•°.☾.°•

"What purpose, do you think, lies behind a marionette's performance?"

"Entertainment?" I say or ask, unsure.

"Deceit."

•°.☾.°•

Opportunities.

One word, multiple meanings.

Each person has his own perception of what an opportunity means and entails. There's a brink of restlessness and commitment, beyond which lies a hidden treasure in the cove of possibilities. The problem is that none of us know how to dig it.

Several cultures have made uncountable attempts to outline how many such hidden treasures one can possibly stumble upon during their lifetime. It isn't as simple as it looks on the face of it. You won't pick a clover and count its leaves to know which one will bring luck. No. Your body washes down a river while you're trying to count the number of droplets that are pushing you into the deep, dark waters.

However, our elders have proposed somewhere between three to seven opportunities that'll be offered to us in a lifetime. The ones we know or don't know, see or can't see, sense or can't sense. But each one of them is undeniably real. And the higher-ups have been trying to squeeze them out for the larger good. Or so they claim.

Translation? I'm giving God's gift of opportunities to someone who had once extended a hand of favour towards me. How many opportunities, you ask? Three? Four? Seven? Doesn't matter. None of them are mine to claim. The twist? I'm not the only one. There are uncountable people doing the same in their own ways. The greater problem, however, is that not all have the same moral codes to distinguish human from inhuman. So, we maintain order in the only way we know how. Selling secrets. Trading information.

You and I aren't cozy enough yet for me to take your time and hold your hand through the beginning of all my secrets, but I'll tell you about my most recent one and my most crucial opportunity. Keiyoushi Monbatsu.

I met him in the summer of '40 when warnings and breaths left me in hopes of no return. It was a call for the last opportunity life would give me, and this one wasn't meant to be used for anyone but me.

How cliché, isn't it? Another story about a lady who gives everything she has to the man she loves. But this one is special to me; that's what's different. It is mine to own, take, tear, burn, cradle, rewrite. So I do. I give him everything that's mine, but not when my integrity cannot withstand the truth. It is what changes the story; that is how I rewrite it.

Ganga, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy. My journey hasn't been something one conveniently refers to as short. On my mission's briefing, I had burned, spewed hatred a minute a mile.

"Why, Amru kaka?" I had questioned him over and over. "I'm no marionette, it is another thing to spy as a boy, how do you expect me to be a theatre girl? I will do no such thing. Cleveland will meet Suzuki at tonight's soiree, I'm sure I can kill him there. Nobody will know a thing amidst the chaos."

"You're a fool to assume you aren't a marionette already," he deadpans.

Something about his statement stings my heart. He has a way of doing this, stinging where it hurts. From the teeth clawed into me, a spectrum of my emotions gets inked together and I go on a run with each of them, through each of them. He drags them like tyres, striking them if he has to. But he is a higher-up, and they have a way of getting things done by riling you up. It is also a part of our training, a tact to check our loyalties and to stay unapproachable by us disposable spies. Sometimes, however, I hate myself. Think logically, not emotionally. I chant it to myself again. I've always been a marionette in their hands. Dancing to their tunes. That much has always been true.

"You're right, kaka."

"Gudiya, why don't you understand that this was the best opportunity I could possibly get you?"

You're a fool to assume you aren't a marionette already.

"Your duty is to shift to Rangoon for the mission disguised as a marionette." He continues when I keep staring at him. "For the next few months, you are to stay with Keiyoushi Monbatsu. You are to protect him from Cleveland without killing any official in the process. The leaders of the freedom movement are using the tensions between the Japanese and the British to gather forces. A meeting has been arranged with Suzuki, but in return, they have asked us to protect the Japanese aristocrat, Keiyoushi Monbatsu."

I was going to puke. My last mission had unveiled more secrets about my mother than I could even during my active searches for the past fifteen years. The Patkai mission of '37 had been straddled with more mysteries than can be verbalised. Spanning three years post the Indo-Burmese separation, the mission itself had been in murky waters. But finding my mother's signet ring hadn't been in the cards.

I trace the cool metal resting on my forefinger. It feels like my mother's dead body recovered from the basins of Ganga maiiya. Cold. Distant. In a way that it had long forgotten me, awaiting its next life.

I'm desperate to swim that distance. To ruin myself if that leads me to her. I want her. I want to know about her. I need my mother's embrace. The five-year-old me deserves her even if not the present me. So, I decide to defy. And defy, I will.

"No," I finally announce.

Kaka raises an eyebrow at my challenge.

"Do you know what is the purpose of a marionette's performance?" He looks at me expectantly.

I know the answer to this. My mother had answered it for me long before. I stiffen at the realization.

My mother was a marionette too.

But it is more complex than that; how does kaka know that my mother asked me the same question once? He knew my mother, didn't he? He hid her from me, so why now? Why is he willing to let me seek the answers? What changed?

"Deceit," I finally answer.

__________________________

1057 words

𖧷PLAYLIST𖧷

Dooba dooba by Silk Route, Atul Mittal, Kem Trivedi and Mohit Chauhan

ta naye sar a lwae myar by Htoo Aein Thin

Stay with me by Miki Matsubara

Could It Still Be a Mistake by David Wu [吳大衛- 會不會還是個錯]

Sweet Love by Junko Hayashi

Deewana Tera by Sonu Nigam, Sajid-Wajid and Faiz Anwar

Shyness Boy by Anri

a lwan ma tha by Bobby Soxer

If I told you that all I love is you by Zhang Yusheng [張雨生-若我告訴你其實我愛的只是你]

Yeh Duniya Jala Do by Janisht Joshi

Pone San Khwt Htal Ka Bawa Myar by G Fatt & Mi Sandi

Lift Karadey by Adnan Sami & Riaz Ur Rehman Saghar

Summer Suspicion by S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe

Duur Se by Hassan & Roshann (ft Amna Riaz)

Lann Ma Gyi Yae Bayy by Wyne Su Khaing Thein

There are problems with being passionate by Ma Yufen [馬毓芬-多情會有問題]

Oh No, Oh Yes by Mariya Takeuchi

Just a Joke by Yurie Kokubu

Ma Lar Chin Nae by Wai La

Mera Pehla Pehla Pyar by KK and Robby Grewal

I wanted to post a separate section for it, but I'm including it here since that was highly discouraged.

.