In their youth, Ampu and Anchu had promised to each other to look after one another. But as years passed and the burden of marriage thrust upon them, reality dawned on the hapless sisters. At the age of twelve, Ampu sneaked out of the house one night to go to the circus. Anchu was about nine years old at the time. In the circus, through the mange of lions and stench of elephants, the sisters managed to gain access to the backdoor and marshalled innocently into the backyard. Limp legged short men shovelled and dumped the animal waste into a heap; a ringmaster was teetering about with two lions; a chimp squatted in a corner, was raising its arms to let the governess put on it a green tinselled pullover.
In the circus, Anchu’s gown was stuck under a paunchy bearded old hag’s walking stick, when she tugged hard, it came out torn and tattered. She was to keep the torn gown in a safe place for the rest of her life, to mark her introduction to the circus. Ampu had a special liking for the ringmaster; a man whose command the lions obeyed. With their loins curved, the beasts sat on backless stools placed before a ring of fire. Here they sometimes whined as the ringmaster whipped his cord and flayed the beast’s ribs. Anchu was different from her sister; ‘poor thing’ she thought of the leonine head that barely fitted into the ring of fire.
That day, on the way back home, the two sisters were confronted by a three legged elephant; it blocked their way. Then out of the dark, the ringmaster stepped into the crimson yellow shade of the sulphurous lamps. He had removed his make up; still holding the straw hat in his hand, he extended his other hand and without a word, Ampu accepted him in betrothal. Marriage was held in the circus - thin limbed girls in shiny golden stockings stood glued to each other; over them, other girls joined their hands and feet together. Ensconced on the top of arched spines, the couple married under the able observation of a jacketed monkey.
Ampu’s marriage turned out to be a happy one; she woke up to the calls of long chinned ostriches mating in the morning. She fed the lions lamb meat; mopped the stables clean after the ringmaster took the beasts out for training; decorated the stage with anacondas who stretched their elongated paunches on tinsel paper. Anchu stayed with her sister; her love for the beasts brought her closer to the lion couple who found it amusing to jump through the ring with Anchu propped tight on their stout backs.
Two years later, the fateful day struck. Anchu, who was by now adored by the crowd, appeared with pigtails, a gauze scarf and a satin gown. Holding a limp stick in her pale hands, she teased the lions, tickled their underbellies until the beasts broke into merry themselves. Perched on the stage was a skull shaped metal cage heavily ornamented with fake bones; the majestic leonine heads drooped so the little princess would pat the under hangs of their ears. The crowd loved it; every town they visited, Anchu’s show gained in popularity. The chivalrous little princess and her buoyant pyrotechnics with the two lions torpedoed the ringmaster’s conventional antics. And, one morning Ampu woke up to find blood pouring out of the bedroom door knob. She followed the trail that snaked between the elephant’s paws, under the giraffe’s nose, and through the chimps’ resting place, to the lion’s stable. The ringmaster’s torn limbs and smelly guts were strewn all over the place; the beasts had soaked their manes with the purplish red blood. Not a sound escaped Ampu’s weak lips; as the incessant snoring of the beasts deafened her, she noticed that in the corner of the stable was Anchu in her short gown that billowed as she turned round and round on her heel.
Years later, Anchu was twice the celebrity. Ampu blamed her sister for the death of her husband. ‘Yes you were young. But not as disingenuous as you make it appear’ Ampu seemed to say to Anchu when they confronted each other in the circus. Anchu was no longer the little princess; she padded her breasts to leave an impression on the audience. Now she improvised on the stage; she issued fire out of her healthy pink lips, rode on the back of a hippopotamus; leapt up in air and paused in a somersault before latching onto a flexible adult male’s torso. Ampu bitterly hated her sister; she never remarried.
Then, a curious thing happened. Anchu lost her business to the advent of television. Her theatrics were never adept enough to catch up with the technological advancements. It was time to rediscover her show.
Ampu on the other hand left circus for good. She moved into the city; her aunt Lacha, a woman of generous heart, made room under her roof. Lacha’s house was located in a desolate part of the city. The red tiled roof leaked when it rained and the occupants hurried about with pitted vessels to collect water. The area’s municipal tap was about a kilometre away from the house and naturally Ampu scuffled about with two mud pots every morning. She put to great use, her strong left hand and the flexible torso which she carried with her from the circus days. On one of the foggy mornings, when Anchu’s vision extended as far as three feet around her, she was scampering back home with the two pots. With her left hand, she held the nozzle of the pot overhead; her right hand fingers, she closed around the mouth of the other pot and dragged it along.
Fog puckered up its lips around Ampu; and with every measured step, she seemed to walk into a sleepless fog whose yawn had come alive to suck her up. She heard a growl; the sound of a beast lurked in the fog around her. Any other woman would have shrieked in horror and had run away with the pots deserted in the fog; but Ampu had fed hungry lions before. There was not a heave of beast that frightened her; for a moment, melancholy crawled up the basement and threatened to cover the floor of her mind. ‘Perish the thought,’ she seemed to say to herself ‘this was no time to make room for melancholy on her mind’s floor.’ Behind her, sound of a hungry paw was followed by a swishing sound. Carefully resting the pots by her side, she looked around her; a hairy tipped brown tail disturbed the thick fog in its sway. Now there was no point in hiding, the beast stepped into the circle of vision. Wheedling its broad head before Ampu, it squatted on its haunches before proceeding to lick a wounded right paw.
Ampu leaned forward to take a look at the beast. Its mane was drawn tightly into pleats like a human girl’s would be; this brought back memories of Anchu who would playfully dress her lioness up in gowns and loose pullovers. A dark patch ran beneath its nostrils like a valley and skirted the lips; when it breathed, its whiskers twitched around the spotty cheeks. It was a horrible sight; the beast stood on its four limbs and kicked its paws into the ground. It was getting impatient, and Ampu nodded obligingly. For the moment, Ampu unfolded the scarf from around her ears to wrap it around the beast’s wound. Where could she hide it, and for how long? Soon the locals would know. Ampu measured the chances of the beast to go unnoticed. There was a dilapidated house beside Lacha’s. Apparently, the owner of the house died of a heart stroke; he had no family and the rubble now belonged to the government.
Ampu nursed the beast’s wound. In her own way, she waved about, her practiced hand, to indicate the rules of the house if it were to stay with her. She visited the beast every morning, brought it dead rats (ones that hackled their way into Lacha’s traps) and corpses of dead pigs (ones that she killed with the drop of a huge rock into the sewers behind the house). In about a week’s time, the beast got better; it wagged its tail, licked Ampu’s paws, and the two got well together. It brandished its playfulness before Ampu; arresting the movement of hind limbs, the beast stretched its forelimbs so the haunches drew themselves out into a bump that rose behind it like a saddle. All was well, but the strangeness of its appearance never fully left Ampu in peace. Whose was it? And, there was the question of its food; she can’t possibly ration for the beast. Not for long.
For about a month, Ampu nursed and fed the lion. She slipped into the woods behind the dilapidated house in the pretence of attending to the nature calls; but the unusual timings and the frequent visitations aroused Lacha’s curiosity. So it was that Lacha followed Ampu one morning to locate the whereabouts of the source of her visitations. A prudent woman Lacha, with her eyes glued to the beast, stayed up all day long behind the rusted window sill to let the inexplicable sight sink easily on her mind’s floor. But the thought bounced on and off between the roof and floor of her mind for about a week’s time until it finally settled down with a puff. At this point, she confronted Ampu, not admonishing her but proposing an idea. The only thing to do was use the beast for their benefit. So it was that Ampu approached a production house.
Two years later, with six movies under the belt, Ampu and her lion relished their silver screen roles. Ampu trained the beast to adapt to the vicarious settings of the woods; at times, the beast made it almost impossible to hold him down but otherwise all was well. One evening, after work, Ampu received a call from the receptionist; a lady had called and wanted to meet her. Did she leave a name? Oh she did. Anchu!
Next morning, Ampu arranged to meet the visitor in the cafeteria. Anchu, hesitantly rolled her eye lids to face the elder sister. Prim faced and nattily dressed, she had been tight lipped about the situation. Daintily, she waddled the coffee mug in air as her bruised upper lip left an arched impression on the mug. This was not how she had imagined it. A surly chap was twisting the cleaning agent’s nozzle neck; with criss-cross movements, he thrust the rectangular face of the glass cleaner into the window to her right.
“The lion,” still staring at the man who was cleaning the glass windows, Anchu continued “after the circus broke down, I had a huge debt on my shoulders. I had no alternative but to sell all my animals to a zoo.”
“Is that where my lion’s parents are,” Ampu’s voice was shrill and clear “in the zoo?”
Anchu dropped her gaze on Ampu for a brief moment, and then took to staring at the man behind the glass window. He was suspended from a thick rope; a bucket of water and a tool kit were belted to his waist. With his feet on the extended railing, he went about his work nonchalantly.
“Can he see us?” Anchu pointed to the man.
Ampu was struck back by the question. She was in mood to entertain her sister with pleasantries.
“My lion couple had to be sold too. It was a difficult choice, but I snatched the baby lion from its mother who was lactating at the time.” Anchu clarified “I thought I could start afresh. But your husband won’t listen to it.”
“My husband?” Ampu’s voice rose with her consternation. “You killed my husband ten years ago,” here her voice trailed off with confusion “you made your lions feed on him like he was the fodder of the day.”
Anchu sat low; uncrossed her legs, rose up, and approached the glass window. “Your husband felt down and low. He was disappointed that he could not take care of you. As his act plummeted down, his meagre earnings no longer sufficed to keep him chivalrous.”
“He never cared for money. A virtuous man he was” Ampu stated as a matter of fact.
“He still is. A virtuous man indeed,” Anchu hastened to a finish “it bothered him that the lion couple should desert him for a twelve year old girl. He raised the cubs to their adulthood, trained them the tricks and treated them like his very kin. But the beasts were no wiser.” And there it was. Anchu settled it finally with the revelation “He planned onto stick with the circus until it broke apart. The circus’ demise should be his too. There was no life for him outside. So he made me enact the play. We waited for the right time. You remember Govind from the stable right? He died around the time. We chopped away his gangrenous limb and spread the rest around the lions.”
Both the sisters went silent for a while. Anchu added “We spread the word around that Govind left for the city to get treated. No one was suspicious. And your husband was dead for you and the rest.”
“So where is my husband now?” there was no emotion in Ampu’s voice. The circus animals were sold to the zoo, for Anchu and the hapless Ampu’s husband had finally come to terms with the reality: they were no longer capable of feeding the poor animals. The husband went about languishing in his situation; be that as it may, the duo was left with good money. They moved into the city with the cub propped in a vegetable basket. He worked as a stable man at the city’s zoo; but had lost his face with the wife and won’t return to her. Anchu learnt a thing or two about city life; bought a piece of land with the money and planned to construct a house. But the plan had to be ceased midway, for the stable man at the zoo was attacked by an angry lioness that was bereaving its cub’s disappearance.
How was Ampu to know that the dilapidated house belonged to Anchu, who wrestled with her trepidation for so long? Only now, she cast her misgivings away and approached the elder sister. That was home to the cub which Anchu brought to the city. Ampu’s husband (who loved the trained beasts) was once forsaken strangely for a twelve year old young lassie; deserted, the ringmaster found his life slipping away from him. The lion couple’s cub, now a young beast, grew up to forsake Anchu (who held onto the cub so dearly) for Ampu in even stranger circumstances.
Ampu visited her husband at the hospital. Two deep precision gashes were left on his neck; the lioness had dug its teeth all the way down; then paused as if to evaluate the man’s deeds before letting him be. But the wound was too deep, the two front teeth had torn away hard red meat before; Ampu’s husband stood no chance of a recovery. His vocal chords were tattered and the tongue hanged loose between the lips. He salivated like an infant; his lower jaw was limp with no throat to stake on. When the beast crooned its motherly despair, Ampu’s husband took the wrath and came out with a spine that was broken in six different spots; and a punctured lung where the beast dug its claws. He was a paralysed mass of broken ribs and frayed flesh.
Two days later he died. Not a word was exchanged between the two.
Ampu found a seat by the window. The horizon was foggy; solid ground beneath her dipped and rose to melt away into the distant mist. What was she doing here? She doesn’t belong here. The place was a cauldron of pitiful phobia; she would rather step outside and face it than endure this. ‘Oh! These tranquil indoors cannot, despite their high rise postures and thick walls, shield us from the horror outside’ she thought as she stepped outside into the open air café. The dizzying height of the fourteenth floor coupled with the whirring wind marked a good start for the day. The table cloths around her fluttered like the restless thoughts in her mind; dropping a raised arm on the cloth before her, she put a check to the wafting wind and faced the straight lipped server who had brought her tea.
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