Bats of Paradise
Samruddhi Ghodgaonkar
Your eyes sting from the soapy lather running down your head when the mobile rings. Momentarily disoriented, you don’t bother excusing yourself or explaining to the men in ill-fitting langots gathered around the well that it’s Sir’s ringtone. They shift gears from vigorously soaping their chests and armpits to more leisurely strokes, squinting at your brisk limp to receive the call before it stops ringing. After a series of short affirmatives to Sir, you drop your neighbour’s pail in the well, douse yourself in one go, put on your chafing khaki trousers and Jhabba, promising to meet the men at your usual evening katta and sprint homeward, the saturated cheap cotton slapping against your limbs.
The muted sky rapidly lightens as you reach the low stone stiles separating your double storey-ed thin rectangle of a home from the ruins of Parola Fort. Last night’s endless Tharra-bottle haze evaporated like a dying man’s breath after Sir’s call. Astride the motorbike, you still slap your cheeks to dissipate the fog suffusing your vision, palms stinging against your week-old, indigo-dyed, bristly beard. The engine’s first rumble brings out your wife, who hasn’t shaken off her drowsiness to drape her sari’s hem overhead. Sour-faced, she asks you to wait till she prepares your tiffin but you brush her off saying you’ll eat out: Sir needs you urgently. You pretend her sharp teeth can’t tear into your flesh as she screams at you to live with your darling Sir from now on. You rev up your son’s motorbike, leaving behind a cloud of dust and exhaust for her.
The daily row of defecating elders that lines the highway, strategically obscured by wilted shrubbery, is absent today. Groups of men, instead, coax home listless bulls to colour their horns, cover their matted backs with garish sequinned red cloths or tie bells around their necks. A Pithori Amavasya announcing Baïl Pola must fall tonight for the townspeople’s sudden interest in the bovine. Tractors turned the creatures obsolete —at least in Parola— now they’re only good enough for milk when the cows run out. You swear at Harya, the young town simpleton when his bulls almost crash into your bike, the witless beasts straying from the highway’s edge. Your usual forty-five minute bike ride stretches to an hour as you weave between the lowing and baying oxen and the occasional bull. You heap profanities at the cattle-owners, bellowing at them to simply castrate the troublemakers and break off the horns- an old formula to tame stubborn bulls your father used.
You swallow the rising bile at the thought of your father- the coward that ran away to Gadchiroli in the eighties after hailing an epistolary ‘Lal Salaam’, abandoning your starved family. Somewhere in the land must be an unmarked grave for his unceremonious death. Nobody informed you, nor did you bother searching out his burial site for a cremation. You preferred that he remain undignified in death even when your mother begged you to bring him home; otherwise you would be spat on as the disgraceful son. If you allow the memories to resurface, you would turn back home and teach your wife and daughter-in-law a bloody lesson to prove you were chalk to his cheese - nobody dared call you a coward. Recalling Harya’s half-witted smile slide off at your steady stare provides a secret satisfaction. Maybe the town knows about your father; why else had your neighbour, Gutya, yielded when you fixed your stiles after last year’s summer storm, poaching a bit of his yard?
Crossing under the skeleton of a flyover under construction, you wonder if the wife regurgitated your father’s stories around town along with your domestic quibbles. Though you have a cloth tied across your face, a passing truck stirs up a large dust cloud, irritating your eyes. For a minute, you stop with a hacking cough at the unpaved shoulder of the highway before continuing. The morning sun feels sweltering as you stop again at a petrol pump, filling less than usual because the prices have rocketed. Your exposed pieces of skin become inflamed, peeling off by the time you reach Sir’s bungalow: a high-walled titanic fortress in Jalgaon that even Rani Laxmibai’s father, who originally commissioned the Parola fort, would gape at in admiration. You wash your face quickly under a tap after the deaf security-guard-baba lets you inside the colossal gate.
Your second employer— the factory manager where you work as the plant operator— calls asking why you aren’t at work. You tell him that your grandmother has suddenly taken ill so you’re visiting her. Usually he doesn’t care about your excuses but today he swears freely, threatening to fire you unless you return tomorrow. Stifling an urge to swear back, you coax him, saying family matters are delicate but you’ll try. You take the stairs two at a time, branches of potted palms along both sides of the flight brushing you in a maternal hand.
You step into the manicured garden spread on the right after ringing the doorbell and shake off the feeling that the marble Ganesh idol’s sage eyes at the garden’s entrance are following your every move.
You remember well the days when this plot was empty and stray dogs bounded over moss and mounds of dug-up earth during your shifts more than two decades ago. Upon realising that the plot was sold and construction would start within weeks, you arranged with the contractor to let you stay on as the security guard. For years after the construction finished, you and your wife lived in the watchman’s quarters, completing odd jobs for the Madam, tending to the garden, cleaning every cranny of the quadruple storey-ed bungalow. When you expressed hope of a wage hike, Madam pointed out that your dipsomaniac tendencies were ruining the family’s reputation in the colony and fired you. The first time you turned up at the bungalow after the firing, Madam said nothing and put you to work. Intermittently, her bad temper would make you threaten to quit and when you sank deep into your nightly inebriated stupors, you called nonstop until she picked up to swear at her from the depths of your soul. The next workday, you turned up at the bungalow, swallowed Madam’s tirade, a goatish smile in place, repeating to yourself that you hardly deserved such paroxysms of fury.
Sir finally opens the door now, calling you inside to check the air-conditioning unit in one of their daughter’s rooms: she heard chittering and squeaking at odd times of night and day, it’s source assumed to be pigeons but on a closer inspection, the squeaking seemed to emanate from the unit’s interior. Out of habit, you step delicately over the glass staircase —a prized architectural feature of the bungalow— your voice echoing around the double-height-ed walls as you assure Sir of resolving the problem. You have taken care of numerous such ‘problems' in recent years- it started with lizards (abundant in the arid Jalgaon climate), centipedes (especially in the monsoon) and rats (infesting the days-old trash the garbage truck missed). You would at first chuck the offending pest outside after pinioning it between broom and pan. Then Sir bought various cans of ‘Hit’ and rat poison because the creatures kept returning. In an aggressive response to your assassination attempts, the wave of pests multiplied and you massacred thousands before they finally surrendered, reduced to a sporadic glimpse.
Three years ago a pregnant cat came searching for rats, instead settling in a shallow pit. It delivered a healthy litter, regularly defecating at the garden’s entrance. Madam got tired of the encroaching, persistent odour so during the cat’s short absence, she made you bury the kittens in the desiccated Waghur river. You left them at the Bori riverbank which cost you lesser petrol. It flooded the next day but you kept the news of the drowned kittens to yourself.
Last year, a snake emerged in the garden searching for rats and ‘Sarpa-Mitra's were unavailable for house calls so you patiently wrapped it around a long branch and threw it in the open-faced gutter. Next afternoon, the colony buzzed with news of a manual scavenger finding a dead snake, choked by a diamond earring and balled up plastic. The District Collector’s assistant had taken the carcass home for anatomising, and rumours spread about his findings.
This year, pigeons wandered inside Sir’s bungalow. Unable to find the way out, crashing into the ceiling’s transparent skylight, confused by the colossal space inside, they left a mess of droppings and feathers behind. You launched stones from a slingshot aiming for their undersides- targeting the wings also ejected them out faster. In retaliation, one of their allies nested outside the garden window. You frequently cleaned their mess spread on the Jaisalmer garden patio. Before Madam instructed you, having watered the garden one afternoon, you stole the eggs and destroyed the nest.
You still crave those cooked, curried eggs.
Working at the bungalow is your lottery ticket: you seldom hit the jackpot; often, you leave empty-handed tending hope for next time. Today, Sir has promised a handsome reward if you manage the disposal. You carefully dismantle the air-conditioning unit, almost loosing your balance on the stool when a pair of minuscule black eyes flash through the wall’s aperture. You quickly crouch underneath the stool amidst an onslaught of chittering followed by gut-churning squeaks. The aperture’s darkness writhes. An orange-sized ball separates from the mass, swooping past you in the room. Through furious heartbeats, you laugh at the zooming subject: a young bat whose eyes flash red for a second in the light. Two more join the escapee and whizz out of the room. An entire camp of bats must have nested in the wall’s opening outside after the air-conditioning unit was installed. The escapee watches, omniscient, then dives toward you. Your feral shriek of terror wards it out of the room.
Darkness gradually dissolves your vision in the aftermath.
For a moment, you become a newborn bat, frozen, disoriented under the stool. Trying to dispel your blackout — a frequent affliction since recent years— merely escalates it’s intensity this time.
An eternity of helplessness later, your vision restores. You stumble out of the room, down the glass staircase, and stop. The objects Madam gathered from her foreign trips in glass cabinets, now lay in dusk-lit, glittering smithereens. Stuffing spills out of sofas and divans as if their intestines were pecked at. Several fractured spotlights blink occasionally. Even the fruits piled high as an offering in the devghar lie desecrated, colourful juices spilling out in a rainbow stream which threaten to soak your feet any moment, a line of martial ants salvaging from the detritus. Glossy magazine pages with tiny bite marks lay butchered on the marble floor, some torn scraps pitifully breathing their last. The camp of bats scoop remnant fruit, flying out from the garden door, single-file-ed into the twilight sky, capped with their last member’s triumphant squeak. From the windows overlooking the garden, you see the quivering figures of Madam, Sir and their mewling daughters. Before they can notice, you limp to your bike, hurt your ankle while kick-starting the engine and drive nonstop till Parola Fort.
By now the interior roads are clear of traffic- bovine or vehicular, the town busy performing pujas of their beautified chattels. You collect yourself outside the fort’s dilapidated gate, stifling the tremor in your hands. You heave a relieved sigh on spotting your usual gang of men and wave. The tremor returns but this time you hide it behind your back, knowing it’ll receive it’s fill soon enough. You follow them, cracking lewd jokes, laughing loudly, one hand slung over Mukya’s shoulder. He removes half a dozen bottles of ‘bhingri’ rum —his home-brewed, fermented-rice concoction promising the buzz of a ‘bhingri’s continuous motion— from the sack stashed deep inside the fort. You gulp the first shot greedily. As soon as the liquid hits, your thirst licks high; your vision fogs over. Sinking deeper into the clear ‘bhingri’ rum, you embrace the state of suspension it brings, uncomprehending of why your laughter sounds like Mukya’s then changes into a collective canine howl. The earth tilts, it’s insatiate shadows leaping at you as you sit up, intruded by Aaba’s thoughts. You dig up the fort’s dry earth, clumps flying everywhere, muttering ’Aaba, wait, I will find you…’. Any moment your intestines will crawl up and spill out like Sir’s mangled furniture and mutilated fruit.
You call the others to help you dig after forcing your organs back inside but nobody comes over. Stumbling against a pile of rum bottles, you notice them collapsed like spilled water. Sitting them up is like gathering spilt rum. A sweet smell clouds over them—like the factory’s methanol. The night gradually consumes Mukya’s face. Darkness invades your vision with a terrifying finality now. Your insides gush out in a violent release.
Rising from the puddle of vomit, you scream: this bhadvya, this jhavadya, has poisoned everyone yet your audience of darkness remains unstirred. The fort is a collection of worn mossy walls, rubbly heaps, dark niches, missing domes- it’s navigation being child’s play. Losing sight transforms it into a maze. When you can stand or scream no longer, you gratefully fall, stumbling over a loose stone.
The still darkness is pierced with a chittering, then a growl. The memory of every killing desperately makes you crawl until you can flee.
Your vomit-covered face itches against the arid air. Colliding, echolocating against stone and roots, you limp for another eternity. You stop to catch your breath.
The sound of thunderous hooves accompanying the faint shouts and screams of people approaches so you turn towards it. Sudden pain slices through your stomach. Your back is thrown against something cold and hard.
Moaning, powerlessly grasping at the divine darkness and rubble, you struggle in vain.
After the pain subsides, you hear the townspeople muttering that they shouldn’t have bought bulls for Pola- that wild one gored this man to death, mercifully running off without destroying the town. Nobody touches your punctured mangled carcass. Your wife recognises the alcoholic reek buried underneath the clothes, a film of angry tears in her eye, the other swollen and bruised from your hit last night.
Thereafter, you abandon your existence to maggots, flies, earthworms, crows, ants and the ancient Peepal trees bursting from Parola fort’s crevices: a nameless grave like Aaba’s. Hopefully you won’t be born as a lizard or rat, neither a snake nor a kitten, nor a pigeon’s freshly laid egg. If birds exist in paradise, bats are your closest guess. A camp of bats flying to freedom: this image hovers then disperses into the earth. Now that you have tasted blindness, you hope for life as a bat in your next sentience.
Aaba left you and your family in search of freedom. Facing your mother’s desolate moans in the weeks after he disappeared, you swore to never become like Aaba at the embrittled age of nine. In these final stages of decay, you fear that you have misunderstood Aaba’s nameless dream.
As your last corporeal piece disintegrates and is consumed, you realise: bats have never been blind, have they? It was you who could never detect a flight path to freedom.
Relinquishing the remnants of your name, you fall into the abyss. Aaba’s dream buried with his grave, finds and tethers itself onto you. In that moment, you are the last in the camp of bats flying to freedom.
*
About the Author
Samruddhi is an aspiring novelist and a short story writer. Her fiction has appeared in Usawa Literary Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Chakkar, The Inklette Magazine and others. Currently working to publish her debut novel, she has a monthly newsletter called ‘Experiments in Fiction’ on Substack. Her short story was one of the winners for the Deodar Prize 2023 at the Bangalore Literature Festival.