Bhavani was one of those people who were world-renowned in their field, and absolutely unknown outside it. As a botanist, she had written as many papers on Himalayan flora, as she had discovered new varieties of orchids. As not a botanist, she couldn’t even get a taxi to stop for her.
It was on such a trip to the virgin mountain forests near Sangton that she met the old woman. Her driver and she had stopped to stretch their legs mid-way to the foothills. Bhavani hated car journeys, and she needed the break more than the driver. While the driver went off to relieve himself, Bhavani found a large enough boulder on which to perch for a grand view of the mountain range. Though she could identify every blade of grass around the boulder, every tree, every flower, yet the mountains could make her feel tiny and lost, like a new-born deer taking her first tentative steps.
It was at this point, when her mind had been wiped clean of all thoughts, and she was floating in a well of absolute peace, that she was jolted by the most unpleasant sound she had ever heard come from a human throat.
“Baba?”
A familiar term of endearment like this, a favourite of grannies everywhere, chilled Bhavani so acutely that she almost toppled off her perch like a piece of petrified wood. Fortunately, her reflexes saved her and she slid off the boulder and turned to face the one who had called her.
The sight that met her eyes looked as old as the mountains themselves, and nearly as mysterious. A woman, stout and short, stood there, leaning on a stick that would have been at home in an anthropological museum, and looked in her direction through barely open eyes. Her white hair was covered by a black and white scarf, and she was dressed in a heavy wrap around skirt and woollen shirt, and a necklace of beads hung from her thick neck. On her back she bore a large basket, supported by a band that went around her forehead, like a tea-picker. Except, instead of tea, she was carrying small saplings.
Her eyes were almost closed, open just enough to see what was nearest to her. Despite that, she stood calmly facing her, not in the least appearing unsteady or unsure. Deep wrinkles crisscrossed her face like bicycle tracks in a playground. Her teeth had likely abandoned her one-by-one, making her lips dip like a trapdoor into her face.
She looked like any old lady of the mountains, and yet like none of them.
“Yes, granny?” Bhavani asked her. “What can I do for you?”
The woman’s face didn’t change at all when she spoke, not a smile, not a twitch. “You’ve come from quite far, haven’t you?”
This was obvious from the difference in their features and clothing. “Indeed, from Kolkata.”
“You’re a woman of learning?”
This was more interesting. While Bhavani believed she looked more learned than most people around, never had someone else said so about her. “Yes, I am a scientist.”
“You like plants.”
That wasn’t a question. The old lady knew.
“Yes, but how -?” She couldn’t complete his sentence.
“How did I know? I smelled it.”
“Is this a hoax of some sort?” thought Bhavani. “How can you smell something like that, granny?” she asked her.
The woman sniffed the air, the first movements she had shown other than talking. “My eyes started losing their light many years ago. But, my nose has stayed strong. I can smell the juices of plants coming from you. Like the kind when womenfolk grind leaves to bring flavour to food, or men when they make medicines. People who work with plants always carry the smell under their fingernails.”
“In that case, how did you know I wasn’t a cook or a doctor?”
“You aren’t carrying anything back with you. Cooks or doctors wouldn’t return empty-handed. Only a woman who studies can leave her subjects behind.”
Bhavani felt overwhelmed by the realisation that she was witnessing the kind of ageless wisdom that the world had, otherwise, probably lost forever. The spirit of the mountains was invested in her every fibre, for she could see even without seeing.
“I applaud you, old lady. I may have learned, but you are learned. It’s an honour that you stopped to speak with me.”
The woman was unmoved by the words of flattery that would have cracked a smile on any other face. “I didn’t just stop to speak with you.”
“Oh? Well, what else then?”
The woman finally moved her body. She bent her aged knees slowly, lowered the basket to the ground and removed the band around her head. “I want to give you something.”
An abhorrent change came over the relationship, as Bhavani thought the woman wanted to sell her something. All the beauty was soiled by the very real transaction that was now impending.
But, she couldn’t stop her, after all a frail person like that couldn’t be handled harshly. The old woman started removing saplings from her basket, each one planted in small containers made of dry leaves with a little soil. She arranged them slowly around her, manifesting a garden out of nothing.
“I should warn you,” Bhavani said pre-emptively, “that though I study plants, I don’t really keep many at home. They are my work, not my home-work.” She chuckled at her own joke, although it wasn’t the first time she’d said it.
Abruptly, cutting short Bhavani’s mirth, the old lady spoke in a reprimanding tone, “I’m not selling you anything. It’s a gift. For me these saplings are not commodities for sale, they are treasures. Treasures that I bestow to ones who have a true understanding.”
Bhavani was quiet, not sure if she should dwell on the curt change in tone or ignore it. She chose the latter. “True understanding of what?”
The old lady finally had found what she was looking for in her basket. Holding up the plant on the palm of her hand she said, “Of the vast unknown.”
The moment she saw the stubby, green thing Bhavani knew something wonderful had come her way. It looked like any old orchid of the mountains, and yet like none of them.
The stem was sinewy and crooked, almost rhizomatic and lacking graceful curves. A few centimetres from the base it had a completely extraordinary set of five whorled leaves that looked like an outstretched human palm. Another few centimetres above it was a flower bulb. In all, it was about thirty centimetres in height. The phyllotaxy, the maturity, the overall apomorphy of the specimen was breath-taking.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” she exclaimed. “Is that a naturally occurring orchid, or have you somehow prepared it through grafting?”
“I do not interfere in nature’s ways. I have presented it as I found it, no manipulations.”
That was absolutely remarkable. Not only had she been given a new species of orchid, it might be the discovery of a new genus. Bhavani was standing on the threshold of one of the greatest discoveries in modern botany.
She reached inside her pocket and pulled out her wallet. All the money she had was meant for the driver, but she figured she could raise the money again when she reached town. Now she was willing to empty his pockets for this acquisition. “How much do you want for it?”
The old lady slowly shook her head and wagged her finger at her. “I already said it’s not for sale. It is my present to you.”
Not wanting to lose time, she stuffed a few notes in the woman’s hand after taking the plant. She observed it closely, and was convinced of its value. She pushed her face as close to it as possible, looking with just one eye.
“I can’t thank you enough, granny. You have made me a very happy woman.”
The old lady replied, “You listened when I called out to you. Not many are there who can even hear my voice anymore. You made this old thing feel real after so many years.”
After she’d had her fill of the orchid, Bhavani once again turned to thank the woman. But, she was gone. Disappeared, as if into thin air. The crumpled wad of currency notes she had given her was tumbling away in the wind, and went over the edge before she could even react.
“Where’d you go?” she called out. How could someone like that disappear in the blink of an eye, she thought. Once again she called out, “Hey, where’d you go, granny?”
“I’m here, Madam,” came a voice from behind her. It was the driver. “We need to leave soon to reach before sunset. Shall we?”
Bhavani nodded, but continued to look for the woman even as she got back in the car. Only when the car turned around the next corner on the road did she finally turn her attention back to the plant.
When she was back home, a few days after the encounter with the old lady, Bhavani immediately set herself to the task of giving the green chap a good new home. The conditions in her home weren’t the best for growing an exotic plant like that. The humidity was fine, more than enough in fact, but not enough sun entered the rooms thanks to all the new buildings around. And she wasn’t about to keep the plant out in the balcony, for fear that a squirrel might get at it, or even one of the vagabond kids who could climb the boundary wall.
The house Bhavani lived in was one of the old relics of a decaying nineteenth century in the twenty-first. It had been built as a mansion in the glory days of the family during the Raj era. What it lacked in terms of convenience and prettiness, it made up for with a sprawl that no modern house could provide. The Doric columns would weep black tears with every monsoon, and termites prepared lines across the walls, that resembled the wrinkles on the old woman’s face.
There was room for five hundred potted plants at home, if one had wanted, but no staff to tend to them. Instead there were as many pots full of mulch and cobwebs. Being a leading botanist paid in respect, not rupees. Bhavani came from a family of wealthy landed gentry who had not adjusted well to twentieth century life. Not ones to give up their aristocratic ways they just survived on their dwindling savings. Bhavani grew up knowing none of the wealth her previous generations took for granted. All she got was the mansion, a reminder of one-time glory.
Botany was the boon in her life. A career, which she wanted, but not one that was commercial, which her parents despised. Since most of the extended family had branched out to fend for themselves in dire times, the mansion came to be filled more and more with plants and flowers of all shapes and colours. For Bhavani it was like growing up in a bagan bari, a garden-house in the countryside. Her love for plants took the place of friends and cousins in her life.
Her life of study meant she had no time for home, or conventional time-bound practices like marriage. By the time she had earned her doctorate, she was too old, too educated, and too wealth-less, to be a desirable bride for anyone. After her parents died it was just her and the plants. Soon, the plants also died of negligence, and Bhavani waited her turn, which she feared wouldn’t come soon enough.
She had a clerk from the office bring her some plant lights, as well as some enriched soil and chemical fertiliser pellets. She also went to the market across town to buy a beautiful ceramic pot for it. No ordinary earthen one would do, for the orchid would certainly attract visitors and need to pose for a few dozen photographs.
In all honesty, Bhavani knew she was overdoing her hospitality for the plant, but she wasn’t about to take any chances with something so precious.
An entire Sunday was used to introduce the plant to its new home, surrounded by gauges for humidity and temperature, a tube dipped in the soil to track watering. She kept it close enough to the window so it could look outside, but no one from outside would see it clearly. For Bhavani, Dr Bhavani the renowned botanist, this was the first time in many years she had done all of this herself and not asked a young student or assistant. She was determined to be a guardian to this plant, not just it’s doctor.
Satisfied by her efforts, Bhavani retired for a good night’s sleep. Sleep eluded her that night, as she lay in bed thinking of all the journals and botanical institutes she would contact in the coming week.
Probably, more than anything else, she debated which sounded better – Bhavaniphyllum bhabesii, or Bhavaniphyllum magnificentii. If she had known the old woman’s name she would have included it in the plants name. But, alas, that would remain part of the vast unknown of the mountains.
Come morning, she jumped out of bed like a kid on Christmas and ran to the plant. She knew that it was crucial that the plant take to the new soil well, or she would be facing a very difficult task trying to keep it alive. To her delight, not only was it looking well, but the bud was also looking a little more plump.
“My, my,” she said to it proudly, “you’re doing very well. I think we’ll start our photoshoot from today itself.”
The plan was to photographically document the orchid as much as possible during the initial few days, and send out some to the journals. She knew how delicate orchids were, and the photographs were her insurance in case of any unforeseen tragedy.
Throughout the day Bhavani photographed the plant from various angles and in various lights. She also set up her camera to keep taking more photographs through the night. A gift of modern technology to record a primordial event. Time-lapse photos were invaluable for a botanist for understanding the life stages of a new plant, especially because, unlike humans, plants had a rich nocturnal life that shouldn’t be missed.
The next day, Bhavani was greeted by a wonderful sight, the first petals of the orchid had started showing. This was no less a delight for her as seeing a new born baby before its eyes had even opened. She wanted to pick the entire pot up and do a victory lap, but instead settled for taking some more photographs. With a lot of reluctance she went to work for the day leaving the fledgling behind.
Once at work she started contacting some of her peers from around the world to tell them of her discovery. She didn’t reveal too much to them, rivalry in academia was not to be underestimated, but made sure to say that what she was working on would be the zenith of her life’s work.
When Bhavani returned she went straight to the orchid’s room without even putting down her bag and phones. What she saw in there almost made her drop everything. The flower had bloomed. And it was undoubtedly a magnificenti.
It was a stunning flower, astonishing. The petals were in two sets, appearing entangled in such a manner as to look like two flowers holding on to each other. The colour was unlike the usual bright colours one expected in most orchids. This one was grey, with little accents of yellow. It looked like the colour of decaying bone marrow, or some other sort of meat. In spite of that, for Bhavani this was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. A grey orchid.
Whoops of joy echoed through the empty house for the first time in many years. The laughter of Bhavani seemed to illuminate all the forgotten corners of the home.
Alas, a mere flower can hardly contain the glacial onslaught of time, and such joy is short-lived. The next day two of the leaves were on the floor, and the rest were also drooping. The flower, thankfully looked strong, for now.
Bhavani dropped to the floor, picking up the leaves like they were holy relics. She tenderly held them to her breast and took them to her desk. There, under a strong light, and with a magnifying glass, she looked for signs of parasites or disease that might have ravaged them. Strangely there were none. It was as if they had just dropped off like petals.
Not taking any chances, she sprayed the plant with some pesticides and added a mix of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to give it some strength. She had already notified many peers in academia, and was also well into writing the research paper. But, a paper with no actual specimen was not noteworthy, like landowners with no land. The plant needed to survive at least another week. After that she could blame it on the life cycle, the weather, or anything else she pleased. If it died before that it would only make her look inept. Bhavani’s heart rattled at the thought of such humiliation.
She decided to take a study leave from her work for the next few days. This would help her to speed up her writing, and also allow her to keep a close eye on the orchid. The plant would be protected in a makeshift Intensive Care Unit.
That night Bhavani brought her sleeping bag, that she normally used for field trips, to the orchid’s room. She also brought a flask of coffee, a flashlight, a pen, and her papers. She planned to stay near the plant, writing her paper by flashlight. No stress was to be caused to it by using bright lights. The coffee was to force her to stay awake as long as possible, but eventually around two in the morning she dozed off, pen in hand. Only the camera stayed on, clicking a photo every twelve minutes.
Bhavani had lived alone long enough to be quite comfortable by herself. She was not one to be spooked by small things, or even big ones. She had slept in forests, in the open, on the ground, or hanging from trees. Her exemplary ruggedness was not the smallest part of her renown as a botanist. But, that night she had the most frightful dream of her life.
She saw herself in a crowd, perhaps in a market, where she suddenly spotted a woman who looked like her mother. At first she was delighted, but everything changed when the woman spotted her. Suddenly she charged, the distance between them decreased till they were face-to-face, and the woman she thought was her mother plunged a sword deep into her stomach while glaring at her with blood-red eyes. No sound came from either of them, and when Bhavani looked around she saw nothing but a forest at night, silhouettes of trees, and the moon. The woman was gone, but when she looked down she saw a sharpened branch still buried in her stomach. Now she could scream, her voice was back. Bhavani started stumbling, looking for someone who could save her, but her voice found no ears. There were only trees. She tripped on some thick old roots and fell. It made her panic, thinking the fall would cause unbearable pain, but strangely there was no pain, except in her mind. She decided to slowly pull out the branch, wondering if it was the right thing to do, yet doing it anyway. When the branch was out, it was a relief, since it had not killed her. But her eye fell on a shiny piece of tape stuck to the branch, coming from her stomach. She started pulling it out, and the tape kept getting longer and longer. After a few metres of tape had been pulled out the horror of it struck her. It wasn’t tape, but her intestines, glistening and red. Again she screamed, and looked around, but this time she wasn’t alone. A woman was there, except his time it looked like the old woman from the hills, the one who had given her the flower. She was holding the branch at both ends in her hands and twirling it slowly. A mass of her entrails were already wound around the stick, and she was pulling out more. Bhavani was in shock and crying, too tired to run, and fear had taken away control on her own limbs. She trembled and whimpered, begging for mercy. The woman didn’t stop, but only said one word. “Baba.”
At that moment, Bhavani woke up. Her legs couldn’t move and a bright light was pointed right at her eyes. Her first thought was that she had actually been attacked and bound. But finding her hands were free, she could reach out to her legs and remembered she was in a sleeping bag. The light was from the flashlight which had rolled around and was pointing towards her. Her papers were wet with drool.
She checked on the orchid with her flashlight and it gave her some relief to see it was still looking strong. Then she gathered her papers and took them back to her room and left them to dry under the fan. The time was only half past three and it was still pitch dark outside. After a harrowing dream like that she decided to spend some time on the balcony, filling her lungs with the cool and clean night-time air, and exhaling whatever bad remnants of the dream were still within her. Eventually she felt sleepy again and returned to her orchid and sleeping bag.
If felt like as soon as she closed her eyes, the doorbell rang. But, bright sunlight was streaming into the room, which meant Bhavani had overslept. It was the maid who was ringing the doorbell. After hurriedly opening the door, and washing off the grogginess, Bhavani took a good look at the plant. To her shock, the remaining leaves had once again dropped off and were lying on the ground.
They were perfectly fine even at a half past three, and it was only a half past seven now. What could possibly have happened? And with the leaves now gone, was it inevitable that the flower would be next?
Bhavani decided to review the time-lapse photographs to see if she could identify the culprit. She had to know what was happening to save the plant. Sometimes it could be something as simple as changing the location to take it away from a cold draft.
Once earlier, a Ruellia plant at her institute would mysteriously lose flowers on one side, and no one knew why. Almost by accident, someone happened to witness the actual cause. The plant was near a window and outside the window was a hanging electric wire with the copper ends exposed. Every morning there was a brisk breeze from the south that would catch the wire and swing it at the plant. After a few repeated swats a few petals would fall off. By the time anyone came to the office, the breeze would have died down, leaving only the dismembered remains. The folks at the office had jokingly dubbed it ‘The Ruellia Morgue Murders’.
The matters of handling cameras and most other technical equipment were usually left up to her students. Some of the latent aristocracy in Bhavani stopped her from being too comfortable with the quotidian tasks. It took her some time, and some calls to her office, to figure it out.
The camera recorded five frames every hour, a hundred and twenty every day. At the speed of regular videos, that would mean a day of plant growth could be played back in five seconds. It took Bhavani less than half a minute to see the entire visit played back.
That was no good, so she made another call and learnt how to slow it down. At half the speed she managed to pin point to the hour when the leaves fell. At a quarter of the speed she pinpointed to the frame. The leaves dropped around a half past four in the mornings. That meant on the previous night, it had happened just after she had fallen back to sleep.
Seeing that the shedding occurred at the same time on both days lent more weight to her theory that it was external factors. Now that she knew when it happened, a closer look at the events prior would hopefully reveal the culprit.
She started examining the photographs one-by-one now, frame-by-frame. Since the pictures were taken at night, the camera had switched to infra-red imaging that gave the entire image an eerie feel. The gaze of the camera was fixed on the plant, so Bhavani was not in the images herself, but sometimes her shadow was visible in the frame, whether by daylight, electric bulb light, or torch light.
Depending on the light the shadow looked hideous occasionally. Bloated and distorted. These blemishes on the record wouldn’t have occurred if she had taken the plant and kept it in her office. The setup was intended to keep such photographs clinically sanitised with no interference. She regretted her decision to keep the plant at home at all. The possessiveness she had towards her discovery, which actually wasn’t her discovery at all, had led to damage that threatened her entire enterprise.
“Can’t you do anything correctly?” she remembered her mother’s voice, asking her sarcastically. Bhavani was just a little girl, and she had accidentally used defoliant on the house plants, thinking it was fertiliser. She thought she was being clever, like her parents, when all she was asked to do was water them.
The shame she felt, even at a young age, burned her like a red-hot iron. The humiliation of those words, of the way they were flung at her like she was incapable of managing a simple task, that never left her. That she went on to study botany was not an unrelated life decision. It was to fling her success back at the woman who had humiliated her, not just once, but over and over in that house.
“Bhavani, why can’t you just marry the man? He is willing to cover all the expenses of restoring this house.”
“Sometimes I think you act stupid on purpose. No one with any sense can ignore our condition. Botanist? Why, you can’t even be a florist.”
“Bhavani baba, you can’t do anything correctly.”
But, Bhavani knew exactly what she was doing with her life. Denying her mother everything that she expected from her, even after she was dead.
She tapped through the pictures with some furiousness, trying to kick her mother’s voice out of her brain. It was like a tiresome game of Spot The Difference, where she was looking for any new article to enter the frame. That wasn’t there earlier or later. The grainy nature of the images, the lack of colour or contrast, made her job much tougher. Everything was adding up to one big disaster for her.
But, suddenly, she saw it. The change. It was not where she had been looking, not on the floor, or near the window. No, in fact, it was the flower itself. The orchid.
It was missing in one frame.
For an interval of approximately up to twenty four minutes, the flower was gone.
Bhavani wasn’t ready to believe it. She switched back and forth through the three frames, one before the flower was missing, the one where it was missing, and the one after. Back and forth, back and forth, while she pushed her face closer and closer to the screen. She was squinting so hard that her eyebrows started to pain, but the fact remained. It was gone in one frame.
A hurried call was placed to the office. The staff said that sometimes there could be aberrations like a flash of light, or a floating leaf, that could obscure an image. It was known to happen. That brought some relief to Bhavani, though she knew that those reasons didn’t apply to a night-time, indoor setting. Perhaps it was a bat that had flown in, it was an old house after all. Or a falling cobweb, even more likely. The mystery of the shedding leaves was still open, but the missing flower was closed.
She decided to set an alarm for four o’clock the next morning, so she could personally get up and watch what would transpire. Before that it was necessary, by the bright light of day, to make a mental note of the exact appearance of the plant, so that at night she could be perceptive even in the dark.
Bhavani pulled up a chair and sat in front of the plant, like an interrogator. Now that the leaves were gone only five stubs remained in their place. These had begun to shrivel like dead grass stalks. On the contrary, the flower was looking lush, something she hadn’t noticed in her earlier state of panic. The petals had become more distinct, more voluminous. They no longer looked entangled in each other, but like two flowers holding each other. The petals at the rear were more cup-like in their formation, while the petals at the front were spread out, like a starfish, as if emerging from the rear set.
Once again Bhavani was lost in the remarkable beauty and novelty of the grey orchid, staring at it lovingly like a mother should stare at her child. A soft movement of the wind made it tremble, like it was frightened. “Don’t worry,” she reassured it, “I won’t let anything else happen to you. On my word.”
That night she didn’t stay up with her papers lest she sleep through the alarm. She brought her sleeping bag back, and had some chamomile tea to relax. At a decent hour she turned off the light and slept.
The dreams that came to her that night were much more pleasant. They were of friendly faces and waterfalls. Even the weather was more pleasant, as if making reparations for the previous night’s inhospitality. Things were feeling much better overall, like the worst was behind her. Despite such soothing visions Bhavani kept drifting out of her sleep every hour or so to check on the orchid. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was still alert to its well-being.
But, hoping it would be an uneventful night went in vain for, once again, it was half past three when a bad dream came for her.
Bhavani saw herself in a train station, lost and crying out. It seemed familiar, like she’d been there before. Everyone was taller than her. She was a child. Who was she looking for? None of the people in the crowd seemed to have faces, just blurs as they milled around her in a hurry. The more she tried to look at their faces, the more they couldn’t be identified. So she tried listening for familiar voices, but it was the same. Just unintelligible mumbling, the sounds of a human mass.
She saw a bit of yellow. That caught her eye. Yellow and grey, in fact. A woman in a saree in the distance, but a very unusual one. Grey with a yellow border, not a combination she’d ever seen. It almost sickened her. Before she could look away, however, the woman saw her. It was the same one from the previous dream, the one resembling her mother, with anger ablaze in her eyes. Bhavani wasn’t looking for anyone, she was hiding, hoping not to be found.
She knew what would come next, so she ran. But the crowd was too dense, and she couldn’t make much progress. People looked like they were moving, but when she tried going through them they seemed to close in and block her. She knew she was trapped and no one was going to help her.
As soon as she turned around the woman plunged her arm into Bhavani’s stomach. She screamed, but nobody heard or noticed her. The woman pushed in harder, and this time the pain felt real. She could feel the fingers moving inside her, blood rushed up in her throat. The hand yanked out some bloody mass leaving her stumbling with a hole in her body. She dropped to the ground, crying and trying to stop the blood. The woman was gone.
Everything was gone. She was just in a room now, dark and hard. Someone was watching her. The gaping wound in her stomach was gone, though there was still blood on her hands. She got up and looked at the person watching. She was frightened yet curious. Her eyes took some time to adjust.
It looked like a very large bulbous woman sitting in a chair. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, and looked like the statue of an ancient goddess she had seen in a museum once. The woman didn’t have a head, or rather she had a head, but no eyes or mouth. Just rows of braids wrapped around her entire head.
The stillness in the room felt safer than before, but Bhavani was still traumatised from the earlier incident and decided to stay away. She found a corner of the room and squeezed herself in, as if that made her invisible. Yet, deep down she knew that even though the woman didn’t have any eyes, she could still see her.
“Baba.”
The sound came from the woman with no mouth. Or did Bhavani hear it directly in her head somehow? Slowly the woman raised herself off the chair and stood up. To Bhavani’s astonishment, it was a giant grey orchid she had been sitting on. Slowly she walked, like she needed to balance herself with every step. And with every step Bhavani braced herself for the unknown.
The woman came straight to her, she could see well enough without eyes. Her arms reached for Bhavani’s face and held it gently. Tears started flowing from Bhavani’s eyes as the fear and hope mingled and released themselves from her. She didn’t know if she was going to be saved or killed, but at that moment she was relieved.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep
The four o’clock alarm. Bhavani was pulled out of her dream, but she had no awareness of where she was when she opened her eyes. It looked like the same room. The room with the grey orchid.
Not sure if she was still alone, she quietly propped herself up against the wall, trying not to be heard or seen. Keeping her eyes on the plant she stretched her arm up along the wall to switch on the light. She was blinded momentarily but slowly her sight returned. The room was empty. She blinked a few times to focus, and finally she could see the plant. The plant, but no flower.
She scrambled over to it and looked all around the floor. The orchid hadn’t just fallen off, it was gone. Someone, or something, had taken it away. She looked all around her, it wasn’t anywhere, she even looked outside the window, but found nothing. She returned to the pot. Where once was her prized plant, with its distinctive whorled leaves and stunning grey flower, now just stood a wretched, dying stalk with five stumps where the leaves once were.
Those stumps, like a taunting empty human palm, looked like they held out a gift of nothingness. A prank, a dirty, hurtful prank on a woman already living with nothing. Bhavani wanted to rip out whatever remained of the plant. She wanted to destroy it, and all the papers she had been writing. Right from the day she met the old woman in the mountains she had been cursed, and now she was on her hands and knees looking at the hideous twisted, knotty shape of how things had become.
As she reached for the stem in anger, a small motion in it stayed her advance. The stumps appeared to be moving, slowly. As she watched the five fingers slowly curled towards their centre, one-by-one, until only one was still left outstretched. At that moment she realised that the stumps did indeed look like five fingers, and now it looked like a hand pointing.
Pointing behind her.
A cold sensation entered her spine, and she started to sweat. From behind her came a woman’s voice.
“Baba.”