By Shaik Asad

This man who’s part of my secret, well, let’s not worry about his name. Not like I see any chance of you dropping in my village, whose name too I choose not to disclose, but a secret is meant to be a secret in the first place, and now that I’m finally letting it out after all these years, let’s not be too specific about the names. But wait a moment; I have no idea how good you’ll find this story, but how can I start it with such vagueness as ‘this man’ or ‘that man’?  For the ease of story telling, you must give me the freedom to give the man a name I like—Amir? Sohail? Vali? All right, let’s call him Vali then.

So, Vali was a tenant farmer who had a decent house three streets away from mine, whose roof I had happened to re-thatch that spring about thirty years ago. I know it’s all corrugated sheets or concrete slabs in today’s world, but in those days, all you would’ve seen in our area were palm leaf roofs topped with used tyres as far as your eyes could see. You might think I’m just bluffing, but do you know what people used to say about me? ‘Not a drop dares fall through the roof if Rafi’s khurpi has gone through it…’ That’s what they used to say. Mind you, I’m not being vain when I talk about being the best thatcher in my area. Fact is a fact, you know. Come summer, my own hands used to rip apart and re-thatch more than half of the roofs in my area, but that’s a different topic altogether.

Anyway, Vali had his roof re-thatched but didn’t pay me a paisa that day. He promised he would pay me the minute his harvest money came by and I said all right. I didn’t bother him the whole summer because he wasn’t of the kind to skip the payment of a poor fellow like me. Besides, like I said, I was very busy throughout summers, packed with engagements every day from morning to night because almost anyone needing to re-thatch his house would choose to wait until late spring or summer, since winters and monsoons were a little problematic, and very few had any alternative houses to rest in while I tore off the old sun-brittled palm leaves one by one, repaired the fastenings of the rafters and re-thatched the roof with freshly flattened palm leaves.

All those hectic summer days would pass in a flash and when the monsoons came, they had me lying about at home. It would be a lie if I said I didn’t enjoy being idle, doing nothing except eating three times a day and escorting my kids to their schools through the sticky, puddled mud roads, and peeling their skins off if they threw any tantrums about not going to school on account of the rain. But again, as much as my overused body craved some rest, I would invariably get bored after a few days, and it was during this time that I took out my little notebook in which lay the names of those who held my money up that year. Whenever the rain offered a reprieve, I visited each one of my debtors. In order not to be too blunt or rude, I would chat with them at great length and wait for the exact moment to slip in a word or two about the dues. I was content with the chat alone, but if I got the money right away, it was two birds with one stone!

Then came Vali’s turn and I visited him one evening, where I got a warm welcome. Vali got me a chair from inside and we settled on the verandah chatting about many things. I don’t want to get you tangled up in all our poor folks’ talks of weather and politics and agriculture; instead, I would like to jump right into the main point. Our chat steered towards the difficulties of farming and how the hard work didn’t yield enough harvest half the time. At one point, Vali’s lips stretched into a smirk and said, ‘Well, let’s forget about it, Bhai, I’m soon going to give it up anyway. You want to know how?’

He leaned in and looked straight into my eyes and whispered, ‘Jackpot! We’ve hit the jackpot!’

But then, the moment he said this, he leaned back, looked away as if he had just saved the biggest secret of his life from slipping out. (Come to think of it, it really is the biggest secret of our lives.) I waited for him to say something, but his mouth remained shut; his eyes avoided me and flitted all around the roof. I watched the bump below his ear rise and fall as he clenched his teeth behind those closed lips. The situation was turning really awkward when I turned my head and was greatly relieved to see his wife coming up with steaming tea in steel tumblers. We exchanged salaams with much humility and mutual respect, after which she enquired after my family. I said they were all fine. She said I should’ve brought my wife along. I promised her I’d do that next time.

When she handed us our tea and left us, Vali started off an entirely different topic. When I tried to remind him of the apparent ‘jackpot’, he faltered. He cleared his throat and scratched his head before saying, ‘Oh that! It’s nothing really. I actually found an excellent pair of bullocks for sale. You want to buy them?’

No, I thought, that’s not the ‘jackpot’ he had meant. It was too obvious, don’t you think? What would I, a thatcher, need a pair of bullocks for? All the same, I left it at that. If he didn’t want to talk about it, so be it.

But he revealed it all when he visited me a week later. I remember that it was an unusually sunny evening and we took our chairs outside to enjoy the sun’s warmth. First, he made me promise that I’d keep my mouth shut about it as long as I lived, and when he got my promise, he jumped right into the subject in a hushed voice.

He said they had discovered gold buried at a spot in the middle of the forest, which lay east of our village. Yes, you heard it right.

‘Gold!’ I gasped, heart leaping, eyes wide open, ears perked up.

Vali’s face lit up when he saw my reaction. He gave me a minute to digest what had been said, and then talked about a certain chemist who was going to lead us in the venture, and who had a certain chemical composition that would bring down the accuracy of the location to a few metres. Above all, he talked about our ultimate boss, whose name really stunned me. The first thing that came to my mind was one of his photographs I had seen sometime in the local newspaper. That benign smile of his, that middle parting of his hair and those bushy eyebrows. He was a well-known figure with all the gold shops he owned across the state. Well, if you’ve figured him out already, you know he’s been dead for five years and one of his sons runs his businesses now, but if you haven’t yet, I must say I wouldn’t like to make my way into the bad books of rich people like them. Let’s just call him the Boss.

Vali went on. ‘Last week, I used that public telephone next to the soda shop in the bazaar and talked to the chemist. I insisted that we have another honest man to share the hard work because I thought I alone wasn’t enough to dig the gold up within a short time, you know. And then I gave him your name, vouching for your honesty and reliability. It cost me ten rupees to convince him, you know. Today I called him again, just an hour ago, and the chemist says it has proved much harder to convince the Boss, but he finally agreed on five per cent for you.’

By the time Vali ended this backstory, I had willed myself to believe every word he said, not because I was a rustic fool but because it felt really good to believe him. Because hope was so delicious. Reasons enough, right? Sometimes I think, maybe if he had come to me at any other time than during the idleness of the monsoon, I would have been a little harder to convince, or maybe I would’ve believed him then too. Sometimes I think that if somebody came up to me with a similar kind of story even now, there would still be a chance I might believe him, although whether I would team up with him or not is another thing.

The rains were an impediment, so we had no option but to wait until monsoon passed. Vali and I met several times and talked about it but I never really voiced the question I had concerning the whole affair. How had our Boss come to know about the hidden gold lying in the middle of a forest? More importantly, how on earth had Vali come into the picture in the first place? I asked Vali neither question because at that point I didn’t really feel the need to question him. In retrospect, however, I think I might have cared a little too much about the flimsy bubble of hope I had made myself very comfortable in, which posed a threat of bursting if too many questions were asked.

Anyway, monsoons passed and we came together one day, Vali, the chemist and I. The chemist was a thin man with a constant frown pasted on his oval face. Hair neatly combed like a school-going kid’s. Clean-shaven chin, immaculate moustache. He wore a clean ironed khaddar shirt that revealed the baniyan he wore underneath. He wasn’t just a chemist but also a direct representative of the Boss, whose orders reached us through him.

An hour after we started, we reached a certain point in the forest where Vali touched the cut marks on the trunk of a big tree and said, ‘We’re on the right path.’ At this the chemist unfolded his map for the dozenth time and pored over it for some time before thrusting it back into his pocket. Then came a thick cluster of keekar trees, which we were to cross.

‘We are not too far now…’

When I took out my machete to clear a path in the keekar wilderness, the chemist cried, ‘Don’t do that, you fool. We don’t want to leave any signs.’

We pushed through the keekar thicket, the thorny stems scratching our arms and snagging our shirts. Beyond the keekar setting was the ‘spot’, which was basically a very old house with no roof overhead. Mossy, five or six feet high stone walls partitioned the house into three different ‘rooms’ overgrown with shrubs and grass. The chemist ordered us to clean them up. Once the ground was clear of shrubs and grass, he twisted open a tinted glass vial and poured its content, a thick red oily liquid, all over the three ‘rooms’. Then he said we’d have to wait for about fifteen minutes.When fifteen minutes had passed and nothing happened, he got stressed. Another fifteen tense minutes passed before the liquid began to sizzle and froth in one of the three rooms.

‘There you go!’ the chemist cried excitedly and let out an uncharacteristic cackle. This was encouraging enough for me to ask ‘How much do we have down there?’

He turned his head sharply, greatly surprised that I had the nerve to ask such a question. Then he moistened his lips with his tongue, smiled a little and said, ‘No chemical to figure that out!’

Somehow I felt that he knew it but just didn’t want to tell us about it. So I said, ‘Don’t worry, Sir, we’ll find out soon!’

#

I was really drawn into it. Gold danced before my eyes. I began to dream night and day about all the things I was going to do once I became rich. It was just a matter of time, and time was what weighed on me heavily. Days felt long. Vali had nothing more to say than, ‘I’m just as curious as you are.’

No one but the Boss knew when he’d give the chemist the go-ahead.

The day finally came about a month later and the three of us met again. We made our way to the ‘spot’ in the evening to see that the shrubs and grass had reasserted their claim on the spot. We were eager to start digging right away but the chemist ordered us to wait until it was dark. We started digging at about eight o’clock in the ample light of the three-quarter moon looming above. We didn’t need to light the lamps we’d brought. Our spades and digging bars kept hitting all sorts of stones and pebbles until we were about three feet deep but it became a little easier after that. The chemist sat on fallen stones in the next room and came to the ‘doorway’ every now and then to check on us, asking the same question over and over again.

‘Did you hit it?’

The most time-consuming part was to remove the loose soil and deposit it in the third room. As we got deeper it was difficult to climb out of the pit, so we tied a rope to a tree trunk outside and dropped it into the pit.

#

We must’ve been ten or twelve feet deep when I plunged my digging bar in, and the next moment a high-pitched sound like a little girl’s scream issued from underground, so sharp I thought it would pierce my eardrums. I shut my eyes and plugged my ears hard. When I opened my eyes a few moments later, I saw an enormous black cobra, coiled, with its hood raised, barely two yards from me. My blood froze when I saw its glossy black body. I stumbled back in reflex and pressed against the wall of the pit and braced myself for its fatal strike. You see, the cobra was almost five feet long: it shouldn’t have taken a moment for the snake to reach me and dig its fangs into my body, but something seemed to be holding it back. It was hissing madly, tongue out, hood held high, rocking back and forth as if it was so desperate to finish me off while its body just sat there coiled up, making no attempt to approach me.

The shock was so sudden I lost my voice. It took me some time to gather enough courage to alert Vali, who was digging away on the far side of the pit, seemingly unaffected by such a deafening scream.

‘Snake, snake… Vali bhai…’ I croaked.

Vali cried, ‘What? Where? Where’s it?’

He held his spade high over his head and came running towards me, but I didn’t wait to show him where the snake was. I had already grabbed hold of the rope and was pulling myself out of the pit. My limbs felt so weak it was a struggle to haul my own weight out. It was only after I’d reached the chemist in the other room that I looked back. I was greatly relieved to see Vali climb up too and approach us, but the relief didn’t last too long: somehow the cobra managed to get out of the pit too. It slithered up, overtook Vali, and came straight at me. Panic overcame me. I abandoned the wretched place and ran out into the forest. It was a grave mistake. I didn’t have my slippers on. I had left them in a corner before the digging began. And here I was, bare-legged and scrambling through the forest. I didn’t look back but could almost sense the cobra chasing me. I could somehow feel it. I knew it was right on my heels.

Soon, the inevitable happened: I stepped on a thorn and fell over, which is exactly what the cobra was waiting for. It caught up in no time and dug its fangs into my foot, withdrew, and struck again. I pulled my legs back just in time to avoid a third strike. I didn’t really feel any pain at that moment, but it was such a terrifying sight. I was panting like a dog by this time. I scuttled back on all fours, my eyes locked on the cobra as it kept advancing on me. My groping hands found a dry crooked branch lying on the ground. I grabbed it and threw it at the cobra. The branch missed the mark, but the cobra backed off and slithered away into a nearby bush.I picked the branch back up and started walking back to the spot, cautious and ready to defend myself.

The venom. As my body cooled down, I began to feel a sharp burning sensation where the cobra had bit me. The effect wasn’t too sudden, but I could feel my lungs shrivel up little by little. I staggered along. A numbness originated at my leg and I couldn’t feel or move my toes. The spot was within my sight when my legs went senseless and I fell into a thorn-less bush. I was losing my breath little by little.

Vali and the chemist, who had been wandering in the forest looking for me, found me gasping for breath. They splashed some water on my face.

‘It bit me,’ I whispered, pointing my heavy hand at my leg. ‘The cobra…’

Vali examined my foot but found no marks of snake bite anywhere.

‘Where? Where did it bite?’

‘Where is the cobra?’

I was in no condition to answer them. All I could manage to do was point my shaking finger towards the bush the cobra had gone into, and gasp, ‘Oh, I’m…’

My lungs were turning into a stone and my eyes were fast losing their focus. In the lingering moments of my consciousness, I saw Vali’s horror-stricken face, his fatty cheeks trembling as he was shaking me, slapping me and shouting words I could no longer hear.

#

I understand that I’ve created quite an impression of my death here with my lungs turning into a rock and all that, but you must believe me because that’s how I really felt, life slipping out of my body inch by inch. Needless to say, I didn’t die, Alhamdulillah! Here I am, all these years later, still stuck to this world like a leech, still breathing and eating and drinking.

Vali heaved my limp body onto his shoulders and took the path out of the forest. He carried me almost three quarters of the distance when I regained my consciousness. There was still some restriction in my lungsbut I was glad I could feel my body and I could breathe again. My body had turned cold and I was shivering. Vali lowered me from his shoulders and we both sat down panting for breath. My eyes automatically scanned the spot on my foot where the cobra had bitten me. I know it’s hard to believe it, but there was not a scratch-mark on my foot. Icould still point at a spot where I had a slight burning sensation, but there were no marks visible.

I wasn’t fully over this shock when I saw the cobra slip out of a bush and into another. I jumped back and cried, ‘There it is!’ Vali sprang up and looked around, but it was too late. We resumed our walk. I limped along with my arm on Vali’s shoulder. My body got warmed up from the walk and I could breathe much better.

We encountered the cobra again a little later. This time it confronted us on the trail face to face, its body glistening in the moonlight, clearly visible from where we stood.

I stopped and pointed my finger at it.

‘There. Now you will see it.’

But no, Vali still couldn’t see what I saw so clearly.

‘It’s right there,’ I insisted.

He took a few cautious steps ahead for a better view. Nothing. He grabbed a stone and threw at it, which made my heart skip a beat. The stone missed its target by at least a metre. The cobra uncoiled slowly and moved, only to settle itself a little ahead.

‘Look, it moved, it moved!’ I yelped.

 Vali still saw nothing. He looked intently at me and gave a huge sigh. Suddenly, his eyes were dilated in the absolute shock of realisation. He slammed his palm against his forehead and blurted, ‘They knew it! They knew everything!’

Vali stood rooted like a rock for a long time, submerged in deep thought while I sat down to rest with my eyes on the cobra as long as it sat there before us. When he came out of his thoughts, a deluge of curses poured from his mouth, aimed at the Boss and the chemist. He vowed never to see their wretched faces ever again. It was now that I sensed Vali knew a little more of this affair than he had shared with me. But I knew he would never own it up even if I asked him with a machete at his throat.

Vali picked up another rock and threw at it. The cobra now uncoiled itself and slipped away. We made our progress. Through the rest of the path I saw the cobra, now hissing down at me from a branch, now crossing the path right before us, but I didn’t point it out to Vali anymore. It kept its distance from me and I was glad it didn’t charge at me like it had at first.

I could breathe much better by the time we entered the village. As much as I wanted to go to the hospital and get a check-up done for snake bite, I had no visible bite marks to show them at the hospital. Also, we realised that making a commotion at the hospital at such an hour would surely cause suspicion.

We walked along the empty streets towards our own street, where a couple of street dogs greeted us. They sniffed at our feet and wagged their tails in recognition.

I went back to my house but told my wife nothing about it. She saw that I was shivering, gave me a Paracetamol and made me a mugful of hot tea.

#

I was down with fever for a whole week after that, accompanied by a severe cold and phlegmy cough. During this whole time, I dreaded being alone. I never let my wife go out of my sight. I was constantly checking under my bed. If something rustled in the roof, my eyes stayed glued to the roof for the next few minutes, almost expecting the cobra to make its appearance any moment. The cobra never again made an appearance in my real life but for a long time, it appeared in my dreams, it chasing me and I trying to run away from it. However, I remember one particular dream where I got a little bolder, picked something up and cursed it. It opened its mouth and talked like a human. It said, ‘Oh, don’t beat me; I won’t kill you; I’m here for your gold…’

I stayed home indifferent to household problems until it got to the point where my kids were coming home for lunch to find rice and nothing else, and I said enough was enough. It took me more than a month to be able to go out, work and earn something.

Vali’s fields got ruined three consecutive times.  He got neck-deep in debts and the whole village pitied his turn of fate. Despite all that I had to go through just because of him, I found myself pitying him too. We never talked about that fateful night except on one occasion when he came to my house asking for a cup of rice. He shed some tears about his fate croaking, ‘I wonder when my curse will lift.’

I said nothing to him at that time, but his words framed an opinion in my head that we were affected by two distinct types of curses: one that was short-term and maddeningly intense, the other that long-term and slow-burning.

But the tables turned so quickly that this opinion didn’t last much longer. The very next year his crops went extremely well. The following year I heard the news that he had bought an acre somewhere, then another, then yet another. In less than five years his thatch house was pulled down and up came a two-storey pucca building in its place, the first of such grandeur in our colony. Three years later he locked the house up and shifted to one of the rich colonies of our village.

Many times since, we have crossed each other in places like the bazaar or tiffin shop or some such place, he in a clean ironed shirt with a golden pen nestled in its pocket; I in my regular old dirty miserable shirt and lungi. He ignores me mostly, but on very rare occasions he bestows me with a benign smile. Sometimes I feel the urge to walk right into his house and talk about that night, or at least ask him when he was going to pay me the rightful money he still owes me for thatching his house that spring. But I think I may have waited a little too long to do that and now, Vali has become as unreachable as the Boss used to be.

###

Shaik Asad’s debut short story collection titled ‘The Stir of a Leaf’ is available at www.spout.page. His works have been published in MeanPepperVine, MuseIndia, The Criterion, and Twist and Twain.