Somewhere north, they say, there is a village of joyous farmers. A village of two hundred stone huts, known for its bumper harvest of broomsticks, where untiring men and unrushed women raise white pigs and grow jackfruits, pineapples and legumes. A village, which has hungry fish in the pond; tittering fowl in gardens and honeycomb hugging trees; surrounded by rampant mountains and fresh streams.
One morning the winds bring a smell, sour, maggoty, black: precisely the smell of a bad death, snaking through the mud lanes and cotton trees.
“Yuck, yuck,” say the joyous farmers. One follows another and all follow their noses, they reach the square village pond filled with moss-green water hyacinth. Men, women and children. Eyes bulging with curiosity; pulse beating with palpable thrill.
Near the pond, among the overgrown weeds and under the April sun are a man and a cat. Seared. Dead.
The burns on the dead man’s face run in zigzag fractal patterns. Clothes in shreds, hair frizzled. The cat is a fried fur ball, lying rigid on his back, paws suspended in eternal pause. A few dozen silver- bellied flies buzz and squat on rotting flesh.
“Remember the loud crack last night?” the oldest and wisest asks, hands akimbo. The one with a stoop, his face looks like a dried apricot.
“Twin lightning. Not once, but twice my ears burst, when the anger of the gods struck our land, straight from cloud to ground.”
Yes. Yes, many say. Nodding their head. They look sideways, left, then right, as if neighbors ought to know more. Assured, they nod again.
“But,” the wise one objects, his fingers scratching his uncombed, matted hair. “There must be a reason for a man so young and one with so buxom a wife to die such a death. If birth is the cause of death and dying is a rehearsal for living; if life and death follow one unbroken, perfect circle, what could be the reason for an untimely and awful death?”
Yes. Yes, an untimely, an awful death. Why? The villagers ask, except one— the new widow.
The new widow squats on the ground, close to the singed bodies of cat and man, her voice shrill but eyes calm. Like the eyes of one who knew the cause of her loss; like a child who now understands why ripe mangoes fall on the ground and why bats sleep upside down.
“Our wedding was solemnized fourteen nights after my father’s death. The date was fixed two summers ago. A thousand coins given to the travel guide, also two summers ago. After the funeral feast on the tenth day, I walked through three villages, climbed two hills and swam across a river, at times hopping from rock to rock, drank from streams, to come here for our wedding under the old tree.”
“Don’t you know we wait for a year after death of one so dear?” the wise one asks, his voice a tad angry, a tad mocking.
“Sin, Sin,” the villagers sing, except the new widow.
“The first ten days after one dies, the soul roams in the house, reluctant to part with mourners. On the eleventh day it slips through the door; on the twelfth, it is drifting in the kitchen garden for one last time; the thirteenth it reaches the fields, fourteenth the village pond; fifteenth it passes the neighboring village, and travels across the river. Don’t you see it takes a long time to trek the mountains and climb into the skies and reach heaven?”
He points to the sky, and every pair of eyes look upwards, as if together they could count the three hundred and sixty five days to heaven.
“But what could be the reason for the cat’s mistimed death?” asks a man, his voice trailing off.
“This cat stole fish at the wedding feast. He ate a sinner’s food. So he was punished,” says the village cook. He looks at the new widow lost in benumbed senses. “Maybe,” the cook adds.
Together the villagers remember the yellow fish gravy with dollops of tamarind, crispy brinjal, and rice as white as pearls that they ate at the wedding feast of the dead man and the new widow. They remember how some licked fingers, twice and some burped.
Forty nights ago. Now, the taste of sour fish rises from their bellies, as noses crinkle with the smell of cat and man, as frowns of mortal worry crawl on the faces of once-joyous villagers of the north.
Bijoyeta Das is a creative writer, journalist and photographer. She has reported from Asia, Africa, USA and worked as a media trainer in South Sudan for the last two years. Her work is available at www.bijoyetadas.com.
–Background & Foreground Photography by Jon Damaschke