Scribbles by Sudhansh

The dry winds of April incessantly struck her soul with Durvijay’s memories while she sat below the blackberry tree waiting for him to arrive in a bullock cart carrying his usual catchy grin. He could even have sent a letter after all but he was adamant to make her suffer in the most terrible fashion. She would sometimes see visions of his stone cold headless body draping on an invisible rope and would wake up with a desperate childish sob but Varsha was afterall a strong young woman. She’d consolidate herself with a considerably useless maturity coupled with extremely painful optimism that helped stabbing her spine.

It was the Battle of Tanga in German East Africa during the First World War where Durvijay had been to capture the area with the British Indian expeditionary forces. The name of his brigade was Imperial Service Infantry Brigade which Varsha had a hard time pronouncing when her brother read out the letter back in October. She had been told that her husband would be back victorious once the war was over and she still had the only letter in her hand which was attempted to be read but in vain. As she lay on her cot at midnight half asleep, she could hear the fiendish laugh of fate which she tried to convince was not something that broke her down to pieces impossible to be put back together.

We can barely stand the smell of those white imperialist cunts but your son of a whore husband went all the way to Africa to fight for them? Sacrifice his life for those blonde fuckers? Look at this arm, it’s blown off by a grenade during combat and this is how I pay for it. A daughter with her six months old son whose husband is fighting for the British. THE BRITISH! What a shame? Does this fateless girl even know that she is still widowed or not? Her father’s revolutionary blood wouldn’t stop ranting and that too probably blew off without affecting much of her life.

Durvijay on the other hand lay in the battlefield of Tanga bleeding from his opened up head like water from a turned around spherical utensil. The bullet had pierced his head with his brain splattered a metre away from his body while his hands remained buried under another corpse.
There was a time when his peers looked up at him and marched along for no greater good or glory but a probable disrespect. Another expedition of his brigade had been minutely successful but the shores of Tanga with their tall coconut trees were pillars of doom for him and his comrades. As a result, he lay there with his thousand others on the shore while the waves did the honours of washing up their corpses very often.

Much like the footprints on a sand vanishes with the blowing wind of the desert, Varsha’s wounds too were seemingly recovering as her child Brij gradually stepped into manhood. She once cut her toe during the season of kolhu in the village. A considerable amount of her saree was stained. She tried to get rid of the stain through multiple washes but unfortunately it was too dry to be washed off.

When Brij passed out of school, army was the absolute last profession Varsha could let him choose but it all revolved back to the point where Varsha’s opinion barely mattered.
The second World War broke out and yet again British India participated with the Allied nations. Two and a half million Indian soldiers participated in the war yet again. A cursed generation yet again for no greater good or glory coupled with a probable disrespect. Varsha’s blood yet again was all set to break out from her eyes but in a rather different way. The insect of suffering fluttered its wings to sit on her wounded heart only to fly away to bite another mother’s flesh. Brij did go to war but not to die like a million others. He came back and Varsha gave a sigh of relief as she saw her son on the bullock cart not smiling as she thought but stone cold like a headless corpse draping on an invisible rope.

When Brij was awake, he would sit all day staring at the blue sky with nothing inside to think of. His conscious mind repeatedly tried to repress the gory scenes he had witnessed in Mizoram. He repeatedly tried to hammer down the pile of corpses deep inside of him with his ideas of bravery, manhood and unparalleled glory but he could find neither of them inside or outside. He once cut his toe during the season of kolhu in the village. A considerable amount of his dhoti was stained. He would try to get rid of it through multiple washes when his mother grabbed the pale of water and said, “It’s not going anywhere.”