A Sister's Promise (27 page)

It starts with the famine. There’s been not much rain for two years running, not nearly enough for livelihoods dependent on agriculture, so tensions simmer along with the earth—parched throats panting for rain and hungry for water.

The farmers do circuits of the temple on their knees; they feed laddoos and milk they cannot afford, and would give anything to have a gulp of to soothe their angry throats, to the Goddess so she will give them rain.

But, every morning without fail, the sky is such a bright blue that it hurts the eyes; the clouds are light and fluffy, frisky as lambs, not wearing a broody black scowl, nor pregnant with rain and fatigued with hefting their moisture-laden burden.

The sun is relentlessly, cheerfully yellow; the green grass now the gold of hay bales, the wells arid as baked cowpats. The ground is cracked, people ravenous, and livelihoods destroyed. Children die from drinking unclean dregs scraped from the bed of the dry lake. The earth starts splintering as do relationships. It is a dangerous time. A time when war can erupt from a mere rumour, a wrong word, a misplaced look.

Da is preparing for our house move, has been for months. He is sounding out farmers in other villages, looking for jobs. But there are none going. The drought has put paid to that.

The longer it takes for Da to organise our move, the more relieved you are, Ma, as am I.

Hurt and angry though I might be, I balk from taking that final step, cutting ourselves off completely from Puja, leaving the hut where her memories thrive. And sometimes I think Da is delaying the move for the same reason.

And then one day, he comes home to say that he has found a job as a bricklayer in a village the other side of Dhoompur. We will be moving in a week.

You look shattered, Ma. Raisin hued shadows ring your pink rimmed eyes as you digest this news.

‘Please,’ you implore. ‘We can’t go away without telling her. Please. I want to see her, just once, before we go.’

And to everyone’s surprise, including, I imagine, his own, Da agrees.

We decide to go to see Puja the day after next, so you have time to prepare all of her favourite delicacies, Ma. You are hoping that once Da sees Puja, talks with her, he will not be able to leave her behind. You are hoping that meeting with the beloved daughter who was once his world will convince Da to take her with us.

But before we can act on this unexpected sanction from Da, before you can put your plan for reuniting our broken family into action, Ma, our world changes, irreversibly, forever . . .

It starts, as these things do, in the marketplace on a Thursday morning, the day after Da gives his permission for all of us to visit with Puja, the day before we are due to meet her. What follows is what I pieced together later, from various disparate accounts as to what happened.

The market sits on a little flat piece of land right next to the highway, and it is permanently cloaked in the peach-coloured dust displaced by the buses hurtling past on their way to the big cities, which stop once in a lucrative (for the villagers) while when the conductor or driver or one of the passengers needs a pee or a bite to eat. Situated where it is, there is always hope that some of these rich people from the cities will buy the produce and meat that the villagers grow but cannot afford to eat.

Now, these potential customers take one look at the wilting produce and the flaccid meat coated in a layer of flies, and climb back into the buses without buying anything. And with each lost sale, starvation and death loom dangerously close for the villagers and their loved ones.

At one corner of the market is the Muslim butcher who sells beef but not pork, of course. In these difficult times, his stall is almost empty, with just a few scrawny cuts of meat from emaciated beasts.

Nobody knows how it happens, but some beef from the sacred cow ends up in the Hindu onion vendor’s stall and in one searing heartbeat there is uproar. The villagers, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, upper caste and lower caste alike, who have lived side by side harmoniously for so many years are now up in arms against each other. Shouts rend the air, stippled red, brimming with vitriol. Accusations are hurled; Allah, Jesus, Vishnu and Brahma are all besmirched and reviled.

And then . . . a struck match, and in a moment of unthinking madness, the onion vendor sets fire to the beef and the market is in flames in a matter of minutes.

I am at the convent in Dhoompur, Ma, along with most of the youth and children from Nandihalli. To get our minds off our suffering, dogged thirst a dry gasp at the back of our throats, the nuns have organised a fun day, having managed to procure a barrel of water from somewhere at great cost.

It is the prospect of clean water after days of drinking the trickle of muddy slush jettisoned from the bottom of the well, which, no matter how much you boil, Ma, still tastes of dirt, and leaves me feeling thirstier than before, that finds me at the convent, despite us being Hindus.

Even though most of us are not Christians, we, the youth of Nandihalli, join the nuns in singing a hymn together, thanking Jesus for our blessings, our newly watered throats raised in grateful chorus. Our hands are clapping along as we savour once more in memory the sweet nectar taste of fresh water, when a bedraggled man bursts into the room, smelling of smoke. He falls at the nuns’ feet, and asks them to please come at once, to help the injured in Nandihalli market.

‘There is a fire,’ he says, sobs choking his words out in strangled wheezes. ‘Everything destroyed. People have died.’

But even before his words have sunk in, I am on my feet, running as soon as I hear the word ‘Nandihalli’. My legs are flying, even though I am short and squat and chubby. Flying like they did when I got my PUC results.

Please God,
I pray to a generic god, all gods,
please let my parents be okay
.

But even as I frantically send my entreaties heavenward, I don’t hold out much hope. If the gods have not listened to the appeals of an entire village and not sent rain, why would they now listen to me, a mere one of their many supplicants?

Orange heat, sinister and swelling on storm clouds of suffocating navy hits me first. It is a completely different heat from the heavy, over baked, aching-for-rain temperatures we have been experiencing during the drought. My eyes sting and I cannot breathe as I run into the smoke that invades my lungs. Then, as my sight becomes accustomed to the dark smog, I come to a shocked standstill.

The market is no more. Just gyrating balloons of dense blue smoke interspersed with tongues of ruby flames that a few men are desperately trying to put out, a losing battle for lack of water. The place where our stall used to be, where I have spent so many happy, content days, is razed to the ground, just a charred wasteland.

Where are you and Da?

I grab the lungi of a man rushing past me.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘Where have they taken all the people?’

He nods his head to his left, where the highway used to be and I see the bodies laid out in a grim, unremitting line.

I walk over on unsteady legs.

Please God. Please.

I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see anything familiar. At least then I can hide behind the flimsy skirts of faltering hope.

But I can’t not look. What if you and Da have been put there by mistake, if you need me and I didn’t check . . .

I take a quivering breath. Some of the bodies are charred beyond all recognition. My fellow villagers, every one of whom I know by name, each with their quirks and their vices, now unrecognisable, their unique traits, their flaws, their passions wiped out by the impartial brushstroke of death. And then . . .

No
!

I don’t want to see this, not here. I want to run away, back the way I came, but I lean closer anyway, my subconscious knowing what I don’t want to acknowledge.

My da’s big toe, with the broken nail, bent out of shape when he fell off the coconut tree. It never got fixed back in place as he couldn’t afford to get it seen by the doctor. I follow the leg up to his face, my heart weighted down with the horror of what I don’t want to admit.

I will his chest to move.
Up and down, Da, up and down
.
Please.

But it doesn’t. It doesn’t.

He used to carry me on his shoulders, those mornings when we went to meet the boats and I would rest my cheek on his head, the smell of coconut oil and unwashed hair, my arms tight around his neck, until he said, ‘Look, Sharda, here we are,’ and then he would gently squat down and I would climb down the ladder of his back and jump off, my feet sinking in the soft sand.

‘Da,’ I whisper, ‘come back, come back to me,’ and I hold his body, too warm, still burning.

Hands grab at me. ‘Come away, girl.’

Where are you, Ma?

I don’t want to find you here too. My eyes flicker up and down the line of bodies, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, united in death. My gaze cringes from the gruesome tableau and yet I am unable to look away, coming back agonised, to rest on the one with the broken nail.

Please God, I’ve got it wrong. Please.

I fight the arms holding me, the smell of ash and cooked flesh, but there is no give. I try to close my ears to the screams emanating from loved ones, the howls that are being wrenched out of me without my being aware of them. I ache to block my heart to the truth of what I have just witnessed.

You are not among the bodies, Ma. At least I cannot recognise any parts of you. I quake as I think this.

Please God,
I pray even though God has not heeded a single prayer of mine. Not one.
Are you even there, God? If so, how can you condone this? How?

‘They took some of the injured to the clinic in Dhoompur,’ someone says.

And I pray, once again, despite having doubted God just moments before. I pray that you are one of the injured, Ma, and not one of the bodies they are still pulling out of the wreckage.

Puja
.

Puja needs to know and I must be the one to tell her. But first, I need to find you. I begin looking for you, Ma, and I get lost in the smouldering crowds. The entire convent, nuns and youth alike, their faces locked in a collective grimace of intense shock, have congregated in this wasteland that was once our bustling market, the repository of so many happy memories.

Just then there is a loud groan, a demonic clap, a flash, and the sky erupts and the rain we have all been longing for explodes onto the blistering earth. It quenches the flames the few straggling survivors have been trying desperately to extinguish, and drenches the dead, these men who have longed for rain but who can no longer feel it—their last rites of fire and water.

And the people who are still alive turn their faces up to the heavens and open their abused mouths, greedily lapping up the ash-flecked drops, and even though it seems sacrilegious to be drinking while their loved ones cannot, their thirst wins out.

I find you lying on a mat in the corridor of the clinic in Dhoompur, which teeters under the unexpected weight of this inexorable influx of casualties.

You are unrecognisable. Your body is distended with weeping wounds as you wait your turn for medical attention. Your flesh sizzles to the touch, throbbing and sore. But you are alive.

Your eyes light up when you see me. You manage to wrap your swollen, suppurating fingers around my hand even though it must be agony for you to do so.

‘Your Da? . . . ’ Your leaking eyes plead with me to lie.

I look down, at my blistered and ash sprayed feet, and see a blackened big toe with a broken nail.

‘No,’ you whisper.

I gather up the courage to look at you. Your eyes are closed, and tormented tears squeeze out of engorged lids.

‘I was fifteen when I married him. We were wedded twenty eight years. He was a good man.’

I hold you then, as gently as I can, your hot body pulsing, as we weep for the man we loved. Da’s memory colours a space between us, and robs us of words.

‘Puja,’ you whisper at last, invoking the other person missing from our family tapestry. Your voice is halting, and your breath comes in wheezing gasps. ‘Please. Find her. Be the one to tell her. Bring her home.’ You try to squeeze my hand, your palm too warm.