Fifty May Not Be Enough

by Shrutidhora P Mohor

Up to fifty kilometres a day, the ranger said.

These days I lie still but sleepless. There are bugs in my stomach. They go up and down, gnawing at my insides. I can’t sleep. Outside there are night sounds. Crickets, a reptile on dry leaves, a sudden prey caught, its sharp and aborted scream. And then I know it is the predator munching on it. My insides wriggle.

I count sheep. Sometimes goats. Sometimes bees. There is a buzz which grows louder. But the missing elephants don’t return. I draw straight lines and hope those are fifty kilometres long. I hope to call them back. I hope to trace their scent. The mother and the child remain missing. The Ranger is screwing up his forehead. He needs to answer for the missing duo. I tell him where I think they are. He dismisses my words as the speculations of a novice. This is serious business, he says. I agree and count again. Two of them are still absent. No one knows how far they have gone or how to bring them back home. The ranger adds the last word as an afterthought, as though the forest isn’t a good home for anyone, not even those who inhabit it. I think of mine, far from forests and I am sure no one knows there either how to call me back. I hope they don’t. It is cooler here. Greener too.

Mornings are no better. There is sunlight but there is the constant echo of their dying cry. One whole branch, as dry as timber, unable to hang on any more, unhooks itself and falls with a thud on the ground and there is the shrieking whimper of birds crushed along with it. The ones who had their home there on that branch. That’s what happens when you build a home before you have tested the land. Bad decision, as he would say. How would birds test the strength of a branch? I would want to protest, but ultimately not say anything. Their dying willowing chirp shatters the peace, and I have no comfort. There are dead birds in my stomach.

Upto fifty kilometres a day, the ranger said.

And have they all been brought back here? Or are some displaced even now?

Nope, two are missing. A mother and a child. They are probably dead. Washed away, or struck by thunder.

We have this conversation every other day. After a time, this sounds like a recorded message. I wait for the next day to ask him again. He answers the same way again.

The Ranger is an officer who needs to count and record and file and report and count again and update and inform and count every now and then.

I have no such duty. I have only one body and there is nothing to count in there. Whatever was inside, is gone now. My stomach is empty. It feels like a cloth being dried inside out. When I put it up on the clothesline, the bugs fall, the dead birds are swept aside. There are threads and stitches inside my stomach.

Forests heal, everyone said.

Memories go? I asked.

They can remember things over decades, the Ranger said. They can come back anytime, he added. Whom are you assuring, I want to ask.

Shall I remember cleaning my womb even after decades? Shall I? Whom am I asking?

On some days I turn into my mother, slack, supine, spread out like the evening sky, where you mistake cloud outlines for pathways, jet sprays for snow trails, the setting sun’s mauve arms for a flautist’s trailing tunes. I lie for hours, on my back, on my sides, on my back again, eyes shut, eyes open, eyes lost, eyes in search of vision. The falling branch, the dying family of birds, the missing duo fill my head. I remember my mother’s touch. I remember her smell. I wonder if the foetus in the womb similarly remembers me, my touch, my smell.

And then I remember that the foetus is gone. Washed out. Cleaned dry. Wiped with tissues. I remember hearing the nurse record my reduced weight.

I know he admires a slim and fit body, not a shapeless mother’s body.

I look at myself in the mirror. My face changes. My body is porous. I smell of wild grass and mud.

One night, I am drawing a road fifty kilometres long and I hear the hushed brushing sound of heavy feet. The sound stops outside my windows. I am charged up inside, my body feels like lightning again, but I am a drag, more like a rag, crumpled, flattened to the bed, unwilling to get up.

There is a mom-child thing going on outside. My skin is burning, my skin is taut. My belly is pumped up like a birthday balloon. I roll down from my bed and move towards the window. At first, I see nothing but then gradually, the echolalia that ties me to my mom, the unsung lullaby that lies between me and my never-born child wraps me in its embrace. I remember the sound of death, the ones crushed, the ones slaughtered, the ones thrown out, the baby with the bathwater, as we heard during lectures at the university, and at that very moment, I sense life inside me as my eyes fall on a majestic mother elephant and her calf, nestled and suckling between her legs, primitive, their naked grey-ness as scary as dark mountains shielding the sun forever.

I am a mother again.

The moving mass of flesh inside me is back, restored, re-planted.

The elephant mom knows how far to travel to keep her child safe. Safe from floods, safe from deluge. She no longer travels upto fifty kilometres a day. Her child’s limbs are weak. She knows where it is safe to stop.

All moms do.

I travel at least fifty kilometres a day, and I’ll stop only where my full womb is safe.

Shrutidhora P Mohor (born 1979, India) has been listed in several competitions like Bristol Short Story Prize, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Retreat West competitions, the Retreat West Annual Prize for short story 2022, the Winter 2022 Reflex Fiction competition, Flash 500. Her writings have been nominated for Best Micro fictions 2023 and the Pushcart Prize 2024. A collection of short stories titled A Moon-Measure of All Things (Alien Buddha Press, February 2025) is her latest publication.

Her Twitter/ X handle is @ShrutidhoraPM

Her Instagram/ Threads username is @shrutidhorap

On Facebook she is @Shrutidhora P Mohor

On Blue Sky she is @shrutidhora.bsky.social

Her email ID is <shrutimohor17@gmail.com>