“This is appalling!” Sunna exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. “Now you do it right in front of us, right here! At least have some respect for your grandfather or your father.”

No one spoke. The family was sitting down to dinner at the usual clearing in the forest. Sunna was exasperated at her teenage daughter Mista. The bickering between the two was more frequent than anyone cared for, but it was only to be expected. Mista was entering the age where girls and their mothers could hardly sit down to eat together in the same clearing.

“You’re so sure you’re never, ever in the wrong. You scare me sometimes,” Sunna went on, but Puchki, her husband, wisely gestured for her to calm down. Young Mista appeared icily unmoved as she continued to slowly roast her dinner over a fire. A bead of sweat appeared on the dip in her throat, lingered around a while and then rapidly snaked down her bare chest to the leaf skirt on her hips.

“But it’s making her sweat!” the mother said to the father, worried beyond measure. “Do you think this will do Mista any good? You know what fire does; it burns things down! It’s clear as the bright holes in the sky. I talk for her good, you hear me? But of course, I’m the bad one here. Because I’m the only one who talks. You hear me?”

Puchki heard her. But he knew not in what manner to speak to his daughter. He found it insulting to his position of power in the family to be disobeyed by the girl who seemed to have suddenly grown up. And disobeyed he would be, he was sure, if she wasn’t in the mood to humour him. Mista could be cold and strong.

They all watched Mista’s meat joint roast over the fire. It was frightening. The meat changed colour at the points where the flames licked it. It turned dark, like death. It even gave off an ungainly smell. But what was worse was that in the moonlight they could see grayish, slimy smoke snake up from the meat. None of them could understand how Mista could eventually eat that food.

“There is nothing wrong in cooking one’s food,” Mista spoke quietly. “It makes food tastier, in fact. You are so against it because you refuse to try it. Because it’s new, and you haven’t seen it before.” But it was to Puchki she spoke, not to her mother.

Puchki turned and looked a trifle helplessly at his father Fuhara. This old man, the most ancient one in their tribe, was sacred, aloof and mysterious. No one knew how old he was, because all who were around at the time of his birth were now long dead. Some even said he was immortal, that he was as old as the bright holes in the sky, because they had seen him die several times and come back to life a little later. Puchki thought that Fuhara now saw and understood everything that was going on between Mista and her mother, but he seemed happy, feeding bits of his dinner to Teesh, their pet wolf.

“But what is wrong with food as it is, Mista? Generations have been eating it raw, the way nature meant us to,” Puchki said, his voice a careful balance of assertion and reconciliation.

Mista said nothing. The flames crackled, and the grey fumes grew thicker. It was really frightful because the fumes burned their eyes and old Fuhara started to cough!

“Do you see what it is doing to your father and your grandfather?” Sunna asked with a lot of feeling, glancing at Puchki and Fuhara as if to seek confirmation that she was doing well.

Nothing can be done, thought Puchki. The Chungiyas, those slit-eyed inventors who believed in a shallow existence, had gone and created this horrible and deadly thing called fire. Of course, everyone had seen fire before, much to their horror, when it burned entire forests down. But at least those were natural fires; the bright burning tongues of evil that gave off an unbearable sensation when one went near! Now these accursed Chungiya ‘inventors’ had rubbed stones together and mixed dried leaves or something to actually create the stuff! Puchki did not understand the technology, but he was sure it could do no good. Nothing the Chungiyas came up with had ever done any good. Why, everyone knew that fire simply reduced everything in its path into a useless grey dust from which the original component could never be retrieved. But the new generation! Oh, they were forever following mindlessly the trends of foreign tribes.

The smoke made Fuhara’s eyes water. But taking cue, Sunna had started to cry silently in the semi-darkness.

Just yesterday Mista had carved for herself a new chest-covering garment out of banana leaves. Even though her mother vehemently forbade her such bold fashion, she wore it defiantly when she went to meet Grus, her man friend. Later when Grus and Mista were sitting by the river watching the birds, Zoola, the old witch-doctor of the neighbouring clan wandered into the scene, smiled at the nice young couple, sat down a little way off and defecated profusely.

Zoola reported that something strange happened to Mista. The girl just got up and shouted like one possessed, calling Zoola a graceless old witch who should have died long ago. Even the nice young man was stunned at Mista’s outburst. Zoola just couldn’t divine what wrong she had done.

No, none could understand this new generation of youth.

Now, as Mista stonily turned her meat over the flames, Sunna tearfully said: “Don’t listen to me, but please, my daughter, please fear Bassole.”

Bassole was their God, prior to which He was a giant mountain that could look like a bald human head if you wanted it to.

“Stop speaking for Bassole, mother. Why should Bassole hold anything against a poor flame?” said Mista.

“That’s enough,” said Puchki but all the manliness in his voice sounded hollow. “Cook if you want to, burn everything down. But I’ll not hear a word against Bassole while I am alive. You will not blaspheme while you stay with us.”

He then turned to his infinitely older father: “O Fuhara, O Father of us all, tell your little grandchild the error of her ways. Light her path with your wisdom.”

They all looked at Fuhara. The ancient one wiped his eyes and cleared his throat. Teesh the wolf stiffened in anticipation. Mista stopped turning the meat. They waited for the words of wisdom, and Fuhara looked at them, one after the other, with his dim eyes which seemed tired with the weight of all they had seen. But it was an uncomfortably long time later, when Teesh went to relieve himself behind a bush that they realised that Fuhara wasn’t really going to speak. Mista began turning the meat again.

In a fit of hysteria, Sunna threw her meal untouched toward Teesh. Puchki had lost his appetite too. Only the old man was now happily chewing with his hardened, toothless gums, throwing bits to Teesh every now and then. He stopped to cough whenever the smoke bit his throat.

“O Bassole, forgive my daughter, forgive us all…” Sunna wailed.

“Chuk buhiya chuk buhiya – na chuk (na, na) na chuk,” thundered old Fuhara suddenly. The very crickets in the surrounding forests fell silent. “Nadaahi buhiya, kadaapi buhiya… aaaaaaaah, na chuk na chuk!”

Fuhara had spoken! The family looked at one another. They had just heard the voice of the tribe’s primordial wisdom, the assertion of their ancient belief system, the verdict in fact. It was in their ancient tongue which none of them understood, and which Fuhara considered a sacrilege to translate. But he had spoken. And then, when Mista continued to turn her meat over the flames (insisting on not interpreting in any manner what she hadn’t understood), the smoke again hit Fuhara’s nostrils, so that he went into a fit of coughing and died.

“Oooooooo,” wailed Teesta the wolf.

“Oooooooo,” wailed Sunna, looking up at the burning holes in the sky.

“The Immortal One is dead! Cursed be the fire that killed him,” Puchki exclaimed, looking morosely from Sunna to Mista to Teesh to the body of Fuhara. “Oh Bassole, curse the Chungiyas, but forgive my daughter! She knoweth not the consequences of her actions.”

But he was wondering how to re-establish his obviously waning authority within the family. This wouldn’t do.

Mista looked at the dead Fuhara awhile. The next morning the tribe would gather, place the ancient one among rare leaves in a freshly dug pit. They would bathe him in the urine of the mountain goats. They would put some special berries at his feet and smear sacred clay on his forehead. They would inscribe ancient symbols on his bony chest, that his soul may not linger yet among the living. But, Mista thought, when they danced and sang around his grave and clicked their sticks together to appease Death, Fuhara would, in all likelihood, wake up and dance with them, unable to contain his excitement. Mista knew that that was the logical thing to expect, considering the experiences of the past.

With the calm surety of youth, Mista sank her teeth into her cooked meat.

Manu V Bhattathiri’s first collection of short stories 'Savithri’s Special Room' & 'Other Stories' is set to be published by HarperCollins later this year

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