NEIL D’SILVA

Copyright © 2017 Neil D’Silva

All rights reserved

Yakshini is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely
coincidental. The book does not purport to be any kind of document or research material. This is a
fiction story for entertainment purposes only.

The book is meant for mature readers. It contains elements of nudity, intercourse, strong language,
and gore.

Neil D’Silva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
© 2017 by Neil D’Silva
http://www.NeilDSilva.com/

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the author/publishers.

Cover Art: The Book Bakers

Yakshini is part of the Supernatural India Series by Neil D’Silva. This series contains stories set in the
contemporary age where supernatural beings from Indian myths and folklore play the central role.
All individual books in the series contain standalone stories.

Books in the Supernatural India Series are:

Book 1: Pishacha

Pishacha is the story of a demon spirit, the Pishacha, who comes back from the void 150 years later
when the woman he loved in his human birth is reborn.

Book 2: Yakshini

Yakshini is the story of a celestial demigod, the eponymous Yakshini, who is cursed to be born in the
body of a human female and learn the lesson of love and selflessness.

These titles are available on Amazon as eBooks and on Pustakmandi as paperbacks.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE: THE SAPLING

Little Bud in Full Bloom
The Unfortunate Suitor
The Waterless Well
A Mother’s Concern
The Man of the House
Naked Man in the Grove
Festival of Snakes
The Night Visitor
The Deal
The Blue Slipper
The Witch
The Grave Robber
Flaming Torches
The New Life

PART TWO: THE BLOSSOM

Letters from the Starved
Black Thread
Honeynoon
Special Delivery
The Party
Red Shining Present
The Real Problem
The Struggle
’tis Love, You Fool!
Showdown
The Parting
Woman of Nature
Ratisundari

PART THREE: THE SEED

The World between Worlds
The Banishment
PART FOUR: THE WITHERING
White Lady of the Forest
The Sliver Left Behind
Full of Deceit
A Visit Long Overdue
The One Pending Thing
The Funeral

Epilogue
PART ONE
~ THE SAPLING ~
Year 1995
~1~
 LITTLE BUD IN FULL BLOOM

IN THE MIDDLE of the courtyard, a solitary sal tree stood proud and
magnificent, once again abloom with its bright red and yellow flowers. The
glory of the season had caused the flowers to attain their full bloom, and
their thick central petals, now fully grown, resembled the hoods of many
tiny cobras raised to threaten anyone who might dare to witness their
majesty without permission.
Nature thrived under the tree, which was now carpeted with its own
discarded foliage. Large ripe yellowing leaves kept falling off the tree,
adding to this carpet. They would soon turn brown and return to the dust
whence they had sprung from. Black ants and beetles ran over these leaves
harmlessly, busy with whatever held their tiny interests. Tiny heads of
mushrooms plumped out from under them, vying for their own little space,
and sorely losing in that quest. And amidst this nature-ordained chaos, a
plump frog poked his head through the leaves. He took his stance, and as if
aroused by the uncharacteristic early morning darkness that had begun to
gather, croaked a wild mating call.
Just then, a little girl’s feet adorned with a pair of silver anklets came
prancing into the garden, and the frog leaped away. Old leaves rustled and
cracked under her feet, and the mushrooms were squished. Yet, nature bore
no complaints, for this girl was one of them. A friend. In her presence,
nature rejoiced.

Meenakshi, for that was the thirteen-year-old girl’s name, came up as

close to the sal tree as she could and hugged its sturdy trunk. “Companion,”
she said in a voice that sounded like Mother Earth’s own breath, “how are
you this morning?”
The sal did not respond. Instead, its leaves shook with the breeze and
the hoods of the flowers turned down to look at her. Meenakshi raised her
dainty chin and peered at the far-reaching canopy of leaves that seemed to
go as high as the mountains. She squinted and laughed.
Then, her brow creased. There was something under her bare right foot.
She could feel its coldness, and yet, she did not take her foot away. Instead,
she frowned and stooped. Slowly moving her foot, she shuffled through the
foliage, and exclaimed, “Aha!”
 It was a gold coin.
“Thank you, Companion.” She hugged the tree again. “You always
make me smile.”
The hoods of the flowers nodded.
The next moment, this chaste romance was broken by a hoarse call that
came from inside the house that adjoined this garden.
“Meenu, ae Meenu, where have you run away so early in the morning?”
“COMING, AAI!” Meenakshi screamed so loudly that her tonsils hurt,
and then ran into the house, hiding the coin in the folds of her skirt.

***

For the world, Renuka was in her kitchen, throwing her spices into sizzling
groundnut oil. But years in the kitchen had turned such things into a learned
reflex; and that helped because, in truth, her attentions were focused on her
daughter who had just walked into the house.
She didn’t say anything immediately as Meenakshi entered, but she
noticed with distaste the mud-marks her little feet left on the floor as she
scampered into the house, clutching her skirt as if it would fly away.
“Meenu, wait.”
Meenakshi stopped.
“Where had you gone so early in the morning?”
“Just out in the garden, Aai.”
Renuka kept her ladle aside with a pronounced clang and turned off the
stove. Wiping her brow with the corner of her saree, she came up to her girl.
“Meenu…”
She started and stopped. Her eyes fell on the front of her daughter’s
shirt, where the buttons were threatening to split.
“Meenu,” she started again, “how has this shirt gotten so tight already?
We bought it just last month.”
Meenakshi looked down at her bust. “I don’t know, Aai… What’s
wrong with it?”
“Nothing. You have another shirt, a looser one?”
“This is my newest one, Aai.”
“Then wear one of Suparna’s. It will fit you.”
“Okay, Aai,” said Meenakshi and began to run away.
 Renuka grabbed her by the hand. “Wait! Running, running, running.
Like the wind. Look, Meenu… today you have to behave.”
“Behave? Why?”
“Don’t you know? I told you last night.”
“Ho, that boy from Bombay is coming to see Manda tai.”
“Yes,” Renuka said, this time with a lingering smile. “A proposal for
your oldest sister. Can you see how fortunate that is?”
Meenakshi looked at her mother without comprehension.
“You won’t understand.” But Renuka did not want to miss the
opportunity to tell it to someone and so she went on, “You are seven sisters.
If your oldest sister gets a nice groom soon, the line for all of you is clear.
He is such a nice boy too. Educated. Family business.”
Meenakshi blinked.
“And now don’t you go about your usual shenanigans in front of them.
He’s a decent chap, from the city and all. Not a rustic buffoon like us.”
“I will behave, Aai.”
“And please wear decent clothes. God knows how you are growing so
fast!” She looked at her daughter’s bust with an uncomfortable feeling.
“You are already larger than three of your older sisters. You are eating the
same food as them, aren’t you?”
“You give us all the same food, Aai.”
“Go run away now! Chatterbox!”
Meenakshi turned and ran. Renuka’s eyes followed her scampering
form with a smile.

***

Dressed in Suparna’s finery (Suparna was three years older than her),
Meenakshi ran off again into the garden. There was an hour left for the
lunchtime guests to arrive anyway, and her mother did not stop her. Maybe,
like always, she was glad to have her out of her hair. She told her as much.
“Go, Meenu, go out and play. If you are in the house, you’ll just be in the
way of everything. Won’t even let your Manda tai dress up properly.”
So, hitching up her silken skirt, Meenakshi played chhippi-langdi all by
herself. She hopped on one leg over the squares drawn with chalk on the
ground, picking up and throwing the little tile piece into the squares with
dexterity and precision. Ten minutes into the game, she stood in the Home
position, looking at the block numbered 8, the farthest. She stood, took a
deep breath, closed one eye, and spent a whole minute aiming the chhippi
as accurately as she could. Then, before letting go, she mumbled a prayer
up to the skies to whoever was listening. And then she let go.
“Arrechya!” she exclaimed when the chhippi just missed the 8 box and
fell on the top line.
She made a pout, a sulking pout, and looked at that chippi mocking her
at her defeat. No, this won’t do! She was winning; this was the last square!
A flicker of mischief arose in her eyes then, and she stood up. She
cocked her head this way and that, for she had to first make sure that no one
was seeing her. None of her sisters were out; they were all getting dressed
inside. Even Manjula, their cow, was not to be seen. She was probably
sitting on the cool comfort of the straw in her shed and ruminating on her
quota of the day’s fodder.
Darting like the wind, Meenakshi came back to the pattern, and slowing
down when she reached the incriminating position, she deftly stooped to
pick the chhippi.
But she stilled. Her hand stopped mid-air, even as it hovered just inches
above the chip.
A noisy rustling of leaves had stopped her, and she knew instinctively
who it was.
She turned to look, and saw the stern tree, the hoods of its hundred
blazing flowers looking down sternly upon her.
“Sorry, sorry,” Meenakshi said and backed out, touching her earlobes
with her fingers. Then she ran up to the sal tree and hugged it. “Sorry,
Companion. I slipped. Will never, never do it again. Will never cheat again.
You aren’t angry with me, are you?”

***

She had stood there hugging the tree for a whole minute with her eyes shut
when she heard another familiar call.
“Ae Meenu, why are you stuck to that tree?”
Meenakshi opened her eyes. There at the gate was Tappu, the
neighbors’ boy. He was her exact age, and they went to the same class.
Right now, though, he was in his Sunday finest, which was a pair of khaki
shorts that came up to his knees and a loose shirt that was probably one of
his father’s discarded ones. Three of him could have fit into it.
Meenakshi came up skipping to him. “Ae Tappya, you go away. We are
busy today.”
“Busy doing what? Making love to the tree?” Tappu laughed a boyish
taunting laugh.
“That’s none of your business,” Meenakshi said, swinging her hips and
pointing a stern forefinger at him.
Tappu jumped over the little iron gate and came into the courtyard.
“Finished with Kulkarni Sir’s homework?”
“Loooong back!” That was in a singsong voice, pronounced with
narrowed eyes and a pulling back of the hand to indicate the passage of
time.
“Hey, new clothes?” he asked, suddenly perking up.
On her face was a pout, but now that slowly transformed into a blush.
“What’s it to you?”
“Nothing…” Tappu said. “You look… look… different.”
Meenakshi said nothing.
“Come, let’s go to the well,” he suggested.
“No re,” Meenakshi waved him away. “I told you, na? We are having
guests today.”
“Who?”
“Aai said not to tell anyone.”
Tappu slapped his head. “Ah, of course, I know. The whole village
knows. Someone’s coming to see your sister, no?”
Meenakshi fretted again. “What’s it to you? You go now. They will
come and they don’t want to see your torn chaddi.”
“Arre, wait, no!” Tappu protested. “What else is there to do outside? Let
them come; I’ll dart away like a squirrel as soon as they turn into the gate.”
But that plan did not materialize. At that very moment, there was a
jostling at the gate, and the children turned to look. It was Govind, the
oldest boy in the neighborhood, and by extension, a bully.
“Aye Tappya, what are you doing here?” he yelled. “You broke our
cricket team of eleven, you rascal!”
A frightful look immediately arose in Tappu’s eyes, and he scampered
away.
 Govind ran after him, chasing him down the street. “Come here, you
scoundrel! There are still ten of us in the team. We’ll all whoop your ass
when I catch you.”
Meenakshi laughed with her hand on her mouth as if not to laugh too
much, even as Tappu ran a-flying to the gate with profuse apologies.
Govind stretched his hand as Tappu reached him, caught him by the
ears, and gave him a thwack on the back of his head, while showering upon
him the choicest of abuses. And then he heard Meenakshi laughing and
stopped.
His hold on Tappu loosened and the boy ran away.
But Govind’s gaze was locked on Meenakshi now, and it made
something happen to her. She felt something tingling through her body, and
she felt every fiber of her sister’s clothes that she was wearing, which even
though loose, contoured over the curves that she had developed of late
(which her Aai always said were ‘too early’).
Govind moved closer to the gate and brought his lips together in a
whistle.
“Looking beautiful, Meenu!” he said in a markedly different voice. And
then he winked.
Meenakshi, stunned at the sudden praise, fled away into her house and
stood blushing by the door, her breath stuck somewhere in her throat.
~2~
 THE UNFORTUNATE SUITOR

“HARIKUMAR JAYWANTRAO DESHMUKH.”

The young man sitting decorously next to his mother pronounced his
name.
From behind the wall created by her sisters, Meenakshi tried to peer into
the room. Through the slits left by their bodies, she snatched glimpses of
him. A man quite different for these parts, surely. Dressed in a crisp,
checkered shirt and well-fitting, well-creased trousers, not like the ones
stitched by that tailor Mangesh Kaka in his shop under the banyan tree near
the Rukminidevi Temple. Smelling good too. She had heard men from the
city wore things called perfumes. You had to just spray them on your bodies
and you smelled like jaswanti or mogra or whatever you chose. His hair
was sleek too, parted neatly at one side of his head, not one strand out of
place, and oh-my-God, he had no mustache. What a rare thing in these
regions, where men considered mustaches a matter of pride!
Then she heard her father’s voice.
“Good, very good,” said Shantaram Patil. “You are so clearly a city boy.
A clear and authoritative voice, just like a man should have! I have been to
Bombay once too, about twenty years ago. Isn’t it, Renu?”
Renuka tittered appropriately.
The boy’s mother chipped in. “Do visit Bombay again. And this time,
stay at our place.”
That was followed by an awkward silence. It took a few moments for
the boy’s mother to realize the impropriety of her invitation. One just didn’t
invite folk from the daughter-in-law’s place to stay over.
But then to Mrs. Deshmukh’s credit, she quickly rectified herself. “Patil
bhau, we are all forward-thinking people here. Most of these customs and
traditions mean nothing to us.”
Shantaram laughed uneasily as though it meant nothing to him either.
Later that night though, Meenakshi would hear her father and mother
discuss that inappropriate comment till long into the night.
“But tell me, will you be okay with a girl from Vatgaon?” Shantaram
asked. “Everything in your city will be new to her.”
“We are okay if you are okay,” said Harikumar’s mother. “As you know,
Hari has no father; God rest his soul. I just want him to get settled now with
a decent girl who will look after the house while he focuses on his business
and they both lead happy lives. I have asthma, and it gets really terrible
sometimes. Everything will be in the hands of this young couple, to be
honest. When Holkarbai referred Manda to us, Hari liked her instantly, and
we trust Holkarbai like a family member.”
Meenakshi searched for Holkarbai, the marriage agent who had brought
this proposition. There she was, sitting on the plumpest sofa, smiling like a
well-fed kitten.
Mrs. Deshmukh leaned forward. “We don’t expect anything from you.
Hari does very well for himself, and—by God’s infinite grace—his father
has left us well off. And I must tell you, Hari liked your girl the best of the
lot.”
“All that is fine,” Shantaram said with a polite wave of his hand.
“Educated and fine business and all that, but does he know our traditions?”
There was a smile on Shantaram’s face, something of a mischievous
smile. Standing in that faraway corner of the room, Meenakshi recognized it
as the kind of indulgent smile he often had when he tested his daughters.
“Yes, sir,” said Harikumar. “I do puja and keep upwaas and
everything.” His voice was sophisticated, no slurring or slanging of words,
the kind one would expect on a city-bred well-educated man.
“Last solar eclipse, he even fasted the whole day,” his mother waxed
eloquent. “He keeps shravan fasts too. Tell me another boy who does that in
today’s times.”
Renuka raised her brows at Shantaram. It was that look of caution that
said, “Don’t finger him too much. He’s a good boy.” She cast another
sideways glance at Manda. She sat there, occupying as little space as
possible, a smile hidden within her lips. It was surely a preordained match.
Renuka threw a silent prayer up to the skies.
“Okay!” Shantaram said loudly. “We really like your family too. It is
true what they say, matches are made in heaven. It will be our first
experience, you see, first daughter and all.”
“Of course, of course,” Harikumar’s mother laughed.
Then Shantaram shuffled in his chair and assumed the pose of someone
with authority. He asked, “Son, do you know how to make a patravali?”
Harikumar balked. He looked at his mother, who looked equally lost.
Meenakshi smiled though. Here was the test!
 Renuka came to the rescue of the flustered boy. “Patravali, you don’t
know? The plate we make out of leaves, for eating meals on special
occasions?”
“Oh, that!” the boy’s mother said. “It scared me when bhau said that so
suddenly. Of course, Harikumar can make it. He’s good at craft.”
“I’m just wondering if he could make one now,” Shantaram said. “You
see, in our village, there is this small custom. The prospective groom makes
a patravali when he proposes. I made one too, in my time.”
“It’s an old stupid custom, and it’s okay if you don’t want to—” Renuka
began, but she was cut off when Shantaram glared at her.
“He says he can make one,” Shantaram laughed without mirth. “So, let
him. It will be pure fun only, all right?”
Harikumar wiped away a sudden train of sweat that emerged from his
temple. “Of course!”
A plate of large green sal leaves was brought to him. Eleven pairs of
eyes, ten of them female, looked at him as he folded his sleeves and
prepared for the task. Meenakshi took a step forward too. This was the fun
part.
Next came a tray with a reel of thread and needle. No instructions were
needed now; the materials on the tray were self-explanatory. The needle
wasn’t threaded; threading the needle was part of the test.
Harikumar smiled at everyone, and as his mother tapped him lightly on
his back, he picked up the needle. Squinting, he tried to pass the thread into
the needle and missed. The girls tittered. He tried again. More titters. After
he missed about twelve times, the titters died away and gave vent to
frustration.
“There’s some wind coming in from somewhere,” his mother reasoned.
One of the sisters ran up to the windows and closed them.
“Saavkaash, Hari,” his mother said. “You will do it now.”
He wet the thread with his lips, squinted, and tried again.
And then it happened. The needle pricked his finger, but he did it.
Shantaram heaved a sigh of relief as if he had been holding his breath.
Then he said, “Now, the leaves. You have to fold them and stitch them. Do
you know how?”
As the room fell silent once again, Harikumar tried various
combinations and arrangements, folding the leaves and holding them in
place. Renuka shuffled in her seat (she looked more uncomfortable than
Harikumar was), and Shantaram signaled her to stop fidgeting. Meenakshi
saw that gesture; it was a gesture of confidence. Her father knew the boy
would do it.
Harikumar started. He put the base—the largest sal leaf—and deftly
folded six other leaves and made a circle around it. Then he went on to
stitch them in their positions. Slowly, sighs of relief passed through the
room.
When he was done on one side, now much more confident, he turned
the whole thing over, and started to make the other layer of leaves.
“I will need more leaves,” he said.
“Sure, sure,” Shantaram said, and then ordered, “Meenu, go run and get
more leaves from the tree outside.”
Meenakshi, startled at the sudden mention of her name, gathered her
bearings and scampered away.

***

The afternoon sun had come up. Meenakshi looked with disdain at the
fallen leaves of the sal tree, which had already turned brown. She could not
take those for the patravali; they would crumble to bits the moment a
needle was driven through them.
She looked up at the tree. Fresh green leaves, now lustrous in the
reflected sunlight, mocked at her. She tried to reach them but couldn’t.
Hitching up her skirt, she tried to jump, but apart from the tinkling of her
anklets, nothing happened.
“O Companion, don’t be so miserly,” she said grudgingly. “What’s with
a few leaves?”
But the tree had chosen this occasion to play mischief with her.
With childish petulance, Meenakshi picked up a stone. “If you don’t
give me the leaves,” she said obstinately, “I’ll hit your boughs till they
break and fall down.”
The tree, spread like a mammoth over her, looked down at her
benevolently, but nothing happened.
Meenakshi shut one eye, took aim, and hit a bough.
The tree still did not move.
“You are petty and selfish, Companion,” she said and sat down right
beneath the tree. “I will sit right here till you give me your leaves. What do
you think? I cannot just go inside and say I did not get the leaves. There are
new people inside. Maybe he will be my brother-in-law too. I won’t be
insulted. I will sit right here.”
At that, one leaf broke off and fell into her lap.
“What will one leaf do, you miser of a tree?”
Then another leaf fell, and before it could touch the ground, a third
came down, and then a fourth and a fifth, and soon there was a shower of
them falling all over the little girl. She wiped her tears, laughed, and picked
them up till she could hold no more.

“Did you make the whole tree bare?” Shantaram asked as she walked in
with the leaves.
Without answering him, Meenakshi walked in, the leaves held up in the
hammock of her skirt. She came in like that, and dropped the leaves on the
table.
That was when Harikumar really noticed her.
His gaze first fell on her bare legs, and then he saw her face. It was a
brief glance, but the gaze lingered for a split-second over that region on her
body that her mother had told her to keep well-hidden.
Meenakshi withdrew, now aghast as if she had committed a crime.
The young suitor silently worked with the leaves that Meenakshi had
brought in, but this time, he began sniffing at the leaves too, as if taking in
the scent of the person who had held them not so long ago.
When he put the last stitch into the patravali, and held it up for display,
there were sighs and gasps. This was not a masterpiece by any standards,
and yet it looked fit to serve a nobleman on. It was a rare moment when
Shantaram praised someone openly; this time he did.
“Son, you are precisely what I am looking for. My Manda will be truly
happy with you. You have your head in the sky, but you are the true son of
the soil.”
Harikumar’s mother giggled like a schoolgirl. “I told you so!”
“So, because I am the father of the daughter,” Shantaram said, “I ask
you, Mrs. Deshmukh. How do you want to do the wedding?”
Renuka sent another prayer to her unseen, unknown god.
“Any which way you suggest, Patil bhau,” the boy’s mother said. “We
are open to all options. What do you say, Hari?”
Harikumar cleared his throat. “Aai… I wish to say something.”
 “Well, sure! It’s turning out to be your day, after all.”
The young man’s gaze scanned past everyone in the room. They looked
at him too, with their bright eager eyes, as if waiting for him to just say the
word and then they would jubilate.
Harikumar’s gaze rested on Manda. “You are really a nice girl, Manda,”
he began, his words steeped in diplomacy, “and someday you will make
your husband very happy.”
Shantaram shuffled in his seat. The smile on his face was wiped off with
those words and replaced with a frown that made his daughters take two
steps back, the ones who were standing closer to him.
“What do you mean, young man?” he asked.
“Sir… I don’t know how to say this except with total honesty.”
“I don’t like preambles, young man.”
“Not preamble, sir… but…”
“Kaay aahe tujhya manaat, Hari?” his mother chipped in. “Speak out
your mind.”
“Aai… I like Manda, but… but I like her more.”
And just like that, Harikumar raised the forefinger of his right hand to
point directly at Meenakshi, who was now standing at the heart of the
crowd.
The little girl, when she realized what had just happened, shrunk into
nothingness.
“WHAT!?” Shantaram shot up. “Are you out of your mind? She is just
thirteen.”
“Sir,” Harikumar stood up too, but with politeness. “Please listen to me.
I am not making an obscene request. I am only twenty-two myself. I am
prepared to wait for your youngest daughter till she comes of age.”
“What is this madness?” Renuka stepped forward and looked directly at
Harikumar’s mother. “What is your son saying?”
“Madam, I have fallen in love with your daughter,” Harikumar said
hesitantly and yet with a strange boldness underlining his words. “I have
never seen her before today. But she just walked in now and something
stirred in me like it has never done before. And that something now tells me
if she doesn’t become my wife, my life itself is a waste.”
“HOLKARBAI!” Shantaram called out to the marriage agent who was
hitherto sitting silently, though the recent turn of events had made her
aghast as well. “Kindly tell this fool to get out of my house immediately.”
 Radhabai Holkar stood up at that command and grabbed the man by his
hand. “Have you gone insane? What are you blabbering? She is but a
child…”
“You don’t understand—” Harikumar protested.
Shantaram flung the towel that was on his shoulder to the floor and
stormed into his room. “Renuka, get everyone out of my house, right now,”
he yelled and disappeared.

***

Meenakshi shut herself in the girls’ room after the suitor and his mother
were unceremoniously ushered out of the house that afternoon and did not
open it until evening. Ardent cries of her sisters to open the door went
unheard. Shantaram locked himself in his room in a wild temper too, and
when he came out hours later, no one spoke above a whisper. Renuka sat
sobbing in a corner, cursing whoever it was that she cursed on such
occasions.
But if anyone would have seen Meenakshi at that point, they would
have felt that creeping feeling of fear everyone experiences at some point or
the other. There’s a reason why fear is described as creepy; it’s because
when you are really, absolutely terrified, there’s this slow but undeniable
sense that something is creeping under your skin. Looking at Meenakshi at
that point would have done just that.
For, the girl did not move an inch from afternoon to evening. She kept
on standing fixedly at one spot in that locked room, right in front of the
mirror where the girls used to dress up and kept on staring at herself. She
didn’t know what was going on with her; such a benumbing feeling of
senselessness had never overcome her before. Perhaps it was because of the
way the man had looked at her. Or because she saw the silent complaints in
her sisters’ eyes. Or because she saw the admonishment from her parents
coming upon her.
In a fit of rage and utter helplessness, she messed up her hair and
whatever little makeup was on her face. Her eyes bled kajal; her lips bled
lipstick. And thus she stood like a rock, refusing to even let tears flow out
of her unblinking eyes.
She had hated it. The man’s trembling finger, pointing at her, singling
her out, and his face. She did not know what that face was, but it looked no
different from Tappu’s face when he saw the sweetmeats at Kopre Dada’s
sweet shop. That sick drooling face with those miserably misty desirous
eyes. He looked no more than a dog who has a morsel of prized meat in
front of him. Yes, that was the look. That was the look with which that man
had looked at her.
Or… or the look of that ruffian Govind whenever he cut across her path.
And that was often.
Why? What was it in her that men looked at her in that manner? No one
looked at her sisters like that!
She stared and stared and stared at her reflection in the mirror, trying to
locate that one thing that was different in her. Aai said she was too full for
her age; maybe that was it. Perhaps. Who knows what the male mind
thinks? It might be true though; no girl in her class was as well-endowed as
she was. Meenakshi had just stepped into teenage, but she understood
things like breasts, and she knew that they had something in them that
attracted men. But was that just it? How could men be so shallow?
She hated herself. Why was she growing into this woman that scared
her? Why couldn’t she be like her sisters, all docile and demure girls who
are expected to create good families and take care of them, and nothing
more? Wasn’t that what was hammered into her since her childhood? Then
what was happening to her?
‘It’s because you are special.’
Meenakshi almost fell. It was a voice. Words. Almost human. Not some
vague mental monolog; these words were the real thing. Spoken right into
her ear, slow and yet firm, like someone had poured those words into her
with great adamancy.
“Who is it?” she turned to look. But apart from the howling wind, there
was nothing.

***

Around dinnertime, her mother knocked on the door.

“Come out, eat something,” she said curtly.
Quite in a stupor, Meenakshi opened the door.
“What have you done to yourself?” Renuka exclaimed, thrusting her
wrist into her mouth in horror.
 And then she broke down. She threw herself into her mother’s arms like
the little girl she was. She hugged her as tightly as she could; she let go.
“Buss, buss,” Renuka said. “It’s not your fault.”
“But why, Aai? What is happening to me?”
“You are growing, that’s all.”
“But why like this? None of my sisters—”
“Every girl is different, Meenu.” Renuka sat her down on the bed. “You
will not understand it now, but you are maturing fast. Very fast. A man who
does not know you will not be able to understand you are just a child. Don’t
ask me how this is happening, but it is.”
“I don’t want this…”
“Why, child?” Renuka said in a soft voice, much different than what it
was a few hours ago. “Think of this as a gift. Everything that we cannot
control is a gift from above, isn’t it? But sometimes, we don’t know how to
use it the right way. This is a gift too. Slowly, you will see it is, and you will
learn to use it properly. We mustn’t cry for the gifts we have.”
“It is not a gift. It is a curse. I don’t want it.”
“No, Meenu!” Renuka admonished. “Don’t say like this. You are my
most beautiful girl. You will see that soon and be happy.”
“But what if something bad happens to me?”
“Nothing will. I am there with you. I will take care of you.”
“And… Manda tai’s wedding?”
“We’ll wait for another opportunity. That man was stupid anyway.”
There was a faint trace of a smile on both their lips.

***

Renuka’s words put Meenakshi’s mind at ease. For the rest of the day, she
was almost her usual self, moving about the house on her quick toes, even
giggling a few times. Things changed again after dinner though, when
Shantaram went back to his room and Renuka took his plate inside.
Meenakshi sat on the kitchen floor with her sisters, having her dinner.
The sisters chatted away in hushed tones, and occasionally tried to cheer
Manda up. Meenakshi wanted to say something too, but this was one of
those occasions where anything you say turns out to be wrong. Then there
was the fact that she had always been considered a kind of pariah by her
sisters. Or maybe they were simply in some kind of awe of her. If these had
been just nebulous notions so far, today they hung in the atmosphere so
thickly that they could be cut with a cast-iron knife.
“Manda tai, Aai said that man was stupid,” she said eventually, and that
brought her sisters’ chatter to a grinding halt.
All the girls turned to look at her, all except Manda, who continued to
hide her face and now broke into a fresh set of tears.
“You don’t talk too much,” said Suparna, the fourth sister, “this is all
because of you.”
“Because of me? How?” Meenakshi quipped.
“There you go about strutting like an apsara! Which man will not slip?
Hasn’t Aai told you how to behave like a woman? Look at Kumud. She’s
also a child, but see how decent,” Suparna spat out.
“I am not decent?”
“Go away, Meenu. It is all because of you that Manda tai lost such a
good match.”
The other sisters said nothing, but they did not have to. Suparna was
always the more acerbic-tongued of all. Whenever any of the sisters had to
pick a fight with anyone, they always sent Suparna ahead, and she sallied
forth with the end of her dupatta tucked into her waist, as if for a battle.
Meenakshi had always admired how her Suparna tai never flinched from
confrontation, but today she was the subject of the confrontation.
Pushing her plate aside, Meenakshi stood up and stormed out of the
kitchen.
Screw her sisters! All they could do was bitch, bitch, bitch. And now
that she wasn’t there sitting with them, they’d bitch all the more.
In blind anger, she proceeded to her room to lock herself up again, but
she stopped when she heard the soft voices of her parents coming from their
bedroom.
Curiosity overcoming everything else, she came up and stood by the
slightly open door and pressed her ear as closely to the slit as she could.
“She is still young; she doesn’t know,” her father said. “You have to
teach her.”
“Aaho, I try,” Renuka said. “I try the whole day. What do you think?
Just this morning, she was wearing this shirt and I had to tell her to change
it. She just doesn’t understand. I am telling you, there’s something wrong
with her.”
“Wrong? What’s wrong?”
 “I am a woman. I know. She is… growing up very fast. Do you know
she has already had her woman’s thing? She started at just ten, imagine.
Why else do you think I don’t take her to the temple on some Saturdays?
But it is so precise that it astounds me. It always starts on a Saturday
morning and dries up that same night. She flows just for a few hours every
fourth Saturday. That’s not natural!”
“Well, you know your womanly things better. Should we take her to a
doctor?”
“Doctors don’t know anything. I talked about her with my old Aatya.
She said girls grow differently. But…”
“But what?”
“She is growing very fast. Just look at her with a man’s eye for once,
not like a father’s. You will see how fully grown she already is. She needs
larger bras than even Manda.”
“She might just be large?”
“No. She is in full bloom. She is a fully-grown woman in a child’s
body.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Make Manda and Meenu stand side by side,” Renuka said, “and then
call a stranger to tell who is older. You are their father. You won’t see all
this.”
Shantaram pondered. “But she’s only a child. Our child. We have to do
what is best for her.”
“Of course. That’s what I am worried about. And it’s not just about her
growing so rapidly. See, I have noticed, something happens to the men
when she is around. I don’t know why. Those neighbor boys… I have
stopped her from playing with him. That day I caught them standing behind
the wall of our compound, looking at her. They… had their hands inside…
oh God, I cannot say this.”
Shantaram glared.
“They are just ten or eleven too! How do they know anything? I wanted
to shout at them, but what could I say?” Renuka asked.
“You have to—”
“You don’t understand. Nothing has happened with our other daughters,
has it? We give them the same food that we give Meenu. Same bhaat-
bhaaji. Nothing different. I am telling you… we need to be extra cautious.
If anything happens tomorrow, we won’t be able to face society.”
 Meenakshi reeled. Her parents—no, not her parents, her mother—were
thinking she was a freak. Was she? Was she the way she was being
described? A full-grown woman in a child’s body?
What did that even mean?
She ran into her room. There was no sleep that night.
~3~
 THE WATERLESS WELL

MOROSE AS SHE never had been, Meenakshi missed wishing her

Companion the next morning.
When she remembered, it was almost midmorning. Her sisters had
already bathed and were dressing up for their schools and colleges. Her
mother came in once to wake her up for school, but she firmly turned to the
other side and pretended to sleep. Missing school was nothing new for her.
She heard the last of her sisters wishing her mother goodbye and
slamming the door behind her, and then she finally opened her eyes and sat
up with the realization that one cannot keep themselves tethered to the bed
forever. She came out of the house with a lota of water and went to the
corner of the compound designated for the family’s morning ablutions.
There she brushed her teeth and washed her face, and only when she was
clean did she visit her huge leafy friend.
“Companion, everyone is bad, very bad,” she fretted, not caring if her
voice carried into the house. “You are my only true friend. You will never
hurt me, will you?”
Meenakshi blinked back her tears and peered at the tree as if it would
give her some sign. There was no sign though, except perhaps that the
flower hoods seemed to be exceptionally bowed down that day.
“See, I told you,” Meenakshi said. ‘You are sad too because I am sad,
isn’t it?”
She walked along, her naked feet crunching the leaves. When she
circumambulated the tree once, she felt it.
“Oh, goody!” she said, and picked up the gold coin of the day. “You
never fail to cheer me up.”

***

That afternoon after lunch, Renuka sent Meenakshi to a store that was only
about five hundred meters from the house with a shopping list that had three
items on it—some liquid soap, a half-kilogram packet of tea, and sugar. The
barest necessities.
Meenakshi reached the shop, ignored the smiles of Debu, the boy who
sat at the counter, and stuffed the necessary things in her bag. When she
brought her purchases to the counter for the billing, she felt his hand
grazing hers. Twice.
Not sure whether it was intentional or not, she quickly retracted her
hand, paid him, and walked out of the shop without giving him another
look.
But no sooner did she come out of the shop and take a few steps
homeward than she heard some muffled laughter behind her.
Then there were voices. Of men and boys. She could hear them behind
her, and no, these weren’t voices she could ignore easily.
A wave of anger mixed with fear overcame her, the kind that made her
armpits feel all clammy with sudden cold sweat. She recognized this
feeling. Almost every male gaze evoked those feelings in her nowadays.
And there were male gazes; she knew.
She did not want to turn behind and look at those men. She knew
exactly what kind of men were looking at her, and what they were doing. It
might be that idiot Debu and his friends, standing at the door of his shop,
ogling at her rear. And with those disgusting grins on their faces. At times,
she felt like going right up to such boys and slapping them across their
faces, or probably something more—digging her fingernails into their
mouths and tearing their lips clean off. Then they’d be grinning forever,
wouldn’t they?
“Go now, go, go. Don’t be a sissy!”—she heard one of the boys
speaking in a hushed voice behind her.
“Going, going… don’t push!”—came another voice, and this voice
astonished Meenakshi.
The next moment, it was Tappu who came up walking quickly, trying to
match her step for step.
She turned now. Debu was in the shop, far removed from this scene in
more ways than one.
“How are you, Meenu?” Tappu asked.
It took Meenakshi a moment to register that Tappu had spoken, but then
she began breathing easier. It was only Tappu after all.
“What happened to you, re Tappya? Why are you dressed in these funny
clothes?” she said.
The funny clothes were a full-sleeved checked shirt that was all
buttoned up, a pair of tight crotch-hugging jeans hitched up with a black
leather belt with a screaming oval buckle. He wore black sunshades too,
totally meaning business.
“Nothing. Where are you going?”
“Tappya, what’s wrong with you? Why are you acting all strange?
What’s with these clothes?”
Tappu laughed. “Don’t I look all grown up today? You like it?”
Now Meenakshi laughed. “Is a girl coming to see you?”
“No, no, no girl. What girl? I just wanted to dress up.”
“You look nice.” Meenakshi winked. “Bilkul hero.”
A broad grin grew on his face at that and he turned back as if to look at
someone. Meenakshi looked too; but she could not see anyone, only bushes.
“Is anyone there?” she asked.
“No, no, no one…”
“But I heard you talking to someone.”
“It’s no one, aai shapath! Only me.”
He moved closer. “Meenu… I wanted to tell you something…”
“Wanted to? Means you don’t want to tell anymore?”
“No, no, I have to tell. I mean… I will tell now.”
Meenakshi let out a huge belly laugh, which made her upper body
shake. “You are really an ass today. Okay, tell.”
Then, almost dancing on the balls of his feet as if the soles of the sports
shoes made him uncomfortable, Tappu let it out. “Meenu, will you come
with me to the viheer?”
The viheer. The well. The common village well where the entire village
sourced its water from. On the huge embankment that surrounded it, there
was a dense growth of trees and plants of all kinds, growing on the soft cool
soil. That is where people hung out, with their families in the evenings, with
their friends in the mornings and afternoons, and with their lovers… almost
never. At least, no one saw lovers sitting there because they made sure to be
well-hidden in the profuse shrubbery, but everyone knew they were there.
That was the dating spot of Vatgaon, after all.
“Viheer? Why?”
“Just like that. We’ll do some time-pass.”
“What time-pass?”
“Arre, come, no…”
“Okay, like a picnic? Pindya, Abdul, Nisha… they are also coming?”
 “No. Just you and me. Like we used to play alone so much when we
were kids? Same like that. We will play and sit and talk. Just fun, nothing
else.”
“I don’t know, Tappya,” Meenakshi grew thoughtful. “I am not in the
mood these days.”
“What happened?”
“Let that be. Okay, let’s go…”
“Really?”
“Yes. I am telling you, no? Let’s go. It will be fun.”
He whooped in joy, and then stopped abruptly when he realized it was
weird.
“But see, I also have this shopping bag with me. I’ll keep it home, tell
Aai I am going with you, and then—”
“No, no, no need. If you go home, your Aai will not let you come out
again.”
“Then why don’t you go with someone else today? There are so many
friends… I’ll come tomorrow.”
“No. I want to go only with you. Or not go anywhere at all. Ever!”
“Arre, Tappya, oh okay, don’t start crying now!” There was actually a
tear in his eyes. “Okay, I will come. But you be careful, okay…”
“Careful of what?”
There was no answer. The next moment, they turned and walked toward
the well, Meenakshi taking the lead. She did not see Tappu turning back and
waving a gentleman’s salute to Govind who was hidden in the bushes,
giving him a thumbs-up sign and a wink.

***

They could not see the water in the well from the mound they were sitting
on. All they could see was the foliage of the many lantana bushes that were
around them, with their clustered crimson-yellow flowers shining back at
them in the post-noon heat. And that gladdened Meenakshi’s heart.
Unable to resist herself, she ran up to the nearest bush and picked a
cluster and smelled it. “Aren’t these flowers lovely, Tappya?” she said,
holding up the cluster. “So small and yet so delightful. It looks like they are
smiling, all at once.”
“You look nice,” Tappu said, completely ignoring the flowers.
 He was comfortably settled on the mound already, his knees drawn up,
his arms resting on them.
“How many times will you tell that?” Meenakshi laughed and came up
to him. “Chal now, are we going to just sit here?”
“Let’s sit for a while,” he said. “A bit tired after all the walking. Then
we will play.”
“Okay, what will we play? I know… hide-n-seek. It will be fun in these
bushes,” Meenakshi looked all around as she said that, and then something
grabbed her attention. “But, oh… see that!”
She threw the cluster that was in her hand and romped back to the
bushes. When she returned, she had a fallen drumstick in her hands.
“You always need to have something in your hands, don’t you?” Tappu
said with a grin.
“I cannot sit idle. I am not like you, mhatara!”
But Tappu did not take offense at being called an old man. In fact,
something very contrary was happening to him now. His eyes were now on
the drumstick, which suddenly had a different meaning as the girl held it in
her hands. He knew he mustn’t look, but he could not avoid seeing her soft,
grown-girly fingers moving up and down on it. Her forefinger came to the
tip of the drumstick and tapped it gently, and something happened to him in
those tight jeans, something that had started happening lately and then he
would have to run to the bathroom, leaving whatever it was he was doing.
And usually when that happened, he would be thinking of Meenakshi.
Pulling his legs closer, he moved up to her.
“You watch movies?” he breathed hard.
“Sometimes.”
“Which? Tell me the names.”
She rattled off a few.
“Ae Meenu, don’t we look like the hero-heroine of some Hindi movie,
sitting alone like this?” His hand came over her shoulder.
She didn’t seem to mind it. He drew closer.
“You like that… that drumstick?”
He placed his hand over hers, guiding it to squeeze it gently.
“Leave me, Tappya. What is this?”
“Just showing you a game.”
He forced her hand now and put it right on his jeans and sighed, “Feel
it, please.”
 “TAPPYA!” Meenakshi screamed and pulled her hand away. She stood
up, horror written all over her face.
But the very next moment, the boy’s excitement all died away. An
unfamiliar pain began in him, of a kind that he had never experienced
before. Oh hell, what was this! Even as he sat there, looking at the horrified
face of the girl he had just outraged, he felt the blood running out of his
groin and rushing frantically into the organ that needed it all the more. His
brain. And he just knew, something bad, something very bad, was going to
happen.
Regret of a misdeed may have rarely hit anyone as quickly as it
smacked Tappu right across the face that afternoon.
There was something growing in her eyes now! For once he looked
beyond her chest and her hips and looked at her face. It was worse than the
face of his mother when she had caught him masturbating, and worse than
the face of his father when he had caught him puffing on his discarded
cigarette.
“Sorry, sorry, Meenu… I didn’t mean…”
But she only stared at him now, with an expression that belied all
definition. She did not even look like Meenu anymore. Suddenly, a vision
flashed in his mind, the vision of his Kusma Aunty who had fallen to her
knees midway during their procession to Pandharpur and begun to
rhythmically sway backward and forward like a crazed woman. He had
been scared to death, but the men started pounding their dhols and chinking
their taashas around her, encouraging her to continue her eerie dance, while
someone had said aloud, “We are blessed! The Mother Goddess has entered
Kusma’s body.”
He could not place why this look was similar. He hoped it was not.
What would he do if some kind of Devi entered this girl’s body now to
punish him? He had heard tales of that kind of thing happening.
“You should not have done that, Tappu,” Meenakshi said. It was a
grown, womanly voice now.
“I am sorry.” Tappu fell to his feet, and lay prostrate on the ground,
rubbing his nose in the soil. “I will never do it again.”
Meenakshi had gone beyond all hearing. The thing that was growing in
her eyes was complete now, two red disks that had replaced her black-
brown irises. And she continued to stare at her offender with those
bloodcurdling eyes, accusing, her big bust heaving up and down like it were
lugging a heavy load up the five hundred steps of the Ambabai Peak.

***

When Meenakshi neared the house, the evening sun had already begun its
descent. The shopping bag handles curled around her tiny fingers, she
walked in a daze, unmindful of the two street dogs that had been following
her all the while, trying to sniff at her bags.
It was only when she reached the gates that her reverie broke.
Suddenly realizing the hour and seeing the bag in her hand, she felt that
sense of panic that she should have felt an hour ago. Shooing one of the
dogs with all she had (and sending the other packing behind it), she broke
into a run herself.
She slowed down at the gate and jumped over it rather than opening it
with the infernal creaking noise that it made. There she stood still for a
moment to assess the atmosphere inside the house. Was her father sitting in
the verandah, fretting and fuming? Was her mother peering at the path
outside the house, panic-stricken? Were her sisters running all over asking
for her? No, nothing.
Nothing seemed to be amiss, at least. None of those worrisome thoughts
were playing out here. So far, so good. Her folk probably didn’t even
realize she was not back home yet, and for once, she was happy no one
cared for her too much. She was the seventh daughter, after all. Probably by
the time her parents reached the point of giving her birth, all their love had
dried out. How much love can humans have in their puny hearts anyway?
Looking at the sal tree for reassurance, she tiptoed into the house.
Her mother was preparing dinner in the kitchen. She could hear the pots
and pans. The sisters were probably out at their classes, learning. And her
father, as usual, was invisible.
She kept the bag down on the dining table and ran directly into her
room.

It was at night that Meenakshi found out her absence hadn’t gone
entirely unnoticed. The girls had just finished dinner and after washing their
plates had moved into their common sleeping rooms. Meenakshi followed
them at a distance when she heard a voice calling out to her with an
unfamiliar undertone.
“Meenuye...”
It was her father.
Upon that, the other girls hastened to their rooms and Meenakshi felt
that tingle run down her spine. She had been summoned, and that was never
good. Being summoned has never serviced anyone quite well, has it?
She looked in the direction of her father’s room and there he was,
wiping his hands with a towel. Her mother came out of the room with his
dinner plate in her hands and rushed into the kitchen without even looking
at her.
Meenakshi had no recollection of when she had entered her father’s
room the last time. With calculated steps, as if she were entering an
uncharted cave, she moved in.
“Yes, Baba?” she asked.
“Sit down.”
As usual, her father was dressed in all white—a white loose kurta and a
white loose pyjama. It contrasted with the dark skin on his face and arms
and made him look larger than he was. Almost like a specter in that mid-
darkness of the room. Was he really like this now? At least, she had never
seen those thin strands of gray hair in his sideburns. Then, even as she was
scrutinizing him, he belched and then began.
“Meenu, you know you are my favorite daughter, don’t you?”
Meenakshi did not know that. She could not remember when her father
had expressed anything to her directly.
“As a father, I am not supposed to be close to my daughters,” Shantaram
continued. “That’s how our tradition goes, and that’s your mother’s duty
anyway. But I try to express my love as much as I can.”
Meenakshi nodded.
“But, Meenu, you must know that a father’s love is different. A
mother’s love is built on concern; a father’s love is built on hope.”
Meenakshi occupied herself in pulling at a string on her dress.
“Your mother tells me that you are growing, and I see that too. Growing
up is a good thing, but your mother is concerned about it. She says you are
still a child and you are growing too fast. Are you, Meenu?”
“I don’t know, Baba.”
 “Look at that mango tree in our courtyard. You know how the cycle
goes. The fruits first come out, little and green and extremely bitter. And in
a few weeks, they become ripe and yellow and sweet. Now imagine if there
was one of these fruits that did not follow the cycle. Imagine that parts of
that fruit grew rapidly while the other parts still remained immature. Think
of a yellow ripened fruit with its tart juices still inside. That would not be
acceptable, no?”
“I… don’t understand.”
“Maybe I am not a good teacher. But your Aai tells me I should talk to
you, and here I am talking to you. Meenu, I see you as someone capable of
doing great things. Other fathers in this village restrict their daughters. I
don’t. But to reach that sweet age of the yellow ripened fruit, you have to be
patient. And careful.”
“All right.”
“This is a crucial time of your life. You have to be aware of the people
around you. Especially men. Do everything that you like to do but be aware
of your surroundings.”
“I always am, Baba.”
“You don’t understand, child. Monsters will never show themselves as
monsters. They will come hidden in various garbs. Sometimes they will
look beautiful and tempting.” Then his tone suddenly changed. “Your
friend, that boy, Tappu… is he back home yet?”
She felt a jolt of electricity running down her spine.
“What happened to him?” she asked, hoping her voice wouldn’t break.
“His mother had come looking for him while you girls were eating.”
“I haven’t seen him today,” Meenakshi said with a straight face.
“He is your age too,” Shantaram said. “See what I mean? He’s probably
gone off somewhere, not caring for his folks at home. Look how distressed
his mother is now.”
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“I am not saying you do.”
At that moment, Renuka walked in again. She had probably stood at the
door, hearing every bit of the conversation.
“Where were you this afternoon then, Meenu?” she asked. “You took
two hours to return from the grocery store. You walked in silently like a
mouse, but I saw you.”
 The pang in Meenakshi’s little heart grew more intense, and she hoped
it didn’t thump so wildly so as to be noticed. Be still my beating heart, she
muttered under her breath, but then her entreaties where lain to waste, for
treacherous tears prickled her eyes.
“Why are you crying now? What did I say?”
Meenakshi tried to look up at her mother, but she could not. Yet, she
knew her mother’s figure was looming overhead, for she could see the
corner of her saree tucked into one side of her waist and her arm held firmly
at the other side.
“I… I really don’t remember, Aai.”
“Didn’t you see Tappu at all?”
“No…” Then Meenakshi looked at her father. His head was bowed
down as if in shame. Something broke Meenakshi’s heart at that gesture
from the man she had always looked up to, and she said meekly, “Ye…es.”
“Why do you lie then? Where is he?” Renuka roared.
Now the tears came out like a bleeding wound that had broken its clot.
And along with it came out spit and mucus and a lot of wheezing. “I tell
you the truth, Aai… but you won’t believe me. I was returning… from the
store. Tappu met me outside. You can ask Debu. Then Tappu asked me to
go to the viheer with him.”
“Viheer?” Renuka’s eyebrows disappeared in her hairline. “Why?”
“He said we could play. And I went, but I didn’t really want to go, Aai,
Baba. Believe me. He insisted.”
Shantaram said quietly, “What happened after that?”
“I remember sitting down with him. We were talking for a while and
then… he just came close to me.” The bawls grew louder, almost to a
deafening extent. The sisters came down at that, but Renuka shooed them
away and shut the door.
“What happened then, Meenu? Did he touch you?”
Shantaram shot a look at his wife, but she waved him away, and waited
for her daughter’s reaction.
Then, slowly but with purpose, Meenakshi nodded.
“And?”
“Then I don’t know anything. Believe me. I went blank. Totally blank.
It was like I was sleeping, Aai. When I woke up, I was near our house gate
and it was nearly evening.”
 Renuka and Shantaram shared another look between them. It was an
inscrutable expression this time, but there was disbelief written all over it.
“You don’t remember anything?” Shantaram asked.
“No.”
Shantaram stood up. He walked up to the door and began to put on his
chappals.
“Where are you going now?” Renuka asked.
“To their house, where else? I have to see if—”
Renuka came closer to him and held him by the arm. “Listen to me,
don’t go.”
“Why? His mother is looking all around the village. We have to tell her
this.”
“Look at her.” Renuka pointed to Meenakshi. “We don’t know what
really happened. People will come and question our girl.” Her voice went
really low now. “And she says she blacked out. You see that? You don’t? I
do. She is hiding something.”
Shantaram sat down. “But the boy—”
Renuka waved a hand of reassurance at him, as if telling him mothers
know best about such things and fathers should not interfere.
She went to her weeping child and patted her on the back. “Sit here,”
she said. “I’ll make some sherbet for all of us.”

Renuka was still putting the deep red kokum concentrate into water
when a loud sound from the neighboring house shattered the silence. She
almost dropped the glass.
She came running up to her husband. “What was that? What?”
Shantaram shoved her aside and walked out into the courtyard. He
opened the gate which made a huge screech that set the dogs barking, and
then disappeared into the neighbor’s compound.
“Oh my God!” Renuka exclaimed, clutching her bosom. She stood like
that with bated breath, and when Meenakshi came up and kept her hand on
her shoulder, she got a start.
For nearly ten minutes they stood like that, and then they saw the white
ghost of the man of their house returning from the darkness he had vanished
into.
Renuka ran up to him, “What happened, ho? Did they find the boy? Is
he all right?”
 Shantaram came back into the house, sat down, took the glass of
sherbet, and sighed. All his daughters were around him now; Renuka could
not shoo them away any longer.
“He has been found,” said Shantaram, and Renuka almost went ecstatic.
“But—”
The silence that followed that ‘but’ could be cut with a knife.
“He is not himself. He is delirious, sort of. All dazed and stunned. I saw
him, and I don’t advise you people to go see him right now. His mouth is
open. I mean stuck open by some force, and his tongue is retracted all the
way down to the throat. The Vaidya is trying to pull it out, or the boy might
choke himself to death. His eyes aren’t closing either. Dazed, like he stared
at something horrible and turned to stone. The boy is colder than the lake in
winter.”
“Oh my God!” Renuka said again and looked at Meenakshi. The girl
looked on with a frown, and possibly an expression of fear. “But at least
he’s alive.”
“Why? What happened to Tappu, Aai?” Manda asked.
“You girls don’t talk now,” Renuka chipped in. “He has been found,
that’s all. Hopefully he’ll be better tomorrow morning.”
The obedient girls filed into their rooms en masse, speaking to each
other in muted whispers.
“Why are you here? You go too.”
Meenakshi turned at that and followed her sisters.
After the girls left, Renuka sat next to Shantaram, rubbing his hand,
which had gone as cold as he had just described.
“Don’t worry. It will all be all right,” she said. There was no meaning in
her words.
“You don’t understand,” Shantaram said. “If the boy comes to his senses
tomorrow, he will tell exactly what had happened to him.”
Renuka felt her beat quicken. “I… I didn’t think of that.”
“We don’t know what happened, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” Renuka said. “Meenakshi does not seem to remember.
Or she does, who knows? But what if the boy tells it tomorrow? What if
this is something we cannot control?”
The couple had no answer to that. They sat like that up to a late hour in
the lingering darkness, enveloped by the frantic sounds wafting up to them
from the neighboring house.
~4~
 A MOTHER’S CONCERN

IT WAS TWO in the morning when Renuka finally moved to sleep. She
cast a final glance for the day at her husband who had fallen asleep on the
cot in the verandah, a usual habit for him on sultry nights such as these.
Leaving him there, and ensuring that the gate was locked, she slowly
walked into one of the two bedrooms that her seven girls shared.
Her steps fell lightly on the red stone floor of the corridor and she ran
her fingers along the wooden railing as she walked, her mind besieged with
a thousand and one thoughts.
She poked her head into the first room. It was darker here than outside.
It is a misconception that darkness is of a uniform kind; there are various
degrees of it too. There is the gentle darkness that still lets you see, and then
there is the unforgiving darkness that blinds you. The darkness in this room
was not just one that could blind; if one stared at it too long, it could make
them so desperate so as to pluck their eyes clean out. But Renuka was used
to it. It had been her intimate friend, this darkness of her house.
A minute later, she could see like a cat even in that pitch darkness,
which was now illuminated with some ambient light. From where that
ambient light came was a mystery that would be never solved. But now she
could see four faint outlines of differing sizes sleeping on mats on the floor
—four of her daughters.
Silently shutting the door of the room just as she had opened it, she
walked into the adjoining room where her other three girls were. She didn’t
really know who was sleeping where; it did not matter as long as they were
in the safe confines of sleep.
Entering this room, she spread a mat made of dried coconut-palm fronds
on the floor, mumbled a prayer that sprang from memory and not intention,
and then lay down herself. She could see nothing around her yet, but she
knew the ceiling was there, and a huge whirling ceiling fan that made all the
noise of the room, and somewhere there was a wooden window that could
be opened if one really began to yearn for some light and air.
She was halfway into asleep when she was awakened by a clear voice
that cut through the darkness.
“I never wanted to be here.”
 Renuka’s eyes opened wide. She sat up abruptly, ignoring that painful
snap that happened somewhere in her back.
There she was, in the farthest corner.
Meenakshi.
She was sitting up now, and quite alert, like she were looking at
something in the distance. Renuka’s eyes were now acclimated to the
darkness enough to see the girl’s heaving chest, and she could hear her
breathing that sounded like a pair of blacksmith’s bellows. Her hair, which
had been neatly-done plaits when she had gone to sleep, had now come off
and was now streaking down in two thick bunches on either side of her
head. And then Renuka saw the one thing on her child’s sleeping face that
made her remember her God again—a twisted smile.
Such emotion rose in her that she felt a knot rising in her stomach. Her
ability to breathe suddenly became a stranger to her.
“Meenu…” she whispered. “Who are you talking to?”
Whether at the mention of her name or what, Renuka could not tell, but
the next instant, Meenakshi fell back on her mat, turned to the opposite
side, and became still.
Another minute later, she was snoring softly, her head neatly cuddled
between her pillow and her sister’s.
But Renuka had no sleep the rest of that night.

***

When the rooster crowed, Renuka opened her eyes and sat up, suddenly
alarmed by the faint light of dawn in the room. Perhaps she had had some
sleep, maybe only a few winks, because she remembered shutting her eyes
just a minute ago and now it was dawn already.
But her eyes wouldn’t close again. The memory of last night haunted
back at her, and whatever sleep she had lost now seemed to have run away
into a distant land.
Her girl wasn’t on her mat.
In a flash, Renuka woke up, and realized that her mouth was as fresh as
it had been last night, as if she hadn’t slept at all. She stood up and saw the
gaping vacant space where Meenakshi had been sleeping. Her bed covers
were now curled into a big O, resembling a nest where her sleeping form
had lain all through the night.
 Morning brightness hadn’t yet come on fully, for the time was just ten to
six. The thick haze of the previous night still overhung the atmosphere, and
through it Renuka walked and came into the corridor. Seeing it vacant, she
ran across the length of it, her bangles making enough noise to wake up the
neighbors.
As she ran, she pinched her forearm with hope. Oh, what would she
give to realize all of this was just some bizarre nightmare, and she would
wake up from it once again, and that her youngest daughter would be back
to her in the form she had loved her the most—those chubby cheeks, those
widely-staring inquisitive eyes, and that hair neatly oiled and bundled in
two tight plaits.
“Meenu!” she screamed out when she was right next to her husband
sleeping on the cot in the verandah. The man did not stir.
Then, a faint giggling came to her.
Clutching her breast, Renuka ran with abandon in the direction of the
laughter. She’s laughing, she told herself. Laughing is good.
She spotted her then, under the boughs of the sal tree in the courtyard,
playing gleefully and jumping and prancing on the fallen leaves.
Renuka stopped.
Was this all of it? Was last night really a dream then?
Meenakshi was hopping on the ground under the tree. Time and again,
she would pick up a huge bunch of the fallen leaves and throw them upon
herself. As the leaves—different shades of greens and yellows and browns
—cascaded down upon her, she laughed merrily, almost like a child on a
merry-go-round for the first time. And she did it over and over again.
A fond smile grew on Renuka’s lips. What was the cause of her
needless worry? Here she was, her Meenakshi as childlike as possible,
engaged in something that amused her, something totally harmless.
Renuka showed herself. “Meenu…”
Meenakshi looked up, and her smile mellowed. She clutched the leaves
that were still in her hand and hid them out of sight behind her back.
“What are you doing, Meenu?”
“Nothing, Aai… Just… just playing.”
Renuka came up to her and stroked her cheek. “My dear little girl…
Play, play, I won’t stop you. Why did you get up so early though?”
“I just woke up. I always wake up early.”
 “I know…” Renuka found that she was not gasping now. Last night
looked like a distant memory. Like they had never happened. For a fraction,
she thought if she should ask Meenakshi about her sleep-talking episode,
but then she herself wasn’t sure what that had been.
“Okay, don’t dirty yourself too much,” Renuka said instead. “Come
back inside soon. I am heating up some water for your bath.”
“Yes, Aai. I am coming. You go on.”
Renuka smiled again, and then jangled her bangles all the way into the
house.

Behind her, Meenakshi slowly dropped the leaves she was holding in
her hands. They fell, one by one, till all slipped away, and yet, there was
something that remained in her hands.
Looking furtively in all directions to make sure no one was watching,
Meenakshi brought her little hand in front of the face and unclasped it.
She was greeted by another shining gold coin, unmarked and unsigned,
like they always were, but with the engraving of some fat ungainly man on
it. But she had never cared who that fat man was. The yellow rays of the
rising sun shimmered on the surface of the coin and then reflected on her
face. They gave her an ethereal look, which became all the more
resplendent as she broke into another of her pure, unadulterated smiles.

***

That afternoon, Renuka changed into a fine saree, clapped on her various
ornaments, and slipped on her good chappals.
“Where are you going, Aai?” Meenakshi asked her as she was just about
to step out.
“Nowhere far,” said Renuka. “I am just dropping into the Namdars’
house.”
“Tappu’s house?”
“Yes,” Renuka smiled with reassurance. “They are our neighbors. It is
not good I don’t pay a visit.”
And Renuka set out. As she turned away from Meenakshi and faced the
Namdars’ house, her pretentious smile disappeared. Truth be told, her heart
was beating like a war-drum. It was an incident that could not be
rationalized, and what if her daughter really had some part to play in all of
this, in a manner that she could not fathom?
She waved a goodbye to Meenakshi as she stepped out of the gate of
their courtyard, and then she turned around the bend.
In her frantic state of mind, she did not see Meenakshi quietly and
quickly beginning to follow her, taking care to stay hidden behind the many
bushes on the narrow path between the houses.
At the gate of the Namdars’ house, Renuka paused to scope the
environment. It sounded silent, markedly different from the wailing and
screaming of the previous night. She crossed her heart, hoping that she was
doing the right thing by visiting them, but she knew she was. In the villages,
it was bad enough to not be a part of someone’s happy occasion, but if you
didn’t share their grief, there’d be a ton of guilt and humiliation to live
down.
Savitri, Tappu’s mother, came out with a tray of red chilies, evidently to
keep them out in the sun’s heat for drying.
Renuka made a fickle gesture at her, which was midway between a
smile and a look of grave consternation.
“How’s Tappu?” she asked.
Savitri kept the tray down, came up to the gate, and undid the latch.
“Come, come, Renu. Look for yourself.”
Renuka walked into the house. She waved a cautious hand at Tappu’s
old grandfather who was sitting on a cot in a corner of the courtyard,
looking every bit like he was ready to die, just the way he had done for the
last twenty years. Then she heard the door swing open and she entered.
Renuka could not see Tappu right away. She first saw his three brothers,
naked except for short cloth rags around their little privates, playing with a
plastic toy train that was missing several wheels. Then she saw Tappu. He
lay on a low bed by the wall, and she knew at once that he was not all right.
His stiff body reminded her of the electrocuted lamb she had seen near
the powerhouse once. His hands were raised skyward, just like the lamb’s
tawny forelimbs, and his eyes, glazed and glassy, stared at something in the
distance. The boy’s mouth was open like in a scream, and his tongue was
pulled all the way back, just like her husband had told her.
The only sign of life she saw in the boy was a slight rising and falling of
the chest.
“Oh my God!” Renuka exclaimed in horror.
 One of the children made a loud “Wheeee!” at that point, and Savitri
screamed at the top of her lungs, “Go out and play, you good-for-nothings.
Don’t you see your brother is half dead?”
The children filed out of the room one by one and a creepy silence fell
over the room.
“Sit,” Savitri said and pushed a stool ahead.
Renuka sat, and Savitri sat on the floor, wiping tears that weren’t there
with the end of her saree.
“What did the Vaidya say?”
Savitri began, “What will he say? This is not a vaidya’s job. You can
see, no?”
“What is it then?”
Savitri’s eyes went round like she were to narrate a horrific tale with
relish. “Agga, you know about the many stories of our village, no? I used to
tell this good-for-nothing Tappu ‘don’t go here’, ‘don’t go there’. Never
would listen. He must have walked under one of the trees at noon. You
know what happens at that, no?”
Renuka nodded.
“I told him pretas come to rest in the shade of large trees in the hot
afternoons. He must have tried to disturb somebody’s dead spirit. That’s
what; the ghost got to him. See how he looks. All zhapatlela.”
“So… he has been stunned by a ghost?”
“What else, Renu? You talk as if you are new to this village.”
“Now what?”
“Have called some priest. His father will bring him today if he’s free.
We don’t understand all these things, anyway. Let the priest do whatever he
wants to do. I have kept nice roosters outside for sacrifice if he asks.”
Renuka looked at him again. There was just a flicker in his eyes, like he
blinked.
“I… I think… he’s moving.”
“Agga, don’t mind that,” Savitri said. “When you are stunned, such
things happen. Yesterday he smiled at me too. But I wasn’t fooled. It’s the
ghost in him that’s making him twitch like this. Don’t look at him. He might
hypnotize you.”
“You are sure it is a ghost?”
“What else can it be?” Savitri laughed uneasily. “Yesterday I was so
worried, I thought he’d die. But then Grandpa told such things happen
commonly and they are easily reversed if we get the right people. So, I am
not worrying. They will remove the mischievous spirit from him.”
“That’s it?”
“What more is there?”
There was silence for half a minute.
Then Savitri said, “Thanks for coming too. Who visits whose house
nowadays? You are such a good neighbor.”
That hit Renuka. A ‘good neighbor’ was hardly what she was at the
moment. In fact, all the while she was sitting here, she had been sending
silent prayers to keep the boy in this condition. If he never comes out of it,
he’ll never be able to tell what happened.—she thought.
“Okay then, I am leaving,” Renuka said abruptly. “There’s so much to
prepare for dinner. I’ll come again.”
“Yeah, come again, haan?”
Renuka found her way out of the house. It bemused her, actually, how a
mother could be so carefree about a son who was practically dead. She was
not educated herself, but she had scant faith in the rural superstitions and
even scanter faith in ghosts and spirits. It was a kind of contradiction, as her
mother used to say when she was alive. ‘Renu, you believe in all the gods,
but you don’t believe in the demons? How is that possible? Foolish girl,
don’t you see? Gods are not possible without demons,’ the old lady used to
say.
But she was not complaining now. Let them think there was a ghost. It
served her purpose.

She was walking thus, on the short path that led up to her house, when
she saw Meenakshi at the other end of the path. Suddenly, her feet stopped.
Renuka thought of calling out to her daughter. Words of reprimand were
almost on the tip of her tongue, when she heard a boy’s voice. Quickly, on
an impulse, she hid herself in the bushes.
It was an older boy’s voice. “Ae Meenu… wait, no…”
Then the boy appeared. Was that… Govind, that Dr. Jamblekar’s son?
“Meenu, listen, listen… have something to tell you…” Govind ran up
huffing. “I know what happened to Tappya.”
Meenakshi stopped. So did Renuka.
Despite Renuka’s worry, she didn’t fail to notice how her girl looked
almost as tall as the boy, who was at least nineteen. But the bigger surprise
was still on its way.
“Yes, you should know. Your friend, after all,” said Meenakshi with
surprising cheekiness.
“I know everything,” Govind said persistently. “I know how he got
zapped like that. His parents are fools to think it is some ghost or spirit.”
“Then what is it?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Govind had a smirk on his face now. That smirk
sent shivers down Renuka’s spine.
“I know everything,” he grinned. “I saw you two go together.”
“Go away, Govind,” Meenakshi said in a firm voice. “Go away and
don’t bother me.”
Good girl, Renuka thought. Fight him.
But Govind held her by the hand. “Ae, Meenu… you have something in
you, re. I just cannot understand. I don’t blame that Tappu.”
“What are you saying?”
“Ah, don’t act so innocent!” Govind said. “You don’t know? That
Tappya is crazy for you.”
“I have no time for such nonsense.” Meenakshi turned to leave.
“What’s his fault?” he said, coming right in her path. “You look so
much like a film heroine. Even I—”
Renuka saw her daughter’s fist balling up. If that hadn’t happened, she
would have herself jumped onto the scene and smacked that Govind right
across his cheek, but now she was intrigued. She wanted to see what her
daughter would do.
In one moment, Renuka’s concern turned into thrill. Hiding there in
those bushes, she balled up her own fist too, almost wanting to cheer for her
daughter, goading her on to do what she was about to do anyway.
But the moment passed. The fist uncurled. And a smile grew on
Meenakshi’s face, and that made Renuka’s mouth run dry. It was not like
any smile that she had ever seen on her daughter’s face. Hell, right now, she
did not look like her daughter at all.
Renuka found herself staring at her daughter’s hand, the one that was a
fist just a moment ago. But, what was this? Something was happening,
something that was much larger than her comprehension. Something that
she would remember for the rest of her life with a brainfreeze.
From those fingers up, there was a transition brewing in her daughter,
some kind of transformation. They were becoming darker, and longer, and
the first flash that crossed her mind was her old grandmother’s wizened
fingers shortly before she died. A horror show was unfolding right here, and
Renuka knew, she just knew, this was all just in her mind. How could this
crazy thing be true?
“MEENU!” Renuka yelled out loud. “Why did you come out of the
house?”
Upon hearing her voice, Govind backed off, and then seeing who she
was, turned and began to run.
Renuka ran after him. “Where are you running off to, you bastard? Have
balls, then turn and face me! You cross paths with my daughter ever again
—”
But the boy had fled out of earshot.
Renuka came running to Meenakshi and held her tightly in her arms,
squeezing her hard as if trying to stifle the transformation that was coming
into her. But then the next moment, she released her from her grip, and
smothered her face with kisses.
She wanted to deny everything—what she had seen and what she
hadn’t. She had suspected there was something quite wrong with her
daughter, but now she wanted to turn a blind eye to it. And that would be
the best thing to do because if she saw her daughter in whatever that form
was, she was sure she would really blind herself.
~5~
 THE MAN OF THE HOUSE

THE MAN OF the house woke up at ten in the morning, a late hour by his
standards, and what irked him more was that he was still in the verandah on
that blessed cot his dear departed father used to sleep on once upon a time.
His first reflex was to call out to his wife, which led him to the
realization that she wasn’t at home. That explained a few things, of course,
like why he was still on the cot in the verandah. If she had been home,
she’d have definitely woken him up. Slowly, he got up, watered the
sarsaparilla that had graciously climbed on the verandah’s railing with a pot
kept nearby for that purpose, and then headed to the bathroom for his
ablutions.
When he emerged again a considerable while later and still didn’t find
Renuka, he dressed up and proceeded to the outside world where his work
beckoned him.
Shantaram Hanumantrao Patil belonged to that lucky generation of a
once-rich family that did not have to practice an active occupation to keep
their household lamp burning. Three generations before him had slogged (in
descending order of the slog) to buy and then retain the ancestral cottage
house that his family lived in now, with the small garden and the host of
trees surrounding it, along with several other small properties across the
village that now brought in a handsome amount of rent.
It was this rent and the income garnered by selling fruits off the trees in
their garden that the Patils lived on; and until a couple of years ago, that had
been more than enough for their sustenance as well as to put something
aside for a rainy day.
But, of late, the rainy days had been many. With seven daughters,
whatever savings existed were earmarked for their nuptial expenses in fixed
deposits in national banks that would strictly not be touched till they had to.
And as the number of members in the household increased and grew up
over the years, the income turned to be inadequate to the point that now the
family lived a hand-to-mouth existence. One of Shantaram Patil’s biggest
mistakes had been to sell off the four-acre cotton plantation his grandfather
had bought in his time. The money from the sale came like a typhoon and
went like it, and it carried away with it a concrete form of earning a
livelihood.
 Today was the first of the month, and Shantaram had to do the rounds of
all his rented properties. He hoped to return by evening, his pockets stuffed
with enough cash to run the month comfortably, provided an ugly quirk of
fate didn’t decide to rear its hood. Then, cursing himself for harboring a
negative thought, he shrugged and left the house.
By afternoon, Shantaram acquired some cash from a few of his tenants,
who had been courteous to ask him in for tea, which he firmly refused. On
principle, he did not enter the houses he leased, but the truth was that he did
not want to see how other people were handling his properties. Even if a
king would have lived in one of his houses, plastering the walls with gold,
Shantaram would have felt uncomfortable to see it. It was not the fear of
having his property damaged that bothered him; it was the fact that his
possession was not really his anymore. And a true man can never rest easy
when he sees someone else using what is rightfully his, even if they pay
him enough for it.
But he had seven daughters. Time and again, he had been told he should
not be so staunchly possessive. That had never worked for anybody, and it
wouldn’t for him.
To clear his mind, he sought a brief reprieve at a roadside inn on the
highway for a cup of tea and some biscuits. This was safe territory, for it
was between his village and the next, right on the arterial route where only
trucks and private vehicles passed by, most of them making their way to the
city of Kolhapur forty miles away. There was hardly a familiar face here but
he didn’t want one either; this was perfectly all right. When the tea came in
a small chai glass, he dunked the biscuits in it with much ceremony, one by
one, and ate them leisurely, and then slurped the tea. No one turned to look
at him though; in that environment slurping was the favored way to drink
out of a glass.
After fifteen minutes of this blissful privacy, Shantaram got up and was
about to walk away when he noticed one familiar face sitting in the corner
of the establishment.
He squinted at first to make sure it really was him, and at that precise
moment, that man turned to look at him too. Another moment later, the man
was running up at him.
Shantaram didn’t have to look twice to recognize him. It was
Harikumar, the suitor.
 “Patil sahib, so nice to bump into you like this. Good afternoon,” he
said with all the politeness he could muster.
“Good afternoon.” An awkward pause followed, and then Shantaram
said, “So you are still here?”
Harikumar looked at his feet. “I… I came back. For another visit.”
“I see.” Shantaram turned. Disinterest in both the person and the
conversation was writ large on his face. “Anyway, be well. I have to go.”
“Sir…” the young man offered again.
“What is it?”
Then Shantaram could not miss it. There was palpable gloom on the
man’s face.
“Everything fine, son?” he asked, and immediately regretted referring to
him as ‘son’ even if it was only for the sake of pleasantries.
Another moment of discomfort followed. And then a tear glistened in
the young man’s eye.
“It’s mother,” he said. “She passed away last week.”
Shantaram stepped forward with such suddenness that his leather
Kolhapuris stomped the ground. “Last week?” he shot out. “But you were
here just ten days ago.”
“Yes. We returned to Bombay after that. Couple of days later, she got
one of those asthmatic attacks she used to get. Only… only this time it was
terrible. I saw her… her face all bloated and contorted, as if trying to grasp
at something. ‘Air, air,’ she yelled and opened her mouth and shut it
repeatedly. ‘Air is all around you, Aai! Breathe,’ I said. But she couldn’t.
She just couldn’t. There… right there… in front of my eyes, her face turned
blue. I saw her die and I was just standing by. Could not do anything. The
worst thing there is—seeing someone die and knowing that you cannot do
anything about it.”
Shantaram took it all in. He knew the man was letting go. After much
searching for a proper rejoinder, Shantaram said, “But then, why are you
here? You should be conducting her last rites.”
“All that is done, sir. I have an aunt in the city to look at whatever
remains. Not a real aunt, but more than one.”
Shantaram placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Please accept my
condolences. She was a good woman.”
A cry escaped Harikumar’s lips at that, but he quickly stifled his mouth
with a handkerchief.
 “Do you have some work in the village?”
Harikumar lowered his head.
“Well, what is it?”
“Nothing, sir,” he said. “I’ll just stay here for a few days.”
“But why? Business?” It was a vain guess; there could be no business a
Bombay entrepreneur would have in a hamlet like Vatgaon.
Harikumar shook his head.
“Then you know someone here?”
“No one. I have booked a room at the Starlight Inn.”
“But, really, why?”
“Something tells me I must be here.”
Shantaram looked at him with puzzled eyes. A curious flicker of worry
passed across his face.
“Well, I cannot understand what’s in your mind, but of course, who am I
to ask? Take care, son.”
Shantaram turned and began to walk away. He had almost hailed a State
Transport bus on the highway to take him back home when Harikumar
came running up to him again.
“Sir… sir… wait…”
Shantaram turned to look. The bus passed him by.
“What?”
“Could you… did you… think about what I told you the last time?”
Shantaram stopped. Yes, this was his fear. If the man had been in a
proper frame of mind, Shantaram might have probably punched him in the
nose, but he stayed calm and asked, “What?”
“If you remember, while leaving—”
“Yes, what?”
“I asked you for… your youngest daughter’s hand. Your… your…
Meenakshi.”
Shantaram’s eyelashes fluttered with worry, rage, and shock. “What the
holy fuck are you saying?”
Harikumar looked straight in Shantaram’s eyes with a stony, fixed gaze.
There was no smile on his lips.
“She is just thirteen,” Shantaram said, a bit softly now.
“Does age really stop things in this village, sir?” Harikumar asked. “I
will keep her like a queen. I have a huge house—no, houses—in Bombay
and have a family business that my father left for me. I practically work for
only six months in a year and earn more than what most people do. Why do
you object?”
“SHE IS JUST THIRTEEN!” Shantaram repeated.
“Is it about dowry? You don’t have to give me anything. In fact, sir…”
Harikumar fell at Shantaram’s feet. “If you allow me to marry Meenakshi, I
will give you five lakhs as a present. I know you have other daughters, sir.
Won’t that help?”
“Get up, Harikumar,” Shantaram said. “I know your qualifications and
eligibility, and that’s the reason I agreed to see you for my older daughter. If
you want Manda’s hand, take it any day. But Meenakshi is off-limits for the
next five years. I cannot do anything about it.”
Shantaram stopped another bus. It slowed down and he got in without as
much as turning back.
Harikumar kept standing on the street though, looking as crestfallen as
if he had been denied a last meal.

***

Even as Shantaram proceeded to open the gate of the compound that

evening, Renuka ran up to him.
“How did you know I have reached? You are no less than a sniffer dog,”
Shantaram said.
“I’m not a wife for no reason. Wives have to be sniffer dogs and
worse,” Renuka said without skipping a beat.
“Of that I have no doubt.”
Then the tirade came. “Where were you all day? Don’t you just go
walking around like that without telling anyone. If anything happens to you,
what will I do with these seven girls on my head?”
“Oh, calm down, Renu. Today is the first. Do I have to tell you every
month?”
Almost obediently, Renuka softened. “Anyway… I have something to
tell you. Today, I had been to the Namdars’ house and on the way back, I
saw…”
“OH, DO BE QUIET!” Shantaram cut her off. It was atypical of him to
ever raise his voice (and the neighbors even joked that in the Patils’ house,
the girls could be heard but never the man). But anger and concern had been
brewing in him all afternoon and now it spilled out.
 Renuka backed off. “What… what happened?”
“I am sorry,” he mumbled. “I should not have…”
“That’s okay. Screaming is good at times. Now tell me, what
happened?”
“I met Harikumar.”
“Him?”
“Yes. He says he is visiting again. I think he never left. But there’s
news. His mother’s dead.”
“Oh! How? She was so hale and hearty…”
“One can never tell what one hides inside their bodies, can they?”
Shantaram said.
Those words, and the way they were said, sent a shiver down Renuka’s
spine. She pulled her saree palloo closer, shrugged, and said, “Why is he
here?”
“Take a guess.”
“Meenu?” But though there was that quizzical tone in Renuka’s voice,
there was no doubt in her mind. A man going all out of the way, acting
beyond any levels of sanity to meet her daughter—that was not new to her.
“He begged me. Fell down at my feet, almost rubbed his nose into the
ground. Just so that I’d agree to marry Meenu with him.”
Renuka made a sound that was almost a groan. She recalled the
adventure with Govind that morning and things multiplied in her mind to
great levels of danger.
“But why? Why always her?”
“I told him,” Shantaram said. “I agreed on the spot to get Manda
married to him. But he wouldn’t listen. Age doesn’t matter, he says.”
“Oh! This is not good. Not good at all.”
“I saw something in his eyes, Renu. A longing that I have only seen in
the eyes of people who pine and waste away. Remember that jilted Narayan
who just used to sit and drink outside the viheer till he died? This
Harikumar was a fine man when he came here the first time, just two weeks
ago, is it? And today, he’s almost a beggar, wasting away like a vagrant.
And all because of what?”
Renuka came closer to Shantaram and placed her hand on his. “Look,
we must not tell Meenu this. Not about Tappu either.”
“Now what’s about that Namdars’ kid?”
 “I overheard someone today. Yes, our Meenu was with Tappu, and she
was the last person he saw. But I saw something more.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to get excited, okay?” Renuka said. “But I have to tell
you. There was this guy teasing her on the street. At first, Meenakshi
ignored him and even reproached him like any self-respecting girl should.
But then something overcame her. She became different. Suddenly began to
change. A sinister smile broke out on her lips and she began to talk in a
different tone, a seductive tone, a voice that no mother should ever hear on
their daughters. It scared me to bits, watching all this, and then I saw—”
“What?”
“Her hands began to turn. Change, I mean. Like she was turning into
someone else.”
“What are you saying?”
“I am telling you what I saw.”
“Then…”
“I jumped into the fray and chased that guy away. Then I just ran and
held our Meenu tightly. That hug was not a hug of love though; it is just that
I did not want that other thing that is inside her to come out.”
“Other thing that is inside her?”
“Why, don’t you see it yet, Manda’s father?” Renuka said. “I have never
believed in superstitions, but our Meenu is not ordinary at all. There’s
something else living within her. And today I saw it with my own eyes.”
Shantaram sat down on the cot. It was a cold night; the beginnings of
winter were making their presence felt. But despite that nip in the air, he
broke into a sweat. Then, wiping his sweat away with his own shirt, he said,
“Do you… do you think it is because something went wrong that night?
Something did go wrong. I know.”
“Which night?”
“That night. When she came into this world.”
And Renuka looked at him aghast, the whites of her eyes looking fit to
burst in that darkness, and for once she was at a complete loss of words.
~6~
 NAKED MAN IN THE GROVE

TEARING HERSELF AWAY from the room where her sisters were still
lost in their post-dawn sleep (and which would go on for another hour at
least), Meenakshi skulked up to the sal tree. The sun was just beginning to
rise. It was tempting the skies with its golden streaks, a promise that would
be broken in a few minutes and the sky would turn a duller blue. But,
seizing this moment, Meenakshi sat herself down under the shadowy
boughs of the tree, and took a leaf from the hundreds that were scattered on
the ground. She looked at it closely as if she were reading something in
those veins. Then with her nails—which were surprisingly back to being
long and sharp though her mother had trimmed them just two afternoons
ago—she began to carve something on it.
Her fingers ran along the contours of the leaf, applying added pressure
on the veins, as they began carving out a shape. She had nothing on her
mind, and she let her fingers guide her however they wished to go, but there
was a thought that at the end of this, she was going to be greatly surprised.
Just like it had been happening a lot these days.
For a long time, she sat thus and enjoyed her little art, but then
something distracted her.
It was a sound in the vacant garden space up ahead of her, a spot that
was overgrown with bushes of various kinds. No one visited there anymore
except stray animals, and there was the real fear of snakes too. She stood up
and looked. But for a whole minute when she saw nothing, she went back to
her leaf carving.
The sound happened again. This time it was a definitive crash, like
someone was trying to break something. With the leaf still in her hand, she
walked with small measured steps to the corner. Everything turned silent
now, even the chirping of the morning birds, and as she entered this
untrespassed spot of the garden, the farthest end from the house, it was as if
she was stepping into a new world altogether.
Meenakshi looked furtively for the source of the crash. Perhaps a dog or
a cat had strayed here and was now stuck in the bushes. Perhaps it was
struggling and squealing. That thought pained her and she began to look
more closely, and then she saw it.
The it was not an it though. He was a man, crouching in the bushes.
 Backing off several steps, Meenakshi let out a gasp.
At that, the man stood upright, and at the first look itself, Meenakshi
shut her eyes. He was stark naked, and completely unbothered by that fact.
He hid nothing; he flaunted nothing. He just stood there in the form nature
had given him.
Meenakshi opened her mouth to scream, but it died away even before it
could pass her throat.
This was the first time that she was seeing a grown man’s penis, and it
scared her. She shut her eyes, and tried her best not to look at it. It was a
small mercy when he stepped back into the bushes, for the leaves covered
his organ. That was when she looked at the rest of him, strangely not scared
anymore, and then she was struck by how handsome he was.
His hair, a shade of lustrous brown, fell like waves over his shoulders,
which were like two blocks of the finest marble ever crafted. His chest was
flat like a slab of the same marble, with chiseled grooves in all the right
places, and from either side of it rose two of the finest arms she had laid
eyes on, well-sculpted manly arms that could draw a portrait with finesse or
even drag an entire bullock-cart if it came to that.
She dared to look at his face, and, quite surprisingly, this was a face
most kind, even with a faint welcoming smile on it. That smile was
contained within such perfect jaws that they could not belong to any earthly
man. And the eyes were the color of a summer river, and the longer she
looked into them, the more she felt like she were slipping away somewhere.
Unknown to herself, she had stepped closer to the man.
“Don’t! Stop!” he said.
And Meenakshi stopped.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I have come to meet you.”
“But who are—”
“I am Kritaveer. Call me Krita,” he said in a firm voice that was both
authoritative and friendly. “It is not time yet for you to know who I am. But
you are growing older, and I need to tell you that I am here for you and that
you are not to worry.”
Then, as if some realization had dawned upon her, Meenakshi said,
“What are you?”
“What I am and what you are—these are questions that you are meant to
discover for yourself, and when the time comes, you shall. Right now,
suffice it to know that I come from a faraway place, and you do not belong
here either. This, your earthly life in the body of this girl, is your cage, your
prison.”
Something told Meenakshi that the man was not talking to her now. His
kind eyes were looking at her body, and his compassionate words were
falling on her ears, but the person he was addressing was not her.
“Why are these things happening to me? Everyone thinks I am a freak.
My mother, my father, my sisters—”
“They don’t matter,” the naked man said. “They are people of this
world, limited by their ignorance and arrogance. And they should stay
handicapped thus, for these humans can annihilate themselves if they gain
all knowledge. Be that as it may, you are still trapped inside the body of this
girl, and until then you will remain who you are. You are cursed to grow
with this girl.”
“Cursed?”
“Yes, you have forgotten where you have come from. That is part of the
curse. But you will remember. And until then, you must play the role of this
girl, Meenakshi.”
Something came over her. She had a limited human brain too, and that
told her she was torn. Split.
In that breaking dawn, she had an acute realization. That she was not
alone. There was someone inside her. She had felt it for long, especially on
those lonely nights when she heard voices from deep within her. She had
suspected for long that those voices were speaking to her, but now she
knew. And that someone was now struggling to get out, trying to claw at her
from inside, trying to rip her apart and show herself to the world.
Words came out of her mouth that were not hers.
“I am alone. No one understands me here.”
“Don’t worry,” said Krita and smiled again, a smile that sent a ripple of
frenzy through the girl’s heart. “There are many companions around you to
help you complete your human birth. The humans here do not know who
you are. That’s how it is meant to be.”
“Who are these companions?”
“There are many,” Krita’s face lit up. “I am one. And I will come when
you really need me. But even if I am not there, there’s always another
companion you can bank upon.”
 At that, Krita turned to look behind her and Meenakshi realized he was
looking at the sal tree.
“Companion?”
“So you know it already,” Krita said. “Nature is your good friend. Trees,
birds, animals, they are your helpers.”
Meenakshi nodded.
“But I will not fool you either. Before the calm comes a storm. And a
storm has to come in your life too, a terrible tragedy, or perhaps a spate of
them, and you have to face them. That’s part of the punishment.”
“Punishment? Why am I being punished?”
“That’s not mine to tell. But you will know.”
And the man flashed again into disappearance, his job accomplished.
Meenakshi found that she had been gasping and had broken into a huge
sweat that was now pooling in various regions of her body.
When she could breathe again, she realized she still had something in
her hand and her fingers ached. She raised her hand to see what it was, and
she saw the leaf.
The carving was now done; her fingers had moved by themselves. And
though the mesh that the veins of the leaf left behind, she could see a hazy
shape of a proud figure, sitting and smiling back at her.
And that gave her quite a start.
This was the fat man engraved on the coins.
~7~
 FESTIVAL OF SNAKES

SUPARNA, THE FOURTH of all sisters, sat next to Meenakshi that night
in their bedroom, every bit of her looking desirous for some good gossip.
“I know something is going on with you, Meenu,” she said. “What is
it?”
“What do you mean?”
“We know. All of us sisters are talking. There’s something that you
know and Aai-Baba know. But what is it? Are you… do you have a
boyfriend?”
“Of course, not!” Meenakshi said in such a loud voice that it made
Kunda, who was sleeping in the same room, turn over and sleep again.
“But then what are all those hushed whispers? And that night when you
in their bedroom?”
“They were… they were scolding me.”
“Baba also?”
“Yes, he also. Aai more, though.”
“What were they scolding you about?”
“They plan to drop me out of school.”
“What?”
Meenakshi nodded. It was true too. Renuka had told her that in one of
her fits of rage, but she hadn’t divulged the reason why. “I think… I think
Baba is finding it difficult nowadays.”
“Why? We have such a big house and that garden.”
“He has no work.”
“He never has any work,” quipped Suparna.
“Don’t talk like that, tai. Baba tries very hard to look after us all. He’s a
good man.”
Suparna shuffled closer to Meenakshi. “Okay, stop praising our father
now. I am not going to go tell him you were praising him, so there’s no
benefit there. Anyway, now listen hard…”
“What?”
“I know there’s some trouble in the house,” said Suparna, “and I am old
enough to know it is not the regular money kind. People don’t talk about
poverty in hushed whispers. I know it is something scandalous, something
you people don’t want the rest of us to hear. So be it. But, Meenu, bear in
mind that I am your older sister, and I will take care of you. If anything
happens, you have to tell me. I have your back.”
Meenakshi looked at her sister in gratitude. This was Suparna talking to
her—Suparna, the acid-tongued one. Suparna, the one whom even the older
boys feared to cross paths with. Suparna, the one whom the older aunties
respected and called in to their clandestine meets. And now she wanted to
protect her. Meenakshi wasn’t blind to see that while none of the other
sisters had approached her about the things that were so obviously going on
in the house, Suparna had. And that meant the world to her.
“I will perhaps never need protection, Suparna tai,” Meenakshi said
after a pause. “But thanks.”
“You are just thirteen, Meenu. I am sixteen and a half. I know better. I
know what goes on, and how people can be real creepy at times. Don’t be
afraid to come to me for anything. You know I thrive on a good fight.”
“I know that,” Meenakshi smiled.
After a few silent moments, Suparna said, “So, let’s go to the Nag
Panchami jatra together, what say? It’s next week.”
“Who all?”
“You, I, and whichever of these lazy asses wants to come.”
Meenakshi laughed. “Okay, if Baba permits.”
“He will,” said Suparna. “You don’t worry about that.”

***

A week later, Suparna, Kumud, and Meenakshi were the only Patil girls to
visit the jatra. It had taken Suparna all she had to convince her mother, and
things had become especially difficult when she said she wanted to take
Meenakshi along. Renuka refused strongly at first, but to avoid Suparna’s
probing questions, she finally relented.
The jatra was in the nearby town of Battis Shirala, a town populated
mostly by families who are snake-charmers since generations. Every year,
in the prelude to the Snake God festival of Nag Panchami, these snake-
charmer families make a beeline to the Goddess Amba Bai temple to
partake in an interesting tradition. They are each given a flower, which is
meant to be placed on the head of the goddess’s idol. If the flower falls to
the right, then that family earns the right to catch a snake that year and
present it in the grand procession, to the utmost respect and admiration from
the rest of the village.
When the girls reached, the procession was already underway.
The snakes, now well-fed and worshipped by the families, were being
led into procession. The entire atmosphere looked fit to explode with colors
and music, mostly songs from Hindi and Marathi movies. People dressed in
their finest danced to the tunes in the middle of the road, right between the
snake exhibits that were rolled out on vehicles. Along the sides of the road
were many stalls selling trinkets and foods for the crazed revelers.
Meenakshi craned her neck to see the first snake that she could spot, a
common krait. It was led by a family of four and followed by a dozen other
people. The men of the family opened the basket and the snake hissed out,
waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
A child from the family, a boy, flashed an orange cloth in front of the
krait’s head. The sudden change in its environment unnerved the reptile and
it darted its head in every direction the cloth moved and came precariously
close to the boy who easily sidestepped it.
The audience clapped and cheered even as the music of a folk song
blared from a loudspeaker attached to a tempo that moved ahead of this
crowd.
“Come on, Meenu, let’s have that candyfloss!”
Meenakshi turned her head away from the snake and looked at Suparna
pointing at a cart by the roadside where an old lady sat with several of the
pink stringy sweets that almost hid her completely.
“Yes, let’s!” said Kumud.
“You two go,” Meenakshi said. “I don’t want.”
“Sure?” Suparna asked. “Because I wanted to check out those bangles
too.”
“Yes. You go. I’ll be here.”
The sisters made themselves scarce and Meenakshi was left alone with
the show. Snakes were much more fascinating than stupid bangles and
candyfloss anyway.
Snakes came and went, and Meenakshi saw them all. There were kraits
and vipers and rat-snakes, and all of them carried a dazzling menace of their
own. Every time a snake lunged, people cheered in deafening applause and
the family handling the snake became all the more puffed up in pride, for
they had climbed up another notch in their social standing.
 Then, far in the distance, a crowd erupted in a loud cheer. This was
quickly followed by an explosion of colors and music that increased in
volume till the zestful strains of that live band—drums and trumpets and
tambourines—overtook every other sound. Meenakshi craned her neck to
see. It was a large open truck, its front painted red and orange, a group of
young men and women dancing in front of it with total abandon. A banner
proclaiming NAG DEVTA MITRA MANDAL shone amid dancing lights. The
other snakes suddenly paled in comparison, for evidently, the bigshots of
the carnival had arrived. Someone from somewhere splashed colors on the
dancers, and young boys took their shirts off and danced, and women
laughed in abandon, but no one stopped or paused. And as the procession
inched its way towards Meenakshi, the number of revelers swelled up and
the music grew to such an extent that she could not hear her own mind.
And that excited her all the more.
Almost clapping now, just like the others in the crowd, Meenakshi
craned her neck to get a better view.
There were men ahead of her and behind her, and all of them were
trying to look at one thing, everyone practically trying to climb over each
other in their quest.
Meenakshi did not mind the men touching her. She knew their interest
lay elsewhere, and in a place such as this, pushing and pulling and jostling
was to be expected.
After all, the bigshot was arriving.
And then they did.
A man climbed up to the roof of the truck and announced on
loudspeaker, “Brothers and sisters, here’s what you have been waiting for!
NAG DEVTA MITRA MANDAL brings you our beloved Snake God. Cheer
loudly for the family who has brought him to us this year—the Gorse
family, the pride of Battis Shirala. Back off now, and feast your eyes, as we
show you the king of snakes—the King Cobra.”
For a prolonged moment, there were sighs and gasps, and then everyone
cheered loud enough to puncture eardrums.
Men and women colored orange and red and yellow ran ahead for a
better glimpse. Meenakshi surged ahead, not minding the clawing people
behind and in front of her, and stood almost at the foot of the truck. The
show was about to begin.
 A man with a white stubble, evidently the head of the Gorse family,
came to the front of the truck. On his forehead were various marks of
devotion. Another man, a younger one, brought out a round earthen pot
whose mouth was covered with another smaller pot, and everyone gasped
again. He placed the pots on the floor of the truck. There was dead silence
now; even the music stopped. The other snake displays seemed to have just
disappeared.
The Gorse patriarch bowed as low as he could and joined his hands in
reverent worship to appease the Snake God who was in the pot. Standing in
that crowd, Meenakshi’s heart began to thump. This would be her first time
seeing a cobra. A well-appeased, well-fed cobra at that. Staring at her, right
in the face.
The younger man moved in, and as cautiously as he could, raised the
smaller pot.
Hearts might have stopped at this point.
Then arose the King Cobra, first bringing his majestic head out of the
pot, glistening black and brown all over except for the white bands all along
his neck. He came out without fear, with a sense of monarchical pride, and
lashed his forked tongue out to feel the environment. The tiny beads that
were his eyes darted all around, and then he began to sway his head.
“God! God is here!” Gorse chanted. There were tears in his eyes. “Bless
us.”
Gorse then undid a red cloth that was tied around his waist. It was a
slow, calculated movement, and his eyes were on the snake at all times. He
took the cloth in his hand, bent defiantly close to the snake, and swept the
cloth gently along his body.
That did it. The snake raised his head again and the next instant, his
glorious hood went up.
Poised for both fear and respect, this special reptile rose up as if for
acclaim.
The crowd went into a tumult at the display. People whooped with joy
and some of them started to dance, but Gorse gruffly warned, “People, be
quiet. Do not excite the Snake God.”
But the Snake God was excited. Gorse led him on with his cloth,
flashing a bit here and a bit there, making him turn his hood turn in
confusion to look at people standing on all sides.
 Standing ahead of the crowd, Meenakshi suddenly began to feel dizzy.
She had been staring too long at the swaying snake’s head, and did not
realize when the crowd went from awe to frenzy.
The breathing of the men closed in on her. She tried to look at the
snake’s hood and the proud gleaming face of Gorse as he led the snake, but
something was turning within her. She felt it; the throbbing under her skin
that had begun to scare her so much these days.
The breathing of one man in particular stood out to her. It fell right into
her ears.
‘Look behind you, fool!’
There it was again, that voice. A woman’s rasping voice. And in that
stilled heartbeat, Meenakshi realized that voice came from within her.
Then she realized she was pinned. That voice… that voice was a
caution.
The man was right behind her. It worried her to look, but she felt his
grubby hand on her waist now. Crawling just like the serpent in front of her.
And how oblivious to it she had been. Blame it on the crowd or the show
ahead of her, but she hadn’t realized it until now. Not until she had been
warned… by her inner voice.
But now she knew. And there was no unknowing it. It was happening,
happening, and then she felt another kind of snake, that man’s hard erect
snake, pressing into her buttock. She looked back and saw the man’s
grinning teeth and a whiff of his bad breath ran up her nose, and then she
saw him nod and wink at her, as if to say, Let it go. Let it happen. You are
enjoying it too, aren’t you?
‘The bastard…’
No, she did not say that. It was the voice, the voice.
‘You stay put, Meenu. I will take care of this.’
The next moment, she felt a tingling in her fingers.
Distantly she could still see the swaying hood of the snake. Gorse had
found his groove now, and he was practically dancing in front of the reptile.
There were others on the floor of the truck, people from his family, and they
took turns in taming the animal too.
And then the music began to play.
Meenakshi could not breathe. The man’s hand had risen on her now,
having gone from her waist to her breast.
 No one looked at her, except that man, who was now breathing heavily
on her back.
Her fingers! They were throbbing now. Moving on their own. They felt
heavy, scabby. She felt the skin of her hands becoming taut, stretching on
her, threatening to break. She looked down at the fingers, and was horrified.
This was not her. This wizening skin, these cracking fingernails… these
were not her hands!
She was still looking at her hands when a colossal shout passed through
the crowd. The loudspeaker blared, “PEOPLE, MOVE ASIDE!”
Meenakshi turned to look at the truck, and she ducked just in the nick of
time.
Barely did she escape the King Cobra that had ejected himself from his
sitting place like he were an arrow shot from a bow.
And even as she fell, she saw the fangs of the cobra emerging out of his
mouth, and she saw those fangs cutting an arc in the sky above her, and then
clamping right into the chest of the man who had been molesting her.
The man collapsed instantly. He began to quiver even before he could
reach the ground. His arms stiffened as if he were trying to fight something,
and then they fell loose.
Forever.
A copious amount of white foam came out of his mouth and began to
spread in the mud.
Then someone shouted again.
Meenakshi looked, still aghast, and then felt something soft by her feet.
It was the cobra, now nestling comfortably between her feet, looking as
harmless as if he were her pet snake.
Gorse, spellbound and dumbstruck, hopped off the truck and the cobra
went gladly with him into the pot again.
“The man is dead!” someone yelled out into the stunned silence. “THE
MAN IS DEAD!”

***

Suparna and Kumud came rushing to the spot to find Meenakshi being
accosted by a group of irate men and women.
“Why was the snake by your feet?” one woman in a green saree asked,
stooped such that her face was inches away from Meenakshi’s. “Why did it
not attack you?”
“I… I don’t know,” Meenakshi stammered.
“What kind of sorcery is this?” the younger Gorse said. “This has never
happened before. You definitely did something to our Nagoba.”
Nagoba was safely in his earthen confinement now, but he was
definitely not pleased. The pots moved with great vehemence, and the
atmosphere was filled with furious thudding sounds, the sounds of an angry
hood beating against the inside of the pot.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Don’t tell us that,” the woman said. “We have been taming snakes
since centuries. This has never happened. Snakes have never flown out like
that. A flying snake! Who will believe it?”
“Who are your parents, girl?” Gorse asked.
A young man stepped forward. “Let her go, Gorse bhau,” he said.
“She’s just a child. What will she know? If you wish, I will take her home.
You will come with me, girl, won’t you?”
Meenakshi looked at the man’s face and flinched. For a moment, she
was happy for his kindness but then she saw in his eye the same lusty male
glint that she had been seeing so much of.
“No, no, I will take her home,” another man stepped forward.
“Don’t you see? She is the Devi’s avatar,” a man dressed in a priest’s
robe said. “She must live with me, in the temple.”
The priest reached forward and grabbed Meenakshi’s hand. “Come,
daughter, come,” he said. “Come. I will give you a special room right next
to mine.”
“Of course not!” Gorse stepped forward and unhanded the priest off
Meenakshi. “She is my culprit. I will take her.”
Meenakshi, befuddled at the sudden turn of events, began to cry. One
man lay dead, and paying absolutely no heed to him, there was a crowd of
more of them, trying to have a piece of her for themselves. No, it wasn’t
just a few tears trickling out of her eyes; it was a full-fledged wail.
‘Should I take care of all of them, Meenu? You only say the word!’
That offer paralyzed her for long moments, for now Meenakshi knew—
whoever it was inside her, she meant business. And then, she shook herself
off her stupor and shouted in both anger and fear. “GET OFF ME! GET
OFF ME, ALL YOU DIRTY, DIRTY MEN! FOR YOUR OWN SAKES,
LEAVE ME ALONE!”
 When she could take it no more, Meenakshi sat down in the middle of
the crowd and buried her face in her hands. This act put the commotion on
hold for a moment.
Her sisters looked on helplessly, especially Suparna, for it was at her
risk that she was here.
Then Meenakshi got up.
She stood and suddenly she appeared to be taller.
The townsfolk gasped, and this time they gasped even more loudly than
they had done when the King Cobra had been unveiled.
For there was an unmistakable glow in the girl’s eyes. Something was
glinting there, sparkling like those eyes could think on their own. She
wasn’t the same anymore, and didn’t look the part of the sweet little girl in
a strange town either. It was as if she belonged; no, it was as if she owned.
Suparna froze in her tracks. Kumud began to sob. The people took two
steps back.
“I am not of this town,” Meenakshi said, and her voice was different
too. Older, more daunting. “And now I am going to turn around and leave.
Whoever tries to stop me now will do so at his own risk.”
She took a step forward, toward her sisters. Without a word, the people
parted and a gulf opened up between them.
“Come, tai,” Meenakshi said, grabbing Suparna’s hand, who instantly
felt the warmth in it.
They picked up a now-disconsolate Kumud on the way and walked
forth. Every pair of eyes was on them, and slowly they broke into whispers.
Meenakshi reached the end of the mob’s circle, when she turned again,
and this time she looked at the man lying dead on his back.
Then she shrugged and made her way out.

***

“What was that?” Suparna asked Meenakshi with a slight shiver when they
were seated in the dusty red bus that would take them back to Vatgaon.
Kumud had already dozed off in her window seat. All the way, Suparna had
been warily staring at her. But Meenakshi was back to being the teenager
again, and was biting into a raw mango they had picked up at the fair.
“What, tai?” Meenakshi asked, her face contorting as the rawness of the
juice hit her.
 “That thing that happened back there.”
“What thing?”
“The man who died—”
“Yes, sad thing about him,” Meenakshi said. “Seems like a snake bit
him.”
“Seems like? Meenu, you were there.”
“Yes, but I didn’t see.”
“What are you saying, Meenu? The man was right behind you. How do
you—”
“I am saying like it is, tai. I did not see a thing.”
“So what did you see?”
“Nothing. It was too crowded to see. Glad you are taking us back.”
Suparna kept on staring at Meenakshi for the longest time. Her sister
couldn’t be that good a liar. Something was amiss, and for the death of her,
she could not figure out what.
~8~
 THE NIGHT VISITOR

IF MEENAKSHI HAD been a stranger to her sisters until that day, she
became a complete alien now, of a species they could not fathom. Kumud
was too scared to recount the happenings of Battis Shirala to their parents,
and even Suparna did not talk about it, for she had no understanding of it.
But they evidently gossiped about it to the other sisters. Meenakshi knew it
when she felt her sisters’ eyes following her everywhere she went, with
those hushed whispers that fell silent as soon as she came within earshot.
Kumud stopped sleeping in the same room as her the night they returned
from Battis Shirala itself, and two nights later, even Suparna silently moved
out of the room with her pillow tucked under her arm and slept in the hall
outside. That was when Meenakshi knew for sure that she was being
systematically ostracized in her own home.
But was anyone at fault? Who’d like to share a room with a freak?
And yet, the most confused of the lot was Meenakshi herself.
A few mornings later, she sat beneath the sal tree, comforted by its
shade and not feeling lonely or depressed as she had been since her return.
Her game involved digging up earthworms from the loose soil under the
tree, placing them on the large leaves, and pretending to talk with them. The
earthworms had no fear of her, and they climbed right up on her arms. Their
clumsy, slimy gait tickled her and gave her spirits some succor.
But all through her game, she looked at the corner of the garden where
the man had appeared a few days ago. Her mind had been stuck on him ever
since, and a part of her wanted to meet him again. He was not like any other
man she had seen before. He had not looked at her with those sleaze-ridden
eyes, but he had looked at her in a way that made her feel warm and
protected inside. She felt that if he appeared once more she would not feel
like a lonely freak anymore.
“Who was he, Companion?” she asked the sal tree. But, apart from its
leaves rustling in the light monsoon breeze, the tree said nothing. “Only if
he comes once more, I will beg him to stay and never let him go.”
Then she became aware of the shadow of her mother creeping up on
her. “Meenu, come with me,” she said, and Meenakshi obeyed. Mother and
daughter went and sat on the cot in the middle of the courtyard.
 “Meenu, we haven’t talked in four days,” Renuka said. “How are you,
girl?”
“I am well, Aai.” For that moment, it seemed that her childlike
exuberance had returned to her.
“But I don’t think so,” Renuka said. “You and your sisters seem
changed since the day you have returned from Battis Shirala.”
Meenakshi looked at her wide-eyed.
“Did something happen there?”
“Nothing happened, Aai!” Meenakshi said. “What will happen? Even
Suparna tai was interrogating me in the bus.”
“She was, was she?”
“You people worry a lot!”
Renuka let out a labored breath. “Look, Meenu, I have told you earlier
that something is happening. It was a bad decision to let you go to Shirala.
Anyway, you are not going anywhere now.”
“Suits me fine.”
“And I must forewarn you,” Renuka said, “there might be real cause for
worry soon. Tappu is coming back to his senses. He’s moving and all, but
still cannot speak.”
“So? What has that got to do with me?”
“I really hope it has got nothing to do with you.”

***

That night, Meenakshi overheard her parents talking again. After her sisters
had retired to their rooms, Meenakshi stepped around the house, came
outside into the garden, and pressed her ear against the wooden window of
her parents’ bedroom that she knew didn’t close all the way.
“So, what will you tell him now?”
It was her mother’s concerned voice, the voice that Meenakshi had
come to know very well lately.
“I don’t know. It’s only a matter of time before he comes to the house
again,” Shantaram said.
“Oh, that should not happen.”
“It will. You didn’t see him today. He’s desperate, raving like a lunatic.”
Meenakshi moved in closer, trying to hear their words better so that they
all made sense to her. And then they did.
 “It’s not right, of course,” said Renuka. “We’d have given him Manda
as his bride in a heartbeat. But, asking for Meenu? Intolerable!”
Shantaram did not answer immediately, and in that brief moment of
silence, Meenakshi’s pulse went racing.
“What? Don’t tell me you are considering it,” Renuka said.
“Of course not,” said Shantaram finally. “What do you think? Am I a
monster to give up my little girl to a grown man? Of course, this is not
going to happen. Maybe yes, if it was 50 years ago. Not now. We don’t do
child marriages anymore; I won’t stand for it. I will deal with that fool if he
lands up here again.”
Meenakshi smiled, not an unadulterated smile but one laced with worry.
Her little intelligent mind put two and two together. Knowing that the man
had quite unabashedly asked for her the first time he had visited their house,
there was no question in her mind. But, when she forced herself to recall his
face, it just wouldn’t come to her. Just somehow, with great effort, she
managed to remember his name. Harikumar. Yes, that was what it was.
She felt proud of her father though, maybe really for the first time ever.
He was standing up for her. It was not that child marriages weren’t
happening in the village. They were, but surreptitiously. Just last year, her
friend Lata had disappeared, and she was told that she had been sent to her
aunt’s house to study. But the girls at school knew she had no aunt. They
knew she was now in Sangli, living in her husband’s house, a rich middle-
aged landlord.
She saw this frail man—her father—in a new light now. But more than
that, she was relieved. Relieved that she was not being dumped on another
man. For, she did not know what the demoness living inside her would do
to the next man who came into her life.

***

“Shh… hey, Meenu…”

Meenakshi turned.
She was still outside the window, standing in complete darkness with
only the moon shining overhead. The lights of a few of the neighboring
houses were still on, but it was post dinnertime already.
There was no one moving about. The sal tree was on the other side of
the garden, and Meenakshi could see it lightly swaying in the night breeze,
but she knew it could not speak to her anyway, at least not in the way
humans did. And that was probably a blessing.
“Here, Meenu…”
This time she caught the direction of the voice. Then she saw figure
jumping off the wall and into the bushes below.
She recognized him only when he came closer to her.
“Govind? What are you doing here?”
There was a sheepish grin on his face. “Shh… don’t be so loud. I just
saw you from the fence and came over.”
“Saw me? How?”
“Just saw.”
“Okay. But you go now. My Baba is right in there.”
“He’s in there, no? He won’t come out. He sleeps at this time.”
“How do you know? Have you been checking out our house?”
“No, Meenu. Only you.”
Meenu was thunderstruck. That sick feeling crept up into her again.
That loathsome grin, that lustful look, that fidgeting with the body… Why
did this have to happen with her all the time?
“Go away now, or I will scream.”
“No, you won’t,” he said and clamped his hand right on her mouth. Oh,
here it was. It was happening. All over again.
She struggled, but she was no match for his might.
With shocking ease, he shoved her slight body against a sturdy palm
tree and pinned her hands behind her back.
“I know what you did with Tappu,” he spewed. “But he’s an idiot. He
got himself paralyzed. Perhaps all this that you have… got too much for
him.”
Govind was unrestrained now. Carnal. An animal who had smelled
blood. His eyes lingered on her body like he’d devour her the very next
instant.
Meenakshi screamed, but it died somewhere behind the wall of his
sturdy, tobacco-stinking fingers.
“None of the women I have been with had a body like yours,” he said.
“What do you eat, girl? Why are you so… so yummy? You drive men to
sin, you… you temptress!”
She bit his hand. He laughed.
 “Sorry, but I am not normally like this. I’m quite a loverboy, you know.
Women love me. Why don’t you? Why won’t you have some fun with me?
Who will know? Anyway… we don’t have much time.”
Meenakshi shook her head vigorously. Stray words fell out of her
mouth.
“You… don’t know… what will happen…”
“Bah!” he said with lustful twinkles in his moonlit eyes. “Real men
don’t think of what will happen. Come, let me make a woman out of you.
Trust me, you will enjoy it.”
Meenakshi heard the zipper open and she shut her eyes.
Looking at the sal tree, which is where her head was turned, she
mumbled a quick prayer. “O Companion… do something…”
And it started.
This time, the tingling began in her fingers. Even as they were clasped
in his grip behind her back, she felt the cells begin to bubble underneath the
surface of her skin. Her fingers went warm, and she felt them throb ever so
slightly.
Perhaps he felt them too. His grip on her loosened.
“What are you doing? Stay calm. Just having fun.”
She could not see them, but she was sure her fingernails were growing.
She could feel that searing, burning pain in her fingertips. Like someone
were poking the soft flesh under the nails with a cutter-blade, only this was
happening from within.
She knew, she knew—from beneath her nails, new cuticles were
sprouting forth. What was inside her wouldn’t stay inside anymore.
‘Yes, step back. Now. This one is mine.’
It was at this point that she lost control on herself.

***

Govind was smelling her hair with his front pressing on her with all force
when his nose felt the matted spot on her neck.
He moved back. “What is this? Do you have some skin prob—”
But his words died midway. He had just opened his eyes and what he
saw curdled his blood.
He had just a glimpse of those eyes—those blazing red orbs—that were
now staring back at him. And just below them, the lips that he meant to kiss
were now puffed and fleshy, reminding him of the tumescent protuberances
on his cancer-afflicted grandmother’s body.
‘Meenakshi, relax. No harm will come to you. It is these six inches that
drives all men mad. If you just take care of it—’
The voice dissolved in a grunt, and then there was a jab and a very wet
squelch.
Meenakshi looked with horror at what she had done—at what SHE had
done—and screamed.
The searing cut was on his groin, just above his “six inches” that lost its
excitement right away. A bleeding tear it was, that had slashed him from
one end to the other.
“Oh no oh no oh no…” he said, unable to even scream, as he saw the
gash widening and the blood beginning to spill out.
“FUCK! BITCH! What did you do?”
That was when he saw her. She now stood like some colossus, her neck
as thick as the trunk of the tree behind her, her arms hanging downward like
drooping boughs. Her waist had grown considerably with a belly the size of
a large water pot, and ended at a navel that stuck out at the size of an onion.
Her clothes were tatters on the ground now, and he saw the hair in her
armpits and on her nipples that looked smears of cattle dung. And then he
saw the vagina—a slimy mound of loose-hanging flesh, a death trap for
anything that might dare to enter it, not much unlike the pictures of the
insectivorous plants he had seen in his schoolbooks.
“Who… who are you?” he stuttered.
But it was too late. Govind, the young man who had climbed over this
fence for a quick round of excitement, would never get any answers
anymore.
As his innards spilled out of him, he toppled over too, and then keeled
over and fell, right at the feet of the thing that was, at times, a little girl
called Meenakshi.
~9~
 THE DEAL

IT WAS ALMOST dawn when Meenakshi woke up and found herself in

tatters under the palm tree. All she recalled was hearing a few snatches of a
conversation between her parents, a conversation that had made her happy
for some reason, and then there was something else.
Yes, that boy. He had jumped over the wall. And…?
‘You don’t remember, Meenakshi?’
Quick as a flash, she sat up and wore whatever of her clothes remained.
Her heart went into its wild thumping mode once again, but this time the
thumping was of a different emotion—raw fear.
What had she done to the boy?
A stray dog came up to her, sniffed at her with all eagerness, and then
scooted into a clump of bushes outside the kitchen wall of the house.
Meenakshi turned to see, and the next instant, her heart practically stopped.
There it was—a huge ugly swathe of blood.
“Oh my God oh my God what have I done,” she mumbled breathlessly.
Free-flowing terrified words. And her steps turned toward the red blotch.
There it was! There! Just as she feared it. Something welled up inside
her and she retched and threw up in the bushes.
He was dead; lying on his back, partly hidden in those bushes. The eyes,
like stones, staring vacantly into the space above. The mouth, open with the
sneer still on it. Flies buzzed around his midsection where most of the blood
came from, attracted to something pink and fleshy. Meenakshi squinted to
see what it was and puked again. It was a portion of his intestine that was
jutting out of his mortal wound.
A wound that she had inflicted.
‘You should be pleased.’
Meenakshi twitched.
‘Aren’t you?’
She looked at herself and then beat her chest. But that detestable
nagging voice wouldn’t stop.
‘What wouldn’t any other woman give to be able to put an end to
bastards like this one? Oh, didn’t you enjoy tearing apart the belly of the
man who tried to stick his evil thing into you? Don’t tell me you didn’t!’
“Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!” Meenakshi cried out.
 What had happened? How? When had done this? Why was she here?
All she remembered was eavesdropping on her parents and then the boy
Govind dropping from her garden wall.
Suddenly, Meenakshi felt warm and sticky all over. She turned down
and looked at herself.
There it was then. Oh God, right there, glistening crimson in the light of
the recently risen sun.
Blood. His blood.
‘Don’t weep, you fool, this blood is of an evil—’
A rooster crowed, cutting off the voice. Meenakshi was nothing more
than a thirteen-year-old now, unsure, fearful. This was not her. But there
would be questions. Blames. Reprimands. Punishments. What would she
say? What could she say? Her brain went into a freeze. All processes within
her stopped, and there was a blank whitespace in front of her eyes, a
whitespace that told her nothing, suggested nothing.
But something had to be done. Fisherwomen also used this garden route
as a shortcut to reach the other houses and sell their fish. Why, someone
might be coming up the path even at this very moment!
“Tell me, you bitch living inside me, what do I do of this body now?
Did you think of that, you ugly hag?”
There was silence.
“Speak now, you murderess, you who say you will put an end to my
troubles.”
She saw the sal tree. There it was, rustling its leaves, calling her. She
ran to it, her naked feet falling on twigs and getting scratched and pierced
and cut, but she ran, and hugged the tree till some of her blood was rubbed
off on its huge brown bark.
And from that point, she saw the pit.
The pit.
Her father had dug that in the garden a couple of months ago.
But she did not only see the pit. She saw in it hope, the hope she
needed. The green spot on her whitespace.
She ran crazily along the length of the garden, praying that the pit had
not been covered up yet, and also that it would be suitable for her purpose.
There it was—a step away from the patch where the strange naked man
had appeared that day, the desolate unused corner of the garden. Only, right
now, the place did not smell of manly scent as it did that day when Krita
had appeared here. Right now, it smelled of—
—shit.
Literally. The hole was filled with refuse and dung and manure of all
sorts, and she recalled her father telling her something about building a
compost pit. A compost pit. Fertilizer. Now she knew what that meant.
But well, this would be perfect! What better place to turn a body to its
elements than a pit that is made for this express purpose?
Without losing another moment, Meenakshi ran up to the dead youth
and grabbed him at his ankles.
It seemed unlikely that she would be able to budge him, and for a whole
minute she just tried to get the right grip on him. She grunted and tried, and
that stray dog came up again to look. But the corpse wouldn’t move, and
then—
‘What can you do without me? Here!’
Just like that, she felt a surge of strength in her arms. They still looked
the same, soft teenage arms, but she felt the added strength in them. And,
actually mouthing the words, “About time, bitch!” she gave one heavy pull.
The corpse moved effortlessly this time.
Minutes later, the hapless corpse was in the bubbling compost pit. It
went in bit by bit, that jutting intestine going in last. And as the bubbles
rose—the sign of a zillion bacteria getting excited and ready to consume
this feast—she smiled. Her father had told her that bubbles meant
decomposition. It meant that everything in there was changing; in a few
days, nothing would be as it was now.
Leaving the body to the care of the bubbling methane, Meenakshi came
up to the well in the courtyard and washed herself. And then, praying that
no one in the house was astir yet, she ran up to the smaller shared room of
her sisters and pretended to sleep.
Next day when she went to look, there was no sign or shred of him.
From within her, she heard the voice:
‘His ass is grass.’
“Literally!” Meenakshi said and laughed.

***
In the mornings to come, Meenakshi’s folks stopped waking her up at all,
and she continued to sleep much beyond her usual time. Her sisters all
dressed up and left for their schools and colleges, no one as much as turning
to look at her sleeping form or wondering why she wasn’t going with them.
Only Suparna came up on two occasions and nudged her, but Meenakshi
only pulled the sheet over her head and slept till it was almost lunchtime.
A few days later, she woke up at noon with her mind blank, bereft of
any thoughts. For a few moments (those blissful moments of semi-
consciousness just after you wake up, when you feel that everything is all
right with the world, it is going to be another fucking happy day, and then
the memories of reality come BOOM! and slap you like a bitch), she even
forgot the blood of the men that was on her hands.
“Woke up at last?” Renuka said, coming into her room. “Your morning
sleep is getting longer and longer these days.”
Meenakshi let out a yawn and stood up.
“Wait… where are you going?”
“To the well to wash.”
“Don’t go there.”
Something pinched Meenakshi’s heart. “Why?”
“Don’t go to the front of the house. We are going to have a guest
shortly.”
Meenakshi wanted to ask who, but she knew not knowing much was the
best way out. Turning on her heels, she moved toward the back door of the
room.
“You won’t ask who?”
She turned again. “Okay, Aai. Who?”
“You remember Harikumar?”
Now she felt the sharp pang.
“Don’t remember? He was here a few weeks ago.”
Meenakshi nodded.
“Well, so he’s coming here. Ask why.”
“Why?”
“To talk about you, that’s why.”
There was a look of concern on Renuka’s face even as she said that.
Meenakshi received her solace from the frown, from the knowledge that it
was not a happy moment for her either. But she felt the jab in her heart
nevertheless.
 “Why is there to talk about me?”
“Your Baba knows.”
Meenakshi silently walked up to the well and washed herself. All the
way, her mind thought of the various things that could have gone wrong.
She recalled the look of resolve on her father’s face. She remembered
feeling proud of him, of the fact that her father wouldn’t just give her away
to some man.
She came back quickly and went straight into the kitchen and accosted
her mother.
“Aai, why is that man coming to talk about me?”
Renuka took her girl’s face in her hands. “Meenu, you know you are my
most sensible daughter, right?”
Meenakshi brushed away the platitude. “Why, Aai?”
“Okay, look. You are at home all day. We cannot send you to school
because… well, there’s something. Some reason. People are talking in this
town. They are talking about things happening around you. Around us.
Tappu might talk any day now.”
Meenakshi exploded at that. “What does Tappu have to do with all
this?”
“Meenu, don’t be daft!” Renuka said, raising her voice too. “You know
I am not daft. I have a sense of what must have happened.”
“What?”
Renuka simmered down. “Meenu, let me tell you the truth. I am proud
of you. Both your Baba and I are. We know there is something special in
you, but it is something that we don’t know yet. I have seen things I never
thought could happen. You have made me a believer in stuff I used to
dismiss with a laugh, Meenu. Anyway, you are our girl, and we have to do
the best for you. It’s as simple as that.”
Tears pooled in Meenakshi’s eyes now but they refused to spill over.
“What went wrong, Aai? From a few nights ago to now, what went wrong?”
“Which night?”
“I overheard you and Baba. Weren’t you speaking about me? And about
that man Harikumar?”
“Shh… you mustn’t take his name now.”
“Why?” Meenakshi screamed. “He’s not my husband.”
“Quiet, Meenu. He’s not your husband. We have not given you to him
yet. We cannot; you are a child. But we are only talking to him about…
options.”
“Why are you even talking to him, Aai? Why open this thing up?”
“MEENU!” Renuka shouted now, the only way she knew to end
discussions with her daughters. “We are your Aai-Baba. We will never do
anything wrong by you. You know how liberal we are. When the entire
village was going on and on about how we had only daughters and no son,
we scoffed at them in return. We are proud of our seven girls. We are not
like the other families in this village that are marrying their daughters off at
10 and 12. We won’t do that. We won’t send you away with any man. This
meeting is only to get to know him better. That’s all.”
“Fine,” Meenakshi huffed. “Get to know him better then. Don’t call me
to see him.”

***

Meenakshi had no intention of seeing any man in this world ever. At this
moment, she even hated the man with those golden locks, that Krita. They
were all the same, all the same, all vultures trying to dig their beaks into
female flesh.
She just hoped the ordeal would be over.
And until that happened, she’d sit under her sal tree and hide. For an
eternity if it took that long.
But when the gate opened that late afternoon, teatime for most families,
she could not throttle her curiosity.
Nimbly she came out of her sulking place and tiptoed around the walls
of the house to get a look at the man again.
‘Why are you even going to look?’
“You be quiet!” she said in a hushed whisper. “Just want to recall his
face, that’s all.”
Staying well hidden behind the last bend of the walls, she cocked her
head to get a better look. The boughs of a jasmine bush kept her concealed,
but she had a fair view.
Yes, he was the same man—that kind clean-shaven face and those
sympathetic eyes—but he looked different now. Thinner. But the gauntness
suited him better. His hair was different too; it was a shorter crop now,
which made him look more intelligent and younger.
 He stood at the gate and looked here and there, and for a brief moment
Meenakshi felt that he had spotted her, but then her father came out to greet
him.
“Come in, Harikumar. Tea awaits us.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
The gratitude was genuine. The handshake was firm. The handshake of
two men who have signed a secret pact.
‘What is going on here?’
Meenakshi put a finger on her lips to silence the voice. As if that could
happen.
She edged closer to the walls deftly (that came easy as she had been
scaling these walls right from her childhood) to listen to the conversation.
She heard her mother come out and sit as well.
“I don’t see Meenakshi,” Harikumar said. “Is she not at home?”
“No,” Renuka said with a misplaced laugh.
“Oh. I thought she’d be—”
‘Lusty bastard.’
“It’s okay, Harikumar,” said Shantaram. “It’s all adult talk we are
having here. It’s good that children are not around.” The subtext in that line
was so thick it could blind someone.
Renuka said, “Look, son, we know why you are here. We have talked
about it long and hard, and we think you must leave for your city. You have
nothing to gain here, at least not what you are asking for. You know
Meenu’s age and we cannot marry her off. Let me repeat what my husband
might have told you a hundred times—we will gladly marry our daughter
Manda with you. You have seen how beautiful she is, and she goes to
college. She is perfect for you.”
Harikumar smiled. “Madam, if it was about Manda, won’t we have been
married already? I’d be probably treating you as my in-laws and serving
you in my huge house in Bombay already.”
“You are being irrational,” Shantaram said with an edge in his voice.
“Do you even know that marrying an underage girl is illegal?”
“Sir, if I have your permission, I will take care of the legal aspects. I
have ways, you see. All that you have to think is whether you agree to give
me Meenakshi as my bride. And, madam, let me tell you this. It cannot be
any other of your daughters. In fact, if I don’t marry Meenakshi, I won’t
marry anyone else ever. That’s a vow I take.”
 ‘Oh, my dazed stars! What a fucking fool!’
Meenakshi was stunned. The bush she was hiding in seemed to close in
upon her. Here was a man taking a vow for her. She was probably too naïve
to understand the implications of it, but she knew what vows meant. She
had read of Bheeshma’s unbroken vow in the Mahabharata. It shocked her.
She did not deserve this. She thought of running up to the man and beating
him up for the awkward situation he had put her parents in.
What a sucker! What a fool!
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Meenakshi breathed.
“Are you out of your mind, young man?” Shantaram said. “We agreed
to meet you because we thought we could drive some sense into your brain
because you don’t have any elders to guide you. But this is preposterous.”
“Preposterous?” Harikumar said as politely as he could. Then he
reached into his briefcase and produced a bundle of papers. “Look at these
papers and tell me if it is preposterous.”
“What is this?”
Shantaram picked up the papers and unfolded them. It did not take him
more than a second to understand what they were.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “This is clear proof that you are mad.”
“What is it?” Renuka asked.
“These are his property papers. Of his house in Bombay. It’s a property
of… how much…”
“Forty-three lakhs,” Harikumar said. “And it is yours. Just give me
Meenakshi.”
Shantaram slapped his head. His fist rolled up and it seemed like he’d
sock the impudent man’s jaw, but then the fist uncurled. The hackles went
down.
“Son… this is unimaginable…”
“What is, sir? This is only a small proof of how much I love your
daughter. I will have no one else. In other marital alliances, girls pay dowry,
don’t they? Here, I am. Consider this my dowry for your daughter.”
“Where will you keep her?” Shantaram asked. “I mean, even if—”
“Don’t worry about that, sir. This is only one of my three houses in the
city. She’ll be a queen.”
“Your business pays you so much?”
“It’s a family business. My wealth is not just mine; it has been built by
three generations before me,” Harikumar said.
 Meenakshi could see her father’s brain-wheels churning. She did not
know numbers, but this was a lot of money. One night she had heard her
father tell her mother about their entire assets, and they were not even close
to just this one figure that he had just stated. But this was her father. She
believed in him. Any lesser man…
But there was also doubt.
Would her life be traded away just like that?
She could hide herself no longer. “Baba, no…” she said, emerging from
her hiding place, tears clouding her eyes.
“Oh, there you are Meenakshi,” Harikumar stood up, overjoyed. “You
don’t know how desp—”
“Stop there, son!” Shantaram arrested his progress. “I am too small a
man and this is too big a sum. We have to think. You must go away now.”
“Okay, sir! I will leave,” Harikumar said in all politeness. But there was
a smile of contentment on his face, the smile that only comes to someone
who knows everything has gone according to plan. That smile, if nothing
else, scared Meenakshi.
As he walked to the gate, he stopped for a brief moment next to
Meenakshi. He reached out and wiped away her tears. “I am not a bad man,
you know,” he said. “Think it over. We could have a great life together.”
Shantaram took a step forward. Harikumar walked out of the gate.

***

Renuka rushed ahead and held her girl by her shoulders.

“Meenu, we are here for you,” she said.
‘They lie. Trust no one.’
Meenakshi brushed her mother away and stepped forward to face her
father.
“Baba? You too? What did you tell that man? Will you give me away,
Baba? Say something, Baba!”
Shantaram sat down, his head lowered, his mind far away now, adrift in
a though that the little girl would not understand.
“I understand now…” Meenakshi said. “You were against all of this.
That night, I heard you. What changed then? I see. You met him again. Or
was it on phone? He made an offer. That’s why you called him here, didn’t
you?”
 “It’s not like that, Meenu,” Shantaram said. “I didn’t know he was going
to hand over his house to us.”
“But you called him here. You are thinking about it.”
“Renu, please take her away.” Shantaram pressed his temples with his
fingers. “I see a migraine coming.”
Renuka grabbed Meenakshi’s arm. “Come on, Meenu. Let your Baba
sleep.”
“It’s all about money, I know!” Meenakshi jerked her mother’s hand off
with such force that it swung all the way behind her body and back again.
“That’s all that matters now. That’s all…”
‘Good, Meenakshi, good. Tell them off. So what if they are your
parents?’
She fell silent for a moment, and then she frowned again. “Is it? It is all
about the money? In that case, wait…”
‘NO! I know what you are thinking. I forbid it.’
Ignoring that voice and leaving her parents looking at her in
puzzlement, she turned and ran into the house. She ran all along the corridor
on the sandstone, and then paced up the stairs. Her mother called out to her,
but she wouldn’t stop now. Something had given her wings.
She came to the farthest corner of the corridor and climbed the stairs to
go to the loft. This had been her private place for long. No one would enter
here, apart from maybe once before the big festival for an annual cleaning.
And even then, no one stayed for longer than a few minutes.
The place was only high enough for her to stoop and walk. Its musty
smell marked it differently from the rest of the house. There were cobwebs
all around, and even as she entered, her feet traced prints in the soft dust
that had gathered on the floor.
The girls had always been forbidden to enter the loft, and none of them
did out of sheer fear anyway, but Meenakshi had a little secret.
And now she moved up to it. Her secret.
‘I forbid it, Meenakshi. Perish the thought!’
But she crossed the length of the loft and came to a corner that was
diametrically opposite from the door. Here, in a worn-out trunk that was as
heavy as iron, maybe really made of iron, was her secret.
She went down on her haunches and with a heave she threw open the lid
of the trunk.
 Her fingers fumbled inside, and she lifted the jute cloth that lay over
one quarter of the trunk. And there it was.
Suddenly the loft was illuminated.
Dozens and dozens of gold coins glittering, shining, moving as if they
had life.
These were her collection, gifted to her by the sal tree, one each on
many mornings, and she had carefully preserved them in this stash. She
knew they were valuable but had no idea what kind of value. And yet, she
knew they must be kept carefully for the right time. Perhaps the time had
come.
She took one of the coins in her hand and looked at it. It had a strange
imprint on it on one face, and she had often surmised they were symbols of
elements of nature. On this particular coin, she could make out the outline
of the sun. Other coins had waves and rocks and moon and elephants on
them.
And then she turned it. This other face, like all the other coins, had the
mysterious fat man on it.
‘Don’t, Meenakshi!’
She had no idea how many of them would be forty-three lakhs worth. In
any case, she gathered as many as she could in her tiny hands and stood up.
But the next moment, she froze.
The coins fell off her hands.
A loud scream had come up to her from downstairs, and in that heart-
stopping moment, she knew something terrible was going to happen.
~ 10 ~
 THE BLUE SLIPPER

MEENAKSHI STOOD BY the dust-stained window of the loft, looking

below. It was a crowd of people, around a dozen of them, and they entered
their courtyard by opening the little iron gate that protested with its usual
infernal squeak. Men and women, walking in without niceties. No smiles on
any of their faces. Rushing through without invitation. In fact, two of them
even carried stout lathis.
A sense of foreboding gripped her and she clutched her frock. Then she
lost her footing when she saw the person at the head of the crowd.
It was Govind’s mother, a doctor in the local clinic. She remembered
seeing her board outside her clinic whenever she was taken there when she
was sick. DR. (MRS.) VILAS JAMBLEKAR. Embossed in stern sans-serif font,
with a string of degrees under it.
She stormed into the house with her white apron still on her, as if she
needed to remind people that she was a doctor. Behind her stood a
trembling Savitri Namdar, Tappu’s mother.
“Shantaram bhau,” Dr. Jamblekar began, “my son Govind has not
returned home for five nights. We have been looking for him everywhere
and now his friend says that he saw him entering your courtyard late
evening.”
Renuka stepped forward before her husband could reply. “No, Doctor
bai, we haven’t seen Govind at all. He’s missing? What happened?” She
said that with clenched teeth and in quick words even as the memory of
Govind accosting Meenakshi on the street outside her house fought to
invade her mind again.
“Why will his friend lie?” Dr. Jamblekar said. “This was the last place
where he was seen.”
“Agga Doctor bai, what does that mean?” Renuka yelled now. “Do you
imply we are hiding him for some reason? Is that what you think?”
An older man from the crowd spoke up. “It’s not like that, Patil bai. We
are just frustrated. Not finding him anywhere. Just got a tip that he might
have come here. Would you mind if we looked? Yours is a big courtyard.”
“Well, look away!” Shantaram said, stopping Renuka from saying
anything further by raising his hand. “Go in the house, courtyard, garden,
anywhere. We are sitting right here.”
 The crowd dispersed. The women marched right into the house while
the men scattered to various corners of the garden. Meenakshi looked in
awe from the loft’s window. It was all coming back to her now, in flashes—
Govind straddling the fence and then jumping in. Walking up to her.
Smiling with his lustful eyes. Unzipping his pants and—
But after that, it was a blank.
Until the next morning, when she had—
‘Don’t worry. They won’t find anything.’
Meenakshi did not reply. She was too numbed to.
Her eyes followed the men as they looked in the garden. The men
looked in the well and behind the trees. Meenakshi’s heart sank when one
of them thumped wildly on the bark of the sal tree in desperation. Several
leaves of the tree fell down at that, and she could almost hear them groaning
in agony. Then one of the men walked up to the corner of the garden near
the compost pit and she clutched her heart.
‘Don’t worry. Humans are blind. They cannot see what’s right in front of
them.’
The man who went to the pit pinched his nose. He remarked something
to another man, and then they both laughed. The two of them then circled
round the pit, and the first one, seeing that no one else was around went and
pissed in a corner. Then the two of them walked away.
‘I told you so.’
“Fuck off!” Meenakshi said breathlessly.
But she couldn’t stop staring at that pit now.
“What are you doing here alone?” The voice came from behind her,
human this time, and it made her jump.
She turned at the voice and saw Tappu’s mother standing in a half-
crouch at the door of the loft, her hand holding the beam for support.
Meenakshi’s reflex was to look at the open trunk. She could still see the
glitter of the gold coins inside it, but the woman could not see them from
where she was.
“Nothing, Aatya!” she said. “I… I just came up here to play with my
dolls.”
“Dolls?” she repeated idiotically and looked at her up and down. Then
she said in a scathing way, “Where are your dolls?”
‘Nosy bitch.’
“I… I just…”
 “Forget it. Have you seen Govind?”
“No.” It was a curt, easy lie.
“His friend says he came in here.”
“I don’t know, Aatya.”
The woman stood silent for a minute and looked all around the loft. It
was threadbare except for the trunk, which is where her eyes lingered for a
while. While Meenakshi’s worry began to nag at her, the woman firmly
looked away and said, “Well, come downstairs. This place has mold. You
will fall sick.”
Meenakshi heaved a sigh of relief, and then out of some obligation
asked, “How is Tappu, Aatya?”
The woman gave her a long stare at that question and then looked away.
With an expression of great distress, she walked out of the loft and went
downstairs.

***

“What did you find? Tell me, what did you find?”
Renuka was now at the head of the crowd, standing them off even as
they prepared to leave.
“Why are you getting so defensive, Patil bai?” Dr. Jamblekar said. “We
are checking everywhere. Any clue, we go and check. It’s I whose son is
missing. I should be the one in distress.”
“That’s not it, Jamblekar bai,” Renuka said, dropping the ‘Dr.’ tag
without hesitation, and ignoring her husband who was trying to signal her
into silence. “You come to my house with a mob and search the place. What
are we? You treat us like criminals.”
Meenakshi came down then and seeing that the situation was still hot,
stood silently in a corner.
“We are sorry if we offended you, bhau,” Dr. Jamblekar now addressed
Shantaram directly. “I hope you understand such things have to be done
when a child goes missing.”
“Child? You son is an adult horse!” Renuka simmered. “He must be out
somewhere, hanging his tongue out at some or the other girl like he always
does. Don’t you know about it?”
“What are you saying, woman?” Dr. Jamblekar moved forward with
menace in her eyes.
 “Aai, please…” Meenakshi protested.
“You be quiet, Meenu!” Renuka thrust a hand in her face. “What do
these people think? They will come and treat us like criminals and we will
allow it? Ae Jamblekar, don’t you know your own son?”
“Don’t you dare talk like that about my son!”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Tappu’s mother chipped in. “Renu, I have been quiet until now, but
please. What Doctor bai means to say is that we must all take care of our
children.” As she said that, she looked directly at Meenakshi.
Meenakshi wished she’d be swallowed up by the earth.
“Why are you looking at her?” Renuka took two steps forward, her hand
now raised threateningly.
Shantaram reached her in the nick of time and grabbed hold of her hand.
“Have you gone mad, Renu?” he asked.
“Get out of here!” Renuka yelled at the entire procession that had
stormed into her house. “Never show me your faces again. If you come here
again asking about your dick-happy son, then I will be the one to actually
cut it off.”
Dr. Jamblekar lurched forward with rage in her eyes, but the old man
grabbed her. “Come on home,” he said. “These things are not worth arguing
about. Come, let’s go and look for our Govind elsewhere.”

***

When the mob left, Meenakshi walked up to the point where she had buried
Govind.
There she stood, at the rim of the compost pit, not minding the smell in
the least. Something had consumed her attention—
—it was a blue slipper that had emerged out of the deluge and was now
slightly bobbing up and down, its bottom end slapping the sludge.
That was everything Meenakshi needed for the recollection to come
back to her. She had been blacked out then, but she remembered refusing to
look at his face, and instead looking down at his feet, at his slippers.
Those same blue slippers.
‘Didn’t I tell you humans are fucking blind?’
“Shut up! Shut up, you murderous bitch!” Meenakshi yelled.
 And it was that yell that made her parents turn to look at her sharply.
For once, there were no words.
But a moment later, Renuka lost it. “That slipper! That slipper! It’s that
bastard’s. I saw it the day he was molesting my Meenu.”

***

Shantaram quickly ran up and clamped a hand on his wife’s mouth. “Shh,
Renu! What are you saying? Those people haven’t gone far.”
With tears streaking both sides of Meenakshi’s face, she sobbed, “Baba,
he was here. He was here that night. And he tried to… he tried to…”
“He tried to what, Meenu?” Renuka asked.
“He tried to force me.”
Renuka, fit to burst into another scream said, “See, I told you. Didn’t I
tell you? That bastard has been after Meenu since a while.”
Shantaram slapped a hand on his forehead.
“Then what happened?” Renuka asked.
“I don’t know, Aai… I don’t clearly remember. I pushed him or
something like that. Then I went all blank until morning…”
“Control your sobbing, you idiot girl!” Shantaram said in a loud voice.
“What happened in the morning then? Was he still there?”
Meenakshi lost her words then. It was like the thing inside had caught
her tongue and tied a knot in it. But there were flashes. Terrible flashes. His
body slumped in the garden. Bleeding. His intestine jutting out…
Shrugging off those glimpses, she turned and began to walk. Like an
animated corpse. Her bewildered parents behind her, holding each other’s
hands, holding their breath.
Meenakshi brought them to the compost pit and pointed at the slipper.
“Is that slipper that boy’s?” Shantaram asked.
“Yes.”
“What? What happened here?”
And then what Meenakshi said changed the way her parents looked at
her forever.
“I dragged his body and dumped it into the pit. He is… he is still in
there.”
A moment of stunned silence later, Shantaram burst out. “BODY?”
“Oh my God! Oh my God! What did you do, girl?” Renuka wailed.
 “I didn’t do anything,” Meenakshi said, now defiant.
“Then who? who?” Renuka blabbered.
“She did it.”
And then there was a laugh inside her, a laugh that only she could hear,
and it drove her mad.
‘I’m actually enjoying this. Aren’t you, Meenakshi? Aren’t you?’
Meanwhile, the afternoon froze. Both man and woman felt a cold wind
brush past their necks and into their clothes, and their blood ran to the
extremities.
“She…” Renuka said in a voice that wasn’t above a whisper. “She
who?”
“She who lives inside me.”
Shantaram went up and held his girl, and then feeling awkward, pulled
back. “Meenu… oh my Meenu…”
“She protects me. Tries to. I don’t ask her.”
Renuka sat Meenakshi down on a bench. “Protect you from what?”
“Men.”
“Like Govind?”
Meenakshi nodded. “That night he came. He forced me. And… and…
something happened to me. My nails…” She looked at her nails, ungainly
and untrimmed now. “…they began to grow. My hand moved on its own…
No, she made it move. And thrust it right into his stomach.”
“And then?”
“I woke up in the morning. He was all in blood.”
“Where?”
“By our kitchen wall in the garden outside. I dragged him and put him
into the pit and cleaned the blood.”
“All by yourself? He is so much bigger than you.”
“I don’t know.”

***

The three sat for an hour in the garden. Wife and daughter sat on the bench
and Shantaram squatted on the floor, his head buried in his palms. Then he
got up as if with purpose.
He patted his wife’s back reassuringly. “Renu, Renu, now we have to
control ourselves. It won’t do for us to get all panicky. See, look, look, he’s
already inside. He won’t come out. This is a compost pit, a decomposition
pit. Put a bull in there and it will become nothing in a fortnight. The boy is
gone. No one will find out about him if we are careful.”
Renuka sobbed away her remaining tears and steeled herself. “You are
right. Meenu, you have to… to be very quiet about this. Don’t even tell
your sisters.”
“Yes,” Shantaram said. “It’s a good thing that they are not at home right
now.”
Shantaram broke a branch off a nearby tree and tore away its leaves. It
was a thin stick now, with which he prodded at the slipper, trying to pry it
out. When he had it out, he began digging another hole. “This is rubber. It
won’t decompose. We will bury it here.”
There was absolute silence after that. As she saw her father burying the
slipper, Meenakshi could hear a faint strain of weeping behind her.
However, it was nothing but the wind rustling through the boughs of the sal
tree.
~ 11 ~
 THE WITCH

AFTER THAT FATEFUL morning, Meenakshi ended up home-bound. The

distance between her sisters and her gradually widened into a gulf. She was
now a pariah for them, almost as if she did not belong in that house. But
Meenakshi could not fault them. At times, when she would sit silently
weeping under the sal tree, she would think she did not belong in this world
at all.
But she secretly enjoyed this solitude. While humans lost in favor,
nature won. Gradually, she learned to compose herself, and instead of just
wasting away under the tree, she began to communicate with the beings of
the garden, getting intimate with the trees, talking to the worms and insects,
and even the very wind that seemed to caress her face with much sympathy
these days.
Three afternoons after the mob incident, Renuka asked Meenakshi to
accompany her to the grocery store. The girl, who was in a playful mood at
that time, came running up to the gate, her pigtails flying this way and that.
It made her look quite gauche, for, over the past few months, Meenakshi
had grown rapidly and was now an inch taller than her mother.
Renuka looked up at her daughter prancing about like that and she had
to admonish her. “Stop skipping on the road like that and walk like a decent
lady,” she said.
Meenakshi fretted but obeyed her Aai.
Mother and daughter then made a beeline to the store where they
equipped themselves with bags of food, most of which would be run
through within the week. It helped that Shantaram had brought in some of
the rent money, which helped Renuka order monthly necessaries like rice
and oil as well, and then they asked the shop to send it over to their house.
That job done, Renuka told Meenakshi, “Come, let’s get a saree for
you.”
Meenakshi said aloud, “Saree?”
She had never worn one before. It was, after all, considered to be a
garment for the older women who knew how to make it as subtle or as
alluring as they wanted by nothing more than a mere manipulation of its
folds. Why did her mother think she deserved a saree?
“Aai, saree? I don’t know how to wear one.”
 “Ah, no matter!” Renuka pishposhed the concern. “Kumud and Rutuja
don’t know how to wear it either, but you are so much taller than them. It
will drape your body elegantly. I will teach you.”
It was as if Renuka had planned the whole affair. She knew exactly
which store to enter, and what sarees to look at. She got so engrossed in the
colors of the various fabrics that she quite missed the way the shopkeepers
were looking at her daughter.
“I could drape this one on her,” the young son of the shopkeeper said.
“Would you please stand up and come this way, young lady?”
Renuka nodded. “This is what they usually do, Meenu. Saree trials.
Don’t mind. Just stand still.”
Meenakshi stood. The man brought out a yellow and green saree of a
soft material that would fall perfectly on the body’s contours and tucked the
end of it into Meenakshi’s waist. As he did so, his fingers lingered on her
skin while his eyes continued to stare into hers. Meenakshi quickly turned
and the man went around her once and then began draping the rest of the
clothing.
When done, he pressed the palloo on her shoulder with unneeded
firmness and Meenakshi had to step back, away from his hot breath that
was grazing the nape of her neck.
“This one makes you look like a princess, Meenakshi,” Renuka said,
beaming. “First time lucky, what? The price is also right. Should we take
this?”
“Yes, yes…” Meenakshi said quickly, beginning to take the saree off.
“Wait, wait. Let me see.”
For the next five minutes, Renuka sized her daughter closely, making
her turn in various directions. The shopkeepers, meanwhile, were having a
field day.
“This one is good, Aai. Let’s take it and leave.”
“Okay, okay,” said Renuka and finally brought out her purse.
Meenakshi heaved a sigh of relief and pressed her fingertips. The slight
wrinkles that had begun to appear on the skin faded away at that.

***

They began to walk homeward but took a brief reprieve at an old man’s
sugarcane juice cart to revive themselves for the rest of the journey.
 So far, Renuka had strangely behaved out of character. Her guard was
down, and it was as if she had forgotten the incidents that had come to her
notice only a couple of days ago. There was a body decomposing in her
garden, but there was absolutely no talk or discussion about it.
And only Renuka knew what she was doing.
She had taken refuge in denial. Over the days, she had rationalized to
herself that this wasn’t something that she could control. The worst that had
to happen had probably happened, and her family was fortunate that no one
had come to know of it so far. In fact, she had a conversation with her
husband just the previous night, where the decision taken was that they
should not behave any differently or else the entire village would be quick
to catch in on it. In any case, Renuka was absolutely certain that people
were scrutinizing them. Tappu’s mother’s behavior had changed, and that
was a profound indicator. There were no more greetings from her; instead
there was a quizzed expression and turning away of the face whenever their
paths crossed.
This afternoon sojourn was a result of that decision. Mother and father
had decided to keep things normal, to keep Meenakshi especially happy.
For if they didn’t do that, there was the danger of things exploding in their
faces.
And yes, there was a decomposing body in the garden. But no one
would find out about it, would they?
“Aai, you haven’t even had a sip!” Meenakshi said.
“Oh yes.” Renuka quickly came back to the world she was contriving,
the world of denial and fantasy. She took a sip and said, “It’s good.”
She moved on to have another sip, and that was when she became aware
of the two women standing on the adjacent stall—a sandwich stall—and
speaking in hushed whispers, but enough to carry to her all the same.
“That’s her,” one of the women said. “Patil’s girl.”
“Her? She is thirteen?” the other woman said.
“Doesn’t look like, does she?”
“She looks at least twenty to me. Her blouse size should be bigger than
my daughter’s and she is sixteen.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and I can believe all that they say now. She looks the type.”
“What type?”
“One who would twist men around her finger.”
 “True that. First that Namdars’ boy. They say he had gone with her that
day. And Dr. Jamblekar’s son too.”
“He was with her too?”
“That’s what people say.”
Renuka turned back sharply. Even as Meenakshi held her mother’s hand
firmly, she gave the two women such an angry glare that they walked away,
completely ignoring the sandwiches that the vendor was handing out to
them.

***

A little away, a group of boys playing cricket in the street stopped their
game midway. The batsman was clean-bowled, but the bowler did not exult.
Instead he was already at the fence, pressing his nose against the iron,
looking at the girl walking behind her mother. Then the other boys joined
in, and they jumped over each other to catch a glimpse, and a fight would
have broken out, but none of them wanted to get distracted from the sight.
“What an ass!” one of them murmured.
“Forget the ass. Look at those… watermelons,” said someone else.
“Hey, hey, will you come to me?” said someone else.
“Fuck off, you perverts!” Renuka yelled. “Don’t you have any other
work to do? Go ogle your sisters.”
Renuka held Meenakshi’s hand firmer now and began leading her home.

***

But the ordeal was not over; it was just beginning.

As they walked along the bend that led to their home, they heard a
woman from another neighboring family, the Manekars, shouting out loud.
“Ae Keshva, come inside. What are you standing there staring outside?
Go, get in!”
Renuka and Meenakshi turned to see a teenage boy, being slapped by
his mother on the back and led inside home. Once the boy was safely
inside, the Manekar woman stood at the door, glared at both the Patil ladies,
and then slammed the door shut with all the force she had got.
“Don’t you know that girl is cursed?” they heard Manekar shouting
from the window of the house. “Keep yourself in control. She does
something to boys like you. People say she ate up that Jamblekar’s son. Ate
up, you hear? She’s a witch. Next time I see you staring at her, I will break
your legs and put you on this bed for months.”
“Witch, Aai?” Meenakshi asked her mother with a tear in her eye.
“Forget it, Meenu,” Renuka said. “You know how the villagers are.
They just need something to talk about. You know how they spoke about
that schoolteacher Sampat’s wife who ran away? Within a week, everything
was forgotten. They will forget this too. Don’t you worry.”
But they walked the rest of the way in silence.
Renuka had managed to tell her daughter something that would quieten
her for now, but her own mind was in disquiet. And she did not know what
she could do about it.
And even that was not the end.
For when they reached the house, they saw the mob again at their house,
led by Dr. Jamblekar. And this time, there were stronger men with them,
men with bulging biceps and flaring nostrils along with the lathis.

***

“Ahaha, here she comes!” Dr. Jamblekar began the tirade, swaying her hips
in rhythm with her words.
At the far end, in the verandah, Renuka could see her husband. On his
face was a look of utter helplessness, a look that annoyed her more than the
presence of the mob. But what could he do against this mad mob? Six of his
daughters stood behind him, simpering, and they were definitely no help to
the situation either.
“What is it now, Jamblekar bai?” Renuka stepped up, pushing
Meenakshi protectively behind her.
“Ask your daughter where my Govind is,” she asked.
“Who, your son, that sleazebag?” Renuka said calmly. “Go look in the
brothels outside the village.”
“Hey, hey, hey, mind your tongue!” Dr. Jamblekar came forward
threateningly. Tappu’s mother held her back.
“You mind yours. What can we say about your son, the great shining
beacon of our village? How dare you come up and ask about him over and
over again? What proof do you have?”
“Ae Shirkya!” Dr. Jamblekar shouted. “Come here.”
 A scrawny boy in only a vest that came up to his knees stepped forward.
He was no more than five.
“Shirkya, tell this blind woman what you saw.”
Shirkya wiped the snot off his nose with his wrist. There were tears of
intimidation in his eyes.
“Tell, re!” Dr. Jamblekar slapped him on the back.
“I… I…”
“So now you will threaten a poor child?” Renuka said.
But there was fear too. Even as she said that, her eye drifted to the
compost pit in the corner, and it slowed her down.
“He… he was… climbing that wall,” the boy stuttered. He pointed to
the wall that Govind had climbed that fated night.
“What?” Renuka quickly thought on her feet. “Someone entered our
compound at night? Are you sure it was Govind?”
“Yes.”
“Suparna, Manda… go inside this very moment and check if all our
cash and jewelry is safe,” Renuka screamed. “What are you standing here
for? Go inside, I said!”
“Don’t change the topic!” Dr. Jamblekar said. “We are calling the police
if we don’t find him by evening.”
“Oh, by all means do!” Renuka moved her arms in a highly dramatic
manner, right in the doctor’s face. “Now I have proof that he entered our
compound, and I was actually looking for my gold mangalsutra yesterday.
You remember that, don’t you?” She looked at Shantaram, who nodded
nervously. “We have proof that your son broke into our private property.
What proof do you have?”
The entire crowd was stunned at the sudden turn of events. The men
standing behind Dr. Jamblekar, who thought themselves to be wiser than
women in matters concerning the law, began to whisper among themselves,
and Renuka caught them nodding.
“Meenu, you go inside now!” Renuka said, waited for her daughter to
obey her command, and then she looked at the befuddled doctor. “Lady, we
have tolerated your transgressions twice in our lawns. You may be the
much-respected lady-doctor of our village, but right now you are behaving
like a common vandal. The next time you come here to question my
daughter without proof, it won’t be good for you, or—” She looked at every
member of the mob and swept her forefinger across all of them. “—for
anyone else who dares to come here with you.”
A man whispered something in Dr. Jamblekar’s ears, but she waved him
away.
“You want proof?” Jamblekar asked Renuka, her hands firmly in the
pockets of her apron. “All right, next time, we will bring it. Solid legal
proof. And wait. Not us. The police will bring it. You hang on there, Patil
sahib.”
The last sentence was directed at Shantaram, who stood in his verandah,
cowering.
And with the issuance of that final warning, the mob moved out of the
premises.
~ 12 ~
 THE GRAVE ROBBER

IT TURNED OUT to be a long sleepless night.

The sisters had all huddled together in one room, and Meenakshi was
the center of attention for once. The sudden spotlight made her nervous, so
much so that she began to sob. But soon she realized why the girls had
practically pinned her down.
Kumud had told them about the incident at Battis Shirala.
“Is it true?” Manda asked. “Did that snake really fly out and bite that
man?”
Meenakshi glared at Kumud, who instantly lowered her head. Then she
nodded.
“I don’t want Aai-Baba to know,” she said softly.
“We won’t tell,” said Manda. “But weren’t you right in front of the
man? What if it had bitten you?”
‘Tell them the truth! Tell them what he was doing to you and how I
protected you!’
Meenakshi ignored that inner voice.
“Oh, tell us,” Manda urged. “What’s the big secret?”
The juicy facts. That was what they wanted. Meenakshi smiled
inwardly, for even Kumud and Suparna did not know those.
Over the nights, she had tried to rationalize that incident in her mind.
And this is how it had come to her.
Nagoba had come to her aid. Nagoba—the protective snake-god who
takes various forms, sometimes as a repose for Lord Vishnu, sometimes as a
neck-ornament for Lord Shiva, and sometimes as an implement to churn the
ocean—had sensed somehow that she was in peril. That Nagoba had not
been able to bear a little girl in distress so close to her. Incensed, he had
lashed out at that man. His death had not been an accident; it was a
punishment for the evil deed of the man.
“It was not like that,” Meenakshi said.
“Then what was it?” Suparna said. “Oh, come on, tell us. We were right
there, but you have never told us.”
“I think…” Meenakshi tried to explain, “that man was Nagoba’s target.
Specifically.”
“Why?” more than one of the sisters asked in unison.
 “Because he was a bad man,” Meenakshi said. “And now don’t ask me
further.”
‘Ha! Is that really what you think, Meenakshi? That Nagoba acted on
his own?’
That strain of mockery in that voice stilled her. Oh, was that not Nagoba
then? Was that her inner bitch again? Even here?
“Oh, oh, look at her!” Jaishree, the second-oldest sister said. “We ask
her something and she starts behaving like a maharani. We have heard
things about you, you know.”
“I don’t want to know,” Meenakshi said.
“Well, there’s a reason why we don’t take you out with us,” Jaishree
said. Manda hushed her, but she went on, “You have to learn to behave, girl.
There is something about you. Anyway, what’s this whole thing about that
boy Govind?”
“What do I know?” Meenakshi said.
“She won’t tell!” Jaishree announced. “Now see what problems she is
creating. Does she care about Aai-Baba? Tomorrow police might come at
our door. Can you imagine that?”
A tear prickled in Meenakshi’s eye. But even then, she did not raise her
hand to wipe it away. It was not because she had any compunctions in doing
so in front of her sisters. It was because the familiar but uneasy tingling
sensation had begun to grow in the tips of her fingers, and it petrified her to
show those fingers to her sisters now.
“Well, let’s sleep, sisters,” Jaishree said then. “But mind my words, this
girl has a lot of problems. Best to stay away from her. She will drag and
drown all of us in too.”
Then the lights went off and some of the sisters went to the other room
and the rest of them began to fall asleep. Meenakshi could not sleep though;
she tossed and turned long into the night.
‘They will abandon you. One by one, they will all shun you. And then
you will be alone. Only I will be with you, Meenakshi. Do you hear? Only I.
And you.’
Meenakshi wanted to scream to shut that voice, but the darkness would
not let her. She got up and walked out of that claustrophobic room.

***
Meanwhile, there was no sleep in the parents’ room either.
“What will we do?” Shantaram asked. “Now you have gone and incited
them. They are already furious. Don’t you have any sense? Can you even
imagine what they might do tomorrow?”
“Why scold me?” Renuka asked. “What else could I do? Should I just
hand over our girl to them?”
“Stop talking nonsense. There are things you cannot control, and you
mustn’t complicate them. I don’t know what to do, but what about
tomorrow? What if they really bring the police?”
“Let them come, no? We don’t have anything to show them. As it is,
you know very well…”
“Stupid woman! These are the police. They are not stupid villagers who
will not see a corpse’s slipper in a compost pit. They are going to check
everything. Even dig into the pit. They will bring sniffer dogs if they have
as much as a suspicion. And you know that bastard woman, that Jamblekar,
has clout. She will pull all strings. Something’s gotten up her ass about us.”
“Well…” Renuka sat down, dumbstruck now. “I don’t know what to say
if you put it like that. But you tell me what can we do.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
And he sat down too.
Neither of them heard the soft footsteps turning away from the window.
As Meenakshi walked away from there, she wiped away the tears clouding
her eyes.

***

A few hours later, when the family was in the throes of sleep, Meenakshi’s
eyes suddenly fell open. And once open, stayed open. Like they weren’t
made of human cells at all, but of glass or plastic.
Suparna was sleeping next to her, her hand on her belly. Slowly,
Meenakshi moved the hand and sat up.
Then she heard the rasping voice.
‘Get up. You have work to do.’
This night was different in so many ways.
The sense of foreboding that had been gnawing at her had now come to
a head. She had never been awake at this hour—a small plastic clock told
her it was past three—but she was wide awake, and she knew it was futile
to try to sleep.
She sat up. Her eyes were wide open now, the whites in them the only
things glistening in the darkness, and even so they looked like a sightless
person’s eyes. She moved forth silently and slowly, not as much walking as
gliding. When she reached the door, her hand moved reflexively to the
handle and opened it, and she spilled out of the door, without turning back
to look at her sleeping sisters.
Maybe she was not awake at all. She, in fact, wasn’t; this was one of the
times of the day when the being in her took over, and it was that demon
who guided her steps to do as per her bidding. But she walked as though
she knew—‘You have work to do.’
It was a blessing that everyone else in the house was asleep, because if
they would have seen Meenakshi in this state, they would have hastened to
their own demises through a cardiac arrest.
In the darkness of that long corridor, she sallied forth in her deadened
shell, not as much walking as gliding. As she moved, her skin began to turn.
Gone was the smooth flawless skin of her arms, the subject of her mother’s
compliments; replaced now with a hacked reptilian skin, hardened and
warty and untouchable. It was sporadic, that transformation. It worked
gradually, starting in patches and then moving upwards from her fingers, till
it reached the elbows and the shoulders and then the entire body.
And as the skin began to turn, her body grew in size too. Already tall,
she now became intimidating in size, reaching up to the ceiling of the house
which, as it is, was built on 19th Century rafters. That giant figure, looming
thus in the corridor, presented a sight that could wrench out a healthy man’s
heart. She stopped growing only when her head hit the ceiling, and then she
dragged on, not minding the rafters that pulled out and broke her hair as she
dragged her scalp across them.
A low guttural moan escaped her slightly parted lips as she walked by,
that sounded no different from the whimpering groans of a sick buffalo.
There were possibly words in that moan, some kind of communication, but
at the moment, they were just lost in the wind.
By the time she reached the main door of the house, her clothes had
fallen off. There was a slight nippiness in the breeze that night, but that did
not daunt the creature from boldly walking into the night, naked and
unashamed.
 The only thing that covered her vitals was the profuse hair that grew
upon it. But she didn’t care. She didn’t care at all. Nakedness was the least
of her concerns now, if she was indeed a her anymore.
She glided through the courtyard sightlessly, only stopping for a
moment near the sal tree, which shook its leaves with some mysterious
sentiment, and then moved on further to the very end of the garden. There
she stood as if frozen.
The monster stood still, staring in the vacant distance, unmindful of the
barking of the dogs that had begun to grow around her. In the darkness of
the entire courtyard, she even towered over some of the trees, and stood like
an untimely effigy of Ravana to be immolated at Dussehra; and could have
been visible from three compounds away if people had been awake.
That, combined with her eyes that hadn’t blinked since the
transformation had taken over, the stench that her body emanated, and the
nostrils that flared repeatedly like they were a pair of blacksmith’s bellows,
made her one of the most terrible things that ever walked on the face of the
earth.
Then she sat, not all the way, but on her haunches. Her eyes moved
sweeping an arc and then lowering at a spot straight ahead of her—the
compost pit. Sitting like that, she looked very much like a gigantic frog
waiting for some unsuspecting prey to come up close. And then the frog
made its move.
It was not a darting of the tongue though; it was a swiping of the hand.
Her right hand went out making a fist and then it fell down with such
abruptness and speed that it caused a small explosion in the air. The hand
was in the compost pit now, and it moved inside it in a swirling path, going
round and round, and then it stopped.
It had found its quarry.
With a little grunt, she splashed through the decaying muck and pulled
it out.
The days-old corpse was now in her large hands, looking no more than a
puny (but heavily decomposed) squirrel in a child’s hands. The compost pit
had done its job well, the bacteria and other microorganisms had spared no
expense in ravaging the fibers of this new entrant into their ecosystem. The
body was almost reduced to half in places, the bleeding sores open and
gaping, the bones jutting out, which are anyway the last things to
decompose.
 The creature now looked with interest at the rotting corpse, knowing
full well that it was still evidence, for anyone that might stumble upon it.
This would not do. This is what she had come to take care of. Now she
knew.
She struck a pose then, half-kneeling, one knee raised. Then she placed
the body on that thigh with its half-spine resting on it. The body well-
reposed thus, she curled the fingers to resemble the claws of a huge bird,
and then, with a bloodcurdling yell that went unheard in the night, she dug
those talons into the gaping abdomen of the corpse.
With great rapidity now, she proceeded to rip the body to shreds, tearing
away fragment upon fragment, and throwing them back into the compost
pit. She ripped it away like it were nothing more than a trussed chicken, and
the pieces she tore off were no bigger than slivers of meat one might throw
to a dog.
When nothing but bones remained, she stopped. With a little grin on
that grotesque face now, she brought her elbow down with resounding force
right upon the skull, which smashed into smithereens like it were a
crumbling cookie. She did the same to the ribcage next, and then went on to
snap each limb into several pieces.
And then she threw the bones, crumbled and powdered, into the
compost pit. Those shreds would be decomposed even before the sun came
up.
There would be no telltale signs even if someone decided to swim in the
pit.
The job done, she stood up and started walking back into the house.
The moment her foot entered her threshold, though, it shrunk, and, over
the minute, gained its unblemished complexion once again. And by the time
she opened the door, she was Meenakshi again, standing at the door,
shivering, wondering why she was naked and her clothes were scattered on
the floor.
~ 13 ~
 FLAMING TORCHES

ONCE AGAIN, MAKING sure that Meenakshi was indeed asleep, Kumud
softly latched her door and ran back to her parents’ room. She joined
Suparna there who had just finished narrating the tale to her bewildered
parents.
“Why did you hide all this from us till now, Suparna?” Renuka said,
finally breaking the thick silence that hung in the air.
“I… we didn’t know what to do, Aai,” Suparna said, still in a hushed
whisper. “But now with all this… the talk about Govind and all… I thought
you must know.”
“And that man died?” Shantaram asked.
“In front of the entire village, Baba. It was creepy.”
Renuka stood up, popped her head out of the door, ensured that the
corridor was silent, and then turned back to the people inside the room.
“Look, Suparna. Don’t tell this to anyone else,” she said. “Let us keep
this within the family. Meenu is ours, and we have to see that no harm
comes to her.”
“That’s why I told you this, Aai.”
“We understand that.” Renuka turned to Shantaram, “It is good that this
happened far away in Battis Shirala. If it had happened here, the whole
village would have come up to torch the house.”
“Is Meenu a witch, Aai?” This sudden question was from the little
Kumud, and it made everyone turn quite suddenly at her.
“No, of course not!” Renuka said, a smile firmly fixed on her face.
“What a stupid thing to say!”
“But all girls at school say there is something wrong with her,” Kumud
said. “They say she looks weird and does weird things. Even when she was
in school, she used to talk to herself and keep staring at the walls.”
“That’s how she is,” Renuka said, not sure what she was saying. “But
you don’t indulge in such talk.”
“I don’t. But people come and tell me.”
“Then, Kumud, you should walk away from there,” Renuka said.
There was a noise in the corridor outside. Someone was stirring in their
room.
 “All right, now you two go back to your room,” said Renuka. “Your
Baba and I will think what is to be done. Remember, do not breathe a word
about Battis Shirala to anyone.”
“But I won’t sleep with Meenu in the same room, Aai. I… I get scared,”
said Kumud, almost in tears.
“All right, don’t,” said Renuka. “Now, go.”

***

A minute after the girls left, Renuka turned to her husband, blinking at the
morning sunlight that was now entering the room. “This can get really big.
What are we supposed to do? That Jamblekar too…”
Shantaram’s head was faced down, looking at the floor tiles. He shook
his head in despair, and then he looked up.
“I love my daughters equally, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do,” said Renuka.
“But then, why am I beginning to think that Meenu is different? That
she is the cause of the problems in our house? Am I a bad father to think
like that?”
Renuka did not reply. What could she say? She was beset with such
thoughts too. And some of her thoughts were those that she could not speak
aloud to even herself.
“Kumud… why did she say that, Renu?”
Renuka’s chain of thoughts was broken. “What?”
“That Meenu is a w-wit—”
“Witch?”
Shantaram looked at the ease with which his wife could pronounce that
word. “Yes. Why did she say that?”
“You know how children are,” said Renuka. “They must be saying
things in the school. And, I tell you, their parents are no less. Everyone in
this village only wants a scandal.”
“How can you be so—”
But Renuka cut in. “You know… I think what you… we… were
thinking a few days ago might be the right solution.”
“What?”
Renuka just said, “That.”
“What that?”
 “I know you know,” said Renuka. “Don’t make me spell it out. Think
about it. He’s rich, and completely besotted with her. He will take Meenu to
Bombay and then it is their life. Our other daughters will have a brighter
future. And, truth be told, do you think you will be able to find a better
match for Meenu when she becomes an adult?”
Shantaram heard it all out in pensive silence. He did not object. His firm
determination to not even entertain the thought had diluted over the days.
Slowly, he looked at Renuka and kept staring at her.

***

Dr. Jamblekar came with a posse of her dozen people at half past nine that
morning. Leading the procession with her were two constables and an
inspector.
Shantaram shuffled on his feet when he saw the khakis. “Doctor bai,
what is this?” he asked coldly.
“You wanted proof, no? You shall have it,” Jamblekar said with an
exaggerated shaking of her head. Thrusting her hands firmly in her apron
pockets, she said, “We bring a warrant to search your house.”
“WARRANT?” Renuka said, coming out. “You brought policemen to
our house?”
“Step aside now,” said Dr. Jamblekar, a gleeful smile dancing on her
lips. “Let Inspector Awchat do his work. You cannot stop us.”
Without another word, the stern-faced policemen stormed into the
house. The other people in the group stood back and watched, doing exactly
what they were supposed to do—add weight to the proceedings. Shantaram
looked around helplessly for a minute and then resigned himself to sitting
on the cot in the middle of the courtyard.
Meanwhile, Renuka stood simmering in a corner, trying not to listen to
the heart-wrenching sounds of her cupboards being opened and even
utensils being upturned. Her nostrils flared with both anger and shame—
shame at the most intimate bits of her life being thrown open thus. But she
had to steel herself. There were people more frightened than her. Quickly
gaining control of herself, she nodded in reassurance to her daughters who
had come out of their rooms and were now standing with fearful faces in
the corridor. However, these assuring nods stopped when her eyes fell on
Meenakshi.
 For the Patil family, the twelve minutes that the policemen were inside
their house, throwing everything apart, were moments of eternal shame.
Even as the seconds ticked, they knew—there was not going to be an end to
this.
Finally, the policemen came out, empty-handed, and devoid of hope.
The crowd sighed in disappointment.
Savitri Namdar stepped forward, “Aaho Inspector, don’t forget to check
in the lawn and the garden. Patil bhau has a huge property.”
Quite obediently, the policemen walked into the garden. Meenakshi’s
heart stopped when they trampled upon the fallen leaves of the sal tree,
crushing the dried ones and squishing the raw ones, and then they moved
beyond. They walked up to every tree, looking behind them, prodding into
the loose soil with their sticks, undoing heaps of dried leaves and twigs that
were abundant in that largely untended garden.
And then they came up to the compost pit.
“What’s this?” the Inspector said, prodding the sludge with a stick.
Renuka came forward in a hurry. “That’s a compost pit,” she said in
helpless rage. “We make fertilizer for our plants.”
“Look everywhere, Inspector!” Dr. Jamblekar said.
The Inspector wordlessly moved forward. Pinching his nose, he went
down on his haunches next to the pit. The Patils held their breath as the
Inspector moved directly over the spot where they had buried the slippers
two days ago. In those few seconds, every frown and wrinkle on the
Inspector’s face was carefully observed. Then, one of the constables
produced a long branch of a tree and stuck it into the pit. Immediately, a
rank smell of decay permeated through the surroundings, and everyone
covered their noses, even the girls who were standing far away in the house.
“How can the Patils live in shit?” one of the men asked. Dr. Jamblekar
scoffed in response.
The Patil couple looked on with horror as the stick went round and
round, as if stirring some thick broth. At any moment, they felt, the stick
would hit something harder than the manure it was in, and then there would
be a shout of exclamation from the policemen. The next moment, the body
—surely a partly decomposed horror—would be dragged out and it would
be a sight that no one in the assembled crowd would be able to ever live
down.
 But the moments passed and nothing happened. Bewildered, the Patil
husband and wife looked at each other, and then Renuka silently mumbled
something, probably a prayer of thanks. And yet, there was a question in the
Patils’ mind, but they did not want it answered. All they did was cast
strange looks at Meenakshi.
Meenakshi was only dazed though, with voices playing in her head.
‘We did a good job, Meenakshi. These fuckers won’t find a mortal cell of
anyone in there!’
“Nothing here, Doctor bai,” the Inspector said.
“There is, there is! Please look again!” Dr. Jamblekar screeched.
“We looked. In your presence, that too. There is no trace of your son
here.” The Inspector turned to Shantaram. “Sorry, Patil sahib. We had to do
this.”
Shantaram stood up. “I understand.”
And before Renuka could come up to Dr. Jamblekar, which she intended
to do with a pronounced swag, the latter turned and vacated the premises in
a huff.

***

The Patils kept on sitting in their places for a long time, even the girls. No
one moved or changed their clothes or thought of their humanly needs.
They just sat and wondered, zapped by what had just happened. Their house
was an upside-down mess once again and the whole village—the people
who were in their courtyard and the crowd that had gathered outside—had
seen the police ransacking it. Even if nothing was found, suspicion was
thick in the air. Doom was impending; there was all indication of it.
It was Shantaram who stood up the first.
“I am calling him,” he said.
Renuka nodded.
“Who, Aai?” Meenakshi asked.
There was no answer.
“Tell me, Aai. Baba. Who? Who are you calling?”
Without answering Shantaram walked into the house.
Meenakshi kept on looking at her father with tear-filled eyes. She
wanted to stop him, but she did not know what she could tell him to console
him. Never before had she seen her father being humiliated to this extent.
For the self-respecting man, it was nothing less than being stripped naked
and paraded in the village square. The pillar that held up her life was
crumbling to dust. There were no words she could form now, nothing she
could say that would make sense.

***

Two days later, Renuka stepped out into the courtyard to bring the spices in.
It had been a sunny day and she had put the yearly necessaries out to dry.
The courtyard—still fresh with the footsteps of the mob and the policemen
—was now patched with the saffron of turmeric and the crimson of crisp
chili peppers. She came out, sat next to the whole spices, felt them, and
shook her head. They weren’t perfectly dry yet. But dusk was nearing and
she had to take them inside for now, and bring them out again tomorrow for
another round of drying, provided the sun came out and wasn’t
unexpectedly besmirched with rain clouds as it was wont to do these days.
Deftly, she picked up the large aluminum tray carrying the turmeric
sticks and placed them in a safe spot on the verandah inside the house. Then
she came back and stooped to pick up the chili peppers.
She was still bent, gripping the tray, when she saw the shadow of a
person standing inside the courtyard.
Immediately she stood up and her mouth opened to say something, but
she realized she had gone wordless.
It was Tappu Namdar.
The boy was standing on his feet, though still a bit wobbly and shaky.
He looked no taller than the gate now, for he could not stand erect. His
mouth was now closed but there was still a quiver on his lips. With his
unclean eyes shifting in different directions, he raised his arm with great
effort and pointed—
Renuka turned to look what he was pointing at, and saw Meenakshi just
coming out of a door in the house. The boy’s trembling forefinger was
pointing right at her, as if stabbing her with blame. Then Meenakshi saw
him and froze.
“S-sh-shee… she d-did… this…”
The words that issued from his mouth were a slurred hiss, like the sound
of water droplets vaporizing on a hot plate.
 Then the boy collapsed into his mother’s arms, who, Renuka now saw,
had been standing right behind him all this time like the shadow of a ghost.
“Bring a chair!” Savitri said. “Someone, go!”
Then the mob came forward. They had probably sent Tappu forward to
identify his culprit, and he had done his task. Now that his job was done,
the crowd moved forth.
Renuka found her voice. “Suparna! Jaishree! Manda! Come out, all of
you! Now! Call your father too.”
Meenakshi, still rooted in her corner, noticed that her mother had not
taken her name.
“What are you yapping about?” Renuka said, still alone, but sallying
forth, dauntless.
A man stepped up with a chair. Making the trembling boy sit on it, he
said, “Oho Patil bai, this is enough now. Didn’t you see? Tappu just pointed
at your girl. We asked him to only go point at the one who put him in this
condition and he showed us your girl. What does that mean now?”
Renuka stayed silent.
“Our Govind. Tell us where he is,” another man said.
“What do we know?” Shantaram said, now coming out, adjusting
himself in his kurta as he walked. “You saw… even the police found
nothing.”
Then a voice came from the back. A stronger, female voice, and its
strength lay more in the anger and the determination that it was laced with.
“The police were a mistake.”
Everyone turned to look, more so Renuka.
It was Dr. Jamblekar again, but not in her apron this night, as if subtly
hinting that she was not in the mood for saving lives today. Instead she was
in an orange sari that blended with the twilight, almost making her a part of
that endless canvas of the sky.
“This thing is out of the realm of police affairs.”
“What do you mean?” Renuka said. Her eyes had gone round with fear
now, and she felt something bubbling in her chest, that feeling of impending
doom. What she had not wanted to hear since so long was now imminently
going to spill out. She choked; she felt her hair standing on end.
“Ask your daughter about the Nag Panchami at Battis Shirala,” said Dr.
Jamblekar with enough venomous spite to kill the King Cobra that had been
the star of that event.
 “Wh-what happened at Battis Shirala?” Renuka said.
“Your daughter showed her true colors, that’s what!” Dr. Jamblekar
said. The other people in the crowd nodded. Even Tappu raised her hand
and placed it on his mother’s hand more firmly.
“What true colors?”
Darkness swept the courtyard at this point. Someone from the back of
the crowd lit a matchstick and then a flame went up, a flame at the end of a
stick. Renuka’s heart sank. The people were carrying wooden torches, and
now they were lit.
“Patil bai, how long will you hide your daughter’s disease?” Dr.
Jamblekar said. “I don’t really blame you because you are a mother. But
don’t you see? Your daughter is a patient of the mind. She is a danger. To
this society. To you. Only, you don’t see it right now.”
Renuka’s voice broke, weighted down by the possible truth in the
allegation. “I… I don’t see what…” She looked at Shantaram, who stood
helplessly silent too.
“You have seven daughters,” Dr. Jamblekar said, “and there is
something very wrong with your youngest. You know it too. Do you not
worry about the wellbeing of the rest of your family?”
“But… Meenu is a child,” Shantaram said this time.
Renuka looked up sharply at him, aghast at her husband’s faux-pas.
“No. Not a child.” The light of various torches fell on Dr. Jamblekar’s
face as she said that. “Don’t you see she has long stopped being a child?
Men, what do you think of this? Is this girl really a little girl?”
The last command was to the men standing behind her. Dr. Jamblekar
looked back at the men, wondering at the sudden silence. Then she saw the
unmistakable signs of lust on them. Each and every set of male eyes, except
Shantaram’s, were now fixed upon Meenakshi with unmitigated greed. The
sight was a frightening one; that of a row of able-bodied men held in a
wide-eyed trance in this manner.
“See what I mean?” Dr. Jamblekar looked at Renuka and huffed. “This
is what your daughter does to men.”
“This is not right,” Tappu’s mother broke in. “A girl holding men in lust
like this? Hurting them?” She placed her hand on her son’s head. “Killing
them? This is very dangerous to our village.”
Dr. Jamblekar nodded. “I don’t know, and perhaps will never know
what she did to my son. But—” Then she yelled, “O brothers! Men! Wake
up! Come back to real life!” She took a torch from the nearest man’s hand
and swayed the flame in front of their eyes. The men flinched and then
snapped back into the reality of their environs. “She is a witch, don’t you
see?” Dr. Jamblekar finished.
At that, Renuka burst out. “What? Do you even know what you are
saying?”
“Don’t listen to her!” the doctor screeched. “Go on, men, hold the
family. We have to take this girl with us.”
The men, now snapped back into consciousness, ran forth. A pair of
hands first grabbed Shantaram, and about the same time, another pair held
Renuka. And as if the men’s hands were not enough, their threatening
flaming torches held them back. The girls immediately set into a frenzy, but
before they could even react, they were all bundled into their room by
someone and latched from outside. It was like all of this was a synchronized
and well-rehearsed maneuver, perfected to the T before they even entered
the courtyard this night.
And amidst all the screaming and shouting and thumping against the
locked door, Renuka saw Meenakshi, rooted to her spot in the verandah, as
if unable to move at all.
“DON’T ANYONE DARE TOUCH HER!” Renuka yelled.
Dr. Jamblekar looked back at the squirming Renuka but said nothing.
Working up an expression of disgust on her face, as if she were approaching
a worm, she went up to Meenakshi and stood scrutinizing her for a moment,
looking closely at her heavily perspiring face, with the eyes staring in agape
wonder.
“Leave her! What’s her fault?” Shantaram said.
The men moved ahead. Emboldened, they came closer to Meenakshi
too, as if she were a thing of wonder, and stood around her, staring,
gawking. The combined light of their torches now gleamed on different
parts of the girl’s body, made glistening by the layer of sweat that had
accumulated on it.
And Meenakshi stood tight, praying inwardly, hoping against hope that
the tingling in her fingers won’t happen again. Not now. Not in front of all
these people.
‘Why stop me now? Don’t resist. Let me come out. Don’t you also want
to kill all these drooling bastards? Bash their skulls in? Bury them in the
same pit as their sleazebag relative?
 “No, no…” she prayed. “Don’t… please don’t…”
And she prayed harder, like she had never done before.
Even as she held her hands joined in prayer, she felt the balls of her
fingertips press against each other, and she opened her praying eyes for just
a moment and saw—the skin was moving by itself. And she thought of the
cataclysm she might unleash right here in her father’s courtyard, create a
night that might go down in history as the worst night in Vatgaon. No, no,
that should not happen. She willed her back; she willed with all her
strength.
“No, no, I will not let you come out…”
‘You have to. Unless you want me to come out, I cannot.’
“But I won’t, you bitch! You have caused enough trouble as it is. I
won’t, even if I have to kill myself.”
And she stretched out her hand to grab hold of one of those torches.
How easily her cotton skirt would catch fire and end this all!
But then, it happened.
A miracle.
Through the crowding chaos of the lecherous male faces, Meenakshi
saw a face—another face, standing distant—that glowed with a serene smile
in the darkness. That face stood away, in the desolate clump of bushes near
the compost pit, the same place where she had seen him the first time.
And it conveyed an instant calmness to her, and Meenakshi felt that
everything would be all right. Then, just as abruptly as it had appeared, it
vanished.
And the chaos was back.
Meenakshi became alive once again to the screams and shouts and the
thuds and thumps that were happening all around her. She heard the pitiful
cries of her mother and father and the angry yelling of Dr. Jamblekar. And
she felt—
—the touch of one of those men on her shoulder that had now been
ripped bare of its clothes.
The skin had now cracked. She saw the blood streaking through in lines,
and she wrung her hands to hide her blight, but she knew now it was
coming. There was no way it could be stopped.
‘One YES. One YES from you is all that it will take.’
This time, she feared she wouldn’t black out. She would see what she
was going to transform into.
 Everyone would see.
She could not hide her hands anymore. The skin had turned to grow
harder, thicker, drier, just like the matted molted skin of the reptile she had
seen a few weeks ago. The tips of her fingernails became pointed and sharp,
and though Meenakshi could not look at those tips given the melee she was
in, she didn’t mind it. It was a sight she didn’t want to see.
Then, uncontrolled, and with great ferocity, the hand lashed out.
And up.
Right at the chin of the man who had dared to touch her.
Even as Meenakshi stared at that man’s face with eyes that seemed to be
made of glass, a trickle of blood spurted from his chin, and then it increased
to a flow, and kept on till it became a stream that he could not stifle with his
meager fingers.
He screamed, and the scream of that one man pushed all the other men
back.
And in that moment that the man stood stunned, she grabbed his torch,
and then brought it… brought it perilously close to her face.
Dr. Jamblekar stopped yelling.
Her mother’s protests stopped. Instead, she began to wail. It was a loud
piercing wail of helplessness.
Then Dr. Jamblekar found her voice. “She’s a witch. I told you! She’s a
witch.”
The torch came right into Meenakshi’s face, its naked flames curling on
her cheeks, cheeks that were not chubby and baby-soft anymore. But
Meenakshi stood unfazed by those lashes of fire.
Instead, she bent, her hands on her hips and her eyes looking forward
with a devilish glint in both of them. Then she opened her mouth and blew.
‘I won’t allow you to kill yourself, you see?’
It was not a mere gust of air that issued from that orifice though; it was
a hurricane.
In that hurricane, the first things to go out were the torches. And then,
the men, who were swept backward by the sheer force of it.
One of the men hit his head on the fencepost of the verandah and
slumped over. Another came and fell right at the feet of Savitri Namdar,
making her almost fall backward.
And then—
“Step back!” came a man’s voice from behind them.
 Everyone turned to look.
“Unhand the girl,” said the man who had just spoken. And everyone fell
silent, for they saw him. His uniform, rather. He was a policeman.
“We found these chappals at a brothel in the nearby village,” he said.
“Recognize these, Dr. Jamblekar?” He threw a pair of blue chappals on the
ground.
“These are…”
“Your son’s. He was there with a prostitute for a couple of nights and
has now run away. Stop tormenting this family right now or I shall have to
book all of you.”
Shantaram looked at Renuka, befuddled. Only Meenakshi could see the
patch though, the patch where her father had buried the slippers. But it was
all dug up now.
“But… but you saw what she did!” Dr. Jamblekar protested, quite
forgetting to rejoice over the fact that she had just received a strong lead to
find her son.
“I also saw what you did,” the policeman said, “and how all these men
cornered that young girl. Why, even now some of your men are holding the
Patils captive!”
The men released Shantaram and Renuka from their clutches right
away. Renuka, now unstoppable, moved forward to the policeman. There
was a ton of confusion, but she didn’t care about it right now. “Take this
bitch of a woman right away, sir,” she screamed, fighting back her tears.
“She has… she has…”
“You rest, Mrs. Patil,” said the policeman. “And the lot of you, vacate
the premises right now.”
“But… but what about…” Dr. Jamblekar stuttered.
“Your son has run away from your home. Maybe run away to the city
or… who knows? He’s an adult, and nothing can be done of it. I suggest,
you give up on him too. If this was such a problem, you should have taken
care of your son when he was younger. Get out now.”
With those words of the policeman, the people filed out one by one.
Even Savitri helped Tappu to get on his feet and held his hand as he
hobbled away.
Renuka turned with tears on her face. “Thank you… thank…”
But there was no one to thank.
The policeman had vanished.
 As the aghast family turned to look at Meenakshi, who had become her
normal self again, her frown disappeared. She knew now who that strange
policeman was.
He was the naked man in the grove.
~ 14 ~
 THE NEW LIFE

HARIKUMAR SAT ACROSS the Patils in their verandah the very next
morning, an uncharacteristically silent one. Even the morning birds seemed
to have forgotten to sing their melodies. The men had teacups in their
hands, and while Shantaram slurped on his tea intermittently, Harikumar
held it steadily in his hands till it went cold.
“Hmm…” he said after what seemed like an eternity.
“So, yes,” Shantaram said. “We see great merit in your proposal. Your
doggedness wins. We accept to hand our daughter Meenakshi over to you,
provided you marry her at the earliest.”
“I accept,” said Harikumar. He looked around and saw Meenakshi
hiding in the room but trying to peek out nonetheless. “You do not worry,
Patil sahib. I wish for nothing more. We will marry whenever you want us
to.” He looked unashamedly in the direction of Meenakshi as he spoke that
last line.
Shantaram looked at Renuka, and then Renuka spoke, “But… but… our
only worry… she is underage.”
“Does that really matter to you?” Harikumar said, still staring at the
slight sliver of her face staring at him from the room. “You say your girl is
different. You should be least concerned about her age.”
“Will you take care of her then?” Shantaram asked.
“I assure you; she’ll have as good a life with me as she has had with
you,” Harikumar said with obstinate confidence.
“So, you are sure?” Renuka asked.
“Never been surer of anything else,” said Harikumar. “In fact, take one
of my houses too, the one I offered earlier. I will marry your girl and keep
her like a princess. Come to Bombay to the house whenever you like. Visit
my house. Meet your daughter. I will be happy to serve you both.”
Renuka beamed. It was her first genuine smile in several days.
“Harikumar,” she said, holding his hand, “we apologize for what we told
you a few days ago in this very place. We see now that you have a heart of
gold. It is difficult for us to keep Meenu here and there is no one we can
entrust her to. Somehow, despite everything about you, we feel you will
genuinely look after her. Please, please, take good care of her.”
 “Goes without saying,” said Harikumar and kept the cup down. “Have
you asked her though?”
“What will the poor thing say?” Renuka said. “She is still trembling like
a leaf. What is her fault in all of this? But…” there was a sudden change in
her tone. “…you don’t worry. She will be fine once…”
“So, when do you want to do it?” Harikumar asked.
“Tomorrow morning itself, if you are willing,” Shantaram said. “With
great difficulty, a pundit has agreed to perform the ceremony. Is that all
right?”
“Of course,” Harikumar beamed and now looked at Shantaram. “I could
not be happier.”
“We shall be only us and the girls,” Shantaram said. “Do you have any
guests you’d like to invite?”
“Guests?” Harikumar laughed. “No. I will come all by myself to claim
my bride.”

***

There was only one being Meenakshi had to say her goodbye to. As soon as
Harikumar left, she came out of her hiding and ran up to it.
“O Companion!” she said in a choked voice and held the huge trunk of
the sal tree as tightly as she could. It looked more benevolent this afternoon.
“Make me one with you and let me live there for an eternity. Just like you
stand here. No one can ever make you budge an inch from your proud
position.”
A few leaves rustled. Meenakshi looked up and saw a crow flying away
from them, reaching out to some unknown place in a faraway land.
“Is it right? Do I really have to go?”
Upon that question, a leaf fell directly by her feet. She picked it up. It
was a fresh leaf, yet green and healthy. There was no reason for it to fall off
the tree like that.
But there was probably a reason. As Meenakshi absentmindedly twirled
the stalk of the leaf in her hands, she felt her fate strangely similar to that
abandoned leaf’s.

***
The wedding was the sorriest affair the village temple had seen in decades.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when the stage was set in the courtyard outside
the temple, around a ritual fire. As the flames began to flare up in the sky,
Meenakshi was brought to the scene, led by her father. Her mother and
sisters followed in the procession. Meenakshi looked dazed; even as the
nebulae of the flames danced in her black-beadlike eyes, she showed no
effect. All she could do now was to trust her parents who had said they were
doing the right thing.
Then why did it feel so wrong?
But every time she thought that, she thought of her mother and her
father in the grip of the angry villagers. She thought of her sisters confined
in that room by the angry mob, flames of fire dancing on their faces. And of
how she had come close, this close, to unleashing her inner demoness in
front of so many people. Shudders still went down her spine when she
recalled the scene of that night, and of the transformation that she had
undergone.
She had brought her family, her village on the brink of being
slaughtered.
It killed her to know that she was not herself at times. There was
nothing she could base that fear on, nothing that was in the little bank of her
knowledge, nothing that could reassure her enough to stay on.
Suddenly, Meenakshi found the end of her saree being tugged, and she
looked. It was the pundit. He was tying a knot with her saree and the man’s
shawl.
The man. Her husband.
He was there now. Smiling at her. His chest thumping so wildly that
even she could hear it.
Oh, she could picture the scene of the night. Him on top of her. His
naked body pressing against her naked body. His thing in between her legs.
And she would have to yield. For he was now her husband, wasn’t he?
Jerkily, the bridal rounds began. As the pundit solemnized the vows,
Meenakshi’s eyes turned blurry till she barely knew where she was going.
Renuka had to hold her twice and redirect her as she almost walked into the
fire.
At last, with the loud chant of “Shubha Mangala Saavdhaan,” the
ceremony got over. “You are now husband and wife,” said the priest in great
exultation. “Go forth and lead a pious life in the service of God.”
 The bridal couple bowed and walked slowly toward the gate, outside of
which a new life beckoned.

***

All through the journey in his red car, which was bedecked as if it were
born to be a nuptial vehicle, Meenakshi sat in funereal silence. She
occupied a place of pride though, sitting next to him as he drove, adorned in
her bridal finery herself. No one from her past family accompanied her on
this maiden journey to the city. Their goodbyes had been bid at the big
house gate itself, with tearful and insistent assurances that they would soon
come to visit.
Harikumar drove on for about an hour without a word, focusing only on
the road ahead. But Meenakshi knew that every time she moved, every time
her ornaments clinked, he stiffened. She snatched looks at him, never daring
to look at him directly but in the various tiny mirrors of the car, and she saw
his mouth beginning to form words but not say them.
Then, when it was nearing night, he spoke the first word to her.
“Hungry?”
She nodded. She hadn’t known she was hungry until he asked.
He brought the car down the highway into a service road and stopped at
the first decent inn he could see.
“Stay in the car,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He was back in five minutes with two plastic meal boxes in his hands.
Opening the car door, he came back and sat in the driver’s seat and handed
her one of the boxes.
“Best to eat in the car,” he said. “Dhabas are sleazy places full of horny
truck-drivers at this time of the night.”
Meenakshi opened her box and looked at the food. It was different from
what her mother prepared, even on first sight. She didn’t even know what
half the things in them were. Silently, she put a morsel in her mouth, not
bothering about what taste it carried.
Harikumar, meanwhile, had found his groove. He proceeded to describe
the foods to her, and then he spoke about how he was a good cook too, and
about living in some hostel not many years ago where he had picked up
those skills. As far as he was concerned, the ice was broken and words
flowed out of him easily.
 Meenakshi eyed at him as he spoke, though, not really listening to his
words. She looked at his eyes, and the first thought that occurred to her was
that they were gentle eyes, but then she recalled the lustful looks they had
carried the first time he had seen her and she again cringed.
Somewhere, in the middle of all the talk, one of his sentences stood out,
especially as there was a pause after it. After Meenakshi registered it, she
realized what he had said. “Don’t worry; I will never hurt you.”
She looked at him with unblinking eyes now. “Hurt?” was the only
word she said. Her first word to him as wife.
“Yes, Meenu. May I call you Meenu?”
She nodded again.
“You will always be happy with me,” he said. “I am a good man, you
know? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. No bad company. My business is all
legitimate. Meenu, you have nothing to worry. I will be a good husband to
you.”
Meenakshi’s heart warmed as she heard those words. Maybe that was
the normal state of things. Girls lived with their parents only up to a certain
age and then they had to leave their homes to make new ones with their
husbands. She had heard her friends talk of the uncertainties of what kind of
husbands they would find, and here she had found one who was, even if by
his own claims, a good man. Shouldn’t she be happy?
He took the emptied meal box from her, went out of the car and threw it
in a corner. Then he came back promptly and started the car.
There was no more talk the rest of the night. It was early dawn when
Meenakshi opened her eyes next, and the world seemed to have changed.
They were now driving through a world that was teeming with people. Her
quaint unpeopled village seemed to be in a different world from this one.
People were busily running around even at this hour, when even the cows
didn’t stir back in her village. The roads were better and shiny and filled
with strange cars and sounds. Men and women dressed in strange clothes
looked into the car, and she suddenly felt conscious about still being in her
bridal saree.
Then she became conscious of one more thing.
She had slept on the shoulder of the man, her husband, and he had not
bothered to wake her up. She jerked up suddenly and then noticed she had
left a patch of drool on his shirt.
“Welcome to Bombay,” he said.
 The panic suddenly hit her with full force now. She suddenly grabbed
his arm, and then realizing that that was making him lose control over the
car as it began to swerve, she left his arm and grabbed his thigh.
“Please!” she said.
“What? What happened, Meenu?” He still looked ahead, narrowly
missing a newspaper boy on a cycle who shouted out a terrible curse-word
Meenakshi had never heard in her life.
“You have to let me go,” she said.
“What are you saying, Meenu?”
“You don’t know anything! All the men who have come in my life, who
have touched me, they have met terrible fates. I don’t know what Aai-Baba
told you, but I am cursed.”
“Fuck cursed!” Harikumar said, and Meenakshi was suddenly struck by
his change in tone. Maybe the city had changed him too. Maybe he would
show his true colors soon, after having been gentlemanly all through the
night.
“You… you…”
“I don’t care,” he said, softer now. “We have to make a life, Meenu.
What is past is past. I spoke to your Baba at length about everything. Trust
me, I know. Here, in the city, no one believes in curses and hexes. No one
has time to.”
“Are you… are you… going to…”
“Am I going to what?”
Meenakshi looked away. She could not bear to look at him anymore, the
swearing man with gentle eyes. She only said, “Touch me?”
Harikumar laughed aloud, so much so that he swerved again. “Oh, you
foolish girl! Of course, I will touch you. I am your husband, after all. But,
do you think marriage is all about husbands and wives touching each
other?”
Meenakshi felt a warm sensation rise in her fingertips and she muttered
within her breath, “Oh God, no… no… not now!”
“What are you mumbling?”
Meenakshi hid her hands, away from sight, and she told him, “You say
you will not hurt me? But don’t you see? You can never hurt me. I am
worried that I will hurt you.”
Harikumar turned to look at her, at her face, and the look of lust seemed
to be back if only for a moment. “Are you trying to scare me?’
 “You don’t know…”
“Don’t worry,” Harikumar said. “Neither of us are going to hurt each
other.”
He drove his car into the gate of a compound. Meenakshi’s heart beat
faster as she saw the cubbyhole apartments of the building. She could see
through the windows of some of them, which looked smaller than the one
sisters’ room in her old house. She saw shirtless men standing at the
windows and brushing their teeth, she saw women in loose cotton maxis
doing their stuff, children getting ready for their schools, and those things
called TVs showing whatever it was that they showed.
And there was probably one more such room in this building where she
would be touched tonight. By this man.
Harikumar parked the car and came running to open her side of the
door. “Well, come out!” he said. And when she did, gingerly, measuring
each step, he ran to the back of the car and brought out the suitcase
containing her clothes.
“Is this…” she began.
“Your new home, yes,” said Harikumar. “Come with me. Come on… I
promise you, all your fears will be soon quelled.”
As she stepped out of the red car in her red clothes, every head turned to
look in surprise. She walked slowly, with the veil covering her head, and
allowed herself to be led by him into a narrow corridor. He made her stand
in front of something that looked like a cage and pressed a button. Despite
her mental state, she could not stop being curious about this, and then she
recalled one of her friends telling her about things called elevators in city
buildings, cages that you entered into and they took you wherever you
wanted to go, as high up as you wanted to go.
The elevator dinged and Harikumar pulled the door open. “Well, get in,”
he said. “Don’t be afraid.”
She stepped in, looking everywhere she could through the veil drawn
over her face. He pressed a number on some kind of light-board. It was 4.
The number immediately lit up.
When the elevator stopped with a jerk, she almost let out a scream.
Harikumar laughed slightly at that, and then guided her out by holding her
hand. They were now in a corridor, and he pressed a doorbell.
Meenakshi looked around to see where the sudden chirping of the birds
came from. Harikumar chuckled again as she realized it was the doorbell.
Then she looked up, and saw a large picture of Ganpati stuck on the frame.
Just like in her old house. Village or city, some things don’t change. She
could make new companions here. Like the Elephant-God himself, perhaps.
“Why doorbell? Who is inside?” Meenakshi asked, suddenly realizing.
But before he could answer, the door opened.
It was a middle-aged woman, already dressed up in a soft white saree
with a dulcet green border. For a brief moment, she squinted through the
grills of her door, and then her face broke into a huge welcoming smile.
“Arre, Hari! You are here so soon? Come, come… I thought it was the
cablewallah! Am getting a new connection,” the woman said.
Harikumar took off his shoes outside the door and stepped inside the
door. He tugged at Meenakshi and she did the same.
“Tara Aatya,” he said. “This is Meenakshi. Meenu.”
The woman named Tara stepped up and pushed the veil off Meenakshi’s
face, and then placed a hand on her breast as though spellbound. “Oh my
God, Hari! She is every bit as beautiful as you described. Are you sure you
will be able to keep up with her?”
Hari laughed uneasily. “You too, Tara Aatya!”
“Come in, Meenu,” the aunt said. “Don’t stand at the door.”
Meenakshi saw a little more of the house. The room she was in was a
hall and had a sitting place in a corner that opened at the window. She
missed a beat when she looked down and realized how high above the city
she was.
“Sit, Meenu!” Tara pointed at a soft couch, the kind Meenakshi had
never seen before. “I have already started with the tea. And if you want to
freshen up before that, the bathroom’s that way.”
Harikumar closed the door and guided Meenakshi to sit on the couch as
Tara disappeared into the kitchen. Then he sat on a low stool, facing her but
respectfully away from her.
“Is she your aunt?” Meenakshi asked.
“No, not by relation. I just call her ‘Aatya’ out of respect,” Harikumar
said. “Truth be told, Tara Aatya is just like a mother to me, Meenu. She is
not related to me. In fact, she was my tuition-teacher long ago when I was a
child. Her affection for me was boundless even then as it is now. And I am
sure, she will love you equally.”
Meenakshi looked around. There was one of those TVs in this house
too, a rectangular box with strange buttons on it. Then she saw something
that made her feel a slight pinch within her. Directly above the TV, on the
wall, was the garlanded picture of a man.
“Tara Aatya lost her husband many years ago, which was why she gave
tuition. She has no children,” Harikumar said.
Tara came out with three cups and some biscuits on a tray. Placing them
in front of the couple, she sat down herself.
“How old are you, Meenu?” she asked pointblank.
“I… I will be 14 next month.”
“Which means you should have been in the ninth standard now. Did you
go to school?”
“I did. Up to eighth standard. Then…”
“Oh, all right. I know a few things. Don’t worry,” said Tara. “We will
take care of it.”
Meenakshi was perplexed. What was this? An academic interview?
The next few minutes were spent in Tara recounting episodes from
Harikumar’s childhood days when he was a student with her. She laughed
as she spoke about his little misdemeanors and glowed with pride as she
spoke about his academic achievements. A twinge of sadness flashed across
her face as she spoke of his mother’s death.
When the tea was done, Tara stood up. “Come with me, Meenu. Let me
show you your room.”
“My room?” She looked at Harikumar and said in a low voice. “I
thought… we were just visiting…”
“Just come,” Harikumar said and guided her.
Tara walked ahead and opened a door. It showed a small room, neatly
done up with some sparse furniture, and a single bed along one wall.
“This is where you will stay, Meenu,” Tara said. “Hope you like it.”
“But…”
Tara heard the apprehension in Meenakshi’s voice and then looked with
big, round eyes at Harikumar. Then she lunged and pulled his earlobe.
“Hari, you rascal! Have you not told her anything yet?”
“Ow, ow, Tara Aatya! You tell her! You tell her!” Harikumar laughed.
“Okay, what this idiot didn’t tell you and should have told you a
hundred times already, Meenu,” said Tara, “is that he is not going to live
with you. For now. You will live with me and learn. I have no one, as you
see, and we will have a wonderful time as I make a fine well-learned lady
out of you. All here, at my place, private education.”
 “But… what about… he’s my husband…”
“That he is, but you will not live together,” said Tara. “Hari, you tell her.
This is your department. I am going to look at lunch.”
Harikumar closed the room and sat Meenakshi down on the bed. He
took her face in his hands and said, “It will be great torture for me, Meenu,
but I am a man, not a monster. Did you think I will harm a child? The
marriage is just a formality, and a rural marriage means nothing legally, to
be honest. We needed to do it so that I could bring you here, away from
those people. Or else, I was prepared to wait. In any case, you can live here
and I am still your husband if only in name, but we will officially marry
only when you turn eighteen. And till then, I will never touch you in any
way that you fear. Tell me if this arrangement is all right with you.”
Meenakshi fell speechless, tears now fighting to spill out. Then she
flopped down and grabbed his feet.
“How can I ever express my gratitude to you?” she said, still fighting
back her happy tears. “You are the kindest and noblest man I have ever met.
How will I repay this debt?”
Harikumar jerked his legs away, obviously aghast at the gesture. “Get
up, Meenu. Stop this nonsense. You will never touch my feet again, you
understand? Just because I am your husband, it does not mean I am a god. I
am as human and as prone to mistakes as you are. And I will commit a lot
of them. Honestly, whenever I see you, evil thoughts do enter my mind. I
fantasize about you, I confess. But I have steeled my mind to do the right
thing. I want you, but not at the age you are. Even now, I cannot resist the
temptation to pin you against that wall and do things I have never done
before. You don’t know how much I have been struggling against myself
the entire journey to stop that urge from taking me over. And… and I am…
just a man.”
Harikumar stood up abruptly, strode into the bathroom, and locked the
door. Meenakshi heard him moaning after a couple of minutes and then she
heard him sigh almost painfully. The next sound she heard was that of a
zipper being pulled up and the door was opened.
“This is not right, Meenu,” he said as he came out. “I am sorry. I cannot
control myself any longer. I am leaving now.”
Meenakshi ran to the door. “When will you be back?”
“When you will be eighteen,” he said. He stepped out of the door and
paused. Then he looked at Tara Aatya who was now standing behind
Meenakshi. “Aatya, just make sure no other man sees her,” he said. “You
know why I tell you that.”
“I know,” Tara said and shut the door. Then she looked at Meenakshi
and gave her a reassuring smile.
PART TWO
~ THE BLOSSOM ~
Year 1999
~ 15 ~
 LETTERS FROM THE STARVED

SITTING ON A couch in the apartment that she had made home the last
five years, Meenakshi flipped over a page of The Times of India. Her
special interest, however, was not in the news. Turning over, she came
exactly where she wanted to be—the page 3 of the Bombay Times
supplement.
Her finger moved over the curves of the quarter-page picture of an
actress in a body-hugging evening gown and she smiled to herself. One of
these days, if her husband and Tara Auntie allowed her, she would get such
a gown for herself too, and wear under it what the fashion-savvy people
called ‘lingerie’. It had taken a while for her to learn the pronunciation of
that word. Watching Fashion TV on the sly had finally come to her rescue.
Tara came and sat next to her on the couch and placed their teacups on
the table. She looked into the newspaper, looked at the flashy pictures of the
celebrity event and laughed.
“What is that thing Madhu Sapre is wearing?” she exclaimed. “Looks
like it will just come apart right in the middle and fall off her shoulders.”
“This is fashion, Auntie!” Meenakshi fretted. “You won’t understand.”
“Ah, don’t you talk to me about fashion,” Tara said. “What do you
know about me, anyway? When I was in college, I modeled a bit too.”
“Really? You modeled?”
“Why, look at my face! Don’t you see the glow in it even at this age?”
Meenakshi looked closely. “Well, now that you say it…”
“Humph! Go away! You and your mockery. You also go and find some
strapless sackcloth like your favorite model is wearing in the name of
fashion.”
“Well, well, well, don’t fret, Auntie! Let’s just have our tea.” She picked
up her cup and took a noisy uncivil sip. When Tara scowled at the indecent
sound, she took another sip, this time silently elegant.
“Better,” Tara said. “Being sophisticated is not just about replacing
‘Aatya’ with ‘Auntie’. It is about who you are from within.”
“Yeah, yeah, Auntie. Point noted.”
On the table, the main newspaper began to flap. The breeze was strong
at this time of the morning, coming right from the sea that started two miles
away from the house. Meenakshi quickly took a tissue box to keep as
weight, but then she saw something on the page that lay open.
She picked up the paper and whistled. “Wow!”
“What is it?” Tara asked.
“Listen: A premier ad agency is looking for new female models aged 18
to 22 for an international shampoo brand. Payment on par with global
standards. Walk-in interviews at…”
“Why does that interest you?” Tara quipped.
There was the luster of wide-eyed wonder in Meenakshi’s eyes now.
“Oh, Auntie, don’t you see? It’s a wonderful opportunity, no? I am good-
looking and smart, and I will be eighteen in a month. I really want to do
something now.”
Tara looked away. “Cannot happen, Meenu.”
In a flash, the mood of the room changed.
“Why? Why not?”
“It just cannot.”
“Why did you teach me all that stuff then, Auntie? Now I have passed
both my SSC and HSC, and am on my way to graduating in two years. But
what use is all that if I am only supposed to sit at home?”
Tara took Meenakshi’s hands in hers. “I am not the one to decide this
anyway, Meenu. You know that. You are your husband’s property with me,
and he is the one you should ask.”
“So, I’ll ask him!” Meenakshi said with an edge to her voice. “Call him
here.”
That suggestion had a predictable result—silence for an entire half-
minute.
“You can’t, can you?” Meenakshi started again. “Even if you do, he will
not come! Of what use is such a husband who has not come to see his wife
in five years? Only gifts, letters, and phone messages is not—”
“MEENU!” Tara shouted, something that she did on very rare
occasions. “Take back your words about Hari this instant.”
Meenakshi only stared back, her mind working up a storm.
“Take it back, Meenu. You know Hari does not deserve such words
from you. Not now, at least, when his self-imposed exile is coming to an
end and he’s making plans to start his life with you.”
Meenakshi knew that too. She had lately begun to look at the calendar a
lot, counting the days down to when her eighteenth birthday would arrive.
And each day brought a new wave of panic to her.
“I take back…” she said haltingly.
“Good girl!” Tara said. “When he comes, you ask him yourself. After
that, you don’t need to ask me anything. Ever.”
“Oh, Auntie, don’t do that now!” Meenakshi shifted closer to the lady
and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know you don’t like drama, do
you?”
“Of course, I don’t!” Tara stood up. “And now, get up. Let’s do some
work around the house rather than just sitting here talking about things that
cannot be done.”

***

Meenakshi went into her room and shut herself. That little talk had put her
on the edge, and she felt that she was now not just a mass of cells but a
balloon of bubbling emotions, fit to burst at any instant.
Bombay—now politically renamed Mumbai—had put a new spin on her
as it does to everyone else. She had spent time visiting the city, always
under the careful protection and tutelage of her guardian, Tara Auntie, and
she had been awed by the buildings, some of which made her tilt her head
all the way back and step back precariously into the streets. She had been in
trains (albeit only in the ladies’ compartments) and she had been in
monstrous double-decker buses in the afternoons (Tara Auntie said those
were the times when the buses were empty) and at times, she had sat in
auto-rickshaws, Tara Auntie making sure to make her wear layers of
dupattas over her bosom. Those dupattas had become a part of her, no
matter what outfit she wore, especially when she stepped out of the house.
Why, lately Tara Auntie had begun to insist she wear them even when
opening the door to anyone.
But the biggest draw of the city was the people. Never before had
Meenakshi seen such a large variety of people in one place. They were
light-skinned and dark-skinned, tall and short, thin and fat, and highly
unpredictable. A handful few of them were outfitted in the kinds of clothes
she had seen back in her village, but most of them wore outlandish things
that she could not have dreamt of even in her wildest imaginations. Since
she was not allowed to speak to people much, her attention drifted to their
attires and their accoutrements, and those were the things that made her
stare at them wide-eyed in wonder. At times, she stared at the people so
unabashedly that she would quite forget that those people were staring back
at her too.
Then once Tara told her, “You must not just look at the people, Meenu,
but try to look at what’s inside. Look at their emotions. Like that girl sitting
all pretty with that guy there is probably feeling quite out of place. Or that
old man in his happy shorts and T-shirt gobbling up that frankie there is
probably challenging his cholesterol levels hiding from his family. And that
man in the swanky business suit over there is full of worry about whether
this client meeting will go well. It’s not about clothes or how a person
looks. You need to learn to look inside.”
“Then why do you make me wear dupattas?” Meenakshi asked.
“Because people are shallow,” said Tara.
And such doublespeak confused her.
On most days, Meenakshi stayed at home, and gained knowledge of the
world outside on the television. She watched shows from all over the world
(thanks to cable TV) and found out that though Mumbai was so hugely
different from her village, there were other places that were far away, and
they were far more different. There were languages that she could make no
head nor tail of, there were buildings that she would not know where to
enter from, foods that she would not know how to pronounce the names of,
let alone eat them, and clothes that did not look like anything anyone could
wear. And mostly, there was a world of weathers out there. It wasn’t hot and
humid everywhere like here. Some places snowed and some had huge
mountains, both snow-covered and fire-spouting, and some had vast
stretches of cold, cold oceans. All this put fear of the nature in her heart,
along with the awe. Something deep within her told her that there’s nothing
more terrifying than the magnitude of nature. Man cannot even hold a
candle to nature’s whims and fancies.
And that is where her thoughts usually stopped. the voice that came
from deep within her put an end to her mental ramblings. That voice told
her that she knew more than she knew. That this face she wore was just a
face, a masquerade, and within it lay the true her. And the true her was
different. The true her did not seek this knowledge because she already had
it. The true her did not want anyone like an aunt or a husband to take care
of her. The true her was dangerous.
She was buried deep, deep within her, waiting to come out.
 And sometimes, on those lonely nights when she lay on her bed in that
now-familiar room, that true her clawed at her. It prodded her into
wakefulness, telling her that there was more to come. That this was just a
transitional period and it was best it stayed that way.
Till she turned eighteen.

***

A week before her birthday, Meenakshi spent the afternoon rereading the
letters that Harikumar had sent to her. Those sweet-smelling aerogrammes
always did something to her. They made her feel loved, and for at least a
few minutes, she could be really lonely with them.
But that voice would raise itself sometimes, and then it would prick at
her like a pin punctures a forefinger for a blood sample.
‘Really looking forward to his coming, are we?’
Meenakshi would then throw her hands over her ears, though she knew
that it could not be shut this way.
‘Well, suit yourself. I only hope he’s nice to you.’
“Dare you try your moves on him, bitch!”
‘Why? Don’t tell me you have fallen in love with him.’

She opened the letters. The first letter was immediately after she had
started to live with Tara. Meenakshi opened it and reread a part of it.

I hear you are quite well-adjusted in Tara Aatya’s house. That’s a good
thing. You be a good girl too, and don’t trouble her much. I cannot tell you
how much I miss you, how much I want to hold you and be with you, but I
should not. I will not. Know that I love you though, and stay well until the
time comes.

There was another letter two weeks later.

So, I have finally received their call. I will relocate to New York in a
week. It is a big city, much bigger than our Mumbai, and it is in this country
called America. How I wish I could take you there and we could be together
in that faraway land! But the time will come soon.
 I have heard there are beautiful girls in America, a lot of them, but I
promise to keep myself clean. Only for you. I want to give you all of me
when the time comes.

The next was when she completed her high school.

Congratulations! Do study further though. You will have probably

started your graduation course by the time we meet again. Tara Aatya and I
have discussed some courses that you could do at home via
correspondence. She will guide you.
Don’t worry about me. I am doing great here. The Americans love us
Indians for our brains and hard work. I am impressing them all! Quite a
few ladies too, and many of them have been dropping me strong hints, but I
am not dropping my pants for them. Ha ha! All of me is for my Meenu, and
I think about you each night. Wink, wink! You know what I mean!

Another letter was fairly recent, and yet it was the most creased.
Meenakshi knew that one word for word, and she directly went to the
paragraph that she loved to read the most.

Wow! Is that how you look now? How will I finish the rest of the letter
now? I want to stop this right here and come flying to you. This instant. You
must think I am a sex-maniac, no? But I am quite the opposite, Meenu,
saving myself for you despite all the temptation I have all around me. And
yet, that is not entirely true. The truth is, after seeing you, I just don’t feel
aroused by any other woman. It just does not happen the same way it used
to earlier.
I think the day I come to you, I am just going to explode!
If only there was not this restriction of your age, Meenu… When will
these few months pass?

A smile dancing on her lips now, she came to the last one she had
received in the beginning of this month. And as she read it, the color on her
face began to change.

So, it is done! This is my last letter to you, Meenu. In four weeks, I will
be with you, in your loving embrace, and there will be nothing to separate
us. I will make love to you all night and experience your magic, for which I
have been waiting all this while. I am sure it will be worth the wait.
I have already packed my bags, and I have what you wanted too, that
lingerie you asked for. It’s a brand called Victoria’s Secret and I think that’s
the best one here. To be honest, I cannot even look at it, for then I imagine
you in it and I cannot control myself.
Just a few days more. I cannot stop smiling. How will that day be when
I will finally take you to my house, which will now be truly our house? I
hope Tara Aatya will understand my craze for you.

Meenakshi felt the rising pang in her chest now. She looked at the
calendar in front of her, and particularly at that one date that she had circled
in red ink about a hundred times.
~ 16 ~
 BLACK THREAD

SHE FELT HARIKUMAR’S fingers on her waist, tapping on her skin

lightly, stopping only for a moment to circle the slight bump of her navel,
and then moving downward.
A sigh escaped her lips as his other hand moved on her back and cupped
the mass of her rear. The same hand brought her closer to him, till skin met
skin in a tingling union.
“Don’t worry,” he breathed into her ear. “We will go slow. We have our
entire lives to do this.”
She nodded, and then felt him guiding her hand the front of his groin.
On his face was an assuring smile, coaxing her, encouraging her, telling her
this was all right now, and that nothing would go wrong. With her hand still
resisting, she pondered. Every pore of her body wanted to reach out to him
though, to touch him, and to let him touch her. There was a dam within that
was waiting to burst, and she wanted to just let it let loose. But there was
also the fear.
She retreated, leaving him breathing hard, and bowed her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “I am sorry.”
“Don’t do this, Meenu,” Harikumar said. “I cannot take it anymore.”
Why didn’t he get angry? Why didn’t he yell out at her? She was
depriving him, wasn’t she? Why didn’t that infuriate him? But these
thoughts only made her think well of him all the more. Such a man who had
waited, such a man who cared for her, would never get angry with her, what
would she not do to be with him?
Maybe, just maybe, love would conquer everything. Maybe the woman
inside her would not dig her evil claws into this man because he loved her?
Maybe that woman had left her in all these years?
But no… she felt the tingling rise in her fingertips. Oh, she was there all
right! And she was seeing the naked flesh of Harikumar right now too, but
in a totally different context. While Meenakshi wanted to treasure every cell
of that body for eternal life, the woman inside wanted to ravage it with her
talons and her fangs, tear it to shreds, and make a bloody pulp of it.
‘Isn’t he just another sleazy cock-happy bastard?’
“Come, Meenu,” implored Harikumar. “It will be all right.”
Meenakshi stepped ahead. But the voice wouldn’t shut down.
 ‘Just look at him. The only life in him right now is in his penis. Perverts,
all of them.’
“Come. Let me touch you,” he said.
Meenakshi took another step forward, her eyes now focused on him and
nothing else. She came up and he reached out to her and pulled her closer.
Taking her to the bed, he tucked his fingers into her waistband and pulled
her garment down.
Meenakshi sighed. Never before had this happened to her; she had been
told this was an experience to cherish. The man she loved was looking at
her with love and respect, at every inch of her, and nothing would be wrong.
Nothing.
‘Don’t like it, you fool!’
He gently pulled her legs apart and brought himself closer. “Relax,
Meenu. Nothing will happen,” he said.
And she shut her eyes, trying to quell that scratchy sensation in her
fingertips, and she breathed hard, letting him guide her.
The next moment, she had the sensation most divine. She gasped,
audibly, as she felt herself filled up by him. The union, the holy matrimony,
it had taken place. He was one with her, she was one with him. She
understood what “one body” meant. Now if only it could stay that way…
But it would not. What was she thinking?
‘Oh, don’t give in! The shame, the submission! I can take care of this.’
Her fingers erupted even as he made the first thrust. While he was blind
to everything else right now, she could only see the fingers of her right
hand, as the skin peeled off from the tips and retracted, and the bloody red
maw inside was exposed. She saw the fingernails uprooting and falling on
the bed, like many blooded petals, and her fingers swelled to a size that she
knew wouldn’t even fit into this room.
“Isn’t this heaven, Meenu?” Harikumar said with his eyes still closed,
thrusting into her in a soft rhythm as though to some unheard music.
But she didn’t respond. She couldn’t respond. It was as if she were
paralyzed now, and the thing inside her had taken over. She felt her hands
fly up, those bloody red things and then they landed on his naked back, and
that was when he opened his eyes.
“Wha…?” he began, and then his eyes bulged out, and she could see
those thin red veins becoming redder. The skin on his face contracted and
fissures erupted on it like it were about to crack, and then it did crack.
 Then he was hurtled away to the wall, howling as a madman, and as that
happened, his skin ripped apart and came off in the fiendish talons that her
hands had become.
She sat up, half-human-half-demon now, and she saw in disbelief the
skinned man running around the room, making whatever sounds his
ruptured larynx could make, and then flopping over the floor, twitching
away to lifelessness.
Then she became aware of the things that were still dangling from her
fingernails. The two halves of her husband’s recently pulled out skin.
‘That’s it. He will bother you no more.’
“NOOO!” she screamed and everything went blank.

As she sat up in her single bed, which was now wet with her sweat and
tears, she could see nothing that she didn’t see every night. Her gaze fell on
the calendar up ahead, and she saw, to her immense relief, the day hadn’t
come yet. There will still two days.
All of this had been a nightmare. Just a nightmare. Or… or, perhaps a
premonition?

***

Next morning, Meenakshi was awoken mid-sleep by a rousing on her arm.

She rubbed her eyes open to see Tara standing by her side, her silver hair
flying in the breeze like the threads on a chewed-up ragdoll.
“Get up and come outside,” she said. “There’s a surprise for you.”
“Hari?”
“No, silly. He’s coming day after. Impatient?”
Then Tara went out, leaving her to guess, and Meenakshi yawned to the
bathroom to wash herself up before stepping out.
The moment she stepped out though, she was beset with overflowing
emotions. Her sleep-clouded eyes welled up again and she felt a choke in
her throat as she found her Aai-Baba seated on the couch by the window.
Renuka ran up to Meenakshi and hugged her and she immediately got
that sweet village smell from her again and she knew what she had been
missing. “Aai… Aai…” she tore up as she hugged her back. “How this?
How all of a sudden?”
 Meenakshi could not remember the last time they had visited. It was
perhaps a year ago.
“Just a little something for you,” Shantaram said, getting up and coming
close to her. He made to hug her but then retreated, perhaps realizing the
inappropriateness of the gesture. He made do with a faint peck on her cheek
instead.
That “little something” was three huge sacks that lay shapelessly on the
floor.
“Oh, my god, bhau! What is all that?” Tara said as she came out with a
tea-tray.
“Fresh produce from our Vatgaon,” Shantaram beamed at her
remonstrations. “Nothing much. Just a jackfruit and some raw mangoes and
coconuts.”
“And also some rice laddoos that I made myself,” Renuka quipped. “Do
not refuse us, tai.”
Tara was overwhelmed at the address of ‘tai’. Though loosely spoken,
the word carried respect, for it meant ‘older sister’. She waved her away
and said, “Okay, keep it. All of it will go to Harikumar’s house anyway.”
“That is why we have come here,” Renuka said, sitting down and
pulling Meenakshi to sit next to her. “Day after, our little girl will be going
to her husband’s house, and you know how awkward it will be to go to the
son-in-law’s house. Even if we visited, we won’t be able to talk to her
much.”
“Ah, doesn’t matter,” said Tara. “Come here as many times as you
please, even after Meenakshi goes away. Think of this as your house in
Bombay.”
“Mumbai,” Shantaram corrected. “Isn’t it Mumbai now?”
“Ah! Don’t get me started,” Tara quipped. “I was born in Bombay and
will die in Bombay. Politics goes to hell.”
Four hours later, they sat for lunch, and that was when the tongues
really loosened. Though the Patils had visited earlier, this was turning out to
be the longest visit. Despite the standing invitation for future visits,
everyone knew there was a kind of finality to this one, and perhaps that was
what made hearts open out much better.
“So, how is everything back in the village?” Tara said in a voice meant
to guide the conversation into deeper waters.
 The undercurrent in that thinly-disguised question did not escape its
listeners though, especially Renuka. She plonked her spoon in her bowl of
dal and said, “Everything’s quite fine, tai. With four daughters married to
wonderful husbands now, we are a happy household.”
“Good to hear,” said Tara. “And the house and all? Village all well?
Neighbors and all?”
The last part of the question hung in the air.
“Yes, tai,” said Renuka. “Now, what to hide from you? You have been a
mother to our daughter for five years now, so you know everything. That
boy, Tappu, he moves around a bit but he’s still not quite all right.”
“Did anyone find out what happened to him?”
Renuka looked at Meenakshi and then at her husband, and then shook
her head.
“No,” she said. “He was slightly better some time back but has had a
kind of relapse. Who knows what that is!”
“And what about the doctor’s son who went missing? That was a big
incident, no?”
An uneasy silence ensued.
Then Shantaram spoke, “Nah, he hasn’t come back from wherever he
ran away to.”
No one said anything then. Renuka looked into her plate again, but her
mind was wandering. She saw glimpses of the villagers avoiding her,
children throwing egg-shells into her courtyard, and no one even wanting to
be their tenants anymore.
“We are just happy Meenu is fine,” Shantaram said. “You have brought
her up as your daughter and made such a fine lady of her that we could
never have. We will never be able to thank you enough.”
“Oh, drop that!” Tara brushed away the praise with a wave of her hand.
“Your daughter is super-intelligent. Why, now she wants to do a job! Be a
model, no less!”
A moment of silence ensued as three pairs of elderly eyes bored into
Meenakshi. She fidgeted with her plate.
“Anyway, that’s for her husband and her to decide now,” said Renuka,
getting up and washing her hands in more ways than one.

***
Just before leaving, Renuka took Meenakshi into the kitchen for a little
private talk. Closing the kitchen door, she said, “So, he’s coming back on
Sunday?”
Meenakshi nodded.
“Good. Then your married life will begin, Meenu,” said Renuka. “But I
can see that you are not happy.”
“Aai, you know…”
“Yes, I know.” Renuka took her head closer to her bosom in a bid to
give her strength. “You are worried that you will harm him. Isn’t it?”
Meenakshi looked at her with fearful eyes, eyes that were on the verge
of breaking into tears.
“Like it happened with others?”
Meenakshi stayed silent.
“Well, I anticipated your fear,” said Renuka, “and that is the real reason
why we came here today.”
As Meenakshi continued to look at her, Renuka thrust her hand into her
purse and brought out a black thread.
“A Swami came to our village a few days ago,” she said. “Without
telling anyone, not even your father, I went to see him. Barefoot, as the
condition was. At first, he brushed me off like I were some ordinary visitor,
but when I told him some specific things, he was deeply interested. He
spoke to me for a long time, and he said some things that you should
know.”
“What?”
It was evident that Renuka was finding it difficult to produce words,
though she had a lot to say. She made an attempt though. “He said you have
the signs of some kind of possession. Usually, people are possessed for a
short while. Like a few hours or, at the most, days. But whatever is inside
you has come into you since a long time, maybe even since your birth
itself.”
Meenakshi just stared.
“You don’t know a few things, Meenu, but now is the time to tell you.
After six daughters, your father wanted a son. So, when I got pregnant with
you, we did an elaborate ritual one night to appease a spirit that lives in the
forest. The spirit of a Yakshini.”
Cold sweat began to grow on Meenakshi’s back. “What’s a Yakshini?”
 “A Yakshini is a female deity. Like a demigod. She is sometimes good,
and sometimes evil. And she has huge wish-fulfilling powers. If a Yakshini
blesses you, you get what your heart desires.”
“So, why am I not a boy?”
“The ritual went wrong. There were things to be done specifically, and
your father fumbled at a particular point. I was sitting next to him, and I
held his arm. At that point, through the corner of my eye, I saw something
coming closer to us from the forest trees. We got so scared that we left
everything and ran away from that place. I didn’t take all of this so
seriously, but after seeing all the things that happened around you, your
Baba and I got almost certain that we did invoke the Yakshini that night.
And she came home with us. In you.”
Meenakshi looked down at herself, not understanding, not knowing
what to do. “Yakshini? What am I to do, Aai?” she asked finally. “You tell
me this thing inside me, that voice that I cannot stop hearing, is a Yakshini?
What am I to do? I am to embark on a married life in five days. How am I
to keep myself and my husband safe?”
Renuka could only stare back at her with her benign eyes.
“What do Yakshinis do?”
“They do different things, Meenu. Not all of them are harmful. But the
one that’s inside you—the Swami told me—seems to be dangerous. He told
me this Yakshini is one who feeds on amorous men. She seduces men and
when they are at the height of their passions, she feeds on them.”
“Oh!” Meenakshi said. “That explains a lot. Tappu. Govind. But, but
Hari? I don’t want any harm—”
“I know.” Renuka handed the black thread to Meenakshi now. “Tie this
thread on your left arm, near the heart. As long as you have this thread, the
Yakshini inside you will be trapped. When you… make love to your
husband, it will be only you and no one else.”
Renuka tied the thread on Meenakshi’s arm.
“Think of it as protection, dear,” she said. “Not all of us women are
lucky enough to ward off unwanted men. You can! With this talisman on
you, you are no different than any other woman. Just thousands of times
more beautiful, that’s all.”
A faint smile broke on Meenakshi’s lips. But then there was also the
fear—the fear that her Hari would be the test drive for this new vehicle.
~ 17 ~
 HONEYNOON

ON THE DAY that Harikumar was to arrive, Tara went to Meenakshi’s

room early in the morning to find that she was already awake, sitting up in
bed, staring at nothing in particular.
“Ah, I can understand the impatience!” Tara said with a mischievous
smile.
Meenakshi attempted a smile.
“Well, get up then,” Tara urged. “Flight’s on time. We will take an hour
to reach the airport.”
Meenakshi did not stir. She opened her mouth to say something but then
closed it again.
Tara came closer to her. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“Just feeling uneasy.”
The older lady’s face broke out into another grin. “I think I can
understand that. Do you feel like your stomach is flying away? Like your
mind wants to run ahead of you and your feet are too numb to carry you
there? Like your blood is hot and cold at the same time?”
Meenakshi smiled. It was a genuine smile this time.
“Well, I was young once too, you know,” Tara said. “Once when your
Uncle was out of town for seven days, and that was soon after our marriage,
I was in a similar condition as you are on the day he was coming back. All a
bundle of nerves. Felt like I’d be ready to collapse. But I made it though, as
you can see.”
“Auntie,” Meenakshi said faintly, “is it possible… that only you go and
pick him up? I… I don’t think I can…”
Tara ran her fingers through Meenakshi’s long tresses. “Hmm, okay.
Will do that. Anyway, he’s going to be all yours once he reaches.”
“Thank you, Auntie.”
“Meanwhile, you use the time to dress up as well as you can,” Tara said,
“and I mean it. I know you are the most beautiful girl any man could ever
hope for, but this is a special occasion. Not just for him but for yourself
also. It is a misconception that women dress up for their men; they dress up
for themselves. It makes them feel better; makes them feel special. There is
not going to be another day like today in your life.”
 Meenakshi shivered at the truth of those words. She kept sitting in her
place for a few minutes after Tara left, and then slowly proceeded to the
bathroom.

***

Meenakshi dressed up in a saree, a special purchase. They had bought it a

week ago at a local store. She draped the red and green saree with the
golden border, and she did it perfectly; the creases and folds falling so well
on her womanly curves that it didn’t look as if she was wearing the garment
but like the garment was hugging her, had become a part of her. As she
moved, each thread of the saree moved with her, providing her no
resistance, becoming as fluid as she wanted them to be.
She sent a silent ‘thank you’ to her Aai who had taught her how to drape
a saree.
But now, as she felt the caresses of the saree on her, it pained her. It was
a new touch, and today seemed to be a day of new touches. This was just a
garment, and she could easily make it a part of her, but could she do that to
another living, breathing person, a person who had emotions and passions
of his own? And what if she couldn’t? There was the fear of losing someone
she had come to love, but there was also the fear of being exposed for what
she was hiding within her—the rotten, undeniable truth about her stinking
existence.
She had never been afraid for herself though. On her first night, Tara
had asked her if she’d be scared to sleep alone in that room, and Meenakshi
had laughed sarcastically. Sometimes when watching TV shows with Tara,
there would be scenes of heinous murders or mutilated corpses and Tara
would look away, but Meenakshi would only stare at them, stunned and
dazed perhaps by the memories that they brought on. Were there any fears
she hadn’t seen yet?
But that question abruptly stopped the troublesome cascade of her
memories. Yes, there were fears that she hadn’t seen yet. The fear of losing
someone she loved. The fear of pillaging, ravaging, tearing to shreds the
person she loved.
She had seen so much, and yet there was so much more she had to still
see.
 If the sal tree had been here, she’d have now gone running to its boughs
and clung to it till it set her mind at rest. Or she’d have waited long and
hard in that corner of her garden waiting for the naked man with golden hair
to appear and tell her she had companions.
Right this moment, she felt she had none. She was a stranger to herself.
She looked at herself in the mirror, at that sad pitiful face that should
have been brimming with smiles.
‘Dressing up for him?’
Quickly, she moved away, her heart thumping wildly, thinking about the
horrors that were about to come.

She opened her eyes when the doorbell rang persistently. Immediately
standing up, and taking stock of the situation, she straightened herself in
front of the mirror. She ran to open the door at what sounded like the tenth
doorbell, and as she undid the latch, her gaze fell on the black thread on her
left upper-arm. She pulled her short blouse sleeve over it, worked a smile
on her face and opened the door.

***

Harikumar was standing at the door like an eager child, covering his eyes
with his hands. Beneath those hands, Meenakshi could see an almost-boyish
smile. The same one he had left her with. It gladdened her heart.
After all those years, the first words she heard from him were:
“I am not going to open my eyes so easily.”
Tara came up behind him, huffing as she climbed the last of the stairs.
“Lift is not working,” she panted, “and this boy didn’t even wait for me.”
She smacked him on the head, walked past him, and came inside and then
realized he was still frozen at the door. “Hari, what game is this?”
“You go inside, Aatya!” Harikumar said. “You won’t understand. I have
heard that my wife has turned so beautiful that no one can take all her
beauty at one go.”
“You young romantic fools!” Tara shook her head and went inside.
Still at the door, Meenakshi blushed.
“Are you going to stand like that forever?” she asked coyly.
His smile broadened. “Ah, that voice! The same voice!”
“Well?”
 “Wait, wait. You know how you should not look at the sun all at once?
It burns your eyes. Just like that…”
“You don’t look at eclipses all at once too. Do you mean I am an
eclipse?”
“You break my heart, Meenu. Here, I am comparing you with the most
beautiful, the most brilliant thing in all the world, and you are doing
yourself this disservice. Let your man look at you at his leisure. He has won
that right fair and square, hasn’t he?”
Meenakshi rolled her eyes. “I see America has done something to you.”
“Well, that was the whole point of going there, MBA be damned!” he
said, and then there was a wink.
Meenakshi saw the wink through the slight sliver between his fingers.
So he had been seeing her all along. Slowly, playfully, she began to back
off, her silent feet leading her up to the bedroom.
“Oh, okay,” said Harikumar. “Both of us can play foolish games, of
course!”
He took one step further as she took one behind. Thus they walked,
matching step for step, one going back and other going forth, till they were
in the bedroom. She stood in the middle of the place while he positioned
himself at the door.
“Safe,” he said. “Now let me see the dazzling beauty that everyone in
the city is talking about.”
“Everyone?”
Slowly, he parted his fingers. His eyes were open now, though hidden
behind the curtain of the fingers. As they opened, the eyes grew wider, and
she sat down on the bed.
“Oh, my holy goodness!” he whistled. “Oh, my God. Do I deserve you?
Why, oh, why? Everything is so perfect about you. And look at me. All skin
and bones. How can we ever be together?”
“I am so glad you are back,” she said and then trying to veer the
conversation away from her looks, she asked, “Did you have a good time
there?”
“As good as one can have without their soul. But now I am back, with a
certificate to boot, and if I have to go anywhere again, it will be with you.”
There were smiles on his face. Smiles of a joyful reunion, the kind that
cannot be controlled. And in that moment, Meenakshi realized that she
hadn’t ever received those smiles from anyone else. These were smiles of
pure happiness.
“I will be graduating too. In two years!” she said.
“I know!” Harikumar held her hand, and something flowed through her.
“Tara Aatya could talk only about you all the way here. Or maybe I asked
only about you! I believe it’s the latter. In any case, Meenu, today, after a
quick lunch with Aatya, I shall be taking you to our house. Our house, can
you believe it?”
Meenakshi did not tell him that that was all she had thought over the
past few weeks, and it wasn’t the thought of unmitigated joy that it should
have been. There was something tinged with that thought that she could not
quite put a finger on.
“Aatya has set up everything there. Cleaned up and all. Made it fit to
receive its queen.”
“I cannot wait…” Meenakshi said, her head bowed, thoughtful.
“So, let’s go ahead and get done with that lunch. Let’s bid our goodbyes
to Aatya who has been so gracious to us all these years, and let’s start the
new chapter of our lives together.”

***

All through the way to her husband’s house, which was now her house,
Meenakshi stayed covered from head to toe. She took care to pull the veil of
the saree over her head. As she sat next to her husband who drove the car,
she did not even dare to look out of the window. Instead, she leaned as far
back as she could go and thought of the life that awaited her.
The face of Harikumar flooded her thoughts. Over these years, he
hadn’t been totally absent in her life, but, on the contrary, he had more than
a mere physical presence. There are couples who share their lives under the
same roof and are still disconnected, but Meenakshi had slowly developed a
strong bond with her husband in his absence. And now that he was here, the
man who had saved her life in a way, she was overwhelmed. All the time,
she kept fidgeting with her black thread on her arm, like a drowning man
seeks succor from even a straw.
“Here we come,” Harikumar said as he parked the car in a designated
spot in the stilt space of a building.
 Meenakshi, her thoughts broken, raised her head and looked up, and
could not immediately see where the building went up to. She had seen
some of these buildings in the city, but now she was seeing one in its full
glory. What were they called? Yes, skyscrapers. She felt a sudden pang
when she realized she was going to live in one. What would her parents,
true people of the soil, say when they heard of this?
“I cannot see the end of it,” she said.
Harikumar laughed. He pointed somewhere high up and said, “Look at
that, that’s our house. Nineteenth floor. Just you and I.”
From that step on, everything was a new experience. The way the
watchman stood up with a salute at her, the swanky lobby of the building
that was lined with exquisitely shining stone, the automated lift that opened
all by itself, and even their house door with its sophisticated locks. It dazed
her. And she was all the more dazed when he took her in, holding her hand
all the way. One wall of the house had only glass from top to bottom, and as
Meenakshi stepped forward, she saw the furious sea in the distance,
continuously lashing its waves at the sands and receding, its ferocity spent.
“Your house looks like a five-star hotel,” mused Meenakshi, running her
fingers on the walls of the house as if making sure it was not all the dream.
“This is your house too, dear,” Harikumar said. “Our house. One of the
safest neighborhoods in the city, and the safest house in that neighborhood.
Meenu…” He made her sit on a chair and went down on his knees by her
side, “How could I let you live just about anywhere? This house, this virgin
unlived house which you shall now make home, is bought with everything I
inherited. And, you know, even then, it is not the dearest thing to me. Can
you guess what that is?”
An unfamiliar fear gripped Meenakshi’s heart. This time the fear was a
question. Did she really deserve this man?
“Come in, my Grihalakshmi,” Harikumar said, getting up and leading
her by the hand. “With you by my side, I will make fifty other such houses.
But now, you cannot tell me to stop myself any longer.”
Meenakshi knew what he meant and she moved forth with slow steps.
She saw the room ahead of her, the one with the shut door, and she knew
what was going to happen.
Harikumar pushed the door open, and all of a sudden, a strong whiff of
jasmine and rose filled their nostrils.
 He grabbed her arm playfully, and she looked. The bed was right in
front of her, adorned with petals of blood-red roses, waiting to be lain on,
ruffled and disturbed. Beyond, she could see tiny fingernail-sized people
playing in the tumultuous waves.
“This is our paradise,” Harikumar said, “and this is our wedding night.
Technically, afternoon. Not honeymoon but honeynoon!” He laughed. “But
does it matter? For us who are free and unobligated, every moment is a
honeymoon.”
Meenakshi worked a smile on her face. She moved over to Harikumar,
her Harikumar, and placed her head on his chest. She could hear his heart
thumping—and she knew that each thump bore no other thought but of her.
Harikumar stepped back. Delicately, he took the end of her saree and
began to unroll it. He did it as one unwraps a delicate confectionary, taking
care not to disturb the preciously crafted contents inside. And she stood
still, only breathing heavily, absorbing every moment.
“You will have to forgive me if I do not do enough justice to your
beauty,” Harikumar said. “I am new and unlearned, just as you are. Let’s
learn our lessons together.”
As he lay bare her blouse, Meenakshi’s first reflex was to throw her
hands over her breasts, but he tenderly moved them. Each movement of his,
each caress, was filled with care. Glimpses of painful memories flashed
through her mind, which were filled with painful groping and lustful eyes,
but there was none of that here. Lust and love are both four-letter words, but
it was only now that Meenakshi realized the difference between them.
Like a baby he lay his head between her breasts, and she welcomed him
with her protective embrace, and like that they stayed for a long minute
before moving over to the bed.

When Meenakshi next opened her eyes, she found herself in the
perfumed bed, and her chosen man in his raw form as nature had made him,
with a smile on his lips, tenderly bringing himself closer to her. She saw an
assurance in that smile, and she knew it was okay to let go.
“I promise to be gentle,” he said and took off the last piece of clothing
that separated him from her.
And then she gave in and stilled. This time the stillness was not due to
any memory or due to any of the hundred fears that were plaguing her. But
it was for the thing that she now saw on her husband for the first time, his
organ.
She had heard about the male organ in various tones before—mocking
when it belonged to a little boy voiding himself by the roadside, ugly and
repulsive when it stuck out like a tumescent appendage on a perverted man,
rousing when it was hidden in the pants of a handsome man, and even
venerable when it was the symbol of a god denoting the fertility of the
human race. And there was one more where she was concerned. A weapon
of suicide. Flashes rose up within her again, flashes of when that thing had
sprung up into action on men who had touched her, and how the Yakshini
had roused into action too and dished them out their ultimate fates. That
thing was right now in front of her, and it belonged to her husband. Which
meant, as she realized with a slight pang, it belonged to her.
An unbidden thought of the naked man tried to rear its head, but she
quelled it immediately.
As Harikumar eased himself, not taking his eyes off her for a moment,
and brought himself into her, Meenakshi kept her hands over her head.
Harikumar, with great concern for her contorting face, said, “Do not worry.
This will be good.”
‘Now tell me. Isn’t he just one of them too?’
Meenakshi’s breath stuck in her throat. Here she was. Here it was.
Coming now.
She held the black thread that was on her arm as tightly as she could, as
if goading it into action.
“Hold me, Meenu,” Harikumar said. “Keep your hands on my back.”
‘Horny bastard. Man-whore. All of them.’
Slowly, reluctantly, she brought one hand out, and placed it on his back,
fearful that it might turn into clawed appendage during the journey from
above her head to his back. But it didn’t. She moaned—her longest moan so
far—and her fingers, still human and tender, made contact with the small of
his back and then moved upward, as if guiding the whole of him to enter the
whole of her.

***

“I could write a poem about your breasts,” Harikumar said later, lying next
to his wife, spent. He was now admiring her form like a painter does to a
muse that he’s just about to immortalize in his art.
Meenakshi laughed. It was a nervous laugh, for she was still reeling
from the aftereffects of what had happened and, more than that, what could
have happened.
Harikumar turned to face her. He reached out and felt her hand and held
it till it stopped quivering.
“Meenu,” he said, “we have to spend a life together. I don’t want you to
be afraid of anything. I don’t want you to begin things with a doubt. All you
have to do is to trust me. Things will be all right.”
Meenakshi had a reply to that, but she kept it within herself. ‘I trust you,
Hari, but what about myself? Can I trust myself?’
“What are you worried about?” he asked.
She opened her mouth. “I worry that this happy moment might not last.”
“We will make it last, won’t we?”
“How can you say that, Hari?” Meenakshi’s voice gained confidence,
now that the barrier of the first sentence was broken. “How can we depend
on us to make it last?”
“Who else does it depend on if not you and I?”
“I love you, Hari, but the truth is that I don’t know you,” she said. “I
only have sketchy details of you, mostly fed to me through others. At first
my parents and then Tara Auntie. But let that be. What about me? What do
you know about me at all?”
“I know enough.”
“No, but, really. Tell me. That first day you came. Wasn’t it for my
sister? And everyone tells me you liked her too. Then what happened all of
a sudden?”
Harikumar smiled, “I knew you’d ask me that, only not so soon.”
“Well, tell me.”
“You want to hear your own praises?”
“About time.”
“Your sister is beautiful. There is no doubt that she set my heart aflutter
as soon as I saw her. She is intelligent and homely and I am sure she is
keeping her husband very happy. But, you are something else. Your beauty
is incomparable. If your sister is like a rainbow, you are like the sun
peeking from the clouds that brings that rainbow. When I saw you among
all those ladies, Meenu, in that instant, everything else blurred out of focus.
From then on, I had eyes only for you. I forgot all manners, all words, all
etiquette. I gained courage. Words came automatically to me. And never
have I been surer of what I said that day—that I want to make you my
wife.”
“Which you did,” said Meenakshi after Harikumar fell silent. “Despite
knowing about me.”
“That a boy went missing after breaking into your house and his folks
went mad? Of course, I heard that. How does that reflect on you, Meenu? I
cannot hold you accountable for that. Nor that boy. I can understand how
one can go crazy over you.” Harikumar shifted and continued in a more
somber tone, “Yes, there is more. I was in the village for a while. I heard
things about you. I heard the men talk how they cannot control themselves
when they saw you. Don’t feel bad, Meenu, but I heard some very lewd talk
going on back there. If I had the strength, I’d have broken a few bones. But
that did not cause any worry in me. If at all there was worry, it was about
getting you away from there as soon as possible.”
“And here I am.”
“For better or for worse, here you are.”
“Thank you, Hari, for pouring your heart out to me,” Meenakshi said.
“You are the first person to ever have done so, and I will never forget that. I
will never forget you for everything that you have done for me.”
Harikumar waved it away, and then he said like it were just a casual
afterthought, “So which Devi do you pray to?”
“Me? None.”
“Then what’s that black thread?”
Meenakshi felt a sharp pang run through her.
“What…”
“That black thread around your wrist. Looks like it is the symbol of
some goddess.”
“It isn’t.”
“Oh, don’t tell me it is some black magic thing…”
“Nothing like that,” Meenakshi said, thinking furiously. “It is just
something to ward off the evil eye.”
“Ah, the evil eye! Well, keep wearing it then. You are liable to attract a
lot of evil eye!”
Laughing, he fell back to the bed, and slowly his hand went back on his
new wife’s velvet-soft abdomen.
 Minutes later, he was asleep, his head nuzzling her breasts, but
Meenakshi was wide awake, her eyes staring at the ceiling. Late-evening
shadows were beginning to loom over her now, and she felt she would
choke on the secrets she was keeping hidden within her.
~ 18 ~
 SPECIAL DELIVERY

WEEKS PASSED IN such bliss. The new couple saw each other like they
had seen nothing else before, getting intimate with everything that the other
had to offer—physically and mentally. While Meenakshi laid bare her soul,
bit by bit, frightened at first and then giving in, she understood that her
husband was a well-educated gentle man who did not like violence of any
kind, loved home-cooked food over gourmet food, was good with women
but had always been decent with them, had few male friends, and had
always lived an uncomplicated life. And, by his own admission, he was
never a romantic, but she had turned him into one.
When he was with her, he filled her time with love and laughter. His
jokes were witty and sensitive, and he did not poke fun at others, but did not
mind stretching himself to the limits of self-deprecation. He spoke of an
incident when he was fifteen, when his friends had put in his head that girls
really “dig” guys who smoke. Totally consumed with that thought, he had
bummed a cigarette from the pack of a chain-smoking uncle and then stood
by the light-pole of a girls’ hostel, blowing what he thought to be smoke
rings up into the air. In retrospect, they were more like fart winds. He stood
there and smoked, and hacked his lungs out, but none of the girls even as
much as looked. Instead, when his friends turned up to see what he was up
to, they found half a dozen female dogs resting coolly all around him. Even
to this day, his friends teased him about what kinds of females his
machismo had actually attracted.
“But wait till those friends of mine see you!” he said after the first time
he had narrated the incident.
And that had sent the familiar wave of worry in Meenakshi’s heart.
She had adjusted herself to this—her life in a bubble—but she knew
that would not last. She knew that she was a married woman now, wearing
all the marks of marital bliss upon her, and soon the time would come when
she would have to step out. Soon, her husband would want to introduce her
to his friends, however few they might be. Or there might be parties he
would want to take her to. Or he may just plan something out of the house
—a dinner date, a movie outing, a trip to the mall—anything. And she had
no doubts how brutally that would burst the bubble she had been living in.
 Meenakshi had spared him the details. How could she have told him all
those things anyway? She could not tell him that his wife had brought along
a dowry, and that dowry was another creature living inside her; and that
creature was part of their communion whenever it happened, and probably
would also be in part a mother of the child if they ever bore one.
These were her demons. She had to battle them herself. Every moment
she saw the body of her husband non-sexually, like when he came out of the
bath or when he was dressing up, she saw the frailty of it. She saw the
innocence in it. If the thing inside were to have her way, that body could be
snapped in two the first time it made an advance at her.
That very thought—the thought of her husband being killed by her
during a night of steamy passion—would not let her live.
‘Let me out. Let me have at it. It would be a feast.’
How many times had she heard that voice inside her? But no. Not this
time, if she could quell it. “I won’t allow you to have your way, bitch,” she
would say. “You will die in there, in my body that you have invaded. But
you will not lay a finger on him.”
Her black thread had been her rescuer so far, but for how long? Every
morning that she went for her bath, she saw the thread slipping away, fiber
after fiber of it coming loose. And she felt the tingling under her skin with
rising force every day. Like the thing inside her was winning. How long
would be it before the thread came off? Maybe it would come off when he
was making love to her, when his guileless face was looking at her and
nothing else, and seeing all the love that was there in it for him.
And then the Yakshini would show herself again, and dance on the body
of her loving husband till all that was left of him was a mangled bloodied
heap.

***

One morning, she received a call from her mother.

There was silence for a long moment after the initial hellos, and then
Renuka broke the silence.
“You sound okay, Meenu. Do I take it that everything is all right? That
things are working out?”
Meenakshi wondered which part of her had sounded okay to her mother.
“Yes, Aai.”
 “Good. I am glad that you are keeping your husband happy. Hari is a
good man.”
“He is. How are things back in the village?”
“Very good, Meenu. We got a nice proposal for Rutuja also. Good guy.
Lives in Delhi. Marathi family. Everything matches. Your Baba says we
should go for it. All our daughters are scattered in different cities as it is.”
“That’s a good thing, Aai. I am very happy. Then you will be left with
only Kumud.”
“Ah, she is attracting her fair share of attention too,” Renuka said. “I did
not believe in God much once, Meenu, but now I do. It is only because of
the blessings of Amba Mata that things have worked out for all of us. Only
because of her blessings have we come out of that black hole.”
Meenakshi cleared her throat and said, “Things… aren’t quite out of the
black hole, Aai.”
“What do you mean, child?”
“Aai, the black thread is coming off.”
“What do you mean?”
“The thread, Aai? Don’t you remember?”
There was a moment of silence, and then a revelation. “Oh, oh, that…
Yes, that thread that the Swami gave. But, Meenu, do you think that your
marriage is working only because of the thread?”
“Yes, Aai. It is because of the thread. But it is wearing away now, and I
can feel the… the thing inside me trying to come out. I can just feel it, Aai.
There’s that tingling in my fingers.”
“Oh!”
“I cannot forget, Aai! It lives inside me!”
Another moment of silence. “There is no way to get that holy thread
again, Meenu. That Swami was a wandering hermit. He was just visiting
here. Who knows what part of the world he is in now?”
Meenakshi stayed silent.
“But don’t worry, child. Pray to Amba Mata. Visit her temple. Ask Hari
to take you. Things will be all right.”
“I will, Aai. Give my regards to Baba.”

***
Five nights later, when Harikumar came to her, Meenakshi flinched. The
thread had almost come off that morning in the bath. She hadn’t realized it
then, but when she looked in the mirror, she saw not her face but the
horrific face of the Yakshini staring back at her with its blazing red eyes and
an obscene hunger in her fangs. She slapped her hand on her naked arm and
saw that the black thread wasn’t there. Terrified and quivering, she shut off
the water, and splashed the flooded water on the floor all around, kicking
and beating the soap suds away. Her heart returned to her only when she
saw that slender line of black, not much different from an earthworm,
making its way to the drain. Immediately, and receiving a cut from a
chipped tile in the process, Meenakshi lurched and caught the last
centimeter of the thread before it disappeared down the drain. She held it on
her arm and stood up. The entity in the mirror was gone; it was her again.
But then it was a tall order to keep the thread on her arm. She tried tying
it with the help of another thread, but the tingling wouldn’t go. She then
wrapped the entire thread in plastic rolled as a tube, and then tried to glue it
together, but the plastic layer diluted the effect, for the tingling stayed.
Nothing she did could bring the thread to what it was.
Sniffling back her frustration, she managed to stretch the much-beaten
thread as much as possible and tried to tie a small knot. On her wrist now,
but it would still work, won’t it? Water had made the thread shrink though,
and it barely went around her arm once. But she had to do it. She had to.
And so, she tried. She had barely managed to somehow bring the ends
together and work up a weak knot when the doorbell rang.
After they had eaten and talked about their days, the moment of dread
arrived. Harikumar seemed super-charged on this day, more so because he
had won a small victory by signing up a deal with a new service provider,
and he expected to be rewarded. He had been dropping hints all evening,
and Meenakshi brushed them off with nervous giggles, but then he
suggested they go to bed.
“You don’t seem to be in it, Meenu,” he said after he pulled off the last
fabric that was on her. “Did something happen today?”
Meenakshi shook her head. Her hands were on top of her head now.
One hand clasped the other wrist, doing its best to keep the thread in place.
He lowered himself and kissed her on the chest. “Come on, Meenu, put
your hands on my back. You know I like that.”
 Praying in whatever language she knew, Meenakshi took her hands
away. She moved them slowly in an arc, her eyes minutely observing the
thread as it moved, and then placed her fingers on his naked spine.
“I like this, I like this! Squeeze harder! Hold me tight.”
Meenakshi’s fingers trembled on his back. She moved them in faint
lines along his ribs.
He laughed. “You are tickling me! Some new kind of torture sex,
Meenu?”
She held him tighter. And then she felt his thing sliding into her, and in
that moment, she lost all other sense. Her eyes closed and she let out a deep
moan of ecstasy and she quivered along with him as they made the four-
legged-two-headed creature.
‘This is our chance! Your fingers on his helpless back. One jab and it’d
do it. Let me come out! Let that black thread drop.’
“Fuck you!” Meenakshi said.
“Wow!” Harikumar said. “Where did you learn that word?”
“Sorry.”
“No, I love it! Come on, tell me, what else do you know?”
Bliss was here again, but Meenakshi did not stop praying. The voice
was back, louder now, persistent. She hoped he would come soon, while the
thread still stayed. It looked that he might, for he never took long.
Somehow, it seemed, this night too would pass.
But, fate had other plans.
“Your fingers…” Harikumar said. “They feel wonderful on my back
now, Meenu.”
‘Hee! Hee! You thought you could stop me?’
And that was when she opened her eyes, her pupils dilated. Those
words made her alarmingly conscious, and it was a sick, tingly
consciousness that started at the tips of her fingers.
Yes, the demoness was winning. She felt her fingers hardening, matting
up as they did. She could not see them now, but she knew quite well the
rough-as-sandpaper scabs that must have grown on their bulbous tips, and
then they would move upward, upward to her palms, and then arms and
then the whole of her.
The thread was broken. Lost. She knew it.
‘Let’s take this one out too, shall we?’
 “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Meenakshi screamed and
immediately threw her hands over her ears. With all that she had, she
struggled to throw Harikumar off her body.
Harikumar fell off by her side, puzzled, his face of a kind she had never
seen before.
“Meenu… what the fuck?”
And then the doorbell rang with the greatest ferocity that had ever been
heard in that house.
Drrrinnnngggg! Drrrrriiiiiinnnngggggggg!
“Now who?” Harikumar said.
The doorbell did not stop though. It went on like it were a fire alarm
that made you stop whatever you were doing in five seconds and run.
“Go look,” said Meenakshi, gently pushing him away, but forcing him
out of her anyway.
As the doorbell went on, Harikumar pulled on his boxers and
Meenakshi hid her hands. Then she called out for him. He looked back and
she pointed at his groin. “Nothing can be done of that,” Harikumar
grumbled, patted down his erection helplessly, and walked to the door.
Meenakshi immediately got up and looked for the thread. She pulled
away the rumpled sheets and the pillows and looked in the crevices of the
bed. She looked in their clothes that were randomly strewn on the floor. It
was nowhere.
Then she slumped back on the bed naked, waiting, praying, for at least
two whole minutes. She heard him talking to someone outside, his voice
rising to levels of annoyance, but she thought that was good.
When he didn’t come back for another two minutes, she got up, slipped
her gown on her, and went to look.
A man in a delivery boy’s uniform was at the door. The smell of slightly
burnt Chinese food wafted into her nostrils. Harikumar was explaining an
address to him.
“Did you get that now?” he said.
The man then looked beyond Harikumar’s shoulder, and under that
overlarge uniform cap he wore, Meenakshi could see his eyes boring right
into her. She pulled her gown closer on her cleavage.
“What is it, Hari?”
“He came to a wrong address,” he said and turned to the man. “Now
you got it? Go.”
 The delivery man half-turned, and Harikumar was about to slam the
door on him, when he turned back and said, “Madam…”
Meenakshi stiffened.
“What is it?” Harikumar asked with greater annoyance.
“There is something on the floor.”
“Where?” Meenakshi looked.
“There,” said the man, pointing.
And then Meenakshi saw. It was the thread. Lying on the floor tile that
was in front of her, an impossibility of course. How could it have come
here? And then she saw it. Oh, this one was different. Whole. Unbroken. It
was a new thread!
But how?
She quickly bent and picked it up and mumbled, more out of reflex than
out of intention, “Thanks.”
The man tipped his cap. And that was when Meenakshi saw.
This was no delivery man.
It was him. Again. The naked man in the grove.
~ 19 ~
 THE PARTY

MEENAKSHI AND HARIKUMAR planned to usher in the beginning of

her nineteenth year by creating new memories with family and friends. “It
also marks one year that we have lived together as husband and wife,”
Harikumar told her when he was setting things up. “So, officially, our first
wedding anniversary! But the celebration is only about you, okay?”
Meenakshi smiled at his justification; she had no argument with that.
Now, the day had come. Since morning, the couple had been pottering
around the house, setting things aright. Among the few guests they had
chosen to invite were included Meenakshi’s parents, and Meenakshi could
not bear the thought of her mother scrutinizing the home that she had built,
as she was wont to do. She had arranged the dinner-plates six times so far,
and each time, she had found another speck on one of the plates which
meant they had to all go back to the wash.
“Why do you fret so much?” Harikumar quipped. He had already
decided they had done everything they could do and he had parked himself
on the couch waiting for the guests to arrive.
“Fret?”
“Of course! Your mother is the coolest lady I have met. And Tara Aatya.
Both of them know each other too, so they are going to be busy with their
conversations. You think they will have time to look at your plates?”
“You really don’t know women, do you?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t make this a gender thing.”
With just an hour to go, Meenakshi decided it was futile to argue and do
whatever she could. A part of her told her that she was not unduly worried
about her mother’s peculiarities, but she was really worried to meet her
after a year. Meeting people from the past can open up the rottenest can of
worms, even if they are your parents. Especially if they are your parents,
who know you the most of all.
Her chain of thoughts was broken when Harikumar said aloud, almost
as if it were an announcement, “So, Nishikant is on his way.”
Meenakshi turned sharply.
“But you told me… he’s not coming?”
“Oh, he is,” Harikumar laughed. “He’s really so unpredictable; I wonder
why we are business partners. He must have decided last minute that he
really has nothing to do at home tonight and so he comes.”
“I’ll have to set an extra dinner plate.”
“Do that,” said Harikumar. “He doesn’t eat much, but…”
Meenakshi did not hear the rest of the sentence. When Harikumar had
been suggesting people for the party, she had tactfully thumbed down most
of the males. In fact, all of them. But she hadn’t been able to keep away
Nishikant Rajan, with whom Harikumar shared a childhood friendship and
now a business too.
The only problem was that Nishikant was a single young man, and
single young men spelled trouble in Meenakshi’s book.

***

The birthday cake was a rectangular dark brown chocolate affair, the kind
that would make a diabetic run away at the very sight of it. Across the
entire diagonal of the cake, Meenakshi’s name was written in red jelly,
looking as if it were a blood wound slashed right across that hunk of brown.
And to Meenakshi, as she looked at it now, that splotch began to move and
drip, looking more like the blood it was getting to be in her mind.
About ten people were crowded into the chandelier-lit air-conditioned
hall of her house. Her parents were there, and they had brought gifts from
the village, which were jute sacks filled with coconuts and raw mangoes
and a jackfruit. Tara was there, who brought a saree in its cardboard box
wrapped in some fancy paper that rustled a tad bit more than it should.
Meenakshi had invited some of the ladies from the building, and they all
stood in a neat, nervous row forming one of the four walls around the cake,
smiling at everything and talking in hushed whispers. Some of the ladies
had brought in their kids, and they were the noise in the house at the
moment.
“You have to make a wish and blow the candle first!” Tara urged.
Meenakshi had celebrated one birthday long ago, back in Vatgaon, and
that one did not have cake. Her four birthdays with Tara Aatya had been
mostly dining out at the neighborhood Red Hut Chinese Restaurant.
“What do I wish for?”
“Oh, you should be flattered!” Tara patted on Harikumar’s back. “A
wife who doesn’t know what to wish for is a true compliment for a
husband.”
 Harikumar crossed his heart.
“You know what you have to wish for,” Renuka winked.
“What?”
Renuka looked at Shantaram, who looked older somehow, and nudged
an elbow into him. When he turned to look, she winked.
“What?” Meenakshi asked again.
“Why, Hari,” Renuka said, “isn’t it a year for your official wedding
today, as you put it?”
Harikumar immediately said, “Yes.”
“Ah, oh, ah!” The funny noises issued from Tara. They were sounds of
revelation.
“What is it, ladies? What am I missing?” Harikumar asked.
The neighborly ladies began to giggle louder. As it always happens,
everyone knew what the hint was except the people in question.
“Are we doing something wrong, Meenu?” he asked.
“Yes, you fool!” Tara laughed. “It is one year already that you have
been together.”
“Oh God, no!” Harikumar said as Tara’s familiar explaining voice
cleared away the murk on that hint.
“So?”
“Meenu, cut the cake,” Harikumar said firmly.
Meenakshi mumbled something—and no, it wasn’t a wish for a baby—
and then blew off the candles. The kids who had stopped their games for a
moment sang the Birthday Song, screeching out the mouthful that was
‘MEENAKSHI AUNTIE’, and then looked expectantly at the generous slabs
of cake that were passed on from one elderly mouth to the other. Oldies
always go first.
And just when the kids thought they’d finally get the sinfully saccharine
cake, they had to wait longer. For, after sucking the cream off his fingers,
Harikumar cleared his throat for attention and then thrust his hand into the
pocket of his trousers.
“Ooooh, expensive gift alert!” one of the younger women squealed.
“And now, my ladylove,” Harikumar said, nuzzling closer to his wife,
“accept this little token.”
“Oh my God, Hari…” Meenakshi went as she opened the box. Several
colored slivers of light reflected back into her dazzled eyes. “How did you
know my size?” was her first question, mostly a reflex.
 “Remember I borrowed your wedding ring for a day claiming that I
wanted to check its purity?” Harikumar winked.
“Oh, you crook!” Meenakshi hugged Harikumar and beat him playfully
on his chest. She felt his arm holding her and then sliding down to the arch
of her back. Suddenly conscious of her parents, she moved back. “You
should not have—”
Then there was another voice from the back of the ring of people around
the cake. “Oh no, am I late again?”
That bodiless male baritone, hitherto unheard in this house, made all the
ladies do a double-take. Cakes froze mid-air. Someone was pouring Citra in
thermocol glasses, which now spilled all over the table. The kids had
discovered a toy car somewhere, but even they halted it momentarily and
turned their cocky heads to look at the new guest.
“Ah Nishi, well, come on in,” Harikumar said.
And in walked Nishikant Rajan, cutting right through the heart of the
guests, walking right past the table on which the cake was placed, even
jostling it a bit with his knee but not minding it, and brought a box wrapped
in glittering red paper right up to the birthday girl. The box was about the
right size to wrap a human heart.
“Oh…” Meenakshi stammered. “Is this… is this…”
“Yes,” Harikumar nodded. “Nishikant. My buddy and business partner.”
“Happy birthday to my best friend’s wife!” Nishikant said with a smile
and a stare.
He was tall, at least a head and a half taller than Meenakshi was, and he
had to stoop to come down to the level of his hostess. Yet, he held that pose,
proffering his present, and holding that warm expression on his face which
was mostly hidden by a well-mowed mustache and beard.
Meenakshi took the present, and the man made a show of heaving a sigh
of relief. “Thanks!” he exclaimed quite audibly. “If I had to stoop for a
second more, I’d have had a slip disk.”
“You don’t get a slip disk by stooping,” said Harikumar. “Now come…
let’s begin our real party!” He led Nishikant away to the corner table where
bottles of glittering gold fluids were already arranged. Halfway, he turned
and returned. “Baba, you come too!” he told Shantaram.
Shantaram looked at Renuka, who nodded.
“Well, go!” said Renuka. “An occasional drink is good for your heart.”
 Where the women assembled, Renuka held fort. Meenakshi heard her
attentively as she updated everyone on the husbands of her daughters,
counting off names on her fingers and listing their professions. However,
what held Meenakshi’s attention more was the fact how no one got bored
even though all her mother was rattling off was a list. Childhood memories
of how good her mother was at telling stories came back to her.
And her father was across the room, talking loosely with the men now
that he was on his second peg. She wondered if she should intervene and
stop him from carrying things too far, but then she decided not to. Maybe
this, this moment, was the memory being etched right in her mind. She’d be
a fool to abort it.
It hit her hard then—how her world had both drastically changed and
not changed at all. These were the people she had grown up with, and they
still had the same foibles. Her father had grown frailer and her mother had
grown plumper, but even so, his coughing and her tittering had been a part
of her life forever. And then, the thoughts of the house came back to her.
From what she heard, the village house was silent and empty now. With
only Kumud left behind, the other girls having married and gone to their
husbands’ houses in various cities, the house was probably just a ghost shell
of what it had been.
“How’s my sal tree?” she asked her mother later.
Renuka replied with a shake of her head, “Still there. But like
everything else, it is aging too. Its leaves are falling faster now. Your Baba
tells it is perhaps nearing its time of complete decay.”
“A son would have taken care of the house,” one of the women in the
group said.
Meenakshi did not hear what her mother replied to that though, for at
that point, she caught sight of Nishikant. And that look made her frown.
While Shantaram shared a particularly juicy anecdote with his son-in-law,
this new man was sitting upright, with a twinkle in his eye. And that
twinkle was directed at her. Unmistakably so. Gaze met gaze, and
Meenakshi realized only a moment too late that she should have lowered
her eyes.
“Let me look at dinner,” she said and excused herself to move into the
kitchen.

***
Twenty minutes after dinner, only the closest people were still in the house.
The neighbors and the kids had bid their goodbyes, citing school the next
day, and Meenakshi busied herself in the kitchen arranging the dishes in the
sink for next day’s washing. She hoped the maid would not claim a holiday,
as she often did when there was a lot of work. Meenakshi was embroiled in
such housewifely worries when she heard the flush being pulled in the
bathroom that opened up in the narrow corridor outside.
She turned to see who it was, and was unnerved for a moment to see it
was Nishikant.
Just like that, with that tall man looming in the corridor that separated
the rest of the house from the kitchen, she felt trapped.
To add to it, he turned to look at her with an inscrutable expression on
his bearded face. She could not quite see his eyes now; the light of the
kitchen fell the other way.
“Do you want something?” she asked in a faint voice.
But he didn’t speak. The gaze continued, held straight on her face. And
it puzzled Meenakshi as well, for it was different from any man’s gaze that
had fallen on her so far. But she could tell; this was not a gaze of lust. This
was not even that nervous male glance that slipped feverishly to the
cleavage for a split-second. He just stood and looked at her, as if he wanted
to say something, but the words would not come out.
‘Here’s another!’
Meenakshi touched the thread on her wrist.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“N-nothing!” he said.
But he still stared for another ten seconds.
And then he broke into a goofy laugh. “Ha! Scared ya, didn’t I?” At that
moment, Harikumar walked in, and Nishikant said, “How did this idiot
manage to get you as wife, bhabhiji? One of those enigmas that would
never be solved, for sure!” And he went away laughing.
Meenakshi smiled at the word ‘bhabhiji’. No one had called her ‘sister-
in-law’ before.
~ 20 ~
 RED SHINING PRESENT

“THAT DIDN’T GO half bad, did it?” Harikumar said above the din of the
windows that Meenakshi was slamming shut.
“No,” Meenakshi said simply.
“Good. I like it this way. Few people, small gathering. Even weddings
should be like this. Why call the entire village to just burp and fart and
complain?”
“Our wedding was like this.”
“Yes, it was,” Harikumar laughed. “All right, now leave those windows.
Hop in.”
Meenakshi turned to look. He was only in his boxers now, sitting up on
the bed, looking at her expectantly.
She laughed. “All right. Wait a moment.”
“What else have you got to do?”
“I have to make sure everything is latched properly.”
“It is. No one can break through these locks. Just fling that thing you are
wearing on the floor and come on!”
Meenakshi turned. Making sure once that her talisman was in place—it
had now become a ritual just like one checks the temperature of a pool
before diving into it—she undid the string that held her robe together.
Softly, the thing fell to the floor.
“I love you,” Harikumar whispered in her ear after about two minutes
when they were in the throes of deep passion-play.
“I love you back,” she breathed.
“I don’t know how you can become more beautiful night after night.
Look at me; I already think I have got my first wrinkle.”
“You are way too young for that, Hari.”
“Maybe. I am just so fortunate to have you. It is like you have this well
of youth inside of you and it just keeps springing out and out, never
ceasing,” he said, gasping as he ground his groin against hers. “In fact…
you have turned lovelier than I saw you the first time.”
“Perhaps I have actually grown into a woman? The first time you saw
me, I was a child.”
Harikumar laughed.
“Pedophile!” Meenakshi laughed back.
 At that word, suddenly, Harikumar’s face changed. In just that one
moment, it lost its color and its smile and fell to that of one who is
grievously hurt. Shoving her aside, he withdrew and rolled on his back on
his side of the bed.
Meenakshi knew she had crossed a line.
“I am sorry, Hari,” she said. “Deeply sorry. Please, I did not mean that.
You are one of the finest men I know. You didn’t even touch—”
“Never even as a joke, Meenu,” said Harikumar in a mellow, hurt voice.
“Don’t say that even as a joke.”
“I am sorry.”
“When you were that age, Meenu…” Harikumar said, turning to face
her and propping his head on her arm. “Even when you were that age, you
were different. I did not see a child in you at all, Meenu. I saw something
else—a grown woman. It was instant love. People only talk of love at first
sight; I felt it. It was a spark that ran all through my limbs, numbing them
for an instant. I still remember that jolt today, like some electricity had
coursed through my entire being. And when you looked back, it wasn’t like
a child looking back at me with innocence. It was that grown woman
looking back with understanding. It is like when you admire a tree you
forget you are in the woods. I fell for it, Meenu. I am only human.”
“I know. And there is nothing I can do to take that word back.”
“It’s all right now,” Harikumar said.
“Won’t you… won’t we…”
Meenakshi placed her hand back on his chest. With her finger, she
lightly tapped on his nipples and then drew small circles around them.
“Can’t even stay cross with you, can I?” Harikumar said with an uneasy
smile. He raised his leg and placed it over hers, and Meenakshi smiled back
as she felt him back in action.
Two minutes later, they were gasping and sighing once again.
Meenakshi looked on, as he slowly positioned himself on her, and then she
said, “Well… where is it?”
“What?”
“The… protection?”
“Do we need it now, Meenu?” Harikumar winced as he made contact.
“Don’t you think it’s time we had a child?”
‘A child? Now he wants to give you a child? Give us a child?’
Meenakshi flinched.
 “What happened? Why the flushed face?”
“Hari,” she said. “I don’t know.”
Harikumar planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “Why, Meenu? You will
make a good mother.”
“Will I?”
“Why do you doubt it?”
A sudden flash crossed her mind at that. She saw, in her mind’s inward
eye, herself in the form of the naked hideous Yakshini sitting cross-legged
on the floor with a helpless mewling child in her hairy lap.
“No!” she said. “I am not ready for a child.”
“Well, all right, all right. Don’t get excited! Yes, you are still young.
Let’s wait.”
He opened the drawer of the bedside table and began groping for his
box of condoms.

***

Early morning, when Harikumar began to leave for his work, Meenakshi
stirred out of bed. She quickly sprang off the bed, realizing that she had
overslept, and ran up to the door to find him fully dressed, stepping into his
shoes.
“Thought I’d just sneak away, let you sleep,” he said.
“It’s all right. I am awake now. Do you want something?”
“Nope!” He stood up and straightened the crease of his trousers. “It’s a
new business. Needs my constant attention. Will tell you all about it later in
the evening.”
“All right. Do eat something though.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll have a bite with Nishi as soon as I reach.” Then he
turned. “Yeah, speaking of Nishi, you seem to have forgotten the present he
gave you.”
She looked at where his finger pointed. The shining red package was
still on the coffee-table, as if yearning to be touched and opened.

***

After a quick bath, Meenakshi left her hair loose to dry and sat under the
moving fan. Shuffling to the most relaxed position, she took the red box in
her hands.
It had lain there for almost half the day, just like most things lay about
the big house, escaping her attention. Or, probably she was subtly telling
herself (and here ‘herself’ meant that inner monster part of her) that the
giver of the present meant nothing to her. She could do without opening it.
But, if she could be completely honest to herself in that moment, she’d
admit that she felt a little stab of fear at the prospect of opening the box.
What could such a shiny present from a stranger contain?
With that pang still pricking at her, she held the box in her hands, one
placed below it for support and the other toying with the butterfly ribbon
knot on the top. The box was of the size of a chalk-box, the kind the
schoolmaster back in the village would bring with him every morning. And
that thought of the school brought on another stab, and this time the stab cut
perilously close to the bone.
Finally, with a little silent wish, she undid that frilly knot. The red
shining wrapper came loose and fell apart.
Inside was a box made of thin cardboard. It was a product box of some
kind. Something electronic. Something she hadn’t seen before. Was it a
camera?
The picture of the thing was on the box. She looked closely and then it
came to her. It was the thing she had seen many people using those days.
Oh yes, a cellphone.
“Wow!” she exclaimed and turned the box over to see if the price was
mentioned. No, that was carefully smudged out with black marker ink.
Then she thrust her nimble fingers into the groove of the box and pulled it
open.
The device tumbled out of the box. Now at close quarters, it was
nothing like anything she had seen before. She had heard that people could
make calls with it, and she turned it over and over to look where the cord
was, and when she did not find one, she was flummoxed.
She held the small block-like thing with the many numbers and signs on
it, and it felt surprisingly heavy for its size. Awe built up in her as if she
were a kid holding a new toy for the first time, which in a way she was. She
lightly touched the numbers with her fingers and let out a slight gasp when
they went down, just like on the new landline telephones that did not have
those round dials anymore. With her finger on one of those buttons, she
pressed.
 And a light went on. A blazing blue light that lit up her face.
Written with a strange arrangement of dots, she could see words now.
Instinctively, she pressed the arrow buttons and the light toggled from one
of the words to the other. She laughed at her smartness; a girl who has been
educated at home learns to do things practically.
When she came to Contacts, she paused.
So, this was much like Tara Auntie’s phonebook. She had an electronic
one, the kind that opened up like a tiny briefcase and had a whole keypad
with which you could fill in names of people and such. On some of her
lazier days, Tara would ask her to fill in those details.
Meenakshi pressed on Contacts.
There were only three names. Two of which did not make sense to her,
but the third did. It was saved simply as Nishikant.
“Oh God!” she gasped again, and then, her mind filled with curious
mischief, she pressed the green button and held the phone to her ear.
And it rang! It really rang!
Terrified, she fumbled with the phone and pressed the red button, and
there was silence.
Why would anyone gift a stranger a phone? And a working phone at
that?
Then something happened that made her jump out of her skin. The
phone began to ring.
For long moments, she would not touch the thing. The black dingaling
rang on the table surface, vibrating and ringing both, making the whole
thing shake in frightening harmony. She did not touch it even as it kept
ringing and died out. The blue light faded off. And then the light came on
again and the phone began to ring again.
With a trembling hand, Meenakshi picked up the phone this time and
held it to her ear.
“So I see you opened my present, bhabhiji!” came a cheerful voice from
the other end.
“Why… why this?” she said.
“Logical, no?”
“Why such an expensive gift?”
Nishikant laughed. “Expensive? Bhabhiji, this is the cheapest gift. Do
you know what business your husband and I have partnered in?”
Meenakshi stayed silent.
 “Phones! Cellphones! New technology. Gen next and all that. We are
getting these phones for cheap from China and Taiwan and selling them in
India. We will bring the cellphone revolution in India soon. Let Indians just
get to know what a cellphone can really do.”
He laughed. It was a casual laugh, the kind Meenakshi had heard only in
her childhood from her friends. She succumbed to that laugh and laughed
along with.
“Good,” she said. “It’s a good way for me to talk to Hari at work now. Is
he in yet?”
“Oh yes, he checked in twenty minutes ago and has already left for his
meeting with—”
The sentence flowed out of him like a gush, but it stopped at the last
word like it had hit a barricade.
“With?” Meenakshi asked cheerfully.
“With his secretary.”
“He has a secretary? What’s his name?”
There was another moment of silence.
Meenakshi laughed. “You must think I am being the curious wife!
Who’s he?”
“It’s a she!”
Meenakshi laughed all the more. “My husband with a female secretary!
That very picture makes me laugh.”
Now Nishikant laughed too. “Roopali is our shared secretary,” he said.
“She accompanies either of us—Hari or me—when we go out to meet
clients. Takes down notes and all. Good, efficient girl.”
“Oh… okay.”
There was a slight pause between the two words that didn’t go
unnoticed.
“Is there a problem, bhabhiji?” Nishikant asked in an abruptly changed
tone. “It’s no problem; I tell you really. Roopali is just very efficient, that’s
all. Your husband is almost a meditating saint.”
Meenakshi laughed again. “I know.”
“You cannot say the same about me though. But, oh, that’s too much
information!” Nishikant laughed. “Don’t want to keep you long anyway…”
“Oh, wait,” said Meenakshi. “Since we are talking, tell me how was the
party last night? I mean this is the first time we had a party at our place and
I don’t even know if I did half the things right.”
 Meenakshi waited with bated breath for the answer.
“It was great fun, bhabhiji!” he said. “What more does a guy my age
want? I am thirty now, so I don’t enjoy those dancing digs anyway. This is
good. Sit with friends, drink, relax. And your father is a hoot too! Could not
have imagined one man could have so many jokes inside him.”
“Oh, yes, that he is when he drinks.” Meenakshi was smiling now,
genuinely smiling. Her mind had drifted to the pleasant memories of her
father back in his youthful groove.
“Well, all right,” he said, “now I need to go,” he said.
“Sure!”
“Thank you for liking the present, bhabhiji. Means a lot.”
“Thanks.”
“And, oh, before you go, may I just request something, bhabhiji?”
“What?”
“I mean… I don’t know how to put this delicately but… it might not be
a good idea to tell Hari about this present. The cellphone I mean. I don’t
know what I was thinking yesterday when I gave one of the stock pieces I
had with me as a gift. The SIM card is in my name, so don’t worry about
the bills. But now that can be considered as a problem too. Hari might think
I’m flirting with his wife!” he chuckled.
“Oh, the thought of it!” Meenakshi rolled her eyes.
“So you won’t tell him, will you? It’s nothing big. Maybe even delete
my contact if you wish.”
“No, I won’t tell him,” Meenakshi winked. “And I won’t delete your
contact. Will call you on and off. Will be a good way to keep tabs on my
Hari to see if that secretary is digging her claws into my husband.”
“Ah, rest assured on that front. If any woman has claws to dig, I will
offer them my back and protect your husband, bhabhiji!”
And on that note, the two ended the call, smiling to themselves.

***

Meenakshi sat for a long time cradling the phone. Of all the experiences she
had had with men so far, she just could not get over this one. It put a whole
new spin on things. She was just done talking to a man on a phone. Long
distance. Nowhere the Yakshini could lay her hands on him. No worry.
 And there was more. She did not have to feel disconcerted by his
wandering gaze or worry about the accidental brushes and touches. Just
pure, plain talk. With a man, no less.
Yes, technology was good. She kissed the phone and left a wet lip mark
on the dial, and then felt embarrassed of herself for doing that.

***

When Harikumar came back home, Meenakshi led him right away to the
kitchen and opened one of the pots. A thick aroma of lentils and vegetables
ran into his nose and he readied himself to put a finger into the sambhar, his
mouth drooling.
“Hey, patience, patience!” Meenakshi said, “No grimy fingers in the
food. Go wash and come.”
“I never knew you could prepare this.”
“Give a person time, the groceries she needs, and a free hand in the
kitchen. You will be surprised every time.”
“But, idli sambhar?” Harikumar opened the other vessel that still had
the piping hot idlis. “Isn’t that quite difficult to make? The idlis are soft too.
Precision, eh?”
“You don’t know the talents your wife has! Except for the one in the
bedroom. What kind of a husband are you?”
“The idiot kind!” said Harikumar. “Okay, let me have the customary
holy shower under our pricey bathroom unit before partaking of your divine
meal. I will be back before you register I am gone.”
He was back in his T-shirt that read LONG NIGHT COMING, and his hair
dripping wet. He plonked on the dining table, where Meenakshi had already
laid out the goodies.
For a few minutes, they did not say anything to each other. The only
sounds were of chewing and chomping and of him smacking his fingers in
delight.
“Hari,” Meenakshi opened the conversation when they were two idlis
down each, “you never told me exactly what you do at your job.”
Harikumar laughed. “You never asked.”
“Oh, tell me.”
“Really? You really want to know? Well, my dad left us with various
business, but I sold most of them before leaving for America. Now, I have
invested in another new thing with Nishikant. We are into telecom now.”
“Telecom? What’s that?”
“Tele-communications. Like phones. You see our landlines? There are
new kinds of phones now, called mobile phones. They do not require wires.
They are going to be really big in India. We are one of the companies
bringing them to the country.”
“What’s the name of this company?”
“Conyo Telecom,” said Harikumar, and then said it again, “Conyo.
Nishikant’s choice. Still haven’t gotten used to saying it out loud.”
“Well, good. Technology is good.”
“Quite good, yes, just like this sambhar.” He stretched out his hand to
have another helping of it.
“So, there might be many people in your firm?”
“Not many right now.”
“I’d like to visit someday,” she said, pondering.
There was the briefest of pauses, and then he said, “Done. But why do
you want to visit?”
Meenakshi looked up at Harikumar now, her eyes all lit up. “You know,
Hari, I have been thinking since several days. I am alone here at home all
day, nothing to do. I am thinking if I could take up a job…”
She let that sentence hang in the air, and scrutinized her husband’s face.
For a trice, it looked as if a shadow passed across it.
“Like that modeling thing you wanted to do once?”
“No. I am past that. Was a foolish idea anyway; no one wants a married
model. What if… what if you give me some job in your firm?”
At that, Harikumar kept the idli back in the place, threw his head back,
and laughed. He laughed aloud for several seconds.
Meenakshi did not say anything. She observed him laughing, and
waited for him to stop.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “It’s not that I doubt you. You can do a great job.
But the very thought of you and I working at the same firm amused me!
Just think of the whispers people would make whenever you entered my
cabin!”
“Why will they? I am the boss’s wife…”
“Yeah, the category that’s bitched about the most. Plus, an employee.
You will get no work done at all.”
“Then let me officially be in your room. Let me be your… secretary”
 She hoped the last word sounded like an afterthought.
“Secretary, really? Oh sure, we’ll see, we’ll see.”
To Meenakshi, that sounded like the tone used by government officers
who promise to do the jobs they never intend to do.

***

That night, Meenakshi dreamed of her house in Vatgaon. She dreamed of

the red sandstone in the courtyard outside the house, and she saw herself, a
littler form of her, tapping her fingers on the stone wall that led up to the
house as she walked along. She saw the wooden double doors that were
painted blue with four red rectangular frames on it opening by themselves.
She saw the funeral ashes of some deceased ancestor hanging in one corner
of the ceiling bundled in a red cloth. And she saw the long corridor that led
to the several rooms, none of which you could see inside when you stood
out like that.
She stood there and called out names. She called out for her mother and
father and then for each of her sisters, but no one came. She knew they were
in there, hiding, happy, not wanting her to come and spoil their happiness
again. The sick feeling of belonging and still being kept away rose within
her even in that dream, and she turned in her bed.
That shifted her perspective in her dream too, and she was no longer
looking at the sullen rooms anymore. She was now looking out, through the
window in the wall of the house, right into the courtyard. And it looked
bright and warm and inviting. Leaving that bleak corridor, she ran (and she
noticed her tiny feet as she did so) to the one entity she knew would
welcome her.
“O Companion, how have you been?” she heard herself asking in the
babysqueak she had left behind in those environs.
She heard the familiar rustle of its leaves and she shut her eyes, even in
that dream, and felt the warm caresses of the leaves as they broke away
from the branches and glided away to where she was, lightly brushing
against her cheeks before they fell to the ground and became part of the
earth.
And then she heard a creak, and she opened her eyes in the dream. The
sal was in front of her still, and leaves were still falling off it, but something
else was growing. The clouds had darkened behind the large canopy of the
tree and for a moment it looked like there was something in those clouds—
something enormous and unfriendly—and it was rising too, threatening to
go on a mad rampage when it came to life. Meenakshi saw her own eyes
then, and they were pleading, requesting the sal tree to do something, and
she felt the tinge of hope that she had in its floral magnificence, the
knowledge that it would not let her down.
But the tree did not have the tenacity anymore. Suddenly, Meenakshi
saw that the tree’s age was past, and with that its courage was gone too.
And then the strength in its roots failed, and the tree began to slowly topple
over, like a grand warrior falling to the battleground after being riddled with
a volley of arrows.
As the tree fell on her, trapping her in its branches, she could still see
the black giant rising in the clouds. And Meenakshi saw it was a female
form. It was the being within her.
It was the Yakshini.
~ 21 ~
 THE REAL PROBLEM

IT IS DIFFICULT to keep a sapling down once the seed is sown. Once a

thumb presses the seed into pliable soil that is fertile with desires and ready
to be impregnated, there is no way to stop it from bursting forth and sending
its tiny shoot skyward, full of hope and desire. More than that, it is not
naturally possible to prevent the roots from sprouting. And as these roots go
in deeper and deeper, they hold the seed with firmer tenacity, nourishing the
seed of thought till it becomes a force you cannot ignore.
In Meenakshi’s mind, this seed was sown the day she realized she could
have a life outside the house she was virtually trapped in. She had television
and newspapers, and she had a few friends, and slowly as she spent more
and more time with them, she found herself getting colored with what they
showed her. Mostly, they were dreams seen through their eyes, and they
fueled her, for she did not have the vision to see her own dreams yet.
She read reports of the millennium approaching, and that did not help
either. It was everywhere now. Something known as the Y2K virus was
going to finish the earth. There was something known as the Internet in the
world outside, and she had heard her husband speak a lot of it, but she
hadn’t seen it yet. She had experienced its magic in some of the neighbors’
houses though, and she had been dazzled by what it could do. But, along
with the magic, there was a lot of stern talk. Whatever that Y2K thing was,
it was supposed to wipe away everything that was on computers, and when
it did that, they told her the world’s knowledge would be destroyed. The
neighboring woman whose husband was an engineer had prophesied that
annihilation was imminent.
The first time she heard about it, she thought of her cellphone. She did
not more than five numbers on it yet, and all secret, but she still worried
what this world-eating virus could do to it. In her nightmares, of which she
had been having a lot these days, she saw a giant worm arising out of the
earth with Y2K in huge letters emblazoned on its front, chomping
everything in sight, the way she had once watched in a Japanese movie.
Yes, perhaps that Y2K monster would come to her house too and chomp her
cellphone right off her hands, and if she did not leave it in time, it might
chomp away her arm itself.
 But that was a fear for another day. Right now, her fear was taking her
in a different direction. Over the last two months, she had asked Harikumar
several times about taking up a job, with special emphasis on how she could
be a good secretary for him. The discussions were never fruitful though. He
did not openly laugh now, but he changed the topic or just ignored it.
Why was that?
She spoke to Nishikant twice after that first time. On both occasions,
Harikumar had not been in office. Meenakshi hadn’t prodded any further
than that, but she figured out that the secretary wasn’t in office either.
When one who has been looking through a tube all along suddenly
looks away, they see how there are so many things they have been missing.
Had she been looking at her husband through a tube all along too? Was it
true that she had been seeing only him as the center of everything so far, so
much so that she had missed out on who was around him?
Maybe he was decent only when seen through that little tunnel, which is
what he showed to her?
Perhaps she had to back her head off the tube and look at her husband in
a different perspective. That would show her that her husband was not the
only thing there to see. There were other things (and people) around him
that she had been blindsided to all along.

***

Meenakshi visited her husband’s office for the first time in the November of
that year. It was the afternoon post-lunch hour and the firm did not quite
look like a place of work. Dressed in the most unspectacular clothes to
avoid unwarranted attention, she walked in casually. Only when she reached
the receptionist’s desk did she stop. She did not know that the firm had a
receptionist. In fact, barring the address that she had copied down from one
of her husband’s work files, she knew nothing about the firm.
“I am Mrs. Deshmukh,” she told the cheery-eyed receptionist who was
dressed in a red dress that had too much cleavage for her liking.
Meenakshi’s eyes subtly went over her once, the way a woman’s do when
she is appraising another woman, and they did not come away impressed.
“Mrs. Deshmukh, who?”
“Mrs. Harikumar Deshmukh.”
 Suddenly there was the sound of the door opening, and that was
followed by a cheerful outburst. “Oh, oh, bhabhiji! I didn’t have the
slightest clue that you would be coming. If only I knew—”
It was Nishikant. He came to the desk to receive her, and then he
scolded the receptionist.
“Come in, bhabhiji,” he said, holding a hand over her shoulder but
keeping it respectfully away from touching it. “Hari didn’t mention you’d
be visiting.”
“He doesn’t know,” Meenakshi said, feeling quite foolish now. “I was
alone at home and was feeling bored, and so…” She did not mention that
she was having nightmares in the daytime. She did not mention that the
nagging doubts in her mind had exacerbated to such great heights that she
could take them no more.
“It’s perfectly all right,” Nishikant said. “This is your office. You can
visit anytime. In fact, I have always wondered why you haven’t visited yet.
Would you like to wait in Hari’s cabin?”
“Wait?”
“Ah, Hari is not in right now,” he said apologetically. “He’s just gone
out for a meeting.”
“You didn’t go? Oh, sorry… I mustn’t ask…”
“No, no, it’s perfectly okay.” Nishikant opened the door to his partner’s
office and switched on the air-conditioner. “I don’t usually go. Three is a
crowd for a client meeting. But you sit. He should be back shortly.”
She did not turn to see the door slam behind her, but the moment he left,
she felt completely alone in the little room. The walls were a shade of
cream, and save for a clock high up on the wall and a heavily-marked
calendar flapping away on another wall, there was nothing on them. She
saw his chair—the boss’s chair—and she stood up. With some trepidation in
her heart, and not without excitement, she stepped forward to the seat and
sank herself into it. The chair was unexpectedly soft and it swiveled as soon
as she grabbed ahold of it. That made her giggle.
From that vantage point, the seat of the boss, she could see not only the
room but also the room in a new perspective. Things looked different
somehow. Even that measly tea-coaster gained more importance, more
meaning. The door swung open and a boy came in with a teacup and she
said ‘Thank you’ quite dignifiedly and waved him away. Like a pucca
memsahib. It made her laugh all the more.
 She thought of calling her husband on his cellphone, for she had his
number now. He didn’t know she had a cellphone yet, but she could call
him with the big-ass phone that was on this desk, the one with a greater
number of buttons than she had seen anywhere. But she didn’t call him. If
she were to be honest to herself, she did not know how he would react.
Perhaps he’d be annoyed at her sudden visit. Or maybe he’d just come back
sooner and her five moments of glory on the boss’s chair would be
truncated.
Slowly, she laid her head down on the desk and shut her eyes. Things
were so much better here. The faint hum of the air-conditioner and the
feeble voices of people outside, everyone set about a particular task, it
exhilarated her. She wanted to be a part of this world. She had it all now,
didn’t she?
The peace drew her eyelids closer. From faraway though, she had the
faint snatches of a disturbing thought. Something she had seen or heard,
something that had fallen over her brain, but hadn’t quite impinged on it.
Yes, what was that disturbing thing? It had been so clear when she had
come across it, but now it was buried deep somewhere in her brain and she
could not get to it. Like that annoying song you cannot get out of her head
and cannot even recollect its name.
Then the words stood out. Loud and clear. As if they were shouted in
her ear right now.
‘What do you think your husband is doing right now?’
She sat up straight. The sleep was out of her now.
The door opened and Nishikant walked in.
“Sorry, bhabhiji, to keep you waiting. I had something that needed to be
sent urgently. Do you want me to call Hari up? He has not gone very far.”
“Where is he?”
“Hotel Matador.”
“Hotel?”
“Yes. The client has a room in that hotel. They are meeting in the
restaurant on the ground floor.”
“No, don’t call him. Let him take his time.”
Nishikant smiled at Meenakshi in silence for a minute. Then he looked
at the cold tea. “Oh, bhabhiji, you didn’t have your tea. It’s gone cold.
Should I call for another?”
“No, it’s okay.” Meenakshi stood up. “I think I should have called…”
 “Oh, bhabhiji, sit down!” Nishikant stood up to urge her to sit back.
“Please don’t leave. Hari will be mad if he knows you went back.”
‘Yes, sit down. I am loving this. This one is juicy too.’
“No. He’s a decent man,” Meenakshi breathed.
‘Why? He has a dick, doesn’t he? Wait for another ten minutes and see.
And then, don’t stop me.’
She looked at Nishikant’s bearded face, the friendly smile with the
perfect teeth, the shining eyes. And then a vision—him lying broken on the
floor, blood seeping through the various shreds of his white shirt.
Just like that, the terror was back. It was that voice from inside, the
voice that started as a little soft nag at first and then clawed at her from
within till it became an infestation.
“That… that will be okay,” Meenakshi said nervously. “He doesn’t
know I was coming. It’s no one’s fault. I’ll leave now.”
“But… would you not like to…”
“No, I have to go. I’ll come another time.” She walked up to the door.
“Sorry, bhabhiji,” Nishikant said. “I don’t know how to entertain you,
or else…”
‘Oh, why don’t you wait? Wait. Give him another minute and he will be
all over you, and then…’
She rushed out of the office as soon as she could.

***

Meenakshi flung her handbag on the couch as soon as she reached home
and kept sitting on it with her head buried in her hands till it went dark.
Occasionally she twiddled the thread on her wrist, as her mind flooded with
a deluge of thoughts. She tried to shunt those images out though, but they
would come back to haunt her. And in all of those, she saw her husband
naked and in the throes of passion, but the woman whose skin he’d be
licking was not her.
‘Should it be tonight then? Let me rip him apart. That adulterous
bastard. Give me one chance; you’ll have all the revenge you need.’
Meenakshi slapped her ears trying to shut the voice, but it was so hard
that tears ran out of her eyes.
She picked up the landline and almost called him, but kept the receiver
back when there was just one digit to go. Darkness consumed the hall now.
The glow of the vehicle lights far below was the only ambient light in the
room. Her hand moved to turn the light switch on, but then it retracted.
Something told her she wanted the darkness for now. And yes, it was good.
Darkness was good.
In the darkness of the house, she walked alone. Her own mind had
become a stranger to her, as it buzzed with rational and irrational thoughts.
When she came in front of a mirror, she looked at herself. It started as an
absentminded glance where the eyes see but the brain doesn’t, but when her
brain became aware of what she was seeing in that mirror, she had to slap
her hand on her mouth to stifle the little scream.
Was this her? The hag in the mirror with the unkempt hair and the
drooping red eyes and the lipstick marks smeared all over her cheeks?
When did she become this hag? When did this hag become her?
‘He is getting his cock sucked right now in a hotel room.’
She straightened up in anger. No, nothing was wrong. Nothing yet. She
did not know anything for sure, did she? He was always good to her. There
was no reason to suspect him. He loved her, and it was pure, unmitigated,
undiluted love. She could see it, of course. And if she could not, there was
no one blinder than her.
Still staring at her reflection, she vowed to put things back on track. She
was idle. Devil’s workshop, and all that. She’d ask him again to take up a
job, or she’ll just do it. She didn’t need permissions, did she? Yes, a job or
at least some semblance of a life that was not confined within four walls
would put everything on track. That she’d do tonight. Even if it meant
having her first fight after marriage.
This was still in her hands.
She had to get ready. Dress up. Because she was a wife, and she loved
playing wife. She loved giving and receiving pleasure. Stupid woman, she
told herself. This is a man who loves you. Don’t lose him.
‘Yes, loves you indeed. And putting his thing inside his secretary.’
A defiant smile erupted her lips. She wouldn’t listen to the bitch inside
her. She was instigating her, leading her on to her doom. Whatever she said,
her ears would be deaf to her.
She turned to dress up and took a step towards the bathroom.
But then she froze, and very slowly, she turned back.
Back to the mirror.
 She knew—no, not just knew, she was sure—that just as she had
stepped away, she had seen something in that mirror. Something that was
not her.
And as she turned back to look, she saw it still standing there.
Large, creature-like, looking at her like an alien might look at an earthly
specimen.
‘Don’t fool yourself. You know I am going to come out of you very
soon.’
The being was speaking to her now, directly, in that painfully scratchy
voice. No, she was not in her mind anymore. Here she was, looking at her!
And Meenakshi screamed. It was a scream that forced itself out from
the back of her throat and would ache her sides for hours to come.

***

That night, Meenakshi was scared to even touch her husband as he lay on
top of her. She kept her head firmly turned to one side, because on the other
side there was the mirror and she had no courage to look into it once again.
Even as Harikumar smiled down at her and with his lips nuzzled the
softness of her cheeks, her mind was only ravaged the horrific sight she had
seen in the evening. That being was inside her. That matted skin—indeed, if
it could be called skin at all, with those blistering, festering papules all over
it—was hers. And that thing with warts was her face. She had seen it. It had
seen her.
And, try as she might, she would not get aroused. She did not feel her
man’s caresses anymore. That thought, that single thought of how she might
harm her husband if things went wrong, overrode any suspicions of adultery
she might have had of him.
She felt the black thread on her wrist, and it was still firmly tied. But
she was afraid. Afraid that it was losing its power. Don’t medicines too lose
their potency if they are kept for too long?
Harikumar winced. His hold on her arms tightened, his chest muscles
went taut, his neck craned backwards, and Meenakshi felt the gushing of
warm fluid inside her. But that was all she felt.
After a moment of relapse, he got off her and walked to the attached
bathroom. She saw him taking his condom off and washing himself.
“You weren’t yourself tonight,” he said from the bathroom.
 She looked away.
He came out and sat by her side of the bed. He placed his hand on her
forehead and said, “Are you feeling okay?”
“I am fine.”
“What is it then?”
“Hari,” she said, “I was in your office today.”
Harikumar sat up straight. “Now, were you?”
She nodded. “You weren’t there, so I waited some time and left. But
Hari… I loved it. I loved every moment of being there. It was like I
belonged somewhere. There was a purpose to me suddenly.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t live in the house all day. You don’t see these
four walls like I do. When everything is silent, they talk, you know? They
fill your mind with things. And you cannot do anything to silence them.”
“Don’t get agitated, Meenu. I understand. I will look for suitable job
opportunities for you. Something that you can do well. There are many
companies that will be glad to have you.”
“But not yours?”
“Why are you hell-bent on working at my firm, Meenu? I have told you
a million times—a husband and wife working at the same place is not a
good idea. Our personal and professional lives will always be in conflict. I
don’t want that.”
Meenakshi mulled over the prospect, and open her mouth to say
something.
But Harikumar chimed in, “And next time you visit, let me know
beforehand. Then I will be there and we can actually have a good time.”
“Then, perhaps, you can take me to your client meetings?”
Harikumar laughed now; it was laugh that was long coming. “Client
meetings? Do you know what they are?”
“Yes, of course. You were at one today when I came.”
“These are not fun outings, Meenu!” His voice had turned softer and
explanatory now, and to Meenakshi it sounded condescending. “You need
to know stuff to talk to the clients.”
“Is that why you take your secretary along? Does she know
everything?”
“Ah, so you have heard about the famous Roopali!”
“Famous? Why is she famous?”
 “Oh, that’s just an idiom, Meenu. What’s wrong with you? Roopali has
worked in various companies. She knows a lot of things. She can easily
convince clients.”
“Are most of your clients men?”
“Most of them are.”
“Ah, then I can understand why you’d need a good-looking lady to
explain things to them.”
Harikumar frowned, as if he were trying to make sense of things. Then
she spoke, “What exactly is the problem here, Meenu? I don’t understand.
Is it that you want to work, or you want to be not alone in this house, or is it
that you somehow think there’s something going on between my secretary
and me?” He scoffed at the last one, and then frowned again. “Tell me
clearly, Meenu. I am glad we are talking. That’s the best way to avoid
misunderstandings.”
But Meenakshi found she had no words now. She had spread the
conversation in so many directions that she did not know any longer which
thread she should pick up. He was right, though. What was her real
problem?
‘Your real problem is him. HIM.’
“Let’s just sleep, Hari,” she said after a moment of confused silence. “I
need to clear my head.”
“All right,” he said, and like a teenager, he hopped into the bed next to
her.
~ 22 ~
 THE STRUGGLE

MEENAKSHI DIALED HER mother’s number the next afternoon and

waited. She pictured her mother in the big empty house just getting off her
meal too, and walking all the way from her room to the landline phone next
to the kitchen, traversing the entire lonely corridor. Hardly did anyone pick
the phone before eight rings in that house.
“Hello, Aai,” she opened.
“Ah, Meenu! Oh my God, Meenu, is everything all right?”
“Yes, Aai. Don’t worry.”
“That’s nice. Whenever any of my daughters call, I get worried that
something might be wrong.”
“We should call more often then.”
“Ah, no. Once a week is enough. Difficult to walk all the way to the
phone now.”
“Aai, you must totally get a cellphone now. Or at least a wireless phone.
Then you can carry it with you wherever you go.”
“Yes, sure! And I will also turn into a cow so that I can put that bell
across my neck wherever I go. Then people can really enjoy my walk.
Technology is good only for youngsters like you. Forget that. Why did you
call?”
“Just like that.”
“Okay, then let me sit down.”
Meenakshi heard the sound of a stool being pulled.
Then Renuka spoke. “Hari went to work?”
“He’s always at work. New business.”
“Nice. And you? Ate?”
“Yes. What else can I do?”
“I sense some resentment in that voice.”
“Not like that, Aai. Just get bored sitting at home all day.”
“Meenu, let me tell you something. I know the city has changed you and
all that, but there are some things we older women were doing right too.
Why do you think we women did not go out of the houses and work in
those days? Do you think we could not? Of course, we could. Your
grandmother and I, we both could have run circles around our husbands if
we wanted to. We could have multiplied this property ten times more than
your father and grandfather did. But we did not. We stayed at home and
looked after the house and you children. Do you know why? Because
looking after the house and children is way more difficult than going out
and working. And the big secret it that we women do not trust our men with
that difficult job.”
Renuka let out a short conspiratorial laugh after that revelation, and
Meenakshi laughed along. But then she again took up her gloomy voice and
said, “But, Aai, I get bored sitting at home all day.”
“Don’t tell me that. I have already told you the cure for it.”
“What?”
“You know Manda is expecting her second baby?”
“Ah, Aai! Not that again.”
“Of course, that. You have to bring new life into this world. Only
women have the ability to do that, and why will you not use that gift? I
believe in destiny a lot nowadays. And it is said that it is preordained who
shall come into this world and who not. By delaying, you are only holding
back someone deserving from coming into this world.”
“Aai, you and your philosophical talk!”
“Okay, is everything all right between Hari and you? In the bedroom, I
mean?”
“Yes.”
“Fire still burning?”
“Of course, Aai.”
“You know why I ask,” Renuka said. “I am not in the habit of prying
into the sex lives of my daughters, but you know the things I have seen
when you were back here. Are you really all right, Meenu?”
“I don’t know, Aai. Everything is quite all right on the surface, or I
think it is. But I feel something bubbling within me. Like how the surface
water of a lake is so calm and peaceful but there are all kinds of monsters
deep inside? Something like that. Something wants to come out of me. I
hear voices. I saw something the other day, Aai.”
“Saw what?”
“I saw my face. Only, it was not my face. It was the her. The…
Yakshini. She is coming back, Aai.”
Renuka stayed silent.
“Aai?”
 “I have been thinking about that too, Meenu. I don’t tell you, but I am
doing some special prayers for you in the temple here. It is all secret,
because I cannot tell anyone of course. That Tappu’s mother still doesn’t
talk to us, and we cannot go to Jamblekar’s clinic for anything. We have to
hire a cab and go all the way to the next village for anything medical. But,
know it, we are praying.”
“What will happen of me, Aai?”
“Who knows? But if everything has gone all right for so long now, it
should be good. My advice, Meenu, do not change anything in your life. Let
things go on as they are.”
Meenakshi laughed. “You are so wise, Aai, but don’t you know? We
never want change to happen. It happens. There are so many things we
cannot control.”
“Like?”
“Hari is different now. Or maybe he is the same, but I am finding him
different now. He looks at other women which he did not do earlier. He
laughs at my simple rustic ways. He does not take my requests seriously.
And, Aai,” Meenu paused and then said, “sometimes I think he cares for me
so much that he doesn’t see he’s smothering me.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Meenu. Everything is good with you.”
“Even the black thread is losing its power now. I can feel it. The
tingling is back. I think… one morning… I might just…”
“Meenu! What’s wrong with you? Are you talking to yourself?”
And indeed, she was. She had quite forgotten midway that there was
someone at the other end. Halfway through those words, she had taken the
phone off her ear and was now speaking into the wind. Then she got up and
walked across the room and mumbled the rest of the sentence.
“…find him in a bloody lump on the floor by the bed.”

***

Meenakshi was still sitting on a couch in her living room, her mind filled
with blank meaningless thoughts when the door clicked open. She looked
up to see Harikumar just latching the door up, and then walking in with a
smile on his face. But the next moment, his smile vanished.
“Meenu, is something wrong?”
 She turned to look in the mirror behind her. The first thing she saw were
the dark circles under her eyes like she had not slept for three days. Then
she looked at her hair that was in the greatest form of disarray, each
individual stand jutting out in different directions. A frightful wave ran
through her spine when she looked at herself. No, she was not the demoness
now; her own face was scarier than the demoness’s.
“Everything’s fine,” she mumbled. “You sit. I will set myself aright and
then lay out the food.” She walked two steps and then stopped abruptly.
“Food? Oh, I didn’t make any. Could we order from that Chinese place?”
Harikumar walked up to her and took her in his arms, consoling her.
Their hearts lined up, and that was when Meenakshi found out that her heart
wasn’t just beating; it was pacing.
“I’m good. I’m good,” she said on loop.
Then suddenly, she became aware of his touch. For some reason that
she could not fathom, she did not like that touch. It was the same touch that
she had enjoyed for so many nights, but right now, she felt his skin doing
something uncomfortable to hers. She was almost sure there were maggots
under her skin now, and they were biting away the inner wall of her skin
with their horrible white mouths and soon they would burst open and
devour her too.
She pushed him back, and then looked at him, horrified.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Meenu, tell me, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
He placed his arm over her forehead but she slapped that away.
“All right,” he said. “I think you need to go to bed and rest. I will clean
up and order the food and call you when it arrives. Okay?”
She nodded. But the look in her eyes was that of frightened submission.

Half an hour later, she was playing with a noodle in her plate, twirling it
round and round till it slipped off the fork, and then she would pick it up
again and repeat the process.
“You are not eating,” he said.
“What did you do at work today?” she asked instead.
He balked at those sudden words, and then said with a bemused
expression, “We struck a deal with a retail store chain. It has 17 outlets in
the city. Big exposure.”
“Good,” said Meenu. “Was it because…”
 She left that sentence halfway. If she had the gumption at the moment,
she’d have completed the rest of it: ‘…that slut Roopali came with you to
close the deal?’
“Meenakshi, we are going to do really well,” Harikumar said, not
hearing her soft-speak. “You shall be a queen shortly!”
“Uh… hmm…” Meenakshi said, and then stood up noisily pushing her
chair behind. “I’m just going go to sleep now. Will that be okay?”
“Won’t you finish your dinner?”
“Not in the mood, please. Could you clear the table and keep the
leftovers in the fridge, please?”
“Sure,” Harikumar mumbled as he saw his wife leaving him alone at the
dinner table.

***

Meenakshi did not sleep all of that night. Even when Harikumar entered
into the sheets with her, and pressed his body against hers, she kept her eyes
tightly shut. But her heavy breathing was a giveaway and he understood
that she was awake. Moments later, he turned on his back and Meenakshi
heard him pleasuring himself, but she did not feel even as much inclined as
to look at him.
She was still in the same stance in the morning when he woke up, went
for his bath, had whatever breakfast he could manage and dressed up for
work. Before leaving, he came into the bedroom again and placed a hand on
her forehead.
“You don’t look well, Meenu,” he said. “I’d have liked it so much to
have stayed at home and taken you to Dr. Gaitonde. But I have this meeting
with a client…”
“Another meeting?” Meenakshi mumbled.
“I’m so sorry, but we are really trying to make our presence felt in as
many retail stores as possible. Anyway, won’t want to bore you about it. I
will return at lunch to take you to the doctor, okay? Meanwhile, take some
aspirin. It will help.”
Even as he left and closed the door, Meenakshi said again, “Meeting?”

***
She spent practically all morning walking around the house, zombielike,
thinking of the various things that might be happening behind her back. She
knew her husband was oversexed, or maybe every man turned that when
they came to her. He could not live through one night without having his
pleasure.
Oh God, America! Had she been lied to there as well? How could such
a man who could not keep his thing down for a night spend five years
without sex? That too, in the land of temptation? She had seen those bikini
dancing shows on MTV and, surely, all of America was filled with such
half-naked dancing bimbos on the streets? Tara Auntie had told her one day
that in America, people weren’t coy about sex. They spoke about it openly,
did it openly. They even told their parents about their sex lives over the
dinner table. These were talks, of course, from someone who had never
been to America, but they opened up a new line of thought in Meenakshi’s
mind.
He had surely done it there. He was lying. The lying bastard. He
probably had a new whore in his bed every night. He would surely have to
have. He just couldn’t do without it.
And now… he was in his secretary’s arms. Client meeting, her ass.
What client? Maybe the client was also a woman and they were having a
threesome? Why would they meet in hotels anyway? Official meetings are
conducted in offices. Why did it throw him off when he heard she had
visited his office anyway?
‘I have been telling you all along…’
Meenakshi twitched as that hoarse voice came again from within her.
The mirror was right ahead, but no, she did not want to look. But how
could she avoid? That voice… it wasn’t a hollowed bodiless whisper
anymore. It was a voice, a full-throated voice; it was her own voice.
She lifted her head. And she looked directly into the mirror and, sure as
death, there she was—smiling with her red eyes with awful white threads of
slime flowing out of their corners.
“Who are you?”
Meenakshi asked that, and her lips moved, but the lips of the reflection
in the mirror, that horrid monstrous pair, did not move.
‘You know who I am.’
“Ya… Yak…”
‘If that’s the name you give me, I am that.’
 “Why… why are you here?”
The thing in the mirror laughed. It was an evil derisive laugh.
‘Why is anyone anywhere? Who knows the answer to that?’
Meenakshi stood still for a moment, looking at the chest of the creature
in the mirror, which heaved like a pair of blacksmith’s bellows.
“I… don’t want you. I want to be free. Free as I have every right to be.
I… I request… no, I command you to get out of me. This instant.”
‘You stupid girl! Do you think I am living in you out of my own free
will? I am trapped in you too. Our destinies are entwined with each other,
and we have to live like this, whatever happens.’
“But… but you are a murderess. A demon.”
‘So is everyone else. You should be thanking me. If it weren’t for me,
these real-world demons, these men, would have raped you thrice already. I
protect you.’
“I don’t want your protection. I want to live peacefully with my
husband.”
‘Your husband? You mean the one who is fucking someone else as we
speak?’
“You don’t know that.”
‘Do you?’
Rage swelled within Meenakshi at that point like a many-headed beast.
Without another thought, she picked up a snow-globe that was on the table
and flung it at the mirror, and it crashed into smithereens.
As it broke and fell, shard by shard, the Yakshini broke into a laugh.
And then the laughing stopped and all that remained was Meenakshi and a
deathly silent room.
~ 23 ~
 ’TIS LOVE, YOU FOOL!

THE CELLPHONE CAME out of its hiding place shortly before lunchtime.
Not that lunchtime mattered in that house anymore; to Meenakshi it looked
like she would never develop an appetite anymore.
“Hello…” she said in a scared voice, hoping it did not belie the storm
that was brewing inside her.
The call was a call of hope. Meenakshi knew that the one way to battle
her demons—which were mostly demons of suspicion and doubt—was to
put her mind to ease. This was no time for vague talks. She had to find out
the truth about her husband. And who better than the one man he called his
best friend?
“Hello… bhabhiji… is everything all right?”
“All is good, Nishikant bhaiya,” Meenakshi said. The address of
‘bhaiya’ was an afterthought. “I… just need to… talk about a few things.
Are you busy?”
“No, no, not at all. Tell me. What is it you want to know?”
“Is Hari around?”
“Yes. He is in his cabin.”
“Don’t tell him I called.”
“What is this about, bhabhiji?”
“Could you… could you come home?”
There was silence for a long awkward moment. Then Nishikant said, “I
don’t think that’s a good idea, bhabhiji…”
“Oh, sorry… Sorry, I didn’t think…”
“Do you want to talk about Hari?”
“Yes,” she gulped.
“All right then. There is this little Udupi restaurant near the crossroads.
Jaya Prabha. You know that one?”
“Yes.”
“Could you come there now? I’ll be there in a half-hour. I have my
lunch there almost every day.”
“Good. That works.”

Sharply at 2, dressed in the most unassuming salwar-kurta that she

could find, and throwing an equally ungainly dupatta across her face,
Meenakshi sat in a corner booth at Jaya Prabha.
When he came, dressed in white-striped shirt and cream trousers, she
made to stand up, but he forbade her and quickly entered into the seat
across her.
“Bhabhiji… what has happened to you? Are you… are you not taking
care of yourself?” That was his greeting.
“Haven’t been well,” she mumbled, and then her tone changed. “Is my
husband having an affair?”
“What? What are you saying, bhabhiji? Really…” At the first “what”
there was an expression that could have passed for genuine shock. At the
next, the shock mellowed down to surprise, and then he covered it up with
an uneasy laugh.
Meenakshi sat still, waiting for him to go through the entire gamut of
predictable expressions, and then said, “Why is that so surprising to you?
Haven’t things been happening behind my back?”
“Bhabhiji… there is nothing like that.”
“All right then,” said Meenakshi, standing up. “This meeting is
pointless. Just didn’t think it through.”
“Bhabhiji, sit down,” Nishikant said. “Let’s have lunch. This place
makes great masala dosas; you will love them. And while we are at it, let
me try to put your mind to rest, because you clearly need that.”
“I just need to know the truth.”
“I am beginning to get worried about you now, bhabhiji. It is not my
place, but is Hari not treating you well at home?”
“No. He treats me well. But that’s not the point.”
“Sorry I asked. But, you are alone in this city. Alone and now lonely.
That’s what I feel.”
Meenakshi scoffed. “Lonely is the last thing I am.”
“You don’t have anyone to talk to. Maybe that’s why you think of these
things.”
The masala dosas arrived, two plates of steaming flatbread wrapped on
a potato-and-spice preparation, with hot sambhar as accompaniment. Food
works wonders on the mind, and Meenakshi realized that was not a cliché.
“Let’s eat,” said Nishikant.
Meenakshi tore off a piece and stuffed it in her mouth. With her mouth
still full, she said, “Why is he always out on meetings though?”
 “He isn’t, not all the time. It’s just that whenever you have called or
visited…”
For the next minute, they ate in silence. Then she asked, “How does this
Roopali look? Is she young?”
Nishikant did not say anything immediately. He chewed all the more
and then tore away another morsel.
“Is she?”
He nodded. “But that doesn’t amount to anything.”
“Why do they meet people in hotels?”
“That’s the way we do things. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, Nishikant, tell me… how long have you known him?”
Nishikant smiled. It was a tender nostalgic smile this time on his
expression-laden face. “You know that we were childhood buddies at
school. Chaddi-buddies, as they say! But then we lost contact after school
ended, and when he returned from America, we met one day and started
talking and that’s how this whole Conyo thing happened.”
“You know him quite well then.”
“Yes. I know him a lot more than other people do.”
“So, how was he at school?”
“Straight as an arrow. Teachers’ pet. Monitor all through. Straight-up A
grades. We hated him.”
“Yes, I can totally imagine him to be like that…”
“Yes. And even the girls were gaga over…” But then he stopped,
wondering whether he should have said that.
Meenakshi’s face was impassive for a moment and then she waved him
away. “Oh, come on! His childhood has no bearing on his present, does it?
So, back then, did he have girlfriends?”
“Not ‘girlfriends’ as you put it… but then, which boy doesn’t like to
look at girls?”
There was an uneasy laugh.
When she was reaching the end of her dosa, she asked, “So where does
he take this secretary to fuck her?”
Nishikant almost dropped what was in his hand. “What?”
“Come on, Nishikant. I know you are covering up for your childhood
buddy. I live with him. I can see those signs. What a blessed life he has
though! Days with the secretary, nights with the wife, and never the twain
shall meet. But no, I am not stupid.”
 “You are twisting my arm, bhabhiji…”
“No one can twist anyone’s arm. You wanted to tell me something too;
that’s why you came, didn’t you? That’s why you gave me the phone. So
why are you hesitating now?”
“It’s not his fault though,” said Nishikant slowly.
“Ah, so now we are talking. Is it that bitch’s doing then?”
“I was against employing her in the first place. I just had those vibes
during the interview, but Hari… he was quite adamant… Oh no… I must
not say anything. I don’t want to be the one who…”
“You have not told me anything that I didn’t suspect already. And trust
me, whatever is happening with my marriage now, you haven’t made it any
worse.”
“But…”
“Since how long has she been in the job?”
“Six months,” he said, feeling as guilty as if he was the perpetrator of
the crime. “I mean… he employed her six months ago.”
“Ha! My husband the adulterer! In some parts of the world, they are
stoned to death, aren’t they?”
“Oh my God! Please … Why did I come here at all?”
“Oh, don’t worry. At least now I know.”
“Bhabhiji, listen…” It was an earnest plea. “Listen, please. I won’t hide
anything from you anymore. Okay, yes. He’s having an affair.”
Meenakshi looked at him with a fearful smile on her lips.
“Why are you smiling?” he said.
“Go on.”
“Yes, you are right. I told you what I know. Where they do it, how, since
how long… I don’t know all that. But…” and now he looked directly into
her eyes, “…I don’t want you to feel lonely ever. If ever you do, you can
knock on my door anytime. Even in the middle of the night.”
Meenakshi’s fingers began to feel hot. Tearing her gaze from the man,
she looked closely at her fingers and saw the brown matted marks trying to
come up like some kind of special effects.
‘Man-whore. I told ya.’
Immediately, she pushed her bench behind and stood up. The sound of
the bench attracted the attention of every eye in that area. Standing up
abruptly, she flung two ten-rupee notes in the dish and picked up some of
the fennel seeds and sugar. “Thank you for the masala dosa. It was
scrumptious. I will take your leave now.”
After crossing the road, Meenakshi looked in the mirror of the opposite
shop—a barber’s salon—and in that, she saw the reflection of Nishikant’s
face. There it was, staring at her retreating form as if submerged in great
thinking, his mouth agape like he were made of stone.

***

Meenakshi reached home with a strange glow of satisfaction on her face.

She was like a cat who knew that her mistress had indeed bought fish and
stored it in the freezer, though she did not know how to get at it. There was
contentment nonetheless, because she now knew she was on the right track.
Men could be such cheats; yes, they could. She had heard stories in her
childhood too. Back in those days, when she would still attend school with
her sisters, Rukmini had come with the tale that the schoolmaster was
having an affair with the tailor’s wife. She didn’t know what an ‘affair’
meant at that age; she thought it was just some kind of friendship like she
had with Tappu, but why should someone not have such friendship? Now
she realized it, of course, being in the eye of the storm herself. And, yes, all
men are cheats—she repeated her sister’s words.
‘Welcome to your world, Meenakshi.’
This time, for once, she did not quell her inner voice.
But now arose the bigger question. Her husband had cheated on her, but
did that mean she should turn off everything and stop loving him? She
should, she knew, but why was that not happening? Love cannot be
measured by a meter like a pregnancy test. There are no telltale blue lines to
tell if you still love a person, but she knew there were feelings still. You
have to ask that to your heart, and the heart can be such a bitch sometimes!
If loving meant caring, and she still cared for him, did it mean she still
loved him? There was anger in her mind now, a slow silent anger that was
trying to work its way to the surface, but was that anger so intense that she
would wish harm upon him? Did she want to see him in a mangled heap
somewhere in the corner of the house? But then, she would not wish that
upon anyone. It was just how she was. Oh hell, the confusion!
And she did not even want to think of what she owed him, if at all. He
had brought her from imminent peril for herself and her family and
introduced her to the city life. He had made her a memsahib.
But had he, really? Hadn’t he done all of this just because he wanted
her? Yes, it was to his credit that he did not touch her when she was not of
age, but in the light of everything that she had come to know, it did not
amount to much. All that he had been doing was fattening the goat for the
slaughter, wasn’t it? And was it a sacrifice at all, if he was really getting
serviced by all those naked white women slobbering over him?
And that was how Harikumar fell in her eyes. From a saint, he became
just another man, and then he became a villain.
The only thing she was still not sure of was whether the love had died,
or if there was a light still burning somewhere, a light that could redeem
everything that was threatening to smother her to death.

***

Early that evening, there was a buzz at the door.

Meenakshi hadn’t bothered to change her clothes. She had been
sprawled out on the couch, almost asleep, when she heard it. She walked up
to the door and clicked on the video camera. It was a man in a cap.
“Who is it?”
“Chinese from Red Hut,” he said.
“I didn’t order any Chinese.”
The man raised his head and looked directly at the screen. And that was
when Meenakshi’s heart stilled.
“You?”
The next moment, he was inside the house, without her having to open
the door. Dressed in a red T-shirt and black jeans, he looked different, but
Meenakshi knew better the naked form that was in it. She had seen him thus
back in the courtyard of her father’s house.
“Krita! How did you come in?”
“Don’t be daft,” he scolded. “Can doors hold us?”
Meenakshi felt a sudden warmth growing inside her. All of a sudden, it
was the very antithesis of the pain she had been feeling all these days. The
only thing she wanted right now was to hold Krita’s hand and sob on his
shoulder, tell him what was going on with her.
“You don’t need to say a word,” he said, placing an arm on her shoulder.
Just like that, she relaxed. It was a healing touch.
 “Help me…” she said.
“That I cannot,” he said. “There are limitations to what I can do. I
cannot fight the demons that are within you, or I would have done that long
ago when you were a child.”
“What are you, Krita?”
“I am the song to your sorrows, the balm to your pains. I am your one
true companion to take care of you, and also the one that is inside you, the
Yakshini.”
“So, she is a Yakshini?”
Krita nodded.
“Oh! Who are you here for then, me or the Yakshini?”
“For both,” Krita said, coming closer to Meenakshi, comforting her like
a parent comforts a child. “I cannot let her have her way though, for she is
angry and anger makes us do things.”
“Angry for what? Is her anger directed at me?”
“No. What for?”
“Then why am I being punished with her?”
“The ways of the gods are mysterious,” said Krita. “Who can argue with
them? At times, they do things that we see as irrational, but it is later,
sometimes millennia later, that we know they were right. There must be a
higher purpose for this too, only we don’t know.”
“But why me?”
“Blame your father for that. He was the one who performed that ritual
to call the Yakshini to bless him with a son. But you know that story.”
Meenakshi did not want to pursue it anyway. Just conjuring that image
of her father partaking of a black magic ritual to seek the blessing of a
male-child invalidated her existence. For, the male-child had never
happened for whatever reason. She had.
“Stay with me, Krita,” she said. “Don’t go. Be with me. I am alone.”
“I am always with you. Always. Even when you are in bed with your
husband, I am with you.”
The mention of the word ‘husband’ stiffened her.
“I was also with you when the Yakshini killed that boy in the village. I
allowed it to happen because it was meant to be. And I could not have
prevented it if I wished to. I am your guardian here, but I cannot do
anything that is not supposed to happen.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen?”
 Krita only nodded with a smile on his benign face.
Meenakshi shuddered. The fact of someone knowing your future is the
most terrifying of all. It is an untold power. That person can hold your
strings in untellable ways, preying on the knowledge they have and you
don’t.
“Don’t tell me about it, though. Just help me get through it,” said
Meenakshi.
“So, here is one advice,” said Krita, “and that is what I have come to
give you. Don’t stop loving your husband.”
“How?” Meenakshi cried. “How is that possible? Knowing that his lips,
his hands, his manhood have been elsewhere? Knowing that he has been
sharing himself with another woman, and probably still is?”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“But you do. Tell me. Is my husband cheating on me?”
“I am not supposed to tell that, for that will change the course of things
to come. Knowledge is the most precious of assets, and knowledge of the
unknown and the future more so, and that is what I cannot give you. You
will have to work that out on your own.”
“But the Yakshini…”
“If you let her come out, she will kill him.”
“I know… that is why this black thread is so important to me…”
At that, Krita laughed. It was a loud laugh, full of humor, and he looked
so handsome when he laughed that her heart missed several beats. “You
think it is that flimsy black thread that has been stopping her so far?” he
asked.
Meenakshi looked up at him, bewildered.
“That thread is of no consequence! It is just something that aids your
mind. But now you must know… the only thing that stopped the Yakshini
from coming out of you and digging her talons into your husband’s back is
the purest emotion of all.”
Meenakshi was stunned like some transfixing magic had been done on
her.
“LOVE… the most powerful thing there is. The thing that can give life.
That can preserve life. In your case, quite literally. The Yakshini inside you
can do nothing to a person that you truly love. Your love is her cage. That is
why it is so difficult for her to come out of you; your love suppresses her,
claustrophobically smothers her. But the day it dies…”
Meenakshi, now terrified, backed away from the still smiling man.
And then he disappeared.
~ 24 ~
 SHOWDOWN

SOMETIME LATER THAT evening, Meenakshi threw up her head and

jerked into complete alertness. With that one snap, all hesitation and
contemplation seemed to leave her, and she emerged a different being, as if
she had suddenly made a resolve to do something.
And indeed, she had made a resolve.
It was almost an epiphany. She decided to give her husband another
chance. The feeling just welled up within her, and now it wouldn’t go. Here
was a man—the first man—that she had started loving, that she had learnt
love from. His little habits, his manner of talking, his style of dressing,
eating, and making love to her, had become a part of her life. She had not
seen anyone so up close and personal, and she had not shown herself to
anyone in that manner either. Over the years, he had come to be the only
man who had bared his soul to her and the only man she had bared her soul
to. This was not just two people living under a roof; this was a commitment,
a communion, and most importantly, it was ordained with divine blessing,
just like all marriages are.
She would not want to throw all of that away for just a suspicion.
Hence, she decided to give him another chance. Only that could help her
decide her course of action. She wanted to know from him what the truth
was, and she wanted proof. Even if it were true, all these things that people
were telling about him, if he came out clean about it, she might try to work
towards granting forgiveness, even though that might be a long way away.
But she would take the first step.
And his redemption would be that he didn’t lie.
‘You are doing the wrong thing again.’
“This is none of your business, you see?” Meenakshi said with a smile.
So, she set about changing things around the house. A huge part of her
wanted to make this evening one of a grand welcome for her husband, like
she used to do in their early days of togetherness. She wanted to keep the
house at its finest, and she planned to deck herself at her best too. She
remembered the first month of their living together. Whenever he would
return home in the evenings, a smile would dance on her lips at the mere
sight of him, and this was a smile brought on by the most genuine reaction;
she would not be able to hide it out of her embarrassment even if she tried
to. She would attempt to smile tonight as well.
But for the sake of marriages, everyone makes compromises. She had
heard her mother say that. Marriages are about compromises as much as
they are about the promises. She would do her bit too.

Harikumar came home punctually, his face creased with worry and
nervousness, the kind that Meenakshi hadn’t seen on it before. He had
called her thrice that day, first to ask if she was feeling better and if he
should take an off and come home to take her to the doctor. She had
vehemently refused, citing that she was well. The next two times had been
once in the afternoon post-lunch and once in the evening around 7. Both
times, he had nothing to talk to her about except to ask about her wellbeing.
The moment he entered, he kicked off his shoes and put his hands on
her forehead.
“No fever,” he said, and then his lips began to part into a smile. “Why,
you actually look better!”
His gaze had only now fallen on her physical form, and he saw how
carefully she was dressed. And the fact that he noticed it made Meenakshi’s
lips tremble into a smile too.
She had been almost laborious in preparing herself for the evening’s
showdown, which she feared might be the last happy evening with her
husband. Scouring through the wardrobe, after much contemplation, she
had decided on a pure freshly-bathed look, the hair still dripping wet and
the hypnotic bath scents still wafting off her body. Harikumar had a thing
for white, and hence, she had chosen the white saree with the tiny cerise
flowers on it. She had had a bath just before dressing up, and left her hair
loose, still slightly wet, held in place only by a loose hairclip. Going against
her usual habits, she had even brought out the makeup box and put a bit of
color on her cheeks, some light kohl on her eyes, and a shade of crimson on
her lips.
“What’s the occasion?” Harikumar asked. “Am I forgetting something?”
“The only occasion is that you and I are together this evening,” she said.
Bemused, Harikumar walked in. “Ooh, even the house looks different.
Seems like you have been at work all day.”
She took his bag from his hands. “You go and freshen up. Wear
something nice. Let’s have a romantic dinner right here in the house
tonight.”
Harikumar looked at his wife now, and it was a look of romance filled
with something else, another inscrutable expression. “Sure, Meenu…
sure…”

When he returned ten minutes later, she had the table all set up—a table
for two by a wall of the house, and the wall had a portrait of his deceased
parents on it, garlanded with a string of sandalwood flowers. The plates
were already laid out, and at the center of the table, two tall red candles
stood unlit, stabbing the space above them.
“Turn off the lights when you come in,” said Meenakshi, and proceeded
to take her seat at the table.
The moment the darkness fell, a match was lit with hissing ferocity, and
a flame caught on. The flame then moved up to the first candle, and a tall
flame soon began to lick the air. Another flame followed, and Meenakshi’s
smiling face appeared in the golden glow.
“Come, sit,” she said. “Everything is all set here.”
Harikumar walked in, wiping his hands, and then neatly placing the
towel on the armrest of his chair. “Sure I am not forgetting anything?” he
asked.
“Why? Don’t you like this?”
“No, no, what’s not to like? Romantic and all that. But, you know,
sometimes romance gets too close to horror.”
Meenakshi laughed. “Relax. Let me serve the food.”
“What is it?”
She opened the dish and a whiff of the aroma rushed forth. “Ah, malai
kofta,” he exclaimed. “Where did you order it from?”
“I prepared it.”
“You did?” He ladled some of it into his plate and looked carefully. “It
looks and smells just like it has been made by a chef.”
“You don’t know many things about me yet,” smiled Meenakshi. “One
of those is that I love to cook and I am wonderful at it.”
The meal started in silence, and for the next few minutes as they
sampled the food, the silence continued. Meenakshi ate in nibbles, hardly
eating at all, while Harikumar seemed to quite forget the creepiness of the
atmosphere and began to partake of the food wholeheartedly.
 When they were almost halfway through, Meenakshi said, “How was
your day?”
“Oh, good, good,” Harikumar said with his mouth full, and then gulped
down his food and continued, “You know that we are trying to increase our
reach, and probably we will be striking a deal with another retail chain
soon. Cellphones are here to stay. By the way, you should have a cellphone
too. In fact, I will give you one. Or, we are soon going to get those couple
handsets, a his-and-her kind of thing. If you are feeling romantic, we could
have one each.”
“That’s nice,” said Meenakshi. “More kofta? There’s phirni too, for
later.”
“Ah, dinner and dessert! What’s going on, lady?”
Meenakshi giggled.
“No, really, is this an indication for something?” Harikumar asked. “I
saw in a movie once where a man prepares a special meal for his wife. But,
spoiler alert! The man was trying to kill his wife.” He winked. “Do we have
similar plans?”
Meenakshi smiled. “That depends,” she said.
“Depends on what?”
“How this evening turns out.”
“Could it turn out any better?”
Meenakshi did not reply. She stood up, walked to the refrigerator, and
brought out the bowls with the dessert.
The table was cleared now, save for the two bowls of the sweetened
yellow dessert. They ate it quickly, this time Meenakshi too, because she
had planned for the decisive moment to be after.
The planning was pat down to the finest detail. The food and the
ambiance; it was no lesser than an intoxication for a man, especially for a
man like Harikumar, who would soon begin to expect the next best thing.
That was anyway the natural order of things, wasn’t it? Dinner, dessert, and
me, baby?
The door was locked, the doorbell was silenced, the phone was off the
hook. Even the black thread was in place despite what Krita had said, just in
case. There would be no disturbances tonight.
He lay on the bed first, pulling off his clothes as per habit, and drawing
the sheet over him. Meenakshi saw him and threw a tentative smile, but
then took her own time to do her tasks before retiring. She took her
nightclothes and went into the other room to change, far from the eyes of
her man. After an entire ten minutes, she entered the room, but then she
walked directly into the bathroom, ignoring a waiting husband making signs
of impatience at her. Even when she came out of the bathroom, she went to
the main door of the house to check if everything was locked properly and
then she came back.
Harikumar was wide awake through all this, and when she finally came,
he said, “Think. There might be something else left to do.”
Meenakshi let the sarcasm pass. Slowly, she backed into her pillow and
slipped into her sheets.
Almost immediately Harikumar turned on his side to face her and
placed his leg on top of hers.
Meenakshi did not stir. Instead, she said, “Did you have a good time
today?”
“So far, yes. But just good. The best is yet to come.”
Meenakshi giggled. Her lips wanted to form some words, but she
wouldn’t say it.
“Go on, say it,” Harikumar said. “I know you want to say something.”
“I was just wondering how you can have such boundless energy in you
all the time.”
“Boundless energy, you say?” Harikumar laughed. “I guess there’s a
little kid living inside me somew—”
Meenakshi’s hand flew at his mouth at that word and she clamped upon
it.
“Do not say that! Never say that,” she said with some agitation. “You
don’t know what might actually come to pass.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you know how it is if someone was actually living inside
you?” she mumbled.
He slowly began to pummel his leg onto her, the knee beginning to dig
into her thigh. She felt the unmistakable hardness of his organ on her side.
This was the moment when all his humor would recede and he would be in
the throes of severe passions and expressions. The iron had to be struck
now.
“Tell me one thing, Hari…” she said.
“What?” he mumbled. It came out as a soft broken groan.
 Meenakshi felt the pounding inside her chest now. This was the
moment; she had to ask. Words were fighting inside her, forming
themselves into questions, racing against each other to tumble out. Those
words were her army in her quest for the truth. Soon they would force
themselves out of her mouth and seek the answer she was looking for.
“What, Meenu?” he asked.
“Have you… have you ever been unfaithful to me?”
There it was. The stakes had been laid, waiting to be picked up.
He had been unbuttoning her shirt. At this question, his hand froze, and
he retreated. He took his leg off of her, and she felt as if she was released
from some captivity.
“Why… why do you…”
“Tell me, Hari… are you sleeping with someone else?”
“I… I am not…”
“I don’t care what you did before our marriage. Heck, I don’t even care
what you did in America. I am talking about now. These recent days.” She
grabbed his penis, now limp. “Has anyone apart from me seen or touched
you these recent days?”
He winced. “Meenu… no… never…”
Then it began to happen, the thing that she was afraid of. But when it
really did, instead of frightening her, it made her sad. Just sad. She heard
the voice inside her.
‘Let me out. Now. You know he’s lying. Shit-faced two-timing liar.’
“Butt out!” said Meenakshi.
And then her fingers began to change. She felt the throbbing, the
matting of the ends, the thickening of the skin, the growing of the nails. All
of that, every bit of that, was back.
“Who are you talking to, Meenu?” Harikumar asked.
He was so close to Meenakshi that all he could see were her eyes, and
there were tears in them. “Meenu…” he groaned. “You… you are pressing
too hard.”
But she would not release him now. She could not release him. Instead,
in a voice that came from the deep annals of her throat, she rasped, “Have
you ever cheated on me?”
“Meenu, what nonsense is this? Of course not!”
“Not even a bit?”
“Women have tried to tempt me, Meenu, but I have never… aah!”
 “Is that the truth?”
“Meenu, your voice… your eyes… what’s wrong? Leave me,
Meenu…”
“What about that slut?”
“Who?”
She brought her face closer to him even as he winced and then said in
his ears, “Roopali.”
“Oh, God… aah… I haven’t even touched her… ever!”
“Why not? Aren’t you a man? Have you never lusted after her?”
“What the fuck, Meenu! What is this? I never think of anyone but you.
And definitely not about Roopali.”
For a second, Harikumar did not realize that she had released him.
When he did, he backed off, hopping right off the bed, and hit against the
wall on the other side, looking down at himself with terrified eyes.
“What did you do? Oh fuck… I am bleeding.”
Under the sheets, Meenakshi felt her hands go back to what they were.
She rubbed one against the other; her nails were retracted, the smooth skin
was back. She saw her husband crouched like a fetus on the floor by the
wall.
“Oh no oh no,” she yelled, throwing the sheets and running to him. The
anger, suspicion, hurt was gone. Realization was back, realization of a sense
of loss, that she had done something irreparable.
Meenakshi was back.
“Stay away from me!” Harikumar yelled.
“No, no, Hari… I am sorry… I don’t know… I don’t know what came
over me. Let me look… oh! That needs care. You need first aid, Hari. Oh, I
am such a vamp…”
“What are you doing?”
“I am dialing Dr. Gaitonde…”
She ran up to the landline phone in the hall. She held it against her ear,
her mind in a swell of emotions now. All she could think of was her
husband with his red swollen groin, and she didn’t want it like this. She had
never wanted to hurt him. Oh, fuck, she did love him. If she could not bear
this wound on him, how could she bear anything more than this?
The phone was pressed against her ear, but all she could hear was
silence. In her agitated state of mind, she did not realize that she had pulled
out the wire earlier that evening so as not to be disturbed.
 “Oh no oh no the phone is dead…”
She heard her husband’s groans, and then she saw the blood staining the
floor. Had she killed the man inside him forever? Oh, what would she do?
The cellphone. Yes, that was it.
She came to the bedroom wardrobe and flung the door open.
“Are you going somewhere?” Harikumar asked, his words slurred with
the pain.
Meenakshi threw her clothes haphazardly on the bed and then took out
her jewelry box. Throwing it open, she pulled out the cellphone from inside
it.
“That… that mobile? It’s from our company… who gave it to you?”
She dialed the only number that was saved on the phone, and under
twenty seconds, she was talking into it… “Just listen… there has been a
medical emergency in the house… no, I am fine, but Hari… I don’t know
what you do… please, please, get Doctor Gaitonde here… okay…”
“Whom did you call?” Harikumar asked.
Tears fell on the screen of the phone as Meenakshi began to unlock the
phone again, and that is when she realized she had been crying.
She banged the wardrobe shut and it slammed hard. Then she heard the
voice again.
She was in the mirror.
‘Why are you saving him? Don’t you see? That man is a cheat. A liar. So
what if he is your husband? You have to set yourself—’
The voice shattered midway. Meenakshi flung the phone to the mirror
with all her strength. And with that, the woman in the mirror disappeared.
For now.
“SHUT UP, BITCH!” Meenakshi screamed at the mirror in
accompaniment to her action.
“Who… who…” Harikumar gasped. It sounded like a dying man’s last
breath.
Then the phone rang. It was on the floor now, and though the scratched
screen, Harikumar saw the name of the caller.
“Nishikant!” he said in puzzlement that defied his state. “You have been
talking to Nishi? He gave you this phone?”
Meenakshi sat on the bed, her shameful head buried in her hands.
“Meenu? Have you been… have you been… oh no! Then what was all
that about me cheating on you? Will I not be right to suspect—”
 “Shut up, you stupid man!” Meenakshi yelled. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut
up! All of you! Don’t you see… how everything is so, so fucked up?”
The doorbell buzzed.
Meenakshi wiped her tears and ran to the door.
It was Nishikant in his nightclothes. “I came as soon as I heard. How is
Hari? Everything okay?”
He ran into the house, up to the bedroom, and saw his friend groaning in
agony, clutching his groin.
“Fuck! What happened here?”
“Where’s the doctor?” Meenakshi asked.
“He’s coming… I ran up ahead.”
“Hey Nishi,” Harikumar said with a devious smile.
“You be quiet, Hari…” Nishikant went down next to him trying to make
sense of his condition. “How did this… how did this even… what were you
trying…”
“I am all right,” Harikumar wheezed. “You don’t need to worry about
me. So, since how long have you been talking to my wife behind my back?”
“What are you saying, Hari?”
“Since when, Meenu? Did it start on the day of the party? It must have,
no?”
Meenakshi opened her mouth to say something, but then she saw
Nishikant’s face. There was a look in it, a look that told her she mustn’t say
anything. The words froze in her mouth.
“Were you, Meenu? What were you doing behind my back?”
Aghast at how the tables had turned, Meenakshi now spoke, “Hari, there
was nothing. Nothing at all. You have to—”
There was a rustling at the door just then as a huffing Doctor Gaitonde
rushed in, and then froze midstep. “Oh, my sweet Lord! What happened
here?”

***

After the ambulance zoomed him away under the care of Dr. Gaitonde,
Nishikant came closer to Meenakshi.
“He is in a terrible state right now,” he said. “Don’t tell him anything,
bhabhiji.”
 “But… but it is so terrible… Here I suspected that he was having an
affair, and now he suspects that I… us…”
And she began to cry. Tears flowed out of her like they had not done for
a long, long time. She did not try to control them either, in part because she
did not feel the need to do so in the presence of this kind man.
“You have been so helpful to me, always a friend…”
“And I will continue to be,” said Nishikant. He came up closer to her.
“If you need anything, anything at all, do not hesitate to ask.”
“I will,” she came closer too, and held his hand the way a friend does.
He smiled and squeezed that hand.
~ 25 ~
 THE PARTING

HARIKUMAR PASSED OUT as soon as he was injected with the sedative.

That was when Meenakshi was bundled out of the OT.
There needed to be stitches, she was told. Since it was a delicate area,
there was no way that could be done without sedation. The scrotum had
been torn, but thankfully there was no damage to any of the tubes or the
testicles. Apart from a short-term minor inconvenience in urinating and
having sex, everything was going to be fine with Mr. Harikumar
Deshmukh. He was still going to stay a man after the ordeal was over.
She was quizzed by the doctor as to how that happened. Dr. Gaitonde
admitted that he was frequently called in the middle of the night. When the
call came for an older patient, he knew it was a cardiac issue even before he
set out of the house. But when it came for a young patient, and that too
newly married, he knew that it was a sex game gone wrong. So, what had
gone wrong, he asked Meenakshi without hesitation.
And Meenakshi replied without batting an eyelid that yes, it was just
that. They had been hearing about some new trends among celebrity
couples called BDSM and such where people tied each other up and derived
some kooky kind of sexual pleasure. Without the slightest reluctance,
Meenakshi said that Harikumar wanted to try it out. That was all, thank
you, and no need to call the police.
But when Meenakshi returned home, back to those bleak walls, the
agitation within her increased. The being inside her had begun to wail now,
and Meenakshi was sure that the wail was only meant for her, and no one
else. No one else could hear it anyway; only she could. Shutting her ears
did not help anymore. Well, even pulling them out or puncturing the
eardrums wouldn’t help. She beat herself up, put fingers down her throat,
even ran and dashed against the walls of the house, but the wailing did not
stop. The malevolence was inside her; how could she remove it?
‘Why, oh why, do you torment yourself like this, girl? Why do you weep
over a man’s plight?’
And she saw herself in the mirror. A hag.
By no stretch of the imagination was she beautiful anymore. The
wizened skin was back, now in its full glory, and it was everywhere on her,
on every millimeter of her face. It caked on her skin like hardened flour and
she could feel the tightness, and as it squeezed and scrunched, she feared
that her skin would just rupture within and bleed. And maybe that would be
good. A person like her ought to bleed to death.
She had worn that white saree with cerise flowers again. While leaving
for the hospital, that was the nearest outfit. She didn’t take it out now. Truth
was, she was afraid. Afraid to change her clothes. Afraid to see herself
naked. The welts would be on her skin, everywhere.
She did not want to see the skin on her.
Then she felt her lips stretching. It stretched to such an extent that
someone would have taken it for a smile, but Meenakshi knew it was
another of the ways in which the Yakshini was tormenting her.
‘Don’t weep over a man. Go out in the world. You are free.’
“I AM NOT FREE!” Meenakshi screamed. “You are in me. A fiend. A
monster. A freak. I will… I will kill you. But how do I do that? Killing you
will mean killing myself.”
‘You think so? You really think you can kill me? You think you are the
one trapped? I am trapped, you fool. I am trapped in your lousy, stinking,
weak human body.’
“Then get out! Get the fuck out of me!”
‘Only if I could.’

***

Meenakshi stood outside the hospital ward, unmindful of the nurses and
ward-boys milling around her. No one noticed her as she stood there in her
white saree that was now stained and soiled with the rigors of the day, for
she hadn’t bothered to change. Victims of injuries walked into the hospital
and left with first-aid. She looked just like that; like someone who was
either injured herself or accompanying an injured.
She didn’t stop to look at any of those people. Her eyes were only fixed
on a bed in one of the rooms up ahead. Through a glass window, she could
see her husband lying there, bandaged around his midsection, his eyes
closed. Perhaps he was sleeping, and even if he weren’t, she would not have
gone up to talk to him. Not after what had happened to him. There were no
words anymore.
His eyes opened and she hid behind a wall. She saw the other door of
the room opening and Tara Auntie walking in with a steel lunchbox in her
hands.
Harikumar tried to sit up with a smile, but the lady gently pushed him
back to the bed. Sitting on the lone chair in the room, she opened the lunch
on a hospital tray and steam of warm home-cooked food rose up in the air.
Meenakshi had a tear in her eye. She should have been there in that
room, tending to her husband, looking after his needs. But no… what was
she thinking? If it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have been in that
condition at all.
She had kidded herself for too long. She had been blind, blind to the
evil that she was. Who was she deluding? It wasn’t that evil was inside her.
She herself was evil.
Why would she be chosen otherwise, of all the billions of people on the
planet?
The wrong was in her. The wrong was her.
The only way to come out of this and to seek some semblance of
happiness in her much-confused and tormented world was to face the reality
of herself.
That she was not made for anyone. She was not made for men. She was
a curse. A man-eating curse.
That man in there, she really did care for him. It wouldn’t do to harm
him anymore. She could not be with him, for even as she stood here all
dirtied and veiled, she could feel her fingertips throbbing. A moment longer
in this place could be disastrous.
She wiped her tears and bid a silent adieu to her husband.

***

“I saw her just now. She was right here.”

Harikumar was staring into the space beyond the steam of the various
foods, right through the glass window.
“Relax, Hari. It is not her,” Tara said.
“Where is she? Why didn’t she come to visit?”
“You ask that still, my poor boy? Look at what condition she has
brought you in. Forget her.”
“How can I forget her, Aatya? She is my life. If she goes, my life goes
with her.”
“They say love is foolish. I am seeing it now.”
Harikumar turned his head to the other side and wept into the pillow.
~ 26 ~
 WOMAN OF NATURE

SHE DIDN’T WANT food or drink or rest anymore. Or at least she did not
consciously look for it. That was the first sign of her beginning to lose her
humanly nature.
After days of wandering in lonely places, traversing on unpeopled
roads, she had begun to lose sense of who she was. She had left the city
behind a couple of days ago, and now she ambled along on the desolate
stretches of the highway where only vehicles zoomed by busily, from one
destination to another, not in the least desirous of slowing down in this
desolate habitat. But this was good. She did not want people around her.
She was done with people.
Hunger and thirst were satiated from whatever she could forage from
the trees and shrubs along the forested boundaries of the highway. At times,
she would chance upon some small eating establishment along the roadside,
and then would deftly nick at the food when the vendor’s attention was
elsewhere. It was easy to steal in these unguarded shops; the people did not
have much to protect anyway.
Once she got nothing but a raw chicken breast, readied with spices on it
to be put into a tandoor. She waited in the bushes for long waiting for the
person to prepare it, but he wouldn’t. Finally, she showed herself to him,
amidst those bushes, and he left everything and ran to the spot to check out.
When he returned minutes later, disappointed, he found the chicken breast
gone.
It was difficult to bite into meat for the first time, for she had been
brought up vegetarian. But that did not matter anymore. She knew that she
had done worse, that whatever she had held inside her had no compunction
for the kind of food that was put into the mouth. And, to put it honestly, the
changes in her food habits were of no consequence in the wake of all the
other things that had happened to her.
She never stopped in one place for long. After she plundered one spot,
she would move on to another. Along the route, she would take the utmost
care to be away from any male eye. Even though she was losing her sense,
instinct told her that she had to hide herself. Her shame was no longer a
matter of her conscious mind; it was a matter of instinct. She flinched at
every human voice, regardless of the distance, and ran away to the nearest
hiding place like the gliding wind.
The woods made her both more beautiful and more hideous. After a few
days on the run, most of the unnatural artifices on her skin wore away. The
makeup withered and dried away as if she had never treated her face with a
brush, and her eyes lost their kohl. The hair lost its shampooed smoothness
and the conditioning, and even the oil she once used to treat it with on a
regular basis dried up and vanished somewhere into the forest air. Her nails
and toes outgrew the paint she once used to put on them, and her ornaments
fell one by one into the ground and became part of the earth.
But this made her more real, more natural, more earthy. Without those
trappings, her true form became a thing of beauty. Of course, it would be a
different thing altogether when the Yakshini would emerge, but otherwise
as she traversed the forest paths with great struggle, she was fully human, a
whiff of natural beauty with that lost-doe look in her eyes.
What made her hideous though was the being that lived within her. It
would not come out now, not if she could help it, but she could always feel
its torment bubbling right below the surface of her skin. At times, the
Yakshini would threaten to rip her human skin and come out, and she would
scream out in the agony of it. But the agony was lost somewhere in the tall
canopy of the jungle trees and would die away, unheard of and uncared for.
Only a few things remained on her body, almost magically so. One was
the saree she had worn. Now muddied and soiled, its white still persisted,
adamantly refusing to be cowed down. As she walked among those dense
trees of the jungle, sometimes the white of her saree would shimmer from
between the spaces of the tree trunks and even the animals would stop and
wonder at what new creature had entered their domain.
The other thing that persisted on her body was a single anklet, the one
on her left foot. Everything else had fallen off, but this one had stayed like
an obstinate lover refusing to part company. It was a slender silver affair
with tiny round bells attached to it, and it made a very faint tinkling sound
as she walked. As the days passed, she actually came to love the sound it
made; it created in her the illusion that she was not really alone.
The animals were her companions, but remote ones. They were all
around, and some of them were of the vicious kind such as hyenas and
wolves, but even they did not think of harming this strange creature in their
midst. That animals have a sixth sense is widely known, but here it could be
evidently seen. Humans could never sense the entity that resided inside the
woman, but the animals knew of it right away, and more than that, they had
the sublime sense that they ought to stay away.

***

It was about a month later that the Yakshini began to torment her human
vessel in untold ways. There was no longer any verbal communication
between them. Words had lost their significance between the two souls.
However, there wasn’t a moment when the human part wasn’t aware of the
nonhuman part, and slowly as the days passed, it began to appear that the
two would commingle to become one seamless entity.
For the nights, her bed would be a spread of various kinds of forest
leaves. Each night, she would be in a different place than the previous night.
Just after sunset, when she had finished eating whatever she had stolen or,
foraged, or after a while even killed, she would set about ripping leaves
from trees. The broader the leaves, the better. She would lay them on a spot
on the forest ground, and sleep until morning. But only if the inner voice
didn’t torment her. And then she had to do the unthinkable.
It was all a part of who she had come to be.

***

This particular night was one such. There was no sleep for her. Nightmares
constantly played out, and they were so real that they did not seem like they
were a figment of her mind, but seemed like they were playing out in real
behind those curtains of her shut eyes. And all of those nightmares were of
the Yakshini coming out of her and going forth, towering like a giant on the
lonely roads of the cities, and picking up lone men and ripping them apart
like they were wrapping paper on a four-year-old child’s birthday present.
By the middle of the night, the bubbling under her skin increased. She
woke up in a sweat, her body broken out in a burning fever, and saw, to her
greatest horror, real bubbles rising on her skin as though there were some
trapped liquid there trying to boil and burst from the surface. She screamed
at the sight, a scream that deadened the howling of some faraway wolves,
and then slapped those bubbles on her skin. But they wouldn’t go away.
 It was her. The Yakshini. She wanted to come out now. She wanted to
feed. And she told her, wordlessly:
‘Feed me.’
The torment was like hundred ulcers burning under the skin. It would
not let her sit, because the bubbles began to emerge on her under thighs and
her buttocks as well, and she stood up, even though she was in half-sleep.
Then, without any option but to do what was bidden of her, she walked
forth just as she was, to find some hapless soul that the Yakshini inside her
could feed on.
She cried. She sobbed. She screamed. If it were at all possible, she’d
have cut away her own flesh and fed it, but the Yakshini had no taste for
female flesh. It was a man she wanted and she was growing hungrier and
angrier.
‘Take me to a man. Take me. NOW.’
The woman in white stood still now. She did not know where she was.
Everything looked like the forest, and every direction looked the same as
the other. But then she stopped at a point and peered. There was a faint
sound, a feeble strain really, of a faraway vehicle.
She sighed.

***

Balram Singh had been driving the truck on the highway for thirty years
now. He had started when he was thirteen, a mere boy in shorts, and even
then, he had driven this thing like it were his pet monster. When his father
died, the truck became his and he could twist it in any way he could. And
since then he had worked for various contractors between cities, plying
whatever goods he was supposed to carry without asking questions.
On this night, it was several bales of cloth. He had headed out from
Mumbai in the late evening and now he was on the highway going
southward. It would be a long night, he knew, and his only company were
the stray trucks that passed him by, in either direction. At times, he would
even slow down and wave at the other drivers, for on such lonely journeys,
even the mere sight of another human could do wonders.
The night was catching on. It was one of those forest nights that are
always cold, irrespective of the season. The roads were moderately lit with
measly yellow lamps that threw light only immediately around them.
Balram Singh had had his dippers checked when he had filled up his
monster before setting out on this journey, and light wasn’t a problem.
Sitting on his high perch, he could see a fair length of the road ahead of
him.
In fact, he enjoyed such journeys. He had about two of them each week,
one to and one fro, and that was enough to keep the light of his house
burning. He thought of the money he’d get at the other end, which would be
enough to repair that broken cot at home. That thought made him smile too.
His wife and he had been sleeping on the floor since it had been broken,
with their tot between them. That would change soon. If he got the bed
repaired, he’d be once again able to sleep next to his wife.
The thought and the lonely chilly ambiance of the night aroused him.
When he realized that, he laughed aloud, and lit a cigarette. With one hand
firmly on the steering wheel, the stub of the cigarette wedged between his
fingers, he intermittently rubbed himself with his free hand. This was good,
the kind of journey he liked. In fact, he added to the thrill of it all and put
on some raunchy music. Shagging in the night, in the woods, alone. That
feeling itself did something to him. Now if only there was someone else’s
hand on his cock rather than his own…
And then he stiffened in a different way.
He immediately killed the music and even threw the cigarette stub out.
His decelerated like the pro he was, but still fearing that he would not make
it.
His father had told him once that if there is an animal in the path of your
driving, then don’t think of the animal. Drive over it, don’t worry. Your
vehicle won’t hurt a bit. But if you swerve for the animal, that might be the
end of you. That had been sage advice, and it had actually saved Balram
Singh’s life on a couple of occasions.
The truck slowed down though, and as it ground to a halt, Balram Singh
saw this was no animal. This was a lady.
Dressed in one of those rustic white sarees, she looked like she were
walking in a mindless daze. A drifter from the nearby village? A pang of
fear entered his heart first, and he wanted to follow his father’s advice of
just going on, but then he did one mistake he would repent for the rest of his
life.
As he began to accelerate again, he turned just once to look at the lady
again, and he saw her face.
 That was that. The next instant, the accelerator sputtered and died, and
he hopped off the truck, unmindful that his trouser fly was open.
The lady looked at it and smiled.
~ 27 ~
 RATISUNDARI

“YOU HAVE RETURNED to your true colors now, haven’t you?”

It was a startling manly voice, and she instantly knew who it was.
Abandoning the blood-soaked finger that she was licking, she looked up,
and saw him.
Instantly, her comportment changed. She felt humiliated at herself,
sitting thus on the ground, her legs folded like a frog’s, picking up pieces of
meat from her recent prey’s viscera, and finding the best chunks to suck the
blood out of. She was also embarrassed that she was not the beautiful
woman he had seen before. She was now some an uncouth, unkempt
monstrosity that roamed the jungles.
She attempted to say something, but language failed her. She had been
out in this wilderness too long, devoid of even the remotest form of human
communication. Words were slowly becoming alien to her.
All that came out of her were guttural sounds.
“Your screeching and croaking is proof of your deterioration. I wasn’t
wrong about it, was I?”
She shut her ears in an exaggerated apish gesture, but when had that
ever stopped any voice for her?
“Do you forget who I am? Look at me. I am Krita.”
It was him, she knew, but she could not tell him. He stood there in his
magnificent naked glory, his body even sending out a slight glow into the
surroundings, but she was speechless. Literally.
He came closer. He stood by the corpse of the recently slain truck-
driver, blood still oozing out of it, and shook his head. “Middle-aged man.
Late-thirties at the most. Well-built. That’s the way you have always liked
them, haven’t you?”
She willed her head to move. It was a nod that went ever so slightly up
and down, and just like that, she knew it wasn’t her who was doing the
nodding. It was the Yakshini inside her.
Krita laughed. “It is funny how a person’s punishment is never really
confined to the person. Even when a murderer is hanged, it is not just the
murderer who suffers; it is his entire family, for they have to face the
shame, the hunger, and the loneliness. When a man is exiled, his family has
to do without him or go with him. When a king is punished by another, that
sentence is borne by all his subjects, at times for generations to come. So
has been your punishment. It has caused nothing but suffering to everyone
around you.”
‘What punishment? Why?’ she wanted to ask, but she could only make a
gurgling sound that perhaps did not even reach the man.
Krita moved close to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “My heart
weeps for you,” he said.
She stiffened. As those bulbs of his fingers tenderly fell on her skin,
something coursed through her being. Something flashed through whatever
remained of her mind. But it was still away from her, still a shapeless haze.
“You don’t remember anything, do you?”
The Yakshini inside her moved her head to look at him, straight in the
eyes now. And she felt her eyes burn, as if something was glowing behind
those circles that were her irises.
“It’s about time that I tell you your story then, my dear Ratisundari,”
Krita said with a compassionate smile.
PART THREE
~ THE SEED ~
Year 1981
~ 28 ~
 THE WORLD BETWEEN WORLDS

THAT PLACE, LOCATED somewhere deep within the clouds, is hidden

from both the Deva Loka which looms over it and the Bhoomi Loka which
sprawls beneath it. It lies on a flattened peak cloistered in the highest
Himalayas and is bordered by clouds that never move. For those who think
that the Everest is the loftiest peak on earth, it would be a matter of great
shame if they ever discovered this kingdom. For, even though the mountain
peak is practically sliced into half to create the flat bed required to lay the
kingdom, it could effortlessly tower over seven Everests if they were to be
stacked up end to end.
Impenetrable as this kingdom is, it remains undiscovered and
unhindered, and will probably remain so even if the entire Kalpa passes,
and another arrives. But there is more to it. The unattainability of this world
is not due to any design of nature; it is because the Creator of this Universe
himself does not wish it to be found by mortal eyes. And so, it stays that
way.
This enchanted kingdom goes by various names, but the most preferred
name used by the denizens to refer to it is Alaka, also sometimes known as
Alakapuri, the land of the demigods.

When the divinities created the earth, they bestowed upon it every
beauty that they could conjure. But, of course, their greatest act—and
undoubtedly the most challenging—was to make this beauty sustain itself.
That they managed, or purported to manage, by granting what is known as
“life” to some of his creations. Life was not an ordinary gift though; it was
the gift of self-sustainability. Those who got life were able to produce more
like themselves, and thus keep themselves running. That was the actual
marvel of the world-creators, a fact that was mostly lost on the world in the
times to come.
But this was not so in Alakapuri. The beauty they had created was their
own. The denizens of this land weren’t blessed by the world-creators, but
they weren’t bereft. They were blessed with great riches, the greatest that
the world has ever known, and they showed themselves in every inch of the
space. There was not a single spot you could look at without some glittering
gold or a sparkling diamond providing a feast to your eyes. The floors were
of uncured diamond, and the pillars were of the most expensive stone
crafted from the belly of the earth itself. Here, even the animals spat rubies
and the reptiles carried diamonds on their heads. The poorest here was
richer than the entire human population put together, and, by some
accounts, even richer than all the gods put together.

The highlight of this land were the special nights on which festivities
would be held. These occasions would be celebrated in the grand garden of
Chaitrarath, hidden high on the slopes of the Mount Mandara, which even
the gods were not permitted to visit. The palace of the king, which
overlooked this garden, would be lit up with lights encased in rubies and
sapphires and topazes and emeralds, and in those shimmering glints of
colors, the semi-divine beings—Yakshas and Gandharvas and Kinnaras and
the very-elusive Guhyakas—would come out to celebrate.
On one such evening, approximately twenty years ago, such a glittering
audience was to perform in the city of Alakapuri. This was a grand
occasion, the five-thousandth anniversary of their victory over the Snake-
People, the Nagas, a grand historical moment when the Naga wealth had
been added to the coffers of the demigods. The Naga Vijaya, as the festival
was known, was to be celebrated with great aplomb and was one of the rare
occasions where the king showed himself to the audience.
People thronged to the hall in countless numbers. Males, females, and
offspring, all creatures milled through. They wore scant clothes, mostly
nothing at all, but their bodies were hidden with the heavy gold ornaments
that they wore. The ornaments were so huge that from the Deva Loka it
looked like a river of gold was in motion, and the clanging noise they made
was so loud that it disturbed the sages meditating in the Bhoomi Loka
below.
But the ornaments had another important purpose, a purpose that no
subject of this kingdom would openly admit. The yellow metal hid their
deformities.
Yes, that was as true as the fact that Alakapuri was nestled by the
clouds. Every being born in Alakapuri was born deformed. The sages say it
was the reason of an ancient curse, and the curse did not have a cure. The
deformities manifested themselves in the form of an unnatural number of
appendages, or incongruently placed eyes, or broken teeth, or a misshapen
skull, or something more devious. A few of the lucky ones could easily hide
those deformities, but for the larger populace, these were right out in the
open, and there was no way to hide it.
In time, however, as the city gained wealth, and as they became more
and more isolated from the rest of the world, the people stopped caring
about their deformities.
And on this particular day, their natural condition was the least of their
concerns. They looked forward to a good time.
The able-bodied (to whatever extent they were able-bodied) males
rushed forth. They had got the whiff of a particular scent and that had put
their edges on end. Quite literally, for they could not hide their arousals as
they walked to the palace.
“This is the scent of the Yakshinis,” said one of the males, shamelessly
touching himself.
“Let’s rush faster! I don’t want to miss even one glimpse of them!” said
another.
It was almost a stampede as the males rushed forth, even stepping on
each other, and grabbing and throwing whatever piece of flesh dared
obstruct their progress. And when they finally reached the garden, they
stood awed, their mouths open, almost as if they had been frozen in their
places.

***

The Yakshinis were thirty-six in number. They were the inhabitants of this
land too, but they were different from the others. To say that they were the
only beings not deformed in this land would be a gross understatement. The
truth was that the Yakshinis were celestial beauties, perfect in every way; in
fact, exaggeratedly perfect, for they were created to titillate the males.
There could not be an aphrodisiac better than these immortal and ever-
young beauties; if they wanted, they could put even an old celibate sage in
the heat and make him commit a sin he’d repent for all his remaining births.
On this occasion, the Yakshinis stood in a neat row, displaying their
ethereal beauties. They were guarded by the demonic Yakshas, their males,
who formed a fence around them with their own intimidating bodies. And
yet, as each moment passed, it became more and more difficult to control
the beings, and there arose the very real fear of these uncontrolled creatures
breaking all barriers and pummeling the Yakshinis right then and there.
 But then, there was a huge flapping noise in the skies above and
everything fell to silence.
From the sky, descended the Pushpak Vimana, the special chariot of
their king. The assembled creatures bowed their heads as their royal head
stepped off his steed and took his first step on that enchanted land.
He was the powerful demigod monarch who had defeated the Snake-
People several millennia ago. He was the one who had appeased the
difficult-to-please Lord Shiva himself and attained from him the status of
overlord of all semi-divine beings. And he was the master of all the wealth
of the world and the treasurer for the gods themselves.
But more than that, he was born an asura, a demon, having come from
the seed of the same father who gave birth to Ravana, the once-dreaded
king of Lanka. He was the one whom even the gods feared.
He was the Yaksha King Kubera.

***

For all his wealth and might, however, Kubera was not blessed with good
looks by any stretch of the imagination. He was not left untouched by the
ancient curse that had befallen the land, and probably because he was the
monarch of this land, the curse had smitten him the most.
His Kingship Lord Kubera stood only five feet high, shorter than most
of his subjects. Even the Yakshinis were a full head taller than he was. He
looked almost comical when he moved, for he carried an excessive paunch
that wobbled ahead of him, like a true personification of his curse.
However, one consolation was that his paunch fell over his groin and hid
his modesty. And to cover whatever the belly did not, he bedecked himself
with rich ornaments from head to toe.
He walked on three legs. The third foot was no more than a hindrance,
and it dragged behind him as he walked, emerging incongruously from the
left of his hip. His arms were short and they could not go around his belly
even if he tried, and they were definitely not helped by his stubby fingers on
which fingernails never grew.
But the greatest deformities were on his face. Most of it was filled with
warts and spots, and the only places where these blights weren’t present
were the eyes and the mouth. To speak of the eyes, he had only one that was
natural; the other having been lost early on, a topaz now shining in that
empty eyeless socket. His overlarge lips enclosed eight teeth that were
distant from each other, and made him look quite grotesque when he broke
into one of his infrequent grins.
He walked on now, with a bowl of gold coins in his hand, and coming
up to the center of the podium, he took a handful of the coins and threw
them on his subjects. No one stooped to pick them up though, for no one
really needed the money. This was, however, an auspicious start to the
celebrations, and for that, there were hoots of glee that rent the atmosphere.
“Dear subjects of Alakapuri,” Kubera began, “welcome to Naga Vijaya.
This is one of the most auspicious days in our calendar, and we are going to
make the most of it. There will be no talk of governance today, or of
anything else. We shall only entertain ourselves. To do that, you can see that
we have the Gandharvas and the Yakshinis amidst us.”
Then, abruptly falling silent, Kubera went and sat on his throne, a
sparkling affair that rose out of the middle of the stage.
This was a cue for the festivities to begin.
The creatures receded, giving place to the performers to grace the stage.
There was such a hush all around that it seemed no one would ever talk
again, but then there was a heavy shuffling of feet.
The crowd turned to look.
Four Gandharvas, dressed only in dhotis that came up their knees, and
holding long sticks came up and took center-stage. Their well-sculpted
bodies, which were on full scintillating display now, drew gasps from the
entire audience, and even the Yakshinis turned to look at these perfect
specimens of virile masculinity. These subjects of much attention now
placed themselves in a formation and then in perfect synchronization, began
tapping the ends of the sticks on the floor. It took people a moment to
understand that this was not any ordinary tapping, but it had a rhythm of its
own. It was a song.
And then the dance began. The two Gandharvas in the front leaped over
the two at the back and then they moved their lithe bodies to the beat. They
tossed themselves in the air, and bounced on the balls of their feet, and
pirouetted like they were swinging tops.
And music filled the air from an unknown place, a music that was not
just notes, but had an intoxicating undercurrent that hypnotized the listeners
and held them affixed as if they were in a trance.
 Suddenly, the attention of the assembly was consumed by another
entrance. The sound made its presence felt first—a low hum that grew into
a louder, more persistent sound—and the people hooted again, for they
realized what the sound was.
It was hissing.
There were Nagas!
Or, technically, young Yakshas dressed up as the Nagas. The
performance would now be a grand spectacle, for it was now evident what
it was going to be. It was a reenacting of their victory over the Nagas.
The poor beings who were dressed up as Nagas came slithering upon
the floor. Their bellies rubbed against the ground as they moved, and they
held their hands over their heads to depict hoods.
The Gandharva dancers paused in synchronized choreography when the
Nagas came up to their feet. A hush fell over the audience again, an
anticipative hush that gripped their hearts. Then, just as the Yaksha boys
poised their hoods to strike, the Gandharvas raised their sticks and brought
them crashing upon their skulls.
The act became only too real. For, indeed, it was real. The sticks had
come down with resounding crashes on the heads of the poor Yaksha boys,
and though it was a performance, that part of it was truly done. They lay
now, dead on the dance floor, their skulls bleeding where they had caved in.
The petrified audience could not close their screaming mouths for long,
even as they watched the gore with wonderment, not knowing whether this
was meant to happen.
Then there was a loud laugh that broke the silence. It was Kubera
himself, standing up now, hopping in glee, and then like an unruly child, he
broke into an applause and a cackling laughter.
A ripple ran through the crowd then, and they laughed too—at first only
nervous giggles which then proceeded into a huge uproar. And the music
started again, and the Gandharvas completed the rest of their dance over the
dead bodies.
But Kubera was least bothered about the “deaths”. For he knew he had
the power to restore life, and he would do so in time. Which was, after the
show reached the spectacular heights he meant to take it to.

***
When the performance ended, Kubera was the loudest in applause.
“You see,” he began, “dear people of Alakapuri, we do not spare any
effort in anything that we undertake. Be they our battles in unknown and
unfamiliar lands, or entertainment in this very land of our own. That is why
Alakapuri is the much-envied kingdom that it is today.”
People hooted in unison, and then broke into shouts of “Digpala!
Digpala!” Digpala meant World-ruler, the honorific that the subjects used to
refer to Kubera with.
“But now there is something happening here that hasn’t missed my
eye!” Kubera laughed in a sinister fashion. “And what better occasion than
today to put paid to it!”
Silence overspread the audience again, as jaws clenched, lips pursed,
and muscles stiffened.
Kubera looked at the four Gandharvas who had been dancing. Their
bodies were now glistening with sweat, and as soon as their king’s eyes fell
on them, their chests began to heave in nervous trepidation.
“You!” Kubera pointed to one of them.
The hapless Gandharva looked at his other three companions, and
nodded, “Yes, Digpala!”
“Come forth, you.”
He took two steps forward, while the other three backed away slowly
and vanished into the crowd.
“Kneel.”
He knelt.
“You danced truly well,” Kubera said, stepping forward now, his belly
oscillating as he took each step. “It was a delight to sore eyes, and though
you are male, you did something to me.” He laughed in a maniacal obscene
manner at his own joke.
The Gandharva kept his head bowed.
“But…”
The hush over the audience became more intense, if that were at all
possible.
“…you have taken your liberties too far, I think.”
“Digpala?” the Gandharva said fearfully.
“Don’t you know what I am talking about?”
“No, Digpala.”
 “Well, it is written all over your face, you poor thing!” Kubera raised
the stick fallen on the ground and with that lifted the Gandharva’s chin up.
“Even right now, you are looking for her, aren’t you?”
“Her, sir? Who?”
“Oh, the innocent act! It blinds me! People, can’t you see the love on
this Gandharva’s face?”
Kubera pointed to a random old man in the audience, and he
vehemently nodded. “I do, Digpala, I do.”
“Well, we all do!” Kubera laughed. “Who is she you were looking at
during your dance? Did it not distract your performance? Come on, you
have to tell us now. And, remember,” Kubera raised his chin even higher, “I
know much more than you think I do.”
The Gandharva fearfully turned and looked at the Yakshinis.
“Which one?”
His eyes rested on one, invariably the most beautiful of the lot.
“Oh, her.”
The Gandharva bowed his head in shame.
“Come forward, Yakshini.”
The Yakshini, scared to bits, looked at her friends. But they all stood
stone-faced, as if they had suddenly decided they had nothing to do with
her.
Quite gingerly, she stepped forward.
“Does this Gandharva has anything to do with you?”
She stayed silent.
“I don’t like to repeat my questions, Yakshini. Does he?”
“Yes, Digpala,” she said. “We are in love.”
“Oh, that commonest of all blights. Love!” Kubera laughed in a sinister
fashion. “Well, speak up your name, Yakshini.”
At that, the Yakshini cast one fearful look at her kneeling lover, and
then said with a face that was now paler than the whites of her eyes,
“Ratisundari.”
~ 29 ~
 THE BANISHMENT

“MY, MY, MY… aren’t you the loveliest of them all?”

Kubera went forth and stood next to the Yakshini Ratisundari, and when
he did that it was painfully obvious how dwarfish he was in her presence. In
fact, even when he raised his squat arms high in the air, he did not reach her
height.
But even so, he came to her, and tried to place his arm over her
shoulders, standing next to her, as if posing for a portrait. With his eyes
firmly fixed on her jewelry-adorned breasts, he said, “Aren’t you every
male’s wet dream?”
Ratisundari looked up at him sharply. She tried to release herself, but
didn’t make the effort too obvious. The bashed-in skulls of the unfortunate
boys by her feet were her warning call.
“Now, now, little one…” Kubera said, and the irony was painfully
obvious, “…don’t you try to get away from me. What’s the use? I know
everything about your little misdemeanor.”
“I have done nothing, Digpala.”
“Oh, the sweetness of your voice! No, not just a voice. A trap for all
males.”
“I apologize for whatever it is you think I have done, Digpala.”
“I think?”
There was an edge to his voice all of a sudden. Within an instant, he
took his arm away from her shoulder so abruptly that she almost keeled
over, and then he backed off and looked straight at her.
“You think I am a fool? I don’t know what I am saying?”
“I didn’t say anything like that, Digpala.”
“Oh, the cheek! The insolence! What are you so proud of, your
beauty?”
Ratisundari quivered like the last fiber holding a torn cloth together.
“I… I don’t know…”
“You… have flouted the rules of this land,” said Kubera, mincing no
words now, “with the assistance of your lover here.”
“What… I…”
“Don’t mumble! Fall at my feet.”
 Ratisundari looked around. There was not a single compassionate eye
for her in that crowd of hundreds now. Meekly, she obeyed, and joined the
Gandharva in the middle of the stage.
“Accept your folly now,” said Kubera. “Tell everyone what you did and
your punishment will be light.”
There was silence all around. Apart from the heavy breathing of the
Gandharva and the Yakshini, nothing could be heard. She looked sideways
at the Gandharva then, and he nodded.
Then she spoke, “Sire, I have committed a folly.”
“Now she speaks!” Kubera roared. “And what folly would that be?”
“I… I left Alakapuri… and I went to the heavens above. This… here,
this Gandharva… he took me there.”
“And what did you do in Deva Loka?”
“I roamed around, fascinated, looking at the marvels—”
“SHUT THAT UP!” Kubera roared. “No one here wants to hear about
the marvels of Deva Loka. There is nothing in Deva Loka to surpass what
we have here in Alakapuri. Tell us of your crime.”
“I… I entered Indra’s durbar in disguise.”
“Ah, Indra! Now why doesn’t that surprise me? And what did you do?
What disguise?”
“I disguised myself as an apsara.”
“Apsara? A heavenly dancer?” Kubera snorted. “Could you not be more
inventive?”
“I… I found the clothes of an apsara and put them on. Again, this
Gandharva helped me. And then I went into his hall and danced.”
Kubera seethed. His lips, those lumpen mounds of flesh, flattened as
much as they could. But his words were soft and slow as he said, “Why did
you do that?”
“Just… I just wanted to see how the gods reacted.”
“QUIET!” the Digpala roared. “You fool no one. We know what a lust-
laden whore you are. You went there to seduce the gods. You have tried
your wiles on all these males here and now you want new meat.”
“No… no…”
“Did no one find out?” Kubera said, returning to his calm voice.
Ratisundari bowed her head. “I don’t know.”
“Did nothing happen to the gods? Did they even get aroused?” Kubera
laughed. “Ha! But what am I saying!”
 Ratisundari kept her head bowed.
“You have committed a grievous folly, as you say,” Kubera pronounced.
“Don’t you know it is not for the Yakshinis to decide such things?”
“I… I… This will never happen again.”
“No, it will,” said Kubera firmly. “The only reason we are able to
sustain ourselves is because we don’t condone mistakes. You see how
precarious our position is? Neither are we humans whose very nature is to
commit mistakes, nor are we gods who by design are unable to commit
mistakes. We are in the middle, and we have to preserve that position. Such
a huge slight cannot be ignored. I am sure Indra found out. And Indra of all
beings? Don’t you know of his reputation with the ladies? He knows all his
apsaras intimately.” Kubera winked at the audience as he said that. “No one
touched by Indra goes unpunished; you know better than that. Haven’t you
heard of that human woman who was cursed and turned to stone for an
eternity just because Indra touched her?”
“Forgive us, Digpala,” the Gandharva said. “We will never do anything
of this sort again.”
“Mine is not to forgive. There shall be punishment.”
Kubera’s offenders then kept their heads bowed, knowing that their
entreaties would fall on deaf ears. Ratisundari only muttered a prayer to the
Creator that the punishment would be light.
“You, Yakshini, you are the bigger offender here. You are a seductress,
and it is not the poor Gandharva’s fault that he did your bidding. All you
know is to make the males dance on your fingertips. Hence, your share of
the suffering will be heavier.”
“No…”
“Deprivation of something you yearn for is the biggest punishment
there can be,” Kubera proclaimed. “Hence, you are deprived of that magic
touch of yours. You will no longer be beautiful, but will turn into a creature
so hideous that even Lord Shiva will blanch to look at you.”
“Please…!”
“And you are forthwith banished from Alakapuri. You shall stay
banished till you realize the significance of this land of ours. Go unleash
your hideousness somewhere else.”
Ratisundari looked at him stunned.
Kubera continued, “You have been lusting after the male race for long.
But now… now you shall be a scourge for these very men. You shall never
find true love.”
Then the Yakshini broke out, “Mercy, Digpala, mercy!”
Kubera raised a hand. “Yes, I am merciful, and hence let me make it
slightly easier for you. I shall give you a home during your exile. If my
brother Ravana were alive, I would have easily sent you to Lanka to work
in his Ashok Vatika. But he is not, and now the world has become more
corrupt than it was in his time. Anyway, there is a man in India whose wife
is pregnant with their seventh child. He has all daughters so far, and he is
praying for a Yakshini to come and bestow him with a son. Well, but he is
not entitled to a son. His rituals were a failure before they even started.”
Kubera came closer to Ratisundari. “But let us answer his prayers in
part. Through his rituals, he has opened up the pathway between our
kingdom and the Bhoomi Loka. Which is wonderful for you. You will be
going down that pathway and be born in the body of his seventh daughter.”
“What? A human life?”
“Yes. An entire human birth. You shall be born as the daughter of this
Patil couple, and will live in her body till she dies.”
“Won’t this be punishment to that poor girl too? What about her life?”
“The girl is already cursed. The moment the father started these rituals,
he played with her life. It is beyond any saving now. But if it is any
compensation, I will transfer your lost beauty to her. She will be the most
beautiful girl humankind has ever seen.”
“But…”
“Silence, Yakshini! Don’t you see how light this punishment is? Human
life is short, and the girl will die. Only, you mustn’t do her any harm, or you
will be trapped on earth forever.”
“But… but I won’t know how to lead a human life.”
“You will learn.”
The Gandharva stammered, “And… what about me?”
“I don’t care about you. Go anywhere. Never show your face in
Alakapuri again till your lover comes back.”
At that moment, a hole appeared in the floor of the land, right in front of
where Kubera stood.
“Get up now, and enter this pathway. The man’s failed ritual is coming
to an end. You cannot be here a moment longer.”
The duo stood. With trembling feet, they proceeded. The Yakshini
stepped up first, and with one look at the crowd, he prepared to jump into
the hole.
“Go now!” Kubera said. “From this moment on, you shall forget every
shred of your life in Alakapuri. Get lost.”
Ratisundari took one last look at the Gandharva, who was now standing
as resolute as ever. Then she told him, “Goodbye to you too, dear Krita, till
we meet again.”
Krita nodded. “Go. I shall never leave you alone, dear Ratisundari. Go
in peace.”
PART FOUR
~ THE WITHERING ~
Year 2010
~ 30 ~
 WHITE LADY OF THE FOREST

“YOUR FORM, AS is seen outside, is not of the girl Meenakshi. It is of the

Yakshini, Ratisundari. My ill-fated beloved,” said the Gandharva, Krita,
touching her cheek and making her feel as if she were healed of an
unknown disease.
She flinched at his touch though. A twig that she stepped on snapped
into two, and her foot bled, but she did not as much as pause to look.
Words had left her now, almost completely. Was it because she had
forgotten to speak, or was it because her existence had bewildered her to
that extent? She would never know, but she knew that now she had to resort
to actions. Actions were all she had.
And her action in this moment was to push the man who was standing
in front of her, the man who had just told her the most bizarre tale she had
ever heard, of a land that she didn’t even knew existed. Why was she to
believe him? If she had fallen from that grace, why did she not remember
any of it?
“Go!” she tried to mouth at him, but it came out as a mere gurgle. But
her raised hand with its outstretched finger and her quivering lips conveyed
the message well enough.
“I shall leave you now, if you say so. Till you are capable of
understanding better, Ratisundari.”
She threw her hands on her ears, because being addressed so appalled
her.
“But I shall not leave this place. I shall not appear in your presence
again unless you want me to. We will meet again when we are destined to
meet.”
He turned and walked. She stood there, trembling, her bosom heaving in
rage, looking at him go away. He walked forth too, without turning back,
and penetrated into the dense shrubbery of that forest. And then all was
silence.

***

How do you kill something that’s inside you like an incurable disease, a
cancer? And what if that thing has a life of its own? You know it lives
within you; nay, it thrives within you. For, it breathes your share of air, it
eats your portion of food. Why, even when you have sex, it robs you of
some of that pleasure too. You cannot give yourself a shred of anything
without giving this parasite some of it too. Denying it anything would mean
denying yourself, but that is deprivation, and why would you do that only to
spite that unholy thing inside you?
You know that that thing is your archenemy, your nemesis; and yet,
getting rid of it is not in your hands. The only way to get rid of it, perhaps,
is by putting an end to yourself. But then, would you be so vengeance-filled
or angst-ridden that you would go ahead and do that? Ending yourself to
end your problem can never be a solution.
Yet, you cannot shun the knowledge of the fact that you are the vessel
for that blight. You cannot stop thinking of that, not for a moment, and even
in your happiest moments, there is a tinge of sorrow that you cannot avoid.
Even in the midst of your laughter, you will silently pause, and you won’t
be able to do anything about it. It will come unbidden with sneaky steps,
and without your conscious thought, but when that moment passes, it will
leave your blood flowing in a rush, mocking you for your helplessness.
You will spend every waking moment thinking of ways to get rid of the
affliction, and when you cannot do that, there is this huge ball of despair
that will begin to engulf you. And you will let it engulf you, because you
have no choice. You sink into that ball, bit by bit, till what is inside you
comes out and taunts you, derides you, and gloats over its victory over your
lamenting self.
That’s how evil a disease is, a weapon that the gods themselves devised
to keep humanity in check.
But here, living within this girl, was something more than a disease. It
was a living creature of the greatest hideousness. A creature that infested
not just every cell of her body but even her abstract conscience.
The Yakshini was her disease.
She could not think anymore without first consulting with the Yakshini,
because the Yakshini would provide her counsel anyway. In this solitude of
the jungle, without contact with anyone else who might provide her wise
advice, the runaway girl could only hear the sounds that came from within,
and they told her only of dark things to do, because that was the inherent
nature of the being trapped within her.
 ***

The next moment, she wasn’t herself any longer.

Out on the road that ran through the forest, she could hear a vehicle zip
by. The night was nigh, and the road was desolate. This was probably a late-
hour straggler trying to make his way home through the direct route that
passed through the forest.
She started walking in a hurry, leaving the remains of her previous
victim, hoping to catch sight of this one before he zipped away.
Just a row of shrubbery parted the forest confines and the road outside;
by now she had come to know the layout quite well. She stood still for a
moment, listening to the sound of the approaching vehicle, drew in a deep
breath, and parted the bushes.
It was a mere autorickshaw, purring and sputtering its way to the end of
this road that led outside to the highway outside the city. Within, the
rickshaw had blazing lights on and one of those godawful movie songs that
only rickshaw-drivers seem to like played on full blast. With those blinding
lights and cacophonous sounds, the black-and-yellow vehicle looked like a
three-wheeled monster, one that was formed out of some unholy
amalgamation of the man and the machine.
The Yakshini peered. The driver was alone. A healthy young man, and
sexually active too, she could just tell. Perhaps recently married.
She smacked her lips.
Coming out in the middle of the road, she stopped, and put out her
bosom as seductively as she could.

***

Vijay Jaiswal drove his three-wheeled steed with Altaf Raja’s latest monster
hit blaring through the forested road, singing along the lyrics in his croaking
voice. He was laughing to himself, for he had had two beers with his friends
just an hour ago, and now after this road, his little bride Neha was probably
preparing the bed at home. And the autorickshaw was his own too, a gift
that Neha’s father had given to him on the wedding day. Life couldn’t have
gotten any better.
His friends had advised him against taking this road though. They spoke
about “incidents” that had occurred with some drivers on this road in the
late nights, but he had called them a bunch of cunts. Then he had sipped on
their beer and gotten along the way.
He needed to take a piss break though. Just like the bladders of dogs
seem to take on a life of their own when they see a lightpole, the bladders of
lonely drivers seem to come alive when they see a dense solitary outgrowth.
But, Vijay had reason too. He hadn’t let himself go after chugging those
beers.
He stopped his rickshaw by the side of the road—on this road any spot
was a toilet, even in the middle of the road if he wished—and he stood
facing the shrubbery. Aiming himself or not, he undid his zipper and started
doing his thing. As the ammoniacal waste gushed out of him, he let out a
long and deep sigh of relief.
Then he saw something.
About twenty feet away from him, there was something white in the
middle of the road.
Quickly, he turned, his deed still not finished. He looked again. And
yes, there it was. A human shape, draped in white, standing carelessly in the
middle of the road. Right in the middle in fact, on the partition dividing its
two halves.
Suddenly, he grew cold.
The beer was out of him now, and perhaps that knocked some senses
back into him. He stood there though, frozen, not knowing what his next
step should be.
“Who are you?” he said in a voice that came out as a whimper.
The thing did not move. Apart from the slight swaying of the white
saree in the cold forest breeze, he saw no other movement.
“Oh my God!” Vijay murmured to himself and promptly got into his
rickshaw. Without another look in that unholy direction, he bent to hold the
igniting shaft of the vehicle and tried to yank it.
But he had sweat and urine on his hands. The damned thing slipped.
“Sisterfucker! Start!” he yelled at his rickshaw as if it were his savior
dragon on whose back he would fly out of this infernal place.
He held the shaft again, and this time it caught on, and he was just about
to pull, when he went dead silent.
A smell of jasmine had grown around him suddenly. In fact, somewhere
right next to him.
Terrified now, he looked into his rear-view mirror.
 And there she was, sitting in the back seat.
The most beautiful woman he had ever seen. With something in her
eyes. Something that was now drawing him in.
Suddenly, his hands went limp, and he left the shaft gently.
“Where… where do you want to go?” he asked in a voice that he hadn’t
even used on Neha yet.
The woman only smiled. The smile came out as one of those cutesy
pouts that he had seen on the mouths of those sleazy actresses in the B-
grade movies in those curtain-partitioned one-room “theaters”. Actresses to
whom he had spent a youth jacking off.
Without another logical thought, he turned and unashamedly looked at
her bosom, for the palloo of that white saree had now fallen off.
“Do you…” he started but corrected his voice for it had run dry… “Do
you want to go somewhere?”
In response, she skooched slightly in her seat and patted on the empty
space next to her.
“Oh, fuck!” he smiled, not really believing his luck now. “You want me
to sit next to you?”
She nodded.
“But I don’t have any money…” he said that just like that, out of
experience of his unmarried days, perhaps.
She laughed, a tittering taunting laugh.
He stood up gingerly, and went and sat next to her. He became aware of
something now, a rock-like hardness in his nether regions, the kind that he
had experienced only in his youth.
“Well, why not!” he said, and came next to her.
With unceasing breaths now, he put his arm around her shoulders, his
eyes refusing to leave her bust. And then, unable to hold himself in more
ways than one, he leaned to place his lips on her midsection.
Almost at that very instant, unseen by him, the woman’s fingers began
to change. He had his eyes shut, and his lips and tongue working frenziedly,
but even if he were in a conscious state of mind, he would not have been
aware of the transformation that was happening behind his back.
Those rosy lips had vanished too. Instead, cracks had appeared in them,
and if he had now stopped his attentions on her bosom and went on to kiss
her, he’d have come back with a bleeding mouth himself.
 The hand, now with the claws at its hands, raised itself, poised to strike
the man in the extreme heat, the kind that made an excellent meal.
But just then, something happened.
Vijay tried to reach out to the other breast with his mouth. And in doing
so, he opened his eyes just momentarily, and in that one moment, his glance
fell to the front of his autorickshaw. And that was where the small plastic
effigy of the orange Hanuman dangled.
That was all it took.
He looked at his little Hanuman who was now dangling furiously, his
mace upraised in his hand as if about to strike, and he suddenly recoiled.
For he now saw her face in the rear-view mirror.
It was the face of a witch. Or demon. Monster. Whatfuckever!
Coming back to himself in the nick of time, he pushed that creature with
all he had got, throwing her clear off the other side of the rickshaw (in those
days there were no blocking rods on the right of the autorickshaws) and ran
up to the front, and started the vehicle.
Hanuman blessed him; the vehicle started.
Without sparing another thought for anything, he zoomed by, refusing to
even look in his side-mirrors.
It was only when he drove on for about five miles did he gain a rational
mind to think how narrowly he had missed death.

***

When Vijay Jaiswal sat with his friends again, he did not call them cunts.
Instead, he narrated to them the story of what had happened to him, without
any embellishments, because they were finding it hard to believe it as it
were. And his narration was punctuated with multiple thanks to his father-
in-law for insisting on having the Monkey-God’s protection for his vehicle.
That had surely helped, hadn’t it?
And those friends told the story to other friends, and they told it to yet
more friends, and then more stories emerged and still more, until the ‘White
Lady of the Forest’ became a legend that was best avoided by lonely
libidinous young men.
~ 31 ~
 THE SLIVER LEFT BEHIND

THE BEAST LIVES inside all of us. He takes on various names—envy,

anger, hatred, vengeance—but he is there, boiling and bubbling under the
surface, making us do things that we wouldn’t have done if we were purely
human. What helps us in keeping this beast in check is the fact that we live
in this world with other humans, following a spoken or unspoken, written or
unwritten code of ethics. This takes care of our humanness and bestows
upon us the power to suppress the beast inside us to stay within and never
rear his ugly head.
But, if we are taken out of this world and kept in isolation, that day we
begin to wane. That is the day our humanness starts diminishing, bit by bit,
and we turn from creatures of thought to creatures of instinct. With that
shield of ethics shattered, we are but susceptible to the fiercest attack most
of us would ever face in our lives—the attack of the inner beast.
It is in isolation that our inner beast fully comes alive. It is when no one
is looking, that is when it takes over us, and makes us do our bidding. And
in time, the human aspect of us is almost entirely gone, and we become the
beast we have been hiding for so long.
With Meenakshi, the beast was literal.
The day she planted herself in the forest, she had no reason to hide who
she was. And the day she understood she didn’t need to hide, she stopped
making any attempts to hide it anymore.
Over a period of time, there were only faint shreds left of the girl she
once was. Her outward appearance stayed human, but that was about the
only human thing that stayed with her.
In all other aspects, the Yakshini took over.
This transformation happened bit by bit, bone by bone, drop by drop of
male blood, and took a period of ten years.

***

If she had been in the real world, she would have turned thirty at this
midnight hour. She would have been surrounded by her small group of
friends and family, all of who looked like hazy figures somewhere in a
stifling mist now, and perhaps they might have sung that birthday song for
her. Ha! The birthday song! She did not even remember the lyrics of that
anymore.
The jungle was not as much a part of her as she was of it. She had made
friends with the beasts, for they had no other option, did they? Once a
leopard, for which the forest road was then quite famous, blocked her path
and snarled at her. The poor animal was quite nonplussed for it lived in the
forest land and did not quite know how to behave when faced with a
human. His haunches stiffened, his head lowered, his eyes narrowed, and
that famous defensive big-cat snarl came out.
But the woman did not even bat her eyelids. She just stood there,
looking at the animal, and then proceeded to pat on its head like it were
nothing more than a pet poodle.
The leopard whimpered and flopped over to the ground, sitting in a
cradle of its own limbs like a domestic housecat, and even purred at this
strange woman.
Perhaps he recognized the beast inside the woman; he understood that
just like he had to put forth a menacing front for defense rather than
offense, the beast inside this woman was also living for nothing more than
survival. Beast understood beast.
Over the years, she made friends with every beast and bird of the forest.
She became intimate with the trees (though they woefully reminded her of
the sal tree from a bygone age) and she trod on every path with her naked
feet with just the one anklet on it. The grains of mud, the splinters of wood,
the pollen in the breeze, all of these forest elements entered within her
every day and every night, and she took them all in. And the forest became
a part of her.
She had nothing to celebrate her birthday today though. She just knew it
was; for she had heard the date when she had been hiding in wait for prey
and heard two men standing on the road by their broken-down car and
talking about some payment that was to be made. Her plan was to kill those
healthy men right away; their man juices was her feed after all, but she let
them go for they had just given her something to look forward to.
She was thirty.
What could she have been? A mother? A daughter looking after her
ailing parents? A well-adjusted wife helping out her husband? A woman
with a career of her own?
But, no. Here she was. Torn and forlorn, a beast of the jungle.
 ‘You are done, Meenakshi. Finished. Only your kernel remains; the flesh
inside is me. It is I now. Only I.’
She was thirty. And dirty. It didn’t matter anymore.

***

With her head bowed, and patting the trunk of every tree that she passed,
she walked into the heart of the forest. She proceeded towards a spot
farthest from the road. It was in the heart of silence, where even the
occasional horn did not disrupt the silence. The only sound that could be
heard was that of the birds and the insects.
Over the last ten years, she had made this her home in the forest.
The home was a den. Perhaps a lion or a tiger had lived in it once; but
now no animal would dare to come into it. Even the occasional hyena or fox
would not dare enter, for they knew who the occupant was. This, despite the
fact that the floor of the den was strewn with bits of human meat and bone
and blood, most of it half-eaten, half-discarded.
She sat on the stone quite like an animal, her legs spread out, her knees
pointing skyward, her head cocking in every direction. She had lost count
of the men she had devoured over the years (had it been really ten years?).
Her choice of meat was single young healthy men with warm blood flowing
in their veins. Her choice of dinnertime was the late night when these men
would be alone in their vehicles, driving along with a song on their lips,
horny as hell. It was easier if they were already aroused; though she knew
she could have aroused them in a heartbeat. She just wasn’t interested in
that part anymore. All she had to do was to make her appearance on the
road in front of them, and most of those men would walk out, their tongues
and cocks hanging out, and she would move in to make her kill.
No one bothered. No one cared. No one came to look.
The legend had grown; of that she was sure. Even those two men who
were standing by their broken-down car just a day ago were shivering in
their jeans. They were talking about the white lady of the forest, and one of
them trembled so much that the other had to hold him to keep him steady.
Anyway, she was in her lair now, and this was where she would feast.
She looked around and saw. There was that half-eaten trekker who had been
foolish enough to take the forest part in the hour before dawn. The stupidity
of the human race was infinite, of course! Why walk into the jungle
knowing that death awaits you there?
‘To be my dinner, that’s why.’
Waving her hand and tittering with an eerie laugh, she proceeded on her
haunches for her birthday treat.

***

For ten years thus, the eclipse went on, the beast part of her slowly
eclipsing the human part until almost all of it was consumed. Yakshini
overpowering Meenakshi. What were once sporadic transformations earlier
gained more permanency, lasted longer, became more ruthless.
It might have helped if there was contact with someone else. A
companion, perhaps? But not even the mysterious Krita appeared to her
after recounting her tale. It was as if his job was to only make her aware of
who she was, and then he disappeared into whatever realm he had come
from. It took her a while to understand that he would not appear anymore,
and when she did, even the beast part of her felt a great pang of loneliness.
Ha! One would think you should never feel lonely when there are two
of you in one body, isn’t it?
That night—the night in her cave when she realized Krita would not
come any more—that was the night she accepted her reality too. She
accepted who she was now, and was meant to be shunned. She resigned
herself to whatever she was then, and stopped fighting it.
That night she had two men for supper, two stout policemen on their
bikes who were in a rush to reach somewhere. They never reached there.

***

But, everything has to change. No eclipse is total; a sliver of light is always

left behind. Even the most stable of things have that slight twinge bubbling
beneath the surface, and you might not sense it right away, but it is there,
growing just a teensy fraction bigger every day, until a day comes when you
realize it is there and you cannot refute it any further. That little nag, that
little itch, is buried somewhere deep within you, and it will torment you
silently until it becomes a part of what you are, and you then have to do
something about it or your life will not remain the same anymore.
 That is why people don’t live in a state of felicity forever. They have to
act on that one little itch they have, because if they do not, the itch will
grow and grow till that remains the only thing they can think of.
For this savage woman in the cave, that itch was one man. The man she
had left behind.
Harikumar.
His memories were the sliver of light the eclipse could not overshadow.
On those lonely nights when she fed herself well and was sprawled out
on the floor of her bloodied den, there was this little glimpse that she would
have. Just a flash, no more, but it was enough to take away her sleep for the
night. It was of him, her husband, and for some reason, she would always
see this vision of him—bare-chested, his hands on her, looking right into
her eyes with his gentle eyes, preparing himself to make love to her. And it
would be so real to her that she would forget her reality for a moment and
shuffle herself, so that he could position himself on her, and then stretch her
lips into a pout so that he could place his lips on hers, but the very next
moment, she would realize the impossibility of it.
That Harikumar wasn’t there with her.
She had left him behind, in a world where she was probably not
welcome anymore.

***

The only time she spared a man voluntarily during her orgy of kills was
when a young couple was driving by the forest. The man was at the wheel,
and he barely had a mustache, and he had those gentle eyes that were
narrowed to look intently at the road ahead. He resembled Harikumar to
such an extent that she had to come perilously close to the vehicle to see
whether it was him. It was not.
The couple stopped in the woods even, and the man led the woman
behind a tree, and they got in the heat right then and there. Maybe the forest
had made them romantic.
The Yakshini was merely a few feet away from this scene of
lovemaking. She saw the man loving his woman, she felt his caresses on her
skin, she felt his kisses on her, she felt his organ beginning to rise, press
against her flesh. And she moaned.
 Every cell of this man would have been succulent to her, and a part of
her wanted to glide by, give that bitch of a woman the ultimate scare of her
life, and tear this tasty delicacy of a man to shreds and feast on him.
But she didn’t. For some reason, which the demon part of her could not
understand, she just stood there among the trees, witnessing the
lovemaking. Even as the couple pulled their clothes back on and drove
away, she did not move.
That was one of the few men who came within her periphery and went
away without knowing of her presence. And, for some reason, she actually
felt happy for sparing that man.
~ 32 ~
 FULL OF DECEIT

IT WAS ON one of the fast-approaching wintry nights of that year that the
Yakshini had an epiphany. That spark of enlightenment was abrupt, but it
had been a long time coming. It had started building up when she had heard
about her past life for the first time—when Krita told her of her
insurmountable beauty in that wondrous land. What would it mean to be
reinstated in such a position? Of beauty? Or power? Of love?
And it was quite a simple revelation. Just one line:
“Human life is short, and the girl will die.”
It was a pure thought, fueled by necessity and devoid of any evil intent.
Where was the girl anyway? Other than her form, nothing of her persisted
anymore. And even that form was not hers. It was a borrowed form,
borrowed from her.
So, wouldn’t it make sense to end her miserable life altogether and free
both herself and the girl?
What had stopped her so far from doing so was another of those lines:
“You mustn’t do her any harm, or you will be trapped on earth forever.”
But now the Yakshini was no longer a creature of wisdom. She was a
creature of instinct, and instinct deludes the thought of one who acts upon
it. It was one of those moments when the shadows were more than the light.
Just as quickly as the revelation hit her, her decision was made.
All it would take was one snap of the finger to end this girl’s life. Why
should she wait for it?
The question now was: how would it be? You are in a prison with bars;
you can do your best to break the bars, turn them and twist them so that
they give you a gap big enough for you to pass through. But what do you do
when the bars are parts of your own body? How could those parts be
twisted and bent without feeling untellable pain?
In this forest with limited resources, how would it be? Should she throw
herself off a cliff? There was one in the middle of the forest, one that was so
forgotten by everyone that it was laden with creatures never seen by
humans who are blind anyway. But the cliff wasn’t too high. The most it
would do was to break a few bones. Should she stab herself with
something? There were several metal and glass objects thrown by careless
drivers along the streets. But that would be brutal and require courage.
 And killing oneself is not a courageous act at all.
What other way was there? Of course, she could leave the forest for a
while and search for more suitable options. But that would mean going back
to the world of men, and she feared that.
So, how would it be? What would be the painless, sure way that would
lead her out of this entrapment?
In the distance, she heard a honking horn.
Yes! That could be it. She hoped and prayed that vehicle was a truck. It
sounded large enough. She could just go in front of the vehicle and throw
herself at the mercy of its giant unforgiving tires. If she positioned herself
correctly, it would be over in a flash, and she would be back to where she
belonged.
That was it. It all sounded so simple now. Why did she wait for half a
miserable lifetime to hit at this plan?
Without wasting another moment (more so because she did not want her
courage to falter), she glided through the jungle towards the sound of the
speeding vehicle. As she swiftly moved past, the boughs of the trees
caressed her body, as if making a vain plea for her to stop and rethink, but
she was not alive to the touches of those companions anymore.
She forced herself to only think of the beauteous world out there
somewhere as that mysterious narrator had described. All she wanted was
to get there.
‘Everything will be over now, Meenakshi. I’m setting you free!’
With a smile on her face that belied all reason, she came up to the
middle of the road, and with a bosom that was heaving with both thrill and
trepidation, she stood, waiting as the roar of the vehicle’s approach drew
closer and closer.
She hoped the driver did not see her too soon and step on the brakes.
Her intention this evening was not to seduce. Oh, if only you could turn that
thing off for a moment!
‘Okay, a minute more. Here it comes. Yes!’
The vehicle turned the bend of the road, which was about a quarter of a
mile away, and as it grew larger, she saw it.
It wasn’t a truck. It was a bus.
A red BEST bus to be precise, one of those rare ones on this route that
ferried passengers from one end to the other of the city right through the
heart of this forest road.
 A sigh left her mouth. The bus might have people, common everyday
folk, and a woman killing herself under the wheels of their bus would
meant a lot of inconvenience. Maybe there were children in there, or old
people, or pregnant ladies. Should she distress them? Shouldn’t she wait for
the next vehicle with a lone driver?
But, no—
Was she a fool? Was she thinking of the minor distress these bastards
would face while her own life had been a long saga of unfair punishment?
And, in a way, it was better that there were people. More witnesses would
mean less trouble for the driver. “She came in the way of the bus; it’s not
the driver’s fault,” people would say.
Yes, this was actually better.
Let the whole world see the spectacle of her doom.
She drew in a deeper breath and stood her ground.
‘Fasten your seatbelts, Meenakshi. We are going for a ride.’
This was it. This was the moment that would finish all of this and take
her to the place that she should never have left.

***

The BEST bus driver Mangesh Lokhande was humming a song as he drove
on this desolate untrafficked road. At this evening hour, there was nothing
on this forest patch and, if he could ignore the fear and stories that other
drivers back at the depot told him, this was actually the most thrilling part
of his day. Cutting through the forest. What pleasure! Feeling the cold wind
hitting his face as he zipped by on this monstrous vehicle. He lived for this.
When the forest path would start, which was around two miles behind
where he was now, he would tune off from the chattering sounds of the
passengers behind him, ignore his conductor (that guy would take a seat and
relax, for no one would board the bus or leave it on this entire patch), open
his top shirt buttons, feel the breeze on his chest, and just drive. The depot
was just outside the forest path where the city resumed, and that was the
end of his workday too.
Things couldn’t be better!
And today, it was quieter. It was a Sunday and there weren’t many of
those middleclass workers returning home in his bus. In fact, apart from a
young couple seated in the front seat right behind him and a group of young
friends seated at the back, there was no one else in the bus.
Lokhande thought of his brother’s wedding that was to happen next
month in his hometown Satara. Christmas holidays would begin soon, and
perhaps he could put in a leave for a three-day holiday and go plan the
wedding? There were invites to be given, the hall contractors had to be
shouted at, the lousy music boys had to be given mother-sister bad words if
they had to do well…
“Oh, fuck, no!” he screamed, and swerved his steering wheel sharply to
the right.
The conductor came up running. “What happened?”
A volley of those mother-sister abuses Lokhande had been thinking of
left his mouth in those ten seconds as he brought the bus to a screeching
halt in the middle of the road.
“What? What?” the conductor asked again.
“Fuck! Fuck! There was a woman on the road.”
“What?”
“I mean, standing right in the middle of the road.”
The conductor looked back at the passengers. They had been jolted, and
were still gathering their bearings.
“Mangya, what are you saying?”
“Arre, asshole, I am telling like it is. There was a woman standing right
in the middle of the road.” He took a moment to let his shudders calm
down. “I was just about to hit her, when she just turned sharply and left.”
“Where is she now?”
“She ran away into the forest.”
“What?”
The driver looked out of the window and vented out. “You
motherfucking bitch! Illegal daughter of four fathers! Your mother’s cunt!
Couldn’t you find another vehicle to kill yourself?”
“Mangya, Mangya…”
“What, fucker?”
The conductor placed his hand on the driver’s arm. “Get out of here.
Quickly.”
“What?”
“Get out, quickly. I am telling you, no?”
Lokhande looked at the conductor. It was that look.
 “Oh, fuck.”
The conductor smacked its lips. “The stories are true. Just get out of
here, I say.”
“Oh, fuck… you think it’s the White Lady? Did I just see the
motherfucking White Lady?”
The conductor opened a bottle of water and sprinkled some on the
driver’s face.
Lokhande, his palms sweating now, held the steering wheel and
stomped his foot on the accelerator. The bus immediately purred to life, and
started to go back to straighten itself on the road.
When the bus had moved barely ten yards, the man of the young couple
came up to the driver and asked, “What just happened here?”
“Go and sit!” Lokhande ordered. “Let me do my work.”
The conductor gently pushed the man back. “You sit, sir. Don’t worry.
Everything is fine.”
“But, tell me…”
“There was someone in the path.”
The man, realizing he’d get no information now, slowly went and sat
next to his woman.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing happened they say,” he said, holding her arm. “Roopali, you
relax. They say nothing happened.”
And then he held her hand in his shivering one and she shut her eyes
trying to go back to her little nap.
But the man was disturbed. He had reason to be. It was just a flash, but
he was sitting on the front seat, and he had seen the woman.
There was no mistaking it, unless his mind was playing tricks.
It was her. Meenakshi.
“You are breathing hard, Hari,” Roopali said, placing her hand on his
chest.
“Don’t worry,” Harikumar said. “It’s nothing.”

***

The yell that left Meenakshi shook the very trees, making their fruits fall
and sending the birds flying away to the belly of the jungle. Why, oh why,
did fate have to deal this cruel hand to her?
 Couldn’t it just have killed her and rid her of this misery?
No!
Fate is a bastard standing on one leg and grinning through its fucking
one-tooth face.
Just when she thought it’d all be over, it had to show him to her again.
And he looked younger than ever. Just as she had left him. Just as
gentle, just as handsome.
She had fought with all she had, and she had forced the Yakshini to
retreat. The sliver had won over the eclipse.
No, no, no. She had thought the Yakshini had taken over her completely,
but no! She was still there; and she could fight back. Looking at him,
Harikumar, was what made that happen. She knew! She just knew!
And she did not want to kill herself.
Gone was the desperation to end herself. Instead, it was replaced with
hope to live for an eternity.
But, what was that?
He was with a woman.
The funny thing is, she still recognized that bitch.
That secretary. And she looked married to him now.
A painful image of her bare-chested bespectacled Harikumar thrusting
himself into that slut of a secretary came alive in front of her eyes and she
roared again.
Deceit! Men are full of deceit.
For once, the Yakshini did not talk back. Maybe she was pissed too.
~ 33 ~
 A VISIT LONG OVERDUE

MAYBE YOU CANNOT rip people through the middle. Maybe you can.
Who knows? Who has tried?
But, if you could rip people through the middle, perhaps it feels just like
this. Just like how she felt in those moments following the unfortunate
sighting of the one man she never wanted to see again.
And, ha, how ironic is that! There are people you yearn to meet for a
lifetime and you don’t even gain an ink-stain’s worth of where they are; and
then there are people you don’t want to ever cross paths with, and those are
the people that fall directly into your lap.
And they leave you torn. Like she was now. One half of her wanted to
leave everything behind and rush to the man who the quirks of evil destiny
had put into her path again, and that was definitely a sign, wasn’t it? How
could she turn a blind eye to it? But there was this other part of her, which
wanted to do nothing else ever again, just give up everything and exit this
world of misery and hopelessness.
Two halves of her, sprinting in two different directions with all the
speed they could muster. If that does not rip someone apart, what will?
No, this could not go on. The turmoil had to stop somewhere. This
wasn’t an existence; living a shunned life, cursed to live only by killing.
This wasn’t life. Maybe, just maybe, that was the gleam of hope. The love
that was still in her. Love erects monuments, it brings the dead to life. What
was yet another miracle for love?
It wouldn’t do to sit here brooding thus. She had to find a way out to
visit his house again. For a few moments, she forced her mind to be silent,
and then she shut her eyes and tried to map the route to his house. It wasn’t
easy; she had been away too long, and now it was not possible to return.
Not without seeking the help of other people, but that was one thing she
could not do.
She did not want to go to meet her love leaving another trail of death
behind her.

When an entire day had passed with her sitting on a rock in front of her
den, staring unflinchingly at a little touch-me-not plant that hadn’t drooped
its leaves even once, she slowly stirred. The rumbling of yet another vehicle
came up to her, and her urges to end her turmoil one way or the other was
rekindled.
Love seemed to be far away, in another world altogether, and she could
not reach it. Hell, she did not even know if that longing despair she felt
within her heart was love. What if it wasn’t? What if it was only a seething
urge for vengeance, a burning wish to dig her claws into the slender neck of
that bitch who was now hanging on his arm? She was a beast now—there
was no doubt about it—and beasts know one thing. Their territory. Perhaps
what she felt now was just that—an unmitigated urge to protect her
territory. But, was Harikumar her territory anymore?
Fuck! These thoughts wouldn’t lead anywhere. It was time to just stop
this. If only they would let her…
“Ratisundari…”
She heard the voice. Yes, she heard it.
It came from somewhere between the boughs, and she turned so sharply
she probably tore a ligament.
There he was, radiant like a glowing lamp in the forest, his body
displaying its handsomeness to the hilt, smiling a benign smile that started
on his lips and seemed to permeate through the jungle.
“Krita…” the being within her wept.
“Ratisundari…”
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Watching you.”
“Why? Why won’t you come and save me? Why won’t you come to
just talk to me?”
“I am not allowed to talk much to you, Ratisundari. It’s the curse. Our
previous chat ran quite long. I was not supposed to—”
It was the Yakshini who stood now and ran up to him, still encased in
the beautiful shell of the human girl. Smoke hissed from the spots where
her fingertips touched his skin. “I don’t care,” she sobbed. “End this for me,
Krita. Stop this torture.”
“It is not in my hands.”
“Oh, it is. Kill me. Just stab me. Drive something through my heart. As
you said… just as you said… when the body of this inauspicious girl will
be no more, I will be free.”
Krita wiped her tears. “You look lovelier each day.” He kissed her on
the eyelid, an eyelid that she willingly closed for him to kiss. “But, my dear
Ratisundari, everyone that is born has to go through the cycle of life and
death. Everyone gets a fair share of life. And this girl you are in, her time is
not up yet.”
“When will it be?”
“You shall know,” said Krita. “I don’t know when it will be, but I know
that you will be freed soon, one way or the other.”
The Yakshini hugged him now, and he, after a moment’s thought,
brought his arms around her.
“Oh, that is the best thing I have heard in this life,” she said. “And I will
be free… I will be back again in that beautiful celestial world that I have
longed for since I heard about it from you.”
Krita took a step back and released her from his hug. “But… but there is
one hitch.”
The Yakshini looked at him sharply. “What?”
“It’s the same thing that has caused most of your problems. Love. You
will be confined to Earth was long as you have that other love in your
heart.”
“What love?”
“There is only one you have.”
“Harikumar?”
Krita nodded. “If it weren’t him, you would not have named him.”
“But…”
“The choice is yours. You and the human girl have dispersed within
each other so much that no one can tell where Meenakshi ends and Yakshini
starts. And what of Harikumar? Is he Meenakshi’s love, or have you formed
feelings for him too? Who can tell? But, you cannot straddle two boats. You
have to end your love for Harikumar one way or the other, and then when
the girl’s life comes to an end, you shall be back in Alakapuri. With me.”
“How do I end her love for Harikumar? Do I kill him?”
“Is killing someone the only way you know to end love?” Krita sighed.
“Ten years is a long time. He has changed. Go see him.”
“Back in the human habitat?”
“It has to end where it started.”
“But… but what about the girl? I will still be trapped in her.”
“If I were in your place, my dear Ratisundari, I would not have worried
on that account.”
“Why?”
 But he only smiled. And then he vanished into the woods.

***

These environs were as good as new. The soft floor under her naked feet,
the perfumed smell in the air—things she knew but had long forgotten.
Sights, sounds, and smells, all seemed to betray her. They were hers once,
or rather she was part of them once, but now they were alien. She did not
understand them any more than she would have understood an extinct
creature returning from the past.
She was standing in front of Harikumar’s office.
After that little instruction from Krita, she had wasted no time in getting
here.
It was a late hour, and she stood in the shadows for a while. She did not
wish to be seen for more reasons than one, and so she lurked about in the
little compound space that lay behind his office, from which she could see
directly into his room through his window.
And he was there.
It warmed the cockles of her heart to see him working furiously thus. In
that form, her old Harikumar was back, the very same, the one whose mind
would be full of only two thoughts—his work and his Meenakshi, but not
necessarily in that order. Oh, how she longed to be the Meenakshi in his
thoughts once again.
Then, after waiting an hour, she gained hope.
The office was shutting down, and people filed out one by one, leaving
only Harikumar behind. This was the moment of opportunity she was
looking for, for she wanted him all to herself when she could have him.
With slow steps, and looking furtively in all directions, she stepped out
of the decorative ferns that were her hiding place and inched closer to his
office.

***

Harikumar looked up sharply. That familiar pang was back. He smelled the
whiff of a scent that he had tried hard to forget for all these years, but it
wouldn’t leave him, as though its molecules had tiny little pincers and had
clamped themselves somewhere in the walls of his nostrils. But this time
the pang was sharper. Like it had come from somewhere close.
Just like that night in the bus a fortnight ago when he thought he had
seen her face.
Would she never stop haunting him? Why was she everywhere—in all
the mirrors that he looked in, in all the empty rooms of his house before he
switched on the lights, even by his side on the bed? His psychiatrist had told
him that he was still grieving and in shock, and that these were symptoms
of a form of a long-prevailing PTS, but those were just words, weren’t
they? No one could really label what he felt.
But, harken, what was that?
The sound of an anklet.
For sure.
He left the papers he was working on and stood. The chair protested
with a creak as he left it, and he tried to shush the chair with a hand gesture,
and then realized how idiotic that was. When silence prevailed again, he
turned his ear towards the spot where he had heard the sound—outside the
window. Yes, it was here, faint, but distinct. He could make it out. He
pressed his ear against the glass of the window.
And then there was a tap, right on his ear.
He let out a short scream and recoiled, and fell back on his still
swiveling chair.
“But… but…” he gasped when he saw her figure at the window, still
dressed in the white saree with cerise flowers that he had seen her last in.
“It is not possible…”

***

Meenakshi, wearing that beauty like a curse, pushed the floor-length sliding
window aside and walked into his office. The moment she did that, the
electricity sparked off as if not to steal her thunder.
“Who… How…”
Harikumar was glued back to his seat now, too numb to keep standing,
and he held one hand over the left of his chest.
“It is I, Hari,” she said, her words coming back to her again with the rest
of her memories.
“You are not real. You… you are a ghost.”
 “I am not a ghost. I am standing here in front of you, just as real as
anything else in this room.”
“But… you are… you were…”
“Not dead.”
“Where? Where were you then?”
“Away. Not far from the spot you saw me that night.”
Harikumar shot up. “I saw you, didn’t I? I saw you! I really saw you! I
am not mad.”
“No. Who says you are?”
“All of them do… all… they talk behind my back and think I don’t
listen, but I do. But fuck that, Meenu, how are you here? How?”
Meenakshi moved closer to him. She was carrying Meenakshi’s beauty,
but she had grown taller. Or so it looked to the crouching Harikumar.
Suddenly her form filled up the cabin.
“I had just gone away. After all the trouble I caused.”
“Oh, Meenu!” Harikumar wept. Painful memories came back to him.
But then they had never left.
She stepped forth, her hands rising in a bid to hold him, hug him, but
they fell back again.
“I only came to see you.”
“Why?” he asked.
And that word broke her. From somewhere a tear rolled out. She didn’t
know she had them anymore.
“You didn’t want me to?”
Harikumar sobbed. “I loved you with all my heart,” he said. “Was
anything amiss? I lost everything. Myself, to an extent. My business. I gave
it my all to build it up again. Even Tara Aatya…”
“What happened to her?”
“She is gone. But happily. She found someone, a sixty-year-old
widower, and married him. They are in the States.”
“What about you, Hari? How are you?”
“Surviving each day with a smile.”
“And love?”
Harikumar shot a look at her. “Go away, Meenu. Go away to where you
came from. Don’t stir passions in my heart again. They are not going to be
fruitful anymore.”
She looked down, at his crotch. “Is… is… everything all right?”
 “It is! It is! It took me a surgery and then a corrective one. But now I am
finding my life back, and there cannot be place for both of us in it.”
‘You know why he is saying that, don’t you? Look around. You will find
their wedding photo. Him and the secretary slut.’
She came closer; he pulled his chair back.
“Is there someone else you are sharing your life with then?”
“Oh, fuck you, Meenu! Just go away, please.”
Another tear rolled, a big wet one this time. “Is it that secretary? The
one for whom…”
Now Harikumar stood up. The chair he was on was thrown back with
such force that it went and hit the wall with a bang and some files on a
nearby rack toppled over.
He strode up to her and held her by the shoulders.
“What do you think, Meenu? What do you think? That you will walk in
and out of my life whenever you choose and I will be the same as you want
me to be?”
A wail grew somewhere in her throat and she parted her lips to let it out.
Ignoring that completely, Harikumar said, “You had a chance. A
beautiful life. But you did not care for it. Your inner nastiness did not let
you. And you left, changing me from a man filled with all the goodness of
the world to this—a self-loathing, vengeful swine. What did you expect I’d
do for you, Meenu? Isn’t it enough that you haunt me every waking and
sleeping moment of my day? Why are you back?”
“You will never see me again,” she said, her words garbled with her
wailing noises. “Just tell me once. Is she with you?”
‘Don’t give in, Meenakshi. This has to end.’
“Why do you want to know?” he asked.
“I don’t want to know. I need to know.”
“Why?”
A fire grew in her eyes, so intense that it surely showed in her irises.
‘Do it now. Do it. What are you waiting for, you pathetic bitch?’
Her fingers quivered. She felt it coming, and she could battle it no
longer. All she could see now was the exposed region of his neck above his
shirt, the region where she had once planted soft kisses on.
“Go away, Meenu, and have a great life.”
“Just tell me… is that Roopali…”
 “NO!” Harikumar yelled out so loud that she felt the tingling in her
eardrums for long afterwards. “NO! She is not. She never was. I did not
care for her even back then. I hired her only because she was Nishikant’s
girlfriend and he had insisted. And now… now, she is married to him, and
so…”
“Nishikant’s girlfriend?”
“Well, didn’t you know? Didn’t you use to talk with each other on that
secret phone, Meenakshi?”
It hurt her. It hurt her that he called her ‘Meenakshi’ and not ‘Meenu’.
“Didn’t you see through it at all?” Harikumar said, his anger greatly and
uncharacteristically aroused now. “Nishikant has always been a big flirt.
Right from the school days. But just having a girl did not satisfy him. He
had to win her over. Mind games. Like this big huge chess-master who
controls all the pawns in the game. That’s what he was doing to you too,
Meenakshi. Bhabhiji. Fuck. He wanted to sleep with you, and that’s why he
poisoned you against me. Tell me, didn’t he?”
“How… how do you know?”
“Roopali told me on one of those nights that they had had a huge fight.
Do you know he played her too? Made her think he detested her, and when
she—she, mind you—fell for me, he began to trick her and win her back.
Poison her against me. Which is what he does. He has ruined many lives.
His previous fiancée, Roopali, you, me. That’s a snake in a man’s clothing.
Don’t you see?”
“But… why is she still married to him?”
“She will not be. And yes, Meenakshi, we have thought of getting
married. Roopali and I. What’s wrong in that? We never cheated you. But
now… ten years have passed. Things have changed.”
The fire came back in Meenakshi’s eyes. Her red glowing orbs shone in
Harikumar’s eyes, but he was too choked up to see or notice.
“What will you do now? Will you hurt me again?”
Those words calmed her. This was defeat. Sadness. A plea, even, to be
allowed to move on. She stepped back.
“No. It is not your fault, Hari. It was never your fault.”
‘So what? You are bound to him. You love him still, don’t you? As long
as you love him, I cannot go back to my land. I am killing him. Now.’
“YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING OF THE SORT!” Meenakshi
yelled. “I FORBID YOU!”
 But, if those words frightened anyone, it was Harikumar. So, this it was.
Those things Dr. Gaitonde had said ten years ago about her—all that jargon
about split personalities—was probably real. And that is why he hadn’t
looked for her after she vanished. Yes, it was real, and it looked every bit as
dangerous as everyone had warned him about.
‘You cannot stop me now.’
Clouded with tears, and gasping for breath, Meenakshi came closer to
Harikumar. With swollen eyesf filled with tears, she said, “I… I am really
sorry, Hari…”
“S-Sorry? For what?”
“For… for what this thing inside me is going to do…”
Her fingertips burned now, so bad that she had to scream. She tried to
hold them with the other hand, but they seared her skin. Every cell of her
wanted to stop this, but how could she? She felt the Yakshini inside her
fighting to get out, to assume that gargantuan form, and to smite the one
man who had ever really cared for her.
Harikumar looked at her face, stunned, standing like a trembling leaf in
his own office, his eyes and cheeks red with the fear of death.
And then, there was a sound.
A noisy ring. A dancing cellphone on his desk.
And some connection was broken.
Her claws withdrew; the focus was lost.
“Take the call,” she said.
Harikumar, his eyes still on her, ran up to take the call.
“Hello,” he said, and then made an gasp of the greatest surprise. The
next moment, it turned to that of profound grief.
When he ended the call, he looked straight at her without even blinking
his eyes.
“Strange… strange are the things that happen,” he said. “This… this
call…”
“What?” she said with a faint gurgle in her voice.
“It was from Vatgaon.”
“My parents?”
Harikumar nodded. “It was your father.”
Pictures of her courtyard sprang in her mind, and danced in front of her
eyes till she could take it no more.
“What did he say?”
 Harikumar placed a hand on her quivering shoulder. “Be brave, Meenu.
It is not good news. It’s your Aai. She is no more.”
~ 34 ~
 THE ONE PENDING THING

WHERE WOULD SHE go now? How would she end this? Was there any
place that still called out to her?
All that echoed back to her was rejection.
And when that happens, there is only one logical thing to do. Do the
thing you have to do. Your duties, your responsibilities. Then, leave. And
that is the stage she was at right now.
She knew where her duties lay. They lay in the form of her mother’s
corpse in her hometown and she had to go there and pay obeisance to her.
She had to see that face one more time, lifeless though it was now, and
thank her for everything. Bid her farewell for her onward journey.
But, before she did that, there was just one more thing that had to be
done.
When she thought of that, she heard the smile within. It was almost
joyous.
‘Yes! Yes! I know what you think, Meenakshi. This is the right thing to
do. Go on! Take me there.’
Just like that, Meenakshi turned her steps, and began to walk in the
direction of Nishikant’s house.

***

Here she was, standing outside his beachside house for the first time. All
those years ago, he had probably wanted to bring her in here, take her to
that bedroom that she could see from the window, lay her on that bed, and
do things to her. How many nights did he fantasize about that? How many
nights did he plot and plan his schemes to win her confidence? And then
break it?
On the wall of the bedroom that she could now see was the picture. Yes,
it was her. Roopali. Perhaps her picture had always been here. Oh, how she
was fooled.
And then she saw his face in the picture, and she saw those same
smiling eyes hidden by that beard, and she remembered the warmth they
had brought in her.
‘What are you waiting for? Let’s go in. This window’s fine.’
 Then that bedroom door opened, and Meenakshi shuffled two paces
behind. And she saw him. But not at all as she had ever remembered him
before.
Here he was, dressed in black jacket and trousers, both made of some
kind of shiny material There was something on them, little metallic things
that looked like studs, and they ran all along the arms and legs of the
clothes. What was this manner of costume?
She could not see his face, for his back was facing the window, but then
she heard him, “Well, come in, bitch!”
For a moment, she felt as if he had spoken to her and she froze. But then
she slowly came up to the window again and saw—it was a woman, a
totally random woman whom she had never seen earlier, coming into the
room on her hands and knees. Crawling. Like an animal.
“Bitch! You are gonna do what I say! Buckle up!”
Meenakshi wanted to scream at him now. He had probably held that
woman against her will in his house, and what would he make her do now?
Should she—
‘No. Wait. Let’s watch for a minute. This is fun.’
“What fun?” she whispered.
‘You don’t know, Meenakshi. What they are doing is playing a sex
game.’
“What?”
‘Look at her face. That hidden smile. Oh, the slut is enjoying this. Give
her a few minutes before we go in.’
Nishikant slapped the woman on her rear and she howled. With every
step she took forward, he slapped. And then he took off his belt.
“He’s hurting her.”
‘And he’d have done the same to you too.’
“Oh no! I am going in…”
‘Hang on.’
He took the woman on the bed now. Abuses leaving freely from his lips,
he yanked at her limbs, one after the other, and began to tie them to the
posts of the bed. The woman, in turn, groaned softly and put up a show of
protests, but that made him go all the more firmer on her.
And then, when she was tied to that creaking bed, he stood atop her, his
legs on either side of her hips, and took that jacket off.
 Meenakshi could not watch any further. She ran up to the front of the
house and, finding the doorbell, she pressed on it as hard as she could.
From inside, she could hear him grumbling.
‘Why didn’t you just go in through the window?’
“No. Why should that woman suffer?”
The door opened. Nishikant, dressed in studded leather pants, opened
the door and yelled, “Who the fuck—” and when he saw who it was and
almost collapsed.
“Hello, Nishikant.”
“Fuck! Is that… is that…”
“It is me. Your Meenakshi. No, sorry, your Meenakshi bhabhiji.”
“Bhabhiji, oh my God, sorry, sorry… but how?”
He ran in and put on a towel on his shoulders and stood like a young
boy who has been caught masturbating by his mother, his embarrassment
clearly outweighing his shock of her returning.
“I always thought you would come back one day, you know,” he said,
“but never in the least did I expect…”
‘I am getting bored, Meenakshi. Let me take over.’
And Meenakshi said, “Fine. He’s all yours.”
“What did you say?” Nishikant said.
But now there was no Meenakshi in there. In the same form stood a
different being, a different creature, and that creature took a step towards
the man and pulled off the towel on his shoulders.
“I came back for you.”
“Wh-what? For me! What do you… are you…”
“Come on,” she said. “Haven’t you always longed for me? Look into
my eyes. Don’t lie.”
“What is going on, bhabhiji?”
“Meenu. Call me Meenu. Won’t you?”
“Oh… what… what are you looking for?”
In response, her fingers fell over his chest. “The same that you had been
looking for all those years ago.”
“What?”
“Say it,” she teased. “I want to hear it from you.”
“But what?”
“Look at me. You will remember.”
 Nishikant’s gaze fell on her. Relaxed now, and completely forgetting
that there was a naked woman tied to the bed inside, he looked at her face.
And then his gaze went lower, to the breasts and there it lingered.
“Did you remember?” she asked.
And then, he came forward in a rush. He threw his arms on her and held
her in a tight embrace. “I… yes… I have always wanted you. But how did
you…”
“Did you want me so bad that you had to play all those games,
Nishikant?”
Nishikant flinched a bit, but then he gave up and squeezed her harder.
With one hand, he tugged at the end of her saree, trying to bring it down.
“Let’s not talk about all that, shall we? Now that you are here, let’s just…”
“But, Hari…”
“He’s a fuck. Impotent bastard. Forget him.” He looked at her with eyes
that shone yellow reflecting light from a bulb. “I will give you such
pleasures that you will forget every man on earth.”
“Like you are doing right now? With that girl inside?”
Nishikant looked back. Through the slightly open bedroom door, the
girl’s feet could be seen.
“Oh, don’t worry. I can take her and you and more if needed. Would you
like that?”
She lowered her head coyly, and slightly nodded.
“Let’s start then, shall we?”
He undid his zipper and began to force her on her knees. And then he
tried again. And again. But, to his strangest surprise, she wouldn’t go.
“What happened, Meenu? Why do you resist?”
He tried pushing her down, forcing her mouth to his groin, but she had
now gone as firm as a stone statue, and he recoiled.
“What is this?”
Then she raised her head. And in those eyes were sparks. Sparks of
something that shone from within. Something blood-red. And words,
terrifying rasping words, issued from her mouth, “Games. Just the kind you
like to play.”

***
Her fingers were transforming now, in front of his terrified yes, and the
blight went up to the first phalanges. The skin tightened and dried up to
form ridges over the bulbs of the fingers. She felt them burn within. Then
she came up to him, even as he stood shocked, and squeezed her breasts on
his chest and he moaned. She wrapped her arms around him and brought
her fingers over his back, not touching him yet, waiting to make contact.
Then he unfroze. Squirmed. And breathed hard. “What? Why, why are
you so different?”
“Relax,” she said. “I will give you such pleasures that you will forget
every woman on earth.”
And she brought those tips of her fingernails, sharp as razor edges now,
on his naked back. She saw it in a mirror—the faint line of blood emerging
from his back where the nail made contact with his skin, but the contact was
so fine and masterful that he didn’t feel it immediately. Then he did.
“Ouch,” he said. “What’s that?” Reflexively, his hand went to feel the
spot on his back that had now begun to hurt. He fumbled at the spot and
then took his hand near his now-stunned face to see it was blood.
“Meenu?” he said.
But it was done. It was too late.
“There is no Meenu here, you bastard.”
She came out of his embrace and he saw what she was, as she finished
the last vestiges of its transformation.
As he stuttered and stumbled to one wall of the room, her body began to
grow. Gone was the milk-white creamy skin that he had been so besotted
with just a moment ago. Instead what stood now was worse than anything
he could have ever imagined. This was something with cracked and
blistered skin, pus and blood flowing out of orifices that were definitely not
natural. Wherever the skin persisted, it was as thick as crocodile-hide. Warts
stood on the face, a face that had no semblance of beauty any longer, or
even any symmetry. The lips were no longer the petal-smooth things he had
just kissed; instead they were dangling blobs of flesh, shapeless and lifeless,
moving with some life of their own.
He looked at those breasts, against which his chest had just rested, and
he saw they were no longer soft like the pulpy innards of some sweet ripe
fruit. Instead, they were chunks of burnt wood, accentuated by hairy nipples
that hung out disgustingly, like two tiny penises peeking out from the
mounds. The navel was a black hole, surrounded by hair, and broken, and
something creeping inside it.
And then, finally, he saw the vagina. It was no longer the place where
he had so uncontrollably desired to enter just a minute ago. Now it was a
bleeding pair of lips, hairy and clamped shut, like the tentacles of one of
those insectivorous plants. Then, even as he kept staring at the monstrosity
of it all, that tentacle opened and out of it emerged a bleeding white worm,
looking no different than a weeks-old fetus in an animal mother’s womb.
“What are you?” he could only whisper as he stood, naked, shivering,
freezing.
Stumbling, he looked at the door. The creature stood at the opposite
corner of the room, and the house door begged to be opened and ran out of.
If only he could unshackle himself of his stupor… He shut his eyes, only
for a moment, focusing all his energies into his limbs (and praying) and
then made a running dash.
He did not even turn to look behind. He reached the door, still alive, still
unbroken, and opened it.
Without as much as a thought to his nakedness, he ran out of the room
and onto the beach outside, yelling, gasping, unmindful of the sharp pebble-
ridden sand that would probably render the soles of his feet useless for days
to come.
But he did not turn back. He did not turn back to see the Yakshini
breaking into a smile.
The Yakshini did smile. It wasn’t a smile of joy, or even of humor, but it
was the smile of a huntress who is happy because her prey has given her a
jolly good sport. The Yakshini welcomed this sport. Games. Didn’t he like
to play games?
Then, when the man had run at least one-fourth of a mile, she made her
first move. It was a twitch of her neck, which creaked as it moved, that did
not sound much different than a tree stump being thwacked by some giant
hand.
She stepped out onto the empty beach, her large feet falling on the sand
now.
There was the puny man, a speck now, naked as nature had made him,
running away towards the rocks. She smiled again. He could never outrun
her there. He could never outrun her anywhere. At any time. No one could.
 Howling like the wind that was blowing in her face, her gait now
changed. The calculated steps were done. It was now a gliding motion, a
motion not unlike that of a hovercraft, moving over the sand like a zooming
vehicle.
And the next instant, she was right in front of the running man, and he,
in his fearful blindness, could not stop till he ran right into her.
The impact made him stop, and then he beheld her huge size that was
almost as large as a hill now, and he cried, “This cannot be real. This cannot
be real!”
The Yakshini smiled at that. It was an accursed unforgiving smile.
“Forgive me! Forgive me, whatever you are! I am not a bad man.”
The Yakshini sat down on her haunches, like a frog. He could see her
vagina up close from here, and that wormlike thing in it, and he covered his
eyes. “Let me go,” he wept and sobbed.
Slowly, she stretched her arm. She brought it to his shuddering leg and
then clamped her hand around it.
“No, no, no…” Nishikant yelled.
But she either did not listen or not understand. As if nothing had
changed, she lifted the man by his leg, hoisted him right up in the sky and
then brought him down with resounding force against the rock.
To someone looking from afar, the scene would have appeared no
different than a washerwoman dashing a heavy wet cloth against the rocks
in the dead of that night.
One dash was all it took.
The man that Nishikant was, was now slumped in a bloody mess on the
rocks.
She ripped him then, goaded on by the sound of the waves, and quickly
lapped up his blood, grunts of contentment coming out of her as she put in
morsel after morsel in her eating orifice in animalistic haste.
Then, when nothing identifiable was left of him, she walked back to the
shack.
As she neared it, however, her feet began to hurt, and she realized now
she had been walking on sand. The pain hit her hard, and she ran, not
knowing where she had been for the past few minutes.
It was only when came back to his room that she relaxed, and saw that
she was Meenakshi again. With a sigh, she went to release the woman tied
and gagged on the bed.
 Outside, the dogs came out from the various corners of the beach. They
had no idea of the thing that had just happened, and they had been too
fearful even to bark at that humongous creature. But now they came, in
ones and two and then in packs, and they saw the delectable morsels of food
left behind.
The first dog, a black and white spotted one, turned out to be the
bravest. He moved ahead, clambered onto the rocks, and brought back the
juiciest bit of the meat he could find.
Following his lead, the other dogs moved ahead too, and pillaged into
the unexpected loot they found.
And then they took the bones and went into the water, playing and
romping on the most sumptuous meal they had ever had on that beach.
Slowly, bit by bit, the waves lashed in, and took back with them the
pieces of the bones of the man who had once been Nishikant Rajan.
~ 35 ~
 THE FUNERAL

WITH THE END of her saree covering most of her face, she walked with
slow steps on the mud-path. All she could see now was the way ahead of
her. The overnight ride in the State Transport bus had been bumpy but her
mind was beset with the kind of worries that would put any physical
discomfort to shame. In fact, she thanked her worries. They were her
companions as she returned to the place she had left behind when she was
just a kid.
As she neared home, she felt the soil under her feet. Yes, it was the
same touch that she used to feel when she pranced on it all those years ago.
As her feet crushed the particles of the soil, the whiff of the organic humus
rose and wafted into her nostrils, and she inhaled hard. If nostalgia could
have a smell, this was it.
She occasionally lifted her veil to wipe away her tears. They were tears
of loss and repentance, and they would not go easily. They held the
heartless promise of keeping her awake every remaining night of her empty
life.
But now, she had to steel herself. She was walking towards the most
difficult sight she would ever see.

The first thing she saw when she approached the compound was the
crowd of people, all dressed in funereal white.
In this village devoid of entertainment, even a funeral was an event. She
could only see the backs of the people—men, women, and children—and
they were all looking at the one point that she had to embolden herself to
see. Now the moment felt more real. It was not just something she had
heard. It was something that was true. It was here. She was here. She had to
face this.
She parted the crowd and they moved, without as much as thinking
twice about who this veiled lady was who was shoving past them. And thus,
she made her way forward, passing one person after another, at times
turning to see their faces, all silent, all trying to bear an expression of
gravity and grief. Befitting a person’s last repose.
Then she came to the clearing and stopped.
There she was.
 Lying on the ground on a framework of bamboo sticks, with handles
jutting out on all four ends to be lifted by able-bodied men and carried to
the grave. The shroud covering her was deceptively white and spotless (Ha!
What a sham! Nothing ever was spotless about life!) and was adorned with
flower garlands, the aroma of which spread sickly throughout the
surroundings.
Only, her face was uncovered.
With white cotton stuffed in her nostrils and ears.
Benign, composed, a half-smile dead on those lips.
Glimpses from her erratic memory flashed across her mind. She saw her
mother still standing in the middle of the courtyard, her eyes blazing, angry
words flying out of her mouth, all directed at that Jamblekar woman. Really
—was that flash from this life?
And then, Meenakshi saw her father. Sitting in the courtyard of that
crumbling house, weeping from his hollow sunken eyes like she had never
seen him do before.
He was there, by her side, squatting on the ground, beating his head
with his palms, held back by Manda (she looked so motherly now) and
another of his daughters (was that really Kumud?).
“Why, why, why!” Shantaram wailed, looking at someone in the
heavens above. “Why did you have to take her away? Never was a thing
wrong with her. Never even a fever. Never did she hurt anyone. I was the
one who is sick. Dying. Why not me, Deva? Why take her and leave me
back? Of what use am I?”
His daughters patted his back, and consoled him, but he wouldn’t stop.
“Who will be my backbone now? Who will fight for me? Who will save
me from everyone’s barbs and taunts?”
Meenakshi sniffled at that, so hard that a woman turned back to look at
her. But her face was veiled.
Four men came up then and placed their arms consolingly on
Shantaram’s back. One of them signaled Manda to take him away, and she
gently helped her father on his feet. Shantaram broke into a much louder
wail now, and screamed, “Take me with you! Take me with you! Don’t
leave me behind! Of what use am I alone?”
A young lad, shaved bald, whom Meenakshi had never seen before
(perhaps Manda’s son), came up with a small earthen pot dangling by ropes
from his hand. There was something in it that gave out smoke and the
smoke billowed in every direction as he walked.
The moment had come.
The men positioned themselves at the four ends of the corpse, and then
with a collective heave hoisted the body on their arms. At that very
moment, a chant broke in through the crowd. The boy moved at the head
with the pot in his hand, and the corpse-bearers followed. Then all men
joined in, leaving the women and Shantaram behind, too distraught to
move.

***

Late that afternoon, the courtyard was empty once again. Meenakshi had
lingered, unseen, and now she took the opportunity to walk up to her
favorite corner of the courtyard. She wanted strength for what she was
going to do, and she knew that strength could come from only one thing.
She walked up to it.
“Companion! How have you been?”
Her gentle caresses fell on the aging bark of the sal tree, which had
withered away considerably in her absence, but had still stood bravely. Just
like she had.
There was movement in the tree, or so she thought. She looked up.
There were hardly any leaves left on it to rustle. Only darkened brown
boughs that could hardly provide any shade.
Another part of her nostalgia. Dying.
She wept.
“I am sorry I never came back to see you. I am sorry I turned away from
everything. I have been the most disloyal person ever. A disloyal daughter,
a disloyal sister, a disloyal friend, a disloyal wife. Will there be any
forgiveness for me?”
The tree stood stiff. Perhaps it did not remember her anymore, just like
everyone else here.
“Now even you won’t talk to me, will you, Companion? Do I have to
lose you as well?”
She had come here to gather courage, but now she felt herself more
helpless than ever. In the withered branches of the tree, she saw her hope
withering away. She hesitated for only a moment, and then turned to leave.
She took one step.
And then a smile grew on her lips.
She felt the coldness beneath her foot.
“O Companion! Thank you! Thank you for not deserting me!” she
cried.
With uncharacteristic quickness, she bent and picked up the gold coin
that her foot had stepped on.
“You always know how to cheer me up!” she mumbled.

***

She lurked there in the courtyard for thirteen days and thirteen nights, the
period of mourning. She did not remember much of the rites and rituals, but
she remembered her mother having told her once long ago that the bereaved
do not perform major tasks in this period, for it is the time when the soul of
the deceased is making its journey towards its final destination. Anything
done in this time might tempt the soul or torment it, and disrupt its journey.
Meenakshi did not really remember why her mother had told her that,
and in what context. Had someone died in the neighborhood? She couldn’t
recall. But now, standing there during the thirteen-day period of lamentation
of her mother, she felt she had been told that for this period itself.
And that is why she stayed in the shadows. It was easy because the
courtyard had plenty of shadows and corners. Whenever any of the sisters
would come out, she would quickly hide in one of those. Once Suparna’s
tiny toddler crawled up in the courtyard when she was not looking. It was
only when he tugged at her saree that she became aware of his presence.
She was barely able to pull her saree away from him and rush into the space
behind the compost pit when Suparna arrived, screaming at her baby.
In the nights, she saw the shadows of her family in the house, which
fallaciously seemed to be full of people. But she also saw the dilapidated
walls, the peeling paint, the old rotting furniture. She saw the imminent
ruin. She knew that these people wouldn’t be in the house for long. All her
six sisters would go back after the mourning to their houses and their
husbands, and will probably forget they had an ailing and lonely father back
here. He will be left behind, to cry through those lonely nights, and what
could she do about it?
 The men in her life had to be sad. They were destined to be thus.
Her heart broke again. Maybe it was the last piece that broke this time.

***

‘You bleed too much, don’t you?’

Meenakshi did not want to hear the voice, not now, but it came. On the
twelfth night of the mourning period, when she was sitting on a rock near
the compost pit, it came.
‘The last moment has arrived. You are withering. I can see that. And you
cannot silence me now. Especially not when I am saying the right thing.’
“You are never right. Nothing about you has ever been right.”
‘What does this family mean to you anymore anyway? You cannot even
face them. Your mother is dead; your father is dying. Your sisters hate you
anyway. What’s to linger here for?’
“Just get out of me. Please! At least for a minute?”
‘Ha! You don’t realize it even now, do you? I am not inside you. I am
you! You are two people in one, my dear Meenakshi!’
“But why don’t I have control on you? Why can’t I shut you up?”
‘Haven’t I tried to shut up too? I did not say anything at your mother’s
funeral. Now, she was a lady! A strong woman. She would have done the
right thing in a heartbeat. Wonder how none of her courage has rubbed off
on you.’
“You don’t know anything about my mother.”
‘I know her just as much as you do. Don’t you know, on some of those
lonely nights when she used to tell you stories, you would sleep but I would
continue to listen? Your mother would think she was caressing your cheek,
but it was mine she was caressing too, wasn’t she? So don’t you tell me I
don’t know her. I know everything of her, and of you.’
“All right, I give up. I shall fight you no more. What shall you have me
do?”
‘End yourself. Quit all of this; it is of no purpose. The world on the
other side is bliss. You shall see.’
“You claim to know a lot of it? Just because that naked man told you a
story? What do you know if it is true?”
‘Not just him. I know. Krita was just the narrator; but as he told the
tale, I actually moved in those lawns of Alakapuri. I saw the ugliness of
Kubera and the beauty of his gardens. Yes, I was there. I know. I am meant
to be there again. End yourself; free me.’
“Wait until tomorrow.”
‘Then what will you do?’
“You shall see.”

***

The next day, Meenakshi sat in the last row of the women mourning in front
of her mother’s garlanded photograph. She blended well in her white saree.
Shantaram sat helplessly at the head of the mourners, and it was not
difficult to see how his body had emaciated over the last two weeks.
A pundit kept on chanting some verses in Sanskrit for the eternal peace
of the deceased, and apart from that on every mouth there was dead silence.
The words made no sense to Meenakshi, but she knew they spoke about the
reality of life, of how everything that has come to be has to come to an end
as well. For an hour he went on, and by the time he had finished, the
courtyard where they were sitting was so thick with the white fumes of
incense that it looked like an untimely fog had descended.
One by one, the people stood and went to the front to the garlanded
photograph. With joined hands, the touched her mother’s best-known
smiling photograph reverently, praying for her safe transit from this world
to the other, and wishing a listless Shantaram their goodbyes, they took
their leave. Meenakshi looked intently at Manda’s son who was standing at
the gate with a bowl of some sweet, the prasad, of which every guest
partook a handful as they took their leaves.
She stayed put in her place though, and even when the last of them left,
she did not notice. Such was the daze that she was in.
And that daze was lifted when a familiar voice shot in her direction.
“MEENU?”
Stunned, Meenakshi looked up.
It was her father, standing upright now, looking at her as if she had
returned from the dead. But was that too far from the truth?
Her sisters stopped the various tasks they were involved in, and they
held and grabbed their assorted children, as if they were trying to protect
the kids from some infection that had walked into their midst. Mercifully,
none of the guests were around any longer.
 And Meenakshi became painfully aware that she was the last one sitting
in that empty courtyard.
“Meenakshi?” Shantaram said again. “Is that you, Meenu?”
Meenakshi threw aside her veil and her sisters gasped. Shantaram’s
wasn’t really a gasp though; it was a punctuation of pain.
He took two steps forward in a rush, but then came to a dead halt.
“How, Meenu? But how?”
“I just had to see Aai one last time,” Meenakshi stood up. No thought
went into speaking those words; they just fell out of her.
“But why? Didn’t you leave us all? Abandon all of us?” This was
Suparna, now clutching her boy who was itching to run away and explore
something.
Meenakshi cast her eyes to the floor. “Trust me, tai, if I could have
helped, I’d never have abandoned anything.”
“Why have you come here now?” Manda asked. “Where is your
husband? We hear he has gone mad in your absence.”
Meenakshi nodded. She had no words to tell them that she had seen his
madness already, and there was nothing she could do to alleviate that pain.
She could not tell them that her curse wasn’t hers alone, it was of everyone
she touched.
“I won’t be here for long,” she said.
There was dead silence after that. No one asked why she wouldn’t be
there; perhaps no one cared. She had been counted among the dead for long.
Just as no one would ever ask their mother anything anymore, no one would
ask her either.
“I just have one thing to do.”
“What?” Suparna asked.
“I need to go into the house.”
“Why?”
“Please let me…”
Meenakshi stepped forward. The single anklet on her left foot clinked as
she walked, barefoot. Step after step fell on that courtyard floor, leaving
dirt-marks behind. She crossed her mother’s picture, and then her father,
and then stepped into the house. The moment she stepped on the floor of the
house, a wave of comfort ran through her entire being. The floor was of red
stone, hard as the scraggy surface of a cliff, but when you have walked long
on a surface, even the hardest surface becomes as soft as a cloud. And in
that moment, she really felt as if she were floating over clouds.
Suparna stepped forward, but Meenakshi gestured at her firmly. “No,
tai,” she yearned. “Let me go alone.” And then she looked at her father and
said, “Please.”
Shantaram nodded.
Meenakshi came into the house and took a sharp left at the corridor. The
years hadn’t dulled her memory about her house. But, more strangely than
that, the years hadn’t changed the house one bit. Apart from the fact that it
was almost in ruin and might topple over at any instant, nothing about the
house had changed.
She saw her father’s chappals outside his room, broken and thinned
almost to a membrane. She recalled his proud leather Kolhapuri chappals
from an age ago and sobbed.
She came up to the staircase at the end of the corridor and taking the
mustiness of the air in this portion of the house, she stepped on the first
stair.
‘What are you up to?’
“Shut up!” Meenu admonished the voice that had come up again. “You
have no say in this.”
‘Don’t I? You cannot do this, what you are going to do. This is not yours
to give away.’
“I will do what I want.”
Meenakshi walked to the corner of the attic, where the hanging cobwebs
gave evidence that no one had come for years, and then she lifted a
tarpaulin that had been kept there ages ago. And when it was lifted, she saw
the storage chest there, just like she had left it seventeen years ago.
With a little squeal of excitement, she bent down and undid the clasps of
the chest, and threw open the lid.
Suddenly, the room was bathed in golden yellow.
The glimmers of a thousand gold coins shone right in her face and her
eyes reflected the twinkle. Her lips parted and gave way to a smile,
something that they had not done for a long time.
‘No! This is not your wealth. This is Kubera’s wealth. I am the protector
of Kubera’s wealth.’
Meenakshi saw the fat man engraved on those coins, and suddenly he
looked grave. Now she knew who that man was. He had a name.
 “He means nothing to me!” she said. “Think of this gesture as my
revenge against him for including me in your curse.”
‘It won’t bode well. Giving away Kubera’s wealth is never a good thing.
Whose else do you think the coins are? Do you think the coins magically
appeared? Fool! This is but part of Kubera’s vast wealth that’s hidden all
over the earth. Like under that sal tree you love so much.’
“I don’t care for your Kubera.” Meenakshi scooped two handfuls of the
coins and held them against her bosom.
‘But I am a Yakshini! I am supposed to guard Kubera’s wealth. Isn’t that
what I am supposed to do?’
Meenakshi only smiled. She held the coins close to her chest and
walked slowly, retracing every step of the way, and came back into the
courtyard.
Shantaram’s mouth fell open even before she reached. She walked up
and placed the coins on the table where her mother’s photograph was
installed.
“What is this?”
“Don’t ask, Baba,” Meenakshi cried. “All I have caused is pain and
suffering to all. Please consider this as compensation for some of it, though
I know it is not enough. Even all the wealth in this world and beyond is not
enough to pay for this pain.”
“But where did you get this from?”
“It is mine. Don’t ask. Repair this house. Return to your glory. Get your
respect back, that which you so strongly deserve.”
Suparna came up now, with unmasked fascination in her eyes. “Is this
another of those magic things of yours?”
Meenakshi laughed. “What is magic? Simply a name for things we
don’t know yet. For illusions. Don’t think of all those things. Just have a
good life, all of you. And if this is not enough, Baba, there’s a lot more of it
in the loft up there. You will find it easily.”
Just then, this moment was interrupted by a loud clapping.
Meenakshi turned swiftly to look, and despite herself, she was
confounded to see what she saw.
It was Tappu, standing there inside the gate. He had not grown much.
He stood like some kind of hobgoblin with a hunchback and a twisted smile
on his face, and he clapped with some ecstasy that only he understood. A
well of emotions rose up in Meenakshi’s heart as she looked at the pitiful
state she had put him in, and she mumbled to her inner voice: “Look at him.
Does he deserve to be like that?”
‘Yes, I should have killed him instead. Why didn’t I?’
“Fuck you!”
Meenakshi walked up to Tappu and held his hand. He jumped in joy,
and said in a singsong voice, “Meenu! Meenu! Meenu holds my hand.”
That brought his mother into the compound, and the moment her sights
fell on Meenakshi, she almost collapsed.
“YOU! YOU WITCH!”
Immediately, she ran out screaming, “Hey, listen, people! People! She is
here! Come, come quickly. The witch is back!”
Shantaram came up to Meenakshi. “You… you must go now. Before she
brings Jamblekar and the others…” he said.
“Yes,” Meenakshi smiled. “The time has come anyway.”

***

Meenakshi walked to her mother’s photograph and with folded hands paid
her tributes to it. Her eyes were benign even in that picture, as if she
understood what her daughter was going through. Hadn’t she always
understood? Always known? That she did not know what she had to do was
another matter.
Then Meenakshi fell at her father’s feet and looked at her sisters with an
inscrutable expression, and finally began to turn around and walk. Nothing,
nothing of her was fathomable anymore; she appeared to be one of those
mystics of whom you can never tell. Only they know their way ahead.
She went up to the sal tree, and just like she used to do in her childhood,
she hugged it. No one could hear the words that left her lips at this point,
but they said, “Take me away, Companion. Make me yours.”
And then she sat down. Cross-legged, in a meditative pose. Her back
reposing against the huge bark of the tree, her eyes looking straight ahead,
at the gate.
She didn’t see her earthly family anymore. All she saw was the gate,
and all she heard was the voice within.
‘So, you are doing it! You are!’
“I am freeing you from my body, dear Yakshini,” she mumbled. “For
whatever it was, we had a life together.”
 Then Meenakshi saw something appear to her left, some kind of specter,
away from everyone else’s line of vision, as if it was meant only for her.
She smiled.
“Look, there he is,” she said. “He has come for you.”
And then she saw. It was him. Krita. Standing by the compost pit, his
face bearing the expression of one whose true love is to be united with him
soon.
‘Oh! So he is! But what about you, Meenakshi? What will you do?’
“Why? Who can take me away? This is my home, isn’t it?”
But all of those words weren’t clearly pronounced. For, while she was
still in the middle of that sentence, a shout arose from the gate even as the
mob entered.
“WHERE IS SHE? THE WITCH! WE WILL BURN HER TODAY.
RIGHT HERE! RIGHT HERE!”
And Shantaram ran up to them, waving his hands trying to stop them
from entering, and then the girls went forth and even their children, but the
mob wouldn’t listen. They entered the courtyard and pulled out everything
they could. Even the table on which Renuka’s photograph was installed was
smashed to the ground, and the courtyard was pillaged once again.
Then Tappu shouted, “THERE! THERE SHE IS! MEENU! MY
MEENU!”
Everything froze in that instant. They turned to look in the direction the
lunatic was pointing.
It was the tree. The sal tree.
Shantaram kept his eyes shut even as he turned, for everything that had
happened, he could not bear the angry mob ripping his daughter to shreds.
But when he opened his eyes about half a minute later, he realized, with
no mean shock, that he should not have worried at all.
The spot where his darling daughter had been sitting was now vacant.
Empty as if it had never been occupied.
And he caught only a flicker, only a tiny flicker, of something like a
white piece of fabric entering the bark of the withered sal tree.
Was it… No, it couldn’t be!
But the next moment, he saw that his doubt was probably true. For, right
in front of the eyes of half the village, the almost-dead sal tree once again
burst into tender green leaves, sprouting from every node on every bough.
Even as they looked, the leaves grew and came into their full glory, and the
flowers came on too, those bright yellow-red flowers with their petals
shaped as hoods, and they raised themselves as if in salute to the people
looking at them.
And then…
There was a glimmering of gold in the soil around the tree, and
everyone held their hearts that threatened to fly right out of their chests.
~ ~
 EPILOGUE
THE SAL TREE still stands in the Patils’ courtyard to this day. It is no
longer an ordinary tree though. It is one of the most sacred spots known to
humankind and is now one of the Shalbhanjikas.
It took the villagers a while to understand. But when the wandering
ascetic (from whom Renuka had once taken the black thread) visited the
village again years later and told the people that she was a Yakshini,
everyone bowed in reverence. For, the sal tree has been associated as the
abode of Yakshinis since time immemorial.
Shantaram Patil relocated to another house in Vatgaon to get away from
all the memories and lived there until he died ten years later. It was after his
death that his old house was converted by the villagers into a shrine for the
Yakshini. Today, people come to this Shalbhanjika from far and wide to
experience the magic of the sal and the surrounding life, which has defied
death over the ages. It is said that the Yakshini’s spirit still visits the sal
from its abode in Alakapuri at times and fulfills the wishes of those who
devotedly pray to it. A few of the lucky ones find strange gold coins under
their naked feet.
People of the village have a newfound respect for the Patils too, and
their busts find a place of pride next to the sal tree.
Meenakshi’s body was never found. The girl is believed to still reside
somewhere in the courtyard, and on lonely nights people have had
sightings, but she never does any harm. However, the believers of the
Yakshini lore believe that the girl was consumed within the tree, and that is
what gave it its life back.

***

Harikumar married Roopali a few months later. They visited the

Shalbhanjika a year after it was built and prayed for a better life and a child.
The entire village gathered to see him at the tree, and as they watched, a
host of the flowers fell into his lap, as if offering him a special blessing.
But it was more than those flowers. As he walked around the tree, his
naked foot fell on something in the soil, and he picked it up. His eyes
clouded with tears when he recognized what it was. It was the lone anklet
that he had seen on Meenakshi’s feet the last time he saw her. Unseen by
anyone, he slipped it into his pocket.

***

The grand reunion happened in Alakapuri moments after the girl’s

departure into the sal tree. Krita was waiting for Ratisundari at the gates,
now celestially adorned, decked up like a groom for her.
Ratisundari was back to her bewitching Yakshini self, and Krita,
handsome as ever, took her into his arms amidst much applause and cheer.
The applause and cheer stopped only for a moment when a loud bellow
from behind the crowd issued, sounding not unlike an angry elephant’s
trumpet. The assembled crowd turned to look, and there he stood, the
demigod king, Kubera himself, with his arms akimbo, a gold-spitting
mongoose playing by his feet. And then he hollered too, and cheered, with
very uncharacteristic words, “Welcome, O denizens of my land! Come
back! And make this land your own once again.”
There was much festivity and cheer upon that grand welcome, and
everything was back to what it was.

END
 OTHER BOOKS FROM THE AUTHOR
~ NOVELS ~

Maya’s New Husband

Maya Bhargava, a schoolteacher, falls for the wrong man. Soon, her life is embroiled in an intricate
web of catastrophic proportions that takes her to the world of serial killers and mystic aghoris.
Amazon India bestseller in the horror category, peaking at #1.
http://mybook.to/MNH

Pishacha

An undead creature comes back for his reborn human lover. The biggest hurdle, though, is that the
woman now loves another. To reclaim her love, the creature will have to fight against giants and
witch-mothers, holy men and the gods themselves.
Pishacha is Book 1 of the Supernatural India Series.
Amazon India bestseller in the horror category, peaking at #2.
http://mybook.to/PSH

~ SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS ~

The Evil Eye and the Charm

A collection of six short stories on the theme of the Indian nimboo-mirchi tradition. This is the belief
that tying a charm of a lemon and seven chilis at the doorstep wards off evil and keeps it away from
entering the house. But does it really work, or is it a myth?
http://mybook.to/EEC

Bound in Love

Eight stories that attempt to piece together the puzzles of human relationships. Shorn of their pink
and rosy exterior of romance, these stories delve into the murky darkness that lies in conventional
and unconventional relationships of love.
http://mybook.to/BIL

Right Behind You

Thirteen stories of horror of different genres. Fear comes alive in these sometimes psychotic,
sometimes psychological, sometimes funny stories. From a haunted pair of chappals to the son of the
devil looking to be born, you are not going to get a more varied horror experience.
http://mybook.to/RBY