Mud prints

Meera leaned against the wooden frame of the doorway pretending to read. She was watching her stepmother through the corner of her eye as she stepped out of the room after a prolonged bath, smelling distinctly of jasmine. She had yards of cotton draped loosely around her; the ends dripping, clinging to her arms and the back of her calves. She pulled up an armchair to the edge of the balcony and sat herself down, her feet tucked in underneath. She stretched her neck out, gathering locks of her luscious hair to one side. She ran her fingers through them, tracing their trails with a fine comb. She smoothened the tangles with utmost care, caressing and whispering to them as if they were truant children. There was no sense of urgency in her movements. Meera wondered what it would be like to live the vacuous life of a rich man’s wife; one who needed nothing and one who no one needed. She would have probably withered, slowly slipping out of collective memory like a vase that once adorned the mantelpiece that now lay broken somewhere amidst mounds of filth. Her stepmother, however, seemed strangely content. Her lips bore a tinge of melancholy at times, as if she nestled a tiny void somewhere deep within, but her eyes flickered with gratitude.

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The Roychoudhury household spent their summers in a sprawling mansion in Chandannagore; a house that had seen a bundle of generations gradually grow out of their childhood levity over the past hundred and fifty years. The locals said it used to be the celebrated residence of a feudal lord once, who spent his days catering to the needs of British colonizers, and his nights leering at courtesans, inundated with the finest wines in the region. With the onset of Independence, the coffers dried up and soot settled in the nooks of the chandeliers in the dining room. Consequently soon after his death, the house fell silent and was reduced to a mere shadow of its former glorious self. It was well into the sixties when Mr. Roychowdhury started overseeing the construction of a brand new jute mill in Chandannagore which required him to live there for months at a time. As business burgeoned, he decided to acquire this forgotten piece of property and considering there was no one who cared enough to invest in it, the process was a breeze.

Meera started accompanying her father on his summer trips to Chandannagore since she was eight. Her brother was popular and had numerous friends peppered across their neighbourhood, who would call out to him from the pavement every evening to join them for a game of cricket. Women, needless to say, were not welcome. Meera tried befriending the girls on her street. However, she quickly outgrew playing house and hosting imaginary tea parties. It was then that she convinced her father to take her with him on his annual trips. Every year school closed in May for the holidays, she could not wait to get on that train teeming with animated peddlers hollering limericks in shrill sing-song voices as they jostled their way through the crowd. Some of them sold brightly coloured trinkets or delectable fried potato rolls, while others pushed for peculiar herb concoctions that promised to cure every malady ranging from concussions to indigestion. Meera was fascinated by what was in those illegibly labeled dark glass bottles and pressed her father to buy some occasionally. But each time, he replied in his characteristic dry monotone, not once looking up from his daily; ‘Dear, I love you too much to listen to you.’

When Meera laid eyes on the house for the first time, she couldn’t believe that it was hers. It had a stately façade, its shoulders resting on robust Victorian pillars and its staircases manned by faded marble lions. The hallways stretched out so far that she couldn’t see one end from the other. She was certain that if she ever were to peal the plaster off, she’d find hidden plates of gold. At the heart of the garden in front was a stone fountain; a mythical fish that spouted water from its mouth, looking out to the forest beyond, its speckled scales glistening in the afternoon sun. The walls inside the house were peopled with portraits of noblemen, some decked up in bejeweled turbans and emerald broaches, while others were in tailored suits with pasty oiled hair, their brows boasting of an English education. Meera spent hours staring at the portraits, weaving ornate webs of fantasy, wondering what each of them were like in person. She had named them after characters she had come across in fairy tales, and created a world around them. On some days she was the queen who meted out punishments to subjects in court, while on less fortunate days, she decided to assume the role of the housemaid who the prince fell in love with. Her stories made no sense to the cynical world outside, but to her they had meaning. She found companionship in what blind men perceived as a bunch of mute stretched out canvases. She gave them wings and took flight with them.

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Meera eyed her stepmother surreptitiously as she locked her flowing tresses into patterned braids. She watched her as a droplet of water quietly made its way down her back, like a string of pearls on satin. Meera shifted in her seat uncomfortably and shut the book that she had been trying to read all this time. She stood up, walked up to her dresser and grabbed a bottle of bright red nail paint instead. She resumed her seat against the doorway and began sweeping her toes with generous coats of crimson, audibly blowing puffs of air to accelerate the drying process. She made sure that a lot of noise was made, albeit unnecessary, hoping to attract her stepmother’s attention.

“That colour does not suit you Meera. Why don’t you try some of mine?”

Meera looked up. Her stepmother was smiling; good-natured disapproval writ large upon her face. In that moment, she could not stand her tone of jest.

“What do you know? You’re old.”

Meera went back to painting her toes, this time with renewed vigour. Her stepmother said nothing. The spite hung awkwardly in the air. Just then little Mrinalini came running into the balcony in her knickers, severely out of breath, her neck caked in talcum powder.

“Ma, didi! Look! It’s going to rain.”

They looked out the balcony and spotted the tiniest of rain clouds accumulating in the distance, making their way towards the mansion.

“Oh thank god! The heat would have killed me if it went on this way for another day. Mrin, go put some clothes on. I don’t want you to fall ill”, her mother said; her voice ringing with concern.

“But I want to get wet in the rain, Ma”, she said, passionately objecting to her mother’s instruction.

“No you won’t.” Her mother refused to bend.

Mrin said nothing and ran out of the balcony. She shot past the bedroom and down the stairs like a bolt of lightning. Her mother sensed what she was about to do.

“Meera! Please stop her!” she implored, “She’ll only listen to you.”

Meera forgot all about her wet toes and ran after her sister, her nails bleeding paint from the corners, calling out to her from behind, her step mother frantically trying to keep up. The hallway turned dark in minutes as the rain clouds encroached upon it from all sides. She imagined the chandeliers being lit up, nautch girls dancing to the tune of the sarangi, and noblemen reclining on gilded couches sniffing garlands coiled around their wrists. Meera heard a rumbling in the distance, and almost instantly the heavens burst forth, the rain descending on the parched land with vengeance. Mrin squealed in delight, rolling down the stairs and into the garden. She stood there with her arms outstretched, felicity gushing out of every pore in her tiny naked self. 

As they watched her dance in the rain, her mother said, “Meera! Let’s get her!” There was a mischievous glint in her eye, and before Meera knew it, she started screaming out her daughter’s name, and rushed down the stairs, laughing like a schoolgirl. Mrin giggled hysterically and sped towards the clump of trees in the distance as fast as her feet could carry her. Meera pursued them as if she was in a trance. Her mind was blank, and felt light and fluffy as cotton. They entered a cove surrounded by palm and bamboo hedges, shuffling one behind the other. There was a humongous pit right in the middle. It was replete with grime and floating damp leaves. They had nowhere else to go. It was as if they had hit a wall. They stood at the edge for a minute and stared down at the rippling muck. Suddenly, Meera felt her stepmother grab her palm, as she dragged her into the crater. They laughed and cackled as they frolicked in the mud, like pigs in a pool of feculence. The leaves rustled nervously as their voices rose from the abyss, like a phoenix from a pile of cinders and as they ascended, they lost their way among the array of bamboo trunks and incessant trickling rivulets.