Aashka Vora
Jul 30, 2017 · 4 min read

CIRCLE

“Where is my uniform?!” my 10-year-old sister shouted out, at 6am on a Monday morning. I threw a pillow at her in rage, turned over angrily and closed my eyes again. She always woke up grumpy for school, and then shouted the place down. As always, Lata came to the rescue, her arrival preceded by the tinkling sound of her cheap silver anklets. She played multiple roles in our household, giving a helping hand wherever she could. We were dependent on her for a lot of the most mundane things, without which our lives would probably inconveniently stop. I knew her since she was a child living in the nearby slum area, and we would frequently go biking in the neighborhood or play Hide and Seek around our large brick-walled house. Those days the difference between us went unnoticed. My childlike eyes only observed the most obvious- how she was a shade darker than me or how her hair was so much prettier and thicker than mine or how she could draw a perfect circle using only a wooden pencil while all I managed with my fancy red fountain pen was an amoeba shaped scribble.

She and I were almost the same age, except that she had recently gotten married. And was 7 months pregnant. I had not seen her since her wedding. There was no more the tinkling or the subdued humming that we had gotten so used to. I missed the perfect henna circles she used to draw on my palms, bathing them with fresh limes to get a rich maroon color that I could proudly show off.

It was a damp Tuesday morning. It had been pouring incessantly since the past few days. Dawn resembled dusk. It was the kind of weather that made you want to sit staring at the swaying dripping trees outside your window and contemplate life. I was just craving Lata’s samosas, when my mother walked in and told me that Lata was sick. It was a serious case of typhoid. Her surroundings must not have been as hygienic as we would have hoped. She had been admitted but the doctors were saying that there was little hope for her or her child. I was shocked, and deeply saddened. It is funny how the idea of something ending forever can put a lot of things into perspective for you. Like how I wished I could have gone to meet her once when I heard about her pregnancy, but how was I to know that I might never see her again? A simple disregard for certain things can leave you with a lifetime of regret.

Some days I just wish to be left alone, and on those days, I look forward to my solo drives. That was one such day. I grabbed my purse and keys and rushed down the stairs. It had started raining heavily again, but I turned a deaf ear to my mother’s protests. I wove through the streets, mapping the route for the drive in my head, including as many richly canopied lanes as I could. Those were my favorite kind. Especially during the rains, it was like driving beneath a green sky; it automatically soothed me. Coupled with the music of the drops rhythmically striking the metal of my car, my cluttered head felt clear again.

I then became aware of my surroundings and noticed how difficult it was to see through the sheet of rain. I suddenly saw bright headlights in my rearview mirror, approaching faster than I would have liked. I swerved to the side narrowly avoiding them, and they sped, flashing by inches away from my rolled-up window. I thought I heard a thud and a screech, but as the car disappeared I blamed it on my overworked imagination. My heart beating fast, I stopped on the side of the road to calm my nerves.

A sudden vicious bark, a dripping muzzle and shining angry eyes smashed against my window. I yelped back in fear. The stray dog appeared like a demon to me in my shaken state, and I hurriedly started my car with trembling hands, wanting to get out of there as quickly as I could. The car coughed and stuttered, and was silent again. I closed my eyes in frustration. With my head against the steering wheel, I took a deep breath and whined. I looked up, startled. The whine. It was not mine. I looked around, squinting to see clearly through the rain. The dog seemed to be sitting in the middle of the road, whining desperately, with a sound as deep and sad as a banshee’s. The hair on my arms rose, there was something eerie in the air. Slowly, as my eyes adjusted to the scene, I noticed what looked like a small bundle lying beside it. A bundle that was brown and red and seemed to be moving sporadically. The breath caught in my throat as I realized what it was.

I desperately tried calling up various local animal rescue groups, but the weather played havoc with my phone signals. When I could connect to a couple of them, they were too far away to reach us due to severe waterlogging. With each second my voice grew more panicked, and tears of helplessness smarted my eyes. I got out of the car and walked up to the dying pup and its mother. She rose hopefully, her eyes shining with unshed tears that I had mistaken for anger. I wish I could tell her how sorry I was, but I think she understood because she went back to her now dead child and nudged it gently to the side of the road. I turned slowly and walked back to the car, shut myself from the world and sobbed.

My phone rang. It was my mother. Lata had passed away, but the child had miraculously survived. I looked across at the mother sitting with her dead child, while I listened about the miracle child with a dead mother. I saw Lata’s perfect henna circles on my hands, and realized what they meant. The circles of life and death, everywhere. I looked at the sky and saw an amoeba shaped circle of blue between the grey. I looked at it until it disappeared, and drove home.