The Fallen Bindi

"Didi, name one thing you would take when you die," asked Nida, already knowing the response. Nobody asks such questions in search of unknown answers; rather, in the hope of an expected answer. The first time Nida had asked this, she was five and Gudi was fifteen. Since then, Nida always implored Gudi in the hope that one day Gudi would take her name. Gudi, though herself a teen when Nida was born, had practically raised Nida. With the same instinct, she held Nida's face close to her bosom and as always, teasingly whispered, "My bindis." Gudi’s playful chuckle echoed in Nida’s ears. She laughed along, however; Nida knew that it was not entirely untrue.

Nida was seventeen now, but she had never seen Gudi without a bindi. Gudi's love for bindis came from their mother, who passed away while Nida's birth. Soon, it became Gudi’s way of remembering her. Gudi would often look into the mirror and tell Nida that this is how their mother looked. Nida would gaze at her intently but every time she dreamt about her mother; Gudi’s face would pop up. About their father, Gudi never talked much. He had died in a car accident shortly after Nida was born. Only once had Gudi talked about him.

"He used to beat Maa; come home drunk and start beating her without any reason. I don't know why he did that and why she never stopped him. You know Nidu, Maa always said that this is how husbands are, and this is how wives should be." Nida saw a lingering question in Gudi’s eyes.

"Maa should have called the police, Didi," Nida had interrupted Gudi's thoughts. "It's the only right thing to do."

“No, Nida. That is not how society works. Maa said that family matters shouldn't go out of the four walls of a household, and it's the woman's responsibility to uphold them. Maa used to say her husband is the fate of a woman." Gudi's time with her parents came with a cost to her young mind unknowingly being conditioned to see violence and injustice as normal. Gudi knew that she disliked her father and his actions were wrong, but why did neither society call him out for it, nor her mother. "It's the responsibility of a woman to sustain a marriage, no matter what," Gudi could never understand her mother’s words.

"Didi, do you really believe that?" Nida stared at her sister.

"Haha, Nidu, no matter how ghost-like expressions you make, I won't take you with me when I die." Gudi changed the topic.

"Then I will hide all your bindis, and you will have no choice."

"Nooo! Also, if I take you, that would mean you will have to die, and I can't let that happen."

"You love me that much?"

"Not at all! it's because when I finally meet Maa, I don't want to share her with you. So don’t disturb us for at least hundred years!"

Nida's face frowned but her hear was always happy when she was with Gudi. Nida loved her sister to the extent any human heart could. Sometimes. one person can embody an entire family for someone.

Even Gudi’s marriage could not separate the sisters. Gudi had laid down two conditions when the relatives had started pressurizing her for marriage using all sorts of coerces including stopping Nida's tuition fees. Firstly, she will marry in the same city so that Nida and she could meet every day, and secondly, he should not be a drunkard. When Gudi had laid this condition, Nida was relieved that Gudi did believe that husbands were a choice and not merely a fate. So, eventually, Gudi was married to Pawan, her distant maternal uncle's son. Pawan did not talk much. Even at his marriage, it appeared as if he were a mere invitee. Despite his lack of interest in the marriage or Gudi, she was relieved that alcohol was not a part of Pawan. Also, Nida visited her every day after school. She wanted no more.

Gudi's new house had a gate opening to a small room, dingy enough to let anyone think of it as an old and shabby house. It led to a second room, equally small but airy because it opened to a semi-circular open verandah. Gudi and Nida loved the verandah. It was, infact their favourite place. An oval mirror with no frame to support its rough edges hung on the bark of the Jamun tree standing right in the middle of the verandah. With no covering above to stop the light from entering, the verandah seemed like a candle lit in a dark room at night. Gudi had a habit of changing her bindis regularly, so she would always have a bindi stuck on the mirror as a backup. Nida would often stand in front of the mirror and position herself to place the bindi on her forehead, to determine whom did she resemble more, Gudi or her mother. She could never decide.

Nida came to meet Gudi every day at 5 p.m. after her school. Sometimes when Nida stood silently at verandah’s gate, she would see Gudi standing in front of the mirror. Gudi would slowly untie her hair and braid it back carefully so that not a single hair was left unattended. She had recently developed a weird obsession where she could not bear untidy and unkempt hair. She had even started scolding Nida for it. Nida would always retaliate, pointing out that she was not like this before and had changed after her marriage. Nonetheless, Nida loved seeing her sister grooming herself. Gudi looked like the most beautiful woman in the world to Nida. Even with one of her most peculiar habits acquired recently, wherein she would pick up a Jamun bud fallen down the tree and place it in one of the hair knots at the nape of her neck. The Jamun nectar would leave a mark on Gudi's neck but she would continue combing without being bothered. "What a stupid and careless thing to do," Nida would say under her breath. Seeing Gudi make no attempts to wipe it off, unable to contain herslef, she would suddenly shout, "How can you just ignore those violet marks on your skin?” It would break Gudi's trance, and she would impulsively wipe the mark from her neck. To cheer up her little sister, after Gudi had braided her hair and put on a new bindi, she would stand like a model. Surely, Nida forgot everything else infront of her sister's playfulness.

For the rest of the time, they would share stories, play and laugh their hearts out. Initially, Nida stayed most of the nights with Gudi only. Pawan used to come late at night and sleep in the first room. But when Pawan started coming early, at around 6 p.m. , the sisters got only an hour with each other. Gudi would send Nida off before Pawan arrived. "Now, let me spend some time with my husband too," She would tell Nida each time while trying to appear shy and miserably failing at it. "Come tomorrow now, Nidu."

Nida had come to the house, after a year. It was her first day at a law school. While she stood at the entry of the verandah at 5 p.m., she could see Gudi picking up a Jamun bud and looking towards Nida as if teasing her, making Nida nervous by putting it close to her neck. Impulsively, Nida stepped forward to stop her sister and realised that Gudi was not there. A year ago, this time was her favourite and now, it could not even last for a moment. Nida realized that mirages are not just in the desert but also in the verandah of that house.

Nida stepped forward and stood in front of the mirror. Layered with dust, it hung on the old Jamun tree in the lonely verandah. She shifted a bit to the left so that the dull red bindi stuck on the mirror appeared in the middle of her eyebrows. For a moment, Nida's heart skipped a beat. She looked just like her sister. It seemed as if the bindi suddenly gained more colour after waiting patiently on the mirror to be worn again. Nida felt a pang in her heart. She quickly took out a tube of glue from her bag, applied it on the bindi, and stuck it back on the mirror. Nida murmured to herself in a determined voice: "I won't let it fall again!"

Sometimes a tiny tremor is enough to make a building collapse to dust. Seeing the bindi, Nida felt something push itself up from her stomach and settle in her throat. She remembered that people had been saying to her in the past year that "this too shall pass" but they never answered the most critical question, "When?" At moments like these, she desperately wanted to know that when will the lump stuck in her throat pass and let her breathe. She screamed in her head with her trembling lips shut tight. "Why didn’t you take me with you? I don’t want your bindis; just take me with you. Or come back! Come back and tell me. Why didn't you tell me anything? Why didn't I see? Didi!”

Nida fell to her knees, her head was exploding but her frail body stared inertly into the space with hollow eyes and trembling lips. A stream of tears fell down her cheeks. It was the first time in the last year that Nida had cried. Often excessive grief behaves like the cork of a champagne bottle. Airtight, it traps everything inside a person until it is opened.

Nida screamed. Her throat hurt, but she kept on screaming and crying. It was the second time that she felt that time was passing in slow motion. After what seemed like an eternity, while Nida sat silently under the Jamun tree, a ripe Jamun fell at her feet. She impulsively picked it up and tried to stick it in the knot of her hair braid like Gudi used to, ensuring that it touched the nape of her neck. She stood up to look in the mirror. Standing in front of it, Nida stared at her sister's reflection. She stood there, frozen for ten minutes, after which, perhaps attempting to break the stagnancy that had surrounded everything at the house, the Jamun bud fell, leaving a violet mark on Nida's neck.

Just like her sister's, when she put the bud in her braided hair.

Just likes her sister's, when she succumbed to the bruises.

After refraining for a year, Nida had thought that coming to the place where Gudi had breathed her last might make Nida feel that Gudi was still there, somewhere. But all her unreasonable plans to feel Gudi around her, in any possible way, shattered into pieces when the mark flooded her mind with the haunting memories of the doom’s day. Everything flashed in front of her eyes at a fast forward speed.

5 p.m. that day - Gudi lay under the Jamun tree - violet marks on her neck - Nida trying hard to rub it off thinking its Jamun - not knowing that bruises are violet too - Nida trying to wake her up - Gudi not moving - Pawan standing with cuffs in his hand - the police taking him away - the neighbours whispering that he had abused her many times before - Gudi going away - forever - not taking Nida with her - Gudi lying under the Jamun tree - violet strangling marks on her neck - her hair unbraided – her forehead empty - her bindi fallen down - someone from the crowd saying that thousands of domestic abuse-related deaths happened that year – Nida wishing over and over for the deaths to be none or at least, thousands minus one.

That day two people lay lifeless in the verandah until Gudi went away. A year later, one of the bodies still lay there – breathing but lifeless.