My father owns a small farm on the outskirts of Podili with his cousins. We went there once to see the well they were constructing, a large pit in the earth twenty-five feet across and about that deep with steps leading along its edge down into darkness. The land was dry but now there are mango trees, coconut trees, green citrus and rice.
I am here by the well at your house, grandfather. I see a flicker in the dark when I pull water up by the rope. I can’t see it but I hear the sounds of things falling in. Light falls in and returns as shadows. A centipede dances by my feet and I let it, stepping back.
No one has committed suicide by jumping into the well. I know this because it would have been boarded up, the water tainted by the body’s decay. I fell in a well once, not a very deep one, outside our apartment high-rise in Hyderabad. My fear raised the circle of sky outside higher. It made night cover the walls. I imagined what would happen if I grew tired of paddling. Shadows would march towards the center, tightening their noose around the sun, leaving me to sink in the dark. To raise myself out of the water I grabbed onto rocks jutting from the wall made of layers of flat stones like shale, felt the spider webs attach to my wet fingers.
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Sep 28, 07:17 PM