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Bhumi - contd

by Shobhita Thakur
(Pune, India)

Back to page 1 of the story

Just as dawn is about to arrive, the lake shudders under a sudden, violent gust of wind as if something sinister has crossed into the world. In her sleep, Bhumi feels the force of it, the wind pressing against her body, unmistakably familiar. It is the same wind from her childhood, the wind that once lifted her off her feet when she was twelve, standing near the caves, the wind that pushed her into the lake. The room grows dense, heavy, filled with an unseen pressure. When she opens her eyes in fear, what she sees is beyond comprehension. Her bedside is empty. The nameless man is no longer beside her. He is kneeling on the floor, head bowed, before a tall, towering woman of terrifying beauty. She stands magnificent and unmoving, dressed in gold and blood red robe that flows violently in the wind. There is an aura around her, her presence bends the air itself. Her skin glows fiercely, surrounded by a bright halo. Her body is luminous, curvaceous, commanding, carrying a dominance that demands obedience. Her long golden hair flows freely down her back, glowing as if it has absorbed the first light of dawn. It falls in soft waves, warm and alive, the tips burning brighter, as they brush against her waist, each strand seeming to pulse with light. She is celestial. A goddess. But her eyes burn with fire. As Bhumi focuses on her face, she realizes the goddess is filled with rage, her expression cruel and unkind. The nameless man’s bent knee makes it clear he is her slave, her possession. She seems like a woman who could raise an army of men with a single command. In her fury, she speaks to him, her voice roaring through the room.
“It is your destiny to save this girl in every lifetime. But it was your choice to let her seduce you. Have you forgotten? This mortal world abandoned you, limited you, carved you in stone to leave you alone in oblivion. It was I who gave you a new life. A new purpose. I gave you this handsome face. And in return, I demanded only one thing: your absolute loyalty.”

The nameless man listens in silence, head still lowered.
“You surrendered the warmth of your hands to me as a token of gratitude and loyalty,” she continues. “How could you forget? I own you. You have no free will.”

Her voice hardens. “For betraying me, you deserve a punishment so great that you will never again be capable of betrayal.”
She bends down. The blinding glow from her body engulfs him completely. She kisses him violently. The moment her lips touch his, the light drains from his body. His skin turns pale. A violent shiver runs through him. He collapses onto the floor, trembling with cold. The woman disappears. The room is left hollow, emptied, as if the air itself has been sucked away. Dawn arrives quietly. Bhumi, frozen in shock and awe, runs to him. The instant she touches his body, a freezing shock shoots through her. He felt like the iceberg that sank the titanic. All warmth has vanished from him. She grabs a blanket and wraps it around him, tries to hold him, to bring him close but he pushes her away. When he looks at her, his eyes are blank. Empty. They terrify her. The love, the recognition, the emotion everything has evaporated. He does not know her. It is as if she is invisible to him, like lovers in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind after their memory is erased. Bhumi’s heart sinks. She doesn’t know how to help him. He is clearly in pain, yet he treats her like a stranger. Slowly, deliberately, he builds an armour around himself, cold, impenetrable and shuts her out. He stands up, steady now, and walks away. His albino deer follows him silently. Bhumi watches as he disappears into the jungle, walking deeper and deeper, fading into green shadows. He never turns back. Tears fill her eyes. She stands alone, unable to understand what has just been taken from her.

Bhumi’s eyes are closed. A female hand rests briefly on her shoulder, firm yet careful, nudging her awake. “Bhumi,” a voice says softly, trained to sound calm. She opens her eyes to harsh white light and the low, mechanical breathing of machines. She is in a hospital bed, in an ICU. The nurse leans in to tell her, almost routinely, that a psychiatrist will be coming shortly to examine her. Bhumi turns her head, confused, her mind struggling to catch up with her body. There are no windows. The room is sealed, without a sense of time. Only then does she realise she is in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit. Panic stirs in her chest, slow and heavy. She craves to be near a window, to feel some air, to let sunlight touch her face even for a moment. Several ECG leads cling to her bare skin, round white stickers pressed against her chest, their thin cables looping and gathering into a monitor beside the bed. Green lines rise and fall relentlessly, each sharp spike translating her heartbeat into signals. A pulse oximeter grips her fingertip, its light blinking steadily. From her arm, an IV disappears beneath transparent tape; clear tubing climbs upward into hanging fluid bags. She feels frightened, hollowed out, exhausted. She tries to remember how she came here, but there is a gap, an abrupt tear in time. One moment she was elsewhere, and now she is here, wired and watched. When the psychiatrist arrives and pulls a chair close to her bed, Bhumi’s unease deepens. He introduces himself, his voice gentle, practiced, neutral. He asks her if she knows where she is. If she remembers what happened. His assistants’ pen hovers patiently above a file. Bhumi turns to the doctor with urgency. She asks for help. She tells him about the nameless man. How he was hurt by the goddess, how he might still need her. Her voice trembles, not with confusion, but with conviction. The psychiatrist listens without interrupting. Then he asks, carefully, whether she is certain these events really happened. Whether they could have been imagined or she is confused. Bhumi answers without hesitation. She says she spent that day with the nameless man. That it was real. All of it. He asks her if she remembers the lake. “Yes,” she says emphatically. She tells him she was possessed by the wind, how it entered her body, how her feet carried her forward and into the water. The psychiatrist nods slowly, as though acknowledging her words without accepting them. He asks her to try to relax. He tells her not to worry about the nameless man. He gently probes. Was it possible that she slipped? That she entered the lake by accident? Or perhaps by choice? Bhumi shakes her head in irritation. She tells him he does not understand. She insists she encountered Varaha, the nameless man, the albino deer, the violent goddess. She says it again and again, as if repetition might make him believe her.

Days pass inside the Psychiatric ICU. Time becomes viscous, measured only by medication rounds and observation notes. Bhumi does not forget. Her story does not loosen its grip. Each telling sounds the same. Each certainty alarms them more. The doctors begin to exchange looks. They write longer notes. They speak to her family in hushed voices. They decide it is unsafe, dangerous, even to take her home. Her family talks of social stigma, of risk, of unpredictability. Bhumi hears fragments of these conversations, enough to understand she is being discussed as a problem, not a person. Under this weight, her anxiety worsens. Panic attacks arrive unannounced, stealing her breath, her voice, her footing in reality. She grows restless, then withdrawn. The more her narrative is questioned, the more desperately she clings to it. Eventually, the decision is made. The doctors agree it would be best to transfer her to a mental asylum for long-term observation and treatment. Bhumi is not asked what she wants. What remains of her firm belief is now officially named delusion and a girl who knows what she experienced, standing alone against a world that has decided she is insane.

Bhumi’s Didi is instructed to keep all her books ready. Her father calls a raddiwala. The man arrives with a sack and a weighing scale, indifferent to titles. For him, paper is only paper. Didi breaks down as she sorts through the piles. Her hands tremble when she recognises a few books Bhumi was reading before she left for Udaygiri Alice in Wonderland, Varaha: The Third Avatar, Hayavadana. She presses them briefly to her chest, as if holding onto Bhumi herself, before placing them back on the stack. In the bungalow garden, hundreds of books are lined up in uneven rows, their spines faded, their pages swollen with age and love. This was Bhumi’s inner world, now laid out in the open. One by one, her most prized possessions are weighed and sold. By evening, the shelves inside the house stand empty. A silence settles in her room. Bhumi’s presence is erased from the home she grew up in, as if she had only passed through it briefly.

In time, she turns into a cautionary tale of a girl who read too much, who lived in a fantasy world of her own imagination and let herself drift too far. Believed the dreams and memories are real and magic does exist in this mundane world.