Cold Feet

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  I finished one beer, ordered another and examined the beach. It was a Tuesday in non-high season, just about turning into March, so most of the tourists had gone, and the locals, tired out from a hectic couple of months of serving and catering, were also taking it easy. There was one family I could spot from my chair, two little kids, a mother, sunbathing and no sign of the father. To my right, was an older couple, maybe in their forties, who were engrossed in the Lonely Planet; and by the bamboo column that held up the tarpaulin roof of my beach shack, was a young girl, obviously the daughter or relative of the woman who ran the shack, dragging her toe through the sand.

  So far, so isolated.

  This was what I had wanted, after all, so I wasn’t complaining, but still, I had kind of hoped I’d be turning away company, ‘No, not today, darling, I really must walk along the beach at sunrise and think.’ I suppose it was a relief that I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone’s feelings by turning them down, but I still felt slightly disappointed.

  The mother was getting up and gathering her belongings slowly. She was wearing quite a nice blue-and-white kurta, and had a large white hat on her head. A posh hat. I saw her put her sunglasses on and call to her children as she walked towards my shack, which was the busiest, because there were three people there.

  ‘Hello!’ she called out and the girl by the bamboo pole looked up and smiled. ‘Hello!’ she said again, looking around at us, like we were all one big happy tour group. The older couple was polite, they smiled distractedly from above their Lonely Planet, but I busied myself with the cap of my beer. I was a Lone Wolf. I was not interested in other people. The mother didn’t seem to care. She sat down at the closest table facing the sea, which also happened to be the table right next to mine and looked around her appreciatively. The daughter of the shack owner came up sullenly with a menu, and just as sullenly laid it on the table. ‘Thank you!’ carolled the mother, and the girl would’ve rolled her eyes, I swear it, if she had been any other sort of teenager, but she smiled as little as she could, and when the mother looked at me and pointed and said, ‘That beer, please! Two!’

  The girl looked over at me, a long look, like ‘See how much I suffer’ and then sighed and went off inside. The children came scampering up to us. I saw it was a little boy and a little girl, the boy was the older one, and he sat down immediately, and said, ‘I want a juice.’

  ‘Then go and ask for a juice, darling,’ said the mother, comfortably. The little girl did a mass wave, like her mother, and called, ‘Hello!’ This seemed to charm the older couple more than her mother’s hello had done, so they actually waved back at her.

  I busied myself looking through the blank pages of my notebook. I couldn’t really tell where they were from, not from their unaccented English, and they were about as brown as I was. Indian, I thought, but maybe based abroad.

  ‘I want Daddy,’ said the little girl, pulling herself up on the chair next to her mother.

  ‘He’s gone for a nice long swim, darling, but he’ll be back soon. Why don’t you go find some shells for him?’

  ‘Don’t want shells,’ said the little girl, smelling the salt shaker.

  ‘Now, don’t do that, darling, other people don’t want your grubby little fingers all over everything. Go find your brother and ask him to get you a juice.’ As if on cue, the little boy came back and flung himself into a chair.

  ‘They’re out of pineapple,’ he said, sulkily.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said his mother.

  I admired her laidback attitude to parenting, so easy-going, so calm, so, actually, unlike most Indian parents, which is what made me think they were based abroad.

  ‘I got a mango instead,’ he said.

  ‘I want a mango!’ said the little girl.

  ‘You don’t like mango,’ said her brother.

  ‘Yes, I do!’ her lower lip begun to stick out and I thought, ‘Here we go’ but the mother said, ‘No, you don’t. Go get a watermelon or something.’ And all the while, she put on sticky lipgloss.

  And then, out of the sea, like a scene straight out of Baywatch, emerged the father and patriarch to this brood, who was, I noted, quite fit for someone who had two children. And then I mentally slapped myself on the wrist for having dirty thoughts about someone’s dad. Even if the dad looked like he was about my age.

  ‘Hello!’ he called, goodness, it was a family of hello-ers, and the mother called back to him.

  Once, I’d seen a video online about the mating call of the loon, a bird found in North America. They cry to each other during mating season and it’s a weird sound. It begins low and gets squawky and I imagine if you’re not expecting it, it can be disconcerting. Not that this family was squawking, per se, but I decided to call them the ‘Loons’ in my head. It amuses me, when I’m by myself, to have nicknames for people. I like doing that, having private moments with myself like an in joke, just for me. I’m a private person and I enjoy my own company. It’s not so weird. Sure, there are times when people, my friends, look at me and think how strange I am, or say how strange I am, but I don’t see what’s stranger about that than texting someone at a dinner table, or only eating vegetarian food.

  ‘Good swim, darling?’ asked Mrs Loon, handing a beer and a towel to the mister. He managed to take a sip and dry off with the same motion, which I thought was kind of cool.

  ‘Brilliant,’ he said, but I got the feeling he said ‘brilliant’ about every experience and ‘delicious’ about every meal.

  Some people are like that, but it’s nice when they really, truly mean it. She held up her face for a kiss, which he did with aplomb, and then sat down. Instantly, Girl Loon was there, crawling into his lap and saying, ‘Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.’ Like Mrs Loon, Mr Loon was also a no-fuss parent, and he patted her back, absentmindedly, while telling his wife how good the beer was, how cold the water was, how hot the sand was.

  I don’t know why I was paying such close attention to them, maybe because it was easier than thinking about my own problems? Maybe because my notebook wasn’t really very entertaining as far as entertainments go, and having them there was like reality TV? They weren’t doing anything very exciting, but they allowed me to tune out of my life and tune into theirs, which the older couple certainly didn’t. Them and their stupid Lonely Planet. I was getting attached to my loons, drinking my third beer now, and they even inspired me to order a grilled fish, like they were having.

  ‘Cool!’ said Boy Loon, holding up his fish carcass, ‘Bones!’

  ‘Darling, don’t do that,’ said Mrs Loon, who was looking slightly ill.

  Mr Loon must’ve noticed as well, because he said, quite sharply, ‘Jeffery! Put that away!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Boy Loon replaced the fish and looked annoyed. ‘Sheesh.’

  Mrs Loon stood up, a little unsteadily and said, ‘I don’t feel very hungry any more, why don’t I take Tiara and we’ll go back to the house? You boys can follow us when you’re done.’

  I thought maybe she was pregnant, but then I remembered the beers she had, two to my three, so maybe it was just a case of the stomach flu. Mr Loon didn’t look too worried, he just nodded at her and extracted Girl Loon from under his arm, where she had been curled up, playing with the hair on his arm. It was quite a hairy arm. I admired him for being able to eat like that. As she was leaving, Mrs Loon tossed, over her shoulder, ‘Remember about the thing tonight!’ and Mr Loon smiled and tapped the side of his nose.

  Then, all was quiet for a while, and I contemplated getting up and going back to my very basic, very cheap hotel for a nap. It was cheap, but at least the sheets were clean, even if the bathroom had to be shared. The trouble was, I had had the right amount of drink, just enough to make your knees feel like they’re not capable of holding you up any more. I would have to wait till it passed. The Loons got up to leave, and as they were passing, Mr Loon stopped by the older couple and spoke to them in a low voice. They tore themselves away from their Lonely Planet for five seconds, listened, nodded,
smiled politely and then went back to reading. I caught sight of Mr Loon’s face as he turned away, it looked kind of helpless, like the face of someone who needs you to want what they want for you, but you don’t, and this makes them very disappointed. My parents get this face a lot. Boy Loon caught hold of his hand, swinging on it, and then Mr Loon looked down at him, ruffled his hair and the two of them walked right up to me.

  ‘This is going to sound crazy,’ began Mr Loon, ‘but it’s my birthday today.’

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I said, putting on my best I’m-Not-Surprised-By-Anything face.

  ‘Thank you. And anyway, every year on my birthday, I, we, like to travel. It’s a nice time of the year to explore the world, you know? And the kids are young enough, we like to expose them to different things …’

  ‘Dad.’ Boy Loon rolled his eyes.

  ‘Sorry. I go off track. My name is Michael.’

  ‘Ladli,’ I said, politely, sticking out my hand to shake, noticing that my hand was shaking quite a bit already.

  ‘Right. Ladli. So, I have a birthday party each year, wherever we are, and the guests are whomever we happen to meet. We’ve met a lot of people like that! And it’s always been a good party!’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘So, we’d love it if you dropped by. It’s a house, a bungalow thing that we have rented, nicer to have a house than a hotel, don’t you think? The kids have space, we can cook our own food when we like.’

  ‘Can we go-hooo?’ Boy Loon was losing patience.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, buddy. Okay, so here’s the address.’ He handed me a piece of paper. ‘Any time after seven is good, in fact, the earlier you get there, the better. And, yes! Hope to see you there!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, folding up the piece of paper. Halves. Thirds. Eighths. ‘I’ll be there.’ And I wanted to. I wanted to be absorbed by this strange family who had a birthday party with perfect strangers.

  ‘Great! See you then, Ladli.’

  I absolutely adore people who get my name right on their first try.

  8

  A Siren Sparkling

  I am dressing to meet you. We’re meeting ‘officially’, for the ‘first time’, and I’m not sure you will recognize me. Why would you? You haven’t been thinking about me like I’ve been thinking about you. But I hope that maybe a glimmer will flash through your brain and you’ll extend your hand, and raise one eyebrow and ask, ‘We’ve met before?’ and it will be up to me to say yes or no. That will be the very last minute of power I have over you, otherwise, as things are, the balance of power is heavily and decidedly on your side. Because I already love you and you don’t even know me.

  ‘It isn’t possible to love someone you’ve never met,’ says my brother, on Skype.

  We’re not talking about you, I would never discuss you with anyone except you—another point you must give me when you make a list of the reasons you should be with me. We’re talking about a girl who likes my brother, like really likes my brother and has shown him what I think are charming tokens of affection. Cookies dropped off at his dorm room door. A carnation at his chosen desk in the classroom. Sometimes, when he goes to buy coffee at his usual place, at his usual time, the barista will tell him that it’s been ‘taken care of’.

  ‘That’s sweet,’ I tell him, but there’s more, he says. Friday night was a karaoke do at their college-patronized bar. She got up and sang I Love You, Always, Forever, a song from the 1990s that practically no one remembers, even if they grew up in the 1990s, which my brother barely did. ‘And,’ he wails, across continents into my computer, ‘she replaced the words “blue eyes” with “brown eyes” and pointed at me and everyone laughed!’

  I myself resist the urge to laugh. I love my brother, but he takes things very seriously. ‘Why don’t you just ask her out?’ I ask. ‘She seems nice.’ She seems the kind of girl I’d like for a sister-in-law is what I’m thinking; the Indian in me has already jumped five stages ahead, but my brother is only twenty-one and marriage is very far from his mind.

  ‘She’s not my type, didi? I don’t know, she’s sweet, but she’s so … desperate.’

  I want to reach through the computer then, smack him on the head and go and find this girl and give her a hug, buy her some coffee for a change and tell her men are idiots, and she is wonderful and special and spectacular in every way. I empathize with her far more than I do with my brother. She is me in this situation, and you are my brother, kind of, except that, unlike her, I don’t have the courage to give you tokens indicating how I feel.

  ‘I think it’s possible,’ I tell him, hoping to pour some amount of feeling into him. ‘I think it’s very possible to be madly, deeply in love with someone you’ve only observed from a distance. Maybe even more so then! You’re not face to face with all their annoying habits every day, you only know the bits you can see from where you are.’

  He rolls his eyes at me. ‘Love is when you know someone well,’ is all he will contribute to this conversation, and then he looks up and away from the screen and then back at me, grinning a leftover smile from someone else and says, ‘Okay, didi, I gotta go, talk soon, yeah?’ His Americanisms are another thing I find hugely annoying about him. Do you have siblings? Do you love them and hate them and sometimes want to inhabit their bodies so you can make their decisions for them?

  And then, as I’m thinking that, I’m thinking maybe my brother is right, and maybe I could only properly be in love with you if I knew whether you had a sister, or what your favourite colour is, or whether you, like me, hate ketchup. Relationships are built on much less, but I love you because—well—does there have to be a reason? If I were my parents, the answer would be yes. I came out to them a little while after Aditi and I ended things, a little while before I moved here. My poor mother, her dreams of a perfect wedding shattered, my father wondering out loud—it’s horrible when people wonder things about you out loud, don’t you think?—whether this was in some way his fault because he had had to travel so much when I was little.

  ‘It’s not about fault,’ I told him, exasperatedly, ‘It’s just a feeling. I feel a certain way about girls. That’s really all there is to it.’

  ‘Al-always?’ stammered my mother, tears streaming down her face.

  They were literally streaming. I cannot make this up. ‘I like girls!’ I said, wanting to cry a little bit myself. ‘I’m gay!’ That’s the first time I had ever said those words out loud, and they sounded loud and heavy in the room, and they settled with a thunk on the coffee table. And all the while, I was thinking to myself, ‘I’m gay! Yay! I’m gay!’ I even wondered if I was a little drunk. I felt so disconnected from myself at that moment, like I was watching me watching my parents. All I could think about was how good it felt to put the words out there, such a relief, like when you have a bruise and you know not to poke it but then you do, and it feels horrible and yet oddly titillating at the same time.

  My mother wrung her hands, my father paced. ‘Now what?’ he asked after a while, like I had a plan. Hey, guys, I’m gay, and now I’m going to take over the world! But I love them, so I explained patiently that I didn’t know ‘now what’ any more than they did. All the information I currently had, I had just shared with them.

  ‘Have you been with any girls?’ asked my mother, hoping that I’d say no, so she could brush this off as ‘just a phase’ like when they found the half-smoked joint in my brother’s room. And I think that was the part that broke my heart the most. I had to tell them about Aditi and me, and I had to tell them that what they thought was a close loving relationship ‘like sisters’ was in fact, me living for several years with my lover. At least they had the close loving relationship bit right. I could tell they really, really didn’t want to hear it, any more than I wanted to tell them, and when I did, there was this deep, brooding silence that lasted a while.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, trying to be jovial. ‘At least you don’t have to worry about me getting pregnant!’ It didn’t work. I was ‘sent to
my room’, and I stayed there, lurking, avoiding eye contact till it was time to leave. It wasn’t hard. They have a large house and it’s easy to avoid people once you get into the habit. I hope when you tell your parents about us, that they will have the maturity to deal with it.

  Today, I am dancing around my room, holding up one top against myself and then another. I haven’t been in such a good mood for a long time, and I blame it all on you. I have just about decided to swap jeans and a low-cut top for a dress, with a collar and silhouette that makes my waist look really tiny—like magic—when Fazia pops her head in and says that Aunty B wants me to come to the living room and chat with her before I leave. This alone is a reason for me to find my own flat as soon as I can, so I could have spent my evening with my stomach comfortably knotting in anticipation, dreaming about you, and instead I’ve been summoned by an old Bollywood has-been, because she doesn’t have any company that night. I would move out, I really would, but this is the little compromise I have offered my parents. A safe place where they think they can keep an eye on me, via Aunty B. It’s such a little thing, my living arrangements, and it doesn’t really mean anything to me. I have been in this city for nine months, and this is one of the first times I will be out after 10 p.m.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ says Aunty B. She’s well on her way to drunkenness, the Scotch has been decanted; the ice cubes are a melted memory in her tumbler. I hate people who call me ‘dear’. ‘Going out?’ she asks next, waving me over so she can examine me in the lamplight. I nod. It’s best not to engage with her at cocktail hour as I’ve found out through experience. Many, many nights of politely trying to hide my yawns while she talks about her film career and how everyone in Bollywood now is ‘rubbish’. ‘You bought this dress here?’ she asks, fingering the hem. I shake my head. ‘Hmm. Well, the quality of the fabric is nice,’ implying that was all that was going for it and then, right on cue, ‘I used to have the most marvellous clothes.’ This is where I would normally offer an encouraging nod, but today all of me is only thinking about how soon I can see you, so I just stand there, paralysed. She’s surprised. She’s so used to me playing the audience. ‘I had a dress just that colour,’ she says, taking a sip of her drink, looking up at me coquettishly and waiting for me to take the bait. I refuse, picking at some imaginary lint instead. ‘It had these earrings that were just too much.’ I wonder how long she’ll talk if I don’t respond. She raises one thin hand to the nape of her neck, her eyes on me, ‘I still have them somewhere. Fazia!’ When Fazia enters, she is ordered to get the blue jewellery box from the green cupboard. These are routine instructions, and again, I cannot make this up. Often, I hear her calling, ‘Fazia! My eyeglasses are on the yellow table, on the brown tray. No, no, the brown tray!’ The whole house seems to be colour coded. I am, joy of joys, in the pink bedroom.