Definitely, Maybe

He raped her. At least that’s what all have on the edge of their lips whenever he passes by the church. He was eighteen when he raped. Some say seventeen though. He was put to the juvenile home, he cried, the nurse a resident of our village says. Yesterday my friend said he saw this man, now about thirty, walk with a small infant in his arms. It’s a girl, he asserts on his observation. He would never be able to redeem his soul of the wretched cry of that girl, the girl he left to die in the dried bushes near the village tube wells I had overheard my uncle at night.

But this girl was different, my friend Khalid reiterates. She was small, very small. And unlike the other girl, this infant isn’t fair. I question him about this additional information he carries, he winks smugly. I don’t ask him again. She was wrapped up like a chocolate. He must be hiding gold within her clothes, Khalid deduces smartly.

But, the teen girl. The girl who died twelve summers back, I saw her portrait on the community hall’s wall last month. My uncle took me there on my aunt’s death anniversary. She was pretty for her age as many had rightfully pointed before. The portrait dates back to a year after she died. Her brother had it made by a town artist after the subsequent death of his mother. She had a heart stroke, some say.

‘Look what I’ve got’ Khalid points to the crumpled pieces of mango on his palm. He has like routine squeezed most of its pulp in his palm, to be licked once I take my share. Mangoes have been stolen from the fat man’s house, who owns the mansion adjacent to the community hall. My uncle often goes there to sell chilies and ginger.

The mangoes are to feed our eyes once I hear more about the girl from him. He had promised me yesterday before he left me with the cows. After donating my last bite to him, I try to get the whole story.

‘They weren’t as ripen as yesterday’s’ Khalid says after wiping his face to his shirt.

‘Did she die because of him, or of the wolves which used to roam around there?’I ask with brimming curiosity.

‘That is another version I got to hear from my brother’ he says coyly. ‘Though they didn’t find any marks to evidence animal attack’ he further adds glaring at the sparrow’s nest on the tree whose shade we are in.

‘Why did——-

‘I am hungry, lets grab some jack fruit’ Khalid exclaims, dusting his wet sticky palm with the fallen twigs of the nest.

I drag my reluctant body to his trail. We elope to my uncle’s farm to be fed into jack fruit trees standing claustrophobically close. The gigantic jack fruits perched to the bark aren’t our prey, but the ones which have been already cut by the workers behind the working hut.

‘Find the knife quickly’ he orders authoritatively. I embrace him with a blank face. ‘I thought you wanted the whole story Resuf’ he traps me glibly. I start frantically looking for the supposed knife. The hut has local liquor bottles and a few cans of paan. ‘The workers might have taken them to the woods’ I suggest wittily.

‘Let’s carry the whole chunk then’ he says, disappointed. It’s heavy, he knows well. For the tale to drop of his mouth, I have to nod my head to all mindless suggestions. I look at the fruit one more time. It’s truly huge.

****

‘Aah, mother of God! Be gentle!’ Khalid yells deafeningly. The little thorn which got into his feet while carrying the fruit across the fence isn’t even bleeding. Leaves are the best tool to take it. But Khalid just can’t get rid of his restlessness. ‘Would you just stop shaking your leg so much, I am almost done’ I growl impatiently.

‘It’s paining Goddamit!’ he groans. ‘And why is it taking you so long?’ he barks.

Quelling my annoyance I try to get information. ‘Has your brother ever seen her?’

‘Indeed he has, when he was eight!’ he says excitedly, submitting his pain to its novelty. ‘He even says he has talked to her. Says she talked about weird things’ Khalid adds. The wound is finally lost in his memory.

‘Weird?’

‘Precisely. She talked of life and death, and their indivisibility. Her parents got tired of her bizarre behavior. People talked about her in the panchayat. My mother even said she seemed to have had bewitched by some ghost in her last few days.’

‘And what made people think so? Did she know black magic?’ I gape.

‘Not exactly. She talked about having seen angels and all’ Khalid says mockingly.

‘You don’t believe these stories?’ I question surprised.

‘I don’t believe such utter nonsense. And I certainly don’t believe in ghosts. The movie which is played in Ramu’s shop is scarier than these’ he smirks.

‘So many of our elders saw her two months after her death, near the wells. What about that? Can that be laughed about?’ I wobble my breath anxiously.

‘Let’s not forget that none of their confessions of the incident sounded the same. All seemed to be knitted on dramatic tapestries’ Khalid rebukes in a raised voice. He is seventeen now. And his infuriation makes him much older. It’s queer for him to be roaming around with me for years now. I am just fourteen. Probably his mother’s negligence in remembering the date he was born frees him of societal age bondages.

Nevertheless, he does often go to the prohibited hills with his brother never even caring to ask me.
‘Enough of these, let’s go for play’ he iterates spitting the seed of the last jackfruit. I am in thought, not paying heed to his proposal. With a little apprehension belted on my throat I say, ‘I want to see the wells’. He stares at me. A huge noise thunders into our moment of exasperation. A bird has been shot in the forest, perhaps.

***

‘Shut up! No more bedtime stories do I want to propagate’ says a disgruntled Khalid.

‘I just want to have a look of that place. To feel the horridness felt there, myself’ I undertone my desire.

He doesn’t retort. He is watching the grasshoppers hop across the patchy grass. Our ancestors built the wells, to curtail the growing scarcity of water in the hills. But since I was born or from a time before that, the place has been abandoned and forbidden for everyone owing to the corpses extracted each year.
The night is preying the day, slowly. Echoes of my mother daunting my ears gallop our adventure. We start walking to the end of the words, words difficult to come by.

‘What would I get in return of this petty adventure?’ Khalid interrogates before leaving for his father’s shop. I jingle the coins in my pocket and within the next breath place it on his palm. I earned it last month working at that dusty library. Those rich people who used to visit, read and tipped my cleaning, I remember them by face even today.

Khalid grins, and vanquishes the coins with his fist. Finally I feel close to my accomplishment. I want to unravel the truth behind this girl’s enigma. With the heap of fodder for the buffaloes on her head, my mother curses me for being late. I briskly open the hen house, for the hens to return to their abode for the evening.

The buffaloes boo in resentment as the fodder dropped in front of them has been losing volume since some time. Their questions are genuine, only answers don’t suffice. An old man breathes his last few days in our little cottage. My father’s been dead since having any memory of him. And my mother feeds her ailing father and the mighty buffaloes. Both are ordeals she wakes for each morning. I, another disappointment.

‘Shall I get you the blanket dada?’ I ask the reptile like body lying on the cot.

He raises his hand to the pot. I run to the backside of the house and get a glass. Then, carry his body to the wooden chair and watch him drink water. He was the one who told me of the incident first. And now my eagerness I can’t get rid of.

‘Dada, was she raped actually? Isn’t it a story made up by people to defame that person?’ I ask him furtively. The firewood being cut by my mother outside can be heard.

He looks at me carefully. Mutters something. Asks me to get him back to the cot, hastily.
I sit at the banks of the cot, hoping to get a reply. He busies himself with the ceiling to glare. I wait anxiously.

‘She was beaten to death. Her face wasn’t even recognizable’ he answered obliquely. ‘Some even claim she was not the one bewitched, but the guy who was with her that night. The boy was just eighteen when he took her to the wells. He had used the opportunity of the area being prohibited to force on her, and in the fit of monstrosity killed her’.

‘And what about the stone dada, she apparently threw down to the village from that hill? It had her blood!’ I try to carve out logic through the confounding.

‘She might have thrown it when he was long gone, in an attempt to seek the tribal’s help’ he says coyly.

‘But why did people conclude he raped her? And why wasn’t the police involved?’ I ask disappointed.

‘The boy’s father was one among the panchs, he ordered the girl to be buried soon, as she was suspected of doing witchcraft. As for the accusation of rape, she wasn’t taken to any hospital. In fact, she was buried the very day she was found near the wells. But she lay naked, and lips slit as if someone bit it’ he coughs.

‘And, did the boy ever confess his crime? He loved her, right?’ I question tapping my feet in fret.

‘That’s enough boy, go help your mother outside’ he grumbles with authority.

‘But Dada I –

‘Do you or do you not want food tonight?’ he threatens angrily.

I growl with contempt and walk outside. She is slashing wood for the evening, my mother. ‘Stop walking like an elephant, and get me more wood from the back yard!’ she yells in disgust as soon as she sees me. Stomping to the other side, I get a pile of uncut firewood. One of its edges prick my finger. Blood oozes out as like from crevices in the rocks of the hill.

The flame engulfs all the firewood I brought like hot cake. She looks at me commandingly. I stagger to the back yard again. Fire is hungrier than us.

****

‘But going at night can prove life threatening. Haven’t you heard of the wolves lurking around there?’ I let out nervously.

‘Believe me, during broad daylight we’d be seen by the nearby tribes, and that would mean trouble. Moreover, I have always gone with my brother at midnight. It’s completely safe. Even the number of wolves has reduced over some time’ he says confidently.

‘How am I to sneak out of my house at night? What if mother comes to know? That would be the end of everything!’

‘That is your job to handle. I just told you the plan’ he mutters uncaringly. ‘Do not forget the peanuts! Rest assured I’d bring all the other things we need’ he swifts away.

A day has flown, and my thrill sees no limit. It’s just a matter of few more hours. That girl’s tale intrigues me. And tonight I’d be where she died, away from home and puddles of remorse.

A whistle is my cue to come out. The moon from outside our little window is dressed like a communion girl tonight. The clouds hurtled onto the night sky like pebbles in a pond. I hear his whistles suddenly, from the wilderness. It intensifies as I tip toe to the door, and I eventually run from the house back yard. I can see him peeping of the banyan shade, and hand him all the peanuts I carry within my rustling pocket.

‘I hope no one saw you while coming’ he blurts expressionlessly.

‘None I suppose. How long would it take us to get there? We need to be back before dawn’ I say fearfully.

‘We’d be there in an hour or so if we take the alley, which given the howls I hear is the safest route’ he envisages. ‘Hold this stick and satchel and walk with me boy’ he echoes across the night smugly, handing me a wooden stick and the cloth which he carries with himself all the time encompassing nothing more than a knife used for killing rabbits and a broken watch, an archetypical piece hardly making time visible.
The story is true, and now I will see it with my own bare eyes. Khalid doesn’t believe a word our aged men say but still something stimulates him tonight. Perhaps, it is the truth itself.

The alley is dark and narrow, vegetation plundering upon the pathway overtly. Leeches and worms drool down the lush leaves along with rainwater. His knife is of some use at last. Dirt spills over our foot rapidly, while we pace our journey. Silence ought to have been kept to preserve the place’s scare.
Ahead about a hundred meter away lays an open space we can see. Khalid points it out and races briskly. We reach the space, to be opened out to a wide stretch of long grass growing on moist soil. Trampling the wet soil with footprints huge enough to consume us if stood for more than just a couple of seconds, we get to the infamous wells.

There are three of them, colossal and daunting as have I have heard about them, each of them standing beside the other in brotherhood. The space between each would just be able to accommodate two people, I presume.

‘The maid’s boy drowned last month in the extreme left one’ Khalid brings in chill to my tormented mind.
‘But he was pushed by his brother, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, just like the girl who’s tale was ended in the center one by her father last year’ he uses his words carefully, dismantling his usual aloofness. His voice is grim now, and eyes converging to the nose in jittering dread.

‘Khalid, you are scaring me now, and I would hit you with this stick if you try it again’ I speak with an anonymous sternness.

‘Ohh, are you now?’ he chuckles loudly. ‘I warned you that this place isn’t for little lads’. I frown.

‘Cant we see the wells more closely’ I propose out of my suppressed fear. He doesn’t respond, instead walks to the direction of the wells. I follow him with uncertainty. The well’s mouth is shrouded in mist, its depth a mystery no one would unravel alive. The width of each of them is undoubtedly more than any cottage of our village. I am seized in fear, Khalid peeps into it. The girl was taken out from this well by the tribes, he says, his voice resounding numbingly.

‘And there lies the ghost of the girl who died twelve summers back, to take a life every summer!’ he mocks with utter contempt and spits at the ground. I near him, he looks at me plainly. I push him to the well edge, and he falls into the depth screaming and howling life out. It takes him time to give a thud. And then it is I alone with my ghost.

__END__