Acid Read online

  ‘Kamala, where did you go, dear? Please come back. Let’s travel together. I’ll be there for you.’

  Kamala smiled. The ultimate shroud that covers man is the forest. She heard hymns recited in voices louder than whispers. She breathed in the sickening scent of incense sticks. She saw the lighted oil lamp, the split open coconut, the casket of holy basil and the tied up toes. She had never seen her mother sleep so peacefully before.

  ‘Cheers, Amma!’ she said aloud. ‘This toast is to the luckiest mother in the world.’

  5

  A depression opened and closed in the bog with the shutter speed of a blinking eyelid. Kamala listened for another moment, and heard her husband, Madhavan, sinking into the waterlogged marsh. She saw the ripples on the thick, chocolate-coloured water. He could’ve chosen some fresh water pond to drown in, she thought. Her children were fatherless now—she shuddered at the idea. She decided not to drag children into her sentiments. She did not want to think any more, because thoughts were the highest limitation human beings had ever encountered.

  She looked over the marsh and then to the skies. The clouds were heavy and black. It was about to pour. She looked around. Flies were fluttering near the ground as the air thickened above. She looked down to the bottom of the rocks, to the treacherous bogs. A minute ago Madhavan had stood there, getting ready to jump.

  She mused on bogs, flowers, Madhavan, flies, forest, thoughts and clean ponds; folded her hands in prayer at the abundance and said, ‘This is the intelligence of nature.’

  Man thinks he is intelligent. Madhavan also thought the same, believed he was intelligent. The big brag! What was there to be proud of? The new robot that fucks you non-stop! Look at nature. It is calm. It is the most sublime thought or feeling or smell or touch one could ever aspire to. Only people run amok on earth; cry and fret and crack up. When they suffer they suffer like hell. They prefer it that way. For most of them suffering is like a candy or something they love to chew on—please don’t get it wrong. They pretend. They act. The great bard might have called them actors keeping this in mind. Let them have their exit and their entrance.

  Kamala wanted to phone Madhavan and talk about the sad demise of her mother. But on second thoughts she decided not to. She felt death was no longer death and Madhavan was no longer a reality. In the time and space of the universe, we are in no way better than grasshoppers. She put the phone in flight mode. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw two tragic hollows instead of her eyes. Then she noticed the reflection of the fresh flowers in the vase on the table. She turned back to look at the flowers. Shaly might have put them there in the morning. There was a tea tray on the table. But the tea was cold and the toast stale. She didn’t feel like having anything. The smell of omelettes made her vomit. When she came out of the toilet she felt giddy; a kind of heaviness was eating her up, working its way to the bed again. But it was time she went downstairs and greeted her children and Shaly. She tried to look in the mirror and smile.

  The woman in the mirror ought to change her ways for her children. She ought not be the same woman who couldn’t even move the latch on her bedroom door and walk out while her mother lay dead and waiting for her in the front hall of their godforsaken house.

  When she came downstairs she saw Aadi in the veranda, drawn and tired. She wanted to open up and talk somehow. ‘Most probably I’ll buy that flat in Kadavanthra. But before that I have some work here.’ Her words sounded synthetic and heavy, and Aadi gave her a sad smile in return.

  ‘I don’t think we will return to this place again. But Aadi, you can continue your studies wherever you want. I won’t stop you from anything. Do you understand? Since you have told me that you’re taking a year off, it is up to you to decide what you want to continue with. You are going on seventeen.’

  Aadi sat there listless, not knowing what to say. He wanted to ask her about his grandmother but he was afraid he would hurt her feelings. He looked away and his thoughts came to rest on his grandmother’s windowsill.

  One, two, three and plop! Shiva was throwing stones at the frogs in the well. Aadi sat cross-legged on the stone bench near the gate, counting the cars that drove by. Sometimes he lost count. The cherry red bus disappeared long before he noticed the green one passing by through the lane. There were cars of chrome yellow and yellow ochre. As he concentrated, he saw some of them transforming into butterflies in the wind. And the road in its dust-stricken yellow hue into a painting of fleeting ghosts, too hazy to handle. Beyond the yellow trees, much beyond the yellow road, down the lane, pyres burned in a blaze. Life ends there. He was about to get up and walk down the yellow lane. Someone held him from behind and said, ‘Children are not allowed to go there.’ He turned around. It was his grandmother.

  ‘How long have you been sitting here? Don’t you have anything else to do?’

  ‘Amma, you should consult a doctor. You look so fatigued.’

  Kamala noticed the stress on his words and said playfully, ‘Don’t you play Mr Grandpa, Aadi. Get up and do something. Don’t you wish to say goodbye to your friends or your teachers or do anything of the sort?’

  Aadi had never thought of waving goodbye to Bangalore even though the discussion had been going on for quite a while. It seemed he wouldn’t even make an effort to get up from the sofa. Kamala felt annoyed at his inertia.

  ‘At least just turn around and look at the boys of your age and see for yourself how they live,’ Kamala went inside in a fit of anger.

  What does she know about the boys of my age, thought Aadi. They stopped chewing bubblegum a long time ago. These days they chew 7 O’Clock razors and spit them out in public. Not all of them, of course. Most of them are not happy with a 100 cc bike; they dream about Harley-Davidsons and Bullets. Bangalore had excellent showrooms for the sexiest bikes in India. But Aadi knew Kamala would never let him ride a bike. She would find a hundred excuses for not buying him one. Whenever he asked she would say, ‘To ride properly on a two-wheeler one needs to have a sense of destiny and balance of mind.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing sitting here? Are we not going to see your grandma?’ Aadi turned to look at Shaly, who was looking down at her cigarette. He felt War and Peace were leaning against the door, lighting a cigarette and asking him something he couldn’t comprehend. But one thing he understood pretty well. She was wearing his coffee bean-coloured T-shirt.

  ‘How many times have I asked you not to wear my tee?’

  ‘Oh! I’m extremely sorry, baby. I couldn’t find anything else in my closet this morning and your tee was lying on the sofa. Shall I take it off now?’ She pretended to pull the T-shirt up, stretching it from corner to corner so that it went nowhere above her navel. He looked at her tits, standing erect in the coffee bean-coloured tightness. When she noticed that he was looking at her breasts she said, imitating Arnold, ‘My nipples are very sensitive,’ and sneered at his edginess. Seeing he was not laughing she asked again, ‘Can’t you buy a single joke this morning, love?’

  ‘I want my tee back washed and without a single crease,’ said Aadi.

  Shaly folded her hands in a contrived way as if begging for his forgiveness and went inside the house singing a cheerful tune.

  Kamala’s children longed for Shaly’s presence even though they hated her. There was something very compelling about her. Perhaps it was the fragrance or the smile or the way she talked. A whiff of Opium she wore or a glimpse of her sexy legs would turn them on, but they hated the way she talked, the way she made fun of things. They did not dare to start a conversation with her unless it was necessary. Once, Aadi saw her reading a book in the public library and he thought it would be bad form to leave without saying hi to her. Hesitantly, he went near her and asked in a hushed voice. ‘Hi Shaly, what are you reading?’

  ‘The monk who sold his flying fart!’ she said real loud. So loud that all his friends started chuckling and the librarian had to shoot a severe look their way.

  Kamala’s children wanted her to
walk out of their house, their lives. But they also wanted her very much; they wanted her to be with them always. For they knew that without her, their house would not be a home any more.

  6

  Packed and unpacked, wrapped and unwrapped, Kamala and her children were never home. This was the third time Kamala was taking the things out of the suitcase she had packed that morning. People from Movers and Packers would come to collect their things tomorrow. The pale blue uniform of the men employed by the company who managed their house-shift every time was a familiar and tiring sight. This was the seventh house they had shifted to in twelve years. This was the place where they had stayed the longest. She thought she would pack only those things she couldn’t stand being deprived of at any cost. Then she closed her eyes for a while and pondered over her dearest things. Her mother’s pyre flashed in front of her eyes. Fire shot upwards in the left side of their courtyard that faced the east. ‘After collecting the ashes I will plant a mayflower tree,’ she said to herself, ‘Let my mother bloom in red flowers.’

  ‘Are you afraid?’ a voice asked within.

  ‘No, I am not afraid. Why should I be? After all, fear is nothing but a very thin line inside our brain. It is fragile. It comes and goes. It is not even half as strong as a matchstick.’

  ‘Did you not want to watch your mother being cremated?’ the voice asked again.

  ‘I’m afraid women are not allowed there,’ Kamala said scornfully.

  ‘Did you not want to kiss your mother one last time?’

  ‘Yes, I wanted it so badly,’ Kamala sobbed. ‘I should’ve gone there,’ she sobbed again.

  After all, it was a matter of hours. She opened her windows wide and imagined the last visitors of the mourning days staring at Shaly with abhorrence.

  Looking out of her Bangalore window, Kamala remembered the lotus pond in the backyard of her mother’s house. It was so enchanting that invariably all the children of the neighbourhood wanted to play hopscotch somewhere near the pond. They wanted to pluck flowers, make garlands and play in the water. But the grown-ups did not allow them to go anywhere near it. ‘Don’t you dare? There is a man-eating giant down there,’ they said to the children. The beauty of the flowers was so inviting that the children didn’t buy such a cheap trick. Those who knew how to swim spent hours in the water until their fingertips became wrinkled and assumed the shape and colour of the fingertips of the ghosts they cherished in their nightmares. With curled-up fingers, spooky looks and raucous squawking they ran after the young girls, scaring the shit out of them.

  But when Kamala was older, she realized that the grown-ups were not selling them some foolish trick—that there was something real and grotesque waiting underneath, ghastly and loathsome. Beneath the motionless leaves, flowers and parrot-green rings, something lay in wait with its mouth wide open. ‘Don’t look down there,’ she warned herself. No matter how many precautions they took, the giant sometimes emerged. Raking up the muck and thrashing the lotus rings apart, it stepped out of the water, rode on a cog from the murder wheel to gnaw at the intestines of their house, and worked on it slowly until the total system that was called family vomited curses.

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed to talk to boys? Do you know you are bringing disgrace on the family?’ an infuriated uncle hissed forth. The giant felt happy at this and started working on the intestines again, all doubled up. The next time, the uncle came with a different allegation. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to touch a girl? How could you ever think of kissing a girl? Only boys are supposed to kiss girls. Do you understand, you thoughtless, good-for-nothing girl?’

  This was not a mere pastime for the giant, for he was envious of Kamala, to whom the pond would go after her father’s death. The giant noticed that the uncles and aunts were equally disappointed about the will Kamala’s father made. Hence, he started working on their intestines, making life in her own house miserable and unbearable for Kamala. The law of territorial greed stood erected, irrespective of the differences between men and women, gods and demons, dogs and cats.

  Relatives mean happiness for the first half hour and hell for the hours that follow, a pack of maggots one cannot easily ward off. ‘Let the mourning be over and I will not let anyone in again,’ she said to herself, ‘Kamala will die an egoist.’ There was nothing wrong in being a little bit puffed up in front of those green-eyed monsters.

  She was still at the window when her cell phone rang. Madhavan, she thought, it’s him. She prepared to answer the call and looked at the display, which read ‘Bossy Purple Ocean’ and stopped buzzing just as she saw it. She called back and her boss answered.

  ‘Kamala, I just wanted to know if we could have the party at Peacocks in the evening instead of Hotel Royal Orchid. The crew says a pub would be a better idea.’

  ‘I am afraid I can’t make it. I am going back home much earlier than I had planned. I don’t think I can afford another morning with a hangover. For you guys it is the weekend, but for me the beginning.’

  ‘Ah, don’t you worry then. See you in the afternoon at the Royal Orchid.’

  Back in her bed, she wondered what she was about to begin. This was an old house, just like any other house in that antiquated quarter of the street, where each plot was bordered with frangipani, those flowers with no scent even in full bloom. The street was always busy with vehicles on the tarred roads, vendors and dogs on the granite-paved sidewalks, and smoky dust greying the air. The house was cupped in an uneven garden by curtain plants lying quiet over the tiled roof and white blossoms whispering down the eaves.

  Admiring the abundance of the flowery avalanche, Shaly used to say, ‘This is heaven on earth.’

  Kamala felt her heart racing and tears choking her throat. She sensed a tension unlike anything grasping the innards of her house. She stepped out of her bedroom, walked down to the veranda, to her garden. Aadi was still there, sitting on the chair doing nothing. When he heard her footsteps he turned to look at her and saw her walking towards the barbed wire fencing in the corner of the garden where she grew wild orchids. He watched her pluck fat green worms out of orchid blossoms. Raking up dirt, she trampled the worms under her sandals. ‘What is the use of taking care of a garden we are going to leave behind?’ he thought.

  Kamala ran her fingers over the softness of the pale yellow colour of the orchid petals. She knew Shaly was remorse-stricken. It was Shaly who had introduced her to acid nights, to the raves, and then to the doctor who assisted the rehabilitation of junkies. All the same, she accused Kamala of spoiling her life, she used the word ‘future’. It was always future—Shaly’s future to be precise.

  Kamala sat in front of the doctor with her eyes down, staring at the legs of his table. She thought patients, especially junkies, should sit like this. Shaly said a good many things to the doctor, all in one breath. She repeatedly used the words ‘disastrous’ and ‘regrets’. The doctor was sympathetic, though severe with his tongue. Repentance is an easy thing, he said. Looking at Kamala he asked, ‘How long does your trip last?’ Kamala didn’t lift her eyes from where she was looking, didn’t answer.

  ‘Sometimes it lasts more than eight hours. The trouble is that she is always having bad trips and the bad mood persists even after the trip,’ said Shaly.

  ‘Obviously,’ said the doctor. His eyes were still on Kamala. ‘Therein lies the tragedy. LSD is hell. It need not be a happy trip always. Sometimes, some people may find it exciting as the neurons in their brains become elated. But at the end of the day, be it a happy or bad trip, you are in hell. The repercussions are grave. You get unwanted flashbacks. If your trip is happy, you cannot be happy again unless and until you are on a trip. Your ability to find joy in simple happiness and the beauty of life will diminish. If you are prone to bad trips, you start getting flashbacks even when you are not on a trip. Do you understand? I am not frightening you. But this is it.’

  Kamala was reluctant to raise her face, but she said ‘no’ when the doctor asked her whether she was a believer.<
br />
  ‘If you don’t believe in any god, then believe in yourself,’ said the doctor. ‘That will help you. Look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I am beautiful. I am forty. I am a badass. I have an amazing life. I am free. I can do it.”’

  Kamala thought he was giving a piece of chocolate to some heartbroken teenager. She wanted to walk out of his consultation room. He was jotting down something on a piece of paper. She saw him drawing diagrams and marking points.

  ‘May I have some privacy with her? Could you please wait outside for a while?’ he asked politely, looking at Shaly.

  Shaly sat almost an hour outside the consultation room. Meanwhile she looked at the other patients waiting impatiently for their turn and remembered Rita Mama, her pale, paper-white face. Rita Mama would lower herself to the bare cement floor, making faces to indicate vertigo, and cry, ‘I can’t manage it on my own. Shaly, take me to a doctor.’ ‘Drama queen!’ Shaly would shush the grumble and stare coldly. At this, Rita Mama’s wooziness would wear off. A faint smile would appear on her narrow lips. Petty fears choked her as she realized that she missed Rita Mama, her house surrounded by changing roses, votive candles, prayer chants; she longed to see her. Should I go back to Rita Mama or should I settle down with Kamala in her mother’s house, wondered Shaly.

  Bangalore always had a jumble of quirky souls who strived for a distinctive social constellation. For all the bad things one may curse about, the warmth of the city remained the same in spite of the sprouting concrete jungles and many individuals who felt fierce loneliness. People who found it difficult to put the champagne back into the bottle still slogged and waited for some faraway comfort in that never-never land. Mothers who lived a single life were many, striving hard to raise their children with love and care and at times with senseless abandonment. Some of them got married again, leaving their kids at the mercy of newcomers. Some of them lived a lonely life, with no partners to share their sexual agonies and inner pleasures.