I’m tired. I need to rest. I need to eat. Drink water. But the ever nearing gunfire makes stopping difficult. We didn’t have too much food to begin with and whatever we had had to be given to the children. No water too. The only water canteen left was punctured by an errant bullet leaving K to lick the damp leather for nourishment. Why couldn’t the bullet hit Karuna and not the water bottle? At least the rest of us would have a better chance of survival. I laughed and the unexpectedness of it nearly threw Lakshmi off balance – maybe this is what the army wants after all. To make us turn on each other like mad dogs. Well, fuck them! I was shushed by V, our leader by default, who was peering at the tree line in the distance, trying to decide the best path for us, where we would have the maximum chance of safety. Just get on with it, I felt like shouting. If we have to die, we will die. It’s too large an army to plan against.
We’ve been on the run for three weeks now. From our village just south of the main town, south to the river and then further south to the sea. Always running away from the fighting, always running into an army battalion, always losing some friends and family. There were fourteen of us when we started, now only six of us are alive. I don’t even remember how they died. But how does it matter if I remember. Gunfire, bombs or illness – dead is dead, without a grave to their names, their carrions left for the birds and insects.
We kept on pressing south, south of our imaginary border. South of the border. It was my favorite book before the war – ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’. Now it only serves as a cruel jape for my endless walk. And for what? It’s not like we have anyone waiting with open arms further south or even hot food. Most of my people are dead and whoever isn’t dead will die soon. The best I can hope for is an internment camp with just an even chance of dying of dysentery or typhoid or jaundice. Even that would be heaven compared to what we’ve endured in the last two years. After two years of constant starvation and bombing, rancid food under the guard of a gun would be manna. South of the border. Let’s get there first. Hope of a normal life, any life at all can happen only after that.
V gestured we should press forward. It was nearing dusk and we needed some shelter against for the night. It would be dangerous to light a fire and the rain ensured this was impossible in any case. But just a place to lie down, out of sight of the infra-red scopes. Bastards! How about a fair fight? Throw down your damn Chinese and American guns, let’s fight with knives and then let’s see who’s on the run. The forest was still a couple of kilometers away and like the refugees we were, we haltingly stumbled towards the trees. K hadn’t seemed to have recovered from the loss of the water canteen. He was still licking the cloth like a dog licks its master after spending days apart, straggling behind the rest of us. Slowly we began to discern the features of the forest, and V nudged me, pointing to a rock outcrop on the left, around a kilometer ahead. We could take shelter there for tonight, he said. Safety is only another two days away now. Peace however, was still a lifetime away.
W, the oldest of us, who was a few meters behind us, gave a cry. Run, he said, I can hear mortar rounds being fired. Balls, I replied. The fight is in the north. Why the fuck would anyone have mortars out here? Before he could reply, a blast hit the ground a few feet to our left. Run. It’s less than a kilometer to the forest. We’ll be safe there. Three more mortars exploded around us. Someone screamed, like an animal in agony. I turned towards the direction of the scream and saw L, W and his wife all lying on the ground. Leave them, V said, they’re dead already. We left them and continued running. We zigzagged our way through bushes and plants, not giving the mortars any chance to calculate our next move. I suddenly stopped and turned a few hundred meters before the forest. K! He was only a hundred meters behind us, still holding on to the water canteen as a lucky charm. Run faster, I shouted. A bomb fell close to where he was. V tugged on my arm. Come on, we need to reach the forest. But K was still alive, still running. He stopped. The water canteen was no longer in his hand. He turned back, searching for it frantically amidst the gravel. Leave it, you bastard, I implored. He didn’t pay me any attention. He couldn’t hear me. I ran towards him, arms flailing hopelessly. Leave it, leave it! He finally stopped searching and on seeing me approach him, he waved a ragged piece of leather in the air like a trophy. We took off towards the forest again. Another blast hit us and threw us of the ground like dolls. I tried to move, to will myself to get up and run for cover again, but all I could do was stare limpidly at K’s dismembered body and the last thing I ever saw was his hand still wrapped around the canteen.
