RED
RED
Choti had begun to hate the colour blue. Not that she knew the word ‘blue’ and not that she had hated it always. But now it was different. It was the plastic slipper that she now held up to the sky. She hated the blue slipper. It was not a nice blue as the sky she decided. She has always liked the colour of the sky, but today she wasn’t sure. Today was somehow different. Today once again everything had begun to feel bad. It was the same kind of bad that she had felt when they had told her that her baby had died and that it was her fault. They should have let her hold her once. She would have liked that. It was a girl, they had told her that or had they said it was a boy?
It was so difficult to remember all this.
She felt tired and didn’t want to think about it and tried to shut it out but once again like so many times in the past, somewhere deep inside she felt a part of her slowly coming apart. It always left her giddy and faintly nauseous. An image of nausea like when her child was big in her and her navel looked liked those small sweets you bought at the mela, made her smile. But she just couldn’t get the thought to stay. It was like chasing dragonflies near Harihar’s pond.
Now she had to find the pair of the slipper that she was holding in her hand. It was a sharp bright blue in the afternoon sun and smelled strongly of something bad. It was not like the blue of the ribbon she wore when she had gone to school. That was very pretty. She had tied it across her eyes and had walked home without any help from her brother…Choti missed him. She remembered laughter. She heard herself calling his name but couldn’t remember it. There was also a yellow pencil. It had a nub of pink rubber at one end with a shiny gold ring that went all around. Choti loved the smell of the rubber…
She searched her mind for the smell, but everything became mixed up. And her head hurt. She looked at the slipper in her hand and her mother-in-law was screaming at her.
She had lost one of the pair. They were saying that. She just could not remember how she had lost it. She found it so hard to remember anything these days. It was her mother-in-laws favorite slipper, her only slipper. In fact it was the only slipper in the house. It had cost a lot of money. She had seen a ten rupee note once. Manna had showed it to her and even promised to let her keep it for a few days. And now they said she had lost one of the slippers. If she didn’t find it she would be out and begging. Hadn’t her mother law told her that, or maybe it was her father in law…?
“…the bitch has brought nothing but bad luck…why do we have to continue to feed her…the bitch…”She didn’t mind that; she was only scared of the beatings. Was that why her head hurt?
Why had she lost the slipper? She had to find it.
She had brought bad luck to the house. They had said that. Choti didn’t know what luck was. Somewhere in the swirl and wash of her mind she was aware of something she had to do. She just had to keep her mind on it. She was hungry. Yes, hunger was there like an absence. Choti didn’t understand hunger anymore. It was just a sensation that she lived with constantly. She knew only that a good drink of water made you forget it. Fear, too was there, a shadowy outline pacing the far edges of her mind.
She tried to keep her mind on the blue slipper.
But the sun and the clouds and the wind moved and whispered around her, confusing her, not letting her remember and do what she was supposed to do…and she was forgetting why she had thought the other blue slipper would be out here in the fields and why it was so important to find it.
It was nearly November. The skies had begun to clear but the smell of wet earth seemed to cling to the distant band of dark clouds.
There was an odour of lightning. The land surrounding the small village had been harvested bare, and now stretched barren and brown, to far Gopinathpur. The old neem tree, that grew out of the small hillock next to Harihar’s pond stood to the west of the dark and brooding Mukherjee Mango Orchard. Abandoned after the death of the Zamindar it squatted, toad like, on the single footpath that connected Neemtala to the outside world. A family of cobras had moved into the orchard some years back and the path had fallen into disuse. Manna, the coconut sweet seller, had told her that.
A kite high in the sky dipped and keened shrilly and the clouds began to unravel. Choti felt the sun tilt in the sky and there was a sense of things spinning.
There was a deep sigh from the nearby mango trees. And a breeze lightly cooled the wetness where her tongue had touched the bruise on her thighs. Choti turned, and a thousand sibilant warnings slipped out of the trees and whispered and shuffled and murmured in Choti’s ear.
What was it they were trying to tell her? She knew it was important. It was about the slipper. She knew that. Her mouth was cold and her palms were as white as Phoolmala’s bones.
Standing there with the slipper in her hand and trying to grapple with a mind that was slipping away…Choti was suddenly aware of a sense of things shifting and falling.
A wind had sprung up, spiraling through the heaving mango trees bordering the field. It snatched up and hung a plastic packet high up in the sky. It clutched at the few tattered fold of cloth that was Choti’s sari. It knocked her head back and opened her mouth and flew into her. It caressed her shorn head and made her miss her long black hair with the blue ribbon in it. In one bound it crossed the open field and snatched away Choti’s name from the throat of her mother-in-law and left her standing with her mouth open in a silent scream, raging at the wind and the cursed bitch. With the smell of earth in her mouth and the clouds and the sun melting across her upturned face Choti heard nothing and thought today she hated the clouds too and thought they should have left the sun alone.
At times like these when she felt herself drifting she tried to think of her mother, but all she could manage now were a few lines of a lullaby and the sound of her mother’s keys as it swung from pallu. It was a sound that reminded her of the smell of her pillow at home. The pillow with the sun still hot in it. She liked to walk out to the edge of the mango trees or beyond the neem tree bordering the pond, and call out to her mother. There was comfort in that. The comfort of pillows with the sun in them.
Today there was some kindness somewhere and a door opened and she heard her mother singing. Some days she could recall a face but no voice. Other days it would be as frugal as the smell of paan. Sometimes again in the course of the day she would be left stranded in the middle of the courtyard, broom in hand, as the world spun around her, listening to her mother standing in front of her reminder her of her shame.
But her mind had shredded most of her past and now had slowly begun to give up even the essentials. The dreamt and undreamt had begun to merge. These days with the world tilting and sliding it was so difficult to remember even the simple things.
Today she was struggling to remember where she had lost the other slipper. If only they would tell her where, then everything would be easy.
She looked around and thought how difficult it was to catch a slipper that had run away.
Standing there under an immense sky and an immense sun buried in her head she knew it was hopeless.
The path through the trees had begun to move…no it wasn’t the trees. It was the path, it was leaving, it wasn’t going to wait for her anymore.
Old Manna, with the drooling mouth, who sold coconut sweets on a cycle, had told her that it took two days on the path to reach the main road where she could watch buses roar past on their way to Kolkata. She would like that. She had heard about buses and cars. Manna had offered to take her on his cycle but she was scared of cycles. But she liked to ring the bell and Manna would let her ring the bell if she allowed him to put his hand inside her sari.
With the sound of Manna’s bell sounding like a ring of keys in her head Choti found herself standing on the path that was like water under feet and tried to remember why she was there.
An image, faint as a baby’s breath, of a hand with a blue glass bangle around the wrist…rose…gesturing…asking for her child…
But the child had died they had told her that when she had asked for her. It was a girl she was sure today. She knew that tomorrow she would be sure it had been a boy. She could think and hope for anything, as long as she kept things to herself. That was being clever.
She would call out to the slipper then she wouldn’t have to run around trying to catch it. That was being clever again.
She was sure if she called out it would answer. What was a girl’s name that was also blue in colour? The other slipper was a girl. It was blue wasn’t it? She knew that. Her girl had died they had told her that. Looking down at the chipped and faded blue glass bangle around her thin dark wrist Choti thought it was very pretty. Her feet were white with dust. She bent down and the ground came up and the world tilted with her. Where was that small silver payal she always wore…the one with pretty beads…?
A small beetle struggled to get our from under one of her toes. As she lifted her foot to let the beetle scramble away, the sun broke through and the wind died, and a shadow passed silently. Choti looked up and a piece of blue plastic was falling slowly from the sky. And a small silver needle moved in the heavens stitching the clouds with thread as white as the sari they gave her when her husband died.
As Choti stood there listening to the square of blue plastic descend, another part of her broke loose and fell slowly into the long dark well within her.
This time she saw it fall and ran to hold it but she fell with it. She tried to call out to her mother but her shame stopped her. And the well looked dark and cool and safe.
When Choti finally heard her mother-in- law shouting out to her from the distant huts it was too late for everything, and the sun was falling in the western sky and there was a smell of woodsmoke and yellow hay.
With her mother -in-law’s screams hailing down on her from the sky, Choti felt the last piece of her come apart slowly and fall away and her pee was steaming warm down her inner legs and as a violent trembling seized her, she knew she had to sit down. Someone was crying, she knew because her face was wet.
She saw that the vast arc of an immense sky was blue like the slipper she held in her hands. And she knew she was lost forever
There was an evening seeping in from across the fields and the sun went down and took all the blue from the sky and there was no light left as the dark crept out from under the trees.
It was dark and she was cold. There was a happy smell of something and a great trembling. Something tasted bad in her mouth. She tried moving her legs and the chain and rope around them sounded like keys on her mother’s pallu. The rope smelt sweet of Phoolmala. She had loved to milk her every morning and stroke the soft folds of her neck and hear the soft plunk of the wooden bell. Something was wrong. The lower of part of her mouth kept falling open. Somewhere there was a sensation of pain and a smell of pillows.
In the predawn light the colour of the sky was like the taste of metal in her mouth. And her tongue was as blue as glass. Her two broken teeth lay in her palms, and they were like the beads from her payal she no longer wore.
Last night had been bad. They had found the slipper. She had hidden it they said. She must have she did not remember. Why hadn’t she hidden both? She could have gone on the bus. Manna had told her she could on the bus only if she had slippers.
“…why do you think she hid only one slipper? She is a witch. The bitch killed her child and then my son by poisoning him…and now she wants to kill me. We should kill the fucking bitch…burn her…”
But her husband had died in the middle of a coughing fit that sprayed her pillow with pink foam. Had she killed them all? What of her child?
A door opened deep within her mind. She would untie the knots and bang on their door and wake them up and tell them that. But the night was ending and a part of herself was aware of the wet smell of dawn.
She had peed and soiled herself again but it had softened the rope. That was good. The pole in the middle of the courtyard to which she had been tied now felt cold as she tried to pull herself erect. And her mother was there, telling her of her shame. The water in the pot above the tulsi plant tasted cool and pleasantly muddy. There was pain in her belly and between her legs, surging through her, infecting her, consuming her. It rose like a fiery vomit in her throat.
She was clinging to the pole now, a still center in her spiraling world. With the leaves amassing in the courtyard and the last star dying in the eastern sky, the swollen sac of pain burst in her belly and she felt the pus flow out warm in the November air. And her mind and body was cleansed. As the leaves gathered, shuffling and murmuring around her feet, she watched herself from a distance, broken and racked with shame and pain. And the pole was like a shining staff rising up to the sky.
“…Choti oh Choti what shame oh what shame have you brought on us…”
“Will you sing me that song Ma?
“Oh Choti…”
And Choti stood with her mother and felt safe and watched herself, trying to get her legs and her broken body to obey her. Only now she could see how small she was and had begun to understand the name her mother had given her. There was no shame in her nakedness anymore, only her mother telling her to get away…run away my Choti run away…my baby…run.
There was a sense of dawn but under the mango trees it was still dark and silent. Every step was just that,another step before one more. She couldn’t think beyond that anymore. If only the path could carry her. Hunger had leant a sort of clarity and pain had distilled the rest. All the essentials had long disappeared. All things around her had become all things in her. She could no longer differentiate. There was no logic that could string together causes.
There was no after, no before.
Everything had merged into a single now.
But Choti had no philosophy that could save her.
So, when she bent down to free the tar trapped blue rubber slipper from the middle of the highway that went all the way to Kolkata, she was happy.
It was a blue slipper and she had found it. They would be happy.
Choti didn’t know that it couldn’t be the slipper she had been searching for. She didn’t know that it was the first day of November. She didn’t know that she had just turned fifteen. She didn’t know that she was a widow. She didn’t know that her child had died in her womb.
With the clarity of final absolution, she looked up from the middle of the road and saw the bus. In the first light of dawn, she saw it was red.
And she thought to herself. I like red.