EMPOWER Malaysia organised a writing competition for aspiring writers with the theme “YOUth of Tomorrow”. This is one of the top entries in the short story category, written by Arathi J Reddy.
Hetumat is my only friend. She visits me at least once a week, sometimes every day. She isn’t afraid. Unlike all the other villagers who claim they hate me. In truth, they’re afraid. Nature can feel emotions, rippling from the shallow end of your heart and straight to mine. Hetumat is not afraid. Hetumat is sad. She comes here and reaches up to the banana trees, pulling on its leaves, plucking them and taking naps on them across the velvet sand. She sleeps almost always. Sometimes she mumbles in her sleep, telling me ‘I can’t do anything else, anything else’, then turns over to the other side like me. I suppose that’s why we get along, tossing and turning, never making up our mind. When I first met Hetumat, she told me it wasn’t my fault she was homeless, it wasn’t my fault she has no money. I thanked her by quieting down; for everyone else curses me for robbing their homes, throwing plastic in my mouth that shoots straight down my throat- I didn’t ask for this. Hetumat does that too, but by accident. She comes to me sometimes with cruel friends. They walk clumsily on my shoulders and then they encourage her to curse me, throwing empty bottles down my throat. The next morning, she always gathers the bottles and brings them away.
Sometimes, the other villagers, especially the fishermen, like to hover over me with sticks and tied-up strings. One man wearing a wide-brimmed straw-hat tells his friend with thin skin and large bones, ‘this shore must be useless. That Hetumat Paudgalika woman always comes here... Does nothing but spend the little bit of life savings on bottles, she doesn’t know anything.’
Then, the skinny-boned friend replied, ‘I hate the Paudgalika’s. They caused this. These floods, eating our homes. Their greedy factories and development made the ocean angry. Stupid people that voted for them, believing their empty promises.’
I have a confession: I do eat their homes. But I can’t help it. The rain keeps falling and water from elsewhere keeps coming, telling me they were once frozen in place but now have nowhere to go. I felt sorry for the villages. But more of them need to understand, their masters are feeding my hunger. And the villagers themselves are feeding my homelessness with all the small things they do. But I understand, they are poor, they are mostly powerless.
After a deep sigh, the wide-brimmed hat man continues, ‘why do you think they kicked the Hetumat woman out anyway?’
‘Good-for-nothing. She can barely scrape by in the village. All she does is drink. Staying in her family’s palace, she didn’t learn anything but to spend money.’
The two fishermen said nothing true. Hetumat had tried in the first 3 months to get a job. She told me, ‘I know so much, Samudra. I can help build this village up again. Maybe it’s my wrinkles. Maybe my poor back.’
It’s true that Hetumat was old. But I knew that was not the reason. No one hired her because they believed her family caused my uproar. And she left her family because they pushed her away- for a baby that was conceived out of love; for a baby that died after three months in her belly. I had often seen women such as. But they always got back up on their feet because of their family’s love. But Hetumat had no one. And Hetumat never stopped thinking about that baby. I knew, remember, nature sees. One night, she tells me that she is good for nothing. And that she only wants to spend the last of her days with me. And because of her kindness, my indifference toward the entire village, and ultimately, the water coming from elsewhere and the thundering rain, one night, I granted Hetumat her wish. I rose up steadily, quickly, and brought her in my arms. Her sadness and pain was so strong, that it made the skies cry out even more. And slowly, centimetre-by-centimetre, we swallowed the whole village.
The sun rose above my horizon the next day. It furrowed with anger as it does more and more every day, but I never know why. With Hetumat’s village gone, there was no one to write her story. And so, I told it for her. Almost half a century later, one small girl named Dharma came and sat on my broad shoulders and dipped her toes into my pillow-top cheeks. She closed her eyes and while listening to my soft waves lapse hungrily for the shores and the clumsy drizzle from the dark-blushing clouds above, she heard the story of this village. Dharma believed in Hetumat’s story with all her heart. When she grew up, with whatever money her parents, the Paudgalika family gave her to begin her life, she started a motel that resided on my shores and hired mostly only women with backgrounds much like Hetumat’s. She also opened a confinement centre for women who had just given birth or had gone through a miscarriage to receive the support Hetumat did not have. I am happy to say that with almost every newcomer, she never failed to tell Hetumat’s story. She always ended the story with this line--
“And if you sit on the shores of the ocean, dipping your toes into its soft cheeks, listen closely to her tears; listen closely to her story... Through the sound of the waves brushing through the hairs of the sand, to the rain as it wails from the depths of the atmosphere and to the sway of the coconut leaves against itself. She wishes only for some kindness shown not to herself, but to the ocean- the shore, the waves, to nature, her best friend. My great-grand aunt’s only true friend.”