by Anosh Irani
“To think the Queen has laid eyes on this same atlas,” his father often said. But that was of no consequence to Sujoy. “Geography and history are linked,” his father would continue. “Yes, I teach geography, but geography isn’t just land and water, shapes and sizes. Geography is made up of nations, and nations are shaped by history.”
But what about this ocean’s water? Sujoy wanted to ask. This ocean so cold, so daring in its loneliness. Yes, he felt that loneliness. This ocean had no fish, no boats, nothing. It was probably not aware of its own colour, its own temperature. It just lay there, deep and stately, the way Sujoy wished to be. Perhaps if he plunged into it, immersed himself in its iciness, he might be able to display some of its courage. Coldness was not aloofness; it was dignity, it was the ability to not need. Even though he was only ten when he thought this, he was already aware of his need for acceptance, for love, aware of the stupidity that was associated with the ideal of the family unit, with mother, father, and child; aware of the ridiculousness of the need to make friends and keep them. Why did one have to keep friends? They were made then unmade. At least, that’s what his own experience told him.
“Look at this boy,” his father said. “I’m explaining things to him and he’s not even responding.”
“But I was just…” Sujoy fell silent. Couldn’t his father see the water, hear it call him, the way you opened the refrigerator in the dazzling heat and the ice felt so loving, nurturing, soothing?
“Papa, do you know the Bellingshausen Sea?” he asked.
His father was silent. He was using a pen refill to scribble lines on his palm. He did that absent-mindedly, to combat the eczema. Every now and then, especially in the heat, his palms would be covered by water pustules, and he would scratch them with his refill, and after the itch had abated, his palms were full of red and blue lines. It occurred to Sujoy that perhaps his father, a firm believer in palmistry, was trying to add lines to his palm, to rewrite his own destiny. Sujoy had so many questions for his father, but for now he would stay with the Bellingshausen Sea.
“Do you know it, Papa?”
“Why did you choose that sea?” his father asked.
“I didn’t. It chose me.”
“Look at this boy,” said his father. “Why does he have to talk like that?”
His mother smiled, as she always did; it seemed to Sujoy that this was all she knew how to do, to smile. Sometimes it infuriated him, but most days he accepted her smile as the only shield she could offer him. If only she were British, his father would have treated her differently. And Sujoy too.
“I chose it,” he said. “I chose it for its…”
He did not know what to say. Somehow, when exposed before his father, the Bellingshausen lost some of its appeal. Now it seemed childish, a little pond with irritating fishlets. He looked at his father and smiled, but his smile was different than his mother’s—Sujoy was trying to be endearing, to win something, elicit warmth. Instead, his father stared coldly at Sujoy, and soon Sujoy did feel warm, as though he was standing in his own urine, his own beautiful piss pool.
The silence—and warmth—was broken by the ring of the doorbell. It was a shrill sound, made shriller because it was Sunday morning. As his mother answered the door, Sujoy tried to get his mind back to the ocean, but somehow the winds had changed. He closed the atlas, and was about to put it back on his father’s desk when his mother came hurrying towards them.
“It’s the vice-principal,” she said to Sujoy’s father.
“What?”
“Your colleague from work.”
Sujoy glanced over at the door; it was still closed. His mother must have looked through the peephole, as was her habit.
“Are you sure?” said his father.
“Yes,” his mother said. “Were you expecting him?”
Everything about his father’s demeanour said no. He got up, he sat down, he got up again. He scanned his surroundings. He smoothed his white vest with his hands—although Sujoy noticed a tea stain—and he ran his fingers through his hair, flattening the strands, begging them to stick to his scalp.
“I’ll get it,” he said at last.
Sujoy tried to make himself look appropriate as well. Fortunately, he’d already had a bath, and was clean. He wasn’t allowed to touch the atlas otherwise. He walked alongside his father towards the door, as a son should.
“What are you doing?” his father asked. “Go inside the kitchen with your mother, and don’t come out.”
Even though his mind questioned this command, Sujoy was surprised at how easily his body obeyed, how beautifully his father had trained him to listen. It was like his reaction when the doctor tapped his knee with a small hammer and his leg lost all control, and kicked.
A HALF-HOUR LATER, SUJOY WAS still inside the kitchen with his mother. Tea had been made, and served, and the two men were still talking. His father’s voice sounded different, so welcoming—there was an expansiveness to him that Sujoy had never before witnessed.
His mother had cooked pakoras for the vice-principal, and now the pakoras were in the room with the men, but they had left their mark—oil splattered on the kitchen wall.
“Why doesn’t Papa want me to go out?” he asked.
“They’re talking about work,” his mother said. “That’s why.”
“But even last month, when Uncle came over, Papa told me to go inside the kitchen. He didn’t want me to come out then, either.”
“He hadn’t seen his brother in two years, so they had a lot to talk about.”
“But Uncle wanted to see me, he kept asking for me, I could hear…”
Sujoy had been desperate to meet his uncle, but he dared not disobey his father’s instructions. Human civilization was built on instruction, relied on instruction—or so his father had told him. What if, whilst constructing a bridge, workers did not follow the engineer’s instructions? What if a nurse disobeyed a doctor? Things would go awry; serious hurt would be caused.
“Sujoy…would you like to learn how to cook?” His mother’s voice was soft, tentative.
Cooking was the last thing on his mind. He found the kitchen a dreary place. It stank of oil and vegetables, and the small ground-floor window that looked out into the back alley only welcomed more smells. The iron grille on the window reminded Sujoy of a jail cell, so he rarely looked out of it.
“I’ll teach you how to make butter chicken.”
For a second, Sujoy thought he couldn’t have heard correctly; perhaps he hadn’t caught all of his mother’s words. But no, it was a Sunday, and there was little traffic outside to disturb the forgiving silence that this one day afforded them.
“But…aren’t we vegetarian?” he asked.
Chicken, mutton, pork, beef. Those words were rarely uttered in his father’s house. His father abhorred anything that walked, moved, made sounds, had life, a heart, a soul. Even though his father spoke about dignity, about how vegetarians were respectful of life, and said that killing a living being was sinful, Sujoy knew that his father did not care a silver hoot about dogs or cats or pigeons, or anything. He wasn’t cruel; but he wasn’t kind.
“It’ll be our secret,” his mother said. There was her smile again. This time, it had a different quality to it, that of a colluder.
A secret? The flat had three tiny rooms: hall, bedroom, kitchen. What about the smell? And where would his mother find a chicken? Perhaps the heat was getting to his mother. He had often heard how, on her honeymoon, she had fainted from dehydration. His father had to carry her all the way to the local doctor. They had been in a remote village somewhere—close to his father’s ancestral home—with no vehicles nearby. While Sujoy’s father was carrying his mother, she had suddenly woken up in her husband’s arms and said something rude to him, making fun of his face. Then she had fainted again. It had caused a huge fight between them later. This last part Sujoy had overheard his mother telling her sister one evening. Perhaps this was a similar case of babbling nonsense in the h
eat?
Sujoy just could not imagine his father ever carrying his mother. Maybe it was because he could not imagine his father carrying him. Perhaps his father might have held him when he was an infant, but at some point early on the physical contact had ceased. This was evident from his father’s current relationship with him. Not once could he recall his father attending to him—to apply a Band-Aid, pat him on the head, hug him on his birthday. Verbal contact was kept to a minimum too. Except when there were instructions to be given.
“Shall we start?” his mother asked.
She removed a bowl from the fridge. Sujoy was astonished to see it was full of chicken—skinless and smooth, but soft and cold, legs and breasts covered in cream and chili powder.
“Where did you get this?” Sujoy asked. He looked out into the hall, to make sure his father was still at the table.
“Relax, that man hasn’t entered the kitchen in ten years.”
This would make him, Sujoy thought. But his mother wasn’t panicking.
“First, you make a mixture of yogurt, ginger garlic paste, and red chili powder, and smear it all over the chicken,” she said. “Keep it overnight. Or even an hour is fine, up to you.”
“You made this last night?”
“This isn’t mine. It’s Leela’s. Her fridge isn’t working, so she kept it here last night. She has a party this evening.”
“Does Papa know you have chicken in the fridge?”
“No…we’re vegetarian, Sujoy. But I used to cook butter chicken before I got married,” she said. “I used to eat it too.”
Sujoy had tried chicken only once, on the sly, at a friend’s birthday party two years ago. He had taken a small piece, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and gone to the bathroom to eat it, lest anyone saw. He quite liked the taste, but soon after eating it, he panicked, so he used his fingers to brush his teeth, smearing them with so much mint toothpaste that there was no chance of a lingering smell.
“Won’t Leela aunty come for her chicken?” he asked.
He imagined the next-door neighbour’s fat arms. She was always waving them about, the charbi underneath her biceps just as slabbery as the chicken flesh. His mother shrugged. Then she placed the boneless pieces of chicken in a pan and let them cook.
Sujoy stared at his mother. Perhaps fathers were magic killers, but who would have guessed that his mother could cast a spell?
* * *
—
TOMATO PURÉE, COCONUT MILK, ONIONS, red chili powder, cashew nuts, green chilies, yogurt, milk, cilantro, cumin seeds, garam masala powder, tomato ketchup…Sujoy’s mother had pulled out all the stops. Everything was laid out before him, like in a Western movie he’d seen once, where the hero wants to buy a gun, and the owner of the joint pulls out weapon after weapon and places them on the countertop. That’s what his mother was doing, she was conjuring this and that from who knew where and giving him instructions—but her instructions were so different from his father’s. Hers came with a playfulness, and he had never before seen her so alive. She was enjoying herself; or perhaps it wasn’t enjoyment so much as moving out of time itself, stepping out of her flat, her city, her life. Sujoy assumed this was what she was feeling because it was how he felt. Even the Bellingshausen was present; each time he opened the fridge, he felt its cold currents, its Nordic winds, and he reached out and held the glass bottles that contained chilled drinking water as if they were hope, or flowers, or springs.
In the living room, the vice-principal was still talking. When Sujoy stuck his head into the hall, he saw that a pall had fallen over his father’s Sunday face, over his father’s eyes and nose, and his father kept scratching an itchy palm along the edge of the table.
“What is the vice-principal saying?” Sujoy asked his mother.
“It’s nothing,” said his mother.
“Papa looks nervous.”
“He gets like that with people from work.”
Now the two men were speaking in hushed tones, and this reminded Sujoy of secrets, or of two people conspiring to hurt a third. Adults were like that. Hurtful and cowardly.
“Take that butter,” his mother said. “We’ll prepare the sauce now.”
Sujoy took a spoonful.
“More, more,” she said.
So he scooped more out of the tablespoon with his finger and let it fall into the metal pot. Then he added oil to the butter, and watched them mix, melt into each other. Next came chopped onions, ginger garlic paste, green chilies, tomatoes—all were welcome, none rebelled, not one rejected the other. Then yogurt and water. The vessel was covered, and everything was left to simmer and boil and burn.
“Slow heat,” said his mother. “They need to blend into a paste.”
In the other room, too, there was slow heat. When Sujoy checked, he saw that neither party was eating the snacks that had been laid out. Suddenly, he felt heavy. It was a familiar feeling, except that this time it promised to stretch on forever. He wondered how long he would live, something he hadn’t ever thought about before. How many Sundays? A Sunday, then school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Then, on Friday evening, that sad glimmer of hope before the weekend—when nothing more showed up, except the certainty of days to come.
“Ammi,” he said, turning to his mother.
He saw pain dart across his mother’s face, and knew what that meant—the onset of a headache. His mother got them on a regular basis and they blinded her, made her mad in the beginning and then steely, a fighter who was determined not to waste her husband’s money by going to the doctor again and again only to be told to take another crocin.
As Sujoy watched carefully, she strained the mixture in the pot to see if any pulpy bits remained. Satisfied, she put the sauce back and let it boil on a high flame. The gas stove suddenly showed its temper, the volcanic flames rising with that beautiful whoop sound, and when Sujoy closed his eyes, he imagined wings, opening and closing, making those same sounds. He breathed deep, accepting the smell of the kitchen. All the ingredients were now speaking to him, throwing bits of themselves at him, the way flowers were sprinkled on a just-married couple, only here there was no love…No, he thought, there is love, there is son and mother, and for the first time the son is discovering the mother, and she is revealing herself to him, the ingredients that make her.
Sujoy opened his eyes. Next came cashew paste, then sugar. Always sugar. In tea, in food, in cake, those bits of white, doppelgängers of salt, double agents—they were always needed. And then: ketchup. Sujoy’s mother handed him the bottle and he slammed it against his palm, and the ketchup oozed out—one, two—and he hit the bottle a third time, liking the forcefulness.
“Sujoy,” she said. “My head is—”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
He said this tenderly, and his mother smiled at him. This was a third smile: neither weak nor colluding, it was the smile of gratitude. Gratitude for his understanding. Suddenly, his heart opened, and he was so confused that he grabbed his mother and gave her a tight hug. She let him stay there, leaning against her, and patted the back of his head, then rubbed his hair down, setting it straight, although for what occasion he didn’t know.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”
Instead of calm, anxiety sprang forth within him like music, drums and rumbles that disturbed the rhythm of his daily life. His mother had never before addressed his anxiety, and now that she had tried to assuage it, he felt even more jittery than usual. His mind spewed a hundred questions, but none of them were audible; instead they created roads inside him, roads leading nowhere.
“It’s okay not to love someone,” she said.
These words hit him—slapped him, rejuvenated him. They seemed to come out of nowhere, but he instinctively understood their meaning. Yes, perhaps the father didn’t love the son; that much he had guessed. But she wasn’t talking about Sujoy. She was talking about herself. His mother didn’t love the man she had married. And Sujoy rea
lized he was overjoyed to hear this. But there was no feeling of celebration within him; it was a sullen joy. Joy could be sullen.
His mother turned away, and took the chicken out of the fridge. Her movements were slow, and Sujoy could see that the headache was catching up to her, eating its way into the back of her neck. Her eyes were drowsy, her eyelids swollen.
“Will you handle the rest?” she asked.
Sujoy knew she was talking about the chicken—but she was also telling him to take charge. Of his life, his movements. Particularly his movements.
He looked at the way she herself moved, suddenly so tired, dishevelled, almost swaying, but not the way a tree sways in the wind. There was a lack of grace in her movements, and a stinking resignation. A hot stink, the kind that one received in Bombay every so often when an open garbage truck passed by, debris coming off it—dirty plastic bags like confetti. His mother was discarding something in a similar fashion, all the hours, minutes, days spent with this man— they were flying off her shoulders and into Sujoy’s face. They were an omen, and the message was clear: if he didn’t do something, he would stink too.
He watched his mother enter the bedroom and lie down. The sudden tigress, the spell-caster, had become ordinary again, apologetic, so light she hardly made a dent in the mattress. She took a pillow, groaned, and covered her eyes with it. And when she covered her eyes, Sujoy felt darkness envelop him. He should run away—but where could he go? He didn’t have a single friend. Just a week ago, two boys at school, tough types, the bullies that everyone aspired to be, had come up to him during recess and asked, “Sujoy, do you want to be our friend?” Sujoy’s eyes had lit up, and his heart had swelled with such big hope and relief that he immediately cried yes with all his might, only to hear them say, “But what makes you think we want to be yours?” The laughter rang in his ears so loud that when the last school bell sounded three hours later he bolted to his bus like an athlete, something he had never been. On the bus, he had realized that he was going home to a father he could never talk to about this experience. But today, on this Sunday afternoon, his mother had reached out her hand to him, and he was determined not to let her down.