Dried drops of tears

In the middle of a night mare

She knew for sure that it was her fate that made her do that. She stood under the shower for a long moment listening intently to the voice inside her. It seemed like a medley of emotions screamed into her ears.

She walked to the kitchen to make some dinner when she heard a knock on the door. She walked to the doorknob and held it firmly inside her palm. She heard a knock again. This time it was louder and strong. She turned it slowly and before she could know what would happen the next moment, a group of people busted into her door. They were all wearing Khaki colored bowler hats and a pair of trousers.

One of them was hissing at her. She focused on his lips and tried to discern what he was trying to mouth at her.

“ We’re arresting you for murdering your husband,” the man said and walked towards her with handcuffs in his hands. She heard her heart pounding through her ribs as she moved backward. Her chest heaved and she felt breathless. The room started swirling around her. She started screaming and darkness doomed over her puny mind.

She woke up, terrified. Her heart was still pounding. It was just a nightmare. She sighed with relief. She smiled to herself and walked out of the room.

It was 6 Am in morning. She walked to the kitchen and made some coffee. She sat on the porch swing, sipping her coffee. The sky was gleaming with the warmth of the rising sun. She saw her husband’s shoes strewn about in a haphazard way near the bench. She picked them up and buried them in the spot near the fountain where they first had s*x.

She remembered his large, pale body upon hers. The thought disgusted her. She swore to herself that she would never think about it. Never again in her life.

Chapter 1

“ Miss Gowda, am sorry for your loss. But we are working on the case. There is nothing that we could do to help you now. You need to understand,” said the commissioner as he looked into Aanya’s eyes. He had always wondered how it would be like to have her under him. He was bald and had a quirky, terrified tone.

Aanya cringed with embarrassment as she tracked his eyes moving under her neck.

“ She’s a child. I hope you will see to that she comes back home fine,” Aanya said and walked out.

She came home in the mid-noon and found her mother lying on the floor, unconscious. It had become a daily ritual for her mother to faint when Aanya was not around. She helped her mother to get up and sit on the chair. She rubbed her feet as she murmured something to herself. Aanya’s mother was in her late sixties, wrinkly and kind. Her eyes always looked scared and restless. Aanya took care of her old mother after her sister had died.

“ Maa, I will make you some lunch. Don’t move from here!” she shouted enough for her mother to hear her. Her mother looked at her blankly and nodded. She walked to the corner of the room where the coal stove was set upon a blazing fire. She started puffing it when she heard a voice calling out her name.

It was a policeman. He had a lethargic look on his face as he stood outside her one-roomed house.

“Yes?” Aanya said as she scoured her finger to take the off the soot.

“ We have found this girl near the lake…” he said as he handed out a photograph to Aanya. Aanya looked at it from a distance when her stomach started churning and her legs shivered. She fell on the ground, unable to balance. The police squatted and whispered in a low voice, “ You would not like to see it,” as if he felt sorry for her.

She did not answer. She kept staring at the picture of Sifa, her Sifa. She closed her eyes and saw Sifa’s large eyes looking at her from behind the door. She saw her smiling. She heard Sifa saying, “ Maa, why are you so late?” as she ran towards her.

She opened her eyes after the terrorizing thought for the nonce and looked at the man.

“ What happened…” she said in a voice that was barely heard. The man breathed loudly and began to explain.

“ She was r***d for three days… continuously. Her hair had been pulled off from her scalp, bunch by bunch. Her eyeballs were punctured with an iron rod or something. We couldn’t trace anything, there was no hint of seminal traces found… her genitals have been…. “ he stopped as Aanya began to scream at the edge of her voice. She had a petrified look on her face as she dug it into her hands and started sobbing. The policeman left the photograph on the ground beside her.

 Aanya walked on the road unsteadily. Her face was pale from three days of crying. Sifa was the hope of her life. She made her days move by lifting her fallen moments with her chubby little hands and her prepossessing face. She saw her Sifa being buried under the ground in a little box. She tried so hard not to think about it. But nothing seemed to work the way she had wanted.

Sifa’s gone. In a moment, before she could really show her that the clouds are not cotton balls and the sun doesn’t ask before it could rise. She felt her eyes welling up in the thought of that. She stopped near a closed garage and looked into the distance. There was no sign of human life. She stood there patiently. The roads were full of fog and the street lights seeped in through them after every few feet.

“Beautiful,” she thought.

She closed her eyes to calm down her inside when someone tapped on her left shoulder. She jerked for a moment and turned to look at who it was. It was Aman. He was wearing a thick sweater. His eyes were glistening in the night light as he stood before her, tall and muscular. She looked at him and her eyes shed a few drops of tear, unable to bear the agony that tortured her cretin insides.

He hugged her and she felt warm and rested for a minute.

“ Why did you ask me to come down here?” he said as he looked around confusedly. “ The road looks like it’s haunted…”

“ Aman! Every little thing in this place reminds me of Sifa. The hills, the valleys…everything. I cannot take it anymore. I need some fresh air that doesn’t murmur Sifa’s name into my ears when it blows. I am planning to leave,” she said while she still had her head rested upon Aman’s chest. Aman did not answer. She moved back and looked at him. She knew he would not be right away into it. She had imagined him crying into her face. But that did not happen. She looked at him dubiously.

“ What about me? What about us?” he said and looked into her eyes. Aman had been there for her since she had met him. He was like a father to Sifa. She did not forget anything. But she wanted to move on. And the only way that was visible in the array was to leave the town.

“ I don’t know. But…” she looked at the ground and turned away from him.

“But?” he said in an angry tone.

“ You could come with us,” she said without turning.

There was a long moment of silence. She dared not turn to look at him. She thought he would say yes. But the thoughts were losing their stance. She turned and Aman was gone. She saw him disappearing into the fog.

It was late in the night when Aanya and her Maa reached the train station. It was almost empty except for homeless people sleeping feet away from each other.

Aanya sat on a bench with her right arm around her Maa’s shoulder. She remembered how witty and beautiful her Maa had once been. She was a wonderful woman. She looked at her now and blamed life for turning her into a helpless, old being. Maa had raised Aanya and her sister on her own. Her father had died in an accident when she was hardly born.

She remembered her sister and their little home again. She will never come back. Never to the place that had killed her sister and her little Sifa. She closed her eyes. She saw her sister running towards her with ragged, torn clothes. She saw Sifa being handed to her for the first time. She saw her sister lying on the ground, dead. She saw her mother lying on the ground next to her sister with her eyes glued on her. She saw Sifa growing up to look just like her sister. She saw her mother drifting into a world that neither had time nor life in it. The doctors had said that her mother had lost her sanity. But she believed that Maa would come back someday when her sister comes back alive from the grave when the three of them sit around the fire looking at Aanya’s paintings in the evenings. Every one of them knew that it was not their fault for their life to take a different turn. Who knew that their landlord would ask her sister to marry him for our father’s debt? Who knew that her mother would have no other choice? Who knew that the landlord would abandon her sister after getting her pregnant? Who knew that he would marry another girl who is half of her age just like her sister? Who knew her sister would leave them all and rest peacefully under the same land that had killed her every day? She was hauled away from her thoughts by the sound of the train pulling into the station. She saw a new life approaching her as she looked at the train. She did not know where it will get her to. She believed that her sins would be left behind.

She boarded the train and heard a loud whistle. She made her Maa sit on one of the empty compartments and walked to the door. She saw something in the distance that she never thought would be there. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. She was not dreaming. Her lips hewed a smile coercively. It was Aman. He was running towards her. She couldn’t believe it.

It was him.

The train pulled out of the station and she saw the board, “HASLI HILLS”. She smiled to herself. Her life is going to change. She swore she would never come back. She turned and looked at her Maa calmly looking out of the window and leaned on Aman’s shoulder. She felt it in her bones that a new life that would be less hard and more beautiful is awaiting her arrival.

Silence.

It was chaotic in Hasli hills the following day. People collected and gathered around Aanya’s house and were cursing her and her mother. One of them was throwing stones at the door.

A woman with a cloth bag dangling around her shoulder walked to the crowd that barely had anyone's voice heard.

“What’s happening?” the woman asked a man sitting on the ground away from the clamorous crowd.

“ The girl and her mother had escaped,” he said in a high pitched voice.

She looked at Aanya’s house and turned to him again. The man sat on his but on the floor with his arms wrapping his bent legs. He looked old and wrinkly.

“Escaped?” the woman shouted for him to hear her.

“ Yes, she’s killed their landlord and his son,”

“Why?”

“ The landlord once married her sister for the debt that their father had left and his son r***d that little girl that lived here with them,”

“ Oh!” the woman said and started walking away from the place. After a few seconds, she clenched her hands and looked up as she smiled.

 The train halted finally after 13 hours. Their journey was full of doubts. A thought of relief swept through Aanya’s mind as they walked on the roads of a new, unknown town. Aman carried Maa as he walked beside her.

The streets were full of bustling people. Men were carrying large loads on their back and the women were walking with long sticks near them. Aman looked at them and whispered into Aanya’s ear “ What are they doing?”

“ We will find out,” she said without looking at him.

They walked for miles before noon and stood near a large juggernaut, tired and exhausted. The town was almost green, with houses built across every few meters. Nothing haunted them more than the people there. They were dark and had had their braided hair dangling on their sides. Every few meters had an unlit fire camp. Their language was more of shouting than words. They looked at Aanya and Aman dubiously as they walked past them.

After hours of sitting in the same spot, they saw a normal-looking man with a blue blazer, walking towards them. Aanya and Aman looked at him come to them.

“Who are you,?” he asked. Aman looked at Aanya and said “ This is Karma, my wife. We have come here for…” before he could finish, Aanya stopped him and said “ We are here for a living”

 “ This is not a place for living. Follow me,” he said as he walked past them. Aanya and Aman exchanged glances. Aman picked Maa up and they started following the man. He got into a steel grey colored car. Aman and Aanya did as directed. They drove across the streets. The people looked at the car and shouted something. Aanya was partly scared and surprised.

“ Am Yash. The train station should be banned from here. Who are you?” the man said as he looked intently across the windshield.

“ Am Karma and this is my husband… Paru.. we are here in search of a living. We have lost our house and land to a debt… there was nothing we could do,” Aanya said as she looked at Aman.

“Where are you from?” the man asked.

“Hasl..” before Aman could say anything, Aanya said, “ Haslapur,”

“ Hmm. I haven’t heard about…. Before he could say another word, a man fell on the windshield from the side. Aanya dug her face into her hands. Yash did not stop the car. The man fell on the side. As they moved away from there, the man stood up again and started running away. Aanya felt sick to her stomach.

“ Who are these people?” she said as she looked at Yash, driving carefully.

He sighed and did not say a word. Aanya insisted upon her question.

“ Alright. Have you heard about lab rats?” Yash said as he checked the mirrors often.

“Yes,” Aman said.

“ They are our lab rats,” Yash said as he drove into a small, narrow path. The car jerked upon rocks as it traced its way through the path.

“ You said you need jobs. What kind of work can you do?” Yash said.

“ Anything to keep us going,”

Yash giggled as he looked at Aanya through the mirror. She felt uncomfortable as he rolled his tongue.

“ Well, you have to meet the master before I could say anything,” he said as he stopped before a large building. It was amidst a bunch of trees. The house would be almost invisible from the streets.

“ Where are we?” Aman asked as he glanced at the building. It was old and had parched, drywalls. It had only a very few windows and there was almost nothing inside it.

“ You will know. Get out and follow me,” he said and got out. Aanya nodded at Aman and they followed him. Maa was sleeping and they decided to leave her in the car.

Aanya held Aman’s strong arms as they walked into the building slowly. It was dark and had no hint of human life. They climbed up the stairs and saw a room, lit and large. Yash knocked on the open door and walked inside. Aanya and Aman followed him. The room was filled with pictures of men and women in fashionable clothing. Aanya looked at them when a man walked In there from another door. He was small and fat. His hair was long and was tied into a bun. He looked at Aanya and turned to Yash, “ Hard valley?” he said.

Yash waved his head sideways.

The man walked towards Aanya and stared at her. She looked at him as he walked to Aman next. Aman stood firmly without moving his eyes.

The man heaved heavily and looked at both of them.

“ Well. How much would you guys like to work for a bastard?”

Aman and Aanya were driven into a large city. It had crowded streets. Almost every one of them was dressed in suit. Women wore long piece of clothing wrapped around them.

“You get out here,” Yash said looking at Aman. Aman nodded silently. Aanya was furious over him for accepting to what they had said. They had left Maa with those people. She felt hard to swallow. The fear had engulfed all the hopes that he had for her new life.

The car continued to comb through the streets of the city. She sat there patiently. It stopped near a long lawn. Yash turned around and looked at Aanya and said “You have to walk in there with these in your hands. A man with a blue blazer like mine will get you to your next, All the best” he said and smiled.

She was terrified when she heard what her job would be like. They have Maa with them. She probably cannot escape with that. She nodded her head and got out of the car. Her chest felt heavy as she walked to the entrance of an enormous building. She stood at foyer and looked at the car leaving the place.

“ it’s all in her hands now”