Bishti

By Prerna Prakash

Blood dripped onto porcelain, blotting out the stain lines.

She leaned over the splintered sink, following the drops as they ran off into the twists that the water droplets had made. The mirror in front of her reflected the shafts of sunlight that managed to seep in from behind the boards on the window. The corners of the toilet remained inundated in darkness.

No one had been in here for years. 

As long as she could remember, she had lived in the enormous mansion that her grandfather had built when he was a young man, or so he said. The whole extended family had once lived in one of the hundreds of rooms that lines the home. One by one, they had all left—either by running away or through death. Now, one rarely ventured to the second floor, or ventured away from the few rooms clustered around the kitchens. As long as she could remember, she had wanted to escape.

Bishti looked around her, shaking out of her stupor for a few moments. Dingy stains lined the windowsills, and the motes quivered within the rays that cut the room in half. The traffic outside seemed to affect the way the dust danced, and she stood there for a moment, transfixed. 

Blood creeped into the cracks of the sink. 

As her eyes moved about, somewhat aimlessly, she saw herself in the liver-spotted mirror. Her face half in and half out of the sunlight, iridescent. Slight purple blotches bloomed at her throat. As if her screams had turned into a necklace. 

THUD.

Had she fallen, already? No, the mirror was still upright, her eyes still looked back from within the murk. The smell of rust and lemon clogged her nose and she could almost taste the blood in the air. The door, then. Where was the door? Hesitant to remove her elbows from where they rested on the rim of the sink, Bishti stirred only her head. The wooden door to her left quivered with the strength of the blows. She could see it now, even though all the sound in the world had been muffled. 

The slats expanded towards her, the spaces between them darkening. It all happened as if time was moving through a pot of honey. Every thud jerked the motes in the air violently, like someone mashing the keys on a piano with their fist. 

Her eyes wandered away from the quaking door, jumping through time and space.

When had she sat in front of a piano last? It had been a few years now. As her eyes rolled upwards, she could see the posh Kolkata parlour dadu always sat in, superimposed on the flaky ceiling. Years ago, they had sat together on the little stool, and played until her little fingers hurt. He’d made her practice until the tips were so raw that even wiping away tears had hurt. 

She could almost see it now, the old family home wrapping itself around the large courtyard—like her mother used to wrap herself around Bishti, before she died. The whispers on the streets used to follow her home when she was a child, but she could barely hear them now. Barely hear the whispers that strolled the streets that surrounded the mansion. 

The old man with the big house, the old man with the deep pockets, the old man with the terrible terrible temper.

The camera spluttered, the reel changed and now the ceiling played a different film. A little girl on the floor—skirt askew, hair jumbled—and her mother, clinging to her as the cane fell. Sometimes the sharp stick caught her face, sometimes the back. It was a good thing that women of decent lineage were not expected to go to the market. 

Dadu liked to tell the story of how theirs was a family that had served under the British Raj, at the highest of the tiers. That is how dadu had gathered enough money to build this house. Sitting at the fireplace he used to turn his cane over in his hands continuously, the orange glow washing over his frame, making the hollows of his cheeks darker and deeper. 

How many times had dadu told them the story of their family? Her mother sitting on the settee across from him, Bishti at her feet on the pouffe. They were not allowed to slouch, or cross their legs, or move while he spoke in his booming voice. Their backs taut like bamboo, faces frozen in a half smile, they looked on as dadu polished his cane, the ominous red glow of the fire caressing the inky ridges of the wood. 

His voice enveloped them, rich and sonorous, until it was a struggle to keep their eyes open. They couldn’t dare to ask for leave. Bishti used to look at the fire, search for the kindling that crackled and broke within. 

It helped her stay awake.

The flames of the fireplace licked the peeling plaster on the ceiling and then the glow turned to sunset. Bishti blinked, surprised, and looked to the window. Time was almost up, it seemed. 

The sunlight struck one of her irises directly, and for a moment, she was caught in blinding light and utter darkness. It reminded her of the night when she had dared to break a rule. It had been almost too easy for Bishti to climb out of the window that night. After fifteen years of dadu telling her that she was meant to sit still and be obedient, she was finally going to take her own destiny by the hand and tug it into line. 

After so long, she didn’t really remember the name of the boy.

In that moment though, she had been consumed by her love for him even though somewhere a worry had niggled at her telling her this could not end well. He had come into her room with his father—learning how to be a contractor. Their eyes had met, and they had smiled. Over the next few months, they had stolen away moments to talk to each other, exchange words in dark hallways—soft touches that Bishti could feel late into the night. The night she snuck out of the house, he had been waiting for her at the end of the lane. As they had writhed and wriggled, giggling at the impropriety of their meeting, she had fallen deeper in love, regardless of the fear. 

The sneaking out had been much simpler than she had anticipated. It was the sneaking in that she had underestimated. As she sat on the shingles outside the window of her room, she had heard a car roll into the drive and the headlight had pierced half her face before sliding off and leaving her with a shivering heart. 

Clearly dadu had come into her room after midnight and found the cold bolsters under the sheets. 

They’d all convened in front of the fireplace. Strangely, at that moment, all she had worried about was the boy. What would dadu do to him? There was no question that he would find out. Later, standing in front of the pyre, she had been told that her grandfather and her mother had driven around the whole neighbourhood, trying to find her. Later, in front of fire and tears, she had been forced to blurt out his name. It was bad enough that he would have no warning. Worse, his father did not belong to dadu’s club. 

Or any club. 

It would not go well for him, she was sure, but that night, there were other things she’d had to worry about. That night was the last time her mother had protected her. She’d died on the ground, encircled around Bishti, her blood soaking warm through the chemise.

THUD.

Bishti looked down at the warmth spreading across her bodice. The sink was obviously blocked. Her elbow seemed to have slipped from its perch and into the viscous puddle that had formed, the splash now spread across her midriff. There was no doubt, the stain would have to stay. She wouldn’t be able to wash this away. The sun seemed to have gone down now. She could imagine how it would melt into the Hooghly, spreading across the ripples of the river, liquifying around the boats that would be heading home. 

The only light that remained with her was the slight glow of the streetlamp from across the alley. Across the alley where the house was painted blue, and the family grew fruits on their roof. Her knees buckled. She’d prepared for this, there was a high stool, and the wall to lean on. As she pressed her cheek against the soft cool plaster, she remembered lying on the floor in her room. The tiles were the only cold she could find within her huge room. 

The bed had been useless, the covers scratchy and thick, the pillow unbearably warm against her neck. The moshari fell like fishnet around her bed, clouds billowing down from the four-poster, tucked under the mattress. It was early morning and dadu had already left. The sun had not risen yet, but sleep had not visited Bishti. After trying for hours to find a comfortable nook in her enormous bed, she had slipped down to the ground, with minimal resistance from the moshari—this one being thinner, softer, and costlier than other mosquito nets. 

Dadu had moved her to a room on the upper floors after Ma had died. In the beginning, Bishti had hated it. It was hotter, smaller, and further away from everyone else. It was surrounded by old vases, long corridors, and gelatinous silences. For years she tried to plead to be let back to the first floor, where the human contact was, but then dadu reformed her old room into a prayer chamber, and she was not allowed to debase herself in front of god like that. It had taken her a good seven years to come to love the room that she had been exiled to, and that was only because of the house across the alley. 

A normal house, small and without any obvious fireplaces.

Her grandfather insisted on keeping the fires lit in the house all the time, and it made no sense to her. They lived in Kolkata. The stone itself sweated tears because of the heat, but dadu would not budge. 

She lay on the ground, the cold seeping through her thin nightgown until her body had leeched all the coolness off the patch she was on. She’d gone to the balcony then; the mosquitoes were better than the humidity. 

It was on the roof of the house across the alley that she had seen the girl for the first time. The girl had waved first, and then hesitantly, Bishti did too. Over months, the waves turned to smiles, and long glances. The first letter was an adrenaline fuelled experience. Bishti had followed the girl’s slight frame into the alley and followed it over to the compound wall of dadu’s house.

Winking at Bishti, she’d slipped a piece of paper into what seemed to be a hole in the wall. That was first contact. 

The girl began leaving little letters under a loose brick on the boundary wall, and Bishti would always rush to answer back. Over two years, they had just spoken through paper, and then one day there was a ladder propped against Bishti’s balcony. Bishti had told her about dadu and his midnight checks, and so, she used to come only in the wee hours of the morning. 

Just after the moon set and just before sunrise. They spoke in hushed voices, their laughter breaking off in their throats like waves receding. 

THUD.

How long had it been? She stirred out of her reverie like waking from deep sleep. It must have been a few hours, maybe half a day? The door had held through the intermittent banging. Someone came and knocked about every hour, Bishti surmised, but she was too far gone now. She couldn’t turn back, and she could feel there was not much time left. 

Bishti had felt the same way a week ago, when she had opened her balcony to let the girl in. They’d crept into the bed, hidden behind the folds of the moshari. That was the first time the girl had said that she loved Bishti. As Bishti sat frozen, the girl promised to steal her away from the museum she lived in, and Bishti could not but worry for the person she loved, once again. 

It all ended when Dadu had come into the room last night, later than she expected him to. Bishti had jumped from the bed, pushing dadu away from the balcony, trying to give the girl time to escape. Bishti had clutched the sheets to herself, and fought against the man who was too strong for his age. 

Dadu had just pushed the ladder. 

THUD.

The blood had flowered out of the girl’s head and seeped down just as the sun had peaked over the next roof. The golden syrup-y light dripped slowly over the scene, spreading like glaze. The girl’s body had been caught on the barbed wire atop the property wall, her skull cracked halfway down the whitewash. Streams of bright red raced into the turned soil, leaving a ribbon stark against the beautiful clean wall. 

Bishti could not take her eyes off the debris as dadu had pushed her into the room and pulled her by the hair to the fireplace. She still saw the ribbons of red against white as the burning pokers struck her back, the smell of singed hair assaulting her nostrils. She didn’t remember much after that, except her head rushing to meet the carpet. 

In the morning, the maid had told her that the girl who lived across the street had tried to come into Bishti’s room to steal jewellery, but the ladder had slipped. The family had been lucky to escape, but the thief had died. God had saved Bishti, the maid had exclaimed, and her dadu was going to make sure the thief’s family was put to justice for their wrongs. 

Completely ruined the wall, the maid lamented. Ruined it, they did. 

No longer strong enough to raise her head off the flaking plaster of the cold wall, Bishti closed her eyes. The rust and tang of the blood was all she could feel, and she could not hear her heartbeat anymore. She felt cold.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens raced off into the city, and she imagined them weaving through the alleys and blind turns. A branch cracked outside the window, and the rain began. 

The last thing Bishti remembered was the irony of rain falling from a clear sky. 

***

Obituary

Kolkata, July 23, 1998: Smt. Bishti Mukhopadhyay passed away last night due to heart failure. She was 25 and had been sickly since the beginning of the year. The whole Mukhopadhyay family mourns her passing and prays for her soul. They will be conducting a puja for her on their premises and the poor shall be fed.

She is survived by her grandfather, who keeps her in his heart forever.

By Prerna Prakash