Weird Tales of a Bangalorean by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

A continent away the enemy’s high command was besieged in their own capital. Our armoured vehicles had routed the enemy. Finally, the lady who operated their radio managed to tune into a dependable signal. We spent a few weeks together, moving by night, hiding by day. Later that day, I met a group of resistance fighters hiding in the woods.

As I washed and drank, the sturgeon swam up to me, closer than it had been since I had dragged it out of the water the previous day. I buried it – her – and then crawled to the river, exhausted. After considerable struggling, bleeding fingers and a couple of upgrades to more suitable rocks, I had dug a grave. I selected a likely rock and started digging. But even the smallest of things has a weight and presence of its own. Such a tiny life…almost nothing beside the tide of the dead we had swum with yesterday. The fish swam towards it, then bumped it towards land with its nose.

I reached a bend in the river where a cloth bundle had got caught in the roots of a riverside tree. Tired, but there was silence at last in my head. The clean air and sunshine were doing me a lot of good. Soon, there was no sign that I had been in a zone of death and destruction just an hour ago. A sleek form moved through the water, keeping pace with me. I had to be away from everything for a while. They said enemies were scouring the forest for fugitives. The next day, I just walked along the river, away from the boats and the dead and the filthy air, into the woods. It slipped into the water but remained near me. In the light I saw I had pulled a fish from the river. I struggled to hold on to them, swam back to land. If I could even save one life…I gripped someone in that oily, roiling water. My clothes had been blown off me, only my shirt cuffs and the tatters of my boxer shorts remained. She crawls to the river bank, holds the little bundle in the current for a while. Her face is more like a very old woman’s than an infant’s. There is a command unspoken in the leader’s eyes. As is she – she has not made milk for three days now. We are safe in this thicket, as long as we remain absolutely silent.

Weird Tales of a Bangalorean by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy