Chapter 1
When I woke up two summers later, the pond had dried up. I was the only one alive. I had faint memory of my fins jutting out limbs in their place; the tapered glistening tail had given form to thighs and shins; the comb shaped vertical rim of the tail broke into toes on both my feet. My gills had closed themselves; skin on the hollows reformed and the breasts were fuller with no gaping holes beneath them. Only, they were not firm anymore; my breasts sagged and wore wrinkled skin. How long have I been inside the pond? Here my old memory failed me. I traipsed impatiently towards the lonely farmhouse in my view. It seemed deserted; a litter of skull and bones greeted me at the entrance.
The place looked like it had not been inhabited in the last fifty years. Cobwebs swaddled the place that smelt of bats’ urine and mice had drilled holes under the basement. I had to break a windowpane to gain access into the house. Nothing inside the house was left alone by the invaders; metal cases were rusted and the contents withered; wooden cases were eaten up by termites and the contents were beyond anybody’s recognition. To restore modesty, I had to find a garment, at least a piece of cloth. So I continued looking until I found a safe locker. Its walls were so thick that to corrode it, would have taken another hundred years.
Inside the safe lock, I found a suitcase full of neatly ironed clothes; apparently, someone was planning an outing. I unfolded a starched cotton saree and draped myself with it. Endearingly, despite the uncertain conditions, I took my time rolling the saree into pleats like a young bride. The petticoat was long and lapped its tongue around me; the white cotton blouse fitted loosely on my withered old trunk. All in all, it was the sight of a poorly draped saree over an ill fitted mannequin.
The wind was coming my way; its tapered brown body wheeled around the farmhouse. The hut in the compound teetered valiantly until the tornado dislodged its roof and sucked it into the whirling guts so high that on its retreat when the roof fell with a thud, it nearly killed me.
Around me, the dry fields spread out with a thorny bush here and a lonely felled tree there. When the tornado was on me, I dug myself behind a narrow ridge; a row of tall pine trees frequented the ridge baring their roots on the ridge’s slope. I closed my fingers tightly around a thick root; the whirling motion scooped out brick ash and rouged me with it. Some of the ash sifted into the hollow of my blouse (for my bosom no longer filled the blouse cheeks wholesomely) and some into the eyes (for my puckered eye lids were tired and timeworn). My gritted teeth could not prevent the charred substance from slipping into the throat; a dry cough seized me into bouts of exhaustion and at the end of it, I could feel the walls of my lungs lined with ash powder and dust flakes.
Something had happened here. The fields had dried up from horizon to horizon; sun was beating down in all its ferocity. The fire from the brick kiln must have spread into the fields. Tornadoes like this one only meant that for miles and miles there was only dry land. I spent the day racking my brains over my failing memory. Brief interludes of gushing tornadoes kept me active throughout the day.
It was getting dark; the half yellow globe was ducking down in the horizon. Then I gazed up as if by instinct. Slowly, trickle by trickle, it came back to me. The evening I left home to the pond, from the tree tops, like arrows slung from turrets, birds leapt out in flights. Together they swooped to the floor and snorkelled in air. Against the dim outline of the sky, they hung about briefly like the silhouette of a great vulture, before melting away into specks of life that alighted with a hush on the treetops.
But now there were no birds. They were all dead: the birds, the dogs and the plants. They all seemed to peer brazenly through the hollow rims of their skulls.
The cornucopia of night life in the fields was gaining form; stirring of dry leaves startled me. Two slates of marble were stood against a leafless tree’s base; corroded underpins on the spine of each slate indicated that the roof was missing. I squinted at the half-moon as ghoulish clouds slid past it. The moon had a ladle shaped grey mark on its face; like a tumour, it seemed to breed other spots around it. My memory suddenly seemed to fall back into place like a creaking old gate the wedges of which, at first glance seem impossible to fit into the lodge but eventually do fit in.
Chapter 2
That fateful day in the past, there was a breeze. In the breeze, my saree billowed and fluttered, announcing the arrival of an alien body in the dark of the night. To my right was the rattling motion of fat paws that lifted and dropped without haste. I issued a steady gait in the direction of the roofless structure; a sound of tearing followed my hurried tramping and in a moment, I had burrowed my back into the marble mouth. Gathering the sari folds into a handful, I pinched them between my thighs. Now the flutter of the sari ceased, and I lent my mind to the fields around me.
From the vantage point of the lonely tree, I noticed that beyond the narrow ridge, the fields sloped into a lake. I was thirsty; but the idea of leaving the comfort of a solid tree on my back and the marble slates on the sides, was rather discouraging. About two hours later, I stepped out of my hiding; over the bump of the field that skirts the rectangular patches, with the saree lifted up to my knees, I cautiously trotted about till I reached the ridge. Here, the tall trees swayed rhythmically to the cool moonlit breeze that snuggled its way around the defenceless midriff. A chill current ran through my nerves and the swell of Goosebumps carpeted my skin.
Here, under the night sky, I came across the bristled creature. It lowered its hood before me, dug its hind legs in the mud as if it were gaining thrust for a pounce. My teeth chattered helplessly; the cool breeze was turning into a wind. The creature unhurriedly progressed towards me; its paws were so broad that it could have held me by my slender waist in its single fist. Blinded by the menacing creature whose body was speckled with bristled thorny hair, I stepped back, one two three….and my feet skidded along the throat of a pond to fall into its guts.
Once inside the pond, I felt my lungs burst under the weight of water. I madly beat my feet against the floor of the pond; my wet saree clung tightly around me arresting my motion. My hands, I waved about desperately; through the lolloping undulations overhead, I could make out the rim of the pond and the ring of the moon. A school of fish came swimming my way; by now my vision had fogged and my mind failed to register any thoughts excepting that of survival. Separating themselves into two groups, the fishes dug their little teeth into my side ribs. With precision, they peeled off the skin and with every pinch, my breathing seemed to appreciate. It was as though the fish had scooped out from beneath my thick skin, arcane gills I never thought I was in possession of.
The pain seemed to wear me out, but I was able to breathe and about ten minutes later, a film of red coated the surface of moonlit water as it rippled sedately. The fish pinched away leaving behind two hollows beside my breasts. Then I fell asleep. About an hour later, I woke up to find my side ribs healed. Skin in the hollows hid behind the bump of the breasts peered at me with blood red intensity. Like the flayed skin, it was irritable to the point that I had to keep my arms stretched away.
With an improved vision, oxygenated blood cells and clear mind, I stretched my body and with the back rested firmly on the pond’s floor; I now noticed a rake tugging at my saree with its crooked teeth. ‘So that was the reason why I was not able to swim to the surface.’ I told myself. I bent my knees and leaned to free my saree from the rake’s teeth; then I noticed an unusual transformation of my feet. Perhaps it was the saree; it wrapped around my feet so tightly that they seemed to have glued together. Strangely though, the skin around my feet coalesced into one; it was not external glue, it was the skin itself that was undergoing the transformation. In an attempt to pull the saree over my knees, I reached out with my hand that had undergone a webbed transformation itself. The fingers had pinched themselves tight together and a shroud of flimsy material grew out of the nails.
I had to know the extent of transformation; tugging at the wet sari with my flimsy glistening wing-like limbs, I pulled the saree over the knees to expose a bizarre transformation. The feet were gluing together into a tail; along the length of my shins and around my thighs, the transformation had become complete. At the toe end of my feet, a comb shaped vertical rim grew out like a fish’s tail. I lowered my fin shaped hands to cover the deep gashes beneath the breasts; involuntarily, my fins began to flap and the tail stirred to unsettle sand on the pond’s floor.
Next morning, I woke up to the flicker of glowing sun on the pond’s surface overhead. A stir of my tail seemed to summon the school of fish. I flipped my tail to create a flutter that ran along the length of my body to turn me upside down. With my belly facing the sun, I swam melodiously through the tangled undergrowth of the pond. A bird’s flock had alighted on an overhanging tree by the rim of the pond; the school of fish swam over me and stood in attention with their mouths skywards. I flapped my way up to the surface and waited in unison with the others. Soon, the commotion was granted what they were seeking: bird droppings. I had the biggest mouth of all; naturally, I fed myself to the brim of my throat before allowing the weight of my stomach carry me back to the floor.
Now in the light of the day, I noticed that the sand on the floor was as bewitching to the eye as silk is to a woman. Pebbles on the floor were so smooth that I swam with my cheeks rubbing them. Scuttling on the floor, a pair of crabs came my way; their heads cocked over the stiff legs like an amethyst jewel crowned on an altar with four pair of legs. With one’s left claw tugging at the other’s right, they approached me; their reduced abdomen was laughably pale and the exoskeleton so thick that one could break an egg on them. So it was that I made friends with the crabs.
Life was good in the pond. Food was aplenty; algae formed a thick coat, lining the walls of the pond. I was omnivorous; if an earthworm came wriggling my way, I would not think twice before showing it to the doors of my stomach. The little fish themselves had a lifespan of about four months and it was generally accepted that one can feed on the dead ones. It was a harmonious relationship that we all shared. Save the scorpions, everyone seemed to love me. Even the snakes did not mind my foreign origins. Once in a while someone would protest and whimper sweetly that the homebred were ignored; but the attempts to ostracise me never found fruition.
Everyone had a season to copulate and the rest would let them be during their mating season. Summers were for the fish, winters for snakes and so on. Years passed and I had learnt to asexually reproduce. My mammalian characters had all but gone. I no longer sensed it and my children were none the wiser. Then on a summer morning, when all the fish were busy mating and the crabs busy courting, I turned my attention towards a snake that was panting heavily. He was suffering from bouts of diarrhoea. I was by now the eldest member in the pond; the old timers had all but died. So the young naturally saw me as the old owl that solved their problems. I asked the snake if he had anything unfamiliar for food last night. He pointed to a pool of vomit lying on a rock outside the pond. It was a ghastly mess of guts topped with clawed crab nails and frog’s eyes.
I made a paste of the vomit and circled it around my tongue; it tasted like what a snake ought to feed on; nothing unfamiliar. But something sharp stung me and I had to spit it out. Upon closer scrutiny, I noticed that the frog’s intestine had a small baby frog in it. I stepped back; this required explanation. Two months later, after a series of such incidents, and loss of lives, I summoned up a meeting.
In the meeting that was held that night, just about everybody was present. We had chosen a dry spot outside the lake. I was not expecting fish to be present; no one was to disturb the mating ones. But to my astonishment, one by one, the fish popped out of the pond to settle their bellies on a submerged rock. The ones that wished to stay in the pond sat on the submerged rock while the rest made the dry bank their seats.
The frogs who were once sedately gurgling water, making popping sounds and hopping about merrily, were now impatiently chewing their tongues. The snakes who hissed, heehawed, climbed the walls of the pond to jump amusingly back into the water, were now huddled up with their tails rolled under their despairing hoods. The crabs that once scuttled the floor of the pond so frequently that the fish complained of the ripples disturbing their vision, now seemed lifeless, inept: a forgettable lot. ‘Something portentous was wriggling in our sands; this was no ordinary malady’ I told myself. The word wriggling brought back memories of my favourite food: earthworms. In the last couple of months, all the earthworms had vanished from the face of the pond. It was as though they were never part of our ecosystem.
What followed was a patient study of our eating habits or the changes in our habits. I tried to find out the reasons. It took a great deal of inquiry.
An irritable snake who had bit his own tail confessed. “I have no appetite,” pointing to his spittoons “my venom.” At this, he pinched his eyes and exposed his sickly tongue “my venom is of no good. It’s puerile to try and suffocate a bird with this venom. In my heyday, I had killed vultures with my venom; last week, a sparrow frolicked in my spit before forking out my left eye with its blunt beak”. Here, he wept so loud that all the fishes began weeping themselves. “I have no virtue left in this world. What have I done?”
A frog was chewing his tongue so hard that blood oozed out of his mouth but he paid no heed to it. I thought it was only natural to have the frog speak next. “I cannot stop chewing my tongue,” between inaccessible bouts of grunts, he continued “ever since the algae became unpalatable; we frogs took to feeding on the worms”.
To this, a fish popped its head outside and screamed “you filthy scoundrels. You began feeding on our earthworms,” the fish was so overwhelmed with anger that he had to raise his gills, make a flitting sound and breathe heavily before proceeding with his head cocked in my direction “we had rationed our fodder judiciously” in an accusatory tone, he dived into the pond to oxygenate and re-emerged to sit on the submerged rock “when the frogs turned to our worms, we had nowhere to go. Now, our young ones are dying fast and the old faster.”
The finger of blame was pointed at the frogs. I asked them “Why are you not practicing mating in your allotted schedule. Two months ago, I noticed a baby frog in one of the snake’s vomit.”
In response, a frog with blood melting away from the corers of his mouth, noted “how could we mate when we are hungry, we changed our schedules.” He looked about him. Noticing that the answer was not well received, he carried on “we adapted. The food was getting scarce. So we mated when we could. Not seasonally.”
This, I found hard to comprehend. Everyone knew that the ecosystem of the pond worked in such a way that one’s feeding routine, mating cycle and seasonal affiliations went hand in hand with the other species. An impulsive wailing impetuosity such as what the frogs had exhibited now entailed a severe punishment. But before I passed my judgement, I quickly turned my attention to the fishes for one last time.
“What about the bird droppings? Can you not satisfy your hunger with what is available?” I only intended to draw the attention away from the frogs for a moment, but the question raised few eyebrows. Everyone seemed hell bent on banishing the frogs from our pond. I had no choice but to pass my verdict. The frogs were to leave the pond with immediate effect.
Next morning, on our surface swim, my daughter tugged at my fins tightly and pointed to the overhanging tree “look mother. The tree has lost its leaves; it looks so pale and dull.” I had not noticed this before. Then on patient scrutiny, I also noticed that fewer and fewer birds alighted on this tree. That meant fewer droppings and lesser food for fish. Then, it transpired to me that the precarious ecosystem had broken down; like a vertebra with a fractured spine, the ecosystem now wriggled pitifully where once it galloped.
By the next summer, the population of our pond had dropped to about a quarter of what it once was. No one seemed to understand the rationale. The fish blamed the frogs, frogs the snakes, snakes the worms, worms the plankton, plankton the algae, and so on. Everyone around me was dying. I had myself become very weak with lost appetite and an unusual chattering of the teeth. My children were dead, and so were all the young ones of the pond. The ones that were left lived like zombies.
And about two summers later, the pond went dry. I was the only surviving member of the once copious aquatic life.
Chapter 3
Presently, I had to find out what happened here. My memory came back to my rescue; I now knew how I fell into the pond what happened inside the pond. But questions still remained. The day I fell into the pond, what was I doing in the fields? What was I running away from?
I went back to the farmhouse in search for answers. Inside the safe-lock, I found a cardboard sheet. I had ignored it the first time I pulled out a saree from the safe-lock. I peeled the cardboard sheet with a kitchen knife to price out a neatly folded envelope. Clutching the envelope tightly in my fist, I ran around the fields to find a suitable place to rest and read thru its contents.
I looked around me. Presently, the field was carpeted with stinging lifeless stubs of dry corn. The moon shaded his eyes off the dark clouds and peered at the great expanse before me.
Back on the day of the incident, all was green around me.
The envelope had a short letter. It was hand written. My handwriting! It read
“Today, there was the news of virus having spread to every last place on the planet. There was no escape. The virus had mutated into something all the more irreversible. The government had issued warnings to the effect of avoiding contact from any land based mammals and vertebrae. The virus affected the skin of animals; sharp venomous thorns bristled from the skin and it spread from the sting.
We all knew that it was only a matter of time before we turned into bristled mammals ourselves. Death had been found to follow the transformation by about a week’s time.
Some had questioned the scientists “how are the birds and fishes surviving?” scientists had no answer. In any case, they thought it was only a matter of time before the virus mutated to affect the birds, plants, aquatic and any other life form on the planet.
It’s a vain hope to live in the city. So I moved into the farm. I don’t know who I am addressing this letter to. I don’t know if any one will ever find this letter.”
So it is that I am the last woman alive.
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