Chapter 11: An Unsettling Thirst

Chapter 11: An Unsettling Thirst

Weeks passed. The monsoon arrived, washing the dust from the streets and the memory of fear from the town’s face, or so it seemed. The river, swollen and brown, returned to its role as a lifeline, its dark history submerged beneath the churning, life-giving waters. Rohan’s disappearance became another sad story swallowed by the Ghat of the Hungry, a cautionary tale for children that would fade into myth, just like the story of Dev before him. A new, fractured kind of normal began to set in.

Our home was the quietest it had ever been. The constant, thrumming hum of my mother’s vigilance was gone. She no longer woke before dawn to light extra incense or check the wards. The silver nail above the door was just a nail now, not a sentinel. The small Tulsi plant on our veranda was no longer the centerpiece of a desperate spiritual battle, but simply a plant. She smiled more, a placid, easy smile I hadn’t seen since I was a small child, but her eyes, once sharp and perceptive enough to see into other worlds, were calm. They were empty. The fire that had burned in them for decades, fueled by grief and fear, had been extinguished.

She remembered the monster. She remembered the ritual, the terror, the night by the river. But the reason, the core of her lifelong fight, was a perfect, seamless blank.

One afternoon, I found the tarnished silver amulet where I had dropped it by the riverbank. I brought it home and placed it on the table in front of her. “I found this, Ma.”

She picked it up, her expression one of mild curiosity. “It’s very old,” she said, her voice light. “Where did you get it?”

“It was… it was Kiran’s,” I said, testing the name, a foolish, hopeful part of me praying for a flicker of recognition.

She looked at me, her head tilted, her brow furrowed in genuine, painless confusion. “Kiran?” she repeated, as if trying out a foreign word. “Who is that, beta?”

I took the amulet from her hand and put it away in the wooden box with the crayon drawing of a boy she no longer knew. I never mentioned his name again. The Jal-Pishach, in its final moment, had performed the cruelest of amputations, cutting away not a limb, but a foundational pillar of her soul. She was free of the haunting, but she was also untethered from the tragedy that had made her who she was. I had my mother back, but it was a faded copy, a ghost with a gentle smile. The weight of remembering now belonged to me alone.

The world outside my home was no less alien. The friendships that had once been the bedrock of my life were now ruins. I saw Sameer once at the market. Our eyes met for a fleeting second across a pile of vegetables. I saw a flash of fear and deep, unshakable shame in his gaze before he turned and hurried away, his mother pulling him along as if I were a source of contagion. The daag, the stain the pandit had spoken of, was still on me, even if the creature was gone.

Vikram was harder. I saw him near the old cricket ground, a place I now avoided like a tomb. He didn't run. He just stood there, watching me, his face pale and etched with a guilt so profound it was almost a physical deformity. He was the pragmatist who had made a horrifying calculation and had to live with being wrong. There was nothing to say. We were no longer boys who could patch up a fight with a shared laugh. We were survivors of a private war, and we had chosen different sides. His bargain had been rejected, but the offer itself had created a chasm between us that no apology could ever bridge.

And the hunger, the ravenous, soul-consuming craving for fried food, was gone. Utterly. One morning I woke up and the phantom scent of samosas that had been my constant tormentor was simply… absent. The silence it left behind was not peace. It was a profound and terrifying emptiness. The hunger had been a monster, but it had also been a purpose. My life had revolved around fighting it, resisting it. Now, in its absence, I felt hollowed out, a vessel scoured clean. The fear, the anger, the adrenaline—it had all drained away, leaving only a quiet, aching void.

Life settled into a dull, grey routine. School, home, silence. I moved through my days like a sleepwalker, the vibrant colors of the world muted. The price of silence, I learned, was a piece of my own soul.

One evening, several weeks after the new moon, I went to the small bathroom to wash my face before bed. The air was thick and humid from the monsoon rains. I turned on the tap, splashing cool water on my face, the mundane ritual a small comfort. I cupped my hands, drinking deeply, feeling the water quench the day's normal, physical thirst.

I reached to turn off the faucet, but my hand stopped halfway. The tap had a slow, steady leak. A single, perfect droplet of water was forming on the lip of the metal. It swelled, shimmering in the dim light from the single bulb, growing heavier, more pregnant with potential.

Drip.

It fell into the basin, the sound a small, sharp echo in the quiet room.

Another droplet began to form immediately. I watched it, mesmerized. The world outside the small, porcelain basin seemed to fade away. The hum of the ceiling fan, the distant sound of a passing scooter, the chirping of crickets in the wet night—it all fell silent. My entire universe narrowed to that single, swelling bead of water.

It was not the roaring, fiery craving for a samosa. There was no scent, no phantom sizzle of hot oil. This was different. This was a cold, silent, and infinitely more profound need. It was a pull that originated not in my empty stomach, but somewhere deeper, in the marrow of my bones, in the very core of my being.

My throat wasn't dry. I wasn't thirsty in any physical sense. But I was overcome by a sudden, inexplicable, and maddening desire for that single drop of cold, still water.

I stared, my breath held in my chest. I wanted to taste it, to feel its cold purity on my tongue more than I had ever wanted the greasy, spicy relief of the fried food. The hunger for the samosa had been a lure, a tainted, human desire twisted into a weapon. This felt purer. More fundamental.

This was the thirst of the river itself.

I leaned closer, my reflection a wavering, haunted stranger in the small, cracked mirror above the sink. My eyes, however, were not looking at my own face. They were fixed, with an intensity that terrified me, on the faucet, waiting with an agonizing, patient hunger for the moment that single, perfect drop would finally fall.