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Cleansing Fire

Posted on April 19, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

All there was to hear was the high-pitched whistling sound. All there was to see was smoke. Thick, sometimes white but mostly grey and definitely shielding little licks of fire that could flare up at any moment. People in the vicinity were being cautious. They didn’t understand it and like in every other case, when a person doesn’t understand something, she is afraid of it.

As a child, Rohit had been fairly hyperactive. He could barely ever sit still, he was always full of questions and he had very few people in his life inclined to humour him. His parents told him not to make such a nuisance of himself. His teachers complained to the principal who called in his parents to tell them what a nuisance he could be. So his parents apologised to the principal and told him again when they took him home.

Until the day he met Uncle Rehman. Rohit wasn’t Muslim so Rehman wasn’t really his uncle. That didn’t matter because every adult who wasn’t his father was an uncle and every woman who wasn’t his mother was an aunty. It was how it worked and he didn’t question it. He wasn’t clear about how Uncle Rehman came into his life and the life of his family. That happened in a time before he had stored up memories.

Uncle Rehman did however manage to change his life.

After an afternoon of raucous running around the blood was pounding through Rohit’s head so fiercely one day that he was yelling at the top of his lungs to be heard by his mother. His father wasn’t home but Uncle Rehman was. He didn’t even look like he had just arrived because he was dressed in a vest and lungi, looking totally comfortable stepping out of the kitchen. The roaring in his ears was beginning to subside; his breathing was approaching normal so Rohit managed to take in enough air to speak at a more normal volume. He smiled at Rehman but the muscles in face didn’t seem too keen on making the greeting completely genuine. He was old enough to know that it wasn’t normal for another man to be home when his father was not around. Rohit went searching for his father, assuming he was somewhere in the flat so that he could tell him about his adventures in cricket.

Rehman dealt with his surprise at the absence of his father with complete calm. He squeezed the boy’s shoulder and shepherded him into the living room, instructed him to sit down and tell him all about his day. Rohit wasn’t immediately agreeable, his eyes flicking back and forth between the door to the kitchen and the curls of hair peeking over the neck of Rehman’s vest. He knew his mother was in there because he could see her moving around but she didn’t seem interested in coming out to speak to him. He noticed a couple of grey hairs on Uncle Rehman’s chest and immediately he had to resist the urge to reach up and pluck one out. He had been smacked upside the head for doing less and he had learnt that it hurt enough to not do anything other than the things he didn’t immediately think would get him slapped around. He hadn’t heard the last few things Uncle Rehman said to him though because he was focused on the grey hairs.

For no real reason he remembered that incident as he watched the firemen and the policemen and the bystanders milling around from his vantage point. He was dressed casually in well-pressed black clothes. T-shirt, cargo pants, lace up boots, all black though of differing textures so they reflected the light to different degrees. His hands were together behind his back and he was watching the movements far below. A tiny part of him wanted someone to turn around and look directly at him. They had no way of seeing him and people only scanned the high windows or the rooftops of buildings when a sniper was involved. No gunshots meant no one was edgy or nervous about anything other than the scene that was presented to them. It was as if everyone was telling them to ‘focus on the fire,’ or in this case, the lack thereof.

Uncle Rehman had died three years ago and the flames on his mother’s funeral pyre were still little more than warm ash. She had been on the verge for several weeks which is why he was presiding over the execution of a plan that had been in the works for over a month. His father had died a long time ago, not too long after that afternoon he had found Uncle Rehman at home with his mother.

When he had begun telling his story about hitting the ball really hard and running really fast and scoring sixteen runs in his team’s score of thirty four from six overs, Uncle Rehman had used his hand to silence Rohit. While the boy was focusing on the heat seeping into his shoulder from the grown-up hand, the man said to him, “Speak softly Rohit. Make them want to listen to you. People always believe there is something worth listening to when they can’t hear it properly. They pay attention.”

Rohit blinked.

“Now tell me again.”

Vikram had been speaking softly for a decade and a half. With the death of his mother the only thing left to do was to erase the record of Rohit’s birth. It was a fairly easy thing to achieve. All that was required was for a cleansing fire to course through the records department of the abandoned hospital building. The authorities were not known for taking great care to maintain records but he needed to be sure. He was certain nobody would miss the hospital. In fact it would be a good excuse for them to rip it down and replace it with a mall.

He was doing them a favour.

Vikram Rathod was ready to be introduced to the world. Ready to let them know what an anonymous boy could do with a little determination and a lot of hard work. For his appearance to have the most impact he needed to cause the disappearance of any evidence linking him to Rohit Varma, the bastard child born out of a secret dalliance between his mother and a family friend.

The still rising smoke was his signal. His people knew what but not why. Not knowing allowed it to be their secret. He might even consider putting in a bid to redevelop the plot.

He nodded to himself, “It’s done, let’s move out.”

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