Ramya's Treasure

by Pratap Reddy

  With five minutes to spare, she starts for the funeral home. The building has a red brick façade like a warehouse, but is not unwelcoming. It has some shrubbery and a thin strip of a lawn in front which are well kept. There are acres of paved parking space around the building. More people come to see the dead than when they were alive.

  There are solemn-faced attendants just inside the front door. They take possession of Ramya’s coat and direct her to the room where the service is being held.

  Subbu-Auntie’s family is present in full strength. They occupy the first three rows, a solid presence. Subbu-Auntie’s going to get a rousing send off. Mr. Rao sits on a chair, erect and immobile, with his palm resting on the grip of his walking stick. He looks like King Canute preparing to order back, if not the tide, at least Time.

  Ramya nods to him in a grave manner, and then proceeds to the coffin. The casket is laid out at the far wall. Masses of cabernet-red roses have been placed in and around the half-open coffin. Only Subbu-Auntie’s face and throat are exposed; the rest of her body is submerged in floral tributes. Ramya places a bouquet of half a dozen white roses on the torso. She bought white because that’s colour of death in India. Now she wonders if she’s done the right thing. Internally, she shakes her head. She’s always had a knack for sticking out like a sore thumb.

  Subbu-Auntie, in the sleep of death, looks pitiably haggard, as if the pain and suffering she underwent in the last days of her life couldn’t be masked by the mortician’s makeup artist. Pain and suffering is the lot of women. Mr. Rao, though a successful man, had been a demanding and insensitive husband. Subbu-Auntie seems to have shrunk substantially too. She looks like a rag doll one could pick up with one hand. It’s unimaginable that when alive she was such a prepossessing figure, so full of life and good humour.

  A couple of Hindu priests in silk kurta-pajamas materialize. They’ve brought puja utensils which they set up on the carpeted floor. They also have a portable fireproof device to conduct homa — the ancient Aryan method of worship. Pre-recorded tapes play the age-old Vedic hymns over the speakers, while the priests perform the last rites in an efficient and fuss-free manner — so unlike what transpires in India. When the ceremony is over, the young male members of the family lift the casket on to their shoulders and make their way to a black hearse, while the loudspeakers blare out devotional songs in Hindi which have been set to sprightly Bollywood tunes.

  Ramya collects her coat, and tips the attendants liberally. They’re no longer wearing the solemn expression on their faces; it’s as if they had removed it with a facecleaning pad — like it was so much stale make-up. After pocketing the tips, they give her big smile and wish her a good day. One can tell that tips were not something they expected from immigrant mourners.

  Once all the mourners are in their cars, the cortege proceeds to the crematorium. Ramya follows at the tail end of the procession. The incurable laggard. By the time she finds a vacant parking spot and goes inside, the service is coming to an end. It must’ve been short and brisk. Maybe, the priests have other deaths to attend to: “Next body, please!” The coffin-bearers move the casket to a conveyor which leads into the maw of the furnace, red and hungry. The last, but brief, leg of Subbu-Auntie’s earthly sojourn has begun.

  When the coffin disappears from view, there’s a lot of wailing and weeping, the lamentation rising like a crescendo. There’s nothing more for Ramya to do. Not born of a maudlin mould, tears don’t come easily to Ramya. She leaves.

  The drive back from the funeral is slow. The snow has begun to fall harder. Visibility has reduced, it’s like driving through masses of white curtains billowing in the wind …

  Ramya remembers the night Amma died. She was seventeen then.

  The drapes of the bedroom windows were fluttering wildly. It was a windy night, a precursor to the first monsoon rain. Letting go of Amma’s hand, which she’d been holding, Ramya walked over to the window to shut it.

  Amma was lying on the cot. She was asleep, but it was a kind of troubled, discontinuous sleep. Whenever Amma seemed to stir, Ramya fed her with a teaspoonful of water, as the servants had instructed her to do.

  It was well past midnight, and the night had an unreal feel. Earlier in the day, she’d tried to feed Amma with very soft rice mixed with plain yoghurt. Despite her pleading and coaxing, Amma wouldn’t eat even a spoonful.

  “Now, I’m giving it back to you,” Amma had said, with a weak smile. Her voice had become soft and croaky, and the words came out with a quavering slowness. “When you were young you wouldn’t want to eat; whenever I tried to force feed you, you were always turning your face away. Only your Atom Auntie could make you eat.”

  Ramya eyes fill with tears at the mention of Atom Auntie. Ramya always avoided thinking about her — even the merest mention would bring a lump to her throat. The last glimpse she had of her beloved aunt, frail and vulnerable under the uncertain light of the street lamp, was a picture she would like to banish forever from her memory.

  After shutting the window, Ramya returned to the cot, and took Amma’s hand — it felt dry like parchment. She knew from Amma’s s shallow, stertorous breathing that her end was near.

  “Amma, are you OK?”

  Amma half-opened her eyes, which seemed oddly sightless, and without a word she shut them.

  Ramya called out to her Daddy. Though his bedroom was on the upper floor, he was awake, as if waiting for his cue. She heard his footfalls, the rubber flipflops slapping on the polished-stone treads, as he came down the staircase.

  In the sickly light of the zero-watt bulb, Ramya saw Amma trying to take a deep, long breath. Ramya stared absently at Amma’s diamond nose-stud, waiting and waiting for her to exhale. Before Daddy who’d entered the room just then could put on the ceiling light, Amma had breathed her last.

  The line-up of cars begins to move, the trail of red lights ahead inching forward. The cars stop and start again, their progress regulated by the capricious traffic lights. She needs to concentrate on her driving, lest she get involved in a fender-bender, but her wayward mind drifts into the past.

  Everyone she loved or cared for or befriended has either passed on or passed by. Her ineffectual Mummy, kind but a bit addled Daddy, her beloved Atom Auntie, Amma, the archetypal mother hen, to say nothing of the dog Barghest, fickle as he was. Even Monica and Sujatha — they’re just a couple of fading snaps in a photo-album. Sandeep and Vidya have returned to India, most probably for good. As to Prakash — she’d let him proceed without her. It was the easiest of separations, no words, no emotions. One went ahead, the other stayed behind. It was as simple as that — as clinically precise a separation as was possible. No mess, no bloodletting. Divorce-lite.

  Now Prakash is engineering a comeback. Is it fear of old age? He must be well past sixty now, an age when people in India are already retired. Loneliness? Or wanting someone to take care of him in his dotage?

  How about her? Is she OK with his returning? Is her life too nearing the end of its course? Does she need companionship? A comrade-in-arms to combat old age and death?

  No! There’s no question of old age or death. Come next month, she’ll be fifty, just half a century old. No, the latter sounds rather bad … just five decades old. A golden girl! She has one third of her life span, or more, left to live. And live, meaningfully. Live, with some purpose. She’s not going to fade away into the sunset, just like that …

  Really?

  Is she kidding herself? Easier said than done. What does she have to look forward to? She has no job, she’s not particularly rich, no husband by her side, no children to fuss over, and not many friends either … Maybe, a few colleagues but whose lot was worse than hers.

  In India, it’s said that everyone should have at least four friends in the world. That’s because it requires four shoulders to carry you on a bier once you’re dead. Never mind that in Canada you need more than four strong shoulders to carry a heavy wooden coffin made of maple. (Or is it oak?)

&n
bsp; As for Ramya, she has none — no friends, no relatives, and ipso facto no pallbearers. No one to extend a helping hand on her last journey on earth …

  When she gets on the highway, the traffic starts to move faster. The snow rising from the road surface looks like scudding clouds of gossamer. The day is grey and dreary, with wet snow falling relentlessly. The wipers move incessantly, scratching at the windscreen with a monotonous rhythm, clearing away the bird-shit-like spatters.

  As the car nears her cul-de-sac, rain has miraculously taken the place of snow. It’s as if all the lamentation for Subbu-Auntie has reduced the heavens to tears.

  When she enters the house, Ramya feels low and lonely, and the gathering darkness outside doesn’t seem to help much. She doesn’t feel like picking up her mail — all she receives are invoices and flyers anyway. The lure of finding a re-appointment letter from True North is simply not enough. She only wants to collapse into a couch and switch on the TV — her only voluble companion. Not that she wants to see anything in particular — the mindless but excited natter of the anchormen, delivering every inconsequential bit of information with gusto, has a comforting ring to it.

  What’s Death like? The cessation of all sensations, she could guess with her limited knowledge. What Ramya has gleaned about Death has come from scriptures, general reading, and also, in her case, the conversation of maids.

  According to Hinduism, Death isn’t the final end all. Souls are merely recycled — like empty plastic bottles or aluminum cans. They’re reborn in another form. Birth and Death, they’re just the two faces of Life, obverse and reverse. Then why does one fear Death so much? Even the terminally ill and those in considerable pain don’t often welcome it. The centuries-old conceptions of Heaven and Hell peddled by the religious establishment the world over must surely have a hand in it, feeding on people’s insecurity.

  Ramya wants to steer clear of the morbid thoughts which are randomly invading her mind, but the shows on TV are unhelpful — not one of them is riveting enough. Death must be a horrendous thing, if one goes by the reaction of the living who are left behind — the grief, the despair, the sense of abandonment. Doubtless there are some who experience joy and profit from someone’s death, and surely, there are others who do the despatching themselves. But, on the whole, humanity would prefer Death not to visit their household.

  But the dead, to whom one would suspect Death had mattered most, are past caring. Perhaps to some it was a happy release — an escape from the countless demands of Life.

  How different and uncomplicated from all this was their servants’ take.

  “When I die,” Sanna Lakshmi said, “I will go to heaven. There I believe I can eat whatever I want, and as much as I want.”

  “What would you want to eat?” the nine-year-old Ramya asked.

  “Mutton biryani, and chicken korma. Every day, morning, afternoon, and night,” Lakshmi said. Ramulamma the cook left whatever she was cooking to its fate and came into the room to join them in the serious discussion of thanatology.

  On seeing Ramulamma, Lakshmi added: “Anything, but what Ramulamma cooks.”

  Ramulamma bridled, but before she could snap back, Ramya said: “Ramulamma is such a good cook. With her cooking she makes life on earth a heaven.”

  “How well you’ve put it, my little angel!” Ramulamma exclaimed.

  “What would you like to eat when you go to heaven, Ramulamma?” Ramya asked.

  “Though I’m a cook myself, nothing special comes to mind right now,” Ramulamma said, shaking her head, her brow creased with concentration.

  “What about drinks?” Lakshmi said, and giggled. “Gudamba, perhaps?” Gudamba was a cheap but potent locally-brewed intoxicant made from jaggery.

  “You’d know better. I hear your husband drinks and lazes all day long, and sends you to work to bring home money,” Ramulamma said.

  To them Life, and Afterlife, it appeared, was all about food and drink.

  Ramya remembers her sandalwood box, which holds only one remaining object. The bottle of Tik 20. The last one standing. The contents of which the thieving Kanthamma had threatened to swallow. In Kanthamma’s case, it was all for show, and she hadn’t meant to carry out her threat. But Devamma? Though she was a showgirl herself, she’d had the guts to take that terrifying step.

  The liquid in the bottle was something that could fell an elephant, though it was meant to eradicate bed bugs and other creepy-crawlies. Did it still retain its potency after all these years? Ramya is sure that it’s still effective. But isn’t the proof of the pudding in the eating?

  Ramya fetches the bottle, and sits down on the couch, and leans back. The room is in semidarkness. The TV is on, and cheerless light filters in through the windows, painting the interior of her home in so many shades of grey.

  Ramya unscrews the cap, places the bottle to her lips and swallows the contents in one quick gulp. Bottoms up! Here’s to Death.

  14

  Groundhog Day

  THE SUN IS STREAMING into the drawing room. Its brightness, uncharacteristic for a winter day, could lull you into believing the temperature outside is mild. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The snow-covered landscape is desolate and bitterly cold. Nonetheless, the sunshine dispels the dark shadows that haunted the room the previous evening. Dust motes jive in sunlight. They’re the only animated things in room.

  Despite being suffused with cheery light, the room is deathly still. The furniture, immobile in their appointed places, crouch restively. The air is still too, the thermostat having turned off the heat on its own. The knick-knacks, mostly bronze and wooden figurines brought from India, look lifeless under their shroud of dust, as though the frigid weather has sucked out their tropical souls. Ramya lies supine and motionless on the couch, like a puppet dropped by a clumsy puppeteer.

  The TV, however, is on, accentuating rather than contradicting the surrounding stillness. It looks tired and jaded, having stayed awake all night. A news anchor gabs about the groundhog’s shadow which was spotted earlier in the day in a small Ontario town.

  Every year the country goes through the ridiculous motions of trying to extract a prediction from groundhogs about the onset of spring. There’s a clutch of supposedly clairvoyant rodents that the TV channels consult for meteorological insights. These groundhogs with lame and lamentable names have a celebrity status. Every year they bask in their fifteen minutes of national fame. Now that the groundhog’s shadow has been spotted, a short winter is prophesied.

  Whether you’re a believer or not, it’s heartening news. The dark and dismal reign of winter being cut short is a welcome happenstance. Spring! A rebirth of life, when nature awakens from a slumber akin to Death. Spring! A time for new beginnings, when the past is sloughed off like outworn clothes.

  It’s no surprise that Telugu New Year comes in early spring. Punjabi, Tamil, Marathi, Kannadiga, and Parsi New Years too come when winter has bid au revoir, or whatever. It does make sense that spring should mark the beginning of the New Year. From what Ramya has read, even in Europe, the New Year was observed in spring until the Gregorian calendar arbitrarily fixed on January 1st.

  On Telugu New Year, known as Ugadi, a special relish is prepared. It’s a concoction made of neem leaves (bitter-tasting in the extreme) and jaggery (a traditional substitute for sugar), among other ingredients. As a child Ramya refused to even sample it, stubbornly turning her face away. But if Atom Auntie was around, she’d coax her. “Just try a spoonful, dear. You eat Ugadi Pachchadi to remind yourself that Life is sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter.”

  Ramya stirs and lifts herself to a sitting position on the couch. She’s been lying there for god knows how many hours. She feels weak and groggy. She remembers waking up in the middle of the night and stumbling to the bathroom where she threw up into the toilet bowl.

  Outside the sun is beating down with deceptive brightness. Ramya tries to get up, wanting to wash her face and brush her teeth. But the effort required to sta
nd up seems quite beyond her. She sinks back into the couch. Reflexively, her hand reaches for the remote. She shuts off the TV and with it the hogwash about the early coming of spring.

  After lying on the couch for twenty minutes or so, Ramya musters enough strength to rise slowly, and then walk haltingly to the kitchen to make herself a strong cup of Bru, the instant south Indian coffee — the true elixir of life.

  She’s still alive, sighs Ramya. She doesn’t know what got into her last night to make her swallow the contents of the Tik 20 bottle in one gulp. But she’s not overly thankful that she’s survived: She’s still foggy about her life ahead. She always knew the poison wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t the bug killer, lying in her precious sandalwood box for over thirty years, have lost its lethal edge? No, Amma must have had something to do with it. She may have found the bottle secreted by Ramya, and poured out its deadly contents only to replace it with tap water. No wonder it was full to the brim. Yes, that must be it … the bottle had been half empty when Kanthamma grabbed it in a dramatic show of bravado.

  Ramya pours the coffee from one mug into another repeatedly until the top turns to foam — the way south Indian coffee must be drunk. On her way back to the living room she notices that she has voicemails on her phone. At first, she wants to ignore them and let things drift, but she changes her mind and picks up the cordless.

  The first message is from Jack:

  “Hi Ramya, you never returned my call. If you’re free tonight why don’t we go to the Ten in Port Credit? We can discuss your future over dinner and a nice bottle of wine.”