It was the first new moon after Sweta’s death. Which is why her mother and sister were at the hermitage of Gupteswar Baba. They had arrived about an hour ago, and spent that time cleaning the floor, lighting incense and oil lamps at the shrine of the deity and offering flowers to the river goddess. The air was damp inside and smelled of crabs and ancient rocks. However, as the incense smoke filled the interior of the cave a pleasant, flowery aroma gradually took over.
The mother and sister were sitting on a straw mat, facing the deity. Every now and again Sweta’s mother leaned over and added drops of oil into the lamps that threatened to go out. Despite the arthritic ache in her joints and despite the long walk from Kusma Bazaar, she didn’t feel tired at all. In fact, her senses were so alert that even the distant, indistinguishable jingle caught her attention. The sister, on the other hand, was extremely exhausted. Now she dozed off, now she started with a twitch of her shoulders and stared quizzically at the lamps. As the jingle of the anklets came nearer and nearer she too became alert and fixed her eyes, which were shining with anticipation, at the entrance of the cave.
Sweta appeared in the entranceway, blocking the star that was peering in through the branches of a nearby pine tree. After hesitating for a moment she walked in and sat beside her sister. As she shifted her eyes from the lamps towards her mother a wave of nostalgia, the type one experiences while looking at her loved ones from a distance and knowing that the wonderful days of past are gone forever, enveloped her. Of course she had anticipated this and had on occasions even tried to train her mind against it. However, due to the lack of prior experience she had overestimated her own ability to shake off the emotions that now held sway over her. Her lips began to twitch, and the bitterness regarding her reincarnation in another life overpowered her. Even before her mother, who was nervously fidgeting with the phone and was wistfully looking at her, could say anything she let out in that dissipated, mournful manner of the dead who has not spoken for a long time, “Mai, I’ve to become a bird in next life.”
“Which bird?” The walls of the cave reverberated with her sister’s excited voice. “I like birds a lot. Please didi, can you help me become a bird as well?” She grabbed Sweta’s arm and started pulling it so as to draw her attention. “I also want to become a bird. Tell me, will you help me or not?”
“I will,” Sweta said.
“But why did you leave us?” her sister went on, staring at Sweta’s tattered Kameez on which still lay the stains of blood. “Mai wept so much when you didn’t wake that day. Nobody let me look at you. They were all wailing and crying. But from far I saw blood all over your sleeping body. I felt so sad, didi. Why you left us? Why, why! My friends say a big truck hit you and you died. They’re all liars, I know. Don’t leave us now. We’ll become birds together, me, you and mai.”
Sweta remained quiet and watched the floor of the cave that resembled the shell of an enormous tortoise. She had forgotten how she had died but now, after her sister’s innocent outburst, she could see with blinding clarity the truck that had run over her. She could also see, for example, how the entire landscape had veered at a slanted angle right at the moment of impact and had disappeared from her consciousness, leaving only a faint dot of light retreating slowly into the distance. Everything came back to her: that drizzle, those rows of misty mountains and that inscrutable smell which had followed her all day long and had grown unexpectedly strong right before the moment the truck crushed life out of her. When alive she had barely noticed this smell though at times sudden whiff had brought a chilling shudder into her, but since it was fleeting she had not been able to lend any considerable thought to it. In any case, now after death as this memory asserted itself with such extraordinary force she found it odd that she had not been able to interpret the portent signs of that smell. She even remembered the dream of the night before, the dream she had forgotten when alive, the dream in which she had seen in chronological order every single detail of that tragic accident.
As if recovering from a deep reverie she felt her mouth gape open as her sister, not getting the expected response, once again held her arm and yanked it. Her head felt so heavy that she allowed the little girl to rock her while her eyes continued to stare at the floor. “Why are you not speaking, speak?” the little girl implored. “Speak, speak!”
“Gudiya dear, stop bothering your sister,” Sweta heard her mother’s voice. In a moment she found herself looking at the contorted, arthritis-tormented face of her mother as she lifted the little girl in her arms and shifted her to the other side. Pushing the phone further away, which she had placed at her knee, the mother began to whisper coaxingly into the little girl’s ear. Despite her effort to keep her straight, Gudiya stretched towards Sweta and added, “Didi, we’ll become peacocks. Wait, no no, I like ducks more. Yes yes, we’ll become ducks and swim together in big lakes.”
“Didi is tired, dear,” the mother said. “Here, listen to me. If you remain quiet, then only didi won’t leave us again.” Though the little girl straightened up, crossed her arms and became silent, the mother continued to whisper. Meanwhile Sweta contemplated her emotions. The ache in her heart, along with the lead-like heaviness in her head, continued to torment her as if to remind her of the recent sufferings that she had been through. Indeed, the last three weeks after her death had been difficult for her. She had not been able to socialize with other dead people. Consequently, her days had passed in lonely brooding, thinking and overthinking about the life that had been snatched away so prematurely. Due to this overthinking, with nobody to comfort her, she had lost her ability to interact calmly with the people who cared for her. Which is why now the presence of her mother and sister had weakened her spirit, and barely could she retrieve the strength with which she had come to meet them. But things could not go this way. With an immense concentration of self-will she tried to spirit away the gloominess that had sunk into her.
“Come, sit closer to me, dear,” Sweta felt her mother’s warm, moist fingers on the back of her right hand. “Yes here, yes yes.” Her mother then took her hand in both of hers, squeezed it lightly and looked at her face with grave maternal concern. “Tell me, dear, don’t they feed you? You’ve grown thin like a dried fish.”
“You won’t believe, mai, but other dead boys and girls are thinner than me,” Sweta said, suddenly feeling calm and relaxed after the affectionate touch of her mother. She even slid her tongue across her lips to ensure they had stopped twitching and continued, “Yes mai, you should meet them and see for yourself. Some girls are only skeletons. Can you believe it? Besides, what does it matter - soon I have to become a bird anyway.”
“Can’t they feed you well and then make you a bird?” her mother sighed, putting a reddish sac on her lap which Sweta noticed only now. “I don’t understand those capricious gods. Can’t they even feed my poor girl? If they can’t, why did they take you away from me in the first place?” She ran the back of her hand tenderly across Sweta’s forehead and then through her hair. Sucking her teeth and beginning to undo the knot of the sac, she went on, “I don’t care what the gods are doing up there. But you listen to me, dear. It’s important to remain in shape, especially after death. You hear me?” She paused, watched Sweta out of the corner of her sad eyes as if waiting for her to say something and continued, “I remember meeting your grandma at this very spot, right here. That was long ago but I remember it like yesterday. You know, dear, we talked mostly about the time when she was alive. But your grandma, who was a great eater, kept talking about food. She emphasized its importance to dead people. She said she was eating all the time. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“I know,” Sweta said. “These old people do eat a lot. Lucky brutes. Or are they lucky? I don’t understand them at all, mai. They’ve lived their lives and now they’re dead. They don’t have anything to complain the way we, the young ones, have. Like how many things we have, how much grievances we have against our lives that ended so abruptly. We wallow in our grief, can’t eat anything and we suffer terribly. These old people, on the other hand, eat all the time. But they also complain about it.” Sweta paused, gulping for breath, and not conscious of her enthusiastic outpouring, carried on, “The only other day, mai, I ran into a pot-bellied crone who was gobbling up a bowl of porridge. When I listened attentively to her incoherent murmurs did I realize that she was cursing the porridge itself for giving her stomach cramps. I mean if it hurts, why eat at all.”
“You should eat a lot of meat and eggs,” her mother said as if she had not heard her words at all. “That Birkanchan’s daughter, you know her right? You don’t? That half-bald woman who used to visit our house frequently. Yes, sometimes too frequently. Anyways, she recently talked with her dead son and even cooked for him a whole cauldron of mutton. I heard he ate it clean.”
“I don’t know about others but things are different for me. Not only I can’t eat meat mai, but also anything else. I avoid food at all costs. It’s just like that, I don’t eat anymore.”
“And nobody comes and makes you eat,” her mother spoke with her teeth together as if reproaching someone. “They simply abandon you like that? Isn’t that horrible? How can a girl like you know what is good for her and what is not!”
“I’m fine, mai,” Sweta said, choking with a desire to convince her mother that she was doing well. She stood up, took a few steps forward, then backward, walked over to the entranceway of the cave, peered into the abysmal moonless world for a while and withdrew suddenly with a shudder as if recalling something horrible. Meanwhile her mother had risen as well and, inspired by her maternal instinct, held her arms around Sweta as she was returning to her place. After they had sat, Sweta added, trying to sound as calm as possible, “Look at me, mai. I’m much healthier than other dead people. Don’t get too worried alright.”
Her mother sucked her teeth. As the silence of the cave fluttered its primordial wings Sweta found herself listening to the sound of the subterranean rivers. Their distant, despondent rumble, like the voices of countless forgotten souls, filled her whole being with an inexplicable longing. “Are you really dead, didi?” she heard her sister’s voice. The little girl, who had been startled when her mother and sister both had stood up, had now managed to prop her arms on her mother’s thigh and was craning her neck towards Sweta like an anxious rabbit. Her eyes, emphasized by the dimming oil-lamps, glistened with touching innocence. “Tell me, will you leave us again? Wait, I’m going to call my friend. Her grandpa is a big yogi. He can make dead people alive. Really, really. Wait.” She leaned over and picked the phone and hastened to dial some random numbers.
“Gudiya, give the mobile to me.” The mother took the phone. She turned it off and pushed it under her blouse. After arranging her saree, she added pensively, “Didi is not dead, you hear me. Now come here, yes, yes nice. Rest it here and get some sleep.”
“We should become ducks with didi, mai,” the little girl drawled, settling her head in her mother’s arms.
“I wanted to leave her at home with your aunt,” the mother said, now looking at Sweta. “But you know how stubborn she is. Such a long walk from our village yet she had been insisting from the morning. Neither I nor your aunt could make her change her mind. Anyways I’ve got some sel-roti for you, dear.”
“Sel-roti!” exclaimed Sweta, accepting the tiffin-box her mother pulled from the red sac and held out towards her. “It smells so good. Cardamom, right mai? You make such delicious sel.” She now looked at her sister. “Gudiya, do you want some?”
“Those are all for you,” her mother said, gently fidgeting with the ribbon that held Gudiya’s ponytail together. The little girl shifted a little and then became still, her assured, rhythmic breath continuing in the silence. “Yes, dear, all for you. She ate a lot at home. I also have got another tiffin of mutton for you. But that later, first eat these, the red ones, yes yes.”
As if she had forgotten she was dead, she picked one sel-roti from the box and brought it to her lips but suddenly, with a shudder, put it back and looked helplessly at her mother. “I can’t eat anything. I wish I could eat all of these, mai, but it’s not possible. After death I’ve stopped eating.”
“This one I made especially for you,” her mother chose a reddish sel-roti and directed it towards Sweta’s mouth. “Take a bite, only a small one for me.” She kept insisting but as Sweta, looking pleadingly at her, drew her head back, she sucked her teeth and added, “You won’t eat, not even one for me, dear. Why not? You know how you and Suvu devoured box-fulls when you took the goats to the fields.”
At the utterance of Suvu’s name Sweta felt a lump in her throat. She had only a faint recollection of Suvekshya, her best friend. Yet there were moments when she had experienced sudden bursts of grief every time those misty memories reached her from the distant, inaccessible world of the living. In any case, now she could see her vividly. Suvu’s face arranged itself into a powerful smile, filling the whole of Sweta’s being with a feverish longing. She saw her in the fields running after their goats, giggling loud enough to startle the birds in their nests. She now remembered the day they, both she and Suvu, had scrambled down the steep slope to reach Kali Khola and wet their feet in its cool, motherly water. What a time that was! How could she have forgotten the day when their fathers took them to the fair and bought them bangles? How that night, brimming with joy, they had talked till dawn! She began to think about her father too. For many years he had been working as a laborer in Qatar. She wanted to meet him, after all it had been so long. And where was Suvu, what was she doing? How could she have forgotten her? Sweta began to swear and mumble to herself.
“Why, what happened?” Her mother, who had been talking about Suvu, totally oblivious to the fact that Sweta was barely listening, now stared at her in perplexity. “Is everything ok?”
“How is Suvu, mai?”
“She misses you a lot, poor girl. Whenever she comes to our house she talks about you. She always brings up the time when you two cared for that injured parrot. She keeps saying had it not been for you, the poor thing would have died. You and Suvu loved birds so much.”
Sweta’s shoulders hunched up involuntarily. Right before her, like the visceral clarity of a hallucination, she could see Suvu, and that helpless parrot, its belly streaked with blood. They both had looked after it for weeks until it could finally fly. Holding her tears back, Sweta stared gloomily at the dimming floor of the cave and said, “Mai, I don’t want to be a bird in the next life. Anything but a bird. Even fish would be better.”
“But dear, why not a bird?” her mother, who was once again about to take a sel-roti and pass it over to Sweta, said. The urgency in Sweta’s voice, however, made her decide otherwise and she added, “Dear, you loved birds a lot. Aren’t birds the most cheerful creatures? You know that better than me, don’t you? You’ve spent so much time with birds.”
“No mai, birds are so miserable,” Sweta said. “These birds suffer the most, even more than us. I know, mai, I know. I know the birds are sadder. We don’t need to live with birds to understand their tormented souls. All we need to do is to peer into their eyes. Into those astonished eyes of the cuckoo. Or into the dark, sad eyes of the sparrows. So sad as if they were haunted by the memories of their previous lives.” She paused and bit her lip. Her lower lip had begun to twitch violently as if to remind her that soon she would have to leave this world, that soon even this last opportunity to be with her mother and sister would come to an end, that soon she would be gone forever, and never again, never, never, the beautiful days of past would return. She looked at her sister who was sleeping peacefully with her head on her mother’s thigh and felt a surging prick all through her. Still unable to tear her eyes off her sister, she continued with a tremor in her voice, “Mai, these birds feel a lot. Even more than we humans do. Yes mai, how else can we explain the loneliness oozing out of the eyes of the parrots. How else, mai, how else. I know these things. I feel these things more acutely after death. I know the cuckoo sings because it remembers the days when it was a human. I know, mai, I know. We dead feel these things. We feel a lot of things. It’s so horrible to be dead.”
“Dear,” her mother spoke hesitantly after a brief silence. “Dear,” she mumbled again. “If you want to be a fish in the next life, I’ll do everything to make it happen. I’ll worship all the gods, perform all sorts of rituals. Everything I’ll do for you, my darling. But tell me, just think one last time and tell me. Are you sure you don’t want to be a bird?”
“I don’t know,” Sweta said, and bit her lip once again. She made an extraordinary effort to smother the agitation that had now begun to throb in the veins behind her ears. Unable to look up at her mother she stared at the oil-lamps, most of which were already out now, and went on, “I don’t know anything, mai. I don’t want to be anything. Nothing mai, nothing. Not even a fish. It’s so horrible, everything is so horrible. It’s so horrible to be dead. Mai, why can’t I be your daughter again? Why, mai, why!”
A pair of tears cut across her mother’s cheeks. Sweta saw and felt shattered by it. Only then did she realize that she had allowed herself to get carried too far by her emotions. Naturally her eyes grew heavy. She thought it would be embarrassing for a girl, who was no longer of this world, to cry before her mother and younger sister. She rose and buried her face behind her palms for a moment. Inhaling deep and steeling herself, she said, “Mai, I must go now.” Her mother tried to say something, but all Sweta heard was suppressed gasps that felt like sobbing. A trembling arm, which had been worn down by innumerable bouts of arthritis, reached for her face. Sweta stooped towards it and felt her mother’s warm fingers across her face. Her sister, who had been awakened by the commotion, was staring at her out of her frightened, anxious eyes. Sweta waved at her but could not bring enough strength to reach out and kiss her. Barely able to sustain herself on her wobbly legs, Sweta staggered towards the entrance of the cave. A wave of cold wind lashed through her. She paused there and looked at her mother and sister one last time. As she stepped into the moonless world, all her efforts to harden herself gave in and a scalding burst of tears tore down her eyes.
Inside the cave both the mother and the sister could hear the receding jingle of Sweta’s anklets for a long time. Slowly it faded and became the silence of the night.