It started as a small wound. He rolled the small round stone between his fingers after pinching it out from under the skin on the side of his big toenail. It had probably lodged itself during the blasting in the quarry. He had gone around the corner for a piss and was caught unawares by a deafening explosion. A fine sheath of dust had covered him completely, but he had not felt this grain of rock going into his skin. Flicking it away he continued to wash the dirt off himself thoroughly. A sluggish river of mud slithered down the drain that cut across the light grey stone courtyard.
The summer months still afforded some light when he got back home before the valley plunged into darkness.
Umed Singh slurped at the sugary tea, his tall, lean form squatting on the parapet of the courtyard, weighed down by the fifty-six years on him. With his free hand he shook off the limestone dust from his short-cropped wavy hair, which was still surprisingly jet black. The increasing gauntness of his face made his chiselled features and aquiline nose more prominent. His forehead was deeply furrowed with the hours of labour in the sharp sun adding, along with the slight downward slant of his deep-set eyes, a tragic note to his countenance. Finishing his tea, he continued to stare ahead blankly at the dry yellow-green valley that sloped down gently to a river, and at the mountains decreasing in degrees of saturation as they receded into infinity. Ija, his mother, moved around silently behind him in the low double-storied stone house with a roof of slate tiles. It was the only occupied house in this valley and was surrounded by terraced fields and immense silence. A burst of distant laughter made Umed shift his gaze to the row of houses above on the far-left side of the mountain. He could see silhouettes of children playing against the sky. But the mirth died down quickly, swallowed by the long layers of terraced fields between them.
*
Lyat Singh sat on a foldable nylon armchair in his courtyard, his legs crossed in a manner of authority. He looked at the unchanging desolate valley, the emptiness broken only by the ragged, thin strip of the limestone quarry that was visible on this side of the mountain. Deep stirrings of dissatisfaction aggravated his temper and he snapped at his grandchildren who yelped with glee while rolling in the dirt. Even if it meant giving up his principalship of the Government Intercollege, he thought, he had to move out in the coming year. No one worth anything was left in the village. If only Umed Singh would agree to leasing his land to the quarry contractor, he would be able to do so too. It would mean a decent income from the land that they were not cultivating anymore. As night rapidly descended, he got up to go in, glancing below at the ghostly row of deserted houses. His gaze shifted down further to Umed’s grainy figure disappearing into the darkness of his lone house as his mother’s shadowy figure hovered in the courtyard calling in the cows.
*
The exaggerated shadows thrown by the blazing kitchen fire on the mud walls were deceptively animated before they died down suddenly. The logs hissed as water quenched the fire and smoke enveloped the kitchen. The blurred dark forms of Umed and Ija as they squatted on the kitchen floor seemed almost still. Ija’s soft grunt as she dropped an extra lump of ghee on a thick roti in Umed’s plate evoked no response from him.
He flexed his feet, stretched his neck over the edge of the narrow hard bed, and soon his body was lulled into sleep to the low sound of the television. Beyond his cell-like room Ija crouched on the mud floor in the kitchen extension watching a small television screen. It was a reminder of her daughter who had bought it for her on her last visit two years ago. She died of jaundice a few months later. They had called Ija to take care of her but she did not go. She didn’t go for the funeral either, nor did Umed. The family had not spoken to them since. Ija was almost deaf and her eyesight was almost killed by those dark blobs that had appeared in her eyes and spread their tentacles slowly but surely. She watched the coloured shadows more as atonement for her daughter’s death than for any fascination for them. Outside the chirping of the crickets ebbed and flowed in the thick warm silence.
*
Umed peered into a small, cracked mirror as he shaved when he became aware of a mild throbbing pain in his right toe. He washed it with water and that was that. He ate his morning meal in the courtyard while Ija went about her chores. No words were exchanged except for her telling him to buy some sugar on his way back. Slipping his feet into mud-coated rubber slippers, Umed set off on the long walk to the quarry which was on the other side of the mountain to his right. He wore a worn-out loose pale blue kurta pyjama and, even though it was hot, a ragged sleeveless sweater, keeping in mind the capricious weather in the upper Indian Himalayas. The walk would have taken him twenty minutes when he was younger and he was accustomed to loping up and down these slopes, but now it took quite a bit longer. Ija was never comfortable with him working in the quarry – she had been one of the few to oppose the quarry coming up near their village and had resisted leasing out her fields for mining. Some villagers were surprised when Umed had started working there but as far as he was concerned, even though the quarry contractors offered less than the stipulated daily wage, it was steady work for six to seven months; certainly more comfortable than going up to the market and looking for odd jobs. His tall body, stooped in submission, cut across and up the narrow dirt path with a long even gait, through dark green clumps of trees and overgrown yellow terraced fields. As he neared the top of the hill, he paused for just a moment under the shade of an oak tree to catch a whiff of a cool breeze blowing up the hillside, then quickening his pace, he crossed over to the other side. Hot dry air hit him as he began descending into a dramatically different vista.
The limestone quarry was an open festering wound extending right down the steep mountain face, eating into the landscape as far as the eye could see. Scattered unevenly on its pale, yellow earth were dark red pits of magnesite deposits. On its top edges stood a thick line of trees, shocking in their greenness, like a scab to the wound. The grating noise of loading trucks and heavy drills echoed in the hollow of the quarry. As Umed headed towards the flat clearing where the labourers had gathered, a sudden gust of wind whipped up a cloud of dust which swallowed him in a white shroud.
The sun dragged itself overhead as the men laboured in the heat and dust. A loud siren echoed off the bare walls bringing work to a halt. While the others sought out the scanty pockets of shadow the quarry offered, Umed crossed over back to the other side of the mountain and headed down the soft yellow-green slope towards a small stone temple. Even though it was a considerable walk he liked to come away every afternoon during the break. He sat down against its outer stone wall under the shade of a horse chestnut tree.
Lighting a bidi, he inspected his right toe. The wound had begun to swell up. He pressed it against the ground feeling a small sharp pain which was followed by a throbbing sweetness. He continued to press it as he rested in the deep silence of the warm afternoon watching a thin thread of smoke rising from his house as Ija cooked the evening meal. He could hear a soft breeze sighing up from the river far below and setting the dry grass into a faint rustle. Then, as it moved past him into the patch of forest above, he waited to hear the hard oak leaves flutter into a metallic cadence. This unchanging rhythm of the breeze gave him a deep sense of calm, as if everything was in its place, even if he was not consciously aware of this. If compelled to articulate what he felt, he would have said that it was a day like so many countless days in his life. He pressed his toe again and a bud of clear discharge popped up, followed by a palpable throbbing. He spotted a train of ants carrying a dead grasshopper towards the root of the chestnut tree. In the bright light it seemed as if the grasshopper was floating through the air. Once the cuckoos started, they went on for a long time and the summer air became dense with their urgent yet monotonous mating calls. This always had a soporific effect on Umed but he shook off the feeling and headed back to the quarry.
*
Umed had seen Lyat Singh sitting on a wooden bench outside the ration-cum-teashop with two village elders. When he called out and offered him a cup of tea, Umed knew what it was about and while he wanted to avoid the usual course of these conversations, it was not in his nature to confront anyone. He accepted the tea reluctantly and sat down on his haunches against a stone pillar.
Lyat’s tone was condescending, ‘So have you thought about it and discussed it with your Ija?’
Umed gave him a faint smile and then looked fixedly at the ground as he sipped his tea. ‘If you agree then I will be able to lease out my land too, don’t you see? Your house is right in the middle, there is no way around that.’ Lyat said with rising impatience. ‘Look at me! I am the principal of the intercollege and yet I want to move out, leave my government job if necessary. What are you doing? Labourgiri! Has there been any change in your life in the last fifty years? The world has moved ahead brother, we are getting left behind. You can have a better life in the plains … you could go and stay with your daughter … her husband has a decent government job. There is nothing left here. Your land does not even produce enough to feed you. The limestone is the only wealth this land can give us – take it.’
Umed moved on without making any eye contact with Lyat.
Lyat called out desperately, ‘The lease is only for five years. You can take it back then if you like.’
Khim Singh, a mild-mannered old man, let out a sigh and spoke in the deep, heavy voice of a lifelong smoker, ‘What will be left of that land after five years? It will need healing, it will not heal itself’ he said, looking at the sky.
*
A few days later the wound was full of pus and the throbbing had become a sharp pain. Umed pressed the tender and swollen toe and white pus oozed out. He clamped his thumb down on the wound and clenched his teeth against the excruciating pain, letting go only when there was no more white discharge. The stinging took a while to subside. After washing the foot with cold water and cleaning it with a rag, he set off for work. The wound was making him hobble a little, but he soon got used to the rhythm of putting less weight on his right foot. As days passed, he began to feel tired in the first half of the day and started giving up the extra walk for his afternoon siesta. The toe was turning purple and Umed often found himself gently pressing down on it to feel the sharp pain go up his leg, waiting for the palpable pleasure when the pain subsided. A fellow worker suggested that he cover up the wound – all the dust going into it couldn’t be good. Umed looked around and spotted the remnants of an old white plastic sack lying near him and tore a strip with his teeth. After dusting it with his hand in a shabby attempt to clean it, he wrapped it around the wound in a tight knot. It gave him some relief and he carried on with the day’s work.
The night was warm and stifling and Umed could not sleep. The toe did not hurt anymore but the pain had moved up to his ankle, a constant throbbing pain which was no longer pleasurable. There was a faint smell of rotting flesh and he stooped down to sniff his foot to confirm the source. He hobbled to the kitchen and poured himself cool water from the clay pot. The foot made him clumsy, and the steel glass fell from his hand and thudded on the mud floor. He saw that Ija, who was lying on the floor like a heap of clothes, did not stir. He was grateful that she could barely hear anymore. He lay down again and turned his head towards the window to look out at the dark, inky sky, littered with a multitude of stars. It struck him that he was looking at it after a long time, perhaps after decades. When he looked long enough the stars seemed to be embedded in the blackness and then as he continued to stare unblinkingly, they would pop out of it. Finally, he fell into a well of uneasy rest.
As the sky opened its eye Umed emerged from a deafening dreamscape to the silence of the morning around him. Earlier, it would have been a relief to wake up. Earlier, he would have worried about what these visions might portend. But in the past few years he had begun to savour the adventure and excitement his nightmares offered as the unchanging nature of his life had lulled his anxieties. He knew the details would slip away soon so he closed his eyes again to recollect them – a jumbled up profusion of images and emotions that he let fade away with a sigh.
Even though the settings of his dreams were usually around his house, the details of the landscape, and more importantly the light, were dramatically different from one dream to the next. He pondered over this unresolvable mystery as he looked out of his window at the familiar fields, at the unchanged panorama on this side of the mountain. As he hobbled down to the courtyard the pain in his leg returned immediately. He opened the bandage and saw that his big toe had turned black. He tried to move it but it was numb. He pulled at it and it came right off in his grasp, black and rotting.
He stared at it unbelievingly and then jerked it away. It fell under the orange tree. There was a putrid smell in the air. He should immediately go to the hospital in the next town, he told himself as he breathed hard. But the hospitals had long lines and it would take him at least four days to get back. He worried about leaving Ija and … what if the doctor decided to cut off the leg? He took a deep breath and calmed himself. It’s just a toe, he reasoned. I can do without it. I’ll put a bandage of turmeric on it tonight and now that the rotten bit has fallen off it will heal, he assured himself. He said nothing to Ija and headed out for work at his usual time.
The hot sun made Umed dizzy and he had to step out of the human chain hauling sacks of limestone into a truck. He began to stagger up and out of the pit using a shortcut, but the loose earth made him slip down back into the hollow. He used the path that led out of the pit and half-crawling, half-walking managed to reach a stony unshaded rockface and collapsed onto it.
Sick to his gut, he tried to catch his breath and get a hold on himself, using his hands to shield his head from the cruel sun. The pain ate into his leg, right up to the hip. He pulled up the pyjama leg to see that the skin was bubbling, fermenting, the rot was seeping up. He breathed hard. He squinted at the workers milling far below him in the wide festering pit like a squad of trained ants carrying the flesh of the earth. The overseer, wearing a helmet, was talking to one of the labourers and pointing at him. He could feel the accusatory look from afar and Umed knew that his wages would be docked if he didn’t get back to work immediately. But as soon as he gathered himself, he felt himself falling down the slippery limestone slope and the workers picking him up. He had a fever and was asked to leave. When he got home he lay down on the cool courtyard stones and fell into a tired slumber.
He woke to the sound of blasting in the quarry. He raised himself on his elbows to look at the limestone dust in the sky and the pain shot up his leg, a thick hot rod grinding into his knee and then dulling into an ache as it moved up. His breath was hot and he was unable to pick himself off the floor immediately. He dragged himself to the ledge and propped himself against it. He looked for his toe under the orange tree trunk. He did not spot it immediately but then there it was, standing up against the dark trunk, alive with ants crawling all over it. He managed to stumble up to his room and lay down on his bed.
*
Ija hadn’t realised he was home until late in the evening. She put a cold compress on his feverish forehead and tried to fuss over him as best as she could. She wondered about the putrid smell. He said nothing to her but she investigated and discovered the missing toe. He appeased her saying he would go to the hospital as soon as he was better. She brought out the rum and they both took a shot of it. It made him feel better and he splashed some of it on the wound too. Later Ija covered the wound with turmeric paste. He urged her to watch some television and go to sleep. He slept better that night, the putrid smell did not bother him anymore, he had grown used to it. But the next morning the fever was back. He convinced Ija to go to the fields and work, saying he would be fine. He came out into the courtyard in the hot afternoon, shivering, and feeling confused. He noticed that his toe had disappeared from under the orange tree. After he had soaked in some sun his skin began to burn and the blasts in the quarry set off a severe headache. He dipped his head into a bucket of cold water. The hospital was fifty kilometres away and it was a long walk to the road head where he would get a bus or a jeep. Why had he stayed back in this god-forsaken place? Someone had to be with Ija,didn’t they? He could still see her looking at him from the window as his father’s dead body lay in the courtyard. It had been a relief for Umed, that death. His father had a frightening temper and was urging Umed to join the army like him. But Umed never wanted to leave Ija, never wanted to leave the village. His thoughts wandered as he continued to sweat onto the courtyard stones.
It seemed like someone else’s life that he remembered, another person in another time. He had no nostalgia for this space – that was unchanged, but there was nostalgia for time. His wife lay in the same courtyard, her face beautiful even in death, his young daughter clinging to her mother’s lifeless form. She looked like him, the daughter, sharp and tall. No, he had no vanity for himself but often regretted giving his beautiful daughter to an ape of a man just because he had a government job. And that ape was ashamed of them, never visited them anymore and told everyone that his father-in-law was the quarry contractor. At least the grandchildren had his daughter’s looks, all except the youngest.
He turned his head towards the hot fields hoping to catch a whiff of breeze to ease the suffocation he felt. But the only movement in that stillness was his own burning breath. He felt a knot in his stomach as he spotted a python wrapped on a birch tree about fifteen metres away from him, its pale body well camouflaged on the white bark. Its unblinking marble eyes watched Umed, its scales heaving almost imperceptibly as it strengthened its hold on the tree. Then it went as still as death and waited patiently. He let the cuckoo calls put him to sleep that day. When he woke up, he was in extreme pain. He peeled back his pyjama leg to see bits of skin stuck to the cloth. He ripped his shirt off, tore away a sleeve and tied it tightly just above his knee. As the pain subsided, so did the ringing in his head and the racket of the crickets took over as evening fell. The snake was gone. Had it crept into the house? He dragged himself to his room pulling his numb right leg behind him.
He heard Ija’s soothing voice and opened his eyes. The darkness outside startled him. He panicked and told her to shut all the doors and windows. But she was far away, only her long hand was caressing his forehead. Her distant voice whispered endearments into his ear … her handsome unfortunate son … he must not work in the quarry anymore … if it was winter it would have been alright, the wound would have healed. Umed refused to eat and finally Ija left the room not able to tolerate the stench. The calm morning had a feeling of finality. It felt like the day his daughter got married, like the day he got married, like the morning after his father died. As he got off the bed, his right leg just sank into the ground, completely numb. He dragged it down the narrow wooden staircase and into the courtyard. He laid it in front of him. It had turned a deep blue up to his knee. After a moment’s hesitation he pulled at it – with a squishy sound it came off in his grasp, right off from his knee.
He looked at that piece of himself he was holding. He panicked for the first time, perhaps it had gone too far. Then seized with a feeling of defiance he thought, let it go … I can function with one leg. Almost choking from the stench, he flung it as far as he could with all the might left in his body. He inspected the wound left behind, a yellow festering wound with raw pits of blood. A vulture began to hover above the field where his leg lay, gliding smoothly in wide circles. Umed’s eyes followed it. He crawled into the cowshed so Ija wouldn’t see him and panic. He lay in the dry hay with nothing to mark the time except the coming and going of a fever. It will all be ok, we have Ija’s pension to fall back on, he thought, over and over again. His head sank into the haystack. A loud blast went off in the quarry. He lay there all day and night. He had a flash of himself going over the hill to collect firewood with his little sister. They went deep into the thick forest where the quarry now was. They caught ladybirds and put them into a steel tumbler stuffed with nettles. His sister collected juicy hishalus, yellow berries, from laden bushes and they ate them sitting next to the stream, the stream that had disappeared, the forest that was erased. Before going home, they released the ladybirds but most of them had to be coaxed to fly away.
The next morning Ija found him dead. She walked all the way to the market to call the villagers. They looked hard for the missing leg but could not find it. Many suggested that the soul would not find peace if the leg was not burnt too. Lyat tried to talk to Ija about leasing out her land but she simply responded by saying that if it had been winter, the wound would have healed. In the months that followed the blasts from the quarry continued to ring in the valley through the day. At night Ija started keeping the volume of the television even lower so that she could hear the sound of the foot that paced in the courtyard.
*
Bela Negi is a filmmaker and writer based in Mumbai. She has been working as a screenplay writer for the last one and a half decades and has recently ventured into short fiction writing.
She runs a production house Nitric Films, that creates content for film and web series and is the founder of Leafbird Foundation, a trust that runs educational and environment awareness programs in remote Himalayan regions.