Epidemic By Numbers
Last year,the count stopped at forty- six ;this time -three hundred & fifteen gone & there's no stopping the epidemic...here they come,the truckers-Mumma MAUSAM COUNTING After all numbers did matter! and Mausam could always discern this abominable truth in a fashion so alien to Bihu. So, even as her virus- sapped limbs refused to co-operate with her dreary mind, her rickety fingers struggled to get the grip of the bedstead, nerves & sinews wrecked under the weight of her effort; she did manage to stretch her neck over the frame of her creaky bed and peep through the contorted window grills only to make sure she counted everyone & every number casting over Bihu's hut,waiting to see her die. Mausam brimmed with shivers as she counted them- a single speechless crow,fourteen pairs of quivery fingers & forteen pallid faces on Bihu's window & none at hers. _______ The silent crow- He was the most inexorable of their kind. The time of the day or the hour of call did never bother him. He was the free-spirited one, ‘the speechless’. He flew down every while,observed the morose pallid faces with the leery eyes of an interlocutor, took a quick peep into the hut, flicked his head on either side & took off only to be back in another while. The quivery fingers-They jittered over the walls as if they weren't fingers but butterflies in the stomach of a probable reality show winner, rested, only to wipe the sweat off their faces. The Pallid Faces- Flames flexed and jumped in their eyes,they wouldn't blink,not for a second. The faces faded in & out in complete synch with the flicker of the burning wick of a lantern hanging on the corridor like a loathsome abuse. The crude shoulders on which the faces rested often shuffled to exchange their muddied Gamchas from one shoulder to another,just like that. Men with broad shoulders - Bihu Men with only big fat mickeys - Mausam ....hmmm..and men with broad shoulders - Mausam Crackers boomed off at the tower-tops with roar enough to propel the 'speechless' off into thick air & cause a momentary freeze on the fingers & faces. The speechless halted on the penultimate branch of the chestnut & peered toward the lofty towers looming over the slums. To him, they appeared like impatient tongue clicking home-bred cats waiting for a nod to have a go at a bag of freshly cut fish. He clicked his head to a side & took wings back to Bihu's. ________ Another cracker whistled through the sky. This was just the one she was waiting for....Rocket No 5.It hung in the air for a while before it crackled to pop out an array of tiny vibrant parachutes which see-sawed in the thick city air only to dissolve quickly in the darkness of night. Celebrations knew no deadlines on the towertops & vice-versa. The entities on the tower-tops, probably, had their non-abrasive teeth dug deep into the best juicy steak in the town. They just went on & on...Lately, she had been counting the tower-tops & also the tiny excited heads on the tower -tops that often jumped & squealed under the glow of some stray rocket. Fucken Dickheads - Bihu oooooo..laaa...Sassy Rambos - Mausam Just another gush of torrid pain crimped itself in her stomach. The torrid pain had incidently found a long- lasting relationship in bursts of choking cough & they usually made conjoined visit to Bihu's groin but lately it had slyly turned polygamous in the company of whirling head & blurring eyes. Under their able symbiosis,Bihu never realised when her wobbly fingers lost their grip & she crashed back into the grimy folds of her bed. What she did realise & hear, before she fell into a delirious slumber, were the desperate flaps of the speechless very close to her own window. Bihu's not gone....not yet- Next morning Mumma wasn't exactly smiling when she announced this. Relieved, she first ran her fingers over her face & touched the smears of dry tears encrusted on her face but never cared to brush them off. Then Spreading her bedsheet over her head, she let the fingers drape her face. Light often found way into her eyes, sneaking through the bed sheet & her clasping on & off fingers. It was another Bihu's game Mausam was better at and she knew it. She allowed her hands to skulk into her nightie & feel the loose shrunken apple like skin lapping on either side .she ran her hands through her coarse ribs; both the right & the left side were drawn at perfect 13 & for a moment she wondered how much was Bihu scoring. psss..show me the last answer - Bihu I let you in on all the answers - Mausam ...The last one...Mausam,just the last one baby ...No ...why....why??? ...sshhh....Don't shout Then,Why don't you just show me.. No ..Why?.... Just a sec.. Did I Just ...Did I just see you giggle, giggly kitty..You think this is funny...Just show me the last one... swine..the last one.. Hide & seek,sand castle,Truth or dare,skipping,racing,Jump the fence,jump the drain,jump me-Mausam always called the shots & Bihu closely fought. Mausam could run 100 meters in 7 seconds with the extra load of Bihu's school bag & catch the window seat of a running bus. She could climb the tallest 11th branch of the fig tree while Bihu picked the fallen figs from the ground. She could kiss 3 fatassed boys one after the other to Bihu's nil. She could bully a 200 metre free lunch line at school and make way for Bihu & herself. She could twist & braid her hair in 5 seconds,could pump vigorously and fill two buckets of water in 5 minutes & score 65 to Bihu's 60 in the term end exams,thanks to the last one .........she could smoke a full cigarette. It tastes acrid...like raw cashew-fruits. - Bihu Ya...it tastes acrid-like Anshum's mouth. - Mausam So, on the tenth evening of their joint collapse in their respective beds , just as Mumma announced with her breath crushed under her teeth ;Last year only 46 had to go,but this time 315 gone & there's no stopping the epidemi;,Mausam was dead-sure , she would go before Bihu. Since then, no words were exchanged between them, no challenges thrown at the virus-laden air but Mausam knew it like she knew the number of cock & bull pictures they had etched together on the walls of the school toilet, the game was on. __________ The living may belong to the families but the dead were solely owned by the truckers. That was the rule. The dead were to be cremated separately lest they should disturb the living & the other dead. Mausam peeked out furtively when the truck arrived daily at daybreak and parked sometimes, slanting over the back alley fancy store. The speechless crow & co. wasted no time to find their reserved spaces on top of the truck's body. They rallied with the truck, flapping & popping like fists of a biker who just closed first in the race. That was also when,the towers crashed open their windows and a gambit of tiny ajar heads with masked faces peered out at the scene,sometimes with binocular-glued-eyes. The whole exercise had the rhythmic semblance. Two burly men jumped out of the cabin first. They had a uniform too-pinstriped blue shirt,dark trousers & a baseball cap. Baseball cap should have looked beautiful had it not been for the protruding mask on their faces. They stretched their gloves to its fullest before they picked the fresh bodies from the heap and threw it up to the men already positioned at the cargo hold of the truck. Between the time of release by the groundsmen & the time of grab by the cargomen,the bodies actually flew in the air making the speechless crow co. flutter. The men on the cargo hold were not the icky ones like groundstaff.They were a sophisticated lot,one of them even wore tinted glasses. They stacked the bodies,one over the other,neatly,like books in the school library. Then,one of them shouted a number & the other ably responded by boldly scribbling it down with a permanent marker on a slip & pinning it to the clothing, the bodies wore. Mausam,frozen like ice-sleet,just couldn't take her awestruck eyes off the scene. After doing away with the initial shock,Just as the cargomen did, she too started keeping account of the dead never bothering to look at their known & unknown faces.She simply counted. 55.56.....82....85.....91...But She soon gave up as other interesting counts fruitfully engaged her like the number of hairs she lost every day to her bed, number of ribs countable with every passing day,number of towers & heads,number of crackers,number of pallid faces......... BIHU COUNTING I want to ask you something...But don't smile..alright...Tell me,Who's your best friend? -Bihu BZZZZZZ....he he...hehe -Mausam can you just stop acting like a bonzo & give me a straight reply. Ok..relax sweetie..I've two best friends. Names?? You know the first one........of-course Seemala Fatima. O...k....And? And.....hmmmmm.... who else but Anshuman. and???..........now stop giggling bitch. A whiff of cool breeze sneaked between the towers and went straight for the slums. After sweeping through the dusty pavement & littering the empty cans at the overflowing garbage,it went toward the chestnut tree where it swept a drowsy speechless crow off its feet.It gyrated around the tree for a while,creaking its branches in all directions making several pallid faces look towards it, only to find a free passage to Bihu's through her own window.Bihu wasn't exactly sleeping when the wind grizzled her loose hair and slipped into a ruffled bedsheet just managing to loose its steam very close to her bony feet. She was simply surprised. It did not happen every day that the evening breeze found way into her room,thanks to the formidable redoubts formed by the thick faces that were ever clustering to her window. But today,She was even more surprised to find zero faces on her window. Something was not going wrong. She did a snap inspection of her state. Fever- as it were,higher than the rockets the dickheads flew on the fucken towers-tops,Skin-loose,shrunken & lumpy like a bearish stock-market graph,Bones-rebellious & angry like an innocent put on trial for no offence of his. What wasn't going wrong?When the answer thudded against her skull,she craned her shrivelled neck out of the window & saw them there. The political,revolutionary,dramatic & pseudo faces of her kinsmen,who had been on her window till last night, had quietly shifted their loyalties, gazes & numbers for the only window ,they were more than welcome. Mausam crashed back into her bed & wiped beads of sweat off her face. She knew Mausam-in all her pain & anguish-must definitely have felt relieved to see the faces back at her window. She knew,If only for fraction of a second,Mausam's eyes must certainly have glittered & she might have smiled too. In the matrix of Mausam's numbers;of competitions,conflicts,apparitions,disappearances,losses,more losses,heights,weirdities;only number Bihu might have wanted to count was the number of smiles that bloomed on Mausam's face,everytime she won.She had a rare smile.A smile teasing the fringes of mordacity and mastery. Alas! her smiles are so frivolous. They just disappeared before they became countable. She knew exactly when the game had begun and she knew of all the games she played & lost again & again to Mausam,this was the only game she just couldn't bear to loose. Not because of a sudden spurt of hedonistic desires or something, but then, it was just so uncool to see Mausam crooned in a truck with a three digit number pinned to her chest; a number, that wouldn't even bring a tiny uncountable smile on Mausam's face. She looked at the gloomy,helpless figures of slum dwellers shrouded on Mausam's window .She was sure Mausam was done counting each one of them,so she had to count them too. she was sure Mausam had counted fourteen,so she counted a number less. Thirteen pallid faces,thirteen pairs of quivery fingers & not even a single speechless crow casting over Mausam's hut. After all numbers did matter!
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