"We're
going to die long before we reach Tawang." muttered Angshuman as the
Bolero rushed recklessly into another corner. Neil looked out the window into
the yawning valley. Up ahead he could see the road winding up another hill,
snaking back and forth upon the steep slope looking like coir rope sticking to
green velcro.
That's the road we're on?
The nausea returned. Neil fought it with all his willpower. He wasn't getting used to the pressure on his eardrums like he thought he would. He adjusted his bag so it wouldn't press against his stomach and took a deep breath of cold air. That helped a little.
Their driver gave a bark of a laugh "I make this trip twice a week. It's what I do for a living. You kids are safe." He tapped Subhash on the shoulder and pointed to the dashboard. Subhash understood. He located the pack of cigarettes. "There's only one left."
"It's
ok. I've got another pack somewhere. Light it."
Neil groaned in his mind. The smell of nicotine was not going to help his nausea. He popped his head out the window and let the cold wind gush past his skin, numbing it. He closed his eyes. Numb as his face felt, he did feel the drop of water. Then the next. He felt himself drifting away to the music of senses. The melodies of the wind. The cadence of the raindrops. Abstractedly, he closed his hands around the bag at his lap. Inside the dirty yellow bag was a pen and a diary, his prized possessions. Inside the diary was a story he was yet to finish. He let the story flow into his mind now as he often did in solitude. And this was solitude. For even though he was in a large vehicle with nine other people, in the screaming whisper of the wind and the rain it was not very difficult to believe he was all alone.
Images filled his head. A woman on a deserted street, alone but for the child she was trying to shield from the brutal august sun, stoic but for the tears forming in her eyes. A woman on a journey through harsh landscapes he had built painstakingly in his head. A journey he wasn't being able to end.
Bidisha's
journey.
That is what he had decided to call his story. Neil's father had died when he was very young. His mother had brought him up almost alone. Neil's father had married outside his caste. When he died while on police duty, shot by goons he was trying to apprehend, the blame, somehow, fell on his mother. The resentment was unstated, but palpable none the less. So evident was it, in fact, that even he had felt it as a child. At a very early age Neil had learned to recognize unexpressed hatred, unspoken taunts, invisible boundaries.
He knew his grandparents' love for him was unsullied by such poisons. He had grown up to look so much like his father he was told. But he had already learned to be cautious in dealing with the love of his grandparents, knowing that it was meant exclusively for him. His mother was to have no part of it. Such love tasted bitter to him even as a child.
Bidisha's story was not his mother's story. And yet Bidisha was a widow too. And just like his mother, all she had was her child. When Neil had decided to write a story, Bidisha, with her infant child, had walked into his head uninvited. Uninvited, but not unwelcome. He had started the story with that image. And it was still nowhere close to the end.
"Close the window. You're letting the water in." Angshuman said, rudely pulling him back into reality. He pulled his head back in and rolled up the window. He rubbed his face trying to get some blood flowing again. The air inside the vehicle was from another world. All but the driver's window had been raised. The smell of nicotine rode the air despite the driver's best attempts to exhale out the open window.
Oh god its getting worse again.
The car took a turn. The nausea peaked. Neil's hands shot up, palms outwards, signalling the driver to stop. But the driver was obviously not looking at him. He managed a weak "Stop."
Thankfully
Saurav noticed. "Stop the car. Neil's gonna vomit again."
The
car jerked to a stop. Neil opened the door and hurried out into the rain. He
realised he had brought his bag along in the rush. He flung it onto the road as
he vomited over the edge of the road. He felt a sudden weakness in his legs.
His body swayed involuntarily before he realised he was on the edge of a very
steep slope. He squatted down even as he heard some one rush towards him.
"Careful man!" It was Angshuman, "We wouldn't want to reach Tawang one short." Neil felt a hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"
Neil was only now noticing that it had suddenly grown very dark. A gloom had settled on the valley floor making it look strangely endless. Across the valley, the mountains were now cloaked in lazily shifting clouds. They had acquired a deliciously ominous mien. And the rain was getting heavier. Neil ran his fingers through his wet hair. His clothes were sodden. The rest of the journey was going to be dreadfully uncomfortable.
"I'm fine. Go go. Don't get wet on my account." Angshuman didn't need convincing. He was running back towards the car even before Neil had finished speaking. He got up to follow. He'd hardly taken two steps when he remembered the bag. He turned to see it lying on the ground a few feet away perilously close to the edge. Had he thrown it a few feet to the right... he felt guilty as he ran up to it.
As he bent to pick it up he was startled by a sudden loud roll of thunder. As he slung the bag over his shoulder the rumbling grew. It was unnaturally close. He turned to face the car. And froze. His throat let out a scream even as his mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. A large chunk of the hill had slid down and was now pushing against the car like the fist of an angry mountain. The Bolero slid on the wet road moving closer and closer to the edge as more and more rocks piled against it.
Landslide!
Neil didn't know what to do. He wanted to run to his friends but his legs
wouldn't budge. He stared in horror. The Bolero screeched around as a
particularly large boulder rammed into the rear with a loud crash. Neil clapped
his hands over his ears more in response to the shock of what his eyes were
seeing than the sound itself. The two rear tyres were no longer on the road.
This finally broke the shackles holding him in place. He ran over the scattered
detritus towards the slanting bolero.
One
of the rear doors opened and a there was a panicked attempt to flee the now
dangerously tilted metal coffin. But the thrashing legs found no solid ground
as with a horrifyingly satisfied grunt the mountain finally managed to push the
car off the road.
Neil screamed. But the scream was cut short by violent punch as a boulder caught him square on the back. He fell to the ground, pinned beneath an immense weight. He tried to raise his head to look at where the car had been just a few seconds ago but let it drop back down as an excruciating pain in his chest shook his soul. He tried to scream again but couldn't muster up the strength. Or the breath. He struggled to draw in air as unconsciousness stood on the sidelines, waiting. Finally, having seen enough, it stepped forward and embraced him. The mercy of darkness had arrived.
***
He
woke up shivering. There was a vicious chill in the air. He was lying curled up
like a foetus on rough wet stone, his hands clenched into fists. And
he was naked. He turned his head a little to look upon a queer sky, dark, with
softly glowing, swirling patches of purple. So alien, and yet, welcoming. His
instincts told him to trust the sky.
He
slowly sat up and looked around. He was on a shelf on a mountainside, only
a little wider than he was tall. He crawled over to the edge and looked down. The
shelf dropped away almost vertically for a distance before easing into a
slightly gentler slope. A slope that ran down into impenetrable darkness. There
was no valley floor, only a river of nothingness, flowing in absolute silence.
On the other side of the river rose another range of mountains, tall and capped
in snow. And the purple of the sky reflected off that snow lending the peaks a
spectral demeanour. He realized that it was the only source of light. It
was enough. And it was beautiful.
He
tried to rise up to his feet, lost his balance, and fell down onto the rocky
ground again. He tried again, gently this time, with measured movements, and
succeeded in standing upright. Finding him open, the chill closed in on all
sides. He hugged himself to no avail as his body shuddered violently. This was
when he noticed the patch of darkness on the ground near where he had been
lying. He took a step towards it, then another, feeling like a child learning
to walk. When he reached the spot he bent down to see what it was.
A
shawl. So smooth that he could barely feel the fabric as he ran his hand over
it. Or maybe his fingers were numb from the cold. It was black, the deepest
black he thought anything could be. The folds and creases melted into the
uniform blackness making the shawl look like it was a hole in time and space. A
void.
The shivering was getting worse. He quickly draped the shawl around his body and immediately felt comforted. He stopped trembling as a warmth permeated his body and limbs. He stood up straighter. On one side of him the ledge narrowed to a trail that ran along the mountainside, on and on till, far away, it was no longer differentiable from the other irregularities in the rock. On the other side a large rock protruded out over the shelf like a nose carved into the stone, obstructing his view. His curiosity piqued, he decided to go in that direction.
The
jutting rock covered almost the entire width of the shelf leaving barely enough
space for his feet as he attempted to cross over to the other side. This only
made him more resolute. He took small, slow steps, hugging the large rock nose
until the path widened again. He could see something out of the corner of his
eye. When he was sure there was enough ground under his feet, he pushed back
from the rock and turned. He gasped as his eyes took in everything in front of
him.
The
shelf widened out ahead as the mountainside curved inwards into a recess. And
there in the middle of the ledge stood a large wood house. It faced him square
such that he could only see one side of it. It was two storied with a sharply
inclined gable roof. Four windows faced him, two on each floor. Yellow light
emanated from all four. Whatever the source of the light was, it mildly
fluctuated, but was not unsteady. The ground floor windows were spaced
farther apart than the ones above. Between them was a small door. He could see
no door or balcony on the upper floor. There was a narrow veranda down below
though. The roof sloped steeply to both sides ending in large overhangs.
Strength
surged through his body at the sight of the house for some reason. Gathering
the shawl closer around his body, he made his way towards it. As he climbed the
steps to the veranda he saw that the door was beautifully ornate. A tall
leafless tree had been carved into the wood, branches spreading out, thinning
to spindly fingers pointing in all directions. On one of the branches sat a
crow. He walked up to this door, and knocked.
He
could hear footsteps inside approaching the door. A very faint series of thuds
on wood. Then the door opened and a wizened old face peered out.
"Ah!
Landslide?"
This
startled him. "What?"
"Did
you also die in the landslide?"
He
was dead? Of course he was. The landslide. He remembered now. The recognition
failing to elicit any sort of emotion in him. "Yes."
"Come
in. The others are already inside."
"Others?"
"Yes.
You weren't alone."
Faintly
he recollected his last moments. The car. There had been others. Who? He
decided it didn't matter. He stepped inside. It was a large room. Much larger
than the exterior of the house had suggested. There were a few small tables
scattered randomly around the room, on each of them a lamp, the flame large and
gently dancing. There was no draught. It seemed the flames were dancing of
their own will just to add a sense of movement to the otherwise still environment.
In one corner was an opening with black curtains. He could see the hint of a
staircase through a gap in the curtains.
Of
the large number of people inside, all, he observed, draped in the same black
shawl, no one was sitting at the tables. They sat here and there on low stools
woven from cane that were shaped like hourglasses. Some of them were standing
along the walls or at the corners. Some had been engaged in conversation, it
seemed. Presently though, everyone was looking at the new entrant. He nodded to
those whose eyes met his own. The all nodded back.
"There..."
The old man who had opened the door pointed to a group of dazed looking men
huddled around one of the windows. "They died with you."
One
of the men in that group looked up at him and their eyes met. There was
no recognition on either side. He realised that his expression probably
mirrored that man's. A little dazed, mostly blank. He looked at all the other
faces and concluded he knew none of them. "But I don't know any of them." He
remarked, looking at the old man properly for the first time. The man was gaunt
and ever so slightly bent at the back, but carried himself with a surprisingly
graceful gait for one seemingly so old.
"Of
course you do not." The man flashed a comforting smile, "You are
not allowed to bring anything from your earlier life over to this
life. Possessions and debts. Friendships and enmities. Skills
and shortcomings. All you had, you left behind. That is why
we wake up naked."
"Then
why are they sitting together? Do they remember each other?"
The
old man laughed. "So many questions. Not many make it through death with
their curiosity intact. You must have been a thinker."
He
shrugged, not knowing what to say. "Come sit with me," the old man
said, going ahead and collecting two stools and placing them on the floor near
the adjacent wall, before sitting on one of them. He looked one more time at
the group by the window before going and sitting on the other.
"They
are sitting together because they share the only memory you are allowed to
carry over from your earlier life. The memory of your death. Soon they might
forget even that. Many do. I myself only remember I died of some illness. I've
forgotten all the details," the old man paused, and looked thoughtfully
into his eyes for a moment, before continuing, "You must have somehow
gotten separated from the group at the time of death, or you might have chosen
to sit with them too."
"Maybe.
I remember a car. I was not in it when I died though," he put his head in
his hands, "I can't remember anything else," his head shot up, a
sudden realisation hitting him "not even my name."
"Pick
one you like. If you feel you need a name. I never bothered. Hmm, so as I was
saying, the only thing that links you to that other life is your very last
moment. Death. Over here, the word is synonymous with birth. It ended your stay
there but it was your beginning here. That is why that is the only memory you
bring along."
"How
about Neil?"
"What?
Oh... It's a nice enough name. But why Neil?"
Neil
shrugged. "I don't know. It came to my mind just now."
"Well,
if you like the name, keep it."
Neil
nodded. Then looked around. There was a stillness in the air, an attribute that
seemed oddly obvious. People talked to each other in low tones. there was no
murmur in the air. A thought struck him. "What is this place?"
The
old man shrugged this time. "I don't know. No one knows. It was always
here and it was always like this. A sanctuary for those who seek such a thing.
Very few stay for long though. Most are too restless. They set off down the
track along the mountainside."
"I've
seen it. What does it lead to?"
The
old man got up. "No one's ever returned to clear up that little mystery. I
gather you'll soon want to go see for yourself. You do seem restive. But for
now, make yourself comfortable. Not even the most restless leave so soon."
He laughed loudly as he patted Neil on the back. There was a strange sound. A
dull whump. The laughter died down to a moment of sudden uncomfortable silence.
"What
is that?" The old man stepped closer his gaze holding Neil's pryingly.
"On your back. Show me."
Neil
got up, stepping back in panic as all traces of geniality fled the shrivelled
old face staring at him.
"What
are you hiding beneath your shawl?"
"I
don't know." Neil took another step back and came up against the wall. He
brought his left hand up to his shoulder, underneath the shawl, and felt
something. He let the shawl slip down a bit so he could see. Straps, holding a
bag to his back, a dirty yellow bag he almost remembered from another life. He
let the shawl fall down entirely. The silence in the room... solidified.
He looked up to see that every pair of eyes was now on him. A few people were
only now entering the room through the curtained opening at the back. They too
soon figured out the source of the unease.
Ignoring
everyone, Neil set the bag down on the wooden floor. Then he knelt beside it
and opened it.
"You
should not have that!" someone shouted from the crowd that was now slowly
gathering in a semicircle around him. A woman. Neil fished around inside the
bag to find that the only contents were a diary and a pen. He shivered. The
cruel chill was once again sinking into his bones. He set the diary and the pen
on the wooden floor and gathered the shawl around him again.
"You
must throw it away." screamed the old man, a vicious anger highlighting
the creases and furrows of his face. "You can't have any part of your
earlier life."
"And
who are you to decide that?" Neil shouted back, his own anger rising. The
old man sputtered in shock, not being able to find anything to say. The crowd
was getting agitated now. There was something besides indignation in all those
eyes. Envy? In a world without inheritance, he was now the
richest man. A hand snapped out towards the bag. His own hand intercepted it.
"No!"
He screamed in fury. "Stay away."
It
was the woman. There was poison in her eyes. "You are not welcome here any
longer. You can keep your things. But you must go."
"Yes,
you must go," came the chorus from the crowd.
"Fine.
I'll leave." He put the things back into the bag and stood up. As he pushed his way through the crowd some of the people hissed at him in rage.
Others backed away in fear. He looked down at the bag astounded at the effect
the insignificant object was having on the environment. He didn't pause at the
door. The turmoil behind him was getting louder. He stepped out and shut the
door behind him. Silence.
He
carried the bag to the edge of the shelf and sat down with his legs over the
ledge. He took out the diary, placed it on his lap, and opened it eagerly. He
hadn't realised how luminous the purple sky was until now. He could see every
single word. He stared at the page casually for a while, before realising with
a jolt that none of it made any sense to him. He couldn't read. He turned page
after page. Nothing. Deeply dejected, he slammed the diary shut and closed his
eyes.
Just
beyond the edge of recognition, something flickered. Or some one. He brought
his hands to his face, pressed the tips of his fingers against his eyebrows.
Some memory was teasing him. Tantalisingly close, yet just outside his reach.
He cast about inside his mind, searching every nook and corner of his
consciousness, and yet the memory playfully escaped his every attempt to
recapture it. Finally, growling in frustration, he stood up. He put the diary
into the bag. Then, taking a long deep breath, the flung the bag far out into
the valley. He watched the little yellow bag descend into the darkness below.
And
then she stepped into view in his mind.
Holding
his breath, he closed his eyes again. There she was in front of him. Bidisha. A
mother walking under a harsh sun trying to protect her little baby. And yet.
Where was the baby?
She
walks alone. Her hands hung
down from her shoulders, limp, defeated. There was no infant. That child was
all she had in the world.
She
walks alone. A mother walks alone.
At
that very moment two things happened simultaneously. Neil fell to his knees as
a terrible agony gripped his chest, and down below, the bag stopped in mid air
as if an invisible rope connecting it to Neil's heart had stretched taut. The
bag swung inwards suspended on this rope and crashed against the slope. The
pain in Neil's chest made him scream. With both his hands he searched the air
in front of his chest to try and find the rope. But his hands found nothing. He
tried to stand up but the weight of the bag was far too much. It was pulling at
him. Trying to make him fall into the darkness. He looked down again and found
the river of darkness at the bottom strangely inviting. He let the shawl fall
down, closed his eyes, and jumped.
There
was no wind screaming in his ears as he'd expected there'd be. There was no
feeling of free falling. His chest wailed in agony once more. He opened his
eyes. The darkness he saw was not the one he'd expected to see. It was the
darkness of a night sky. And there was something else. A person. Crouched over
him. He realised he was lying on hard ground. He heard voices.
"Can
you see their car?"
Car.
Landslide. Friends.
"No. Its too dark. No one could
have survived that fall. Everyone died."
"Mother..."
mumbled Neil.
There
was frenzied motion nearby as the person crouched over him scrambled back, his
legs kicking, hitting Neil's head in the panic, "Holy shit! He's alive!
You said he was dead."
Neil
fought to hold on to his consciousness. Another voice drifted in. "Well...
he was... He had no pulse."
"Hey..
Can you hear me? Hello?" the first voice enquired.
"You
hit him in the head you idiot." A third voice.
"Well
a dead man said 'mother' right under my nose. It was genuinely scary."
There
was a pause. "Papu's managed to turn the vehicle around, that ugly bald
angel! Let get this guy in the car somehow. If we get him to Bomdila he might
survive."
Neil
only now heard the rumbling engine of the car. The sound brought memories to
the fore. His friends. For some reason, he remembered them all sitting by a
window, draped in shawls. He knew not where the memory came from but it brought
tears to his eyes. And the grief was only beginning to make itself felt. It
would grow further, he knew. And he had no idea what he would do
about it. If only he could sleep. But then he remembered what one of the strangers had just said.
'He had no pulse.'
Had he died? How had he made it back? He turned his head a little to the left. There was no visible road on that side. The mountain had stepped onto it, claiming every inch of the road. The mountain that had killed his friends. And spared him. For some reason, he'd never know. What he did know was that he didn't want to sleep. Not now.
Ten
painful minutes later he was in the strangers' SUV. A space had been cleared
out on the back seat for him. The others had crammed their bodies into the
remaining spaces. Even though they had tried to make him as comfortable as was
possible in such a confined space, he knew it was all in vain. With the very
first bump the tyres encountered he drowned in the agony in his chest. And so
began the painful journey back. A journey to a recovery he was almost not going
to make.
