I was pregnant, but it did not matter. Ledzep was visiting India and there was nothing that could stop me. My husband was a pragmatic man; he would not let me go. But only I knew that beneath the thick black whiskers of responsibility, hidden inside was a playful child. It was my fifth month, the bulging stomach, apricot coloured, soaked me with joy while my husband tenderly dropped a kiss above my navel. Ours was a love marriage. We met each other in a hotel; he was on his business trip and I was holidaying with my friends. Sitting by the window that overlooked the swimming pool, at 10 in the night, he was typing slowly. As if lost in thoughts, he would look through the glass window, then in a flash, something from the dark that extended beyond the pool would stir a thought and he would sink into his laptop once again.
Yes, I would be extremely careful. After a bundle of promises, he accepted, and so we began on our journey. It was midday when we got there; dusty winds swept the ground, arid and withered was the plateau on which the band was to play in about couple of hours from then. It was insane, anarchy prevailed in the country; democracy was too benign, like a pair of ragged clothes that hung listlessly on high tension electric wires, the doctrine was hung about in the crosswire of bespectacled yellow toothed numbskulls. Religiously, people climbed atop the rocky rift to get to the top of the concert ground. The show was free for all the devoted music lovers, and everyone respected the norms, for an altercation however frail it might be, would provoke the narcissistic authorities. It was not like the old days, of moshpits and drunken catharsis; this was the concert full of sober men and women who lent a hand to each other. In silent acknowledgement, celebrations cast shadows of acquiescence as the participants murmured sacredly, something about the old days.
I found it difficult to reach the ground climbing atop sinuous rocks; someone from behind us suggested the other pathway that was chiselled with cars lodged into the wall of the ground. It was the longer route of the two, but a less treacherous and all the more sorrowful. Indian car manufacturers were no more there; their cars were now found in strictest obedience to nature-puckered between the valleys, rusted and ruptured.
On the day of our marriage, my aunt bereaved of her husband’s demise in the riots between the two ravenous parties that fought to close down the beaches and party hubs, for they believed that the common man was indulging in prospects that were contributing to the intellectual heresy. It all began with the march of toy soldiers as they called it back then. a nowhere school and nowhere kids rose their voice against the placid, inauspicious and uneventful life in the nation. It was nothing at all, and the state ignored it until the voices on the road picked up momentum and overthrew the state to establish notoriety.
The crowd sat themselves meekly before the stage that was laid out by an underground metal band, ledzep were not charging any money, for they too knew the people had none to spare and the currency reproached in the open market, for it had no value any more. Commerce was herded through anarchic coins and rebellious notes printed at their will. Trade came to a standstill; fewer ships flew past the Indian Ocean for the nation encouraged pirates. Indian pirates put the Vikings of the past times to a dreadful shame. The army, the navy and the civil order, no one knew now, whatever had happened to them?
My mother and father met us in an adjoining park as was planned. I was to leave with them after the show. Mother made some snacks, there was still time left for the show to begin, so we all sat down and had snacks. The atmosphere was anything but chivalrous. We were all worried, were fraught with the fear of anarchic armies marching and trampling over our silent evening. I was carrying my passport and certificates, originals, with me. My husband knew it, I knew it, and my parents knew it. It was not going to be easy, to conceive a baby and hide it from the carnivorous anarchic parties. One always had to carry originals now.
A car came screeching down the road to stop by our side, my aunt got down from the car and shouted at the top of her voice. She was hysterical, but the words never sank in our ears, for now the music had begun and the strumming of chords, an overture now pervaded the evening. Something inexplicable happened. An oppressive gush of air filled my ears and I dropped dead on the floor. So overpowering was the strike of bomb, my senses were numb and the last few seconds of my life tore open a column in my brain, somewhere hidden, was one memory that I never thought existed in my mind. My mother was bathing me, soaping my slender arms and tickling my arm pits; she sat me down on the bathroom floor and washed my hair as I whimpered, for the soap water had filled my eyes and I reached out with my arms stretched for my mother’s sari fold. And I was dead.
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