THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM Read online

  He had become the de facto leader of the group because they all believed he could sniff these creatures out into the open. But here they were, in the middle of the field, and yet he felt nothing crawl under his skin. He heard no sounds in the corners of his mind, he saw no shapes when he closed his eyes. Could Thatha be right? Had these creatures learnt how to hide themselves from him?

  Of course, Thatha’s theory that he had outgrown his abilities was nonsense. He had never in his life been free of his peculiar ability. As he grew older, his sense for people’s emotions only got stronger. Even right now, he could feel the fear in Chanti, the sadistic delight that bubbled over in Sarayu, and the slinky, secretive sense of guilt in Aravind. If he could feel all of them, why couldn’t he feel these things they were looking for?

  He stopped when they got to the well at the other end of the field and looked around him, covering his eyes against the sun. The others behind him stopped too. Aravind walked to the well and looked down.

  ‘God!’ he said. ‘Completely dry. It has been like this for some time now.’ Everything he said reminded Chotu of the thief who robbed the temple and then joined the search party. He was hiding something. Chotu could tell that much from the smell of rotten guilt that came from him.

  ‘So, Chotu,’ Sarayu said. ‘Is this where we dig?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Chotu. ‘I do not feel anything.’

  Sarayu gave an impatient grunt and pitched her fork in the ground. It hit a crack and fell on its side.

  ‘Maybe Thatha is right, Chotu,’ Aravind called out. ‘Forgotten your little mind-reading trick, have you?’

  ‘I’ve not forgotten anything,’ Chotu said angrily. ‘I think we should start digging near the well and work our way towards the house.’

  ‘Great, so we’re going to dig the whole field in this heat?’

  ‘We will have to. We have no choice.’

  Aravind turned to Chotu and leaned on his spade. ‘No, Chotu, I’ve been telling you numbskulls this, all morning. We do have a choice. We pack our bags and leave.’

  Once again, that whiff of fear, a fear that people would come to know. But what was it that he was hiding?

  Chanti walked up to the well, took a look inside, turned around and drove his shovel into the ground with a heave. The blade hit the ground and scraped the surface instead of slipping in. On his second try, he aimed for a crack. With his foot, he stamped the edge of the shovel into the ground and lifted a piece of it. The mud was loose and powdery, with no trace of moisture anywhere.

  Chotu suddenly became aware of a wave of movement in his mind. It had awakened the moment Chanti hit the ground, and it was steadily moving towards them. It was an emotional equivalent of a swarm of bees, all driven by the same instinct, flying towards their attacker.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said.

  ‘Someone, hell,’ Aravind said, striding ahead and looking to the right. ‘A lot of someones.’

  ‘Who?’ Sarayu asked, first looking at Chotu and then at Aravind. ‘Who is coming?’

  A group of people, around fifty of them, all dressed in white, men, women and children, huddled up in the corner of the field and stood there, staring. Even from this distance, Chotu could see the pitch blackness of their eyes. At the head of the group stood a boy without legs, steady on his crutches.

  ‘Who are these loonies?’ Aravind asked.

  Chotu read a strange emotion in them. In fact, it could not be called an emotion. It was so base, so primal, that it could only be called instinct. And the instinct he read in their minds was that of protectiveness and sacrifice, similar to what mother cats felt for their newborns, what bees felt for their hives and for their queen.

  Their queen, then, was somewhere close by, and they had come out in droves to protect her. Had Chanti’s shovel inadvertently hit the right spot? He glanced at Chanti and signalled to him to strike the ground again.

  Chanti raised his shovel.

  The mob moved closer.

  ‘Whoa,’ Aravind said. ‘Whoa. What’s going on here?’

  ‘This is what Thatha was referring to.’ Chotu wiped some sweat off his brow. ‘She must have seen that we’d be coming here. So she sent an army of bodyguards to protect her.’ He took a step towards Chanti. ‘Now, Chanti, I think they may allow us one more strike before they attack. Do it once more. But slowly.’

  ‘Whoa!’

  Chanti brought his shovel down and lifted another piece of earth. The crowd moved closer still. They did not hurry, they walked at a leisurely pace, their black eyes fixed on them.

  Sarayu took a step back. ‘God, look at their faces.’

  There was no other word for it. Their faces were dead. Their eyes were dead. Each one of the bodies that stood before them was sick to the bone. Ribs protruded from wasted, brown torsos. Their limbs were mere sticks, their mouths twisted in grotesque, pallid grins, and their steps were halting, hesitating, fearful.

  The only two healthy specimens in the group were right at the front, one on crutches, the other one-handed and blind.

  ‘We need to go back,’ Chotu said.

  ‘Really, genius?’ Aravind picked up his spade and walked back. All four of them retraced their steps, keeping the advancing group of people within their sight. When they had reached the middle of the field, the mob, by now at the far end, stopped advancing and stared.

  ‘Now we know where she is,’ said Sarayu. ‘Only we don’t know how to get there.’

  ‘Since almost half the village is here, maybe we can make a run for the school and dig her up over there?’

  Chotu said, ‘No, they will come after us.’ He turned back and saw that Avadhani Thatha was standing by the house, watching them. He now signalled to them to come back to the house.

  ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ Chotu said. ‘We will deal with these people later.’

  Chanti said, ‘I… I am scared to turn back.’

  ‘They’re not going to come after us, you oaf,’ Sarayu said. ‘They’ve stopped there. As long as we keep away from where they’re standing, I think we will be safe.’

  They turned back and walked back to the safety of the house, all of them resisting the urge to break into a run. Chotu read fear in all of them, himself included, and as they drew closer to the house, the fear was slowly replaced by relief.

  When they reached the gate, they turned and looked back. The crowd was still there, standing, vacantly staring.

  ‘Well,’ Aravind muttered. ‘At least now we know that Thatha’s story is real. The old man has not lost it.’

  ‘Who were the boys in front of the mob, Thatha?’

  ‘Who? Saidulu and Ramesh?’ Avadhani peered out of the window in the direction of the field, then came back and sat in his chair. ‘I think they’re gone now. But the moment you go out there, I am sure they will be back.’ He smiled at Aravind. ‘Remember what I said about her, my boy? She has had time to think ahead and predict most events and put safeguards in place. Survival, my boy. Survival.’

  Chotu asked again, ‘The boys, Thatha…’

  ‘Oh yes, Saidulu and Ramesh. They are the boys that Chanti and Ramana saved seventeen years ago.’

  ‘What?’

  Avadhani chuckled. ‘Yes, remember Ramana’s dream? He saved a boy from a car accident. And Chanti, in his dream, saved a boy from a house fire. Well, Ramesh lost his legs in the car accident, and Saidulu lost his eyes and one arm.’

  Chotu shrank back against the wall and asked, ‘And do they… do they…’

  ‘Yes,’ Avadhani said, nodding. ‘They work for her. She chose her two main minions back then, boys. You see now what we’re up against? If we are to win against her, we have to think on our feet, and think so fast that we ourselves are unaware of the thought. Only then will it escape her, only then will it surprise her.’

  ‘Is that even possible?’ Aravind asked.

  ‘Ah, not as sceptical as you were this morning, are you, boy?’ Avadhani said. ‘I don’t know if it is
possible or not. We will find out soon enough.’

  Chotu said, ‘Should we not be heading out to the other places right now and looking for her, before the crowd has time to recover and follow us?’

  Avadhani said, ‘Chotu, that is exactly what she would have foreseen, and I guarantee you, if you go out there now, you will walk into an army of sleepwalkers.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘We will do what I said we will do. We will try to second-guess her, and then second-guess ourselves, because every time we change our minds, the future changes, and with every turn our thoughts take, she has to plot different scenarios and cover each one. While all we have to do is hold back our thoughts and stop thinking of it consciously until the right moment, she has to keep constant tabs and stay on constant alert. I’d say we’re at an advantage. Won’t you?’

  Aravind asked, ‘So your big plan is to do nothing?’

  ‘Exactly! For now, we do nothing.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Until at least tomorrow afternoon, we do nothing.’

  ‘But what if one of us…’

  Avadhani looked at Chanti and smiled. ‘What if one of us gets killed?’

  Chanti nodded.

  ‘We all stay in the house, my boy. We don’t go anywhere. We try to keep a look out for one another. After all, what danger can there be in here, inside the house?’ Avadhani pointed towards the field. ‘Out there you can run into an angry langur, but here, there is nothing to be scared of.’ He looked from one of them to the other, and said slyly, ‘Except maybe one another.’

  Sarayu asked, ‘Those boys, Thatha, whom do they live with? Who feeds them? They looked like strong bulls, both of them.’

  Avadhani threw his head back and laughed. ‘That is the advantage of sleeping well, my girl. They have food everyday at Saraswatamma’s house. Creamy milk every day, chicken every Sunday, and a full night’s sleep—dreamless—every night. Did you see how deathly everyone looked?’

  Sarayu nodded.

  ‘Look at how deathly I look!’ Avadhani pinched a fold of his skin. It readily gave in to his fingers. ‘Stay here for a month, my dear, and you will age by ten years.’ And he looked deep into her eyes and chuckled.

  Sarayu looked away.

  Avadhani lurched onto his feet and reached for his stick. Leaning on it, one hand supporting his back, he made his way to the bedroom. He stopped at the doorway and half turned. ‘I would suggest you go to sleep, all of you,’ he said. ‘We have nothing to do until tomorrow and you know what they say… A waking mind is a devil’s workshop.’ He turned, and his bony shoulders bobbing up and down in hoarse, hissy laughter, closed the door behind him.

  From inside, they heard the nawar cot stretch under his weight. ‘Oh, and kids,’ he called out weakly, ‘remember not to dream, and if you do, do not do anything in your dream. No matter what the voices say, just watch. Nothing more.’

  And then there was more of the hoarse, hissy laughter.

  Chapter Nineteen

  1984

  Gopalam stood by the edge of the well and looked down at the water. The mid-day sun burned the metal railing under his feet, but he was impervious to pain by now. The muscles of his face relaxed, like the rest of his body. Sweat trickled down onto his cheeks, but he made no movement to wipe it off. It caused him no discomfort.

  He felt nothing of either the fear or the fascination he had once felt at the sight of water. As a child, he had been the only one in his group of friends who did not go swimming on summer afternoons. While they skipped and danced their way to one of the wells in the village, he stayed back on one excuse or the other. One day he would come down with a headache, another day he would have to help his mother, and sometimes he would have homework to finish. It was strange, this fear of water. All his life, he had never understood why it dogged him so.

  But now it didn’t matter, of course. A frog leaped from a crevice in the wall into the water and swam across to the other edge.

  You too, Gopalam?

  She had not opened her mouth. She had not resisted any of his movements. Not a sound she had made—of fear, of pain, of disgust—no, nothing. But she had kept her eyes open. She had watched him all through the act. And those eyes had said, ‘You too, Gopalam?’

  He looked at his watch. There were two more hours to go before they would notice that Surekha had not got up from her sleep. Maybe a few more hours would elapse before the doctor arrived and told everyone that she had died of poisoning. How long would it be before someone asked where he was?

  He thought of Prabhakarayya without any of the cold, vengeful anger that had once consumed his being. Now he thought of him with a deep sense of empathy, as one of us. Once you share an experience like that with a man, he thought, he becomes your brother for life.

  Prabhakarayya, seated in his cane chair, one leg regally crossed over the other, pointed shoes, ring-laden fingers, spotless clothes…

  ‘Money? You want money?’ he had said that night.

  ‘Yes, Karnam gaaru. I… I went to the doctor today.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Prabhakarayya said, examining one of his rings carefully. ‘I keep telling you to stop smoking those beedis, Gopalam. How many times did I tell you to stop, hmm?’

  ‘The doctor said there is a hole in my lung…’

  ‘A hole! That will not do, will it now, Gopalam?’

  ‘No, Karnam gaaru.’

  ‘And an operation must cost a lot of money, no?’

  ‘Yes, Karnam gaaru. If you could do this as a favour to an old friend…’

  ‘Gopalam.’ Prabhakarayya looked up and smiled. ‘Is this what you think of me? All these years, and this is how you’ve understood me? Of course I will lend it to you. How much do you want?’

  When Gopalam told him the amount, Prabhakarayya’s smile broadened. ‘And your salary?’

  Gopalam told him.

  ‘So on your salary, it will take you twenty years to repay the principal.’

  ‘Twenty?’

  ‘Yes,’ Prabhkarayya said, nodding regretfully. ‘Twenty. And the interest?’

  ‘I will do something, Karnam gaaru. I will do anything and give it back to you.’

  ‘Of course, Gopalam,’ Prabhakarayya said softly. ‘Of course. We’re friends, you and I. Why such big words? We will write up something just as a formality and you can have your money. Okay?’

  Somebody then brought out a book, a sheet of carbon paper and a pen. Prabhakarayya got to work. After a moment, he stopped and said, ‘Gopalam, you know you don’t have to pay me back in money.’

  ‘I… I don’t understand, Karnam gaaru.’

  It was then that Prabhakarayya’s smile had become the broadest. ‘You can ask your wife to help you as well, you know,’ he had said. ‘Surekha can come and work here in the house for a few days… Don’t worry, I will look after her well… There will be the odd errand here and there that she can help with… In four to five months, your loan will be repaid.’

  Gopalam had stalked out in anger that night, but he had returned the following week to tell Prabhakarayya that Surekha would be coming from the day after. That night, he had left Prabhakarayya’s house with a packet full of money.

  ‘A woman’s self-respect does not mean anything if she doesn’t have a husband,’ his mother had said. ‘Tomorrow, after your husband is gone, what will you do with all your self-respect?’

  For four months after that, lying in his bed and nursing his chest, he had watched her go every morning. He would lie in bed, staring at the gate, until she returned just after nightfall. She looked the same—a bit tired, perhaps, but essentially the same—and yet she changed. She was irredeemably changed.

  Not once had they talked about the errands she ran at Prabhakarayya’s house. At the end of the four months, Prabhakarayya had marched to his place, and after partaking of the steaming hot tea that Gopalam’s mother had made for him, he had grandly torn up the piece of paper, declaring him a free man.

  ‘G
et better soon, Gopalam,’ he had said. ‘I hate to see an active man like you in bed like this.’

  Get better soon, Gopalam.

  The words came to his ears, dancing, swaying, as though on the back of a breeze. Only there was none blowing. There was sweat on his cheeks and burns on his feet, but there was no relief in the air. And yet the words danced and swayed.

  Had it changed anything? Had it left anything unchanged?

  Had there been even one night in those four months when he entered Surekha’s room and left it without feeling like his head had been sawn off? Had he bought her a bunch of chamanti flowers from the temple even once? Had he accompanied her to the movie at Saraswatamma’s house even once since then? Had he looked upon her with love—pure love—a love untainted by guilt and hate?

  No. To all those questions and more, the answer was no.

  You too, Gopalam?

  It was as Avadhani put it. ‘We’re all parts of a chain. The one above us stamps on us. We stamp on the one below us.’

  Wherever he went, he saw the grinning face of Prabhakarayya. He would smile at Gopalam whenever they met, place a hand on his shoulder if the situation permitted, and he would ask, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And how is Surekha?’

  How is Surekha?

  He had been thinking of Prabhakarayya that evening at the sarai shop. Avadhani had been there too. And when Chakali Sanga hobbled to the shop and asked for one more packet and was turned away, Avadhani had looked up and asked, ‘Oye Sanga, when will you give Gopalam his money?’

  ‘I don’t have it,’ Sanga muttered.

  Avadhani looked at Gopalam and lifted his eyebrows.

  Stamp those under you.

  ‘You don’t have to pay with money, Sanga,’ Gopalam heard himself say.

  The drunkard’s eyes flashed in greed. ‘What did you say, babu? I don’t have to pay you?’