SCUM.

By Rhea Purnita Paine

Stuck to the corner of the lid, sticky like a four year olds suspicious fingers. Or yesterday’s pudding gone sour because she left it out on the kitchen counter overnight, in the middle of the melting summer. Green like gangrene. Green like envy encrusted in his mistress’s eyes. Green like the rotting stench of vegetables forgotten in the back of the fridge.

It was sitting there quietly, while the noisy scrub pushed and shoved to scrape it off. Solidified with years of her oversight and migraines. Clawing in with every passing day of Shanti bai’s knowing blind eyes.

It sat there vehemently. Still, like the murky waters of an urban pond. Refusing to budge, like Durga’s heavy foot on Mahisura’s chest, pushed in its place for all eternity.

But the scrub was an obstinate bastard. It had decided to meddle, lift off the heavy stain from her pages, or at least the corner of the frying pan. Or maybe it was the stubborn delicate hands that ignorant people mislabelled as dainty. Or was it deliberate ignorance? The persistent hands that still smelled of garlic and herbs, that wouldn’t give up, that refused to let it be; trying to edge it out from its antiquated home, its comfortable little corner.

Maybe it slid a little.

Or maybe it was the sun playing tricks with her eyes. Eyes that looked like a smudged puddle of mud after a fresh rain.

The thick brows tangled into a fine line of frustration. Fixed on her head like the blood red bindi that her mother wore everyday. Her mother’s pride and position as a married woman concentrated into a little dot, plastered on her head for the whole world to see. Cementing her place securely with a pinch of sindoor in the parting of hair.

Vermillion and scathing.

Like chilli powder.

Her own bare forehead told another tale. It was too unfettered for rules. Too ambiguous in its assured freedom. She had traded tradition for toil. But she didn’t mind that. Better to be moving, crawling even an inch, than to be stuck like a discarded doll in a rotting bog, bigotry in gentrified society, or this damned little piece of scum.

A stray strand of hair got into her dishwater eyes and the pan slipped a little clanging against the steel sink.

She knotted her hair back into a tight bun.

Tight like the knot of her grandmother’s saree over the keys of their ancestral home. Announcing her arrival in every nook, jingling her superiority in every corner of the house. Well almost every corner. The little temple above the stairs reigned over such trivial noises. Here the heads were bowed in obeisant servitude. Hailing the supremacy of the 33 million higher beings.  Or at least the 33 that could fit in this wooden abode.

Maybe that’s how she came to understand that there wasn’t just the one.

But the many one’s. Always looking for the next one.

The end was always visible before it began. Like the horizon, always looming in the distance.

A constantly receding reminder of the future.

But she had to concentrate on the present.

They were about to come. The guests. Could you call them guests if you really didn’t want to meet them? If you did everything in your power to actively avoid them? If you had used up all your excuses and had to finally give in to a haranguing relative’s pleas of well meaning wishes? Was it even really well meaning? Or simply ulterior motives refusing to be scorned off?

So she finally agreed to meet them. Carve out a little piece of time from her rapidly slipping life, just like this pan would, again, unless she held it more firmly. She turned it over, placing it more forcefully in the narrow strip of counter between the steel sink and her hand.

She wished she could make more of it.

Time.

More of it than what was allotted to her. More of it than fate deemed fit to allocate to her. Drag out the days into the final darkness. Drag it to do more.

But do more what? Cleaning, scrubbing and musing about pointless things? Take another chunk of this 4th dimension and make more room for more meaningless thoughts, merely to cling to life? Cling with a vengeance like this sick little scum.

Cleave on tight. Totter away in the light. Make more. Get more. Be more.

More. More. More.

That’s all that mattered right?

Consume and fill out the clothes. Fill out the room. Fill out the earth.

Fill till you choke with addiction.

Fill till you are brimming with satiety.

Fill till you have stuffed the hole in the soul.

Or what remains in its absence.

Never ending hunger for an unending abyss.

It’s all about taking up more space, wanting more, needing more. Keep looking for more.

Another hit of happiness. Another fleeting feeling. Another distraction.

Or maybe she could use this time to observe.

Look. Peer. Prod. Understand.

But nobody wants to really look at the little details, the tiny things, the rough edges.

It’s all too close for comfort.

Too much reality.

Too much truth.

Too much knowledge.

Too much to handle.

Just too much.

Give us a break. Let us breathe. Let us live. Let us slip our head back in the sand.

Everything was all about size these days.

Bigger. Brighter. Blinder.

XL size burgers, giant TV screens, 50-foot hoardings and rockets that put 100 storey skyscrapers to shame. Measuring their masculine might with their height. Asserting their superiority with their size.

No more tiny steps. Only giant leaps for mankind.

The ginormous lights that light up the future with their massive plastic beams.

Making the future brighter. Or at least the bit lit by the 1000-watt bulbs.

The lights are bright enough to blind us to the filth below. There’s always room in its shade for slums and beggars, addicts and outcasts, farmers and migrant workers. The forgotten lot, the have not’s, the dying and dead shells.

Like this tiny overlooked scab of septic scum.

Hiding in plain sight all these years. All because she never looked at it closely, at anything closely. 

She brought the scrub down with more force, scrubbing back and forth with a furious rage that sent soap flecks flying in her face.

It moved. That dismal dredge.

The fragile fingers firmly fought back. She pushed it with all her might. With one last squeak it slid right out. Like a slimy snake that grudgingly slides out of a rabbit’s burrow. Maybe a bit too late. But finally.

Out with a whimper, not a bang. Out before dusk claimed the last light.

Smiling brightly, she held it up against the dying light of the day. Her perfect piece of scum.

Author Bio:

Rhea Purnita Paine is a writer and editor based in Kolkata, India. She has worked in television and digital media for 14 years. Currently, she is freelancing, finding herself in the bookstagram space and trying to write more fiction. Also, she’s an atheist Bengali, trying to be vegan, live more sustainably, and learning about the various intersections between race, class, gender and the environmental crisis.