Broken Hug

The Ancient City

Rohan

I reach the station, and the digital board displays the next train due to depart in nine minutes. The local trains going down are fairly empty at this time but this train, Foxtrot Local, is quite crowded.

Jostling through the influx of passengers and moving towards the platform in a maddening rush, it is my luck to get a window seat. The day is cloudy to an extent, and my eyes close when the expert fingers of the breeze, the masseur, massages my scalp and temporarily helps me forget the passenger crowd. 

A3 size posters stuck on the metal compartment walls and also just below the emergency chain stare out. They condemn the suicides, telling the ruling party to give jobs to the youths, and that way the future of the country will shine. Everybody is being made aware of this, and all kinds of methods applied to do away with this act.

Passengers are leaning over each other, against each other. Chock-a-block, you can say. How many of the youths will return home I wonder. And how many have decided to end up their lives either today or in a few days from now. I would like to stand up and tell this present gathering something on this topic, but a train is a sensitive vehicle; and I never know how my words will be taken, because some may support the suicides. My words might lead to a spark to light up prairie fire in the train.  

The rattle-rattle of the train’s wheels is a lullaby, the quiet-hurry of the suburbians lives. Stations rush by, but the train stops in most of them, bringing passengers in and out of the vehicle. A blind singer with an ektara, the one-stringed guitar, boards. He begins singing about renouncing life and living like a hermit in the forest. This elderly singer is lead by a little girl, perhaps his granddaughter. He has come closer to me. He peers down at me. Through intuition, his blind eyes pierce through his dark shades. Suddenly the song changes its words: Call it suicide/Don’t fabricate/Just tell them babe/It was suicide/Don’t sugarcoat it/Just let them know. This blind singer’s voice wavers like a suicide victim’s when he is up on the chair; and he has put the noose around his neck; and he has tightened it; and he has kicked the chair; his body hangs loose; the voice in a coughing fit but he cannot cough; his breath is caught in a vice-like grip of Suicide God’s gnarled fingers.

The train rattles on in galloping speed cutting through unending fields piled with suicide victims rotting in the rice fields under the sun, victims young and old.

Suddenly a pair of quiet eyes with a smooth forehead comes closer. It is about to touch my face when I wake up with a shivering shock. The train stops with a squeal of metal wheels and chains. The compartment is empty save me now the sole passenger. Yes, Foxtrot, the last station, and my destination. The quiet and sleepy station invades into my system as I walk out of the building. Outside the station, the first rickshaw-man wheels his vehicle forward and asks, “Ancient City?”

“Yes.” I smile. Everyone is aware that a new face means Ancient City. Phew!   

“Fifty,” the puller says.

I nod.

Two roads bifurcate ahead, and the driver takes the left one.

“Where does the right one go?” 

“To the neighbourhood, sir.”

“Will you take me there later?”

“Yes sir, but first finish off with the Ancient City. It will take quite a while to complete the entire city ground. Are you a tourist, sir?”

“No, no, no.” I smile again.

I taste the scene around. The quaintness of the huts catches my eyes. To the left of an open cemented yard five hillocks of husked rice stand with a winnowing machine. Behind this yard three children are busy playing hop-scotch, the place marked with red lines. Behind them a field stretches, and beyond that an endless line of palm trees. And beyond that, the cloudy sky.

The rickshaw driver is an expert with his vehicle, gliding through narrow lanes and roads as easily as a jungle boy dashing among trees and jumping over scattered boulders. The vehicle then goes down a narrow road lined with a few houses, before taking a left turn; then suddenly you see the river to your right, its muddy surface glistening like the dull skin of a lazing python. A few shops and some factory offices line the left. From here if you look ahead, your eye catches a high wall. 

This is The Ancient City.

Built by the joint effort of an industrialist and his friend a patron of arts, it was constructed thirty years ago, and covers two square kilometres. As I step inside through the ten-foot high teak wood gate, I stumble over the thick wooden planks. But my fall is cushioned by a pair of soft hands and the picture of a woman flashes past. Thank you, whoever you are. But it is kind of creepy, and cold sweat runs down my spine.

Someone in my head points out, telling me in his soft growly voice and I enter the Bhimbetka Caves through the open door. Besides, there are two large gunmetal demon heads as decorative knockers. Zero power bulbs glowing from glass torches fixed to the cave wall show the way through the twists and turns. I bend my head at the uneven roof, sometimes quite low, and at other times not quite high. As I proceed ahead, suddenly an invisible force strikes at my neck and in that split second I bring my head down in a flash. This is followed by a crashing noise on the rocks behind me. A fist-size portion of the hard blackish brown rocky wall of the cave has been dented. Phew, that was close, that punch would have damaged my skull with a large dent.   

After about five hundred metres through the cave-path, the other mouth of the cave opens out to the outside world. And there, in the middle, is some kind of a gathering. Guys, maximum around twenty-five years of age, are holding candles and looking at the darkening sky. Others are sipping hard drinks while some are holding beer bottles. Words like Solar storm reach my ears. And when I move towards the water dispenser on the left, two youths are standing at the Qutub Minar entrance. They were not there when I had swept my eyes all over the place awhile before. Their forehead is plastered with dried blood, their eyes droopy. They have the smell and cold feel of the suicide youths on the road. People around them continue laughing and screaming and does not feel the presence of the cold-feel dead look of the youths. 

The sky darkens further without warning and everyone’s eyes go up. Like the calm before a storm, a blaze of light takes over the darkness. Reddish-purple-blue it is. A mini Milky Way of sorts. Voices go yelling and screaming at the wondrous scene. The massive monument of the Qutub Minar structure piercing the sky for a good seventy-five metres, looms over everyone around. I give furtive glances. Yes, some force pulls me from within. A wave-like great disturbance rolls inside my mind. The constructed towers; the rock-cut Ajanta Caves; the Great Wall of China; the Sun Temple dominating the central part; and the avenue of twenty red-stone pillars, with the impressive standing Buddha statue 15.8 metres high – they close in from all sides. A rush of balmy wind, smelling of marsh and bog soil, attack my nostrils. I struggle to breathe. My lungs are hungry for air. When I am about to collapse, when my lungs are without any air, a figure appears beyond the group of human beings, from the darkness behind, from the top of the Ajanta Caves. The figure’s hands are outstretched like Christ’s figure in crucifixion fashion. Next, it tilts from the edge of the rocks. Soon a massive frightful thud reaches everyone’s ears. The ladies squeal and everyone looks back.  

I make an endeavour and rush forward with painful lungs, but I stagger and fall. I point out. The youngster next to me, lifts me by the arm and we brave through the crowd. Seeing us others follow. People have forgotten their tryst with the solar storm. Diwali is over.

Next to the big rock a figure in a shiny sleeveless dress is lying, hands and legs spread eagled, head to one side. Torches from cell phones show the head, and below it blood. I push the two onlookers in front of me and when I get a further and inspective look, a familiar face looms up. Charoen's friend. Classmate. Hetal. 

Intuition holds my neck and turns it, and the three youths with blood-plastered foreheads have their eyes piercing into mine, their mouths turned into a smile.            

A mad rush. People are yelling. Murder! Suicide! Guards!   

They are running away from the scene of the suicide. I am alone on ground. The three shadowy youths fix their eyes at me. they approach forward.

Another youth appears, his face hazy. Though slim, he rushes towards the youths. His hands outstretched, he puts his hand on his chest and thrusts it forward. An orange-yellow light projects out from his hand and in a trice he has reached closer to the youths. he strikes them with his hand. One of them suddenly turns and strikes a this lone youth with a dagger of light on his shoulder. The blade plunges deep into his bone. Then with only his left hand he swings his weapon left and right with flashing speed. The light hits one of the villains on his head, and he lies on the ground, groaning. The second one jumps from one rock to another. When the lone youngster is busy avoiding the other's attack, the third opponent jumps and lands his weapon on my chest. An excruciating pains overpowers me. The lone youth strikes the second shadowy youngster and he lies injured, nursing his stomach. The lone youth leaps from his position and is beside me. He rests his hand on my chest and simultaneously attacks the third opponent. The flash of the orange-yellow glow of the weapon lands on his stomach, and he lies on the ground, rubbing his hurt body. The youth flashes out something from his pouch and rests it on my chest. before I could even get Fai's picture in my mind, my hur vanishes. He pats the injured spot on my chest and I stand up. The youth looks at the three injured. The three get up and jumping into the air, vanish into thin air.

"Thank you." I turn my head, but my protector is nowhere around. I try recalling his face behind his misty appearance, but I cannot. I get up and drink from the water dispenser. I look around. No one is in sight. Hetal's body has gone. The ground where everyone had gathered around to watch the display of the solar storm are not there. Not a single clue of any of the incidents are present. After having rested for a while, when my strength to walk returns, I get up.  

*

Was it not here to this left that emotion had over-tripped me and I had taken Fai in my arms and we both were locked in a romantic kiss? And didn’t she run her finger at this curve in the rock wall and wonder at the mystery and the character of the cave?

            I place my hand on the curved part of the rock. But suddenly it softens and my hand is sucked in.