The Unconventional Courier June 2023

Abaka & the Intruder by Ashwini Gangal

He was visible from where she lay, but she didn’t notice.

He gathered himself and plunged into the room, landing noiselessly, but painfully, on the floor, triumphant at last, but exhausted by his colossal climb.

Abaka read many novels at once; halfway into the first, she started the second, and after a few chapters, whimsically opened a third, then went back to the first, before impulsively starting a fourth, and so on, till her actual life in Kumbasa Manor was but the ninth or tenth story playing itself out with her as its central character, a myopic loner who hadn’t taken a lover in a long time.

That sultry August day, while the rest of Mumbai was being roasted, she read about a journalist’s misadventures in the Turkish city of Kars in the dead of winter.

It snowed in Abaka’s world. A slight vibration startled her for a second, melting the snowflakes instantly, pulling her back into the real world.

But she decided it was just the family downstairs moving things around, and continued reading, absentmindedly putting her fingers under her beige cotton kurta and rubbing her soft belly.

Suddenly reacting to the heat, she sat up and peeled it off. Now clad in jeans and a white brassiere, she continued reading, sprawled comfortably, unaware of the intrusion. Strangely, even Kumbasa Manor did nothing to caution her.

By then, the famished intruder had desperately begun looking for edible scraps. His injury made it difficult, but he managed to drag himself towards a rotting fruit of some kind, groaning in pain as he moved.