IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE

  ‘You mean his wife,’ Appa said. ‘There’s a picture of her in my study.’

  ‘According to your son she is George’s sister. He told me a fantastic story about Gibbs, the dates, facts all a hundred percent accurate. Wholly crazy but wholly believable.’ Then the doctor’s eyes grew ponderous and he nodded his head a number of times as though he had recollected an exciting memory.’ The doctor rose and walked around the table to Appa and pressed his shoulder. His eyes were serious. Suddenly he laughed out loud. His eyes were laughing as he looked at me. ‘You had me fooled, son, you did,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I believed what you said about Tara. Medically speaking it is wholly understandable. Until you told me all that nonsense about George Gibbs.’ He turned to Appa. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your son, Mr Iyer. He has an amazing imagination. It is wholly possible that your son’s loneliness makes him fantasise, invent invisible companions.’ The doctor returned to his chair. ‘Let me explain, the type and potency of chemicals in our brain is dependent on the food we eat. In the end everything boils down to diet. Too much carbohydrates can induce a dream-like trance, an inactive phase in the mind. They make one daydream even when awake and make one imagine the unreal. What is worse, they sometimes bring on a touch of clairvoyance and this can be disconcerting, as one could lose the sense of the present world around.’

  Clairvoyance. Clairvoyant. I repeated the word in my mind. I had read it in Georgie’s diary but I didn’t know what the word meant.

  ‘Are you saying he’s making all this up?’ Appa asked.

  ‘Wholly fertile imagination,’ the doctor said, scribbling on a piece of paper. ‘I have prescribed anti-anxiety pills but what your son needs is a healthy protein-rich, fat-rich diet. Good for the brains. No rice, no potatoes. He should eat fish.’

  Appa drove home in silence. He swerved when a cyclist shot past the car and then braked hard to avoid Swami scuttling across on his hands and leg.

  ‘Motherfucker,’ Swami screamed out. ‘Are you blind? Are you mad or what, you sisterfucker?’

  A taxi driver who had pulled alongside sniggered. He leant out of the window and said to Appa, ‘This country is full of sightless, mindless people, sir. The blind people call others blind. The mad people call others mad.’

  ‘It was my fault actually,’ Appa said.

  ‘This is the problem with this country, sir. Everyone blames themselves. They don’t blame the others. All Gandhi’s fault. When somebody slaps you, Gandhi said, show your other cheek. Why get slapped twice eh?’ The taxi driver stamped hard on the accelerator and sped away.

  Patti was waiting restlessly on the veranda steps. She ran to Appa as we got out of the car. ‘What’s wrong with Siva?’ she asked, tugging at his arm.

  Appa shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him, ma. The doctor said he should eat fish.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Patti retorted. ‘Gandhiji’s diet was vegetables, nuts and goat’s milk. Great men don’t eat fish.’

  ***

  I sat at my desk and looked in the dictionary.

  Clairvoyance – ‘clear seeing’. Having the supposed ability to see objects or events that cannot be perceived by the senses.

  I was a half-and-half who could see beyond the senses.

  23

  Dr Kuruvilla came to the house a few weeks later. Appa had sent for him. Patti was unwell. ‘You must drink milk and eat a lot of spinach,’ Dr Kuruvilla said after checking Patti.

  Patti drank a glass of milk each night. Mani got different kinds of spinach and sautéed them: Patti ate them with rice, which turned green or red depending on the colour of the leaves. She developed stomach cramps and was horrified when her stools were black. She told Appa her liver was malfunctioning, her kidneys had hardened, and she was going to die of kidney failure.

  Dr Kuruvilla, who had come to check on her, asked her to cut down the spinach, drink coconut water and be active. So Patti drank coconut water and walked updown updown in the garden. Then, when she felt reasonably content, she burst into tears suddenly without any provocation; she continued to cry for days. The doctor attributed such behaviour to age and sorrow. ‘Wholly understandable,’ he said patting Appa’s shoulder. ‘Loss is a terrible thing. Have you heard anything about your wife?

  ‘I put several notices in the local papers,’ Appa said, ‘but I haven’t heard anything yet.’

  ‘It must be terrible for you,’ the doctor said, ‘but try to understand your mother’s moods. You are young and you have the strength to sustain, conceal your pain. But your mother can’t. So talk to her about the aches of grief. Now and then, humour her.’

  Appa did, but Patti never ceased to complain about her ailments. For no reason at all, she explained to Appa, a sort of pouring fire from hell oozed through her body and swelled her blood. Sometimes a hardened chill from the Himalayas rattled her bones. She was dying, she said. She made arrangements for her imminent death. She packed all her clothes in a trunk except the one she would wear each day.

  I tried to humour her. ‘When you go, are you taking your trunk with you?’

  She laughed. ‘When you go you must not leave behind a mess, kanna. You must leave everything tidy.’

  I imagined my room: sparkling clean. The bedcover tucked smoothly under the mattress, books lined tidily on the shelves, all my clothes packed neatly in a trunk, and Georgie looking out with sad blue eyes, as I lay on the floor, dead.

  ‘But I don’t want to die here,’ Patti added. ‘I must die in Madras. I was born there. I have eaten my first grain of rice there. I have to die there.’

  Patti’s trademark logic again. It contained in it the evidence of the simple rule of life. Dust to Dust, Boiled Rice to Boiled Rice: that Sort of a Death. Reap what you Sowed: that Sort of an End.

  Patti had made lists – she made a list of 10 things TO DO and 20 things NOT TO DO. Then a list of 10 important things and where they were in the house, and yet another of names of 10 most important people who must attend her funeral. She tried to count these people on her fingers; she could count only 7. She kept trying to think of the remaining 3. She was adamant.

  10 must be an important number for her, I thought – like the 10 commandments that God gave Moses. God had written them Himself, Sister Mary Edwards had told us, with His Godly finger, double-spaced on two stone tablets.

  ‘Because 10 is a holy number?’ I asked Patti.

  ‘No, kanna,’ she said. ‘Because it is a round number. Nice and round.’

  Patti was always good with numbers.

  She held long dialogues with the death-god who for her was a kind of saviour: he delivered special people from the evil world. First her husband, then her granddaughter, and soon it would be her. I realised she was serious about dying. ‘Are you really going to die Patti?’

  ‘Everyone has to die someday, kanna,’ she said, ‘and it is good to Be Prepared.’ She stressed the B and P.

  ‘Should I also be Be Prepared?’

  ‘Don’t say that, kanna.’ She placed her hand on my head and blessed me. ‘May the remainder of the years of my life come to you.’

  ‘But you said you didn’t have much time, Patti.’

  ‘I don’t. But whatever I have left is now yours.’

  It wouldn’t make much difference, unless I was 99 plus. Then with some more time I would live to be a hundred. Nice and round: 100.

  While Patti was preparing to go, Appa was preparing for London. His experiments using genetically altered mosquitoes to create new strains capable of delivering anti-malaria vaccines had been successful. His research had brought him considerable prestige in the UK and was called the Raman Technique and, what was more, Rukmini-aunty had called Appa to give him the good news: Appa had been made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society. His old institute in London had organised a ceremony to honour his work.

  Patti would have been happy for him had
she not been unwell. She got breathless while talking, and when she cleared her throat it made a wet sound like a death cough.

  ‘Look after Patti, Siva,’ Appa said to me the day he was leaving. He scribbled on a piece of paper, gave it to me. ‘This is my phone number. Call me if there’s any problem.’

  I promised him I would. Besides Mani I was the only man in the house. Of course there was Georgie Gibbs but he was something else, really. And Munniamma was always there; she didn’t go home in the evening like she previously did. She was more than a man. She was Superman. It would be all right.

  Vishnu-thatha came every day to check on Patti. One evening we were out on the veranda. Munniamma got Vishnu-thatha a tumbler of coffee and sat down on the steps, not too far from us. Patti rubbed balm on the soles of her feet and sighed. Her face was covered in a cold sweat of pain. ‘Any news of Mallika?’

  ‘Wherever she is I hope she is happy,’ Vishnu-thatha said.

  ‘Why have the Gods troubled us like this?’ Patti asked.

  ‘The Gods have nothing to do with our troubles,’ Vishnu-thatha replied. ‘Gods exist only in our minds, because we are afraid, and They keep us afraid.’ Vishnu-thatha looked up at the sky. ‘Can you see those seven stars? At the beginning of this world there was only a big round of white light. It was much bigger than the sun. Around it everything was dark. Then the light exploded into seven large bits. The western scientists call it the Big Bang, but we know it as the saptarishi, the seven stars – the seven minds of the universe. Out of the light energy of these seven stars people’s minds were made. And out of people’s minds the Gods were made up because people were afraid. Remember this, the mind existed even before the world was created, or the Gods were. So as long as you feel fear, create your own fleet of Gods. Bribe them with flowers and coconuts; yes they like coconuts but money they like even more. Then when you are no longer afraid, let all the Gods go. Release them. Like this.’ He clapped his hands thrice. ‘Po, po, po.’

  Patti stood up and darted into the house. Concerned, I ran after her. In her room she rummaged through her trunk. She took a silk saree out of it, an old blouse, a blue velvet jewellery box and a silver container in which she kept jars of kohl and pottu. She slipped her arms through the sleeves of the blouse, draped the saree around her and then she put on her jewellery piece by piece. She smeared kohl round her eyes and dotted her forehead with red pottu. I gawked at her, openmouthed.

  We returned to the veranda. ‘I am going to a new world shortly,’ Patti said. ‘Munniamma, you make certain I don’t reach there dressed like a widow.’ Patti sat down on the steps, looked up at the moon. She clapped her hands and in a loud and clear voice she said: Po. Po. Po.

  Victoria Villa was quiet that night. The streetlamp cast shadows on the ground. The branches of the neem tree sounded tick tick tick in the wind. Patti breathed heavily and her heart raced, until at dawn it stopped.

  ***

  Munniamma dressed Patti in a red silk saree and all her jewellery. She smeared pottu on Patti’s forehead and poured drops of Ganges water into her mouth. She tied a piece of white muslin under Patti’s chin and around her head. She joined her hands at the chest and with strips of cloth she tied Patti’s thumbs together, and then her big toes. On a whim, I applied Amrtanjan Balm on Patti’s forehead and the soles of her feet. She would like that. Then, with Rose-aunty’s help, Muniamma lifted Patti’s body, smelling of the heat and spice of balm, on to a palanquin.

  Appa, when I called him to tell him the news, was totally shattered. He asked me to carry out the funeral rites. It would take him two full days to return from London. The garden that afternoon was filled with neighbours and friends who sat on coir mats laid on the grass. Rose-aunty, Vishnu-thatha, Munniamma and Mani sat amongst them. Including me there were only six most important people instead of ten. It was not nice and round. Three eager crows sat in the neem tree and I counted them on my fingers: 7, 8, 9. They could be Patti’s ancestors. Beneath the tree, a purple flower bloomed on the plant potted in an old rusted milk-powder tin. The tin, I remembered, was nearly as old as me. Patti had told me this. Sweetie-Cutie stood outside the gate smacking her hands. I counted her. 10 – nice and round.

  The pundit lit the ritual fire and I sat in front of it. Mani presented me with a large vessel of boiled rice, and I emptied it on the ground. The pundit directed the steam from the boiled rice towards heaven, pushing it with his hand: Go. Go. Go. He coaxed it in Tamil: Po. Po. Po. He blew after it phonetically: phoo phoo. Phoo. The steam rose, moistened the neem leaves, and soaked the air above; then, with a loss of spirit, it spread downward, wrapping itself around the people who had gathered. The pundit slapped the rice into a perfect square, cut it into three horizontal sections, sprinkled rice, sesame and water on it, and offered it to three generations of the deceased.

  When the funeral rituals were over at the house, Vishnu-thatha and the other men carried the corpse to the cremation ghat along the river. I followed them with the pundit who was carrying a clay pot filled with water. At the ghat the corpse was set on a heap of firewood. The pundit made a hole in the clay pot and raised it on my shoulder. The water dripped from the pot as I circled the pyre. Once. Twice. Thrice. On the pundit’s signal I crashed the pot on the ground and then lit the pyre. The smell of smoke and balm filled the air above us.

  I felt a deep ache, not in my heart, but deeper, in my belly. I looked up at the sky. Then I clapped my hands. Po. Po. Po.

  ***

  Appa had framed a black and white photograph of Patti and set it on the shelf in the prayer room. It was the only photograph that he found amongst Patti’s things. She had been very young. Every morning Appa lit a lamp and a bundle of joss sticks and hoped that her soul would find rest. He didn’t address the replacement Gods directly; he seemed a bit awkward with this. I took down the bottle of rice and sesame seeds from the shelf and set it near Patti’s photograph. On the floor I arranged Patti’s small khaki-covered suitcase, the tiffin carrier, the old English holdall, the lantern, the jar of Amrutanjan balm and the mosquito net that had been darned in a number of places. These six items had comprised Patti’s life: food, clothes, sleep, light, no-pain and no-bite.

  Appa seemed lost without Patti. It was as though he had misplaced his timetable. He was frequently late for work; on some days he didn’t eat his breakfast and surprised Mani by turning up for lunch. Appa had always been meticulous about his clothes and the way he wore them. But now he didn’t seem to care. His shirt would often be buttoned wrong and once he had worn different coloured socks on his feet: blue on one and black on the other. When Mani pointed this out to Appa, he shrugged and said, ‘Did you know mosquitoes are attracted to the colours blue and black?’ Then Appa stopped going to work. He would wander aimlessly, room to room and finally he would retreat into his study and be in it till late playing solitaire. Mani would have left his dinner on the dining table. A few bowls of this and that covered with steel plates. Appa, who was very particular about the food being piping hot, ate it cold or didn’t eat at all. One evening Appa sat on the stone bench near the pond, his head slightly bent, staring vacantly at the water. Mosquitoes swarmed around his feet; many of them bit him and sucked his blood most certainly, but he didn’t seem to care.

  ‘Tisstime tomorrow, reckon where I’ll be, downinsome lonesome valley, hangin froma quite ol’ treeee. Hangdown your head Tom Doooley…’

  The next day, sufficiently restored and resigned to fate, Appa dressed up in office clothes, ate hot idlis for breakfast and left in time for work. Everything had returned to almost normal for him. But not for me: Rebecca had gone. Amma and Patti had left me. But Tara was Ever Present.

  ***

  Tara had appropriated my soul, my innerness. She had become a bigger part of my conscious, and she orchestrated my life with obstinate precision. There was nothing much I could do about this except confine Tara deep inside and Timepass one day at a time u
ntil all time passed. The countdown clock was ticktocking the seconds away. So I set a routine to my days. After school I didn’t return home: there was no one there to return to. I wandered about in the market or I was at Tommy-uncle’s garage. I could talk to him about Rebecca. He listened quietly. But once, when I asked him how much it would cost to go to LA, he gathered me in his arms and surprisingly he had nothing to say.

  It would be late evening when I came home. Then Appa and I ate dinner together, but neither one of us spoke much. There didn’t seem to be any use for words. Loss sufficed. Each night as I lay down in bed I felt as though someone’s hands were pulling the quilt away. Tara always felt hot even when it was cool. This routine continued until one day I didn’t go to school. Tara didn’t want me to go. She was resolute.

  The morning air smelled of salt and moist earth. It tasted salty in my throat where the Tara-feeling nestled deep. She walked me out of the gates; the peepal tree outside went sis-sis in the breeze. The clouds were dark and heavy. The grey folds of the sky resembled the waves in the sea. Tara walked me through the woods in a hurry as though someone, something was waiting for her. And there under the chakka tree was Sweetie-Cutie. I knew she would be there. Clairvoyantly.

  ‘Hi princess.’ Sweetie-Cutie dried her hair with a towel. ‘It’s so hot, I wish it would rain.’ Then she sat down and began to cut a watermelon. I sat down beside her and raised my hands to my eyes. A deep hazy look came into Sweetie-Cutie’s eyes. She caressed my face with her fingers; they felt warm and sticky against my skin. She curled a lock of hair that had fallen on my cheek. Her face was so close I could feel her breath. ‘Is there something you want to tell Sweetie-Cutie?’