Gina trembled. There it was again. Old friend.
A dark shadow hovering to left of the fruit salesman intent on showing off the latest consignment of sun-kissed mangoes past the din on this busy,
traffic-encrusted road.
“Er…please some other time, but I have to go…” she thrust the mango she’d been examining into his hands, and scrambled into a taxi idling at the curb.
*Old friend* Her heart pounded. No, there was no way she could have warned him. ”Excuse me bhaisaab, but I see a dark shadow to your left…”
No way she could have asked him if he had an insurance policy, or bank savings or a will in place. Or gently hinted at the need for a medical check up. No, not without getting into serious trouble. Mad
woman, they’d call her. Or haul her to the police.
Or call her a witch, burn her at the stake.
Gina trembled.
Old friend. The shadows had first made their presence felt when she was in middle-school. One afternoon, Mrs. Patel, the next door neighbor had marched in, furious, after her daughter had rushed home, weeping. “Gina said I’m going to go to the hospital.”
Her mother had scolded her, cut off her pocket money and had packed her off to a distant relative’s the next day, “This girl’s getting too fanciful for her own good!”
“You’ve got the gift, child. Only they don’t understand. Our little secret, mustn’t tell anyone. Else they’ll say you have a black tongue.” Grandmother had said that afternoon, her unseeing eyes looking at some distant horizon, counting her beads in the silence that had settled in like the folds of silk.
She’d overheard the servant’s gossip only months later, how Missy *memsaab* had been thrown from a horse at school, and oh horrors–had cracked her head—a freak accident, an only child too, you understand, such a tragedy, never heard of in the last hundred years at that elite boarding school.
And she’d pleaded a migraine at her best friend’s wedding, feeling like a fraud, a Victorian dowager with an attack of bad nerves and smelling salts. For the dark apparition sitting by the groom at the dress rehearsal had been unmistakable.
Old friend.
Of course it was such a tragic accident when a car jumped the divider and rammed into them on their honeymoon.
Natural calamities—earthquakes. tsunamis, cyclones, thunderstorms—came with a trippy shadow, light and mist-like, that would sigh but dissolve quickly. Man-made events–terrorist attacks, accidents,
knifings and suchlike– would fetch a cloak of gloom, thick and sticky, cutting out the light on a bright sunshiny day and she’d retreat into silence, to flutter her hands, meditate and pray.
Meditation seemed to build a protective wall around her, to allow her to breathe and function normally. Although sometimes a word of caution would slip out—a baby held side-saddle on a scooter or a young
girl wavering, tipping over on the wrong side.
“Tell all, choose to divulge without discrimination and most importantly, without being asked, and you’ll lose the gift” her grandmother had whispered at her deathbed. “We’re ambassadors of the dark, but it must be a choice.”
Today, she’d decide. She caressed the shiny strip of tablets in her purse.
Today, she’d surrender to the sunlight.
_____________________
©2011 Mira Desai
Tags: Mira Desai
January 16th, 2012 at 10:49 am
Superbly crafted! Keep that pen/keyboard going!
January 16th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
A first rate story that is wholly original and sends chills up your spine. Mira is one of my favorite writers and this story only proves why that is.
January 16th, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Mira.
Wonderful work.
Abha