Wet mud squelched at Ananya’s feet. Yet, she kept shifting from one foot to the other. The faint smell of banana and cow dung wafted through the air, and bright yellow blooms of konna puvu swayed gently in the air- they had come early this year. For Vishu, she suspected drily, there won’t be one left.

Their village-town was a little one. Unimportant. The roads had not been re-laid for the last ten years (Fifteen, claimed her mother, it’s not been retarred since my marriage to your father) and no one knew whether the running water that bisected their town was a stream, a river or just some forgotten canal. It had no name, anyway. Some called it puzha – river. Others simply waved in the general direction of the thing. Ananya liked to think of it as a stream. She loved it- when she was a child, and had more time on her hands, she would beg her mother to take her to its banks, and play in the water. There were little fish in it, and if you were patient, and still, and kind, they would nibble at your feet, black tails swishing like ragged flags.

She was waiting for the ferryman. There were a few other children with her- all younger. Aman, in the second grade, Rohan in the third and Johann in pre- nursery. They bickered amongst themselves, and Ananya ignored them in favor of her textbook. She listened to the sounds of the river, and waited for them to become louder- that would mean the ferryman was here. Then she would look up into the baked lines of his face, say Hello, help the children into the boat and then get in herself. They would all go to school, on the other side of the stream.

The ferryman came. For a few minutes, as they glided across the stream, the only sound was the ferryman’s breathing, the children’s whispering, the sounds of the oar pushing through water and mud, repeatedly. The children, she knew, feared the ferryman’s eternal silence. He was a small man, with black eyes and a slow, cracking voice. He spoke rarely, smiled little. As he rotated the oar, you could see the silvery scars that ran across his wiry musculature, marring his wrinkled skin. He was, Ananya thought, at least a few years older than her father.

There was a thud as the boat hit the other bank. Ananya and the others got out gingerly. The boys ran off, and she thanked the ferryman. He nodded, a single sharp movement, and went on his way.

In the evening, he would come again, and row them across the pink waters, humming with the cicadas.
…
It was raining. The tin roofs drummed, and as Ananya spooned warm kanji into her mouth, her mother complained of the rains- the clothes weren’t drying and she had the beginnings of a cold.

The ground outside was turning to slurry, the muddy brown waters moving sluggishly. The snails were crawling, leaving their slime trails on whatever surface they graced.

“If it doesn’t stop raining the clothes will not dry,” said Amma, again.
“Don’t worry. It can’t go on forever,” said Father around his mouthful of kanji, “Besides, there are bigger problems than the clothes not drying.”
“Don’t talk with food in your mouth. Your daughter will learn from you.”

Ananya stared down at her kanji, and stirred it with her spoon. The stream was going to breach its banks. The ferryman would have tied the boat to the bank and covered it in tarpaulin, safely away from the water. She wondered, idly, what the ferryman was having for dinner.

At two in the morning the water had begun lapping at the door, seeping through the cracks. The ferryman swung his oars wildly into the froth of the stream – a stream that was once so benevolent. He could not see through the rain that hurtled down from the heavens above like silver spears, but he was a good boatman, an experienced one, and he knew he was certainly not going downstream. His hair hung in front of his face in wet clumps.

He rapped his oar on the door of the girl’s household- loudly and roughly. There were other families that needed help and his boat was small, and the stream hungry. Presently the door was opened.
“The land around your house has sunk. Come outside quickly. I can take you to the other bank,” he told the father.

The father called his family. Ananya carried her books in some plastic covering, her mother carried their documents. Achan carried medicine. The little boat rocked unsteadily against the waters, and the ferryman pushed violently with his oars. She felt a strange heaviness within her, and squeezed her eyes shut against the rain. She should have paid more attention to that house. She should have loved it, instead of counting every one of its cracks and its plumbing issues.

The rain would take the house away, she knew. The waters would lash at its walls and pull them down into its muddy depths. But now there was no time to grieve. She saw a single flare through all that rain, and it got closer. The boat hit the bank, and they lurched. Ananya gripped tightly to the sides of the boat, waited until everyone was out. Stared a little at that blinding light.

The ferryman did not jump out. She realized why, and handed him the plastic covering she had used for her books. It was big enough to cover him.
“Thank you,” he said, and smiled, a little uptick at one corner of his mouth.

He rowed back out, into the stream.
.
They were housed at Anjumon’s. They were dry, and safe, and Ananya wondered about the boatman. The house was soon filled with other families, and the sound of people shivering, crying, and praying. Rohan and Aman were silent. Johann played with the hem of his shirt, sniffled every now and then.

The power was out. There was no heat in the house, and they huddled close to each other to salvage whatever warmth they could. Ananya felt exhaustion creep in at the corners of her mind like a fog, and she slept.

The families stopped filling the house- they must have gone somewhere else.
.
Wet mud squelched at Ananya’s feet. There was no yellow in her vision; the konna flowers had all wilted in those rains. Vishu was long gone- it had not felt like a festival, more like an occasion to notice all the absences and voids in their little village. There had been no konna either. She did not wait for anyone, did not look for the ferryman. The boat would come, and she would go in it. That was all. The children were now taking the bus to school. Good for them. The stream could be cruel, and they were small.

There was a dull thud as the boat hit the bank. She clambered on. She stared at the waters. She did not look into the ferryman’s face as it would not be his face, but an alien’s. She knew him no longer.

And as she stared into those waters, that had claimed so much, stolen so much, she realized she had never asked that ferryman’s name.