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Burning Prayers
Note: This is a fictional story based on current events in India
The roosters’ crows pierce through the morning fog, sounding off the early morning alarm that wakes me before my grandparents, whom I am visiting for winter break from America. The house they live in doesn’t have a bathroom, so 5 AM is the optimal time to take care of business in the surrounding fields without anyone noticing. I get out of bed and walk to the front of the house, where the village’s Sankranti bonfire continues to burn. The plastic chairs sit outside people’s homes as remains of last night’s the Sankranti dinner potluck. I wander to the back of the house where the cows graze on the few panes of grass left, mooing at the sight of people walking past them.
I hike through the fields of mango trees to find a place to pee. The grounds are a lot less lush than I remember them as a child. Days before Sankranti, the Hindu festival celebrating the winter solstice, my cousins and I used to travel from all across the world to gather and celebrate the festival in our grandparents’ village. The kids would sneak into these fields and play Antakshari, a game where each contestant sings a song that begins with the word with which the previous contestant’s song ended. After our games, we would carve our names and the date onto a nearby mango tree. Years later, only one name remains on the withered tree: Arjun, my cousin who ran…
