Apanapan
1461 Words
For a long time, Ramu held Anand against his chest.
Salim Khan and Chotu Kaka came closer but none urged him.
At last Ramu raised head.
“I’m taking him back to Bombay.”
Salim closed his eyes for a moment.
“From here to the Rann is five days if we are lucky.”
“A week across the salt flats. Perhaps more.”
He paused.
“And after Kutch, the monsoon will already be rising. No boat will take us to Bombay in that weather.”
“Horse or bullock cart,” Salim continued. “Another month. Perhaps longer.”
“No body can endure that journey.”
Ramu lowered his face.
“He came because of me.”
“I will take him home.”
Salim looked at Chotu Kaka. Chotu Kaka looked away.
Then Salim said nothing more.
⸻
They wrapped Anand carefully.
Chotu Kaka brought a clean cloth from one of the bundles left by the second caravan. Salim helped tie it around the body. Ramu did his best to flatten every wrinkle as if he wanted Anand to feel as comfortable and look as decent as possible.
⸻
They moved again.
Anand’s body, wrapped in blanket and cloth, lay across the camel ahead of Ramu.
With each step, the camel swayed. The bundle moved too.
The small shifting weight beneath the blanket looked almost like breathing, like sleep. Almost like Anand was merely exhausted after a long road and would wake at the next halt.
The sun climbed. The sand whitened. The air turned hard and bright. Ramu’s fever pulsed behind his eyes.
Then Bapji’s voice came back to him.
“We shall begin the new journey together, beta.”
Ramu had been younger then.
Too thin.
Too silent.
Still unsure whether the Professor’s house was a place he was allowed to stand in or only pass through.
Ramu had the kindness, the debt.
He had built his whole life around repayment.
Only now, half-delirious under the desert sun, did he hear the sentence again.
Not as command.
Not as charity.
As welcome.
⸻
By noon the heat became unbearable.
Salim ordered a halt.
The camels dropped to their knees one after another, groaning in relief.
Chotu Kaka prepared tea. When he handed a cup to Ramu, Ramu instinctively reached with his right hand.
Nothing moved.
For a moment he did not understand.
Then the emptiness returned.
His right side.
The missing weight.
The bandaged stump.
The pain came after.
Chotu Kaka quietly put the cup in Ramu’s left hand.
Ramu took it without looking at him.
His gaze had fallen to the bandage. Underneath it, where his right hand had once been, there had been a birthmark.
Dark.
Small.
Oddly shaped.
He had nearly forgotten it.
Another room opened.
The Professor’s wife sitting in the courtyard. Ramu, thirteen or fourteen, sitting next to her. His sleeves had been rolled up because of the heat.
The professor’s wife rubbed the small birthmark on Ramu’s right arm.
“The vajra,” she smiled, “May Shiva protect Ramu.”
The professor looked up from his book.
“To me it looks like an infinity sign.”
His wife’s smile deepened.
“Then may Shiva protect Ramu infinitely.”
Everyone laughed.
Now, in the desert, Ramu stared at the place where that hand no longer was.
The mark was gone. The hand was gone. Yet the memory remained whole.
Chotu Kaka sat beside him.
Ramu asked after a sip of tea, “Kaka.”
“Hm?”
“You once told me a word.”
“Apanapan.”
The old man nodded.
Ramu stared at the tea in his cup.
“You said your neighbor’s son was your nephew.”
Chotu Kaka gave out a long, gentle sigh. But he waited.
“How did you know?”
Ramu’s voice was dry.
“How did you know they truly took you as their own?”
For a long time Chotu Kaka was silent.
Then he said, “Time.”
Ramu looked at him with a confused frown.
Chotu Kaka’s eyes remained on the desert.
“All the things that happen inside time.”
He paused.
“All the feelings you have inside time.”
⸻
That afternoon the road blurred. The caravan moved only when the heat allowed it.
Ramu drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes he heard camel bells. Sometimes he heard gunshots.
Then he dreamed of Anand.
Not the Anand in the desert.
Not the Anand lying silent beneath blankets.
The Anand of fourteen.
Sixteen.
Eighteen.
Always slightly overdressed. Always too confident. Always smiling before he knew what trouble he was agreeing to.
Ramu said, Let’s walk to the sea.
There were examinations the next morning.
Anand looked at him for half a second. Then his whole face opened.
“Let’s go.”
Another day.
Let’s climb that hill.
“Let’s go.”
Another.
Let’s skip dinner and finish this problem first.
“Let’s go.”
Bapji had once stood in the doorway, watching them with amused despair.
“One day,” he said, “Ramu will drag you to the Himalayas.”
Anand grinned.
“Then let’s go.”
Bapji laughed.
Anand also laughed.
“If Ramu wants to go, let’s go.”
In the dream, Ramu laughed too.
Then the laughter disappeared.
He remembered.
Anand was dead.
⸻
Ramu woke with a sound caught in his throat.
For several seconds he did not know where he was.
Then he walked out of the tent and found Anand.
The wrapped body lay on the sand.
A strong feeling rose from him. He needed to see his face. He missed him already.
He reached toward him. His left hand shook as he lifted the edge of the blanket.
Then he dropped backward in shock.
The face beneath had already begun to change. The handsome lines Anand had carried so carelessly all his life had softened, swollen, shifted away from themselves.
It was still Anand.
And already not Anand.
Ramu stared.
For a long moment he could not move.
Then he lowered the blanket with terrible gentleness.
“Anand.”
His voice broke.
“Why did time change your face so quickly?”
“And why did it take so long for me to understand?”
He covered his face with the left hand, and wept.
“Anand, I am sorry.”
His shoulders shook.
“I am sorry, Anand.”
The desert heard him.
“I should have accepted your apanapan.”
⸻
Memory started flashing like light.
Bapji’s face.
Beta.
The Professor’s wife before the shrine.
May Shiva protect Ramu infinitely.
Mahadu dragging him across a courtyard.
Uncle! You have to see!
Anand smiling in the sun.
Let’s go.
Salim turning his camel without a word when Ramu had screamed to go back.
Chotu Kaka, who had just lost Gopal, following too.
Ramu looked out toward the desert under the merciless sun.
His eyes seemed to pass through it.
Through sand.
Through heat.
Through pain.
Something within him loosened.
Not his body.
His body was still broken.
The arm was gone.
The fever still burned.
The dead were still dead.
Anand still lay beside him, already being taken from the world by time.
Yet for a single impossible moment, none of it could reach the center of him.
Something sounded in his mind, like a strong and steady sound of a temple bell.
“Apanapan,” he whispered.
He pressed his remaining hand against his chest.
“Is this the secret of time?”
His breath trembled.
“The apanapan…”
He closed his eyes.
“It was always there.”
A long silence.
“Hidden in every moment of my life.”
The desert blazed around him.
Four companions had died.
His best friend lay before him.
His arm was gone.
His childhood had been hunger, humiliation, and fear.
And yet, from somewhere deeper than grief, deeper than memory, a strange happiness rose inside him. For a moment, he felt himself dissolving in time and infinity.
He had never walked through time alone. He had been part of someone else’s time.
And they had been part of his too.
⸻
When he returned to himself, his eyes had become very gentle.
He looked toward the direction of Bombay. Then, with a tenderness he had never allowed himself before, he whispered, “I am coming home, Bapu.”
He turned back to Anand.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted the blanket once more.
Anand’s face had grown fragile beneath the day’s heat.
The skin looked thin.
Ramu touched his cheek with the back of his fingers.
As gently as Bapji’s wife had once touched the mark on his hand.
“Anand.”
“My brother.”
- Writer
