State Secrets

State Secrets
(Sreekumar Ezhuththaani)
One of the stories in his upcoming collection: Before I Forget
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The first thing they did was stare.

Not smile. Not speak. Just stare.

The lobby of the Bauhunia Hotel smelled faintly of polished wood, coffee, and the cold breath of air-conditioning. Outside the glass doors, Pune traffic dragged itself through the wet evening like a tired animal. A wedding band somewhere nearby kept repeating the same trumpet phrase again and again.

Then Daliya laughed first.

Jasmine covered her mouth with her hand as if she had suddenly become a schoolgirl again.

And then both of them forgot the years and held each other tightly.

“You’ve become fat,” Daliya said into her shoulder.

“You’ve become old,” Jasmine replied.

“You look terrible.”

“You look worse.”

They laughed again, louder this time.

For years Daliya had wanted to meet Jasmine, the girl who had once lived in the neighboring house back in their village, the girl who disappeared into North India and NGO work and relief camps and trainings and distant cities. Jasmine said she had come to Pune for a professional workshop.

But that was only half true.

She had really come because she heard Daliya was here.

After dinner, they walked outside the hotel. Near the entrance was a tiny children’s swing painted in fading red and yellow. Jasmine sat on it awkwardly, her legs stretched out, her sandals scraping the ground lightly.

Daliya lowered herself into an uncomfortable iron chair beside her.

The night carried a thin chill.

Somewhere behind the hotel compound wall, a dog barked without pause.

They spoke first about safe things.

School uniforms.

The old canal behind their houses.

A teacher who used to smell of snuff powder.

The mango thief everyone blamed on Jasmine.

A dead rooster Daliya once buried with full funeral rites.

But beneath all those memories sat another thing, swollen and breathless, waiting to emerge.

Both of them knew it.

Finally Daliya exhaled and leaned back.

“Before my father died,” she said quietly, “he confessed something to my mother. Before my mother died, she told me. She said only one person needed to know the secret at a time. I’m telling you now because… for some reason, I feel we are not two people.”

Jasmine looked at her carefully.

“If both of us know it,” Daliya continued, “it will still remain as safe as if only one person knew.”

Jasmine suddenly burst out laughing.

“What is this, some national defence secret? Was your family manufacturing bombs?”

“Shut up,” Daliya said. “I heard the bomb-making stories were about your family.”

“Oh, so you heard those too? Then there’s probably nobody left in Kerala who doesn’t know.”

The laughter faded.

Jasmine looked toward the parking lot lights.

“Did you know your family used to be Hindus long ago?” she asked.

“How would I know? Wasn’t that too a state secret?”

“Do you know why your family converted?”

“Yes,” Jasmine said mock-seriously. “Because your family and my family fought over a tree.”

“Correct,” Daliya replied softly. “But you don’t know why the fight really happened.”

“Oh, I know that too. A branch from the sapota tree in our yard grew into your property. Your father cut it without asking. The fight became a police case. My father lost. Then he converted religions just to irritate your family forever.”

“Almost correct,” Daliya said. “Actually, we changed too. My father used to say there was never much religion in our house anyway. When your family became Muslim, ours became more aggressively Hindu just to spite you more.”

Jasmine shook her head, smiling faintly.

“And then both families started competing like mad people. One week there would be a loud religious function in your house. mics, fireworks, crowds, drums. Next week ours would do something even louder. Nobody slept peacefully for years.”

“That part everybody knows,” Jasmine said. “Tell me something new.”

“There is something new,” Daliya replied. “Something nobody knows.”

The wind moved through the hotel garden shrubs with a dry whisper.

Jasmine’s expression changed slightly.

“My father,” Daliya said slowly, “didn’t cut that branch randomly.”

“What do you mean?”

“He did it deliberately. Someone advised him to.”

Jasmine sat upright now.

“Who?”

“A local godman.”

They looked at each other in silence.

Daliya continued.

“My parents fought constantly. Every single day. My father went to see a holyman to solve the problem. He asked my father how things were with the neighbors. My father said both families were very close. The prick told him something strange, that if harmony with the neighbors became hostility, the problems inside our house would disappear.”

Jasmine blinked.

“They discussed many ways to create conflict. Finally they settled on the harmless idea of cutting the branch.”

“My God,” Jasmine whispered.

“Which god?” Daliya asked bitterly. “If gods existed properly, none of this would have happened.”

The old bitterness in her voice surprised even herself.

“What began as a tiny quarrel became a war. Villagers added poison. Relatives added fuel. Suddenly my parents had a common enemy, your people. And after that they became inseparable. Almost like love birds, no love birds really, my mother used to say.”

Jasmine stared at the ground.

“Yes,” she murmured. “For nearly ten years our families hated each other. Then one day suddenly everything changed. My father used to say it was our mothers who made peace first. Not the men.”

“I heard the same,” Daliya said. “But I never understood why.”

Jasmine looked at her for a long time.

“This meeting isn’t accidental, Daliya,” she said finally. “I came here on purpose.”

Daliya immediately groaned dramatically.

“If you’re planning to murder me, at least tell me before killing me. The hotel bill money is inside my bag. You can also take the ring and bracelet.”
Both of them burst into helpless laughter again.
“Stop it,” Jasmine said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I also have a story.”

“Wonderful. A murder story?”

“A girl,” Jasmine began quietly, “was returning home from school alone.”

Something cold moved inside Daliya’s chest.

“There was a mullah she hated. He stood on the roadside holding out an ice candy to her. When she went near him, he grabbed her.”

Daliya froze.

The memory rose slowly inside her like shallow shapeless footprints appearing after a retreating wave.

“He dragged her toward a bush,” Jasmine continued. “Then suddenly a demon in black appeared from nowhere. It pushed him away and told the girl to run.”

Daliya’s lips parted.

“Jasmine…” she whispered. “That is my story.”

“Why did it become only your story?”
“They found the mullah dead that evening,” Daliya said faintly. “I was barely ten. I never told anyone. I thought the thing that saved me was some spirit from the temple grove. Or a goddess.”

“Rubbish,” Jasmine snorted softly. “If gods and demons started interfering in every village problem, this world would be less rotten.”

“In my case something did interfere.”

“Yes,” Jasmine said. “A goddess.”

Daliya stared at her.

“My mother told me everything before she died,” Jasmine said.

Her voice trembled now.

“The person who saved you… the person who killed him… was not a ghost. Not a demon. It was an angel.”

The hotel lights flickered briefly in the wind.

“It was my mother, clad in burkha, returning from her Quaran lessons..”

Daliya felt suddenly dizzy.

“Even though you belonged to the enemy family,” Jasmine continued, “and even though the man was an important religious figure from our own community, my mother smashed his head open with a black stone.”

The sounds around them seemed to disappear. The croton leaves stopped swaying and listened.

Only the faint creaking of the children’s swing remained.

“She carried that secret alone for months,” Jasmine said. “Then one day she went to your house and confessed everything to your mother. That was when both of them realized how absurd the hatred between the families had been.”

Daliya covered her mouth.

All these years she had believed religion healed their families.

Now it stood before her like smoke after a burned house.

“Our mothers stopped believing in gods after that,” Jasmine said quietly. “Stopped believing in religion too. But they still needed something to hold on to. That’s why they joined the Baháʼí Faith. Later our fathers followed them.”

Daliya began crying silently.

Not politely.

Not gracefully.

Her shoulders shook.

She clutched Jasmine tightly.

“Amma…” she kept whispering. “Amma…”

But neither of them knew whose mother she was mourning.

Perhaps both.

Perhaps all mothers.

Perhaps the frightened women who carry impossible things inside them until silence itself becomes a wound.

“Our names were changed later too,” Jasmine said after a while.

“I know,” Daliya replied weakly. “But only now do I understand why.”

It was very late by then.

The hotel corridors had gone quiet.

Only the humming of central air-conditioning remained.

“Shall we sleep?” Jasmine asked softly.

Daliya nodded.

“Can I sleep in your room?”

“Idiot,” Jasmine said. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

That night they turned the AC unbearably cold and slept holding each other tightly beneath the heavy white blanket.

Like mother and daughter.

Neither of them cared who was who.