The Town - A contamination

 

I woke up early that morning for breakfast. I was returning home after my pilgrimage. Feeling oddly satisfied with myself. Whether it was because I had finally endured the tough journey and felt I had achieved something big or because I was conditioned into thinking that without this pilgrimage I wasn't enough of a son, brother, friend or father, I could not tell. I brushed this thought aside, locked it in a room in my head, and threw the key far away.

I woke up early because the old man had the best of stories at only dinner and breakfast. He generally would sleep through the afternoon. To me, that was such bliss. To be able to nap through the afternoon. In reality, it was mainly because nothing much happened in this town. Other than the two prominent groups fighting about their place of worship and casual violence breaking out every now and then. The old man said that that was the charm of the town. I honestly did not care that much because I was merely a passerby, a meek traveller.

The old man was talking to another old man who seemed considerably less old than our old man. He spoke of "contamination" occurring in the town once in a while for over a thousand years. That's a sense you got in this town, a sense of sadness that weaved its threads across time, through different ages and lifetimes. Just as though everything in this town was older than time. People suffered for as long as time went back. Coughing with a dollop of cheese in his hand which was very exclusive to this town. Proudly telling me that it was one of the only few good things about the town, took a generous bite, smiling. 

About thirty-two or thirty-three years back, he couldn't remember, the last contamination happened. I asked him why he addressed this as an event. He corrected me and said it was a disaster that occurred ever so often. People like him, withered by time as much as him, always knew which was contamination and which wasn't. Confused by this I asked him to clarify. With a kind smile, he said that by contamination he meant a child born every three-four decades who was a personification of "disease" itself. That the child would always feel like something of a disease, contaminated wherever she went.

After answering what to him must have felt like stupid questions, he continued. About three decades back, give or take a few years. A child was born in the peak of summer. I asked him how could one possibly differentiate between a normal child and a disease? He said that normal babes in the town took nine-nine and half months to leave the mother's womb. Contamination took six or seven. So this child born in the peak of summer left the mother's womb at about seven months, sending everyone into a frenzy. 

No one in the family wanted to believe that they'd borne contamination or even begin to fathom the aftermath. They denied everything in their minds and hearts, that they had now someone in the family who wasn't carrying a disease but was it in her very existence. The child, a girl fighting across all odds wanting to live, spread herself in the veins of everyone she had met. Pure poison. Rumour has it, that families with generations worth of sins produced contamination. At least three generations of this family must have seen to the doings of horrendous deeds to produce disease by blood.

To this, I made a slight protest, saying that it was wrong to assume these things. He educated me then about the rules of towns like this, he said "whenever it's time for contamination, for a disease to be born, the child always left the womb early spreading a strange poison in the mother's womb. It did not kill the mother but stopped her from bearing any more children. You see? The disease contaminates the womb first, its very maker. That's how the people of this town know contamination has occurred."

The father's mother, in this case, opposed even letting this disease live and saw it as the right thing to do. The old man said it as if his opinion mattered at the time. The child lived through all this though, in spite of many protests from the family to not let the disease live. Especially, the granny on the paternal side. People said in whispers, back then you could hear her shouting in the corridors of the hospital that this child will cost lives.

She did exactly that. To survive I think because really, how aware is a child of being a disease. A child is a child. In her initial years, the mother would worry so much and she remained generally of weak health and underdeveloped organs. The mother loved her, but that's a mother's love. But somewhere everyone knew she resented that baby. For spreading poison in her belly. The mother had always dreamt of two children and she could never forgive her baby girl somewhere for destroying her ability to procreate.

By now the old man was laughing saying that the granny had been right. The girl was born and poisoned the mother, eating up the possibility of the next baby who would probably have been born free of any contaminations. A few years, two or three years into living, the grandfather on the maternal side passed away, who chose to love this baby against all odds. He succumbed to death quick and unexpectedly. Everyone said he was a great man with an even kinder heart. He did not deserve contamination to take him. The child, in order to survive took him. As careful as everyone was around her, the grandmother never took a liking towards her. Steered clear mostly because she did not want to lose her very own life. Some house animals and pets died for this child to survive. Dogs with a selfless sense of love also succumbed to the contamination as disease spread through them. No one knows where the child is now and what she must be doing. About thirty-five years in length if you think as a human is a lot but only a speck in the grand picture. The parents chose to send her away.

Everyone knows that the mother still prays every evening for her to not return. The granny was seen as the happiest the day her parents decided to send her away. The mother celebrated in secret.

In towns like this, you see, everyone knows everyone. And everything that happens has been happening for thousands of years now. No secrets, it was not possible. No one could ever contain or end contamination.

With that, I retired to my room with a vastly bitter taste in my mouth. I was just glad I'd be leaving soon. Ignorant I chose to be, even a little selfish, wanting to enjoy the afternoon nap, which one only gets as a privilege in towns like these.

As I was about to fall asleep, I couldn’t help but wonder how this story would have been narrated if it were a baby boy instead of a baby girl, in a town like this.

Until next time
Love, always
S