He was beautiful to watch. His movements were deft, and his calculations and execution were skilled and precise as if he was an engineer or an architect, not the odd-job man of a convent school. We could see he took pride in performing the task in hand well. He was, as always, clean-shaven and his hair was neatly cut. And while his clothes were plain – a collared blue shirt and dark workman’s trousers tucked into work boots – they were fresh and pressed and fitted his strong frame well. He took pride, we could also see, in his appearance. When he had finished the cardboard cut-outs, he walked around the house, entering every room, closing the curtains, pegging each tightly. When he was finished, he walked over to where we had stood, the three of us, motionless, watching him.
‘This is very kind of you, Jonah.’ My mother’s voice was soft. ‘Thank you.’
I think he said, don’t worry, I’ll come every day if you want me to, but I’m not sure. All I can remember is how they stayed like that for some time, facing each other, and how I watched them both.
‘Sissy,’ he suddenly spoke to me without turning his gaze from my mother, ‘don’t open the curtains. Not until the morning.’
‘I won’t,’ I piped up.
‘Not even to wave goodbye,’ he said, looking at me now, and then grinned. So he knew I always watched him ride away. I blushed, but returned his smile.
‘Jonah, I’ll give you some money for your time and the materials . . .’
He shook his head, but my mother turned and walked to the sideboard, and as she walked away I saw his eyes move over her again, before he seemed to wrench them away as he turned to me. ‘How is school?’
‘Fine.’
‘Study hard, Sissy.’
Then he reached into his pocket again and held out the key of my father’s car. When I had grasped it, he did not let go immediately, but tick-tocked the index finger of his other hand from right to left. I gripped the key tightly.
‘I will,’ I said. ‘And how are you, Jonah?’
‘Well, Sissy, well.’
Then, to my delight, he reached forward and tugged at one of my plaits, in the exact same way that my mother did; perhaps he had seen her do so. He gave me another small smile, and then my mother was standing in front of him offering a collection of notes.
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘I did not come for this.’ He opened the door, caught my eye again before the door closed and he was gone.
There was a silence; it was just the three of us again. I put my hands behind my back so my mother would not see the car key in my fist, but when she turned to look at me she fixed her eyes on mine, and did not waver.
‘I didn’t want Papa to go, Sissy.’ Her voice was icy but her eyes were hot. ‘He decided to, not me. And, yes, I’m angry with him and I know you are too.’ Her eyes flashed at me, challenging me to deny what she had said and I gulped. ‘But don’t take it out on me, just because I’m the one who is here.’ Then she gestured around her. ‘This is hard for me. But I’m not going to disappear.’
The sole light glowed dully. We would be alone with the dark for hours ahead. I said nothing. All I felt was a gnawing fear in my heart, at the word she had used – disappear – at the anger I could see brimming beneath her skin, but also the cold resolve in her voice. She might have wanted to continue, but she didn’t, choosing silence over explanations as she would do for the rest of her life. We spent the evening getting ready for bed, as if the rituals of mindlessly eating, washing up, washing ourselves, were enough to alleviate a life without any cultural pursuit to cultivate or any beauty to behold, any sound to soothe or image to enjoy. The little house was a boat suspended in a lake of darkness, its occupants floating on its waves, the gentle wind outside stirring its sails.
Part Three
10
I FINALLY returned to India, to Delhi, to attend a conference, ‘Translation in a Technological World: New Developments and Challenges’. The opportunity was the first of three to present themselves to me – all within twenty-two months of each other – to reconnect with my past. This first emerged without any warning. I was teaching a class at NYU on translation theory, supplementing my meagre stipend with translations for commercial catalogues and interviews for fashion magazines, finding that after a relative flurry of requests to translate literary texts – three novels in quick succession – the work had dried up. A colleague rang to say that a professor in the department who had been due to attend the conference had dropped out on account of illness, and the organisers had asked if someone could step in. Could I knock up a quick paper? The department knew of my India connection, deemed me therefore suitable for such a last-minute venture, and were happy to fund my flight and conference fee if I would pay for my own accommodation. I found a cheap hotel in the area of the city near the train station, Paharganj, described as ‘perfectly decent’ in my guidebook and a snip at 500 rupees a night; at that time, approximately seven dollars. My mother, when I had called her to let her know I was going to India the following week to a conference, only said: I’ve never been to Delhi. Neither of us mentioned that the trip would be a homecoming; we only discussed how our plans for my visit back to Philadelphia would have to be rejigged for the following month.
It didn’t feel like a homecoming, although I had a sudden, surprising lump in my throat as we descended into Delhi. The airport looked nothing like the tiny shack where we had always landed in Cochin, to be met by Monuchayan. And outside, waiting for a taxi, the air was not thick and moist like a warm, wet towel, but hot and dry. I heard no Malayalam, or at least I did not pick out any from the cacophony of voices surrounding me. The taxi-driver into the city kept meeting my eyes in the rear-view mirror, until he asked, speak Hindi? I shook my head, although, as a true linguist would, I had crammed up the previous week and now had a passable knowledge of basic phrases and numbers. My response provided the death knell to any further conversation and we proceeded in silence. As we drove past the grand hotels and boulevards, and skirted around Connaught Place, I was thinking how dissimilar the capital was to the chaos of Ernakulam, which to my memory had looked half-made and badly made by turns, until we swerved into the road leading to Old Delhi, into a familiar vista of shabby stalls and unremitting traffic, human and animal jostling against each other.
The hotel was neat enough, and comfortable enough, staffed, it appeared, entirely by men, and the stares I attracted were disconcerting. While I filled in the police registration form I felt the eyes of the young receptionist on me in a piercing gaze. After suffering his scrutiny for many minutes, I raised my head and gave him a weak smile, which he then returned with an astonishing, sudden brilliance, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. Perhaps, I thought, he had not been appraising the scar that veiled half my face, but was simply curious about a woman in rumpled clothes, travelling on her own.
In the evening I wandered through the stalls of Paharganj, fingering the blouses and trousers and kameezes – madam, this way, madam, good price – and bought myself a shawl, for the night had grown chilly. I slung it around me and continued meandering, braving the blatant curiosity; at least, I thought, I was not invisible. I marvelled at the familiar – the dust on my toes, the colours and the clothes, the smells of cooking, the stalls where hot, sweet milky tea was served in steel cups, the tailor with his sewing machine in full view of the street – and the unfamiliar – I understood hardly any of the language, the children on the street seemed plentiful, pitiful and unsupervised. There were several groups of well-dressed, well-heeled young people with modern swinging haircuts, trendier and cooler than any I had seen in Kerala, who must have been visiting from more affluent areas of the city, and who were regarding their environs with as much ethnographic interest as I was. All these sights and sounds swilled around in my no-doubt jetlagaddled brain, so that when I found my way back to the hotel and lay on the bed, I wept for many minutes, perhaps even an hour, surprising myself at the quantity of tears I could produce, soaking the pillow. Wept at the sheer
strangeness of being back in India, but not where I knew, and not as I had been; not a smooth-faced young girl but a young woman who felt rudderless and adrift.
I hadn’t seen my father for eighteen years. My mother had been married to my stepfather for longer than she had been to my father. I was thirty years old and, until a few months previous had been in a relationship I thought would last for ever, but which had since gone awry. I seemed always to be working, yet I paid my bills with difficulty. I had moved back to Bed-Stuy, having given up the lease of an apartment near Central Park, one I could not afford now that I was living alone again. I was back on Nostrand Avenue, which I still felt great affection for. But the neighbourhood had become more expensive and the return was a reminder of how little my circumstances had changed materially since my early twenties. I had no idea what the rest of my life would be like, but I knew I wanted it to be different. My scar had faded a fraction over the last few years but I had long stopped hoping that, just like the colour of a flower’s petals can alter with a variance in the acidity of the soil, one day, by some trick of hormonal changes or by some strange concoction in the air, I would wake up and the veil across my face would have been drawn back, my skin would have resumed its original hue to match the rest of my face, my eye fully healed.
After wallowing all night in my thoughts, I was glad the next morning to find my way to the conference venue on the outskirts of the city. To be reminded that I was not purposeless, that I was educated, had a profession and a reason to have taken myself across the ocean. That my trip had been paid for because someone had thought of me as a deserving recipient. In the first coffee break I got talking to another woman of my age, Prithi, who was originally from Delhi but was now living in Bombay, and who worked as a translator in the film industry. We gelled immediately and kept each other company over the next three days. I appreciated her confidence and enjoyed her irreverent humour.
And then, on the fourth day, I absconded; woke up that morning and decided that I would not go to the conference. I had already given my paper to a group of fifteen unenthusiastic delegates. The experience had been rather deflating, but I knew that was not the reason for my sudden disinterest. I felt that I was being untrue to myself, by being in India and not conceding to this significance. I ordered room service for breakfast. I was reluctant to descend to the soulless, airless dining room, to drink a cup of ‘English’ tea under the eyes of a swarm of over-attentive waiters. I ate my toast and slurped my tea while lying in bed, the television I had ignored until now tuned in to a soap opera.
It was after I had lazed in this way for a couple of hours that I began to feel restless. The hotel room did not assuage my disappointment of myself, and so I dressed, threw my shawl around me. I would wander around the shops on Connaught Place.
The sun was out, and there was a bustle. Surrounded by young couples, families and tourists, I walked past shops selling Levi’s, saris and jewellery, a McDonald’s, takeaway kiosks offering masala dosa, cheese sandwiches and pakora. I could pretend I was on vacation. I loitered on the pavements, enjoying the snatches of conversations in English that I could understand. And then, on advice from my guidebook, I approached an autorickshaw driver who was parked in a rank, cleaning his wing mirror, and asked him to take me to Humayun’s tomb. He was a Sikh, with an impressive maroon-coloured turban and extravagant moustache. He accepted the fare I suggested without any haggling and my appearance with a refreshing equanimity – perhaps he had seen much worse – just a slight inclination of the head and gentle smile. And then, as if he offered entertainment as part of the service, as we buzzed through the streets he started singing – a Hindi love song. Neither the noise from the autorickshaw’s engine nor the traffic that sped around us failed to drown him out. He sang with great feeling, beating time on the steering wheel, pausing at significant moments, in a voice that was deep and melodious. And I was transported; I was the heroine of a story being driven to meet her lover. We arrived at the tomb, and the driver slowed down so that when he stopped and turned off the engine it coincided with the end of the song. Perfect timing. He turned around, grinning, and I smiled back, my spirits revived.
Large manicured gardens, surrounded by trees. Beyond, the elegant red stone building and white dome. I turned off the path leading to the tomb, found a quiet spot on the grass. Others had come for the same respite; when the emperor’s Begum built a mausoleum for her husband, she would not have known what a haven it would offer from the sprawling city that Delhi was to become. Among those tranquil surroundings – the beautiful Persian symbol of the love between a husband and wife before me – I mulled over what I had been thinking when I had agreed, so easily, to come to India, after so many years. There was no reason that I should not have made this journey five, ten years ago; instead someone else had presented me with the opportunity. And what had I learned so far? That it was a vast, diverse country; that this city, and the people in it, bore little resemblance to the river and the lakes in which my mother had swum, in which I myself had swum with her, all those years ago, the coconut trees swaying around us, with my father watching us from the bank. If I indeed wanted a homecoming, I would have to make another journey, further south.
I got to my feet, walked up to the tomb, and climbed the steps to the terrace. There was hardly any noise here. The city could have vanished, and apart from myself there was only one other person: a woman in a green sari, bent over at the waist, sweeping the inner room with a bamboo brush. I stood still, absorbing the serenity, appreciating the elegance of the ornate window cut out of the stone. The vista was scrubland; the smog above the city hung not far away. When I turned around, I saw the woman was watching me, her eyes softening when she saw my face.
Then she pointed and said, Mecca. Humayun head, Mecca.
I smiled and nodded, and she smiled in return – a smile of very large teeth with a prominent overbite. We held this position for a few moments and then she returned to her brush. I left the tomb, walked back through the gardens where three young men were sprawled on the grass. When they saw me, one sat up and waved, and then, as if galvanised by his friend’s actions, another blew a kiss while his friends hooted with laughter.
I returned to the hotel – in pensive mood, but feeling I had made the correct decision to have missed the day at the conference – where the young receptionist said: the lady left a message, madam.
It read: Where the hell have you been? I’m coming back at six. Dress nicely, I’m taking you to see some friends. Prithi.
And when she arrived, punctually, and found me waiting for her downstairs, she said: what happened? I thought you were eaten by wolves or something. Then: what on earth are you wearing? You look terrible.
I had chosen to dress in a salwar kameez that I had bought an hour earlier from a stall, filled with nerves over the prospect of meeting Prithi’s friends. Not wanting to attract attention to myself, not wanting to be the outsider. But I agreed that the outfit swamped me, the colours clashed with my already two-toned face, the salwar was heavy and I had no idea how to arrange it over myself. Around my neck? Draped over one shoulder? In the end I had twisted it around my chest like a straitjacket.
Those jeans you were wearing the other day and that black sleeveless top? Prithi said. Go and change, I’ll wait here for you.
I laughed to myself as I climbed obediently back up the stairs to my room. I was not offended; I only felt an affection for my new friend. I changed, brushed my hair out from its bun and swapped my earrings.
When I descended, she said: that’s better. Followed by: what were you thinking?
Trying to fit in I guess, I muttered. And I’m a bit nervous, truth be told, about meeting your friends.
This, she flapped her hand in my face. Don’t think about it, Sissy. Don’t think about this.
But it was a glamorous gathering, as I had suspected, and she had made me wear the exactly right clothes. The whole party – two young married couples, two other single women and a single
man – the whole party wore studiedly casual jeans with shirts or blouses or kurtas which could not have been anything but designer-made, were all glossy-haired and had dazzling smiles, spoke mostly in rapid English with only the very occasional dip into Hindi. They were welcoming and interesting, and I enjoyed watching and listening to them, surprised at the quantity of beer and whisky everyone drank as we munched on plates and plates of pakora and samosas that one of the women kept bringing in from her kitchen. The apartment was modern and modishly East-meets-West. The colony, it appeared, was much sought after, with a shopping mall close by, and for most of the gathering, aside from Prithi and the single man, only a short drive away from their work.
You’re an American, aren’t you? the man said. Aren’t you supposed to be loud and brash or whatever?
He was at my feet, literally, sprawled out on the rug while I sat in a low chair above him.
I sipped my beer. I don’t think of myself as an American, I said, maybe a New Yorker. But I suppose I am. I’ve lived there most of my life.
Don’t be rude to Sissy, Ashu, Prithi called out from across the room, quite drunk by now. She’s adorable. She’s an Italian translator and she’s a Keralite, you know.
Kerala? I’ve never been, he said. Do you go back often?
I could have lied, but perhaps because of my earlier disdain for shirking from the truth, I answered: not for many, many years. My parents divorced, and my mother’s family really disapproved. They’re Catholic, you can guess how badly that went down. She hasn’t seen them since.
He raised his eyebrows. And your father?
My long-lost father, George Olikara, I said, raising my beer bottle in salute, and I furnished him with the few details I had relayed to many people, on many occasions.
The Wild Wind Page 11