House in the Woods

The picture on the salon wall

Long ago, I cannot remember really well, a middle aged man came along the dirt path through the woods. That was a rare occurrence in that time. He was on a mule and I surmise they had lost their way. They had stopped nearby for breaking their fast. I do not know where they were traveling to or what they were doing in this desolate region, but from what the woods told me later, they did not mean to go back.

They were deserters of some sort, but what were they deserting, my brick-addled brain cannot fathom. Of course age too has taken a toll on my memory. But I remember, that when Big Man Adam's daughter Kukushka stumbled upon an exposed root, and had to be taken aside to check if her toe nail had clipped, Big Man Adam saw the lake behind me. And that is when I was born. I imagine that I should say I was conceived then, for as the aged trees lovingly told me, Big Man Adam had decided in that moment to end his journey and build a home where he stood.

My genesis took a long solitary period of time, in which Big Man Adam aided by his daughter, raised me from ground up, bit by bit, one cabin at a time. I had a humble beginning. A wavering roof made of a bedsheet - supported by four frail twigs - constituted my whole being. But as the unwavering labour of Big Man Adam fed me zealously for years, I was born, a stout and sturdy house with thick wooden walls. When wind blew through my abundant doors and windows I could smell whole of the forest in it, and in bargain it took away my flavour to the forest.

The father and daughter were a hard-working set of people. Kukushka had set up a small garden at the back, where they would get their meagre provisions for food. She toiled in garden and worked on a cloth with a fine needle. Her father, he went to the out of house on his mule once a week, for simple trades and came back the same evening. He went down to the lake for fish sometimes. Usually he just taught her to read and write and cook, and tended the garden with her.

She was a dainty creature. A songbird. When she sang, her lovely tones penetrated deep within my being and it seemed that my very timbers and stones came alive with it. My foundations wished to get up on its rickety feet and swoon around. And if I had sinews like those humans and beasts, I might have too.

The father and daughter lived here through five winters. At the end of fifth year, a band of dirty dishevelled men arrived and in a day, they undid what the father and the daughter had done in years. At the very steps of this house, they culled Big Man Adam like a chicken and after rampaging in the house for food, they found Kukushka and took her away. She shouted and fainted. None of them ever came back.

I was left here, wooden and still, for the first time in my life, contemplating the meaning of solitude. Dust settled, and vines crept up along my limbs and walls. There was no one to halter the invasion of moss and dank that then took hold of me. In parts, some wild fauna made home in my internals, but they did not have the impeccable sense of cleanliness and unrelenting perseverance of Kukushka to take care of me like she did.

I lose sense of time after that. One year, maybe many, or perhaps decades later, humans came to these woods again.

##

They were a husband and wife, a youthful couple. They had no business being in this isolated woods, but I believe, they too were seeking solace in isolation. They cleaned me up, and cut the weeds and vines as best they could manage. The garden was the toughest piece of work, where it seemed that nature had drawn a masterpiece of chaos when given free reign. 

The young man put in a bit of stone at the periphery and made a small fence about the garden. Then he made a shed for their goats, and for the poultry. Then, with their simple fair, they made me part of their silent life.

With them another woman came. Old and unsightly. In contrast to the man and wife, she looked just like an old banyan compared to a young sapling. She was thick around the waist. But she was much too agile for her years. They called her Granny.

I never learned the names of the couple, for they never called each other by their names, and neither did Granny. In fact, as I remember, in all the duration that the family lived here, I never heard the young man or his wife speak. They conversed with gestures of eyes and hands. Only Granny spoke, and that too sparingly. She took care of the young wife, when she grew thick around the waist suddenly. 

Then I had believed that the old woman felt a sense of obligation to a likewise fat woman - however young she might be. When less than a year later, a crimson lump tumbled out of her and began to cry, the young wife became thin again. The woods told me later, that the lump was actually a progeny of the couple, just like a bird lays eggs which hatch into chicks. I had seen lizard and fowl eggs, but they were smooth. The human egg was horrible, red and brown, it looked like the colour of earth on the day Big Man Adam was killed on my steps.

I think I was prejudiced against the child from the beginning. He was loud, and he always kept scratching me in odd places with sharp objects. He teased all the living things that he found anywhere, the snakes, crickets, earthworms, all of them, and they cursed him heavily. But with time, and the passing of the old woman, he grew solemn.

He used to watch in peace the rare rain that fell, sitting on the wooden porch, with his knees pressed close to his chest. He also made some marks in a paper by his side, and then read them silently to himself. The silence that the young couple had brought with them, infected him too, and I began to miss his riotous laughter and his mischievous stints.

His father spoke to him sometimes, when his mother had taken to bed ill. She did not survive for long, and if it were possible, the silence of the family grew deeper. Except the metallic clang of cooking pots and wood splintering under an axe, there rarely came a sound among the woods. I could even hear their hearts beat, a regular rhythm devoid of emotion and musical uncertainty that the young wife had, and Kukushka before her.

A world without women, is really no world.

What happened to them? Here, my memory fails me. I had taken to slumber, while the man and his son inhabited me. I cared not for their routines and motions, and never noticed when, leaving me to my fate, they faded into oblivion.

I slept unhindered.

##

Then came the renegades of war. 

I cannot remember how long it was that I had been alone, and to be honest, the renegades weren't a welcome company either. They were a desperate and weak lot. Their filthiness reminded me of the cursed bandits who took Kukushka away. But with the mean and hunted look that they carried with them, they stood in contrast with the raucous arrogance of those pillagers.

They wore tattered clothes, which under the dirt and grime looked the same to me. Their shirts had some rusty metallic bits attached on shoulder and chest. And they wore high boots that reached their knees. The woods say they were soldiers. The men might have been. But the two women and five children did not look like soldiers to me.

They did not live long here. In fact, their lives here could only amount to a fleeting moment in the long span of life that I had lived. The coming of the renegades was a omen though. It was barely a week or perhaps ten days later, when they were dragged out through the door.

Of the five men of the company, only two went out regularly. The rest stayed back to guard the women and children. They lived in constant fear, a dread of discovery. They never cooked anything. They ate whatever came out of the saddlebags of the two men returning, which was mostly salted meat and stale bread. It was evident that they could not survive on those meagre rations. If they would only preen the garden and plant some vegetables, they would have been able to have a decent meal for dinner every evening within two months' time. And their was plenty fish in the lake too. That was nature's bounty!

But wooden as I was, I could not communicate this to them. And anyway, humans are supposed to be intelligent. If they saw the remains of the garden, and did nothing to make food from it, I fail to see what intelligence this lot possessed. I never imagined they might have had a reason.

But it became clear before long.

##

When the Colonel and his men came, accompanied by sound of hooves and drums and flintlocks, they brought with them the storm. And what a portentous storm it was! I might have known that such fury of nature is felt only before the world turns upside down. My little wooded world gradually turned and turned until all recognition of the place itself was washed away in mud and shit.

Unfazed by the pouring rain and the crackling sky, the Colonel's men laid a siege upon me. The renegades did not dare come out, nor attempt to run. They were doomed the moment they had fallen asleep in the night, for the general's men had them surrounded before sunrise. I felt sorry for the children. Malnourished - almost starved to death - and now death stared right in their faces, coming much sooner than the circumstances had promised.

After the storm ceased, the Colonel ordered his men to open fire. Had their guns blazed that day, they would have left me an open grave of three men, two women and five underfed children - a mausoleum shot to shreds and without the name of its residents. And that would have been the ignominious end of my short life.

But fate had ordained otherwise. I was to bear witness to more horrors than I had yet seen, and the penance for being built a house in that age was not to be cut short by their rifles that day. Their gunpowder, having been drenched in the rain, did not ignite. That did not deter the Colonel though. He sent his men in, and they dragged the flaccid deserters out of the house.

They built a simple platform, on which the Colonel sat with a chair and table and read them their death warrants.

On the tall oak tree by the decrepit garden, they selected a low branch, and threw a rope over it. They dug a shallow hole directly underneath. Then one by one, they hung the men and women, their children watching the brutal due process of law, without understanding any of it. They were ineptly covered from the scene of death by a soldier who stood before them watching with interest.

The exhibition was lent a stifling sense of macabre by the dying men and women when, loosened by the noose tightening around their necks, their bowels emptied under them. I heard the snapping of neck, and the splashing sound of shit hitting the hole in the ground below them. I heard the sobs of children, barely above whispers. I heard in the bickering of the soldiers, their reluctance to go on with the hanging after the first man, and I heard the stone-willed voice of the Colonel which left to them nothing but to go on.

When the guilty had been hanged, the soldiers removed them and took them down to the lake. They came back without them, and filled the hole with earth. The Colonel in the meantime, had been inspecting the surroundings, unconcerned about the children.

He came to my doorstep, entered and crossing the corridor, came to the window there from where you could see the lake in that time. He stood there all the while, watching the soldiers bury the men and women in a common grave.

Then only did I notice the sense of melancholy that had swept over him. He looked upwards at the sky and seeing that the rain was imminent, he made some marks in a paper. I was filled with disgust, for the lump of red earth - that solemn child of the dumb young wife - had come back to me, and he had turned the earth from blood to faeces.

He waited for his men to come back, and upon their return, he announced unceremoniously, "There will be a town here."

##

If I had known what a despicable invention a town was, I would have crumbled then and there, at the feet of the Colonel. My ignorance prolonged my disgraced existence. I had grown into a hermit by this time. I resisted their attempts to restore me. I shed wood and termites all over the place, and swayed at night under the wind, uttering a ghastly moan which I had known to scare the humans. But my limited ingenuity failed to halt them.

They took out the old timber, and brought stone from a quarry. They took the roof away too, and fixed it with red tiles. The garden, they restored, and laid a concrete fencing around it, which covered me as well, and in the fencing they put an iron gate. 

All these additions remained alien to me. I was born in the woods, from the woods, and never took to the brittleness of stone. They were not a part of me. Even the stone that they put in my walls, replacing the timber there, stood out as an appendage at best.

The Colonel brought his family in time. The trees surrounding were felled by dozens, and the forest cleared. More old men and women came, with their families, and built those ugly stone cottages all around the place. I saw the renegades' children toiling there as farmhands once or twice. Then the cattle came, and after them, all mean and sundry started arriving. Stone-masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, shepherds, fishermen, butchers, who ever smelled it, came after it. It was the whiff of opportunity, the Colonel told his daughter one day.

The Colonel's family was small. A daughter and a son. They built a school somewhere around here. And a church. The framed photograph of me on the wall of the salon was put up by them. It is faded now, but when it was first put, it was magnificent. It had that old-world charm about it, which I was losing gradually. The Colonel's children lived long, and so did their own children. And with each generation, the world around me ripened into a hideous place.

My mind was in a whirl. I did not know where the trees went, where the dirt went, the weeds and the worms, the termites, the snakes and the frogs of rain, I misplaced them all. I wondered if they ever existed anywhere outside my imagination.

Someone discovered the coal deposits near the lake. That brought in the miners. The ramparts put by them snatched from me the company of the lake too. From crimson blood and brown stool, the earth was now the black from dust of coal-miners feet. I knew somewhere about then, that this was the march of progress. I dreaded to think of the colours to come in my life.

But what followed were the lively colours - rouge and mauve - of the gangs of strumpets and clowns and puppeteers of the bawdy theatres. I missed the introduction of moonshine to the neighbourhood. That was the completion of the circle. From redundancy of their education, inactivity of alcohol, vanity of church, to the obscenity of the artists, I had seen the whole lecherous march, and wished for an apocalypse every passing moment with every creak of my being.

Now, whenever it rains, it falls on my concrete beams, and I feel nothing. The splatter of rain on my wooden spine used to rejuvenate me. With stone, it doesn't bother. I feel sullied forever. And afterwards, the ground does not smell of geosmin any longer, for the dirt path had been paved in asphalt. The garden that the sweet songbird Kukushka laid ages past, now has a shed built upon it, in which iron tools rust and tin roof inflames under the heat of sun.

Tomorrow when they take me down, they will move the rubble and lay here the heavy iron rails for the steam engines which tread upon them without remorse. The blur of the steam settling upon the country side will obliterate all colours from here. It will be death for me, finally, and I will be most grateful.

I wonder though if anybody will cherish me in their memory. I know it is vain and much like humans to hope that you will be kept alive in memories, but some twisted part of me wishes to be remembered. Yet I fear that the rubble that will collate after my death, will take my story to everywhere it will spread, and I will die a thousand times over in its retelling. Somehow, it seems more honourable to die once and forever. Anonymity will be peaceful.

##

I never found out what happened to her though. I should have liked to hear her song once more.

This post is part of the contest Tell a Tale on WriteUpCafe.com

Punishment III

Go to Punishment II

Six months later, the seasons had changed. But the winter that endured in his relations with his father, was still the same. The monotony of his job was the same too. He had developed a habit of taking random walks when the boredom seemed to overwhelm his capacity for frustration.

The dream had recurred too. Once or twice. But today, it was much detailed and had come in the little hours of the morning, so that it remained ringing in the back of his mind.

At tea-time, he started for a walk, lost in that six-months-old mental turmoil again. Soon, he found himself back in the very woods where the previous retrospective journey had taken place, six months ago.

The dark clouds hung like a curtain on the eastern horizon. They were approaching fast, there imminence being born by the swiftly flowing wind from the east. It was devoid of the chill of a stagnant winter afternoon. The summer hadn't given up the reigns of weather to winter yet. Autumn stood waiting. The humidity foretold that the day will soon drown in a warm rain and then the smell of earth will rise upon the air. He loved the smell of rain. It was a familiar smell.

It was like a ghost, the one whose presence he always felt but could never remember when it came into his life. The rain was really like an ancestor to him. It was old, and yet, it was resilient to the whimsies of nature. If it were to come, it will come. There was an unspoken bond between them, the sort that exist between a loving grandfather and his only grandchild. If rain told him that it was on its way, he knew, surer than his own life, that shortly it will rain and then it will alleviate the burnt that the sun left in its trail blazing through the day.

So when he smelled rain in the air, the tension in his brows lessened. His face relaxed. He took a deep breath, filled his chest with two lungfuls of that earthy aroma and then tenderly let go. It had a freshening quality of mother's tea in a lazy Sunday afternoon, but quite soothing.

He looked up at the darkening sky. With anticipation rising in his gut, his pace quickened. As his head filled with relief, a spontaneous smile spreading on his otherwise tensed face, he found himself somewhere in the middle of woods.

The woods were silent. It was their apprehension, of the creature of the woods, to solemnly wait for the rain. They will perhaps take shelter once the rain fell. They were respectful of nature. They lived close to it. They knew the extent of its wrath, and the millions of years of evolution has taught the beings of the forest to maintain a modicum of caution while out in the lap of nature.

In contrast, those who have alienated it with brick and mortar structures, with towns and cities boundaries, they are indifferent to it. They feel safer in their imaginary seclusion from the forces of nature, in their rigid unyielding stone edifices. But when rain decides to have its own, it comes down with a fury, it brings storm with it, and lightening. The rage then culminates in a devastation that humbles even the grandest of human designs, the sturdiest of populations. Till then, they feel safe.

Though not long after.

***

In the days following his mother's death, his father started losing his grip on reality. On certain occasions he had called Srikant up saying that his mother wanted to talk to him - his deceased mother.

Most of the calls were made under this pretext, though once firmly admonished by him, his father would not bring up the topic again in the duration of that call. He would then talk for a while and satisfied with some little enquiries, he would hang up.

But his father's pretext that Srikant's mother wanted to talk to him, did not remain an innocent deception. It was comfortable in the beginning. And his father became so adept at saying it, that his frequent digression from truth led to the lies becoming a reality. His innocent ruse solidified into a belief over the years and he started talking to himself. Srikant's uncle took Father to a psychiatrist who concluded that his behavior was a manifestation of his guilt over negligence towards his wife that he believes led to her death.

There were few buyers for that diagnosis. His father's behavior was never of one hounded by guilt. He did not, for example, lie awake during the night crying. He did not visit temples of gods or tombs of saints to pray for peace for her soul. There was a photograph of the mother put in the drawing room but he never looked at it longingly. He never even took care to tell the household servants to change the garland of dried flowers upon the picture.

But at times, during tea, squiniting at a newspaper he would ask for his reading glasses from some unseen presence. Then he would lift his head, with a jovial gesture, he would pick himself up and fetch the glasses. During his reading, he'd make remarks, as if someone was listening.

To the household servants, it was as if the man was still a Grihastha. He had not yet realized that his wife was dead. The silence that leaked from every pore of the house and threatened to engulf with its immobilizing venom every one who came within its reach, the picture of his dead wife, even the effort of getting his reading-glasses himself everytime he sat for tea, failed to make him realize that something had changed.

Srikant's uncle had told him quite a lot about it, though it seemed still too little to his uncle. He persisted in telling Srikant every last detail about this guilt-ridden man who had been forced into a purgatory because of the death of his wife. He would conclude then, pleadingly, that his father should be forgiven for his past deeds. In the twilight of his life, a man deserves the comfort of his family and friends near him.

And so, the uncle kept calling and calling until one day he too grew tired and stopped.

***

A faint drizzle had started.

As he was heading back, he noticed another call from home. His mind went back to the struggle he had with himself, six months ago, about returning the call. Then, something had kept him from actually doing it, though he had made up his mind. Today, he did not wait for the occurance of any similar incident.

He decided to return the call. He dialled the number and waited to hear the voice of his father, choked with gratitude, on the other end. Instead there was a female voice on the phone. His ears went numb and his mind froze.

In the frail voice of his mother he heard, "Beta, your father has expired."

It didn't sink in immediately. There was static on the line now. He started pacing about impatiently to get a clear signal. He was shouting desperately into the phone, "Hello, who is this? Hello, can you hear me? Hello, Ma..?"

After a moment, the static cleared abruptly. An old man was speaking now, "Beta, can you hear me, Hello?"

"Hello", he replied, "Kaka, what happened, who was on the line before?"

"Beta, I have terrible news. Beta, your Father has expired. Come as soon as possible."

The death of his father was not the thing he would have wasted his breath over. But for the sake of sanity of the old man on the other end, he pretended that he cared. He asked how it happened, when it had happened, and so on. When he disconnected, his palms were moist with sweat. He took out a handkerchief to dab at his forehead. His father was dead. What did it matter?

But it should matter. The man dead, was the man who brought him into the world. Srikant didn't have much in life to be thankful about, but he was thankful for a devoted, caring wife, and he loved his children. More than anyone, he loved his mother. And she somehow was there when his father died.

Even in death? Was it possible that she loved his father with such undying compassion? He found it impossible to comprehend that anyone could love a brute such as his father at all. But maybe she did. Maybe, she did and maybe she really was on the other end of the line to inform him of the death.

He decided that maybe it should matter that his father had died.

And if it does, then it should also be accepted that his father was never in the suffering that the world believed him to be. He really was a Grihasth all this time. And his death wasn't as lonely as everyone assumed it would be. If someone had asked Srikant six months ago, he would never have allowed that he would be disturbed by it. But today, it rained with such a fury, that it took away his shack of mental fortitude and left him desperately seeking cover.

When he reached home, he started making arrangements to leave for his father's funeral.

***

 

Punishment II

Go to Punishment I

He felt strangely comforted in the woods. They were dark and soothing. Much like a mother's bosom where you could hide you face in when some crazy relative tried to play a scary prank upon you. There was little direct sunlight, but was enough to drink in the detail of the surroundings. There was a sense of nostalgia surfacing here. He had longed for this kind of relief since his mother died.

His mother's death had left a void in his life, which no amount of distraction could fill. She was not ill. She was a robust woman for her minute frame. She was strong hearted and could do the work of ten people when it came to household duties. But she was not immune to the deprivations of solitude.

She just of fell apart after Srikant left for boarding school. It must be mentioned that - in contrast to other children of his age then - he left quite willingly. The scandal had grown too much and the girl had suffered a lot. When their families got the wind of their relationship, their destinies were dragged through an immeasurable whirlwind. Young lovers, Srikant and Sunaina, impromptu they thought they were intertwined the moment they laid eyes upon each other.

Their courtship started as a fairy tale of a prince and a princess and as time passed, it grew with them. With age, there blossomed into it the intricate details of kingdoms, and mythical creatures. There was magic in it, but with the surreal satisfactions, there was also a shade of rationality. They were never far away from the ground realities. Out in the garden, there were dungeons and captured princesses to be saved, magical beasts to be destroyed. Inside the house, there was homework to be completed and dishes to be washed. They both went their separate ways quite equitably.

Their mutual attraction started to outgrow the bounds of public decency and the eyes began to notice and tongue began wagging. Shortly the whole atmosphere in the small town was abuzz with all the sordid details. It was appalling how their fairy tale was dragged through the streets and market places on those lewd tongues and turned into a raunchy filthy affair.

It is noted historically that the fairy tales never account for protesting parents and kin. Consequently, none has ever withstood the test of this opposition and achieved success. Lovers have been lucky to escape with their lives. And their dream of living "together" for on and on itself becomes a history.

The parents fall first. The kin are just the catalyst, but no less important to this gradual degradation of the parental fortitude - their moral obligation of standing by their child. While parents always worry about their imaginary social standing, the kin imagine the horror the parents must be going through. It becomes a vicious circle and when wave upon wave of horror lashes onto the indecent imaginations of the society and the social standing of the parents has really turned into a ghost, there remains nothing but dry straws.

And holding that last straw, they distance themselves. Boundaries are put between the child and his parents. Mother, torn between the two, has to take sides. Srikant's mother was a perfect housewife. She stood beside her husband when they told him that he would be going to the Boarding school in Simla and never be seeing the girl again.

His mother died a lonely death. And he always blamed his father for it.

***

The stunning silent woods drew into sharp contrast the murderous screaming life of the city against the stillness of the earth left to its own means. It was immaculate. The dirt here was purer than any that can be found in a city.

The dirt that now covered his expensive black leather shoes. He did not mind the dirt now. Walking barefoot upon cool soft dirt, the idea was exhilarating. He started to take off his shoes when his phone rang. It was someone from office. Something possibly needed his undivided attention. He decided not to divide it now and switched off his cellphone.

***

The life of boarding school did not leave time for him to concern himself with people at home. His parents rarely visited. There were a small group of pupils where he found he could be accepted without much resistance. They served as friends, as best could be managed.

Years passed swiftly and after a momentary slouch around his mother's death, they passed even quicker. He went to college, got a degree, a respectable education, got married and had two kids. In all the time, he never counted the years, and never visited his home-town.

His father would call. Once or twice a year he would answer the call, and his father would be conspicuously grateful. His father had tried to make make amends with him. But Srikant never allowed him to achieve it. Other than an obligatory call, there was no communication between them. He did not want to give his father the satisfaction of knowing that he was forgiven.

Even the silly, desperate attempt of his father pretending to be insane, fell short of making Srikant relent.

***

After a struggle that seemed to go on forever with this egotistical entity within himself, he finally gave in and decided to call home. He turned on his cellphone. There were 15 calls reported missed on the screen. Three turned out to be from his manager at the office.

An anxiety took a sudden hold in his mind. A sense of urgency swept over him. He grabbed his shoes and pushed his feet inside as he half ran half hopped through the woods looking for the exit. He kept an eager pace but the woods seemed to go on forever. Cursed woods those were. He found the trail that he had come through earlier. It was so full of mud that his shoes were caked with it.

He found a dried branch and tried to scrape the mud out of his shoes. It was persistent though. The dark brown streaks on the patent black leather made his heart boil. He swore at it.

But swearing rarely makes anything go away.

What did go away though, was the thought of calling home, of reconciliation with his father, and the feeling of the cool damp earth on the sole of his feet.

***

Go to Punishment III