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  This shadow belongs to Kamala’s mother—the thought crossed her mind—and it was for her they hung the rope down, for her convenience. This is her rope, would Kamala need it? Shadows are not always a pleasant sight, nor the thoughts that accompany them. The shadow was swaying, the end of it was almost pirouetting. This house doesn’t fit me, for I still have blood in my veins, Shaly thought, even Kamala has become a shadow now, an illusion I had in my mind in the past. The children have disappeared too, again I don’t know into where. I have been trying to push bits of me—say my head, arms, half a leg—through, since I came here, but this is a rather strange network, a labyrinth that leads you to the open gates. Like Alice, I have tried to peep through the keyhole. I am neither tiny nor gigantic, just the normal size, and the keyhole, the door, the latches, they all seem just as normal as myself, but whenever I try to peep through the hole, I feel I am a patient in front of a tonometer, failing to resist the power of the puff of air blown straight into the eye, I shut my eyes, I withdraw. No time, no sense of time, no direction, no sense of direction.

  Why did she drag me into this? Why couldn’t I take my own decision?

  She said, ‘I need you because I am lonely.’

  Rita Mama had said the same. ‘I cannot manage it all, I need you. I will not let you go, even if you don’t have a job, it doesn’t matter. We have more than enough to survive. Stay with me.’

  Old curmudgeon! When I absconded from there, I thought I had won a battle, the battle of Aizawl vs Kerala, and what did I gain?

  The landing led to a closed room that opens on either side to the big, half-open veranda outside and to the large entrance hall inside with its huge, open courtyard in the middle. The moment she stepped on the veranda, something came flying past and slapped on her face, leaving her with the feeling that she had been attacked by a bunch of sharp, pointed edges. At first she screamed at the unexpected attack, but when she saw the beast or bird hitting itself against one of the pillars she checked her voice and observed the ‘thing’. It fell down on the floor, and with it the twig of rose apples it carried in its mouth, making the fruit roll all over. Gathering courage, she came nearer and got a better view. It was a bat. So this was what was wiggling amidst the branches. Whatever it was it was dead now, such a short life. Was it the greed for foraging that had failed the echolocation? There were no beats, no motion—but was it dead, or just pretending to be dead? She bent over to examine it, the wing membranes and bone structure resembling the human hand, the large ears; she stretched her fingers to touch it. Someone called to her just then, and she started.

  ‘Who are you?’

  She lifted her face and saw a woman looking at her; exactly in the same way she had been observing the bat. Her eyes that seemed like pickled eggs were fixed on her, her brows arched in surprise.

  ‘Who are you?’ the woman asked again.

  ‘I’m Shaly, a friend of Kamala’s.’

  ‘Where is Kamala?’

  ‘She is inside, I think she is sleeping.’

  The woman pushed the door open and went inside with the same surprised look on her face. Shaly turned to the bat and saw that it was moving, very slightly, but definitely moving. ‘Thank god,’ she sighed. In no time it flew back into the thicket of the rose apple bush. Again it appeared on the veranda, this time with a twig of even bigger rose apples, and she couldn’t hush her laugh. It took three turns of the veranda and instead of flying away, entered the hall, the doors of which had been left open by the surprised woman. ‘Go away,’ Shaly tried to shoo it away, though she was afraid of getting hit again. ‘Go, go away.’ Her surprise, her inflexible curiosity still not diminished, the woman came out and smiled pathetically at Shaly. Shaly furtively arched her eyebrows and smiled back.

  ‘See you,’ said the woman.

  ‘Yes,’ said Shaly.

  But she heard one more whisper, or a voice so feeble it was difficult to determine if it was voice or air, and turned back and found Kamala standing at the threshold looking like a ghost.

  Her face twisted in a sneer of disappointment as she asked Shaly, ‘Why can’t you just sit upstairs till all these horrid people leave?’

  ‘What?’

  She felt insulted, infuriated. She went out to the courtyard, walked on the laterite pavement, pushed open the wooden gates of the gatehouse and disappeared into the darkness. Suddenly she felt that she had become something that was worth nothing, like a useless rag that she needed since she woke up to scrub the bird droppings off the table near the window. She had no idea where she was headed, but she kept saying as she walked, ‘I am not your slave, Kamala, not just yours, nobody’s’. She took her cigarette case from her pocket and lit one. A cyclist approaching from the opposite direction looked in disbelief at the apparition of a woman smoking a cigarette in the dark, and almost landed his cycle on the hedges on the other side. She didn’t seem to have noticed him. It was a steep slope and she hurriedly walked down. Unmindful of the slope and the increasing darkness and strange faces, she absently walked towards the place where she saw light—or was it a fire?

  This was a large tract of open land, and there were small heaps of fire, cinders, light and smoke scattered all over. Only when she came closer did she realize that they were funeral pyres and that she was the only person around. The kingdom of the corpses lay desolate, for the relatives, she guessed, might have gone after setting fire to the pyre, and it was the fate of the corpse to get burned to ashes unattended. She heard the rupture of bones breaking apart, exploding. Suddenly, with a deafening bang, a skeleton sat up on the burning pyre with a jerk. In the light of the pyre she could clearly see the white of its bones, and the laughter on its face. She turned and ran.

  Kamala didn’t see her rushing in, walking up the stairs in stupor, and crying out of breath in her room. Shaly threw herself on the bed and said to herself, ‘This is a haunted house, how can I spend a night here?’ Her entrance downstairs was restricted, and every other minute raccoons ran wild on the roof, scratching the wooden planks. Each manoeuvre frightened her. It frightened her more when she thought that she was the only human being upstairs. Even if she ran downstairs in an emergency, she knew, the huge entrance with its heavy doors would be closed and her cries wouldn’t reach the insides of the house. She looked at the single bulb hanging above her in the air, suspended on a thin electrical wire—now, she realized, she shivered more than the filament inside the bulb. There was no supper waiting for her on the table. Hunger and thirst didn’t bother her.

  She turned off the light, and the white laugh of the skeleton appeared before her. She turned the light back on. ‘How slender was its hip bone . . . was it a woman or a man?’ The bulb dangling above her head with dust gathered on its very thin, yellowish glass surface, its filament burning furiously, was an acid bulb, which could drop at any moment.

  Downstairs, in her mother’s bedroom, Kamala was talking non-stop, talking and laughing, and at times crying. Still laughing, she sat on the floor and crawled towards the corner where the walls met. She sat on the cold, rough granite slabs which were used as a channel for draining water, a traditional urinal of the native houses. The coldness of the stones pleased her.

  27

  ‘Wake up, wake up, have tea.’

  Shaly opened her eyes and saw Kamala. So she does know the way upstairs, thought Shaly. As the most intense experiences from the previous night had died down, she didn’t feel anything against Kamala. She took the cup from the tray and sipped the tea at ease.

  ‘When did you come back yesterday? I didn’t see you come.’

  How on earth does she expect to see me come, thought Shaly, when her doors are always closed and she never comes out. The doors of the spacious entrance hall—from the centre courtyard of which different pathways led to different rooms—opened to a comparatively small visitor’s room, which again opened on to the long veranda. The doors of both were always closed or very rarely partially open. The staircase with the rosewood pineapple motif
that led to Shaly’s room was at a corner of the veranda, cut off completely from the rest of the house. Shaly herself couldn’t recollect how she had come back from the cemetery, walked up the stairs and collapsed on the bed out of breath, fear burning over her head.

  ‘Where are the children?’

  ‘They are downstairs. There is a large bedroom that opens to the east. I have arranged their beds in there, cross ventilation is okay there.’

  ‘Just okay, isn’t it?’

  ‘For the time being we need to adjust a little bit. Is this room okay? Do you want to come down and take one of the rooms downstairs? I thought you would love to have some privacy.’

  ‘This is fine.’

  ‘This used to be my room. If you sit on the windowsill, you can see the main gates.’

  ‘Those who come and those who go, isn’t it? I saw a large burial yard yesterday. I saw a corpse burning there, just nearby.’

  ‘It is down the slope. Why the hell did you go there?’

  ‘I was bored here and I thought I would go for a walk. Kamala, have you seen corpses being cremated?’

  ‘No, and I have no wish to see them. Never in my life.’

  ‘Do the dead bodies sit up while burning?’

  ‘Shaly, talk sense, no more nonsense. Go and take a shower, then let us go down and look around.’

  ‘That sounds like the ban is over.’

  ‘What ban? You don’t understand what I am going through.’

  I understand perfectly well, thought Shaly. Kamala was woman stuck in the air like Dali’s Rose Meditative, no tethers and no relations, no worries yet full of worries.

  Kamala led her through the house to the dining area at the back, through the entrance hall and some small verandas. The children were already at the dining table, waiting for them. They looked tired, extremely anxious. It was obvious that they didn’t like this place. The maid greeted her with noticeable pleasure, a young woman of not more than twenty-two.

  ‘I think we must all have breakfast together every day, let us consider this our quality time,’ Kamala said ceremoniously, with furtive strain visible on her face.

  For breakfast there were idlis, white, soft, with red chutney and sambar. But the children were not hungry. Their expressions weighed heavily on their mother. There was not even a decent TV in that house—how could they call the heavy old box in the corner, not much bigger than an instrument box, a TV? It was not even ten inches wide and there were no channels except news channels and Doordarshan. The boys didn’t even glance at it. If there had been a modern TV in the same room, they might have loved to conduct a comparative study of the two, amused by the old world, but since there was nothing like that it was better not to think of it.

  ‘Amma, when are we leaving?’ Shiva asked while eating.

  Shaly felt the food get stuck in her throat, so she asked the maid for a glass of water.

  ‘We came here just two days ago. What is the big deal? Just make yourself comfortable till we move to the new apartment. I really don’t know how long it will take.’

  Shiva’s face fell, lines of exhaustion visible on it, but he could not cry as he was not a child. This November, they were going to be eighteen. He slapped at a fly that was walking up his tea glass, spilling the tea all over the brocaded tablecloth and on his shirt.

  Kamala didn’t seem to have noticed the mess he had made. Paying him no heed, she said, ‘I would like to go and meet my cousin Usha.’

  If she went, she knew she would go alone, but she debated whether to go at all. After a while, she spoke again.

  ‘Actually, I am not going anywhere. If they want to see me, they can come here.’

  After breakfast she took Shaly to the pond, taking her hand as they walked, delicately stroking her arm with her fingers. Soon it started drizzling, but she didn’t seek shelter, nor did she ask Shaly if she wished to go back. With rapture which was not usual in her, she walked through the overgrown plants, her index finger hovering over Shaly’s knuckles, as if she wanted to share something dark. A small cat came to play at her feet; a little way off, a heavy black dog was busy nuzzling the earth, secretly watching them. The strong odour of water lilies welcomed them, and Shaly couldn’t contain her surprise when she saw the pond in full bloom, happiness searing into her flesh with wetness.

  Shaly feared that this old property, this land, this house which was no longer a house but a place that kept vigil for the dead, would tie her down forever. She walked down the steps that led to the water. The stones were smooth, covered in a thick layer of velvety moss. As her feet brushed the rushes Kamala breathed in the ancient smell of the slimy world underneath and said, almost mildly, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear what she was saying, as if there was a life enclosed within the water which was totally different from theirs, ‘Watch out, the ground can be slippery.’

  ‘All I need is a lotus, I will be careful,’ said Shaly, wading in.

  Kamala imagined Shaly drowning, water filling her lungs, flooding her sinuses, her body sinking after minutes of struggling for breath. She also imagined her rising from the raucous ripples in a flash, head up, torso straight, her feet touching the surface of the water, eyes eaten by fishes, sockets swollen and white—falling down, floating face down. She thought, in that case, that she would walk back home with a heavy heart. The next second she regretted her vicious thoughts. But those who did not wish for the death of their partners, even if for a matter of seconds, were rare. Those seconds remained as the time they were afraid of. Kamala knew that if Shaly ceased to exist, she would grieve the most.

  28

  Anticipating the honking of the vehicle from Movers and Packers, Shiva lay on his dismal bed like the most fragile thing in that room. Handle with care.

  He could not image a world outside gadgets. It was not easy to wheel him around as there were no even roads inside or outside the gates; the terrain yawned in hollows and bumps. Each room had a threshold so high one could even sit on it. He could never think of crossing them on his own. He had seen long ropes hanging down from the ceiling at different places in the house. The maid told him that they were meant for his grandmother, for when she had found it difficult to walk around and cross the thresholds. But she could at least cross the thresholds, even if it took time. She had managed walking without slipping in the centre courtyard, in the entrance hall paved with rough granite. Even Aadi seemed worried when wheeling him across the hall near the depression in the centre—the wheels, sometimes, could turn and move on their own.

  In their house in Bangalore, there were no thresholds except the one at the entrance, and that too was barely noticeable. The floors were even, like a flow; he remembered skating from one room to the other as a boy, and he had wheels underneath his soles then. He wondered why these old houses need such high thresholds; a word recently entered into his vocabulary. But still, both the boys loved the centre courtyard from where they could watch the moon at night. And sometimes, when the wind blew, mangoes fell down through the opening with a soft thud and Aadi rushed to collect them. They were waiting; they would love to watch it rain inside.