by Steve Carr

The juvenile macaques played in the remains of what once was the Hotel Lakshmi, where those who were nearly homeless lived, but was now but a shell, most of its interior and windows carried away. It is was now just a ruin, something from the past; a crumbling eyesore. When it was gone, every brick removed, a highrise apartment building would be built in its place. Living space in Mumbai was hard to come by, commerce usually taking precedent, but here the plan was to provide upscale housing for those that could afford it; built in Shivaji Naga, an area of the city occupied mostly by the poor. Ravaged by construction workers with jack hammers, what remained of the building was visited daily by engineers and architects who observed the destruction like pathologists at an autopsy, feverishly awaiting the day the foundation for the new building would be laid.

Mukesh was one of them, an architect. Although often told he had to wear a work helmet when around the crumbling building as it was being dismantled, he rarely did.

Then one day a macaques tossed a brick from the top of the structure, dropping it right on Mukesh’s head. Knocked unconscious, his skull split open, he was rushed to the hospital.

Diya, his wife, age 23, younger than him by twenty years, arrived at the hospital thirty minutes later, called there by Mukesh’s best friend, Dinesh, an engineer, who had been at the site also and witnessed the accident. He had explained the whole situation to her over the phone as she frantically dressed. Mukesh was in surgery when she walked into the waiting room outside the room where Mukesh’s head was being sewn back together.

She sat down next to Dinesh, and wringing her hands, said, “Why wasn’t he wearing his hat?”

“As you know, he and I grew up together. He has always tempted fate,” Dinesh replied. “Marrying you is the only thing he did without the possible threat of the universe coming down on his head like the brick did.”

Crying softly into a linen handkerchief embroidered with images of peacocks, she stared down at her feet that poked out from the hem of her sea green sari, thankful the toe ring on her left foot kept her from being carried away from this plane to the next by the sheer force of the emotions that stirred deep inside her. “But to let a monkey drop a brick on his head!” she said to Dinesh between bouts of sobbing. “It shows a total lack of forethought.”

Dr. Acharya, a young, handsome surgeon, came out of the operating room an hour later, and standing, looking down at the seated Diya and Dinesh, told them that the surgery went fine, that Mukesh “would fully recover from his injury and the surgery.” He turned his gaze to Diya. His dewy brown eyes stared into hers. He was transfixed by her beauty, that which he could see, and that which he couldn’t, but was certain existed deep inside her. He remained there, silent and mesmerized, unable to still his pounding heart.

It was Dinesh who brought the doctor to his senses. “My friend has a good job but hospitals are very expensive and my friend doesn’t have a lot of money. Can Mukesh be cared for at home?”

Stammering as he tore his transfixed gaze from Diya, Dr. Acharya, replied, “He should stay here for another two days and then he can go home after that as long as he has someone who can nurse him back to health.”

“I can do that,” Diya said. “I once thought of becoming a nurse and have read several books on that subject.”

“While your husband is with us I will take it up personally to endeavor to teach you everything you will need to know.”

“I will forever be in your debt,” she replied, finding in his eyes, the refined shape of his nose, the fullness of his lips, and the gentleness of his voice, features she found alluring, but resisted their tug on her heart and soul. She loved Mukesh and only Mukesh.

#

The bandage encircled the entire top of Mukesh’s head giving the appearance that the cap of a minaret had been placed there. Although he was a Hindu, he couldn’t help to think that maybe there was some significance to taking on a Muslim structure as a temporary part of his anatomy. Like most thoughts he had since awaking from the surgery, he knew this needed more reflection. When Diya held up a mirror so that he could see for himself the way his mustache and beard was being trimmed by her, his eyes inevitably wandered to the bandage.

Dr. Acharya had taught Diya how to wrap his head, guiding her hands with his, although as Mukesh witnessed, it could have been done just by being told how. In the two weeks of being home, the surgeon had visited at least eight times, spending his time at Mukesh’s bedside, mostly talking and laughing with Diya. Mukesh had no reference to go by to determine if this was normal behavior for a doctor, but in his new enlightenment he believed the problem lay in him and wasn’t a problem unless he wanted it to be one. His enlightenment had sprung up beneath his bandage and leaked down to the tip of his new, and growing, beard.

Having finished re-bandaging his head, Diya looked at it, at him, with satisfaction. The color in his cheeks had mostly returned. “You’re looking healthier,” she told him.

“I feel healthier,” he said. “Healthier inside and out.”

“Healthier inside?”

“The brick falling on my head has raised my consciousness. I’m thinking more clearly.”

She lifted the pan containing the used bandages from the stand beside his bed and turned to leave the room. She stopped momentarily to look at him, thinking indeed there was something different about him, about the way he spoke, as if he knew things others didn’t. She found it annoying and hoped that once a bandage was no longer needed he would return to his old self – and cut off his beard. She left the room wondering if she should discuss the matter with Dr. Acharya.

#

Dinesh was in the room the morning that the bandage was removed for good from his friend’s head. He stood near the door, watching anxiously as Dr. Acharya slowly uncovered the thick mop of hair that had grown on Mukesh’s head in the two months since the brick had nearly ended Mukesh’s life. Mukesh was seated in a chair with Diya at his side, holding his hand.

“I’m being reborn,” Mukesh said with solemnity.

“It will be very good to have you back to work,” Dinesh said. “The last bricks from that old hotel were carried off days ago and tons of soil and concrete have laid the foundation. It’s now time for us architects and engineers to finish our work.”

“What is architecture? What is engineering?” Mukesh replied. “Aren’t the things we build or tear down meaningless artifacts of our need to seem useful?”

Befuddled Dinesh, replied, “People live and work in what we build or tear down.”

“A person can live or work anywhere if they have discovered within themselves the inner truth of what it means to build or tear down. I don’t plan to build or tear down anything beyond my consciousness.”

The doctor pulled the last part of the bandage from Mukesh’s head. Only a hairline scar that ran between Mukesh’s parted hair remained as evidence that a very serious injury had occurred.

“Your husband owes your nursing and tender care to how well he has healed,” Dr. Archarya said to Diya.

“What is healing?”Mukesh said. “Aren’t we born healed and taught as we age to reject that healing?”

Diya yanked her hand away from his. “Stop that gibberish, Mukesh,” she grumbled. “You’re driving me insane.”

“I am enlightened. Aware,” he replied.

She turned to the doctor. “Do you not see what that monkey’s brick has done to my poor husband. He believes he is now a guru. All day long he speaks in circles and riddles.”

The doctor stroked his chin, thoughtfully. “The shock of sustaining a blow to his head may have unsettled his senses, but I’m certain that in time he’ll return to normal.”

“In the meantime we’ll end up on the streets and starve to death,” she replied, anxiously twisting her blue and white sari’s pallu.

Dr. Archarya put his arm around her shoulders. “There, there, no one is going to allow you to end up on the streets or to starve.”

#

Later that afternoon, Diya went to the dress shop where she went to buy the most expensive clothes that now hung in her closet, and bought a very costly scarlet sari. The color of it was so vibrant that it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to looking at it when she tried it on. With it in a box and wrapped in tissue paper, she stopped at the beauty salon and had her hair washed, trimmed and styled. She bought a bottle of perfume, her husband’s favorite scent, at a Bombay Perfumery Shop, and purchased a tikka embellished with a faux sapphire and a pair of affordably priced gold loop earrings at a jewelry store. When she arrived home in the back of a motorized rickshaw she gave the driver a hefty tip before going in her house. She had put a small dent in their savings, but figured it was worth it if it would help her husband recover from being enlightened.

She fixed the evening meal without allowing Mukesh to see her in her new scarlet sari until the moment she brought the food out of the kitchen and sat it on the table. He was seated at one end of the table, as always. She stood by her chair at the other end of the table, trying to act nonchalant as she posed in her new sari, tossing her long hair from one shoulder to the next.

“Aren’t we going to eat?” he asked at last, paying little attention to her looks or what she was doing.

Annoyed, but deciding there was still time to arouse his desires before bedtime, she sat down and lifted the lid on the dish of lamb rogan josh, his favorite. A cloud of curry fragrance rose into the air. “Don’t you see, dear husband. I’ve prepared a special meal for you.”

He looked at the simmering food. “I don’t eat meat of any kind,” he said. “I’m a vegetarian.”

“Since when?” she said, biting her tongue to keep from yelling at him.

“This morning,” he replied. “An enlightened being would never eat something that has a soul. That could be an ancestor of mine or yours that you have fixed for our dinner.”

She slammed the lid down on the lamb rogan josh, and jumped up. “Until you stop this foolishness I won’t take this new sari off, ever. That will enlighten you to how bad an unwashed wife and sari can smell. She tossed her head back and stormed out of the room.

“What new sari?” he said to himself.

#

Alone in their bedroom Diya sat on the bed and began to sob. She missed her old husband, the one who didn’t ponder aloud things that made her head ache. He hadn’t said a romantic thing to her from the moment he awoke from the surgery, which wasn’t like him. He was the only man she had ever sex with, and it had never been what she read it should be like in the magazines, books and on the internet, but she missed it nevertheless. He had always been gentle, kind, attentive and affectionate. The new Mukesh seemed only interested in expressing what he said were profound thoughts, and then he would go to great lengths talking about why no thought was profound, that all thoughts were recycled. She took off her new earrings and flung them across the room, kicked off her shoes, and then laid back on the bed and fell sound asleep.

She awoke the next morning and sat up. Her sari was crumpled and wrinkled and her hair disheveled. Seeing that Mukesh’s side of the bed hadn’t been slept in, she knew he must have slept in the hospital bed that he had been sleeping in while recovering in the spare bedroom. She got up and walked to her vanity dresser and stared at herself in the mirror. Her tikka hung clasped to a few hairs to the middle of her forehead. Just beneath that her bindi was smudged above her left eyebrow. She removed the tikka and wiped away the bindi with some face cream and a tissue. Suddenly, her face felt naked and exposed. She quickly dabbed her finger into a jar of kumkum and dabbed it between her eyes. Then she put her finger into the kumkum again and dabbed that on the end of her nose. Five minutes later her entire face was freckled with kumkum. She quickly ran a brush through her hair, adjusted the sari, and left the room, barefoot.

Outside the room where Mukesh had slept, she heard Dinesh’s voice. He was speaking loudly, emphatically. “Don’t you even care that the foundation of the building is now ready to be built on?”

“We must ask ourselves, what is a foundation?” Mukesh replied. “If you peel away one foundation, isn’t there another one underneath, so on and so . . .”

“Shut up!” Dinesh yelled.

Diya opened the door and went in. Both men stared at her.

Eyeing her up and down, Dinesh asked as politely as he could, “Diya, aren’t you feeling well?”

She crossed her arms. “Perhaps you should ask my husband how I am feeling.”

“When we put a flame to our skin, that creates the feeling of pain. There is no question of that,” Mukesh said. “But my young wife has confused unmet expectations with feelings.”

Her eyes ablaze, Diya glared at Makesh, saying nothing for several moments, rendering the room silent. “We shall see about that,” she hissed, and back stiffened, head held high, turned and marched out of the room”

# # #

A month went by and true to her word, Diya never took the sari off and bathed only those body parts that extended beyond the scarlet cloth. She reduced the effect of inhaling her own stench by carrying around her new bottle of perfume and dabbing it under her nose whenever needed. Strangely, to Diya’s way of thinking, the one person other than Mukesh who didn’t seem to notice her odor, was Dr. Acharya. In fact it stimulated his ardor for her.

As always, on the premise of inquiring into Mukesh’s health, the doctor arrived at their home carrying a bouquet of gardenias and orchids for Diya, which he handed at the front door. With great exuberance, he announced to a nonplussed Diya “This marks our fourth anniversary.”

“Fourth anniversary?” she replied, nervously. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe not the fourth anniversary exactly, but nearly the time we have known one another, and dare I say, formed an attachment.”

“I’m not atta . . .” she started.

He cut her off. “I understand. You’re a married woman and you don’t want to betray your husband, even if he is mentally unsound, but from the moment our eyes met, it was obvious we were meant for one another.”

She looked down at the dirty, tattered hem of her sari. It had dragged on the floor so often that it resembled an old dust rag. That part of her sari was no longer scarlet, but had turned a dull, pinkish beige. She then looked up at him. “Don’t you see what I’m wearing, how I look?”

“You have worn that scarlet sari for weeks to entice me, to allure me,” he said. “It has worked. I’m enthralled by you. Every waking moment I think only of you.”

“I’m another man’s wife.”

“You are the embodiment of the goddess Lakshmi.”

“The goddess Lakshmi is the cause of me being in this state to begin with,” she protested. “It was from the top of a Lakshmi namesake that my poor, confused husband was hit with that brick, thrown by a monkey, need I remind you.”

He grabbed her and took her in his arms. “Remind me with your lips,” he said, and then kissed her passionately while grasping at the folds of her sari.

She struggled free from his hold and then slapped him. “You are no better than my husband. He only sees what is the unseeable and you don’t see the real me at all. Now get out and don’t return. She shoved him back across the threshold, threw the flowers at him, and slammed the door.

Breathless and gasping for air she leaned back against the door. Tears began to flow down her cheeks. She then looked down to see that in the brief tussle with the doctor, her blouse had been torn just below her left breast. She then slowly made her way to the bathroom, where she removed her sari, blouse and petticoat, and then stepped into the shower and turned on the water.

An hour later, in a clean light blue sari with gold trim she walked into the bedroom where Mukesh slept, carrying the scarlet sari in her arms. He was staring out the window.

“I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving you,” she said.

He turned from the window and smiled, not at her, but a smile that originated from somewhere inside him. “We are all clouds at the mercy of the winds that blow us.”

“I’m not a cloud,” she said. She tossed the scarlet sari on his bed, turned and left.

At the front door she picked up her two suitcases and went out.

About the Author:

Steve Carr, from Richmond, Virginia, has had over 440 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. He has had seven collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, The Tales of Talker Knock and 50 Short Stories: The Very Best of Steve Carr, and LGBTQ: 33 Stories, and The Theory of Existence: 50 Short Stories, published. His paranormal/horror novel Redbird was released in November, 2019. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. He is the founder of Sweetycat Press. His Twitter is @carrsteven960. His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com / He is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.carr.35977