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3

Prose

Burnt Napalm

Anil Cherukupalli

The air smelt of burnt napalm. Only two of us were left. The rest had left. We decided to stay. The Americans would come. We knew that. They would spray the land and burn the blue haze. We knew that too. We still did not want to leave. We were tired of running every single day, tired of wading through swollen streams, tired of avoiding open spaces and sleeping inside wet woods, and tired of not trusting our own people. Life has to end sometime somewhere. We decided that for us it would be here by the side of an unmarked road, in a no man’s land between two hostile villages.
I lit a small fire even though it was dangerous. You know how it is. When you have decided to die, you do not care. My companion was old and it was remarkable that he had survived for so long. He was the type who did not talk much but looked hard at everything as if he could understand everything just through his eyes. We had met on the road south. He was part of a small company of men charged with the dirty business of killing some villagers who spied for the Americans. I was part of an elite unit assigned to run some dangerous missions behind enemy lines in the south. But we did not know the terrain and were in search of someone who could guide and also fight beside us. He fit the bill and we took him on.
After that, everything went horribly wrong. The old man took us through a forest where we ran straight into a company of Americans. It was a complete disaster. Those of us who survived drifted back to reach this pre-arranged meeting place. The old man was one of the survivors. This of course led to speculation that he might be a spy. Perhaps that was why he decided to stay back and wait for the American death machine. Or perhaps he was even more tired than me.
The fire started to burn low. It was comfortable just to sit there and see the yellow flame go down and allow the red underneath to dominate. I like embers. Fire is something superficial; it just goes about its job burning blindly everything in its path. But embers have a certain majestic beauty. They seem wise. They only burn if you touch them. They are content to just glow.
My reverie was disturbed by a long sigh of the old man. He was looking east, craning his neck to one side as if to hear something. Were they already on their way? There…I could hear something. The subsonic throb of a jet slicing through the heavy air like a wet whip cracking in the air. It was time and both of us knew it. I looked at him, and his gaze met mine, and suddenly in that instant, I understood why he looked hard at everything. It was a beautiful moment, a moment that transcended time. It was like all your life you were searching for that one thing that would define your life and, in the end, you find it in an unlikely corner. I could see the same understanding in his eyes, wet with the tears for the sudden bond between us. A new calm began to take root in my heart. I closed my eyes, savouring the wet taste of approaching infinity.

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