Drawers Part - I
Fiction
Part 1 of 3.
March 14th of 2005 marked the construction of a world forbidden to all but Rit.
After Anand’s felo-de-se, the hostel was covered in the ether of the dead’s breath that stayed till Rit’s suicide. The body was removed and a police report was filed. Later at twilight break, Ekon slipped into Rit’s room with a Rollei 35—which almost broke while tripping on the door edge.
There were many notes in a drawer beside the window: most by Rit; some by others—evident by their handwritings.
Note 1
Pink was creeping into the orange sky and I loved it. I was a stranded mountaineer looking at what must be indifference, longing to hear a call with trees that never saw a human; for the first time, I was admiring beauty without sharing. I owned the beauteous obscure until Dina ruined it with her bloody eyes.
Note 2
I see the glaring sun through my twilight eyes like it’s down but the afterglow’s making the grief harsher. I have become a lunatic who watches the scars on the moon–who doesn’t admire it but bullies it. I bully it for being ugly and stealing attention. “You don’t deserve it,” I say, but I can tell, it’s my only comrade… no… companion that looks like me and behaves like me though it lacks the other that in turn bullies me. So, I reluctantly accept the position.
Note 3
Dina —
42
Female
Mud house with concrete flooring
Sweepers’ land
She was clingy and quick, and thin like a stickman; sick like a 70-year-old. She held my hand and her eyes glowed. She spoke authoritatively, “Take my name,” then repeated, “Take my name.” The first was a command, the second was more of a verbal tic, but I doubted my assumption when she pulled on my shirt and said once more, “Please take my name.” This was somehow less authoritative and more helpless. Her eye glow made more sense then.
Towards the corner of her veranda, a wall bulged into the floor. She sat there and I got a chair. She told me in her muttery voice, “I have gone to all those campaigns. The campaigns that those parties kept. See my name there, you’ll find Dina Deoz. They took me to Misfall and Manim, in buses every five years to give me food and a promise for a better future—a future where those ‘gifts’ would be unnecessary.”
“Hmm,” I Interjected after some time. I asked her how she lived, and the least that I expected, she would perform a play for me. Dancing, sobbing, and laughing—all for a natural story, she said:
“I was 13 when my father lost me in a ludo game to Evan’s son. The bet was of me and 3000 rupees from his side. The boy spoke little but was good-looking. I admit, I was happy. Kids were always happy. My life was—” she smiled every sentence—her speech and expressions were dissonant.
“—life was good, but then he died at 32 and I was still 19. I had become a slave in his house; they beat me like an animal. And… and my two kids—a boy and a girl—took their father’s attire. They spoke little but my boy made up for it, the witch didn’t. She left for her lover before the age of strong reason. Her husband was a jerk who beat her with leather belts and choked her till she could barely breathe—keeping her just enough alive so she could continue serving him. Don’t you think I cry? I don’t. It’s the fate of my blood—after my boy, that little seventeen-year-old was taken to join the forces and hasn’t returned yet. I keep expecting him.”
“He’s dead,” a man passing by the dusty way shouted at us. She half got up, then fell back down. She’d taken a sad person’s staple—wrapped her arms around her keens, looked down into a distant sand particle, and meditated with eyes so empty you might rather doubt a rock for thought.
“Where do you live now?” I said to break the silence.
“I told you, didn’t I sir? I live with my husband’s family and work from dawn till night. I do the dishes, mop the house, and take care of their children.”
Note 4 (Distinct Script)
Rit’s mom and dad were obliged by lineage. Their growing tension of an external push to closeness aversed every spark; an internal rebellion of resented hearts overcame them.
I remember Rit standing near the basin and, contrary to what I must have expected, singing in a nursery rhyme tune, “I know how this will end. I know how I’m gonna die. I know so fuck you sweat loves. I won’t let ’em live any more. I won’t let me live any more…”
Every family breaks and every family has the potential to be dangerous, when and where matters.
The deep afterglow was leaving the sky when Ekon heard the doorknob turn. His nerves creaked in his lower body then a shiver ran up his spine and shook his face ever so slightly. In the blueish-grey light, Ekon recognised Natasha from her hair curls that swayed as she delicately entered the room.
‘How did you come here?’ asked Ekon…
To be continued.
Read next: Let The Bluebirds Fly.
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