by Anita Nair
‘Come back tomorrow. I will ask some of my regulars and let you know.’
Next day the man said, Shivu, that was the boy’s name, had gone back to Salem. ‘That’s where he is from. He moved to a college there. I think it is called the A.V.M. Chettiar College.’
This time you knew what to do. You wouldn’t waste time inside the college. Instead, you would head for the petty shop outside.
‘You could try the Rose Cottage,’ the man there said. ‘Some of these boys go there, dirty as it is!’
‘Rose Cottage?’ Your heart sank. A whore house?
‘Hawaldar’s place. He doesn’t have a liquor licence but he sells booze in a back room. These college boys go there for a shot… army quota. It’s hard stuff but cheap!’
You waited outside for four days before Shivu walked in. You crossed the road and followed him in. In your haste, you bumped into him.
He turned in surprise at your bulk looming behind him. ‘Who the fuck?’ he snarled.
You murmured, ‘I am Smriti’s father.’
The boy’s eyes were those of a rabbit’s caught in a light. Petrified.
The owner, who is also the bartender, steward and chef, slams a plate of scrambled eggs on their table. Oil glistens on the egg and chopped onion and chillies. ‘The hardboiled eggs are over. So I made you this. Anything else?’ the man asks.
The boy shrugs. Jak looks at the thickset man with his hair razed to a stubble. He has heard the other men call out to him as Hawaldar. An ex-army type or a man posing as an ex-army man. He continues to stand there.
‘What?’ Jak asks.
‘You have to order something. This isn’t a club for you to sit around and chat,’ the man says.
‘Fine. Bring me a vodka tonic,’ Jak says. He doesn’t want a drink. But if he has to, he prefers vodka.
‘I don’t have vodka, gin or all those fancy spirits. Just rum, brandy or whisky. It’s all military quota.’ The man’s abrasiveness rattles Jak.
‘Get me one of each.’
‘Large or small?’
‘Large, and three bottles of soda, and a plate of peanuts. That satisfy you?’
The boy looks up now. ‘I am sorry for this,’ he says quietly.
Jak doesn’t speak. He is furious. Then he asks, ‘Why?’
‘I can see that this is hardly the place you would hang out in. And the rudeness of Hawaldar… oh, for everything.’ The boy’s voice rings with remorse.
Jak puts his hand on the boy’s arm. ‘Should you be here at all? Look at what’s around you!’
Their eyes survey the rundown seediness of the room. The decrepit men with shaking hands and the palpable need to toss a drink down their throats. The silence they fill with alcohol in steel tumblers. The demons that perch on their shoulders and urge with slobbering mouths: one more, one more…
‘This is a place for alcoholics. For men who are far gone. So why are you here?’ Jak’s voice is soft but insistent. ‘What are you running away from?’
The boy’s eyes widen, then he drops his gaze. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why haven’t you been to see Smriti even once?’ Jak asks.
‘It is difficult for me to come to Bangalore.’
‘That’s not the truth.’
The boy continues to look into his glass. He doesn’t speak. Then he raises the glass to his mouth and drinks deeply.
Jak flinches.
‘I can’t,’ the boy says. ‘I can’t. Do you hear me? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. That satisfy you?’ The boy’s tone mimics his.
‘No,’ Jak says. ‘I need to know why. You were her friend, weren’t you? You, the other two boys, and Asha.’
The boy’s eyes are quizzical. ‘Asha? Who is Asha?’
Jak looks at his palms, on which the lines whirl in an almost centrifugal pattern.
So Asha is yet another lie in the stream of lies Smriti fed them, Nina and him. Why did she feel the need to create this imaginary girl? Asha, whose mother was a doctor and father an architect. Their dog Snoopy and their lovely old home in Jayanagar, which Smriti had been to several times. Asha, who topped the class and never missed a step. Was she the girl Smriti ached to be? Or was she the veneer of respectability Smriti sought to hide her recklessness behind?
But why? He wouldn’t have prevented her from going on a trip with the boys anyway. He never laid down the law; never played the heavy father. He never said, no dating, no doing this, no doing that… ‘It’s your life. If you screw it up, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. I know how it can feel. That restlessness. The need to push the limits. But take it slow.’
He voiced only what Amma had said when for a while he, Kitcha, had run amok.
‘The world is yours to grasp,’ Amma said to him, taking his hand in hers and smoothening his tightly clenched fist. There are many ways of knowing life. All in good time. Why must my Kitcha be in such a hurry?’
Kitcha didn’t want to dwell too long on it. These days he didn’t want his mind to pause at any point. If it did, he knew he would burst into tears. It was better this way. Ever since Appa left, a ball of fury seemed to reside in his chest – his biology teacher called it the thoracic cavity. Home to his anger, it hissed and fumed, burnt and seethed.
It made him aim stones with his catapult at the blackboards in empty classrooms. It had him defile library books and smash windowpanes. There was a strange satisfaction at this wanton destruction. Like there was triumph when he aimed for shins rather than the football. Or, when he bowled to injure rather than contain the batsman’s stroke play. A ball of fury with goblin ears that said playing hooky was what any schoolboy could do, go on, do more.
It made him light a cigarette in the playground. It made him smuggle pornographic magazines into the class. It whispered in his ear, ‘Be a man! Now! Now!’
It emerged as a sulphurous stream from his mouth: profanity made him feel better. The shock and disgust it triggered made him want to laugh. A wild manic paroxysm of laughs. Koodhi. Amma Koodhi. Appa Koodhi. Loose Koodhi. The words danced on his tongue with glee and Kitcha spoke them loudly, clearly, on the playground, in the streets. He soon came to be known as the nasty boy with a gutter mouth.
Inevitably, he was caught. ‘Missing classes to go for a movie is one thing, but your son is a bad influence,’ the principal said. He had found his son smoking and the boy had no qualms about pointing his stubby index finger at Kitcha. ‘He said I should try it. Be a man, Kitcha said.’
‘I am suspending him for a week. This is his last chance. Then it will be dismissal.’ The principal bristled.
Amma said nothing. Kitcha waited. They took the bus home, their shoulders and thighs touching, but Amma wouldn’t speak a word. Kitcha darted glances at her face. Would she be angry or would she weep?
At home, she went into her room to change her clothes. He waited in the hall. The chains creaked as he swung himself, waiting for retribution.
Amma went into the kitchen and brought out a plate of tiffin and a tumbler of coffee for him. As if it was yet another ordinary school day.
Amma watched him eat. She sat by his side, still wrapped in a catacombic silence. What was she thinking? What was she planning?
When he was done, she took the plate and tumbler from his hands. Then she said, ‘I think I know what’s making you do this. What can I say, Kitcha? I am sorry that your father and I did this to you. I am sorry, Kitcha!’
He hadn’t expected this. For Amma to take the blame for his rowdiness. Kitcha cried then. Large wet sobs that tore themselves from the ball of hate in his thoracic cavity and emerged as gigantic, heaving tears.
They wept together. Then Amma wiped her tears and his. She took his hand in hers and kissed his brow. ‘I know you are not a bad boy. It’s your age, Kitcha. It’s your age. Shall I suggest something? When you get really angry, why don’t you draw something? You hardly touch your paints any more.’
The boy isn’t drinking in such a hurry now. The level in his glass dip
s slowly. Jak feels the questions tumble in his head but he doesn’t know where to start.
The Hawaldar appears at their elbow. ‘Half an hour. That’s it! I am closing. If you have any last orders…’
Jak shakes his head.
‘I’ve had enough,’ the boy says.
‘Don’t come back tomorrow if you are going to sit around and gossip. I don’t like people staying too long here. Do you hear me?’ Hawaldar puts a piece of paper on the table. ‘Settle up and leave. Quickly!’
‘Can we meet tomorrow?’ Jak asks.
The boy shakes his head. ‘For what?’
‘Just an hour. I won’t bother you after that,’ Jak pleads. ‘But not here. Come to the hotel I am staying at. No one will hurry us there.’
The boy gulps his drink down and Jak counts out the notes.
The boy stands up. He wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘Don’t you want to know my name?’
‘It’s Shivu. I know,’ Jak says.
‘What time tomorrow?’
‘Eleven thirty suit you? The bar opens by then.’
‘Hey, hey,’ the boy protests. ‘I am not a drunk. I don’t know why you said that.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ Jak placates. It’s just that he thinks liquor will loosen Shivu’s tongue.
You were there when it happened. Is that what it is, Shivu? You can’t face the truth. That you could perhaps have stopped it somehow.
IV
There can be no stopping. Once the unravelling of the past begins, it will be beyond him. Jak knows this. He will not at some point be able to put his hands up and say, ‘Stop. I have heard enough. I know enough!’
Does he have the stomach for this?
‘We knew that these girls were sluts.’ The boy wipes his mouth and then, aghast at his words, he reaches out to pluck Jak’s sleeve. ‘I am not saying that about her. She, Smriti, was different. She wasn’t like the rest of those girls. The NRFs, we called them. The Non Resident Fucks.’ Again the boy catches his breath. He sinks his head into his hands. ‘What am I saying? I am sorry. I don’t mean it like that. I don’t know what I am saying!’
Jak looks away from the boy. Do I make this easy for him? Do I tell him, yes, yes, I know it is all those other girls you were referring to. It’s not my daughter you meant. You wouldn’t. A nice decent boy like you wouldn’t make such allegations about nice decent girls. Especially my daughter.
But he doesn’t offer a line to the floundering boy. Instead, he taps him on his shoulder and says, ‘Go on. I am listening.’
The boy raises his head from his hands. Remorse is replaced by the inevitable need to unburden. To shed the weight of his soul that has driven him to obscure bars.
Shivu reaches for a glass. Booze steadies him. It calms him. It wraps him in a haze of forgiveness. You are not to be blamed. You did not know what you were doing.
‘There is a kind of hangout place near the college. They play good music and it has a hubbly bubbly. Most of us go there after college. The girls come too. The day scholars, and sometimes the hostelites. But it was the foreign girls who came there as regularly as the boys did. They had money to spend. And I suppose it was like one of the places they would go to in their own countries. A place where you could hook up with someone. Everyone knew that. It was like a tradition.’
He searches Jak’s face.
Jak meets his gaze steadily. He reads the purport of the boy’s expression: What is this man thinking as I lay bare his daughter’s life?
Jak wills himself to not show any emotion. Shall I tell him that we did the same? That university students all over the world have always felt the need to congregate and stimulate their already burgeoning hormones with coffee, beer, coke, whatever? That I know how plans are hatched, dares sprung and the camaraderie of one’s peers makes one feel ready to take on the world.
Jak allows the boy a tight smile. ‘I understand. So is that where you met Smriti?’
The boy shakes his head. ‘That’s where I first saw her. She came there with a group from their college. She walked in and we couldn’t take our eyes off her.’ The boy gestures.
Jak’s eyes drop. The boy’s meaning is quite obvious. Smriti’s body piercing would make anyone flinch.
‘Is this about Nina and me splitting up?’ he asked, unable to believe the mutilation he saw. Was this creature with studs in just about every conceivable place his baby girl?
‘Why does it have to have anything to do with you?’ She tossed her head, her dreadlocks swinging back. He grimaced at the sight she made. She looked like one of those demented creatures you found wandering in temple hallways, claiming to be possessed by the goddess. With matted hair, glazed black-rimmed eyes and a set expression that would accept no truth but theirs.
Was that a stud in her tongue? He could see one in her navel too. Where else? Where else, Eashwara? In moments of stress, Jak found himself reverting to Kitcha, the Mylapore boy who called on his patron deity for rescue and succour.
‘Oh, stop it, Papa Jak. Don’t act so wet. This is my Goth look. It’s what I want for now. Don’t be like those Indian parents we know. C’mon, Papa Jak, do I ask you why you do what you do?’ She perched on his knee just as if she was eight and not seventeen.
Jak knew what Nina or any of his relatives would say to that. Nina’s mouth would narrow into a line of displeasure. ‘For heaven’s sake, Kitcha, she is not a child any more!’
The male relatives would turn their eyes away while the female relatives hissed, ‘Shiva, Shiva, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any sense? As for the girl, has she no decorum, no modesty?’
But Jak had turned his back on Kitcha, the boy he was, and had become a product of the new world he inhabited. He could let his grown-up daughter sit on his knee, close his eyes to the thought of nipple rings and clit studs and pat her head affectionately and ask, ‘Isn’t it a nuisance? All these studs and rings? Don’t they get in the way? Catch on your clothes, your hair?’
She jumped off his lap. ‘You get used to it. Papa Jak, guess what? You should get your ear pierced too!’
Jak touched his ear lobe. ‘My ear was pierced when I was a baby. But I guess it closed up. I might just do it again,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Cool!’ Smriti grinned. Her Papa Jak would never fail her. And Jak felt as if he had triumphed again. He had tried telling Nina this. No point in getting the children’s back up. You have to meet them halfway.
‘We hadn’t seen anyone like her. The studs in her eyebrows, the nose ring. The under lip stud and then the one in her tongue, her navel. It was like any place she could, she had it pierced,’ Shivu speaks easily now. ‘But we met for the first time at the Stree Shakti forum.’
Shivu and his theatre company had been invited to conduct a workshop by the forum. Rupa, the forum coordinator, had asked if they would pitch in. ‘The least you can do after what you have put us through,’ Rupa said, grinning.
Shivu knew what was coming. ‘Which means we won’t get paid, I presume.’
‘You presume right.’ Rupa shoved a sheaf of printouts into his hand.
‘You mean there is actually a script!’ Shivu widened his eyes dramatically. ‘Not just polemic. So what is it this time? A Burnt Woman is not a Beautiful Woman?’
Rupa swatted his arm playfully. ‘Don’t mock us. Female abuse begins early, Shivu. This is serious. Female foeticide. We want to take this play to little towns. Stree Shakti is having representatives from its various nodal cells come here and if you train them to put up the play, they’ll take it further. It’s like what we did to spread awareness about the evils of dowry. There are fewer cases of bride burning now. And we need to take this up seriously.’
Smriti was roped in by some girls from her college to volunteer, and Shivu had wondered if it was a fad like the piercing. But she was a dedicated worker whose unbridled curiosity was matched by her tirelessness. In the following days, Shivu watched the girl with the strange look take on the work of ten people
. When Rupa tried to tell her she was doing too much, Smriti wouldn’t accept it. ‘This is the least I can do,’ she said vehemently. ‘All those girl babies! Murdered even before they had a chance! It kills me to even think of it!’
Shivu felt his curiosity transform into admiration. And then something else. One day after rehearsal, he suggested coffee.
‘Smriti agreed easily enough and we went to the coffee shop where I saw her first. I was curious about her. What was she doing here? In India? In Bangalore,’ Shivu narrated, his voice striated with the sweetness of a time long ago when all their lives had brimmed with promise and hope.
Jak and Nina had been appalled when she turned down Brown and Columbia and announced her decision to move to India for her undergraduate degree. Nina, who was at Berkeley then, had been unable to hold back her anger. ‘You are going to regret this! Kids from all over India, from even small towns want to come here, dream of studying here, and you want to go there! If you want to be a sociologist, then it is the US you should be in. India! You want to study in India! I don’t believe this! Tell her, Kitcha, make her see sense.’
At first they had been united in their efforts to keep her there. What is all this nonsense about social welfare? We thought you wanted to do women’s studies.
Smriti listened to them patiently. ‘You are an academic,’ she told Nina. ‘You do not understand what women’s studies ought to culminate in. I do. It has to translate into real life solutions. Do you know what is happening to women in India? You sit in your pretty little house with your labelled kitchen jars and a room full of books and think it is emancipation. Empowerment has to come from within.’