Fiction Special 2025: ‘No End’ by Ruth Vanita
An idyllic summer comes to a close with the dawn of realisation
Open land stretched, vacation-like, as far as her eyes could reach. Nothing but a few dwarfed trees—scarcely trees, more like shrubs—dotted it. From the tiny flat, where, as her mother was fond of remarking, they were cooped up all year, to this expanse, they had journeyed by train for two days and two nights. They had been here several weeks now. Her father had gone back to Delhi but Uncle kept persuading them, much to her delight, to postpone their own return. Twice, he had sent a boy from his office to change their tickets.
She was not supposed to venture beyond the long, slatted, wooden gate on which she was now swinging, but that was not a hardship because there were many wandering ways in the back compound. It seemed to have no particular end, that compound, the trees, bushes and moist pathways petering out into scrub and sand, every path encroached on by vines and hidden nooks beckoning, surprising, slightly frightening, delicious.
One of the hottest spots in the country this was, at this time of year, so the adults stayed indoors until evening, but she didn’t mind the dryness or the heat, especially in the shade of the trees behind the house, near the well and in the animals’ domain where hens pecked and threw up dust clouds, fluttering off when approached, and where cats, dogs, goats, lizards with astonishingly long tails, slunk, slumbered, skittered.
Slowly would unspool the glorious day. Her mother was sitting with her great-uncle and would later gravitate to the kitchen to chat with her aunt. Veera, with the privilege of late teenager-hood, was lazing in bed, and would dally with the older cousins after completing her rituals at the old-fashioned dressing table with its swing-mirror. Peering at every pimple, plucking every hair, gazing into her own eyes.
Dheera could play with Shanti, the cousin more or less her own age, and little Neera might tag after them. Or she could linger over her scrapbook, or sit in a tree and read. Right now, she was pleasantly full from a breakfast of sweet parathas and unnamed vegetable concoctions imbued with coconut. By the time this wore off, a lunch altogether different from those cooked at home would emerge from the cavernous old kitchen with its smoky coal furnace. Inside the old, high-ceilinged house, everything was shadowed, cool, bare but comfortable. Outside, an age-old life took its hot, unhurried way. This was coal country; her uncle did something somewhere in the coal mines.
If she were lucky, her tall, broad cousin, Kewal, might saunter by, sending pleasant thrills through her with his teasing. Uncle was annoyed with him for tinkering with his motorbike instead of looking for a job, and for disappearing with companions of whom Uncle disapproved. His cheeky smile and some quality she couldn’t name made her eager to hang around him, hoping he would take her for a ride on the motorbike once he had repaired it.
Uncle made a pet of her; he admired her prowess at school of which her mother boasted, making her squirm with mingled pride and embarrassment. He praised to the skies the long poem about a butterfly she had written a few days ago, and insisted she read it aloud to everyone. She had felt shy about this, but also pleased. The only person who aroused a slight uneasiness was her aunt whose crooked smile seemed to indicate that she saw her as a silly little girl, that she saw through most people, perhaps. Aunty was always busy, either in the soot-smeared kitchen or directing the servants in some unseen portion of the house or orchard. She had no time for such frivolous things as butterflies. That must be the explanation.
Somewhere a buffalo’s guttural roar. Speckle! She must find him. She jumped off the gate and ran towards the back compound. A few days ago, Uncle had carried the baby goat out to the front garden. “Dheera, come and see".
“Oh," she cried, breathless, and ran to him, taking the kid from his arms. “Oh, she’s so sweet! How old is she?"
“It’s a boy," Uncle replied, smiling.
The kid was a perfect mix of black and white. His legs, much longer than his body, dangled from her arms. A cuddly toy, come to life.
“What’s his name, Uncle?"
“You can name him."
Breathless with joy, she named him Speckle. Neera and sundry children from the servants’ quarters appeared and clamoured to hold him. But from the first he was especially hers. She had named him, and then named all the other kids as well. Her mother participated and suggested names. Aunty, still smiling, turned and went back into the house.
Today, it took her a while to find him. She got distracted by a bush covered with fruit that looked like miniature oranges. She found him on a dust heap, playing king-of-the-castle with two others, and carried him away, unresisting, to the front garden, where the flowers were protected by a fence and a small gate. Against her face, his ears were softer than her mother’s soft silk saris. His eyes, two curious marbles, observed her in a detached manner. He wriggled strongly, and she set him down.
She was the maiden in the garden of the sensitive plant. Speckle was a lamb trailing at her feet. A bee buzzed in the black heart of a sunflower. She was scared of it but also fascinated. Butterflies, yellow, white, and the occasional blue, pirouetted, now visible, now invisible, amongst the bushes.
“Oh Speckle, don’t do that." She detached him from the young plant he was trying to uproot. Just a few days ago, he would stagger when you put him down. Now he bounded around, ready to get into trouble. Was it all right for him to butt that scraggly rose bush? What if the thorns hurt him? Or if Aunty didn’t want him disturbing the flowers? She decided to return him to his mother. After that, she would go to the kitchen, where her mother was likely to be chatting with Aunty, and would see what was cooking. The chicken curry last night was so deliciously creamy, very different from the one her mother made.
When she reached the goats’ enclosure, her aunt was already there, surveying the goats. “Dheera, you’re here. Your mother is looking for you. Just bring that black one to me."
“Yes, Aunty. His name is Sooty." She deposited Speckle near his mother, and picked Sooty up. “He’s much heavier than Speckle. But why do you want him?"
She was not really interested in the answer; she was watching Speckle who had leapt once more to the top of the small hillock. Her aunt looked at her with a half-smile. She often seemed amused when she looked at Dheera, but why?
“Because the Matthews and the Singhs are coming to dinner tonight, and I want to try a different recipe." She took Sooty and made her way down the path to the servants’ quarters.
Dheera looked after her, mystified, then slowly followed the path to the house. She stopped under a tree and put one hand on its trunk despite the large ants purposefully crawling up and down it. The earth shifted under her bare feet, shadows moved over her head, there was a roar inside her.
“Who caught his blood? I, said the duck, It was just my luck."
She had seen goats’ heads under the blood-dyed wooden platform on which the butcher sat, in his shop at the end of their alley at home. She had brought home pieces of bone and flesh wrapped in newspaper through which blood seeped. Somehow, she had never connected those heads, that blood, that flesh, with Speckle, Sooty, Snowy.
An acrid smell filled her nostrils, making her slightly dizzy. A sea of bleeding goats’ heads covered the reddened earth, closing in, stretching beyond all horizons, world without end.
Ruth Vanita is the author of many books, most recently the novel, A Slight Angle.
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