The Girl with the Golden Parasol

EIGHTEEN

Rahul and Anjali sat in the shadow of the neem tree. The yellow parasol that lay nearby trembled intermittently in the tiny gusts of wind. It seemed that if the wind blew just right, the parasol would spread its yellow wings with a start and take flight in the form of a butterfly.

A real butterfly, which had somewhere lost its way, fluttered by and landed for an instant on Anjali’s shoulder.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Anjali leapt up, startled.

“What happened?” Rahul asked, concerned. The butterfly flew from Anjali’s shoulder and hovered around the parasol before landing on its tip. What was amazing was that the butterfly shared the same yellow color as the parasol. A living, breathing, yellow, capable of flight, both alive and afraid. Fear made it fly from Anjali’s shoulder.

“It’s just a butterfly. What’s there to be afraid of?” Rahul said, smiling at Anjali’s alarm.

She sat down again in the grass. “What if it stings?” Anjali said.

“Butterflies don’t sting.”

“How do you know butterflies don’t sting? What if this one did? Then what?”

“Butterflies don’t sting,” Rahul argued. “Bees do.”

Anjali tried to put an end to the discussion, either to conceal her embarrassment or to avoid admitting she was wrong. “They’re all the same, butterflies and bees.”

“The same? What are you talking about? Butterflies never sting. Bees do — sometimes, anyway.” Rahul clearly wasn’t in the mood to quickly put the matter to rest.

“Have you ever been stung by a bee?” Anjali asked.

“Sure, a couple of times,” Rahul said. “Back in the village, Papa built a big open tank next to the tube well in the field. We called it the hamam, and it was a lot of fun bathing in it during the summer.”

“Did you ever go in?” Anjali asked.

“Of course. During summer vacation I’d run down there at night with a bar of soap and a towel and jump in. It was great fun. Even the soap had a strong scent there that it doesn’t have here.”

“How’s that possible? Soap’s the same everywhere.”

“No, it’s not. In the forest, near the fields, and at night, soap smells sweeter. It’s true,” Rahul said. “There were jasmine bushes growing next to the tank, and at night the blossoms smelled even more fragrant.”

“What are you talking about?” Anjali was getting a bit irritated. “First you were talking about the sweet smell of soap, and now jasmine?”

“Oh! Well, if you ever go there, you’ll see. When I swim there at night, the soap and jasmine both smell sweet. Sometimes I feel like I’m washing myself with jasmine instead of soap. And sometimes I could swear soap bushes are growing next to the tank. But since you’ve never swum there at night, how could you have any idea?” Rahul was also getting a bit irritated.

“But you were talking about bees. What do they have to do with all this?” Anjali looked at Rahul with slight displeasure.

“The bees are during the daytime. In the afternoon they hover around the water flowing near the tank — swarms of them. One afternoon when I went swimming, I hung my clothes and towel on the pipe of the tube well. A bee stung me when I started to dry myself off after I got out. They’d hidden in the towel.”

Anjali started laughing hysterically.

“So you think that’s funny? Wait till you get stung one day,” Rahul said angrily.

“No, I don’t. But I do wonder what would’ve happened if they’d hidden in your pants instead of the towel?”

Anjali started laughing again. Rahul watched. She was laughing so hard tears streamed from her eyes. How much laughter did this girl have inside her? As she laughed, her eyes remained fixed on Rahul. Suddenly he felt the same way he did gazing out the window of Room 252 in Tagore Hostel and watching the yellow spot bobbing along on the winding road from the field below.

Her laughing eyes floated into his insides, and Rahul felt them swim through the blood of his veins like two tiny shining fish. And in that red bloodstream, flowing in the darkness of his body’s blue veins, they arrived at the place where all arteries and veins in the body join together. The place where the fragile and mysterious clock of life beats a continuous tick-tick, tick-tick. And the moment the ticking ceases, no more life! It’s that place where the heart is.

A mild, pleasant fever crept over Rahul, the kind of feeling music can dissolve into. Rahul’s ears heard the music within the fever and sank into it. What a melody — so faint he could hardly hear it, try as hard as he might. The two shining fish laughed and swam continuously inside his body, and back and forth across to the sweet fever.

“What happened?” Anjali said, waking Rahul from his reverie. “It’s like you turned into a statue.”

Rahul was silent. Sheepishly, he regarded Anjali. As if he were still seized by his fever, she still seemed to be laughing.

“Alright, alright. So, when was the second time you were stung by a bee?” Anjali asked.

“I was riding my motorcycle. I have no idea how but it got inside my helmet.”

“My god! That’s horrifying. A helmet strapped to your head with a bee trapped inside it,” Anjali said, truly frightened.

“So then it stung me. I was so scared. I couldn’t let go of the handlebars, and I couldn’t take off my helmet. .”

“So. . so what did you do?” Anjali sounded worried.

“I nearly ran into an oncoming bus! If there’d been an accident, it would have been the bee’s fault,” Rahul said.

“My goodness!” Anjali said, reeling from the thought. “Then how did the bee get out of the helmet?”

“Get out? I pulled to the side, took the helmet off, and it just flew away.”

“Oh!” Anjali let out a big sigh of relief. “Just thinking about it — how awful and scary it must have been to have a bee trapped inside your helmet buzzing around on your head.”

“That’s exactly how it was. And going fifty miles an hour on top of everything.” Rahul smiled proudly.

But Anjali was no longer concerned. “You still haven’t proven your point,” she said.

“Huh?”

“The thing from before. .”

“What thing?” Rahul didn’t understand.

“The thing about butterflies not stinging,” Anjali said.

Rahul started to laugh. “Butterflies don’t sting. I’ll bet you. Bees do, like I said.”

“Just because bees sting doesn’t mean that butterflies don’t,” Anjali argued.

“You’re weird.”

“Why?”

“Butterflies don’t sting because they land on flowers. Bees, on the other hand, land on sweets and water near tanks,” Rahul said. “Haven’t you seen all the bees swarming in a sweets shop around the jalebis, the gujhi, the barfi?”

“Bees hover around flowers, and they sting. And flies swarm around sweets. They don’t sting,” Anjali countered.

Rahul was beginning to despair. How could he convince this girl that butterflies didn’t sting? He’d been successful in convincing her that bees do. But that was only half a victory. Winning the other half was proving no easy task.

“Butterflies don’t have stingers, so they don’t sting. Bees have them. In the back, near the tail.” Rahul argued his case with careful consideration as if playing his trump card.

Anjali raised another question: “Have you seen with your own eyes that there’s no stinger on the back of the butterfly?”

Now Rahul gave up hope. He ran out of steam and fell flat on his back. His body went limp and he rolled around in the grass. “I give up! I now fully agree, Princess Diana-ji, that the butterfly that landed on your shoulder, flew off, and just landed on your parasol, stings. Okay? Happy? Can we please change the topic?”

Anjali began laughing again, maybe at her victory, maybe at Rahul’s surrender.

“Now what’s so funny?” Rahul’s mood began to lighten as his annoyance abated.

Anjali grabbed a clump of grass with her right hand and tossed it at Rahul. “What is it with you? How do you manage to tell the truth, and still lose?” She laughed.

No one had said this to Rahul before. He felt as if Anjali, so easily, so casually, had managed to grasp this about him. This was the first time he and Anjali had quarreled, playfully, and even though he’d been right, he lost.

But why was this defeat feeling so good? Why was he so happy?

I drank

I drank

Now what? Now what?

My heart

Is hers

Now what? Now what?

Rahul began to hum the tune, slowly. There was shade under the neem tree. Thick and cool. A September breeze, filled with its afternoon freshness, moisture, and heat. The monsoon hadn’t completely receded. Heavy clouds could gather in the sky at any moment and burst into rain.

The parasol was still in the same spot, occasionally trembling in the breeze. The butterfly on top had folded its wings and had, perhaps, fallen asleep.

Do butterflies dream? Rahul had read somewhere that we humans can perceive only seven of the colors in the spectrum, whereas butterflies can see thousands. Such a teeny-tiny flying insect with such beautiful wings. How small its eyes must be! And a retina smaller yet, the size of a pinprick. What kinds of tiny images would be created by a retina so small?

But images are nothing more than representations of light, read by the brain. So is the butterfly’s brain, which senses thousands of symbols of color, more sophisticated than ours? And if that’s the case, then the butterfly must also be capable of incredibly developed and sophisticated thought. This means the butterfly that flew, frightened, from Anjali’s shoulder to the yellow parasol is now asleep, dreaming a Technicolor dream, magical, intricate, of a cosmos unknown.

If butterflies were capable of language, we could know about their dreams, colors, and world. Maybe they do have language and, just as we’re not able to perceive the thousands of colors they can, we probably can’t discern the various sounds, tones, and consonants of their sophisticaed, intricate, unknown tongue.

Butterflies would have their own alphabet if they could write. Who knows? The butterfly might be sitting on a flower or leaf and writing away. And wouldn’t we be able to read it?

My goodness! More sophisticated than even the most complex computer filled with the best microchips is the brain of the butterfly. Who installed this biogenetic microchip inside the brain of this tiny insect? Who painted all the patterns on its wings?

“Is it really true?” Anjali asked. Her voice roused Rahul from his daze.

“Is what true?” he asked.

“The thing Anima mentioned the other day in the canteen.”

“When?” Rahul played dumb.

“C’mon, don’t you remember? Just after you got admission into the Hindi department and you were treating us to chai and samosas,” Anjali said, in a serious attempt to stir his memory. However, there was absolutely no need to remind him.

“What are you talking about?” Rahul asked. “Don’t beat around the bush.”

Anjali thought about it for a moment and then haltingly began, “You know, the thing about dropping out of anthropology and transferring to the Hindi department because. .”

Rahul studied Anjali. This was his chance to get revenge for the earlier defeat. “Because what?” he said innocently.

“Because. .” Anjali said, glaring.

“Becaaauuuse?” Rahul asked again, drawing it out as far as he could.

“You’re impossible!” She was annoyed. “Never mind. I don’t care anyhow.”

Anjali’s remark stirred up something inside Rahul, and it was fear. Rahul felt that Anjali, even as she was asking him, was in no mood for jokes. She actually had been eager to find out why. But now the giggling was over and a kind of suffering and torment had begun. The lines of tension intersecting on her forehead were quite visible.

How beautiful those lines were, but why did they need to be there at all? Why did stress show up on the forehead of a girl who, ordinarily, was laughing? This too was because of him.

Rahul noticed that Anjali’s eyes were fixed on him with an expression of eagerness or plea. There was something in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Rahul felt his throat was dry, as if the sweet fever were again creeping up. He swallowed hard. His mouth was getting dry. He looked at Anjali and slowly said, “Yes.”

“Yes what?” Anjali asked, her voice trembling.

“It’s true,” Rahul said. He lowered his head and ran his fingers over a blade of grass. Where had this sprouted from?

A cool breeze suddenly arrived. Even though it was September, the breeze retained some of August’s leftover humidity. The blades of grass gently blew in the wind. A silence had descended.

Rahul lifted his head up; her eyes were as before, fixed on him. Rahul couldn’t meet her gaze. He looked in the other direction, at the butterfly asleep atop the parasol rocking gently in the wind. The butterfly must certainly be dreaming now.

Right that instant, the magic began. Holding his breath and not blinking, Rahul’s gaze fixed on the full expanse of that magic. There are twenty-four frames in each second of film. In slow motion he watched every instant and detail of whatever took place in that scene. It was surprising, amazing — Rahul could hardly breathe.

The butterfly, which had been sleeping, silently changed its form. A metamorphosis. It might not have even realized someone was watching this marvel. At least the butterfly was a living creature. But this marvel went so far that it even included the parasol — a lifeless thing made of fabric, plastic, and metal — in its magic. Now the parasol itself was silently changing its form.

Rahul was flabbergasted. It was the first time anything like this had happened to him, and right in front of his eyes. I’m awake, aren’t I? He rubbed his eyes. So this is truly happening in reality?

The butterfly grew bigger and rounder. It grew larger with each passing instant, in each of the twenty-four frames for every second.

The parasol grew smaller at an identical rate. This meant that the butterfly and parasol were in cahoots, playing a game. They both knowingly participated in this act of magic. No more than thirty seconds could have elapsed by the time the butterfly had completely changed into the parasol and begun to flutter in the wind, as if it were the real parasol.

And the parasol had changed into a butterfly and was perched atop the parasol as if it were the real butterfly.

The color had drained from Rahul’s face. He was dumbstruck. O god, what kind of jest is this!

Was this the dream the butterfly dreamed when it flew from Anjali’s shoulder and fell asleep atop the parasol? Could it be that the thing Rahul saw was the butterfly’s dream, occurring inside of its sleep? Or who’s to say Rahul didn’t have a quick nap and himself have a dream?

In the meantime he rubbed his eyes and saw clearly he was awake. Then he looked at Anjali. She was quite real, sitting in the same spot, eyes fixed on Rahul. Her gaze entered his pores, and Rahul felt it swim through the blood of his veins like tiny shining fish, swimming toward his heart, the place where the mysterious clock of life beats, tick-tick: the sound on which the whole of a life hangs.

This meant that the magic was real: the butterfly had really changed into a parasol and the parasol into a butterfly.

Just then, a leaf fell from the neem tree and floated down to the spot where the butterfly sat, which was, just a short while ago, actually a parasol. Frightened by the neem leaf, the butterfly took flight. But Rahul knew full well that it was not a butterfly at all, but a parasol.

“Look, the parasol’s flying away,” Rahul cried.

Anjali looked back to the ground, puzzled. “What are you talking about, it’s right there,” she said.

“No, that’s a butterfly. Believe me. It’s a butterfly.”

Anjali had a good laugh. “You really are a joker.”

Rahul accepted defeat. He realized it would be nearly impossible to explain to this girl what had happened: the thing that just flew away was a parasol, and the thing still on the ground wasn’t a parasol at all, but a butterfly.

“Johnny joker, that’s my name. .” Rahul said. In despair. These were the lyrics from a Shweta Shetty pop song.

Anjali looked at Rahul. This was the first time. Nothing needed to be said. It had happened, the thing that happens. Rahul felt as if a symphony inside him had begun to play for the first time.

Anima, O.P., and Hemant had returned. They brought cake, biscuits, a bag of Uncle Chipps, and five bottles of Pepsi.

“So did the two of you discuss Hindi literature?” Anima said, looking at Anjali. Anjali remained silent. Why did Anima’s voice sound so flat and sorrowful?

When all who had gathered there began leaving, and Anjali had picked up her parasol, Rahul turned around and wanted to tell her the truth: it wasn’t a parasol protecting her from the sun. It was actually a butterfly.

But he stayed silent and trailed behind the six-foot-three giraffe-like bamboo stick all the way back to the hostel and, once in the room, fell flat on the bed.

“I think I have fallen in love. . for the first time in my life!” Rahul whispered into his pillow.