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By Shalini Singh After 7 Years a person missing is declared legally dead if not still found After 7 Years After 7 Years a person missing After 7 Years a person missing is declared legally dead After 7 Years a person missing is declared legally dead if not still found A body was found after 16 years in the Satopanth peak, second highest peak of Gangotri at 7075m in snow white Himalayas. A search was eventually called off after there was no inkling of discovery of a body or any equipment of the soldier who got lost 16 years back. When the snow had hoisted the body, finely preserved, peaking out of the snow, the woman was sent a box with the body, a Neel Kurinji plucked from the sight plastered across the wooden tomb. An aide-memoire in the left pocket read-
Your heart has experienced approximately 2,116,284,12 heartbeats since your birth- aapka dil 2,116,284,12 baar dhadak chuka hai A woman walks slowly, with the wind as her guide, her sight falling short as days withered into months. In a jagged corner of symphonic Farmana in Haryana, amongst dimidiated mosquitoes infested chawl where misery was scrawled on every brick; lived Laal and his mother. The brother, the soldier never promised to return and he did not. With the flutter of the pigeons, she filled water in pots, barrels every morning; in the evening the same pigeons would let her know if it was going to be dark soon. In a bleak entrance of the house, neighbors watched, sighing, sometimes feeling apologetic for the state she was in- the woman, old, withered, blue from cold, mouth slightly agape, words escaping in a whimper... “Laal will be home soon”, sitting on a plump surface where moss grows, blue and green, amongst bidi butts. Outside it is late spring. Rogan josh cooks fortnightly. A flick of the mind, a moment of intentionality paradoxically almost unconscious. Aslan, the caretaker, himself, old and frail was her constant. Everyone had left, even her two prized Bullocks who had won the annual Kila Raipur bullock cart races in succession. Aslan prods her, deep frowning burrowed in the empathetic search for heirloom Naths or a bobby pin but the woman didn’t want to find things, she wanted answers to her one and only question. “Where is Laal?” The luxury of spending few hours a day just stepping back from that clamor, trying to gain some clarity was a dream now. She did not know when the dream began and when reality ended. A blue coat with a loose string at the collar helm, torn when he was going for his last job interview- a celiac sprue hung below that with Abaindranath Tagore’s Bharat Mata sketched on its surface, with abrasions evident of use- a white cotton kurta lay folded on a charpoy, collecting dust. Laal’s brass bowl lay idle, salt-loving 'Haloarchaea’ microbes coloring the water pink. Remnants of memory hanging, molding, folded in the house. Each of these reminded the woman of Laal’s absence. Her son. Her moon. Her star. Everytime she kneaded dough, she made heart shaped parathas, oiled edges sprouting into the shape of her heart, as if she knew. She chose life everyday but life did not want her. Sepsis made it difficult, tumor made it worse. Her best approximation was liable on her son, Laal, who had disappeared suddenly. He’s always off on a trek or a hike. He wears colorful knitwear, and over that, a bright neon jacket. He has one big battered backpack. Often, he drives an Enfield, and ties tiny Tibetan prayer flags across the handlebars. Laal liked to watch shaktimaan. He had little fingers, big feet, a big head and an even bigger heart, said the woman whenever someone asked her to describe Laal. She said her old age was making it difficult for her to spend more than around three to five hours per day travelling to the police chowki, slipping leaflets through the doors. She remembered him reading everything, translating anecdotes which he knew his mother was going to love from a book with couple of legs sticking out on the charpoy. The genteel exclusivity of a storyteller and a living story told at night, everyday till the fateful day when he did not come home. Two sons. Gone. The hypocrisy of a violent society punishing violence by violence is difficult to attain to. The hypocrisy of the living becomes violent in a disappearance because either the person is dead or deader. Each day she would try to complete the song she had read and then written down on her skin, which now was reminiscent of the time she had hastily gone in, just before cancer started eating her brain, one macoma at a time- how she had gone back to a different tattoo shop and asked to erase the poem. She could never fathom why she had liked it so much to have it engraved on her skin. People engraved words, endearments, some swollen promises which would deflate with the phases of the sun, some their dead kid brother’s nick, dates which made no sense to anyone but them. The woman had engraved emotional violence on her. Sour face of love- “he who is without sin cast the first stone.” She did not understand English, yet somehow the disability reminded her of her son. They were never found. They never found each other, again. When Neel Kurinji plucked from the sight plastered across the wooden tomb was lowered in the ground, 16 years ago, Laal stood at the grave site, dressed in nothing but a white lungi. He had not let a single grain of dust soil the white. He had in a moment of hesitation confided in his mother, the woman, frail and weeping, “I will never leave you alone”. 20 years later, the leaving left, the living bereft.
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