Acid

  As she cried, Kamala felt a tightness in her chest and she thought she was going to die. In between the soreness of breathlessness, she wanted to say: Why don’t you understand that I am in deep love? Why do you pretend as if you don’t understand?

  But she didn’t say any of it.

  38

  Kamala felt tired by the sight of the crowd in front of the office of land registration. The land broker, a middle-aged woman in a faded green sari, approached when she saw them coming.

  ‘How long do we have to wait?’ Kamala asked.

  ‘There is nothing to worry about, our token number is three,’ she said.

  There were a couple of empty chairs on the narrow veranda of that dilapidated building. Lots of chairs, tables and other pieces of furniture in bad shape lay piled up in the shed attached to the veranda—broken, legless or bottomless. Kamala examined the condition of the furniture through the window grille. She was about to sit on one of the empty chairs when she noticed that it too was in a terrible condition and coated with dust. She coughed and said she wanted to go outside. She went with Shaly to the ground covered in white sand; the sea must be somewhere nearby, she thought. There was an old mango tree in the centre of the ground. With each gust of wind, mangoes fell down at random and Shaly excitedly started collecting them. They were very small, but extremely juicy, their fragrance filling her nostrils. She squeezed the mangoes with her fingers till they began to soften, then rolled them on her thighs till they became soft and squishy, and made a hole in the top using her teeth. She sucked on the fruit as if she were having juice from a bottle or tetrapack using a straw. They saw Raghavettan’s car coming in. The broker walked towards the car and Kamala followed her with timid, slow steps. There was an old man with him in the car. Raghavettan smiled with unease when he saw Kamala.

  ‘You have changed a lot. What happened? Are you not well?’ he asked her.

  She didn’t answer but smiled pleasantly.

  ‘Haven’t I told you about her mother? That was the reason why our registration got so delayed. It will take time for her to recover from the shock,’ the broker said.

  ‘Oh, I am extremely sorry to hear that,’ said Raghavettan. ‘How old was your mother?’

  Kamala looked at him uncertainly, as a child faced with a particularly challenging problem looks at her maths teacher. She knew she didn’t know the answer.

  ‘Where is the toilet?’ Shaly asked the broker in a loud voice from under the mango tree. The broker cringed with embarrassment: women usually asked such questions in hushed tones, yet this one had come like a gust of wind, slapping them straight on the face. Shaly, however, was not bothered at all, rather she was bored and tired of drinking mangoes. She walked down the way the woman had pointed with her hands tucked inside her pockets, the way men did.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ Raghavettan asked Kamala, looking at Shaly.

  Before she could answer Raghavettan introduced the old man who had come with him.

  ‘This is Mr Ramachandran. He is buying the flat above the one you are buying. But I don’t think he will be your neighbour. I am afraid he is buying to sell, the way intelligent people do.’

  Ramachandran smiled. ‘I have no plans to sell. He is just joking; I think he likes to make fun of me. We have been friends since childhood. Both my children are in the USA. I am buying the property using their money, and it will go to them when the time comes.’

  ‘Now, now, Ramachandran, this is the teacher who tricked me out of this property. She could have become a businesswoman if she had tried.’

  Teacher? Kamala looked at the broker in disbelief. How on earth could she change her vocation? How stupid. The broker was all pleasing smiles and Kamala didn’t venture to correct her. Be it teacher or doctor, she really didn’t like these tricks. It made her so upset that she wanted to shout; for a second, she even wished she could drop the project. Both of them had talked for hours before negotiations. He had said okay because he was okay, who had cheated him?

  Shaly smelled of cigarettes when she came back from the toilet. Raghavettan’s face darkened and he stared down at her in incredulity. Kamala was also looking at her; she was examining her to see whether she truly looked like her daughter. Was she that young? Or am I just too old to be her friend? Shaly was wearing distressed jeans and a white blouse. Her hair looked fresh and gorgeous. Maybe my appearance has altered a lot, Kamala thought. She glanced at her reflection in the glass window of the car that was parked outside. Yes, she had dark circles under her eyes and fine lines on her face. But she knew that the mirrors of the car projected objects in a magnifying way. She remembered the letters on the mirror: something to the tune of ‘Objects may appear closer than they actually are’. Her fine lines were now more projected, more exaggerated, more unreal. They didn’t show up quite as much in the mirror in the house; there she still looked beautiful, at least not as bad as this. Now that she thought about it, the mirrors in the house were not very good either. They were old with mercury coming off them in random places. They are mirrors in name only, she thought, I should break them all up and replace them with new ones. She imagined smashing the old ones and buying the new ones. On the way here, she had examined herself in the hotel mirror when they had stopped to have tea. She had felt confident; the mirror in the hotel was a comparatively better choice, for she clearly remembered admiring her sari in the mirror a few hours back. But now the sari weighed heavily on her body and she felt sick and exhausted. She wanted to reach home at the earliest, no time for mirrors on the way.

  But Shaly wanted to try some of the shopping malls in the city. She wanted to buy a satsuma body lotion that she had forgotten while shopping in Bangalore. There was no chance of getting it once they reached Kamala’s house. But seeing Kamala’s condition, she decided it would be best to take her back to that godforsaken place quickly, back to the valley of boredom, where the four of them could sit, walk, sleep without looking at each other—they hadn’t started hating yet . . . good.

  Shaly was behind the wheel, Kamala sat next to her, a disquieting look on her face.

  ‘Some more work needs to be done, I don’t think we can move into the flat that easily.’

  ‘What about the rest of the work, then?’ Shaly asked.

  ‘Raghavettan has promised to help us. He said something about pointing or something on the tiles, or maybe pointing the tiles, yes it could be about pointing the tiles. We will have to supervise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do I mean? I am thinking. Don’t shout!’

  At the traffic signal, she had to press down hard on the brakes.

  ‘Can’t you just concentrate on the road? Do you want me to drive?’

  Shaly thought only a stray shout from outside could bring Kamala back to herself. She wished she could turn off the engine. Look at her, look at the rotten condition she has drawn herself into, but still look at the way she talks . . . what is this show of arrogance? Is she really mad? Sick in the head? She’ll never leave that house.

  ‘Can I play music?’ Shaly asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  The moment it started, Kamala shouted again. ‘Will you please turn down the volume? Or do you want me to take a bus back?’

  Shaly turned off the system. When she saw the roads diverting to the airport, her heart skipped a beat. There was a big junction with lots of intricate crossroads, a labyrinth of imaginations. If only I could turn that way, I could fly to Bangalore or to Mizoram, she thought.

  She couldn’t guess what Kamala was thinking or where she was looking. She was sitting like a frozen rag doll, the one she had told her she used to have a long time ago.

  When she saw an advertisement for Michelin, Shaly said, ‘Kamala, it is time to buy new tyres.’

  Kamala didn’t answer. They didn’t talk for quite a while. Kamala lowered the sun visor and examined herself in the small mirror. She looked at herself for a long time. The tiredness was mainly around the eyes, she double-checked
the sunken areas of her face. After some time she asked Shaly: ‘Shaly, do I look like an old hag?’

  ‘Never.’

  Once again, this time without seeking her permission, Shaly played the music, softly. In a low voice, someone sang the legend of Bharat ki ek sannari.

  ‘Tell me, Shaly, do I really look like an old hag now? Please be honest,’ she said again.

  39

  ‘How come you are not even on WhatsApp these days?’

  ‘You won’t believe me—there is no signal here. The phone says “poor”, I guess that’s what we are. Poor!’

  ‘Ah, thank goodness! I thought you were avoiding me on purpose.’

  ‘No, why should I? If I wanted to avoid you, I would have just blocked your number.’

  ‘Now that I know your landline number I don’t think blocking me will do any good.’

  ‘Please, for God’s sake! Don’t make a call to this number. I called you from this number because it’s an emergency. Otherwise I would not have called.’

  ‘Agreed, but do you remember you had promised me one night?’

  ‘Are we fuck buddies or what? I was drunk when I made that promise, you idiot!’

  ‘Okay, okay, but next time when you get high please don’t say that my thing is small, it is six plus and I am quite happy.’

  ‘Ha ha, you stay brave. Your secret is safe with me.’

  ‘Now get to the point, give me a deadline. I would appreciate it.’

  ‘ASAP.’

  ‘Nothing doing! You have to specify the date.’

  ‘Give me one more month; you know what a sloth I am and you don’t know the situation I am in.’

  ‘In that case, do you mind if I transfer it to Meera?’

  ‘That would be better, I guess.’

  ‘Anything for you, baby girl, you know we miss you terribly in those Feminist-Lesbian-Profound coffee shops.’

  ‘Who is on the phone? Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Janu asked.

  Kamala hung up the phone in shock, for she hadn’t seen Janu there, and the receiver landed in its cradle with a crash. She was devastated, like a woman caught red-handed in public. Maybe she knew that eavesdropping was a breach of decency.

  ‘I am afraid someone has picked up the phone downstairs. I will call you later, bye for now.’ Shaly disconnected the phone.

  Kamala knew most of Shaly’s friends, at least half of them. She knew it was Jithan on the other end of the phone, and that he was a blabbermouth. He spoke the same way to almost all the girls in his circle. Kamala didn’t like Shaly toying with him, but all the same, she was dying to know more about these secret phone calls. She wanted to make sure that nothing could be forcibly inflicted upon Shaly, be it Jithan or something else.

  Though she had set the receiver back in the cradle she was still clutching it. She looked at Janu in aversion. The poor woman was cleaning the floor. In that moment, she hated her overwhelmingly, hated the innocence on her face, the inquisitiveness in her eyes, her distasteful gestures to please her, and above all her large, half-exposed breasts visible through the nightgown she was still wearing. She was never dressed properly; the women in her neighbourhood considered it their privilege to wear a nightgown throughout the day. What a shame, how disgusting! They went to local shops wearing the same nightgowns, occasionally they would drape a towel over it, something only a little better than the rags one used in the kitchen to clean the service table. They called these nightgowns ‘nighties’, and they came in hideous designs that were displayed in clusters from the ceilings of local clothes shops. Wearing a nightie was license enough to go from door to door, to repeat everything they heard or said. The smell of the cheap fabric excited them, no matter how rich or poor they were, it was just an absence of aesthetics in them. It was also a license to show off their enormous breasts as they bent forward, the only way they could expose themselves to the world.

  I can’t let her dress up like this in my house, thought Kamala. ‘If you make molushyam one more time, you will be out of this house,’ she said.

  ‘But you haven’t told me what to do! Can I make sambar today?’ Janu asked.

  ‘Make whatever you feel like. Serve us poison if that will make you happy!’ Leaving Janu unnerved and squatting on the floor with the mop in her hand, Kamala marched towards her room. Aadi was waiting inside, but when he realized that his mother was not in a good mood, he got up to leave.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Amma, I would like to go to Bangalore. I want to see my friends, and now that Shaly is here I don’t think it would be a problem if I go.’

  ‘Go wherever you like, what the hell do you need permission for?’

  Terrified, he left the room in dismay. Back in the boys’ room, Shiva consoled him, ‘Don’t worry, I will convince her.’

  Frustrated, he sat on Shiva’s wheelchair and started wheeling himself across the room, using his hands. It was indeed a small room; it took mere seconds to start from one wall and reach the other. It was an all-enclosed cycle. You start from walls, you reach walls, and in between you don’t even know how time travels. He thought he wanted to be a missile to break down these walls. He wanted to be radioactive dynamite to cause the maximum destruction possible. Aadi, the suicide bomber! But the walls were thickening every minute, closing in on them. They were going to crush them.

  When they initially arrived, the walls had not been so thick, not so heavy. Though he remembered Shaly asking about their width and thickness on the first day she came down to dine with them. ‘It is an old mud house,’ his mother had said, ‘and mud walls are supposed to be thicker and stronger.’ Shaly examined the walls for some time, laid her cheek against them and said, smiling, ‘And cooler.’

  It would take real strength to make a tunnel through the mud, he thought. He had read The Count of Monte Cristo, about Abbé Faria’s escape tunnel that ended up in Dantès’s cell. If he started digging he was sure he would find himself in his mother’s room, but if he could make his escape, his mother might not even notice. Once in a while, she might look sympathetically at the empty dining chair and continue eating. Maybe she would sigh, hardly noticeable. He grew so angry at the thought that he pushed the chair hard and it crashed against the walls with a loud noise.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  ‘My chair!’ Shiva cried.

  ‘This is a mousetrap! We are nothing better than rats caught in it.’

  ‘Get out of my chair! If I lose it I will end up in this bed forever. I am afraid I am getting bedsores. Please! Get out of my chair—and don’t ever touch it.’

  From the outside, their house seemed calm and peaceful. It was an old mansion, its exquisite beauty defined by its architectural dimensions, surrounded by trees, vines, birds, squirrels, the occasional display of sun, a large courtyard covered with fallen leaves—yellowish and brittle—and the laterite walking path on which two or three stones had come out of the pointing: all of it lay deceptively deep inside the countryside. It is said that doves live in a peaceful atmosphere, and it was ironic that on the roof of their house lived hundreds of doves, to hamper the peace of the inmates. After Kamala and her children had moved in, there was an irrefutable grief in the cooing of the birds. A miserable feather flew down each time they fluttered their wings. But they were not ready to vacate the house. Inside the house, marked by a heavy sadness, human beings moved around, breathed in and out, talked softly.

  ‘They are our guests, we should not let them down,’ the birds said to each other.

  From the rooftop of that ancient house that afforded you a bird’s-eye view, you got to see laughing skulls 300 feet down in the earth, cracking jokes and telling stories. It was good to listen to them, for they had crossed the miserable spell called ‘life on earth’, they said it was really cool underneath. They didn’t care for anything any more; they really didn’t care about the divergent roads or what was past. That which was burning in the pyre was me, myself, ghee and cakes of cow dung. It was easy for the fa
t bodies to get incinerated. All your life you strive to stay slim, but on the pyre it was a different matter. What a wonderful world!

  ‘Where is your pride now?’ asked one.

  ‘The fire devours it all,’ the other answered.

  Breath stops where hopes, desires and despair stop. In the remaining, left over, one-tenth of desperation, in the unconditioned air, each human being on earth says: ‘I cannot take this any longer, I am tired.’

  When at last Aadi got up from the chair, examined it and said it was all right, Shiva smiled in relief. It seemed it was all he had that was reliable on earth. There was a kind of horror in his smile that was reflected in the tears that filled Aadi’s eyes.

  Kamala got up from her bed and walked towards the door. She closed and latched it on the inside.

  In the kitchen, Janu seasoned the sambar.

  40

  This is my silent dark immensity,

  This is the home of everlasting Night,

  This is the secrecy of Nothingness.

  —Savitri, Sri Aurobindo

  Aadi shut the book. He closed his eyes to think of Anuraktha, and saw the massive stone walls of the building leading to the orchard and from there to the library adorned with hibiscus flowers and red fairy lights. Leaving this place was like plummeting hundreds of feet down from where he always loved to belong. He couldn’t concentrate on the book; he read three or four lines a day, or once in three days. What was his connection to the book? Was Anuraktha keen on his reading this particular book? Or was it just a book for the sake of a book? He liked the expression ‘the home of everlasting Night’. That was something, something resonated with him, but it would have looked better if it had been the home of everlasting days. There was nothing worth cherishing about his past, but his past was better than his present.

  Once again he went to see his mother in her room. She was lying on her left side on the bed. He sat down beside her. He waited for hours but there was no response from her. She was not sleeping but lying down with her eyes closed, her lips tightly shut. For a moment he imagined the house without her, and though he wanted a breather from her presence, sadness choked his throat, and he wanted to cry. He loved her but a feather of freedom kept showing him the sky, he knew he wanted to leave.