Free The Stolen Girl by Renita D'Silva Page B

with pride, dries any straggling tears right up.
    ‘Next,’ he says, ‘we dig for worms.’
    They dig and dig, the late afternoon sun plastering Vani’s hair, which has escaped the tidy plait that her mother had combed it into just that morning, onto her back in wet, lank strands. The worms wiggle and twist and when she pokes them with a stick, they curl up into Kannada alphabet shapes. Da finds half of a coconut shell and they lure the worms into it, the brown ropy interior writhing slimy pink.
    Finally, when the shell is half full, Da declares them ready.
    Vani and her da carry their makeshift fishing rod and the booty of wrigglies down the hill to the stream and position themselves on the bank. Da’s tiffin box lies forgotten in the mud on the opposite bank and Charu aunty’s stray comes up and sniffs it. Da shoos him away.
    Suggi’s cow, tethered to the post for grazing, ventures as close as her rope will allow, looking askance at them with curious almond eyes. ‘We are fishing,’ Vani tells her, marvelling at her shiny brown nose, those liquid expressive eyes.
    ‘Now, Vani,’ Da says, ‘first we have to bait the fish.’
    He picks a worm with his finger and ties it to the end of the thread. It wiggles its pink body at Vani, pleadingly. ‘You are fish food,’ Vani tells it, ‘fish food.’ She grins. Sweat dribbles down her back and collects in the waistband of her knickers. The air smells orangey red, of dust and worms and excitement.
    ‘Now,’ Da says, ‘once you have tied the worm, hold the stick like this.’
    Da helps her cast the rod. And they sit there as the afternoon fades to evening, trying and failing to catch the fish slinking past.
    But Vani doesn’t mind. Her heart is full, despite her stomach growling, despite her arms sticking to her sides with sweat, slick and slippery, and later, years later, she will identify that warm, replete feeling as happiness.
    They sit there until the sun travels down the sky and dips behind the trees flanking Chinnappa’s house at the edge of the village. They sit there until Vani’s ma calls out for them, saying she will come and whip them, even Da, with the fat stick she uses to scare the crows that steal the grain meant for the chickens, if they don’t come to the house at once . They sit there until blue-grey wisps from kindling – burning as water is heated for their evening wash – stain the darkening sky.
    The air tastes of wood smoke. It smells charred with a spicy undertone. With all their worms gone and no fish to show for it, Da takes the coconut shell and tries to scoop up fish with it.
    And just when Ma starts coming down the hill, stick in tow, just when she yells, ‘Where have you been? I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of either of you. And is that my spool of thread lying half-buried in the dirt? And what on earth is your tiffin box doing there, Ganesh?’ Da lets out a victorious cry of, ‘Vani, I caught one.’
    Ma stops mid-rant to squint at the cloudy water overflowing from the brown shell. Vani watches the silvery scale streaking around the muddy orange water and she screams with joy. She jumps on the bank and loses her footing, falls into the stream, and Da drops the coconut shell and bends down to pick her up.
    She is wet, soaking, yelling, ‘We caught one, we caught one!’ and there is a rueful look on Da’s face as he mumbles, ‘Um…we did, but…’ and Vani spies the coconut shell lying upturned at the bottom of the roiling stream and Ma starts her yelling all over again, just as Da picks up his tiffin box with one hand and Vani with the other and they race up the hill to avoid Ma’s stick.
    Later, after washing themselves in hot water scented with coconut husks, red rice and fish curry warm in their stomachs, they squat beside each other as Ma tries to scrub the tiffin box free of grime by the light of the lantern.
    The trembling light casts shadows on Da’s face and dances patterns on his body and Vani says, ‘Tell