The Field Where Mother Died

She pointed it out to me as the train swept past it. It looked like any other field, and I didn't believe her.

It was a rainy December afternoon, and I was on the Mumbai Mail. It was the day after I'd decided to quit looking for a regular job and take up writing full-time. "She was bitten by a snake," the girl went on, oblivious to my misgivings. I was remembering a scene from Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1960s classic, Anupama. The protagonist, a schoolteacher who's decided to quit his job to concentrate on his writing, is at a dinner party. A simple man, he's uncomfortable in the cozy extravagance of his surroundings. His companion introduces him to the host. "So what do you do, young man?" he's asked. He's a writer, he says. After a moment of uncomprehending silence the host says, "But what do you do?"

"Can I have a look?" she points at my Yashica FX3. I pull it off from around my neck and hold it at the eye level of the nine-year-old. She looks out the window through the viewfinder, and then I take a couple of photos of her. "Do you want a biscuit?" I suggest. She shakes her head.

"What's your name?"

"Shakuntala."

"Do you know the story about Shakuntala?"

Startled, she shakes her head again. "There's a story?"

"She was a fisherman's daughter. One day, the king's son saw her bathing in the river, and fell instantly in love with her. He took a jewelled ring off his finger and slipped it onto hers, proclaiming his love. He would ask his father's permission to marry her that very day, and send for her soon. She was to show them the ring at the palace gates. Feeling she was in a dream, Shakuntala watched the handsome prince ride away.

"Unfortunately, the prince's ring was too large for Shakuntala's finger. When she went to bathe in the river the next morning, it slipped off her hand, and was washed away by the current. Shakuntala wept with despair. That evening, the prince sent a magnificent carriage to escort her to the palace. But when she got there, the palace guards refused to let her in because she didn't have the ring.

"It was then that they heard excited voices from the kitchens. One of the cooks, preparing dinner for the royal family, had just slit open the stomach of a fish – and found the ring inside! And so Shakuntala's story has a happy ending after all."

Shakuntala's station is coming up. "My stop's just ahead. I must jump off and hide, you see," she explains. "I haven't got any money today, and my brother'll hit me if he finds out. But I got plenty of places to hide!" She gets up from where she's been perched on my seat with me. "D'you know what kind of field it was?" I shake my head. "Rice. And this one?" she points to a grove of trees that the train, slowing down now, is passing. I know, but feign ignorance. "Kela. I know it's called banana in English. I know a sentence, too: what is your name?" She smiles impishly and the train stops. "Wait, take this." I start rummaging in my bag. "I'll take it from the window, okay?" she vanishes down the aisle. It's a short stop.

I give her two five-rupee coins from the window. "Don't you have a ten-rupee note?" she asks. I don't, but I offer her a packet of chocolate biscuits. This time she accepts.

(Anupama ends at a train station, too. Our writer, having completed his novel, is boarding a train. He's left it open-ended, because he doesn't know, until the movie's final seconds, how the story ends.)

My photographs of her turned out less-than-perfect. One was underexposed, and the other not sharp enough. But I can see, clearly enough, the pink-and-green blouse she wore over her nondescript ankle-length skirt, and the silver medallion on the black thread around her neck.

I think of a young woman who may or may not have died after having been bitten by a snake in a field of rice. I'm certain she is dead, because if she weren't, her daughter would've known Shakuntala's story.