Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1. May 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
Burial
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| Image courtesy: alamy.com |
The
tune wavered in search of early morning strains like the chirping of sparrows,
the chant of prayers, and the tinkle of bicycle bells before finding its
ascending curves along the cumulus clouds roosting in the bright autumnal sky.
The toddler’s cherubic face occupied much of the laptop screen, filmed by a
two-day old dust. Her parents hovered fleetingly at the corners, already
dissolved in the whirling bustle of the day. A white strand of hair fell across
Sandhya’s forehead rooting thick creases between the eyebrows.
The
child abruptly stopped singing. “Dimmi,
you are not listening,” she complained, her face puckering up in the prelude to
a stormy spell of rage.
“I’m
listening,” the elderly lady assured, forcing a smile, though she knew the
accusation was not off the mark.
There
was a sharp rap on the front door. It could only be Mukul: her other
acquaintances in the city were big enough to reach the doorbell. He lived in a
nearby shanty and sold pineapple-flavoured lozenges at traffic lights. Sandhya
had unsuccessfully tried to teach him the alphabet.
“Someone
has come to meet me,” Sandhya told her family halfway across the planet.
“We’ll
meet again after you are back from school,” she promised her grandchild,
suppressing her guilt and hoping she would not unleash her disappointment upon
her overworked parents.
“Come
with me,” Mukul said as soon as Sandhya had unbolted the door. Breathing
heavily, she hastily brushed back her hair with her hands and stepped out of
the house, not bothering to change into a sari. With the hem of her oversized maxi
trailing the clingy dirt of the unwashed streets, she followed the boy down a
bumpy lane that narrowed to a half of its width past a butcher’s shop strung
with slaughtered goats. The path shed its coating of cement and winded through
a vegetable market. Men and women squatted on improvised seats of loose bricks,
with the produce spread out on the surface of empty gunny bags.
Mukul
pointed to something embedded in a swelling dump of discards that choked the
passage between two tiled roofed shops and tumbled onto the lane, just inches
away from a leaking municipality tap. A coconut-fibre rope was coiled savagely
around the cat’s neck. Sandhya’s heart leapt, her gaze tracing the rope that snaked
listlessly across the bulging packets of household wastes to dangle over the
smelly drain bordering the lane. Her shoulders jerked upwards and her eyelids
pressed tight, the wrinkles deepening to crumple up her face. Once she wrenched
open her eyes, her hands involuntarily lifted and joined to shutter upon her
trembling lips. She had heard about such acts of perversion, but never imagined
it would happen to her pet until he went missing a couple of days back. She
waddled to the edge of the dump, and then gripped by the strength that only
rage could infuse, she arced herself as much as possible despite the unbearable
pain almost ripping her off from the waist, to gather her pet in her arms. She
laid him on a smooth slab of rock, used as a stepping stone by the inhabitants
of a bare-bricked hut and crouched in front of him, unbothered by the stink.
With the knuckles of her hands whitening, she obstinately dug into the tight
knot, as if it mattered anymore. Finally, she pinched out the tailing end of
the rope from its loop and flung it away. Then she clutched a tuft of his fur,
maddened by the urge to clutch onto something – anything, and as the blood in her veins gradually slackened their
pace, she slowly loosened her grip, numbly watching the hairs droop back. She
crooked her arms, stapling the cat to her chest and ambled in the direction
opposite to her house.
Grey
pigeons flocked to the nooks of the temple whose blazing orange flags, from its
multiple spires, canvassed over the lowering clouds. She used to visit this
temple regularly when her husband was suffering from lung cancer. Over the
years she had gotten acquainted with the other women who worshipped at this
temple. After laying down their offerings of wood-apple leaves and pouring
Ganga water on the Shiva-linga, they would settle down on the cool, broad,
stone steps to chat.
Arriving
at the rail lines, Sandhya craned her neck to look into the distance, although
the withdrawn barrier indicated that no trains were expected. Even with her
focus often lapsing from her surroundings, her feet landed flatly on the rails,
her late husband’s warning ringing in her ears, “Never step upon the gravel
between the rails. Your feet might get trapped between them. That’s how many
accidents happen.” Almost every day, she would watch the barrier lower before
her eyes, on the way to the college where she taught. In a panic, she would
slam down the brakes of her old, hand-me-down scooter lest it lurched towards
the tottering rickshaw in front. She would impatiently glance at her watch and
then at the vehicles flanking her as their drivers resignedly meditated on the
yellow and black striped barrier. She would also keep an eye on the big, greasy
bus next to her so she could duck her head in time if the driver hurled his head
out of the window to spit. When the barrier would slowly incline upwards, he
would be the first one to rain ridicules on her and all the other women riders
and drivers in the world, if she was a split-second late in restarting her
scooter.
Across
the rail lines was the bungalow rented for ceremonies. On the way to the
bougainvillea-draped porch, she had stopped by the fountain to cradle her
bawling seven-month-old, who had peered under the huge arcs of water hooding over
the lotuses in the pool. The shushing sprays had calmed the little girl, and
she had giggled graciously through the slightly perplexing rites of her
rice-eating ceremony. Soon the heat turned oppressive; the venue was overrun
with strutting guests. Sweat piped along the pleats of Sandhya’s heavy silk.
Yet she spun across the compound, ensuring none had missed the welcome drink of
jal-jeera and imploring the caterers
to speed up their cooking.
“So
thin,” her guests remarked, wriggling their noses while blessing the baby. The
men advised she should leave her job to bulk up her child. The women suggested
that the defect lay in her body which was failing to pump out sufficient milk.
Sandhya
sighed, wondering whether those memories would siege her so vehemently if her
cat was alive.
Beyond
the bungalow, the road forked. She took the path where feathery grasses
sprouted, crevassing the red brick surface, and green-necked ducks quacked on
their way to the shallow waters of the lake. She had come here for the first
time to meet her charming pen-friend. Years later, they married. She was
shunned by her parents because they were Brahmins and he was not.
The
road meandered away from the edge of the water body to fuzz at the mossy feet
of the bat-infested eucalyptus trees. She left her shoes at the bend of the
path and walked into the fusing shadows of gulmohar trees, her bare toes
planking the gaps where sunlight poured. She stepped across a line of ants and
trod on a carpet of red and yellow gulmohar petals, sloshed with rain and
strewn with seeds snatched from a variety of plants by a prolonged gust of the
formidable early-autumn breeze.
Discovering
a spot bereft of insects, she clawed the earth with her bare hands, the soft
mud wedging into her fingernails. Clods of earth claimed the lowermost leaves
of saplings. Some crumbled into grains and peppered a stretch of diminutive
grass flowers. She roomed her cat with a handful of seeds when the pit was
large enough to accommodate him. She found her pet beautiful, with his silken
black fur and the round seeds casting themselves into a necklace along the
twirl of his tail. As she stared, the clouds darkened, and the seeds lodged
behind his ears and bunched between his limbs began to resemble warts. At an
anguished swipe of her hand, the heaped-up earth at the edge of the dug-out
buckled, and with another swipe it showered upon the cat.
Sandhya
dropped with exhaustion on a cement bench facing the lake, her maxi splattered
with mud. Mukul would pass this lake on his way to the main road. There was a
shorter route, but he would come here every day to check whether the lotuses
had bloomed in the corner of the lake that had curved like a horn and tapered towards
the barbed wire fence of a private fish pond. She felt guilty about not
exchanging a word with him before moving away from the slum. She imagined him
to be as distressed as she was. Perhaps, consoling him would soothe her for a
while. She turned around and stared at the path, but finding no sign of the boy,
she directed her gaze at the water. She watched the ripples jiggle the
reflection of leaves and sheaf the long floating stalks underneath. But the
beauty sprang upon her like a fanged fairy.
The
cat came to her life the day the storm had smashed the windows of the deserted
ground floor flat in her ten-storied apartment and pounded on the tin roof of
the tea-shop grazing the boundary wall. She hurriedly bolted the windows to
prevent the sprays from soaking her bed sheet, when she heard a knock at the
front door. Curled up in Mukul’s palm was a black kitten, its wet fur slanted
like pine leaves.
Sandhya
dipped the dropper in a pan of milk and eased the pipette between the kitten’s
lips, battling with doubts about his survival. She took a cardboard box dumped
on the stairs leading to the roof, snipped down its sides so the kitten didn’t
feel caged in it and layered it with the stuffing from a ruptured cushion. She
would check on him while reading her books, cooking her meals and watering the
flowering shrubs, which together with the rain-borne weeds that she had
decided to keep, cracked open their clay pots and forested almost the entire
balcony. He learned to look up when Mukul called him by the name ‘Manu.’
However, she poured over the Sanskrit
dictionaries she had inherited from her father to search for a more uncommon
name, preferably with a poetic lilt. Finally, she put all the dictionaries back
on the shelf and called him Sravan, after the rains.
A
month later, Sandhya’s granddaughter was born. Fondling the growing kitten
lolling on her lap, she would observe her daughter rub baby cream on her
infant’s back and button up her tiny woollen frock until the internet
connection snapped.
She
squirmed, imagining how her Sravan might have struggled. Perverts were never
quick. She didn’t remember having an altercation with anyone in recent times. So,
her cat’s murder couldn’t be a way of settling scores. She wondered how some
people derived pleasure from such acts of brutality. Blanking out the image of
the dying cat, she tried to imagine the lush leaves of the plants that would
grow from the seeds sown in the burial, but the jibes at the bungalow, the
railway crossing and the temple buzzed in her head, pricking at old wounds.
Jolted
into attentiveness by Sravan’s mewing, she became very still, only her eyes
raking the air. Sensing a nudge at her maxi, she realized it was the mewing of
a different cat. A kitten, in fact. With grey stripes. It sneaked under the
fluttering hemline and snuggled against her calloused ankles. Her hands itched
to pick it up, but her mind strove to spare her from another agony of
attachment. Failing to extract any response, it left for the shadows of the
gulmohar trees, its stripes embossed by the protruding ribs.
“Tea.
Biscuits. Lemon tea. Black tea. Milky tea...,” a voice reached her and grew
louder with every passing second.
Sandhya
pretended not to hear as only nausea got triggered by the thought of food and
beverages. Yet the tea-seller halted in front of her bench and repeated his
hawking cry, compelling her to lift her eyes. She glanced around, and at once she
knew the reason for his insistence.
On
other days, there would be lovers enthroned on the benches like royal couples,
their arms interlinked, their laughter ringing through the lake breeze, their
companionship on full display to swoon the loveless. There would be other
lovers blending into the hedges by the lake, their messed-up hair flecked with
wild flowers, their limbs twined like stems, their love unshackled by the free
will of nature. Some of them slunk away into the dark, overlapping shadows of
trees, all traces consumed by a sea of trembling leaves, vanishing completely from
prying eyes. At some point in time, most of them would be assailed by the kind
of thirst that could not be quenched by their partners and would look around
for a cup of tea. But today, there were no lovers.
Sandhya
recalled reading in the newspaper that the police had arrested all couples from
parks and other public places on the charges of obscenity. Why doesn’t the
police leave the couples alone and focus on catching kidnappers, molesters,
rapists and murderers, she had wondered, disgusted. Even today, on the way to
the lake, she had spotted a police van, waiting to prey on couples who were
unaware of the recent raids. She felt people who found pleasure in harassing
lovers were no different from those who had killed her cat.
She
looked at the tarpaulin bag slung from the tea-seller’s shoulder, carrying the
portable stove, a tower of paper cups – one tucked into another – and small
jars of biscuits. Then she looked at his weather-beaten face. Under bushy
eyebrows, protruded the eyes that had pinned her as his first customer of the
day. From the flappy pocket of her maxi, she pulled out the folded currency
note she had forgotten to put back in her purse.
With
a couple of round milk-biscuits wheeling about in her pocket, she rushed by the
burial, stamping on the line of ants and trampling on gulmohar petals until she
tripped over a heap of loose pebbles, and then rammed into the brick wall of an
old, waste-choked well. Panting by a dry gutter, she scanned a patch of copiously-leafed
weeds tipped by white flowers, when she spotted the kitten sniffing at the grass
encircling a tree stump. She wobbled towards it, averting a brush with a clump
of thorny bushes and crumpled the biscuits to scatter them on the grass. She
took a deep breath to soak herself in the transient spell of satisfaction, as
the kitten picked up the pieces of biscuit, and on her way back to the bench,
she mustered the strength to throw a glance at the burial.
Troughed into the soil were the letters – M-A-N-U. A
branch was lying a couple of feet away, its pointed end scabbed with earth. Ah,
the alphabet! Finally, Mukul has learned.
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