Lydia and Serena walk down the drive together. A large stone-grey cement frog crouches over an empty pond filled with dry and withered leaves, never to turn, transformed by love into a fairytale prince. The golden ball which had flashed through those enchanting, fantasy-filled gardens perhaps lay tarnished in the turgid depths of a wounded psyche.

Parts of the garden are scorched. Burnt in patches. The bougainvillea bush crinkled and seared like burnt paper. The dark bamboos stand like grim sentinels behind and before the house.

‘Anil, my nephew, is going to cut that ancient clump on the hill and clear the land.’

At the foot of the hill drive, Serena touches the tiny truncated nodes of the bamboos. ‘People will kill even the small ones ….’ she says regretfully. ‘I will come back,’ she continues. ‘I want children here. Orphan children affected by this bitter war, to come and spend holidays. No tourists for me. I won’t sell. I won’t rent out the house. People will never go. No restaurants. No guest houses. Perhaps for my friends to come and stay.’ But where are these friends? Do they want to come and share the memories of ghosts?

Above them, on the hill, lies the hidden citadel. Every orifice, every entrance taped into silence. Imprisoning those myriad voices that will soon whisper into dust, dwindle, leaving those speechless ghosts to the death of perpetual silence.

The Mutants

SHE SWISHED THE water in the bathing tank with the full swirl of her palm, then lifting it lightly with a myriad sparkling droplets catching the sunlight, she let it skim gently over the surface like a dragonfly.

Nanna knew that Zuleika was in a happy mood but she could not allow for the distraction of so heady and bubbly a feeling, temporary and transient, in her granddaughter’s mind.

‘Zuleika, stop playing with the water and have your bath,’ she called from the house.

The water tank was outdoors, filled to the brim. That was where they bathed and washed their clothes. They lived, the old lady with her thin praying mantis body and the grandchild, in a small one-room annexe near the sea. The rent was paid for by one of Nanna’s daughters who had married a foreigner and lived abroad. But soon they would have to leave this place because the landlord had decided to put up an extension to the house.

Zuleika wouldn’t stop playing with the water. Her eyes were taken up by the silvery swathes, the shimmer of patterns she created. Images: branches swinging with sharp pointed leaves and birds perched on them, their beaks deep in fruit. No one else but she saw the silver forest swaying beneath her hand. She hummed under her breath.

‘She loves me.’

That was the thought in her mind.