One Fell In My Neighbour’s Garden

Kshitij Bahl 

When the first men fell from the sky, I was sitting on our veranda. It was a bright summer evening, the sky was all shades of lavender, lilac and pink. I was sitting - on one of our wicker chairs, we had a few - and I saw a man fall into our neighbour’s garden. Men don’t fall from the sky every day, or they did not back then, and I followed his journey from the moment I saw him ( gender later confirmed) until he disappeared behind the thick barricading bushes of the garden. Our neighbour, a lonesome widower in his fifties, was completely unaware. The fall was silent. All around the village, in unison, shrieks, gasps and sounds of horror echoed, as the falling men - a half-dozen - descended on carpet greens, muddy swamps, dog shits and asphalt, without a sound When the widower - everyone called him “the widower” - came out to his garden twenty minutes later, the rising brouhaha of the village had drowned his bewilderment and his terse response.

“Fuck.”

By nightfall, men from some houses went to other houses where men lay slumped in the earth—gifts of God—and this shower of men became all the rage. Nobody went to the widower’s house.

“I suppose we should go see for ourselves,” my father suggested at the dinner table.

“Now what good would come of that?” Mum was always cynical, often rightly so though that never made it any more pleasant. She was always reining in Dad’s adventures.

“I suppose—” 

“Well, don’t.”

We ate in silence. No one spoke of the widower; no one ever did. No one spoke of the shower of men. Outside, a raucous mob went from house to house. They knocked, they questioned and exchanged their stories of fallen men. Some had jokes—men have finally fallen to the ground—but the humour was flavoured with fear of the unknown. They speculated, as did the wives who were more imaginative—they all speculated—but no voice of confidence rose above the rest.

“Psst,” called out our other neighbour. We were sandwiched between two houses that were sandwiched between two houses on a lane that was a tray of such sandwiches. He was my age or thereabouts, but he was not in my school so age had no business meddling in our relationship. 

“You seen one?”

“No.” I was careful to be soft. Mum never liked this boy. She called him Pod. “Why Pod?” I remember asking her.

“He is about as useful as the pods in which peas come,” she replied. It never made much sense to me, and I recall she said it out of spite, splitting peas on a hot summer afternoon. 

Pod crept up to the steps of the veranda; he knew the thresholds of secrecy. We would often rendezvous at night, and in our clandestine meetings, we would achieve nothing. One of us would smuggle a thimbleful of whiskey from one of our fathers and we would drown our innocence in it, baptising our manhood—more in odour than in liquid. He had scored nearly a cupful that night. The falling men had brought generosity.

“You want to see one?” He looked at me, hopeful and excited, like a dog. I weighed his offer against the rage of my mother and I shook my head. “Pussy,” he spat.

The next day, rumours emerged as news swarmed the village roads. Every house—except the houses that had the fallen men—had a tale, every nook had men huddled like old varsity afternoons, and speculations of the fallen men were rife. I tried to catch sight of the fallen man in the neighbour’s garden but the fortress of thick bushes kept it a secret. I would sometimes see the widower in his veranda, looking in the direction of the fallen man and sipping a cup of tea, quiet as ever in the company of his obnoxious tabby, who seemed equally disinterested in this strange phenomenon. 

“No one knows,” Dad said at lunch. He was not eating, focused on the television. The television was always on to drown out the voices. Dad switched it on to drown Mum’s nagging; Mum switched it on to wash over Dad’s daydreaming. Sometimes, if I ever had the luxury, I would turn on the television because without it the strangeness of quiet in the house would discomfort me.

“No one knows a thing,” he repeated when no response was forthcoming. Mum was quietly working in the kitchen.

“Surely one of your friends—” “None.” Mum stopped him abruptly. “Not even—”

“No one knows,” Mum said. Dad did not protest any more; he returned to the voices on the television.

At sunset, just like on the previous day, I sat on the veranda. The summer sky was again all shades of candy and once more, men fell from the sky—five or six, perhaps more—but none fell so close as the one that fell in my neighbour’s yard. Once more, under the blanket of the night sky, Pod returned to the veranda with whiskey and idly speculated or repeated verbatim the idle speculations of his father, to me.

“They don’t speak. They don’t have a voice.” He paused, expecting shock, expecting something.

“They have nothing, they just fall naked, men with sparse hair on their chest, ghastly faces and flaccid penises. Have you ever seen a naked man? Ghastly, my mother says.” Pod was shaking his head and tapping his fingers, as if he was repenting, seeking forgiveness for the mere mention of such repulsive visions.

“They don’t even move, they’re just like mannequins—not exactly like mannequins—they have flesh and skin the colour of ours, they even have teeth—they do, just like ours—some are bald though.” He kept on rambling, detailing what could only be described as ordinary men, banal in every element of their composition, men we saw everyday.

“And their legs.”

“Where did you see one?” I asked, hoping to stop his insipid descriptions. I was certain he hadn’t actually seen one. Pod was prone to exaggerations, known to borrow anecdotes and embellish facts.

“Mum’s sister,” he replied instantly, “down the road from the baker. One fell there today; we went to visit her. She was so upset, bawling over how it is an omen—that superstitious old hag—and Mum was there, comforting her while I snuck into the garden to see it.” 

It. Men as objects, fallen, strewn around the village. Pod’s fingers were locked, tapping their knuckles. He had big clumsy hands, chubby fingers that were often lathered in moisture. He was fidgety, nervous. I had known him for almost six years and was one of his few friends. He spoke enough for the two of us, and his constant chatter freed me of any responsibility to uphold conversation. The few times I did talk, I never had to worry about his judgements. It was easy to be around him and he, forever with new topics, was always there. 

Until one night, sitting on the veranda, the sky as dark as ever, I waited for Pod, who never showed up. I had scored slightly more whiskey than usual and waited for him, but an hour must have passed and he never came. I was more miffed than annoyed.

“He won’t come tonight.” I froze when I heard Dad. He was behind me, unfazed and looking out into the darkness. “I thought I would join you tonight.”

I did not say anything—what could I have said?—and he took Pod’s usual place by the steps. He had a drink in his hand. For a while, neither of us spoke while we made shapes in our mind out of the darkness in front of us, layered in the many blacks that made up the night.

“They got one,” he said solemnly. His voice, usually demure, was grave. Something about the way he delivered the news was unsettling.

“Pod?”

He nodded. I did not believe him. Pod would have come, he would have surely come, with fervour, breathless, panting. He would have come and delivered the news with such extensive droll; he would not have said I got one. No, if he really had one, Pod would have announced it with fanfare, with two cups of whiskey, with animation. Instead, Dad was here with his drink, his three words and creepy silence.

“What are they like?” I had no emotion in my voice. I was scared, without logic. Why was I scared?

“Have your whiskey,” he said and disappeared back inside without another word. I sat there, invisible to the world, sipping my three-finger whiskey and pondering over fallen men, thinking of Pod and his non-stop blabbering. What if they were as ghastly as Pod described? What if they truly were omens that brought, with their fall, the fall of those witless men whose gardens they flumped on and what if Pod—poor, dumb Pod—was in peril? Crickets and other insects of the night rattled a divine confirmation, and suddenly, I found my fear to have a purpose. I found my fear rooted in the fear of my dear Pod, for his safety. 

I put my cup down beside the steps and—with that heedless, admirable determination of martyrs—I stood up and made my way to my neighbour’s garden. The barricading bushes were a black wall in the night, their shadows daunting and impenetrable. The bushes were a head taller than me, so I dropped to my knees and began to crawl, shielding my face with my arms, wincing at the wildflower thorns that pricked me. I trundled in the bushes, determined to find the fallen man. 

I saw his silhouette through the gaps in the bush: his slender frame and his floppy, soft belly. He looked like any other man—a drunk man—fallen gracelessly in the garden, piss-drunk as most lonesome men in the village. As I emerged from the bushes with twigs and thorns and scars and leaves, his silhouette became more defined. No longer the average drunk; he had the posture of a priest. His arms were by his side, palms facing up, cupping invisible objects that he offered to invisible gods. There he was, flumped in the middle of the garden, resting precariously against the bushes that obscured his face. I went closer, step by step, without any attempt to conceal myself, but the fallen man did not move. Not a twitch. 

Even the crickets had deserted us’ the only sounds were of drunks far off in the village, their faint songs indecipherable. I moved closer, and like a rising sun, the shadows on his face lifted slowly, until the face that stared back at me—with closed eyes and pursed, thin lips—was familiar; it was the face of the widower. Except it was bluer, all colour sapped. There were no scars, no marks, and the skin—was it the skin of the widower?—was taut, and I recalled Pod’s mannequin details.

“Uncanny, isn’t it?” The widower stood on his veranda, leaning against a brick pier, his body slanted like a model posing in a magazine. 

I ran the few feet back to the bushes, scrambling. I tripped and clambered into the bushes as I squirmed my way through the thickness that now felt welcoming. I closed my eyes and did not bother to protect my face as scores of broken twigs and wildflower thorns scratched my skin. I came out of the other side, never looking back once, and ran past my veranda where, in the rush, I kicked my whiskey cup which broke without a fight. I ran into my room, right into my bed, where I buried my face in a darkness that was more comforting than the one outside.

For the next few days, I did not step out. The voices, the men outside, the television—they all spoke of more fallen men and no matter how hard I tried to avoid them, the fallen men and their false tales chased me. On the dinner table, curt conversations about the fallen men continued.

“Almost the same number today,” Dad said. “Almost?” Mum and her specifics.

“Who knows? People want nothing to do with them. I heard it's an omen.” Dad looked at me.

“Stop with the nonsense already. Men are falling every day, won’t mean a thing until one of them decides to move and do something.”

“Maybe we should be prepared—” “Stop it.” Mum would have none of this

Pod did not return. I tried enquiring about his whereabouts indirectly, but Mum simply shrugged and mentioned how good it was that he did not come around. Dad had nothing more to offer; he shrugged and passed me a bottle of whiskey which was a little less than half full.

“We can always sit on the veranda, you know.”

We could, but there was no Pod. Perhaps the grim truth of the fallen men was too much for him. I imagined him running away from the fallen man, incapable of a shriek which would bubble in his throat but never escape; a shriek that would take away the fancifulness of his anecdotes, rob him of his exaggeration and freeze his fidgeting. Poor, dumb Pod. Outside, the darkness grew on my window but even in the grading blacks and purples of the summer night, I could make out the silhouette of a falling man in the sky. I closed the door to my room as my father yelled in excitement at the sight of this falling man—his trajectory aligning with our garden—and the silent fall couldn’t drown Dad’s joy as called out for me. He ran to the fallen man, he ran much like I did, he ran until he saw—the fallen man hidden behind the slender silhouette of my father—a face, I imagine, familiar to him.

*

About the Author

Kshitij Bahl is an architect and artist based in New Delhi, India. He looks for hidden patterns in the world, blending them with realist fantasy. Working from his studio, he builds, paints, and writes, exploring the balance between documentation and fantasy, order and chaos. His creative work offers a fresh perspective, encouraging others to see the world in new and unexpected ways.