Tarini Tilve
Issue 3: Haunt, August 2024
Lifting the curtain over the entrance, Raunak emerged from the hut and into the pre-dawn darkness that greeted him daily. His eyes, looking through a filter of dust, took in the slew of brown huts amongst the gray plants. A fence with barbed wires ran down the perimeter of the basti, wires that were now catching light from the streetlamps and scoring long shadows onto the scorched ground. Raunak stared at their imprints on the soil, imagining them unravelling into ropes that tied around his ankle and dragged him back as the sun climbed the sky. One beheld the sun only through its rise, its eventual zenith upon which Raunak would have to cease working and return home. What would be a good number of gardwo to bring home today? Twenty? Forty? Their last bag of rice had been weevil-infested and the slightly sour smell from their uncooked lentils was becoming hard to ignore. Maybe fifty would be enough to replace both of those.
Another shadow cut through the scoring on the ground. Raunak slunk backwards, pressing his back against the hut as the shadow got bigger. The figure left deep and distorted footprints in the soil, moving with the jerky motions of a horse rider. Each breath shook its entire body, a deep rasping noise that emerged from the lungs and left the mouth in half-gasps, as if the body never pulled in enough air.
Raunak grimaced as he stared at the face. Two eyes that almost bulged out of their sockets set in a face that was just as swollen. The stretched skin had a slight tint of red, reminding Raunak of the tightness of a pressure cooker right before it gave way. He had known that face two months ago as his neighbour, Ajay.
As Ajay walked away from him, Raunak saw the twin metal triangles that now extended from bleeding raw gashes in his back. With each triangle, multiple nodes held the structure up in a lattice pattern, squeezing and twisting flesh through multiple exit wounds. The skin was supposed to grow around them, so one saw the nodes as emerging from the man himself. Yet with each move the skin stretched, exposing sinews and tendons.
*
When he had first heard of the amritas, Raunak had thought of wings. His dadi had scoffed at the idea when the sarkaar had first put it out.
“They make us leave our homes and now this?” she asked, sipping on a cup of tea as she twitched her nose.
“So you would rather sit there and die like frogs inside boiling water? Dadi, the sarkaar is doing what it can and we need to do what we can. Sikandar got the operation and he’s already gotten the full-day work pass. How can I make money if I have to keep coming back and hiding in the house every afternoon like a rat?”
Raunak had reached into his pocket and taken out the white sheet that had appeared on the doorstep of each house, appearing in the dead of night as suddenly as the thing it was announcing. On it, the words “Project Garuda” were in a large, bold font. He held it out to his dadi who only turned her face away from his outstretched hand. Raunak brought the sheet closer to himself and read out the words on it.
Dear recipient,
Are you looking for a bold new solution to the heat crisis of our times? Tired of being limited by how far and how long you can stay out?
Unlock your full potential with Project Garuda. With our cutting-edge technology, our newly invented amritas cool the blood within the body while cycling water and nutrients through you. Through this, we allow young and able jobseekers to find employment outside their respective bastis during high temperatures for longer periods of time.
Raunak skimmed the rest of the form. The best doctors medicine has to offer... Experience little disruption to your daily life. At the bottom, a disclaimer in small print read:
Possible complications can include death. Please note that the government is not responsible for any issue that arises. Responsibility for all aftercare falls solely on the recipient.
Raunak glanced at their medicine cabinet, which held a handful of pills for fever and headache as well as one unnamed yellow pill that no one dared to test. Dadi placed her cup on a table and huffed. She leaned further on her cane which she used to hobble around the house on good days.
“What does that bewakoof Sikandar know?” she asked. “He would jump in a well with no water inside. Inserting those into your back to cool down your blood. No, I won’t allow such a thing. Throw that damn form away.”
Raunak walked away and tucked the form under his mattress. He imagined Sikandar with a new cap and a grey suit, like the ones the government officials wore. The cotton dresses he would buy for that girl that lived three houses down from them. The roasted corn he would treat Raunak to after his first pay came in. Sikandar had said so himself. I will come back in two days he had said as he buttoned up a special shirt he had been given for the operation.
Three days later Sikandar showed up at his doorstep, his wet shirt clinging to his body, his hair stuck to his forehead. His mouth emitted animal-like grunts that were only interrupted by the weak “Maa”s he whispered for a mother he had not seen in a decade. Raunak laid him down on his stomach, wiping his back and face with a wet cloth. Sikandar clutched at his blistered throat, gasping and choking as he coughed out clumps of phlegm mixed with blood. He looked up at Raunak with eyes that had a pool of red where the whites should have been, begging Raunak to use the kitchen knife and carve out the amritas instead of waiting for the medic. Then he writhed as he scratched at his own back, nails descending into already rotting skin. One of his hands hit something and it landed on Raunak. He looked down and saw a crawling maggot. Raunak flailed, then stared at the back of his hand where a red smudge was all that remained.
Sikandar’s cries got quieter and the rasp from deep within his chest grew louder. Then, silence. The medic walked in, took one look at the scene and scratched his chin as he stared at the body. He shook his head, setting his bag of tools on the floor.
Poor kid. You gotta wash yourself properly after the procedure, you know? Rest and use ointment, not run around. I am sorry, these things go wrong sometimes. Only God can give guarantee, we are only humans. Are you sure you want to stay here? Better to wait outside.
He carved out the metallic parts, half of which had turned brownish red and flaky. The skin on Sikandar’s back near the two gaping holes oozed a green liquid. Raunak walked out of the house, took five steps then fell to his knees and retched the contents of his stomach.
From another house, the first man walked out of his home with only the shirt on his back and the white paper clutched in his fist. Then the second. Then, the third. Slowly, Raunak no longer saw the people he had grown up with within the basti anymore. Instead, he saw creatures that held only the faces of the people he once knew.
*
Raunak glanced at the mattress and immediately looked away. He picked up his comb and ran the last few teeth left on it over his hair. The clock on their drawer read 5:32 am. Seven hours. Eight if he could push it. He picked up the clock and turned it, glancing at the bottom.
Product of Kanishta Factory.
Kanishta Factory, like the other factories, lay beyond the checkpoint that the sarkaar had first established when the basti had been formed; when the crashing sea had overrun the coastal town Raunak called home. The checkpoint – where the old man with the white beard and beady eyes had stopped him from taking a step further the first time he had approached.
“No operation, no kaam,” he had said, never taking his eyes off his phone. Behind him, a sign that read “leave at your own peril” was displayed. At the bottom, the date read 2060. Ten years later, Raunak still remembered the blazing, bone-biting heat from when he was eighteen that year. By then, any work beyond that point was only permitted for those who had gone under the knife, and every afternoon the huts filled up as people waited out the sun. As time passed that number dwindled and the number of people who went past the checkpoint increased.
Then the people left behind started mumbling about lower wages, hungry children, days-old roti and the closed borders of other nations. So they campaigned, as unhappy people are wont to do, and were allowed out to work in places like Kanishta, where stagnant and uncirculated air filled the rooms with a heat like the one under the earth’s surface. In fact, Raunak could only hope that death was a colder affair.
Raunak set the clock back down and turned to leave. From inside the hut, the thaak, thaak of the cane sounded just before his Dadi appeared. The sound of her cane turned into a long screech against the floor and Raunak rushed to her side as she collected herself.
“How many times have I told you to call me for help, dadi? But no, you would rather fall. What do you need?” asked Raunak.
“I need to wash my hands and eyes. Do you want to take them off my body and wash them for me? I am old, not useless.”
Raunak shook his head.
“Listen,” she said as she looked anywhere but at him, “if you can, could you buy us more eyedrops? I threw out the bottle last week. Have been taking from that Lali lady and well, I don’t want to trouble them anymore.”
Raunak hummed, picking up his brown satchel and slinging it across his body. He kissed her cheek and left the house before she could place her hand on his head to bless him, not wanting to see how far the scales that once began near her nail bed had grown. Raunak walked by Lali’s house, where a woman was hanging clothes while balancing a wriggling bundle with flabby arms and legs around her hip. As they exchanged smiles, he noted the tight lines around her lips.
*
Strictly speaking, Kanishta wasn’t far. Yet the sweat that showed up in patches at the back of his shirt would have convinced anyone otherwise. He took out a water bottle from his satchel and gulped down a bit before pouring some on his neck. He gazed down at the surface of the water through the opening of the bottle but then capped it and placed it back inside the satchel.
Flicking his shirt away from his body, Raunak walked up to the gates of Kanishta. A facility with three buildings glued by the side to one another with cylindrical pipes that reached upwards to the sky to penetrate it. The factory’s windows had smudges on its panes from numerous fingerprints and the concrete flooring had blisters that Raunak never looked at for too long. He ran an identity card along the slot of a small rectangle mounted near the door.
Access Granted.
He walked through, almost running straight into Ajay. Raunak held his breath, watching as the latter made his way towards the assembly line with panting breaths and loud clanks. Raunak made a dash for the other room, which was closer to an exit that allowed men like him to leave quickly and return to the basti when the temperature started to rise. He heaved a sigh as he saw two other men, chatting with their arms slung over each other’s smooth backs. Their eyes lingered on Ajay as he walked towards the other heavy-breathing men. Their shoulders hunched, heads closer together as they whispered to each other. One of them made a gesture, causing the other one to break out into loud laughter before they both stopped, catching sight of Raunak.
The man who made the gesture cleared his throat, then walked over and smacked Raunak on the back with his meaty hand.
“Kaise ho bhai?” he asked.
Raunak mumbled a small “good” and smiled through another question about his dadi’s health and how he had heard (from someone who knew someone else) that his dadi had been borrowing medicine a lot recently. The sound of a loud buzzer going through the factory saved him from having to give an answer. He walked over to the assembly line, which groaned and clanked as it came to life and started moving forward. Raunak began selecting and packaging the parts that came through, putting them in their assigned boxes and setting them up to be shipped.
The air around him burned hotter as he worked. Already, he could see drops of his sweat falling onto the boxes. He took a deep breath, counting every fifteenth package as a quarter of a beele. His arms yearned to stick to his side for just a moment and yet the belt in front of him only plowed forward. The tightness in his calves grew, already strained from his earlier walk. But it was the heat, a simulation of hell that tightened around Raunak’s neck and burrowed deep within his body. He felt a steady beat drum against his skull and the sweat covering his upper lip and brow fell quicker, landing on his boxes or disappearing under his shirt.
Raunak set this last box down harder than the ones before, pressing his thumb against his temple as dark spots danced in front of his eyes. The man from earlier came over, his eyes scanning Raunak who was leaning forward on his feet the more he worked.
“We should head home soon, bhai.”
“Just a bit more,” Raunak replied.
A soft hum came in and Raunak watched from the corner of his eye as the man shuffled away to shut down his line. The packages blurred into a long stream of brown as he picked them up, reminding Raunak of the long exposure shots he would take with his father’s camera as they walked down the lanes of their old neighborhood. His father laughed at them, ruffled his hair, and pulled Raunak closer for a photo. We will print this one out so you can see it clearly, he had said. The memory faded away as Raunak’s eyes refocused on the scene in front of him, taking in the boxes as they travelled down the black fabric that felt like a long oesophagus leading elsewhere.
A clammy hand shot out and grabbed Raunak’s. The smell of putrid stomach acid reached Raunak’s nostrils. God, he’s already thrown up, he thought.
“Bhai, we need to go now.”
Raunak fumbled with the red switch next to his station, pressing down on it. The belt let out a long groan and spluttered to a halt. Somewhere, someone pressed something into his open palm as he started making his way to the exit. He looked down at his palm, still swaying as he counted out the notes in his hand. Fifty. From across the room, the sound of a low hum like the one in his fridge and a louder beep that rang out at every five intervals caught his attention. He turned his head and saw Ajay, with his deep rasping breaths audible from the other end of the room, smile and wave at another man who winced as he raised his arm and waved back. Two weeks ago, that man would have had to leave the factory at the same time as Raunak and the other clammy handed men that reeked of sweat and vomit. Now, he was still getting used to the new additions on his back.
Raunak sat outside Kanishta, guzzling the rest of his water down. No longer seeing spots in front of his eyes, he slung his bag up higher and began the trek back home. Upon reaching the basti, he headed to Kamin’s provisions shop.
He surveyed the offerings, hesitating for a moment before picking up half a packet of daal and the smallest bag of rice. He grinned as he picked up the bottle of eyedrops, already hearing his dadi’s voice telling him with a chuckle that money comes in during the hot seasons. He approached the front, where a lanky figure arranged and rearranged papers, the money god keeping watch over his head.
“One bottle of eyedrops please, Kamin bhai.”
“Twenty gardwo.”
Raunak laughed.
“Kuch bhi bhai. Trying out new jokes?” he added, placing ten gardwo on the table.
Kamin glanced at the money, then pointed at the papers on his table.
“You see these? They have just come in from the sarkaar, price hike on everything. Look, the paper is still warm.”
Raunak stared at him. Kamin’s furrowed brows were the only things that moved on his face as he set the bottle back on the counter. He clenched his thumb within the fist of his other hand.
“I want to help you.”
Raunak turned around and walked out. He stared at the ground, kicking up dirt as he walked. Then the road became more gravel, and he looked up, staring at the curtain that covered the door to his own hut. He tried to listen for the soft snores of his dadi but heard only the cicadas, their noises scratching against his ears like running nails down dry skin. He took a deep breath and walked in. His dadi’s figure lay on the cot, curled up like a baby. As he stared, she turned in her sleep and her fingers came up to rub at her eyes before her hand settled below her cheek, resting against the other hand as if in prayer. He stepped away, the floor under him creaked.
“Raunak, is that you?” A voice came from behind him.
“Yes dadi…I’m back.”
“Good, good. How was work?”
“Very good dadi, I spent much longer than I thought I would.”
“Oh, that’s very good! Very good…I’m proud of you.”
A pause.
“Did you get the eyedrops?”
“No dadi…they…they increased the price. I bought some food.”
Dadi glanced over at the slumped over bag at his feet, which was creased near the base. She nodded slowly.
“Food…yes.” She added after a beat.
Raunak averted his eyes and swallowed, then brought his hand up to rub at his throat. His eyes landed on the photograph his Dadi kept tucked inside the prayer cards on her altar. Today it was peeking out slightly, not put back in the careful manner it was usually treated with. On it, a young boy and an older man.
“It’s just…I didn’t stay long enough to buy both but by next week –”
“ – Oh no, of course. Koi nahi beta, I will ask Lali.”
*
The next day, Raunak was at the checkpoint before the moon had abandoned her place in the sky. The man at the desk sat with his arms crossed. From Raunak’s position, he could see the indents the man’s hands had left on the fabric under his armpit. His bushy brows raised slightly when he saw Raunak.
“I want to get the operation,” Raunak said.
The man sat up straight, slowly disentangling his arms from underneath him. He pushed a clipboard forward.
“Sign here, then at night come back. You will walk to the house near Kanishta Factory. They will take care of you.”
Raunak took the form and signed it without looking at it. The man glanced at the form, then leaned in until his mouth was closer to Raunak’s ear. Raunak smelt the betel leaf on the man’s breath and saw hints of his blacked teeth from the corner of his eye.
“When you go there na bhai, give them my name also. We get commission, you see?” he said with a wide grin.
Tarini Tilve is a writer with a penchant for all things dystopian. She loves reading about figures that are “otherwise present” and enjoys exploring marginality and otherness in all the forms they can take. Her work has previously appeared in Mahogany Journal. In her free time, she enjoys belting badly to musicals and spending time with her guinea pig.
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