Siddharthan attained enlightenment.
I saw him once from afar. The crowd of bald heads led up to his closed eyes from the meadow at his feet. Lanterns blazed. Light flew across the orchard and his curls sparkled. The journeys that lasted until our last meeting ended each time with him leaning out the window, his long eyes closed. The forehead was without a wrinkle. He was that young. I was, too.
I walked away… Expecting a likely encounter, I went on foot. The river flowed into the darkness, indifferent. I continued on the trajectories where the thorns and stones lay, and then walked the shores.
Who am I?
The destroyer of a million dreams… The flames of a thousand curses drenched my pale body without cease. I scattered in the unfamiliar meadows… The barbed hook of his widow’s numb gaze clutched at my heart.
My fingertips and eyes tingled with hurt. She might have collapsed in bed feeding the crying child at the very moment he left. He woke me as he went. She was somewhat salvaged… from the struggling, protesting intellect of a man twice her strength. Any attempt to read a woman who is a complete stranger to you is as stupid as sculpting on ripples. Reality frazzles more than any starvation.
He asked me countless questions. He asked me, only me… about the repetitive nature of life, I believe. I was proud… so proud, that I thought I was someone that great. I sat cross-legged and told him that it is indeterminate, struggling not to move my eyeballs. But his final questions blew out the candles of my pride. Nimisha, his youthful widow, was thrown into an ocean of uncertainty.
‘Will my daddy return?’ His sky-tall child asked me in every nightmare.
‘Mom… do you know why we learn history?’
‘It is to know how we became what we are… isn’t it?’
‘No… it is to make us learn from past mistakes and not commit them, no matter what…’
‘Ah haa…’
He lay in her lap, gazing at her eyes where yellow lines of fragility had spread. The grey above her ears crept toward the crown of her head. I sat in silence, watching the figure of a grown, fragile son in his mother’s arms. I rested against the wall. Nimisha rolled her eyes.
Appu smiles just like Siddharthan… that scarce smile of his! He was always reluctant to smile… and when he did, it was as if he was fighting to hide his crystalline teeth.
Siddharthan joined our class in an unexpected supplementary admission. I was unimpressed. But with time, I underwent many quiet evolutions to earn my spot beside his left shoulder on the back bench. He talked nonstop. Then, one random day, he went silent. He would listen to everyone from an abandoned corner, his sighs flowing and intermixing with the murmurs.
I remembered the gloomy evening I took Nimisha and their son home after my father passed.
‘It was an evening like this when you and Siddhu first came to see me…’
She never spoke of him again.
I am afraid of the night. There’s a tale about a fox that would gulp down the rice balls of children who were reluctant to eat. If you didn’t feed him, he would swallow the child whole. If you eat, you’re safe. But I have no memory of that fox. It is the grey-furred wolves that haunt me. They wander all over my brain, gazing at the sky, sharpening their glassy yellow eyes. A kind that lives on snow-clad mountains. At night, the memory of the children they’ve engulfed slaughters my peace. The darkness drags unreasonable terrors from the depth of my uncertainty. Countless packs of these grey wolves chase and devour me. The corridor from nightmare to reality is always dimly lit. The smiling wolves resemble Siddhu. But instead of rice balls, he demands Nimisha and our son. My blood drips from his canines.
I was struck by a sudden fright on the day of Appu’s fifth birthday. He cut the cake and gave a piece to Nimisha. When I asked for one, he refused. It was just a child’s tantrum, but it tore my heart. That’s when the nightmares of Siddhu’s return intensified. I locked the gates with multiple locks, their chimes echoed in my brain. Yet every night, he thrashed against the gates and broke into our yard.
I lost everything so unexpectedly–my mom, my dad and Siddhu… Then one afternoon, Appu left. He packed my two or three saffron-dyed dhotis and left a goodbye note stating he would never return. I was asleep on the cement slab in the veranda. I asked Nimisha over and over if he had gone in search of his father. She consoled me. But I think she was just trying to calm me down.
‘Daddy…’
Appu stood on the wardrobe’s door, rocking. I didn’t bother to scold him. He then jumped down, looked at the ceiling and raised his left hand, cosplaying Ben 10. I told him about the foxes; he just laughed and ran out, through the room and across the veranda. I never interrupted Nimisha, not even when she hit him. I was afraid she would shout at me to stop interfering with her and her son.
I feel a void when I think of him. The kind of void you feel when an unattainable toy goes missing. What if the neighborhood kids took it? Is this feeling suffocation, or an impending death? Is it my destiny to live and die inside this void?
‘Why are you starving yourself?! That little rascal is his father’s son. He will never come back, no matter what.’
The yellow lines of fragility spread all across her eyes. Appu ran around the yard with an airplane, its right wing broken. He will never return; he is Siddharthan’s son.
I have never thought deeply about Nimisha. She simply became my wife on a random evening. That’s all. But a storm took shape in my brain whenever I thought of Appu. The stories that he listened to, the songs he recited… I handpicked them all for him. He has been ‘my son’ from the day Siddhu left. She only became my wife many, many days later.
‘Daddy… the blue butterfly should’ve fluttered across the gardens without meditating, right!!!’
‘Ya, Appu… that’s what it should have done.’
She was half awake in the ICU, worried about Appu’s father. I sat by her side. She pressed my hand. She murmured that Appu would not return. The flame in her eyes went out. She was probably waiting for Siddhu. She clutched my hands and fell silent.
Her hands rose above her melting body on the blazing pyre, her long braided hair charring to nothing. The chips she made for me and pickles she saved for winter were all finished by the fifth day after her passing. I sat on the steps leading to the fields –the same steps where she used to wait for us to return after work and school. I recently started knitting the one she left behind… All the things we never learned!! Appu never returned from the end of the stony way. He ran after a red ball and vanished.
About the Author
Niranjana A. V. is a Research Scholar in Philosophy at University of Kerala, and an aspiring author.
