse yesterday.’
The plan was simple.
When the actors were on the stage during the third act, they would steal into the shed where the costumes where kept and make off with a tail. If that seemed like an odd choice of pastime, it was easily explained. Yesterday, one of the lead performers had told Siva off. Siva had merely been exploring the ‘set’, but the man, annoyed by the boy, had held him by one ear and thrown him out, with a cuffing, no less. Such a man, the friends decided, surely deserved to have his face rubbed in the mud. It transpired that the man was to play the role of Hanuman, as well as a minor role in Ravana’s court. This involved a fairly simple costume switch- the donning of a mask and a tail. Well, he was going to have to play Hanuman without a tail.
Meanwhile, there was nothing to be done, but wait.

There was some light in the patched up shed, but the boys still stumbled a little bit. Vishnu wished he had had the foresight to bring a torch. ‘We should have got a torch’ whispered Siva, just ahead of him. Vishnu grinned to himself.
‘Got it!’ exclaimed Raju, his voice a little too loud.
Shhh! The others shushed him. Too late.
‘Who’s there?’ boomed a male voice just outside.
Oh no! There was only one exit from the shed, and that probably meant running full tilt into the voice.
‘The door’s open..’ said a second voice in a surprised tone. There was nothing to do but to run for it and hope the element of surprise would work in their favour. They dashed out, bumping into the men just as they were entering.
‘Whaa..’ said one, flailing, but the other tried to grab at one of the tiny figures as it rushed by. Vishnu felt his shirt rip at the back. Helter-skelter they ran, followed by the men giving the chase.
Vishnu felt his heart pounding in his ears, as he headed toward the cowshed. It was on his father’s property, which was fenced, so he hoped that the men would not dare cross that. Panting, he sank finally on the ground behind the cow shed and held on to his side with one hand, while feeling his back with the other. How was he going to explain the torn shirt? He stiffened when he heard the muffled sound of voices that were coming from inside the shed. Oh no! The men had actually crossed the fence. Slowly, he crawled toward the side where he knew there was a small gap in the wall. Putting his eye to it, he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness inside. He could make out the silhouttes of three men. Three? There had been only two.

There was the sound of a lighter being flicked, and in the sharp flare, he saw his father. Vishnu’s eyes widened and he tried to stop breathing.
‘The bus is late’, said his father.
The other men were shorter, stockier in build, but their faces were indistinct blurs. One of them mumbled something.
‘Yes’, replied his father.
The second man seemed to have a question.
His father shrugged.
‘Leave it there, by the side, let everybody see.’
What were they talking about? Vishnu could not fathom the meaning of that conversation, but he knew he had better keep very quiet.
‘Come to me later, then,’ said his father, and strode out. The men followed.
Vishnu scrambled back to his original position, and watched as his father headed back to the house. Peeking from the side, he saw that the other men headed off toward the fence. Probably they were going to meet someone at the bus stop, he thought. He had better find the others.
‘Hey! Are they gone?’ A voice whispered from just above him. Startled, he found Siva and Raju staring down at him from the branch of the mango tree.
‘Yes, it wasn’t them anyway. ‘
‘Who was it?’, asked Siva as he landed with a leap.
‘My father and some other men, I don’t know who they are.’
Raju was clambering down the trunk.
‘Where’s the mask?’ asked Vishnu.
‘Left it behind in the shed.’
‘So you mean we risked our lives for nothing?!’
‘And I’ve gotten my shirt torn too,’ he added mournfully.
Siva burst out laughing.
‘It’s not funny!’, snapped Vishnu.
‘It is, you should see your face!’
‘Let’s go back and watch the rest of the show,’ he said.
‘No, let’s head toward the bus stop, my father will be coming’, said Siva.

‘I hope he gets me an aeroplane toy’, he said, as they trudged toward the fence.
‘Those are quite expensive you know’, Vishnu said, and immediately wished he hadn’t, seeing Siva’s downcast face. When they reached the bus stop, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Maybe the bus hadn’t come.
But where were the other men, then? Maybe the bus had left, thought Vishnu.
They hung around for a while. Siva kept looking up the road. Vishnu tried to cheer him up with tales from his boarding school, but Siva didn’t pay much attention, although Raju kept asking the most annoying questions, in his childish way.
Finally, Siva said, ‘I’m going home. Father might be already there….and maybe he got me something’, he added under his breath.
Bidding goodbye to his friends, Vishnu crept back via the window into his room. He needed to change his shirt and hide the torn one somewhere. With any luck, Father would not notice the difference. As he changed, his mind went back to the conversation he had overheard earlier that evening. He couldn’t understand it, but there had been something…disturbing…about it.
His father didn’t notice the changed shirt.
In dreams, he was chased by dogs, which turned into giant lizards, one of whom had a silver lighter dangling from its neck. Waking up with a start, he looked at the dial of the little alarm clock near his bed. It showed 9 am. It was late.
Rushing around to brush his teeth (they had the only indoor bathroom in the entire village, what’s more it had fancy fittings and ceramic tiles in a flowery pattern), Vishnu hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble for being late for breakfast.

His father was in his usual chair on the verandah.
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ he said, as Vishnu stepped on to the verandah.
Vishnu stared. His father seemed to be in a good mood.
‘Go have your breakfast’, he said, ‘I have a surprise for you.’
When he went into the kitchen, he found breakfast laid out for him. Idly and sambar, his favourite. Tucking in straight away, it was a while before he noticed that the usually talkative maid Janaki was silent as she served him a second helping. Looking at her, he noticed that her eyes were red, as though she had been crying.
‘What happened Janaki, have you been crying?’
Janaki shook her head .
‘It’s so terrible’, she whispered.
‘What?’
‘They found his body this morning. ‘
‘Body?!’
Janaki lowered her voice even more.
‘Your friend Sivamani..his father’s body…it was a little distance from the bus stop.’
Vishnu felt his insides turn cold and simultaneously an urge to throw up his breakfast.
‘His poor wife, and that boy..what will they do now?’ Janaki mumbled.
Vishnu pushed his plate away and stumbled out of the kitchen.

The verandah was bathed in sunlight.
His father looked up from the newspaper he had been reading.
‘Look what I have for you’, he said nodding to the wooden table at the side.
Vishnu looked.
Gleaming in the sunlight, there stood a small toy aeroplane, red-tailed, silver-winged.