CALLING

Here it came again. In the dark before dawn, Geetha shivered, though it was not cold, and she cried. This was more than a bad dream; she knew the sensation too well, and couldn’t overcome the feeling that she was emerging from an experience more vivid, more powerful than the reality that now confronted her, in her closed room, with her mother sleeping alongside her. Such forcefulness must mean something important, so she must make the effort to recall it, in all its vividness. The blood. Of course; that was what was distinctive. Blood flowing, becoming a stream, then a river, thick, turgid, the redness of fire, of violence, gradually deepening to a black, featureless sea of blood, in which her own being sank and was no more.

She had thought the sensation was fading, three months or more had passed without its appearance, and she had come to think of it as a phase of childhood. The familiarity of it, the distinguishing character, is something she has never been able to describe, she has no words for it. It coloured certain moments and experiences, like a presence, a shift in how she knew herself, like being in two places at once. Now it was back, stronger than ever, and the sense of it this time was that it was always there, an element of the life that flowed within her, asserting itself on occasions she could never anticipate. Like blood, flowing within her body, now flowing out from her, and that it held her truest self, the feeling, sensing part of her, that it was her, and as it flowed out it left her body drained, a husk, like the shed skin of a snake, which she could see but not touch.

Geetha wept, and called out for her grandmother, her Aatemaa, the one person who would understand and comfort her, knowing she would not come. Aatemaa, why did it have to happen now? Everything was happening so rapidly, the patterns of life crashing down around her. Aatemaa dead ten days since, no, eleven, Geetha remembered. School shut and Taata out of work, and now the blood.

She thought back two days. Schools were shut on government orders as a measure to control the pandemic. Taata’s workplace, the brickworks where he had a daily labouring job, also shut, and with it went his daily wage. The family were luckier than some: Geetha’s mother had been offered some hours of work each day on a farm, while the pepper harvest was under way, but it meant she was out of the house much of the day. With Aatemaa’s death, her husband would have to care for the children.

That day, Amma rose early, before it was fully light, went to the family well for water, and then to the kitchen. There, in the dim light she prepared food for the family. Perhaps soon there might be an electricity supply, it had arrived already in the lower village. For now, this was what she had always known, working by candle and firelight. Taking small sticks and dried palm, she started a fire, and put the pots to cook, before waking the family.

Before she left to walk across the hill to the farm, she checked that things would run smoothly. Geetha was old enough to help out, cooking and cleaning as well as caring for the two little ones, but it was her husband she asked. Yes, he was fine, he could manage lunch, and there was plenty for him to do around the house and garden, she shouldn’t worry.

Two hours later Geetha watched her father as he cut the ribs from fallen coconut fronds. Taking each in turn he chopped expertly with a sharp katti, a machete, on either side, cutting away a length of a metre and a half with an arrowhead shape. The hard dry leaves spreading from each rib he then set aside. They could be used as rough thatch later. With 10 or 12 of the tapering ribs prepared he moved to the fence that ran along the village footpath on one side of their property. Here he inserted the sharpened end of each firmly into the soil, replacing a few damaged stems. Or he did for a while. Geetha caught sight of him, with half the curved stems still at his feet, sitting gazing blankly across the land, for some minutes before he shook his head, and resumed work.

She was playing with the dog, Sudu, while the two little ones investigated the joys of the mud by the well wall. Sudu began to bark at her, and Geetha’s attempts to calm him only roused him to greater excitement. Then she realized, and it struck her with a shock, despite its being long anticipated: she was bleeding. Her first period had arrived. For some moments she sat uncertain. Aatemma and Amma were missing, she would have to confide in Taata.

Mumbling and looking at her feet, she told him. She shouldn’t have worried. He was joyous, called her his little lady, and beamed incessantly. Geetha retired to her room, where she would be obliged to remain for four days, and before her mother returned from work an aunt materialized. Taata was evidently in high spirits, and before long she heard other voices she recognized as one of his brothers and a neighbour. Together the three men could be heard scraping and banging, as they transformed the house, preparing for the ceremony that would mark Geetha’s coming of age. One of the men was sent off to obtain supplies, and returned later with beer and arrack. As far as the men were concerned, Geetha’s age attainment ceremony was to be the occasion of a prolonged drinking party. Geetha herself would see nothing of it, nor of the visitors, other than the two or three women who entered her room.

There was an unusual sound. Geetha heard a motorbike making a slow approach, and coming to a halt outside the house. None of the neighbours had a motorobike, and few people ventured this far off a surfaced road. Soon enough it became clear that the visitor was a police officer, and she listened as closely as she could. She heard her father’s exaggeratedly friendly tone, as he offered the man a drink. He evidently accepted a beer, and after some talk about the state of roads came to the point. The planned celebration could not take place. Public gatherings were suspended, and proceeding would make her father liable to arrest. Could it be postponed for a later date? No, that would be pointless, it was to mark an event of a lifetime, not a monthly occurrence. Taata pleaded, the officer sounded sympathetic. Yes, he understood, he would want the same for his daughter, but the rules applied to everyone.

This was a blow to the family, but Geetha’s disappointment passed quickly. She would have had no part in the men’s party, or in the women’s catering, confined to her room for the duration. Her friends would know anyway that she had reached the step into adulthood.

Shut in a room alone, Geetha had time to think about what was happening to her. The chatter of aunts and mother made it difficult for her to examine her feelings, but now she was aware of what had been buffeting her, the conflicting emotions of elation and repulsion that had been vying for her attention. She was confused and troubled, but also thrilled. This was something she had been waiting for, wanting, the proof that she was becoming a woman, no longer a little child. But there was sadness in that, to know that a certain kind of carefree life had ended, that she would be expected now to behave as a young woman. She would have to be careful that the clothes she wore were suitably modest, and would no longer be able to run around with her hair loose.

There was little discomfort in the changes to her body. It surprised her that the bleeding, which she still associated with wounds, did not cause her pain, but the sense that she was not in control, that things were happening to her, her body being worked on by primordial forces, was disquieting. The urge to look, to touch, was overwhelming. She was fascinated by the look of the blood, thin and milky but then clotting, and at the same time disgusted by it. Her attention was riveted to those parts of her body immediately affected, the area between her legs, and where it led, until the sound of arriving visitors jolted her back to an embarrassed present, and she tried to hide her hands and cover the guilt she felt.

Her mother and an aunt entered. The aunt, her Loku Nanda, was commenting to Amma, unconcerned that Geetha would hear, as though she were still a little girl, “It’s a bad sign. Not having the ceremony is bound to bring bad luck. Poor girl. I don’t suppose she’ll ever be able to marry after this.”

Amma was never forceful in the presence of her husband’s older sister, but she responded to this. “You know her birth chart said she will have a long marriage and three children.”

“Well, I don’t know how good your reading was. You should have gone to the lady I suggested.”

There was no other way Loku Nanda could trump an assertion drawn from birth charts. Even Geetha was unsure. Once at school a question had arisen in class, based on a reference from an old Buddhist text disapproving of astrology. The teacher had been uncertain how to respond, and children had wanted to talk about it. Everyone in the room had had a birth reading, and most knew some elements of their own. Geetha recalled something her Aatemaa had told her, and a passage from a school science book, and putting them together suggested that it was like gravity, the way the moon could move tides on the earth, and influence the growth pattern of plants. It was the same, she offered, with the planets, whose motions must exert a pull on us as we are born, so that we are made like this or like that. The class was satisfied, and the teacher relieved. Only Geetha doubted the force of her argument. She was an indifferent student, generally, never excelling in any subject, nor wanting to, but she was raised in the estimation of at least one teacher by comments like these.

Her astrology chart said little about her character. She was a quiet, easy-going child, content to be alone, not shy, but inclined, people said, to be self-absorbed. In her early years she was an only child, her father away and mother sometimes doing farm work, and she had learned to play by herself or with the animals. Like any child she developed games of make believe, and her first stories of strange experiences were met by the same kind of gentle tolerance for any child’s tale of imaginary friends.

When she persisted in them those attitudes sometimes changed, and she had learned to be discreet about sharing the experiences. Mockery and punishment are persuasive teachers, and she met both. Liar, liar, little girls shouldn’t lie. She discovered soon enough that insisting she wasn’t lying only made things worse, and she kept these visions increasingly to herself, sharing only with Aatemaa. Now, with Aatemaa gone, they are a part of her life she would prefer to forget.

There were occasions when she had encounters with animals, feeling a kind of identification with them that went well beyond empathy, a sense that she knew precisely what they were feeling and how strongly. These were simple emotions, and even when dominated by fear, as an animal’s response might be, they did not trouble her, because she knew she was herself, and could watch dispassionately when these events occurred.

She told her little group of girls at school once of the time she was walking on a forest path and encountered a monkey, walking towards her. She stopped, and the creature took a few more steps before standing on its hind legs. Drawing itself tall, the animal gazed at her as if to tell her something, and then walked away backwards. Premawathie, the most dominant of their group, immediately topped it with a story of three monkeys, and then little Ayomi told a confusing account that featured a flying snake. All this seemed natural enough to Geetha at the time; she assumed that all of them had such experiences. It was only when she related other incidents, and was met with hostility and exclusion, that she realized she was alone in this, that their earlier responses had been a game, a form of showing off.

The one person she was able to talk to freely was Aatemaa. The two were close, and spent a lot of time in each other’s company. Aatemaa always listened attentively, and responded seriously. Aatemaa was a healer, with a wide knowledge of herbal remedies, and provided a kind of village first aid post, referring patients on to the rural ayurveda hospital, 15 kilometres away, if she felt her own knowledge insufficient. As all good healers do, she developed a keen judgement of character, and knew when a complaint brought to her displayed the kind of symptoms that called for her medicine and when it might be an expression of other dissatisfactions, as was often true, and ministered equally to both.

In these tropical hills a wide range of plants had medicinal properties, whose effects depended on many different forms of preparation and combination. Some she would gather and keep in dried form, or brewed or powdered. Others needed to be fresh, and gathered only at the time of treatment, and a patient would sometimes be told to supply their own. Many times Geetha accompanied her when she scoured the hills in their vicinity, and Aatemaa patiently pointed out whatever she was gathering, leaves, flowers, seed, bark or root, naming each, pointing out where it grew, and what it was used for. Kohomba leaves made a good antiseptic, leaves from the castor bean provided behet endaru, effective against headaches, as was the root of the nebada. She showed Geetha the best plants to use against bruises, boils, skin wounds and colds, what would help sufferers of asthma, toothache and period pains.

Along the side wall of the temple grew a shrub with white flowers, sudu idda, whose large white flowers with their five narrow petals were frequently presented as offerings there, but which had other value. Aatemaa insisted Geetha should know it for its emergency use against snake bite. Bites were not frequent around the villages, but could prove deadly, and the power of snakes meant there were many rules of how to deal with them, how to appease them, or to honour their spirits, what to do to ensure they did not return to take vengeance. The efficacy of the sudu idda against such power meant it too had a force that must be respected, and before taking samples it was appropriate to give reverence to the spirit of the plant.

All of this Geetha found fascinating, if bewildering, and she realized too that there were things Aatemaa didn’t show her. She had worked out for herself that Aatemaa kept parts of pulun imbul, the kapok tree, because it was sometimes called for as a love potion.

Geetha sat while Aatemaa took a consultation with a patient, a man from the lower village with a painful inflammation of the leg, red and hot to the touch. They talked about his diet, she advised him to cut out ‘heaty’ food, and she prescribed plant preparations that he should prepare and use. Then she took a sheaf of leaves and moved them back and forth above the leg, now and then lightly brushing the affected area, muttering an informal prayer. She broke off a number of the leaves, chewed them thoroughly, and spat the resulting mess in a fine spray over the leg. Her patient seemed content, and smiled warmly at the old woman and her granddaughter. No money changed hands, it never did for these consultations. Sometimes food or plants would be given, often there would be an understanding of a future obligation, repaid by some little favour. This time Aatemaa accepted an offering of flowers.

As they sat together after the consultation, on the plank that served as a bench along the house wall, Geetha was reminded of a recent event there. She pointed down the slope in front of them, remembering how she had looked up as she heard the wingbeats of a group of doves. Three birds were flying straight towards her, she said, and passed so close she felt their feathered wings brush her face. At the moment they reached her the house seemed to dissolve, and the doves continued straight on through where the walls had been. Aatemaa said they were blessing her.

These experiences came unpredictably, but almost always when Geetha was alone. There was a quality about them which she tried to explain to Aatemaa, saying other sounds stopped, and the light seemed brighter. They could be unsettling. There had been a day a year before when she was on her way to school, making the walk over the hill to the little school on the country road, a journey that took her around 50 minutes, along forest paths she knew very well. Much of the route lay along a rough roadway, rocky and deeply rutted, marked here and there by rock or mud slides, a legacy of each year’s rains. Scattered along this track were numerous small houses like her own, with little tracts of garden, many almost lost within the trees. Here and there were areas of farmland, growing spices, pepper, cinnamon and coffee, scattered cloves and nutmeg, occasionally a few rubber trees, each of them from a distance merging into the background of thick forest. Geetha had known this road all her life, it was her familiar neighbourhood, as much a part of her as she was of it.

That day she arrived at school breathless and weeping. A sympathetic teacher asked why, and Geetha explained between sobs that there was a large jak tree not far down the road. As she drew level that morning she realized the tree wanted her to look at it, so she stopped and gazed at the trunk. As she watched the shapes and markings began to move, and the form of a face and a figure gradually coalesced, an old woman with eyes filmed over as though blind. When the body was clear, it emerged from the tree, raised its arms and moved towards her. Geetha took fright, and didn’t stop running until she reached the school. Other children, several of whom must walk the same route, heard this story, and there was a buzz of excitement through the room.

By chance, this happened to be a day when her father left work early, and called in at the school to take her home. Geetha emerged from the school in the company of a small man with a clipped moustache, the principal, Mr Fernandopulle, a man not known to have smiled since he arrived in the district to take up his post. With Geetha standing sheepishly beside him, he lectured her father, relating the morning’s event, saying this was not the first time such things had happened, that Geetha was upsetting other children with her fantasies. It was the parents’ fault, he believed. They must stop filling her head with such nonsense. Even without looking at him, Geetha knew Taata was affronted by the man’s tone, but restrained his feelings. The reaction, she knew, would come later.

It did. When the two little ones had been put to bed, Geetha was treated to the full force of his anger. He called her stupid, said she was wasting her time at the school, and that she was shaming her family.

Amma tried to soften the effect, and told Geetha she shouldn’t talk about such things. “If you repeat them to those people they will call you mad, or say you’re possessed by a yaka.” To her husband she said “Maybe it means they’re going to cut that tree.”

This didn’t have the desired effect. He became angrier, and shouted at his wife. She was a fool too, for encouraging Geetha to believe such things. Amma tried to placate him. “You have to pay respects to the spirits of trees before you cut them down. Duwa is making it real, that’s all, like her little games when she was small.”

“And turn into an old woman? It’s a tree. How would she know about cutting it anyway?”

Aatemaa spoke. “It might speak to Geetha, she is one who can hear.”

You’re all crazy.”

“Geetha has a gift, like my mother. She saw things too.”

“Aachi? She was crazy too! What did she get for it? Her husband died young.”

“She was respected, she was a special woman.”

“It’s you who put these ideas in the girl’s head.”

Taata and his mother argued, and it turned, as it had before, to his decision, years before, to go away to work.

“You ignored the signs. You thought you knew better.”

“We were cheated, you know that. Nothing I could do. Some of these people round here don’t know how lucky they are. Why don’t I have a bit of land like them? I work as hard as any of them.”

For the first time Geetha spoke up, now that the attention had moved away from her. “Taata, you shouldn’t feel jealous. It’s very hard for them too, you know. Sometimes they are envious of you because of your life.”

He turned to her, and his face showed his surprise at her remark. The argument was over. He put an arm round her shoulder and hugged her to him.

It was soon after this that Amma approached the hamaduruwa at the temple for help. He cautioned that Geetha was still young, these things would pass. Exorcism was certainly not appropriate, he said, but in case of an evil eye influence, a puja could do no harm. A week later Geetha, was decked out in new white clothes, and she, her close relatives, a few neighbours, and a few of the temple’s stalwarts gathered for the ceremony. The hamaduruwa in his robe of deep scarlet led prayers as the day ended, candles were lit, cords tied to a wrist of each participant, and then Geetha was to throw down a coconut. When it failed to break, as it was supposed to, Loku Nanda commented loudly to anyone who would listen, “I told you so, it’s a bad sign”, but the hamaduruwa smiled, unconcerned. Geetha basked in the attention of an event in her name, and beamed continually for photos on a family phone.

But that was some months ago. Now she was shut away, and worrying about her life. The house wasn’t as quiet as usual. Taata had decided to make the most of the occasion, and, with his brother, get through the beer and arrack. Loud laughter and shouting, turning into argument. Geetha had rarely seen her father drunk, and never become aggressive under the influence. It hurt her to listen now, and she cried, thinking herself the cause, that the rage she heard consuming the house would not have happened but for her bleeding. She felt lost, alone. Loku Nanda, staying until her seclusion was over, was no consolation.

A little later there was uproar. Geetha, anxious, pressed Amma to find out, and learnt that her uncle, leaving to go home, drunk, had stepped on a snake and been bitten. A tic polanga, amma said, the most dangerous of snakes. They had brought him back into the house, and no one knew what to do. Loku Nanda let them know her view. “He wouldn’t listen. There was a gecko shrieking just as he was going to leave. It was a warning.”

Geetha knew what was needed. She remembered Aatemaa’s instruction, and knew where her stock of sudu idda was. Her advice was followed with gratitude. Tomorrow uncle must get to a doctor; for now he could be calm.

The household finally settled down, under a moonless, clouded sky. The darkness enveloped the land, total and unremitting. These are times when many things emerge, not only owls, some snakes, wild boar, pangolin and porcupine, but spirits. The villagers know better than to venture out. Geetha was restless, but eventually fell into a deep sleep.

She is roused by a sound, and listens carefully. There, again, clearer. Her name, someone is calling. She rises and goes to the window. It is hard to make out anything in the dark, but as her eyes grow accustomed she is aware of a faint strip of light, a beam of moonlight through clouds, and as she looks it becomes stronger, clearer, and takes on structure, leading down towards her. Her name again. No mistake now, it is Aatemaa’s voice calling to her, and there, a figure approaching in the beam of light, is Aatemaa.

Geetha is overjoyed, and bubbles to tell her she has attained age, but she has been frightened; she tells her of her father’s drinking and uncle’s snakebite. Aatemaa is her kindly self, and reassures her that she is growing into a woman, and will learn to control what is happening to her.

“But Aatemaa, I’m so sorry, I didn’t learn all the things you showed me, and I can’t remember. How can I help people like you did?”

“You mustn’t worry, child. You have shown tonight you can help. You will find your own way. Trust yourself, believe yourself. You will learn what you must do.”

Aatemaa turns to leave, and Geetha makes to follow. “No, child, it’s not your time. You have much to do. But remember, any time you are in fear, call me, and I will come.”

The morning arrives with wonder across the hills. What was a dark indistinguishable mass begins to resolve itself into distance, hills, slopes, to take on the beginnings of green, and slowly to reveal trees, rocks, a skyline. Geetha is at her window, and it feels as though it is all forming itself for her. Her gaze turns around the sweep of the land, from the ragged banana plants in front of the house, out to the furthest hill, and all of it seems at once strange and deeply familiar, like returning to a place not seen for years. As she looks she seems to notice every individual tree, every branch with great clarity, to see all of the landscape as a single intricate pattern. She feels lifted above it, or as if a part of her, perhaps her spirit, rises and looks down on the forest, the farms and the homes below, as though every roof becomes transparent, and she is aware of what is happening in each house. She sees the women collecting water and beginning the day, she sees the love in some houses, bitterness and anguish in others, she feels the jealousy between neighbours, squabbling siblings, the suffering of the sick. For a few short moments everything is transfigured, everything revealed, and she is apart from it, but intimately a part of it. This feeling will pass, but a new kind of peace has crystallized within her, and will grow.

1:05, 4605 words