Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories Read online

The boy looked down. ‘A tiger.’

  ‘A man-eater?’

  He hesitated. ‘We think it’s dangerous. And we’ve tried to bait it and hunt it down…and failed. They say you…’

  Bah Hem lit a cigarette; it glowed in the dim bare-bulb light. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kasa.’

  ‘Kasa, I’ll help you only if you tell me the truth.’

  The boy finished the rum in a single gulp and grimaced. There was a little more colour in his face, but he still looked troubled.

  ‘The army people in the area wounded it…it will turn into a man-eater sooner or later. My father—’ and here he halted, ‘is unwell, otherwise he would have taken care of this himself. He was…is a very good marksman. They say you are too…’

  Bah Hem spoke only after he’d finished the cigarette. ‘Alright, I’ll go with you…’ and he raised a hand to stop Kasa from speaking, ‘but we will leave tomorrow morning. Tonight you stay in Shillong.’

  Since Kasa knew no one in town he could ask for such a favour, and it wasn’t particularly safe for a dkhar to stay on his own in a hotel, Bah Hem invited him to his house. He and his family lived in Umsohsun, close to a bridge over a large stream, in a lime-washed house built on a sloping hillside and accessed by a line of crooked stone steps. As they climbed, both of them bathed in moonlight, Bah Hem thought how it could have been him and Nathaniel returning home. Esther, Bah Hem’s wife, made up a bed for their visitor, downstairs in a cot in the living room, surprisingly without question. Usually, like most locals in Shillong, she was wary of outsiders and, what they considered, their strange language and habits. Their other children—a son and two daughters—treated Kasa as a curiosity, something their father had picked up from one of the locality melas he was so fond of attending.

  ‘Patlun lyngkot,’ giggled one of them, pointing at Kasa’s shorts.

  Esther told them sharply to behave themselves, especially at the dining table, and spooned out more stew on their visitor’s plate.

  Only late at night, in a silently dreaming house, did Esther say to her husband, ‘He has Nathaniel’s eyes.’

  Bah Hem said he thought so too.

  Before Nathaniel grew too weak to stay awake and spent most of his days lying in bed, dehydrated, with his hair falling out in clumps. By then he also threw up most of what he ate, everything made him nauseous. The fever had been replaced by headaches, a perpetual throbbing at no particular spot in his head. ‘It doesn’t look like he’s getting better,’ Esther would whisper while their son slept, clutching her husband’s hand in terror. Yet when they asked the doctor, he said there was not much more he could do. They needed to be patient. On some afternoons, while Esther rested in the hotel, Bah Hem would sit in Nathaniel’s room, narrating stories, not the ones he’d told him when he was a child, but of what they’d do when Nathaniel grew older. He’d take him fly-fishing to the Bhoroli, hunting in Garo Hills, perhaps they could get Nathaniel that drum kit he’d always wanted. Even with his wife they’d only speak of the past or the future. There was nothing in between. The present didn’t exist; it was a black hole they all stood over. He’d always hated hospitals, and this one with its sterile whiteness seemed to suck away all the colour off Nathaniel’s face. How could he take it away? Why was this happening to his son? There were no answers. Apart from a slant of sunlight that caught Nathaniel’s cheek, now hollow and wasted, the vase of wilted flowers, and the beep of a machine that mechanically monitored his heart.

  The next day, they set off early, catching the first bus out of town before the sun’s rays brushed the mist-shrouded hills of Shillong. Bah Hem had wanted to drive his jeep, but Kasa said it was safer travelling in a group.

  ‘It takes time for the army to check all the passengers, but it’s better than being caught alone by militants.’

  They hit the dirt track around midday although the landscape around them had long given way to paddy fields the colour of sand. Soon this too would change to the perpetually lush hills of North Cachar. The army, Kasa explained, had been sent in by the central government two years ago to quell separatist movements in the state. Their presence was less around this area, though, and their numbers mainly concentrated in the other more troubled parts of Assam such as Lakhimpur and Sibsagar. These were the main strongholds of the United Liberation Front of Assam, a group who claimed to be fighting for sovereignty and independence.

  ‘I don’t know which is worse,’ said Kasa. ‘The ULFA…or the army who trouble us and call us militant dogs.’

  Along the way there were seven checkpoint stops—each time they were made to get off while the interior of the bus and its luggage carrier were inspected. Bah Hem had heard of how people were robbed on night journeys—his Mizo neighbour’s niece had hidden her money in the hem of the bus window curtains; the only place that hadn’t been searched. Their rifles were stashed at the bottom of a canvas bag that Bah Hem had packed the night before; stowed under Kasa’s seat. It went unnoticed.

  They were dropped off at the outskirts of the boy’s village, from where they had to walk. The gulmohar-lined road was empty apart from a boy herding cows. It was strangely quiet. Soon, the settlement came into view, perched on the edge of a ridge, ringed by sloping hills criss-crossed by dusty yellow footpaths. It was late afternoon and the sun was slowly dragging light away to the west; a thickening curtain of mist hung above the ground. They stopped outside a thatch-roof house slightly bigger than all the others in the line. Faces appeared and disappeared at doorways and windows yet no one approached them. A boy, no older than ten, stood shyly in the compound, peering at them with large, dark eyes. A cat the colour of night twined itself around his ankles.

  ‘Noru, ask Maina to make tea.’

  The boy and creature vanished.

  After a quick wash at a garden tap, Kasa ushered Bah Hem to the kitchen, where a girl of about seventeen tended to a kettle on a wood fire.

  ‘My sister,’ said Kasa.

  Maina nodded at their visitor, her long hair falling over her shoulders. She was dressed in a cotton mekhla the colour of mustard, and it made her seem older, as though she’d stepped into someone else’s clothes, and someone else’s role. Bah Hem wondered what had happened to their mother, why she wasn’t here. As Maina bustled around with cups and cutlery, he noticed there was something restless and fluttering about her. Like a caged bird. Noru, though playing with the cat in the corner, kept a careful watch on them all. Kasa and Bah Hem sat at a low-lying table, and an old man shuffled in like a ghost through the door. His age was impossible to reckon; he could have been anywhere between sixty and hundred—immensely thin with a pale chador wrapped around him like a shroud. His eyes, though, were sharp and bright as any youngster’s, glinting with wisdom and wariness.

  He introduced himself as Kasa’s grandfather. ‘Thank you,’ he said in a voice that sounded like dry, raspy leaves. ‘We are very grateful for your help.’

  ‘You should wait to thank me until after I’ve killed the tiger,’ said Bah Hem. To his surprise, the jest was met with solemn silence.

  The grandfather joined them at the table and Maina served them tea and a plate of coconut sweets.

  ‘How’s your father?’ asked Bah Hem.

  Maina and Kasa exchanged a look.

  Their grandfather answered, ‘He’s keeping poorly; we can only hope for the best.’

  The nearest medical clinic, he explained, was over an hour away in Haflong. They had brought medicine for him, but it didn’t seem to have helped.

  ‘When do you think you can start the hunt?’ asked Kasa.

  Bah Hem felt four pairs of eyes boring into him, even the cat seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  ‘There’s no need for our guest to stay up tonight,’ interrupted the old man. ‘He has had a long journey, let him rest.’

  That night Bah Hem might as well have kept watch. Despite being a sound sleeper in mostly any circumstances—knobbly forest floors
, dank circuit house beds, cramped train berths—he was kept awake by a feeling that something was amiss and unnatural. His room was bare yet comfortable, and he lay there staring into the darkness, with a peculiar heaviness in his chest. It didn’t help that close to midnight strange noises echoed from the other end of the house. Whimpering that changed to low moans of pain and then to cries of great distress. It must be Kasa’s father, he thought. Except sometimes, the sounds seemed inhuman. Finally, exhausted and wide awake, Bah Hem crept out of the room to investigate. A pair of glassy green eyes stared at him in the corridor—it was the cat. If Noru wasn’t asleep, he wouldn’t be far behind. At the end of a narrow corridor, the door to the invalid’s room was slightly ajar, just enough for him to peer through into murky lantern-lit dimness. He could see the edge of a thin mattress next to which sat Maina and her grandfather. The girl was crying softly while the old man had his hand out, muttering under his breath. Bah Hem couldn’t see the suffering man, but he could hear him. As the cries rose to a dreadful shriek, a touch on his elbow startled him. He looked down at Noru, cradling the cat in his arms.

  ‘Father is wounded.’ It was the first time Bah Hem had heard the boy speak. Before Bah Hem could ask who had wounded him, Noru walked away to the kitchen where the wood fire lay low and dying.

  The next morning, Bah Hem arose after a few hours of sleep, unrefreshed and restless. Despite warm sunshine bathing the small village and lapping over the paddy fields below, he was still uneasy. He would prefer to leave soon, he thought, as he ate breakfast, a plate of small puffy puris and spicy potato. After his meal, determined to carry out his mission, he asked Kasa to show him around the village, and the outskirts where the tiger had been sighted. It didn’t take them long to walk through the settlement; women sat in front of their huts cleaning rice or spreading thick red chillies out to dry. Children ran up and stopped at a distance, staring at them curiously, pointing to Bah Hem and whispering among themselves. At the foot of the hill, on the other side, a dense forest began—‘That’s where the army camp is…’ pointed out Kasa. The people of the village would gladly have stayed away from them if it weren’t for a path running through the forest to Malangpa, a neighbouring market village. ‘We can’t stop using the road…how would we survive without the bazaar?’ said Kasa. ‘They’re vile creatures. Our women aren’t safe. My sister…’ he began and then stopped. Bah Hem could see why the people here kept a wary distance from him. Their distrust of outsiders had only deepened with the army’s presence. Kasa also showed him where the tiger had been sighted—drinking water at a pond near the paddy fields, in the bamboo thickets near the village, and mostly pacing near the edge of the forest.

  ‘We’ll keep watch from seven-thirty this evening,’ said Bah Hem. Kasa agreed but added, ‘I must warn you, at that time it’s difficult to see in the mist.’

  Bah Hem said he’d been on shoots in far more difficult conditions.

  ‘I’m sure…but you don’t know the Jatinga mist. Even birds get disoriented. They fly into our torches and die. Or sometimes, they lie on the ground waiting for us to kill them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We believe it’s a mercy.’

  ‘Don’t you leave the birds to fly away?’

  ‘It’s not what they would want us to do.’

  After that they both fell silent; Kasa polished his shotgun with a rag, while Bah Hem paced and smoked a cigarette.

  That evening, after quick cups of strong black tea, Bah Hem and Kasa stepped out with their rifles slung over their shoulders. In this half-light, with the moon and cloudy shadows, Kasa reminded him more than ever of his eldest son. The slope of his jaw, the way his mouth was set, and the look in his eyes, like Nathaniel just before he played a football match or while he wrestled with a catch on his fishing line. Bah Hem remembered the stories he’d told Nathaniel on his sickbed—a pang shot through him sharper than the thorns of the jara tenga his hand accidentally brushed against.

  ‘Those birds you told me about,’ asked Bah Hem, ‘when do they fly to Jatinga?’

  ‘During these months,’ the boy answered, ‘up until November.’

  ‘Do they come every year?’

  Kasa nodded. ‘Every year since even my grandfather can remember.’

  Bah Hem hesitated. ‘Have you killed any?’

  ‘Yes. Many. I told you,’ the boy stopped and looked at the older man, ‘it’s a mercy.’

  They had almost reached the edge of the settlement, the mist lying thick and vast before them like the sea, blurring the lights of the village.

  ‘You stay here.’ Bah Hem indicated a cluster of flowering hibiscus bushes. ‘I’ll move further down the slope…closer to the forest.’

  Bah Hem stowed himself behind a clump of soil and tufty undergrowth—it could be a long wait. The stillness of the evening around him was broken only by the dismal howling of dogs, and the shrill chirping of crickets. He brushed away a spider that crawled over his hand. Somewhere, he could hear a rustle—of leaves, wings? he couldn’t tell—and he thought about the birds that lay waiting to die. He remembered an afternoon three weeks before Nathaniel’s death; his son had had a particularly bad night and was almost unrecognizable as the nineteen-year-old who’d left Shillong only six months earlier. The doctor had broken the news to them as gently as he could—that there wasn’t much hope, that the chemotherapy wasn’t working. The disease was rapidly spreading to the nervous system, after which… ‘It would be best to take him home,’ the doctor suggested, ‘make him as comfortable as possible.’ Bah Hem had refused; he would stay here as long as it would take for his son to get better. There was no other way. That afternoon, standing by the window, watching his son sleep, he tried to will the doctor’s words out of his head.

  Then Nathaniel awoke. ‘Papa,’ he called quietly.

  Bah Hem had rushed to his side. Was there anything he needed? Was he comfortable enough? Should he call the nurse?

  His son shook his head. It was an effort for him to move. Infections, small and insidious, had wracked his body to shreds. ‘I had a dream, papa. Of where I would go after this…’

  ‘You mustn’t speak of…’

  Nathaniel tried to lift his hand. ‘I can feel it. This immense warmth and light. But something won’t let me go…’

  He drifted away and fell asleep, exhausted from the effort. The next day Bah Hem asked the doctor if they could take Nathaniel home. It was, he hoped, as Kasa had said, an act of mercy.

  Somewhere in the darkness a chorus of drunken cries rang out, a party of soldiers were staggering back to the camp. Bah Hem’s eyes burned from the strain—it was difficult to see in the fog—and his shoulders ached from the weight of the gun. They’d been waiting two hours. If the tiger didn’t show up tonight, he would have to stay longer in this place. He felt weary and dispirited. It didn’t bode well, it wasn’t the right mood for a hunt.

  Yet when he heard a short, sharp hiss from Kasa, his thoughts cleared, and the ache was forgotten. The creature had been sighted. Bah Hem shifted his position and trained his eyes towards the clearing before the forest.

  It was barely a shadow, a dark form in the mist, but it moved, treading carefully, its grace defeated by a terrible limp. It paced restlessly, head hung low, moving in and out of the dull moonlight. If he wanted a clear shot, he would have to get closer. Kasa was behind him, breathing heavily, his eyes burning with a strange light. They crept down the slope, taking care to keep the creature in sight. The tiger was resting now, licking its wounded paw. For a moment it looked up and let out a low growl. Finally, Bah Hem settled to take a shot. He unclasped the safety catch, waited for a moment’s breath, and pulled the trigger. In a second, the animal crumpled to the ground, roaring in pain.

  ‘Got it,’ said Bah Hem and glanced at his companion.

  Kasa’s face was wet with tears.

  They left the creature where it was—‘our people will clear it in the morning’—checking only to see that it was dead. Its eyes stare
d sightless, curiously human eyes filled with pain that hadn’t left even in death. They walked back to the hut in silence. Bah Hem was exhausted. It hadn’t been a good hunt. He was left with none of the heady exhilaration that accompanied a kill.

  Back at the house, the grandfather was standing at the door.

  Kasa uttered one word. ‘Father?’

  The old man shook his head.

  Kasa melted into the shadows inside.

  Bah Hem put away his gun and warmed himself by the kitchen fire. Maina and Noru were nowhere in sight. The warmth and tiredness closed in on him; he must have dozed.

  It was a strangely dreamless sleep, as though his mind had completely shut out the world. When he opened his eyes, the grandfather was sitting nearby wrapped in his chador, his shadow long and limbless against the wall.

  ‘Where’s Kasa?’ asked Bah Hem.

  ‘He is resting.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your son.’

  The fire was sinking but neither made an attempt to revive it.

  The grandfather’s voice was low and toneless. ‘Five evenings ago, when Maina was walking back from Malangpa, a group of army men started harassing her in the forest. This had happened before, but this time there were more men teasing her, frightening her. Suddenly, she said, out of nowhere a tiger flung itself on them…it gave her time to run away. She heard shots but she didn’t look back. That same evening my son fell ill.’ He paused before asking, ‘Do you find that strange?’

  Without waiting for an answer, the old man continued. ‘They say all over this region—in Sohra and Jirang and other far-flung corners—there are what people call shape-shifters, men whose souls can inhabit animals…’ He left the sentence dangling like a broken fishing line.

  ‘If what you’re saying is true, then I killed your son.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘No, you didn’t. His spirit was wounded. You only set it free.’

  For some inexplicable reason, Bah Hem wanted to laugh so it would swallow his grief.

  ‘How would men change into animals? Do they utter some mantra? Or drink some magic potion that gives them fur and a tail? Or…or is it hereditary? A family secret passed on from father to son.’ He sounded hysterical.