One dark night, about ten years ago, right in the middle of a crazy thunderstorm that shook the ground, she was born in a town hospital of Sikkim. Although the skies were roaring outside with joy, there was a pin drop silence within the hospital. My sister was born without the ability to speak. My Pa named her Jasmine, after the flower which was his mother’s favourite. But for my Ma, she was always Ela*.
“My daughter might never speak, but Ela represents the earth. And one who is connected to nature is never silent, ”I recalled her saying weeks after her birth, smiling as she looked deeply into Jasmine’s curious eyes. She was reassuring herself. I could tell.
What we did not anticipate was how Jas grew up to be exactly as Ma predicted. She was one with nature. During the time that this occurred, my family and I had moved to a new place. One on the outskirts of a remote town, about 50 kilometres away from Sikkim. Pa was offered to work as the head at the local Post office there around the time that Jasmine was a month old. It was a bigger post, one which made him a bigger fish in the proverbial pond.So, much to my dismay, he accepted the job, and off we went into the mountains, leaving all my town friends and school memories behind.
“Don’t you worry, Tida*. You will love it there,” Pa told me, tightening his hands around me as a way of assurance. The new house looked nothing like the one in the town. It had smaller roads, but wider fields and a huge yard in place of what should have been my old friend Nima’s house. The yard of the house led to a small landing with trees that continued till the base of the nearby mountains. I hated the place. I made no friends at the new school either. Every morning, I had to cycle for a quarter of an hour to reach the building that they called the school. The kids that came there had never seen a city girl like me. To them, I was the outsider; the new face from a fancier place. So, when school was done, I rushed back home to Ma and Jas, looking for comfort in a strange new environment.
Jas, on the other hand, was thrilled! She hated it when she was left indoors. When she started crawling, her first steps were always out the door. When she started learning how to walk, it got even worse. It was impossible to keep an eye on her. She would run around the yard, collecting twigs or rocks and building stone houses with them. Her eyes, however, were always trained on the mountains. Early in the morning, she’d wake up Pa, and with his fingers tightly wound around hers, she’d pull him into the fog. Soon, she was out exploring the trees by herself. Of course, Ma always had an eye out for her, but there were times when her tiny fountain-shaped ponytail would just disappear beneath the wave of greenery around.
A year into the new job, Pa got his first bonus, and with it came a bunch of presents. Ma got a pearl Naugeri*, I got a small pair of silver earrings along with an empty diary from the Post office. The best of all, however, was the Kalli* he got for Jasmine.The thick silver anklet even had tiny bells attached to it; bells which could now tell us where she was, even if she wandered off into the nearby woods. Her brown eyes warmed with excitement as she hopped from one foot to another wearing them.
When Jas was around three, she made a new friend. Her first friend outside of the family. An abandoned puppy that just started following her around one random day. In many ways, the two of them were alike. Tommy was her best friend. He rarely barked for a pup of his age. The only noises I heard him make were the tiny mewls when he was hungry or the small growls when Jasmine walked or ran a little too fast; faster than his tiny legs could carry him. He only observed her silently, offering his support and presence. I realize now as I say this that I was a little jealous of their friendship. Two souls being able to talk and understand each other without any words? It seemed fated that the two of them met. My Ma was greatly relieved. She realized that his presence was making her Ela happier. So, no two questions were asked and he became a part of the family.
By the time Jas turned five, she became even more difficult to handle. Tommy was no longer tiny anymore and my sister was no longer bound to the house. It was impossible to find her when she was out with him. Jas had a very unique way of calling him. With her eyes set in the direction of the yard, she would clap and follow it with two snaps of her fingers. The anticipation on her almond-shaped face was adorable. No matter where he was, he would run right up to her when he heard the clap and snap.
One night, I remember waking up from my sleep, feeling cold. I went to check if the windows were locked when I heard a noise. Not just any noise but the sound of Jas’s anklet. The fluorescent cat-faced clock next to the desk lamp showed that it was 2 A.M. I turned on the lamp and looked to the bed on my right. It was empty. I was a little surprised because Jas usually woke me up if she needed to go anywhere. Even every trip to the bathroom had a sleepy-eyed Tommy and me following her. So, I was a little surprised when I heard Tommy’s low growl just as I was about to get up and go check. Sigh. It sounded like the two were up and playing again. Preparing my serious adult face, I went out to scold them back into returning to bed.
“Jas…”, I whispered while waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Only there was no one there. The door to the yard was wide open. My heart skipped a beat.
Where had this kid gone off to?
I rushed through the door only to find both of them fast asleep on the makeshift chair outside. Her yellow frock had almost turned brown with the dirt from the woods nearby. It was chilly, I was sleepy and annoyed that I had to play nanny to this kid who had wheels on her feet. When I picked her sleeping form and walked back in, Tommy woke up too and walked back inside with me.
“You!” I whispered fiercely to him after putting her to sleep on the bed. “Where did the two of you run off to in the middle of the night?”
If it was any consolation, he did look guilty for a minute before he too passed out on the floor below. I was worried. Jas had been uncontrollable lately. The kid had stars in her eyes and her eyes were only on the trees and mountains. What if she got lost one day? Or worse, what if she fell into a ditch somewhere? She couldn’t speak, she wouldn’t even be able to call out for help! Despite being able to hear her, we often seemed to miss her leaving the house.
Soon, the worry turned to irritation. I looked sideways at my sister. I loved her to death, but why did I have to be the only one concerned!? If only my parents had decided to stay back in Sikkim! I wouldn’t have had to deal with this. I would have my own friends to hang out with and secondly, my parents would not pass on the responsibility of their beloved Ela to me! I spent many hours of that night awake, annoyed, and unsettled with everything that led to this in my life, while the source of my frustration snored happily in the bed next to mine.
On the following Thursday, while I was backing up my cycle outside of the gate, Jas walked in from outside. Leaves were sticking out of her braided hair. The pair of hair clips that were meantto match her red frock wasnowhere to be seen. Her tiny fists were cupped.
“Jas! Where were you? Ma had made toast with your favourite orange jam,” I signalled.
She looked at me with a big smile and opened her fists. Out fell a bunch of blue flowers. Tommy barked happily as they all rained down on him.
“Where did you go now, Jas?! I told you not to go far away!” I was exasperated. I leaned the cycle against the gate and slowly removed the leaves from her black hair.
She hooked her two index fingers together, pulled them apart, and then clapped. Great! Now, she was making friends with these trees, I thought.
“Do not ever go into the woods alone, again!” I tried to put on my strict face as I signaled to her. It was really difficult to get angry with Jasmine. She had learnt the sign language, but she was trying still to read lips. With her curious unwavering eyes, she would look at me, patiently waiting to understand.
When she brought back the flowers the second time, she gave them to Ma. Needless to say, Ma was thrilled. Every nook and corner of the house which could hold a bunch of colourful flowers was filled with Jas’s exploits. Pa, who had grown up on a farm full of flowers, kept telling me the stories of his childhood. When he was a kid, every time a relative or a friend visited them, they always carried a bunch of flowers. I am not sure what it means in a time like this, but back in the day, when visits were scarce, it was a symbol of remembrance. While leaving, they left the flowers at the doorstep as a means of saying “Here lies proof that I was here. Now, let these flowers keep you company in my place while you wait for me to come back again.” It sounded silly holding onto something that lost its sheen within a few days. But weird old customs were no new thing in my family.
The month of July was almost around the corner and with it came Jas’s sixth birthday. In a town as small as ours, birthdays were a huge event. While the monsoons battered the wind panes and the winds howled all day, Ma prepared Jas’s favourite sweet inside. Pa even went to the monastery to get the holy water, which was to be consumed on the important day. However, the lady of the hour spent all her time leading up to the day out in the rain, collecting flowers. With Pa’s old rubber sheet on her head and Ma’s basket held in her hand, Tommy and Jas got home enough flowers to decorate the entire town. The night before her birthday, the colours in my house resembled the streets of Sikkim during the Pang-Lhabsol. The air was so rich with the fragrance of the flowers, that it masked the smells of the freshly prepared dishes in the kitchen. It was almost midnight before I stopped hearing the bells of the anklet in the hallway.
“Jas, it’s a big day tomorrow,” I signalled. “Now, let us get some sleep so that we can eat all those sweets Ma prepared in the morning, okay?”
In the fluorescent night light, I could see a wide smile on her face. Wisps of her hair had escaped the rubber band and fallen onto her face. As I pulled it all together into a small ponytail, I couldn’t help but feel emotional. My naughty, annoying, little sister. It seemed only yesterday that she was crawling around the house, falling face-first into every carpet that she encountered. Now, she was almost half my age, old enough to not need me anymore. With so many thoughts whirling in my head, I fell asleep only in the wee hours of the morning.
The morning of Jas’s birthday shone bright and cheerful. But Jas could nowhere be found. At first, we just thought it was one of her routine walks with Tommy. So, we waited for her, switching between worry and mild annoyance. But the morning soon turned into afternoon and there was still no sign of her. The place where Tommy slept too looked empty; like he hadn’t been there all night. When the sky started to turn dark, Pa and I ran to the nearest farm to ask for help. With a few torches and other men, we searched the woods, the school, and almost all of the places we thought she could visit. We couldn’t find her that night. A week later, the rest of our townsfolk stopped coming along with us. They had things to do; a life of their own to lead. My parents stopped looking for her after a month. The night before Jasmine’s sixth birthday was the last we ever saw her and her beloved pet.
It has been almost four years since Jas disappeared. To this day, my parents keep waiting for her. They believe that like the flowers she brought, she will come back one day. “My Ela will come back with more flowers” Ma keeps saying, eyes still trained onto the mountains where she often saw her youngest.
I look upto the mountains too. But I have no hope that Jas will return to us. Even if she could, maybe she will choose not to. It seemed like nature played a game on Ma the day she decided to call her Ela. Maybe this wasn’t her home at all. The story that Pa often narrated now seemed to make more and more sense to me as the days of Jas’s return kept passing by with no sign of her.
“Here lies proof that I was here. Now, let these flowers keep you company in my place while you wait for me to come back again.”
Years later, her belongings still lie in odd places in the house. Her little frocks are kept at the back of my clothes cupboard; her toys in the kitchen cabinet right next to the rice jar; her dolls on the stand which holds a few family photos. It seems like she hasn’t really left.
“The story that you told me, what happens to those who wait, Pa?” I ask him one day.
He looks at me for a minute and says in a soft voice“They wait until it is their turn to leave.”
The End
*Tida – Daughter
*Ela–A representative of mother earth
*Naugeri– Necklace
*Kalli – Anklet
Author’s Bio: “Divya Ramakrishna is a writer based out of Bengaluru. When she is not writing stories or poetry, she is busy listening to music, reading books, or wondering about the vastness of the universe.”
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