Tornado

On the day the tornado came, my grandfather saw a buffalo fly through the air. Not gently, its large body resting on the flow of the breeze, but sudden and swift, like an afternoon sleep's oversized dream. It was so close when it went by that he could have reached out and touched its frightened face.

My grandfather, in a long white shirt and dhoti, was on his way back from a walk. As the breeze intensified, his dhoti swirled around his legs. The black umbrella he always used as a cane was sucked away from his hand. There were red and yellow flowers, broken from their stalks and flying over the fields. The flower filled wind threw my grandfather against a banyan tree. On all fours, little by little, he made his way home. On the way he saw a cow on a peepul tree and small silver fish on bushes. He passed the neighborhood pond from which this wind has drained all water and loosened it on the land .The pond was empty now, a large bowl of weeds and silt.

All night, the wind. All night the sound of falling trees, breaking branches , dancing twigs, flowers hurled against one another. In the Lantern light, full of shadows , my grandfather sat silently. No other sound, no other action, except the wind had any meaning. So he made only the necessary movements-stretching a leg, waving away a fly, leaning his head against a wall. His mind hovered in a region beyond fear , beyond wonder. The wind had entered him through the nose, mouth and ears, and had begun to move him inside gently but powerfully, a slow, rocking wave forming from the sea of his blood.

A window flew open towards midnight, and my grandfather, looking out, saw a large crystal chandelier floating through the darkness, all its swaying pieces tinkling loudly against each other. The zamindar, my grandfather, was slowly losing his riches to the wind. The chandelier was like a star flung down from the sky, stark against tornado night blackness. The world had changed, thought my grandfather . In the passionate wind, things had been cut loose from their moorings. The chandelier was simply a low hanging star,the buffalo a bird, the pond a crater, the land a lake.

The wind transformed things, gave them new names. And not only new names. It gave them new possibilities. The chandelier knew how it felt to be a star, and the silver fish what it was to be a bird on a green smelling bush. My grandfather opened his eyes in the tornado to a new vision of the world. He saw that only things loosened from their mooring became truly real, like a ship throwing off anchor to set sail.

When my grandfather came to the city, he carried the wind with him. In the big city house, he was the one who breathed most easily, sitting on the bed with his back straight, his hands on his knees, silent, There were large balconies in the house but still too many walls, and wind entered here only in small wisps, like a child's excited breath. Once, only once, it had knocked over a glass.

Sharmishtha Mohanty