VIVEK’S FICTION AND NONFICTION HAVE APPEARED IN LITRO MAGAZINE, INDIA CURRENTS AND BRILLIANT FLASH FICTION. HE CURRENTLY LIVES IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA.
Sivan Poduval was fourteen years old when Michael Bradshaw arrived in his hometown in southern India. While the rest of the country was in the throes of pre-independence, the rural south was largely untouched by conflict. Occasionally, an intrepid Brit passed through, armed with a boxy Kodak and a leatherbound notebook to document village life.
News spread quickly of the white man’s arrival. Sivan and his friends ran to the boat jetty. A crowd braved the pouring rain just to watch the thirty-something, clean-shaven tourist in a beige, three-piece suit and two-tone, brown and white calfskin shoes. A black pipe hung from the side of his mouth, billowing a weak stream of grey smoke. He smiled and waved as he stepped off the boat. An assistant held an umbrella out for him. A porter carried his luggage. An interpreter he had hired from the city accompanied him everywhere, translating his questions and the villagers’ responses. Over the next few days, Mr. Bradshaw was seen in various parts of town, pointing his curious handheld machine at mangoes and jackfruits, betel vines and coconut palms. At times, he requested the villagers to stop what they were doing and be still for just a minute.
“The machine records a moment in time,” the interpreter explained.
#
Every morning, the women and children of the village walked to one of three public ponds. While the kids splashed around, the women washed clothes. On weekends, the children remained in the water long after the women had left to tend to other chores. One Saturday, when Sivan and his friend Chandru were playing at the pond near the edge of the forest, Mr. Bradshaw arrived with his interpreter. Being the only ones there, he asked if the boys would pose for a few photographs.
Sivan and Chandru stood in the waist-deep water, smiling on command. They posed at the edge of the stone steps in a diving stance, standing absolutely still, stifling their giggles at the overdressed foreigner with his alien instrument.
Mr. Bradshaw looked up at the sky. It was about to rain soon. He asked if Sivan and Chandru would quickly swim to the other end of the pond and pose from there. The playful smiles disappeared from their faces.
Sivan pointed to a broad tree towering over the far bank. Its thick trunk split in two, each half growing long, sinewy branches, repelling away from the bark that birthed them. The tree arched over the edge of the pond, as if guarding the entrance to the dense foliage beyond.
“The paalamaram,” Sivan said, “is where Yakshi dwells, a spirit that takes different forms to lure young men into the forest, never to be seen again.”
The interpreter nodded solemnly.
Mr. Bradshaw smiled. He had heard many similar tales and superstitions over the course of his travels.
“What does the Yakshi have against men?” he asked.
“She was betrayed by her brother and strangled in bed by the man she loved,” the interpreter said.
“Have any of you seen this spirit?” Mr. Bradshaw said.
“Only Braanthan Rajappan has lived to tell the tale,” Chandru said, “but he went insane.”
A woodcutter by profession, Rajappan had gone in search of prized sandalwood for a high-paying client. He lost his mind after the alleged abduction and harrowing escape from the forest. Nowadays, he sawed off the very branch he was seated on, making him a liability to anyone who hired his services.
“How about going three-quarters the way?” Mr. Bradshaw said, producing a single coin from his breast pocket. He was desperate for a shot before it started raining.
Sivan and Chandru looked at each other, enticed by the silver, scared for their lives. They both looked at the interpreter for guidance. He averted his gaze. Overhead, dark and heavy clouds closed in.
Mr. Bradshaw assured them it would be quick. Sivan glanced at the other bank. Thirty meters to and thirty meters back. The coin glittered in the swiftly receding light between Mr. Bradshaw’s pale index finger and ruddy thumb. Chandru shook his head. Too risky. Sivan, however, did not know of a single other person, except for the king of Travancore, who could boast of silver among their possessions.
He took a deep breath and launched from the stone steps. The reeds growing from the bed grazed against his chest and stomach. He reached forward with long, nimble strokes. The plants receded. The bottom became a dark shade of green. Soon, it was a murky, infinite black.
Halfway in, Sivan paused to catch his breath. The sun had disappeared behind the clouds. The paalamaram did not seem as menacing anymore. Its long branches arched forward in a welcoming embrace. The tree was in full bloom — a light breeze cradled its white and yellow flowers to the water. Sivan swam towards their soft perfume.
A few meters from the muddy bank, he stopped. His breath was shallow after the long swim; his heart pounded in his chest. The paalamaram loomed right above. He turned around and waved at the familiar shapes standing on the stone steps. Mr. Bradshaw raised a suit-clad hand, signaling him to hold still. Sivan couldn’t wait to get his hands on the silver coin. He reached down with his feet, feeling for a bottom to rest on, but it was still deep here.
As Sivan treaded water, waiting for the signal to swim back, he felt a presence behind him. At first, he thought it was his proximity to the paalamaram, its low-hanging branches gently swaying in the wind. The sweet scent of the flowers grew stronger, like a pot of wild honey had been placed behind him. It wafted closer, raising the hair behind his neck. He turned slowly.
Her long black hair, wet and unkempt, fell over her bare shoulders, floating on the water about her. The rise of her full breasts glistened despite the dim light. Her teeth gleamed porcelain. Her lips dripped crimson. Sivan stopped moving his hands, kicking his legs. He was buoyed by the black gaze of her empty eyes.
His mind registered distant sounds, calls from voices he once recognized, no longer heeded. Slender, red-painted fingernails surfaced before him. In her hand, she held an ornate, gold-plated, handheld mirror – a rare, precious aranmula kannadi. She turned slightly to admire herself in it. Her shy, mischievous smile beckoned him closer.
A clap of thunder shook the pond. Sivan jolted from his reverie. Fingernails the color of blood reached towards him. He turned and darted for the other end.
Heavy droplets of rain slapped the side of his face when he came up for air. He swam hard towards the shapes he recognized.
When he got to the other side, the interpreter pulled him up the steps and under his umbrella.
“Yakshi,” Sivan gasped.
Mr. Bradshaw, standing under another umbrella with his camera, pointed up at the sky. Was it the thunder that scared him?
The interpreter nodded. “Perhaps.”
“No,” Sivan said, heaving, petrified. He pointed in the direction of the tree: “Yakshi, yakshi.”
The other end was barely visible in the heavy downpour.
The interpreter patted Sivan’s back, trying to calm him down. Chandru wrapped an arm around Sivan’s shoulder.
“I don’t know if I got a good shot, young man,” Mr. Bradshaw said, “but here’s something for all your troubles.”
#
Many years later, an envelope arrived by airmail. Sivan Poduval took it to his study and opened it. It contained a single black-and-white photograph from a dark overcast day at the pond. Droplets of rain pockmarked the water surface. An overgrown tree, tall and wild, occupied nearly the entire background. In front of it was the blurred shape of a boy in mid-turn, shoulder-deep in water.
Sivan looked up from his desk. A square frame containing a nondescript silver coin hung on the wall. He flipped the photo over. It was simply signed Michael Bradshaw, OBE. There was no accompanying note. He stared at the blurred shape in the water, thinking back to that rainy afternoon. It had taken him months to get over the shock. His parents forbade him from ever returning to that pond. Even while bathing by the temple or the pond near the market, he stuck to the vicinity of the stone steps. His peers ragged him: there’s our strong swimmer Sivan Poduval, wallowing in the shallows.
When he was eighteen, he left to look for work in the city, hundreds of kilometers from his village. Soon, memories of his hometown faded. Surrounded by concrete, soot and automobile exhaust, he began to doubt his recollection of that monsoon afternoon. The only time he brought it up with Chandru, his childhood friend had laughed it off: children have wild imaginations.
Now, visiting his aging mother, Sivan was surprised to receive correspondence at his parents’ home, an address he had not lived at for so many years. He stared at the silver coin hanging on the wall, gifted to him by the man in beige for a photo that hadn’t even turned out properly. He flipped the photo around a few times, not knowing what to make of this worthless souvenir.
Minutes passed. He walked to the window and held it against the sun. Noticing a smudge near the center, he tried wiping it with his thumb. He wiped harder, but it didn’t go. He put on his reading glasses to take a closer look. Just behind and to the right of the distorted shape of his fourteen-year-old self, floating on the surface, defying all its metallic weight, was an ornate handheld mirror.
END