Loooooooooooooooooooooooooong timeeee!! Hellooooooo!!!! Bansheeee wails!!!!! The banshee has just been writing about a werewolf and a Jokhini in her latest story. But that's for another day. The banshee has delayed because she suffered severe aches and pains in her head everyday and still continues to do so which left her mostly wailing moaning and whining, but the time has come to rectify this. And the banshee promises that all wailing and moaning shall be done here, on this blog, henceforth.
Well, the first Comeback Publication which actually happened last year summer is a huge one. I can in fact be considered a classic publication because it's called Berserk Banshee. In the Virasat anthology of short stories (West Bengal), edited by Nishi Pulugurtha. This is a high and mighty print publication. I can try putting the story here but it's a bit long, almost 4000 words. Or if you all send out feelers and signals to the banshee-- heck, we have emails and messages now-- she'll respond with a mournful wail for sure.
Berserk Banshee
Oleander was what they called a mad woman. Stark, raving mad. She was to be found at the
same spot, all day and every day, hell bent on digging a tunnel. They called her obsessed.
Possessed. She constantly kept muttering to herself. Sometimes her anger would rise, and her
swear words would rise to a crescendo, a scream. Her long black tresses going down till her
knees were eternally open. She was forever naked. She had never worn clothes ever since the
time she had gone mad. She could not remember to wear them. She could not remember to
comb her hair. Oleander, like her name, was pretty and poisonous. She was poisonous to certain
people. She could also be poisonous to herself. Her name signified desire, destiny, caution, and
romantic love. She embodied all of these too. Every part of the oleander plant was poisonous.
A single leaf was enough to kill. Oleander had ideated for so long about suicide by eating the
oleander that her name suited her perfectly.
Oleander was a banshee. Every night, she used to wail portending a death. Her own death.
However, nobody knew that she was a banshee. Nobody knew where the wailing sound came
from, or whose death it portended. Everyone thought Oleander was just a mad, senile, berserk
woman. Nobody connected Oleander with the mysterious wailing sound that was heard every
night. To be sure, there was a sinister chill about the shriek, where did it come from, whose
death did it portend?
She was digging the tunnel as a secret and surreptitious means to enter the palace. The huge
palatial grounds where on the huge citadel lived the royal family, their extended family,
courtiers and maid-in-waiting, the most prominent entrepreneurs and businessmen of the
nation, and the most eminent writers, poets, artists, musicians, filmstars, sportsmen, and the
finest gardeners, birders, potters, weavers, craftsmen, and the most accomplished people of
every field. A separate colony for the best doctors, another one for the best teachers of the land.
The rest of the ordinary populace lived outside this palatial citadel. However, many who
worked there had passes to enter the citadel in the morning and exit by evening. The rest were
allowed there only on very rare and special occasions like state festivals. Except one person.
There was one person perpetually banned from entering the palatial citadel. This person was
Oleander. All the gates with all the liveried guards, she dare not enter them. She dare not even
come near them. This was because of her obsessive and intense passion for Orchid, a most
beautiful and talented lady of the land, as colourful as all the colours you find Orchids in, who
Oleander was smitten with ever since Orchid had shown her great kindness which Oleander
had never been able to forget. Orchid was perfectly seductive and alluring. Orchids were also
the national emblematic flower of the land. However, when Oleander's passion and obsession
had not shown signs of waning, Orchid had simply spoken to the King who had discussed it
with all his Lords, and they had banned Oleander from entering this palatial and beautiful
citadel. They would not even employ her as a sweeper within the citadel. They would not allow
her to enter, no matter how many precious stones and jewels she may bribe them with. Now
Oleander, spurned and rejected, longed to enter this citadel with an obsessive passion. It burned
within her like flame fire. It consumed her. It became her life's mission. She saw it as her
destiny. Now, at the farthest edge at the back of the citadel, there were no gates. Here at the
back were fields only used during exhibitions and festivals, and for the sportsmen to practice.
The maids-in-waiting had their houses here, huddled to one side. Thus, it made sense for
Oleander to try to dig the tunnel from the back. Moreover, immediately behind the citadel,
there were no roads. The soil was softer here, there were a few trees, it was easier to dig. Now
you see how Oleander perfectly embodied the symbolism of the Oleander-- desire, destiny,
caution, and the passionate love of the red oleander. Oleander lived here. She slept inside the
tunnel. She did nothing else and thought of nothing else either. Her single-minded life mission
was this. She was poor and homeless. For food, she either begged for bread, or plucked fruits
off trees. Lots of citadel trees had branches extending beyond the wall. You may ask what was
Oleander's purpose behind her obsessive burning desire to enter the citadel. Nothing. This was
the point. Oleander had no purpose but to find solace, to calm down her neurodivergent nerves,
and to satisfy her neurodivergent sexuality. You see, Oleander was autistic.
Before Oleander started digging the tunnel, she had gone entirely insane. She reached for train
departures and weddings and parties and meetings and other events at the wrong day and at the
wrong time. She got off buses randomly at places she wasn't supposed to get off at. She had no
idea where she was going. In this state of lunacy of course, she could not reach anywhere she
had to go. Thus she slipped from society. She would forget about wearing clothes and combing
hair. Gradually, she made the tunnel her home. All she ever thought about was Orchid. All she
ever dreamt of was entering the citadel. Her whole soul bent on her life's mission.
As she dug the tunnel with her spades and shovels, constantly muttering to herself, one of her
autistic quirks, sometimes her desperation raged and her anger seethed and her ignominy was
utterly intolerable. Sometimes she screamed at the four walls of the tunnel. She screamed that
she would tell Orchid exactly what she thought of her. She swore that she would go and kill
herself at Orchid's doorstep. She vowed that she would become a suicide-writer like the suicide
bombers and write all the abuses to all those hateful people and murder their reputations before
she died. Because none of it would matter to her after death anyway. She dreamt of joining the
political goons in the city and learning how to scale walls and throw bombs and start various
kinds of fires from them. Autistically naive as she was, she had no idea how to do such things
herself. With her strong autistic sense of justice, that she was planning to learn from the goons
itself shows her intolerable condition of madness. And yet, at other times, she lay wretched,
chanting Orchid's name as if it were god's. This was her autistic stim. Saying Orchid when she
was scared tensed, in pain in shock, saying Orchid to deal with life. Orchid in the morning,
Orchid in the evening, Orchid at night, Oleander breathed dreamt ate Orchid. Was Orchid? She
prayed to Orchid, worshipped Orchid, was maddeningly in love with and obsessed with that
pretty, talented, and tantalising woman called Orchid. Hers indeed was a pitiable condition.
Being autistic, she had passions and frenzies she was unable to control or regulate. Her
emotional swings had become roaring and routine like sea tides. Her obsessiveness too was
very autistic. Also, she dreamed. She dreamed a lot. She dreamt of all the ways in which she
could enter the citadel. She hadn't even finished the tunnel yet, but in her dreams, she had
entered and sojourned the citadel through the tunnel so many, many times. Sometimes she
managed to sneak in surreptitiously through the gates. Like, in a car. Curled up in the back of
a car entering the citadel gates, who would see her? Or she dreamt of the time Orchid had given
her that chocolate, had praised Oleander's poem, had compared Oleander to an eminent woman,
and so many of Orchid's other daily solicitous kindnesses.
As she dug the tunnel, some puwali bhoots, which means child ghost in assamese, came to
trouble her. They created a lot of noise and ruckus on the roof of the tunnel. These little demons
shrieked and banged pots and pans creating a din, and taunted this crazed old woman,
wandering naked and constantly muttering to herself. Even screaming, at times. The ghost
poltergeists flung coconuts on the roof, and drove poor Oleander even more insane if that was
possible, with their maniacal laughter. They were terrible. They brought garbage from dustbins
and overturned it on Oleander's tunnel. Then they salvaged whatever sweets they could find in
the waste and ate them and danced in glee. Of course they never gave any to Oleander. These
puwali bhoots have Oleander terrible migraines. Or maybe they were autistic psycho-somatic
headaches. Autists can have psycho-somatic pain in various parts of their body due to sensory
overload, emotional overwhelm, stress of unregulated emotions, and a host of factors due to
their super-sensitivity and intensity. They just went on and on and on. They raged for as long
as the puwali bhoots danced shrieked and jumped. They continued into the night long after the
puwali bhoots had left. They ruined Oleander's life entirely and made her miserable. They just
never let poor Oleander alone. They were a double nuisance on top of the puwali bhoots and
their shrieking maniacal laughter and their stinking garbage. What if they threw one of their
pots and pans and coconuts directly at Oleander's head? And this, of course, on top of all the
rejection from Orchid, and all the people of the entire city and the citadel, and the liveried
guards looking at her suspiciously if they ever saw her within sight of the citadel gates. They
would also regularly patrol the back of the citadel. Oleander had to be very careful. She
crouched inside the tunnel to hide and only came out when the coast was clear. She longed to
be a part of all those people who could just enter the citadel normally. Ah, the beautiful tree
lined paths and fountains of the citadel, and the magnificent buildings, all of them done in regal
style and splendour that just went on and on. There were ancient style grand historical buildings
there. Well laid out parks. Gardens. Libraries. Fun foods and festivals. The most revered people
in the land. Oh, what wasn't there in the citadel! Oleander had cherished memories of
frequenting the citadel in earlier times where she had been training to be a writer, with access
to the best libraries, and the best writers and teachers. Orchid was one of the writers who would
act as resource people for trainees such as Oleander. And of course she remembered the
beautiful kindness shown to her by Orchid who had taken her within the comfort and snug fires
of her own home when Oleander had felt bullied and misunderstood and entirely strange and
different from others--- a complete misfit, not being able to wear what others wore, not being
able to participate in the same activities as the others, hanging out at the movies or the dance
parties. Being autistic Oleander was not able to wear tight-fitting jeans because of her
supersensitivity to touch. She also had prosopagnosia which made it difficult to understand
films. She was a highly naïve and emotionally sensitive creature whom others could easily take
for a ride. She could not belong. Orchid had shown her beautiful kindness and had sort of cared
for her, protected her-- until of course Orchid got scared of Oleander's ardent, burning passion.
Oleander would slither down along the tunnel, rubbing her clitoris on the bed of the tunnel. She
would shake her body vigorously from left to right. This was a kind of masochism. It was
almost as if this was a kind of self-punishment. But it gave her a kind of pleasure too. It was a
kind of penance. It was also a measure of self-control. Sometimes, after one of her fits of rage,
she felt the need to do this. Sometimes, if she felt one of the guards had seen her, she felt the
need to exercise a measure of self control. Sometimes, she got desperate and wanted to kill
herself off. Sometimes, she got wild and crazy ideas about what she would do once she
managed to gain entry into the citadel. She would burn down the citadel. She would lock Orchid
tight in a death-embrace. She would hurl abuses like stones. Sometimes, she felt pangs of guilt
as to what she had done to Orchid to make her so terribly afraid. How she had repaid Orchid
for her kindness. She had to punish herself, control herself. And yet, it gave her a strange kind
of weird pleasure too, it gave her a sense of balance and clarity to rub her clitoris against the
rocky bed of the tunnel. Sometimes, it hurt her body physically to do this. At other times, she
would clear the debris, and bring mounds of fresh soil she had just taken out back into the
tunnel. When she made a mound or hill of that soil and rubbed her body over that, it was more
pleasurable. It depended on her mood, her end goal from this act. Sometimes, when people of
the town or the puwali bhoots taunted her beyond belief, she found solace in rubbing her body
and her clitoris, there in the tunnel. She had to hide. She could not do this in front of anyone.
After a vigorous round of this, she lay back, pleasured yet exhausted. Yes, it was exhausting to
do this. Sometimes, when she got extremely agitated, she did something funny with her hands.
Her hand would become stiff and rigid, her fingers a little wide apart. Her hands would shake.
Her whole body would tremble in her agitation. It was instinctive, she could not help it. Her
face, at such times, would be tense and stern, a little contorted. Once this frenzy ended, she
would be back to normal. Or, as normal as Oleander ever was, in any case.
In the middle of all this, Oleander was haunted by eyes. These eyes were perhaps the only
kindness she had ever seen. Well, apart from Orchid's. And miraculously, lo and behold, these
eyes belonged to Orchid's husband. Orchid's husband's eyes. It may seem inexplicable, but
Oleander had only seen kindness from these eyes. Never once had he shown her taunt, disdain,
hatred, torment, unlike all the people of the town, the liveried guards, and the puwali bhoots.
His eyes had seemed more compassionate. They did not judge her. They only looked at her
curiously, very curiously, as if wanting to penetrate the very depths of her and to truly see her.
It was a piercing gaze as if he wanted to find out whether Oleander was as innocent and naive
as she seemed, or was it with malicious intent that she had started taking her daily morning and
evening walks near Orchid's house. Whether it was sheer love-lorndom, or whether Oleander
was by design trying to stalk Oleander. Did she want to learn Orchid's routine and to accost
her, assault her, or was she satisfied only to catch a glimpse of her? It was very strange but he
did not seem to judge her. He merely wanted to know. Once, in fact, at the time when they had
banned her from the citadel, his face was all red, full of shame. His body cowered. He side
stepped. He could not look Oleander in the eyes. Neither of course, could Orchid, but Orchid
was terrified and traumatised, which he was not. And yet, it was a curious thing. This was no
love-triangle. No hate triangle. There was an absence of jealousy and hatred between him and
Oleander, though no spoken words passed between them. In its own sense, it was magic,
beyond the ordinary realms in which humans live. This remarkable space of everything that
was non-normative. Oleander treasured it more than the most precious of stones. It became like
a surviving and guiding light for her. These eyes haunted her. They multiplied. They constantly
watched her in the tunnel, when she was at work, when she slithered and rubbed her clitoris,
when the puwali bhoots taunted her. These eyes made Oleander survive. They enabled her to
go on. These eyes were the last thing she thought of when she slept. These eyes, as also, the
memory of Orchid's kindnesses. It was as if the tunnel was made up of eyes. It was a safe space,
a place of refuge.
Eventually, Oleander's digging was successful and she was able to tunnel through to the other
side, right into the citadel. Now, she was finally there. She had shovelled through the last
remaining bit of earth. But now that she was actually here, she was hushed, quiet. It was
unbelievable. She was also scared. What if anyone saw her, anyone at all. They would
immediately recognise her and throw her out. They might imprison her, punish her. She had
no idea what they might do. She did not particularly desire to see Orchid though she would be
delighted if she did. Being present in the same citadel, with Orchid, with all of them was enough
for her. But she dare not even try to see Orchid. She remembered how Orchid had been
trembling and shivering when she had seen Oleander from the windows of her house a few
times. So Oleander just stayed put inside the tunnel. She was still in the tunnel, it was just that
she was inside the citadel now. She had taken out the only piece of clothing she possessed, a
shawl Orchid had given her long ago, and had draped it over herself. She did not wish to wander
around naked in the important citadel. Moreover, she did not wish to attract so much attention
to herself.
However, Oleander put out her sign. Her sign was a huge silver orchid, dangling in the air. The
orchid whose name she chanted every time she was in pain, in fear, hungry thirsty sleepy
whatever... This sign loomed large over the town. A hushed gossiping and whispering started
in the town. Was it for Orchid? Who had put it there? How did it come there? Or was the king
planning to hold a special orchid festival or exhibition? The white shadowy ghostly silver
orchid looming in the air was like a symbol of Oleander's love and faith, like the silver doe was
the patronus for Severus Snape, spurned lover of Lily Potter.
Oleander would come out of her tunnel very early in the morning, pick up some leftover
foodstuff kept outside citadel shops, pluck some luscious fruits off trees and take water from
one of the taps or the fountains. Of course, she could go back down the tunnel at any point, but
now that she was finally in the citadel, she was transfixed here, she could not leave. On one of
these trips, Orchid's husband, out on a morning walk, happened to see her. He kept an eye on
Oleander, followed her back, and discovered the tunnel.
The next morning, Oleander found a small note at the entrance to her tunnel. Orchid's husband
had taken some pity on Oleander. The note read: "Oleander, Orchid does not hate you or wish
ill for you. She is traumatised, she is terribly ill herself." Reading this, some sort of an epiphany
began to dawn on Orchid. It began to clear some of the foggy perceptions in her brain. It made
her start rethinking things in a different way. It seemed to be a message of peace and
understanding. If Oleander thought of it this way, she could lose some of the bitterness and her
suicidal bouts. She would also lose some of her angry fits as to what she would do after entering
the citadel. In fact, the message left by Orchid's husband was vitally important for Oleander,
and was necessary to salvage the situation as well. That morning, when Orchid's husband saw
Oleander and the sign that Oleander had put up, he instinctively understood that Oleander was
a banshee and that it was her wailing they heard each night. Now whose death did Oleander
warn people about? Orchid's? Her own? This complicated matters infinitely. It was partly this
which prompted him to leave the note for Oleander, trying to guess at her internal state, and
hoping to prevent a death.
What did Orchid feel when she saw the huge ghostly silver sign? What did Orchid feel when
she thought of Oleander? Oleander could only imagine. Perhaps Orchid felt somewhat
disturbed. Orchid knew that Oleander had never gotten over her passion. Although Oleander
was forbidden to enter the citadel grounds and Orchid had managed to put sufficient distance
between herself and Oleander, she may have had heard stories of Oleander wandering about
naked, shrieking, crying. She had probably been told Oleander had gone completely mad and
that she was at full risk of harming herself or someone else. Perhaps Orchid would shudder.
She may have heard that Oleander was sometimes seen within eyesight of the citadel walls and
had even been spotted gliding along them. It might disturb Orchid to be the object of such
seething passion. What exactly did Oleander want from her? What did she want to do to her?
Now, perturbed, watching the sign, might Orchid fall sick? Oleander imagined her getting
chills and fevers. Her shivering and trembling did not stop. She became house-bound. She put
up all the blinds and curtains. Although Oleander had never even touched her physically,
Orchid was just shit-scared. Of her sight, her gaze. Of her passionate intensity. Of what this
might lead her to do. Would it cross her mind whether Oleander would kill herself because of
this rejection? Might she have an underlying sense of guilt? Oleander imagined Orchid sitting
in bed, propped up between pillows, blankets, and hot water bottles. A psychiatrist may have
been called to examine her. She might be following all the psychiatrist's instructions and
prescriptions round the clock until the fear symptoms abated.
That night, it rained. It rained and rained and rained as the heavens poured upon the earth. The
rain brought some clarity, understanding and peace to Oleander. Of course, the note from
Orchid's husband was responsible for it. A wave of relief washed over her to know that Orchid
did not hate her and was not against her. Orchid was in pain, just as Oleander was, only her
pain was different. Orchid was afraid, just as Oleander was, only her fear was different. It was
mutually exclusive, but it was still pain and fear. It was still not nice, and it still hurt, but it was
a little easier for Oleander to understand and accept. The rain made the message of the letter
percolate in her mind. The rain brought peace and understanding. The rain also naturally made
the tunnel disappear. Oleander would not try to dig a new tunnel for some time to come now.
What would Oleander do next for her own survival and sanity? Would she try to connect with
Orchid in some other way?
