Step on a butterfly

I used to visit one particular day too often. It was how I spent majority of the holidays back then- travelling. Like the barista of a coffee shop you frequent would know exactly what you order, the ticketer at the time shop knew me by face; she knew what seat I would book and how long I would stay.

           It was the early days of April of the year 1953 that I used to stop by.

           Before I had found a favourite time, the people I worked with would try to act as concerned advisers and tell me that so and so date or week or year was a happy time, a simpler time, and thus worth visiting. They’d say how travelling had made them calmer and saner. But no one knew what worked and what didn’t. No one knew exactly what the point of it was. Only the billboard outside the biggest time shop in the city claimed to know, in bold, capital letters- ‘We let you escape the present.’

           I had an ordinary life, one that didn’t demand much- let alone to be escaped out of, as frequently as I did. My pretence that the routine and the ordinariness of it had not defeated me was as convincing as the silence that must have cried out of me sometimes, to let people know that I longed to not be anchored there.

           That’s why the ticketer had never stopped me, held me by my arm and asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’ That’s why the concerned people at work had tried so much to find out where battered people must sail to. That’s why I, so confident of the misery in the present, retraced my steps to the time shop at every chance I got.  

           The people there knew this. They knew their customers were no different from the alcoholics who despite the promises and the self-loathe, returned to the bottles. They knew how muddled things could get, how the confusion in the customers’ heads could delay the process and the queues. So, they had a suggestions board we could choose the time of our liking from- mostly a list of either historical times like the night of independence or the day Gandhi was shot, or personal memorable days, like when one’s child was born or when one got married.

           And it was always the past. ‘The future isn’t here yet, it is being built’, they’d say. ‘It’s scary and it’s expensive. We don’t provide those services.’

           At first, I wasn’t a frequent traveller and then when I was, the times I travelled to were various. But then that bright, sunny day of an old April singled itself out. The day was long before I was even born, so I had more freedom to move about, to touch things and stay for as long as I wanted.

           So I stayed because it was still midnight and the air was cool and thick. I stayed in a deserted shack till the dawn broke; the sun rose inch by inch and the air became warm and desperate. I stayed till I saw her- shepherding two cows and three sheep uphill, and the air that touched her was all I wanted to be. So, I stayed and then stayed often.

           I found myself going there again and again, to each detail in the picture that painted itself in front of me as I hid myself in that shack. Her red salwar- so conspicuous against the green all around, her playful gait as she walked to the pond after the animals spread out to graze, her green dupatta that she untied from her waist and threw onto the ground- everything was the same every time. She didn’t look a day older than sixteen or seventeen, and I was a grown up, married woman.

           I’d be lying if I wasn’t tempted to walk out of my hiding place and go talk to her.

           When the sun- higher in the sky, would make the water in a nearby pond all shades of yellow and gold, she would throw herself into that pond and float by. I still can’t say if it was the distance or the reflection of the sun or her in that liquid light, that made me go blind momentarily. I could only look at the red and green of her abandoned clothing, and my lungs became a monotone. I wondered if she had ever been touched, properly. Was I ever touched properly?

           I was doubtful if I was allowed to go and talk to people on these visits, let alone touch that glowing fairy in the water and scare her away. I always assumed one wasn’t supposed to meddle with the past. Step on the butterfly, and you return back to a different world altogether. I had read the story.

           So when she would climb out- water dripping from her hair and sand clinging to her wet feet, and drape the red and green, in that little lair I hid in, time would be a silent beast. I would look down, at my own flesh- bitten and mangled by the years. I would pinch the scars on my skin and touch the forgotten crevices of it, to feel what I wanted her to feel. But I was burnt clay and she was fresh earth. I was a ghost, out of her body, out of her time.  And when I couldn’t be living, couldn’t be her, I gave up. I gave up on every visit. And before noon, she picked up her things, led the animals back onto the serpentine road that led into the village and disappeared behind a large banyan tree.

           It had become a routine, another ordinary routine I was slowly, but surely slipping into. But before it caught me, pinned me to the stone in that hut and transformed itself into another door to escape, something happened that jolted me out of my slumber.

           One day when she picked up her things, led the cows and sheep onto the road into the village and was about to fade out of sight, she quickly looked back, caught my eye and smiled.

           I was white, I was shook and I was startled. I came back immediately. As I was punching my return ticket at the counter, I was also stopping my heart from jumping out to my hands. I was afraid someone might notice how pale I was and ask me something, but nobody did. I didn’t say anything to anyone either.

           I drove back home and prayed that I had been discreet as always and hadn’t stepped on the symbolic butterfly. I prayed to have returned to the same world, to the same home and the same me. I prayed the language sounded the same, the country smelled the same and the ordinariness of it all remained the same. I prayed she hadn’t noticed me, and if she did, she hadn’t known what I had been thinking. I prayed I had a body within a body, where I could hide all those unclaimed thoughts.

           Contrary to how the story goes and to my disappointment, nothing happened and nothing changed. The butterfly I had stepped on was insignificant in the bigger scheme of things, I assumed for a few days.  

           A week later, the newspapers arrived in the morning and blared out the news that all the time shops everywhere were being shut down indefinitely. Some person had decided to bribe the ticketer and travel to the future. He had bought a one-hour ticket but, hadn’t returned. He had chosen to stay.

           ‘Is the future much better than the present?’ read the title of the article I was reading, when a note fell down from between the pages onto my lap. “It is still April and I can’t find you here. I will be here the next April, too. Meet me”, it read.

           The note was the dead butterfly I couldn’t bury. It is still everywhere in my ordinary house, one piece of extraordinariness tucked away in books, phonebooks and under pillows. I look forward to all the Aprils now. But they are dead, I stepped onto them. Or the person who stayed in the future did. Now it is August, now it is March and now the wind blows as it did in April. But the year is eleven months now.