chapter 2: Damn!The Dame Lost its e!

Chapter 2:

June 20th, 1999.

Unidentified No., ‘By the Unchartered waters’ Avenue,
Jalsindhi, Madhya Pradesh,
India.

She steps into the deliciously inviting waters. Her unconditional, unrelenting,umbilical fixation with the mystical rivers, before her involvement in this cause had always been an innate obsession. The waters had never been of any real threat to her. Until today…

However, as she absently props a tiny kid with bubbling phlegm popping in and out of one nose into her arms, her thoughts quickly shift gear. The waters were never a threat before the huge ‘engineering marvel’ had been ludicrously erected by the conniving ‘Iron Triangle.’ She muses, “The water always loves and gives; its ferocity is only kindled by the notorious acts of selfish men and kindred.”

The police are moving towards them with a brutal body language suggestive of the use of lathi and maybe even harsher means of repression. As if spurred on by the impending danger, she joins in the resilient chanting with a renewed sense of invigoration : “Bachao. Bachao. Narmada Bachao. Bhag Jao. Bhag Jao. Police waalé bhag Jao!” (Save the Narmada. Run away Police Men)

Approximately 200 people rub shoulders with her. Lohari and his family shout the slogan from the bottommost pits of their stomachs. This family would always feel like the snuggest sweater she wore back home in Mumbai.

Then, her eyes meander to the woman, the keystone of this protest; a lady whose simplicity and small frame belie the powerhouse of empathy, energy, fire, passion and purpose within. Medha Patkar is the exemplary ordinary Indian woman who became the extra-ordinary ‘queenpin’ of this group of people: the most unseemly alter-ego of divine deities who adorned the greatest temples as much as they occupied the common man’s mind spaces.

They are of various makes, these people, including her: electrons, protons and neutrons; nevertheless, electrons, protons and neutrons that make up the same atom. Like atoms, they might be considered the smallest particles of matter in the huge universe of people who seemingly didn’t care about them. She carries on the internal debate: “When atoms share or lend electrons with other atoms, they make a chemical bond. There are those varying atoms out there in the outside world who still did not know them. But, a bond could definitely be made. Time and dedicated efforts would be a catalyst towards melding the bond.

She now turns her attention to the little child in her hand. She smiles at the pop-up phlegm. Boom! The bubble bursts all of a sudden. She absent-mindedly wipes the greenish viscous stuff off with her Dupatta, cleans the stained Dupatta in the waters and passes the kid on to its mother, all the while thinking of that little angel Ila. Children in this valley, especially ones with bubbling phlegm always blew her inner maternal instincts out of proportion. She then wonders where Ila would be at this very moment. This particular direction of ‘wondering’ would always lead to the insistent resurgence of ‘troubled waters’ in her mind.

And surely, troubled waters were here to stay…..

The water rose with every question…

How many more children would have to lose their childhood?
Would these children’s birthright to live be snatched right after birth?
How would delusory displacement of people in the Narmada Valley finally marry effectual, real resettlement?
How long would the hapless Adivasi feed his life to the Euphoric, rich Indian?
How long would the Government hoodwink its hideous underbelly; an underbelly that is fed with dreams of a golden corridor industrial belt?
How long would the engineering wonder continue transmuting into a natural disaster?
How long would radical activism take to activate the passive citizens of the country?
How long would the Damn continue damning the lives of harmless, guileless people?

The water didn’t really rise as much with every question as did her body submerge into it. Like in a trance, she slowly, but surely melts into the water. The sugar when dissolved in black coffee melts into it with absolutely no physical evidence of it ever have been there.
People around are so immersed in the protest that they hardly notice her becoming one with the black waters.

Her curvaceous hips whip out delicate ripples. They are succeeded by the weed like waist and the bountiful bosom. The delicate neck follows suit. The Cupid pout kisses the water. The black mole above merges into the lake’s black hole. The aquiline nose literally nosedives into the lake. Finally its jus the eyes; the open green eyes are gazing back at her own unanswered questions. The whirlpool in her eyes is as deadly as the whirlpool she is getting sucked into.

She sees some faraway man in an incoming boat look at her. However, it is only for a split second she notices him. After that, he gets lost in the mindless oblivion surrounding her.

Lohari’s wife Bobita looks for Toya the very first time in an hour. The police are closing in on them...