incomplete- calling out

There were these voices, always.
Whispering, conspiring, nudging her to kill the normal.

Normal? What’s normal for a 19 year old mentally retarded girl?

Soiling the bed in the night? Being chained to a lifeless witness of her sorrow? Or talking to herself, 24 hours?

Or is it the old Gulmohar tree in the backyard of her four walls? The tree. It talks to her. When it’s sad, it cries its leaves out. When it’s happy, it breaks into small red flowers. Last night it was angry. Swaying vehemently as if trying to uproot itself and touch her. She was in pain and it could feel it.

Even last month when “he” was here from the town, she was in pain. It always hurt to see him. She wanted to reach out and feel him. She wanted to smell him, she wanted to kiss him, caress him, fold his arms around her. What was he? Some dream she had lived, or more convincingly she had dreamt. Dreamt a dream? Was it normal to dream a dream?

What was normal about Raj Lakshmi anyway?

When she was a kid she did normal things. Freed butterflies from the sweat of her hands. Reveled the orchestra that the nightingale, woodpeckers, crickets, seemed to play with the rustling of the winds and the whistling of the water. She loved the stories that the sun and the sky read out to her. Often, when she would follow a pebble down stream, she would make a new friend. A wild flower, a rabbit, RAIN!

Rain, was sometimes Raj Lakshmi’s best friend. It mostly came unannounced. Sometimes it caught her out in the open, drenching her, embracing her and flowing down her hair like tiny transparent marbles. On other occasions it hid her embarrassment, totally drowning her tears. For hours she would sit by the window and watch the drops romance the air. Fall on the ground and break into thousand tiny droplets and then she would laugh, loud, unashamed of being heard.

It would raise a familiar fear in her dadi.

Chapter 2
Dadi and sisters


The month of july ushered in two seasons in the haveli of Thakur Rudra Pratap Singh, the sweet zest of mangoes and the tinkling of the two sisters’ payjeb. Raj Lakshmi and Swaran Lata, strangers sharing the same family!

In their Dadi’s words Raj Lakshmi at 14 was a princess. “A delicate stem of Lotus, prettier than the pink of monsoon skies, soft like rose petals and unassuming, very unassuming.” Of course she never forgot to add doomed with Raj Lakshmi! That’s what her cousins called Raj Lakshmi, Doomed Princess!

Swaran Lata was pretty, like..like….well she was pretty. She had big black magical eyes. They cast a spell on you everytime they would look into your direction. She could lock your attention for days after you would have looked into them, searching for that mysterious shine. Her long lashes were equally skillful. They would shut on you when you would be too close to something she kept guarded inside that sea of seduction. All of 16 years, the girl could boast of a voluptuously crafted frame that could lure many a thousand ships into a storm. And she was sharp!

She could cut through you and read every sentence you were about to utter. Read every word that crossed your mind. It was dangerous to desire her in her presence and impossible to not do so. Often, she played with people, she read, had fallen for her. She was good with words and words she wrote.

“ I burn, I melt
in the arms of wind
come embrace my being”

Come who would not for her, when the darkness was young and the sky all drunk on the beauty of moon. They all came. With expensive gifts and gifts of hearts! She kept them waiting for hours, for days. She never met them, not one of them. She liked words not men!

There was another thing she did not like, Raj Lakshmi!

It pained their dadi to see the distance between the two increasing by the day. Raj Laksmi reminded many of her mother. The same innocence, same beauty and same aloofness.
The quality of being with everyone yet being alone. The art of being everyone’s friend, yet belonging to none. Everything that Swaran Lata wanted to erase from her memory, she lived in Raj Laksmi..


Sometimes Dadi saw an unknown fear in Swaran Lata’s eyes, almost as if she had seen a ghost. Was Swaran Lata scared? What could possibly scare Swaran Lata? Her Dadi had seen her stand unperturbed on rather moving occasions. Occasions, when tears flooded the eyes of those, known to have lived their lives without a heart. They had failed to move the girl, of infusing any feeling of loss or fear in her.

What was it about Raj Lakshmi that invoked a fear in the heart of her elder sister?

What was she scared of?

Of Raj Lakshmi finding companionship where no one ever ventured, dark forests, khandars and the lone black room in the basement of the haveli.

Chapter 3

THE SUMMER TROUBLE

They indeed had remarkably dangerous similarities. Raj Lakshmi and her mother.

And this haveli would never let the family forget the same. Nor would that summer.

The holidays started on a rather lazy note, marking the absence of many relatives and friends. Kusum Tayee, from Calcutta, Banwari Chacha, Palo Chachi and their three kids suman, chandru and manohar would not be coming. But Everyone’s favourite “mene kya kaha tha?” P.K. kaka had just arrived. Lachchi chachi, the widower with a sword-sharp tongue had arrived a week earlier- in order to ensure the best room- facing the orchard and miles away from Raj Lakshmi’s den. Govardhan mama and his two twins love and kush were expected to be home by evening. A certain Shreyas, the twins’ friend from nagpur was going to share the room at the out house.