Tushar Jain <\/strong><\/p> \/\/\/ Aral Tushar Jain Aral is born with nine toes instead of ten. The odd number displeases her father. In the village, nine is the number of the witch, the demon, the cursed. From the day she is born, her father distances himself from her. Nothing good can come of nine toes, he grumbles. The girl … <\/p>\n
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Aral is born with nine toes instead of ten. The odd number displeases her father. In the village, nine is the number of the witch, the demon, the cursed. From the day she is born, her father distances himself from her. Nothing good can come of nine toes, he grumbles. The girl is marked, he says. Ill fate will follow her like a shadow, he rages. His wife listens quietly and tends to Aral in her lap. She isn\u2019t that concerned about the nine toes. She worries more that Aral is dark like her father. Darker. A groom will be hard to find.\n
Aral is three when her brother pushes her off a cot on the terrace of their small house. Her head finds the floor before her hands can. By the time her panicked mother picks the wailing child off the ground, she knows the wound will scar. In the evening, when Aral\u2019s father returns home, he doesn\u2019t react much to the bandaged head of his young daughter. He looks at the child coiled up next to her mother, glances briefly at her feet, and then, walks into the bedroom.\n
Aral\u2019s mother worries. What is wrong with this child? She catches her six-year-old daughter staring at a wall for hours. The bare, tattered wall holds the girl in thrall. She\u2019s seen Aral look at everything so wondrously that it\u2019s worried her out of sleep. What\u2019s so spectacular about a mynah? A mirror? Is the child dull? Aral looks at a wildflower and laughs. She talks to her shadow. She catches and releases butterflies over and over. Smiles at the puddles of color in their wings.\n
When Aral comes home with a letter from the school, her mother grows anxious. Aral\u2019s brother has never come home with a letter. What has this nine-year-old troublemaker done? When she pulls Aral\u2019s ear, the girl begins to cry her innocence. I\u2019ve done nothing, Aral shrieks. To settle the matter, to end the suspense that has begun to press against her chest, Aral\u2019s mother hurries to her neighbor. Gangalata may be a nag and reek of fish but she can read.\n
The letter is brief. Aral\u2019s mother has been called to the school for a meeting, Gangalata says ominously. Called for a \u2018meeting\u2019? repeats Aral\u2019s mother, dabbing at her perspiring brow with her chunni<\/em>. She returns home and tries to harry the truth out of the child. I\u2019ve done nothing<\/em>, Aral insists again.\n
The next day, Aral\u2019s mother arrives at the school after hours. She\u2019s dressed in her best suit, but is a bundle of nerves sitting across the much younger, sprightly, slim-waisted teacher. Aral\u2019s teacher, Miss Nathmohan, smiles warmly and asks Aral to leave the room while she talks to her mother. Aral glares at everything in her way as she stalks out.\n
So many words assault Aral\u2019s mother. Brilliant. Precocious. Gifted. Prodigy. Aral\u2019s mother makes little sense of what is said. Pieces of paper are pushed in front of her to survey. Though she cannot make out what\u2019s written there, she recognizes the precise, natty script of her daughter\u2019s handwriting. The teacher is babbling, gushing. She finishes, dramatically, in a word in which she appears to lose her breath. Extraordinary<\/em>, the teacher says, curling both her hands into fists. By now, Aral\u2019s mother knows her daughter isn\u2019t in trouble. And that is enough.\n
Rumors rustle amongst the young of the village. All the twelve-year-olds know. On Sunday nights, the teenagers gather at the dilapidated shack next to the peepul<\/em>. There, they do things. What things they do, Aral doesn\u2019t know. But she does know that all her friends have been to the notorious shack at one time or the other. They have done these things. Every time Aral thinks of the shack, she feels a smile come on. And something turns, flops, jumps inside her belly.\n
One Sunday night, Aral tiptoes out of her house. As she\u2019s closing the door, her father groans from his bed. Aral pauses. When no other sound follows, she closes the door gently.\n
The streets are lit by the smolder of the newly installed street lights. Aral hurries to the shack, wondering all the while if she\u2019s perhaps too early or too late. When she reaches it, she realizes she\u2019s neither.\n
The shack is indeed old and ruined. Though Aral never heard of a fire, the place looks burnt from the inside. Plus, it carries a scent. The moment she steps in, murmurs break all over the place. There are more people in here than she could\u2019ve guessed. Eyes blink at her from the darkness. Ignoring the stares and the sounds, full of scandal, Aral slinks over to the staircase and sits down. There, she waits for something to happen.\n
Almost fifteen minutes pass before she feels the warmth of another body next to her. Someone has come over and sat down. She glances to her left to see it\u2019s a boy. Unlike her, he is definitely not twelve. Moonlight is all that illuminates the inside of this ravaged place. And in the silver of the light, she can see his whiskery cheeks. Eighteen. The boy must be at least eighteen.\n
The boy stares at Aral unabashedly. After a moment, awkwardly, she stares back at him. Aral wonders if he can see how dark she is. A thing of bones wrapped in more night. Or if he notices the small, disfiguring scar at the side of her head. Before she can speak, say anything, he presses his lips to hers.\n
The kiss isn\u2019t intimate or tender. It\u2019s hungry. After a few seconds of this, Aral pulls away and leaves the staircase, the place in a rush. On her way back, she stops under a street light. She touches her lips, smiles. There\u2019s warmth there. She hurries home, something in her pleased. As she gets in bed, Aral believes that she has a secret. That she\u2019s no more a child.\n
The scholarship comes as no surprise to Aral\u2019s mother. After all the prizes, accolades and beautifully inked certificates her seventeen year old daughter has collected over the years, this is something she expects. The discussion for Aral to attend college in the city is a brief one with her beleaguered father. Aral\u2019s father has had misfortunes pile up one after the other in recent years. Among other things, he\u2019s wracked with a rare neurological disease that has pain throb like a heart in his ribs constantly. Though he hasn\u2019t mentioned it in years, Aral\u2019s mother knows that he silently blames their ill-fated daughter. So, when she proposes to send the girl away, he sighs, momentarily claws his aching, pulsing chest, and agrees.\n
Fleet-footed, a few months pass. Aral is in love with Bombay. It is unlike anywhere she\u2019s been. The hubbub excites her. It\u2019s a city in a hurry. Everyone needs to be places. Aral watches a flurry of people climb buses, crowd beaches, unfold out of autos and fold into tall buildings. She wears jeans, shredded at the knees, everywhere. She wouldn\u2019t have dared wear these back home.\n
Back home, Aral read about college in smudged, tattered books she borrowed from friends. In movies, she saw it as a mad place, a frenetic world full of song, color, and manic energy. While her college in Bombay cannot match all this expectation, it does take her breath away. There are all kinds of people. She\u2019s seen a boy with all his hair clumped and spiked in the middle of his head. She\u2019s seen two girls kiss outside the canteen openly. She\u2019s heard rumors about her professors hooking up. At times, to her shock, with students.\n
Aral is in her final year when she meets Dbek. Dbek has long hair, can quote Sufi poets from memory and has a slight stutter that you miss until you don\u2019t. He is also a year younger to Aral. They meet, bizarrely, in the comment section of a blog that neither owns. Their disagreements are so strong that they\u2019re forced to meet, to confront. Later that week, Aral experiences her second ever kiss.\n
A year later, Aral moves in with Dbek. They rent a small, compact flat that is somewhat luxurious by Bombay standards. Dbek writes copy and Aral teaches; there\u2019s enough to make do. Aral also begins work on a heartsong of a book, a pearl of an idea that has taken shape in the back of her mind over the years.\n
News of the move-in somehow reaches home. When Aral calls, her mother talks in a strained voice while her father yells in the background. Obscene words fall from his mouth more than Aral has ever known or imagined. Her mother abruptly cuts the call or perhaps her father snatches the receiver and slams it down. Later in the day, Aral weeps into Dbek\u2019s shoulder. Nothing he says, nor his usual daffy humor, is enough to console her.\n
At a friend\u2019s behest, Aral publishes an excerpt of the novel she\u2019s working on in a literary journal of some reputation. The next week, to her surprise, she\u2019s flooded with calls from agents and publishers. She has no idea how they even got hold of her number. And surely each call surprises her more than the last. Everyone seems to want a piece of her. They call the almost ten thousand word excerpt \u2018sublime,\u2019 \u2018heart-rending,\u2019 \u2018exceptional,\u2019 and more. They call Aral \u2018a star\u2019 and that loaded word again, \u2018genius.\u2019 Aral is overjoyed but also, a bit overwhelmed. In the end, she makes Dbek take the calls. In the end, she agrees to share the novel, when it\u2019s finished, with quite a few very insistent people.\n
Aral is in the second year of writing her novel when something happens. The work is only two-thirds of the way done, when a strange stiffness takes hold of her hand. On an afternoon when sunlight coats her windows and sears the tulsi<\/em> in her balcony, crouched on her writing desk, Aral finds it impossible to unclench her left hand. Aral struggles until she lets out a shrill cry. But her hand refuses to unlock.\n
Had it not been for their insurance, Dbek and Aral couldn\u2019t have possibly afforded all the tests that follow. In order for the medical insurance to cover the bourgeoning charge, Aral is admitted in Breach Candy hospital for a day. Though young and healthful, Aral is taken around for comprehensive tests in a wheelchair. She\u2019s backed up against X-ray machines and swallowed up by CT scanners. They drain bottles of blood out of the wrecked hand with syringes that remind Aral of pictures of needle-nosed mosquitoes in her school books.\n
After all this, when they approach the doctor, they are startled by his solemn expression. This will grow, he says without waiting for them to sit down. This is just the beginning, he says without waiting for them to ask.\n
Three weeks. Just three ordinary weeks. That\u2019s how long it takes for the whole of Aral\u2019s left arm to stiffen. Aral is grinding chickpeas into a paste in the kitchen at the time when it happens. Her arm freezes at the shoulder, bent at the elbow. And nothing she does makes the slightest difference. Though the doctor had warned that the best medication would only delay it, Aral had imagined having much more time. That night, Aral is inconsolable. Dbek calls her home to inform her parents of their ill luck. It is Aral\u2019s father who picks up the phone. He listens silently and hangs up the receiver when Dbek pauses for breath.\n
The next time it happens, it is all-consuming; it resembles a thunderbolt out to raze a city. Aral is keying passages into her novel with her right hand when the doorbell rings. A glance at the digital table clock reveals that it could only be Dbek. Aral is excited; she cannot wait to show him a sentence of hers she\u2019s grown attached to in the last hour. She leaves the desk and makes a run for the door. And on the way there, she freezes.\n
She cannot move a muscle. She cannot produce a sound. She looks like something stopped in time, someone who\u2019d forever be on her way to the door. The doorbell rings again. And again. After about ten minutes of this, when the ringing has grown worried, Aral hears footsteps recede from the door. She imagines Dbek rushing to the Katyals, their neighbors, to ask for the spare key they keep with them. When Dbek finally opens the door and enters, the sight stuns him.\n
Aral\u2019s eyes move in their sockets. She hears all the sounds Dbek makes. There are gasps, then a strangled cry, then more noises. In the end, there\u2019s crying. Aral watches him frantically bring out his phone. He scrolls through his contacts with trembling fingers. In seconds, he\u2019s on call with their doctor. And from where she stands immobile, Aral can hear the doctor comfort a raving, stuttering Dbek. The doctor sounds patient and kind. But, to a terrified Aral, he does not sound surprised.\n
After that, as they would, things change. In the beginning, whenever Dbek returns from work, he makes an effort to talk to Aral. He asks questions and answers them himself. Where do we keep the salt-shaker we bought last Diwali? My bad. It must be in the cupboard. Have you seen the remote? Wait, it\u2019s right here. Shall I try and cook something for us tonight? No, too much hassle and I\u2019ll probably burn the place down. And, then, for no reason whatsoever, in the middle of a question, he dissolves into tears.\n
As months go by, Dbek forgets, more and more, to change her clothes, to clean her unmoving limbs with a damp cloth. On occasion, he forgets to slip water and food between Aral\u2019s still lips. Moreover, slowly, the one-sided conversations ebb away, too, like sunlight withdrawing its shapes with the coming of the dark. And now, almost every day, Aral sees Dbek coming home drunk. More often than not, to senselessness.\n
One of such days, he stumbles towards her stilled form in a haze. He stands there awhile, reeking of rum, gazing into her eyes. Then, with the immediacy of the starving, he begins to paw at her body. At her breasts and her thinning waist and her bony behind. He tries to pull her to him but is unable to shake her. He comes to her instead. He nibbles her collar bones, bites tenderly here and there. He presses his mouth against hers. And when, for the first time ever, Aral doesn\u2019t respond, he stops. No, he says, taking a step back. No, no, no. He repeats. No, no, no, no, no. He goes on incessantly, until he staggers out of their home.\n
It is the last time Aral sees Dbek.\n
As more days pass, Aral\u2019s stomach finds an emptiness that cries out to the silent room. It growls its lonely appeal. Her bones creak like crickets in the dead of night. Her sore muscles have been lulled to sleep. Soon, a quickness, a suddenness grips the way Aral sheds weight, the way her arms grow lean and her face sinks.\n
A new season breaks. Autumn covers everything in leaves. And in her apartment, over and over, Aral stares at the same things. The door, the couch, the T.V., the stained rug where she or someone else spilled their drink, old newspapers \u2013 Pioneer, Statesman \u2013 gathering dust on the coffee table, the cordless telephone that has rung all of once since Dbek left. Aral, patiently, lengthily, imagines the rest of the house. Her cherished balcony with its moldering black and green lawn chairs. The kitchen, spare and unpretentious, that has always had room for everything she\u2019s ever needed. The bedroom where, time and again, Aral and Dbek have desired each other both timidly and fiercely like something much younger. Lastly, her study. Where sentences, paragraphs, a world sits, waiting to be touched by senses other than hers.\n
Aral thinks of all this. She lets her thin breath slip in. Slip out.\n
Slip in. Slip out.\n
In. Out.\n
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Tushar Jain is an Indian poet and author. He’s the winner of multiple prestigious literary awards including the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing, and the Raed Leaf India Poetry Award. His debut book, Shakespeare in the Parka<\/em>, was published in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/files\/2020\/06\/output-onlinepngtools-5.png\")
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