Acid

by Sangeetha Sreenivasan

  The doors to her room were ajar; even the window, which had been closed while he was there, which he had wanted to open so badly, was open now. She was not in the room. He saw her headphones on the bed. He searched all over, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the dining area; he even went back to his own room to see if she had gone there. Shaly had told him that the house measured more than eight thousand square feet. Suddenly, each room, each space, each void frightened him. Most of the rooms remained closed all the time, and he shut the doors faster than he opened them. He didn’t even stop to check whether she was inside the rooms. He ran amok, breathing in the rusted smell of darkness. Somewhere in between the corroded shadows he hesitated, he thought he saw long hair, a swivel chair, a black cat and the ghostly doll his mother had abandoned a long time ago. He turned back and looked around in fright, calling aloud, ‘Amma, where are you?’

  There was no answer. He ventured outside the entrance hall. The old staircase with its pineapple projections was not welcoming, but the thought of pigeons sleeping upstairs strengthened him. Yet, with each step the phantom of darkness bit his ears, poked his eyes and tickled his stomach where he sensed a jerky stroke. He tried to think of something sweet, something pleasant. He remembered the two oscar fish he had had in his tank when he was a boy. At first they used to be inside the small glass tank but later he put them in the cement pond tank Kamala had bought to grow water lilies in. He cleaned the tank thoroughly, for he knew oscars lived only in fresh water. It seemed the fish immediately liked the place Aadi had arranged for them. Whenever he went near the tank, one of the fish swam across to reach him. He started bragging about it and his friends corrected him. They said it was because of the food he was giving them, that the oscars came to the surface of the water no matter who came to them as long as they brought food. Kamala used to bring him bags of guppy fish from the market to feed the oscars. The second they smelled the rainbow fish they would come to the surface dancing. He soon realized that the oscars were not so good at catching fish. The rainbow fish would stealthily evade the open mouths of the oscars and it was he who fished the guppies out and fed the oscars at times. But it takes a certain amount of skill to feed them, and it’s best not to try if you don’t have it. Many of his friends had failed hopelessly; Shiva had frowned, seeing them suck their bloody fingers. Aadi, he had said, was exceptionally talented. He closed his eyes and climbed the steps. It was not just a small water tank; he saw fresh water spreading in front of him and a surprisingly clean layer of plankton over it. The lapping of the water filled him, he said, he was thankful to the Oscars who helped him climb the stairs.

  Even the verandas upstairs smelled of Shaly, the slightly intoxicating perfume of a woman. He felt no fear, no trace of anxiety. But suddenly a shudder ran down his spine when his mobile beeped. The message had been sent in the morning, some kind of good morning wish, and had reached him when his phone entered the receiving zone. There were two flickering signal marks, he looked carefully, just two lines of signal that kept appearing and disappearing. He tried to dial Kamala’s number, but it said her phone was busy; he hated the automated voice at once and wondered who could be calling her at this hour. The doors to Shaly’s room were open and cautiously he went inside. The bed was vacant, the room heavy with the smell of perfume. He decided to sit on the bed for a while; now that his tension had eased a bit, sleep was working its way into him. Then he saw his mother sitting in the corner, next to the bed, her eyes, mouth, everything about her almost purple in colour. Though fear blocked his way, he thought he heard his mother say, ‘Spare them, let them crawl over to the backyard, let them live.’

  His tongue was stuck to the back of his throat, he looked at her expressionlessly.

  ‘They have been living with me for so long now, please don’t kill them,’ his mother said to him again.

  36

  ‘What happened to you? You didn’t even take off your shoes last night. And your phone was ringing inside your pocket all night long. If you keep up these habits, I warn you, our relationship is not going to last much longer,’ Kuljeet said.

  ‘What habits?’ he asked.

  ‘Both, drinks and phone calls.’

  She was afraid she would lose him again; afraid of Kamala and her sons; afraid that any moment they would snatch him away from her. The more frightened she became, the more vicious she grew. It is not easy for a person to keep another person in a wallet or inside a closed fist. Physically, it is impossible, and mentally, it is unthinkable. Moreover he had started showing signs of boredom and depression these days. No matter what she asked, he answered with no emotions: ‘I can’t help it. What can I do?’

  ‘Do you remember you threw up on the bed last night?’

  ‘I did?’ He looked at her in disbelief, and then at the bed. There was no trace of vomit, the sheet looked good as new, the carpet smelled fine. She pointed towards the laundry basket from which the crumpled edges of a bed sheet stuck out. As he glanced at it, he felt a crick in his neck.

  ‘I am fed up, I didn’t marry you so that I could clean up your puke while you chat happily with your ex-wife and children.’

  He took the phone out of his pocket. As if to convince her, he said aloud, ‘It’s an unknown number; let me check who it is.’

  He was showing off, or rather attitudinizing apathy as she looked at the missed call display; all the while his heart thudded like hoofbeats. His phone had been in silent mode since he had been at Peacock Bar with Parvesh. But the landline number from which a call came after eleven o’clock in the night was a familiar number, one he had known by heart since the day the telephone had first been installed. And the mobile number that had flashed on the screen after midnight was also dear to him.

  ‘Now, don’t cook up any bullshit stories, I am not buying any of it,’ Kuljeet said.

  He could see his image getting tarnished in her eyes and so he said, ‘I’m hungry. Could you please get me something to eat?’

  While Kuljeet was in the kitchen, he tried to call Kamala, but she returned with bread and fried eggs before he could reach her.

  ‘Now tell me who it was,’ she demanded.

  ‘I cannot have eggs in the morning. Can you please make something palatable?’

  She knew there was nothing wrong with the eggs, and that normally he preferred having them in the morning. When she left the room, he dialled the number again. She could sense his nervousness from the kitchen. She returned with a plate of poha and a bowl of sugar and placed them in front of him. ‘You’ve been fretting over your phone for a while now. Tell me what the fuck is going on.’

  ‘I have a lot of people to call,’ he said defensively. A little later he said again, ‘Okay, all right, can I tell you something?’

  Her lips stretched thin, she said, ‘Tell me!’

  ‘When they were in Bangalore, I thought I had no problem with the separation. But now, I don’t think I can manage this, I cannot live without them, Kuljeet.’

  It made her laugh, and laughingly she spat the catarrh on his face.

  Sometimes, shattered pieces of glass join back together like magic, like one of many photo shoot tricks, like they show on the music channels. He remembered how he had admired the way the petals rose from the ground and joined the flower when he saw the ‘Return to Innocence’ video for the first time, years ago. How easy it had seemed, he thought now, leaving no scars, no marks in between, or on the margins of the wounds. But lives were difficult, otherwise, they would have been like the one-line story by James Joyce: ‘They lived and laughed and loved and left.’ Madhavan found nothing laughable or adorable though he was congenial at times, and behaved in a gentle way. The package of life came with no promises, no laughter and no love included. Nor did he find anything worth mentioning in the years he had lived or in the one, he knew, were to come.

  He spent the entire day in the park, in the Lal Bagh botanical gardens. In fact, he got there very early, and was able to find parking space near the big divider a
t the end of the zebra line. Overwhelmed by the dark silhouettes of the huge trees and the not very pleasant smell of wet grass and fallen leaves, he smiled nervously at the festive, sleepy, yogic mood of the early walkers.

  He sat on a bench facing the lake, the lowermost flower boughs of a tree brushing his head with the intermittent rush of wind. He watched the red lotuses in bloom, the reflection of the pink shower of the apple blossom tree in the water, the water birds in motion and, at some point, he started counting the people, like little children count the vehicles that pass by. At first the people caused some unease—he thought too much happiness was artificial and these people were not real. He waited for his senses to get accustomed to happiness, a word he hadn’t known for years. He observed their strides, each person moved with a rhythm entirely different from that of the other, but somewhere, at some point, the rhythms resonated, bridging gaps. He marvelled at his capacity to link people, make connections and conjure their stories; for example, he kept imagining the different ways they might have made love in the mornings, before they set out to walk, long before they were busy wearing their jackets and walking shoes. He looked at those who walked together and felt satisfied, as it was easier for him to imagine this when there were two concrete figures to participate in the action. He also pictured those who slept with their backs turned to each other, defeating each other with endless farts. Then he noticed two women walking together, the exhilarating harshness of their gestures, the true pleasure of existence. Next, he started taking stock of the men who walked together, particularly the sets of two, his attention focused on the intensity with which their fingers intertwined. He looked at all the lonely walkers, men and women, their weight weighing on their minds, slowing down their pace. He sensed a spasm of emotions, a shiver hardly noticeable. He took count, in between he missed the numbers again: man, woman, man and man, woman and a woman, man and a woman—to be more precise, penises and cunts on the move in different combinations. He wished he could pile them all up.

  Who was he, in between, what was his position? Tonight he could imagine himself dead, blissfully he would be dead. But how long does imagination normally last? Was he just another link in the chain called humanity? If so, what was there to worry about? No great deal. No big fuck. Links have always been there for the sake of making connections. He was a link, an in-between, between Kamala and Shaly, like the one in a pair of handcuffs. If so, why the fuck was he never satisfied? Recurrently, he had been thinking of, or imagining, a large wall lined with stone coffins that looked almost like drawers with knobs. It was easy to pull the knobs, and he wished he could open them, to know what he would be like when asleep, his colour gone, the corners of his lips slightly open, some parts of his body even decaying. Inside one of those coffins he saw a man and a woman sleeping in the puddle of rotten breaths and body fluids, but the outer shell was visibly beautiful. He had to close the door as the stench was getting on his nerves, reminding him of the dirty odour of mechanical sex. He was just bending his body to open one of the lower coffins when someone said, ‘Don’t open it, for you don’t know what awaits, don’t do that, just don’t do it, some of the bodies might be pretending to be asleep, pretending to be making love.’

  He tried to touch the knob once again and someone whistled up ahead. ‘Stop! Stop!’ said the voice. He gave up.

  Like Hitler’s arguments on the defilement of blood, people argued about the defilement of sex—they wanted it pure, they shouted, pure blood, pure sex, for they were incapable of capacities. To join the bandwagon, he too had to blow the oxygen out, sacrifice two darling boys, boys who laughed and loved and ran after the butterflies in Lal Bagh gardens. People were crazy. They banned relationships, but only those with particular combinations, god knows why. People, he was convinced, were the vilest worms roaming the earth, ruled by conceit and ignorance, for they could not enjoy even a good night’s sleep.

  He wished passers-by a good morning, people he didn’t know. He doffed an invisible hat and bowed and smiled. Love is a sea where people floated like guppies; one’s fin touches the mouth of the other, no man and no woman but gills and fins in motion. Good sense, good water, clean thoughts. Inside the water, there were stars and rivers in their eyes. If there happened to be a rainbow in the skies, above the gardens, he would have bowed down, touched the ground and cried for forgiveness.

  Love was no sin to be hidden, to be kept away, nothing sinful, but somewhere, somehow, it had got stoned to death, burnt and hanged. It was the same love that was dragged in history from the church of Santa Croce to the Rialto Bridge by a horse’s tail and had its hands cut off at the scene of its crime, and was then dragged off again to be beheaded. Since then, the moral police had known no rest, here, there, far across the world, they were happy to be proclaimed as bedroom peepers, sometimes in the dark, near the outer walls of those bedrooms, they peed and shat, for they believed that their furtive pleasure demanded free bowels, clean and empty, to be on vigil, to be stronger than the victims. Surreptitiously, they took their turns to look through the windows through their cheap sunglasses, to observe horrible, unsafe things, and to poke questions of the utmost relevance. Who should a person love? How should they make love? When was the perfect time for making love? How long should lovemaking last? When to stop making loving? Was love some sort of soup to make? They were happy the windows were not closed tight, that they lacked latches. Hey you, moral police, how many people can be killed at a time to execute the rights of your manifesto? Any specific numbers?

  37

  ‘I’m home!’

  Her perfume filled the dining area much before she stepped in. They were having breakfast when she came, loaded with and weighed down by bags. She was wearing military green baggy trousers, a black shirt with blue stripes and a scarf of mixed colours, all quite out of tune. She didn’t look tired; it seemed she had had a good time on the train. Excitedly, she crossed the room and dumped her bags on the floor in her silly, childish way. The boys were electrified to see her, but Kamala’s face darkened and she helped herself to another dosa, her hands trembling. She smiled as if to convince the boys not to make a scene. After a few moments she said, ‘Take a seat, have . . .’ and pointed to the dishes.

  The same stale dosas and sambar, Shaly thought it was disgusting, they were eating like cows, chewing hay. The dosas didn’t even have a proper shape, not just that, they were thick at the edges. She had brought a variety of breads from Hot Breads but she didn’t feel like taking them out. Kamala was behaving as if she were a stranger, which made matters worse. Not that this was something new, but the children’s faces fell. They wanted to talk, ask her about Bangalore. They chewed on the edges of the dosas in silence.

  When Kamala finished her breakfast and went back to her room, Shaly got up from her seat and followed her as if to wheedle her way into their lives again, pulling away in the face of the boys’ pleading looks. The boys heard the door shut, they knew something was wrong. Aadi wheeled Shiva back to his room and took a few steps towards his mother’s room like a thief. It was amazing to know how badly he wanted to know what was going on inside. They sort of missed the women’s fights. Here, in this house, this was their first experience of it, the first fight like the first rain. As usual, he heard things flying, up, and breaking, down.

  From the broken bits he heard of the spat, he understood Shaly had been irresponsible, that she hadn’t taken his mother’s call or made any effort to call back. Poor Amma, he thought, she must have gone through hell last night. He felt sorry for her, for he knew this had happened with him as well whenever he came back late from college. It was not easy to calm her nerves. Suddenly he heard the sound of a slap. And it was true that he had already heard such similar sounds when they were in Bangalore. Had Shaly slapped Amma? How dare she! How could she do this? He wanted to kill her.

  Abruptly, the door was pulled open and Shaly rushed out, covering her face with her scarf. She ran upstairs to her room, her sobs audible all the way. He didn’t
feel like going after her, but he wanted to console her, apologize.

  Much later, Shaly heard Kamala approaching and noiselessly taking her slippers off. She didn’t raise her eyes, but saw the faint light of the moon falling upon Kamala’s silk nightdress. She knew it was her turn to abandon herself to a strange form of humility and hence, she waited. She knew Kamala was as devastated as she, as disoriented as she. ‘Forgive me, Kams,’ she said, not raising her head from the pillow, not moving an inch. How often, Shaly thought, had I lain thus in her embrace, docile and happy.

  How long had Kamala been stroking Shaly’s cheeks, the still fresh finger marks? The more she stroked, the wetter her cheeks became, drenched by Kamala’s tears and kisses. ‘My little one,’ Kamala murmured as she kissed her mouth. Her kisses were as indisposed as herself, sick, sick, always sick. Shaly didn’t say any of this, she felt relieved on Kamala’s lap. They could hear the boys talking downstairs. They were purposely making a lot of noise, they wanted to know what was happening upstairs; they couldn’t bear the silence and separation any longer, they too were sick of nothingness. Kamala, numbed, sat on the bed, unmindful of the noise, mechanically stroking Shaly’s cheeks and crying. But Shaly thought it was all a little disturbing; she wanted to get up and go downstairs. It was already two in the afternoon. Janu must have finished cooking and was probably sleeping somewhere on the kitchen veranda. The mustard-seasoned smell of yam cooked in curd waffled in the air. Shaly knew she was hungry for she hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. But what she wanted was chicken wings, seasoned with delicate spices and fried until golden and crisp.

  ‘Can we go down now?’ she asked Kamala.

  But crying harder, Kamala fell down on the bed.

  ‘Please don’t cry like this, you will exhaust yourself, trust me, tears are of no use, ever.’