HAVELI
She tightened the blanket around her, still shivering under the January winter.
In her mud hut, it wasn't much a luxury of warmth in winter. Her grandmother had to either make a fire or sleep with her on her cot to keep her warm. Fire would emit such smoke that would suffocate them towards the middle of the night so sleeping together was a safer option.
As she spun in her bed, tugging further on the blanket around her she realized her grandmother wasn't beside her.
Overcoming the veil of slumber, she heard footsteps, not one but a music them, as if an army of soldiers were parading by her hut.
Suddenly, a sharp scream tore through her ears, waking her up from whatever sleep she was still into. It was unmistakably her grandmother.
She tossed the blanket away at once and got down from her bed. She went to the nearest hole in the wall, few steps away from her cot. She leaned against it, peeping through, trying to catch the glimpse of what was going outside.
There were still voices and screams and lots of cussing but there was no sight of her grandmother.
Only some men in dhoti and turban holding lathis in their one hand and fire torch in other were facing towards the front of her house, where she supposed her grandmother was .
She held a hand to her mouth, holding her sobs. She caught the snippets of what they were yelling and she still wasn't surprised, just sad that the moment has come so soon.
"Burn the witch!" was the common scream from the men from behind.
"...but Sarpanch ji, this is the third murder this week. How many children do we have to lose to finally put her horrors to an end?" a man yelled.
She broke into silent sobs, muttering to herself, 'Maa didn't kill them. Maa is no witch.' She fell to the floor, thinking of all the ways they would let her grandma go.
She remembered strictly what her grandma had warned her. Never leave the house if such situation came.
She missed all the conversations but got up just in time to hear her grandma pleading, "Sarpanch Ji, this is madness. There is no such thing. I'm a common healer, and I was only trying to help those sick children. It's happening because of the dirty water they're drinking."
"We drink the same water, Chudail. But the difference is, you didn't come to heal us. That's why we are alive."
"Sarpanch Ji, we have to do this before the sunrise or her spirit will haunt this village for eternity," she knew this voice. She'd visited the temple one too many times that she knew this distinct hoarse voice. It was the priest of the village's temple. He used to be very sweet to her but why is he suddenly so cruel to her grandmother, she couldn't understand.
They dragged her grandmother to the nearest tree, before which they had built a pyre. She ran to the back wall that faced the tree and she peeped through the ventilating hole in the wall.
She pried for her grandmother's eyes as they tied her to the wooden pole on the pyre. And as her grandmother's eyes finally held hers, all the voices outside drowned.
She could feel herself crying as the tears rolled down her cheek. And she could see her grandmother shaking her head, holding back her own sobs as if asking her to be strong and her grandmother suddenly wore the expression she used to while forbidding her to come out at night, especially when these numb-heads come for her.
Suddenly she felt her name being called from behind. She felt the warmth of the fire on her skin as they finally set her grandmother aflame. She heard her grandmother shriek her name and then again a voice called her from behind.
Once or twice...and as she turned to see who it was-
She woke up to see Tai Ji screaming her name, her face looming over Phulwa's face.
"Wake up; it's going to be late. You know Amma ji doesn't like her warm water past five," Tai Ji had a ladle in one hand that clearly indicated that she'd been up way earlier.
Phulwa herself was very prompt at that age of seventeen, never missed a deadline, would usually be up before five to get Amma Ji her glass of warm water and fresh cut apples, but these dreams that would cloud her conscious seldom held her from being that punctual girl she was. And this was one of those times.
"Oh, sorry Tai Ji. I don't know how I missed the alarm," she woke, stalking her hair back, rubbing her face to feel the warmth of her palms.
Tai Ji stalked out of the servant's block of the haveli and Phulwa followed her.
The servant's block was like a large dormitory that had about twenty single beds, each set few feet apart from other and the right of the bed belonged to the owner of the bed to store their belongings.
Phulwa on the occasional nights would sleep here in the dormitory when Amma Ji would need her private space for meditation and sound sleep, however, usually, Phulwa would sleep on the recliner sofa in Amma Ji's room.
As Tai Ji retreated into the kitchen, Phulwa freshened up at the nearest basin.
Silently, as she always preferred, she heated the water and sliced the apples and readied Amma Ji's morning requirements in just but few minutes.
She tied her stall to her side as she lifted the tray of warm water and evenly sliced apples off the counter and shot out of the kitchen and across the hall, bowing momentarily to the idol of lord Shiva (Shivling) right in the middle of the hall, catching the flight of stairs to Amma Ji's room right at the left end of the staircase.
She knew better than to knock - it disrupted Amma Ji's meditation if she was in one. Phulwa used her spare key for Amma Ji's room that only she owned, being Amma Ji's most trusted being in the whole world.
There's this moment in life where you face the ultimate crisis, being said that you find the only thing keeping you alive is suddenly no more and you are left with nothing but gasping.
That's what escaped Phulwa's lips at first when she opened the door to Amma Ji's room.
A slender, smooth and impeccably fair skinned Amma Ji lying in her bed - carelessly - naked, her legs pulled up to fall on one side, her left hand lying casually on her left breast, the other one sprawled further away from her body, her head tilted, eyes staring blankly into the distance-beyond the window, bathed in her own blood.
Phulwa could see the fresh cut that had opened the skin on Amma Ji's neck into a slot. The edges of the cut skin were now clotted and sore somehow, welcoming the passage of blood from the corner of her mouth.
And the gasp was followed by a sharp scream, the tray and the glass and the bowl shattering upon meeting the ground with a thud.
That was the moment where Phulwa remembered nothing. Absolutely nothing. Who she was, who was that on the bed? She knew this though, that this was the moment of survival.
She lifted her head, following the flying feet to its body and then to the head that hung by a rope from the ceiling fan. It was Raman.
The young, handsome boy, smartest in the whole province, enough to be hired by the trade lord of Dumsarai, Naveen Thakur , to do his taxes; the strong boy who had once stolen her heart, loved her in the way even she couldn't, now hung there from the ceiling, naked, dead.
She felt week in her knees. Her head spun for a moment and the next thing she knew, the floor seemed much closer to her face and then she blacked out.
New Words :-
Dhoti - a long white cloth used in wrapping the lower half of the body.
Lathis - a long bamboo stick sometimes used as a defensive weapon.
Sarpanch - a head of five individuals forming governing council of a village.
Chudail - a bad witch
Haveli - mansions in small towns or villages, usually belonging to the royals.
Shivling - an idol, a semi cylindrical stone topped with semi spehere stone, of lord Shiva.
Dumsarai - the fictional town of The Queens of Nights.