Necessary Pain
The woman at the door reminded me of the beggar woman midway to Mahakal Temple atop a hill in Darjeeling. She was sitting with a baby on her lap, attempting unsuccessfully to shield it from the sharp winds with the end of her saree. I had thought of the beggar woman on my way up to the temple, contemplated how much money I could spare for her when I’m on my way down, pondered over her circumstances, what hope she has, and whether my meagre help would keep her away for a day but no more than that, and she would be back at her begging spot with the other beggar women, still cradling the sleeping baby, or if the baby was not hers at all, and as they report, merely kidnapped from its family and both woman and someone else’s baby put to begging by a syndicate, but this woman at the door held a chit of paper that she had barely extended towards me, wherein I imagined would be a note she needed money, and had just indicated by waving her palm across her mouth that she could not speak, when, at that moment, the neighbor emerged from the apartment unit opposite mine, shouted, “Pest! Who let you into the building?”, and this woman turned towards him startled, shaking in fear, the note fell to the floor, she picked it up and hurried down the stairs. I could hear her footsteps down the stairs, and the neighbor’s middle-aged angst still erupting in bursts of words of disgust, and I am thinking if I must rush down to shove some money into the woman’s palm, because these women do sometimes come up the stairs in our building seeking help, but it was too late, the woman’s footsteps were long gone and the neighbor’s door had been shut with a bang, slapping a gust of wind as cold as it was in Darjeeling onto my face. It felt icy on my burning cheek.
Pieces Left On The Dining Table After
Reading the Newspaper at an Aid School
Spilled from the pages: Shards of glass, unfed children, stranded food trucks, a harvest of tires, an abundance of bricks, steel, debris. “Do you prefer to watch the sunrise or sunset? Mountain or sea?” Boy is startled at the suddenness; the tone of cannonade in the enquiry. Debates the merits of each, answers nothing. Girl looks disappointed; says, “I am a daisy”. Boy is dismissive: “Spring? Hard to imagine.” Girl looks away. Boy makes amends: “What do you do if you’re caught outside?” “Duck”. “Correct.” Boy twitches, suggesting a change of mind: “A fine meal for the hungry.” Girl giggles with all the might in her twelve-year-old frail body. Fine time to think of meals—we’re in the middle of a war, silly! —she thinks of saying, but decides she’ll let it go. When he sees one, the fourteen-year-old knows a nice loving glance—he’s seen blood and hate all his life. A minute passes in silence. Boy scans the perimeter of the dingy room, its unpainted bare walls, then her face. They stare at each other. More minutes pass. He leans to peck her cheek, but leaves the job unfinished; looks away wistfully. Girl is disappointed. Again. She imagines a glass-shattered heart in her chest, shrieking unfed piglets in the mud creek back home, stranded wishes, a harvest of unfriendliness, an abundance of unlove, steel-hard coldness, debris of hope—all of which seem more hurtful at this moment than the spillage on the dining table.
Mandira Pattnaik’s nonfiction work has appeared in Emerson Review (Pushcart-nominated), Pithead Chapel, Timber Journal (Pushcart-nominated), Common Ground Review and Hypertext Magazine, while fiction has appeared in The Rumpus, The McNeese Review, and The Cincinnati Review. More at mandirapattnaik.com