It was cold.
Shaam was trying to gauge what was going on outside while still hiding under his quilt. He was calculating. Wake up exactly fifteen minutes before the alarm goes off and curse everyone to your heart’s content. How many dreams lurked within that singular state! A child’s muddy hands wiped his face. He was waiting for his mother. His heart was about to burst. He would stare at the window with his eyes shut until the scene outside was clear to him. Then, with his eyes still closed, he would try to visualise it. Why is the singer Baba standing in a single spot today? Did he stop in front of a house? Has the sky torn open? It was the tenth time this morning that this thought had occurred to him. With his eyes still closed, he fished for his diary and noted it down. He had written the whole diary with his eyes closed. Would he read it with closed eyes too, or would he open them? Maybe there’s nothing inside this diary. Maybe it’s completely blank. Maybe it’s all written together, one thought on top of another. What if the pen never worked? Maybe he never wrote anything, or maybe he doesn’t exist, and neither does his diary. Right at this moment, something came to him. Walking from Chanchalo’s courtyard, crossing Laghu Kirana’s street, Baba was coming straight toward his house. If it weren’t so cold and his eyes weren’t closed, the scene would look romantic. Mother would wake up soon, and then Father would, too.
If you trust me, I’ll tell you that the moon, which is right behind Baba’s back, is nothing but Mother’s plate. Baba knows this very well, or he would never walk around begging, not with his tambourine at least. Baba walked around scratching at the walls while he sang. Later, when he brought the tips of his fingers together, they felt soft to the touch. Baba was beautiful; deep brown complexion and soft hands. Some children believed that a variety of creatures lived inside Baba’s tambourine. It was easier to believe this with one’s eyes closed. But as soon as you open them, the disbelief returns. I wish I could keep my eyes shut forever. I feel like I have numerous incarnations, and each one of them has a different story. Why not wander around in the sky today?
With his eyes still closed, Shaam got up. His head hit the roof, and a few birds flew off the banyan tree. He carefully wrote down the scene that had just occurred to him as a result of the collision.
Scene: The moment my head hit the roof, I saw stars. But what I saw afterward was in no way normal. My warm breath turned fragrant when it came into contact with the cold air. Numerous flowers started blooming within that fragrance. The water was green and the sky yellow. The flowers were variegated. Words broke free of thoughts and wandered. I felt a desire to talk to all my incarnations about this experience. Every incarnation has a story of its own.
Now think about it. In this village, where even the newspapers arrive two days late, how do I have access to all these books? A conspiracy is in the works. Each of my incarnations has a different face. It’s possible that when you met me, the friend I was talking to at the time was none other than an incarnation of mine—or maybe something worse! Something more horrific? Now brace your heart for this one, but what if you too are an incarnation of me? Don’t hold your breath; let it mingle with the cool air outside. It’ll turn fragrant. It looks like this is the first time you’re experiencing my effects. It’s an experience similar to the churning of the sea. So many things come out. I use some of the small ones every day.
Baba’s tambourine is made of leather. It’s either snake hide or alligator or deer! Labba and I would argue about this every day. Labba’s whole understanding of the world comes from tomes. He’s read everything. Everyday Chacha would try to persuade him to leave. “What are you still doing here, in this stinking town, even after gaining all that knowledge?” But Labba wasn’t ready to hear any of it, he would reply, “The less one understands, the better. The key to greater knowledge resides in not understanding.” Labba loved to talk in such roundabout ways. I never gave a single thought to his philosophizing. It was his pastime to get into arguments like this. And it was fun as well. Two or three of us would put a cot down in the gali on summer afternoons and sit down to enjoy both the juicy mangoes and Labba’s even juicier tales. Labba was never short of stories, nor Chacha out of mangoes. Often, you could find fairies dancing on the heap of discarded mango pits. Labba would pick out the smallest of the fairies and talk to them. The drain flowing in front of us would turn into a purple spring. The fairies would fly there one by one and sit on the fenugreek plants that sprung up along the drain’s edge. I love eating fenugreek leaves, especially those growing near the drain. My grandmother would go and pick some every evening, then serve it with potatoes and curd. I must have eaten some fairies with it, because whenever I had fenugreek leaves, I’d turn up in the fairy land in my dreams. The fairies would complain that I had trapped their souls inside my stomach. One day, I too might sprout wings.
Am I thinking about all this in the future, or am I old already? Shaam thought as he lay beside the window, his eyes still closed. Baba had neared the window now. His singing had mingled with the birdsong. Shaam knew yellow light would spill out of the window as soon as the bulb was turned on. Mother might wake up soon.
(He had come to a compromise with his shadows. The floral designs on his clothes were shinier than the light in his eyes.)
Everybody knew that reading strange books was Shaam’s only hobby. It’s not clear why Mother got so worked up about it. She divided Shaam’s books into two categories: some books landed in the “ours” category, others relegated to the “other” category.
Mother is about to come in.
She hates words. She cleans the words hanging in the air like one would clear out cobwebs. This strange phenomenon has been occurring over the past few days. Words slipped out of the diary at night and hung around in the air. What astounds me the most is the fact that Mother never saw it as absurd. She came in. First she cleaned the floor and then wiped my face. Then she removed the cobwebs with a broom. Along with the cobwebs, she also removed the words that hung in the air. I just stared at it all, awestruck. I couldn’t understand a thing. It was only a few days later that I could see the whole picture. This is all Chachi Damari’s doing. I had started listening to the stories told by her shadow under the tree every day. Anyway, that is a longer incident, and I’ll get into the details later. She is the one who had hung the words. Later, I came to learn the mysteries behind some other incidents as well. The flower blooming in the dried-up pot sitting in my window. The artistic crack in the rock in our yard. The change in the colors of the tree for a few seconds, etcetera. But much more surprising was the fact that Mother wasn’t taken aback by any of these things. She incorporated removing the words into her daily routine as if it were a normal activity. Every morning, she would wake me up and then remove the words with a broom. All the while cursing at me or reciting one of her scriptures or singing a song or explaining things, or simply coughing. It was then that I remembered the very first thing Damari taught me: “Whatever you can see around you is just the precursor to whatever is not visible. The only utility of the scenery around is to make you aware of the things that are not there.” I remember that Damari had laughed after saying this.
Baba stood right in front of the window now.
In a few moments, when Mother turned the bulb on, Baba would be awash in yellow light. His black beard would turn green. This one change hides numerous inscrutable mysteries in itself. One day Damari had told me about it in detail. All of this seems like nonsense when I’m awake. It’s only when I look at things with my eyes shut that the meanings become clear. “Keep your knowledge in your pocket,” Father had shouted once. Since then, I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket. I also bought a small brass box for this very reason. But then I started collecting my Mother’s tears in it. The art of turning teardrops into pearls was something I had learned from Damari as well. Regardless, the brass box had one more purpose. Taking revenge on my Mother for her taunts. I could show her the frozen tears to hurt her whenever I felt like it.
From कालजयी कमबख़्त by Amit Dutta. © Amit Dutta. Translation © 2023 by Vaibhav Sharma. Published in partnership with the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. All rights reserved.
