‘Promise?’
‘But you must promise not to spend all your time with that Rebecca. Don’t ask her to come home and you don’t go to her house. Promise?’
At school when we made promises we crossed our chest and said aloud, Cross my Heart and Hope to Die. This sealed the promise but without saying it the promise remained open and could be broken.
‘I promise,’ I said and did not cross my chest.
Appa couldn’t keep his promise, however. He had an urgent phone call that evening and he left early the next morning. I didn’t have to keep my promise to him. It was unsealed. That night I went to Appa’s study and took down the big fat dictionary. Whenever you don’t understand a word, look into this book, Appa had said, you can also find the roots of words here. I called it Wordtree. I imagined words growing into a big tree, its roots digging deep into the earth. I wanted to know more about sin. But first I needed to know more about God. They went together God and Sin. I looked up – God.
God is the indescribable, uncreated, self-existent, eternal, all-knowing source of all reality and being.
I looked up each of the words and simplified the definition:
indescribable – God had no characteristics
uncreated – God was not born
self-existent – God was alone
eternal – God didn’t die
all-knowing – God didn’t need to study
source – God was the beginning
reality – God was real
being – God was a living thing
God was a real living thing with no characteristics as He was not born and He was alone since He didn’t die and He didn’t need to study because He was only at the beginning.
God didn’t make sense to me. I looked up the word sin and its roots. Sin came from Old English synn. The word’s older root was es, which meant to be. Esse also meant guilty in Latin. The oldest root meaning of sin was: it is true. Sin in the New Testament meant: to miss the mark.
So I had missed the mark. How?
***
Patti had got to know about Appa’s visit to my school. ‘Why did your teacher call Appa?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me, what did you do?’
‘I don’t know, Patti.’
‘Don’t lie. I will give you a slap and the truth will come out of your stomach.’
‘I missed the mark.’
‘Mark? What mark? Did you fail?’
‘No. Teacher said I was a clever boy but I had missed the mark.’
‘How?’
‘Because I sinned.’
‘What did you do now?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t lie to me now. I will hit you so hard the truth will come out of your mouth.’
‘You said stomach before, Patti.’
Patti whacked my head. ‘Now tell me the truth.’
‘I made Jesus angry.’
Patti snorted. ‘Jesus has no right to be angry with you. You are a Hindu.’ Patti frowned. ‘But why was Jesus angry with you eh?’
‘Because I wore Rebecca’s frock.’
Patti laughed. ‘What’s wrong with that eh? Our Lord Krishna wears women’s clothes sometimes. Nothing wrong. And our Lord Shiva is half man and half woman – ardhanarishvara.’ She stood with her hands on her hips. ‘Next time ask your teacher to call me and not your father. Then I will teach her one or two things about our Gods.’
‘So I don’t have to say Hail Marys?’
‘No Hails and no Mary’s. Our Gods are not as old-fashioned as Jesus. They are very modern.’
16
Jesus was not just old-fashioned but older than all the Gods. I learnt this from Fernandez Sir when he had come to school for the Exceptional Class. This special class was introduced a year ago when the government banned compulsory catechism classes for non-Christians, who were now required to attend the Exceptional Classes compulsorily. Fernandez Sir was tall and thin as a reed and his beard was long; he looked somewhat like a younger brother of Mr Moses, except he wore a suit. He was called Suit-n-Boot Moses. He came every few months to talk to us about the Exceptional things in science and religion. And for him religion always won since science couldn’t explain everything. This time Suit-n-Boot Moses talked to us about the Big Bang.
According to him, in 1927, someone called Georges Henri Joseph Ed-ou-ard Le-mai-tre set out the theory of the Big Bang. All matter in the universe was pushed into a tiny dot, he said. This dot spun faster and faster and faster and then Bang, it exploded. Little parts of it flew into space – these became the universe. Suit-n-Boot Moses asked questions to Georges Henri Joseph, as if he was there: where did the matter come from? How did it become a dot? What made it spin? What made it explode? Of course there were no answers to these questions, Suit-n-Boot Moses told us. The Big Bang was not the absolute answer for creation. It only distracted people from the larger picture of the Creator, Jesus Christ. Christ created everything in the beginning. He gave different kinds of physical senses to all living things. The best sense was spirit, which Jesus gave only to humankind. Because of this man had the ability to reason. Then Jesus wound up the universe like a big clock, so it started working: Tick-Tock Tick-Tock. But because of man’s lack of reason, because of his sins, the universe stopped ticktocking properly. Everything in it was growing old, going slow and wearing out. Jesus said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away.” Matthew 24:35…
I wasn’t paying attention to what Suit-n-Boot Moses said or what Matthew had said in 24:35 or worrying about how matter became a dot, started spinning and then exploded; or about the ticktocking universe. I tried to reason a more important matter: why hadn’t Rebecca come to school?
***
Rebecca had pulled her knees up to her chin and resembled a lying-down apostrophe. ‘Why didn’t you come to school?’
‘Granny told me not to go,’ Rebecca said. ‘And your mother said the same thing when she came here yesterday. She went to the market and got me a saree. My. First. Saree. Candy pink, so pretty. And your mother made me wear it. She fixed flowers in my hair, a pottu on my forehead and she made me wear glass bangles on my wrist. She said. I. Was. A. Big. Girl. Now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I got my periods, silly.’ She stuck her hand between her legs, ‘Every month blood will come from here. Because of hormones.’
‘Hor-Moans?’
‘Yes. Granny said they’re telephone lines between our organs and cells. They carry messages from one to the other and tell them what to do.’
‘When will I get it?’
‘Get what?’
‘Periods.’
‘Only. Girls. Get. It.’
‘Only girls have Hor-Moans?’
‘Maybe.’ She made a face. Then Rebecca leapt out of bed. ‘I will show you something I found in Daddy’s cupboard,’ she said. ‘It’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone.’
I liked secrets. Secrets brought its sharers closer. So I crossed my chest and hoped to die. Rebecca lifted down a book from the shelf and from its pages she produced a photograph of a woman with golden hair, light blue eyes, and skin so white.
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s American, I think. She must live in LA. She must be rich and famous. I think Daddy’s having an affair with her.’
‘Affair?’
‘It’s what divorceless married people have when they reach midlife.’
‘When they reach what?’
‘Midlife. About 40.’
‘Your father is 40?’
‘He reached his midlife two years early.
‘So what happens in an affair?’
‘Love. Happens. Lotsandlots of forbidden love.’
‘What happens in love?’
‘Granny says when you’re in love your head f
eels light and you can’t think straight. Your heart trembles. You feel as if there are butterflies in your stomach. And your fingers and toes tingle and your eyes go zzzinnng.’
‘Zzzzinnng?’
‘Yes, zzzinnng.’
‘But how do you know your father is having an affair?’
‘He keeps disappearing.’
‘Is he going to disappear forever?’
‘Coursenot, silly. An affair is only a temporary bliss, Granny said. It doesn’t last.’
‘What are you doing out of bed, Becky?’ Rose-aunty stood at the door. ‘Go home, Siva. Rebecca must rest now.’
I didn’t go home. Something disturbed me; I didn’t know what it was. I walked through the woods. I looked up at the palm trees that waved their fronds in the wind; and the big fat trees that spread their arms on and on; and the flowering trees that smelled nice and the fruit trees that the birds liked so much, and the leaves that rustled in the breeze and sounded like a little girl in a starched silk skirt, running. Like Tara. I lay under the parijat tree and took the Hobbit storybook out of my schoolbag and began to read it. The Library Miss said I must finish it in a week and re-re-return it. She said this because I had already read it and returned it twice. I liked re-reading Hobbit. I knew it so well that I could read it from the end to its beginning. It was nice to know the end and learn how it all began. Reading forwards was like exhaling: you saw everything before your eyes. Reading backwards was inhaling: you could see all that you wouldn’t see. But this was my reasoning. Appa and Sister Mary Edwards had their very own reasons.
Appa said: it’s very Froy-dian, reading in reverse. Looking backward helps to uncover the most improbable things at its origin. The excitement of the Why and How is the pure joy of science. And Sister Mary Edwards said: this is how they found out that unlike the Christian God, the God of Islam is not a father. I didn’t quite understand either of them but what they said about the improbabilities of origin and fatherlessness of Allah sounded important.
I started re-reading from the point when Bilbo meets Gollum and they play the Riddle-Game. If Bilbo won, Gollum would show him the way out of the underground lake, but if he lost, Gollum would eat Bilbo. After that I would read how Gollum got to the lake in the first place. Sweet flowers fell on the open page I was reading. I watched a row of red ants climb on the page – plump ‘i’s’ with circled dots. They loafed letter to letter, word to word, and between lines, disfiguring words, sentences and punctuation. I dozed off. I woke up with a start when an ant bit my earlobe. I searched my mind for nagging thoughts. Suddenly I knew what it was that had been bothering me, and Tara even more.
Back in my room I took a pair of fresh underwear out from the cupboard and then locked myself in the bathroom. I slashed my finger with Appa’s 7 O’Clock razor blade. Ouch-ouch! I let the cut bleed and smeared the blood on my underwear and ran up to Amma’s room. I held out the stained garment to her. Amma sat up in bed. She stared at me with a mixture of alarm and excitement. Then a wild look entered her eyes. She seemed as though she had gone crazy. For a moment I thought she was going to hit me. Then as though in a dream, Amma pulled me into her arms and kissed my cheeks. Then she got out of bed, pulled an old trunk from underneath it. She looked through the silk sarees she had stored in the trunk and lifted out the cinnamon-brown silk saree with peacocks and parrots. She draped it around me. She combed my hair, gathered it into a ponytail. Then she plucked the string of flowers from her hair and pinned it in my hair. She lined my eyes with kohl and on my forehead she smeared red pottu. ‘Oh Tara,’ Amma said drawing me back into her arms. ‘You are a big girl now.
I put my finger on the top of her 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 Tara curled my finger into the dip. It was a temporary bliss, I knew, and it wouldn’t last. It didn’t last. It was more shortlived than Temporary. I heard Patti call out to me, and a few minutes later I heard rather heavy footsteps on the stairs. That was not Patti. Who was it? Appa stood at the door. What was he doing here? He was on a tour and not expected back until the day after. I gaped at Appa’s face and registered the three capital O’s. OOO. Appa ground his teeth, the muscle of his jaw twitched. It required no more than two long strides for Appa to be standing next to me. He pulled the string of flowers from my hair. With his thumb he wiped the pottu from my forehead. The colour stained his thumb and Appa rubbed it on his shirt as though it was infected with some incurable disease.
Amma grabbed Appa’s arm in a swift movement of her hand and pressed it to his chest. For her size, she displayed substantial strength. ‘Leave my child alone,’ Amma said. ‘Please leave her alone. Tara’s got her periods. She is a big girl now.’’
Appa stood motionless for a minute as though he had been stung. It was as though a dam had burst within him. He held Amma by her shoulders and shook her as Patti would a pickle jar. Then he gave her his Bracket-look. With sadness in his eyes Appa raised his hand, stroked Amma’s hair. ‘Tara died, Mallika. Look at him, he’s Siva, not Tara.’
I wanted to tell Appa that Tara was not dead. She was one half of me. But Appa walked out of the door, and rushed down the stairs. The floorboards of Victoria Villa heaved and creaked under his feet.
17
Victoria Villa was full of old stuff. Appa did not permit Patti to throw away any of the old books, magazines or other odd things. They don’t belong to us, he would say, they belong to the house. They belong to George Gibbs. But Patti was distrustful of other people’s old things. So now and then, whenever Appa was travelling Patti set out to clean the rooms. She garnered the support of Mani and chucked away old things, which according to her were not useful: Georgie Gibbs was dead after all. She would warn Mani not to breathe a word about the undertaking and he readily consented to her bidding. He was excited by the secrecy and sneakiness of it all. I was rather glad whenever Patti took on this task, as there was always something or other I found that had belonged to Georgie, or at least I assumed they had, and they were my keepsakes. The last time Patti had cleaned up Appa’s study I had found an old tobacco tin and a small metal box.
Appa had left on a tour only that morning and when I returned from school I found magazines, newspapers and old books strewn in the hall outside the storeroom. Patti stood at the doorway brandishing a broom. Mani heaped rat poison on bits of paper and set it here and there in the storeroom. A family of mice had made their home in it and had gnawed away at the sacks of rice. Patti didn’t like this. Patti didn’t like mice at all.
I looked through the old things. I found an old pen-stand, which I set aside. I was sure it belonged to Georgie. I noticed a big ledger on the heap of old magazines. Its red spine was torn; only a part of it remained. I opened the cover carefully. On the first page were the words:
George Gibbs.
Victoria Villa
23 Gibbs Road
Machilipatnam
‘Stop messing around, kanna,’ Patti said.
I pressed the book to my chest. ‘It belonged to Georgie Gibbs.’
‘Put it down. You shouldn’t keep other people’s things,’ Patti said. ‘They store old memories, and they will seep into you and make you live their lives. Go up to your room. Go now!’
Clutching the ledger and the pen-stand I ran up the stairs. I set the pen stand on the desk, next to the toy hen, old tin, and the box and stones. Then I sat on the bed with the old ledger. It fell open on a page:
My memory is like an ant that halts at every obstruction and meanders down a less difficult path. I would never have been able to arrange time in a sequence of events since I was so much a part of it, and because I have no clear remembrance of the shape and continuation of my days. These are, therefore, nothing more than random fragments of my life.
George Gibbs
Machilipatnam
The pages fol
lowing this were blank. I opened a page in the middle of the ledger. There was a date on top: June 1851 – August 1854. I read on…
The Victoria Dyes factory sweated and swelled in the heat. Inside its ovenlike womb I inspected the bales of silk, each with a tag: Kalamkari on silk – Tree of Life. Just then I heard voices of boys shouting in chorus: cri-cket, cri-cket. I stepped out. The local boys had collected in the open ground near the factory. The cricket bats and stumps were fashioned from branches of the chakka tree and the pitch was prepared by rolling a heavy drum on the ground. I had got the cricket ball all the way from England. It was a bright, sunny day. The boys were excited: the game was on. The batsman and bowler took their positions across the pitch; the fielders were in their assigned places: Short Leg, Mid-wicket, First Slip and so on. Each time the ball was batted, a cry: Six. Four. No ball. Every time the batsman was out, I shouted: How’s That! And then the ball bounced off the bat, soared in a wide arc, caught the wind, turned, and hit me hard on my head. With a sour grimace I looked up. Low sullen clouds obscured the colour of the sky. Then the clouds burst. The sky whitened with explosions of electricity, and thunderclaps like gunfire made the air vibrate. The boys ran to the trees. I escaped into the factory.
Dense slanted masses of water slashed down in such quantities that within minutes the parched earth had turned to slush. A plague of geckoes descended upon the inner walls of the factory, and mosquitoes whined around the workers and fed on their blood. Crickets set up a chorus and large rats came squealing out of the shadows. Undeterred by the geckos, rats and mosquitoes, the workers packed the bales of silk in cloth and marked them. After they were done, and the rain had stopped I walked out of the factory, down Gibbs Road to Victoria Villa.
IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE Page 16