Wiilderness

by Anoop Anthony

Arjun flicked his gaze to the clock on the car's dashboard. It was just after 4:00 PM and the sky was already darkening. Ahead, the N95 highway stretched emptily into the distance. Far to his right, at the horizon, the majestic ghats rose to a brooding slate-grey sky capped with thunder-clouds. The woodlands that flanked the highway appeared to be growing wilder the farther north they went. The forest had encroached the edges of the road, the trees sending out furtive roots that caressed the boundaries. 

They'd left the city two hours ago, but it felt like he'd been driving a lot longer. Beside him, in the passenger seat, Mia was gazing fixedly out of her window. She had not looked at him once during the trip. When he'd stopped at a petrol station to gas up about twenty minutes ago, he'd offered to get her something to eat from the store, but she'd shaken her head without speaking. 

He glanced at his phone, which he'd perched on a holder on the dashboard. There was no cellular range this far from the city. So the GPS wasn't working. It didn't matter; he knew the way. They probably had another four hours of driving before they arrived at the Malabar Hills Resort. If she wanted to stay withdrawn for the whole journey, he would let her. He would give her that space. 

He'd planned this trip last week. He'd booked the largest suite the hotel had, and he was paying for the extra touristy activities such as a guided forest trek, a midnight grill-out with live musicians, and two sessions at the 'rainforest' spa for Mia. The cost was ridiculous, but that was alright; this was his last-ditch effort to get her back.

He found himself thinking about the last time they'd made this trip — six years ago, about four months after their wedding. They'd been different people then, he'd just been starting his career at THS Automobiles and was lean around the waist and lighter of mind. (The stress and responsibilities that came with his promotions were yet to come) And she! She'd been a bright, smiling bride, aglow with contentment. She'd always been a quiet woman, but in those early days, she'd radiated a kind of girlish joy that made his heart sing. They'd left the city at the break of dawn and driven down N95 holding hands and listening to old-school Hindi love songs. He'd sung along to some of them with great gusto, much to her amusement. The eight-hour drive had flown by, and he'd barely noticed the long monotonous stretches of highways and forest-roads. They had spent a glorious weekend at the resort, made love, drunk a lot of wine, and laughed a lot. Different times. 

Now, six years later, they were making the same trip, not with the joy of newlyweds, but under a pall of grief.

* * *

1

Over the years of their marriage, their relationship had waned. There was no particular reason for this, he supposed; it was just the way life played out. As his position and responsibilities at THS grew, he found himself spending more time away from home. He worked late most days, and when he was promoted to regional manager, he began to make business trips to other states that kept him away for whole weeks at a time. 

Mia had few friends, and all of them were back at her home town. She rarely spoke to her parents or his. She spent a lot of time alone. Her tendency to suppress her feelings and avoid talking about what was bothering her made matters worse. Some days, when he got home from work, she refused to speak to him for hours until he coaxed her to air her grievances (usually his workaholism and his lack of attention to her) 

By the third year of their marriage, she had begun talking incessantly about having a baby. It was time they had one, she insisted, she felt deeply about it. Their parents wanted them to have children, too. (Which was true. Both their parents had begun a not-so-subtle campaign to get grandchildren). Having that baby had acquired a talismanic significance in her mind — a child would give her purpose, would complete their family, would bring back joy, would fill the vacuum of her empty life. 

But a year on, when there was still no baby, they began fertility treatments. Tests revealed nothing amiss with either of them, but he learned that infertility was an epidemic in modern India due to changing food habits and stressful lifestyles. There were hundreds of fertility clinics peddling a variety of treatments, and Mia began monthly shots before her ovulation cycle. 

Finally, eight months ago, there had been good news and much celebration; she was with child. He observed how she began to get her old glow back. When she spoke about the baby, her voice was suffused with joy. She suggested names and began planning a nursery in the second bedroom. Sometimes, he would catch her smiling to herself or humming an old tune, and he would smile himself. It was the happiest he had ever seen her, which made him feel a little ashamed. It was clear that she hadn't been content in their marriage, despite his providing a good life — a great home in one of the city's upmarket zones, hired day-time help, the best of everything that money could buy. He had given her everything but his time.

But what was he to do? He headed a region, which meant that he had to travel, visit different states twice a month, work 12-14 hours a day and often weekends to catch up on a never-ending backlog of work. Perhaps it was wrong to take one's spouse for granted, especially when she drew little attention to herself, but his work demanded a lot from him, and that wasn't his fault.

* * *

2

She had grown heavy with the baby, and during their monthly visits to her doctor, they observed with delight (via mystical 3d scans) how the child was taking shape and growing at a steady, healthy clip. Mia no longer looked haggard or weary; she radiated that familiar, long-forgotten glow.

* * *

A week into her third trimester, he had to travel up north for a sales review. 

She was in good spirits when he bade her goodbye before heading to the airport.  

* * *

The cramps struck her just after midnight. 

She awoke crying out in agony. The pain was huge, terrifying. She scrambled for her mobile phone and called him, but in a hotel room thousands of kilometers in the north, he lay fast asleep. She hauled herself out of bed and ran for the bathroom, at first gasping and then shrieking with the pain. Blood flowed down the insides of her legs, pattering to the floor. She slipped on her blood just as she entered the bathroom, and she fell heavily to her side and curled up in pain. 

She lost the baby right there. Her body pushed out the child, lifeless and slick, in a gush of warm blood onto the cold tiles of the bathroom floor.

When he finally called back in the morning, nearly four hours later, she was in a hospital emergency ward, heavily sedated. A doctor answered her mobile phone, his tone cold. He explained how Mia had dragged herself out of the bathroom and back to the bedroom and tried to call Arjun again. Unable to reach him, she had called an ambulance. 

He flew back immediately and stayed by her side until she was discharged four days later. 

She had always been a quiet woman. It was something his friends and family occasionally observed. Even his mother, usually the least critical of persons, had once commented in a wry tone how Mia seemed even anti-social at times. At family dinners or company parties or outings with friends, Mia would slip into a self-contained, seemingly impenetrable pocket of silence, smiling when spoken to and answering in monosyllables when asked questions. He knew that she wasn't being aloof (as some thought) or cold. She was just being Mia — happy to not draw attention to herself. He liked that about her. In a world where people were too loud and made too much of themselves, quietness was a virtue.

But after losing the baby, something in her appeared to break. She withdrew completely. She would go days without uttering a single word. When their parents called, she refused to speak to them. She floated about the house, her eyes vacant and ringed with dark circles. He tried everything — cajoling, giving her room to grieve, begging her to visit a counselor with him — but she refused everything. It seemed to him that she had disappeared into some dark place inside herself, an impenetrable wilderness from which she was refusing to emerge. 

This idea of a weekend at the resort had come to him last week. The resort represented one of the better times in their marriage; they'd both been carefree and deeply in love. Maybe taking her there would jostle something inside her, awaken an old part of her, and draw her out of the darkness. Maybe what she needed was a change of environment.

* * *

3

He turned to her now and reached out and took her hand. He remembered how they'd held hands on that trip four years ago, the mellow tones of the ghazal singer washing over them like liquid gold pouring out of the car's stereo. 

Her hand lay limp in his, her fingers cold to the touch. She did not turn to him. He saw the way her hair hung lankly to her shoulders, how the white full-sleeved salwar kameez she was wearing was rumpled, how the skin under her eyes was dark. Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night and find her lying awake, staring at the ceiling.

Is she angry with me? he thought, I didn't cause the baby to die. It wasn't his fault that he'd been away on a business trip when it happened. Had he been at home, they would have still lost the baby. By all accounts, the termination of her pregnancy had been abrupt and violent, her body rejecting the child it had nurtured for months.  

But it wasn't just his being away on the business trip, was it? Just how much of himself had he given her through their marriage? Maybe his absence when she'd undergone that trauma had been the last straw. Perhaps the years of neglect made that final act of absence unpardonable. 

"Hey," he said. "Mia?"

She did not respond. 

It was almost fully dark now. The N95 was empty except for the occasional lumbering truck roaring down the road in the opposite direction, its headlamps large lambent eyes. The trees bounding the highway were so thick that they seemed to form a wall of grizzled bark and twisted branches and leafy vines. Above, the trees had put out a canopy of leaves that cut off the last of the day's light so that it seemed they were driving through a tunnel of perpetual night. He had some idea of the geography of these lands. He knew that the forests stretched away to their right for thousands of kilometers, rising towards the magnificent western ghats in a gradual slope. 

He had lowered his window a little, and a chill breeze whisked into the car.

"We'll get to the hotel by ten," he said, "I know that's pretty late, but you can have a hot bath, and we'll have dinner in bed, and watch some TV. You remember the jacuzzi in the bathroom?"

No response. 

Not that he was expecting her to suddenly warm to him. But he did hope that over the course of the next few days, she might thaw a little.  

Maybe it's too late. Maybe she's too far gone.

He pushed this thought away. He had to stay positive. For both of them. It hadn't been easy dealing with her over the last two month, to be subject to that continued onslaught of mute accusation and not be dragged into the darkness with her.

If this trip worked, if the change in environment did help, if he got through to her, she might start to heal. And he would change. He would! He would become a more attentive husband. He would make sure that she did not feel alone anymore. The loss of the child and the way it had broken her had brought it home to him, the shameful truth that he had neglected her in some fundamental way and not noticed the erosion of their relationship. 

He patted her hand and let it go. He was not going to push. He would work on her gently. He would be patient. He said with forced gaiety, "It'll be fine when we get there. We'll relax, you'll love it."

She had her face turned away. She gazed out into the darkening world, seeming to stare out at nothing.

* * *

4

It was seven pm and full dark. 

He needed to piss. His bladder felt like it would burst. It was the cane juice he'd had at the petrol station. Cane juice always made him want to go, even more than beer, for some strange reason. He'd guzzled it down, and it had gone down well, cold and sweet. He'd bought one for her, too, but she'd only sipped at hers twice and then put it aside. So he'd finished hers, too. 

Going on forty, that's a lot of sugar. Not good. he thought absently. That was one of the downsides of living out of a suitcase two weeks in a month. You ate rich, artificially colored hotel food every day, and you spent most evenings in bed, plugging away at your computer, hacking away at your backlog. His life was a mess. How had he let it go so far?  

"Hey," he said, "I got to stop to take a piss."

To his surprise, she turned to look at him, perhaps for the first time since they had begun the drive. The intensity of her gaze startled him. 

"What?" he said. 

She regarded him steadily, with unreadable eyes, and said nothing. 

"Mia?"

He found he could not meet her gaze. He turned his attention back to the road and said with a nervous laugh, "What are you looking at me like that for?"

"Arjun," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "Do you think that we are meant to?"

He tried to understand what she meant.

"Meant to what?" he finally said.

"The baby. Do you think we are ever meant to have a baby? To be parents?"

He turned to look at her. She wasn't crying, thank God, but the way she was looking at him, in that fixed manner, made him nervous. He had to be careful, so careful. This was the most she'd uttered in days. 

He spoke solemnly, "Of course we are. The doctor said so, too."

It was one of the first things she'd asked the doctor when she had been able to speak. Will I be able to conceive again? The doctor had assured her that she would but advised that they give it a year before they tried again. 

"He said we could try again in a year, remember?" Arjun said. "We just have to wait, and we will. And it'll be fine."

She shook her head slowly.

He said, "We did it once. We can do it again."

She turned away. 

"Mia?"

That stony silence again. Suddenly he wanted to yell, "Don't shut me out. Talk to me. What did I do?" But he drew a deep breath instead. 

It's what you didn't do. her silence seemed to say, Where were you when I was rotting away in my head. What did you do?

He pulled the vehicle off the road, the right wheels crunching dried leaves and twigs. 

He looked at her once more, troubled, then stepped out of the car and into the chilly night. The highway stretched emptily before them, the car's headlamps barely penetrating the night. There was no traffic at all. A few kilometers ahead, he knew that the road would begin its steep ascent into the ghats. 

This close to the woods, the illusion of a contiguous wall of trees was gone; he could see the murky otherworld of the forest beyond.

He stretched, walked around the car, and moved towards the forest. The chill in the air made him shudder. As he got close to the trees, he heard the chirps and trills of a thousand insects and nightbirds. A brisk wind rustled the leaves. The trees were massive, some of their trunks as wide as the torsos of several men. 

He paused at the boundary of the forest, then turned and glanced at her. She was a dark shape in the passenger seat, sitting perfectly still, her face a pale oval shape turned towards him. He waved, but she did not wave back.  

He walked into the forest.

* * *

5

He went about six feet into the woods, but it seemed to him that he had slipped into another world. There was no light at all. The temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees, and the air was somehow thicker. Dark shapes loomed in the murk. The ground underfoot was layered with dead leaves and dried twigs that snapped and cracked underfoot. He groped in his trouser pocket and drew out his mobile phone. He turned on its torchlight and held it up. He saw trees, in every direction, gnarled, grotesque, twisted, clustered in copses. Behind him, he heard the low thrum of the car's engine. The light from its headlamps barely penetrated the woods. 

He walked up to the nearest tree, trying to look in all directions at once. He unzipped and let go. His piss came in an unending, steaming stream. The cold made him shiver.

"Come on," he said. Vapor escaped his lips. 

Behind him, he heard the car's door open, then slam shut. 

"Mia?" he called over his shoulder, his voice quivering, "You ok?"

There was no reply. 

"Mia?" he yelled. 

Finally, he was done. He zipped up and walked quickly back to the road. 

She was not in the car. 

* * *

"Mia?" he yelled.

He circled the car, peering into the back seat and, rather absurdly, under the vehicle. Yeah, she's crawled under the car. Where else would she be?

She wasn't anywhere to be seen.

He glanced up the road and then turned and looked the way they had come. The tail-lights of the car threw a blood-red glow on the road. 

Where the hell was she?

He was about to call out again when he heard the sound of snapping twigs.

The forest, he thought in horror. The sound had come from the forest, from a little way to his right. He ran down the road, holding up his mobile phone and shining its harsh white light into the trees.

He almost did not see her. The phone's light caught a flash of white deep in the woods, moving away from the road. 

"Mia?" he screamed.

As he watched, Mia was swallowed by the forest, disappearing into the inky black of the woods.

"Mia," he yelled, "What are you doing? Come back."

He ran after her, crashing through the trees, slapping away branches and vines that crowded and clutched at him. He moved towards where he had seen her last. The land dipped and rose. The underbrush was growing thicker, and beneath his feet, the ground was treacherous and uneven. Mud squelched, sucking at his shoes. Roots erupted and tried to trip him. 

It seemed to be getting colder the deeper he went. She was wearing plain cotton clothes; she would freeze in there. He had to find her quickly. 

But he could not see her anywhere. The phone's light revealed a disconcerting, symmetric eternity of trees in every direction. He glanced at his phone battery indicator. The battery had about 20% charge left. No cellular signal either. 

"Mia," he screamed, "Come on. This is dangerous. Come back."

The phone threw harsh, brittle light, and grotesque shadows jerked as he moved. 

He cursed under his breath and headed deeper into the forest.

* * *

6

Arjun paused for breath and sat on a fallen log, panting, puffing out plumes of vapor. The bark was damp, and he felt the wetness seep into the seat of his pants. He spotted an insect the size of his thumb, its exoskeleton gleaming, crawling on the log towards him, and he stood up hastily. 

He glanced at his phone again. 15%. The phone's clock said it was 8:02 PM. Time was tricky in here — it seemed he had been in here looking for her for hours, but in truth it had been only fifteen minutes. Despite the cold, he was perspiring. Large welts had puckered up on his forearm in several places where insects had bitten him. The woods were so thick at some places that the trees formed an impassable barrier and he had to take a detour to continue. 

He should have caught up with her by now. He had been moving in a straight line from the road, keeping the direction of the highway fixed in his mind, hoping to overtake her. She must have wandered off in a different direction. If he changed course, there would be no way to find his way back. 

"Shit," he said.

He turned his face up to the darkness and yelled, "Mia. What the fuck are you doing? Come back."

His words seemed not to carry; the air, still and heavy, absorbed them.  

She's flipped. Had a breakdown of some kind, he thought, Maybe she's suicidal.

The thought horrified him; had she been descending slowly into madness all along, her silence masking her steadily deteriorating mind? Maybe all of it, her obsession with having the baby, and the desolation after losing it, was all part of a descent into lunacy. And he had been too busy working and making money to notice. The terrible truth was that he might have missed a lot of signs. Had he paid attention, had he not taken her for granted, had he given her a little compassion (as husbands are supposed to do), none of this might have happened.

Around him, the trees crowded him, implacable, predatory. 

"Mia," he yelled, "I'm sorry, ok? I'll make things ok, I promise. Just come back. It's late. You'll freeze out here."

He drew a deep breath and held it. He shut his eyes and listened. Suddenly, the sounds of the forest were amplified. The wind in the trees ruffled the leaves in a clattering rush, and what sounded like millions of insects and birds chirped, creaked, and trilled in an eerily beautiful cacophony. In the distance, he heard a series of faint grunts, deep and urgent, the sound of some wild animal, perhaps a boar. (For surely, this forest would have animals — bears, big cats of some kind.)

Something buzzed near his ear, something so large that its wings sounded like helicopter rotors as it flew past his head. His eyes flew open, and he swatted it away, his skin crawling. 

"Mia," he called.

How would she hear him amidst the sounds of this forest? How would he hear if she called back? How would he find her in this deathly black? How could he find her if, in the grip of her madness, she didn't want to be found?

He glanced at his phone and saw its charge was down to 12%. The torchlight was burning up his battery. At this rate, he had another twenty minutes left before the phone went out. After that, he would be running blind, and it would be impossible to make it back to the road. 

He plowed ahead, pushing through the thick foliage, holding his phone aloft, peering into the blackness. 

At some places, he had to squeeze between narrow gaps between the trees; their rough bark scraped the skin off his forearms and his elbows and drew beads of blood. At other times, the trees parted, and he walked through tiny clearings. In every direction he looked, the trees stretched away into darkness. He swatted at the bugs flying into his light, some of them so big that his palm stung. 

* * *

7

His mobile phone's battery was down to 2%. 

His legs ached, and his skin smarted from the scratches and scrapes. He lowered his head and cursed. 

There was nothing for it but to go back. Without any light, he would not be able to go any further; he might walk right past her and not see her. 

He would return to the car, charge the phone, and head back in again. He would also call for help; there had to be a village nearby with a police station. He could head back to that petrol station and ask. That was about twenty minutes back the way they had come. The locals would know the lay of the land and might help to gather a search party. 

And what will you tell them? My wife... lost her mind, and got out of the car, and wandered off into the forest. How would that look? They would regard him with cold, judgmental gazes, maybe think he was lying or guilty in some manner. What kind of man could drive his wife to wander off into the forest? They would tell him that it was better to wait until daylight. 

He turned around and began to retrace his steps. He was close to tears. It was impossible to know if he was walking in the right direction — the landscape of trees and foliage looked the same. But he had been careful not to veer too far away from a perpendicularity to the road. If he kept going, he must eventually come to the highway. 

* * *

Twenty minutes later, he was not so sure. 

He had been making steady progress, but the road was nowhere in sight. His phone's battery was now at 1% and had been for a while. It would go off at any moment. He turned off the torchlight and tried to navigate by the faint glow of the phone's screen, but he could see nothing. He nearly stumbled and fell headfirst. He cursed and kept moving. 

It was important not to panic or change direction now. 

* * *

Ten minutes on, and there was still no sign of the road.

It was impossible to deny now that he might be lost. 

He raised his phone high, trying to decipher where he might be. He should have been at the road by now. There had to be some sign, any sign of —

The phone died. 

* * *

How much time had passed? 

How long had he been stumbling through this eternal night? 

His eyes had adjusted a little, and at some places where faint moonlight broke through the thick cap of leaves overhead, he saw the shapes and silhouettes of the trees.  

Twice he fell, stumbling over exposed roots, badly skinning his knees and his palms. At one point, he felt something slither out from underfoot, and he let out a cry of revulsion. Another time, something large crashed through the forest nearby. He stood frozen in terror until the sound of its passing faded. 

He was no longer calling out her name. There was no point. He was sure that she was nowhere nearby. And he had no doubt that he was lost himself. For all he knew, he was simply heading deeper into the woods. There was no way of telling. 

* * *

8

He heard it an indefinite time later, and nearly wept with relief — the roar of a truck, just off to his right, close enough that the sound of it filled the world. 

He ran in its direction... and hurtled face-first into a tree. His nose exploded with pain, and his eyes watered. He pushed away from it, tasting blood. He no longer cared about the pain, or the branches and thorns tearing at his skin, or the rough bark scraping away flesh. He slammed through the woods. 

Presently, he burst through the tree line and onto the highway. He looked about wildly... and saw his car far to his left, the red glow of its tail-lights like twin eyes in the distance. It was nearly five hundred feet from him. He had come out behind it, so he must have veered away after all.

He ran to the car in great shambling steps, aching and bleeding in a dozen places. 

He climbed into the car and plugged in his mobile phone. As he waited for it to come to life, he threw his head back against the seat and began to cry. Mia, oh Mia. He wept inconsolably for a time, and then when the sobs tapered off, he turned and looked at the forest. He would call for help; then he would go back in there. He would do everything he could to find her. 

But as he stared at that wall of trees, a growing certainty gripped him — he would not find her. She had disappeared into the forest, into that impenetrable wilderness, and nothing he did would get her back. He would never be able to draw her out from the darkness into which she had disappeared.

9