With the pallu of my sari obscuring most of my face, I’ve remained unrecognized on this journey home. Now it’s to be seen if broken birds like me, who fail miserably at migration, are welcome.

“Last stop: Sanctuary!” the conductor yells, and the bus shudders to a halt. I inhale deeply. I wait till all the passengers alight, clutch my cloth bag, and step out of the bus. I leave behind the early morning bustle of the village bus stop and wait near an orchard.

During my two-year exile in the city, this world of green remained an elusive dream. It’s a joy to find the bushes alive with bulbuls, robins, sunbirds, and tailorbirds. Kingfishers, drongos, mynahs, and bee-eaters perch on trees and transmission lines. The breeze, resonant with birdsong, cleanses my ears grown accustomed to abuse. When the seed pods from a mahogany tree descend in unhurried whirls, I feel my tension slip away.

I see him first and lower my head. The breeze snatches the sari pallu off my face, unveiling swollen lips, purple bruises, and a missing tooth. He wheels his bicycle toward me. When our eyes meet, a muscle twitches in his clenched jaw. Why do I try to hide the truth? He’s my twin brother—my brave half. He’ll know. He looks around my feet.

“No luggage,” I whisper.

He bangs a fist on the handlebar. “Sit,” he commands. “This time, I swear I’ll beat some sense into your husband’s head.”

“Shivu, forget it. I’m never going back.”

I sit sideways on the bicycle carrier, and he pedals effortlessly. The morning breeze works a soft hairbrush through my tangled hair. There’s no finer way to grow wings than race through the countryside on a bicycle. We sail past jade-green fields pegged with white herons, and buffaloes wallowing in the muddy pond—one picture-postcard scene after another. But I have no delusions; I’ve lived here long enough to see the struggles behind the picturesque calm.

We stop to greet Nanja, who is driving his bullock cart up the road. I finger the leaves on the tendrils of fresh cucumbers in his laden cart. “These leaves look burnt, Nanja.”

He throws his hands up. “I’m worried there’s something wrong with the river again. The yield has halved too. But who has the time or money to find out? Take some cucumbers, Devi. I have to hurry to the market now.” He yells to urge the bulls forward. “Devi, is everything okay? I know a good teeth doctor . . .” he says, his gaze averted.

I blush as I put four cucumbers in my bag, but I don’t cover my face. The village will know, sooner or later; a failed marriage is hard to hide. I thank Nanja and sit on the cycle. I hope my return won’t hurt Shivu’s chances of finding a bride.

A few minutes later, Shivu brakes suddenly. “Devi, look up!”

A painted stork flies overhead with a leafy twig in his yellow beak. Seven storks follow him. The morning sun lights up their pinkish-orange plumage. Like the aircraft display for dignitaries on Republic Day, they fly in our honor. Shivu salutes them. I laugh, recalling our childhood ritual, and do the same. He grins.

“How’s Kumbha?” I ask.

“We haven’t found any dead crocodiles. So I guess he’s fine as any five-year-old crocodile can be.”

When the cycle bounces on the uneven path, my body reminds me where the blows had rained. But here in my winged world, between the clouds and the earth, I can never remain pessimistic for long. A hope, strong and sure, takes hold of me every time I see a bird in flight.

We pass a copse with young eucalyptus trees, beside which ornamental trees burst forth from the confines of a huge garden.

“Does Arun still live here?” I ask.

“Of course. Where else can that idiot go?”

A black SUV vrooms past and screeches to a halt ahead of us. A tall, well-dressed man steps out. His shiny boots crunch the gravel as he walks towards us with the green world captured in his sunglasses.

He pushes the sunglasses up till they crown his head. “Oh ho. Look who’s here. I should’ve warned you, Shivu. It’s impossible to get rid of your twin. She’ll always return to haunt you,” Arun says. He pointedly examines my face and smirks. I lift my chin and stare back.

 “Since you’re here, won’t you both come inside?” Arun asks.

“Devi, let’s go home,” Shivu says, and starts to pedal. The cycle doesn’t move.

“Hey! Not so fast,” Arun says with his grip firm on the handlebar.

“Arun, this isn’t school to bully us. Go away.” Shivu twists the handlebar, and I almost fall down.

“Shouldn’t Devi see what she tried to destroy?” Arun throws his head up and laughs. “And don’t be afraid. These days, the swimming pool is exclusively for humans.”

I tuck my sari pallu at the waist and fix my hair in a tight knot. “Shivu, let’s go inside.” I walk past Arun. Tiny pebbles prick my feet through my worn rubber flip-flops.

Arun overtakes us and the huge gates slide open at his command. Trimmed ashoka trees line the path like green-tipped arrows. I walk across the lawns toward the swimming pool. The water in the large kidney-shaped depression shimmers silver blue. I clench my fists. That rainy night in May when the very young crocodiles vied for space in this pool seems like only yesterday.

Our childhood war with Arun had intensified in my first year of college when I overheard him confide to a classmate that he had crocodile babies in his swimming pool. His dad had brought them from their farmhouse and was going to send them somewhere that night. Shivu and I decided to investigate. That night we snuck into Arun’s huge garden through the back gate and squelched over the lawns. Despite the weak lighting, we could see the workmen pile empty wooden crates on the driveway as rain poured in torrents over the crocodiles in the pool. Shivu tripped over a young crocodile stranded on its back in the dense shrubbery. It had a gash on its neck. He wrapped it in a bathing towel and we raced back to release it in the stream behind our hut. When we returned to Arun’s house to rescue another, we found the gates locked, and Alsatians roamed the floodlit grounds, barking incessantly.

Back home that night, I stayed awake, unable to shake off the feeling that we’d been robbed. The next morning, I informed the police and the newspaper. Despite the lack of proof, a gutsy reporter dug around and kicked up annoying dust that took ages to settle.

A fortnight later, Arun’s father ordered me to visit his office. He paced the floor in silence while I waited.

“Devi, you’re in Arun’s college?”

I nodded.

He spoke through the steeple formed with his fingers. “Good . . . good. Chemistry, botany, zoology are your majors, right?”

I was in his son’s class, and he knew it. His theatrics wearied me. I stood to leave.

“Stop! Listen carefully. Of the eighty odd eggs a marsh crocodile lays, only five or six hatchlings make it to adulthood. And what did I do? I removed some thirty eggs and got them hatched in my farmhouse. Now those young crocodiles, destined to die, will die somewhere else. That’s all. What’s this fuss with police and press?”

I asked him how in the first place he’d assumed the eggs were his for taking. Citing more examples, I argued that Nature’s decimation of hatchlings and his were in no way equivalent. He grew livid. He warned me to back off. “A boatman’s daughter shouldn’t overstep her limits and waste her education on activism,” he said.

Our crocodile survived, but had remained in a sickly stupor for months. We named him Kumbhakarna, or Kumbha, for short. His ill-fated siblings had probably traveled to Europe’s fashion houses in handbag, shoe, or belt avatars.

Arun coughs. “I see the pool is making you nostalgic. Your Kumbha . . . how is he? Or, is it a she? I heard you had it shifted to the Sanctuary.”

“I’ve seen enough,” I say and retrace my steps to the gate. I gesture toward the ornamental trees. “You should at least have had the good sense to plant native trees. And a whole field of eucalyptus trees? You’re crazy. They rob the soil of moisture—”

 “You passed an exam with distinction spouting that nonsense, but look where that got you.” He hurries behind us. “Good for you, your husband put you in your place—back in a boat by the river. But do visit me again, I’ll show you my textile factory.”

Shivu pedals furiously down the path. We hear Arun yell, “Kiss Kumbha for me, will you?”

“Devi, you know he’s a stupid fellow. Why did you have to go inside?”

“I don’t know. Curiosity, I guess. Shivu, you should’ve gone to college too. Maybe become a police officer and thrown such crooks in jail.”

“High school was a huge torture in itself, and anyway, you’re the brighter one.”

Shivu stops near our hut. I run down the path. A pennant of Shivu’s clothes flaps on a clothesline tied between two coconut trees. The door is still hinged askew. Inside the hut it is dark and cool. I sniff a ripening jackfruit; my weakness for it is legendary. I close the door, open the old tin box, and change into Shivu’s old khakis altered to my size and a faded green kurta. I remove my mangalsutra and stuff it with my sari into the box.

In the stream behind the hut I wash my face and painful past away. So what if Kumbha wasn’t a pet? He too had deserved a chance at survival. Didn’t we all need safe places to heal? Arun and others like him could go to hell.

Inside the hut, Shivu heats a stew made of beans and serves it to me with a ball of ragi. He watches me eat with an almost maternal concern. “Eat slowly. It must hurt when you chew.”

I shake my head and eat with false gusto. “See, no pain at all.”

 “So . . . why did he hit you so badly?”

“I got him fired,” I say.

Shivu leans forward and pours me a glass of water. I’m loath to relive those terrible days, but I owe him an explanation. “You’ve seen the lake next to the textile dyeing factory I worked in? Our factory was one of four hundred others polluting the lake. After the foamy lake caught fire, government inspectors visited our factory. All I did was agree with them that there was no waste treatment plant on the premises.” I sip water slowly. “They were going to shut us down anyway, but my supervisor fired me for being ‘ungrateful.’ And then, using me as an excuse, he fired my husband yesterday.”

Shivu’s anxious expression makes me feel guilty. “I’ll find a job. Let me stay, please.”

With a cry of anguish he raises his palm as if to force my words back. “This is your home too, and money’s not the issue. We’ll manage. But you never told me it was so bad.”

“I wanted to book a police complaint against him and return home last year, but Ajji and Uncle kept forcing me to adjust. I’ve had enough. I’m twenty-four, not a baby. I can be a guide, a gardener, a cleaner, or even row boats for tourists like you do.”

“We’ll see about that later. There’s no hurry. I promised Ajji and Uncle’s family I would bring them medicines. It’s strange—they’ve been down with sore throat and fever for some months now.”

When Shivu goes to the Sanctuary office to ask permission to take the afternoon off, I lie down on the grass and close my eyes. My consciousness skims the silence, gathering the music of the lapping stream, rustling leaves, chirps and warbles of tiny birds. City dwellers yearn for tranquility too. Hounded by the crowds and noise, many take their gardens to the rooftops or throng the dwindling lung spaces. It is sad how they have to fight now to save their few lakes and trees.

A commotion breaks out and I open my eyes. Mynahs are hopping around the tamarind tree. Crows are cawing and diving at the tree in repeated sorties. Sparrows are chirping urgently. I rise to investigate. It’s the shikra. With his gray upper parts, fine orange-barred breast, and banded tail, he’s a handsome bird. The sharp curved beak and alert eyes hint of a baby snatcher on the prowl. He makes a show of nonchalance, but takes wing when a band of clumsy babblers throw a fit. I laugh aloud. He is so like the men in the city buses who sit stubbornly in seats reserved for women and look out of the window, impervious to the shrill protests around them.

I walk the unfettered space around the hut with no clock or calendar to scissor my day into bits. My two-year absence from life was the result of a marriage my grandmother had arranged, confident that a “graduate bride” more than made up for being a poor orphan. My husband fixed me up to work in the same factory where he was van driver. I clocked nine-hour shifts, six days a week, for seven thousand rupees a month in a horrible cramped shed. At home, my in-laws worked hard to keep my “educated airs” in place.

I sit under the mango tree and watch the two-way, accident-free traffic of black harvester ants on the clothesline. Didn’t we humans belong to Nature too? Why was it so hard to maintain its orderliness in our lives?

Shivu returns by afternoon. We haul our boat and row upstream. My eyes continue to soak up the Barringtonia, screw pines, jamuns, and thorny shrubs that formed a dense boundary on the riverbank. Crocodiles doodle the calm waters with their serrated tails. Crows and raptors fly high in the afternoon sky like handlebar moustaches relinquished by giants. Cormorants spread their wings in the classic Titanic pose as they soak the sun. Fruit bats ponder over the affairs of the world from their upside-down perches. Openbill storks and painted storks skitter like long-legged girls in short skirts. Every now and then a cheery river tern stops by on a boulder beside us.

“Look!” Shivu points the oar at a boulder.

An openbill stork disappears headfirst into the jaws of a crocodile. Thin legs strike the air feebly before the crocodile goes underwater. The stork’s four dumbstruck companions stare at the ripples as if shocked that death was so near.

“Storks feast on crocodile hatchlings, so this is actually revenge,” Shivu says.

I know that too, and have great respect for the workings of Nature. But the death of a bird always makes me sad.

We course the river as it widens and narrows past the fields. It is when we reach the quieter regions far away from the Sanctuary that a stench hits us. Dead fish float in the water, their scales glinting in the sunlight. I draw in my breath sharply. Shivu rows the boat to the bank and secures it to the trunk of a tree. “I’ll show you Arun’s factory,” he says grimly.

It’s never pleasant to be ambushed by a crocodile, so we walk carefully. The path intersects a new asphalt road. We follow it for a kilometer to reach a huge compound. Broken glass glints wickedly under the barbed wire on the high perimeter walls. The signboard that looms over us proclaims: Arun Textiles. We exchange looks. Four years ago, the villagers of Namhalli had obtained a stay order against another textile company after numerous devotees of the Gangamma temple on the riverbank complained of nausea and vomiting following a dip in the river. How like Arun to repeat the mistake and thumb his nose at the law. His effluent treatment plant clearly existed only on paper.

When we reach Ajji’s hut we find the family too listless to berate my return. They blame their illness on the weather. Didn’t it ever occur to them that their river was ill too?

We leave early and promise to return with more medicines. It is past sunset when we row home on the reflection of the trees on crimson waters. Birds are flying back to their nests. Parakeets are returning to the isles in chattering groups. They remind me of the garment factory workers—women who spill out on the roads from cramped buildings just as the first streetlights come on. They talk volubly, almost nonstop, as they hurry home, and more often than not have nothing cheerful to say.

Shivu frowns. “Devi, the manager at the sanctuary said that upstream, twelve families of spoonbills have disappeared and nearly three hundred egrets have died. I thought the paper factory was to blame, but these textile factories too—”

“Arun will use western commodes inside his fancy house, but make his factory shit in the river. This should stop. But first, let’s arm ourselves with facts. We’ll collect water samples and get them tested. We’ll interview farmers and villagers all along the river. I’ll send a solid report to the government.” Shivu nods as he rows the boat into the small cove beside our hut.

I help secure the boat to a tree and watch it bob gently in the water. In the ever-widening ambit of this greedy world, a sanctuary shrinks until it exists only in one’s mind. Humans can envisage the vanishing world from their armchairs in soundproof, dustproof, temperature-controlled capsules. But what about the mute creatures? Where will they go when their forests shrink and their rivers are poisoned? This was the world that had protected us when we were orphaned; now it was our turn to stand guard.

I suddenly remember what Arun had asked me to do. I blow a kiss to the river. I’m delighted when a serrated tail swishes and disappears underwater.