No Trespassing

by Brinda S Narayan

  The week Hansika was due, Raj had taken time off from work and moved around the property, ticking off the gardeners or garbage pickers for not performing their duties adequately, then tipping the electrician or plumber with unexpected rewards. The buzz among the housekeeping staff was that the big boss had turned suddenly flighty.

  Eventually, one afternoon, Hansika’s much anticipated labour kicked in and Raj SMS-ed all the ladies in Utopia with a jumpy: ‘Off 2 clinic. Will call soon with good news.’ What was bewildering after all that buildup was that none of us heard from them again for the next few days. Kalpana tried calling Raj but he didn’t pick up the call.

  Nearly five days after that first message, we received another SMS from Raj: ‘Happy 2 inform U, boy. Hans fine, but tired. Will update after we get home.’ Strangely enough, the message seemed to politely defer our clinic visits. ‘Wonder if she had any complications?’ Kalpana said. ‘I mean, even with a C-section these days, most people recover quickly.’

  For the next two weeks, Hansika didn’t return to Fantasia. Kalpana and I had bumped into Raj near the main gate, when he was on his way to the clinic, and he stopped his gleaming blue BMW for a brief second and slid his window down. ‘Hey, how are you folks?’ he asked.

  ‘How are you?’ Kalpana asked, pointedly. ‘And how’s the little fellow doing?’

  ‘He’s doing great,’ Raj widened his lips into forced cheer. ‘Cradling’s after two weeks, you’re all invited.’

  At the cradling ceremony, we understood. We didn’t need a specialist or a physician to point out the signs: Raj’s son, little Adit, was different from other infants. His body was too floppy for one thing, too malleable, almost like modelling clay. His head and jaw were disproportionately small, his spine was unusually curved. Of course, no one said anything. We gently lifted him up and kissed the top of his head with polite murmurs, ‘Oh, so cute,’ or ‘How little he is!’ But our tones were muted, and our voices stiff, because we weren’t sure how Raj expected us to respond.

  Raj himself was wearing the forced exuberance he had worn earlier, his booming voice barking orders to the cook and his assistants, who were serving a traditional Gujarati thali for the occasion. Only Hansika, dressed in a red bandhani sari, seemed to be openly moping, her face filling up with tears each time we hugged her. At one time, Raj happened to approach the baby’s cradle when he spotted Hansika’s teary face: ‘Why are you weeping woman? We’re celebrating the birth of my son.’

  ‘The doctors never said cerebral palsy.’ Hansika looked at Kalpana and me. ‘Two scans, but they never said anything.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Raj said, interrupting the conversation. ‘There was nothing to say, there’s nothing wrong with him, I tell you. Watch my words, this chap’s going to enter the gifted stream at Le Meilleur.’ As he spoke, he attached a new mobile to his son’s cradle, bearing a clown’s grinning face. ‘See, someone has given this. Because his future is going to be so happy.’

  In an attempt to dissipate the tension in the room, I asked: ‘Who gifted that, Raj? It’s really cheerful.’

  ‘Someone here, some kid brought it.’

  SEVEN

  FOR A FEW WEEKS after the Mehtas’ cradling ceremony, there were uneasy pauses in our conversations. We circled around the usual topics, flitting from issues with the domestics to some plumbing problem to the milkman’s exasperating muddles. But the new baby was a taboo topic. Not just when Raj and Hansika were around. At all times, people skirted that terrain as if it were fraught with unknown perils. So, eight months after the child’s birth, when Raj started visiting a guru, we didn’t speculate about his motives.

  Soon, however, Raj was buzzing around the place on weekday evenings, trying to spread the word about the guru’s miraculous powers. His go-getter fretfulness had, over the past few weeks, been supplanted by a calm, priestly demeanour. Even his booming voice had softened, and the worry lines on his face had faded.

  At the parks, the topic shifted back to the Mehtas, or rather to Raj in particular. ‘Honestly,’ Manjushri said, by the golf course one evening, ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was the same Raj. He’s a completely new person.’ In the distance, we could see Jacob and Tushar putting on the seventh hole, by the umbrella trees. Raj had given up on his weekend golf to spend time at the ashram.

  The next week, we bumped into him. We were walking down our palm-lined driveway and he was driving up in his BMW. When he spotted us, he honked and halted. He seemed delighted to encounter us together. ‘Hey folks, how are you all doing? Been planning to catch up, but been so busy with Guruji’s activities. I have a few brochures that I want to leave with you. We’re having a special orientation session two weekends from now, if you’re interested. The kind of peace you get there is unbelievable. You have to experience it to believe it.’

  That evening, as I sauted red and yellow capsicum slivers with garlic, I couldn’t hide the smirk in my voice when I turned to Manas, seated on our breakfast ledge: ‘Can’t believe this. Just recently, Raj gave us the same spiel to enter Fantasia. He said the peace here is unbelievable, that we’d have to experience it to believe it. Now he’s driving more than an hour-and-a-half to experience his elusive peace again? And he wants us to join him?’

  As much as my mother was dogmatic about her atheism, I was ambivalent about my own beliefs. During my childhood, Baba had secretly ushered me into temples, where I had been transfixed by the clanging gongs and flickering tongues of light. I still visited temples on my own, unsure of what I was seeking. I felt strangely calmed by the priest’s chants and the invariability of the rituals. But a ‘peace’ propagated by Raj felt like an extension of the manicured lifestyle we inhabited, rather than an encounter with the mystical.

  Manas, who wasn’t a particularly religious person, said: ‘Vedika, we need to meet the guru just to keep Raj happy. Without his funds, I’ll be in trouble.’

  As it turned out, our weekend trip to the ashram was preempted by another announcement. Apparently, in the two weeks leading up to our proposed trip, so many Fantasia families had expressed interest, that Raj had persuaded the guru to visit our complex instead.

  Just then, I received an email from Sajan’s teacher calling for a meeting.

  Given the barebones school I had studied in (a single stone building without a playground), Le Meilleur International always overwhelmed me with its looming glasswork and steel beams, its sparkling corridors and tree-dotted grounds spread over a generous ten acres. Even the children, sauntering around in pleated trousers and checked blouses, wore an aura of improbability. Could this be India, and these American-accented youngsters our future citizens?

  Sajan’s teacher, who wore a beige pant suit and chic glasses, only served to further my sense of alienation from the terrain. Inside the air-conditioned discussion room, she flashed her ultra-straightened, pearly teeth before reverting to an unsmiling grimness. ‘Is there any stress in your household?’ she asked, gently creasing her forehead with thin worry lines.

  ‘No, nothing’s going on. Why?’

  ‘Something seems to be off with your kid. I can’t put a finger on it exactly, but he switches off in class.’

  ‘Really? For how long has this been happening?’ My heart knocked against my ribs with loud thuds. Why hadn’t I spoken to her earlier? I should have heeded my maternal instincts and ignored my unflappable husband.

  ‘On and off in the past. I thought he was still very young and it seemed like a phase. But of late, I’m seeing it again.’

  That evening, Manas tried to temper my agitation. ‘Vedika, you’ve already taken him to doctors. They said there’s nothing wrong. We’ve moved countries, he’s growing up in a new place, even school is a new experience for him. Give him time, he’ll settle down.’

  I wanted to believe him, but I fixed an appointment with a psychiatrist. If his teacher, too, had noticed something, it wasn’t just a mother’s paranoia creating an imaginary crisis. In the meanwhile, I consoled myself
that the condition was likely to be transitory, that he’d grow out of it as his brain cells matured. While my dyslexia had never completely vanished, I had learnt to cope with its limitations as I grew older.

  Guruji was scheduled to visit on a Sunday. Our premises had acquired a special gleam in the run-up to that Sunday visit, every streetlamp and park-side bench radiating an otherworldly shimmer.

  Two of our prettiest teenagers, dressed up in traditional silk saris, awaited the guru’s arrival at the clubhouse entrance with a plate of reddened water and a large rose garland. The rest of us stood behind them.

  ‘He doesn’t like paraphernalia.’ Raj stood right out in front, in white kurta pajamas. ‘He’s a very simple man.’

  Half-an-hour later, Guruji—a short, wiry man—alighted from a bluish-silver Merc, dressed in embroidered saffron robes. Raj rushed to touch his feet and stood by his side, head bent submissively.

  Inside the large hall, a special chair with ivory-coloured legs and a red-velvet cushion had been rented out for Guruji’s use. The rest of us squatted on the floor on colourful jute rugs that the Fantasia committee had purchased the week before. The women sang bhajans, while the guru’s feet were washed with milk and then with water, then smeared with sandalwood paste, rice, turmeric and vermilion.

  Later on, Raj whispered something into the Guruji’s ear. He then ushered each of us to the platform for one-on-one darshans.

  Perhaps I might have been less irked by the whole procedure if Raj hadn’t stood there, fanning the guru gently with his right hand, and commandeering the whole operation in his modulated voice. When each couple or family walked up, Raj described the ‘situation’ and appealed to the Guruji for a blessing on their behalf. When Kalpana and Vicky walked up, Raj said: ‘Kalpana would like Gaurav to pay more attention in school.’ I wondered if it was strange that Gaurav had an attention issue, just when Sajan’s fogginess seemed to have reappeared. Joanne and Subbu were next. Raj, taking charge still, said: ‘Their second son, Michael-Mohan has a hearing problem.’ Before I could process the peculiar concurrence of so many kids’ issues—were we all cursed, today’s affluent, forward-thinking parents who thought we were above the misfortunes of the past?—Raj summoned us to the podium.

  It might have been more tolerable, I told Manas later, if we’d been allowed to speak for ourselves. ‘Why did Raj need to behave like an intermediary?’ When it was our turn, before we could say anything, Raj had introduced us as the ‘parents of a special boy. They need your help in making him normal’. Guruji looked at us then with a piercing glance, but all I could feel was my rising irritation. Why had Manas communicated our child’s condition to Raj? And why had Raj announced it here without our permission?

  On the way home, I confronted Manas. The noon-sky was bright and a blazing whiteness flooded the pathway around the lake.’ Manas, why did you tell Raj about Sajan’s fogginess? I thought we were meeting the guru just to please Raj?’

  ‘I swear, Vedika, I didn’t tell Raj anything. I would never discuss such things with him anyway. He must have noticed something at the Diwali play --’

  ‘But that was so long ago...why would he even remember...’ I started wondering if Kalpana was the one who had squealed to Raj. I could just imagine her saying, ‘Poor Vedika’s boy is special, he doesn’t understand simple commands.’

  ‘It could be his own son’s birth. He’s eager to spot other families with issues. You know how it is, when you’re faced with a problem in your own family, you’d rather shift your attention to other families,’ Manas said. Did Manas even realise that he hardly wanted to dwell on Sajan’s issue himself?

  ‘Maybe, but it’s just so annoying.’ Raj’s words might have been less piercing if Sajan’s teacher hadn’t revived my unease.

  ‘Raj mentioned something else. The other day, when you weren’t at home, I was showing off your origami pieces, and he was so taken in, he took some pictures and showed them to his guru.’

  ‘Really?’ I held my breath. I could already sense my anger receding, diffused by a grateful surprise. Manas had shown off my origami pieces? And Raj, with his discerning, calculative eye, had been impressed? All these years, my origami obsession had been treated as a somewhat crazy pastime, not just by others but even by me.

  ‘That’s not all. The guru was so enchanted, he introduced Raj to one of his devotees. A lady who runs an avante garde art gallery in Mumbai.’

  I was at a loss for words. I felt something gurgling inside, as if I’d swallowed a bucketful of the lake’s waters, with all its wiggly worms and fish. Had I been too impetuous in judging Raj? After all, he’d been my husband’s saviour, the first person to endorse his business idea. Even if he was patronizing at times, wasn’t he well-intentioned in everything he did?

  EIGHT

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE psychiatrist visit, our world capsized. Later, I would rewind that story again and again, as if sifting those events would change everything. That evening, Sajan had been invited to Kalpana’s older kid’s birthday party. In his eagerness to land at Akshay’s doorstep on the dot, Sajan assured me he had no homework. ‘You don’t have to be there at 4 sharp, Sajan,’ I told him.

  He wasn’t listening, he was already scrambling up the stairs to change into his party clothes and retrieve his wrapped gift. I yelled, the unrelenting Indian mother: ‘You have to revise your tables.’ I heard him scatter his school books on his rug. When he bounded downstairs, I asked him to drink his milk, but in his ripping haste, he ignored my insistent summons. As the front door clapped shut, I was thankful that Sajan was making friends easily. At least my kid was not consigned to the kind of lonely childhood I had had. Quelling my fears about his fogginess, I moved upstairs to work on a tricky shape. If only I had heeded Rhea’s cries to ‘go to park, go to park’ instead of pacifying her with an iPad game.

  Despite learning various forms of painting at Calcutta University, where I did my Bachelor’s in Fine Arts, I had stuck to my childhood craft. I was a self-taught origamist, imbibing mountain and valley folds, frog and fish bases, box pleats and corner flaps from how-to-books and online instructors. Mostly, I learned by doing. By spending hours perfecting a crimp fold or popping a convex point into a concave one. Over the years, my shapes had become increasingly complex. It wasn’t just a pastime or a form of stress release. It felt more like an addiction, a necessity. Other people worked, ate, drank, danced, sang. I breathed life into paper.

  That day, I sensed new stirrings inside me. It felt strange to think some gallery owner might be interested in my shapes. So far, I hadn’t thought my paper sculptures could lead to something more. Even as I lifted an indigo-tinted sheet and started creasing its edges, my mind wandered to Raj’s encounter with the gallery owner. Was she really interested? But two hours later, I had banished my distracting thoughts and ignored the intercom’s buzz as the shifty legs of a fish-eating stork unfurled into view. I was keen on obliterating all sounds, while my fingers eased out a curvy neck. The intercom buzzed again. I picked up the receiver with a curt ‘Yes?’ I heard the word ‘accident.’

  I heard other words: ‘children’, ‘boys’, ‘your son.’ The voices gathered momentum, and soon I was swept into a blizzard of sounds: ‘not breathing,’ ‘badly hurt,’ ‘choked.’ Each word tossed at me by a faceless voice, each sound crushing me with its unbearable loudness.

  The next three hours were to cleave to me for the rest of my life. When my boy was brought home by a maid, when neighbours and guards crowded into our foyer, when an ambulance and doctor were summoned, when our screeching siren tunnelled through a throng of vehicles, when Sajan was declared ‘dead on arrival’ by emergency doctors, when I tumbled into a state of shock.

  When Manas rushed in from the office, he said I had stopped hearing anything.

  I was seated in our living room, with my hands trembling on my lap, incapable of sight, speech or thought. I had slipped into an unfeeling nothingness, floating inside a chasm where reality had lost its overbearing
thrust. I believed that evening would pass us by, that the next day would yank us back to our earlier life, oblivious to this absurd drama. The fireplace, the brass objects, the fabric futon and Turkish kilim, the people gathered around a still body, had all acquired the preposterous quality of stage settings.

  That night, I was knocked out by a sleeping pill prescribed by our kindly neighbourhood doctor, Sid Shah.

  The next morning, I rose to the certainty that I would hear my son’s drowsy grunts as I roused him to prepare for school. I tiptoed to his room, like I always did. His school bag lay on the floor, unzipped, with his books spilling out and his homework unfinished. On his desk, a note to parents about a school picnic contained a blank awaiting my signature. His teddy bear, his cricket bat, his ping pong balls were scattered on the thick beige rug. The telescope was tilted on a stool by the window, poised to peer into an unfeeling universe.

  I knocked on the toilet door before twisting the knob open, expecting to encounter him as I usually did: foam slopping across his tiny mouth, his brush moving in brisk circles. His dry toothbrush lay by his uncapped toothpaste, with an ooze of blue and white gel snaking out. Was he already in the kitchen, prying the cupboard open, foraging around for his Tangy Tomato Lays? I called from the banister: ‘Sajan, Sajan.’ There was no response.

  Outside, I could hear the milkman wheeling his cycle and the newspaperman flinging his papers. Birds called, leaves rustled in the breeze. Rhea was already stirring about inside her room. Everywhere else, life had been restored.

  Manas picked me up from Sajan’s room later. ‘You were just lying on the rug, staring vacantly at the ceiling.’