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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/book “Question Everything” cc&d, v280 (the February 2018 issue) Order this as a 6"x9" paperback book:  |
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Sam’s Mother
Arpit Rohilla
A girl had once said that I would find my muse in the mountains.
I walked down from the hotel. The path was wet. Sunlight came in beams through the coniferous trees. Sam, a local twelve year old, walked uphill in long strides, with two buckets hanging from a rod placed on his shoulder.
He smiled. He had fair skin and straight, black hair. He was thin. I pat him on his back.
Right then, a short but bulky kid ran down besides us. If he went any faster, he might slip. This was Sam’s elder brother.
“He’s gone to study,” Sam said. He put the buckets down.
“He loves to study,” I said.
Sam stared valley side. Sunlight fell on his face. The sun was halfway up the mountains and the clouds were golden.
“Beautiful?” I said.
Sam thought about it. He said, “I guess. I see this daily.”
“Only my second time at a hill station,” I said.
“You must like this, right?”
“I don’t know.”
Sam smiled and said, “The tourists love mountains.”
I shrugged. We strolled up. His buckets were both half filled and I offered to lift them.
Sam frowned and shook his head. “There’s this man who can’t lift water. He’s an adult. He did not work when he was a kid. Do you believe it?”
“Is he sick?”
“I don’t think so. But I want to be strong when I grow.”
“And big?” I said.
“Yes. The girls only go for the big guys.”
I am 5 ft 9 inches myself. I laughed. “What do you know about girls?”
“I know,” he said and smiled. “But you won’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“You put your pee-pee in a girl’s butt,” he said in a hushed tone and with raised eye brows.
I laughed. “But where did you hear that?”
We reached his house, small and blue, and his mother stood outside. Sam stayed silent.
She hung clothes to dry. I saw all the colours in them and maroon dominated. Water dripped from them and the sunlight made them glimmer as they moved in the breeze.
She smiled at us. She had curly hair which she tied but some of it found a way to fall on her forehead. She was thin like Sam. She was a widow.
Women here look young, I thought.
Sam and his mother went in and I strolled out.
The sun climbed up and the green of the mountains got bright. I thought about things I could write about, and about things I could have written about but no longer had the zest to do so. I thought about the worthless things I had written.
The houses in the valley below were colourful like the clothes in Sam’s house. I stood at an edge and spotted the yellow hotel I had stayed in five years ago.
The trees rustled. I shivered and sighed.
Sam came and stood beside me.
“Sam is not an Indian name,” I said.
Sam shrugged. The sun was sharp.
I removed my sweater and we sat down. “Maybe I will end this trip.” I said.
“Really? You said you were here for a year,” he said and kept looking at me.
“I really cannot do what I had come here to do.”
Sam looked as if he thought through a math question with watery eyes. “Why can’t you do it here?”
I shrugged and looked at the yellow hotel. I said, “Someone once said that this is a nice place to write. But maybe not for me.” I frowned. The sky was clear.
“Was it a girl?” Sam said.
I nodded. “Girls, eh?”
“Girls,” Sam said and sighed. He drew with his finger on the ground. “But maybe you have not really tried to write something good. Like, try really hard.”
I pressed my lips together.
“My mother thinks my brother studies, but he drinks,” Sam said. He peered down the valley. The air ruffled his hair, and he clenched his face. Some sunlight fell on it but not on his eyes.
“How old is he?” I said.
“He’s 17.”
“Don’t you drink – well, never too much,” I said. My voice was hoarse. The sand had been eroded except for around the tree roots, so it looked as if the trees sat on small, sand thrones. “I don’t think I would work well in Delhi either. Noisy place.” I picked up a stone, pulled back as far as I could and threw it.
“Mom says not to throw them,” Sam said.
The hill was vacant. The sun washed it orange. I picked up another stone and threw.
Sam picked one up and threw. We laughed.
When we stopped, Sam said, “Please take me to Delhi with you. I don’t like it here.” His girlish voice stammered.
That midnight I sat with a cigarette. I had promised a girl, 5 years ago, that I would never light one again.
But the end glowed in the dark. I took a puff. It tasted familiar but bad. I put it out and threw it out of the balcony.
I wrote about Sam, and though I couldn’t write half as much as when I had met this girl in a yellow hotel, I smiled when I finished. My hands were tired. I leaned forward.
The edges of the mountains were black, but otherwise silver fog shrouded them and shined in the moonlight. The distant mountains faded and the horizon was unclear.
I kept looking, for something I would never find here, or ever anywhere.
The next morning, I did not get my coffee first but went out to buy a pen. The sky was still dark. The shops might be closed but I wanted to walk.
Sam’s mother stood outside her house.
I stopped. We looked at each other.
Her elder son drank and she didn’t know. The younger hated the place.
Could she not just be another woman who smelled of icy rivers as well? Maybe she too laughed like wind chimes, and maybe she too talked such that I would want to move into a yellow house with her and live happily ever after.
But I just smiled politely and walked away.
