Things That Move Between Pastures
BY MAYOOKH BARUA
My head was on the flat pillow, and my arm kept the light from entering the crevices of my shut-eye. Rest appeared delicate. It was a few minutes before dusk. The sky was pink like a fruit before it rotted. The cold finally caught my feet. There wasn’t much I could do about it. Some kind of anemia that I had inherited from my ancestors that held my mother, aunts and grandmother captive. I pushed my feet further into the quilt. A headache appeared from all the walking with Aita back to the house. It bewildered me to think that Aita walked the whole evening and still managed to clean the temple at the hunchbacked age of seventy. My sweaty hair got caught in the cotton pillow cover.
Knock knock. The thud from Chutki’s knuckles quietened the woodworm munching the insides of the door. The hollow that the woodworm chewed out made the knocks louder over time. How did it get there, right to the middle? And how did it know when to chew? It always did that when no one was around. As if it knew how to keep the humans around satisfied with silences.‘Priyam da, Heman da is here to meet you.’ Chutki announced.
I opened my eyes under my arm and gathered the bones on my back to sit upright. ‘Oh Heman, come come. What brings you here?’ It was hardly twenty minutes since Aita and I left from Punyo’s Naamkaran, Heman’s firstborn.
‘Well Onita sewed Aita a handkerchief. We forgot to give it to her there so I came by. And you were here so I thought why not talk to my old friend.’ Heman was shorter than me, just slightly. But broader on his shoulders just like before. His hair was soft and curved to the left, showing his balding corners where a dew of sweat had formed. His perky ears, I remembered teasing him as a child to be those of an elephant, grew into his face. Hathir Kaan was the name I gave him twelve years ago. That’s the strange thing about names. Giving them was a way to possess another person. My tongue tingled to call him hathir kan and my fingertips quivered to touch his ears. I wished we were children again. To brush off offenses with laughter.
‘You did a good thing then. Come sit here,’ I tapped on the bed. ‘Chutki come here,’ I looked into her middle part. I cupped her face in my palms ‘I will play with you soon once Heman da leaves okay?’ She nodded with anticipation. She was an easy child without any complaints. Her hair was always neat and her frock was always a shade of pink. It was hard not to take her for granted.
‘That’s nice of you. I still have to go back to the ceremony. But I guess some minutes don’t mean much, does it?’ His eyes moved from one corner to the other with hesitation.
‘It does not,’ I said.
‘You have come after a really long time. Just visiting Aita I believe?’ He twisted the purple thread that stuck out from the quilt between his two fingers and looked down at it.
‘A few months to be exact. I was here a little…less…than a year ago. So yes I haven’t seen Aita for a while. I am worried about her hunchback.’ I smiled wide whenever I had to compensate for a lie. I don’t owe him any kind of truth. But what truth do I even tell him? Was I fleeing or was I hiding? As a refugee or a fugitive? When a lover of five years leaves, one becomes a foreigner wherever one is standing. I was far from metabolizing or for that matter numbing Sameer’s departure. I hid this from my mother when I told her I was returning to Guwahati for some Saksham-related fieldwork. She always had an ear for the nitty gritty of my NGO work. I mentioned education for girls and she, unable to hold her dissatisfaction with its current state, would decry everything that has gone wrong with education. As if her complaints made the lives of some unknown imaginary children eventually better. Soon after the announcement of fieldwork, she insisted I visit her mother in Jorhat. Like a parcel going from one place to another, I was happy about this passing. All I had to do was keep the noses of both mothers from the smell of my grief.
‘Oh yes you should give her an earful. I tell her all the time not to work like this. Especially in the sun and that too, instructing the tea workers. She just does not listen.’ He grew quiet. ‘It’s good you are here. There was always something or the other that came up the last few times you visited. Here for long?’ His eyes clung onto the purple of the quilt, away from my mine.
‘Maybe a couple of days. But not too long I hope.’ If I had to really answer him, I would’ve confessed that I was awaiting some news from a broker in Delhi. He was searching for a one-bedroom apartment. Every three days for the past two weeks, I asked the broker if he had found what I wanted—a balcony with a view of the sky, the bathroom not beside the kitchen, with an AC, a partition between the bedroom and the rest of the house and in a nice neighborhood. This was the house I shared with Sameer in Delhi’s Rajouri Garden. On the hot summer day when he disappeared, I had made our favorite mango smoothie. While looking for him, I found the note in the mirror with short clipped sentences like in a telegram. At the end, it said: I have to leave. I love you. I drank that smoothie. Its thickness fell down my neck slowly, making me sick then projectiled out of my body. As days became weeks, the quiet from Sameer made the sky clear. The wall was peeling. The sink never stopped tapping. The dogs barked all the time. The AC sometimes laughed at me, almost a chortle as I lowered the temperature. But when Sameer was there, the AC hummed like the beginning of a song. I didn’t even notice the sink. The dogs howled their love of the night. The walls were abstract paintings. I was warned about this homosexual need for marriage to a woman. My friends told me not to move in with Sameer or I will be nowhere. They were wrong. After he left, I still had a place to stay. But I did not want to stay there.
‘I am glad you came to Punyo’s Naamkaran then.’ He finally looked at me. There were those eyes of a fish, round and alert.
‘There was no way I was missing your son’s naming ceremony.’ I laughed and lamented out of envy. I quietly tapped the wood of the bedframe to keep the envy from getting to Punyo. Otherwise, he would become an innocent casualty of my yearning to have someone. I never wanted to go to the ceremony. Aita forced me to come with her. She dismissed any refusal on my part. She didn’t want me to sit in the room all day.
‘I know. I have a son now. It feels strange,’ he shook his head.
‘He is a beautiful child,’ I said, wrapping my hands around my knee and pulling it closer. The warmth of Punyo’s body was yet to leave me. An hour ago, I had folded my arms around that ball of flesh and held it tight lest it slipped. He stuck his tongue out and I wondered what he imagined my body to be. Could he smell the longing for his father on me? Children know these kinds of things. Things outside the realm of comprehension. How quickly, like clean water, such discernment was spoiled. I slowly rocked him to create a memory of my arms. Maybe he would remember something and in the future, I could ask, ‘Do you remember me, Punyo, when you were a child, I rocked you for a few moments?’ And as I asked this, it would become not about the strength of his memory, but rather about whether I was memorable or not. I came to a pause noticing his full lashes, button nose, and big ears. I am great with children, especially ones without consciousness. But the unexpected children of past lovers, I was not the most accustomed to. The thing about the past, the odd seemingly unrivaled part, was its encore in new shapes. ‘He does not look like you though.’ I grinned.
‘I thank Krishna for that,’ he laughed. ‘But you. You look like…,’ Heman stopped and his brows moved inside his temples to pick a word.
‘Like I’ve been in the city too long?’ I completed his sentence out of habit.
‘No. Untouched,’ he said.
‘Untouched?’
‘Yeah like the world has not touched you,’ he stepped closer and inspected the parts of the body above the quilt. He touched my hair which fell to the cup of my clavicles. The fingers from the past were an amicable knife—comfortable and piercing. ‘How did you grow such long hair? Look at me.’ He pointed at himself, ‘they say village water is fresher. But here I am balding.’
We laughed.
‘It must be nice to be in a big city, right?’ His eyes gleamed.
‘Sometimes it is,’ I smiled. I started growing my hair out after I arrived in Delhi to attend college. I grew it out to grab some fondness from men. It was a way to let everything hang out. All of my apprehensions about liking men. All of my disdain for being bullied in school. All of the chaos that ensued in the family from being seen as like-women. The thing one aborts in the womb. From having reminisces of the gender that was not assigned at birth. I chased my freedom to Delhi—to Sameer.
‘Then what is it?’ he leaned in.
Chutki rushed in and made an akimbo. ‘When will we play cards?’ She demanded an overdue debt. I was shocked to hear that from her. Just eight years ago, she was a wet towel in my arms and now she understood time. She whistled out of the gap that had replaced her milk teeth. Her mother told me that she broke it off with her little fingers and without a dropped tear.
‘Chutki I am so sorry, I need to go walk Heman da home. Can we do it once I am back?’ I got out of bed and held her face, forcing her to look at me. Doubt made her eyes squint. This must’ve happened to her before. Her eyes looked calm and worried at the same time, like she had seen a familiar ghost.
‘Alright but promise me you will before we sleep,’ she folded her arms in protest.
‘I will my jaan I will,’ then I kissed her on her head where her fringe parted. ‘I want to catch some fresh air while I am here. Do you want to walk a bit?’ I looked at Heman.
‘Sure as long as you promise to take me to the city.’ He stood up smiling.
The sun was sinking as we walked. Light chasing the sun oiled the sky for the bubbling stars.
‘So where is your house?’ I asked him.
‘We walk straight and then take a left. Just beside Robin Koka’s place. You remember right?’
I hesitated a bit. I didn’t know if I should recognize that place or not. I wanted to give an answer that kept some questions at bay. ‘Yes I remember,’ I said looking down.
‘Those were the days. Sneaking out to the tea garden to watch a movie. Was that the third time we were meeting?’
‘No, no, that was many weeks into my summer. The first time… Ah I remember, I remember. Oh yes you were catching fish.’ I thought I almost forgot.
‘And what was the second time?’ he asked.
‘Who remembers the second time?’ I said with a wide smile.
‘I do. It was when you were reading that book.’ Heman snapped his finger. The echo of the click bounced around on the pebbled street.
‘Oh wow, how do you remember that?’
‘I remember many things, my friend. Remember how Rohit danced Bihu with those drunk tea pickers? And we could not find Radha for an hour or so playing hide and seek. And you had seen a snake and chased after it. I cannot believe you did that,’ he shook his head while laughing in disbelief.
Maybe Heman had forgotten most of the bad things. When bad things happen, one either recounts it in a loop all the time or lops it out of sight. Maybe we remembered some parts and discarded others, just to be able to live. To go on without asking too many questions. I looked into Heman’s face for an answer. ‘Me neither,’ I said, mimicking his disbelief.
‘Do you remember how shocked you were when I took the firefly here when we were returning from Robin Koka’s place?’ He turned to me and made a ball with his palms. There was some space between his fingers to let air in and dark out.
‘I thought you’d kill it,’ I tried to pull apart his fingers like the last time.
‘Why did you think I would kill it?’
‘Because I saw you kill those fish the first time I met you.’ The first time I had met Heman, I saw him crouching at his reflection on the shallow waters of the paddy, far from our houses. He was suspicious of me before his cousin introduced me as Aita’s grandson. Then he winked at me and went back to his busy task. He focused on the small net between the pond and the paddy, looking for fish. After catching one, he would strike the head of the wriggling fish on the ground before placing it in a small steel bowl. On one such blow, some blood splattered on my toes. I searched for some shape there in the string of blood. Before I could, he wiped it with apologies. This was the first time he touched me. Suddenly, one of his dead fish jumped back into the water. I gasped. The dead had come alive. The unnatural had happened in nature. Since then, I always imagined that bleeding fish to have lived a very robust life, at least more than the other fishes in the same pond. It must have made some meaning out of escaping a steel bowl of death.
‘Oh yes,’ he chuckled with his hand in mine. He let go of his grip and I held his open palm.
Last time I had looked for a dead firefly inside in those palms. I had traced my finger along the hills formed around the brown rivers of his destiny. I had pried to find the first letter of his wife’s name. I had secretly hoped to catch a P. Now I looked at them with the same eyes but without any hope of alphabets. ‘You still have rough hands,’ I said.
‘I have been told that often enough. But I can still catch a firefly without killing it.’
‘I bet.’ I closed his palm.
‘Are there fireflies in Delhi?’ he asked as he took his hands away and walked ahead.
‘If there are, I haven’t seen any. I don’t see them here either,’ I moved my head around to prove the point.
‘There were plenty before. Now these cement walls don’t seem to be of their liking it seems.’
‘You mean they are completely gone?’ I was concerned.
‘Uff you city people just snap to quick conclusions. Just because it is small does not mean it will just vanish. Secretly so many small things live without us realizing they have conquered us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that just because you can’t see them does not mean they don’t exist. In fact I know a place where they gather in hundreds. Do you want to go there?’ Heman’s eyes widened at this proposition.
‘Don’t you have a ceremony to attend?’ I asked.
‘We are all late to some things,’ he said.
‘If none exists, then you have to buy me two samosas,’ I opened my palm for him to bet. I giggled like I was ten again and Heman was twelve. When we played ghar-ghar, I served him tea, and he pretended to read the newspaper.
‘Bet,’ he made our palms clap.
It was somewhat of a detour. Instead of a left we took a right. There was a small patch of land beside someone’s tea garden. A place I was warned not to go as a child. They said tigers visited that garden in the dark. I always wondered why tigers didn’t roar in the night. What did such magnificent beasts do quietly? The Jutuli and Nahar leaves rustled in the breeze as they guarded that patch of land. I saw specks of light from afar and moved closer to the choir of green fireflies.
‘This is beautiful.’
‘See. You owe me two samosas now,’ Heman said as he slumped to the ground.
We sat beside each other quietly. Just the way we did at Robin Koka’s place that eventful night. When we arrived, the movie had already started. It was projected on a large white cloth. The tea estate workers sat around completely hypnotized. We had anticipated being shooed away like dogs. Instead, they asked us to sit beside them with a wave of their hands. This amnesia of the right and wrong was the magic of movies.
‘Do you remember the movie?’ I asked while watching the fireflies.
‘How can I forget Pakeezah?’ he said, gazing at the fireflies as well.
Truly, how could one forget Meena Kumari’s thick eyeliner that made her eyes even bigger? Bigger than the moon she had longed for. Close to the climax, I had grabbed onto Heman’s vest. His brown cotton vest kept me near and apart. He made a chair out of his shoulder. It was wrong to be this close to his scent, and then I pushed myself closer to him. My head sat in the cave of his neck before he kissed me on the cheek. His lips were wet and prickly when he kissed me on mine. My face glowed like an orange coal.
‘What do you remember?’ I looked at him finally. Small fireflies rotated around us, taking us to be plants. A part of their world.
‘I remember people doing Bihu steps on those mujra songs. That was funny. And oh they had to stop in the middle because the electricity went away for a few minutes. Such a silly time. Remember how horrified people were when we came back? My father had given me quite a lashing.’
‘Oh,’ I was taken aback by his casual rendering of that moment. His father had dragged him by the root of his hair towards their house. That night, the trees turned into sibilant spirits to cover Heman’s pleas for forgiveness. We had never seen Heman’s father angry. The anger of a grown man who saw, felt, and made everything nothing. We were not allowed to meet for the rest of the summer. After that, when I saw Heman with his mattock and called out to him, my voice fell on deaf ears. ‘So you remember everything?’ I asked.
‘Ah-ha why are you asking about all of this? See there,’ he pointed to a pasture of fireflies. ‘They are all going there to mate. I always wondered how something so tiny can bring so much happiness in someone’s life?’
I turned to him, but he looked away. ‘So you forgive me?’
‘For?’ He looked at me.
‘For what I did.’
‘Sure I forgive you. See those fireflies there. Do you remember how in those days they would just come to Aita’s garden?’
Frustrated, I asked, ‘Why did you bring me here?’
He held a long breath and looked at me. ‘Just for old time’s sake. Because I knew you liked fireflies.’
‘No, why did you get me here Heman?’ I asked adamantly.
‘Aren’t you glad to see so many fireflies? Tell me Delhi has a view like this.’
‘This is no time to joke,’ I grew impatient.
‘I can also ask you. Why did you come with me?’
The question surprised me. ‘I…I…I just wanted to…,’ I mumbled. ‘I don’t know. I wanted to look at the fireflies, I guess.’ It was not him, but I who wanted something. And I was ashamed at this wanting.
Heman held my collapsing back. I remembered he was the one who had leaned in at Robin Koka’s garden. He tasted like gooseberries, at first sour and then sweet. The heat that his skin absorbed in the daylight throbbed out of the cotton vest. I clung to that like a cold-blooded reptile. This time, I leaned into him and Heman moved away.
After a second of surprise that appeared in my eyes, Heman kissed my cheek instead. ‘I missed you,’ he said, folding me in his arms. His soft bones eased my temperature.
‘I never got to ask this, but why didn’t you say anything about going to Robin Koka’s place?’ I pushed him away with steady hands. That night, when Heman and I, along with a few other kids, returned from watching the movie, we were met by a swarm of angry parents. We were grabbed by the ear and the arm. We were taken to Aita’s courtyard, where many ruffled heads and white chadors sat on anxious stairs. Everyone was asking who it was that made the plan. The kids knew it was me. But I, the grandson of a Professor amongst those of tea pickers and clerks, didn’t know then that my words would be taken as truth. I pointed at Heman.
Why did I do this to Heman? Someone kind to me. As though even as a child, I knew I could take advantage of people who liked me, and more so if they loved me. I could take them for granted. For if there was any destination in place, it was to receive someone’s love. And when that was achieved, there was no reason to be kind. There was no rule in the books telling us that we needed to do right by people who loved us. All we had to do was not upset neighbors, wives, and priests. Inconsequential lovers could go to hell. Until they left in silence. And came back with a child and insects, bright and abundant.
‘The past is the past Priam. Why are you bringing this up now?’ He said.
‘Maybe it will help the future?’ I didn’t know how to tell him that I had lost hope in the future. That the trappings of marriage and children appeared as some kind of light. When I didn’t have a place to stay. Someone to call my own. People would never approve of who I wanted to love—a man as a man. There was not even the possibility of a child for me.
‘You city people are too dramatic. Life does not work like that. Things happen and you move on. Just like these fireflies. Last year, they were nowhere to be found. It took me so many months of searching to finally find that they had come here. Like cows, they found a new pasture. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I thought they had died. I hope they stay here till Punyo gets old. But who knows maybe all of them will die or move somewhere else.’
‘But you don’t feel anything?’ I looked at him in the dark to catch a feeling of his memory somewhere in the frown, nose or lips.
‘You mean hate you? I did hate you. After all the love I showed. When someone works very hard on their tea and there is a bad harvest, you sit there and you cry. You can’t help it. You cry and cry and cry and cry. You can blame all the Gods and monsters. But that season has left. We are just tea pickers, we have to accept what we have. Leaves, animals, and people in whatever form they come. Besides, who listens to me anyway? When I told Baba that it was your idea, his hand moved faster and harder. Lines on my back did not go away for years until right before my marriage was arranged to Onita. See,’ he bunched up his shirt, and some stripes were still left to dissolve.
I didn’t know what to do with Heman’s love. Of all those moments when he arrived in front of the house to call me out to play. When he rubbed the back of my knuckles slowly as though he was massaging cream into them, and I did his ankle. When he held me up to walk on the pebbled road barefoot and I cried in pain just to hold him tighter. When we listened to parrots twist and turn in the air. Their red beaks planted a seed in me of a world I had never heard of. Perhaps I blamed Heman because deep down I didn’t know what to do with a love like that. Where would I keep it?
‘Why do you think your dad beat you so much?’ I asked, slowly pushing his shirt down. This was the only way I could touch him now.
‘I always wondered that. I sometimes think that he knew something more. I could feel it. The shame in the back of his eyes. And with each whip, he released it into my blood. But it didn’t feel bad. It felt strange.’
‘Strange in what ways?’
‘It felt good. Like my father was correcting me. Like I was brought to justice for having the audacity to love something out of will.’
Something green landed on my toe, like a drop of dew. Its wings twitched a bit before sitting there. The bulb on its back blinked slowly. It seemed everything in this world had some way of capturing rhythm on their body. Night fell into my ears when the grasshoppers buzzed and light appeared in splotches. Our love was ours momentarily before it blazed off the sky.
‘Do you love her?’ I asked him. I was curious about the sharpness of Onita’s pink mekhela that hid the streak of vermilion in her hairline. About her dutifulness. About the purposefulness of her looking down when Heman introduced me as an old friend. About the intimacies between them that propelled these manners.
‘We didn’t get along like most people in the beginning. The marriage was arranged so quickly. But I guess both of us have admitted that we have to live with each other. If not for us, for him.’
‘I am so happy you found that.’ I touched his face and he pressed my fingers between his cheek and shoulder.
‘Did you find love?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes.’ I smiled.
‘Well, hopefully, I can attend your child’s Naamkaran too.’ He patted my thigh. I touched the shaved chin. It was a spectacular chin. Sharp and straight. It made a noise like a purring cat when I rubbed my thumb across it. I did this to him as a child. Those children have left. Those fireflies have changed pastures.
‘Did you give me Aita’s handkerchief?’ I stood up.
I hoped the handkerchief was a ruse. A lie he told just to talk to me.
He searched inside the pockets of his kurta. ‘Oh, here it is. I almost forgot, thanks for reminding me.’ He handed me the pink cotton handkerchief that was folded in a square. It was lined with a red border and on one corner was a bouquet with three different colored dots as flowers.
‘I will give it to her,’ I said.
We separated at a fork on a large paddy. The only light now was from the cars that flew by on the main road. They zoomed past like the lone firefly that had left that night from Heman’s rough palm. It had pulsated slowly and then fast from the back of its light bottom. It’s surprising how some things survive even the harshest of hands moving from place to place; point to point; light to light.
It was a straight walk to Aita’s place. This was the house where my mother was born. Aita told me that the house grew with time. As people married, grandchildren walked, and caretakers were hired, its limbs extended and sometimes even chopped. On the two sides of the walkway into the house was a vegetable and flower garden that Aita maintained even after Koka’s death. Nothing died inside those bamboo enclosures. During childhood summers, I saw people stop to smell the tagars. They spotted the roses and marigolds, but they would miss the kopoo phool. Only I was privy to that flower. It was my secret. It was mine. Something I was sure about until its petals fell to the ground. The last few days, when Heman wouldn’t speak to me, these fireflies made unnamed and ever-changing constellations for me. Those summers, there was nothing called lonely.
I spotted two before I entered the house. Chutki came screaming, ‘Priyam da, you are here.’ She hugged my knee, ‘I was looking at the watch the whole time. Now teach me how to play bluff like you promised.’
I tore her from my leg and picked her up. ‘Of course, I always keep my promises. Just don’t tell your mother I taught you.’
My phone buzzed. I put Chutki down and asked her to lay the cards out on her small play table.
The text was from my broker: Priyam we found a house. Look at these pictures. It’s not what you wanted. The bathroom is beside the kitchen, but the wall is thick. It overlooks a colony, not a sky. But it has a big balcony. It is a studio and spacious. Has AC and in a good area in Green Park.
I closed my eyes. There was the mosque, the gulmohar trees and the chai shop right there. The azan woke me and Sameer up religiously. The Gulmohar leaves were small dots that made the tree look lush. Those leaves dried and fell on the balcony like brown snow. The chai bhaiya added extra ginger for me. I knew I would never find a place like that. Never find Sameer or an explanation of things. I shut the phone without replying. I sat in front of the spread-out cards on the play table. They were upside down and promising.
