by Gracy
The Female Rabbit whimpered, ‘What’s the point of me still being pretty? Hasn’t my friend been separated from me?’
The Male Rabbit said in a tender tone, ‘It’s when we love and part that life attains perfection.’
The Female Rabbit was annoyed, ‘Rubbish!’
With a mysterious smile, the Male Rabbit continued, ‘Since last week, several new developments have occurred here.’
The Female Rabbit was interested now. ‘Mm … like what?’
One night, our master and his wife had a rollicking fight. They went to bed only after they took the decision to go their separate ways as soon as dawn broke.
The Female Rabbit interrupted, ‘But they both are here even now!’
The Male Rabbit was sarcastic, ‘Why do you jump the gun?’
The Female Rabbit sneered, ‘Because your shot drew a blank!’
Ignoring the jibe, the Male Rabbit mumbled as if to himself, ‘Look at the misfortune of these human beings! Detesting each other, yet living under the same roof!’
At that moment, the doorbell rang. The Female Rabbit shuddered, ‘Aren’t you frightened?’
Indifferent, he said, ‘Oh!’
A pale, thin girl and her mother were the guests. The housewife, as usual, welcomed them with a smile. In a soft tone, the lady asked, ‘Isn’t sir here?’
The Male Rabbit did not catch what the reply was. The pale, thin hand reaching towards the Female Rabbit was what held his attention.
‘Look Amma, poor thing! Its face is burnt!’
The girl’s mother dissuaded her, ‘Leave it there, dear.’
But by then, the doll had slipped from the girl’s hand. Before she could complete the lament – ‘Oh, didn’t I say so?’ – the Female Rabbit lay shattered on the floor.
(Mamallapurathe Muyalukal)
9
Baby Doll
As she was leaving, Amma reminded her again, ‘Whoever rings the bell, don’t open the door. Even if it is a familiar person, open the window to say what has to be said. Achan and Amma will be back in no time.’
The daughter nodded.
The mother stepped out on to the yard only after she heard the doors being shut and the latch fastened. When Achan and Amma disappeared through the gate, she turned to the doll she was holding, ‘Did you hear that, my beautiful? Whoever comes, don’t open the door!’
The doll smiled, winking. Kissing its silky hair, starry eyes and smooth cheeks, she smiled gently. The things Amma had said when Achan bought this pretty thing for her on her twelfth birthday!
‘However much I tell you, you just don’t understand. Listen, our daughter looks like a seventeen-year-old. But her nature is that of a child of seven or eight. What’s to be done if you won’t ever let her grow up? How will you even know a mother’s worry?’
Amma had started off, thinking she was asleep. For a moment, she had thought of laughing out aloud. But then, she decided against it; she wanted to hear what Achan would say. His voice was heavy with sorrow, ‘This time too she made me promise, Nalini.’
After a moment’s silence, Achan gently opened a tiny window of secret, ‘I don’t know why, but I can’t stop myself from buying baby dolls whenever I see them, Nalini. Plump dolls take me places. Remember, there were no toys in my childhood.’
Achan sat with his face buried in his hands. Amma muttered in a gentle voice, ‘But the times are terrible, Ravi.’
As she passed her fingers through Achan’s hair, she sighed for no reason.
By the time she wondered why Amma became so stressed over anything and everything, sleep had seeped through her eyelashes like dewdrops.
She repeated the same question to the dolls lined up in the showcase in the bedroom. They were the dolls she had forced her father to get for her. It was with them that she had always shared her sorrows and happiness.
However, they too shrank away from her question and stood mum, their eyes pinned on some other world. Suddenly, her big eyes welled.
Noticing the blood spreading on the floor, she screamed. The alarmed mother, who came running, was also taken aback and stopped short. The next moment, she recovered and held her daughter close, soothing her, ‘Nothing to worry! This happens to all girls. This means my little one has become a big girl.’
But that was not something she liked. She had always loved to press her face against the softness of her mother’s belly, and to sit on her father’s lap and tell him the little things that had happened in class.
From that day onwards, Amma often chided her, ‘Enough, enough. You’re no longer a little child.’
At those moments, Achan would protest gently, ‘Why such unnecessary rules, Nalini?’
Amma would glare at Achan, ‘Unnecessary?’
All of a sudden, Amma’s eyes would brim with tears and her voice would break, ‘God! How will this girl face the world?’
With a faded smile, Achan would pat Amma on her shoulder, ‘Don’t worry. Everything will sort itself out.’
When the bird in the doorbell chirped, she peered out through the curtain. It was the cricketer from next door: a collegegoer who always smiled at her whenever he happened to see her. He would draw close and make small talk. Pressing her face to the window, she asked, ‘What is it?’
In a soft tone, he queried, ‘Where did your Achan and Amma go?’
‘Didn’t you hear that the uncle and aunty next door had an accident? They are at the hospital.’
‘Why didn’t you go, sweetie?’
‘I’m scared.’
Looking at the doll in her hand, he asked, ‘You like dolls, don’t you?’
She smiled shyly. ‘Mm.’
Scanning the surroundings around him quickly, he said, ‘I’ll give you a living doll, little one.’
Her face blossomed like a flower, ‘Really?’
His voice faltered, ‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
The innocent curiosity in her voice fell like a heavy weight on his chest. Even so, ignoring it, he murmured, ‘It’s in my room. If you come there, I’ll give it you.’
Placing the doll gently on the floor, she joyfully unbolted the door.
(Pavakkutty)
10
Petra
I am Elishuba, daughter of Pathros. It was not to my father that He said, ‘And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’ However, to build the congregation, my Appan11 did not fail to pledge the easiest contribution that he could offer – his eldest daughter, Deenamma. It was when Ammachi’s sorrow – ‘Why don’t you think about your daughter who is past her marriageable age?’ – began to simmer and flare at the touch of daylight, ending finally in suppressed curses by evening, that Appan decided to donate Deenamma as Christ’s bride. Appan bragged about his bequest, burping a sneering smile into Ammachi’s face, twirling the little finger of his right hand in the air to show he was one up on her. Ammachi not only brought up the phlegm that she spat out violently at the retreating figure of Appan, who was leaving to celebrate his victory at the toddy shop, but also stabbed him with the question she forced out like a knife through her gritted teeth: ‘Why the hell did you bother marrying and producing children?’ She calmed down somewhat only after she had pummelled her chest violently, bemoaning that it was good that her womb had shrivelled up completely when Appan forced her to consume some kind of ash made by a country medicine man – he had mixed the ash with rabbit blood to curb her fertility after her third girl child was delivered stillborn.
When Appan and Ammachi jointly spewed enough sulphur and fire to set the house ablaze, it was not the Word that saved me. It was my job as a clerk-cum-typist. I went to the convent to inform Deenechi12 about getting the job. In her white habit, she had faded even more. In her big, dark eyes, all her dreams floated dead. My eyes filled with tears, thinking of the fate of Deenechi, who was far prettier than me. Wading through the waves of tears, Deenechi touched me. Her fingers were as cold as death. The blood froze
in my veins. With that, the stammer that I had had in my childhood returned. By the time I told Deenechi about the job, I had tripped on my own words and fallen flat.
Deenechi smiled. The sadness in the smile pierced my heart like a dagger made of ice. When Deenechi sighed deeply, saying, ‘At least you escaped!’ I ran out like a woman possessed. As I swung the gates open to flee, I looked back once again, feeling as if someone had sunk a hook into me and was yanking me back. On the veranda stood Deenechi, frozen like a pillar of salt.
As I was dusting an old air bag, I declared, ‘From now on, it’s my life, my path!’
I saw Appan’s fingers tremble as they tried to loosen the thread as much as possible to widen the mouth of his waist-pouch, and Ammachi’s smoke-discoloured eyes wince on the needlepoints of loneliness. Sweeping away all these sights with the back of my hand, I left home.
My office colleague introduced herself as Mridula. I was irked when she, playing with the talisman around her neck, claimed that her father had lovingly named her Mridula because her heart was so soft. She explained further that her father abounded in goodness and love. My heart burned with jealousy as I heard her say that it was her father who used to bathe her when she was a child, rub Rasnadi powder into her scalp as a precaution against cold, plait her hair and pin jasmine flowers in it. When she rued that she had never wanted to become an adult, and given a chance, would love to go back to her childhood, I resented that she was stripping me of my privacy, almost as if my underclothes were being peeled off.
It was my habit to follow the person walking right ahead of me on the path. I liked to keep my right foot in the imprint left by his right foot, and my left foot in the one made by his left foot. I always played this game, starting with my right foot. After a while, the game began to turn serious. Following the feet ahead of me, without faltering, and forgetting everything else, I began to make trips down the steps to my childhood. There, Deenechi and I played kothamkallu or kilithattu,13 completely oblivious of the future. Or else, Deenechi smoked imaginary cigarettes made with short pieces of the stem snapped off a communist pacha14 plant, her knee-length skirt folded like a man’s mundu.15 Holding an immature coconut at my waist and draping a thorth16 over my shoulder, I would become the obedient wife and mother. Our little house, dangling from the tip of the sky beyond this world, would be filled with celestial light.
In one of these voyages of mine, I happened to follow a middle-aged man to his house. After following the imprints for a while, the tracks disappeared and I stood appalled, until someone slammed the door in my face. I retreated, hiding my embarrassment in a faint smile.
Anyway, from the day I heard Mridula, I was unable to follow the footprints on the path linking the hostel and the office. In fact, I rejected them adamantly and walked so fast to overtake those who walked ahead that I was drenched in perspiration by the time I reached the office. I plopped into my seat, fuming from the tip of my toe to the crown of my head. Even in that incensed state, I could perceive the thunderous rumble announcing a transformation. To take revenge on an indefinable something, I jammed hard on the typewriter keys.
Rather unexpectedly, Mridula got married. She came back to the office only after a month. Her eyes were heavy with sleeplessness. Her lips had become plumper in fulfilled joy. In the curves of her body, lethargy seemed to laze indolent. Often, when her sari slipped, her right breast which had filled out lately leapt out, drawing both men and women to this tempting sight. I became more and more conscious and ashamed of my shrivelled breasts. I took great care to hide them from others, sheathing them beneath stiff cotton saris.
I was relieved that Mridula refused to speak about her new life to anyone. However, after four or five days, a word tumbled out of her mouth like an unexpected actor who happened to stray onstage. An onrush of countless words followed in its wake. They began to circle me, and peck and tear at my flesh. I smiled bitterly to see that she had dislodged her father’s icon and installed her husband in its place. The intensity of his ardour and their bedroom secrets seared me. Thereafter, in my nights, sleep retreated into bottomless depths. The moment I shut my eyes, an uncertain future loomed with the figure of a loveless, drunkard husband, who would stagger with bloodshot eyes, faltering steps, and curses that stuck like slime, to fall on me.
As days progressed, the weight in my chest grew heavier. Finally, I decided that it was time to meet an eminent doctor in the city.
He was a dark-skinned giant. His round eyes, narrow forehead, and short, dense hair reminded me of a wild buffalo. Before I could subject him to closer scrutiny, he pressed the stethoscope to my chest. I began to breathe deeply. After the examination was over, his head began to move from side to side like a pendulum. Then he grunted pointedly, and in a squeaky voice totally at odds with his figure, he declared, ‘In place of your heart, what you have is a stone. It is hardening by the day.’
I was not shaken. I had forgotten how to be shocked. Staring at my arid breasts, he continued, ‘The last drops of your tenderness are drying up.’
Walking out of there dispassionately, I knew. This is a new postscript to His Primal Word. In the boiling heat of the day, I raised my eyes to the sky. ‘What dost thou propose to build upon this rock?’ In reply, my eyes flooded with darkness.
(Paara)
11
Fraction
She felt that something was ballooning in her head. She realized that she was almost on the verge of an explosion. Hoping that there would be some relief if she were to have a warm bath, she entered the bathroom.
Her fever had begun three days ago. When she left the office, head throbbing, eyes smouldering, and feeling warm all over, she just wanted to curl down somewhere.
As soon as her husband entered, she told him, ‘I can’t lift my head. You make the tea.’
Muttering something, he went into the kitchen. After a long time, he brought her a cup of tea, along with one for himself. She took a single gulp of the concentrated tincture, gone viscous from overboiling, and threw up immediately.
Her husband stood glaring at her, thoroughly dissatisfied.
Picking up the newspaper that he had left folded after glancing through it in the morning, he fell back into the armchair and started reading. Since it did not look like he was going to budge from the seat even as dusk set in, she dragged her body from the bed and hauled herself into the kitchen. As she set the table with the simple dishes she had made, she muttered, ‘There’s no rest to be had in this house, not even when one lies dying! Are there still men these days who do not help in the kitchen in a crunch?’
Her husband showed no sign of having heard her.
Even though she got a reprieve from office duty, there was none to be had from her kitchen duty.
The moment she stepped out of the bathroom, her daughter approached her with her school text.
‘Hey, Amma, please teach me the addition of this fraction.’
Controlling her boiling irritation, she demurred, ‘Ask your father.’
‘Achan will only stare at it. Won’t teach me anything.’
She skimmed through the book, took a paper, wrote some figures down and tried to explain as well as she could.
The child protested, ‘I didn’t understand a thing!’
Her head began to throb. Pressing both her temples, she turned to her husband, ‘Can’t you help her with this?’
Lifting his legs on to the teapoy and staring into the distance, he said, ‘I have forgotten all that.’
Her face clouded and she snapped, ‘Yes! You’ve forgotten many things!’
The intensity of their love in the early days. How the radiant splinter of laughter would, despite their efforts to suppress it, burst the inflated bubbles of silly quarrels. The sweetness of breast milk rediscovered with the same delight as that of a child chancing upon the very peacock feathers that it thought it had lost. So many such things! Seeing stars turn into charcoal, she had laughed and cried. Whenever he had caught her at it, he had
yawned, dismissing her as demented.
However, now she was really mad. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she muttered, ‘All right, I will teach you first.’
Even after she repeated them two or three times, he was unable to recollect the old lessons. She felt that he was probably not even listening. Scorched by the thunder and lightning that erupted inside her, the remaining tender shoots of her dreams burnt down. Slapping her head, she wailed, ‘It’s my destiny!’
Unfazed and unmindful of everything, he sat as he always did, staring empty-eyed.
With a wild glint in her eyes, she ran into the bedroom. Bolting the door from within, she selected an appropriate sari. Climbing on a stool that she pulled into place under the iron hook she had earlier dreamt of hanging a lantern from, she made a noose with one end of the sari. She eased her head into the noose and screamed, ‘Come here! I will teach you!’
She smiled at the faces that appeared through the open window. The glare of that smile stunned them.
Pointing her forefinger at her head, she said, ‘This is the numerator!’
Then, touching her body, ‘This the denominator!’
Panting, she continued, ‘When two fractions add up, here, it is like this!’
Abruptly, she kicked away the stool.
(Bhinnasanghya)
12
No One Understands Athmaraman!
No. No one understands Athmaraman. Nor have you even bothered to try. In the end, given the circumstances, when the least you can do is extend some affection and comfort, you are all turning away from him. Without knowing someone thoroughly, how is it right to turn against him or her? You may ask how it is possible to know someone else when you cannot even claim to know yourself. To some extent, that too is correct. But did you ever ask what Athmaraman had to say about himself?