•°.☾.°•

"Do you know what Mirasi means, Ruru? It means inheritance. Sometimes even heritage. Do you know of the inheritance I have received? Do you know about the heritage I am supposed to carry? What do you know of my secrets, Ruru? Do they let you sleep?"

She locks eyes with me. Letting the silence sink before continuing to speak. She has a deep devotion to everything that sinks because that was her fate, too, after all.

"You see this ring?" She glides her hand on the thin rag I'm tucked into. "It'll be your heritage, this ring. My legacy that'll help you find your way into my secrets. Find me, Ruru. Find me if I'm ever lost."

"Why do you keep so many secrets, maa?"

She smiles at me and cups my face in her ring-clad hand. The cold metal, a stark contrast against the soothing warmth that characterises my mother.

"Information is only meant to be traded, Ruru. If I tell you my secrets now, what'll you offer in return? Will you even remember them? If you would, then remember to find them."

•°.☾.°•

A lady crawls to me on most nights, cradling me in her arms.

Making me believe it is a mother. Offering false hopes of solace. Whispers sweet nothings in my ear— of promises she has long forgotten, of assurances that don't work anymore. I call her shame, she listens to me just as I listen to her everytime she calls me. She brings me dreams and I pay her with my sanity.

Her pearly eyes are shaped such that they command love but I can't bring myself to it. They don't speak, they don't betray an ounce of what she feels rather they keep mirroring what I do and feel. They've made all eyes pearly for me, taking all elements of feeling humanity. I fail to see emotions in others, so I begin to assume. They're all the same for me.

All these stories about people getting read through their eyes don't resonate with me. I've read only two things that came close to what others may do when they read such stories.

One, eyes are the windows to the soul. Whose soul, I ask?

Two, "a carpenter and a painter drank together all night, their laughter echoing until the last drop was gone. As dawn broke and the bar ran dry, they begged the bartender for more. With a wry smile, he leaned in and said, 'I'll pour you another, but first, answer me this: Who paints the windows?'"

Eye wanders, forms in and out of itself. Folds, twists, straightens but never stills. I sit with a frozen butt peeking from eye to eye. Sharp, shiny, almost gleaming surfaces betraying the pangs of hearts, stillness of soul, bareness of the bodies. The stretch marks spanning from their kneecaps to streak their eyes, sewing the body as a whole. Eyes look back at me, I look away unsure if I want to know who paints the windows.

There's this thing about finding answers, you're never sure if it was what you've wanted in the first place. Yet here I am, straddling the streets of Rangoon with bare optimism and naked ambition coating my veins.

A month after I realise that my mother, too, was a marionette and Amru kaka had possibly been party to the knowledge, the streets of Rangoon and I found ourselves held in the embrace of the Japanese. If India lay in the mouth of hunger and unemployment, Burma was also flustered about its newfound identity in the wake of crippling economic depression. The Japanese had begun to softly thread the streets, positioning themselves strategically in the Southeast Asian geopolitics of the Second World War.

  ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ

𝄞

वो जो हम में तुम में क़रार था

तुम्हें याद हो कि न याद हो

वो जो हम में तुम में क़रार था

तुम्हें याद हो कि न याद हो

𝄞

The agreement between you and I

Whether you remember it or not

The agreement between you and I

Whether you remember it or not

𝄞

  ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ

Soft tunes of a Hindi song from a roadside theatre performance begin lacing my skin in a delicate embrace. I look at the two women hooking their steepled hands as the personified nature props begin swooning left to right.

The Burma Road is usually characterised by heavily loaded trucks moving in an antlike structure. Their presence heavy in the air as they move to Laisho railhead from the port. The road links eastern Burma with Kunming in Yunan Province, China, and has been key to supplying war goods transported by sea to interior China during the Sino-Japanese war and the occupation of the seacoast of China.

My eyes don't waver from the two beautiful women on the makeshift stage.

I think it is the case with every art form, its beauty multiplies with misery. Isn't it why miserable women are deemed beautiful, and several traditions such as footbinding increase the allure of femininity by inflicting years of pain. So what better stage for theatre tropes than the recently constructed corpsebed of the East.

♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ

𝄞

वही या'नी वा'दा

वही या'नी वा'दा निबाह का

तुम्हें याद हो कि न याद हो

𝄞

That means promise

That means the promise of living

Whether you remember it or not

𝄞

  ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ

The song reminds me of my mother. I think of Patkai, of her ring that I had found after fifteen years. When she died, I had been so distraught upon discovering her corpse that the missing ring hadn't dawned upon me. It didn't help either that I was five. How did it end up at a remote valley in a mountain range several miles East of the Ganges? The question had clouded my mind for a while now.

I sense a figure approaching me from behind. Quickly unsheathing my Kukri knife, a souvenir lent by my Patkai comrades, I turn in a swift motion. The circle is half spun as I'm stopped by the sound of metal clicking with metal. The lady in front of me smirks.

Realisation dawns upon me.

"Nila!" I squeal like a child and cage her in a long-needed embrace.

I had met Nila during our training days in the webbed pathways of Purani Dilli (Old Delhi), where she kept complaining about how her tender feet were meant for the cobbed pathways and not grime and dirt. It always cracked me up because when she was bought, she was nothing but a thin fabric of charred skin enveloping a skeleton. So frail, her sockets had sunken into the abyss, and her feet mangled as she walked. Her lips carried secrets I was unsure if I had it in me to hear them chime, but her body lilted songs at nights while I was deeply enshrined in the cradle of an unwanted mother, of shame.

"I'm surprised they sent you here knowing that Burma is still reeling from the bloody anti-Indian riots that broke out a decade back," she remarks, breaking the hug.

I scoff, and sheath the sharp blade. "Us Indians are too pretty, I know, but it isn't some reason to get obsessive."

"Never reveal your real identity to anyone," She whisper yells and then checks to see if someone has heard us. Then with a knowing smirk, she continues, "I'm guessing your years of spying will pay off on this mission. Lock anything you know about yourself in the recesses of your memory. Don't engage with anyone unless you absolutely have to. That is, never. And tone down the narcissism, will you?"

Her eyes dart towards my face. I know what she is thinking, what she is always thinking when she sees me, but I'm glad she doesn't ask. I'm yet to find answers to the questions running through her mind. Growing up in the city of Kanpur, I was often teased about my East-Asian eyes. Children teased me, saying I was an illegitimate child because my eyes were neither my mother's nor my father's. But Amru kaka had assured me it was probably some recessive gene I had received from either of my parents. The possibility of my mother being a marionette, however, changes everything I had previously believed.

"It isn't our fault that they don't understand the influence of fucking propagandas?" I attempt to change the topic.

She steps closer with a frown. I know she is about to chide me again.

"Don't be racist, Ruru. The whole war is about a bunch of people believing propagandas. You lot have believed several of them too. And what about the organization? Don't you think higher-ups feed us lies too?"

Her gaze drops to my hands, and her eyebrows furrow.

I open my mouth to tell her off like I always do, only to be interrupted. "Are you being sugared by a watermelon?" she asks.

"Excuse me?"

She looks at me and I see the realisation dawning upon her. "Oh, fuck me, for god's sake, if I could say a single thing right."

"I would have, but I'm sorry I don't swing that way." I say, drawing crosses in the air with my fingers.

She takes a step towards me, and by now, I'm half concerned about her intentions and half about my safety. As I step away, I lose my balance. I attempt to hold her hand, but it renders her unable to regain balance, and she topples over me.

A sharp pain shoots from my butt to my thigh, and I feel an unknown warmth on my chest. I look down to find Nila's hand resting there while her face digs at my shoulder blades. Squealing, I attempt to move back, only to end up worsening the pain. Nila's weight has completely shifted on me. I whimper in pain. Her face near my chest doesn't help either.

On cue, a hand dances in front of my eyes. I look up to find another familiar set of eyes peering at me.

He begins leaning forward, eyes never leaving me as he coils his fingers around Nila's shoulder. In her frantic attempts at getting up, she almost gifts him a bloody nose, but he closely escapes the favour. Had I not known her for almost all my life, I would have had doubts about the success of the mission, witnessing her clumsy self.

Once Nila is up and about, his hand calls for mine again, but I've still yet to make a move to hold his. He kneels in front of me, his eyes inching me in search of any wound or sign of hurt. He stops near my abdomen and rushes to remove his jacket. The action makes me frown and I follow his gaze. Only to find blood coating the fabric resting at the sides of my butt. I gulp the saliva resting in my mouth.

"May I?"

"Huh?" I spurt, still reeled into some form of shock.

"May I help you, miss?" His voice is soft yet firm, authoritative.

I take a deep breath and nod.

He leans till his breath fans my ear, and I almost choke on the air. The air spun out of him craftily tickles my skin. His fingers, albeit hesitantly, glide smoothly over my waist. Rivers and rivers of warm blood rush from every inch of me to my face. I sense his gaze travelling beyond my nape, lingering on my fingers straightened on the ground. My eyebrows furrow. Just then, I'm wrapped in the warmth of the khaki that graced his body. The arms of the clothing slowly inched right above my hips. A slight tug of a knot jutting against my lower abdomen.

I feel his thumb resting atop my ribcage as he begins pulling me up. A short breath escapes me as his lips accidentally touch my earlobe at the immediacy of the action. I rest my hand atop his shoulder for additional support as our eyes meet again. My dirt-stricken face honestly reflected in his brown orbs. I'm a mess, but at least the dirt hides my consistently reddening face. It didn't happen to me even while Nila lay atop my chest.

He cocks an eyebrow at me as if to find amusement in my predicament. I force an awkward smile at best.

"Are you a watermelon, too, now? I don't remember you as one." he finally whispers in my ear when I'm almost up, and I lose my balance again. Maybe Nila and I can compete at clumsiness.

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2,086

1,057 + 2,086 = 3,143 words

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With it, I've completed the first target and I'm so so happy about it. Please don't forget to vote and comment if you liked the chapter. The next few updates will be a little delayed because I have a lot of workload I'm yet to catch up on.

Till next time, sayonara!

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