Almost Lives

A note from the author-

Here is a short story that I wrote months back for a competition. Inspired by a dream and invoked by a clenching need to write, I spun the yarn. It is to be noticed that the narrator's sex is never disclosed throughout the story, for it could be you or me or the girl next door narrating it. It's a story that can haunt any of us, and I bet it does. Fear of confessions and pain of loss. It manifests itself in every alley, every nook and every table of the dingy, downtown pub. Every one of us has an almost life that could've been, an almost brother, a soulmate who could've been saved. This is to us, and our almost lives.

--

Rishita.

                                                                      Almost Lives 

          It’s late September. Past midnight. It’s pitch-black outside except for two beams of the headlights of my car that bathe the dark and dangerously wet spiraling roads, getting narrower and the bends sharper with every meter left behind. On the left are the hills, steep and tall, covered densely with trees and occasional outgrowth and creepers. The trees make the hills look safe, giving the impression of a steady wall of green. But they are the illusionists. Dark. Dangerous. Deceitful. It’s not just a wall of green, but of slimy mud and unstable rocks. Every rain brings with itself the menace of a landslide, like tonight. I can feel it. I can feel it as the rain thrashes the windscreen threatening to send it shattering and leave me punctured with a thousand shards of glass. I can feel it as the memory splashes me with the thirty-five rains I’ve seen down here in Bastar and with it, the landslides. Through the barred windows of the State Transport Corporation buses, stretching my arms out through the bars, palms up, to feel the rain kiss my hands. We would be lucky always- I, Babaji and Amma. The mud and rocks would come slithering down a few vehicles before us, blocking the road or shoving the vehicles mercilessly down into the ravine. To make it worse, huge trees would come crashing down and crush buses and trucks into rubble of metal, fuel and blood. And then would start the bedlam of clueless cursing, engines’ revving, and spine-chilling cries. I would break into cold sweat and hide in Amma’s sari, shivering. Amma would pull me close and I could hear her heart thumping against her blouse. The usual lubb-dubing gone. Only thump thump.

                             The same thumping is echoing in my ears tonight. But it is not my fear of landslides that is speaking to me. It’s the anxiety of looking the person who changed my life forever in the eyes after ten years. Ten years of pondering, repentance and hatred. Ten years of rage. Ten years since Madhya Pradesh split up into Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Two states that saw massive uprooting and resettlement. Two states with a border separating their territories and splitting families. Almost families. I hit the brakes with a fierce pound. My car sways wildly on the wet road and finally skids to a halt with a screech. The inside of the windscreen is suddenly frosty. I am breathing heavily, bile rising in my throat. A wolf had shot across the road, its eyes catching the lights for the briefest moment. The valley of Keshkaal poses not only the threat of landslides but also of the unknown and the wild that rule its dense forests. Beyond this valley, a few hours’ drive to the north, the city of Raipur bustles with life. And in that city, my brother is fighting for time. My brother. Almost.

                             I pull the car back on the road. The rain splatters on the windscreen and the wipers struggle to give me a view of the road. Like brooms brushing off the cobwebs. Like arms flaying in flames. I look at my left hand and the four fingers missing from the knuckles. I look back at the road. It was a summer afternoon. Schools were out for the season and would open up again when the earth was moist with fifteen days of rain. I and Avi, my friend, were in the outhouse. It had a high beamed ceiling of local wood and a thatched roof and walls plastered with mud and dung. Heaps of hay and sacks lay lined up against the colossal walls. It was where we used to spend our summer afternoons if not in the mango and tamarind plantations which my grandfather owned. That afternoon, Avi had found a lit bidi stub and we brought it to the outhouse. I was eleven and he was ten. He dragged a lungful from the bidi and broke out coughing wildly, his eyes bloodshot and tears streaking down his cheeks. He threw away the stub and clutched his throat with both hands, choking. I was petrified and clueless until I heard crackling and rumbling. The outhouse was on a huge fire licking at the ceiling. It had consumed the hay and the sacks. We ran to the door. Avi was smoke-stricken. He fainted. I stooped down and something hot dropped on my left hand. It was so painful that my senses evaded me. The next thing I remember is being carried in my Babaji’s arms. There was chaos all around. Someone was sobbing and I could smell burning tires, Babaji’s hair-oil, and toothpaste that was dabbed all over me. Avi survived with a few sores. They had to amputate my fingers. Avi came out an engineer. I remained trapped an artist. Avi moved to Bhopal when Madhya Pradesh split up. I chose to stay back. What transpired between us during those months would never tantamount to sanity. I blamed all my failures on him. He moved out with the guilt of making me handicapped. He never looked back. Never wrote, never called.

                               Until tonight. The call was from a hospital in Raipur intimating me that Avi was fatally injured in a road crash and that they were hoping he’d make it through the night. Hoping. The first rays of dawn broke the darkness and my heart throbbed faster with every speeding mile. The night had passed. What about Avi?

                                                                         *

                        I am standing in the hospital compound, leaning against my car. It hadn’t rained in Raipur. It’s dry and dusty. A small girl in ragged clothes is picking plastic bags from the smelly dump waving off the flies. But I am numb to the surroundings. I can smell only burning tires, Babaji’s hair-oil and toothpaste. I can see only my blistered bidi-smoker Avi. And I can hear only the unspoken love for him. The engineer with the guilt of my handicap. My dead brother. Almost.

(This is a published piece of work. The author asserts copyright. Please do not copy or distribute without acknowledgement of the same.) 

Image courtesy- flicker.com