Acid Read online

  SANGEETHA SREENIVASAN

  acid

  Translated from the Malayalam by the author

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  1

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  4

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  9

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  11

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  Footnote

  53

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  Praise for the Book

  ‘Sangeetha Sreenivasan’s honesty, novelty and nerve are required reading for a new generation . . . our language is continuously getting freshened in her writing’

  M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Jnanpith Award winner

  ‘What makes this book absolutely prominent is the subject it handles and the way the author leads you down the narrow lanes of the mind you didn’t even know existed. Sreenivasan looks at the complexities of life with the wisdom and dexterity of a seasoned storyteller. Hers is a captivating voice and Acid is a compelling read’

  Anees Salim

  ‘The lotus in the Acid Pool, the simple style, the thought-provoking narration, unethical references together with the rich content echoing the confusing scenario of the new gen, succeed in providing a sumptuous banquet to the reader’

  Dr Sr Jesme

  Everything I write is for Sarah

  Dear J,

  Do you remember how we laughed our heads off the night your friend rolled the joint you had given her?

  ‘It’s her first time,’ you said, as you laughed the contagious hell of laughter.

  I looked at you through smoke rings but the darkness of the terrace in the sparse lighting revealed only some scraps of your face and body, the tramp-like look of your hair in the night wind, the whiteness of your teeth as you went on laughing, the poppet figurine dangling from the thin metal chain on your bare chest. What really made me nervous was the resonance of your laughter, echoing in mid-air like the sickening thud of bullets, giving out emotions of struggle. I saw an imaginary handgun, not yours, not mine.

  She was twenty-two. I was alarmed when she didn’t move. What if that girl had really gone to sleep her last? But you said she liked to play possum. You knew better; she was your friend. And you were right. When she came back from her stillness, she was laughing too. Then she stopped and looked directly into our eyes and solemnly quoted Dali, ‘I don’t do drugs, I am drugs.’ You laughed even louder at this; in fact you couldn’t stop. I saw you stomping your feet on the ground, losing balance. She was hopelessly trying to make a Dalian moustache out of a streak of her hair and to roll her eyeballs this way and that to keep you amused. I wondered what made you cheer and shout for an encore. She lifted one of her eyebrows, and screwed up her eyes and started stripping. She said she would lie down naked on the terrace and wait for the bees to cover her up. You seemed to have gone insane with that slutty laughter of yours.

  I was feeling edgy and was thinking about going home. I walked towards her and poured the rest of the beer that was in the bottle on her head. I knew I was rude to do so. She was eight or ten years younger than us. I saw the grin on your face freeze as the beer ran down her navel, your eyes on draught. I thought you wanted to have sex. I walked out.

  The next time I saw her, she was in her early thirties. Chekka, you won’t believe it, she looked like a pickled fish in saline water, a dead face with eyes open, eyelids missing. Even her black open shoes, which she always kept polished, looked battered with scratches and were caked with mud. She was wearing some very cheap imitation jewellery, which she said were real Swarovski crystals given by you. She said you had asked her to work out to keep fit and learn to drive. When I came to know that you were still seeing her, I felt a sudden fear coursing down my spine. I called you that night; I wanted to tell you that what she needed was not a gym or a drive but a rehabilitation centre and the help of a doctor. But you were busy with something else; you said you were about to go on a cruise. You were not willing to listen to me; you said you didn’t wish to hear anything in connection with her. You called her an antisocial nuisance and hung up the phone. She was your close friend, wasn’t she?

  Yesterday, I saw her in the mall. She was walking down the aisle, talking gibberish and digging for boogers. I was shocked; I felt myself a savage and had the immediate urge to hide somewhere. You used to say that youth begins in one’s forties, but I’m afraid I don’t think she is going to see them, her forties, I mean. I felt guilty—I still feel guilty, for I had joined in your shitty laughter years ago. Do you remember, last year we ran into each other in the same mall? You were busy with the medical admissions for your daughter.

  Dear J, this book is my charge sheet for you.

  1

  She lies naked and flat on her back in a lotus pool that surpasses the stillness of Monet’s beloved ponds. The water in its greenness brushes against her nipples. The woman in her greenness shoots a hurricane of madness upwards to the window that opens to the south of the winds. And her eyes say, ‘I wish I could lose you.’ And her eyes repeat, ‘I wish I could hold you close, so close till your breath stops.’

  Opening the murky wooden window of the second floor, the window that opens to the south of the winds, the other woman exclaims, ‘Oh dear, what’s wrong with her?’

  The first woman doesn’t move. She lies with her body like a stillborn, focus unmoving, fixed on the window that opens. Purple petals kiss her black thatch. The shadows of the silver fish float like babies around her belly.

  The gaze from the wooden window cuts through her body. It slices the waters as if the pool is but another piece of cake. The gaze ignores the body, dives through it, as if the body that lies naked does not exist at all. It goes down, down to the bottom of the pool, through the slender green stems tangled in knots. It is in search of something. Not the naked body, but something else. Something new, something with the freshness of the morning briers! What could it be? What could possibly lie in the oblivion of the dark gloomy waters where lotus grows? Underneath the lotus buds, flowers, leaves and shoots, an upturned world shivers, foreseeing the worst.

  Under the crushing weight of negligence, over the weight of the dead lake, the woman lies shattered like a snake beaten up, blind yet still alive. The darkness around her eyes intensifies as she moans, ‘Please, please don’t look. I have something to hide in there.’ Water hugs her, mute and warm. Water drowns her prayer. The gaze continues its maddening rush and settles down at the end of a fragile stem to which Aadi clings, curled up amidst tufts of grass green lathery moss. ‘Aadi’! His name means ‘beginning’. In the beginning there was only water. And black was the colour of the beginning, stillness its pace.

  He closes his eyes. He sees purple water lilies in bl
oom. He doesn’t smile. An occasional streak of light tickles his yet-to-be-born senses. With a start, his skin touches another’s, as vibrant as his own. In the black water of tranquillity, the rhythms of two hearts beat together. Beats give life to the water, mud, leaves and flowers.

  But the gaze continues. It brazenly plucks the purple flower cutting the stem from its root. The boys see their cords confiscated, moving away from them. Losing grips, they fatigue. Aadi’s heart echoes back in a lonely rhythm.

  ‘Where, where is Shiva?’

  The dream vanishes.

  Aadi opened his eyes to the yellowness of the lamps and the remnants of a weary night. The lotus pool, the two women, the heaviness of the vapour, all had disappeared. Half asleep, he gingerly walked towards Shiva’s room.

  Upstairs, Kamala was fighting with Shaly. There was nothing new or surprising about this—they fought constantly, with a minimum of two hours’ and a maximum of two days’ intermission in between. The house had two storeys. Kamala lived with Shaly on the upper floor and the boys, Kamala’s biological children, Aadi and Shiva, lived on the lower floor. All of them, both the women and the boys, shared the sitting rooms, bookshelves and the kitchen on the lower floor. The women were free to come down whenever they wanted. But the boys were not allowed on the upper floor.

  Aadi heard Kamala scream across the room and the sound of something being knocked to the wooden floor. The room shook, and somewhere at the back of the house plaster came off the walls. Weighed down with confusions, he stood for a while and listened to the voices from above: there was something out of the way and tragic about their conversations. He could hear his mother shout, scream, hurling maddening abuses at Shaly, and he felt nervous. When Shaly spoke, finally, he understood how profoundly the severity of the morning had scraped away her voice, into shreds of whispers. He looked at the plastic flowers in the Japanese vase as he heard her say: ‘Kamala, please calm yourself. Let us manage this together. You could take Aadi with you. I will take care of Shiva. Please Kamala, it’s already getting late. Shall I book the flight?’

  Something shattered on the upper floor. Was it the glass vase or Kamala’s iPhone?

  Shaly almost knocked Aadi down as she climbed hurriedly down the stairway like a blind cat, shouting, ‘Do what works for you guys. I am leaving once and for all.’

  It must have been a hard blow, Aadi thought, as he noticed the finger marks on her left arm. He stood in the doorway, bemused and sad. As she stormed out of the house, her eyes welled up with tears and she said to him, ‘Kamala’s mother passed away last night, your grandmother.’

  In the kitchen Aadi set some milk to boil, his heart pounding all the while and his lips trembling. He did not remember much about his grandmother, though. He was worried about his mother, now an orphan bereft of someone to guide her.

  By the time Shaly came back, she had regained her composure and she cautioned Aadi in a carefree manner to watch the coffee, which was boiling over. She shut the flame off and accidentally knocked the lighter down, but let it remain there. The bright red polish still shone on her nails, especially on her toes. After Aadi had gone to Shiva’s room with the tray of coffee and biscuits, she picked up the lighter and lit the stove again and prepared some tea.

  She had to push the door open with her leg as she was holding a tray laden with a teapot, cups, biscuits, toast and marmalade. Kamala stood beside the table, unmindful of her shouts or reluctant to open the door. She took no notice of the tray Shaly placed on the table. Instead, she stood there listening to some lone voices from within. Shaly should have been bitter about this, but her poise betrayed only signs of suppressed anger, shrouded in grace. When Shaly noticed Kamala’s eyes closed in rapture she pulled her up by the hair and hit her hard across the face, anyway. ‘What the hell!’ said Shaly.

  Kamala stepped back and carelessly knocked the teapot over with her hand, spilling the hot tea onto the floor.

  ‘I’m going to kill you, you bitch!’ Shaly tried to thrust her fingers into Kamala’s mouth, with a force sufficient to scoop out the insides—the tongue, uvula, teeth and everything—but anticipating the worst, Kamala pursed her lips disgustedly and forced them out, so that Shaly had to give up.

  In consequence, acid took the reins. It designed the maps of convulsed ecstasy under Kamala’s tongue. Soon it would travel, numbing whatever it touched on the way until Kamala was numb to the world outside her eyes. Red kangaroos wearing lucky horseshoes would race up to her brain, making her forget her present, past and future in the haze of dust their hooves would raise. Neurons would mount on camels obscured by clouds to take her for a short pleasure ride.

  ‘Bastard! What do you think of yourself? You stupid slut!’ Shaly shook her hard; slapped her harder still. Kamala didn’t seem to be in pain. Yet she covered her face in her hands and squatted on the floor. ‘Everything happens because of you, Kamala! How many times have I warned you against taking those dumb godforsaken pills? But you don’t listen. You are on medication. Do you hear me?’ Tea pooled in the wooden depression on the floor.

  Shaly went out to fetch a mop, saw Aadi on the stairs and yelled, ‘What the hell do you want? Get out of here.’

  It was not easy for Shaly to compose herself this time. After a while, she tried to fake a sympathetic look and walked to the children’s room, pretending everything was under control. Before she knocked on the door she said to herself, ‘Kams is a horrible woman. Everything here is garbage,’ and smiled.

  Still smiling, she asked the boys, ‘Shall I get you breakfast?’

  The boys looked at each other and then at her. ‘What about grandma? Are we not going to see her?’ Shiva asked solemnly.

  Shaly was about to say something but suddenly the sound of the saxophone shook her up and her face turned pale and bare. Music came floating down the stairway.

  On the upper floor, Kamala closed the windows, drew the curtains shut and sat on the floor in the corner of her room. She thought she was safe, no harm could ever find her. She stared at the innards of her stereo and laughed thoughtfully.

  ‘I will bring you toast, please wait,’ Shaly called out from the kitchen, as if the boys were impatient and enthusiastically waiting for something to munch on.

  The first two pieces of toast got burned on the frying pan. Shaly wondered from where Kamala had got hold of the hallucinogen again. She had taken it on an empty stomach, in addition to the sleeping pills she had had the night before. Shaly recollected the faces of each and every peddler on the road. Bastards.

  Two tiny pieces of eggshell flopped on to the yolks in the pan. White pyramids on yellow balls. She removed the pieces with the edge of a spatula. ‘I should not have left her,’ she said to herself.

  No one knew how long a bad trip would last. Kamala’s mother, frozen, white and pale, waited for her daughter in uncertainty while Kamala shut herself up in a room too far away from her mother and mused on something that would never be useful in life. She moved the gears on an unbridled, hysterical ride, on a magic journey some people mistook as life.

  On top of her worries, Kamala had a pet dog called Depru. Monsieur Depression. An impalpable ghost of her esteemed hypotheses. It accompanied her wherever she went. A huge bulk, a mass of comfort. A cushioned bundle of sadness. It showed no interest in playing with a ball or a toy, no interest in going out for a walk. Instead, it would mount her shoulders, its weight crushing her. They say dogs make eye contact. It looked straight into Kamala’s eyes like other dogs. But in the mauve shadow of its eyes, a child drowned every second. And Kamala wept, looking at the dying child. Lifting one of its eyebrows, the dog would sigh; place its heavy paw on her forehead. ‘Do you think that man has any right to stop me?’ Kamala asked it. She was talking about Madhavan’s father, her father-in-law. There was anger in her voice, but mostly, there was fatigue. The dog gave her a cold nod that said ‘No’.

  Aadi piled the pillows one on top of the other and helped Shiva sit up against the headboard. Then he sat b
eside him on the bed, took his hand and pressed it gently.

  ‘Do you remember our grandmother?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’ Shiva shook his head.

  ‘But, why doesn’t she cry? I mean our mother?’

  ‘You will cry when our mother dies, won’t you?’

  2

  In the graveyard, Hozier waltzed alone. His eyes revealed the happiness of her slender waist, her splendid legs. He danced in the darkness with shadows of gloom. Sometimes she felt jealous of his dancing, sometimes of the purity of his words, of his magical voice. Sometimes a dreadful longing sucked her entrails. She wanted to roll on top of him in the cemetery. In between fatigue and ecstasy, in the midst of the smoke that devoured her, she tried to concentrate on the stereo and talk to him. Her veins throbbed under the pressure of his smile. He was no longer the singer with the face of Christ but a mournful aghori in sexy dreadlocks. In his tragic yet magical voice, which was lustier than the three drops of acid she had taken, he sang, ‘Crawl home to her . . .’

  Love is the sigh of the abandoned dogs, the opium of the depressed souls. And invariably Kamala was a victim of love.

  ‘Come inside,’ Kamala said, looking at the stereo.

  Shaly pushed the door open. Inside the room, Kamala clung to the bedpost with contempt in her eyes. Shaly searched frantically in the chest of drawers and on the mantelpiece, but she couldn’t find a damn thing. She noticed a small bottle, smaller than her index finger, half hidden in the bookshelf. She flushed the contents down the toilet. She heard Kamala groan. She came out of the bathroom and sat beside her. Kamala looked into Shaly’s eyes. There are things you cannot look at. Sad, she looked down at the bare wooden floor and wept.

  Kamala edged away from the monster sitting by her side and weeping. Fear shot forward as she saw the monster spitting fire and the flames in turn licking up the curtains of her room. She panicked, not knowing how to extinguish the blaze that was spreading fast. She had to do something before the fire devoured her children, her house. She pulled herself closer towards the bedpost. ‘My house was also there in the blaze, on the street that caught fire,’ said Kamala.