The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  “Did Arya uncle leave?”

  You turned, and on your cheek I saw the angry outline of Arya’s fingers imprinted in red. “He did. I hope you’re happy. I hope you’re finally satisfied.” Before I could say anything, you stalked away.

  chapter thirty-five

  A FEW SUNDAYS LATER, THE PHONE RANG. SCHOOL WAS ALREADY IN vacation, and you had squatted on your bed all week, it seemed, constructing some sort of audio amplifier with your electronics kit. Even though it was the hottest part of the summer, you insisted on keeping the door shut so you weren’t disturbed.

  “Hello, Meera.” It was Paji on the other end of the line.

  Although one could dial between cities directly now without a trunk-call booking, it was still very unusual to receive a phone call from Delhi. My heart began to thump in my ears, as I braced myself for some horrible emergency. “Has something happened to Biji?”

  “Your mother is fine, as surly and impossible as ever. I was calling to respond to Ace’s—I mean Ashvin’s—request. Could I talk to him?”

  It was such a relief to learn no calamity had befallen anyone that I didn’t ask Paji what he meant by your request. “Give my love to Biji and Sharmila,” I said, and called you to the phone.

  Your conversation with your grandfather lasted for barely a minute or two. After thanking him profusely, you turned around with face flushed. “I’m leaving in June. I’m going away to Sanawar.”

  “What?”

  “The boarding school there. I asked Nanaji for help. Remember when he made the promise long ago that he’d pay for it if we ever wanted? Thankfully, he hadn’t forgotten. They usually don’t accept anyone in the eleventh standard, but he’s on their board and says there will be no problem with admission.”

  “I don’t understand. When…?”

  “I know I should have asked you first. But there was so little time left, with classes beginning next month. It really won’t cost anything. Nanaji’s even sending money for the uniforms. It’s amazing how he agreed to everything without asking any questions. I think it was what I wrote in my letter about the gymkhana and Arya uncle that must have done it. He said on the phone that he was proud of me for breaking away, that it was the best thing for my future.”

  Your expression softened. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first. I know how much you’re going to miss me. It’ll pass by quick, don’t worry. It’s only two years until I graduate.”

  I felt unsteady. “That’s very nice of Nanaji,” I forced myself to say. I thought you were going to hug me, but you didn’t.

  THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED were filled with activity. We had to buy cloth and visit the tailor for your uniforms. Sanawar was at a high altitude, so I contacted Sharmila to send sweaters from Delhi. The school stocked a special material of wool, together with an embossed pocket emblem, which one ordered from them to have a blazer stitched. There were textbooks needed—not only for the eleventh standard, but also (since there were differences in the syllabus) the tenth. One day, a three-page medical questionnaire arrived in the mail—we went to Dr. Kagalwalla’s dispensary to have it completed. He heard “something fluttery” while examining your chest through his stethoscope, and it took an X-ray and EKG to satisfy him that everything was fine.

  Although I tried to lose myself in these preparations, I was periodically overcome by the enormity of the change I faced ahead. Most cruel seemed the sheer suddenness of it. I knew you wouldn’t be away just two years, as you had tried to reassure me. You already talked about going to one of the technology institutes spread far and wide over the country after you finished school. Even beyond, once you got your degree, who knew to which city your job would take you?

  In the back of my mind I always realized I would have to give you up—but only at some abstract time in the future, far away as yet. To whom should I protest about being cheated out of the last few remaining years I had left?

  Despite any anger you still harbored, you granted me more of your company than usual. I was thankful for this extra time we spent together. We went several times to Chowpatty in that last month—ordering extravagant ice cream sundaes and enormous plates of channa bhatura almost every day at the Cream Centre (the generous check that arrived from Paji helped). We visited all your favorite childhood haunts—right down to the zoo and the fountains at Hanging Gardens. You even sat next to me on the sofa and endured old movies on the VCR.

  It was during the time we were watching Aradhana again that it struck me. Sharmila Tagore had just been sentenced to prison after taking the blame for the murder committed by her son. As she grew old behind bars, I realized that my wish for an opportunity for sacrifice was being answered at last. The chance to smile as I bid you off, the years of loneliness stretching ahead. Finally I was being given the chance to attain the stature of a proper tragedienne.

  On the night before your departure, I kept glancing over to catch another glimpse of you lying across the room. How often I had seen you like that in the light from the balcony, your nose and chin illuminated in silvery silhouette. How much more would I have cherished each such sighting, had I known their number was coming to an end. How much more would I have savored every mundane action of yours, every shared moment we spent.

  I remembered the night Hema slept at home before her wedding—Mataji next to her one last time, cradling her head. Couldn’t I, too, pull my bed softly to yours? Ease your head from its pillow and cradle it as well? I looked at your sleeping form and wondered if this longing still held you in its sway as well. Wasn’t it not so far back, that day of Holi, when you sat astride me on the ground? How right it felt, how natural it seemed, your weight pressing against my waist. I know you thought it too—I could see it in your face.

  Were there still some confused impulses darting around in your head that hadn’t been damped out yet? Beneath the desire to punish me for separating you from your Yara, did you still have some need for closeness left? Or had the craving transferred itself completely, striking up its lone encampment in my chest? The fear of losing you that made me want to hug you so tight that if only for an instant it was quenched?

  I imagined going over to your bed. Standing over you, like you once did over me—our positions reversed from the dream I used to have. What would you do when you opened your eyes—reach for my hand, pull me down next to yourself? A filigree of moonlight to adorn our nestling bodies, the shadows tucking in everything else?

  For a while, I would just lie there, awash in your essence, replenishing myself in your touch, in the field of your presence. Would your scent be stronger now, more distinct, more mature? As we embraced, would I feel muscles running across your arms and back that I hadn’t noticed before? Would your teardrops taste the same if my lips encountered any on your cheek? And your chest—would there be light enough to trace the serpentine patterns in which the strands of hair had grown?

  Afterwards, once the ache in my chest was quelled, and all the expressions of affection we knew were spent, where would we go? Would we let sleep come claim the night, or would we look for new landscapes across which to rove? Would we huddle gratefully through the hours that remained, or cast around for an expanded vocabulary to explore?

  I tried to imagine what forms these explorations would take. Your nose nuzzling for scent behind my ear, your tongue skimming a taste off my throat. Your head seeking out the breast it remembers, your mouth closing around the aureole still familiar from before. Perhaps your fingers caress my navel, the portal to which you were beholden so long ago. They meander down from my belly and pet shyly at the curls they have not touched before.

  Your thigh feels hot upon my own, your foot curls and strains against my toes. You lick your lips and I feel you are going to say something, but instead, a swallow rides down your throat. I want to assure you that it will be fine this time, that you don’t have to be nervous, that you can let your curiosity roam. This is my gift to you, to help you make this journey, to follow wherever you go.

  But you cl
ose your eyes and rest your cheek on my chest—either you are content, or uncertain where to proceed. The tips of your fingers, so tentative in their contact, have withdrawn entirely now. I taste the disappointment in my mouth—am I not entitled to curiosity, to a reciprocal chance to explore? The flush of anticipation still flows through my body—my thigh is the one burning, I realize, not yours.

  For a moment, I wonder whether to help you along, whether it is for me to take the initiative now. But each time I alight on a possibility, your restfulness makes me shy away from completing the thought. All I can think of is pressing your head to my breast—it seems too sordid to envision anything more. Even this is not for real, I remind myself—you are in your own bed, on the other side of the room.

  Perhaps somewhere out there is a world where this distance between us could be dissolved. A parallel universe in which we would no longer be mother and son. Perhaps we are like gods and goddesses, living through successive incarnations, exploring each other’s different forms. Waiting for the birth when our roles match up, when we can be one.

  I think I will spend the night looking at you. But sleep steals me away before dawn can approach.

  THE SUN WAS STREAMING across your empty bed when I awoke, making the white sheets incandescent. The dread rose in my chest as soon as I sat up in bed—I knew what the morning meant. From the bathroom came the sound of you brushing your teeth; a clock struck eight somewhere outside. Your train was at eleven forty-three, which meant there were less than four hours left.

  The breakfast I prepared for you that morning felt like a last meal, except the condemned person was myself. The eggs scrambled with onions and seasoned just so, the bread toasted twice to make it more crisp. The glass of Ovaltine with milk poured in from a height to give it a frothy head. I sat across you as you ate—you were subdued and stared at your plate. It occurred to me that perhaps you too could taste regret.

  I heated the water for your bath and mixed it into a half-full bucket—another routine coming to an end. The minutes accelerated and I heard the same portentous clock strike—first nine, then ten. We scrambled to pack overlooked items—a flashlight, a lunch box, even your new blazer, still hanging in its plastic sheath in the cupboard. One of the locks proved too big to fit through the suitcase latch, so you went downstairs to the bania to buy another.

  We sat together in the back of the taxicab, with Zaida tactfully taking the front. The seat was wide, but somehow your arm remained positioned in reassuring contact with my side. By now, last night’s reveries on touch, on longing, were distant blurs in my mind. All I could think of was the scene to come, of you vanishing on your train as I watched in dry-eyed disbelief.

  On the platform, you insisted on carrying your luggage yourself rather than hiring a coolie. The Sikh husband and wife sharing your row were very friendly, even though the woman made no move to relinquish your window seat, which she had occupied. We stood outside after stowing your bags, and I tried to pass off my numbness as nonchalance. You were covering up as well, I could tell, hiding your misgivings with an excess of heartiness.

  Just before the end, you dropped all camouflage and became completely silent. A glimmer of optimism sparked up inside me—perhaps you were having a change of heart, perhaps you wouldn’t go, perhaps I would get a reprieve. I looked at your face and saw the longing I had wondered about—was it something you were revealing on purpose? Before I could get too encouraged, you let a stronger emotion surface—the guilt that you felt, at leaving me.

  I thought we might barely hug, but you pressed and squeezed and covered my face with a flurry of kisses. The whistle blew, and I imagined holding on to you as the train departed—let the Sikh lady keep both your luggage and your window seat. But then you had slipped out of my arms and clambered onto the train, and were waving to me. Behind you stood the conductor with a half smile, as if this was a rite of passage, sad but hackneyed, that he had witnessed so many times before. You gave one final wave from the receding doorway, and then I was alone, adrift in the vastness of time.

  I’m not sure how I got home—I suppose Zaida must have taken me back. The first thing I noticed was the stack of handkerchiefs I had ironed and folded neatly—I had forgotten to pack them into your bag. I lay awake well into the night, worrying about them. How would you deal with a cold? With what would you wipe your sweat? Did you have enough money to buy new ones? What if in Sanawar, handkerchiefs were something they didn’t even sell?

  The next evening, I sat by the phone, waiting for the call to tell me you had safely arrived. When it came, the handkerchiefs were all I could babble about. I cursed my forgetfulness as you told me about your dorm, jabbered about mailing you a parcel as you tried to describe your trip. I didn’t even get to say how much I missed you—the line went dead as soon as your three minutes were up.

  Afterwards, I realized I didn’t have a phone number to call you back. It took six days for your first letter to make it to me, six days without any contact. I stared at childhood pictures, pulled out your baby clothes from the trunk, leafed through your notebooks from school. One morning I even ironed each handkerchief again and arranged them in a fresh stack. That each minute could be so long, each second stretch so elastically, I never knew.

  It didn’t get much better in the weeks that followed. Your letters, when they came, took only so many moments to race through. I tried to teach myself to live in these concentrated bursts of reading them. They never revealed all I hungered for—to whom you spoke, what foods you ate, the pictures on your wall, the books on your desk. I had been spoiled for sixteen years, knowing everything about you, down to the color of the socks you wore each day. I couldn’t call you and ask, either—the telephone number you sent was only for emergencies, you had warned.

  I watched my favorite old movies every night—Mamta and Aurat and Mother India. Nargis appeared on my screen repeatedly, to shoot her son over and over again. A part of every woman was Kali, just like a part was Parvati—that’s what the reviews had explained. Did Kali reside in me as well—would I have consumed you too, had you stayed?

  Sometimes the evenings progressed, the streetlamps came on, and still the cassettes played on the VCR. I knew what awaited me in the other room—the sight that made each night so difficult to bear. Your bed all neatly made up, with the sheets and the pillowcases I still changed. And right next to it my own, as stark as the cot from Aradhana on which Sharmila slept in jail. We had kept them apart ever since the year you turned fifteen, when everything changed. Was it so wrong of me to join them again?

  ONE EMOTION BURNED brightly through the haze of my grief—anger towards Paji. After the movies ran their course, I lay in bed—sometimes yours, sometimes my own. The sheets crinkled in the heat of my fury, the walls glowed orange and red. I played out imaginary dialogues with him—how this was the final straw, how I was fed up of his meddling, how I would no longer allow him to run my life. Sometimes I found myself spouting my lines aloud. “Did you forget I’m his mother? How dare you make such enormous changes in his life without even talking to me?” At other times, I scrambled into the living room and furiously started scribbling out a letter to him, listing all the ways he had derailed my attempts at happiness. “Isn’t it enough that you made my mother’s life a living hell? Did I have so much left that you had to take away my son as well?”

  By daylight, my ire subsided somewhat, though it never completely abated. I made more reasoned plans on how to convey my resentment. Calling him was no use—I always became too tongue-tied when he was on the phone. Sending a letter would not work either—he was much too articulate, much too adept at finding arguments to snake around the written word. I could see him finding elegant ways to counter my accusations, to assert that he had acted selflessly, only to neutralize Arya’s influence.

  The only option was to confront him in person. To stand in the same library room, refusing to be cowed by the cold blast of the air-conditioning, and pummel him one by one with my grievances. I deci
ded to go to Delhi and have a final showdown with him. Even if it did nothing to change his behavior, the satisfaction of telling him off to his face was something I needed deep inside.

  But it was not so easy to get the better of Paji. Before I could get my ticket, he died.

  I HARDLY BELIEVED the news when the call came. Surely Paji couldn’t have been felled by something as ordinary as a heart attack? It happened on his morning walk, near the intersection of Ansari and Tilak roads. There was a temple at the corner, and for years Paji had been climbing the steps to the shrine at the top. He never went inside, just walked past the entrance, “to show God that His adversary was still in good health.” Most of the pilgrims took their footwear off at the bottom of the steps and climbed barefoot, but Paji tromped up in his leather shoes, and made it a point to scrape the dirt off his soles on the top step. He would relish the shocked looks and outraged shouts he encountered—a few times, he had been involved in confrontations with the priest himself. “If your God made everything, then surely He made cow dung as well—why should you object?”

  Perhaps if Paji had sat down on the steps when the pain started, or even asked his friend Bansi, who was accompanying him, for help, he might have survived. But he soldiered on, refusing to give anyone in the temple (including the idols themselves, Bansi noted) the satisfaction of seeing him falter. He made it to the top, scraped his shoes on the steps for the last time, and managed to make it all the way around the corner, so that he was completely out of sight of the temple before he collapsed. Bansi said that he had tried several times that morning to get Paji to stop to take a rest, but was dismissed. “It’s just gas,” Paji said. “That’s the most God has ever managed to conjure up to scare me.”