Acid

by Sangeetha Sreenivasan

  Satan jumped off his shoulder the day Joseph learnt that his wife was pregnant. Joseph said he was tired of never-ending examinations, he was humiliated. He believed Emily was hatching Satan’s offspring. He ran off, Satan trampled over him as if he were dirt on the pathway. He couldn’t bear the cry of the newborn baby girl, the daughter of Sin. Drawing the sign of the cross, he sent a wireless message to Andrews: Come back immediately.

  At last, when Andrews came, Joseph handed over his own flesh and blood, four months old. Satan couldn’t help laughing, ‘Joseph, you are impossible! How could you be such a fool? The girl is your blood.’

  In front of the candles that bent and bowed over, the soot that formed on the surface of the mantelpiece because of the unusually thick wicks, candle wax encased in the glass liquefied to oil, in front of all the vigil lights that burnt and burnt out, Emily cried. She wanted her child back. In her house, Rita yelled: ‘I don’t want it.’

  Another girl resembling Miriam! Stealthily, Emily came to Rita’s house to see the child Joseph had entrusted the priest with. The changing roses had the colour purple on them when she arrived. She looked like a stained candle, with its wick withdrawn. When she saw Shaly, she gave a loud cry of horror. She could not get enough of what her eyes had seen—she felt her life was closing down. Rita came running downstairs when she heard her cry. The woman was reluctant to speak; she went on crying as if she had seen her dead mother walking towards her. A stranger crying in her house, Rita was alarmed, and when Shaly asked her what the matter was, she said she couldn’t understand a fucking thing. She pulled open the door with such force that it rattled on its hinges and asked the woman to get out. Shaly felt sad, she took the woman by her hand and helped her walk out. And finally, when they came to the road she thought she would follow her to wherever she was going. Rita was calling her name, but she didn’t look back. She followed her as if she were in a trance; she knew there was something behind her tears.

  It was a princely house girdled by ancient trees. The woman was still crying. When they stepped inside Shaly looked at Miriam, not in discomfort, not in surprise, rather as if she had been expecting something like this. Normally, twins had such a resemblance, like Aadi and Shiva. The girls looked at each other; Miriam was younger, maybe two or three years younger than her. The girls sat down at the table, had tea and listened to Emily’s story. She saw Miriam crying too. She didn’t feel like crying, didn’t feel like waiting for Joseph, her biological father. She said she had a terrible headache and set out in the darkness. Her head actually was aching, painfully dizzy. As she walked under the ancient trees, Andrews Papa called out: ‘Where is your butterfly?’

  Now she knew she wanted to cry. She didn’t need anyone but him. When she reached home, she saw Rita prostrate on the floor, crying. It was a message from Mizoram, announcing his death. There was a ban on the transport of infected bodies, so he would be buried there soon. The next day Shaly set out for Bangalore. She didn’t want to face anyone any more.

  51

  Their embraces were not over yet; Aadi knew how happy he was, and he also knew this would be the most wonderful trip he would ever take. Inside the Qualis, they were busy cracking jokes, eating and singing songs. Occasionally, one of them would bump into the person sitting next to them to amuse themselves and to evoke laughter: such happiness, such joy. Sometimes they let loose loud farts and described how inspiring they were. Aadi thought about the loneliness he shared with his brother in their room at home, the isolation they sliced up while they all travelled together.

  ‘Would you like to have a milkshake or a banana split?’

  Amy Ammu was busy taking orders. She had a plastic juicer and frying pan ready by her side on her mama’s lap.

  ‘I am afraid I don’t have choco chips in my restaurant now. Sir, would you like something else?’

  Yes, sincerely, they all wanted her to sleep. Nonetheless, the game continued. From time to time they took turns amusing her, acting as her clients, telling her stories. Aadi must have dozed off in between for he woke up with a start to loud shouts of joy. He saw a long mud path stretching out in front of him, lined by tall mango trees on either side. Geography changed at the speed of light. It was highways and tarred roads minutes ago, now the redness of earth and greenness of nature welcomed them. The vehicle stopped in front of an enormous gate, on which was a piece of artistically dilapidated wood with the word ‘Adishakti’ written on it in small letters so as to not upset the exposed bark and the tree rings. Aadi couldn’t help the smile on his face when he saw Nimmy swinging on the gate, opening it, making a funny, exaggerated gesture of welcome.

  It was a happy site set against the background of khus-khus grass. There was a cowshed near the entrance on the left side of the gate, with eight or nine cows, perhaps more, in it. They drove slowly over the mud path and arrived at what seemed like some kind of a parking lot surrounded by trees, and parked under a lovely lemon tree that bore hundreds of lemons, splashes of yellow amidst green. Aadi imagined the picture he wanted to draw.

  When they were about to get out, dogs came barking from almost all sides. Aadi was frightened, he thought they were attacking. They were jumping all over; some of them were trying to place their paws on Molière’s shoulders.

  ‘Faristha, Itchimba, my darlings!’

  Aadi saw the actors hugging the dogs.

  ‘Won’t the dogs go away?’ he asked Nimmy.

  ‘Don’t call them dogs, they are his sons,’ she corrected him.

  ‘Oh!’

  Once the cuddling was over, the noise died down and they all dispersed in different directions, dogs and actors. He saw Amy Ammu and her mother walking straight to the back of the property, taking a path decorated with the fallen petals of pink bougainvillea. There were long stone benches along the way under the splash of colour.

  ‘So, do you like the place?’ Nimmy asked with tenderness.

  He said yes, very much.

  ‘Muthu, take him to the guest house, room number 7,’ she instructed someone who was there.

  As he walked he marvelled at the fullness of the brown sapodilla fruits on the trees and the vision of the orange tangerines and the pale yellow star fruit. There were many cars in the parking lot. Pointing to a red Mercedes, Muthu said, ‘Some film star from your place, a big actress.’

  Aadi nodded as they continued. It was a place for research in theatre. Lots of people came from different parts of India, from different parts of the world, some of them became a part of the place and decided to stay. Be it real life or theatre, Aadi felt the place had a special energy of its own. The walls of the guest house were the same red colour as the earth they walked on. It was no colour; it was the earth itself, the mud house. He thought about the whitewashed walls of Kamala’s mud house, the low ceilings, the rooms with no ventilation—the contrast brought about by the years of architectural experimentations, the same medium and the different form. He inhaled the aroma of essential oil and noticed the pot of the reed oil diffuser in a corner and the beautiful paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There were black-and-white photographs of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo decorated with deep red hibiscus flowers on the walls. Anuraktha had also had the same pictures on the calendar in his library. But he stopped, short of breath, in front of another black-and-white picture: a woman in her early twenties—his mother, Kamala. Carefully, he walked closer to the picture and touched it as if to feel it: it was his mother in a sleeveless blouse and sari, sitting in a posture befitting royalty. She had the same nose pin, the single diamond on her right nostril. Right or left, he pondered for a while till water filled his eyes. He felt the shine from her nose pin was filling up the room. When Muthu noticed him looking at the photograph with intense care, he said: ‘This is Veenapani amma, our mother.’

  Veenapani smiled at him with her whole heart and soul, she said in a whisper: ‘You are family. Now go and rest.’

  She must have been a feather or a dream when alive, for he hadn’t heard
a voice more delicate than this. The moment he reached his room he dialled his mother’s number. It rang, but no one answered. He walked to the window from where he could see the blue-green swimming pool with floats and balls netting the edges. The walls of the pool were also of mud, with an ancient clock hanging in the middle of it. He tried her number again, but the recorded voice reported that the person he was calling was not responding. The night tightened its fearful grip when the crickets went suddenly silent. He saw the lights shining on the surface of the water. He kept dialling her.

  It was difficult for her to continue living in the same place with her sister Miriam living just two streets away. Nor was it easy for her to convince Rita Mama to stay, or to go and settle down in a faraway place with her. The memory of the rats running amok on land that didn’t belong to them made Rita reluctant to leave this place she was so fond of, the serene atmosphere, the undisturbed roof over her head bordered by beautiful changing roses. Her wedding, she remembered, was happy, because of the fortune and the wonderful house Andrews had inherited. She was overjoyed with the new title of maskiamma, the wife of the priest. But Andrews had tossed out the fortune and the title in no time for whatever blasted reason, as easily as disposing of a cat or a piece of unwanted furniture, and then gone to live in the folds of the forests like a primitive person, cheating her, cheating her family. She still remembered how the people of the parish had called her Madame, with great admiration.

  Shaly was not sure of a welcome. It had been years since she had deserted the place. Let her say what she wants, thought Shaly, what Rita Mama needs in her old age is company, the company of a person who is sincere towards her. When the wind ruffled her hair, she said, ‘Rita Mama, I haven’t talked enough to your changing roses, tell them, please tell them I am coming home.’ The changing roses were wild, and if left unattended would form a wilderness.

  With the passage of time, pain would become a memory. She wondered whether the wind that rushed and roared with the speed of a bus was leading to her past or future. She closed her eyes and turned the music on.

  Shiva hadn’t washed himself or brushed his teeth. He was hungry and he knew he couldn’t stand it any longer. When Janu came to clean his room, he asked her in a feeble voice as if he was asking her a favour: ‘Could you please get me something to eat?’

  Kamala was holed up in her room. When Janu asked, she said she didn’t want to eat anything. She remembered the bleak, dull white walls of the flat that the dealer said were in vogue. But she was not after fashion; she wanted colours, as bright as they could be, colours that would emanate happiness. She remembered how long she had spent at the paint store holding the catalogue of colours the shopkeeper had given her. The catalogue was too long to concentrate on, but when she noticed the shades of pink she remembered how Shaly hated pink.

  ‘Pink again? I told you I hate it,’ she would say. She would say no to anything that was pink. No pink shoes—she had never seen her wearing ladies’ shoes or fancy slippers—and no pink hair bands, even if her hair was blowing in the wind like mad. No pink tops, for she said they would make it seem as if she was trying to look like some pretty princess. What was more, she said no even to pink margaritas.

  Kamala sat down on the sofa with the catalogue of shades for more than forty-five minutes. She pondered over John Cheever’s yellow room. The way he stepped into the yellow room, the way he felt the peace of mind that he had coveted when he first saw the walls in a walk-up near Penn Station. He believed we would feel unexpectedly at peace with the world when we stepped into a tack room, a carpenter’s shop or a country post office. She too wanted to sit in a chair by the window feeling the calm of the walls restore her.

  Her fingers tapped over the shade called ‘hidden spring’. There was a spring which was hidden, a faded shade of blue. She thought of choosing that colour for Shaly’s room; Shaly could sleep in a blue room and dream about the hidden spring of pink daisies. Once one colour was fixed it was easy to decide upon the others. The shopkeeper, who had acted like a charlatan so far, proved very helpful. He said Prussian blue would go well with the faded blue. She agreed immediately. Next he suggested ocean blue for the children’s room, turquoise blue for the bathrooms, ‘maiden voyage’ for the balcony, ‘rainstorm’ for the reading room, ‘serene sky’ for the entrance hall and ‘wipe-out’ for the kitchen: in effect, a blue house.

  It occurred to her only when she was caught up in the too long, too slow traffic that blue could signify melancholy, it was an essential colour of sadness. It was difficult to comprehend colours, though. The sameness of the colours could be boring; the same sea, the same sky. She was convinced she wanted to cancel her order. She opened her handbag and searched for the shopkeeper’s number. Had she thrown away the bill? She was certain she didn’t want blue. At a certain point, she even thought about turning back. It would have been better if she had. Instead, she turned the music on and tried to concentrate on forgetting the din the drivers were making outside. The song announced: ‘When she came back, she was nobody’s wife.’

  For a second, Shaly halted. She looked closely at the purple yam she was about to cut into pieces. It resembled the paws of a dog or the paws of a tiger; it could be both. The finger-like extensions, she decided she didn’t want to cut them away. It was her idea to prepare food for Rita Mama before she came back from church. There had been a change in their relationship since she had returned after a gap of years. Rita Mama had become more severe with her tongue and gestures, and with her famous goddamned speeches. The lightness was missing. Had it been there before? Whatever it was, a sort of bond that was stronger than before was forming between them. Rita Mama wanted Shaly; it was clear she was not willing to give her back to Emily.

  Leaving the tiger paws on the kitchen table, Shaly came outside and sat down on the doorstep, waiting for the whistle of the fishmonger. Rita Mama had asked her to buy mackerel. While waiting, she searched on the Internet for good mackerel recipes. She remembered Rita Mama had been neither good nor bad to her on the day she arrived. What she had expected was a ramshackle house with a dilapidated gate drenched in bird shit and a garden overgrown with grass and wild plants forming a wilderness around it, blocking the way, and Rita Mama inside, bedridden, just like you saw in the movies. She was extremely surprised when she saw both Rita Mama and the house in robust health. Rita Mama, on the other hand, did not even seem surprised; she behaved as if she had been expecting her. She prepared tea for her and gave her boiled tapioca to eat. She had displayed no signs of vexation and hence, Shaly could look only at Rita Mama’s changing roses with anger. But from the second day onwards, Rita Mama started behaving as if she were Cinderella’s stepmother. Back to her normal self, but a little bit harsher, a tad more sour and dour. And Shaly knew she was home at once, and happy.

  Shaly heated oil in a wok, and fried the ginger-garlic paste. Then she added the paste of spices she had prepared along with gamboge and salt water. Once it was golden-brown in colour, she added the fish pieces one by one.

  When his hunger subsided, he remembered Shaly, the hunger of his flesh, his mother’s friend. Would she never come back? He knew his mother was angry with him. She had stopped coming to his room—like the hands of a clock that had suddenly come to a stop, whose rotations had ceased, and a stillness had taken hold. He remembered her lying prone on the bare floor. He had heard her cry, a din of voices from the three women present at the time. His memories served him right.

  Now with pain, he remembered the woman who had abandoned him as he was crawling up to her breasts, his eyes closed and his mouth open. He sensed her nipples erect, hard as they brushed against his lips. What he had lost, he knew, was a continent of love. He wanted to lie down beside her, inhale the feminine, seductive smell of desire from between her thighs.

  Janu came in with a glass of buttermilk and placed it on the table. She said she was busy helping her father in the backyard. It had been four days; they had been cleaning, destroying the poisonous w
eeds in the backyard. Poison grew in the backyard in abundance, she said, it was so deadly it could even cause the death of a person. When she left the room, he thought of his brother, Aadi. Later he started thinking of his own death.

  52

  All port towns have the same secrets to reveal—stories of weed, money and prostitution. Business always flourished no matter how many died while trafficking, or how hard the crackdown from the police and vigilance. Invariably, the peddlers had the same face; the same expressions. Surprisingly, their eyes were the same colour as that of the eye of a dead chameleon. Children were their targets, the ones who loved to sit patiently for hours in some parlour or salon to get their hair fixed, make dreadlocks by twisting and ripping their very soft Indian hair. They screamed in the name of what was not theirs and loved the tangles and mats of abundance, the wooden beads of Jamaican colours, and considered themselves descendants of the beloved black singer. Sad, they admired him not for what he had done but in the name of a joint. People were to blame; they were the ones who marketed the Rastafarian. They pushed his songs to the background, for they found more business in his uncut matted hair and the smoke that got tangled in it.

  ‘No, no, not this, this is not what I intended,’ he would have told us if he were alive. He died young. His voice carried the pain and the dreams and the freedom of his people. The peddlers gave you neither the dreams nor the freedom, but they did give you the hurt, distress, anguish, and trauma compressed and wrapped up in a small packet. They would let you scrape the goodness off your soul, jeopardize you, your generation and existence. It is heard that the trafficking was strong on the borders; countries yearned for the devastation of their neighbour’s country, the way you craved the annihilation of your neighbour’s paradise.

  Cochin is a port town. Kamala had bought a flat somewhere in the heart of Cochin.