Evanescent Shadows - Saleem Rahman

The wintry onslaught of the month of Poh was stretching into the wee hours of the night. A distant village clock struck the midnight hour, but my son Balwant’s car didn’t sound its discordant horn to announce his arrival. Nor did I hear the clangor of the heavy gate and its

dangling security lock. When he comes on in an uneventful day, his piercing headlights come through the cracked window pane of my room. How cold my silken comforter is, but my daughter-in-law Ajit’s feminine choice cannot be questioned by a dotard like me. I think silk should be worn by one’s daughters and daughters-in-law. As for me, my infirm and skeletal frame feels like it is dipped in cold water, and I am slowly drowning in it through the night. But Ajit insists: 

“Bapu, you must use this comforter. What would the village folks say if they found out that we cover ourselves with khadi cloth?”

I capitulate to her, and she smiles knowingly, almost disarmingly. Maybe she knows a lot more than I do. I am living in my son Balwant Singh’s house, and I cannot afford to let my daughter-in-law take even the slightest umbrage at my somewhat worn-out welcome in her home, where she manages her hubby with a silken touch.

I don’t get to sleep well now, compared to when I was a tall man of muscular build, and many a damsel passing by would coyly give me a once-over twice.

It was another night of Poh and the leaves of peepul tree were rustling and fluttering at a weird flutter. Wind gusts were carrying the fallen leaves with it in shoals. My playmate Chint Kaur, or Chinti, and I were all wrapped up into grandma’s comfy coverall. Our store room, where we were huddled together, didn’t have the luxury of light. A solitary oil lamp with a nearly burnt-out wick was doing its best to keep us company in that desolate little room. When the gusting winds picked up a disgustingly ominous pace, it sounded as if someone was desperately pushing against the front door. I find myself digging into my past again. 

“Who’s trying to open our front door, grandma?” I managed to timidly sound an alarm, just to hear her warm and reassuringly soothing voice.

“Try to fall asleep, otherwise such questions may attract a one-eyed jinn. It is my Gotam’s turn to water the fields; my lonely son. Help us, wahey-guru!” she replied.

Grandma’s mind was lurking into the distant crop fields, and she was least interested in dampening my little wave of timorously flickering fear.

In the adjacent room, my mother and other girls of our village were using the spinning wheel, charkha, and would periodically erupt into effortlessly singing folk songs that go with the spinning wheel. Mom came by to give me and Chinti something to eat and asked Grandma if she’d let Chinti and I sleep over in grandma’s giant quilt.

“It is very cold tonight, and Pershu’s daughters can’t return home unescorted,” she said matter-of-factly. “So, my kids will spend the night with you, Ma.” 

Grandma’s quiet frown meant she’d accepted the suggestion thrown by my mom at her. Grandma was something of an Amazon woman. She could walk at night from one end of the village to the other. Women in general were afraid of her because of this untested bravado she was reputed to have. I was wary of passing by the mango trees, even in daytime, because kids my age believed that a chameleon lived in one of the trees, and at least one old man claimed that it changed a few colors as he looked askance at it and hurried away from that tree, chanting “Wahey Guru, help!” Mango blossoms emitted a heady fragrance that would make one feel lightly inebriated. The Cuckoo bird’s long-drawn-out “coo’oo’ – oo” added to the mystery of the fragrant gardens. That was then, but now I am in the city, at Balwant’s mansion.

A profusion of flowers regaled my senses and I not only see them bloom but even ‘hear’ them titter like damsels at the mussiyya folk festival. 

Uttam Singh was my father’s name but he was popularly known as Uttma in the village. Grandma dragged her slippers in a hasty move to go and check up on her dear son Uttma, and, on her way out, she verbally spat out a list of tasks she wanted my mother to accomplish while she was gone. I felt sorry for my mom. Grandma had already left, undaunted by dark ominous clouds building up like a swarm. Mother had to go upstairs to bring down the uplay or cow-dung-cakes used for warmth in nasty winters as well as daily cooking chores.

When Grandma was back, Chinti and I clung to her and insisted she tell us stories. It was our ploy to ward off bone-chilling cold. She obliged after racking her brain to select a story that would be macabre enough to suit the ill-ominous wintry blast that we were living through.

“I will tell you a special story, kids. But if you fall asleep, your punishment will be that I will never tell you that story again.”

She knew how to keep us attentive and awake. It was a moonlit night, but they say, winter’s moonlit night and a poor man’s youth, both quietly pass away, wasted!I  was lost in such thoughts when I heard Grandma’s holler:

“Are you listening to the story, or should I just end it right here?” 

Of course, I became instantly attentive.

“Anoop Singh was enamored of Rani,” Grandma’s resumed her story.

“She was a kehari named Bhaggo, who worked at people’s houses to make a meager living.”

I suddenly thought of my youth and dipped into my past. Deepu and I used to steal glances at each other, hiding behind the trees. The very thought sent chills running down my spine. She used to appear to me as a fragment of moon that had laid down on the unsullied grass of the village. I was a dreamy little boy then, and I did not know that if you happened to like a girl, she could begin to look like a galloping gazelle to you, even if she was not. When Anoop Singh had a baby from her, he started to stay away from Bhaggo and even sold some of her jewelry to spend on a new love-interest who had become available. I would meet my dearly beloved secretly almost every night alternating their venue between the barley fields and the abandoned temple. She was even more aggressive in seeking my attention than I was and found it intriguing. Bhaggo did not stand a chance in front of this depraved wench.

Deepu was eventually married off by her honor conscious father to avoid a scandal. I felt a shiver running from my head to my toes. Right at that moment, my son Balwant entered his house, where I was cowering in my rickety cot with a silk comforter draped over me.

Ajit, his wife, ignored who was entering the house with him. 

“Is this your servant?”

An unfamiliar female voice made me irate. Balwant must have nodded because I did not hear his reply. Then I suddenly picked up courage and roared:

“Noooo! I am not his servant. I was his mother’s servant who is long dead and forgotten by him.”

This night was also a Poh night, and with my sudden burst of truth it slapped Balwant’s face as he wordlessly retreated into his room.

The night got even colder.

xxxxx

Saleem Rahman, a former civil servant in Ottawa, grew up in Lahore and earned a PhD in Economics from McMaster University, where he also taught. He writes fiction.