The picture hanging in the protagonist's ancestral home changes overnight. What is the secret behind this change?

These long-legged creatures. Birds, to be precise. Snow white, funny, muscular long beaks. I could spend hours watching them swoop down their heads, pick up a prey and slide it down that flappy beak into their long throats. A mild vibration and that’s it.

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I once imagined being picked up the same way and being munched on. Inside the mouth, it was squishy and fluid-y. Later it turned out that I had fallen asleep over a bowl of liquid adhesive while I was assisting a kid affix pictures in a scrapbook. The brush in the gum had toppled over on my face.

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Storks.

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Dancing around in our backyard, in our neighbour’s garden.

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Storks.

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Forming a white sheet of flight when they would shift base in large groups.

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Storks.

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Leaving conspicuous footprints of their claws in our yard, the spread out marks, a regular pattern of movement.

Far more regular, far better than my dance class attempts. Ruddy had said, he loves rhythm. I had joined dance classes, from ballet to Zumba. My footwork had been ridiculously poor. Slow, disjointed, out of sync.

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No use, leave it, he had concluded. You don’t have the grace of birds.

“There is something about the portrait in the hall upstairs.”

“If you observe closely, you will find it changing its colour at certain times,” that is what some of my younger cousins whispered to me when I returned home last summer.

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For the first few weeks, I observed storks instead, white arched canopies on the lakeside foliage, and waited to collect their footprints from the backyard on moist sponge scrubbers. Ruddy had told me that he would see me again when I would gift him something unique, something striking. Not drab things please, not for the showcase in the living room, not dull like you, he had added with his eyes fixed on me.

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I often scrutinised myself in the mirror, flat-chested, plain-haired, freckled cheeks, collar bone showing, eyebrows nearly joined, forever sleepy eyes. I drew stork footprints on my cheeks one day for inspiration, borrowing water colour from a kid, my nephew somewhere in the family tree, and attempted ballet on the terrace, hoping to impress Ruddy if he ever dropped by.

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He didn’t.

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After some weeks, I stood in front of the portrait, peering into the figure before me, a lady in her thirties, married, crouching under the weight of the vermillion mark cutting through her black, well-oiled hair, her veil carelessly pushed back though, displaying far more of her face and head than would be considered proper. 

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“Whose wife was she?” I wanted to know.

“No one’s.” Burly men with hanging moustaches boomed with these words. All of them, my uncles and grand-dads. Of different kinds.

“You ask the wrong questions,” Ishi slapped me later on my shoulder.

“Why?”

“She eloped! Don’t you know family secrets?”

“Nope, I don’t. I was away for decades.”

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I considered the thrill and the shock running over the walls of the house at this incident. Did they cook dinner after they discovered she had run away? Did they hug their side pillows tighter, shut their bedroom doors firmer, command servants louder to get over the shock and the shame?

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I must have looked slightly amused, or at least merrily thoughtful.

Ishi reprimanded me. “We call it a mishap, a terrible curse in the family, not something to celebrate.”

“I understand. But tell me, why do you keep her picture?”

“It’s like a weathercock. In the sense that whenever it changes its colour, something happens.”

“Oh! So, has anything happened before?”

“A lot of times. Business downslides, deaths in the family, robbery at our factory. Each time the picture has turned black.”

“Is it?” I added after a few seconds, “All negative things only? Why?”

“Yes, all negative things. Because she is an evil influence upon future generations. Anyway, come down if you want to join us for tea. You ask too many questions.”

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I lay on the terrace in the afternoons, solving complex trigonometry sums in the air, remembering to wipe off the imaginary blackboard after every exercise.

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Ishi often joined me, watching my fingers draw lines, insert symbols.

“What do you propose to do now?”

“Collect footprints.”

“What? Whose?”

“Have you ever seen them dance?”

“Whom?”

“The storks.”

“Dance? No! We have seen them fly. Birds don’t dance.”

“Oh yes, they do. I’ll join a class to learn their dance. I must.”

One night, I was sleepless. I had overdone trigonometry through the day. I moved out and stood in front of the portrait in the hall. In that darkness, I saw the vermillion mark glowing through her hair.

“Why did you elope?” I asked without thinking.

“Because my lover taught me real dance steps, steps which give you flight, steps which give you freedom.”

“Zumba?” I was excited.

“What?”

“Er, no, I mean, what dance form?”

“I don’t know the name for it.”

“Can you teach me?”

“It’s simple. Trace the footprints of the storks. Match each pattern, step by step, and you are done!”

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I ran to get the footprints that I had collected. Spreading them out on the floor before me, I hopped into those marks, guided and hand-held by this unknown female ancestor.

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Soon, there was music, there was madness, there was flight, there was freedom, there was grace, there was lilt, there was a zoom, a twist, a hop, skip, jump, clap, staccato, a swirl, a twirl, a whoop and a whoosh, a vroom and a gong.

Next morning, my cousins were demure.

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Upon my insistence, one of them told me that the picture has changed overnight.

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“Black? Something ominous?” I asked, relaxed.

There was no answer at first.

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“No. It isn’t black. She’s wrapped in flames. Burning. You can feel the heat if you pass by. And…”

“And?” My feet were still going tap-tap.

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“And…and there is a stork dancing around her flaming gown.”