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When he was young and still connected to his twin, and the heady weight of the monsoon seemed to last forever, India used to collect cats.
Well, not just cats - India felt the soft call of sympathy for basically all animals and with the echo of exasperation-understanding from his twin, loved to bring them along, whether it was for a few weeks while they healed, or a few years before they passed- but whenever they; himself, his twin, and his younger sister; stayed anywhere permanently for any amount of time, it was cats.
“Get down from there,” Shahadeva hisses, from where she’s holding the chair they’d dragged onto the balcony. “It’ll scratch you.”
Of course, he could feel her sympathy for the creature as strong as a second heartbeat, but it was out weighed by her worry for him.
“Don’t worry, it’s just scared,” he says, knowing full well that scared is the most dangerous an animal can be, but hopped up on the immortality of being approximately 16 and taller than most- on top of his actual immortality it was a potent mix- it didn’t much concern him. “Besides, I have the towel.”
The cat that he had cornered was an especially raggedy thing. It had wedged itself back into a corner and faced the world with all the rage of something desperate to not appear like lunch, which did nothing to hide the matted, bloody, fur along its side or the way one leg drifted out to the side of its protective ball of anger.
It hisses and snarls as he draws nearer, paw flicking out to bat at him in warning.
“Hey hey, I don’t mean you any harm.” He keeps his voice soft and even. “Puss pusspusspuss.”
Perhaps he should have expected the sudden launch forward as the cat exploded out of its huddle and into the air, and he definitely did expect the wriggling as the cat scratched at him, the the fabric, and the world when he caught it in the towel. Still, it was enough to knock him down and send him hurtling back to Earth, momentum broken by the stone balcony.
“Ahhh…owowowow,” he says. Even with pain racing up and down his body he keeps a tight grip on the squirming, yowling bundle in his arms.
His twin grabs it before it can scratch him and flee. Gripping its scruff, it goes stiff in her hold.
“I’ll find a cage,” she says, before smiling. “If you’ve broken something, handling this wild thing- serves you right!”
He’d laughed then, bruised but not broken, young and lively and up for taming a hurt and biting creature. And he’d never corrected her on the terminology- that the cat was feral, not wild. He cared for both the same, after all, and so did she.
Still, the difference mattered- a wild creature was independent of thought and body, coexisting with man but not of them, wandering far and secretive, or close and companionable, they were still separate- and woe befall you if you forgot that. The trail of trampled elephant tamers and cocky tiger handlers would make good grave-mates. You healed a wild creature and it would always- always make it’s way back to where it needed to be. The boy called Nakula had met a great many ‘wild’ men in his time, and secretly, he felt they were somewhat self-aggrandised by the title. A little too compelled by it, and moreover, was struck by how often they called him and his sisters ‘wild’- quite incorrectly.
And of course they cared for the wild creatures, they were essential to who they were, after all. Still, you never expect them to stay.
But feral. Feral. A creature molded by human hands, its bones, its face, its soul baring the fingerprints of human need, it’s heart needing work and companionship- abandoned, alone, and full of bitter anger and coldness. The creatures meant to be tended to, protected, held close, made useful….India and his sisters had met a great many feral humans. And like feral animals, some never quite managed to learn to be at ease, even as they found they hated to leave a hearth that had been offered.
India found he quite liked them, actually.
It would be a long, long way into his even longer life, before he would meet a truly feral nation.
Wild hair, poison green eyes, feral spirit.
Distant, on edge, ready to bite.
(“pleespleesplees plees-”
England, in his arms, is ranting in his own language, hands curled into fists grasping at his kameez. India wants to pull back- tries to even- the man is hurting somewhere deep and nameless and he doesn’t want to be party to a drunken bought of self-debasement, but-
“Touch me,” England, eyes wild, voice drunk, says in perfect Gujarati.
And India does.)
Desperate for softness, gentle and present in turns, unable to trust softness, unable to replicate it, but hungry, hungry, hungry-
(He threads his fingers through already tangled blond hair, no matter how much India tries, he can never get England to keep it soft and cared for. Gently, he grips at the back of the man's head and marvels- this soldier, this wild man, this beast in uniform- goes limp as a newborn kitten.
Moment of madness. Every moment around this young man is a moment of madness. India kisses his temple.
“Why the angst, hey? I’m not going anywhere right now, I’m right here-”)
Unfillable, Insatiable. Sharp clawed and awful.
It’s a bit different than a handful of cat. But still so easy to forget the man-shaped, man-abandoned creature
has claws.
(He can’t breathe. England holds him by the throat and slams his head against the wall, and India is scrabbling against the mans arm, his chest, the soft spot at the back of his neck and the man- the beast-
England is unyielding. “Remember, I made you.”
And drops him like laundry. His head is dizzy and his feet slip on the paper underfoot- the freedom-shouting papers months out of date passed to him fourth hand because he needs any contact any at all with the humans that make him what he is, lie torn and scattered on the floor. He hits the wood like a hammer and lays there like trash.
England's voice seems strangely distant. “Clean yourself up. You’ll scare the children.”)
The rain pounds down on the world outside, wet and fierce- almost drowning out the underlying hum of car engines and people chattering. Sometimes, a car horn or the sharp ring of a bell punctures the soundscape.
India stares out the window.
He looks down. Spins the ring between his fingers on its side like a top.
The noise it makes is a little like a spinning coin. He watches as it gradually tilts sideways, then rocks and settles flat on the wooden table top.
Another car horn rents the air.
He should put it away again.
(It had sat in the bottom of an old travel trunk since the 1930s, privately, he’d thought he had lost it. Personally, he had hoped it would be at least one token memory of that man he would not have to deal with.)
The wedding ring glints in the electric light.
(It was so very plain for wedding jewelry- of course, that was what was traditional in England, but still- a plain, undecorated band for one finger, rather than a full dowry's worth of finery. At the time, he hadn’t cared- truthfully, he still didn’t care about that part so much - though was it a sign? A point he should have drawn a line under, should have been the proof to put the lie to that ugly sham of a marriage?)
He sighs and leans back in his chair.
The spinning thoughts will kill him.
(In the end, gold was too soft to make a shackle.)
It’s been twenty years. Longer, since the ring touched his finger.
Impulsively, he puts it on again- it only gets to halfway up his knuckle before a wave of nausea hits him so hard he flings it across the room. It sparkles in the air and chink-chinks on the floor and just as impulsively he scrambles after it, scrabbling around on the kitchen tile until the golden shackle is cradled in his hand once more.
(Could what they had be said to be a marriage, if neither parties’ people recognised it?)
(Could it truly be called a divorce, then?)
His twin, in the blinding, dying days of triumph in the independence movement had snorted and called it an annulment, if anything. Said his ‘husbands’ cruelty eliminated any marriage bond.
(To call it an annulment would mean they were never married, he had smiled at the time, but now it makes him feel sick. Annulment may be legally accurate, but it was a lie to his own soul.)
(Cats claws sink deep. They leave scars.)
He supposed divorce was the right word then.
He traces the ring in his palm.
(It is not true to say that Hindus, or Indians more generally, never divorce- India knows all his people, in all the myriad of centuries, and knows it does happen. But still, the word hangs like an axe, like a terror. Is it fair for him to break the promise of forever? For humans it was many lifetimes, and he had already spent many lifetimes with England- was his duty fulfilled?)
It is a cold and black thought on his heart.
(He left for his people, he tells himself. He left for the children, so they might not see another hidden bruise and think it the price of love. He left because what could he do? Stay married to a man determined to be the devil?)
(The scriptures would say yes. Worse, to consult the scriptures would be useless, they were two men. Would he have to argue himself as the woman, or England? He could hardly claim childlessness, nor infidelity- again, the argument feels sick, a chain, a lie, on their reality.)
(Although it was white suits and ties for both of them, and an exchange of rings, they walked around the fire seven times, and England got his nose pierced.)
(He let it heal over.)
India stands, grabs his umbrella and puts the ring in his pocket.
The pounding, heaving life of the city is electrifying in its realness. Rain pours down the prongs of the umbrella, and mixes with the smells of mud and petrol. People yell, and run and splash through the rain in their haste to get to shelter, and he.
Doesn’t.
He wanders calmly where his mind goes, ignoring the calls to come over, Sir! We’ve got good deals for you! He breathes and he watches people running free. (Could it be sacrilege?)
(Maybe the only thing real over his long, long life is sacrilege.) (He doesn’t know.)
He breathes.
A cat, two cats- a pair of strays- fight over an upturned cardboard box. It tugs at his heart strings, but he keeps walking.
He walks. And he walks. And he walks.
Until he must stop.
Because he’s at the banks of the Yamuna.
The rain makes the river's great body dance, its skin alive and almost boiling. It’s busy, so busy, even now, late on a rainy night, not even a festival. (It’s busy because it’s alive.)
She is not clean, the way she was centuries ago.
That’s ok. He isn’t either.
Before he can think, he folds his umbrella and places it on the steps, and runs into her waters.
He dives down, cold, roaring water rushes over his head. He comes up for air. Dives down again. Comes up for air. Dives down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.
He stands, snorting water out his nose, ignoring the yelling and pointing he’s beginning to get. ‘He’s got the wrong month!’ ‘Is he auditioning to become a monk?’
It doesn’t really matter.
He pulls the wedding ring out of his pocket. Holds it between his finger and thumb.
(He remembers, suddenly, that for all he’d managed to make England bathe, he’d never made him bathe in a holy river. Never thought to. Maybe it would have done nothing- India’s old enough to have seen terrible men bathe and call themselves holy. Maybe not.)
Does it matter? He’s washed himself clean now.
He holds the ring up to what passes for light, nowadays. Remembers what it looked like in the light of the fire, that terrible, horrible, beautiful night, when his freedom ended and he took in that stray.
He flings it into the river. In the rain, the splash it makes isn’t even visible.
(Yamuna will understand, he thinks. She is, afterall, a woman.)
He thanks her, quietly, for taking this burden from him, and he trudges back to shore.
He’s only a few wet, squelching steps up when he realises someone has nicked his umbrella.
He laughs, bizarrely light and lively in the small hours. He’s not going around chasing thieves and strays today. He’ll take the loss of his umbrella- embrace the rain.
He walks back into the city, dripping wet, and free.