The evening was diaphanous, slowing slipping into a dark, starless night. Dhrumi crouched, watching with bated breath the slanting sunbeams disappearing into the horizon as the tall grass obscured her. Anxiously clueless, she wondered why her mind reverberated the lines from a Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s ghazal. True night was commencing and the forests of Kanger Ghati which looked warm and welcoming in the daytime; now seemed to put on a menacing scowl, ready to pounce much like the predators that roamed there. It had been six months since Dhrumi joined a government project on cave restoration near the Kotumsar Caves. She, often, had to encounter unwelcome visits from strangers who would either threaten or try to bribe her into submitting reports that would permit rampant construction. That day, too, had started out with a hostile visit, but as an expert in minerology studies, Dhrumi had held out her own in front of Viraj Lal, who owned several acres of land and was involved in a not-so-prospering timber business. The lavish summer-morning sunlight streaked in through the shadowy trees onto the small windowed-office-room as she said, “I will not sign that fraudulent report of yours”. Viraj with the eyes the colour of caterpillar, Viraj of the crooked hair and crooked teeth, Viraj whose name everyone was scared of, and who could be no one’s friend, glared at her with his dark, intimidating eyes.

Now, hiding in the foliage, she remembered she had mentally clutched the ends of her table to combat the drive-to-flee during that morning conversation. Viraj Lal, a quinquagenarian, who had lost half of his foot in a car accident, was known for coercing others and making them comply to his wishes, had walked out of the room, brandishing his angry walking stick and muttering, “I will see you again!”. He had an army of henchmen who could make anyone disappear if he so-wished. Today, Dhrumi was his target as she understood that evening while driving back. She was waylaid by his men and as they approached her, she ran towards the dense jungle thicket with its reservoir of immaterial darkness.

Concealed in the forest, the susurrating grass relaxed her as the watch on her hand ticked by. Almost forty-five minutes had passed and the rustling sounds and shouts had stopped and Dhrumi who had quietly kept moving along the dusk-lit forest-foliage was firmly ensconced in the darkness of the green. Once again, she found herself in the midst of a sublime knowledge process of her identity that had engendered in her fourteen years ago. It had produced itself in that moment and from thence had creatively endeavored to unfold itself in her every attempt and desire. At seventeen, she won a meritorious scholarship and joined the English-medium upmarket school in Umanagar to fulfill her parents’ wishes but often found herself at the receiving end of the bullies of her class. On a past-fateful late afternoon, the prismatic expanse of light had covered the small classroom on the top floor of her school. She had been forcefully dragged there, by the gang of bullies who called themselves unimaginatively ‘The End’. Like bad weather, they would suddenly descend upon her in the school corridors and rob her of her pocket money, knick-knacks and self-respect. Each time there was a new addition to their torturous bullying methods. Scared, she crouched lower as one of the boys brandished a penknife when the door swung open and a tall, lean young man not-more-than twenty strode inside with the janitor’s big mop. His commanding voice dispersed the group at whirlwind speed. Quietly, Dhrumi sat down as tears of relief rolled down. The young man strode up and knocked on the desk in front and said, “You need to complain to the school authorities. Tell your parents if you are not able to handle them on your own.” His sonorous voice made her look up. In an instant she understood the lines from the ghazal that her uncle had been listening to all his life in their small drawing room- “teri aankhon ke siwa duniya mein rakkha kya hain” (Without your eyes this world seems nothing).

From then on, she became Raihan’s shadow, as he worked part time on the clerk’s desk in the school, surreptitiously following him and secretly finding in him her salvation, identity and desire. Raihan inside that wrinkled shirt, Raihan who worked odd jobs to survive and pay for his studies, Raihan who helped his grandmother run a small grocery store, Raihan with his history of hurts and scars, Raihan whom everybody knew as the genius and who could identify any gemstone. Raihan who had once stopped Dhrumi in her thoughts on a still evening and had told her that he could not offer anyone any place in his life and had disappeared down the years to pursue higher studies. A deep rustle behind, startled Dhrumi out of her reverie. The world had a strange new smell in the devouring darkness and with a terrified soul she glanced. Small zigzagging lights appeared in the forest foliage but muffled shouts made her cower further. Suddenly, a torchlight fell on her face as her anxious breaths matched the stertorous breaths of its owner. The night became completely coated with those eyes once again. Raihan held her as his men came racing down the hill to help. Finally, after years, he had found her.

Dipu, the attender, at Dhrumi’s office had spotted Viraj Lal’s men leading her car astray. Distraught he had sought help from every passing car. But only one car had stopped and the Chief Conservator of Forest had stepped out.

That night, there were the two of them, and there was the Earth they walked on. There was no one else as the body became completely soul and that very ghazal reverberated in Dhrumi’s mind as she and Raihan walked back towards the road.

 

Dr. Neepa Sarkar has taught in the Department of English, Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, where she was the coordinator for the M.A. in English program. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature, and her thesis was on Literature and Collective Memory. She has been published in History Today, Middle West Review, Irish Studies Review, The Confidential Clerk, Mejo Journal, Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, Glocal Colloquies, and The Himalayan Journal of Contemporary Research. She won the Issac Sequiera Memorial Award (2018) for her paper on Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Three of her chapters on Partition Literature and Postcolonialism and Ecocriticism and Detective Fiction respectively have been published by De Gruyter Press and Lexington Books. Also, her poetry has been published in Within and Without Magazine, US, Wingless Dreamer Publications, Cyberwit, and Daath Voyage. Two of her short stories have been accepted for publication for anthologies by Curious Blue Press, Running Wild, and RIZE Press. She is presently working in the areas of posthumanism, ecocriticism and memory, along with co-editing two books, one of which has been accepted for publication by Ibidem Press, Germany.