Belly Fire

It was the eve of the New Year. Like a bride, housing societies had decked themselves up – they shone and glittered. Moksha went about the house with a frown on her pink lips. Her fair, translucent skin had turned a shade darker, with gloom enveloping her. Mum was not home yet. In the morning Moksha had heard her blabbering about the hectic day ahead. 

‘Nobody wants an appointment for the 1st of Jan. Why visit a doctor on the first day of the year?’ Mum was fuming while leaving for work. ‘Yet, everyone wants to see the New Year with new eyesight. As if new eyesight will bless them with a new vision. Morons.’ 

Before getting into her Nano, she dropped a surprise for Moksha. ‘Be ready for tonight. We are going to have fun.’ Moksha thought they would be merry-making, wearing the fancy frill frock, and the new hair band mum had bought from the flea market.

When the clock moved past the party time and mum wasn’t home, Moksha changed into her night suit, pulled out the hair band, and crept under the blanket.

‘Tendatan! Mum is home!’ The mother announced her homecoming like Santa on Christmas, parking her Nano reindeer outside, she galloped towards Moksha. The girl pretended to sleep. 

‘Mum is sorry, sweetheart. You know she has more on her plate than she can manage. But it is necessary.’

Moksha shuffled in her bed. Without a whimper, tears soaked her Cinderella printed pillow. The little girl had a celebration on her mind. Her girlfriends in school would be now dancing to lunatic Bollywood numbers with their parents. The entire day, her squad had gushed about styling and rehearsing hook steps and were going crazy over the end of 2023. Moksha was left out because mum had promised her more fun. Now that didn’t seem real. 

Mum opened the windows, and a starry light cascaded in the room. Before she could convince Moksha for something, mum borrowed inspiration from the still night. Not everything that was dark was scary. A deep breath later, ‘Mokshu, won’t you ask me which party we are attending?’

‘There is no party that will entertain us now. We are late.’ Pat came the grumpy reply.

‘Not all is lost. There is one party I know that is waiting for us.’

‘Is it?’ Moksha jumped out of the bed to land on her mum’s lap.

‘Yes, there is. But before we let our hair lose, tell me, have you made your wish list?’

‘Wish list? Haan that in which I’m supposed to write what I want, na?’

‘Not just what you want. But how and by when you will achieve it?’

‘Oh, I just have to ask and you will bring it from the market.’

‘Hahhah…it isn’t that easy. A wish list is not only about stuffing your cupboard with toys and dresses or a little further with money and jewelry or visiting destinations, but it is also about growing, evolving, and making a difference to those around you.’

‘Means?’ Mum loved Moksha’s innocent, puzzled look- a tinge of wonder mixed with a blob of confusion.

‘How about a story?’ Stories were Mum’s saviours during tantrums and melt downs. Stories came handy to her when hard truths of life had to be delivered softly. Stories were mum’s and Moksha’s best friends.

‘Once upon a time, about 40-50 million years ago, there was a girl…’

‘Mum, no more girly stories, please. Very boring.’

Her baby was growing and now the stories too needed innovation. Stories that needed to undergo transformation. Evolution. Mum’s neurons fired an idea. EUREKA! She screamed, adding to her daughter’s surprise.

‘Okay then. Once upon a time, about 40 million years ago…’

***

The ocean and the sky merged in a communal blackness. A moonless sky loomed over the quiescence of water. Yet the darkness didn’t dampen their spirits. Aye-aye snored through her hairless snout, disturbing the snoring symphony of her mother Cha-cha. Only when the senior lemur would strike a chord of traditional Gondwana snoring, Aye-aye would erupt into the Madagascar vibe. While one sounded like a chirping bird, the other wailed in a blissful rhythm. 

The raft, made from sargassum algae, floated gently on the waters of the Pacific Ocean. A troop of lemurs were headed to Madagascar for a change in lifestyle, tired of the frequent storms and cyclones that uprooted their life from the good old Gondwana. The leader of the troop, Cha-cha, an eye specialist, was a gutsy female. Along with raising her naughty daughter Aye-aye, she was a part of a community comprising of teachers, midwives, nurses, soldiers, plumbers, and carpenters. The vocation suiting their interests and abilities. Each one could pick up an area of interest irrespective of what their mothers or foremothers did.

The raft trembled as strong winds blew over the inky black waters.

‘Attention! Comrades, the enemy troops have again begun the invasion. Our land and water, herbs and trees, burrows and butterflies are in danger. Attention!’

‘Turn about, Aye-aye.’

‘Aye Aye, captain.’

 ‘Aye-aye, your name is Aye-aye and no enemy troops have attacked. It is just the notorious wind that is blowing.’ Cha-cha who had woke up startled from her daughter’s bawling, whacked the little one with her black and white ringed, long tail. ‘Move, girl. Turn. You have been kicking me all night and now this crazy Attention, Attention shriek of yours.’ 

‘Ouch! Mum, I was just trying to be alert.’

‘Shut up and keep mum. The entire day you are an audience to the idle talks of the tribe. How the Dinos got extinct. Nothing better to do.’

‘Mum, but imagine, the earth gobbled up such gigantic creatures in no time.’

Aye-aye’s red eyes glowed like rubies in the dark. Amusement circled in the rims of her pupils.

‘Stop blaming the earth. The boring creatures got extinct because they didn’t dream enough, explore enough, stayed glued to where they were, comfortable in their meadows. No adventure. No fun. No threat, as every organism was intimidated by their size. Understood, dumbo?’

‘Wow!! Mum, you know so much!’ Aye-aye looked at her mum in admiration as Cha-cha was lost in her world, eyeing the fast approaching Madagascar Island. Dreaming of the eye surgeries, she would be performing so that most of the creatures could have a nocturnal vision like the lemurs.

‘It is the dark that the weak animals take advantage of to conquer the stronger ones.’ She would frequently instil sense into Aye-aye.

‘I know so much because I dream and I read. Darling, reading and dreaming prevent the shrinking of the brain. Another reason the Dino monsters got extinct.’

‘Read? What to read?’ The girl dug into a piece of wood lying on the raft and plucked out a fresh, juicy insect larva. ‘Yum, so tasty.’

‘Oh, there is so much to read. The signs of the universe, the unspoken language of our fellow mates, the grumble of earth and the cracking of the sky. The zigzag lines on the barks of the trees tell their age and speak of hidden wisdom. The patches of moss on rocks whisper that there is a spring of water within it. We need to listen. We need to read.’

Madagascarian snores greeted Cha-cha’s revolutionary tirades. Aye-aye had turned a bushy deaf ear. The progeny’s fat belly rose and fell with the intensity of the ocean waves that were merging with the shore. Streaks of daylight emerged from the grey skies, announcing the beginning of a beautiful day. The water streaming below looked like liquid gold erupting from mines. The approaching island, a masterpiece from the creator, welcomed its new inhabitants, the lemurs.

The inviting fragrance of damp wood enticed Cha-cha. Damp wood meant food. Food meant plenty of creatures around and plentiful creatures who could not see at night meant a bulk of eyes for her to operate. Her dream of bringing nocturnal vision to all the species in the world was about to come true. 

‘Hey, wake up. Wake Up!’

‘Attention! Attention, comrades!’ 

‘Aye-aye, yes, wake up and pay attention to every detail on this island.’

The mother wasn’t even looking at her bewildered baby screaming attention. Her eyes were glued to the beauty of the green canopy drilling into the blue skies. Large elephant birds pecked at the leaves with their conical beaks. A giant tortoise crawled from under a fern bush. A group of pygmy hippopotamuses yawned, exposing their red oral cavities. The forest was humming with life around. The chatter of animals Cha-cha hadn’t seen before tickled her ears. ‘Fresh eyes to work on. How thrilling!’ She whispered to herself.

The lemur troops climbed down the raft and parked it nearby. Emergency could come calling anytime. 

‘Ahaaa, soft, grassy carpets all around, to snooze anytime and every time.’ Aye-aye chose a comfortable gap between the shoots of a bamboo tree, made some grunting sounds to polish her vocal cords, readying them for the Madagascar melody, and surrendered her beady eyes to the sleep fairy. When, 

‘Aiye, witch! I mean, which creature hit me?’

‘It’s me, Aye-aye. We are not here to sleep. Remember the Dino story? Lazing around will suck life out of your fur. Dream and…-

‘Oh, mum it’s you.’ 

Yawning, ‘But to dream, one must sleep. Let me get the whole thing right from the beginning. Only when I’m about to sleep, you wake me. How will I dream?’

‘We don’t have time. If we fail in bringing night vision to some creatures, the predators will eat them up. Their numbers will reduce. They will become Dinos. Extinct!’

Ting. 

‘Mum, first pick up your dropped jaw. Do you think you can open that hippo’s eye? Isn’t there something called as a choice? What if they don’t allow you to?’

The daughter went back to nestle in the reedy patch. She knew that a single thought was sufficient to drown her mother in a pool of worries. At least for the next 12 hrs, the eye doctor would worry about how to convince the animals for eye surgeries, how to write letters, petitions, hold lectures and awareness programs, stepwise program, meticulous planning. At least for the next 12 hrs, Aye-aye could focus on setting up her orchestra and not worry. 

Maybe surgery was not the solution. Yet, there had to be a definite solution. 

***

It was late in the night, yet Moksha was as alert as an owl. Wide-eyed, she waited for her mother to continue.

‘Is the story over? No na. Then why did you stop?’

‘We need to rest now, sweetie. Tomorrow I shall continue the story.’ Mum’s eyes were red dipped in fatigue. It looked like she would need a doctor on 1st Jan. 

‘I want to know whether the lemur’s mother could fulfil her wish. How long it took?’

‘Hmmm…Certain wishes and dreams come true in a single lifetime. Certain others demand epochs and several lifetimes.’

‘Means mum?’ Moksha sat up, innocence and wonder sparkling in her eyes. Mum pulled her closer and ran an affectionate hand over her neatly pleated, pale brown hair.

‘Let’s continue the story.’ Mum was determined to complete Cha-cha’s bucket list. 

‘Now, around 6 to 8 million years ago…’

***

It was a holiday. Who knew whether the school existed anymore? It better not, thought Funtoos as she slept on a magnificent mahogany branch. The orchid flowers tickled her belly, but she was too lazy to find another bed. Midges buzzed around her ears that resembled fanned out mushrooms. There was much of a room for the flies to swirl in and come out. Only when the flies decided to slide down on Funtoos’s ears, her long arm that extended beyond her knee, slapped them. The determined flies pivoted and took their positions at her ears again. But this time the strategy was to crawl up her neck, through her brown hair that was huge grassland for the flies. After the meeting, the flies dispersed and started ascending from the neck to the ears. 

Could ever the grasslands make out the prowling of field mice? 

Funtoos scratched her skin, yawned, inhaling a mouthful of air, and continued to sleep. As the insects trekked higher, some stopped to pierce their straws in her blood and took sips of the red fluid. Refreshed, they continued. 

With each sip, Funtoos’s scratching increased. But scratching wasn’t that important to give up on a holiday’s sleep. She rubbed her belly on the creepers, dug her nails into her skin to scratch, howled in pain, but did not open her eyes to locate the troublemakers.

Jintoos, who was pounding herbs on a rock, heard the cry. Covering the green paste with a large leaf, she huddled up to Funtoos’s branchy bed. Looking at the chimp, one would mistake it to be a nightmare haunting her in sleep. Jintoos, knowing her daredevil daughter, for whom nightmares were an adventurous opportunity to fight off ferocious creatures, examined the crying child. Funtoos could crush an entire Archeaopteryx in her dreams, but the lazy bone would not pluck a thorn stuck in her feet. Sleep, sleep, and some more sleep was all that she aimed for.

‘Arghhhhh…Funtoos. FunTOOS. FUNTOOOOSSS.’

‘Huh?’ One weeping eye looked at the irate mother on the nearby branch. The other eye was a laid back one. 

Whack!

‘Ouch, mum!’ The other eye, too, opened and stood staring at the progeny’s mother.

‘Funtoos, an army of midges are about to enter your ears.’ The mother picked the insects clung to her daughter’s skin.

‘I have a better idea, mum. Pluck out the ears instead. Cut the head off the snake!’

‘I will chop off your ears if you don’t listen to me, henceforth. You are hibernating from the past three days. Rains, floods, and forest fires are an excuse for you to sleep. The school is just for namesake. No point sending you there. Now I worry about what must have happened to your school.’

‘Washed awayyyyyy with the gurglingggg waters of Congoooo…’

‘Don’t sing, Funtoooos! Understand.’

‘Tooooos, she is the one singing and advocating me otherwise.’ The daughter muttered under her breath. She checked the red trail left behind by the flies on her skin. Footprints bereft of their master. 

‘Mum’s shrieking can scare pythons. These were mere flies.’ The self talk cum murmuring continued. Maybe mum needed a hug. The thought propelled Funtoos to jump from her branch to mum’s.

‘Ohooo…you are hot!’

Jintoos blushed as her daughter complimented her.

‘Ahaa, it’s just that sometimes my herbal paste stays a little longer on my skin.’ The lady-like chimp looked admiringly at her reflection in a puddle of water below. 

‘Acccctually.’ Funtoos took a moment to clear the air. ‘I meant that you are warm to touch.’ She dared not continue until the mother realized her folly.

‘Hmmm…’ 

Jintoos’s expression returned to being pensive.

‘Mum, when you are angry, I have noticed, you turn hot. Hot as in…’ The little chimp tried changing the subject. ‘I sometimes wonder if we could use your body heat to produce light.’

‘What nonsense!’

Jintoos considered going back to her grinding. The sun had come out after a long time of rain. Her paste needed to be exposed to light to receive the therapeutic effect. She had been working on this formula for a long. In fact, her great grandmother was also a healer who worked with the hidden powers of plants. Extracting juices from roots, bulbs, and fruits alike, Jintoos’s ancestors experimented with plants to bring night vision to primates. Cha-cha, the pioneer lemur, had left an unspoken legacy of thoughts to prevent the extinction of their tribe. Jintoos, though a strong follower of Cha-cha’s ideology, felt there was something amiss in the theory of evolution. There was more to extinction than just the absence of night vision.

Before the mother could leap down, she noticed Funtoos going back to sleep. No way was she going to let that lousy baby doze again.

‘Explain yourself.’

Funtoos knew now there was no escape. She had kindled the discussion, and she had to bring it to a logical end before her mother would allow her to sleep again. It wasn’t fair to the flies as well, reasoned Funtoos mentally.

‘Wookay. The other day, before the storms, the teacher told us that if we could have the sunlight at night, we could see without having a night vision. They will be asking the Cha-cha hypothesis for ten marks in the exams and we got to do a project on how we can see in the dark. The  teacher did give some ideas, but I feel that if all the chimps make their mothers angry, then the heat produced might result in light.’

The girl was benefiting from the school. However absurd the reasoning might seem to the world, as a mother madly in love with her daughter, Jintoos bought her theory.

She went back to the paste lying under the leaf. There was hope. Her daughter was thinking, though sporadically, yet she was looking for solutions. She remembered her grandmother saying, ‘Being part of a solution is progressive than being part of a problem. Only rare individuals do so.’

Jintoos laughed, showing her crooked teeth. Certainly they were a rare species, but would not go extinct. The mother chimp rubbed the stones vigorously to make a fine paste of the herbs. Grind, grind, grind. Each friction was stronger than before. The green getting greener with every rub. 

Struck

Did Jintoos see a spark of orange in the green?

***

For the first time, Moksha saw how her colony and sky looked at 2 am. The mother-daughter duo came out of the house to experience the winter chill. Mum soaked in the silence and Moksha followed the chirping of cicadas. The singing cicadas weren’t new to her, but an uninterrupted performance in the city was rare. The partying people had slept tight. Honking of horns died down. It was at such an ungodly hour, God’s best creations came to life.

 It was mum’s longstanding wish to spend such uninterrupted time with Moksha. Single parenting gave her brief opportunities to engage her baby in talks other than, ‘did you eat at the crèche?’ or ‘was the school bus on time?’ or ‘when is the project submission?’. She missed such tete-a-tete conversations. She missed drawing Moksha out of reality and immersing her in the world of novel, unknown possibilities where the earth could work on lunar power and creatures as insignificant as flies and mosquitoes could think. 

No harm in planting an idea. Maybe her theories could be proven wrong, but at least she would teach her daughter to think unconventionally and dream. 

Mum had taken a break at storytelling on the pretext of an aching throat. She wanted Moksha to question and be curious. Yes, she did inquire. ‘Why do babies come out of their mum’s tummy if they are so comfortable inside?’ or ‘Is there a spring in our nose that erupts when we sneeze?’ or ‘Does the square become a rectangle if we stretch it?’. Mum wanted her to ask questions about this story, too.

‘Were there schools even millions of years ago?’ Looked as if mum’s wishes were granted. In the recess between the storytelling-session, Moksha was munching on food for thought. Mum would now refill her Tiffin box.

‘Possible. There could have been schools, learning, and exchange of knowledge, passing over of ideas and philosophies, and even doctrines to imitate. The animals may have had a script or language that we don’t understand, but they comprehended well. Remember, what we don’t know, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. The possibility of certain secrets not discovered is taller than the three tier cake we ordered for your fifth birthday.’

‘This big?’ Moksha stretched her arms as wide as she could.

Widening her arms, ‘This big!’ Mum answered. 

‘Okay, let’s continue. Tell me more.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to sleep?’

‘Nah. Aye-aye and Funtoos slept so much na! Lazy girls.’

Mum laughed. Somewhere the evolution had taken away her daughter’s sleep. 

‘What happened to Funtoos?’ Mum scratched her head. ‘I don’t know. But I certainly know how Jintoos and Funtoos’s theories were taken ahead.’

Moksha rested her head on mum’s lap. They chose to sit in the garden and wait for daybreak. Till then, the storytelling would enlighten Moksha, who refused to call it an end.

‘So, around 2 million years ago…’

***

The branch was fragile, hanging from the edge of the canopy. The hungry flames had steadily eaten the bark. A fire that had started with a click sound, petty in the gargantuan sounds of the forest, roared. The trees were sharing the wrath of nature. Sisterhood at its best!

From a distance, Dinga was observing the branch that was not fully lit. A long brown arm of the tree that was not yet completely devoured by the fire. 

Now or never, she thought. 

She had to grab that branch, a burning opportunity, and run towards her settlement. Chochuka, her daughter who loved rabbit meat, was suffering from a troubled tummy. Dinga tried giving her dried meat instead of fresh meat, but whenever the woman kept the tender muscles to dry in the sun, an animal would run away with it. The purpose defeated. Not only her daughter suffered, but many babies were dying of cold weather. This very fire could save them. 

‘Nothing doing. I must jump at it.’

Without a moment’s ado, Dinga sped towards the branch. Her stocky body advancing in the night air made a dash at the burning end of the forest. Elongated sturdier limbs ignored the thorns and pebbles injuring her flat feet. Once at the last tree that was yet to spread its embers to the next leafy member, Dinga started working on the branch with a stone as sharp as an axe. Her fingers gripped the stone tool tightly as she cut the branch at its root.

Snap.

The branch broke. Dinga gave out a winning howl and began her journey home. She ran. Her flesh had burned at places while trying to salvage the branch. Blisters bulged out of the skin where thorns and pebbles had poked her. But she cried in happiness as she was successful in catching a few flames. 

Fire was what her community needed. Fire was what her foremothers believed could save their species from dying. But there was no controlled fire. There were sparks as her community tried to sharpen their hunting tools. Mere sparks that died a quick death weren’t useful. There was fire in the forest but it was in the monstrous form, murderous and dangerous. 

This burning branch was a harbinger of hope for her. She darted past trees and caves that stood like ghosts haunting in the dark. Her legs flying over rocks and ditches that could end her dream. Her calves pained, and her breath formed clouds in the air. The energy in her limbs could have defeated a shooting star, racing across the sky.

Dinga closed her eyes tight out of fear of seeing the fire dwindle. If she was successful today, countless babies of her tribe would survive the cold. They would not have to depend on the Sun God to dry their food. They could use the fire to dry or even cook buffalo or deer meat. Her tribe wouldn’t have to wander. People of the community would not be lost. 

The feet, though were advancing in the right direction, yet the closed eyes were dreaming and dreams rarely have a direction. 

The soft feel of mulch against her soles told her she had reached her camp. She had left Chochuka under the supervision of other women in the group. If not for her clan, she wouldn’t have considered going this far where the forest was displaying its ugly side. She had taken this risk, for she had the strong, erect backs of her girls to fall back on.

‘Heluviaaaa…heluviaaaaaaa… see my sisters, what have I bought for you?’

Dinga’s eyes were still closed. She would open them only to find excited faces dripping with marvel.

‘Whatawhata? Why are you screaming?’ One of her teammates answered her call. Gradually, the entire clan had started appearing from among the bushes. Sleepy-eyed, they stared at Dinga.

‘Fire, can’t you see?’ Her bushy brows raised high in her receded forehead. Awe reflected with closed eyes.

Hehayaheheyaya

‘Mum, open your eyes. See they are laughing at you?’ Chochuka saved her mother, standing with a broken, charred branch in hand, from further embarrassment. ‘There is no fire. Let’s go inside.’

Tears glided down Dinga’s chinless jaw. She refused to open her eyes. The darkness within her shut eyelids was better than the one outside. The darkness inside was lit by her dreams. 

‘Chochuka, I will open my eyes only when I’m able to bring fire to our use.’

‘Silly-billy mummy.’

‘Hoisho hoisho. Call me silly. But I promise, I will see the world when I tame the fire. Teach the misbehaved embers to follow my orders. You will see.’

It would be fun not having mummy see her horrible handwriting on the walls of the cave. No one to reprimand her, if she didn’t wear the itchy hide to cover certain parts of the body. Chochuka could eat rabbit meat all day and make mummy believe she was eating healthy roots and leaves. 

What fun, she smiled, revealing her teeth that had shreds of flesh stuck in the gaps. 

‘Filiyafiliya.’ The elated daughter went to announce her freedom.

When her drumming heart would quieten, she would realize the intensity of her mother’s oath. Like all daughters, who initially doubt, question, and later approve of their mother’s choices, Chochuka would help her mother strike the spark and unite it with the wood. 

For this discovery, there was time. Chochuka had to grow up with a blind mother. 

Blind but not ignorant.

***

‘So, finally, Cha-cha’s wish was fulfilled! People could see in the dark and they didn’t have to pop their eyeballs out!’

‘Yes, Mokshu. Now if we don’t sleep, our eyeballs will not be worthy of playing marbles either.’

‘Mum, I want to make my wish list. Chalo, na.’

‘We will, darling, but do you want me to turn blind like Dinga?’

‘Well, if that means you not checking my books and answer sheets… can I say a yes?’

Mum guffawed at Moksha’s retort. A roar. She was proud of herself for raising an honest and loving individual. Her foremothers- Cha-Cha, Jintoos, and Dinga would be doubly proud of her for having inculcated the burning desire of having a bucket list in life.
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Glossary: the author has taken a creative liberty with the glossary. She feels modern day words like hello, what must have originated in the Stone Age.
Heluviaaa- hellooo
Whatawhatawhata- what
Hiya hiya hiya: hahahaha
Hoisho hoisho- okay okay
Filiyafiliya- a sound of excitment
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