eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 22

21

STORIES

adorned that dark summer evening, the
embodiment of the galaxy I’ve read about
in my mother’s school books. My parched
lips gulp down that saliva, and I go back
to sleep, a little peaceful, a little disturbed.
She knew my secret, and I know hers.
***
I don’t remember how or why I had become
friends with someone who nobody around
me used to look in the eye, but I did, and
that too very comfortably.
I was eleven years old, probably a few
months younger, and she was old enough
to cook me matki rotis and mutton curry.
I had heard many around me remark that
she used to look younger than what she
really was, and that helped her with her
job, but I never really got around her work
profile anyway. I didn’t bother much, till
her last day.
Our friendship was rather odd, if I am to
indulge in constant flashbacks and try to
revisit those horrid summer days. We hadn’t
ever indulged in talking as much as we did
in sharing silence, and eating out of the
same plates.
Our only gateway, getaway, from the constant chaos around us, was a tiny shack on
an abandoned farm. The cracked farmland
used to soothe her instant urge apparently,
I remember her telling me once, during a
brief discussion on where to sit and hog.
I had safely let go of my curiosity to ask her
of that urge, I had better thoughts to fill my
mind with, then.
I should have.
We had had only two proper conversations during our beautiful union, if one is
to probe me.
One was the evening I had come to know
of her secret but wasn’t sure of it, and the
other was the morning she had realised my
secret, and had slowly kissed me goodbye.
I should have known better than to stay
after the first conversation.
eFiction India | June 2014

***

She handed me the steel dabba, “Here.”

under her supervision, my “aaya” she was,
officially. That was the evening I had gotten
around the concept of why the other eyes
never met hers, why her words were always
that sharp, and why she was who she was.

I collected it from her, her patchy skin
brushing against mine, each touch pushing
me into the trap further.

“Do you mind if I peck your cheek?” she
asked me, like I had asked her for another
serving of the curry. Rather straightforward.

She bit her lip, and her eyebrows twitched.
“I forgot the nimbu paani!” her delicate
hand involuntarily reached her head, and
she scratched. Slowly, thoughtfully, rather
regretfully.

I aye’d, didn’t bother when I had my mouth
full.

“I had realised I was missing something,
should have known it was this...”
“It’s okay, I am not much of its fan anyway,”
I nodded my head like a shy strange dog,
and moved my lips to my right, winking,
gesturing my playfulness.
“But I am,” she stated.
Said it, like my choices had never bothered
her or influenced her cooking style.
I was a kid, nobody had taught me the cons
of a being a blunt being, and so I hadn’t
realised how hard it must have been for
her to be who she was, and still be alive.
I hadn’t realised that she could have been
drowned to a vessel of burnt ashes, her
mother weeping over the stinking stairways to the Ganges, for she was being who
she had become.
I hadn’t realised it was unnatural, and
illegal.
She placed her torso on the mat made of
cheap bamboos carpeting the droughthit land. I opened the clutches of the steel
dabba. It smelled like charcoal.
“You made mutton?” I asked her knowingly.
She nodded in affirmation.
I passed the dabba back to her, asking her
to pluck some of the rotis off, for herself.
She dragged a piece of my identity with her
as well, I have realised now.
That was the evening my father had left me

She patted my head, and wiped my mouth
after the meal. She kissed me goodnight
too.
I almost knew her secret, but she hadn’t
known mine, still.
***
A few minutes into my soft sleep, I had felt
something running through my cropped
hair, over my chapped lips, onto my flat
chest.
I hummed a lullaby, and remembered my
mother’s bed time stories.
The feeling grew stronger, my lullaby
louder.
***
She reminded me of my mother, I had told
my father when he had asked me if the new
“aaya” had been good to me. He smirked,
and asked me how.
I told him how.
He smirked harder, and had told me to
go play outside. I remember his face then;
wrinkled, with a thick unibrow, and a slit
on his forehead from the evening he was
gone and had left me with her.
***
We were having rose-flavoured, Benadrylsmelling ice gola, when I had burped out
my secret.
She stared, her eyes stuck to mine, driven
with conviction to prove me wrong