The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  The day before, a Sunday, started out innocently enough. You insisted on sharing Daddy’s egg, so I fried an extra one for him. He was feeling a little groggy, so instead of tea I made him coffee, which he also let you sip. It being a holiday, Dev didn’t take his bath until noon—he spent the morning in his pajamas, wrestling with you on the bed. At one point, while I rolled out the chappatis in the kitchen, you dragged your father in, to show me how well you had lathered his face for him to shave. A few minutes later, you ran in again, to show me how Daddy had lathered your cheeks in return. You came a third time, with an ash mark on your forehead—Dev had sent you to rummage around for a fruit offering for Ganesh.

  At lunch time, Dev pulled out one of the oversized bottles of beer he had stored in the fridge. “Just this one,” he told me, when confronted with the look I gave him. “To clear out the kidneys—I feel I’m not urinating enough.” Ever since he had stopped working, he always claimed some therapeutic reason for drinking during the daytime—beer for urinary health, whiskey to ward off an impending cold, rum to cure the ache in his neck. I snatched your hand away when you tried to hold the glass for him while he poured.

  Afterwards, you wanted to go to the terrace to look for enemy planes, but Dev convinced you it would be too dangerous, directing you to the balcony instead. He rolled a sheet of paper into a telescope and asked you to keep a watch on the sky while he took a nap. Zaida showed up a half hour later and put on an old Beatles record she found at her cousin’s place. You barked in accompaniment as they crooned about working as hard as a dog.

  That evening, more cars jammed the road below than I had ever seen before on a Sunday. Perhaps people were already getting claustrophobic after two nights of blackouts. We watched them from the balcony, the Fiats and Ambassadors crawling by the unlit streetlamps, the drivers blowing their horns more aggressively than usual to compensate for their painted-over headlights. At seven, the air-raid siren sounded. You ran inside to turn off the lights—you were still enthralled by the novelty (all false alarms, so far). Even after the all-clear siren sounded, you insisted we keep the candles lit and sit in the dark.

  So Dev began singing, reprising his Saigal performance from the last war. For a moment, I was transported back to when you were an infant in my arms, when I could see his voice fill your luminous eyes with calm. Now, as you sat in your father’s lap, you fidgeted and drummed against the chair, out of sync with his words. One foot pivoted around on the floor, as if doing the twist with a life of its own. “Can we put on the Beatles now?” you asked, the moment Dev’s lyrics died down.

  We actually had to turn the lights on to make you sleepy that night—the darkness had excited you too much. The next day, the sixth of December, was a Monday. I didn’t know if your school would be open, but dressed you up early in your uniform all the same. We waited at the corner until nine, but the school bus never came. Dev was still asleep when you burst into the bedroom. You woke him up, yelling, “No class today.”

  Perhaps it was providence that kept you home to spend one last day with Dev. Although, had you been away, I might have been less rankled, and things could have turned out a different way. Something oozed inside of me that morning when Dev let you break the yolk of his fried egg again. I felt a slow burn spread into my chest when you lathered him and wrestled him and ran around once more with ash on your forehead.

  “Still having beer for your problem?” I remarked as Dev poured his second glass at lunch. “Perhaps one doesn’t need to urinate quite as often as you think.”

  Dev set the empty bottle down on the table noiselessly, as if the slightest clink or scrape might propel my anger to a higher level. He sat where he was and stared at the crumbs on his plate as if waiting for permission to touch his beer.

  “What’s the matter, something else wrong now? Your elbow, perhaps, or is it your neck? I forget, should I get you rum or whiskey for that?”

  Still, Dev did not speak. You looked at him, then me, hiding your face behind your tumbler of lemonade. “Well?” I said. “Are you going to answer me, or do I have to call Auntie to come make the diagnosis?”

  “Just once,” Dev said softly, shaking his head. “Just once.”

  “Just once what? Speak up, maybe your son wants to hear as well. Just once can school fees not be squandered on alcohol? Or just once can Daddy digest his food without having a drink?”

  “It’s you who can’t digest your food, not without having a fight with me after every meal.” Dev threw back his chair and stood up so abruptly that the beer bottle toppled over and rolled off the table. “Just once I wish you wouldn’t talk down to me. Day after day you train your tongue to speak only in taunts. If not for me, at least think what Munna must feel.”

  “What must Munna feel? Watching you loll around the house unemployed every afternoon, gulping your drinks. Is that the model you’ve set for him to grow up as?”

  “Yes, yes, go on. Tell him how useless his father is, how he can’t even get a job. Don’t think I haven’t figured out your scheme. You’ve been trying to turn Munna against me since the day he was born.”

  Dev wrapped a protective arm around you as if I was about to pull you away, and this further infuriated me. “I’m not the one who’s turning him away, you are, with the behavior you keep displaying. He’s six years old now, he has eyes and ears and a brain, he can see for himself what his father is like.”

  “And what about his mother, does he see through her preciousness? So refined, so much too good for everyone, always strutting around with her nose in the air, always doing what her father directs. Instead of coming after me and ruining my life, why didn’t she marry her Paji instead?”

  I’m not sure how long the fight went on. I remember you disengaged at one point and disappeared into your usual hiding place in the bathroom. I remember dredging up every grudge I could think of, from Roopa to Freddy to my dowry, and Dev doing the same. Only the shadow within me, the phantom presence of your unborn sibling, remained uninvoked.

  The bell interrupted us. It was the postman, delivering a letter from Delhi, which had arrived with Paji’s usual impeccable timing. By the time I returned from the door, Dev had stalked off to the balcony.

  The fury within me was so centering that it held me in a state of heightened clarity for the rest of that afternoon. I felt like an actor during the intermission, charging myself for the second act of a play. While Dev smoked cigarette after cigarette on the balcony, I decided on eggplants for dinner and blistered them over the gas. I sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and onions as well, arranging them precisely on a platter in an enormous burst of salad. At one point you asked me for help on using a compass, and I bore down so hard that the needle pierced your notebook. I read the letter from Paji with its sheaf of clippings rubbing in the news of Indiraji’s latest accomplishments. Neither the usual accompanying gibes nor Paji’s meddling suggestions left much of an impression in the spate of my rage.

  The siren went off promptly at seven again. You kept sitting at the dining table, drawing circle after circle as if hypnotized. I switched off the lights myself and used a single match to try and ignite all the candles. As they blossomed into flame, a snatch from some familiar tune swirled unidentified through my head.

  I sat in silence and waited for Dev to come in from the balcony. Your compass pencil rasped against the paper as it crisply etched out its curved lines. The traffic outside seemed less noisy compared to the day before. I remembered reading that between sirens, cars were supposed to come to a standstill at the curb. Every now and then someone took advantage of the cleared road and I heard them zooming through the night.

  Dev finally appeared, and for a moment, I wavered. I could feel the afternoon’s events weighing down oppressively—did I have the stomach to complete the unfinished fight? Then, through the darkness, Dev’s defiant eyes met mine. I felt instantly electrified. “Look, Ashvin,” I said. “Daddy’s come inside.”

  Even then, we had a chance. I could hav
e vented my sarcasm, which Dev could have chosen to ignore. He might have gone back to the balcony, or braved the blackout at Auntie’s like one of those Times of India souls. After all, we knew the options, we had played out these roles so many times before.

  But then the unplaced tune surged back into my mind. It unmasked itself, overrunning my consciousness, garrisoning the centers of my brain. “Daddy’s going to sing for us,” I heard myself say. “The song he’s been singing for years now to make Mummy his.”

  I had never thought myself mean or sadistic, always staying behind a self-imposed cordon of restraint. But now I felt compelled to try cruelty as an experiment, see what effect it would have on Dev. I wanted to summon up something truly venomous, experience the thrill of it issuing from my lips. “You know the one I mean, don’t you? The one Daddy likes to sing every chance he gets? The one he’s spent his whole life singing and done nothing else? The trouble is, nobody’s thought his voice good enough in all these years to make a record out of it.”

  I didn’t discern any visible reaction from Dev, so I thrust in deeper to make sure I reached him. “Come, let’s hum it together—it looks like Daddy’s forgotten, but we can remind him. I know you prefer the Beatles, but I promise we’ll play them after Daddy’s finished.” With that, I set the tune free, humming it loud enough to drown out your protests that you didn’t want to sing. I picked you up and twirled you around in a show of affection for Dev.

  A voice inside urged me to retreat, but I continued, unable to stop myself. “Looks like even this isn’t ringing a bell for poor Daddy—perhaps he needs to hear the lyrics as well. Come, Ashvin, this is fun, you must join me in helping him.” I started crooning the song, twisting around the words, inventing new lines, exaggerating the tune as mockingly as I could. “Will you light the darkness of my heart? To dispel the fire in my life. Nobody wants to hear this song. So I keep singing it at home every night.” You struggled as I grabbed your hands to clap them along with the words.

  I brayed on for a few more verses, until Dev shouted for me to stop. “Can’t you see he’s crying?” He strode over and lifted you out of my arms.

  The act of having you physically taken from me crystallized all my outrage. I went on the attack instinctively. “So much concern you have for your son,” I said, the presence inside me furiously typing up the script. “Before he gets too attached to you, why don’t you tell him what you did?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well—the one you forced me to drop, the one whose life you traded for this house. Do you want to reveal it to Ashvin or should I be the one?”

  “Are you mad? Have you completely lost your senses?”

  “Ashvin, listen to me, Mummy has a story to tell you. That man holding you, he’s not only your daddy, but also the daddy of another.”

  “How can you cling on to such rubbish after all these years? You were the one, not me, who—”

  “Listen to me, Ashvin, a sister or a brother that was in Mummy’s stomach, do you understand? We’ll never know what it was, because before it could come out, Daddy had it killed.”

  “Shut your stupid mouth,” Dev said, and, still holding you with one hand, grabbed my arm with the other. I screamed as if I had been struck, and tried to get away, losing my balance as Dev let go. I toppled towards the floor, striking my head on a corner of the dining table along the way. For a moment I sat there dazed, feeling around with my hand where my scalp felt sticky. When I looked, there was blood on my fingers.

  “Meera?” Dev said, uncertainly. “Are you? I’m sorry—I didn’t think…” He remained standing where he was.

  I felt more blood seep out from under my hairline and brushed at it with the back of my hand to wipe it away. You started crying, then wriggled to get out of Dev’s arms. “It’s okay, shhh,” Dev whispered. “Mummy’s fine, she just scratched her head—Daddy didn’t mean to.”

  But you began screaming and flailing, and Dev was forced to set you down. You came running across the floor and buried your head in my chest.

  “Daddy didn’t mean to,” Dev said again, kneeling down beside us.

  “Munna, look at Daddy.” But you kept whimpering against my breast. Dev turned to me, speaking with a different tone. “Are you going to tell him I didn’t do it on purpose or are you going to make a big drama out of this? Perhaps you can convince him that I’m trying to murder his mother as well.”

  “Just leave him alone, will you? You’ve done enough as it is.”

  “And you, as usual, are completely innocent.” Dev got up. At the door, he tried to get your attention one more time. “Daddy loves you, Munna, you know that, don’t you?” In the candlelight, I could just make out the line of his chin, the curve of his lips, the shine of his pupils against the whiteness of his eyes. “Does Munna love Daddy?

  “Ashvin?” Dev said quietly, one last time, and I felt you stiffen against me. By the time you turned around, your father had left the flat and closed the door behind him.

  WE HEARD THE SOUNDS even before I had a chance to put something on my wound. They were delicate, like balloons burst underwater, like kernels of corn popping in an adjoining room. “It’s outside,” you said, and ran to the balcony. “Mummy, come quick—there are lights floating in the air.”

  I stood with you and stared at the festoons high above the buildings. They were neither gun flashes nor bombs, but surely something connected with the war—I had to tell you I didn’t know what. They reminded me of pictures of cells under a microscope—each light a nucleus of luminous purple surrounded by a plasma of magenta glow. A string of them shot up, then slowly came apart, drifting through the sky like fireworks that had forgotten to explode. For a while I wondered if these were some strange new fireworks—could India already have won the war? Perhaps if I watched long enough, they would bloom in plumes of orange, white, and green, to shower the country below.

  Then the guns started. Shadows jumped and the outlines of buildings reverberated in white. The skies lit up as if from sheet lightning flashing through the night. “The Pakistanis, they’ve come,” you cried out. “They’re going to throw bombs on us.” You turned to me, horrified. “Daddy. I didn’t stop him. He’s outside.”

  “Daddy can take care of himself,” I began to reply, as you darted into the bedroom. “Ashvin,” I shouted. “Stop, didn’t you hear what I said?” But it was too late. You ran out of the flat, leaving the door open to the corridor outside.

  I raced after you. I had to slow down on the staircase, which was dark—I could hear your feet stumbling down the steps ahead. People were milling around on the pavement, pointing to the sky, watching the aerial events as nonchalantly as a shooting star display. “Ashvin!” I cried out as you dashed out on the road to avoid the crowd.

  An oncoming Impala almost ran me over as I stepped onto the road myself. I saw your figure ahead, zigzagging between the cars that had heeded the regulation to stop. Every few seconds, you glanced up into the night as if to keep a lookout for bombs. “Daddy will be fine,” I kept calling out, even though I knew you wouldn’t look back. “Let’s go home—he’s probably waiting for us, wondering where we went.”

  Another car emerged from the maze of motionless vehicles on the road, blinking its painted-over headlights at me as it careened past. The sound of the antiaircraft guns was almost constant now—their echoes bouncing off the building façades. In the sky, the orbs still hovered, peering down at us like purple eyeballs.

  Something flamed down from the sky and crashed ahead in front of my eyes. People scattered, but I charged towards it, mindful only of you. By the time I got there, a knot of onlookers had cautiously advanced to watch. A metal tube, still smoking, lay punched into the road. Someone said one of the purple lights had crashed down from the sky, another claimed it was an unexploded bomb.

  Peeping in waist-high between two of the men, I saw your face. Instantly I was upon you, grabbing onto your shirt, your belt, your arms, so you cou
ldn’t get away. I tried to lead you homeward, but you caught hold of a lamppost and struggled to break free. “I have to find Daddy, let me go,” you yelled.

  There was a whistling sound, and then something smashed behind us. A man lay bloodied on the pavement, a woman sat screaming beside him. An instant later, an even louder sound, almost a shriek, filled the air. As we watched, the cigarette shack at the corner of Lamington Road seemed to burst in two.

  Suddenly projectiles were falling all around. While most people ran, some stood rooted to the ground, staring at the orb-dotted heavens, waiting, it seemed, to be struck. I dragged you into a building, and we huddled in the vestibule together with others who had ducked in for refuge. “Ram, Ram,” the building watchman chanted, but his voice was drowned out by the clanging of fire brigade trucks.

  There was a window high above the door, through which I could see the outside. The night seemed smokier than before, faraway flashes still flared out of sight. A purple light meandered across the window frame, followed by another. I imagined the heavens flowering in bursts of color, rockets exploding up high. Gandhi appearing beside me in the vestibule to remind me of my destiny, pointing once more at the sky.

  Then I heard you crying softly to yourself in the darkness. I lifted you up and pressed my mouth to your cheeks. The clanging and sirens faded into the background as my lips encircled your tears. The sky remained unadorned by fireworks, the vestibule ungraced by Gandhi. It didn’t really matter what happened to the world, I thought, my destiny was safe in my arms.

  chapter twenty-five

  FIFTY PEOPLE WERE HOSPITALIZED THAT NIGHT, TWENTY OF THEM JUST from Lamington Road. Many more sustained injuries all over the city. A woman died in Matunga, two boys lost their eyesight watching the spectacle from their balcony, and a man was hit on the terrace of a building in Sewri (“He gave his life defending the country,” a neighbor declared). Several eyewitnesses reported sightings of enemy planes—one had them swooping in from Marine Drive, another swore they almost crashed into the skyscrapers on Malabar Hill, before swerving just in time. These reports all went unsubstantiated. The actual explanation came later—a short circuit triggered off a false alarm which resulted in the deployment of the antiaircraft guns. The mysterious purple lights that lured people out were tracers sent up to scan the skies. What rained down on the spectators to maim and kill them were empty Indian shells, not Pakistani bombs.