Chapter Text
Rangashtalam seemed to Anand like a little town that was still living a couple of decades behind in the world, and thanks to that, at least as long as no one peeled the surface, it was happier than any city where he had lived before.
Houses were for full families, and pretty much everyone worked at the fields. There was a lot to be fixed there, in the sense of productivity, but they respected the earth, something that was missing in many, many other communities that Anand had visited. However, they also had a high rate of poverty thanks to a very corrupt government and a ‘communal society’ that gave loans to people but took huge advantages against those people who were not literate and thus, didn’t know how to defend themselves.
Anand hadn’t found out about this until he had been two weeks there, after he decided to come to Rangashtalam instead of Hyderabad for his masters’ project. The first two weeks, all he could think about Rangashtalam was that people were not very happy about having outsiders around. Everyone seemed to see him with some suspicion, as if he was nothing but a pampered rich city boy who had come to play farmer for a few months.
He was a rich city boy, that was something he couldn’t help. His uncle was well to do, and that had nothing to do with Anand himself. But he drew a line at pampered. So instead of lecturing people about how they should do their job, the job they had been doing for longer than he had been alive, he listened, and learned. Some farmers were starting to warm up to him, but in general, his only real friends, the only people who talked to him, where his host family, the Chelluboina.
Ironically, they were not farmers. The father, Kotesawrara Rao, was a tailor, and Kantham, his wife, worked hard at keeping their home. Their eldest son, Kumar Babu, had just recently returned from the Persian Gulf, where he had been working as manager for a foreign company, while Chinni, their youngest, was still studying and preparing to go to high school in the city. The only one he hadn’t met yet was the middle son, Chitti Babu, who for some reason never seemed to be at home whenever Anand was there. He knew Chitti existed because everyone talked about him: not just the Chelluboina, but pretty much everyone in town had a story about Chitti. How if they needed help, Chitti would be there to lend a hand no matter the size of the problem. That he never let anyone badmouth his family or his friends, and that he was also good in a fight, despite being a little short.
He knew Kumar loved his younger brother and hated when people badmouthed him, and that Chinni had learned to read when she was only six years old because Chitti helped her. He also knew that Chitti was apparently a bit hard of hearing, but it was very, very important not to talk to him too loud because it could hurt his ears -something that made absolutely no sense to Anand, but until he met the man, he couldn’t make any judgments. Oh, and that Chitti loved chickens, and had a pet rooster that was always around him.
Anand had to admit, he was curious about Chitti. Apparently, he was usually in the fields helping with the crops and the harvest, and was the one in charge of an engine that brought water to the fields, but Anand had yet to cross paths with the elusive younger Chelluboina brother.
His favorite part of Rangasthalam, however, was the absolute lack of light pollution. The nights were completely dark and he could see many stars that were hidden in the city. So on some nights, like this one, he would go out to the fields just to watch the sky.
He was enjoying the sounds of the night, so different from the noise of the city. Crickets, mostly, but he was also sure he could hear the song of some nightbirds.
It was beautiful.
As he was about to go back to the Chelluboina’s home, he saw a bright bulb of an Arabic Jasmine, and, confused at its size, he needed to go and check. While Arabic Jasmines were quite common at that time of the year, he had never seen one so big, almost six inches tall. Anand went close to it, curious, and wondered if his cell would have enough battery to take a good photo when suddenly the bulb opened.
It was then when Anand thought that he had to be dreaming.
Inside the flower there was a man, about three inches tall. He was wearing a peach-colored pattern shirt and a blue checkered lungi. And on his back, there were two big, beautiful wings, patterned like those of an Indian Jezebel, white on top, yellow, black and orange on the bottom. The man had a beard, and poofy black hair, and pointy ears, like a faery from a children’s story. He was yawning, as if he had just woke up from a nap, and when he opened his eyes, small as they were to Anand, they looked like two beautiful brown crystals, shining with stars inside of them.
“Hello?” Anand half whispered, but the man didn’t seem to hear him. However, as he got up on the flower petals, he looked up, right into Anand’s eyes. At first, he looked startled, scared even, and Anand couldn’t blame him. The size difference alone must be terrifying for the little guy. But then, the little man seemed to get his bearings, puffed his chest and opened his mouth.
“Chicken!!” The little man yelled, and suddenly, from behind Anand, a yellow rooster came up running. The tiny man jumped from the flower to the rooster, who was wearing a bead necklace and bead anklets, and then they both disappeared into the tall grass, leaving Anand confused.
He pinched himself, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. He felt the pain, so he was awake. But that definitely did not explain what he had just seen.
* * *
The morning brought light, but not clarity to Anand’s thoughts. All he dreamed about was the tiny man with butterfly wings that he had seen the night before. In his dream, the tiny man didn’t run away, but flew to Anand’s hands. However, he never introduced himself. Just looked at Anand with those gorgeous brown eyes, before flying to the same height as Anand’s nose, kissing it softly and then disappearing into star dust.
It had been a wonderful dream, but it only made Anand more confused. Had he dreamed the whole thing? If so, what did that dream meant? And if he hadn’t dreamed it, if he had really seen a tiny man with wings, who rode a rooster away from him, well, then what next? How he could meet said tiny man again?
Anand had gone back to the field, looking for either the man or the flower where he had seen him sleep. But the plant was no longer in bloom, and the other flowers around were too small to house a man of the size of the one Anand had seen. It was on those trips, both at night and at day when he noticed that Rangashtalam had an unusual number of butterflies flying around for summer season. However, none of the ones he saw were Indian jezebels, with the white, yellow and orange wings he had seen in his tiny visitor.
A couple of nights, he had woken up from sleep convinced that someone was watching him. No, convinced that the tiny man had been in his room. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know how he knew that, but also, he assumed he might be just having some wishful thinking. Anand understood that he was getting obsessed with the tiny man.
Because people in Rangashtalam still watched him with some suspicion he didn’t want to ask any of them about the tiny man. After all, he was very aware how insane it sounded. He couldn’t go around asking if anyone had seen a fairy flying around or riding on a rooster, unless he wanted everyone to think that the city boy had lost his marbles.
Anand had tried at least to get information about the flower where he had seen the little man come out of, as it was a lot bigger than any other jasmine he had ever seen. But when he asked Kumar Babu, the one person in town who would talk to him normally, Kumar had gotten strangely silent.
“We have a lot of weird plants in the fields, and I’m more of an accountant,” Kumar said, not looking at Anand into the eyes, by pretending to be checking the account books that Lakshimi had brought him. They all knew the society was taking more money than they should, and Kumar was trying hard to put a stop to it. “Maybe Auntie Rangamma knows about the big ones, but you shouldn’t really worry about that. No one is going to be cutting those flowers here.”
That was true, and one of the things that made Rangashtalam strange and yet so wonderful for him. No one cut flowers in this town, and the ones sold at the market were made of cloth and paper, or sold with their roots intact, planted in pots. It was not a law, as far as he could tell, but basically absolutely no one would give flowers as a gift if the flowers in question weren’t still alive and thriving.
It was a respect for nature that Anand had never seen, not in the city, nor in the small towns that he had visited before.
Of course, when he asked why that was, the answer had been very cryptic.
“We wouldn’t like it if someone came and plucked our homes, would we?” Had been what Kumar’s father said, and cut the subject short.
So once again, Anand was left without any possible answer to his questions.
Until the day when he was taking a bath in the outhouse -another thing that made Rangashtalam a perfect time capsule was that very few houses had inside plumbing, so showering implied getting in a small hut made of palm leaves with buckets full of water- and he heard many men arguing about a snake. Worried about the possibility of it entering the shower, Anand froze, trying to hear any signs of the snake, when he heard Auntie Rangamma’s clear and strong voice yell.
“Chitti Babu!!! Your snake is here!!”
Chitti Babu, the name of Kumar’s brother. Anand froze further, wondering if this was how he was going to meet the mystery man.
But before he could cover himself up, the rooster he had seen before entered the shower, with the tiny man riding him. Anand had time to admire that the tiny man was now wearing a very stylish peach and yellow shirt, as well as a blue and white lungi, before he remembered that he himself was completely naked.
The tiny man, who now Anand thought had to be Chitti Babu, as he had come when Chitti had been called, looked up at him, his face turning into a strange smile. It was only then when Anand noticed that his own dick was starting to get an erection… and that it was almost bigger than the tiny man looking at him. He blushed red, all his blood going to his face -even if some had to still be in his dick because the erection refused to go down- and the tiny man blushed too, grabbing his rooster’s reigns, and making him leave the shower, not without sending one last look to Anand’s… well, Anand was not sure if the tiny man was looking at his dick, or at his face… but the tiny man winked at him before leaving.
By the time Anand remembered he was supposed to be taking a shower, the water in his buckets was completely cold.
Once he left the shower, now completely dressed, Anand had more time to think. The tiny man had come when Chitti Babu had been called, so he was sure he had to be Chitti. There had been no yelling, no marveling at the tiny man, so the people in town had to know about him.
Now that Anand had seen the tiny man and his rooster twice, he was sure that he had seen the rooster around town, wearing bangles on his feet and a collar in his neck. The rooster, when seen around, was treated by everyone with respect. As if he was the steed of a knight.
But the mysterious Chitti Babu remained unseen.
And Anand now had a new problem: How could he ask his host family if their middle son was a fairy?
