Chapter Three

It was still night when I was shaken awake.

“Time to get moving, mate,” a voice was saying. “This is no place to kip, believe me.”

I was shaken again.

“You’ve got to have somewhere better to sleep than this, surely?” the voice insisted.

I stared up at a policeman.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, wiping sticky lips.

“You know you stink, don’t you?” he added. “Sorry,” I repeated. My mouth tasted poisonous. “Do you know you’re on a roundabout?” “Sorry,” was again all I could manage.

“Well, how about moving your ‘oh-so-sorry’ backside and getting yourself off home?” he suggested.

“Thank you,” I muttered apologetically.

I did not look back after I crossed the road. I knew he was still watching. I pretended to know where I was going, yet had no idea in which town I was that night.

The dying bulb of a public lavatory flickered up ahead. I glanced behind to be sure he had not followed.

I took a newspaper from a rubbish bin, then locked myself in a cubicle. I laid the paper on the floor, curled up around the pan and struggled back into a difficult sleep.

***

The sky was darkening as Bindra reached the top of the path that led to the abandoned burial ground. Her mouth was parched. Her knees, hips and back painful.

As she broke through the tree line and the dimly lit valley opened up before her, she stopped. She looked beyond the Shakti Tree to where her home stood. She had lost her bearings.

Again she looked at the tree, and then beyond.

There was smoke in her nostrils. There were embers in the gloom.

Bindra’s heart violently twisted in bloodless dread. Her knees suddenly buckled beneath her. And as she fell, she vomited.

“Jyothi, Jiwan! Mero choraharu!” she screamed, as she began to scramble down the stony hillside. “My boys! My boys!”

Bindra rolled and slipped, lacerating her clothes, her skin, until she fell against the tree’s solidity.

“Ama!” a hoarse voice gasped. “Mother!”

Bindra’s sons burst towards her from the darkness of the hollow. “They’re still here!” both boys cried, as she gathered them into her arms. “Ama, they’re still here! They’re waiting!”

***

I looked without recognition at the reflection in the window of the off-licence.

Gaunt features blinked back.

I had no sense at all of who it might be.

I was knocking at the door, when the “Open” sign was slipped into place and the bolt unlocked.

“Alright, alright!” the plump-calfed woman barked.

I had the bottle in my hand and the two pound notes on the counter, even before she was back behind the till.

“Have a nice day!” she sneered, as I skulked out and made towards the park.

I pushed deep into the bushes, away from any paths, any dog walkers, any police. I unscrewed the cap and gulped down foul, burning bitterness until all was gone.

I laid my head on soft, damp ground.

I breathed the sweetness of dark soil deep into my lungs. And then, again, the blissful, empty darkness.

***

Bindra peered down the smoke-swept hillside for a moment.

“Who has done this?” she asked the frightened faces pressed against her legs.

“Ama, they’re still here. Stay safe by Durga’s tree,” Jyothi pleaded.

“But this is wrong. This is nobody’s land. We owe nothing. No one comes here.”

Kali Ma surged back into her bones and Bindra stood tall again.

“Stay here,” she whispered. “Pray to Mahishasura-mardini, She who is the Slayer of the Buffalo Demon. Pray for victory, my strong sons!”

Bindra touched the two dark heads as she left the sanctuary of the Shakti Tree, placing on them a blessing before she stepped towards the dying bonfire that had once been their home.

***

I was naked beneath the blanket. Naked and cold.

“What’re you on then, eh?” some man was saying to me, clenching tight his grey face as he examined my eyes.

I stared back, frightened.

“Know where you are?”

I shook my head.

“You’re in a police station, mate. In a lock-up.”

Again I shook my head.

“Oh yes you are!” he replied with a bored laugh, pushing my chest with such force that I fell back onto cold concrete. “What do you expect, walking around in the altogether? Not nice is it, for the rest of us? However pretty your mother thinks you are.”

“My mother?” I asked in confusion. “You know my mother?”

“Night night, pretty boy,” he chuckled.

And the lights went out.

I lay still and silent.

I lay still and silent for a long time.

And then:

“Enough. No more. It ends here.”

***

Bindra approached the smouldering pile of bamboo.

She stopped and stared in disbelief at the complete destruction of all she had struggled to provide for her children. Forcing back a pressing wail, her bewildered gaze rested on the scorched-scalp dome of her tasala. The sight of her old cooking pan emerging from the embers, like the dark skullcaps she unearthed amongst her vegetables, gave her momentary comfort. Her boys would still have hot tarkari before sleep.

A spectre of bright sparks suddenly scattered into darkness, drawing Bindra’s eyes to narrow on a twisted chair. She owned no furniture. She looked again.

“Mero bakhri!” she choked in rage and confusion. “My goat! Why kill my goat?” She put her hands to her face and began to cry. That sweet-natured she-goat was a friend to the children. She gave good milk. She even slept with them when the cold was too hard to bear.

“Who did this?” Bindra screamed into the enclosing shadows. “Show yourselves, kaapharharu! You cowards! Who would do this to my children? And me, a widow! With nothing! Who has hurt none of you!”

A murmur made her turn.

A group of men and women were standing some yards from her, their faces flickering in the dying fire.

For a moment, she thought they were bhutharu, spirits of the dead bones beneath her feet that she found caught amongst her carrots.

But she knew these people. They farmed the land around her. They were her neighbours. She had laboured hard in their fields during harvests of buckwheat and kodo, pearl millet and mustard. She had planted their paddy until her feet had swollen and split in exchange for a measure of daal. She had fried them gifts of sweet, rice-flour phinni during Dasai, during Durga Puja. She had brought them tasty, baked iskus when the forest vines hung heavy with yellow squash gourds.

“You?” she faltered. “Why would you do this?”

There was no shame in their eyes. Only a look she had seen earlier today, in the cave temple.

“You are afraid!” she gasped in realisation. “Why? What have I done? What have any of us done to you?” They blinked back in motionless silence. A man cautiously stepped forward.

“Woman, you are cursed. And now you curse us. My children are sick because of you.”

A young woman joined in. “My belly is full of worms, bokshi!” “It is you, Witch, who has fouled our water and soured our milk!”

“Our cows are dry!” cried another.

“I am no bokshi!” Bindra laughed in astonishment. “What are you saying? You know me! You are my neighbours!”

“We do not know you, Leper Witch!” an elderly man shouted. Bindra looked back, up to the Shakti Tree. She did not want her sons to hear such wicked words. Such cruel names. Such lies.

A sharp stone struck her shoulder, causing Bindra to stagger backwards in shock and pain.

“Leper!” shrieked a woman. “What sins are yours that you’d punish even us for your crimes?”

Bindra looked up to the tree, to her boys. She turned to stumble back into the darkness, to hold her sons again. Her Light and Life.

A sudden, rushing movement and Bindra’s clothes were clinging wet against her skin.

The brutal reek of kerosene.

She turned her face towards the flickering group of spectral bhutharu, standing silent, staring with their hollow eyes.

And then a gleaming flame, spinning, spinning in the dark.

The thud of a burning stick against her back.

Bindra was on fire.