The Mountain Girl – Matriarch Homicide- Part 6

Nivedita felt the beginning of the panic. She and her mother were walking down a very narrow street, Nivedita was carefully observing the amenities around, and it looked like a convention of the old era. The sun appeared to be lolling in its claim beams. It drifted over the skyline, and shining Fuschia and apricot collided with the profound blue sky. Nivedita could hear the sounds of pots clattering from inside the huts with thatched roofs and mud-packed walls, built on both the edges of the narrow pathways. The aroma of some very pleasant home-cooked feast was lingering and getting mixed with the dried cow dung pasted on the outer walls of a beach hut. The cows faintly mooing from a little distance tied on the barns situated at the backside area of these huts to the left. At the center at the entrance was the only hand pump to fulfill the water requirement of eight families living around. After she and her mother crossed these graveled narrow paths, they landed in a completely different world.

It was a perfect paradise of beauty and quietness. Her eyes couldn’t believe what she saw. Some half miles from where she was standing was a green hilltop on the center was a huge banyan tree. A gentle breeze rustled through the needled tall grasses surrounding the banyan tree and species of other beautiful floras were scattered like a bedsheet in the whole area, tufting and waving on a sunny windswept day. The stem of each flower spread out hanging and dancing as if so proud of the perk of aroma they disperse in the air. It was a party of colors, of chaos and order, of a beauty that sprung from simple seeds blessed to bloom under the deep pool of green hues.

As Nivedita approached, she saw 2 men and 1 woman sitting under the shade of the banyan tree, from a distance she felt like these people were in the middle of the fifth decades of their life. The wind was buzzing softly and the hilltop was rosy in the sun, both the mother and daughter used their muscles to climb the hill and finally reached paradise.

Even in her wildest dream she hasn’t imagined a scenario like this, Joey’s both parents and his uncle were the one sitting under the Banyan tree, utter disbelief was palpable in the air. Nivedita couldn’t figure out how to react. “Should she consider it a joyous moment or something unbelievable was lingering under the cloud”, she was bewildered.

She could also read a sign of agony in the eyes of these quinquagenarians which was setting fear and trepidation in her heart. The displeasure in Joey’s parent’s eyes, her mother’s sudden change of attitude towards her, setting up a meeting in such a lonely and tranquil place, what on earth is going on; her head was spinning like a spin wheel.

Is this some kind of game, but what?

When she turned to see the other side of the hill she saw Joey sitting there with his cousins!

His cousins were looking at Nivedita, gossiping and smiling, but Joey’s eyes were sad, very sad. She couldn’t figure out why.

“Shall we move to?” Joey’s mother stood and gave a burning hard look to Nivedita.

“Of course”, Nivedita’s mother replied. But Ma! Where? Nevi spoke in her heart.

The two ladies left the arena. Immediately after, the two men also followed them, but both gave Nevi a burning animosity. She watched as the whites in their eyes turned a pure black, and as their iris glowered they reminded her of pit viper.

She nervously gulped her fear.

She turned to look at Joey; it seems like laughter evaporated from his eyes. Even his focus was not towards Nivedita, as if his eyes were lying and that guilt wasn’t allowing him to look at her face.

With eyes full of questions Nivedita also started walking down the hill. On the midway one of Joey’s cousins, Mohit was running towards Nivedita, he stopped when he saw her.

With a wheezing voice and a panic smile, he waved at her.

Nivedita just passed an asymmetric smile at him.

Gathering his breath he managed to speak, “Nivedita let me just cut it short”. Joey’s parents got to know about you both and they are not happy with this news. Based on whatever I have heard from Joey about you, I have realized that you are quite a sensible and a perfect definition of the most caring girl. I don’t feel right about this.

Right about what? “Nivedita intervene”.

Mohit started stammering, struggling with his words he finally spoke, “Your mother’s life is in danger, save her”, as soon as her ears could observe those words and she would react Mohit was already down the hill.

Now her blood drained and heart hammered erratically. With a jolt she ran down, Maa she started screaming, her traumatic body chemistry invited tears to commemorate her trauma. Nivedita ran along the rough cobbled streets that caused her feet to ache. Houses were tight together and loomed over her, like a forest of stone. When she looked up the roofs were so close together that she could only make out a sliver of the blue sky that was mirrored by the tiny stream of light that trickled along the cold stone ground. Where must her mother be, where can she find her! She began knocking on the entrance of every house and like a runaway psychopath she kept on banging them in a row, fanatically screaming and screeching like a monster. She roared for the one last time and then collapsed.

Nivedita Run!

Run Nivedita!

She heard her mother’s voice,

She heard a very loud screaming of someone from a distance.

Maa! Maa!

She turned her head to figure this voice.

She woke up straight on her bed shaking, with a parched throat and wet eyes.

Shit! Her lips trembled and her hand shivered, with a sudden jerk she got up and turned her eyes to see things around her. Chest rising and falling rhythmically slow breathing, warm under duvet, rapid eye movement, stressed and dreaming.

She was on a stillness of deep sleep. Oh my god! She looked at her green zero watts led bulb shining on her wall. The clock below told her that she was badly hit by a terrible dream in the middle of the night. It was only 2:00 am and here her entire world was shaken up.

She felt a chill and prayed to god to keep her mother safe. That night after so many years she missed her mother so badly that she wanted to hug her tight and sleep on her lap, crying and emptying every droplet out of her eyes.

Nivedita cried as if her heart was being tattered from inside. Her eyes saw nothing; her sight was completely blurred with her tears. From her mouth came a cry, a cry so raw that even the eyes of the strangers beholding her would weep in tears. Emotional pain gushed inside her. Stained with the memory of her mother, one last time for that night she summoned her name Maa! Then she fell back onto the four-poster bed, the mattress sunk under her weight and she snuggled inside her thin blanket. Her dark lashes brimmed heavy into tears and her eyelids puffed. Moment by moment they started getting tired and started to fall. The last painful emotion slammed against her before she lost the feeling of feeling. Everything darkened into nothingness and she dozed off again.

©Molli Sherchan Kaur

P.S: She wishes her mother could see her emotional current, she could read the storm in her eyes. The way her mother welcomed the change from her umbilical bond to breast, Nivedita wished her mother would have welcomed every new change until her baby girl was fit to navigate the limit of her own sky.