Krishan would not have been able to say, as he stood there in his room, to what extent this poem he’d read so long ago had influenced his reaction to the events of the war, but it occurred to him now that the structure Poosal had constructed so meticulously in his mind was not so different, in a way, from the one he himself had constructed in the months and years after the war’s end. He too had more or less abandoned the world around him to cultivate a kind of alternative space in his mind, and even if the time he’d spent dwelling in this site had been painful rather than joyful, driven as much by shame as by love, he too had in some way hoped that the object of his thoughts, the suffering of his partly real, partly virtual community, might receive through his labor a recognition it hadn’t received in the real world. Thinking of his first months working in the northeast after his return to the island, Krishan could still remember the distinct sense he’d had of physically entering a place he’d imagined into existence, the feeling he was moving not so much across solid earth as across some region in the outskirts of his mind. He’d begun working for a small, local, underfunded NGO in Jaffna, earning little more than he needed to survive, and traveling on broken roads between bombed-out villages that glimmered with the corrugated steel and aluminum of makeshift homes, past the resentful glances of men who could no longer protect, the tired eyes of women who now bore all responsibility for the continuation of life, it was as though the scenes of prior violence he’d re-created in his mind were superimposed over everything he saw. The last shells had long since fallen, the last bodies been long since cleared, but the mood and texture of this violence suffused the places he went to such an extent that even his way of walking changed while he was in the northeast, his gait acquiring the same quiet reverence of someone moving in a cemetery or cremation ground. There were glimpses occasionally of a simplicity and beauty hearkening back to another kind of life—the joyful laughter of two girls sharing a bicycle on their way to school in the morning, the careless splashing of an old man filling up buckets of water at a well in the gathering dusk—and seeing the violence of the final years of war everywhere around him but also, at such moments, visions of possible futures, he’d given himself up to the work before him with vigorous, single-minded discipline.
He’d become, during his time in the northeast, less abstract and more grounded, more connected to the land and people that till then he’d seen mainly on screens, gradually internalizing the cyclical rhythms of rural life, where time never seemed to be heading anywhere but was always circling, returning, and repeating, bringing the self back to itself. He’d envisioned participating in some kind of dramatic change, in some kind of sudden rising or flourishing after all the pain and grief, but as the months turned into a year and as one year turned into two he began to realize that these visions would never be achieved, that some forms of violence could penetrate so deeply into the psyche that there was simply no question of fully recovering. Recovery was something that would take decades, which even then would be partial and ambiguous, and if he wanted to help in a meaningful way it would have to be in a way that was sustainable for him in the long term, without having to abandon all his needs for its sake. As his initial urgency and unity of purpose wore away, he began spending more of his weekends in Colombo, making the seven-hour journey back home two, sometimes even three times a month. The city had transformed dramatically in the years since the end of the war, its widened roads brightly lit by shop signs and electronic billboards, its skyline populated by sleek hotels and luxury apartment buildings, its new cafés, bars, and restaurants teeming with people he didn’t know and couldn’t place. Krishan registered these changes with resentment, as if the city’s sudden modernity was in direct relation to the evisceration of the northeast, but he couldn’t help being drawn to the easy distractions this urban life seemed to offer, and when a position opened up at one of the large foreign NGOs in Colombo—highly bureaucratic, well-compensated, and concerned mainly with applications and reports—he’d decided it was time to return, not for very long, he told himself, just until he’d saved up some money and had a better sense of what his next steps were. He’d settled back into life at home with his mother and grandmother after the better part of a decade away, old habits and routines returning but mingled with the freedoms of adulthood, his free time spent meeting old friends and new acquaintances, seeing the occasional or potential lover, reading and watching films at home. These small but varied pleasures had distracted him for a while, but there was a difference between pleasure that soothed and lulled one to sleep and pleasure that drew the self more widely and vividly into the world, and thinking of his return to Colombo now it seemed to him, as he stood there in front of the window, that something vital had been lost over the course of the previous year, the sense, so strong for most of his twenties, that his life could be part of some larger thing, part of some movement or vision to which he could give himself up.
Krishan turned from the window and looked around at the room in front of him, the room he’d grown up in with his younger brother and which, in the last few years, since his brother moved abroad, he’d had mostly to himself. The room was still suspended in the warm glow of early evening, but the shaft of light that fell from the window had moved along the floor, indicating that he’d been standing there for a considerable amount of time. He remembered the call from Rani’s daughter and realized that he’d been thinking only about himself since returning to his room, that he’d failed to bring himself any closer to the fact of Rani’s death, as though he was trying, somehow, to evade the significance of what he’d learned. He went to the dressing table, picked up his phone, and after hesitating a moment, dialed his mother’s number. There was still time before her class ended but he hoped she would pick up, that in communicating the news to her he himself might better understand its meaning. The phone rang for a while before playing the network’s automated message, informing him that the number he was calling was not available, and putting the phone down Krishan thought of his grandmother, who was probably sitting in her room with nothing to do. He hadn’t yet told her about the call, and he could perhaps go to her room now and let her know. The news would sadden her, no doubt, but his grandmother wasn’t the kind of person who was easily affected by the deaths of other people, in a way would even be grateful to learn what happened to Rani, obtaining from it the urgency and excitement that even a painful happening can generate in the life of someone without much to do. Relieved there was someone he could talk to, the one person ironically who always wanted to talk to him, he went to the door, turned the key in the lock, and took the four short steps across the vestibule that separated their rooms. It was only when he put his hand on the doorknob that he began to have doubts, realized that informing his grandmother right away might not actually be the wisest way to proceed. It was Appamma after all who would be most affected by Rani’s death, Appamma who’d shared a room with Rani for more than a year and a half, and perhaps the best course of action was to keep the news from reaching her altogether, to let her go about her life with no notion that Rani had died alone in a well the night before. He remained in front of his grandmother’s door, wanting to go in and talk but unsure whether it was a good idea, till feeling at last an urge to glance into her room, as if by getting a glimpse of her he would know what to do, he let go of the doorknob and knelt down in front of the door, closing his left eye and squinting in through the keyhole with his right.
2
Appamma’s door was in line with the chair by the window, and peering into her room Krishan could make out her figure from behind, her body slumped forward on the chair, her arms placed along the armrests, and her legs stretched out on the stool in front of her, in accordance with her belief that keeping them horizontal was beneficial for her circulation. Her head was tilted to the side and hanging forward slightly, as if she were staring down at her lap, and from time to time it jerked up like something had startled her before sinking back down. His grandmothe
r, Krishan realized as he stared through the keyhole, had accidentally fallen asleep. It was not an occurrence that was rare, given her difficulty sleeping during the nights, when she sometimes got up to go to the bathroom four or five times before dawn, but it wasn’t something he could have counted on or expected either, especially not in the evenings when she was generally most on her guard. It happened usually only in the early afternoons, when she was lying in bed with the afternoon movie playing on the TV, very occasionally in the late mornings too, when she was sitting in her chair waiting for lunch to be brought up to her room. His grandmother didn’t like being caught sleeping in the daytime, he knew, especially if it was obvious that she hadn’t fallen asleep intentionally. Accidentally falling asleep indicated that she wasn’t in complete control of her body, that sometimes her body acted of its own accord, independently of her own wishes, which wasn’t something she could let other people think. If she ever woke up after a nap and discovered that someone had come into her room she would strenuously deny that she’d been sleeping, even if she hadn’t been asked or challenged, would claim to have been resting with her eyes closed, enjoying the breeze, even if just a moment before her mouth had been hanging wide open and her snoring audible through the door. Seeing no reason to hurt her pride Krishan always avoided going near his grandmother at such times, had learned, over the years, if for some reason he did need to wake her up, to make a loud noise from afar before entering her room, to bang a door or pretend to sneeze so she would have time to compose herself before he was in front of her. He took these measures in part so she wouldn’t feel anxious or embarrassed, so she wouldn’t feel the need to persuade him she’d been awake and not asleep, but even more than this because it bothered him that his grandmother was willing to tell such obvious lies to convince him she was in good health. Almost everyone told falsehoods, it was true, in order to maintain in their minds a certain image of themselves, but whereas everyone else told these lies skillfully, without exposing the insecurities at their source, his grandmother’s lies revealed that she was capable now of only the most transparent attempts at maintaining her preferred self-image, betraying herself far more in uttering them than if she’d simply kept silent.
Krishan moved back a little from the keyhole. He didn’t want to wake his grandmother up, and was sure now that he shouldn’t inform her about Rani’s death, that for the time being at least it was best to let her continue existing in her state of ignorance. He didn’t want to return to the stillness of his room either, and feeling an urge suddenly to put as much distance as possible between himself and the house, it occurred to him that he could leave to go for a walk, that being out in the open for a while, smoking a cigarette in his usual spot, he would be able to collect his thoughts. He went to his room, changed quickly into a pair of trousers, and put his pack of cigarettes and lighter into his pocket, left his phone on the desk and went downstairs. Stepping out of the house he saw with a little relief that it was still relatively bright outside, the sky still a pale, weightless blue, and closing the gate behind him he made his way up the lane with quick, determined strides. He passed the neighboring houses, the construction site where the workers were finishing up for the day, the sound of trickling water audible from their makeshift shower on the ground floor, turned left at the end of the lane and headed in the direction of Marine Drive. An unbroken stream of cars and vans was rushing past in both directions, the vastness of the sea glimmering beyond them, and crossing the road as soon as a break emerged in the traffic he began to head south, keeping to the pavement between the road and railway tracks except for occasional stretches where the pavement seemed to disappear. Taking his lighter out and sparking it with his thumb he looked around distractedly as he walked, at a parked three-wheeler with an icon of the Buddha attached to its rear window, concentric circles of colored LED lights creating the illusion of a halo revolving around his head, at an elderly Muslim woman doing her best to keep up with a young girl and boy, her grandchildren most likely, who were tugging at her hands. Cars, vans, and three-wheelers continued to rush past in both directions, as though keen to avoid the twilight, and the people passing him seemed fully absorbed in their various destinations too, tired commuters hurrying to the station to catch the next train home, aging men and women taking their evening exercise in T-shirts and tracksuits, swinging their arms with exaggerated motion as they power walked toward some imaginary goal. It took a while to fall into a rhythm after the quiet of his room, to assimilate the sound and movement of the city into a workable state of equilibrium, but putting more distance from their house he began to feel calmer, to relax into a more even pace as he made his way along his habitual route.
His walks had become an unexpected routine in the previous few months, one of the few effective strategies he’d found for escaping the restlessness that had begun taking hold when he returned in the evenings from work. In his first months of being in Colombo he’d still been engrossed by all the possibilities of life in the city, by the prospect of going out in the evenings, drinking and smoking weed, being obnoxious or lighthearted with friends, meeting attractive people with whom he could flirt. These activities had given movement and structure to his time, a sense of something to look forward to, the possibility of an encounter that could change the course of his life, but perhaps because he’d met so few people in Colombo who really moved him, whether intellectually or politically or romantically, perhaps because he was less easily sustained by the things that had attracted and stimulated him when he was younger, the desires that led him to move back and the short-lived satisfactions they offered soon came to feel misleading, like distractions or diversions from a more basic absence. Solitude in the past had always been a pleasurable way to pass time, a kind of consolation for the demands and disappointments of the world, a tender solicitousness he could obtain simply by withdrawing into himself, but a quiet restlessness began to surface whenever he found himself alone at home in the evenings, as he moved here and there in his room, wasted time on the internet, tried to read books he’d been meaning to read. He tried to cope in whatever way he could, even if it meant going to his grandmother’s room and listening to her discuss how mosquitoes were managing to enter the room despite her precautions, but the unease continued to lurk just below the surface, growing continuously over the course of the afternoons and evenings and reaching a peak during the last, dying moments of the day, when the sun was setting and the golden yellow light giving way, suddenly and dramatically, first to pink, then to violet, and finally to the lighter and darker blues of night. There was something about twilight that heightened his anxiety, which brought it to the surface of his consciousness and made it palpable, as though with the gradual disappearance of the horizon the last hopes and promises of the day too were disappearing from view, another day coming and going with nothing to show for itself.
He would set off well before the sky began darkening, moving with an intentionally slow, steady pace meant to calm him down, taking long, meandering routes through different parts of the city at first, out of a desire to familiarize himself with its significantly altered topography. No matter how many different paths he took he continued feeling out of place amid all the new signs and façades, markers of a new trajectory of development that he could find no way of relating to, and gradually he began circumscribing his walks to the residential areas closer to home, to the numerous small, scraggy lanes and byways of Wellawatta and Dehiwala, areas he’d rarely explored when he was younger on account of the war, the army checkpoints put up every hundred meters and the omnipresent risk of being interrogated and detained. He passed the small, old houses, most of them with people living in them, some of them converted into small offices and showrooms, passed the newer apartment buildings occupied mostly by Tamil and Muslim families, and thinking as he walked of the weight of life that all these structures contained he would begin to feel less burdened, as if with every step he took from his own house he was leaving behind some heav
y and unnecessary part of himself. He was still full witness to the dramatic changes occurring in the sky above, but something about being outside and in the direct presence of these changes made them easier to bear, as if being out in the open, unbound by four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, whatever was weighing him down in his chest was free to spread out and dissipate. Listening to the sounds of the waves breaking gently against the rocks, the birds flapping their wings against the push of the warm breeze, he gradually became less restive, the present ceasing to be a void and becoming instead, for a short period of time, a place he could inhabit comfortably and securely. There were few moods that could persist after all when one was in full view of earth and sky, and even the more deep-seated moods one carried through the course of the day—those moods that maintained themselves in the chest against all the conflicting feelings that came one’s way while out in the world—even these moods thinned slowly into nothingness when confronted by the immensity of the horizon, so that one could feel, at such moments, if not satisfaction or contentment then the peace at least of a brief inner extinction. When he returned to the enclosed spaces of his house and room after these walks he was usually too tired to feel the unease that had led him to leave, and getting on his bed, salty from perspiration and the breeze of the sea, a pleasant ache in his calves and thighs, he would lie there in the cocoon of his exhaustion, getting up only when it was time at half past eight to go downstairs and bring dinner up to his grandmother, when it was already dark and the most difficult part of the day, the transition from evening to night, was over and done with.
A Passage North Page 3