Sarika lay unconscious in the driver seat. Clad in her blue silk saree complemented by a green blouse, a pearl necklace, and a Titan watch, she had been driving to the orphanage to adopt a baby brother for me. I did not want that, and I ensured Sarika knew it. She had been trying to convince me that I would not have to suffer neglect and it would be fun for me to have a baby brother around. I did not believe her. Up ahead, I saw a coconut tree that had been falling onto the road, like in one of those movies I watched the other day. But unlike the movie, the tree collapsed on the back of our car and crushed it like a cigarette under the boot. The car went face-first into the ditch with headlights partially submerged. Crumpled and creased, the vehicle seemed made out of paper, like an origami gone wrong.
On the day I was adopted, Sarika drove me to the beach directly from the orphanage. That day, I asked her about her husband. She said she never had any. I did not believe her. How could she not? She was a handsome, educated woman with thick black hair and glossy skin. Her skin would shine so much that many a time, I asked her if she came in the matte finish too. She said it was all because of coconut — coconut oil, raw coconuts, and coconut chutneys. I said I wanted to learn to drive like her. She suggested eating coconuts for that as well. I did not want to believe everything she said, but she was a passionate driver, and she ate a lot of coconuts.
Half an hour went by, but not a human passed by to help Sarika out of the origami car. A murmuration of starlings danced in the evening sky. She told me that a murmuration was a magical phenomenon that changed fates. For me, it was just a whole lot of birds gone berserk together. An Alto car from the opposite direction slowed down, wound down its window, and wide-eyed observed the accident. But the man in the Alto neither stopped at the scene nor tried to film it on his mobile camera. So far, the magic did not seem to work. But moments later, the Alto turned back. The car looked purposeful as if something was left behind. A wafer-thin man with a sharp nose got down and checked around, especially the coconut trees lining the road, to see if any more were about to fall.
The man looked around and tried to assess the situation. He tried our car door, but it was dented, making it impossible to open. Sarika’s window was halfway down. He gently put his arms through the window and reached out for her head and neck with both his hands. He struggled for a while, his feet unstable on the uneven, muddy slope climbing down to the ditch. After a few minutes of struggle, he let go of her head and pocketed the pearl necklace. He pressed his face against the back seat window to check if anything else was lying around. He looked at my splintered hand lined with glass and blood, and promptly hurried back to his car as if he had seen a ghost. Nonchalantly, the man drove away.
Sarika said a lot of things about a lot of things, and I rarely believed anything she said. Even the magic of the murmuration did not seem to be working so far. But she would have argued that the magic was working, probably not for her but maybe for the wafer-thin man. He must be needing the necklace or the pearls or something to that effect. At any other time and under different circumstances, he would have helped Sarika to the hospital. I don’t know if I would have believed that either.
Vipul Lunia is a writer and a bird-watcher based out of India. His work can be found in Halfway Down the Stairs, Page & Spine, Kitaab, Ariel Chart, and Active Muse, among other places.
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