Fiction

          During the floods, Aunt Cheema is paranoid. She keeps imagining she’s married to the crocodile, and walks to the edge of the Bambusoides flooring of our kuccha home, just above the three steps that are underwater. Not that I bother but I still say, “Come, let’s get inside,” in the hope she’ll accept my offer. Instead, she glares scornfully.

          The waters have been here since yesterday, touching the stone mortar-and-pestle on the floor with every ripple. Like a ten-year-old, Aunt Cheema raises her skirt and gingerly dips her foot in the murky brown water. A minute lapses and the crocodile closes in. It’s the largest one from the Bhogdoi River, but instead of looking at Aunt Cheema, it stares at Woama’s husband on the wall. The old fisherman smiles back from the garlanded framed photograph. Aunt Cheema turns to follow its stare and is somewhat baffled. After paying its respects, the crocodile slithers away, paying no attention to Aunt Cheema whatsoever. For the next hour, Aunt Cheema cries her heart out.

           Lest her tears bring about a mini-inundation in our humble quarters, grandmother Woama pulls out the enormous trunk from underneath the bed to distract her. It smells of burnt vinegar and moss. I know it hoards some of Aunt Cheema’s best friends from childhood: a rag doll named Pinky, and a baby rabbit, once white now not. At the sound of pulling and dragging, she becomes cheerful. Woama takes out the things one by one. Photographs, from when she was getting married to the fisherman, wearing an Assamese scarf and toothy smile, emerge first. Then, more colorless snapshots from when my mother was born, from when Aunt Cheema was born, and then one by one, Aunt Cheema’s “best friends.” In the absence of real friends now, Aunt Cheema clings on to the gifts her friends gave her when she was much younger as though they substitute for her friends. The trinket with a pair of owls embossed, charms Aunt Cheema. She holds it for long, as though remembering something. Then a tiny cloth bag with a handful of rice. Excited, she explains, “From Sabita, my best friend. When she was leaving the village.” I hover around, sit for a while, and then start pacing the room because I’ve seen and heard the same things over and over. 

          Woama and Aunt Cheema continue to pick out things. I hate these routine sessions of reminiscence and nostalgia–what do we get out of them anyway? I’d far better prefer the present and what we’re losing each passing day.

          Outside, the sky grumbles again. Likely it’ll soon be raining. Again. Like yesterday, like the day before, like all month. The floodwaters will rise again. Will we survive?

          I consider the flat, raised counter above the clay oven, where we store our meager grains in sacks made of jute, tied with coir ropes. Rustic, but functional. It’s important we keep safe our share of free ration from the Department. That countertop is two feet and a half above the floor. Will this spell of rain do it?

          When thunder claps, Aunt Cheema pulls out another cloth bag from the tin trunk, full of crocodile scute. Fifty of them. She’s told us before: they belong to her husband. He’d wanted it to be a parting gift because she had returned to human form.

          As night falls, we can hear toads cry like panic has gripped them. Bushlarks and eagles dash; Prinias call tchup, tchup, tchup, zeet-zeet-zeet, tee-tee-tee, sending out signals of urgency as the waters rise. Foxes howl irritably like Death is nearby.

          Later, I light the kerosene lamp. Its oil is running out. Woama says it burns furiously when the end is near. I watch transfixed as the ribbons of fire lick the air as lustily as a lover.

          When we go to sleep that night, Woama turns off the lamp to save precious oil.

          Aunt Cheema wonders aloud: “He’ll come to take this bag of scute. Scutes like these harness solar heat when he’s lurking in the waters and he must be so cold now. I’m sure if I beg enough, he’ll take us on his back to dry ground up in Majlikoyi.”

          Woama and I nod, so as not to hurt or anger Aunt Cheema, though we know how moody the crocodile is. We pretend to be sleepy.

          Except, we see the crocodile’s eyes just sticking out of the floodwaters at the edge of our Bambusoides floor — eyes that can see all around, yes that can track different targets, eyes retractable in battle, and eyes that can see extraordinarily well even in the dark.

Mandira Pattnaik is an Indian writer, poet and columnist. She is the author of collections "Anatomy of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople" (2022, Fahmidan Publishing, Poetry), "Girls Who Don't Cry" (2023, Alien Buddha Press, Flash Fiction) and "Where We Set Our Easel" (May 2023, Stanchion Publishing, Novella). Mandira's work has appeared in The McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Passages North, DASH, Miracle Monocle, Timber Journal, Contrary, Watershed Review, Quarter After Eight and Prime Number Magazine, among others. More at mandirapattnaik.com