Short Story: A New Dawn

By Indrani Talukar

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The door is locked. But she can hear Bahadur’s voice lilting like a feather caught in a breeze.

“Bibi!” 

He knocks thrice. Typical of him.

Opening the door, she puts out her head hesitantly, knowing fully well she will not see anyone. Anyone other than Bahadur.

“They need more jars of apple jam at the factory outlet, Bibi.” His voice sounds muffled through the crack.

She can barely discern his shape under the wincing light of the stars. But she can picture his Gurkha eyes – twin pinhole torches – beaming through the door. She shivers seeing a wet moon lapping the artificial pond next to the sidewalk leading up to the apple orchard. Soon the sky will turn an imperial topaz. No one else rises this early in this cavernous hell called Gulabi Haveli. The only time she gets to talk to him is this unearthly hour, just before the first rays of the sun slit the dawn. 

She falters, swaying, as the wind bushes her face, carrying on its crest the sharp scent of ripe apples. The apple trees outside her door are ablush with mouth-watering fat red globules ready to drop. It must be autumn then. 

Ammi had explained the seasons to her. 

Ammi had loved apples. She would take a walk down Seth’s apple orchard whenever she could get away from him. Him and his brothers. Just as well that Ammi had died soon… 

The hurt had stuck inside her head like a bullet. Ammi had forced a promise on her- that she would not weep after her passing on.

She looks away. It is the jam she needs to focus on. Seth’s old arthritic wife had taught her to make apple jam. She had been a fast learner, outstripping her mentor. Seth’s wife, generous in her acknowledgement, had gifted a stainless-steel pan almost deep enough for a cat to snuggle inside. She would mash chopped apples in it with a wooden spoon the size of a small broom, whistling an old Bollywood tune. She always looked forward to when the smell of cinnamon powder hit her nose, just as she loved the sight of sugared apple puree congealing like jelly.

No one makes jams in Suraya like her. It is her only quality, so Seth keeps saying. Seth does not like her. For all she knows, she could be his daughter. Maybe that is the reason Seth and his brothers have left her alone. Just as well, too.

Ammi always said that Seth was better than the others before him. She had not seen the others, nor did she wish to.

“They want to hire you at the factory. Haven’t you been listening to what I have been saying, bibi?” Bahadur’s button-hole eyes are widening with impatience.

Poor Bahadur. Seth and his brothers had thrashed him for letting two girls escape from the haveli’s yawing gates, as large as a dragon’s jaws she had been told. She hadn’t seen the haveli’s gates since the day she was born. The gates were well out of her sight in this thirty-four acre property.

Repeated thrashings had yielded no confession from Bahadur, who was finally let off with a warning. They would never get rid of Bahadur at the haveli… he knew too many secrets. 

“Bibi!”

She twirls around a full circle but sees no one this time. Throwing open the only window in her room, she lets in the autumn air heavy with the dewy scent of apples. 

Ammi had hated autumn. It was not difficult to guess why.

It was autumn when Ammi had been whisked off the tiny pathway leading to her village school in a country she pretended to have forgotten. The men lifting her off the pathway, as though an orphaned kitten, had masked their faces with ‘gamchas’. They had smelled like dead fish, Ammi would mention tautly. Her bones shrieking with pain, she had struggled to breathe as they gagged her with a dirty cloth. They also spoke in a dialect that sounded alien to her ears. She realized later that she had crossed borders with her kidnappers. 

Ammi did not remember her journey from her village to the teeming city of Kolkata. What she did remember was waking up in an airless room that smelled as though pigs had been in residence before. 

“Have you never visited the factory?” enquires the gruff Gurkha voice outside her door. She hadn’t, not being allowed to venture out of the garden right outside her room. 

“Run!” Her spine quills watching a stem genuflect to the breeze through the new dawn. “Run before they get to you!” 

Her spine quill to attention.  

“Run before the men in this bungalow catch you like they did me!” That is what Ammi had said before her death.

“Run to the factory, they need you there!” The desperation in Bahadur’s voice propels her despite her fear.

“Run, Bibi, run!” the leaves of the tree lush with red blobs hiss as she sprints towards the end of the long-winding lane where Bahadur is swinging open the gaping gates of the Gulabi Haveli…

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BIO

Indrani Talukar has a Masters’ degree in Communications’ Studies from RMIT University in Melbourne (Australia). Currently employed as Senior Editor at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), she has worked as a journalist in India and Australia. She won First Prize at the Greater Dandenong Short Story Writing Competition in Australia as well as a Rotary Exchange Fellowship to Argentina besides penning three novels, a novelette, and a book of short stories for children, one of which was selected for publication by the Rajasthan State Board. Her poem – THE RIOT – was ranked Number 1 Star Finalist in the Voices.Net International Poetry Contest in 2012 and her short story “The dowry” figured in the long list of the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, WHEN THE LAMPS WERE LIT (2008) appeared as an e-book serialized by www.indianwoman.com, based in San Jose, California. Her second novel – THE SOUND OF SECRECY – was published in print by LiFi Publishers (New Delhi) in 2016, while her third novel, THE COLOUR OF POPLARS, was published by Spring Books (New Delhi) in 2019.

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Gate Image: Simy