Acid
Page 36
‘No, please don’t. Let her sleep, she must be very tired.’
He was at a loss, for he had no idea where to begin. He looked at the scissors and nail cutter he had taken out of his bag in dismay. He closed his eyes for a while, as if he were praying, before he started cutting his brother’s womanish hair: the long, black abundance. Then he cut his nails short and flat. As he wheeled him to the bathroom he asked Janu for a change of bed sheets and pillowcases, insisting that they be really clean. It was only inside the bathroom, while he was helping him change his clothes, that he noticed the pink-brown patches of sores on his brother’s back. He let out a furious cry and thought he was about to break down, horrified by this sight he had never wanted to even imagine. He stood there rubbing his brother’s shoulder between his thumb and forefinger, pressing his hands against his palms, listening to the running water. They had grown up inside the same water in her womb, the flesh of his flesh of her flesh. Aadi sobbed as he cleaned Shiva’s wounds, the backs of his ears, his buttocks. He couldn’t understand what had gone wrong in the house during his absence. He had been happy with Shaly’s updates about his mother going to supervise the finishing touches in their flat in Kadavanthra. But after that—what?
Becoming aware of Kamala’s unblinking gaze on Shiva then, Aadi wanted to smile, but fresh tears choked him in horror at seeing his mother. This was not his mother; she looked paler and more bloodless than a fleeting spectre that hovers in dreams at times. It seemed she had not recognized Aadi’s presence, for she was staring at Shiva with gratitude and amazement, deep down from the bottom of her heart. She knew Shiva was safe in the hands of his brother.
Janu was in no way better off, she too was crying inside the kitchen. She felt she had never been so happy in this house before, that she was filled with a sense of obligation even towards the vegetables on the tray, the bitter gourds, ash gourds, pumpkins and the drumsticks. She started slicing the ash gourds with the avidity of someone reading a new chapter in a novel. For the first time, she knew exactly what to make. Aadi realized there was no need to ask his mother’s permission to fix an appointment with the doctor. He came to the kitchen when Janu was still busy attending to something on the stove, and asked her to arrange for a taxi by five in the afternoon.
‘Let me finish this and I’ll go and get the taxi man.’
‘Ask him to come by five.’
‘How was your trip? It’s a silly world we are living in, isn’t it?’ Kamala asked him as she walked towards the dining table, leaning against his shoulder.
‘It was exciting,’ he said, in between shuddering breaths.
‘I’m glad you didn’t find it insane,’ she said.
‘I’m glad it’s all over and I’m back,’ he said.
She sat down, clutching the side of her chair while they ate. It was a picturesque sight, the mother at the head of the table and her sons on either side, except for the lack of vigour.
‘I wish Shaly were here, I miss her,’ Aadi said.
Kamala listened to him as if she was listening to something remote and faraway, and Shiva dropped a spoon on the floor as if by mistake. It was essential they remain happy, preserve the beauty of the moment, and capture whatever they found beautiful, even if it was a smile or a kind word. It could even be a thought. And hence, uncovering the dishes one by one, he laughed, ‘Look at Janu, she has gone nuts. Look at all this food. From where did she get time today?’
They saw Janu blushing in the corner of the room. They all laughed.
But Kamala didn’t feel like eating anything, even though she had a strong acidic burning inside her stomach. She watched her children eating with a sense of well-being.
Janu was very quick at changing the sheets and cleaning the room. She wanted to finish before Kamala returned from the dining room. But her eyes welled up when she noticed the dampness of pee on the sheets. She saw the scorched and wilted leaves of the money plant with yellowing veins inside the whisky bottle on the windowsill. The little water that remained in it had a very unpleasant and unhealthy stench. She removed the diseased plant from the bottle and threw it outside through the open window. Then she flushed the water and the rest of the contents of the bottle down the toilet and cleaned it with a bottle cleaner. She filled the bottle again with fresh water and placed a bouquet of lotus flowers inside it and kept it back on the windowsill where it belonged. She burnt camphor in a small mud pot and kept it in a corner of the room, right on top of the granite structure Kamala would sit on during her trips. When Kamala and her children had finished eating, she cleaned the table and took a tray of food for herself and her father and walked towards the kitchen veranda.
Kamala walked back to her room, leaning against Aadi’s shoulder. She was surprised to see her room looking neat and tidy, with pleasant scents. She wanted to show how happy she was. She asked him to bring Shiva; in a way, bring everything that was hers.
Aadi wheeled Shiva in.
‘Sit here by my side,’ she said.
It was a small bed compared to theirs; there was hardly any room for the three of them. She was tired and so she had to lie down, but she didn’t let her children leave. She asked them to lie down beside her. Aadi helped Shiva stretch out beside her, and somehow he too squeezed in.
‘I love you,’ she said.
She wrapped her arms around them and pressed her hands tightly over them. They offered no resistance. Aadi remembered lying in the same way a long time ago, in the same old house. She never let them go out and play in the afternoons; instead, she would make them lie down on either side of her and hold them so tight that they could not run away. Shiva would be grumpy, but she paid no attention. Aadi on the other hand, would lie calmly, holding onto her body and looking at the khus-khus curtains they had had on the windows, the curtains that emitted the scent of coolness, the breeze. He wondered where those curtains were now.
The mother started growing cold long after her children were fast asleep. But even in their sleep, the heat of their tender bodies embraced her tightly, not allowing her to grow cold.
* A ritual dance performance presented during the night as an offering to the incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
Acknowledgements
My thanks most of all to my friend Sachu Thomas for his assistance, his correspondence, his patience—for everything.
My heartfelt thanks to Rajni George for showing great interest in this novel since first seeing it in manuscript form a year ago and being an invaluable supporter at every stage.
I want to give robust thanks to my inspired editor Ambar Sahil Chatterjee for his sensitive suggestions to do with the making of this book.
In preparing this English translation I have had the benefit of a patient and perceptive editor in Shatarupa Ghoshal. I can’t thank her enough for her support.
And, as always, my endless thanks (and eternal admiration) to Veenapani Chawla, my guiding spirit.
I would like to acknowledge material and inspiration drawn from a variety of sources: Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol by Sri Aurobindo; The Tenth Head written by Vinay Kumar K.J. and directed by Veenapani Chawla; On Love by Stendhal, translated by Philip Sidney Woolf and Cecil N. Sidney Woolf; Molière by Ariane Mnouchkine (1978); ‘L’invitation au voyage’ by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Arthur Symons; ‘Fern Hill’ by Dylan Thomas; ‘Spring and Fall’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins; ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ by Oscar Wilde; ‘Latent Homosexuality in Malayalam Literature and Kerala Society’ by P.A. Shan; and lines from Frère Jacques, Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma and Oorali.
Also, I would like to extend my gratitude to Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts and Research, and Kalarigram, Puducherry.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2018
Copyright © Sangeetha Sreenivasan 2016, 2018
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ISBN: 978-0-670-09091-4
This digital edition published in 2018.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05157-0
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