The following night the moon in waning came out bright again. Everything like last night—the bronze-capped waves, expanse of rice fields, and cluster of huts—became washed again with splendour and happiness. The island people, in beliefs from superstition to logic, would watch the moon as it dwindled for fourteen nights until it became a sickle like a curve of wire. They called this half of lunar month krishnapaksha or dark fortnight. The next night—amawasya or amawas—when the new moon would not be seen—they would sulk a little thinking of ghosts, catastrophes, and demons, then would brighten up as the new-moon sickle grew into a full moon again. They called this half of the lunar month shuklapaksha or bright fortnight.
Purnima, still in her bridal dress, and Arkah in his bridegroom, stood at a window looking out at the river. They seemed tired, bored, and impatient, Purnima moving her feet as if standing on hot coals. When she found Arkah falling into silence, she thrust a finger into his ribs, good-humouredly, and said, “What is on your mind”
“You know what?”
She winked at him with a trace of reproach. “The moon right?”
He chuckled, his lips convolved with an ironic smile. “Yes, the moon.”
She pretended ignorance to his irony. “Does the moon seem smaller tonight?”
He shook his head to pity her little game. “I think so. That’s why I m looking so hard to find the missing piece.”
She ignored his tantrum again. “Everybody on this island talks about the moon. This is a moon island.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What do they do when the moon is bright like this?”
“Many things.”
She knitted her brows to feign rebellion at his brevity. “Come on, tell me. Just don’t be. . . ” And she trailed out of words.
And not wanting her to be truly angry, he told her about the festivals the people celebrated, about men playing cards under trees, women worshipping gods and goddesses at the river beach, men performing Ramlila and Indar Sabha plays in barns of rice mills, groups singing Tulsidas’s choupaaees, beating drums and clanging cymbals. Then he remembered how he, Agni and the other boys would boil crabs in large pots for group feeding. The crabs smelled delicious in the mix of coconut milk, wiri-wiri peppers, celery, callaloo and onions. Then everyone would be ready to eat, their gara-gara leaves, plate-like, stretched out in their hands to collect their portions. After that, they played cockadillo in the woods, singing and bringing back tree leaves. These were the best times in the village: the dry season with ripened paddy grains in the fields; mango, tamarind, and jamoon trees laden with fruits; the rice mill grinding.
When she saw him lost in his world, she poked a finger into his ribs again and made a face as if to kill. “Where have you gone. . . into your dream world again?”
Quickly he came back to himself, and said, motioning to the parrot in the cage, “Thinking what that parrot would report to Mother.”
Her eyes twinkled with amusement. “Don’t worry. I know how to bribe parrots.” Then, as if acting, she laughed convulsively, and pointed to the river. “What are those lights?”
He dilated his eyes to reciprocate her act, and said, “My beautiful dulahin, that’s where you’re from. Surprised? That’s East Bank Essequibo. Those lights you see there are lights of houses and other buildings between trees.”
Elated surprise flashed in her eyes. “My! Which part do you think is my place?”
He threw an arm around her and pointed to a place where a constellation of stars hung over a purple backdrop of dull flickering lights. “There. That’s Graceland.
She stamped her mouth with a hand. “Really?” Then she fisted the other hand, stomped a foot on the ground as if ready for a big exploit. “Let’s pretend to be goblins or angels and walk across. When we reach, I will cook you a nice dinner of crabs or hassars and break Mother’s rules. Then I will take you to the cane fields and ask the cane cutters to give us sugar canes to eat.”
He stared at her, his eyes wanting to break more than rules. He felt flames leaping within him. It would be so nice to be with her in the cane fields, he thought. He could even make it romantic like one of Jeetendra’s movies, dancing, hopping, hiding, teasing and singing. Her place, Graceland, was one of the most beautiful places on the other side of the river, with canals, meadows, stretches of cane fields, coconut groves, and a sea wall like that of Mumbai, waves billowing and leaping over to the road in blasts of sprays. Many times he had thought that this was a good place for a movie. Now he fell into a swirl of him and Purnima in a dreamland of Bollywood ecstasies.”
She nudged him to whisk him out of his reverie. “Come on, tell me something.”
He jumped out of his dream. “Oh, you want me to tell you that we should go across. Well, if you think it easy to walk across a six-mile-wide river, we can go.”
“So wide?”
“Yes, so wide.”
“Do you think anyone can swim across?”
He shrugged. “Someone did already.”
“Who?”
“Agni.”
“Who is Agni?”
“Thought you knew.”
“Why? No one told me about him.”
“He’s my brother.”
“Your brother?”
He walked across to the sofa and flung himself on it. “Not my brother really. We grew up as brothers. He’s my mother’s. .. Not my mother’s…” He trailed out of words.
She too walked across and dropped herself on the sofa. “Please don’t play a game with me. I hate being in the dark.”
He threw back his head and exhaled a gush of air. “Rewati isn’t my mother. She’s my stepmother, and Agni is her brother.”
Her face contorted with disbelief. “What I’m hearing? Is Rewati your stepmother?”
He shrugged. “That’s the truth.” Then he told her that his mother Rajni had died at childbirth when he was two years old. Two years later his father married Rewati, who brought her brother Agni to live with her. He was four years old then.
Serenity pervaded her face, and she flung her arms back. “I have never seen a stepmother adore a stepson as how she adores you.”
“With Rewati, I have never missed my mother,” he said. Then he told her when they were five years old how he and Agni used to sail paper boats on the pond behind their rice mill. One evening as they were having fun, Arkah’s boat got stuck between a bulge of grass and duckweed. To free it, he went to the edge of the pond and tried to extricate it with a bamboo rod. The dirt on the pond broke away, and he fell headlong into the deep of the water. Soon he found himself in a world of rainbows, amber moons, and lightning forks. Agni, panicked, ran and told Rewati. She sprinted, jumped into the pond and fished him out. When he came back to his senses, he saw Rewati slapping her chest, her eyes full of tears. From that day she became his real mother; Agni his blood brother.
Purnima, moved by the story, said, “I saw the pond, a very huge and deep one.”
Arkah nodded. “We use the water from it to soak our paddy for milling.” He fell silent for a while. Then when he gathered his thoughts again, he said, “Do you like the surroundings there with the rice mill, bungalow, jamoon groves, and troolie-thatched huts?”
She brightened up, her yes like two shimmering lakes. “Beautiful.”
“That’s why they did our wedding there, closer to everything.”
She now seemed ablaze with excitement. “Down there you have all you want of village life—the women cooking and singing, the men making tents and dancing.”
Yes, indeed she was right, he thought. When he was a child he used to think that Bundarie Square was like places in rural India he had seen in movies Jab Jab Phool Khile, Junglee, and Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon. Despite the hard work in the rice fields, cow pastures, ground-provision farms, and rice mills, angels and fairies seemed to be roaming everywhere. Colours—whether from sunsets, moonlights, gardens, or lily ponds--sang like kiskadees in trees. Even the grass after a shower of rain would challenge the green beauty faked in the best films.
The parrot cawed and said something unintelligible, hurling him out of his dream. Seeing Purnima gaping at him, he said, “Bundarie Square is different now. Many years ago people were poor but there was a kind of beauty and happiness you can’t find now.”
She ran a finger on his face in reproach. “Don’t say that. It is still beautiful.” Then she told him on her first day on the island she had taken a tour of the village and was thrilled to see women squatting on the grass, doing their laundry; boys throwing marbles into holes dug out for the game; others grazing their sheep or goats on parapets filled with daisies.
Then, drunk with her feelings, she said, “What I love most are the flowers—jasmines, marigolds, frangipanis, zinnias and lilies. And you can find them everywhere, in pots hanging from porches, in the churchyard, graveyard, school compound.”
Arkah seemed happy that she liked his island. He put his lips to the nape of her neck and said, “Ah, you have a feel of it! Bundarie Square, no place like it.”
To be continued
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