It doesn’t stink anymore. It smells of earth, organic and wholesome. The mud sticks to my bare feet and begins a slow, devious crawl up my knees. I want it to. My jeans are a goner. There are flecks everywhere, I have this impulse to wallow in it. I’m in a trench that separates the fields. This is just one of many that delineate each plot into rough squares. Green, green, and more green, the rice is ready for harvesting. The girdle of peaks around me stand unmoving, stubbornly loyal. Nothing has changed, well not quite, some new houses have eaten up the scenery and part of the fields. It’s a desecration, why did they build on such fertile ground? My heart flutters with the wind, it can’t be healthy. I desperately hope it holds out until I see them, feel them. Fifteen years is a long, long time.
Snakes love the paddy fields, they feast on the rats, frogs and other rodents who nervously occupy the lower rungs in the food chain. We aren’t on their menu, but we were nervous just the same. I remember how Uncle Nimal and my childhood friend Suren died from their strikes. They couldn’t get them to the town doctor on time, we didn’t have good roads back then. The tractor took two hours, Suren’s father made an incision near the bite and sucked out the blood and poison, he tried to. It was hard work, harder because he was sobbing violently between each mouthful. He died two months later from a heart attack, it was grief, we all knew. Suren did not have a mother. She had died or left them when he was just a baby, I didn’t know, but there were whispers. My mother was a mother to him. They are together now, the villagers muttered with moist eyes.
I just wanted to get out, anywhere would be paradise to this. I finally got my chance ten years later. I felt the village would hunt me down, along with the snakes, along with Suren’s ghost. Just to make sure it couldn’t I placed several oceans between us. Europe was heaven, I never looked back. My parents never knew my address, a farmer’s son surely wouldn’t be respected. My wife asked, but I lied, they were dead. She would never have married me if she knew, she was above my pay grade and family position and drop dead gorgeous. We spoke the same language, I spoke with fluency, so did she, but seemed to struggle when she talked with others who shared our background. Still she left me three years later. I found out much later that she was from a village not far away from mine. I laughed, I was weeping till then. It was good riddance.
I can still remember the tears as I left them, the first time I saw my father cry. He sobbed, hugging me. He was a tall man, strong with years tilling the fields, but he looked small and broken. My mother was a wreck. Losing an only child broke them, even though I was only leaving. I wept too, didn’t realise why though, since I was happy to escape.
The winds bring me back. Suren’s house comes up, the large jak tree still take centre stage in their front garden patch. A little boy and a girl are playing marbles under its shade. We did the same, I thought marbles had gone out of vogue. The old world charm still lingers. Loud music wells out from the house. They look up and wave at me, with wide smiles and boundless energy. I can feel my arm go up through the tears. Not long now, not long.
The last bend and the island pops into view. It is a plot of land that protrudes heavenward from the paddy fields. It is easier to name the fruit trees that my father had not planted. Mango, pomegranate, water melon, I give up. The memory and the long walk wet my mouth. A small stream surrounds the property, granting it its true status. My father forced me to take a dip in its freezing waters every morning. I got a constant cold. The colds stopped after my fifth birthday. I want to strip and immerse in the cold. But everything stops. The woman in the front garden is bent, so bent, her face is almost nearing her belly. She is shading her eyes from the sun to take a better look at the stranger frozen a few meters in front of her. Then she fumbles forward, fumbles trying to run, but she can’t, her body and age won’t allow it. I can see her tears. Our tears drench each other. I’m on my knees.
“My son! My son!…thank you!”
“He…he…he was waiting for you for so long.”
Not a word of admonishment. My heart is hurting my ears. I look around through the wetness of my eyes.
“Where…where is ?…”
I have stopped breathing. Then a painful cough from inside, it is music.
“When will you leave again?”
She squints into my eyes. It’s hard with such a warped back.
“Never…never again mother. Never.”
She smothers me again. I am home.
Copyright@Jude Perera 2024