IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE

by Sara Srivatsa

  Patti looked at me, sadness in her eyes. I felt someone’s fingers curl into mine.

  Ting-ting-ting.

  ***

  Soon everybody got used to Amma’s goings-on. She came out of the storeroom early each morning, washed, changed into fresh clothes that Munniamma had left on the kitchen table, ate leftovers, then returned to the storeroom. All day long she sat in a corner staring at the shadow on the floor, as one in a trance, as though the shadow was calling out to her. The dry wind blew through the gap in the window: ooooowr-oooowar-oowat-oowata-oowata-r… When Munniamma went to her, Amma pointed to the shadow and said, ‘Why did she have to go?’

  ‘Because she had no After,’ Munniamma said, wrapping an arm around Amma’s shoulder.

  ‘I want to have no After,’ Amma said.

  And whenever Munniamma took me to her, Amma shut her eyes and would not look at me. Each time Appa stood before her, cajoling her, she shut the door in his face. Hurt and bewildered, Appa let her be. He had me. Only a week ago Appa had had the cloth cradle moved from Patti’s room to his. When I woke up at night and cried, Appa pulled the rope fixed to the cradle and sang as he gently rocked me:

  I’m a little mosquito, l have little wings,I fly around and smell all things.When I see a little boy who smells simply great,I buzz out to all of my mosquito mates.

  ***

  It was early September, and the sun had switched on its heat. Frogs leapt into mirage puddles, dogs ran zigzagged in the streets, tails between their legs, tongues hanging out of their mouths. Then the heat cast its eyes on people. It squeezed them dry until their eyes wore a permanent squint and their brows a lasting frown. They whined and hissed like the hot wind.

  My skin was prickly and sore. I heard wombsounds: whispering and hissing, and the slosh of the sea that had contained me. I moved my tongue and echoed the sounds: ssh-ssh, hizz-hizz. I pressed my tongue to the upper palate to try and make the slosh of the sea, but it came out as a cluck. This alarmed Patti.

  Appa was in the rear garden examining a dish full of larvae, singing Hang down your head Tom Dooley as he did so. It was his favourite song. I had memorised the tune: Lala-la-la-la-lala. Patti stepped out of the study door holding me in her arms. The pungent smell of balm preceded her. ‘Look at this place swarming with mosquitoes,’ Appa said without even looking up. ‘There are around 300 million cases of malaria in our country and about three million people die every year. Only fifteen years since our independence, and look at the state of our mosquito-ridden country.’

  ‘This country has only you to fight mosquitoes or what?’ Patti slapped my arm, brushed away the squashed mosquito. ‘And what about your son? He has heatsores and all day long he hisses and wheezes and makes clucking sounds with his tongue.’

  Appa smiled. ‘He must be imitating some of the sounds he hears.’

  ‘Only snakes hiss and sish and hens make those clucking sounds and there are no snakes or hens here for him to imitate.

  ‘Hen,’ Appa repeated. ‘Now where did I see the hen?’ Momentarily distracted from his task, Appa rushed out of the rear garden door and up the stairs to the attic. Straddling me on her hip Patti followed behind him. Appa walked past bundles of old newspapers, files, a heap of mattresses, broken umbrellas and wooden cases to a trunk. He pulled away the bedsheet and opened the trunk. Stacked in it were several cloth bundles. He looked into one; it contained half a dozen baby frocks, silk, dyed in vegetable colours. He looked into the next one; it contained a number of boy’s clothes brought all the way from England. Under them were a few shoes and feeding bottles, a plate, and a cup. From amongst them he pulled out a wooden toy – a hen, one claw broken and one eye-bead lost. Appa turned to Patti and me and thrust the toy into my hands. ‘There must have been children in this house a long time ago. This toy must have belonged to them.’

  Patti looked at the toy hen suspiciously. ‘I wonder if the mother of those poor children cared for them,’ she said. ‘Old houses store memories and the past repeats itself.’

  Appa laughed. ‘Of all the silly superstitions!’

  ‘Superstitions are not silly, okay. Something must have gone wrong with the people who lived here and it is affecting us.’

  ‘Only George and his wife Elizabeth lived here. He was a fine man, and one responsible for malaria research in this part of the country. Do you know the Queen’s Mosquito Repellent was started by him?’

  ‘Oh forget the queen and her mosquitoes! Why don’t you do something about Mallika, eh?’ Patti snapped. ‘By ignoring the problem it is not going to sprout wings and fly away like your mosquitoes. If you’re not going to do anything about it I will, and right now. I am not afraid of her. You are a coward, Raman. You are frightened of your wife.’

  Appa’s endurance broke. Grinding his teeth he rushed down the stairs and into the house. Patti followed him to the storeroom. After several knocks on the door Amma opened it. Her face was swollen and her saree was dirty. Appa held her gently by her shoulders. She swept Appa’s hands away, retreated into the room and threw all those things that would break: bottles, glasses, and the old mirror. She threw old newspapers and magazines, and Appa’s old files and then the thick brown ledger flew up in the air and landed at Patti’s feet, open. Its faded, yellow-grey pages rustled and turned in the breeze from the open window. Part of the red spine had torn from the ledger and lay curled on the floor: a thumb ripped away.

  ‘Why are you angry with me?’ Appa looked at her beseechingly. ‘What did I do?’

  Amma rushed at him and beat his chest with her fists, her eyes wide with rage. ‘You killed Tara.’

  Appa held Amma’s arms and gently but firmly pulled her out of the storeroom and bolted the door. He called out to Munniamma to get the padlock. Amma ran out of the hall, up the stairs, all the way to the spare room on the second floor.

  Patti stood still, looking at the broken glass and debris all around. She looked down at the old ledger at her feet; some of its pages had shifted out of the binding. A gust of wind blew from the window and the pages crackled like dried leaves as they turned, more pages, more pages, and a swatch of silk flew out and rolled on the floor: cinnamon-brown, painted with a peacock, parrot, leaves and a lotus.

  Patti stared at the square of silk on the floor. Holding me to her chest, she bent to grab an edge of the fabric. Her eyes widened. ‘Now why didn’t I think of this?’

  ***

  The spare room on the second floor was crowded. Suitcases and trunks were stacked in one corner; two steel almirahs stood against a wall; steel and brass utensils lay in a heap. On a bed, under a small window in the adjoining wall, was Amma. She held me in her arms and caressed the cinnamon-brown silk of my new frock. Amma kissed me on both my cheeks and pressed me to her breasts. My mouth opened wide and I made smacking sounds with my lips. Amma unbuttoned her blouse and thrust her nipple into my mouth. Appa and Patti stood watching outside the bedroom door. Patti struck her tongue on her palate and produced a defiant cluck.

  That night, Appa brought Amma down to their room on the first floor. He held her close as she lay beside him. They seemed happy just like they did in their wedding photo in the hall, in which Appa looked fondly at Amma and she looked shyly down at her toes. Appa lifted his head to check on me; he pulled at the rope that rocked the cradle. He sang:

  Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo.

  Catch a mosquito by her nose.

  If she buzzes don’t let her go.

  Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo,

  He turned back to Amma and said, his voice deep, ‘Do you know, Mallika, mosquito is a Spanish word. It means little fly. It belongs to the insect family cu-li-ci-dae which is derived from the Latin word culex meaning midge.’

  Amma giggled.

  Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo.

  After that day, whenever Appa was travelling Amma laid me to sleep next to her each night. She bundled me in a soft
quilt at the slightest hint of breeze. She tucked peppercorns under my pillow to keep bad dreams away. She kept the rattle next to the pillow and whenever I woke up in the middle of the night she went Ting-ting-ting with it. She not only left the night light on but hung wind chimes on the window which tinkled through the night, a lilting music to my dreams.

  An echo went off in my head:

  EenieMeenieMineyMo.

  Who was that?

  2

  And thus my life began due to an inconsequential Spanish fly. Had it not been for that probing parasite Appa would have never come to Victoria Villa; he would have never been married to Amma. I would never have been born. But by the mysteries of destiny I had tumbled forth onto the storeroom floor in Georgie Gibbs’ old house, amidst sacks of rice. Whispers soaked into the old walls told me that my sister had died the day I was born. Her name was Tara.

  But Amma called me Tara. And Appa called me Siva. Patti called me both Tara and Siva. I was both a boy and a girl to her. Only I didn’t know whether I was a boy pretending to be a girl or the other way around. I was four years old.

  I was allergic to dust, the heat gave me a cold, milk brought out a rash and green vegetables made me itch. I contracted quite a surprising number of slight ailments. Dr Kuruvilla’s visits to the house became a regular routine. I still wet my bed and still sucked my thumb. The doctor had said this was due to congenital fear. Patti was perturbed. ‘What is it about this child, so delicate?’ Patti asked Appa one morning as he left for work. I was down with a cold. ‘And sensitive to heat? Have you ever heard of anything like this? Sensitive to heat? Ha! In Machilipatnam? With the sun blazing 365 days of the year?’

  ‘Stop pampering him, ma,’ Appa said. ‘Don’t bathe him in warm water. It is habit-forming. Bathe him in cold water. Let him cry, it’s good for his chest. Mallika shouldn’t cover him with that silk quilt when he sleeps and she shouldn’t leave the lights on. He should get used to the dark and the cool breeze. How long will Mallika dress him in these silly frocks eh? Surely she knows he is a boy.’

  ‘She is only pretending.’ Patti rounded her eyes and shook a finger at Appa. ‘But don’t you say anything to her.’

  ‘What will happen when she finds out?’

  ‘You don’t worry about that.’ Patti was worried nonetheless. When Vishnu-thatha came to the house a few days later Patti confided in him. We were out on the veranda.

  ‘Siva and Tara were born together,’ Vishnu-thatha said. ‘I am sure Mallika knows the child who survived is Siva. But to battle her grief she needs to make believe he is Tara.’ A frown of concern came upon his face. ‘I am more worried about Siva. Like his mother, he must miss Tara. Twins often develop a strong attachment in the womb. He will feel the loss of her.’ Then Vishnu-thatha held my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes. ‘Terrible things happened, Siva,’ he said, ‘and your mother got very sad. She thought of someone who will make her happy, and this person became the real thing. But a day will come when she will not want to fool herself anymore. When this will happen I can’t say. But this much I know, she will one day.’

  The ‘one-day’ had yet not come and Amma’s illusion blossomed and bloomed.

  I was Tara, and Tara, her world.

  Amma was always telling me stories about my birth. I was singing when I was born, she told me. And when she looked into my eyes she could see the whole world. There was a stormy wind the night I was born, she told me, and it howled: ooooowr-oooowar-oowat-oowata-oowata-r, as though it was thirsty. I was a little shadow in her tummy, she said, and then I grew my skin, flesh and bones.

  She pulled away her saree and tapped her belly button, ‘You came out of here.’

  I put my mouth to my birthhole and blew hard; it made a farting sound. I tried to peep into the birthhole but I couldn’t see inside it. ‘Was there only me?’

  Amma’s face went blank and her eyes filled up with tears. I did what Amma did to me when I was hurt. I put my hand on my mouth and fisted it, and then raising it to Amma’s mouth I pasted a smile on her face.

  She said, ‘Only you, Tara.’

  Something throbbed inside me in a strange sort of way, like a twin. Tara?

  ***

  One afternoon, when Patti was resting, Amma dressed me in long silk skirt, the colour of wet paddy, and a red blouse. She kohl-lined my eyes; on my forehead she smeared a vermillion pottu. She fixed a string of jasmine to my long hair, which she had refused to cut. We were going to the temple.

  We walked down Gibbs Road. Low houses lined the street behind lines of drowsy palms; the houses were set back and far apart, all crowned with terracotta-tiled hats, scorched brown by the sun. From each of the houses music could be heard: Carnatic, Hindi, Telugu, English, and even Appa’s favourite Hang down your head Tom Dooley song – Lala-la-la-la-lala; film music, godsongs, jingles for toothpaste and balm, from different radio stations. Between houses there were the vacant plots that resembled a yawn or a toothless grin depending on their size. In front of them sat new hawkers who smelled of distant migration.

  As we approached the market a confusion of smells filled the air: coffee, curry powder, pickle, sour rice batter, tender shallots roasting in ghee, ripe bananas, jackfruit, and the scents of jasmine, kadamba and roses. It was a mixedup smell that lingered from the beginning of the market street to its end, and beyond, where the sea took over.

  Old greengrocers had laid out their vegetables on the ground: the snaking gourds, the rolling pumpkins and pimply yams – their colour dull as dried earth. Beside them, younger merchants had arranged in baskets purple aubergines, red tomatoes, green peppers, all rubbed with oil to make them shine. Fruit sellers had put out their bananas, apples, pears and grapes, all of them arranged in cardboard boxes, tier upon tier. Old women with nineyard silk coiled between their legs, and younger women in bright nylex sarees, ambled through the market aisles, halfmoons of sweat at the armpits. They bought flowers for their hair and for the Gods, then headed down the road to the Shiva temple.

  Amma held my arm and pulled me along. She pointed to a mango coloured house across the way. It was Vishnu-thatha’s, she told me. The shutters of the window nextdoor were painted a bright green. Behind the window, stood a young girl and an old woman. I recognised them. The old woman was Rose Coelho, Patti’s friend. She came to the house now and then to collect old clothes, old books, everything that was old, and money. Patti always had something to give her. It was for the poor, she told me. And the young girl was Rose-aunty’s granddaughter, Rebecca.

  Rose-aunty combed Rebecca’s hair, plucked the loose hair from the comb, balled it up and tossed it from the window. Screwing up my eyes, I followed the hairball as it floated in the air, whirled, downdown, caught on a branch of a tree, blew off and stuck to a lamppost, and then rolled down the pavement like tumbleweed. A signal had been given.

  We passed Ranga Roses, a roadside stall that sold roses in papercones, and Yusuf’s Pet Shop beside it. A cow sat in front of it. Unlike the animals, fish and birds in Yusuf-uncle’s shop, the cow was not for sale: it was a homeless holy cow. We stopped at Mohan’s Fruit & Juice stall next door. I watched Mohan feed sweet limes into the mincing machine. He pushed them down with a rounded stick, collected the frothy juice in a steel jug, then scraped handfuls of pith, which he flung into the bucket crying six if all went in, four if half went in and no-ball if all dropped out. He was mad about cricket and he played his game substituting the pith for the ball and the bucket for the cricket stumps. Flies swarmed around the sixes and fours, and the holy cow looked up from its bundle of grass and licked the no-balls.

  ‘Here, kanna.’ Amma held out a glass of sweetlime juice. I gulped it down, so lemony and sweet. I heard a slurp in my head.

  A crippled boy limped closer to Amma. He smiled at her and displayed the knob of his leg.

  Mohan smacked his hands. ‘Go away, Swami. Stop pestering my customers.’
>
  ‘Give Swami a glass too,’ Amma said and paid for our drinks.

  ‘You stupid cow,’ Swami shouted, ‘I don’t want juice. Give me money for Coca Cola. Stupid cow. Stupid cow.’ Amma clutched my arm and dragged me on.

  The temple was similar to a house with a tiled roof, except its outer walls were painted yellowochre with a band of red at the bottom. We walked around the temple to the backyard. A pujari sat in front of the ritual fire on the rear veranda. Amma sat down before him and pulled me down in her lap. Amma took a lollypop out of her bag, unwrapped it and stuck it in my mouth. Lala-la-la-la-lala. The pundit spooned ghee into the fire. The mole on the tip of his nose grew red as the flames hissed and shot upwards. The man in a white vesthi next to him wiped the sweat off his face with a towel. I was restless; I tried to free myself but Amma held me tight. Sweet syrup trickled down the corners of my mouth, mixed with sweat. Lala-la-la-la-lala.

  The pundit continued to feed the fire with ghee: onespoon twospoons threespoons of pure homemade ghee. My candycoated tongue stuck out, licklicked, then disappeared. I screamed when the man in the white veshti pierced my ear and twisted a gold wire into the hole. A scream sounded in my ears. The man quickly pierced my other ear and I started to howl. Amma hugged me. She balled her saree in her hand, blew warm air on it and pressed it to my ears, one at a time. She whispered, ‘Now the hurt will go away.’ She held me to her breasts and rocked me gently. ‘Look Tara, there are stars in your ears.’

  I touched my ears. I put my finger on the top of Amma’s forehead, then slowly ran it over the ridge of her nose, down its tip, over the lips, the chin and all the way down the neck to the hollow under it. Then I curled my finger into the dip, sheltered and safe. I felt someone else’s finger curl into mine. Tara?

  We were by the lake behind our house. White lilies grew in it and butterflies flitted over each bloom. Green-brown toads croaked in unison. The trees around were tall. A few cicadas mistook day for night and screeched in chorus. Amma sat down on a grassy mound under the old chakka tree. I sat down beside her. The ground was still damp from the night’s drizzle, and drops of water fell down from the leaves above. I tried to catch them in my palm.