Chukkru was fifty when he married Maimoona. He looked only sixty, commented Kuppu-Acchan viciously ...
Chukkru followed an unusual calling. He dived and retrieved things fallen into wells. A pulley or a battered bucket, a pitcher of copper or bronze, at times a gold or silver ornament. Often there was nothing to be retrieved, but he wandered from well to well and from village to village, over desolate paths and distances. Those were times before there was piped water, and there were wells in almost every house—the more prosperous the family the deeper the well. Chukkru ranged over the Palghat countryside, by now familiar with the cry of his calling—a long, sad drone in which pots and pans lay lost as in the slime of wells. They called him the Diving Fowl.
In the years of perilous diving, Chukkru’s name atrophied, he became a diving fowl; Kuppu-Acchan said that the fowl would peck grains of rice if one were to throw a fistful in his path.
When the marriage was fixed the villagers said it would never really take place and if at all it did, the bride wouldn’t stay long. But these fond expectations were belied. Maimoona walked unperturbed into wedlock. There was no honeymoon; the Diving Fowl left Khasak before dawn the day after and came home after midnight, covered with leeches and moss. Maimoona picked his skin clean and put him to sleep across her navel. She woke up to her days as usual and walked across the square, the thattan slipping from her hair, sleeves rolled up in grand display.
And she sat in her shop, more for gossip and amusement than for gain; she spent hours there with her friend and confidante, Thanka the jaggery-seller ... Abida had grown up watching Maimoona from a distance, and like most girls her age, was stricken by a strange love for her beauty. But when Maimoona moved into their house, Abida felt a greater loneliness than before. It was hard for her to consider the newcomer as a stepmother; Maimoona was just seven years older. Abida couldn’t call her ‘elder sister ’ either.
Abida had always been lonely. This girl, timid and apprehensive, sorrow hidden in the pallor of her cheeks, had found no playmate while a child and no young man when she came of age. When the wind had taken away the heat of sunlight, she would wander along the big ridge across the paddies, or sit by the lotus pond watching the water birds. Often Thitthi Bi would ask her, ‘Have you no friend, my child?’ and Abida would reply, ‘None, Umma.’ And Thitthi Bi would bless her, ‘The Holy Sheikh be your companion!’
But there was someone to love, someone to serve and care for—her Attha. She would warm the gruel around midnight and wait for Attha. Now it was Maimoona who warmed the gruel, and on many nights Attha went to bed without seeing his daughter. Yet Abida stayed awake in her corridor until Maimoona’s crooning gave way to the fitful snores of her Attha.
Abida would attempt an overture at times, tentative and ingratiating, ‘Tell me a story.’
‘The story of your mother’s lover,’ Maimoona would ask, ‘the one who killed her?’
It was on such occasions that Abida slipped out of the house without catching anyone’s attention, gliding like a spirit. Once she escaped and went into the grove of Arasu trees. She sat down beneath a tree and asked, ‘Holy Sheikh, are you with me?’ Suddenly the brook turned a deeper blue, and there was a rain of flowers.
‘Yah Rahman,’ she said. Her inward ear listened intently. In that ecstasy she became a child once again. She heard the horse’s trot in the wind.
‘Horse-spirit, horse-spirit,’ she said, ‘will you give me a ride across the sky?’ She mounted the horse-spirit, and together they raced in the wind, past forests and over seas. Then she saw her mother, young and radiant once again, but at Abida’s touch, she began to shrivel and moulder. Abida found herself in the doomed house on the hill. Outside, her uncle sat on a rock holding up his palms to the warmth of the setting sun.
‘Horse-spirit, horse-spirit!’ Abida called out. She could hear the hooves no more, she was alone beneath the tree. The east wind blew in giant sighs through the grove of Arasus.
‘Maimoona,’ Allah-Pitcha once reasoned with his daughter, ‘I don’t think it is wise to send Abida out as a servant. She’s no longer a girl.’
‘Who’s sending her?’ Maimoona taunted, ‘She likes to flirt around.’
The next day Abida did not go to the school. As the day grew warmer, Thanka the jaggery woman came to laze about and gossip. Abida could hear them whisper and giggle.
‘Who’s there in the corridor?’ Maimoona asked, leaning back and speaking into the window.
‘It’s me,’ Abida responded.
‘Didn’t you go to sweep the school?’
No reply came from Abida.
‘Aren’t you going?’ Still Abida was silent.
‘You had better go,’ Maimoona said. ‘Do you expect the Diving Fowl to fly home with your food?’
It was Sunday. Quietly, Abida slipped out and took the footway towards the seedling house. She found Ravi, broom in hand, sweeping. Quickly she seized the broom.
‘Not you, Saar!’ she said.
‘True,’ Ravi laughed, ‘I can’t sweep half as well ...’
‘Yaa Allah!’ she said. It was that day, without her realizing how, that she told him her story.
‘You are not alone, Abida,’ Ravi said, ‘I too am a motherless child.’
‘Rabbil Aalemeen!’
Abida stooped to sweep. Ravi was standing close. ‘Abida,’ he said to her.
‘Yes, Saar?’
‘You don’t look too well.’
He laid a caring hand over her forehead.
‘You have a fever, my little girl.’
She smiled in gratitude. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘it keeps coming and going.’
‘Go home and lie down.’
As she walked home she wept without restraint. Suddenly she stopped; it was no good going home in that state. She turned towards the brook to wash her face and cool her feet. Appu-Kili was there, stalking the big green dragonflies. He was overjoyed to see her.
‘Came to see me?’
‘Of course, what else would I come here for, my Parrot?’
Strangely, Abida realized that she had spoken the truth and touched a mysterious springhead of solace.
Meanwhile Appu-Kili had caught a dragonfly and with nimble fingers slipped a lasso round its tail. Abida looked at the dragonfly, into its eyes of a thousand crystals. The eyes shone dully with the chronicles of the dead. If dragonflies were memories of the dead, as they believed in Khasak, whose then was this memory? Perhaps it was her mother’s pining images of sin and regret and drowning. The crystal eyes fell on her.
‘My Parrot,’ Abida said, ‘why do you hold the ancient one in your lasso? Let him go his way.’
Appu-Kili began to cry. Quickly she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.’
The tears stopped, the cretin’s smile spread over his face, big and beatific. ‘No ask me leave him?’
‘Oh no!’
Appu-Kili undid a cloth wrap and laid it before her, ‘Take it.’ Champaka flowers. She folded her thattan and gathered the flowers in it. She walked home with a Champaka in each of her earrings, and placed the thattan filled with flowers before Maimoona.
Thanka was still there, whispering and giggling. Maimoona took the flowers, adorned her earrings with them, and gave generous fistfuls to Thanka. Abida walked away into her dingy corridor. Maimoona said, within Abida’s hearing, ‘Wearing flowers, that bag of bones!’
Abida bore the venom of those words. She tried to soothe it with a prayer. She took up the broom and tried to sweep the corridor, but couldn’t. She leant the broom against the wall. There was a bowl of souring gruel, she took a spoonful, but it tasted foul and she did not eat any more.
Abida walked out again. Maimoona did not ask her where she was going. Abida went back to the grove of Arasus. The place was deserted. In the enchantment of the grove she became a dragonfly; whose memory was she? Perhaps a memory of her own sorrows of another birth. From the grove she walked to the brook, she plucked the two Champakas from her ears and tore the petals into fragments and gently dropped them into the water.
Appu-Kili was still amid the screw pines. He saw Abida drop the petals into the water, and was saddened.
‘Achchi,’ he said, ‘what you doing with fovers?’
‘O my Parrot, I was playing.’
He came over and stood near her. ‘You aa bootiful,’ he said, soothingly. ‘I marry you.’
‘Of course, my Parrot.’
‘Get you more fovers.’
Appu-Kili went back to the screw pines. Again, Abida was alone beside the brook. She sat down on the soft carpet of Krishna Kantis, the blue-flowered grass. The brook flowed on with the remnants of many things.
The village said that Maimoona was becoming more beautiful. She walked through Khasak as she always had, she sat in her shop for long hours with Thanka.
One day Abida came and stood before them. She was no longer afraid. She said, ‘Let Attha come home. I’ll tell him.’
For a brief moment Maimoona went pale, but soon she was her normal self.
Pouting, she said. ‘What are you going to tell?’
‘That the Khazi comes here ...’
Thanka was the one who flared up, ‘Ah ha! Can’t the Khazi come here to ward off spirits?’
‘I’ll tell ...’
‘Let’s see you do that, little slut!’ Thanka said in a tearing rage. Then to Maimoona, ‘Nip this in the bud ...’
‘Thanka, it’s nothing ...’ Maimoona said.
At midnight Khasak woke up to screams and the sounds of a chase; Abida was running towards the mullah’s house, blood flowing from the gash in her forehead, with Chukkru, brandishing a log of firewood, in hot pursuit.
Quickly Thitthi Bi took the girl in and closed the door.
‘What has come over you, old sinner?’ Thitthi Bi barred his way.
The Diving Fowl gasped for breath in anger and exhaustion.
‘Open the door, Thitthi Bi-Akka,’ he panted, ‘bring her out!’
Chukkru stood in the yard, incensed.
Now the mullah stepped down into the yard, drew his knife out of its scabbard in the broad canvas belt, and held it up.
‘Take this,’ the mullah said, ‘and this too,’ he said touching his head with the knife, ‘it’s greyed, cut it off, and then have your way.’
The Diving Fowl threw away the log of firewood and walked home downcast. The mullah went to the closed door and said, ‘Abida, my child, don’t go back, sleep here.’
The next morning the houri walked again, fresh roses in her earrings ... Abida slept the whole day, and got up at sundown.
‘Umma,’ Abida said, ‘Let me go up to the brook. I’ll feel better after a dip.’
The fading sunlight was turning crimson. Abida recalled the many remnants the stream contained, she remembered the froth and eddy of the water as it bore them away. She crossed the brook and began her walk over the ridge. Far beyond Khasak, she saw the train race towards the mountain pass like a serpent with a flaming jewel on its forehead. Now the black palmyras were lost in the oncoming night. The village of Kalikavu was far away.
Many miles from Khasak, in that red and darkening twilight, the Diving Fowl perched on the wall round a well. The well was ancient, bounded on all sides by the four wings of the old manor. The Diving Fowl sat there and contemplated the plunge. Deep down lay the water, luminous in the dark, like a diviner’s crystal. There was a song he had composed years ago, a lullaby for the motherless Abida. As he divined the gleaming ripples below, the song came back to him. From his perch, Chukkru sang it in his rusted and dissonant voice:
‘O my old fish
With the fat old head!
Bring my crying daughter
A big glowing pearl.’
He dived into the well, and deeper, into the well within the well. The water was like many crystal doors and silken curtains. Chukkru made his way past crystal and silk, and moved towards the mystery that had lured him all his life. As Chukkru journeyed on, the last of the crystal doors closed behind him.