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  Kamala followed Shaly like a persistent shadow. Or was it Shaly who followed Kamala?

  While the two women basked in light, the boys drowned in inherited, familiar darkness. They waited for hours in a background full of shitty laughter.

  7

  Holy devil! What did I get myself into, Kamala wondered as she struggled to keep the steering wheel steady; it kept veering to the left side of the road, of its own accord. The harder she tried, the stronger the pull. It seemed the alignment had gone soft in the head. The man behind her in a silver Volkswagen honked several times, lowered his window and called her names. She pulled into the next lane, into the traffic. She should have knocked down the Triumph that was trying to overtake her on the left side. ‘Dirty bitch!’ she heard the rider shout.

  She checked her speedometer and slammed the breaks, bringing the VW to a stop amidst maddening honks. She felt dizzy, she revved the engine again, manoeuvred with much difficulty into the slow lane. The man riding pillion on the Triumph was giving her the finger. She couldn’t fake anger, she laughed. She slowed down, heard the sputter of the Triumph die down and saw it transform into a black ladybird with tubes and fenders, its composite body painted a sparkling orange, flying skywards. On top of everything, Shaly was shouting, ‘This is a free ride, just enjoy.’

  Something was just not right. She knew she was running on the remains of the previous night’s party; she was hung-over. She stopped the car on a side path as she didn’t want to end up against some highway trees. Like a kingfisher pecking its own reflection in the water, something tapped non-stop inside her brain. Aadi and Shiva must have panicked, not seeing their mother last night. They were children going to school, not yet on their own. The scene in front of her pulled back abruptly, pushing the vehicles, horns, roads, everything into some wayside dumpster, urging her to seek something familiar, something far away, something from the past.

  ‘Come on, this is a ride. There is no running away,’ Madhavan hollered.

  Kamala looked at him uncertainly; she looked at the giant wheel. The wheel stood silhouetted against the segments of dust rising gently in the rays of the setting sunlight. Madhavan seemed cheerful and hostile as he dragged her through the festival crowd. There was something unnatural about him, about the way he jeered at her and made scenes in public. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her closer to him. She wrestled to get free of his grip. His hands were strong, she couldn’t even budge. She feared the giant wheel; she didn’t want to go on it. People who went for a ride came back safe, but that didn’t convince her. She had heard the story of a child who fell from a giant wheel during some festival or other years ago and was killed. She bit his wrist, hard, and fled. Madhavan stood dumbfounded, gaping at his bloody wrist.

  ‘We are friends; all of us are your buddies, pals and what not. Look at us, feel safe.’ Kamala looked up from her cigarette. In the dim light of the room she saw faces, people. She took count: not enough to be addressed as a crowd. How can they be my friends, I don’t know anybody, she thought. She heard the psychedelic music from the instruments. She felt she heard colours. She tried to concentrate on the music. ‘Is that Pink Floyd?’ Her voice was so loud that it shattered in her ears like a piece of glass against something rocky. Shaly and her friends formed a large circle around her, and started to laugh at her, having their share of fun. In the background, the real Slim Shady accompanied them.

  Kamala dragged herself to a corner of the room and settled down on the floor, leaning against the frosted glass wall of the balcony. She could feel anger under her fingertips, but she also felt her fingertips going numb and heavy. She thought she was shouting without raising her voice, she saw the fire creeping up the walls, displaying never-ending cardiac waves in bright colours.

  She decided she would not look at the walls again, nor at the dark side of the junkies. She furtively listened to those people who called themselves buddies as she wanted to ward off conflicting feelings and unsettled emotions. She listened, she heard them. They were talking about entrepreneurs and Steve Jobs in particular. They said Apples were already on the way to their Indian tables. Someone said Steve Jobs used sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll as his ingredients in the making of the perfect Apple. Kamala visualized Zen, sex and music boiling over in a large cauldron and Steve Jobs stirring the bubbling froth with his long ladle like a druid hilarious over some newly discovered magic portion. The children of Mayannur, the children near her ancestral house, flocked around, they all wanted to have a taste of the portion, the sensuously seductive apple bites. ‘Don’t burn your tongue,’ Steve Jobs shooed them away.

  ‘Once the balls fall what you need is a handful of mushrooms,’ said the middle-aged man who sat near the table smoking weed. It was a common comment among druggies and no one laughed at this. Most of them were youngsters whose balls were in good shape.

  Kamala said she would pick the mushrooms herself. Her basket was full of mushrooms. But when Madhavan plucked the juiciest of the mushrooms from the dark earth, her face fell. She was the hunter who had seen it first. Children returned home, their tiny baskets heaped with snowy white treasures. Kamala’s mother washed the mushrooms in turmeric water and sliced them into long strips. She sautéed the mushroom strips in coconut oil along with ginger, garlic and a paste of black pepper. The children couldn’t stop drooling over the most perfect mushrooms in the world.

  8

  The children did what she asked, told her only what she wanted to hear. Skilled in selecting memories, they blocked out the faint scent of musk cologne and wiped away the taste of dark slabs of Swiss Thins from their taste buds. Madhavan was a memory thus blocked and forgotten. They bluffed when asked, pretended he didn’t exist in the world they grew up in. They asked nothing about him even when they were busy packing their things and getting ready to leave for their grandmother’s house. They knew their father was their mother’s cousin. The knowledge was shame; they were guarded all the time so as not to bring it to light. They didn’t want people to think they were weird.

  Peace was destined to cut the roots off Madhavan, their father who was neither an intellectual nor a revolutionary, neither sad nor silent; just one of those good-for-nothing neighbours, down to earth with nothing special to brag about. He had not laughed since the day he had lost his wife and children. He missed them in every smile he faked. He was happy they were in Bangalore; he frequented grocery shops and bookstores with the distant hope of getting a glimpse of them, his beloved cousin and darling boys. Sometimes he met Aadi in coffee shops or Kamala at some traffic signal, at other times it was Shaly cautiously pushing Shiva down the sidewalk, Shiva sitting peacefully in his pram.

  Once they go back to live in Kamala’s mother’s house, Madhavan worries the distance will stain the vacuum with an undesirable blurriness that will weigh him down badly. At first, he thought he was lonely. Then he felt he was alone and being alone is beyond loneliness. In the aloneness he knew people intervened with everything, animate and inanimate. Though man does not sprout like seeds in the rain, though he walks, jumps and runs over the earth—touching it only at intervals, has the habit of taking his feet off the earth, he is earth, not just part of it. True, he hasn’t grown visible roots like plants, but he has roots everywhere, roots of air anchored on the earth through his lungs. And the air is omnipresent, making nature his labyrinth.

  This was not the first time they were moving house. Kamala kept saying that each house was an excessive investment, good for nothing. As children, Aadi and Shiva had loved the humongous cardboard containers and cartons Kamala used to pack their things in. The boxes were like caves, big enough to welcome an elephant, they thought. They would hide, sleep, eat, read comics or do whatever they felt like doing inside the snugness of their cardboard world. Life was a lot more secure and happy inside the boxes, thought Aadi.

  But they remembered the stained memories of a faint Friday afternoon when two women, unaware of being watched, made love on a king-size feather bed. A paint
ing remained stamped on the white bed sheet. One of them was their mother; the other woman looked younger, much younger than their mother. At first the boys thought they were attacking each other, a strange kind of wrestling they couldn’t enjoy. Hearts in their mouths, they waited behind the transparent curtains.

  Later, when the women came out of the room, the children saw nothing but joy sparkling in their eyes. They felt relieved at this less disastrous disorder of emotions and somewhat happy ending; blithely they welcomed the newcomer with bashful smiles. The fragrance of love unfurled inside the rooms, in the dining hall, in the kitchen, wherever the women walked. A huge laughter was welling up somewhere inside their dark, craggy mindscapes.

  ‘Meet Miss Shaly, our family friend,’ said Kamala. Shaly smiled and shook hands with the boys. She held their hands as if she was holding something magnificent.

  ‘Darling boys,’ said she.

  ‘Darlings indeed, as long as they don’t make a mess,’ said Kamala.

  ‘Which class are you in?’ asked Shaly.

  ‘Third standard,’ the three of them replied in a chorus.

  The children wanted to hug her again and sit on her lap. She smelled of something they wanted to eat.

  9

  The party was meant for all of them. Purple Ocean had invited them all—it was Kamala’s farewell party and her family was important. But as things had taken an unexpected turn, she said she would go by herself and come back quickly. She went to the party shabbily clothed, her hair undone and her emotions unsettled. She had not informed her office that they were in mourning, she didn’t want to anyway.

  When Shaly came downstairs to get ice cubes and green cheese from the refrigerator, she noticed Aadi sitting in Shiva’s wheelchair. He looked like an alien in trouble.

  ‘Is Shiva asleep?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Please come inside. We would like to talk with you.’

  ‘I will come down in a couple of minutes. Give me some time. Let me take these things upstairs.’

  The boys knew Shaly was not going to come down again as they had nothing to talk about. They moved and slept under the same roof but had nothing in common. They gasped when they came upon each other suddenly, as if the looks were too heavy to be seen or taken in. The house grew noiseless, making the curtains still, the walls still, the roof still, the small tensions grow intense. Shortly afterwards, they heard Eminem descending the staircase.

  Shaly, they knew then, was in front of her laptop. The music would change night into day, making her work like a fanatic. They imagined her sipping whisky, nibbling on the green cheese and going through the books and papers she had arranged scrupulously on her table. She would work late into the night. Sometimes she went to bed at dawn. The music would last till the last drop of whisky, making Vivaldi, Demis Roussos and Paul Mauriat take their turns to climb down and knock on the children’s door. Sitting in her room, Shaly earned more than what Kamala made in a month at Purple Ocean.

  Aadi lay on his bed, his face between his arms, thinking of his father and why his father hated Shaly. His father said he couldn’t bear to see his children becoming spoiled. But when he left, he left his children at her mercy. He left because of love, the surfeit or the lack of it. Had his departure been good for them, Aadi wondered. It seemed it hadn’t made any difference at all. Love was no sin. As children, they had witnessed how after the first kiss their mother began to sparkle. It was no magic; love gifted a sparkle to her eyes, which in turn proclaimed the happiness of being alive. What you learned from experience was not easy to discard by notions. If Madhavan had been kind to them, kind to their laughter, things would have been different. His children would still be laughing, his wife still sparkling, his house spic and span, his bread ready, and his car shining outside in the porch. Madhavan was not intelligent enough to live a serene life. Without trying to understand why his wife had fallen in love, he hated Shaly, he hated Kamala and he hated himself for hating them. And he wanted his children to grow up to hate her. All the restless hearts of the world would have done the same.

  You polish your windows till they are shining and keep them closed. You don’t seem to remember the world outside your window with its pristine, unbroken invitations. Because the only things that remain shut in the world are windows and doors. You don’t venture out unless and until the sky falls on your head and the wooziness of the inside world throws you out. The closed interiors make you puke. You need air. Go out, breathe and come back, let there be love in your lungs. Breathe easy.

  Kamala came home only after midnight, dazed by whatever she’d drunk. Aadi was still awake but he pretended to be asleep when he heard her footsteps coming in. She didn’t go upstairs as usual. Instead, she came to his room, turned off the dim light, and lay down supine on his bed, the whisky on her breath emitting frustrations. He began to feel uneasy, not knowing whether to caress her or let her sleep like that. The ceiling fan gathered speed; it blew the air around even faster, distorting the image of Kamala in the centre. The fan rocked her as if she were lying in a devil’s cradle.

  Love is stronger than three drops of acid. The strangling creepers of desire will burn you down. Shaly, were you right to enter our poor lives?

  10

  ‘There, there, my baby, show me your butterfly.’

  Little Shaly looked around confused, showing signs of exaggerated unhappiness. She opened the hands which had been clenched tight a moment ago and said, ‘It’s gone, and the butterfly flew away.’

  ‘Don’t lie, darling.’

  ‘I am not lying,’ she said restlessly and opened her mouth wide like good old Johnny, the obedient sugar eater.

  Andrews pointed his index finger towards her red panties and said, ‘What a lovely butterfly you have over there.’

  Little Shaly flinched at that and said all in one breath, ‘That’s not a butterfly, it is a flower.’

  ‘The butterfly is hiding behind the flower. If you come closer I will get the butterfly for you.’

  Shaly pulled her panties down and checked. When she pulled them back up she said aloud, ‘Andrews Papa plays dirty games.’ Where did her white chemise go? ‘Rita Mama!’ she called out.

  It’d been five years since Andrews Papa and Rita Mama adopted Shaly. Andrews loved her like his own flesh, but he had no idea how fathers loved their daughters, what games they played with them. Rita Mama believed that Shaly was her husband’s illegitimate child, that her husband was telling her lies, increasing the difficulties with the baby girl. To top it all, Rita Mama had peeling layers of worries and queries buried deep within to support her uncertainties. Why had Andrews run away to Mizoram leaving everything—the parish, his house, a steady income and name—behind?

  Andrews had said he would open a school in the heart of the forest. The early schools in Mizoram were run by Christian missionaries who were always good at making a profit. Andrews believed he would find his luck there, that God would support him. But Rita didn’t think the shack could be called a school. She couldn’t even find decent lodgings in the forest.

  ‘You will see for yourself how the forest is going to transform into a civilization within the next five years,’ said Andrews, ‘I bought the forest with a vision.’

  Forest! Rita was already sick of forests because she had seen nothing but forests around her from the day she set foot in Mizoram: the dark green groves, the thick jungle of bamboos with poles no more than a foot apart, no flat roads but valleys and hillsides, grey birds with pointed red tails, cobras, kraits and vipers, surprisingly beautiful fair-skinned men and women with Oriental eyes.

  Andrews was not particularly handsome. But he was born rich and was by profession a chemmachan in the church, one in the process of becoming a Father—like a tadpole with legs, frog-like but not a frog. When Rita’s family received a proposal from Andrews they were overjoyed thinking of the position and power of a priest in society. Rita too was happy, for she had admired his two-storeyed house right from puberty, from the time her lo
ngings began. She thought something new would happen which would make her life a feel-good movie, discarding whatever was left dark and brooding in the past. After her wedding with the priest, she would become maskiamma—the respectable lady of society, the wife of the priest. Since the day her father had given his consent for the wedding she had spent her time acting like a real maskiamma. She dreamed of the white organdie sari dotted with pink flowers she would wear after her marriage, the pearl brooch that went with it and the expensive jewel-studded hair clip in her black curls. She was determined to be undeniably kind to the people of her parish, even though she would feel loathsome inside, at times. Everything about her had to be just perfect, ladylike, she thought. The way she walked, prayed, talked to strangers, gave alms . . .

  But look at her! She had ended up in this disgusting dungeon where she understood neither the language nor the customs of its people. She dragged her dreams through the hostile crowd and tried not to smile at anybody even by mistake. This was not her race, these were not her people. The natives, she believed, carried poisonous spears to torture her and whenever she stepped out of her house she made sure she was not being watched or followed. When Andrews had to go back to their homeland on some business she shut herself inside the house and, like a worm wriggling towards the broken earth, she twitched behind the curtains, waiting for her husband’s return. Days passed by so unhurriedly that she did not know they had gone by—and then Andrews returned in the middle of a day. He came panting, his eyes downcast and his power dispersed. To add insult to injury he handed over a soft bundle to her and said, ‘Consider her your child.’