Virika had a number of one-offs, but her most consistent character to write about between the ages of 10 and 13 was “Tapedeck” – In many ways an expy for her many-times-Great Aunt Mina. The ban on talking about Mina’s elastic powers – their nature, their capabilities, anything – due to her Mother Jyoti’s consistently horrifying reaction to them left Virika with a lot of thoughts she had no outlet for.
These are closer to written order than anything else.
The train was full of people, pushed inside and hanging from the edges and stacked outside. Many people were going home to mess each other up on Holi.
Tapedeck sat on the roof of the train, hair going flappy flap in the breeze. Her flatness made it easy to fit wherever there was room, but it was good not to be in the sweaty room.
The train whistle blew, and a bunch of street boys ran up to the train, trying to get on as it started to go. They all made it to the roof joking and pushing each other, they laughed as the train went faster and faster.
All of the sudden, one of the street boys got pushed to hard, and started to slip off the train. He was scared and going to die.
Tapedeck saw too and decided to be brave. She took her arm and flung it like a fishing net. It swoop swoop swooped around the boy and caught him. Tapedeck cranked her gear, and the people in the train saw the bow being pulled up up up with film wrapped around him pulling. It was hard, and the other street boys helped Tapedeck pull him to safety, afraid of what had almost happened, but the boy called Tapedeck his hero.
It was a hot summer, before monsoon. The Village Moms did the washing, while the children that did not go to school played in the river to stay cool.
A little girl tried to swim in the fast current, but could not keep up. She spit water and tried to shout for help, but the children an moms did not know were to look.
It the reeds, the baby, black as tar, had been cooling off. With such dark skin it was easy to get too hot. The baby was squished and grew and was Tapedeck. Tapedeck wound her arm like a cowboy lasso, and it sailed a long ways to catch the little girl, so far that the as almost nothing more of Tapedeck. But she quickly pulled her out of danger.
The moms has saw the sparkle, and checked to see what had happened. And saw the girl being saved. The came to Tapedeck to thank her, but she turned back into the baby and disappeared into the inky shadows, knowing she had done the right thing.
Once upon a time in Odisha, a business man had been paid by the government to put in a lot of roads, and the more roads he put in, the more money he would be paid. He tore down the forest to put in roads. He tore down fields to put in roads. He filled in rivers with rocks, just to put in roads. He even tore down houses to put in roads. He would dump stones in stinky tar, and roll them flat to make a road, and then the old man would follow to paint lines on it, which only got him a little money.
People ran away from their houses as he pushed them over. But one day, he heard a crying girl. Her parents had run away scared, and hadn’t even remembered she was there. The man didn’t want to hear the crying, so he threw her in the tar and went home for dinner.
The next day he came back to make more roads, but the tar had dissolved the girl’s bones, and stained her skin, and she was like a baby, still crying. And he was about to roll her flat – but the old man came by and asked if he could have the baby.
The old man took the baby home and fed it, but was surprised that the baby said she was actually a girl. He gave her lunch instead of baby food. And she could only titter toddle as she walked. When she fell over she bounced like a rubber ball. The old man though she could get bigger if she were stretched, so she tried once, and got a little flatter, and she tired again, and got a little flatter, ans she tried again, and she snapped right back to baby size.
The old man rolled the baby’s belly with a rolling pin, to find she could get as flat as newspaper, but would only bounce back.
The old man distracted the road roller driver, and the baby scrawled in place. She couldn’t be a baby all her life – so she didn’t care. And the road roller smushed and smushed and smushed her so many meters, and her skin was so dark you could hardly tell her from the new road. The old man was worried, but with a big pop, she was back to being the baby.
The baby never thanked the old man for trying, it was fine if he thought she was dead.
The next time the old man saw tapedeck was many months later, he was was going through the market in town. He didn’t see the baby, he saw a pretty young girl, brown and shiny like film. Her guts were squeezed inside a clear plastic case, like an old cassette tape, including gears that went all the way through, but showed there were no naughty bits. Her arms and legs and hair were like long loops of film, and she stretched and caught a thief who was stealing many saree that people worked hard to weave. Her arms wrapped around him like snakes, and she liftem him off the ground so the couldn run. When the police came to thank her and arrest him, she fixed her filmy hair ad disappeared into the shadows.
The old man looked and looked, wondering if maybe she had been the baby, but didn’t find her THAT day.
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