THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM (26 page)
Read THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM Online
Authors: Sharath Komarraju
Chapter Thirty Three
220 Die in Village Fire
By our special correspondent
AP Mirror
|April 02, 2002
|
Nobody knows who or what started the fire. All that is clear is that the destruction is complete. Not one hut has been spared. Not one building has escaped. The bodies of all 220 inhabitants were found in their respective homes; most of them had died in their sleep. The police are now in the process of identifying the dead, and it is with great regret that we announce that the body of Miss Sonali Rao, one of
Mirror
’s most promising young journalists, was found in an old house that has reportedly been uninhabited for over a year.
The police believe that the fire was most probably caused by accident. They say the hot and dry weather that Palem has been experiencing lately must have made it easier for the fire to spread.
Chapter Thirty Four
1970
S
he lay on the cot watching the roof, legs parted, her sari pulled up over her thighs. She had only looked one of the four men directly in the eye. Mangayya and Sundarayya were dogs anyway, she was not surprised they had come. But Subbai? And Gopalam? She had spat in Subbai’s face and stared into Gopalam’s eyes. What sweet words did Avadhani tell those men to make them come here tonight, she wondered.
She had expected him to come too. But he had not. After Gopalam had staggered away, he had peered in, looked at her, chuckled, tossed a fifty-paise coin at her and left, laughing.
Sanga, her husband, was still out on the porch. She heard him count his money and sing to himself gleefully. What sweet words did Avadhani tell
him
? What sort of hold did the man have on all of them?
But what was the need to place all blame on him? If there is no blackness in your heart, is it possible for anyone to exploit it? If Sanga had been talked into drinking, if he had been talked into doing
this
to her and to himself, did it not mean that his mind had been corruptible?
The door opened, and he stumbled in.
‘Lachi,’ he said.
‘Hmm.’
‘Make me some fish curry. I am feeling hungry.’ He held his hands out to steady himself, but failed and collapsed on the floor. ‘Oh,’ he said when he hit the ground. ‘Make it nice and spicy.’ And then he started singing again.
She adjusted her sari, got off the cot and went into the kitchen. Was this her father’s curse playing itself out? How she wished she could go back to her father right now… What she would give to hear him read out from the Gita for her one last time… How badly she wished the years would roll back and freeze on those summer evenings, when she slept on the porch and heard him tell her stories about the stars…
She picked up the rolling stone and stared at it. A brahmin’s curse did have a lot of power, she thought. All you could do is bow down before it and give in. What else could you do?
Her fingers tightened around the stone. From somewhere deep in the recesses of her past, another voice broke out. That voice belonged to the girl that wanted to leave Palem and become a lawyer. She couldn’t hear what the voice was saying, but it was definitely not asking her to give in.
She walked back to her husband and squatted next to him. He was snoring now. She held the stone in both her hands, then lifted it up over her head and brought it down on his forehead with all her strength behind it.
All it took was one blow. He neither screamed nor stirred. He just hiccupped, and as the blood started to flow, his breathing stopped.
She took his head in her lap and massaged the wound, spreading the blood all over his face. For the first time, she noticed that the moon was out that night. There was a song that her father used to sing when the moonlight was particularly beautiful. She cocked her head to one side and crooned, now and then bending down to kiss him on his cheek.
Challani raja o Chandamama
…
