Nikhil Khasnabish

(“The Talisman” tells a story about kindness, patience, humanity, and forgiveness. Even after being attacked and humiliated, Manmohan chooses not to respond with cruelty when he learns who Salim is. Instead, his anger fades, and he gives Salim a chance to share his side of the story instead of punishing him.)

Manmohan Bhuyan heard some sounds at the gate. He didn’t bother about them. As he heard loud and frequent noises after a few minutes, he went out on the front veranda and saw the silhouette of a person vanish fast into the misty, moonlit night. What was that? He kept standing there for some time, curiously staring in the direction the silhouette had taken.

      He returned to the bedroom. He cautiously picked up the key from the dressing table so his wife Jhumi didn’t wake up. He went out. He took a close look around. He then opened the wrought-iron door of the veranda and locked it from the outside.  

      When he didn’t see anybody, standing in the middle of the street, he decided to walk ahead, and he walked ahead about a kilometer and stopped at the L-bend of the street and looked back. What was he doing? Was he courageous or stupid? 

      He returned.  

      As he was about to climb into bed, he again heard the same sounds and went out. A young woman in a white sari with black borders was standing at the gate, a white dog beside her. He loudly cleared his throat and she slowly retreated into the night, her hair cascading on her back. He began to follow her. Failing to catch up with her, he stood in the street and watched her moving away at a slow pace, like floating on the air, across the dry river, towards the forest at the foot of the hills. She vanished. As soon as he turned around, the dog appeared out of the blue. It stared at him. Though he wasn’t afraid of it, he didn’t like its stare. He started walking fast to avoid it and he tripped over something and almost fell forward. He gesticulated towards the dog so it was off his scent. But the adamant dog looked at him aggressively, pinning its ears back and twirling its tail. If he’d had an iron rod in his hand, he would’ve reduced the dog to a pulp and made its innards a feast to insects. He found a broken piece of brick near his feet, and then, as he tried to hit its head with it, he noticed it didn’t care to budge even an inch. Now it looked angry and he got afraid of it. He must run away, and he began to run, and running a few metres, he tripped over a boulder, fell flat on his front, and kept lying motionless, the dog behind him. The dog urinated on his bottom, scratched at the grass with its forelegs, and slipped into the night. He touched his bottom. He rose to his feet. What he could now do at best was nothing more than cursing the dog.

      He walked back home.

*

With a loud yawn, Manmohan got up, his whole body aching. He ran his fingers over the blood clot on the left knee he’dbruised. He put on his shirt and limped out.

      ‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked, staring at his face. ‘Why did you sleep on the divan in the sitting room?’

      He didn’t answer. He went to bathroom.

      Coming out of the bathroom, he changed into kurta and lungi and got stretching exercises. Then he sat on the edge of the bed in the rays of the sun coming through the window.

      Jhumi came in with a cup of tea. ‘Mohan, are you hiding something from me?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘You didn’t get up in time. You slept in the sitting-room.’ She put the tray on the bed.

      He looked her in the eye and then looked at the magpie robin feeding off insects in the garden.

      ‘How did you bruise your knee so badly? Where did you go in the night? There must be something wrong with you. Don’t lie to your wife.’

      ‘I never lie to you.’

      She pulled his leg towards the window and the sun kissed the bruise.With the pad of her middle finger, she pressed the rough surface of the bruise softly and carefully, and, his whole body twitching, he turned his head left, not shifting, and gazed at her finger that rested on the blood clot.

      ‘Just abruise,’ he said.

      ‘It’s deep. The skin around it has swollen.’

      ‘Get me the Wokadine ointment.’ The cup in his hand, he got off and stood by the window, after she’d gone out by smoothing her fingers over the knee he’d grazed. While drinking tea and watching the magpie robin, he decided to tell her the truth, not caring about her reprimands in reaction to the details.

*

When Mohan finished the story of the woman and her white dog, Jhumi told him that she was Rimzim Bora, who had disappeared from her house after being betrayed by Sunil Pradhan, a veterinary doctor. She’d disappeared on the day of the doctor’s wedding. She was pregnant. She’d emerged from the forest, with her white dog, after several years to attack a newly-appointed young veterinary doctor. Since that time, she’d been on the prowl at this town and had hunted for the people, who had come to work here from other places, especially the veterinary doctors. She’d learned about her from Purnima, their domestic.

      ‘She avoids the man who wears Saheb Ali Fakir’s talisman. Only Fakir-sahib can save you from her. She’ll come back again. So don’t follow her and blunder, Mohan.’

      ‘Give me another cup of tea.’

      Mohan didn’t believe in apparitions or any such supernatural things. The white dog had pissed on his bottom. He resolved to follow her if she came up and solve the mystery. He’d never go to Saheb Ali Fakir and wear his talisman to do away with her attention Jhumi was sure about.

*

When, after two days, Manmohan heard the same sounds again at the gate, he focused the torch on the wall clock, read the time—it was 1:35 am—and went out to the front veranda, the shawl on him, and saw Rimzim rush away into the blowy night that felt like January in February. He peered through the misty moonlight and saw the pair of barn owls sitting in the corner of the roof of the opposite building. Some dogs barked somewhere. Feeling determined to solve the mystery, he walked into the street and after scanning the surroundings as he made sure she wasn’t anywhere around, he began to stride ahead, oblivious to Jhumi’s warning. Suddenly, Rimzim and her dog appeared. He followed her through the turning of the street, past the residence of the headmaster, past the high school, and then past the electricity office, to the bank of the dry river. In the river and around the forest, the mist was dense like on the shoulders of the hills beyond it. The waning gibbous moon was dim, and the clear sky was heavy with sparkling stars. The wind biting his face, he got into the river, and then as he almost crossed it, he saw her standing at the bank for a few seconds, peering into the mist, before turning back into the forest where the wind was moaning aloud. Once he ambled up to the edge of the forest, she rushed out like a whirlwind and grasped his right shoulder, and the second he managed to liberate his shoulder, she heavily punched him on the jaw, and he forcibly twisted her hand and assailed her with the blows to the nose. Her hand felt like rubber. She kicked his kneecap and as soon as he fell backwards, she opened a jackknife and positioned herself to thrust it at him and he quickly thumped her. Then, holding the ends of the shawl on him tight, he began to run fast along the bank, leaving the shawl on the wind so it couldn’t make him slow down. But, unable to proceed the way he wanted to—he’d got exhausted to a frazzle—he knocked against a dry, transverse trunk and fell to his knees and turned a somersault. Rising to his feet, as he resumed running, he felt his knees buckle, and he stopped to recover his breath and touch his right flank the jackknife had brushed. The jackknife in her right hand, she swooped in on him, held his neck in the crook of her left arm, and made him unable to make any sounds. Her hair brushing his shoulders and her breasts feeling unlike breasts against his back, as he was scuffling with her, to release himself, his Adam’s apple scratched on the jackknife. He chopped her wrist and the jackknife slipped out of her hand. She slackened the grip and bent down to pick up the jackknife. He struck her to the ground. He clutched the tip of her nose, discharged a hard kick on her abdomen, and made her fall flat on her back.

      ‘I won’t spare you.’ He threw himself on her bosom and muted her with heavy blows. Then, when he forcibly pulled her by the hair to make her stand up, the hair came loose from her head. He held the wig in his hand, for a few moments, then threw it to the foot of the tree, where the dog was standing. ‘You’re be-wigged!’ He forcibly made her stand up and, before she could renew the fight, he kneed her in the crotch and got her to bend double. ‘Who are you?’

      ‘I’m Salim Ali.’

      Manmohan’s anger dropped away.

      ‘I’m a jobless young man with a BA degree, sir.’ Salim straightened up. ‘I’m the eldest son of a very poor family. I tried hard to get a job, to earn an honest living. By selling my mother’s gold ornaments and the landed property, father collected twenty-five thousand rupees and gave it to the local MLA. The MLA neither gave me a job nor returned the money. We were helpless against the powerful MLA. We couldn’t remain hungry and half-fed. Then I met another hungry man like me. He is Saheb Ali Fakir. Saheb Ali Fakir is also a graduate like me. He is not a bad man, sir. What we are doing now is the result of our plan. I got many prizes as a drag artist at school and at college in go-as-you-like competitions. I wouldn’t have earned my living as a drag artist if my academic certificates and bribes hadn’t failed in getting me a job. We started our job by intimidating Sunil Pradhan. Saheb Ali Fakir’s talisman saved him.’

      Manmohan looked at the white dog. ‘Why doesn’t it bark? It urinated on my behind.’

      ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Salim knelt at his feet and touched his knees with his head. ‘It’s muzzled, and its mouth is belted.’

      ‘Then you will continue intimidating people like this?’

      ‘As long as we don’t find an alternative source of income, we can’t leave it, sir. So please don’t disclose my identity and destroy our only source of living, sir. Please…’