The Fable of the Wild Bear
Trigger warning: Sexual violence
Back in those days, the local fable of the ugly, grotesque, blood-thirsty Wild Bear from the deep shadows of the woods caught every child of the village off guard. The oldies would go around spreading rumours that children’s mischief or social non-conformity would result in the divine prosecution of their birth-givers. The isolated Wild Bear was supposed to be a grim reaper of sorts, performing activities at the order of the Almighty. So, for every financial misfortune, unprecedented natural calamity or abrupt death in one’s family, the children of the house would blame themselves. The parents, and in fact, all the elders, were well aware of the baselessness of this myth but preferred such falsity over their children’s reckless tendencies. And so, they didn’t essentially intervene in these episodes of fright and misinformation.
Baba liked to keep his professional and private lives particularly separate. So, often, Ma and Baba would sleep in different rooms. After much conflict, I came to the conclusion that Baba was heavily worked up but was considerate enough to not burden Ma in any way because of his anxieties. But sometimes (very seldom), I remember waking up from my sleep on hearing Ma struggle to fight the Wild Bear that tried his luck at consuming her.
Usually, neither Madirakshi nor I would experience these episodes first-hand, we could just hear the Wild Bear’s unearthly growling overshadowing Ma’s pitiful silent cries from the room next to ours. Strangely, whenever Ma slept in our room, the Wild Bear wouldn’t really attack her. Or even if it did somehow enter our room, it was almost like he’d give in to Ma’s sorrowful predicament of not wanting to be chastised in front of her children. Instead, they’d secretly go to the storehouse next to our room to complete their dealings.
Coming upon Ma’s inclusion on his list of potential victims absolutely horrified me. More so, for it was unbearable for me to witness Ma’s muffled squeals. But, very realistically speaking, as a ten-year-old, I lacked the power to do anything even if I wished to. Moreover, every time I woke up from a nightmare, my sleep paralysis would take over my body, heavily restricting my psychosomatic functions. The only difference this time was that the nightmare had come true. I could only imagine how desperately Ma would’ve wanted Baba to rescue her from the Wild Bear, but being the other half of the supposedly-considerate couple that they’d been, she refrained from worrying his heart out.
It was the last day of November. Ma slept next to Madirakshi and me in our room on the wide charpai. Ma has a habit of falling asleep way before us. While we girls were trying to sleep, we felt a fog of eeriness covering most of our room, indicating an ill omen. It seemed to celebrate the coming of the hairy sinister. His heavy footsteps alerted us both, so we pretended to have already slept.
The Wild Bear, reeking strongly of the locally-produced alcohol, swiftly climbed on top of Ma. Her lifeless legs were violently flung in the air, his gigantic paws choking her by the neck, his enormous body wistfully dissolving her existence and taking its ownership through consumption. At that moment, the brutalities being inflicted on Ma were cognizant of a soul-draining roller-coaster ride. I found no sense of joy in such escapist imagination. I wanted to die at that very moment. Even though it wasn’t my body that was being violated, I constantly felt nauseous and dizzy from the bizarre movements the charpai, just like Ma, was forced into making. It was the strange feeling of helplessness when you’re on the ride--- you know you can’t continue any longer but you also know there’s no way you can get off it either until the ride officially completes its time and turns.
But I also got an important lead. The Wild Bear was not entirely an animal, he was half-human too. It sort of made sense to me then why he’d commit such inhumane acts. His heavy, hoarse breathing deafened my ears. With each breath he took, I felt like I was losing another of mine. With each fervour that heated his loins, I was freezing to numbness. With each sigh of lust he gave, I was becoming more certain— of what he really might be.
When my sleep paralysis finally spared me, I gathered all the courage left in me and half-turned towards Ma, lying straight on my back, with my head facing the cracked ceiling above. My eyes slyly moved towards the left to comprehend the things I’d never experienced before or rather, the ones I always tried escaping from.
Beside me was a huge bulky figure of the Wild Bear on top of Ma, radiating fierce, evil energy. There was a sinister sense of darkness in his figure which made his presence stand out in the already darkened room. The only sense of light was the glowing reddish orange splinter of a cigarette sparkling rather aggressively on Baba’s ashtray, which otherwise I strongly resented. At intervals, the glowing splinter would rise above and then calmly come back to its original position. With every such instance, the Wild Bear would give off smoke from his mouth. The smell was so ferociously strong that I felt as though I was an active participant in smoking that cigarette.
However, strangely, at that point in time, the reeking of cigarettes made me feel both vulnerable and secure. I cussed myself within for giving in to such flickering sentiments. But the conflict brewing inside my soul prevented me from making it stop- the torture on Ma’s body and soul, even though my sleep paralysis didn’t kick in anymore. Madirakshi, with all her strength, tried to scare off the Wild Bear…till he finally vanished into thin dark airs.
…And the next day, everything was normal, neither of us in the family ever mentioned the Wild Bear incident from the night before. However, it tremendously affected Madirakshi--- shying away from any human touch, refusing to eat, breaking down on seeing the man of the house, voluntarily locking herself in her room and so on. Perhaps this was the consequence of interfering with the divine order, I believed. But the mental torture on her part was mainly at the thought of losing Ma and having no one to protect her from the grave sin that I’d formerly committed.
Madirakshi had always been a fighter, reminding a person of an assertive representative of righteousness. Being the eldest offspring, my grave sin of being a female child was forgiven, in hopes of a second, male child. Sadly, Madirakshi could not escape her ill fate and had to face the brunt. Ma was given all sorts of eatables that would facilitate the slow death of the innocent child inside her womb. But not even the Heavens possess the might to take away from a mother her child. And so, Madirakshi survived the deadly plague inside Ma’s womb.
Tragically, she was a double culprit in the eyes of both human and divine order. But if she was the output, I was the source of such fatality.
It is silly as I think about it now, for it was also the days when my classmates introduced me to sex as a concept and the physical/emotional pleasures associated with it. So, I understood every bit of it—what happened that unfortunate night. However, the taboo related to sex made me believe that whatever occurred was because of the forbidden fruit of knowledge that I’d consumed. But unlike Eve, I wasn’t really regretful of my inquisitiveness.
My experience definitely chilled me to the bone but when I think about Ma, I’m left speechless. While both Madirakshi and I had our own inner battles to fight after the experience, Ma pretended like nothing ever happened. Could she have forgotten everything? Maybe all of it was just a nightmare? Maybe we really were sinners? Maybe everything that happened was far beyond my ability to comprehend? But maybe I was turning a blind eye to the obvious? When I look at it now, I realise it wasn’t the potion of forgetfulness but the potion of silence that Ma would gulp at the end of all such sinful long nights to conceal the ugly truth of the Wild Bear.
Sure enough, the incident deeply baffled me, so I decided to inform Baba of the mishap. I rushed into his solitary room.
“Baba, something bad happened to Ma last night. She was in pain. The…Wild…Wild Bear…was…doing things to Ma and I couldn’t do anything…because…I…was s-s-scared.” I shuddered while trying to narrate the incident.
He didn’t even bother to look up. Just doing his thing, as usual. Counting his notes. Touching his bald head. Listening to the radio. Smoking his cigarette. When I nudged him a little too much, he sharply looked into my eyes while his kept growing larger and larger with each passing second. This wasn’t the fatherly figure I looked up to. His eyes had a prominently ferocious look, like they were on the verge of spurting blood, almost resembling a blood-thirsty animal. He reminded me a lot of something extremely daunting but I somehow couldn’t remember what or perhaps come to terms with. But as soon as he sucked in the smoke from his cigarette like a dead man consuming the potion of eternity, the truth struck me like lightning.
The Bear was no animal, he was entirely human.
He was no stranger. He was no entity of isolation emerging out of the dense woods but a full-fledged family man.
It was no divine order. It was no camouflaging.
It was what it always had been. It was him all along. The hoarse, heavy breathing. The strong reeking of alcohol and cigarettes. It was always there, for so long that I’m starting to believe that I’d confused a sense of fear with longing for fatherly approval and affection.
