The Beach at Galle Road

by Joanna Luloff

  When her thoughts then drifted to Rajit and Lalith, the younger boys, who still seemed safely preoccupied with their own childish distractions, she wondered how long it would be before they, too, learned words of fear and violence. Would Manju and Nilanthi be their teachers, or would they find these things out for themselves through the newspapers and neighborhood rumors? Kamala looked at the aunt’s battered box sent down from Tamil Nadu—it was now holding Kamala’s cooking coconuts. She wondered what it would be like in India, where their language was spoken but where nothing else would be familiar. The aunt was growing older; perhaps she missed her family, perhaps she regretted the decision to leave her childhood home behind. Kamala knew she would never be able to ask this aunt any of these questions, but she let herself imagine what it would be like to suggest to this relative and stranger that she meet her grandnephews and grandniece one day. If things became bad enough, could she write a letter to the aunt? Would she be able to do it—send her children onto a ferry to be greeted by an old woman they would have to call Auntie?

  Kamala suddenly sensed Nilanthi’s presence in the room. She wasn’t sure how long her daughter had been keeping her company, but she smelled the rose Lux soap Nilanthi used. She heard the sound of oil sizzling on the stove and the crackle of the onions and chilies as her daughter stirred them into the pan. She suddenly felt guilty for the direction her thoughts had taken her just now. When she turned around, she attempted a smile for her daughter. “I was just thinking about your poem, and I started daydreaming, it seems.”

  Nilanthi returned her mother’s smile. “The contest is in one more week. I think I’m ready.”

  “Here, let me help you.” Kamala stood up to join Nilanthi by the burners and kicked the aunt’s box farther under the shelves.

  A FEW DAYS later, Suchinta and Dinesh were sitting on Kamala’s porch again. Dinesh had brought pineapples from the south and Kamala had sliced them thinly, spread them out on a serving platter after sprinkling them with pepper. Kamala watched the men, their mouths full, laugh about a coworker whose mother forced him into consulting an astrologer to find a prospective bride. His girlfriend was furious, it seemed. Lalith periodically sprinted on and off the porch to ring his fingers with the fruit. Kamala tried to ease herself into the playful mood, but she and Suchinta had barely exchanged a few polite words and she sensed her friend’s body, rigid and distant, only a few inches away from her. Suchinta’s face showed signs of sleeplessness, and Kamala couldn’t erase their last exchange from her thoughts. She hadn’t gone to visit Suchinta while Dinesh had been away.

  Eventually, as she knew it would, the conversation turned toward Dinesh’s travels to Tangalle. Dinesh explained he had found his cousin in his air-conditioned office, signing paychecks and reprimanding a waiter for taking too long a break. “A day like any other,” Dinesh said. “He seemed truly shocked to see me. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’d write?’ he asked me. I must have looked pretty foolish to him.”

  “Well, at least you got a bit of a vacation out of it.” Nilan chuckled.

  “Yes—a swim in the pool and fresh lime juice and a room for the night next to some boisterous Australians.”

  Kamala couldn’t help feeling that some things weren’t being said. Although Dinesh was certainly creating a lighthearted account of the trip, there was something forced in his laughter, and Suchinta’s sustained silence was unsettling her. “And he really didn’t seem at all concerned?” Kamala asked. “What about the partners’ warnings?”

  “He claimed that it’s all blown over. Nothing to worry about.” Dinesh waved his arm as if to dismiss the earlier concerns. “Aside from a few checkpoints, everything looked like it always does down there.” He turned to Nilan. “News gets distorted over distances. I suppose I panicked a bit.”

  Kamala tried to meet Dinesh’s lightness with a smile of her own, but she found herself not believing him. She thought about how, only weeks ago, Dinesh had scolded her for being naive, and how Suchinta had looked at the recruitment flyer with resigned acceptance. Perhaps she had been trapped for too long in her own imagination these past weeks, or perhaps the fact of the flyer, tossed days ago into the trash pile, still remained in her mind, but she was sure there were dangers and changes that were being left unsaid.

  When the two couples said their good-byes an hour later, Kamala half listened as Suchinta promised that they would be at Nilanthi’s oration contest, and Dinesh made plans with Nilan to take the boys for a sea bath the following weekend. How do they do this? she wondered with some envy. How do they step into the future with their plans and their promises and pretend that everything is all right?

  NILANTHI WON FIRST prize in the Grade Ten English Oration Contest. The whole family was there, nestled into the fourth row of the auditorium. Kamala was tucked neatly in the center, Nilan and Rajit to her left, Manju and Lalith to her right. Kamala had positioned them as centrally as she could so that Nilanthi, if she grew nervous, could look out from the stage and see her family there, offering smiles and encouragement.

  But it quickly became clear to Kamala that Nilanthi had strength and confidence enough on her own. When her daughter approached the podium, she barely glanced at the audience and instead focused her gaze somewhere out into the distance, above all their heads. Kamala, in fact, seemed to be the only nervous one among their family. She braced herself for the poem as she willed her hands to stop their nervous fidgeting in her lap.

  Nilanthi’s voice began strongly. Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, / Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time. Kamala let her daughter’s voice surround her. The English words and the formal rows of chairs made Kamala feel she was someplace unfamiliar. More happy love! more happy, happy love! / For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d. Kamala looked around her. There was Nilan, his face serene, proud of his daughter’s performance. There was Lalith, slightly bored, his cricket bat tucked underfoot. Manju, his face full of concentration, nodding encouragement after every completed stanza. And Rajit, his head lowered, perhaps listening the most carefully to the words themselves. But even as she looked at her family gathered around her, heard their sighs and their breaths, she sensed this image of togetherness was a false promise. Her own imagination had dented the safety and wholeness she had promised to protect all those nights ago.

  As Nilanthi’s voice grew softer and increasingly mournful as the poem neared its end, Kamala felt a new sweep of panic. She readied herself for the lines to come, the words she remembered about sacrifice, about a village by the sea growing silent and empty. Nilanthi’s voice seemed distant and Kamala’s thoughts drifted to the boy-soldier, to the feeling of his hand on her arm. Kamala pushed the poem’s words away, but still the tears came. As her vision blurred, the familiar faces of her neighbors and friends retreated into haziness. She lost track of Suchinta’s profile; even Nilanthi became a fuzzy shadow of pink on the stage.

  Nilan’s hand surprised her as it fell over her own, offering a comforting, tangible weight. And quite suddenly Nilanthi’s voice trailed off, replaced by a wash of applause. Kamala felt protected by the echoing sounds, but she knew it was only a temporary relief.

  JANUARY TIE

  Sunitha fell off her forbidden bicycle and ripped her school tie in two. She held it in her hands delicately, as if it were an injured bird, and wondered if there was any way she could fix it without her grandmother knowing. The tie was more than just a tie to her father’s mother, her only family now; it symbolized the return of some much-needed luck, and her grandmother would read deeply into its tattered message, especially if she learned of the bicycle accident.

  Every night before bed, her grandmother rubbed Fair and Lovely cream over Sunitha’s face and pulled a comb through her long, straight hair and told her that people forget about the past as long as you give them something to admire in the present. Keep your shoulders covered. And your shirt buttoned to your neck. And do not ever, ever meet eyes with any of those schoolboys or you will bring more shame to
this family. And in this way Sunitha was presented to the village of Batticaloa as someone to be admired for all she was rising above.

  Without the tie, Sunitha’s uniform suddenly looked shabby. Her grandmother would be the first to point out her disreputable appearance, but her teachers would certainly express disappointment, too. Then the scolding would begin. Her grandmother would remind Sunitha that she was not allowed to ride the bicycle—her dead mother’s bike, no less—because no decent men marry girls who break their skin early riding bicycles and can’t bleed on their wedding night. Especially lower-caste girls. But mostly her grandmother would mourn the tie itself, the good luck it had promised when she first discovered it, bright and new, in a box of crumpled secondhand uniforms. Sunitha could already hear her grandmother’s reprimands. It is your vanity. You must have shown your pride.

  A girl from school approached Sunitha. She helped Sunitha right the bicycle and dust off her uniform. “But my January tie is ripped,” Sunitha muttered as the girl picked up her overturned bag.

  The girl stood next to Sunitha, almost a full head taller than she was. She wore a prefect badge on her uniform; she was one of the smart girls in their class. “What’s a January tie?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s what my grandmother calls it. Because it was one of the better ties, the ones usually reserved for the January selection. We don’t get to pick up my school supplies until February, when they’re discounted.” Sunitha felt embarrassed; she hadn’t wanted to say “secondhand,” but she knew the girl would hear the implication and link it to other things Sunitha knew were talked about: That although many of her classmates had several ties and white dresses, Sunitha had only one of each. That she had a grandmother instead of parents. And the girl would probably have heard why this was so.

  “Well, you’re welcome to my extra.” The girl pulled a tie out of her schoolbag. It was wrinkled, but quite new. “Mine are always falling into my food, so my mother usually sneaks a few extra from the supply pile each year.” She seemed embarrassed, too, but made up for it by talking quickly. “We’ve got so many extra ties, my mother uses them to dust the house. She even threatens to make quilts out of them.”

  Before even saying thank-you, Sunitha wrapped the new tie around her neck, smoothing the wrinkles and offering herself up for inspection. “If you were my grandmother, would you see the difference?” she asked.

  “I don’t know your grandmother. Does she wear glasses?”

  “Do you know any grandmothers who don’t?” Sunitha laughed. “My grandmother is nearly blind, but she notices everything. She’ll certainly notice the wrinkles.”

  “We can iron it out at my house if you want. It isn’t far.” The girl climbed on her bike and led the way to her house. On the ride, she would introduce herself as Nilanthi.

  SUNITHA AND NILANTHI became friends because neither was jealous of the other. Nilanthi never called Sunitha beautiful, never expressed envy over her friend’s slender nose or sage-colored eyes. And because Nilanthi was big boned and clumsy, it was easy for Sunitha to ignore her friend’s prefect badge and the fact that she was entering the O-levels with the highest marks of the ninth grade. Their classmates, most only slightly pretty or somewhat smart, had a difficult time befriending either girl, so Sunitha and Nilanthi were relieved and comforted by their unexpected friendship, praised one another’s luck quietly, and mapped out their futures in whispers. Nilanthi would become a doctor, and Sunitha would marry a wealthy businessman who would take her far away from the village of Batticaloa.

  Sunitha and Nilanthi rarely saw one another at school. Over two thousand girls attended their regional school, often traveling from distant villages to study there. Because it was made clear early on that Sunitha would never make it past her O-levels, she was placed in the home science and dance classes to “improve her other strengths.” Most of the girls in her class were quiet, meek girls from the lower castes, most of them pretty and delicate, while the less pretty girls were placed in the agriculture track and often left school early to work in the tea estates. The higher-caste girls like Nilanthi took literature and biological sciences. For them, university was at least a possibility, and if not, there were the teacher-training colleges and a suitable husband not too far in the future.

  After school, Nilanthi would ask Sunitha about her lessons as if they were mysterious secrets kept from the O-level girls. When Sunitha described a cooking lesson or a traditional dance, her voice took on a seriousness to match her friend’s interest. Sunitha began to see how these feminine skills granted her a certain expertise and authority. Although Sunitha had always thought of them as less important than the O-level subjects, Nilanthi had given her pride in her studies. And even though she wondered sometimes if Nilanthi was merely acting curious in order to construct a balance between them, Sunitha tried to shrug off her doubts and made her lessons sound as grand and complicated as she possibly could.

  SOON AFTER HER bicycle accident, Sunitha was at Nilanthi’s house, teaching her how to make proper roti over a fire. The monsoon winds had begun a few days earlier, and despite the heavy air and threat of rain, Sunitha made Nilanthi fetch wood while she gathered fallen twigs and crumpled old newspaper in the backyard.

  “I don’t understand why we have to make a fire. Can’t we just use the gas burners?” Nilanthi complained as she fought against the tangled bushes. Her socks were caked with dirt and she had scraped her left knee.

  Sunitha felt momentarily sorry for her friend, who was struggling with a dried bush, but she took on the voice of her home science teacher and mimicked her stern instructions. “Gas is growing expensive, and besides, the wood creates a smoky flavor that isn’t possible with gas.” Sunitha liked the authority in her voice and was proud she knew more about something than Nilanthi did. “Here, let me.” She gently pushed Nilanthi aside and snapped off a few twigs.

  “You always make things look easy,” Nilanthi said with a sigh, examining her scratched hands.

  “It’s not easy. It takes practice,” Sunitha answered without looking up. “Like geometry, I suppose.” She smiled at her friend. “We’re just good at different things.” As Sunitha stood, she saw that Nilanthi’s hair had tumbled out of her braids, and her forehead was glistening and streaked with dirt. “You’re a complete mess,” she scolded.

  “Well, it’s your fault if I am.” Nilanthi frowned and wiped her forehead with a handkerchief. “Let’s just go in and start cooking.”

  Sunitha had heard a growing impatience in her friend’s voice. She wished she had been more encouraging just then, but sometimes she just got carried away at playing the expert. As she followed Nilanthi into the house, she reminded herself that she mustn’t act too proud; she couldn’t afford to push her only friend away.

  Once inside, Sunitha moved the rice cooker and teapot out of the way, clearing a spot on the stone surface. “You see,” she said, “this space was once meant for fire stoves.”

  Nilanthi nodded, but Sunitha could tell she was restless. “How long is this going to take? I’m starving.”

  “We’ll be done in time for the film, don’t worry,” Sunitha assured her. They had planned to watch Bewafai this afternoon on the TV Nilanthi’s father had recently brought home. So far, Nilanthi’s brothers had let the family watch only cricket matches. Luckily the boys were off with their uncle on a boating adventure this weekend.

  Sunitha grabbed an apron and tugged it tight around her. She placed her hands in the gentle curves of her suddenly accentuated waist. She pursed her lips, attempting to mirror her teacher’s perfect O, touching the shapes of her face and lips as she blew steadily against the fire. “Like this,” she instructed. “Come here and help me.” She gently rested her palm against Nilanthi’s back as the two of them watched the wood crackle with flames.

  WHEN NILANTHI’S MOTHER arrived home, she greeted the girls, who sat transfixed in front of the television. “What smells so good in here?” she asked. Without taking her eyes off the screen, Ni
lanthi handed her mother a plate of rotis with onion-chili sambal on the side.

  Sunitha liked Nilanthi’s mother. She was a calm, friendly woman, smart like Nilanthi, but more graceful. On the day of the bicycle accident, when Nilanthi’s mother first saw Sunitha, she had let out a gasp. Her face registered some sort of understanding, and Sunitha braced herself for what she correctly anticipated was to come next. “You look just like her, my God,” Nilanthi’s mother had said. At those words, Sunitha had fallen silent and remained so for much of that afternoon. She worked hard at following her grandmother’s instructions, encouraging others to forget her family’s past, but people were always telling her how much she looked like her mother.

  Lately, Nilanthi’s mother seemed to have settled into Sunitha’s presence in her house, and only every once in a while would Sunitha catch a lingering glance, a sympathetic but troubled look.

  Sunitha often sensed Nilanthi being cautious around her, too. She always let Sunitha take the lead in conversations, decide how much and when she chose to reveal things about her family, her life with her grandmother, the rumors that circled them whenever they walked through the village center. Sunitha was relieved by her friend’s consideration and she tried to do small things for Nilanthi in return. She would help Nilanthi pick out new ribbons for her hair or act as Nilanthi’s practice audience when she was getting ready to perform a poem for the English Day competitions. Sometimes she just sat and kept Nilanthi company while she hung her head over her biology text or a particularly difficult math problem. She hoped that her presence soothed Nilanthi as much as her friend’s quiet company comforted her.