Sorry for the delay in the chapter. I had gotten busy with exams and projects.
This chapter explores more of the surroundings and relationships with his peers a bit more to understand what is happening. Hope you like it
'' -- Thoughts
"" -- Saying
The light flittered through the iron grills to touch the light webs of the spider in the corner of the classroom. The poor spider had yet to catch its prey and it sat silently contemplating its next meal. It had been restless. It could sense a kin of itself and yet no matter where it looked it could not find anything but dark slinking shadows. Tranced upon by tales of another time. It shook its head of such thoughts and went back to its meal plan. With no easy prey in sight, it went back to spinning its web unaware of the quiet chaos brewing in the life of the liminal hunter below
"Guys, teacher's coming!" yelled a boy in a white shirt and grey shorts as he dashed through the open, creaking wooden doors of the classroom.
Two spiders jumped in surprise
One scurried back to spinning its web and the other straightened his back to stand in respect and slight boredom
A sing song of good morning mam echoed through the classroom as the teacher came and set her purple handbag on her desk
"Ok children sit down and take out your textbooks" she said one hand waiving at the children and the other fishing through her bag for the Malayalam school textbook. She took out a well worn-out textbook with some colourful sticky notes jutting out from a few pages
"Hmm where did we stop yesterday?" she flips a few pages and finally reaches to a bookmark
"Ah yes chapter 2 line 3, yes. Ok hmmm….. Rudra…. Stand up and read the third line of the poem."
Rudra stood up with bored eyes hastily flipping through his hand me down pages for the lines. He found the start of it and started reading lazily
"I am going for a walk said the duckling. Me…"
"Mone, vittil onnum bakshanam kittiyille? Speak louder" (Son, did you not eat breakfast/food at home)
His classmates giggled as heat climbed up Rudra's ears. The teacher seeing it was enough quickly rapped her fist against the desk
"Silence. Rudra speak again"
"I AM GOING FOR A WALK. SAID THE DUCKLING. ME TOO. SAID THE DUCK"
"Ok, ok fine you read enough. Mathai read the rest"
A thin child stood up to read as Rudra sat down. Rudra sat pensively with his face resting on one hand with half his mind on the teacher's voice, the other wondering if there'd be omelette in his lunch today. His thoughts were interrupted when another boy nudged his elbow, snapping him out of his daydream.
"Entha Avinash?" (What) Rudra asks as he turns to a slightly plump boy with rosy cheeks. The boy's dark black eyes stared back.
"Da, are you coming to play cricket today?"
Rudra pondered a bit before replying
"Hmm ok but is it in-front of the church or the field near the old well at the bottom of the hill?"
"Not in front of the church. Lakshmi and both of her brothers are coming so we will be 13 people. We need more space, so we are going near the well. Also there is some function this week so the church will be busy preparing for that."
"Ok fine. I will be there."
"Ok bring the ball also"
A sound of the class chorus answering the question the teacher interrupted their talk as Rudra tried to continue with what the class was saying to make it seem as if he was paying attention.
He paid a small nod to the boy to confirm the location and went back to listening to the teacher speaking
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"Da did you bring the ball?" asked Avinash as he saw Rudra coming down hill road. Not many cars frequented here and at most there were only the scooters that sped down the road.
"Ya I got an old tennis ball. I still couldn't find the other one." Rudra said as he came down the slope. He handed the ball to Avinash who bounced the ball a few times on the tarred road. He finally caught the ball as it rose on the 5th time and had a satisfied look.
"Well it bounces well enough and doesn't seem to be punctured. This will do."
Rudra and Avinash went to the other people while he rubbed one side of the ball against his shorts more out of habit than out of necessity.
There was already a team of eleven gathered near a slightly even patch of the field. The area had once been cleared out by local workers who used it as a spot to drink as it had a well that they could use to mix with their liquor. Eventually, the police drove them away after repeated complaints from nearby residents about the cooing and vulgar singing. Later, the same space was repurposed for small festivals and local dance performances. Over time, it also became a makeshift stage for travelling magicians and street performers who stopped by to entertain the village. All this activity had gradually forced people to level out parts of the land (not cemented or tarred), leaving behind a few flat strips just even enough for the children to claim as their cricket pitch.
One child was setting a broad piece of wood against 2 large bricks to act as a wicket and was unsuccessful. Another child was dragging his foot against the soil to mark a line for the batsman. The boy at the stump looked up to see them both and
"Oh, you finally came. Vishnu didn't get the ball today, so we were wondering if you had yours." said the boy fixing the stump while pointing at the boy dragging his foot
"Hey, don't blame me, Shalom. You hit my previous ball beyond the treeline into some ditch. Now my mother won't let me take the new ball unless we are playing in front of the church."
Rudra simply chuckled and simply motioned for Vishnu to move away a bit so that he could fix the stump. Rudra caught the stump mid fall and straightened it perpendicular to the ground and simply hammered it into the soft edge of the pitch with three slaps to the top.
"Damn what is Leela aunty feeding you? I don't think you can even do that with a hammer" Asked Vishnu in surprise
"Haha, I guess you should eat all the thoran, especially that pavikka thoran. It is good for the bones you know" ( thoran – stir fried vegetable dish with coconut, pavikka thoran—bitter gourd stir-fry with grated coconut)
"Eww. Thoran is fine, but pavikka thoran is the worst" Avinash said completely disgusted
"Anyways let us call the others, Rahul, Laksmi, and everyone else come. We got the ball." yelled Shalom to the rest who were broken out in small groups.
The rest of the evening went in a bunch of odd or even games to decide the teams and a couple of how's that and the ball flying. At one point Vishnu hit the ball far and it fell into the small ditch of muddy water. Luckily Rudra was the fielder and went alone and as simply folded his middle and ring finger while outstretching his thumb, index and little finger into the signature spider man hand sign. A thin string of webbing shot from his wrist and attached to the ball which he pulled. He ripped off the webbing as he had made sure to make it quite weak. He marched to the rest of the group to continue the game
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"Oh ya I was in form today. You wait and see I am going to be the next Sachin Tendulkar." Avinash exclaimed as he trotted up the side of the road as the sun kissed the earth as the watching sky blushed
"Yeah, sure you would" said Rudra chuckling as he walked beside him Vishnu walked at a comfortable pace behind checking his bat for any broken parts
"Hey don't mock me. I am the best in our school."
"Of course you will be don't be worried about it." came a sweet, lilting voice beside Rudra.
He turned his head to look at the wide eyed girl named Lakshmi. She was a girl with long wavy dark brown hair that highlighted the light brown eyes that glimmered in the evening light. Her sun kissed skin sported a small blush that spotted her thin cheeks and her sharp jawline. Her thin and delicate frame that adorned a pale green blouse and a faded out white pavada (a type of long skirt), was a wonder for her brothers on where all the food she ate went to. She could eat twice as much as them and yet not be satisfied and yet looked as if she was starving herself.
She had a slight tomboyish nature and always accompanied her twin brothers sometimes they went to play. Though at the start it was simply because she liked hanging out with her brothers, after some time it was due to another infatuation. Said infatuation rubbed the nape of his neck nervously while sporting a slightly larger blush.
"You really think so?"
"Yes. Just work hard and believe in yourself" she said, leaning forward slightly with her hands clasped behind her back.
A few moments passed with the intervals of the slapping of the sandals against the gravels of the road. A voice from one of the boys ahead revealed her brother calling her to the home as their mother needed them for some household work. A rushed apology and a promise to join them next time was given before she rushed ahead to her house.
"Oh, enthora punjaram adiyil aayirunnu!" said Vishnu once she went home (basically saying "Oh, what flirting that was!")
"Da, I don't do anything like that" said Avinash vehemently denying it
"Don't worry da. I am pretty sure her brothers already know. They seem fine with you so your future is set in stone." Said Rudra slightly chuckling looking at them both
Vishnu stopped walking and bent his hip to the upper right. He then turned his head slightly away and used his right hand to clutch the imaginary shawl of a sari while sticking his left hand out to Rudra, wrist bent as if asking for a hand.
"Oh Avinash, tell me that you will take me away from my house with their blessings so that I can be yours alone."
Rudra caught on to the act and took his hand with his left and mimicked giving a kiss to his fingers
"Of course I will Lakshmi. In this life and in the next life I will love you and you alone" Rudra said as his right hand crossed across the chest and fist on the heart while slightly bending his knees.
Avinash now blushed furiously and slapped Rudra on his arm for his transgression.
"Poda. There is nothing between us." (Get lost)
The boys laughed heartily as they continued teasing him and walked back to their house
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Rudra stepped out of the bath with a towel wrapped around his waist and started looking for clothes to wear On the wall hung an old sign: A Star is Born — bought in 1989, the morning after he was found on the doorstep of the family that would raise him. His parents had revealed the truth to him when he was six at Mariamma's insistence who claimed that he was a bright child and it would be much better to reveal the truth now than to keep it for later. At first, his parents hesitated. But even they couldn't deny that his features had never really matched theirs.
It went better than they had feared. Rudra had taken it quietly, and on Mariamma's insistence again, they gave him his own room, a smaller one, but his alone. "A boy like him needs his own space," she had said.
He had the same deep black eyes as his father, but his hair shimmered with a reddish tint under sunlight, unlike his parents' jet-black strands. His nose was straight and narrow, in contrast to his father's flatter one and his mother's slightly crooked bridge. But it was his skin that stood out most — pale and soft, stark against his father's sun-darkened tone and his mother's warm brown complexion.
He dressed slowly, glancing around his modest room. On the bed sat a worn out, handwritten book titled Cursed Energy and How to Use It in Malayalam. Mariamma amachee had given him after he passed his second grade.
Originally Rudra feared the lady and refused to anywhere near her after the stunt she pulled. However, she had done nothing bad to him after that incident and always gave him some butter cookies and milk whenever his parents brought him over. After all, she was his godmother who had baptised him when he was still a babe.
He still had a slightly sour taste in his mouth when he knew that here children who didn't know better were getting pulled into a faith they didn't choose no matter how the church justified it. Though he couldn't complain as all over the world people were expected to follow their parent's religion and not being in the same was extremely rare. At least here when you grew up the church and state gave you freedom to convert or stay as they liked. Though one might wonder how many would truly leave after building their lives inside one community.
He looked outside the window and saw the church down the hill illuminated by the nearby streetlight. He could see the white church with the slight overgrown grass and somewhat even land that was used sometimes as his playground. His eyes shifted further down when he saw the tombstones that lay behind it. As expected, he saw a few cursed spirits roaming the area.
He had noticed that there were always a few cursed spirits there, but recently the population had grown a bit more. He had held off exploring that area as he had felt that it might be too risky. It was quite true too. The only things that he had till now was his spider-strength and his cursed technique. He had awakened it when he was 4 and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was basically the ability to generate electricity and control it. At the start he mainly was focusing on trying to push out more cursed energy at one go, but for some reason it only used to work well on his fists and nowhere else. Only after reading Mariamma's book did he understand how to wrap himself in cursed energy and how to activate his technique alongside his natural strength.
He was eight now. He had tested his strength to a fair extent. He could easily lift a Bajaj Sunny. And with a bit more effort—and a spark of cursed energy—even his neighbour's Chetak wasn't out of reach. Not that it helped much. His cursed energy was shallow. Just a few bursts of his technique would leave him completely drained. At this point, each use could only stun or temporarily paralyze something about the size of a dog. (Don't ask how he tested that.)
His real advantage lay in his spider abilities — especially his webs. He estimated he could shoot about 15 to 20 meters in one go before needing to recharge. It left him hungrier and a little tired, but nothing too serious. Especially considering that just a few strands were strong enough to lift a motorbike or hold up sections of a crumbling building. Of course, with practice, he could control the strand thickness — but lifting bikes and supporting crumbling buildings were his current limits.
"Rudra come to eat dinner" called out his mom interrupting him from his thoughts. He grimly looked at the church again before he left.
"It had to be done tonight. Before someone else saw what I did. Before it grew stronger."