The Portrait of Anamika

By Arya Pawar

Those seventeen years of my life passed in a blur; first nine years of naivete, reaching fourteen was a mystery and sixteen seemed like a curiosity. Perhaps it was time for some clarity.

It was around two thirty at night. The parents were fast asleep and I was seated on the hanging swing in the verandah of my old ancestral house, accompanied by the voices of the night creatures and a distant hooting of an owl, coming from the old banyan tree besides the temple.

Clarity comes with a price, with discoveries, and exploration. Out of my mind, an idea struck. The abandoned house, the Dutta House, never went there, was never allowed to. Courage, yeah that comes easily, rebellion more so.

I was a little reluctant, but it was as if this escapade to explore the house called me, as if there was something inexplicably abstract that yearned for me, and if I denied it, I shall always be restless.

The Dutta House, as I called it, was a two storied abandoned house reclaimed by nature, standing tall even after its residents left it behind as a distant memory. I always wondered how one can leave their house, the place they were born, the place their child took their first step, the place where the family elders spent all of their existence, so easily, as if it was all for nothing? Isn’t leaving your house just you leaving a part of your heart behind?

I was standing in front of the eerie house, about which I had an inevitably negative feeling. I shaked it off as my natural instinct.

I grabbed my satchel and took out the torch that I sneaked from my dad’s almirah.

I was about to enter the house via the wooden back door when I heard the hooting of the owl become loud. I flickered my torch open and wherever the light touched, the dust particles looked like snowflakes against the beam coming out of it. It was somewhat intriguing, for they were ostensibly bright.

The innards of the house had an uncanny silence. The living room was covered in dust and spiderwebs. In the rightmost corner of the room was an old wooden rocking chair, home to a whole society of termites. Across the room was a rusted almirah, partly open and high above, on the ceiling was a chandelier stripped of its glamour which once it might have held.

Behind the rocking chair, in the centre of the huge wall was something covered in a black cloth. Curiosity got the best of me and I approached it. With a flicker of my touch, the cloth slipped and gave rise to something majestic from its confinements.

My eyes fell upon the most transcendent of beauties. Her black hair flew like the branches of ebony on a new moon night, caressing me with its unspoken depthness. Her trembling gaze staring straight into my soul, into my being, gave me a treacherous peace and there where her heart met her black gaze, the artist stroked that singular pearl, a drop, rising like an unsheathed sword ready to swing. Her lips, similar to the shade of the vermillion which rose from Giulietta's sacrificial love, her pale femininity, her divine ingenuity, the abstract surreality and one name embedded in the veins of the portrait— Anamika Dutta.

My hand became the hand of Adam of Michelangelo's creation. Submerged in Anamika's tranquillity, I touched her tear and a flicker of my eyes, a whisper of her cries and a distant memory immersed me.

Where was he? He never came back, but he was there. Was he or was he not? It was the day I cried, I sighed, it was the day our love went missing, as if he didn’t exist at all, as if love perished. But I know he was there, for his caress, his touch was here, I was here and so was my heart.

What are they doing? Don't hurt me. Where are they taking me? No. No, it can't be…

You can't do this to me. You promised. I prayed for you, I gave my everything to yourself. You cowardly lifeless thing, how could you shun my penance to the darkest corner of existence, who are you if not me and who am I, if not us? My heart is crying and you, you feel nothing? What did I do, but not love you in your sins, in your absolution and there you lie breathless, like my shrieks, like my agony, like my pain and here I am, already a living dead.

His pyre, my red wedding gown, they set us on the eternal fire, the one which joined us that day, the one which ended us alas and pain? Pain is the difference between the dead and the alive, pain is my withering as I burned, and burned, in pain I cried and they watched. They watched as I shredded my soul, his love, flame by flame, life by life and these living corpses, they watched. And in our charred bones lie shattered the vestige of my unlived life, the one which went with him, the one which still blazes behind the last tear in my eye, the one which still persists. Therein lies everything, therein lies nothing.

Behind Anamika's portrait, in a dark hidespot within the wall, you will find her ashes. How do I know? She, in this damned reality, felt me and only me, my presence and the truth and the lie. It was the thirtieth day of April, two thousand and five. The day I went missing. The day I died. And Anamika's truth died with me.

By Arya Pawar