Shapna’s voice took over, singsong, rising and falling like the waves spitting white foam bubbles at their feet. “The Gujarati seamen came in heavy dhows loaded with tons of cargo, the timbers lashed together, unriveted by metal to avoid the risk of rusting. During the long voyage, the sailors rode these slippery logs with desperately splayed toes. Many fell to their deaths as the structures unravelled in heavy storms. Ah, child, this country was such a marvellous crossroad of cultures, such a mingling of bloods!”
In Shapna’s voice, Jay could smell the burnt incense, hear the bustle of the arrival, unloading and reloading of hundreds of ships. He saw the elephants, owned by the fat Gujarati merchants, lumbering between seamen.
But his father brought them back to the moment with the sharpness in his tone. “No magic here, just the cycle of history! I wish we could feel this history in Malaysia, but there are no Tanah Lots there, eh?”
Shapna said gently, “Ancient history, tcha, it is so easily forgotten!”
“Not forgotten. Erased. If we all pretend it never happened, maybe it didn’t,” said Mahesh.
Shapna sighed deeply. “Until the river floods and the silt uncovers what should remain hidden.”
Jay had looked at her quizzically. He was about to ask her which river was going to flood, but the tour guide hurried them back into the bus.
It would be too many years before he would find out exactly what Shapna had meant, and by then it would be too late and his life would have changed forever. In this cesspool of a country, too much was covered up by muddy rivers that did not flood.
But Colonel S? He had been a father figure for Jay, when his own father had given him the crumbs of his attention, or whatever was left after Shapna had finished. Depression and mood-enhancing drugs plagued his years in America until Colonel S had found him a place in that lab in Seattle. Then science had given his life such a meaning and validity that his human relationships paled in comparison.
He could never turn against Colonel S, no matter what happened. He always had the option of leaving if things became too uncomfortable again.
First, he would have to ask some oblique questions, digging into the specifications of the research but also reading much more into what was left unsaid. Until then, there was all this work to finish, until late into the quiet night.
Thirty-one
Agni and Rohani turned into Desa Hartamas, a hip yuppie kingdom where Japanese and Mexican restaurants competed for customers with the nostalgic Malayan kopitiams from the Fifties. A parking spot seemed impossible until a jaga kereta squeezed them in between a Jaguar and a Proton Perdana.
“Make sure no one scratches my car, okay?” Rohani dropped some coins into his palm. He nodded automatically, shifting his gaze to the cars coming in.
Rohani had enveloped the car in the essence of roses and minty mouthwash. She indicated the jaga kereta boy with her head and said cheerfully, “The doped-out dregs of KL, but still useful!”
Agni felt cheered just looking at Rohani. She had on a romantic rebel outfit, a frilly soft muslin shirt with pants studded with zippers, and some serious shoes. Agni envied the way Rohani’s skin shone with a milky translucence. “You look so right for this place,” she commented wryly. “In my antique sari, I look like your auntie, lah!”
“Don’t be silly, Agni. No one’s looking anyway. And be careful with that beautiful fabric; you’re trailing it on the ground!”
Rohani was mistaken; they were attracting quite a bit of male attention. Agni glared at the moony drunkard sitting in the corner, and lit a cigarette as soon as they sank into their seats.
Rohani blurted out. “I got the offer letter – MBA, Wharton.”
Agni squealed in delight, “Congratulations! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“It’s been pretty crazy at work, yah?” Rohani shook her head, “And you were so busy with the employee clearances, worrying about Abhik and Hindsight… Didn’t seem the right time to share the good news.”
“Sorry, lah! But this is great news, and you’ll be with Sven again! Aiyah, but you’re doing so well here, major media star and all – I haven’t had time to read the piece, but there was some magazine article last week?”
“Oh, that rubbish? Nothing much – one of the Malay women’s magazines just did a spread. Crusader Sister or some such headline, about my work with the Sisters in Islam.”
“Oooh. I haven’t picked up a Malay magazine in ages, but I’ll have to see this!”
Rohani stubbed out her cigarette. “Don’t bother. They have a butt-ugly picture of me. I think they didn’t know whether to do a prodigal daughter story or a black sheep angle.”
A waitress appeared. “Minum?” she asked, swabbing the table with a stained grey rag.
“Teh tarik?” Rohani asked. Agni nodded and, as Rohani placed an order for two drinks, Agni listened to the gentleness in her manner of address. Kak, she called the waitress, and her voice lilted in entreaty rather than command. Such small courtesies refined over centuries of civilisation resulting in such gentle dignity; Agni was charmed by the musicality of Rohani’s manners. Rohani’s family traced its roots to a Malaccan court. When a throne fell vacant, the Bendehara were the kingmakers, often providing consorts for the king from their own eminent family.
“God, I’ll miss this place!” Rohani sank lower into her seat.
“You’ll come back. You’ve done it before!”
“I don’t know, Agni.” Rohani drew a long breath. “My brother, you know, the politician, the one I’m staying with now? His wife bothers me all day with haram this and haram that. I’m finding it hard to be myself in my own family now.”
“Excuse me?” Agni raised a disbelieving eyebrow, and took a sip of the hot tea.
“You have no idea, obviously; you can do as you want. One Muslim woman might get caned for drinking in public, yah, so what does that do for those of us who like pubs? I’ve had it up to here trying to figure out what might offend someone next… too much tension.”
Agni sighed. “I try to keep out of all this and just concentrate on work, but Abhik makes me feel really selfish.”
Rohani laughed. “Oh, I just love Abhik!” She leaned forward conspiratorially, “How’re things with you two, eh? You may not be telling me, girlfriend, but something’s going on there, yah?”
Agni smiled mysteriously. Rohani grabbed her arm and made a face, “So tell, lah!”
Agni began the story with the kiss in the waters of Port Dickson. The rain poured noisily down while the streetlamps, murky yellow spills in the blackness, lit up the spray like ghostly sprites dancing in the air. They watched the wind picking up the dust like a carpet, flinging it onto windshields and the trees.
“So that’s all, nothing much to tell.”
“Yah, nothing much to tell!! Congratulations!”
“Actually, it’s all too new. I don’t want to talk too much, okay? Not yet.”
“Okay. Got it.”
There was a contemplative silence. “So how about you? What’s next with Sven?” Agni asked her.
“Let’s see. I’m going back to the States, even if it feels all fucked up there sometimes. It’s saner than here, you know. Easier to have desires.”
“Unless you’re gay in certain states,” said Agni. “But they did just legalize gay marriage.”
Rohani smiled naughtily. “No king-sized mattresses being hauled into courts there!”
Agni reacted to her flippancy. “The Anwar case wasn’t about sex! It was politics that only you Malays could talk about. The rest of us just sat in front of our TV screens and watched with our mouths shut.”
The silence grew as the smoke from Agni’s cigarette whispered past the neon sign flashing LAW HAIRDRESSING, and hung suspended for an instant around the gaudy green light. Then the thunder and lightning pierced the world. A shrub writhed in the wind, its leaves tickled and convulsed in delight – until the darkness shrouded it again.
“Actually, I reacted to the sex mor
e than the politics in the Anwar case.”
“What?” Agni stared at her.
“Well, homosexuality makes me uncomfortable.” Rohani shrugged self-consciously. “I don’t know why, it just does.” She held up a hand to stall the interruption. “I just don’t believe it’s okay for all consensual adults to have sex. Let’s draw out the parallel. Is it okay for adults to have incestuous sex? Like brother and sister, mother and son? Let’s say possible pregnancies are taken out of the equation. So if any two adults have consensual sex, is it okay?”
“Incest is never okay. You can’t compare like that!”
“Well, incest was okay for the pharaohs… and the Mughals too. For me, gay sex is eeeeww. So it’s all quite relative, pun intended.”
The TV, droning on in a corner of the coffee shop, caught their attention with a news flash. “Anyway, at least the political players are changing now. Probably the filthiness in Malaysian politics will get better.” Agni said.
Rohani grimaced. “It will get a lot worse before it gets any better,” she said grimly, “especially with the Indian agitation.”
She wiped her grimy fingers on the edge of a napkin, carefully folding the greasy part out of sight. “My parents were open-minded, very liberal, yah? Wanted us to mix with all races, study abroad and all that; be globally Malay. But you know why I went to an international school?”
“Same as me, I guess,” said Agni, “to get an English education?”
“No, lah! Nothing that simple. I was considered un-Islamic in my other school, for things like wearing shorts during hockey practice, and not wearing a headscarf, everyday things.”
Agni started to laugh.
“It wasn’t funny to my parents. My mother went to complain, you know, about the ridiculousness of it all, but when she parked her car, the ustazah heard Hotel California on the car radio. She was so angry; such music is haram we were told, like taking drugs.”
Agni looked at Rohani steadily. “That was one crazy teacher you had.”
“Agni, you have no idea. And it was just the beginning. My niece was told off for using chopsticks, so un-Islamic, how can – ! My parents think it’s just getting worse.”
Agni ground her cigarette and waited for Rohani to continue.
“So,” said Rohani quietly, “everyone thinks Malays are too stupid to be dangerous. And we get quietly hijacked by the radicals.”
“Too heavy, lah, this conversation,” said Agni.
“Anyway, I feel I can do more if I stay in the US, you know; help change the direction things are moving in globally right now.”
Agni sat up. “What about making a change here? Making things better here?”
“Change?” Rohani snorted. “I’ll leave it to my politician brother. It’s his job.”
Agni didn’t even smile at her sarcasm.
“Ahh, Agni. I am just waiting for the wheel to turn full circle. I can’t handle all this stuff with haram this and haram that. That’s why I joined the Sisters in Islam – to make sense of some of it. I can’t even argue with my family because that proves how the West has corrupted me. But I grew up with stories of magic and sex as facts of life. Nowadays, we are told that if we dress this way and pray five times, that’s the only magic to wipe out all evil. I’m running off overseas again.”
“You’ve really agonised about this.”
‘Well I care about what is happening! My mother’s family followed the matriarchal system from Sumatra, and property passed from mother to daughter. Now, as soon as my cousins get married, they change into docile wives. This change is not what I want, but what to do?” She looked over Agni’s head and leapt to her feet. “Hey, loverboy’s here!”
She rushed past Agni. Agni swivelled in her chair to see Abhik envelop Rohani in a deep hug. Then Rohani said something into his ear that made him grin at Agni.
Thirty-two
It is almost midnight and Agni is not home. I worry about her, at that party all day with Jay, and what he is whispering into her ears. He will not leave until he has destroyed her.
I worry about her. The streets are uneasy again. The Tamil nurse has dragged the small TV into this room and watches the screen all day; she is slopping the medicines into my mouth without checking the labels. Just an hour earlier she was giving me water to swallow my pills and was so mesmerised by the TV that the water dribbled into a pool at my neck, soaking the collar of one of the new maxis which Agni bought last week.
The new maxis are very pretty, all three of them, in pastel shades of pistachio, pink, and lavender, my favourite colours. As my pink maxi was getting ruined, I was so upset I gagged because I couldn’t shout, but the nurse was irritated at the mess as if it was my fault. She twisted the collar as though to wring my neck. I am resigned to this. When you are old, you pay for curses and shifting moods, living on the scraps of kindness from those you employ.
The streets are uneasy again, just as they were when Jay left the last time. He has returned to finish the job he left unfinished because his parents fled so soon after the riots of 1969. But I will not think of him as a fire-breathing deathgiver; oh no, nothing so powerful when he is only the scum of the earth.
Maheshbabu had to leave this country because of Jay. He left me because of his son’s vengeance. I have no illusions about this, although people like Mridula and the other Bengali women will tell you Maheshbabu left because he repented. They will tell you that Ila returned from India because she loved her sons too much to stay away, and that she came back to her husband who welcomed her with open arms.
All lies.
Ila had given up Maheshbabu almost as if she was delighted to release him. In one stroke she had cut through the knot of their marriage and set him free so that she would never again share his bed, a meal, or anything remotely marital. He didn’t matter any longer, so his relationship with me was of no consequence.
And Maheshbabu? He twined me closer to him in response, especially after Nikhil passed away. As much as I had hated Nikhil’s distance, his hiding in his poetry and his books, I chafed at this cloying neediness too, this grasping of Maheshbabu’s that insisted I match my rhythm to his tune, never let go of his hand even in sleep. I would awaken on nights physically gasping for breath.
Ila was strong. Whereas my life has been lived as a long lie, always searching for missing alibis, I could never accuse her of an untruth. She was hateful, so hateful. In the five years we all spent together, living in what became a communal dormitory, it was their relationship that spoke the loudest in the house through the night, the chinking of Ila’s shakha and pola keeping time to a beat we could not shut out. In such close quarters, oh, we all heard her joyous bangles through the night and had to pretend not to.
Ila had left Maheshbabu for only a few months before she came back from India, but she had lost much of her physical strength. Maybe we had broken her, Maheshbabu and I, but I think her physical weakness was an act to goad me into my worst indiscretion.
She spoke often about the atrocities of the partition that had made two nations from one India. She snivelled, especially about how the changed India had beggared her brothers and killed her parents.
We were all at Mridula’s house that day. Mridula was peeling young banana flowers, dipping her fingers delicately in the mustard oil to get rid of the sap. She was seated on the floor, one foot balanced on the boti while the blade curved upwards, slicing the tendrils into minute portions.
I said, “My mother is a minister in Delhi now; the partition brought new opportunities for the patriotic.”
Ila stiffened slightly. Then she said, “Perhaps women should attend to their families instead of politics, eh Mridula? So that the daughters don’t become the kept women of married men, like common whores?”
I was shocked; it was the first time Ila had voiced such venom. I had not thought her capable of the language she used. Mridula got up quietly and, laying the lethal blade of the boti softly on its side, muttered “Hari Om, Hari Om,” and left witho
ut looking at us.
I wanted to take that blade and slice as cleanly through Ila’s neck as I would through the neck of a scaly carp. She must have understood, for she bent down and, setting the boti upright, she calmly continued to cut the banana flower stems.
I ran to the house next door, where Maheshbabu would be, and bumped into him as he was coming back from attending to Siti. Siti had taken to her bed after seeing the shadow-play between Zainal and Shanti the previous evening, and was still in shock.
“Did you already know about Zainal and Shanti?” Maheshbabu asked me, completely befuddled. “Zainal is unrepentant. He says there is a child, but he will take her as a second wife.
I felt the room spin madly. “A child?” I could barely speak.
Shanti’s love had developed over many years, in the hothouse of the times, but I had been so distracted by my own passion for Maheshbabu that I had not known. The way I had failed Shanti could not be spelt out more obscenely.
In that distraught state – my churning emotions compounded by Ila’s venom – I dragged Maheshbabu into a bedroom and told him all. Everything Siti and I had sworn to never tell another human being. I shut all the doors and windows, uncaring of what people might think of our need for privacy under a blazing mid-morning sun.
What I didn’t count on was Jay, who had crawled under the bed to tighten the screws on an electrical outlet. Jay had stiffened in embarrassment when he had heard the door slamming shut, followed by the clicks of the windows, and the sound of his father’s voice and mine. He had curled into a ball and shut his eyes tight, while his ears had opened wide.
We found him curled into a foetal position, Maheshbabu and I, when the screwdriver clattered from his hands. His breathing was shallow, as if he were holding back an emotion so overwhelming that his lungs would burst from the effort. Maheshbabu and I looked at each other wordlessly and I thought, this boy will tell my Shanti immediately and it will kill her, but Maheshbabu waited for Jay to emerge, dirty and dishevelled, from under the bed and said, “Son, you are old enough to understand why you must never tell anyone what you have just heard,” and the boy had nodded and left.
Ode to Broken Things Page 15