IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE

by Sara Srivatsa

  Appa walked out of the door. Patti came up behind him. ‘Why do you have to go to work today eh? It’s Sunday.’

  Appa stepped into the garden without a word. He wore that Fullstop look in his eyes. He had many punctuation looks, which he used instead of words. He had the Bracket-look when he was sad. His face shrank and seemed contained. Now he waved to me with a Semi-Colon-look (this one is a To-Be-Continued look), walked to his car and drove out of the gates just as Munniamma walked through with the shopping. He gave her his Ellipsis-look, which mostly meant Go On… Get On With It… without actually saying it.

  Patti spread the pai on the veranda floor. She sat down on it and held her head with both her hands.

  ‘What’s the problem ma?’ Munniamma climbed up to the veranda. ‘Headache?’

  ‘A big headache.’ Patti hit her head. ‘And it’s all Mallika’s fault. Women should know how to manage their men and keep them.’ Patti’s eyes became moist. ‘I must have committed some grave sin in my last birth to deserve this.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, ma. Gods have a hand in these matters. Everything happens for a reason.’

  ‘The only reason the Gods created women is so that they would look after their men and give them children.’

  Munniamma moved closer to Patti. ‘Sometimes ma, we have to help our Gods in their work. Tell me, what do you do with the jackfruit seeds?’

  ‘That Mani roasts them and eats them all.’

  ‘You must roast the seeds, powder them and mix them with sesame seeds and jaggery and then make small laddoos from the mixture and give them to Raman-aiyah every night.’ Munniamma beamed and slapped her thigh. ‘Then watch. Aiyah may be one mile away from his wife but in the middle of everything, he will run to her. So much thirst, ma, so much heat, he will not be able to control. He will just run, run, run. Nothing can stop that ache between a man’s legs. Not even his bad temper.’

  Patti at once called out to Mani. He strutted out of the door in a new red shirt. Patti looked censoriously at him. ‘Ye da Mani, is this the only shirt you could find to wear? If you walk on the street people will mistake you for a postbox and shove letters into your mouth. Go, cut that jackfruit you got yesterday. I want each and every seed, mind you.’

  Mani chuckled. ‘When I eat those seeds they make me so thirsty that I have to drink gallons of water. My stomach gets so full that I want to sleep all day. And if I stand all day long all the water rushes to my feet and they swell up. I can hardly walk.’

  ‘What do you know about water in the feet?’ Patti grunted. ‘Anyone would think you are pregnant.’ Mani chewed at his fingernail, and then spat it out. Patti screamed, ‘I’ll chop your fingers off if you bite your nails. Now don’t stand there like a buffoon. Go cut that jackfruit and after you have taken out all the seeds, go get yourself a haircut. Look at your hair growing all over your head like a paddy field. And get that barber to clip the hair growing out of your ears. Chi-chi-chi.’

  After Mani had trotted off to the market Patti hurriedly roasted the seeds. She ground them to powder, mixed it with sesame seeds and melted jaggery. She made small laddoos and put them in a steel box and hid it in the kitchen cupboard, which she locked. That evening I saw Patti leave two laddoos in a bowl in Appa’s study.

  ‘Don’t eat that, Siva,’ she said. ‘It’s for your father. I have put some medicine in them. If you eat them you will get a stomachache.’

  Patti had told the truth after all. Appa woke up with a terrible ache. With a Bracket-look he moaned and groaned and paced the living room, his hands pressing down on his belly. He didn’t go to work. Instead he kept running to the toilet. Then late in the morning he sent for Dr Kuruvilla. The doctor checked Appa’s temperature, his throat and tongue. Then he listened to his lungs with the stethoscope. He tapped his belly with his forefinger. ‘Wholly gas,’ he said. ‘What did you eat last night?’

  ‘The usual,’ Appa said.

  ‘He ate laddoos,’ I said.

  ‘What laddoos?’ the doctor asked.

  When Patti told him what they were made of the doctor threw back his head and laughed, and then he looked at Patti and gave her a big wink. ‘So much heat in them they can send a man running in every direction.’ Turning to Appa he said, ‘They have melted the insides of your stomach.’

  I would have laughed, but honestly, what with the way things were at home, and between Appa and Amma, between Amma and me, nothing was a laughing matter anymore. I had been tricked by my own destiny. If anyone, anything, were to be held guilty it was fate, a blessed piece of paper with squares, notations scribbled in them: my horror-scope – the damned inventory of life stamped on my brow. And as fate would have it, one evening a week later Amma was by the stove, boiling tamarind water with turmeric and sambhar powder. Her faded cotton saree had turmeric stains all down the front. Her hair was uncombed, and her face sweaty. Otherwise, the day had turned out to be rather nice. Nothing exceptional, only ordinary, but even that was somewhat special given the circumstances. Except my left eyelid had been twitching all morning.

  ‘That’s good luck,’ Patti said. ‘Left eye for the boy, right for a girl. Today is your lucky day.’

  It was evening and nothing terribly fortunate had happened yet. Mani hummed a song as he grated coconut. Patti shouted at him from the door. ‘Hurry up with that. Raman-aiyah said he would come early today. He’s bringing a scientist with him.’ She turned to Amma, ‘You go up, ma, and change your saree. Comb your hair nicely and put flowers in. Be nice, okay, be very very nice.’

  A half hour later Appa stood in the doorway with a woman standing beside him. I had not seen anyone like her: she was tall and fair-skinned, with big, bright eyes. Her face was made up like a film star and her hair was cut short in a chic bob. She wore fitting black trousers and a sleeveless blue chiffon blouse that seemed to me like she had wrapped the sky around her. And the sky smelled of perfume.

  They entered the living room, and Appa called out to Mani asking him to bring two glasses, a jug of water and lime. He took a bottle of Old Monk from a paper bag and set it on the table. Minutes later Mani stepped into the living room with a steel jug of water, glass tumblers and a lime cut in quarters. He stood rooted to the spot as he stared at the woman for some moments and then walked back to the door where Patti stood. I hid behind her. Patti sidled up to Mani. Between her teeth she hissed, ‘What are you standing here with your mouth wide open like that? Before you know, a pair of mosquitoes will go in and lay their eggs inside your stomach. Then you will die of malaria of your stomach. Go!’

  Appa looked up at Patti. ‘This is Rukmini Swaminathan,’ he said.

  Patti looked surprised. ‘She is Tamilian?’

  ‘That’s right. Rukmini is originally from Madras. She was with me at the institute in London. She’s now the chief researcher in a very big pesticide company there.’ He turned to Rukmini, ‘My mother, Rukmini Iyer. And my son, Siva.’

  ‘Hello Siva.’ Rukmini rose, looking queenly and radiant. ‘Good evening, Mrs Iyer. My namesake.’ She smiled.

  ‘Evenin-evenin.’ Patti wondered what the woman had meant by ‘Name Sake’. Name, she understood, but what did she mean by Sake? And whose sake? Hers or hers?

  Appa poured the dark contents of the bottle into the glasses, topped them with water and dropped the quarters of lime in them. He held out a glass to Rukmini. ‘So what are you working on now?’

  Rukmini took a sip from her glass. ‘We are studying the single frog.’

  ‘Frog?’ Appa repeated. ‘Single?’

  ‘That’s correct. The highest rates of hermaphroditism are to be found in frogs when larger volumes of DDT are used for mosquito control. Some frogs have complete ovaries as well as complete testes. Pesticides have altered hormones of wild animals but frogs show the effects of ecological change more quickly or more noticeably than other species.’

  ‘So it’s the co
ncern for frogs that has brought you to India. I mistakenly thought you had come to see me.’

  ‘You were in London recently, weren’t you? But you didn’t even try and see me.’

  Appa scowled. ‘I didn’t think you would want to see me.’ Then he smiled. ‘It’s good to see you, Rukmini. I was both surprised and pleased to hear from you.’ He put on his Parenthesis-look, one where his face would widen and swell with delight. His face had become unaccustomed to such joyous swelling.

  Rukmini leant forward and held Appa’s hand. He curled his fingers around it. Their eyes met and held for seconds. The air in the room was still and silent. The seabreeze could be heard in the distance. Then Rukmini pulled her hand away. She looked in her bag, scooped out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. ‘Tell me about your work here,’ she said as she pulled out a cigarette from the packet and lit it. She took a long puff and sat back in the chair.

  ‘We have discovered a virulent and invasive strain of the Chikungunya virus spread mainly by the Aedes alpictus mosquitoes,’ Appa said. ‘These mosquitoes can be identified by the white stripes on their black bodies and legs. They are aggressive daytime biters, active during the early morning and late afternoon, unlike the Anopheles mosquito, which is active at dusk. Typical symptoms of Chikungunya could include fever, headache, crippling joint pain, rash, minor bleeding in the eye and skin, and nausea. What is alarming is that this virus could spread from mosquito to mosquito and not just through a human host. This would result in outbreaks that last longer and affect more people. The strain is in its primitive stage but in ten or more years it could lead to severe epidemics across Asia.

  ‘Growing cities and the increasing size and density of human populations will only hasten the spread of the virus,’ Rukmini replied. ‘Not long before this will become an emerging worldwide health threat.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled a wisp of smoke that went up, up and disappeared.

  Patti turned on her heel and grabbing my arm she walked back to the kitchen. There she seized Amma by the arm. ‘Look what is happening in front of our eyes, eh?’ she said. ‘This shameless woman is blowing smoke all over your husband’s face. And look at your dirty saree, and your hair all out of place. Have you not even washed your face eh? Have you no idea how to be a proper wife?’ Patti hissed through her teeth. ‘You have to be cunning. Conniving like a cat. And you have to learn to control your husband without him even knowing it. Men are not as tough as they appear. They are easy to impress and confuse. I told you didn’t I? First whisky and then woman. He’s doing both at the same time.’

  Loud squeals of laughter came from the living room. Patti flushed and the veins in her neck stood out. ‘Just listen to her laugh,’ she said. ‘Chichichi, this Rukmini has no shame. Just imagine, she is a Tamilian like us and her hair is cut short like a man’s, and do you even know what she is wearing? Tight-tight pants and a transparent blouse without sleeves even.’

  Amma looked at Patti with a queer smile. ‘So this is your son’s Rukmini,’ she muttered, ‘your namesake.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that? Patti retorted.

  Amma stopped the sob that rose in her throat and then turned around and ran up the stairs. After the meal Appa left with Rukmini, to drop her at Queen’s Hotel. Patti and I stood by the front door. I felt as if my chest was crushed and I couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Is Rukmini-aunty going to be my new Amma?’

  Patti turned around and smacked me hard on my head.

  ***

  I liked to dream. Not the dreams that come with eyes shuttight but those that happen with eyesopen. There was a way to do this. I would lie back in bed and stare at the dented fan blade as it went round and round. And then the dream would drop down into my eyes. My best journeys were in such dreams, spinning on the brink of sleep. They were soft and light: dreamy. It was bright in these dreams and not dark, unlike the sleepfull dreams; I could travel anywhere, with the moon in my eyes and my finger on a map. I never got lost, or felt loss either. I was always with Tara in my eyesopen dreams. We flew over distant rivers and seas, and on grassy fields ate corncobs in the sun. Sometimes we burrowed back into the womb, to the splosh of the sea within.

  This time I flew with Tara all the way to London. We were in skysmelling Rukmini-aunty’s house and all the rooms in it smelled of flowers. The wind was cold and the sky was a different shade of blue, deep and bright just like in the pictures Appa had shown me. Rukmini-aunty took us to the Queen’s big house, Hide Park, Pika-dilly and all the other places Appa had told me about. The roads there were so good and the cars moved in straight lines. And yes, we went to the London Bridge that we learnt about in school: London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, my fair lady…

  Then Rukmini-aunty took us to a restaurant for Chinese near Tra-fa-ga-square. I never had Chinese food before. Tara didn’t eat, she didn’t have to, and I didn’t eat much because I don’t eat meat. So Rukmini-aunty got me ice-cream afterwards.

  Tara whispered: Who she?

  Our new Amma.

  Tara screamed. I shut my eyes and ended the dream.

  10

  Something changed about Victoria Villa after Rukmini-aunty’s visit. Like Amma, the old house heaved, drew a hood over its head and its insides became dark and gloomy. A window rattled tic-tic-tic and somewhere water dropped d-r-i-p, d-r-i-p, drip. A gust of wind swept through the window and the pages of a book on the sill went flap-flap-flap. A door slammed shut above. These were subtle indications. The ominous house was waiting for the right timing, and I should have known it did not intend to let me be.

  Timing is everything, Appa would say. Sometimes, saying or doing even the right thing at the wrong time does not turn out well. You need to be in the right place at the right time. This is not coincidence, it is providence. And then you must do something about it at the right time, and this is neither coincidence nor providence. A good sense of timing, that’s what it is. It wasn’t providence surely, but I couldn’t decide whether it was a coincidence or a good sense of timing that my sister died the day I was born, and on the day Amma was born, her mother died.

  It was my grandmother’s death anniversary, and Amma’s birthday. The morning had warnings written all over it. Moreover, Rebecca had quarrelled with me the previous day. I didn’t even know what the quarrel was about except that she wanted to have her own way. I didn’t want her to have her own way. So we had squabbled and Rebecca had her own way and I was not in the best of moods.

  Amma didn’t come out of her room that morning. Patti sent Munniamma to fetch her. Amma stood in front of the old cupboard, staring at her reflection in the mirror fixed into the shutter. She rubbed her hand over her gaunt stomach. ‘I have become fat,’ she told Munniamma who stood by the door. Amma gathered her thick hair in a knot at the nape of her neck. ‘My hair has thinned,’ she said. Then she bent closer to the mirror and inspected her bony chin, the three strands of hair sprouting out of it. ‘Oh no. I am growing a beard.’ She started laughing; her voice was shrill but her eyes were full of tears.

  In the kitchen, Patti was making aviyal. Vishnu-thatha was coming for lunch. I liked aviyal, it had lots of vegetables in a curry of coconut and yogurt. Tara liked it too. Patti cut an obese brinjal on a blade shaped like a hook. The blade cut through the brinjal’s tight flesh, slicing it; not a drop of sap dripped from it. Then she cut each slice into strips. She had already cut many vegetables into strips of the same length: potatoes, beans, drumsticks, raw banana, yam and carrots. I had arranged the strips like a railway track on a steel tray: potatobeandrumstickbananayamcarrot and Tara was waiting to add the brinjal strips to them.

  Amma stepped into the kitchen and the old house heaved and creaked. Outside, Cha-chi set up a howl and then abruptly stopped. Mani ran through the door some minutes later, bewildered. ‘It was howling one minute ma, and the next minute it fell to the ground and died. Cha-chi died.’
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  Patti’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Achicho, that’s a very bad omen. Something bad is going to happen.’ She muttered a prayer as she sliced the brinjal faster, the slices thinner, and when a shadow fell over her she looked up. Vishnu-thatha stood at the kitchen door. I ran to him.

  ‘Don’t be late for lunch,’ Patti said.

  ‘We’ll be back in an hour,’ Vishnu-thatha replied. ‘Come Mallika, let’s go.’

  ‘I want to go,’ I said, looking up at Amma.

  Her eyes had taken on a new sort of emptiness. Her mouth was empty of words, or almost. She had stopped talking to Appa after Rukmini-aunty’s visit. If he asked her something she said yes or no with her head or eyes, but she didn’t talk to him. And she didn’t talk much to me. Appa and I were in the same boat, one that tilted and tossed in dangerous waters. What was more, I didn’t know how to swim.

  ‘Take him with you,’ Patti said to Vishnu-thatha. ‘And Siva, take your water bottle. It’s a hot day.’

  Vishnu-thatha drove us in his old car to the market. He bought flowers from Ranga’s Roses and a cage of lovebirds from Yusuf’s shop next door. He drove all the way to the end of the woods; I climbed the steep hill, clutching my water bottle. Amma didn’t say a word. Neither did Vishnu-thatha: he was deep in thought. Although the day was hot, the air was fresh and light high up on the hill. The valley spread out below us, the paddy fields woven into it like tapestry. Boulders speckled the hillside, and wild grass that had been roasted brown by the sun. A garland of white clouds hung from the sky. The breeze smelled of flowers. It was a good day.

  Under a Parijat tree, next to small piles of pebbles, Vishnu-thatha laid the flowers with a prayer and a song. ‘This was your mother’s favourite place,’ he told Amma. ‘We came here often and sat under this tree. ‘It’s been twenty-five years since your mother left you and me,’ he said. He pulled Amma by her arm to the other side of the tree and pointing to a hump on the earth, he said, ‘Mallika, this is where I buried Tara’s ashes.’ Then he let the birds out of the cage one by one.