| Abhinav Thanda | July 2026 | Flash Fiction |
I climb the stairs because I cannot go back in time. I climb upwards because I cannot move forward without you. The guard with a lathi in his hand tells me I must deposit my handbag and footwear at the counter. I deposit my faith too and join the amorphous queue. The jostling, saffron current of people ferries me to the foot of the stairs.
The granite under my feet is cold and wet with rainwater and coconut water, simultaneously smooth and uneven. The first flight of stairs is packed — a multi-limbed, multi-headed chimera of pilgrims lighting clay lamps and lemon halves, breaking coconuts, before commencing their individual climbs to the temple atop the steep hill. I did not bring any flowers, nor the paraphernalia necessary to light a lamp. “You mustn’t visit temples for a year,” your aunt said. But I have no wish to.
How does one escape a spherical hell save by climbing to the sky or crawling into a grave? Smudges of vermilion and turmeric, petals of marigold, and brown and white coconut shards blanket the staircase like a tie-and-dye carpet trampled by a swarm of naked, red feet. Soot, smoke and orange flames rise up, searing the foggy morning air. I squeeze through the throng thick as the grey, thirty-foot concrete walls abutting the stairs on either side. A man sings the goddess’ prayer in a thunderous howl that reverberates off the gigantic walls. A chorus of voices echoes its refrain.
At the first landing, where the crowd is diffuse and the sidewalls turn into a dense jungle, I take a long breath. A timid deer behind the lush rain-tree, waiting for a nibble from kind pilgrims, stares at me through her shiny, black eyes. I climb to escape the moment I found you on your bed, cold and blue, dried vomit on your sheets, your eyes glazed like the deer’s, your long wavy hair against the white pillow like the leaf you pressed between the pages of your diary.
Men and women prostrating in devotion, men and women with full hair heaving up the stairs, men and women with cleanly tonsured heads, yellow from remnants of washed off turmeric, racing down.
“Is everything okay, Vineeth?” I had asked … I did ask … at dinner. You, in your school uniform, had mumbled, “Everything is everything,” dropping the spoon onto your plate and retiring to your room.
I climb because the abyss I am in grows deeper with each passing moment.
Cheerful children tease grey langurs seated like sentries on steel railings and tree branches. A couple, making a wish like millions before them, touch their foreheads to the sacred boulder, its surface littered with smooth, concave depressions — vestiges of human desires that reshaped stone.
I stepped into your room in the middle of the night without knocking, prompted by mother’s instinct, that invisible tether that binds … bound … us, not realising what I felt was nothing but the recoil of this tether snapping.
“It’s only been eleven days. You can’t leave home now on a trip!” they protested. “What mother goes on a trip days after such a tragedy?” Eleven days? But it was yesterday that I saw you take your first steps. I should have hugged you — you who felt everything deeply and acutely, you who, after one trip to the butcher, wrote poems about the world and its bleakness, you who were inconsolable, when at six years old, a little girl in a pretty, yellow frock had rejected your marriage proposal. I climb because —
“— drinking-water — ”
“Pardon?”
Heaving up towards me is a young woman in a maroon chudidar, her oversized sunglasses pulled up to her hair.
“Is the water in your bottle from one of these taps?” she asks again, pointing at a tap by the side of the stairs, then at the bottle in my hand. I nod.
“Can I have some? Thank you. The tap water gave me tonsillitis last time.”
She sits at my feet sipping water from the bottle. “And my husband forgot to take out my bottle when he left our luggage at the counter.” She wipes the sweat from her forehead and looks at the bend in the stairs. “He must have fallen behind. Not exactly Milind Soman, you know.”
My knees and my feet burn like lumps of coal. I sit beside her and drink from the bottle she returns. The sky, dark with accumulating clouds, thickens the shade of the lush jungle. The cool, soothing breeze brings comfort and with it, remorse.
“It’s about to rain, yet the crowd is heavy.”
“It’s usually busy here in Sravan,” I say.
“Is that so?”
“Hmm.”
“I wouldn’t know. This is our second time here after four years. My mother-in-law insisted that we come. Do you visit this temple often?”
“I used to.”
“There he is.” She nods at a man in aviator sunglasses and olive joggers scrambling up towards us.
At the bend behind him, a man with a tonsured head is climbing the steps on his knees. His wife and passers-by encourage him with prayers.
“I wonder what his wish was to make a vow so harsh and fulfil it.”
Her husband plops down beside her, nursing his knees. “Something to do with a sick child who got better,” he says, taking off his glasses and gesturing for water.
“What kind of sickness?”
“What kind of sickness? How would I know? I didn’t pry!”
“Must have been a life-threatening condition.”
“He wouldn’t be doing that over a simple fever. Thank you, ma’am,” he says, returning the bottle.
The young woman stands up. “Let’s go. It’s about to rain.” Her husband follows suit.
“I’ll stay here for a bit,” I say.
“Well, then we will see you on the hilltop.”
Beyond the steep stairs, under the rumbling clouds, the land undulates into hills big and small, blanketed in thick green forest with concrete patches and serpentine roads. In the drizzle, the man climbing on his knees approaches, his face wincing in pain and determination. I offer him water. His wife declines with a namaste and a smile, pointing to her own bottle.
*** END ***
Note: This story was inspired by Yiyun Li’s short story, “The Particles of Order,” and by her conversation with Anderson Cooper on the CNN podcast, All There Is.
________________________
Abhinav is an engineer by profession. He grew up in Hyderabad and now calls Bengaluru his home. His short stories have appeared in the Indian Literature journal, The Bangalore Review, State of Matter, and the 2024 Deodar Prize anthology.
_________________________
Find MeanPepperVine on Instagram @MeanPepperVine
