Shaly knew how difficult it was to take Kamala to a doctor. If there was a way to avoid going to a physician, Kamala would find it. Shaly wanted to go there herself and drag her to the doctor. She wanted to knock on her door until she opened it. She remembered the drifting smoke from the burning grounds and she also remembered how important it was not to remember that. She knew she wanted her. Aadi held out his hand to offer his promise, and she pressed his hand with hers as if she were giving him a living imprint of her heart.
Who said that when music hits you feel no pain? She remembered all those wonderful singers who had to leave the stage in pain. All of them were young when they said goodbye to the stage. We haven’t seen their wrinkles, the crinkled skin, the turkey neck, spotted hands, crow’s feet and fine lines, all the wonderful signs marked by age, and those singers, in turn, haven’t seen the happiness of the setting sun; it hurts to leave like that, halfway, on the way, a sudden full stop.
It was nothing like Ariwara no Narihira’s celebratory poem where cherry blossoms scattered in the wind so that old age couldn’t tell which path to follow. It hurts, like when one of those dear young trees gets burnt by lightning, the green of its sap still flowing, its rings in the process of forming. It hurts, all the way.
There was Elvis Presley.
There was Michael Jackson.
And so many more people—preceding them, following them and in between them. They didn’t cross their fifties. Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain were twenty-seven when they died. Whitney Houston, who sang, ‘I will always love you’, accidentally drowned in her bathtub in a cocaine-induced haze. Sad, sad, sad, nothing could be sadder. In Aizawl moments were counted by the strums of a guitar. Music was the heart of the forest.
They didn’t say anything for a long time. But their eyes welled up all the same. Once your heart overflows, it becomes the sea itself, beware. They went into her bedroom when Rita Mama went to sleep.
‘I promised Shiva that I would bring you back.’
Suddenly, she became silent. It seemed she even stopped breathing. She looked at him. She wanted to tell him something.
Love was living with them. She remembered the games of hide-and-seek she had played as a child, her heart thudding against her throat in fear as she hid, feeling the pressure of her ribcage under the skin, as if she was going to get flayed soon in the open. But this house that looked like a huge strawberry cake was no hiding place for her. Rita Mama was no ploy to buy time, to wait for the perfect opportunity to come out. Rita Mama had gone to the paint shop on Sunday, on her way back from Mass, and selected the paint that would go with the flowers of her garden. She arranged for the workers too. It was the first time the house was being repainted. The much-faded green colour of the walls gave way to the pink fantasy in the name of Shaly, just to make her stay more comfortable, to please the owner of the house, so that she would not run away again. She dumped her old clothes, anything that was smelly and unbecoming, and stopped farting loudly in public. Minor tip-offs, maybe, but they could not be neglected.
But how on earth could she tell him that she was trapped like an ant within the honey cake, that she couldn’t pull her legs out of the hard icing? Sometimes, spiders flew away using their webs as parachutes, carrying everything that was in it with them. Recently, the dreams of the spiders had frightened the shit out of the people in Goulburn. People panicked seeing hundreds of ethereal white threads floating in mid-air and settling down on their ground. There was nothing unnatural about the dreams of others devastating our sleep. And it is purely our choice whether to live for the dreams of others or not, a matter of choice: votum in Latin.
There was hope in his eyes. He wanted her to go with him. He was young and he thought everything was possible, he didn’t wish to go back without her. But when he went to get a bottle of water from the fridge, he saw Rita Mama’s swollen legs and thighs naked on the bed. It was a sickeningly painful sight, her legs separated like the legs of a compass, her nightgown lifted up above her thighs, her snoring uncontrollable and frightening.
60
Kamala knew she would die if she swallowed one more drop of acid. She knew she wanted to live for her son, Shiva.
Janu said she would not leave Kamala’s room as long as Kamala refused to eat. She stood there, stubborn as she had never been before, going above and beyond her duties as a maid until Kamala had to give in.
Mother and son had rice porridge with fried ivy gourd and pickles and papad sitting in his room. Kamala knew no taste. At times, she looked at him with an expression of disbelief, as if she were searching for her son in the forests of his overgrowth. ‘I will help you shave tomorrow,’ she said, somehow.
He knew her fingers didn’t have the strength even to hold the razor.
‘Aadi will come tomorrow,’ he said. He saw her quiver.
‘Good, now let us not send him anywhere,’ she said. Like a kid she repeated, ‘We will not send him away again.’
Kamala’s mother was laughing, listening to her blabber.
‘Why don’t you send him away, Kamala? Let him see the world and be exposed to its cruel ways, let him have a taste of the real life outside, eat the food of his choice, the chips and other munchies, help him fill up his backpack and let him go.’ Her mother pretended to be surprised. Kamala refused to look in her direction. She didn’t wish to push this further. She was tired of arguing with her. She knew they didn’t have an audience.
‘Amma, we should go and see a doctor when Aadi comes back, I had no idea you were so tired, you look unbelievably pale and weak.’
‘Yes, my dear.’ She bent forward to kiss him on his forehead. The smells of man, porridge and fried gourds mingled: she felt nauseated. She couldn’t hold on to anything any more. She heard her mother shout.
‘Kamala, stand straight. Don’t frighten the child with your silly drama, you shameless drama queen.’
She wanted to fuss over him, show him that she really cared for him, but she stepped away from him. At the threshold, she stopped. How could she go without kissing him? Again, she walked towards him. How long, it seemed like she would never cross the miles, hours, eras from the threshold to his bed. She embraced him like never before and smothered him with kisses till she thought she would collapse.
‘Sleep well, my darling. Tomorrow I will help you take a bath.’
In the night, looking into the open drawer of her night table, she said: ‘I must live for my son.’
When did her fingers scrabble around the insides of her tongue? When did the sand bowl stretch out in the room again? When did the seagulls start hovering above?
The singers walked away leaving the orphaned, dying figure in the desert. As usual, Kamala saw the building rising up from the desert. People came in to peek through the open window. Kamala dragged herself through the desert with an unbelievable energy. She was determined to see it, whatever it was. She sensed the distance getting shorter and her heart pounding faster—thud, thud, thud, each beat she could hear separately. She thought it was pygmies beating on their drums. Drawing the people aside, she looked in.
She saw an old woman lying supine on a bed in ruins. She was wearing a battered piece of cloth which could not be called a dress or a gown or anything meaningful. Loosened bags of skin remained where her once robust breasts had been. What was wrong with people? Why the hell were they staring? Kamala felt scared of the ogling humanity. Were they looking at the fleshless skeleton covered in naked wrinkles to make their swelling pricks calm down? She turned to look at the people with hatred. The people had the same look, the same smell and the same colour. Their eyes reflected the gestures of the old woman. Kamala couldn’t believe that woman was capable of making any gestures. She looked at her, lying on the bed. Her left arm, which seemed almost like a piece of rotting log, moved up and down, with the speed of a poor motor engine in dilapidated condition; shaking and vibrating excessively in between abrupt stops, engine stiff, disconnected, battery sulfated, contact weak. Her fingers were m
oving towards her grey triangle.
‘Oh God, what is this old hag doing?’
Kamala pressed her hand over her forehead; she wanted to cover her face. Her youth, that had known no ecstasies of making love, mocked her as she moved closer towards the window of shame. She tapped on the panes of the open window. She wanted the woman to stop whatever she was doing. She tapped louder, she wanted to call her, but a woman performing such an act in public could not be addressed as mother, or grandmother. Smelly crone! What a shame, she had no idea what was happening outside her window. Why the hell couldn’t she close the doors?
Standing under the yellow sun, in the desert, some of them talked about the flood. Kamala remembered Janu had not turned off the old black-and-white TV that was in the entrance hall. Kamala had seen the city of Chennai immersed in water before she stepped into her dry desert. She craned her neck to listen to the news. They were talking aloud, still standing under the scorching sun. They said that the flood had devoured the temples and mosques, human-built, and they saw a Brahmin crying aloud and lifting his hand from the topmost level of a skyscraper to the piece of bread a Dalit was throwing him from the sky. Imagine; imagine all the spaces made equal in flood. She couldn’t so she turned back to the old hag, to the ruined window choked with breath.
There were two boys at the window. Kamala shooed them away. The old woman turned her head at last, towards the window. Now Kamala could see her face. She shuddered.
Eyes
Nose
Eyebrows
Lips
Wrinkled forehead
Each of them was a grenade in a nutshell.
Grenades were blooming inside her brain.
Covering her face, waving her arms, making her voice louder than explosions, she frightened the people away. She stoned them and threw whatever else she could find at the running people. She didn’t want anyone to know that it was her. Yes, no one could know that the old woman was Kamala, she was particular about it.
Wearing Armani perfumes, clad in the purest silk clothes available and adorned with red glass bangles and a red bindi, Kamala looked at Shaly and smiled. ‘Class, that’s what we have to maintain while living.’
61
Suddenly, Shaly burst out laughing. She went on. As if she couldn’t stop; it seemed she was deeply hurt in her soul. It was hard for him to watch her laugh. Then, out of nowhere, she said, ‘I have this feeling that we have been taxing her too much, all of us, without exception, you don’t understand as you are still a child.’
‘I’m not a child any more, Shaly.’
Shaly laughed again. How long would the memories be silent? She remembered his face on the first day she saw him hiding behind the curtain of their dining room, looking at her with wonder and excitement, happy for her because she was happy, happy for his mother’s sparkling eyes, happy for the happiness of the moment. Memories came and went, every now and then like an old-fashioned bulb that dangled under a loose contact, flickering: on and off, off and on. She remembered the woman who lived like a fleeting dream, tender and fragile like the truth, who could not withstand even the simple woes of life. Like a lotus leaf she lived, and her children and all those who came close to her heart were like those unsteady water beads you may find on leaves: she didn’t take them in, instead she let them wander abandoned over her surface. And not finding a foothold they rambled, unsettled, in the constant fear of falling down into the water that was everything, the same water she was not afraid of. Kamala, the flower in the water.
‘So, tell me, did you miss Shiva?’ she asked.
‘Very badly.’
‘Yes, I know. I can imagine how excited he will be on your return. Poor thing, his brain must have transmogrified into a big clock right now, counting splits of seconds. Ha, ha.’
They laughed; all the same, they knew it was not that funny. After that, they were silent for a while. Then she asked without ceremony, ‘Would you like to have a mug of cold beer with me?’
He looked at her in surprise and said, ‘No.’
‘You are no longer a child now; you are a traveller, aren’t you? You have seen the world . . . Don’t you want to share a drink with me?’ she arched her brows mockingly.
‘No, I don’t think I want to do that. I don’t think I am going to touch booze in my life. The world I had seen even before my travels had taught me this.’
‘You have grown smart enough to answer back, it’s an improvement. I appreciate that, and I understand what you mean by the life you had seen. I’m sorry I asked you.’
‘You needn’t be sorry.’
‘Aadi, it’s very important, this real education—what you learn as you grow, what you read, what you see and what you experience. I grew up admiring the travels and happiness of gypsies, but I must tell you I have never seen a gypsy in my life, for they were never a part of our terrain and culture. It was the Bohemian dream I had as a girl—roaming around the world in groups, having no responsibility, indulging in everything, always in excess: music, dance, graffiti, love, sex, and it felt good. It felt good to think of wandering around with people with the same thoughts and interests, with— What do you call them? Like-minded people. Yes, that was the catchphrase at the time. Maybe, the gypsies won’t forgive me for the wrong notions I have had for so long, but baby, it really felt so good. There was no one to guide me to Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and Proust, or to the great Indian philosophy your mother has studied so well, or to ancient Chinese or Japanese literature and philosophy. It took me years to discover that Casanova was not just a seducer, but one of the greatest minds of the European Enlightenment. You learn all this if you decide to grow up and as you travel, and remember, you can travel a lot sitting inside your room, on your chair next to the table you love so much, with your favourite cup of coffee by your side. The body has limitations, it rots, but you have something wonderful within you and that’s what makes you truly remarkable. I hope you understand.’
She spoke with the grace of someone he had always wanted to see. But then she asked again, in a silly, villainous way, ‘Do you mind if I ask you one more time? Well, I hope you really don’t mind . . . can we have a glass of cold beer by the light of the candle you bought for me?’
‘No!’
‘With chèvre, talking about John Cheever.’
‘Hah! I said no, never, and I always mean what I say.’
‘Good,’ she tapped him on his shoulder. ‘I’m glad you are a man now, no longer just that good boy I used to know. My boy, I tell you, it’s not easy to withstand temptation.’
The next morning, as he was saying goodbye to Shaly and Rita Mama his eyes filled with tears.
‘Oh, so this is the man I was talking to last night.’ Shaly winked.
At that he started crying harder, holding her hands tighter, sobbing uncontrollably like a toddler, until Rita Mama asked him to stop. She went inside and returned with a small figurine of Mother Mary and asked him to keep it with him to ward off troubles on the way. He embraced Shaly one last time, and she said, though it was clear it was hard for her to do so: ‘No one is going anywhere, Aadi, all of us are here, Shiva, Kamala, Madhavan, me . . . And you won’t believe how small the world is, even if I tell you. It is true we are not living under the same roof, but what difference does that make? You take care, and take your mother to a doctor. That’s what matters now. Consider it your priority. If you need my help, don’t hesitate to give a ring. I’ll always be here for you. Give your phone to her and ask her to speak to me, force her in case she is not willing. Will you do that for me, Aadi?’
Aadi knew something was twisting into a rope inside him, but he managed to smile and nod. The gate still looked slightly wet and unbelievably pink. He opened it with the same cautious effort with which he had opened it the previous day. It was dry except for the clogged paint beads. He turned back to wave and listened to her call out from the entrance: ‘Don’t forget, it is always E = mc2.’
It was a simple equation, it said everything
was there in the universe, he and his family, nothing but infinitesimal fractions of particles. People, being simple and miserable, could not contain things as simple as them; otherwise, everything would have been much easier.
The memory of white hills didn’t trouble him these days. What he wanted was fresh air and cleanliness, something to match the purity he felt within. He awoke feeling peaceful, composed and glad his mother was going to give him a bath and his brother was returning. He was badly in need of a haircut and shave; he knew he looked like a girl with a long beard these days. There was a time he had fancied that he would look like a rock star if he could tie his hair into a ponytail with a piece of jute ribbon or hairband. But he was afraid he was getting lice, and was tired of scratching his scalp, neck and the backs of his ears, tired of living with parasites. He wanted a haircut and wanted it to be as short as possible. He waited, listening to the footsteps outside. He heard Janu’s father complain to her that he would need one more worker to help him clean the pond, as it was in full bloom. Her father talked about flowers as if he was talking about weeds or a heap of waste or fallen leaves he set fire to. Shiva thought he would like to have a large bouquet of lotus flowers in his room, just for the sake of looking at it.
The scent of familiarity must have startled him, for he awoke from his daydreams quivering and palpitating. He must have crossed the entrance gate without realizing it, and was now walking on the laterite footpath. He had panicked like this before, a long time ago, when he had played hide-and-seek with his brother, but that was a different sort of excitement altogether, naive, gullible.
Aadi looked into her room through the opening of the door. He saw her sleeping, but he couldn’t see her face as she was facing the window. He didn’t wish to disturb her, but stood there at her doorstep for a while, feeling sorry for her, and then went to Shiva’s room. Tears sprang to his eyes when he saw his brother, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He realized the extent of his anger towards his mother for the first time. He wanted to ask her why, but all the same, he wanted to overcome his emotions. Janu came in with a cup of coffee in her hands. She saw him crying. As she didn’t know how to console him, she simply said, ‘Amma is still sleeping. Do you want me to wake her up?’
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