Siva sucked his fingers all the time; he was restless and waiting to be born. Amma was restless too. That evening as always Amma stood at the dining room window pulling at the spring curtain and it went driiing-driiing-driiing. The sound announced the close of the day. But today, as Amma pulled at the spring, her day was not over. It was time for the Valakappu ceremony. It was time to pray for the sex of her unborn child.
Amma went to her room to get ready. She donned a blouse and saree made out of the cinnamon-brown silk she had found in the attic. She fixed a string of jasmines in her hair, and smeared her eyes with kohl. From the cupboard shelf she took down the baby frock she had stitched with the leftover cinnamon silk, and clutching it to her breasts she cooed: my Tara, my sweet Tara. Then Patti called out to her and Amma hastily put the frock away and rushed to the veranda.
A group of women sat in a circle singing, clapping their hands and swaying to the rhythm. Amma sat amidst them. Patti, because she was a widow, sat at a distance supervising the event. The young women slipped pairs of red and green glass bangles on Amma’s wrists. Then they smeared turmeric paste on her arms and face. Beside her feet they arranged the quill of a porcupine, Udambara leaves and an ear of paddy. Another young woman put sweets and savouries into the palav of Amma’s saree and tied it around her waist. They were meant to be food for the baby.
Meanwhile Munniamma, the maidservant, had put a vessel of rice on the floor. The women walked around it, sprinkling flowers and chanting. They clapped their hands loudly so that the baby would not be born deaf. Then the women started to pray to Rika, the deity of the full moon. They beseeched the Goddess to make Amma’s pregnancy fruitful and bless her with a son who would be as beautiful as the full moon, and whose intellect would be as sharp as the porcupine’s quill. After the prayers were over, Munniamma brought coffee, savouries and sweets.
Amma didn’t eat anything: she was meant to fast until the stars came out in the sky. Patti didn’t eat either. Her brow was creased with worry. ‘Where is that Perumal?’ she said, when the women had left and she and Amma were finally alone. ‘He should have been here fifteen minutes ago!’ Just then there was a rattling of the gate. Patti looked up to see Swami, the crippled boy. ‘Munniamma, give the poor boy something to eat.’
Munniamma returned from the kitchen with food parcelled in a sheet of newspaper and hastened to the gate. She held out the parcel; Swami grabbed it from her hands and shouted, ‘You fucking whore!’ Munniamma reached out and tweaked his nose. She was not a bit annoyed. Everyone knew about Swami’s bouts of intermittent insanity when he let out coarse words, which he didn’t mean and didn’t seem to remember he had spoken.
Swami was no more than ten years old, and a homeless orphan. In the daytime he went house to house begging for food. In the evening he was at the market selling limes, chillies and green coriander. When he had made enough money he closed his little stall and bought a bottle of Coca Cola, a treat for his endeavours. He lived one day at a time, one Coca Cola at a time, before he made his way to the railway station where he slept away the hours before the next day began.
‘Go get your horoscope, Mallika, and Raman’s too,’ Patti said. ‘They are in the box in the prayer room. Perumal should be here soon.’
‘I am hungry,’ Amma said.
‘Drink water, ma. You can’t eat for another hour at least.’
Amma went into the kitchen. Munniamma had cleaned the dishes and put them away, all except one plate by the stove covered with a napkin. Amma lifted the napkin slightly to reveal bondi ladoos, coconut burfi and different kinds of vadais. Amma looked around her, and then she picked a laddoo and stuffed it into her mouth. ‘That’s for you, Tara,’ she said aloud, rubbing her hand on her stomach. Amma quickly tossed a coconut burfi into her already full mouth and pressing it down with her fingers she dashed into the prayer room. She opened the tin box on the shelf and from it retrieved two paper scrolls and brought them to Patti.
Perumal Krishnan walked through the gates dressed in a starched white veshti, barechested, his Brahmin thread looped over his shoulder. He climbed the steps to the veranda. He was tall and extremely lean. He had brought with him several notebooks and charts. He set them down on the pai and sat down in front of Patti and Amma. Patti gave him the horoscopes.
Perumal adjusted the sacred Brahmin thread over his shoulder. He fanned his armpits with a fan made of dried leaves. The astringent odour of Lifebuoy soap and perspiration laced the air. Patti’s nose twitched and she covered it with the end of her saree. She sniffed the air to ensure the brief breeze had blown away, before dropping the saree from her nose.
Perumal now surveyed the scrolls of paper matching house for house, planet for planet and star for star. He looked through the frayed notebook in which he had made interpretations of the positions of the moon. He made notations of planets and stars on a page and put down lunar calculations in the margin. Then with a shudder of his chest he blew the air out of his stomach and burped. ‘A girl,’ he pronounced.
Patti said, ‘Look-look, see properly. It has to be a boy. I didn’t go all the way to Chiroor for nothing.’ Tears had pooled in her eyes.
Perumal stared at Patti’s open mouth. ‘A… a beautiful boy,’ he said with a wavering smile.
Patti’s mouth closed and then ever so slowly it widened into a smile. She clasped her hands together, stretched them in front of her and pressed them out until her finger bones cracked. Twin dimples appeared at the back of her elbows.
‘Definitely a boy,’ Perumal repeated firmly. But his eyebrows remained knitted together, as though they had a mind of their own and they didn’t entirely agree. Perumal smoothed out his eyebrows, collected his books and hurriedly left. Patti had not missed the doubt etched on his face.
With renewed determination, Patti took Amma straight to the Shiva temple at the end of Gibbs Road. She offered two coconuts, a basket of flowers, an entire bunch of ripe rastali bananas and fifty-one rupees to Lord Shiva. The pujari rotated the plate with the burning camphor with one hand and rang the bell with the other. Looking intently into Lord Shiva’s eyes, Patti folded her hands and prayed. When the pujari stood in front of her with the plate of burning camphor, Patti covered the flame with her hands and touched her eyes and face. She drank the holy water that the pujari dropped into her palm with a silver spoon. She looked up at Lord Shiva and added, ‘Now don’t forget to make sure it is a boy. I have named him Siva after you, after all.’
***
Late in her ninth month, Amma often got breathless and she could hardly sleep at night. She had grown terribly big and, to a lesser extent, so had Siva and his sister. Siva had shed all the downy hair on his body and his skin was smooth. He had moved further down in the womb and it was getting intolerably cramped. He hung upside down from a cord and his sister swayed backforth like a trapeze artist. And when Amma sat in a particular way their heads collided: ouch-ouch. But Siva didn’t seem to mind this at all; he kicked his legs excitedly. His twin was asleep most of the time, her finger curled into his, until he too fell into sleep.
That afternoon Amma sat under the cool shade of the neem tree reading the old brown ledger; she read it almost to the end. Tears tumbled down her cheeks and she wiped them with the end of her saree. Suddenly, she felt her womb heave and squeeze, and she involuntarily said aloud: ‘Nooo, by Jove!’ The heaving and squeezing happened again and Amma felt a firm grip like a clamp around her womb. Hugging her belly, she bent double and retched all over the trunk of the tree. The violent heaving and squeezing began once more. Each time, her heart skipped a beat. She felt as though her life had turned into water and it was oozing out of her. Amma bellowed – By God! Good heavens!
Patti rushed to her. ‘Your water has burst,’ she said and at once sent Munniamma for the midwife. Holding Amma by the arms, Patti led her beyond the hallway to the dark storeroom for the birthing so that light and wind wouldn’t startle the newborn
. The walls of the storeroom were lined with gunny bags containing red rice from the local fields; they gave off a homely starchy smell, meant to be good for babies. The midwife came with Munniamma and both helped Amma squat on the floor, then they held her shoulders, gently laying her down. ‘Munniamma, go get the bottle of balm from my room,’ Patti said, ‘and rub it on Mallika’s back. It will relieve some of the pain.’
The hours passed. Amma felt each minute in its entirety, and the separate grain of each second. Inside her, Siva was kicking feverishly while his sister seemed to have momentarily passed out. Appa, who had been summoned from work, paced up and down in the hallway. He clutched his nose, unaccustomed to the smells of birthing: Spittle. Birthblood. Sweat. Balm. Then Amma screamed. It pierced the night like lightning.
Siva’s sister struggled in the slimy water, bobbing up and down, and then gulping water. More water. More water. She sank to the watery bottom of the womb-bed, landscaped by deep shadows and silence, and the twisted root of the birth cord, already old, curled around her neck, and then she choked, once, twice. Her heartbeat rose and fell like a leaf detached from its tree. Her finger she had curled into Siva’s let go bit by bit.
Amma gave a big push and Siva’s sister arrived into the world, headlong, the umbilical cord still coiled around her neck. The midwife cut the cord and held up the baby. Patti stared stupidly at her granddaughter as she kicked her legs in the air. Amma held out her arms for her daughter. The midwife slapped the baby hard on the buttocks. The child didn’t cry as they are meant to; instead she rounded her mouth and sang out their wombsong – oo-oo-oo – and her eyes glittered with newborn tears.
Outside, the wind howled: ooooowr-oooowar-oowat-oowata-oowata-r, as though it was thirsty. Amma would not forget this peculiar lament of the parched wind. A flash of lightning brightened the dark room for a still moment, and then shadows appeared, on the ceiling, walls and floor. Amma wouldn’t forget the shadows either. It started to rain hard – large hyphenated lines tossed from the sky. The midwife looked up at the windowpane etched with lines of water, raindrops drumming at it. She looked alarmed. It was only April: too early for rain. It was a sign, this summer rain. It meant that something untoward was to happen.
The midwife pressed the baby to Amma’s breast. Amma touched the baby’s hair, stiff with birthblood. She touched her lips to the baby’s cheek, kissed her with neverending love. It was a moment Amma would never forget. Then she breathed the name into the baby’s ear: Tara.
Appa stood at the door, his shirt sweatdrenched, worried, wondering. Just then Munniamma stepped up to him with the newborn baby and raised her into his arms. Appa looked down at his daughter, wonder in his eyes. He laughed with joy. The baby twisted, cried, turned blue, and then was still. He continued to laugh, tears in his eyes.
Munniamma wrenched the child out of Appa’s arms, walked back and laid the child next to Amma. Her voice shaking, she said, ‘She died, ma. She died in her father’s arms.’
Amma writhed and moaned. The midwife turned to her, and pressed Amma’s stomach with her hands to force the placenta out of her womb. It had occupied all the space, pushing Siva’s sister into the coils of the cord of birth and death.
His heart pounded loudly. The sound was amplified in the hollow he now inhabited alone. Then, even as he stayed moored to the very root of his beginnings, his body was caterpillared down the narrow passage and out. His mouth quivered open and he opened his eyes to the light of an oil lamp.
The midwife raised her bloodied hands. ‘It’s a boy.’
And thus I was born in a room that smelled of raw rice and balm.
1
It was early morning, but the sky was unusually dark and the moon was still out. An eagle perched on the roof of Victoria Villa looked up, watching, waiting. Dawn broke and cracks of light emerged from the dark clouds. The eagle spread its wings, felt the wind in its feathers and flew with flawless grace into the morning sky.
Light filtered through the leaves and faltered over my face as Patti stood under the neem tree, gently rocking me in her arms. I felt the pangs of hunger: a gnawing, dull ache, as though a mouse was nibbling at the inside of my belly, scratching-itching. I wailed, not so much because of hunger but because something was missing: the scent and the warmth I had got used to. Amma had abandoned me since the day I was born; I was now three months old.
Holding me close to her chest Patti walked into the kitchen. She was short, stumpy, but not fat. She was solid with hard work and childbearing, although Appa was the only one of her children who had survived. Three daughters had died in different positions in her womb. Her umbilical cord was a tragedyloop, Patti told everyone. It had coiled itself around a babyarm, babyleg and a babyneck and coaxed the life out of them. Patti was always dressed in nine yards of cotton the colour of an aged deerskin, and this she wrapped around her body and twisted between her legs. Somewhat like frilled trousers, her saree reached her ankles, and her bare feet moved quickly-deftly through each day. She wore no blouse because she was a widow and for the same reason, as per custom, her head was tonsured. She pulled the saree tightly over her bosom and her head. She smelled of the scent and the heat of balm.
In the kitchen, Patti pulped a piece of ripe rastali banana and fed it to me with a silver spoon. I rolled the pulp in my mouth. Patti gave me another spoon and then another, so sweet and starchy. But by afternoon I had set up a howl. Patti dribbled tablespoons of gripe water into my mouth. The aniseed rivulet cooled my stomach and soothed the cramp in it. The next evening Patti crushed a piece of homegrown papaya and asked Appa to feed me. I ate it greedily, raising my open mouth for more, Patti would tell me.
Appa would come home with different kinds of papaya, she told me: the long ones, the round ones and particularly the small ones, which came from the western coast, called disco papaya. They were honeysweet. I loved papaya, Patti said. In fact it was the first word I learnt to speak. Each time Patti brought my evening feed, I would kick my legs in the air. Pa-pa, pa-pa, yaaaa. Patti told Appa I was asking for him. Appa smiled, showing all his teeth.
Appa was lean, tall and dark skinned, and wore gold-rimmed glasses. Hair sprouted out of his ears. His teeth were crooked and when he concentrated on something he ground them hard. In the evening after Appa returned from work, if he was not fussing over me, he was in his study at the back of the house, grinding his teeth.
In the study were a mock-Elizabethan chair, a rattan bench that had given way in the centre, a wormeaten table, its crevices filled with the dirt of years, and an old English safe. The safe contained little money, but in it were bundles of papers and reports Appa had recently prepared on the behaviour of a certain species of female mosquitoes. Above the safe was a painting of a young woman dressed in a cinnamon-brown silk gown painted with parrots, peacocks and pink lotus flowers. Her hair, under the threadnet bonnet, was cut short and her deepset eyes were blue like the sea. She was slightly swollen at her waist. At the bottom of the painting was a plaque: Elizabeth Gibbs.
Attached to the study and connected by a door was a garden full of flowering shrubs enclosed by steelnet and partly covered with dark canvas to keep the interior dim, warm and moist. In large glass trays of slimy water, larvae grew into adult mosquitoes. Families of the Aedes, Culex, Culiseta and Anopheles buzzed, copulated and multiplied. This was Appa’s favourite place. The drone and whine of a thousand mosquitoes thrilled his ears and his absolute power over them energised his mind. He ground his teeth vigorously. It was in his study that Appa introduced me to the world of insects: flies, moths, butterflies, ants and mosquitoes.
‘Did you know Siva,’ he told me, ‘the mosquito goes through four stages of life: egg, larva, pupa, and an adult. The larva lives in the water and comes to the surface to breathe. It sheds its skin four times, growing larger each time. The larva changes into a pupa. After two days the pupa splits its skin and an adult mosquito emerges. It rests on the surface of the w
ater, waiting for the wings to harden. Then it flies in the air.’
Appa paused and looked at me. ‘Now tell me what does the pupa do?’
And I said, kicking my feet in the air, pa-pa-ya-pa-ya.
***
Amma’s father, Vishnu-thatha, was tall. He had a sharp face with deep penetrating eyes. His hair was long, tied into a ponytail. His smile was almost angelic, as though he wished something good for everyone, though tragedy had struck him early and left him lonely for all his life.
That evening when he came to see us I was lying on the pai on the veranda floor. Patti sat next to me, fanning me with a dried leaf fan. Not far from us she had lit a bowl of Queens Mosquito Repellent Powder; its bitter fumes bewildered the mosquitoes and they buzzed away. Patti lifted me onto grand-father’s lap when he sat down beside her. He stroked my cheek that had railwaytrack marks from the pai. He took a silver rattle from his shirt pocket and shook it over my face.
Ting-ting-ting.
‘He’s got Mallika’s eyes,’ he said, tickling me under my chin. Vishnu-thatha thrust the rattle into my hand and closed my fingers around it.
Ting-ting-ting.
Grandfather’s voice wavered as he enquired after his daughter. Patti averted her eyes as she told him that Amma was still in the storeroom. Vishnu-thatha became stiff and pained; a gush of shame spread over his face. He lifted me into Patti’s arms and insisted on seeing his daughter. Patti led him across the hall to the storeroom. Vishnu-thatha knocked on the door and called out several times. The door opened a crack and there Amma stood, her hair dishevelled and her face stained with tears. Ammasmell. Wombsmell. I waved my hand.
Ting-ting-ting.
Vishnu-thatha held Amma by both her shoulders and gently shook her. She looked at him vaguely, then turned away and went back to her corner. Vishnu-thatha turned to Patti. ‘Her daughter died, ma. It is because of grief that Mallika refuses to see her son.’ His voice was broken.
IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE Page 3