The Slave's Promise: A Mini Fiction Series: Chapter 1

 

The sights outside the metro train fleeted before my eyes, creating a mirage of green, grey, and blue. The evening metro was packed with office goers as they got cooked in the day’s sweat accumulated from their toil in hot offices. Summer was at its peak, the sun mercilessly scorching the steel body of the train. My childhood city, an ancient port on the western side of the Indian peninsula, is bound to drown in the Arabian Sea in the next 25 years when sea levels rise, if climate experts are to be believed. As I sat on the train, experiencing the extraordinary heat, I felt like I was inside a burning furnace about to fall into the sea. This teeming seaport of colonial verisimilitude, where the Dutch, Portuguese, and English built their forts and cemeteries to rule, live and die, had been a second home to me where our family lived when we were kids. Here, my father had a job, and I still have many friends from my school.

In contrast, my village, where our family settled after my father retired, is remote, green, and silent, a place of serene air and sweet water. Yet, I found the city again when I had my first job here. I still carry some partiality towards it. This city gave me my identity with the necessary dose of anonymity it provides to all, especially a woman like me. Villages are ruthlessly patriarchal, while the cities’ floating populations have a shortage of time to care for what women do, a fact working to the advantage of us who strive to be independent and free. 

My best friend has assigned me a task. The assignment begins today. I have to be in a dilapidated Victorian building on the sea coast by day's end, where I will meet Uncle Fred, one of the senior residents of this city. I am expected to convince him to move to my village, where he has his ancestral home. In the process, I shall help him move his bank accounts and similar documents to our home village and arrange transportation for his household things. The task fell upon me when his sole child, a daughter who lives abroad, began to get worried about his lonely stay in the coastal corner of the city, given its rising crime numbers and commotion. 

I am not to divulge his name here because he is quite a recluse, that is, he has been after retirement. I will call him Uncle Fred. That was what we used to call him when we were kids in that Anglo-Indian neighbourhood. His ancestors were English and north Indian Parsis. He had blue eyes, and his black hair still shone against his fair face. As kids, we adored him for his well-maintained red bike, his elegant watches and blue-rimmed glasses, and his fine, pastel taste in clothing. 

When I reached his seaside villa, the day had mellowed, and the sea lost its furious glory of the day. The land and the water seemed to assume the same bland grey hue in a tired mutual embrace. Uncle Fred's maid brought in tea and biscuits as we sat on the Verandah in brown cane chairs overlooking the sea. Oh my! Those biscuits were a blast from the past! They were made by the women of the small Anglo-India community living there. They were part of what remained here as the vestiges of the past colonial era. The people hanging between two cultures when the British departed, as they belonged more to this shore than the English cities and countryside, about which they knew only from news and stories. They spoke the local language and followed British customs. Indian souls inside English men's and women's costumes.

The evening was setting in. Pleasant shades were cast by the branches of the two Guavas in Uncle Fred's courtyard. A not-so-high compound wall separated the front of his property from the seashore, a wall covered in bougainvillaea of different shades. The splashing colours of the mix of thick bunches of flowers framed the view of the sea. 

Uncle Fred smiled when I requested him to heed his daughter’s suggestion to relocate. “I understand that you do not want to leave this lovely house you built and this dear city you helped build. This is where you spent most of your life. Yet, a hospital is 20 kilometres away, and the nearest taxi stand is 10 kilometres afar. To get a taxi, you or your maid will have to phone the driver and wait for another 30 minutes, given the condition of the roads and traffic,” I tried to coax him. 

He kept silent, fidgeting with his walking stick, a shining, perfect Mahogany stick with a grip with a lion's face carved on it. He was a high-ranking officer in a British plantation company that grew tea and cardamom. The company was headquartered in this port city. After retirement, he settled there. His daughter, my friend, had her schooling and higher education here. 

“Do you know slaves were brought here from Africa by the Portuguese?” he suddenly asked me. “No, uncle, why?” I was surprised at the change of topic. “Young people like you must read more history,” he replied jovially. I could understand that he was changing the subject because he did not discuss his daughter’s wish further. I felt I must give him time to think about it. 

The dinner was peaceful, and he went to bed early. I sat on the porch, enjoying the sea breeze and the occasional lights of fishing boats that shone far away in the sea. When I think of it now, I realise that a mysterious silence had gripped the air as if the world stopped. At that time, I was just sitting there without noticing. 

The first anomaly that I noticed was the sound of a chain. Then, I inhaled the acute scent of burning cigars. It was unbearable and yet intoxicating. I thought someone had come to visit Uncle Fred- maybe an old local friend. I felt some movement outside the wall, beyond the branches of bougainvillaea. The small wicket gate was closed. It shook slightly as if in the sea breeze or like someone was trying to push it open.

“Hello, someone there?” I asked. No one replied. The unmistakable cigar smell was still lingering. In a moment of impulse, I stood up and walked to the gate. Outside, under the street light, I saw him, a handsome black young man of maybe in his thirties, wearing a suit and a cigar in his hand. He looked a little out of place because, in this city, suited-up gentlemen do not walk around on the streets. They lived in high rises and navigated the city in plush cars. 

As an afterthought, I remembered that part of the city had Anglo-Indian roots. This exceptionally dark-skinned man could have been a descendant of the slaves that Uncle Fred was talking about. Before I could speak, he waved his hand in an unexplainable manner. Was he asking me to follow him, or was that just a friendly neighbour's gesture? Quickly, he turned and walked away. It was odd. He might be a neighbour and would be on a stroll by the seaside. It was clear he was not in the mood to talk. Yet, out of courtesy, I felt I must ask him, “Hey, are you here to visit Uncle Fred?” He raised and waved his hand in a clearly negative gesture as he walked away without turning to answer me. I felt like a fool and intruder, though he was the intruder. Slightly annoyed, I turned back, went inside the house, and locked the front door.

The next morning, I asked Uncle Fred about him, and he confirmed that a few Anglo-Indians and Blacks lived in that part of the city. They wore suits and followed an English lifestyle. "Poor souls walking light-headedly as if in a gust of the past," he added. “They are neither here nor anywhere else, especially the jobless ones,” he said. I remembered the man I saw was handsome and young. I did not divulge that particular information because, as a young woman, I did not want to make myself appear too enthusiastic to talk to him about a young, handsome man. 

During the day, we visited some old friends and relatives. They were acquaintances from when the family lived in this city. When we were at his house that evening, I went for a stroll to see if I remembered anything from my childhood. After a few turns into the crisscrossing narrow alleys, I entered the old market area and walked into a narrow lane. I passed row after row of old and abandoned godowns belonging to spice companies that flourished in a bygone era. Their huge doors were locked. 

I could not see a living soul, but at the end of the lane, I saw the board of a small grocery shop. I would ask the shop owner how to find my way back to the avenue where Uncle Fred lived. I was alone on that tiny stretch of road, which was more a pavement with its old tiled contours cracking open here and there than a proper road. Then I saw him. He was leaning on the wall of a godown with a burning cigar in his hand. He nodded to me in a friendly gesture. 

I smiled at him and passed him, thinking in relief that he was just a man living in Uncle Fred's neighbourhood. It would have been the magical evening beside the sea that made me believe my encounter with him was strange. I walked a few steps more when I heard, “I was waiting for you.” A wave of chill passed through my body. I froze a moment and turned around. He was not there. The street was deserted. By instinct, I quickened my pace and walked towards the shop. It was closed. I was relieved only when I turned into another lane and saw the familiar huge Banyan tree at the end of that lane.

Back at Uncle Fred's house, I did not tell him about this strange incident. I thought my mind was working tricks on me. Maybe he stepped into a side lane and saw someone else and was talking to that person. I couldn’t understand what made me so jumpy and nervous. 

I had one big victory that night. I finally convinced Uncle Fred to relocate, rather, he agreed reluctantly. I talked to his daughter over the phone, and she asked me to stay a couple more days and help him pack. She feared he would change his mind if no one was there to help him and execute the plan. So, I called my office and extended my leave for three more days. 

We began packing. It was the third day of my stay in Uncle Fred’s house. By evening, Uncle had a fever, and his feet looked swollen. After discussing it with his daughter, I took him to the hospital. The doctors wanted to keep him in observation for a day as he had a heart condition. I came back to the house quite late. 

I saw that there was only one light still on inside the house. It was the one in the corridor visible through the window glass. The maid might have slept already. I stepped onto the porch. A shriek stuck in my throat, and I refused to come out when I saw the man with the cigar sitting on a chair. He smiled, stood up, and slowly came to me. The scent of the cigar got stronger as he approached and made me light-headed. 

He took my hand and said, “Let us go.” I walked with him as if in a bad dream. I had lost my ability to think but was acutely aware of his presence and my surroundings. Silently, we walked until we were near the big Banyan tree. Passing the tree, we turned into the ally where I had met him the previous day. (...to be continued) 

Read chapter 2 here- https://www.brokenbangles.com/2024/11/the-slaves-promise-minifiction-series.html

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