Summer holidays always ringed a relief to me. My grandparents’ house was an old mud house with a portico that overlooked an empty road; the compound extended narrowly before the portico like a ship’s hull. The entrance was guarded by a green varnished gate and a bow shaped arm rested between the two faces of the gate. Outside, two raised platforms were cemented to either side of the gate; on these platforms, at night, women from the neighbourhood gathered to sit and chat. Sometimes, the chatter went all night long; only the crack of dawn could dispose them off to milk their cows and feed their oxen.
To our left was the house whose walls projected outside like the chin of a grumpy old man; the first floor settled back with a water house in the front making it look like the nose. To finish the setup, the lady of the house swaddled the roof top with dry grass like the neatly combed thinning hair of the old face. To the right were houses with their backs resting precariously on a deep well; the well had dried up and no one seemed to recall if it ever had any water.
On one of the nights, on our platforms, the lady from the chin faced house was animatedly chatting up with the rest. She had done her hair into a braid and pinned up right on top; she cloaked the braid with a net and was presently releasing it. Unfolded, her long hair fell like water gushing out of reservoir gates. The women were treating themselves with lemon soda; a pimpled youth with unbuttoned shirt was serving them soda. The youth had rolled up his sleeves; round his neck was a red chequered hanky and two silver coated chains.
For a long time, the chin faced house fascinated me. That night, I eavesdropped on the ladies’ commotion to learn that the occupants of the chin faced house were leaving the following morning for a marriage in the city. It would take about three days and would my mother hold onto the keys. Does she mind? Well why would she.
I woke up rather early in the morrow; the chin faced house had cast an elongated shadow over the row of houses before it. I watched in amazement as the shadow shrunk slowly; it mounted over the hunched roofs and slanted thatches before falling distressingly into the gaps between the roofs. Sun flickered through the gap between the water house’s four feet and the rooftop cast a captivating interference pattern on the cowshed before the house.
About an hour later, I was drying up my hair in the sun. I had clambered atop our roof to achieve this; it was then I noticed the lady of the chin faced house with her hands resting on our gate, chatting up with mother. A canter issued from my loins as I climbed down to register in my mind, the hiding place for the keys. That afternoon, after mother took a nap, I sneaked into the chin faced house. I locked the main door behind my back; it was a tall house with no windows or doors; there was no way I could pursue the course of my curiosity in dark. All the houses in the neighbourhood were fitted with traditional skylights; so I took the stairs outside to reach the roof. Here in the shade of dry grass, beside the water house was a lonely aperture; a rusted metal plate was shrouded over it and a heavy rock placed atop to avoid rainwater leaking into the roof. Lifting the heavy rock was not an option so I rolled it to a side and removed the metal cap. Then I climbed down the stairs, and stepped into the house for a second time.
Inside the house, the aperture, skylight, poured out a great shaft of light; flakes of dust darted in and out of the shaft. Apart from this, there was no other source of light and I wondered if this ringed a sinister bell.
To my left was a wooden stair case that wound round a tree trunk; the steps were lodged into perfectly chiselled slots of the trunk, this was the work of a professional. The ascent of stairs took me to the landing from where a dusty cardboard sheet made way to an attic; overhead, the stairs spiralled further to reach the skylight. A knee length gate was firmly clamped on either side, before it laid the dusty cardboard sheet that made way to the attic. It was quite dark inside; only the area around the stairs was properly lit with the skylight. The walls, the attic and the unknown things were tightly wound in mystery’s embrace.
In the attic, I was greeted by a slight flutter followed by the sound of a long heave. It was the youth who sold lemon soda at night; his legs were chained to a boulder, a heavy latch was clasped around his neck, and the clamps on hands welded together. He rose to his feet, tripped and fell flat on the boulder knocking his nose on the boulder’s head. I had to be vigilant; this was no time to play the vigilante. I tried to get him to talk, but he won’t; perhaps his throat was sore. I noticed a scalpel, pair of tongs, and a strip of bandage to my right. He was weak and presently bleeding from the sharp flop onto the boulder; I approached him with the bandage, pressed a strip against the nose until it ceased bleeding. Daubing away the blood that had turned his red chequered hanky into a stiff fabric, I tucked the used cotton buds into the heap of dry grass by his side.
Ten minutes later, the youth woke up to settle on his four limbs and began munching heavily on the dry grass. He was digging his head into the heap to fork out the green grass at the bottom; then stately, he would rest on his haunches with the grass between his hands, and chew unhurriedly. He began salivating rather abundantly; with his head tilted skywards, he went about ruminating in a style reminiscent of oxen. I was plodding him to talk; but he won’t budge.
Out of nowhere, a squirrel came scurrying about; with a little hop, it left the great tree and gained access through the winding staircase and the dusty cardboard sheet to the attic. Here, it flitted effortlessly from the grass heap onto a lever. It seemed to say ‘here! Turn this’. I was not going to disappoint the sweet little thing, so I reached out and flipped it without deliberation. There was a long pause as if the house had ceased breathing; the squirrel cocked its head downwards in anticipation of something; the youth ceased ruminating and moved closer towards the attic end. Then it began; a slow churn of the tree trunk clockwise, green stalks stemmed out of the trunk sideways. The stair case seemed to develop a handrail of some sort; it morphed into a crawler with branches that puckered up the chiselled lodges. In a minute, the dead trunk had become a healthy tree that was swaddled densely by a crawler. I noticed that over the landing that lead to the attic, the tree tapered sharply; halfway through, it spurted out into copious branches that had grown as far as the roof.
The youth’s head was covered in froth; he was nonchalantly musing about. The squirrel hopped onto my back and climbed forward to reach my head; my hair had tangled in its feet, so I scooped it off my head and rested on the right shoulder. Then there was a popping sound followed by another. At first they were discrete, but soon the sounds echoed through the darkness and deafened me. The popping sound was followed by a teeming budding of the flowers; first the petals splurged about, dropped like used flakes with their faces curved outside. Then thin stalks rose upright; they shuddered a bit in their growth, paused and adopted a stiff posture. White flimsy material shrouded the flowers from outside that grew downwards as the vein coloured stalks grew thicker and thicker. Then, over the weightless grey pollen, frail white filaments rose to crown stigmas. The flowers rose severely towards the skylight thereby dimming the interior. Through the sifting petals, sun scarcely filtered through to drop a beam here and a beam there.
Some flowers began shedding their petals; in their place arose pear shaped buds that grew until they became fruits. Some other flowers retained their stalk, stigma and the petals; they too grew into fruits of a different kind, perhaps vegetables. And the fruits ripened; they grew bigger and bigger until they exploded to release a nasty pungent fluid that accompanied the seeds. When the fluid began splashing, my squirrel friend abandoned my shoulder to retreat into a corner so remote that not a drop could reach it. I respectfully declined the offer until I noticed that the nasty fluid was burning the floor and walls; wherever it splashed, it left deep searing marks. The splashing ceased after a while; but the floor creaked and the attic jerked in ill health. I peered downwards and noticed that the nasty fluid had burnt gashes so deep that the great tree merely began sinking into the ground.
The roof was pitted and sun flickered through; now the light allowed me to survey the surroundings. Walls had grown deep squalid patches of burns themselves. There was not a thing in the house, save the tree (which was presently sinking) and the attic (which hung precariously to a wall that posed a dreadful pimpled face). The walls now rid of plaster, bore their guts out; they were made of rocks irregularly piled over one another; the roof stood on a row of thick wooden slabs, they too were laid out unevenly. Below me, the tree had sunk to about half of its size; a branch got caught up in the attic’s railing and dragged it along. A sweeping motion ensued as the sinking tree’s branch tugged hard and in a moment, we were off the wall; the attic tilted dangerously veering away the grass heap and the boulder. Poor thing, the youth fell into the gaping mouth that the sinking tree had created. It was as though the tree was alive; the branch that had tugged at the attic railing lowered it so the other teeming branches could join the merry. And so they did, in a minute the branches had sped into the grills of the railing and threateningly closed the exits.
I turned around to make a huge leap in a desperate attempt; I could lose a limb or two in the fall, but nothing wise struck me at the moment. Now it was the squirrel’s turn to whisper wisdom; it relented the fall, sat in the middle of the attic and won’t budge. After some quick thought, against my best impulses, I chose to give credence to the squirrel’s intuition. And so it helped; the sinking tree persisted but the attic was too long, too wide and too thick and won’t fit into the ground. Dejected, the branches snuggled their way into the ground as the attic now covered the gaping ground as a lid. Sunlight poured through the porous roof and in the light, I could see that an ancient door was dislodged from its fitment. Through this door, I stepped out into the open.
Sun was hovering over the horizon to the west; it was about four or five in the evening. I gave an athletic lift to my feet, and darted into my house. Mother had just woken up; she was brushing sleep off her eyes when she saw me coming inside. I sat her up in a cot and narrated the whole eventful afternoon. I had taken the gamble; I was risking getting beaten up by mother, for I had violated her instructions of staying put while she took a quick nap.
Mother breathed heavily, hesitated, wrinkled her forehead as if to gather her thoughts, and pinched my cheeks “So. You are telling me, this squirrel saved your life”. She pointed to the wooden squirrel in my hand.
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