Acid Read online

  ‘That is because you are difficult, you are not cooperating. I told you I would give you the money, what else can I do? I have money and I am happy to share it with you. Such obstinacy is not good, especially in times of crisis. The seed money for the project which is not going to happen anyway is in my locker. If you can give me one week’s time I can get you that. Buy the flat immediately, you can return the money later, when you get a buyer for your property.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I couldn’t be surer. I want you to do this for me.’

  She smiled, but her face showed no signs of relief. She was like a computer that had stopped responding, no matter how hard you pressed the buttons, how much you tried a forced shutdown. Ctrl+Alt+Del: she must be rebooted and recaptured, with immediate effect.

  Love obscured by immediate problems, Kamala said: ‘The washing machine has stopped working. Janu will get your clothes washed for you, I have told her to do that. Please keep your laundry outside your room.’

  ‘Yes, I will, or, I think, I can do it on my own. It will help me kill time.’

  ‘I know you are going through a difficult phase.’

  ‘My problem is not your washing machine or the mixer-grinder; it is the distance you are keeping and your health. Janu is here to look after the boys. If you would come with me to Bangalore, we could consult that doctor once again, it would be helpful, and you need a good doctor.’

  ‘No, no, I am perfectly all right. Maybe I am thinking too much of my mother these days, I can’t sleep well . . . but this is all quite natural, no need for a doctor.’

  ‘No, this is not natural. I have been observing you these past few days.’

  ‘Why don’t you understand, Shaly? I said I have no problems.’

  ‘Leave that for the doctor to decide.’

  ‘Can’t we just talk about something else now?’

  It was not easy to talk with her. Shaly sat on Kamala’s bed with her head bent, looking down. Kamala probably didn’t remember how she had sat on the stone urinal in the corner of her room as if sliding on an infinite surface, in the dead of the night. The doctor had clearly said that bad trips were likely to happen even without taking acid or any sort of drugs and Shaly was sure Kamala was going through one such bad trip. He had prescribed some medicines too, but they wouldn’t work sitting inside their blister packs. Shaly sighed.

  The Kamala she remembered was like a moonlit night filled with music and laughter, like listening to Frank Sinatra with a glass of wine. But now her gestures frightened Shaly, neutral and cold, obscuring anything that was good, and possessing a discreet beauty of its own, like the patina on the brass knobs on her chest of drawers. It must be the bad trips, her face was tired, she was tired—maybe, it was just tiredness.

  How, when, what, Kamala kept asking herself. Shaly touched her hands to calm her. She noticed the dark circles around Kamala’s eyes, the sharp lines that were not there before on her forehead. The blood seemed to have drained out of her eyes and her body, and her lips had become slightly disfigured since Shaly had last noticed them. Even two days ago she’d looked all right; at least, Shaly thought, I hadn’t noticed such visible signs of withdrawal so far.

  She’s the woman who taught me to abandon my headphones, Shaly remembered, and helped me enjoy music with my ears, eyes and other senses, my body receiving it. She led me to music beyond the popular bands, to the oriental waves of Hindustani and Carnatic—both strange to my ears at first, but I loved the feel of them in no time. And I gave her my English music collection in return—something like a give and take.

  My ears were Indian-born, but maybe because I lived on the borders, on the hills, guitars were much appreciated and I grew up in tune with western music. My body swayed to the rhythms of Michael Jackson. As children, we loved rock ’n’ roll, pop and country, we sang Abba and Boney M, though we had no idea what the lyrics were, what the songs were all about; they were something we imitated, and something we tried to reproduce in our dialects because we loved the music. It’s English, someone said, and I remember how I longed to learn that magical language at the age of four. It took me years to understand that Rasputin was a sex machine, and that we were singing in praise of his dick when we were just three or four.

  Shaly also remembered how she adored the bookcases on Kamala’s walls, laden with books and music CDs, and the bedroom where some instrument was always playing in the background. But these days Kamala only played Karen Dalton on an endless loop.

  While she was going through one of her first trips, Kamala had hugged Shaly once and said in a jubilant voice, ‘This is fun! I am listening to all my favourite audios without really playing them. The music is in my ears! With digital clarity!’

  What she needed were not some commonplace psychedelic experiences. And Shaly rejoiced at the prospect of making her ride. Kamala was not one of those boors who savoured a pill for the sake of getting high, for a kick-start. She was a psychedelic with class, one who wouldn’t falter even if she had to pour Prosecco when she was already high. Adorable!

  There used to be a lot of friends at one time, especially from Kamala’s office, who visited her just to make their evenings wonderful. Sometimes they raided her bookcases, though she didn’t appreciate it much. They assembled on her terrace garden, the place she called her ‘barsati’. Shaly had helped her set up the trellis for passion fruit on the terrace, and a lattice for a beautiful espalier. In no time, the passion fruit vines grew in abundance and laced the trellis with their purple and white flowers. Obscured by the leaves, the fruit that filled the sun-gaps within the foliage became visible only when they started to turn orange. Her friends, Shaly’s friends, all gathered in the beautiful, fruit-filled barsati with smokes and drinks. Shaly sliced the golden-yellow passion fruit into two and scooped out the insides, packed with surrealist seeds, into the glasses of vodka. That sight itself was life: the unreal blurredness of love, the interpenetration of happiness with the sour taste of vodka. ‘Cheers!’ they all said aloud. Bhavana, Ashika, Arjun, Daksha, Vinobha, Lakshya, Ratik. Cheers!

  ‘Rane, could you please lower the volume of the music? I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Faizy, watch out, you are going to step over it.’

  Sometimes her boss said that he would like to have a barsati on his rooftop at the office, for he considered it a beautiful option to relieve their heads of tension, to let a little bit of wind in.

  Who hitchhiked to where was always irrelevant in the night. Weekend passions placed them up too high to bother about realities. Someone picked up someone, someone dropped off someone—it was always someone, never a name.

  ‘Strap her tight to your body, or else she will fall down,’ someone screeched.

  Those who went back from the barsati were more charged. In they came like timid cows to a meadow, shaking their udders, and out they went like fiery fighter bulls, balls fully charged. Unconscious of the night police on vigil, of the traffic signals, they flew through the night.

  The staircase to the barsati was at the back of the house; attached to the house, but outside it. There was enough space to park the bikes and Bullets, but not the cars. Those who came by car parked at the entrance of the next street and returned with either a long scratch on the door or a glass missing. This was the main reason they preferred bikes on weekends, the safer option. They were careful not to disturb the children, but still, before going up the staircase, some of them went straight to the children’s room and gifted them chocolates or something else. How happy they were! Those were the days. Shaly tried to remember them in more detail. Kamala had stopped listening to music for the past six months, at least. This, she thought, was not her Kamala.

  Shaly closed her eyes tight and saw that doctor. Handsome, with a sweet smile, a twinkle in his eyes and a receding hairline. A large bookshelf behind him, panelled with glass and decorated with big books; she did not think he opened it ever. He was sitting in a black revolving chair, and in a pleasing voice, he asked
, ‘Do you regret anything?’

  Shaly looked at him with hatred. She didn’t say yes or no. She had confessed many times that the idea of drugs had been her mistake. They had started it just for fun, and the same fun had turned Kamala towards eternal sadness from which she saw no recovery and a lack of remedial measures. How could a person regret more than that? The doctor knew it, but he was asking such questions on purpose, just to poke her, scatter her to irreconcilable bits.

  ‘It was my mistake, please don’t remind me again.’

  In a sweet and cautious way, he asked again, ‘Shaly, are you bisexual?’

  Pathetically, she looked at Kamala.

  Kamala was thinking of something else. ‘She has been the most exceptional joy of my life, the most justified pleasure. I haven’t exposed myself in front of any other woman, and I don’t think I will do that ever again. With her it was art, and I was the body artist. But look at her—like one plucks a green worm out of a garden plant and tramples it under the soles of their sandals, she is plucking me out and throwing me away with a scornful smile, the bad girl.’

  32

  ‘Can I go with her too, Amma?’

  ‘No, I cannot manage him alone. Moreover I have certain issues to sort out here.’

  ‘I am getting bored to death here.’

  ‘And so is Shiva.’

  Aadi felt worn out.

  ‘What does she want? Does she think she can tether me to his bedpost all my life?’

  For a second, he hated Shiva. Shit! I am paying for his disobedience. He was the one who broke the rules and ran out of the hostel and I am the one who is paying the penalty. It was not the fact that Shaly was leaving that provoked him; he couldn’t help thinking that one of them was escaping. The woman who was responsible for more than half their problems was sneaking out, with permission—no fair. Shaly immediately picked up on the meaning of his dark stares, not at all in keeping with his customary peaceful face.

  ‘It is just a matter of four days,’ she told him. ‘I need to arrange some money, and as soon as I’m done I’ll come back. The money is crucial otherwise we will be trapped here forever. We need money to get out of this fucking place, Aadi, try to understand.’

  The children also wanted to get out of this fucking place, at the earliest. But the thought of her leaving made them at once sad and jealous, the disappointment particularly visible on Shiva’s face. When Shaly said goodnight, to her surprise, Aadi followed her to the veranda. When they were in Bangalore, she used to come down to their rooms and spend time with them, but then as now, no one came up to her room, except Kamala, and she too very rarely. Even the birds were silent at that hour of the night. They walked cautiously, and at one point she wanted to ask him to go back, but she didn’t.

  There were no night tables or chairs in Shaly’s room, so he sat on the bed. He surveyed the room and saw the old lampshade with its electric bulb dangling above his head; the shade almost looked like an upside down brass bowl. He ran his fingers over her bed sheets, which smelt like her, of her French perfume. For a second, he wanted to lie on his back looking at the electric bulb. Shaly had kept her bags and other stuff in the cupboard on the veranda outside her room. She brought a big bag and some of her clothes and placed them all on top of the bed beside him. She took something out of the bag and put something else into the bag. The packing, she said, was done.

  She felt uneasy about the way Aadi was lying on her bed. The way he had taken this liberty, it was a kind of encroachment, coming into her room without permission and behaving in a way that was disconcertingly familiar—though she used to go to their room whenever she felt like it, whenever she felt lonely. There was nothing to give him, not even a piece of chocolate. He was her guest that night, the only person who had taken the trouble to climb the steps. But this was not her house, there was nothing, no fridge, no anything inside that bleak-looking room save the bed on which she slept and the windowsills that protruded inwards. This was her separate place in their whole mansion. She realized she was thinking nonsense; she had been a no-nonsense woman all her life. Was she afraid now because there was a guy on her bed? No, she had many male friends, and this was a child. But somehow, it seemed improper, no matter how much she loved him. She loved him so dearly, like a mother loves her son, she had seen him as a child, had shared in his suffering with him and experienced the pain of his eyes within her own bosom. At times, she used to think that she was guilty in his eyes. She wanted to say something now, but both of them didn’t speak. The children had been taught not to enter other people’s rooms, and they adhered to this the way people followed an unwritten constitution. Shiva couldn’t, even if he wanted to, and Aadi didn’t feel the need usually.

  ‘Is it hot in here?’

  ‘Comparatively,’ he nodded.

  Slowly, he closed his eyes. It was the hour of the serpent flowers in the backyard—they were blooming.

  ‘Aadi, get up, please don’t sleep in here. I need to leave early in the morning. Please.’

  ‘Even before we wake up?’

  ‘I am afraid I will have to, Kamala asked me to take the car, but I have booked a ticket for the morning train. I think that’s the better option.’

  ‘Aadi, what are you doing in here. Shaly, it is time you sleep. You need to wake up early in the morning.’

  The harshness of Kamala’s voice startled both of them. An unwanted turd of tension hovered under the dangling bulb. Aadi immediately left the room. Both of them heard him running down the staircase.

  Shaly retorted in a voice harsher than Kamala’s, ‘It is no good for anyone to be so insecure.’

  It wasn’t light yet. On either side of the pocket road, black trees were shedding, not water, not leaves, but the sorrows that multiplied every other second. Kamala was heading for the main road, where she hoped to see at least some of the headlights of the vehicles that raced over the tarred roads. There was not even a lamp post on the way. What is this place, she thought. She was neither running nor walking. In the distance, she saw the shadow of a huge boulder, indicating either a dead end or another opening. Ghost or just a shadow! She tried hard to concentrate on the rock so that she would not deviate in the darkness. A single goal! How quickly the pocket roads ended and dawn rose in the distance. Light! There was a huge red flag on a metal iron pole, almost on the ground level, maybe five-and-a-half feet or so—she realized she was not good with measurements. But something kept telling her that red without signals meant danger. Did it mean something dangerous was ahead? Like a wind-up monkey, but without the golden cymbals, she walked forward, mechanically. The dark ghost she had seen was there, only, she now realized, there were three such ghosts—or rather shadows, houses at three different angles. Suddenly morning light filled the sky and she became fully aware of the vast ground on which she was standing. Those were newly built shelters painted in dark green. Dwarf-sized boards marked the boundaries. Ha! She was standing in a meadow, a clear, green meadow, with either velvet or buffalo grass, she couldn’t tell which. As the light intensified around her, she tried to read what the boards had to say. It said 350 yards on the first one. She checked the other boards too, and found the number getting smaller: 300 yards, 275 yards, 250, 200, 175, 150 . . .

  What the fuck was this! Where was she standing?

  The heights that cupped the firing range were lined with trees that grew upwards in straight lines, it seemed they never cast their shadows. What she loved was the lawn beneath. She hadn’t seen such a lively lawn since her childhood. She wanted to smell it, feel the wetness all over, the wetness of earth and grass, the wetness of a woman, the wetness people may forget the second they walk away, like the way she had forgotten the grasslands of her childhood, those of her adolescence. She lay face-down on the lawn, sniffing the grass with the intense passion with which one sniffed cocaine. A flash of remembrance rushed through the prairies of kite-runners. Kites always belonged to the boys: Madhavan and his friends. They ran wild after those exciting kites. Wh
ere was the fun in holding the end of a thread and chasing after something that hovered high in the sky? She used to wonder, but now she knew—the fun lay in the way they controlled things, especially the kites, kept them under their command. They would let them fly for a while but never out of their purview, and once the kites broke away from the threads of control, that would be their terrible fate, a doom the boys on the ground could not assuage. They would wander for a while in the sky against the winds, the beaks of birds, and later perch on some godforsaken tree, almost broken, only to get scorched and fade under the happy sun. Those were the days of earth and grass, cookie-shaped cow dung cakes and dragonflies with glassy wings. Kamala raised her head and looked up. Where are they coming from now, she thought, those most ancient of insects? She lay supine, facing the dragonflies, the flies of September. Were they still not extinct? She let the flies float like war-copters over her. Beyond the flies, in the sky, the clouds were forming patterns of animals and faces. Now the face of a girl—the longer she looked, the clearer it became, the kaleidoscope eyes letting out iridescent happiness. She lay with her back to the skies, parallel to Kamala and facing her, suspended in the air but not floating. Her face was not clear, for in between them were dragonflies, mist and a layer of sunlight. But Kamala could clearly see her T-shirt, the edges of which were within the grip of the air. She read the alphabets that ran across the tee: LSD.