Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories by Janice Pariat

Author:Janice Pariat
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9788184003390
Publisher: Random House India
Published: 2012-11-01T18:30:00+00:00

Sky Graves

It was mostly at funerals that people told stories. On the three night-long watches kept by the ieng iap briew—the household of the dead—when windows and doors stayed open for the spirit of the deceased. Sometimes a stool would tip over, a wooden shutter suddenly rattle or a tumbler fall to the floor. These were indications of a ghostly visit, some believed, mysterious signs that the one who’d passed away was making peace with the world they were leaving behind. On these nights, people whiled away the hours playing cards or carrom; in the kitchen women would splice betel nut and fold tobacco leaves for the next day’s visitors, they would talk quietly of the bereaved and the inconsolable. In a separate room, in a musty corner, a group of men would huddle around the chula, giving off warmth and light like a familiar, benevolent mistress. There were funny stories of drunks who wandered into empty churches and talked to stoic ceramic saints, of animal hunts that went heroically right, and sometimes tragically wrong, tales of journeys through jungles and wilderness involving characters they’d never met but who’d become real and intimate through years of retelling. Stories are told at festive, joyful gatherings, but the ones narrated at funerals are special because they reaffirm existence, of the listeners and the narrators. They are times of remembrance that haul the past into the present, and keep people alive even when they’re gone.

It wasn’t often that Bah Hem told stories. He would sit in silence, listening to the others, his eyes fixed on the glowing coal. On nights that were a trifle colder and quieter, though, he could be persuaded. If he’d had a drink—smoky rice beer or a sharp stinging glass of clear kiad—someone would ask for a story about love, and he’d speak of the man who came from the place where birds go to die. And like at the beginning of so many stories, the room would transform, assembled anew with words.

‘He showed up one late September morning,’ he’d begin, ‘when memories of monsoon rain were fading with the mild autumn sunshine. He walked into my workshop, silent as a hunter.’

The stranger was greeted with no small surprise—this was the rough ‘wild west’ part of town, an area of strict local laws and devout churchgoers. Not a place for outsiders.

‘I’m from Jatinga.’ His tone was soft, foreign, not of these hills.

‘You came all this way?’ Bah Khraw, assistant at the workshop, sounded as rough as the sandpaper in his hand. He’d worked there thirteen years, almost as long as the place had been open, and felt he’d earned the right to choose the people he wanted to be agreeable to. The young man, tall, thin, with the dusky complexion of the people from the plains, remained silent. He was no more than twenty, but his eyes, quietly pensive, looked much older. The weapon in his hand was a solid 10 gauge double-barrel shotgun, much used and badly in need of polish.

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