IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE

  I thought of what she said. The thought pained me, like a pebble in my shoe. It hurt as I walked home.

  Appa’s Ambassador drove out of the gates. Tommy-uncle stopped the car when he saw me. ‘Confucius. So young man, are you looking forward to go to London?’

  ‘I don’t know, uncle,’ I answered truthfully.

  ‘It’s better not to know. Because you shouldn’t know what you know until you know what you don’t know.’ And with that he rattled down Gibbs Road.

  Only last evening I was in the attic. I hadn’t been there since I returned. The floor was littered with dried leaves blown in through the window, bits of paper, and dried morsels of food. Rats, squirrels, sparrows, cockroaches, mosquitoes and other insects had made the attic their home. I stood under the hole in the roof and watched the twilight sky. I saw a plane flying over. I saw its huge belly. I saw bird-bellies flying. The stars glittered above like an island in the sky. Our Para-dies, with tiny tiny stars.

  And now here I am today, my last day in Georgie’s villa. So many years… So many lives… My cockeyed fate with an ultimate plan has transcended all of them except Rebecca. We had met near the lake. Fireflies had dotted the night sky. I had kissed her and then run my tongue over my lips, testing, tasting, as though I was licking a new flavour of ice-cream. I had liked it.

  I try to cry. I need to cry. But the tears don’t come. The fan above turns slowly, then with a loud whirr it begins to rotate faster. I feel a whirlwind of emotions on the tip of my tongue; I taste each one: Sweet. Sour. Bitter. And then in a big gulp I swallow my spit. My mouth is dry, bereft of taste. I look around the room. The paint on the walls has yellowed in patches and looks like watermarks with burnt edges. I look at the old picture of Georgie on the wall. Depending on the light his expression changes. He looks terribly sad today. Did he find his son? I am curious to know how the end ends. I retrieve the ledger from the cupboard, and then sit down on my bed, flip through the pages, read the last entry, dated April 1862:

  I had just finished reading the letter from my father, a fifth time. My mother had died suddenly of a heart attack. It had started with a mild cough; a week later she had succumbed. She had been utterly lost since the day Elizabeth left home.

  Matthew came through the door. ‘You must sleep now sar, you have a long journey to make tomorrow. You be back in your country and you will be happy.’

  ‘And what the deuce will I do, back in my country?’ I barked at Matthew. ‘Leave me alone!’ I was in a worse temper than ever.

  After Matthew left the room I picked up my son’s notebook from the table. I flipped through the pages: alphabets, words, a butterfly, then there were the sketches of the sea, so many pages of them, blue, endless, waiting… I took a deep breath and started to remember; it all came back, perfect as it used to be, my brief time with my son. I looked up at the picture of Elizabeth on the wall. She had been four months pregnant then. My head became cluttered with too many thoughts, too many memories: of John, Elizabeth, my dead mother, my old father, and my cold country. My thoughts shifted to my village in Somerset, to the trees and the river, the small animals, night smells of herbs and flowers, and the birds flying and the swans floating down the river, their huge white wings folded. I would have liked my son to see his country, his village, and his grandparents. But he has gone.

  ‘The sea swallow me. It swallow daddy.’ John’s voice rang in my ears.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I slipped out of my nightclothes and donned my uniform. I looked for my belt but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Far away in the distance, I could hear the waves; they called out to me. My son called out to me.

  ‘Daddy! Where are you?

  It is only mid-April but it has rained nearly every day. This morning the clouds are empty of rain and the early sun has tinged the clouds with its colour, but blackness tears at my heart. Darkness fills me utterly. Soon I will cease to feel and before long, I know, I will cease to think...

  As I read Georgie’s words I am convinced the blueprint of my life exists; my Fibonacci sequence has followed through as intended. This new knowledge contains in it a strange stillness, absence, and deep silence.

  I am afraid.

  Why are you ’fraid?

  Did it hurt?

  Only for a blink of an eye.

  Is it like Over? O-V-E-R.

  It’s not over. I was with you all the time.

  I raise my left hand and stretch it out in front of me. Tara’s hand touches mine, a cold glass in between our touching hands. I stretch out my right hand and feel Tara’s hand warm against mine. I bend forward and touch my cheek to the glass, and I feel the softness of Tara’s cheek. I touch my lips next and my breath leaves two dewy spots on the pane; they coincide with Tara’s breathbubbles on the other side. I blow at them; they disappear, both the halves, quivering together, hand in hand, fingers locked. Tara’s heart beats in my heart and through my lungs she inhales. Tara whispers and I hear her in my head.

  I’m goin now.

  Don’t go. Please don’t go.

  I must.

  I’ll find you.

  You won’t. If you look for me, I am not here.

  Then all at once I feel lightness in my mind – Tara is slipping out of it. I feel colourlessness behind my eyes – Tara has drained out. I feel emptiness in my heart – Tara’s beat is missing. My lungs feel full and I exhale her breath. She hums in my ear but her voice is faint. Her fingers that she has locked into mine let go, one by one by one. She is gone. I am alone.

  I know what I have to do.

  I get dressed at once and into a bag I stuff Amma’s saree that I had stored in the cupboard, the old ledger, the butterfly notebook, the photograph of Rebecca, Cyril and me taken in Sunrise Studios, and the wire rose with red cloth petals. I reach inside the drawer of the desk and retrieve the old goodluck coin.

  Once when I couldn’t decide which ice-cream flavour I wanted, Vishnu-thatha asked me, ‘Siva, do you have your goodluck coin?’

  I had groped in my pocket and held up the coin. Vishnu-thatha took it from me and tossed it in the air, caught it and closed his hand into a fist.

  ‘Heads you choose the flavour. Tails, I choose, okay?’ he’d said. ‘But never forget, coins work only for choosing between small things and not big things.’

  Heads.

  I had chocolate ice-cream that evening.

  I put the coin into my trouser pocket and run down the stairs and out of the house. I walk down Gibbs Road, my eyes on my feet, humming: Lala-la-la-la-lala. There are people on the street already. Some of them stare at me and whisper to each other as I pass them by. I walk past what used to be a bookshop. The sign is painted in the colours of an upside-down taxi, black-on-yellow: Sweeties Saloon. Hairpieces displayed in its window roll down in ringlets or are piled high on pink plastic heads. The beauty parlour undoubtedly belongs to two Chinese girls. Their names appear on the sign: Lin & Jin.

  Farther along, MacOnly’s board reads:

  No Beef

  No Pork

  Muttan on Fridays

  Waterless Chickans Always

  MacOnly

  Hambuggas

  Be eating

  Being Happy

  In front of it is the signboard: No English. Only the language of the soil. Only Telugu. It is broken.

  Closer to the Shiva Temple, people have collected under a new hoarding of Coca Cola. Momentarily distracted, I cross the road and push through the crowd to see the mob of the Hindu National Party dressed in saffron robes, ashlines intact on their foreheads. The pavement is wet with purpled water, slightly foaming at the edge, and Coca Cola bottles lie broken on the road next to the delivery vehicle. Swami is crouched on the road, scooping up the foaming purple liquid in the cup of his palms and slurping it up.

  ‘No Coca Cola.
No Colgate. No nylon,’ the mob shouts. ‘Indian products only. Buy Indian. Be Indian.’

  The speaker of the party raises a hand in the air to quieten the mob and shouts: ‘Beware, westernisation is corrupting us. Look around you, my brothers and sisters, look at the red soil, grab it in a fist, feel it, smell it, taste it: it will taste of our mothers’ sweat and blood, our sweat and blood. Remember this is our mothers’ land and we are the sons of this soil. We must fight for our rights; we must fight for our land, our mothers’ land. Be Indian. Buy Indian.’

  I press through the crowd and out of it. I hurry past the delivery van and almost slip on the wet road where Swami had been. He is not there. I walk on slowly, all the way to the beach. The morning sun has hardened, crisping the air. The muezzin taps the loudspeaker in the minaret, then wails into the moist atmosphere – la ilaha ila allah. From the Shiva temple the devotees chant: Shiva. Shiva. Shiva.

  I see Swami with a tattered straw hat, possibly discarded by a tourist, perched on his head. Swami smiles and with a benevolent nod displays the knob of his leg, unevenly stitched. He crawls closer to me. ‘You motherfucker! Bastard son of a mad woman.’

  I turn away and dash to the sea. Baby crabs spring sideways. The waves reel, toss, and fold into themselves like sheets of mercury. I unzip my bag and pull out the old ledger. I fling it high into the air. It flutters open and plunges into the water: Red –Yellow – Dark Blue – Brown-chocolate – Black – Purplebrown – all soaks away.

  Goodbye Georgie.

  I take out the butterfly notebook. I pull apart the pages and toss them into the air. A paper wraps itself around my leg. I peel it off and look at it. It has pink and blue lines on it. At the top of the page is inscribed a capital A and somewhere at the bottom a capital Z. John had yet to fill in all the letters between A and Z. The paper slips from my hand and the breeze scoops it up; it dips and soars aloft. I watch it and for a moment forget the bitter ache in my heart. I take out the photograph and Rebecca’s wire rose, and hurl them into the sea. The photograph floats, the waves tugging at it, slapping it this way and that; it washes ashore, only to be sucked back again.

  I take out Amma’s saree now, the brown one with peacocks and lotus flowers. I unfold it and wrap it around me. A familiar smell. A childhood smell. Ammasmell. Tarasmell. They will be together, Amma and Tara. Always. Forever. Connected by an umbilical cord of love. Perhaps for the first time I understand love: it grows eternally, undismayed by any eventuality or any end. A love so momentous it could last a lifetime.

  But I don’t have a lifetime.

  I obliterate each thought until I am empty: empty in my heart, empty in my mind. I am in an empty place. Through the resounding emptiness all I can feel is the wind sweeping in from the sea, moistening my face, murmuring in my ears, innocent nothings. This moment has about it a certain intimate quality. It belongs to me. Not Amma. Not Tara. Only Me.

  Shoving a hand into my pocket I clutch the goodluck English coin. This is a small thing, I think. I throw the coin into the air. The coin flies overhead, catches the light of the sun, winks, flips, and like a shooting star falls on the sand.

  Heads.

  My lips tremble and my knees buckle; my feet sink into the sand. I look far out to sea, like one in a trance. Tara, I call out, if you look for me, I am not here.

  The sun shines on the water, a wave wets my feet, and...

  Siva! Where are you…?

  Acknowledgements

  I want to thank, firstly and mostly, my son Ayush, who read the manuscript on his flight to London and texted me on arriving – ‘Awesome Mom!’

  For friendship and generosity I want to thank Jill Hughes who wrote to me out of the blue – ‘Have you written anything lately?’ and became a dear friend and agent who rigorously believed in my work and me despite my moments of doubt and desperation.

  For kindness and grace, for the unrelenting enquiry of all things unfamiliar, and for the finest editing, I would like to thank Lin, Hetha and Kevin, the team at Bluemoose, who made the book what it is.

  Most of all I am thankful for my granddaughter, Rosa Maia, who brings such delight to my days, and my daughter, Anshu who made this possible.