The Recognition of Nidhi
Mitthu and her mum stood before the sturdy black door of her father’s house in the foothills around Lonavala. They were drenched despite the makeshift raincoat they’d fashioned out of the umbrella de-ribbed by the wind.
Her mother’s shoulders were slouched, defeated by rain and circumstance. She had driven almost all day from their emptying home in Lower Parel to come out here to a doorstep she’d hoped to never see again. The door swung open to reveal Mitthu’s dad. He was shorter than she remembered. Or maybe she’d grown taller. She’d known about the new beard from the photos he updated on his profile. But he looked grayer than the pictures.
Her mother’s face paled as if to match his and then she spoke, her voice almost eaten up by the din of the rain. “Ravi, I need help.”
With those whispered words, she’d surrendered the last of whatever pride had been left her by the judiciary and society during the Tambes’ long grind trough the rites of divorce.
A few weeks later, Mitthu had fully moved into the bungalow. She still texted mum whenever she got the chance, but the replies were more and more infrequent, as though she was trying to intentionally forget Mitthu.
Dad, on the other hand… dad was still getting used to having Mitthu around. For the first two days, he’d forgotten to set two plates or even cook for two, leaving Mitthu to fend for herself. It was a sign of the times that Mitthu, a twelve-year-old, was beginning to get repulsed by the very sight of instant noodles.
“I’ve applied for you to join the central school when term starts again,” her father said one day, over a dinner of lukewarm soup from a packet. She nodded mutely, focusing on her crunchy carrots and pasty broth. “I’ll ask Nidhi to send the books she bought already.” More nods from Mitthu. “Good,” he said, before slurping down the last of the soup and retiring to his study to work on the next draft.
The next day, he bought the first set of mangoes for the season. Each of the fruits turned out rotten. The rains had been unseasonably early and had destroyed the mango crop of the deccan.
Mum and dad loved had chilled mangoes for breakfast. Every April Mitthu could remember from before the separation, the house in Parel had borne witness to a frenzied wait for the first mangoes of the season. Once the vendors began selling them, mum and dad would buy whole cases of mangoes, which would sit in the sunbeams filtering through the dusty windows and fill the air with the head-spinning aroma of fat, ripe mangoes.
That house would be empty by now, as mum prepared to sell it away and move away from the memories.
Mitthu spent a lot of time outside, trying to find others her age to befriend. But their hillside bungalow was too far from the heart of town. The only others nearby were the old caretaker of the plot and his bedridden wife. There wasn’t much else to be done before term started, so Mitthu began doing what had been unthinkable back in Mumbai.
She started heading out for walks again.
◆◆◆
When Mitthu had been a six-year old in Mumbai, she’d once wandered off while waiting for the bus that would take her home from school.
Her panicked mum and dad had found her in a few hours, perched atop the roundel at Khanolkar Chowk, watching traffic and stickily eating a mango given to her by a passing hawker. The two had then proceeded to chew her ear off. That was the last time she remembered the two of them in violent agreement with each other.
This was the first walk she’d taken since that day.
Memories of mangoes accompanied Mitthu through the woods around the bungalow. The forest was peaceful. It was almost entirely silent save the babbling of the little rain-fed stream that ran past the bungalow’s hill. Nothing like the incessant thrum of Khanolkar Chowk. The forest felt secluded. Private. Lonely.
She wasn’t crying. She was too proud by half to cry even in the lonely shade of the soaring banyan by the stream, far away from prying eyes.
But she did want to cry. She wanted to cry and scream and rage at her dad for leaving her mum, then her mum for leaving Mitthu with her dad and then at herself for still hoping this would end somehow. She missed Lower Parel. She missed her friends. She missed her mother.
But she was trapped. Trapped here with this man who had forgotten how to be a father and how to be a husband.
“Shit!” She shouted angrily, kicking a pebble into the stream.
A stern voice responded “Language, child.”
Mitthu yelped in surprise and looked around. “Who is that?”
"It is I", said a voice in front of her. A faint glow lit the air around her and a pure white crane unfolded into being, as though summoned by the voice.
A startled Mitthu began backing away from the apparition. She was a few thousand feet away from home. A quick burst of energy could take her halfway there before the crane wised up and used its wings. A crane was talking to her. A crane.
“Do not fear, child.” The crane continued, taking two regal steps towards Mitthu to match her movement. “I know who you are.”
“You do?”
“I see you are Shakuntala’s child.” It clattered its beak with joy, “And you have come to take back what is hers.”
“Is that right?” What was it that mum and dad had said at Khanolkar chowk? Keep eye contact and back away if a stranger talks to you. Flee if you think you can make it. Don’t eat mangoes offered by strangers. Call for help. Call for help? Against a crane? Wait for a distraction. Then run!
“Do you claim otherwise, child?” The crane asked.
A cuckoo cried out its ear-rattling trill in a distant bough. The crane’s eyes snapped skyward in response and Mitthu took that as her cue to tear her way back from the stream.
She didn’t hear the crane following, but kept expecting to hear the whoosh of wings opening up behind her before she was suddenly yanked up into the sky and dropped to the ground. She passed a few boulders that would crack her head open like a melon when the crane flung her on to them. The sight gave her wings of her own. She ran faster. And faster. And faster still, even when it became apparent the crane wasn’t following. Mitthu reached the wooden door out of breath, heart pounding from her otherworldly encounter, but with her self-unharmed – and her skull un-cracked.
◆◆◆
The night’s dinner was soup again. The crispy bits of dehydrated carrot were replaced by squidgy bits of partially rehydrated mushrooms, for some variety in their palate.
“Have you been talking to your mother?” Dad asked.
Mitthu shook her head morosely. It wasn’t for lack of trying. The infrequent replies had eventually tapered off into no replies at all. It was mum’s fault, of course. She knew that. But she couldn’t help blame dad. If he hadn’t left, if he hadn’t forgotten how to love mum, then mum would still remember Mitthu.
“You should talk to her, you know.”
Mitthu nodded.
“Good girl.” He finished his soup and retired to his study.
Mitthu lay awake in bed, tossing and turning as she tried to decide if she’d dreamed it after all, when something about the crane’s words had tickled a memory in her mind. She pulled out her phone and looked it up. After a few abortive searches, she found what she’d been looking for.
The next morning, she wolfed down breakfast – cornflakes and milk, no fruit – and rushed back down to the stream. “Mister Crane! Are you there?” She hollered. A seam of light opened up almost immediately in the thin air over the stream.
“Back again, my child?” The crane asked, stepping out from the light.
“I knew it! It wasn’t a dream! You really can talk!” She clapped her hands with delight before adding, “Why did you think I am Shakuntala’s child? Did you mean this Shakuntala?” Mitthu held the phone out over the water. A woman in an orange saree and a garland of white and orange flowers looked out from a painting on the screen.
“Perhaps?” The crane replied. “Is this the woman to whom this belongs?” It opened his beak a smidge, revealing a golden ring glowing at its tip.
“A sign-et ring!” Mitthu said proudly, having learned the word just last night in her searches. “Yes! It is hers.” Mitthu leaned in closer to peer at the ring in the crane’s beak. It looked exactly like one of the rings mum kept in the box Mitthu was no longer allowed to touch. Curiously, it was also the same ring she’d seen on zooming into the painting of Shakuntala she’d found online. How had it ended up in this stream, with this strange talking bird?
“Very well,” The crane replied, “Daughter of Shakuntala, grandchild of Vishvamitra, you are also the daughter of the great Dushyant, lord of Hastinapura. I am certain you have long pondered the identity of your father, and it has now been revea— why are you shaking your head, child?” The bird cocked its head curiously at Mitthu, “I see. You are taken aback by your heritage. I understand. It is a heavy burden to should— what? What is it?”
Its voice grew waspish as Mitthu raised a meek hand to interrupt. “I’m sorry, sir, but my father is up there in the house on the hill.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“His name is Ravi Tambe.” Mitthu offered helpfully, pointing at the house perched on the hillside. “He’s a writer. Well... he’s trying to be one but Mum says he’s just taking a really long vacation.”
“Ravi Tambe? A writer?” The crane peered over Mitthu’s shoulder and continued, “That house? Say, what sort of wood is that? I can see through it!”
“I believe it’s glass, sir.”
“Glass?” The crane made a funny noise in the back of its throat, “And how is that miniature in your hand glowing?”
“My phone?”
The same funny noise again. “Look here. Listen here. Tell me this. What is happening here? Tell me right now. Are you or are you not the daughter of Shakuntala, grandchild of Vishvamitra?”
“I think my grandfather’s name was Pratik.”
“Right, then!” The crane’s feathers grew to stiff points as it became visibly agitated at Mitthu’s answers. “All right, now. Let me try again. Who are you, child? And what brings you here? And do you know where I can find Shakuntala, daughter of Vishvamitra and rightful consort to the king of Hastinap— what are you doing?”
“Says here that she doesn’t exist.” Mitthu held out her phone, this time showing the article on Shakuntala. “See? Legendary princess that—” Mitthu fell silent as she read the rest of the text. The crane huffed and puffed in the background, awaiting her return to the conversation. She looked up with a catch in her throat. “What does that ring do?”
“Do?” The crane croaked angrily, “Do?! What is the meaning of this? What do you mean what does the ring do? How dare you step into the presence of a sacred lake without so much as an inkling of where you are?”
“This is a stream.” The crane looked around, feathers twitching. As it took in its surroundings, the ruff of feathers rising around its angry neck began to settle down. When it spoke again, the voice was drained of its supercilious arrogance. “Where am I?”
“Lonavala.”
“And where is this Lonavala?”
“A few hours’ drive from Parel.”
“And where is this Parel?”
“It’s in Mumbai.” Mitthu said. The crane clacked its beak angrily and hissed. “Wait, I know!” Mitthu pulled up her phone again, “We are one thousand, six hundred and fifteen kilometers from Hastinapura.”
“How is that little box telling you things?” The crane replied, nonplussed. “And what is a kilometer? Is that what the box calls a yojana? Look at me when I speak to you, child! This is no way to treat a Yaksha of the house of Kubera.”
“A kilometer is a thousand meters and—” Mitthu began typing in the words, but was cut off by an indignant squawk.
“Enough!” The shade under the banyan grew darker and colder and a roiling broke out on the surface of the stream. Mitthu made to step back, but found her feet frozen to dirt as the crane stalked towards her.
Mitthu noticed then that its feet hovered on the murky surface of the stream and only then she was finally truly afraid. The crane turned to face her with a beady eye before speaking again. It leaned closer and apprised her head to toe.
“Yes. It is true. You are not her daughter.” The crane leaned back with those words, and the deathly grip on Mitthu’s feet was released. The bird continued, “And yet... You bear the same marks. You are abandoned. You are lonely. You do not understand why this happened. Is this true?”
Mitthu nodded, not daring to speak.
The crane shook its head sadly before turning away, “Very well, my dear. Be on your own way. I will await my moment in the eternal circle.”
“She won’t come.”
The bird was halfway through the glowing portal it had appeared from, but the half that was outside snapped around to face Mitthu. The rest of the crane followed. “Explain yourself.”
“In this article—” Mitthu timidly gestured towards the phone, “— it says Shakuntala lost her ring in a lake. And that the ring would make the king love her again. Is that true? Is that what the ring does?”
“Yes. In a way, that is what the ring does.” The crane snapped, before asking again, “Explain yourself. Why would she not come?”
“She’s likely dead by now.” Mitthu replied, “This painting is from one hundred years ago, and she was a legend then. If she existed, she’s dead now for sure.”
“No. That cannot be.” The crane shook its head dismissively, “I would’ve known if she’d died. This cannot be.”
“She’s dead, sir. She’s in heaven. Her mother, the apsara, took her to heaven after the king failed to recognize her.” Mitthu pointed at the article, “It’s all in here.”
“Lies!” The crane said. Despite its protestations, the bird leaned closer over the cellphone. It read through the screen, nervously clacking its beak. It punctuated the clacking with brusque instructions to “unroll more.” As they reached the end of the article, the clacking intensified, before abruptly cutting off into a honking laugh.
A startled Mitthu almost dropped the phone. “What?”
“Look, look there at the bottom.” The crane said, “Looks like Shakuntala and Dushyanta met in heaven after all. So, my little peccadillo didn’t do all that much damage.”
“Peccadillo?”
“Means indiscretion.” The crane cocked its head back and forth before hissing exasperatedly and adding, “I took it. I took the ring. Shakuntala dipped her hands into my lake without so much as a how-do-you-do so I took her ring. How was I to know that there was some curse? It’s my fault she’s rude to strangers? But when Kubera finds out there’s some curse and she’s been forgotten by the king and all that nonsense, suddenly he’s wringing my ear and telling me I have to turn the ring back over and so on and so forth. So, I meant to return it by feeding it to one of my fish and having it land on the king’s dinner table. But just as I was putting my plan into motion, I fell afoul of a rishi that cursed me into a deep slumber. And now here we are. Still… it sounds like there was no harm done.”
Mitthu found that her fists had curled up into white hot balls of rage as the crane nattered on about tearing up this Shakuntala auntie’s family for a meaningless puddle. She wondered if mum had dipped her hands in a lake somewhere – mum did love swimming. “Give me the ring.” She muttered through clenched teeth.
“What’s that?”
“Give it to me. I will use it.”
“Now, now, I can’t just give you someone else’s ring willy-nilly.”
“You stole it!” Mitthu hissed.
“I did.”
“And the king forgot his wife!”
The crane managed to look sheepish without eyebrows or lips. “He’d already forgotten her because of the curse. The ring was just to remind him. It worked out anyway, didn’t it?”
“Give it to me. You owe this to me.”
“Whatever for?” The crane drew itself up to its full height.
“I told you where you were. I told you about Shakuntala. I told you she’d found her family again. You owe me!” Mitthu stood taller still. Even though the bird towered over her middle-school frame, she felt no fear.
“Very well.” The crane replied. “On one condition. I will ask you some questions now. Eighteen questions, to be precise. If you answer them all, the ring is yours. And if you get any wrong, you walk away from this, you forget this happened. Are you prepared?”
Mitthu clenched and unclenched her angry little fist. If the crane decided to flee, there was little she could do at this time. “Sure.”
“Excellent,” the crane croaked happily before continuing, “First question. Tell me… what makes the sun rise and ascend in the sky? What moves it around? What makes it set? What—” the crane crowed, “—is the true nature of the sun?”
There are a few good things to be said about schools in Lower Parel, but none of them are glowing endorsements of their classes in philosophy or astronomy. Mitthu scowled at the question, “Give me the ring. You’re asking questions that are too hard. This isn’t fair.”
“That’s not an answer,” the crane replied, mockingly. It stepped forward with its right leg, which promptly disappeared into oblivion.
“Wait!” Mitthu yelled, “Wait!” She racked her brain for what she’d been taught in school. The sun is the center of the solar system. Planets revolve around the sun. Copernicus said that. Or Galileo? The sun is a star. A star made of gas. Or were stars gaseous? And what about the setting? A wild tangle of thoughts zipping through Mitthu’s mind before a single clear image coalesced out of them. With a smug smile, Mitthu whipped out the phone.
It was short work from there.
“Gravity. Gravity. Gravity. And it is an ob... oblate sphere of plasma powered by fusion reactions in its body. It is classified as a yellow dwarf, though its light is white.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
The crane haltingly said, “Those aren’t really the sorts of answers that one expects for such a question.”
“You said I have to be not wrong. Was I wrong?”
The silence wasn’t stunned this time, merely grumpy. “Very well. I shall continue, and thwart this box I shall.” With that, the crane trotted out question after question, growing increasingly dismayed as Mitthu plucked the answers off the internet and responded.
Eighteen answers later, the crane begrudgingly pulled the ring out of thin air and offered it to Mitthu. “Very well, child. You have won. You have answered my questions, even though the answers themselves are beyond you. You understood nothing, but repeat everything perfectly. Here you are.”
Mitthu took the ring and smiled broadly, “Is there something I can help you with? Are you a spirit of the water? Do you want me to pour you into our sink? The drain washes into the rivers in Pune. You could get out of this jungle and see the city a little bit?”
“I see the city often enough, child.” The crane’s voice changed subtly. It turned its red-capped head towards Mitthu. Had it always been red-capped? “There’s always someone in the city that needs to see me.”
“Thank you for your time, sir crane.”
“Time an illusion of the world.” The crane repeated, chiding, “Your words, not mine.” “
Those are the words on the page, sir crane.”
“See that you understand some of them. Until we meet again.” Without another word, the crane stepped out of existence again, leaving the surrounding clearing a shade darker than before.
A triumphant Mitthu looked at the ring. Up close, it looked like something newly-minted millionaires might wear to a formal dinner. It was large, golden and gaudy, with an enormous centerpiece bearing inscriptions in an unknown script. And it was the ticket to get mum and dad back together.
◆◆◆
Mitthu made her way back from the woods just in time for crunchy dried vegetables swimming in warm broth - hot and sour this time.
“Good girl,” dad said, as she slurped up the last of the soup. “Hungry today?”
“Yes, daddy.” She said, barely able to suppress her excitement. She fumbled in her pocket and felt the reassuring weight of the ring next to it. “I found something in the woods today, daddy. Do you want to see it?”
“Can it wait?” He asked, frowning. “I can take a look tomorrow. It’s just that I’m in the middle of a good streak.” He caught sight of Mitthu’s wilting face and sighed, “Or now. Now is good too.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Mitthu.” There was a warning in his voice, but he obliged, experience having taught him that this would be the fastest way to get it over with.
“Now open your hand.”
When he opened his eyes, the ring sat glowing in his hand. “It’s… beautiful, Mitthu. Thank you!” His voice strained with forced cheeriness. “Come now, let’s get you to bed.”
“What are you thinking about?” Mitthu asked, excitedly.
“Bedtime, Mitthu.”
“Is that it?” Mitthu’s feet went cold, “Is that all?”
“What were you expecting?”
“It’s mum’s ring! You don’t even care? Don’t you remember how you loved her?” She stamped her foot to emphasize each sentence, eyes burning with tears.
Understanding dawned on his face. “Oh, Mitthu… this is just a ten-rupee knick-knack from Juna bazar. So was mum’s. They make them by the bucketload in Chinchwad. She never liked rings, your mum. Even that one she only wore when your grandmother came around.”
“No! This is real! It’s gold!” Mitthu’s voice cracked as the tears finally burst from her face. The crane had lied. It was just some filthy trick of that dirty stalking bird. “It’s gold.” She repeated, now with less conviction.
“Come on, Mitthu. Let’s get you to bed.”
◆◆◆
After tucking his despondent daughter into bed, Ravi returned to his desk. He rolled the ring in his hand this way and that for a while before setting it down on the empty page before him.
He’d given Nidhi this ring’s lookalike on the day she’d agreed to marry him. His meagre salary from the call-center couldn't afford him anything more than the Juna bazaar knockoff. They'd still manged to be happy. Ravi looked around the house they'd built in the years since, at the sturdy timber in its bones and the scent of the hills in its breath.
The old rotary phone they'd bought on a lark sat squatly beside the blank page just a few inches from the ring. The dial on its face stared insolently at Ravi, daring him to pick up and call.
Mitthu’s trials with the crane are a modern update to two famous stories from the Mahabharata that hinge around water bodies: the story of Shakuntala and Yudhishtir’s trial with the Yaksha (a type of lake spirit.) The painting she shows the crane is my half-remembered version of Raja Ravi Varma’s Shakuntala, while the title of the story comes from Kalidasa’s abhigyaanashakuntalam (literally, the recognition of Shakuntala.)