THE PHOENIX

A slate-coloured sheet was rolling across the sky. A low rumble was moving around the entire sky from all sides like a surround sound system. Fine mist like rain covered my hair, as I peered over the terrace to see whether Adi was visible at the bend in the lane. The smell of the drops on the hot terrace were encroaching on my senses and distracting me. The season’s first showers were now soaking me unabashed. The horizon was blurred and gloomy, and I kept peering over the parapet.

Two hazy entwined figures formed a water colour greyish black painting at the end of the lane. I hoped and hoped that one of them was Adi, my son. I glided to the front door and stood outside the open door, waiting for Adi. He came through the gates, limping, holding on to another boy’s shoulder who was about a couple of years older than Adi.

Adi was in pain. His left ankle was swollen and there were cut marks on his knees. ‘His leg went into the hole by the field, Madam ji’, the boy beside Adi murmured. I remembered a number of construction workers, drilling holes beside the road, to put up a glow sign. They must have left their job unfinished. The boy beside Adi looked vaguely familiar. ‘This is Nathu’ Adi volunteered. ‘He lives with Birju bhaiya’. I faintly remembered having seen the boy at our apartment complex caretaker’s place. ‘How are you related to Birju?’ I asked Nathu, in midst of tending to Adi. He kept quiet and started scratching the floor with his toes.

On coming back into the drawing room with antiseptic and bandage, I found Nathu near the terrace, looking up with wonder at the steady stream of water falling on his outstretched hands. The innocence of teenage touched me. He seemed so similar to Adi. I returned with a plate of sweets and urged Nathu to take them. His shy grateful smile as he hesitantly took the plate, did not fail to move me. A lump rose in my throat.

Adi was limping his way back to normalcy and Nathu was becoming a constant figure in our home. He rang the bell shyly during the afternoons and peeked into Adi’s room almost daily. He hardly spoke, and listened with full attentiveness as Adi narrated Harry Potter stories to him or stories of his visit to France and Italy the previous year. I often found the two heads together as they played games on the laptop. We slowly and steadily started getting relaxed in each other’s company. Nathu, however, maintained his elective mutism, and rarely spoke out. Throughout my career as a teacher and a child psychologist, I had researched and treated a phenomenon known as elective mutism, an emotional disturbance, occurring in children mainly. Many of them speak a little, with whom they are most comfortable with.

My Husband Dilip was an officer with the merchant navy and majorly lived away at his ship. He was docked in Shanghai and had called up to enquire about Adi and me. ‘I would advise you against allowing Adi to get emotionally attached to Nathu’ he said. ‘He has tasted the thrill that comes with committing a crime, once. He will be prone to repeating it.’ ‘Keep Adi away from that boy’ Dilip warned me again. 

I called over, Birju, my caretaker one particular day, after his job hours. He looked as if he had made an effort to look as clean as possible. His hair was parted and brushed and though, most of the buttons on his shirt were missing, he had buttoned up the rest of them. ‘Boliye Madamji’ He asked tensely, as I asked him to sit. ‘Has Nathu been up to his pranks? Why do you allow him to come to your apartment so frequently, Madamji? He is not a normal boy at all. You should not allow him to mingle with Adi bhaiya’

I gathered from Birju that Nathu was his neighbour’s boy, back from his village. When he was thirteen, he had attempted to rape a girl of eight/nine years in the village, after pulling her to the shrubs beside the road, when the girl was returning home from school. He had punched the girl and beaten her black and blue. He was remanded in police custody and later shifted to correctional facility for adolescent boys. After four summers of trying to cope with his further misdeeds, the administrative body had informed Birju, who was Nathu’s local guardian and contact person to come and get him as they were ready to release him. So Birju, it seemed, as a good Samaritan, had taken Nathu in, till his father came over from the village to take him back. Presently, Nathu ran small errands for the occupants of the apartments.

Nathu kept coming back repeatedly. It was now almost a daily norm and Adi started looking forward to Nathu’s visits. I decided to go ahead with a few informal sessions of psychtherapy with Nathu. One day, I gave him a few puzzles to solve. He was quick to solve the puzzle. Next day I engaged him with an activity book. He seemed genuinely interested. I asked him about his education. ‘Till standard Seventh’ Nathu replied. Why did you stop going to school after that? Nathu withdrew again. For the next couple of days, Nathu did not come to visit us. I was worried and asked Birju after him. ‘He is not keeping well, Madamji’ Birju replied.

Nathu came the very next day. He seemed tired and withdrawn. ‘I drew something for you’ he retorted suddenly. It was the drawing of two men lying on the road. Bones stuck out where the legs should have been. A bird was sitting on the bone of one of the men and pulling out a piece of meat from the body cavity. Blood was split all over the road. It was a horrible and frightening picture. It was shocking in its incredible attention to detail.

‘That is what I am going to do to my stepfather and Birju one day. For the next few days, Nathu obsessively kept drawing many pictures. I encouraged him to express himself through them. One day he brought a drawing of a young boy naked, lying spread-eagled on a bed. It was becoming increasing clear that the young boy had been sexually assaulted by his stepfather back home, and perhaps by Birju as well.

At the back of my mind, a concern was growing. Had I unleashed a monster from his self-imposed prison? One day he drew a picture of a little girl about seven to eight years old. ‘That is Munni, my sister” he added. ‘Once I had made her a doll from rags. My stepfather snatched it away from her and set it to fire’. The corners of his eyes glistened with emotion for the first time in so many days. As he stood up from the floor, something slipped and fell from his pocket. ‘what’s that?’ I asked. ‘It’s a knife’, Nathu said gently.’ I made it myself from a piece of a rusted iron window rod’. There was a hint of pride in his voice. He took hold of my arm and ran the edge of the knife through my inner arm. ‘See how sharp it is!’ ‘I am going to split his guts on the road one day.’

When I came back home from the market one day, I found Nathu drawing a picture with full concentration in Adi’s room. Adi had gone for his Science tuitions and was to be back shortly. ‘I have something for you Nathu’ I said as I stood in the kitchen and rummaged in my bag of groceries for the water colour set and paint brushes that I had bought for Nathu. I suddenly sensed a presence behind my back. I glanced back to find Nathu, behind me, between me and the door. ‘Nathu, what do you want’ I asked. He responded. ‘I hate you.’ He was succumbing to gutter level. The lights went out as I shouted out sharply, I heard him move towards me. I could smell his hot breath. A sick stench of fear hung in the air as I felt his hands on my shoulders and on my breasts. We struggled in the dark for a few minutes, before I hit him on his jaw squarely. It gave me space to reach out to the light switch. Nathu was sprawled on the floor and he was crying.

When you decide against someone, everything thereafter, tends to confirm that prejudice. I concurred with my logical self. Nathu was too dangerous for me to handle and I forbade him from entering my apartment, ever again.

The rain is relentless. I hear it thrumming on the metal roof and running down the broken pipe into the mud, and I moisten my cracked lips with my tongue. I wonder if they’ll bring me food and water. I wonder if they’re coming at all…I tried to open my eyes, which seemed heavy. There was not a single movement or sound excepting the incessant pitter patter of rain. A pointed light showed up from perhaps a crack in the boarded-up windows. I remembered with a shudder, the heavy breathing of a stranger, in the darkness in my bedroom, before I blacked out after a dull thud to the back of my head. I kept shouting out. ‘Help’, all the while knowing that nobody would hear me as this was far away from human settlements nearby. I was very hungry and my body ached all over. I did not know, where Adi was. Was my husband informed at his ship? Was he on his way? I had no clue about what was happening.  

There, suddenly was a creaking sound on the roof as if someone was walking on the roof stealthily. Why would these men walk on the roof when they had the keys to the door? I strained my ears and fought with myself to keep me awake. There was a lingering drowsiness which was difficult to fight. The sound of the creaking, exceeded that of the beating of the rain drops on the metal roof. Now, I was all ears. I was shivering both from a chill that I felt was seeping into me from the cold floor, as well as a cold that was emanating from within. My hands and legs were tied with a rope that was cutting into my skin as I tried to wrench open my hands. I was mulling over the course of my next action, when there was a scuffling sound at the window that was barred black with boards, perhaps. ‘Madamji!’ were my ears playing with me? Again, someone called out to me in a hushed undertone. ‘Madamji…are you there?’ It sounded like Nathu. But how could Nathu be here? I was hallucinating perhaps! Nonetheless, I replied. ‘I am here’. The scuffling sound at the window grew louder and in what seemed a lifetime, light entered through the window, and Nathu’s face was barely visible through the window rods.

As I was recuperating, the police were carrying out investigations. Birju, the catetaker, Maya, my maid were all hands in glove. It seemed that Maya had spiked my food with a date-rape drug. But the highlight of it all was my husband Dilip’s association with the whole plot. He had actually masterminded the entire operation from his ship on the sea, and if Nathu had not overheard Birju talking over the phone to Dilip, and had acted promptly, I would have been raped and murdered that very night. All because of one and half crore Rupees worth of a life Insurance Policy, that Dilip had opened in my name.

I admitted Nathu to a neighbourhood school and he stayed with Adi and me. We were secure in each other's company. He still ran errands for the occupants of the apartment and did odd jobs, but he was also focusing on his studies with Adi's help. Nathu was spreading his wings, slowly but surely. He drew for me a picture of a captive bird spreading its wings. I was not apprehensive of Nathu’s next phase of life’s journey anymore. He was a phoenix and we would surely rise from his ashes.