“Let’s drive to Wayanad this weekend.”
Athira snapped to attention.
“Wayanad?”
“Yeah,” Unni smiled. “Quick trip via Mysore, and we’ll be back in Bangalore before you know it. We’ll drive up the Thamarassery Ghat Road, stay somewhere quiet. You love the hills… didn’t you live somewhere there as a child?”
You love the hills.
She almost laughed.
Twenty-five years had passed; years of learning to live with silence, of folding memories like folding your old school uniform into the trunk to be placed on the attic, unable to use, unable to discard.
***
The rain had begun as a whisper over Wayanad. By noon, the whisper was turning into a roar.
Athira had jumped in delight when the announcement came over the school’s public address system as classes were dismissed early due to heavy rain alerts from the district administration.
“Athira,” her teacher had said, “Go straight home. No stopping. No loitering.”
The road curved along the Thamarassery Ghat Road, a pristine, winding ghat section on the Kozhikode-Mysore Highway. Mist engulfed the bends ahead. Her slippers slapped against wet earth as her schoolbag grew heavier with rain. She stopped for breath at the 5th hairpin bend milestone, and from there she assessed the broken village road that branched off, leading to her hamlet.
Then she heard it.
The hills groaned.
Not loud. Not sudden.
But deep.
Fear crept in. Her house was the farthest down the slope.
Then the rain thickened. Red mud began to flow down the ghat. Trucks roared past, splashing muddy water onto her raincoat. Somewhere above, a stone loosened and tumbled down unseen.
And she ran.
***
The road climbed.
Curve after curve.
Mist thickened.
Trees leaned closer.
The Thamarassery Ghat Road.
She felt it before she saw it.
“Hey… Athira?”
Unni’s voice pulled her back.
“You okay?”
She blinked. “Hmm? Just… these turns. Feeling a bit nauseous.”
“There’s a lemon in the glove compartment,” he said. “Smell it, you’ll feel better.”
She nodded, but her fingers trembled slightly as she reached for it.
***
She jumped over the cattle barrier gate and ran to the driveway.
And stopped.
Gasped.
A motorbike on the muddy driveway.
She froze.
The same motorbike whose sound had haunted her dreams. The man with the brown, stained teeth, the one who had once slapped her so hard the sting never really left.
A blinding flash of lightning split the sky, followed by a thunderous roar that shook the valley. Athira didn’t hesitate; she flung the door open and ran inside.
Sound.
Of water dripping into an aluminium pot.
Voices
Two.
Twisted.
Groans.
Laughter.
Painful laughter.
Even now, twenty-five years later, that moment had not softened.
Her mother.
Unclothed.
Eyes wide.
Not shame.
Not fear.
“Go outside,” she had said.
But Athira could not move.
The man turned.
Walked to her menacingly.
His body looming, naked, his smile familiar and terrifying.
Something inside her broke free.
She bolted past the kitchen, out the back, into the rain.
The sounds followed her.
Was it thunder?
Or him?
The door of the small Muthappan temple stood open.
She ran inside.
Collapsed.
Sobbing.
Not knowing what to pray for.
“Muthappaswamy, rekshikanne…” she whispered, over and over.
Because some things, once seen, cannot be unseen.
***
“Brace for the sharp turn,” Unni said at the 5th hairpin bend.
The tyres curved slowly.
A signboard flashed past: landslide-prone area.
Athira’s fingers tightened around the seatbelt.
***
Then Muthappan answered.
A crack.
Not from the sky.
From the earth.
The ground trembled beneath her feet.
A roar rose, slow, inevitable.
The Thamarassery Ghat Road was coming down.
She remembered the impact, the mud slamming into the temple wall, the structure absorbing the force, holding its ground like a silent guardian.
The world turned terracotta reddish.
Mud everywhere.
She looked ahead, trying to peer over the slope.
The landscape had changed.
A small mud hill stood on the path she had come from
Her house was not visible.
Suddenly, the mud hill split in two with a deafening crack.
Mud splashed over something metallic behind it.
A motorcycle.
Or what remained of it.
***
“Athira…”
Unni’s voice was soft now.
“We can turn back.”
The car had slowed.
Mist was slowly moving up from the valleys.
She looked ahead.
At the bend.
At the slope.
At the hills that had taken everything.
“No,” she said.
Her voice surprised her.
“No. Keep going.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
***
The landslide had ended as suddenly as it began.
The rain softened, as if nothing had happened.
The priest found her the next day, weak, hungry, silent.
Alive.
He offered a quiet prayer to Muthappan, thanking him for saving an innocent child.
No one asked how she got there.
No one wanted to know.
The truth stayed buried.
With the mud.
With the road.
With the past.
***
Now, twenty-five years later, the hills rose again around her.
Alive.
Unchanged.
But she was not.
She turned to Unni.
“I saw a landslide here once,” she said quietly.
He glanced at her, but didn’t interrupt.
And for the first time, she began to speak.
Not everything.
Not all at once.
But enough.
Outside, the rain began again, soft, steady, familiar.
The hills listened.
But this time
they did not take.
They only returned what had been buried.
And Athira, at last, did not look away.
**************
Glossary:
Muthappan: Sree Muthappan is a widely revered Hindu deity in North Malabar, Kerala, and parts of Karnataka, considered an incarnation of Lord Shiva and Vishnu
Rekshikanne: Save me
Pc: Alexey Fedenkov/Unsplash.com
