Unwind

Anandi was a name that screamed of taboo in the village near by the town. She always wondered why she grew up listening to people tell tales of Anandi with the aim of scaring little children, her mother did that until she learned the methodical scheme of implicating tyrannies under the subtlety of fear.

"Ritu, please sleep! Otherwise Anandi will eat your hair."

To that, Ritu always clutched her mother tightly and closed her eyes shut, forcing herself to dive into a deep and fearless sleep. It never came. She ended up thinking why a person named Anandi would develop an interest in eating her hair. She was fooled into believing that certain ghosts loved eating the hair of young girls. They ate their hair and then, they drank their soul.

They loved to look pretty, her friends tried to convince her as they picked up a piece of poori from her lunch box and savored it. Ritu remembered how the eerie feeling picked up its pace everytime she tried to visualise Anandi, a ghost that haunted her mind until she reached a certain age. It remained a mystery, something her friends would laugh at even today.

Ritu could reminisce how she woke up everyday and stood in front of the mirror to check if her hair grew short for about an inch or more, and sighed a relief when the length remained unchanged. She had learned to pray before sleep, she asked a million times to the universal energy to keep the human race safe from the clutches of ghosts like Anandi. It was all a eight year old Ritu could do to keep people safe from the impact of evil spirits. Albeit that, she wondered what she would do if she ever had to come in face with Anandi, a ghost that loved to drink souls. Much to her surprise, she felt hollow, as if the thought was a conjunction and not a screening halt. It was a sinister, unlikely in making her feel less apprehensive.

And then there was the lovely woman near by the stop who always laughed at stories like this. She could picture how vividly she jested her about the idea of ghosts. Her eyes sparkled, like the stars that clustered in a chiverllering optimism was a prose. Ritu could absorb sanity only when she was around the village, they met occasionally at the stop, in the space between her irritable waiting for the bus. Her company made her days better, she was relieved by the notion of not being judged.

She was sixteen when she saw many love stories bubbling up in the corners of the stop. She was even asked to pass letters; and much to Ritu's annoyance, all of the lovers with held shy smiles and slow eyelocks. It did not make sense because her mother warned her about the after effects of being in love, to work as a slave in the household of the beloved. She believed it was akin to any other stories her mother bluffed about. She injected the perspective of Anandi for years, a ghostly one and Ritu was never sloshed by paranoia after a while.

It took her a while to understand, when she saw her own neighbour run away with an elderly man, ending up impregnated, wiping the floors of his house while he thorougly read newspapers on his porch. The scene scarred her beyond her wits, unlike Anandi who was just a spirit that became a long lost rumor and failed in the attempt of making her skin go cold. The passing of letters seemed schematic later on, a control held to break the norms of the ruggedness fixed in by the ancestors of the so called house hold.

Marriages preplanned by the families weren't less either, it seemed like a commodity brought in the market. A certain fixation to legalize the notion of love marriage with the witness of hundred people- Anandi eating her hair seemed marvelous under that perspect. That was when Ritu decided to continue her higher studies in the city.

When she addressed this to the young lady, she smiled. Ritu rewinded her memory further, remembering every scene and words like a clipping from an old tape.

The trees swayed enchantingly to the breezes, the wild fragrance of champaca and jasmine dispersed around the locus. She was waiting for the bus like any other day, she had an ardent desire to skip some time and make it late to the school. Her bag was less heavy, she was starting to hate carrying so much weight on her back, unlike her friends that carried a baggage to make good grades while passing secretive letters under the table. She was being judgemental, that was what she was told she was being. To be in the circle, she had cooked some lies of a lover who never belonged to the town. Had she had the need to be truthful, she would have voiced her longing to escape these silly traps, and have a dip in the sea of unknown.

That was why she was called crazy. She nodded her head, shuffling her thoughts and focusing back at the morning sky. She noted a few butterflies fluttering ahead of her vision, the mixture of white and blue coloured wings grabbed her attention, it intermixed like a streak of painting dripping down into blotches of white on the surface of blue. She breathed, smiling wide at the intricacy of the sight.

"You missed the bus" she heard a honey laced voice. Ritu's twinkle brightened, she turned around and found Ani, the young lady that always showed her the sprectrum beyond the idealogies of an ecompass that Ritu always figured the narrowest.

"Aniii! I don't want to go to school, yet."

"Why? You hate staying at home with your friends having fun at school."

Ritu kicked a stone, sighing at her words. Her friends are more interested in getting involved with a boy or a man than spend some time thinking about the wild breezes and the sunset sky. Not that she was not interested, she had passionate dreams than them. The idea of being taken in under the wide sky fascinated her, it made her veins throb and spine shudder. Yet, what puddled her was the illusion knitted along the complexities, as if the thought was a paradox.

"I want to go to the city and study further."

There was a heavy pause, it was stretching further, making the breezes whisper across her ears. The echoes of it sounded like a sentence from another world.

"That's smart of you, you learned to be wise," she encouraged. Ritu stopped and looked back at her in sheer surprise. Is that all she wanted to hear? Ritu wondered. The thought clambered a certainty she had fixed for years.

"Why did you choose to be wise?"

"I don't know. I do not wish to get trapped in the circle of fixations."

She could sense her smile, her obsidian eyes reflecting something par the sensibilities. That was how she reacted when Ritu first spoke of Anandi, the ghost that ate people's hair and drank a person's soul. Ritu felt silly at the way she was intimidated by the idea of ghosts once upon a time.

"Aren't we all full of fixations?"

Ritu narrowed her brows, now what was that supposed to mean? She thought she understood Ani, because she thought like her, she understood her and encouraged her. It was now a blur, like the glassy window on rainy afternoon, filled with the droplets from the pelt, turning the vision uncanny.

"What do you mean?"

Ani beamed further, puzzling Ritu, clouding her chain of thoughts in the rain of her words. She looked ahead and signed her something. Ritu turned in that direction. She watched Mr. Madesh, the most reputed elderly man of the village walk across the stop and move into a narrow street. What about him? Ritu pondered. Everybody spoke high of him, he was the most charitable educated man who had a goverment job in an era where it was considered the rarest and highest in the village. It was equivalent to being the king of a certain reign. Everybody respected him, for his age, his humility and his ability to speak about culture and ethics wonderfully. That was what people told her atleast.

She once remembered Vanathi, the college girl who took her tution classes praise so much about his giving nature. He was a good man, despite being so old, he always kept a thorough knowledge about the day to day world and took care of his family and also aided the needy.

Ritu was not keen about the pleasantries, it grotted her, she never had the chance to dwelve into the point of being driven by the conclusions brought in the name of norms. She did not want that chance.

"Will anybody believe if I say he is paying Vanathi to sleep with her?"

Ritu widened her eyes. Vanathi? The Vanathi who was just three years older to her? Why will she do that? And how did Ani know? She is not ready to believe Ani! Though she is a woman who knows the world much better than her, she did not have the rights to spew illicit knowledge about people just like that! Especially an elderly man and a tender aged woman. Ritu was just seventeen, but she knew what it would do to the psyche of the person.

"Apparently, she is doing it without any force. To earn money."

Ritu wanted her to just stop. She did not want to know, she did not want to imagine nor did she want to have the taste of the gossip, it was bitter, curbing her tongue in distaste. What will she do by knowing what they did at all? She did not like to take the matter to her hands, the people surrounding her were scum bags that liked to degrade behind the mask bof a smile than to confront and move on.

"What image does that make of them now? If you know especially know that Madesh had blood in his hands?"

Ritu sighed. She did not know.

"Why are you telling this to me?"

Ani smiled.

"You should know that we always fixate things, we cannot escape that."

"Imagine you were some guy, let me name him Karthik." Ani continued, while Ritu raised her brows. Ani wanted Ritu to work her mind and fish out a conclusion, as though it was the most important of an act in the edge of the world.

She wondered how Karthik would be, a studious person who did not like the company of humans, and stayed away from the strangeness of petty talks.

"Karthik loved a woman, so deeply in love that he fought with her family against marrying her to an older man and eloped with her to some other place. They lived so happily..."

Ritu couldn't imagine that. That was something she couldn't picturize, yet a part of her could feel the uncertainties of it. It was unexpected , growing like grass on a cemented plot. Of the stories spoken by Ani, this one seemed more intriguing, pushing her into the meddling with her chain of thoughts.

"Then there came another woman, who tried to tried to woo him but he did not give in. He loved his wife dearly. The other woman wanted his wealth and his attention, she did everything but couldn't make it up to him."

"So she planned to tell the couple's family about their whereabouts."

"The family started hunting for them to end their lives."

"Karthik's wife vowed to protect him, they died while she tried to protect them..."

Ritu gasped, stunned at the sudden twist of event in the plot. What in the world did Ani want to convey? This sounded like an age old story where familes slaughtered their children to keep up their reputation. A reputation that got dirtied in the hands by blood. It sent a chill down the spine.

"What will you do, Karthik?" Ani asked sincerely, calm as if Ritu really had something to say. It was too complex. She looked up at Ani, the charcoal eyes remained silent as a lake on a moonless night.

"Stop imagining maybe" Ritu replied. That was what she could do, to stop thinking about things that cannot be undone. She remained powerless to unwind and redo the necessities. Why dig a grave when she knew what remained was the mortal ruins of blood and tears?

To that Ani widened her eyes in surprise.

"It is of no use. People do not love the souls, they love the bodies."

Waves of silence crashed around their shores once again, leaving a handful of winds to communicate their own language. Ani looked at the sky above the shades of the trees, sunlight peaked through spaces of its leaves, gleaming time and again, as though smiling at her sudden shower of attention.

"That's why you don't believe in soul mates?"

Ani stared at the mild dancing of the leaves, they were interwoven with a prfoundness, she felt a part of her embracing the connectedness, there was something that felt familiar to her, as though she was pre-existing, in the veins of the leaves that dwindled to the zephyr.

"Who knows if the lover of my previous birth turns out to be my daughter today?" Ritu added, smiling into the ecstacy that filled inside every cell of her body. If she wished, she could dissipate without leaving an imprint of evidence that emphasized her breathing.

"We remain puzzled because we never get to bid proper adieu."

That was the last time she had a proper conversation with Ani, Ritu sighed. It was five years since the event, since she felt a surreal catalepsy take over her mind. The words she spoke came out of nowhere, an empty space that did not come to the notice of her existence until that moment. It was as if the breeze carried her into the loop hole of a different world. She came back to the village to pursue a break from her work, it took a toll on her busy nerves and as she relaxed all she could think about was Ani.

How was she? Did she get married? Did she have children? Did she remember Ritu, the companion who always had crazy notions about life? She was grateful to Ani for accepting Ritu however she was, beyond the fixation she habitually talked about.

She always spoke about Ani to her boyfriend Jai, the second person in the world to have never deduced a constant fixation about her, who in fact listened to her confusions and smiled earnestly. The acceptance led her into peace, he called her crazy and mad but that made her lean into the exciting theories of life futher. She smiled, looking up at the star lit sky from the terrace.

There was a point when Jai had asked if she could contact her through phone. She felt like a fool for not asking her number. It was the simplest thing she could have done to stay in contacts with her, all she could do now was to wait at the stop. She was sure her mother wouldn't let her go to the stop this time, at least for a week. She would rather pack ger bags and send her back to the city.

Well, according to her mother, the girl who was a neighbour started behaving crazily after being haunted by some spirit. She was stuttering, crying, not budging to go to the temple and not eating at all. Had Ani been with her, they would have laughed loudly at the erratic buzz of an information.

She closed her eyes, drinking an ingenious whiff of air as the summer breeze intermingled with the settling down of the temperature, making the warm scuttle down to slight tepid and touch the rim of a crisp chillness.

"Ritu, please help me find my old album!" Her mother voiced from down stairs. Ritu did not want to leave. It felt as if the breezes tried to communicate a different language with her, to tell her the tales of the planetary forces and beyond, it was striking her in the centre of the chest, crawling through her vessels as if she was being injected into the sensation of what the wafts told her.

Despite her intense yearning, she wanted to revisit the pages of her mother's album and take a good notice of the snippets taken from years ago. She breathed, trying to settle her heaving breath and started decending down, moving towards the store room where things remained fogged in company of mites and dust.

She fished through the rack of an old almirah, searching for the album that was wrapped by a newspaper. As soon as her hand reached for the album, she smiled vividly. It was striking to discover entities that captured an image from a time that cannot be rewinded. She carried the album to the living room, happy further as she saw her parents and her younger sister laughing merrily about something.

Her family was one of the most well settled set of people in the village, her parents were goverment employees who fell in love and got married. It automatically gave her the reasons to revisit the album, to discover the happiness glinting their eyes at the period of their marriage. What was it like to fall in love and tie a knot at a period when such activities weren't accepted or promoted much? It was another thing that they kept it in the store room than intheir own bedroom. Or was the album about something else?

Her mother unwrapped the newspaper and placed the album on the table. The news paper fell down as her mother explained that the album contained the pictures from her childhood. She flipped each page oppen and explained all the scenes scene could put a name to. Ritu wondered why she chose to hark back to her childhood out of the blue. She must have intruded a lost conversation.

"Ma! Do you think, this is going to distract us from the topic of evil spirits?" Ramya, her younger sister vocalized.

Ritu raised her brows. So that was why they were fiddling with the dusty pages of the album. She shook her head at her mother's silliness, as she did, her eyes fell on to the newspaper. Her eyes scurried through the news that was charted in the front column, it grabbed her attention vehemently.

She picked up the paper and read through the lines. The picture of a couple, young one, eyes full of dream captured her senses coldly. She couldn't figure the familiarity of the man. It almost seemed nearly twenty five years ago, a period when Ritu was never born. The man, despite the credentials, had a soft smile, enchanted in the world of love. Love. She could feel it sweep into her expanse.

Her eyes then landed on the woman. She looked so young, her eyes were cherubic with a tinge of darkness that remained like a lake on a moonless night. What made the picture different was the glint that had managed to escaped from the ocean of her eyes, like tiny stars flickering about in the blanket of darkness. Ritu suddenly felt thunderstruck. The picture matched the features of somebody.

Ani.

She couldn't breathe, it couldn't be her! She tried to read the words, to connect each and every dot of the occurrence, trying to materialize whatever was going inside her mad brain. This was not a figment of a dream!

Anandi and Karthik, a young couple met with the tragedy of honour killing. Their house was set on fire by their family memembers in order to preserve their reputation. The couple had died of with third degree burns.

Ritu could feel her feet go cold, her spine shuddered. The breath was still arrested in her wind pipe, her eyes lived a different memory. She could see the charcoal eyes stare into her, speaking to her about everything as if that were all real.

Real.

Was there anything that she saw seemed real? She couldn't remember a day when she met her anywhere other than the stop. She never changed her clothes and nothing about that concered Ritu! How could she? Why did she feel empty? Why was this hurting her recklessly? Why was the dream and reality conglomeratating, pushing her in a straight abyss? Was she real? Was her body real?

"People are still believing that Anandi is roaming around here. Mr. Madesh is one of their blood relative, he did the rituals for her soul to attain peace."

"Anandi will not be back anymore."

So what Ani told her was true? She stood up, suddenly feeling nauseous about the circumstance. She walked to the washroom and stared right into the mirror, the glass was reflecting her image but her mind refracted the tiny bits of their conversation. An intense ache pierced through her chest, her eyes welled at the notion. How much torture did she go through? Ritu clenched her fists.

How much torture did we go through?

She heard a voice whisper from within. She swallowed, looking up at the mirror. A forgotten fragment of their talks came back flashing in her mind.

"How do you know people, Ani?"

Ani smiled, she looked up at the sky and remained further calm. The glimmer in her eyes enlightened the pavements of a long lost evocation.

"I can see souls. I can picturize who are who, and hence I come to meet you everytime."

So when will they stop meeting? She had asked, her twelve year old brain couldn't fix the puzzle of their communication. It went above her wits and compliant thinking.

"I'll dissolve the moment you cease to need protection."

Ritu held her mouth, muffling as tears slipped from her eyes. She was never subjected to trouble throughout the years of her growing, she has always been treated kindly, as if touching her would mean wrath.

Anandi!

What will you do, Karthik?

Ritu shut her eyes close, she tried to stop the storm brewing inside her head. She never tried to feel the magnitude of love that showered like the blossoms toppling above her during the late spring. She never tried to decipher the intensity of her deep yearning, shutting her past the visions of a dead past. It was dead wasn't it? She tried her best to feel connected, to outlive the trance of joy and comfort she felt on having a companion, a guide who gave her the direction to life. She had somebody whom she could trust, bereft of any biased conceptions. And with her, it was another voice that talked, she was just a tool to manifest the words.

We remain puzzled because we never get to bid a proper adieu.

She cried harder. She was just being a dutiful wife. A part of her screamed. It was so abnormal! Anybody would think Ritu was going bonkers about a certain ghost that seemed more human than the monsters that carried warm blood with a pumping heart.

She wiped her tears and walked up to the terrace. She stared at the sky and the moonless night, it reminded her of Anandi. She closed her eyes, and embraced the winds. It always tried to speak to her, about the entities that she couldn't remember. About the moments that she had once celebrated and cherished, of a life that was incinetrated when she got besotted in like an unwhorling flower.

It was paradoxical; Jai's eyes glimmered effervescently, enticing the perception of a waxing moon while Anandi's black orbs hurled in tenebrosity. She paved away from the lane of luminescence, swallowing indistinction in broad daylight, bearing the catacomb of a mammoth foregoing, watching a dream being actualized in a body that wanted to not remember the happenings from a defunct time.

I don't know what we were, but I can feel your pain. I can feel the grief and agony, I am safe, Anandi. I hope you dissolve into the domain of the unknown.

We are connected,

You are loved, set yourself free,

Don't settle yourself for this abyss,

Don't embitter your essence for rutheless monsters,

You are eternal, you are divine.

Ritu could feel a breeze, that was all she knew.