Two of us in a Body
Makati plunged into the Ganges in her bus --- seventeen-years-old, most of her life unlived.
Those days I used to resurrect people --- found them indulgent bodies which they entered surreptitiously and left at-will --- responsive to their residual yearnings. Family and friends doubted me, but I viewed them uncharitably; believing it’d be inequitable to discount suppressed desires amongst spirits.
It all begun with priest Chinmaya of the Anglican Church in Conoor. Three years ago. He’d visited me just two days after---the soil above him still soft. I helped him with all my skills, acquired by means of trial-and-error, because he’d found a Dutch backpacker at his own cemetery, who was leaving for Male in two days. Priest Chinmaya’s dreams of breaking the shackles of the hamlet he’d never stepped outside of, took wings.
Next, my friend Anita got stabbed in the subway. Her wide eyes, open like a wooden doll, kept asking, why me? No answers. We --- Anita and I --- had to find an extension outside space and time, an existence that enabled her to inhabit her terrier, because, after her, her partner spent most of his time with it.
Coming to Makati, her elfin face was framed by short black hair. Watching her bloated body, I kept thinking what kind of life would she have led? Wishes drowned, moments washed away, like flavors from a tongue.
Not much different from me --- walking dead who pitied his existence! Oscillating between recognition of what I wanted and living another different life; who let pieces drain him, physically and emotionally, but couldn’t provoke buying editors to turn the first page!
Ahhh! Whose dreams aren’t just hopes hung on compromised consciousness?
Muddied trousers folded upto my knees, I spit the tobacco from my mouth, twirled my thin moustache and pondered. She needed my help to restore her. My head was bursting with possibilities! Moments sped like wild horses.
Crouching beside her, I held her hand.
‘Malai eklaichadideu’ she said in one of the thousand or so Indian dialects.
I must’ve appeared baffled because she repeated---shriller and insistent,
‘Malai eklaichadideu’
I beckoned the tender-coconut seller, ‘What does she say?’
He looked at me, aimed a train of cuss words. He was in a tearing hurry. At the rescue scene curious onlookers were swarming like maggots to a cadaver.
‘Malai eklaichadideu’, she said again, this time feebly. Alarmed I let go her hand. She immediately floated above, circling around in the void above the wreckage, and melting before I could blink.
Malai eklaichadideu, I learnt later, meant ‘Leave me alone’!
I didn’t leave her alone. Not that I could help it in any way--- a young man’s never sure of his ways.
The first of her messages came while sailing with a simpleton boatman on the Mekong, Laos on one bank and Thailand on the other; thanking me for helping her find her first abode. On an unhurried maiden adventure, she enjoyed playing a trick or two of the disappearing type on the people wearing straw hats squatting by the riverside.
Makati soon outgrew it, abandoning the boatman to plant herself on the Irish Munster Vales through a welcoming breeder on the stud farm. For a young woman, I reckon, jostling with warm bodies was exciting enough for the adventure to last close to a year.
Makati excelled in getting bodies fast. And trashing them faster, unsure of what exactly she wanted. One of those who lose interest before gaining any, she went wherever her crammed, curious mind ordered. I’d swear she rather enjoyed being without a body of her own than she’d ever have been in one.
At the bar one day, lamenting the lack of an income to my friend Lewis, I told him how proofreading for a small press and writing on the sly was beginning to dismantle me.
Lewis said, ‘Try London. Or Paris. Life’s there, my friend. Ghost writing---neat pay! Look at me. I’d think I’m not half as talented as you.’
I was considering it, talking to my ageing parents whom I didn’t want to leave, when Makati cried for help. Again.
Days earlier, she’d split herself into two --- inside the Monsieur! The French President! Taking a fancy to the Elysees Palace, she needed two of her own to keep up with his diverse and engaging lives. But three in the same body was rather a crowd. The voices in the President's head had decided to silence the body. He shot himself one morning.
She hung aimlessly unsure whether to take the body-route again, as unsure as I, mulling whether to continue putting pen to paper.
One night, I took my chances. Proposing to Makati was like entrapping her. I had wild visions of violent protests --- she clawing my face, making bloody scratches on my limbs. Instead, she coyly agreed to partner me.
That was like a burst of energy---she within me. Together, we. Spitting fire!
Makati squeezed narratives out of her colorful experiences, inundated me in flashes.
I commemorated our inviolable partnership by splitting myself into two; let one part embark on unfathomable adventures with Makati, living other people’s lives within their bodies.
The other was bent on the desk at home, fingers skimming over keyboard, weaving that yarn first-hand, and sending them out to editors faster than I’d ever done. Most wrote back positively.
Tonight, when I checked my inbox, flooded with snapshots sent from idyllic islands and Russian space stations, I found a mail from my editor: my adventure tale had gone into reprint within the first week.
Mandira Pattnaik writes poetry and fiction in India. Her work has appeared most recently in Brilliant Flash, Door Is A Jar, Cabinet of Heed, Spelk and Lunate . Fiction is forthcoming from Star 82, Heavy Feather Review and Gasher Journal.