Shuddho walked briskly through the forest path rubbing his hands partly in excitement and partly to ward off the chill. It was post sunset and darkness had settled down comfortably over the surroundings. The crickets had started their orchestra and the occasional screeching of the owl or the howl of the fox nearby, added to the symphony.
Suddho, however, was oblivious to all these. His mind was rife with the exciting news he had just received. There was a possibility of another Rhino hunt and he was again appointed as their guide.
Though the last one had gone all awry, he was optimistic about this one. It was pure bad luck. The fools had gone a bit too far in lighting the fire. It was a mistake that he was sure to avoid this time. He was afraid they may not contact him anymore after that incident. However, he was glad when they called him.
After all, he was the local boy who knew the area inside out. His lips curled up in an evil grin as he sniggered imagining the heavy armoured bodies of the Rhinos lying prostrate on the ground, their horns wrenched out of their skulls. He licked his lips in anticipation as he calculated the money that he could almost see making a happy bulge in his pocket. The trumpet call of an elephant somewhere in the distant made him stop in his tracks.
“It will be your turn soon” he snarled viciously. “How I would love to put the bullet through those oblong mounds of bone and flesh and tear out those tusks sticking out from them.” He whispered hoarsely. Shuddho despised elephants. It was for them that he had lost his parents. They and that mute sister of his. How he hated them both.
It was when Shuddho was a boy of 10 and Amodini had just been born. A few months after her birth she became seriously ill with high temperature. Shuddho still remembers that fateful night several years back as if it happened just yesterday. He was sleeping near his mother when he woke up to realise that the house was full of people talking and crying. His mother was weeping inconsolably, his father was running around organizing people and Owui was consoling his mother as well as rocking the wailing bundle of cloth which he assumed was his sister. Shuddho had hardly even looked at her properly. She was always surrounded by people, checking, feeding, rocking, or singing to her. Not that he bothered to look either. At 10 Shuddho had already had a whole world of his own, boys his age, who like him, had no time for bawling infants.
However, that night everything seemed to be different. Owui looked serious and his mother did not even notice that he had got up and was standing by the bed looking lost and confused. It was only after a while that he realised what was happening. Amodini’s fever was shooting up and she was wailing uncontrollably. The neighbours suggested they needed a doctor immediately. His father decided to leave along with a few of others from their village.
It seemed as if the gods were weeping too at Amodini’s plight. It had been raining incessantly since evening and the skies did not intend to provide any respite. The amber glow along the dark horizon predicted more rainfall. A gale was howling its warning that tore through the rain laden skies making things even more difficult for Amod and the rest of the party.
As he huddled in the plastic wrap that doubled up as a makeshift raincoat, Amod’s face was wrought with worry and anxiety. However, he was hardly thinking of himself. Shuddho realised his father was not even thinking of him, his son. His anxious gaze when he looked at the baby, made Suddho realise that his father’s thoughts were focused only on the infant. A strange feeling hitherto unknown to Shuddho stirred within his young heart. Why was his father only thinking of her? Why was he not thinking of him? Did he not matter anymore? For 10 years he had been their only thought. What happened to change all that?
Anxious to feel wanted again, Shuddho had moved closer to his mother and clutched at the loose end of her Sari.
“Come here boy” Owui had dragged him away. “Let your mother be with your sister. She needs him more”
Shuddho had found that strange. He was scared too. He needed his mother to hold him tight just like she always did when there was a storm or when he had a bad dream; just like now. Why did she not realise that? As he looked towards his mother for reassurance, he found her anxiously scanning the face of his infant sister that was fast turning a pale orange from the deep red. So it was her then. She was all that mattered now. With no one to wipe away his misinterpreted tears, Shuddho looked at his baby sister with a new-found animosity.
The storm was getting worse. “Why don’t you all start off before it gets impossible to move?” Matongini hurried her son and the rest of the party. Batasi stood up with the baby wrapped firmly in another plastic sheet leaving the face exposed. She lay still, wilted, and weak with her eyes closed. Her wails had exhausted her, and she lay limp in the arms of her mother. A bright streak of lightning lit up their path briefly as the little party of villagers made their way into the forests. As Shuddho stood watching feeling lonely and scared, he saw his father carefully cover his mother and his sister with his plastic sheet, before stepping out. Till today Shuddho remembers that fateful night when they disappeared into the torrential rain away from him – forever.
The next morning had brought in more chaos. The rains had stopped but not before it had wreaked havoc all over the village. It had lashed out in mad fury, uprooting trees, breaking walls, blowing over houses and even killing livestock. Just when people were looking around to scavenge the bits and pieces of their lives from the devastations, Matongini’s wails rang through the village. Shuddho had ran outside to see his Owui pounding the walls of their hut with her bare hands and beating her chest alternatively. Her wiry hair flying all over her face that was streaked with tears flowing down like rain fed rivulets. He looked around to see a few of the men who had accompanied his parents last night standing dishevelled and wrought with grief.
It was then that he had been told that the storm and the lightning had blinded them, and the party had mistakenly taken a wrong route. Subsequently, they had run into a herd of elephants in the jungle. The animals confused and scared had run amok at the sight of the intruders. In the tussle his parents and a few others had been crushed to death. They were unable to carry them back and hence when the rains stopped, the villagers had decided to bury them in the jungle itself.
“And the baby?” said Mataongini suddenly.
“The baby is safe. It is indeed a miracle. In the tussle that ensued, she was flung out of Batasi’s arms and had landed in the bushes. The elephants however never touched her. We really do not know how or why.” one of the villagers had said as he stepped forward with a bundle in his hands.
Matongini rushed down the steps and cradled the infant in her arms hugging her to her chest.
“Thank the Gods in Heaven. He has saved my Amu” she weeped.
Shuddho stood dumbstruck. His whole world had come crashing down in one night. He did not understand how Owui could raise praises to the Lord. It was then that he realised that there could be no God. Even if there was He did not quite like Shuddho. Or else why would he deprive this 10- year-old from the one love that he needed urgently now?
“Very well”, Shuddho had decided. “I will be my own God. I will make my own rules, and my own life.”
The storm had not only broken his family. Its lashing had made a deeper wound in his heart that had robbed him of his faith. Young Shuddho had started interpreting life in his own way. With no one to correct his understanding, to soothe his sorrows or help him heal his wound, he had left it open, raw, and bleeding even today.
The storm and the accident had caused another calamity. As Amodini grew up Matongini realised that she could neither talk nor hear. She could just make guttural sounds from her throat. However, her innocent smiles and dreamy eyes stole everyone’s heart, except Suddho’s. He could not bear the sight of her. Whenever he saw her, he felt as if his wounds were being scraped afresh. If there were two things that Shuddho wanted to obliterate from the face of the earth, it was this deaf and mute sister of his and the Elephants.
As Shuddho stepped out of the jungle towards his village, he looked back and snarled “Be ready to pay for your sins you beasts!”
Another trumpet call resounded through the trees as if the animal responded by accepting his challenge.
[…] Chapter 8 […]