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  Through the microphone connected to his white linen shirt, the Swami laughed, spoke and sang, and the room echoed with sing-song speech, and linen clothes swayed and ruffled underneath the fan. Why was he laughing, wondered Kamala, what was there to laugh at or even smile? Everything seemed serenely exaggerated, the extravaganza of a reality show. Kamala looked at Aadi: he was surveying the room, not at ease among the whirlpool of white linen, the dancing men in white with long beards. Women were also clad in white, clapping their hands and swaying their bodies in time with the rhythms.

  The fragrance of incense sticks annoyed Aadi, his eyes welled up. He knew his father had decided on something, something not good. There were children, little ones, but they all looked different. A boy of ten years was banging his head on the floor while another was laughing at him uncontrollably. Some others were sitting in motionless postures like imperfect handmade wooden carvings, staring at nothingness.

  The night before, Madhavan had written a letter but he hadn’t shown it to her, and so Kamala drew back when he took the blue envelope from his pocket and held it out to the Swami. She had no idea what it was, she thought it contained something unpleasant, something she didn’t wish to know. Somehow she shared the vague fear Aadi felt, something not good. The Swami was in no hurry, it seemed Madhavan had even paid for the appointment, thus it was his time, Madhavan’s time. The Swami opened the envelope.

  Swamiji,

  We are grateful for the love you are showering endlessly; we have no words to thank you. But we must admit we live in constant pain. As you said once, the centre of life is love. But what if we lose our grip on love?

  We live a lost life with our twin boys, Aadi and Shiva. Two years ago, Shiva was partially paralysed after long and unfortunate hours wrestling with cold water and death. After that incident, Aadi—his twin, the one who is with us now—became exceptionally slow. His slowness frightens us; he moves only inside the house or sits in some lonely corners as if wrapped up in a mysterious, tragic dream. Shiva was a very smart boy, very active and always enthusiastic and ambitious, but Aadi was not so. He was a silent observer even when he was a toddler. Please help our child. We would like to enrol him in the mind empowerment program you are conducting for children. Please bring him back to life.

  With hope,

  Madhavan

  This was news to Kamala, strange, unexpected news, her muscles froze and vision contracted, she wanted to scream at the insensitive male psyche.

  ‘But Madhu, those children are differently abled. I cannot let this happen.’

  Madhavan paid no attention to her, but said in a fleeting way, ‘Not all of them. They give special attention to children who wish to forget a bitter past, everything unpleasant that happened in their lives.’

  Like a zombie summoned to life, the watchman opened the gate and out they went, leaving Aadi behind.

  Blackness filled her insides, her stomach ached, and she realized her underclothes were getting soaked in blood early. The decisions were always his. He said the house was on fire, he repeated it the next day, slightly modified; he said the fire was to devour their children, and on the third day she woke up from a nightmare to see the cinders.

  In the car Madhavan talked about how swamis train children in ashrams. He said India was a land of great gurus, and added that they would come in useful where parents failed pathetically. But he remained silent after that. At a certain point, she thought he was crying.

  Their relationship came to an end exactly after a year. She looked blankly at the roads he left open, but didn’t bother to take a ride.

  Kamala and Shaly went to the ashram and brought Aadi home. Aadi now knew the art of transforming tears into crystals, making the eyes sparkle.

  13

  On a very fine December evening, when the sun was growing colder, the warden walked out of the hostel premises in the hope of burning a few calories. He forgot to lock the gates of misfortune behind him. Usually, the task was the gatekeeper’s. Where was he on that dreadful evening? Nobody knew. Despairingly, the warden looked at his belly and sighed, the football in distress. This time he seemed determined, for he flew out of the premises like an athlete.

  Children were always butterflies—well, not all, some were cats and others monkeys, though all of them were good at tossing Frisbees. Above the green meadows, bordered with white-fringed violet petunias, colourful Frisbees flew through the air, up, down. Some of the children made paper Frisbees in the shape of aeroplanes and others waited impatiently for their turn to toss them.

  Shiva was really impatient, he couldn’t wait any longer, he kept shouting at the elder boys, ‘Next is my turn! Vroom! Vroom! My turn! Vroom!’ Aadi was sitting on the lawn watching the progress of the games. Out of the blue, a pirate who had covered his left eye with his uniform tie jumped in front of him and asked him to raise his hands. Aadi did as directed and the pirate shouted, ‘If you move, you will grace the obituaries on the notice board.’ Aadi stood there watching the girls dance to a song.

  In a land far away

  A girl kissed a frog

  That just made his day!

  One of the girls had a doll in her hand, a lovely doll with golden hair and blue eyes; a foreign doll. As the verses progressed, as they danced and moved at random, the girl squeezed the doll hard, making it cry.

  Far across the forest

  It is fun to know

  How Goldilocks got away!

  It was only then that Aadi noticed that they had with them an elephant-shaped gun for blowing bubbles. Rainbow bubbles floated everywhere; so high, some faded in the thin air and some settled on the delicately frilled petals of the petunias. For a second Aadi forgot that he was a prisoner—he ran after the bubbles as if he were chasing dreams.

  Just outside the unfortunate gates, a fabulous splash of bougainvillea intertwined with an old oak tree cast scattered shadows on the surface of the evening lake, over the subaqueous disorientation of the water hyacinths, its banks encrusted with rushes. It had been decided much earlier that a red Frisbee would fly out like an ignited aerofoil and little Shiva would follow, then Aadi in search of Shiva. Slowly, in a dark mood, the evening silhouettes reflected the song of the girls. How could Goldilocks have lost her way? Silence touched the folds of water, water lilies opened their mouths.

  It was getting darker. Usually it didn’t rain at evenfall in Bangalore, but that day the skies opened, emptying out chaotic pressures and cold anxieties. Madhavan and Kamala were on their way back from Murdeshwar, the place where the phallus of God once materialized out of a piece of cloth which was thrown away in a fit of anger by the demon Ravana. The sky was pouring like mad, it seemed it wanted to remain parched, devastated, without getting wet again. At a certain point, Madhavan had to stop. Kamala offered to drive, but she was equally exhausted. They wanted to clarify many things, discuss the separation, but they didn’t do it. Instead, they wandered at random as if they were just strangers, bored and exhausted but forced to be on the move. Reality remained—they wanted to talk about the children. It was no good separating the twins. Both of them knew it. He was okay with her keeping the children and she was okay with him leaving them forever. Now what was there to discuss? So, he said, ‘The rain is not going to stop.’ She answered, ‘I am afraid it is not going to.’

  When they had started out in the morning there had been no sign of rain, the skies were unusually clear and blue and the wind was hot—whenever they opened their windows to throw anything away the wind slapped their faces and they had to immediately close the windows. After an hour and a half, Madhavan parked his car at the roadside pull-off opposite the sea for a quick snack just as Kamala was slowly waking up from her nap. From a paper packet he took a knife, a loaf of bread, a packet of peppered cheese and some fruit. He cautiously cut a kiwi into two, and offered her a half. She looked at the fruit and saw the splash of chlorophyll spotted with black seeds inside the hairy pelt—felt a muscle contraction; she had forgotten the date of her las
t period—pressed her tummy and declined.

  The heat outside intensified. This serene place sandwiched between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea unfolded before her eyes like a far-flung, sanctified settlement. The unending turquoise water was yet to succumb to beach bums. He started the car.

  ‘If you are willing to leave Shaly, we can bring the children home; they need not stay in a hostel,’ he said, voice faltering. It seemed pointless to ignore his request. She knew how her children detested hostel life. They took turns over the phone and cried, ‘Amma, when are you coming? Please come soon, we don’t want to stay here.’ Something clogged inside her chest; she touched her breasts and shuddered at the pain and dampness around her nipples. Suddenly she saw her children in front of her; they were standing in the last row of the school assembly, their right hands placed over their hearts; they sang in unison, their voices reverberating in the nooks and corners of the building, evoking the bright goddess.

  The previous night, inside one of the resort rooms booked by holiday makers from Bangalore, Madhavan had stumbled in the semi-darkness for words, for hours. He violently shook the long ash from the stub of his cigarette. He had a lot of things to sort out. Crumpled amidst the white bed sheets, Kamala looked at him for a while. It had been years since they had shared their bodies; she no longer remembered the smell of his fluids.

  ‘Madhu, we are educated . . . do you think people marry their relatives these days? It is a modern society, we should act accordingly.’

  Madhavan was not at ease. Still, somehow, he said, ‘Kamala, look here, education has got nothing to do with traditions and family names. We cannot throw away the hopes of our parents.’

  ‘Yes, but you have to make it clear whether it is the hopes of our parents or the money of our parents that you’re not throwing away. You are answerable; at least answer this before we proceed with this monkey business called marriage.’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Do you think you can love me? You were like my brother, Madhu. Is it possible?’

  ‘I will try, what else can we do?’

  ‘Why take all the pain, Madhu? If you were to insist, your father would desist.’

  When did Kamala fall asleep, still crumpled in those white sheets? When did Madhavan come from the balcony and lie beside her? How many cigarettes had he smoked so far? At home they had two separate rooms.

  Kamala had a nightmare, she saw Aadi falling, falling endlessly from some hanging rocks. She shrieked and opened her eyes. The bed sheets reeked of whisky and she saw her husband snoring beside her, and immediately she hated the sight. It is true that Kamala loved Aadi more, more than Shiva. He was so fragile that she was afraid of wounding him with a scornful smile or angry tone. Shiva was smart; Aadi was sensitive. She remembered the glass menageries Madhavan had bought on his way back from Rajasthan: seven camels of different sizes, the colour of a drop of pastel brown dropped in water, unreal yet tangible. When she came to know that Madhavan was not alone when he went to Rajasthan, that he had a woman with him, his lover from before their marriage, she pushed the glass camels one by one off the edge of the dining table with her little finger, making them explode on the cold floor tiles, their melancholic explosions invigorating her painful insides. How easily the heads came off, and the legs, and the hump on the back! Aadi too was a glass menagerie, very fragile—she had to pay attention, for he was her responsibility.

  ‘I will not give my children,’ she pushed him hard. He was in deep sleep; it seemed he had no idea about the tension that was brewing inside that artificially decorated room. How can I trust my children with Kuljeet Kaur, the woman who hates me?

  Kuljeet Kaur!

  It was on the day before her wedding that Kamala learned her name, on the back cover of a blue envelope, a quarter of it under the postal seal. She was a girl from Mumbai. The letter was written in simple English. She ran to the lotus pond and sat on the steps and read the letter twice. The letter revitalized her with hope: her condition, she thought, was still remediable. Madhavan has a girl, and she is pregnant. Madhavan is answerable. She wanted to run, holding the letter high in the air, and shout. But the sight of her uncle, Madhavan’s father, drained her energy in an instant.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her.

  She wanted to congratulate him, for he was going to be a grandfather. But she couldn’t gather the strength to retort. Instead, she gave him the letter. He couldn’t read English, so she explained the situation to him in one breath. She saw his face grow pallid. Happiness thundered inside, and with an air of authority she asked for the letter back. She saw him tearing up the paper and throwing it into the lotus pond, its ink forming microscopic patterns on water.

  ‘Give me back my letter!’ she cried.

  ‘First, that is a fake letter, second, it is not yours, and third it is a bad habit reading somebody else’s letters.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I can’t marry him! I will talk to my mother.’

  He almost slapped her then but she lay prone on the ground and started making a scene. The house was full of guests, friends, relatives and neighbours; the tailor was waiting for her, he had her wedding blouse ready and he wanted her to try it on.

  ‘Get up, get up, Kamala!’ shouted her uncle.

  ‘Madhavan, wake up!’ I cannot leave my children at any cost, thought Kamala, who had lost her sleep, embittered by memories; she looked at him with vengeance. She rummaged through the bed sheets to find a comfortable corner; what she found instead was a heap of unusual memories. Those who came and those who left asked the same question, ‘Has the other baby opened its eye?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Kamala heard her mother say in a whisper. ‘Don’t let my daughter hear this, poor thing, she is already very upset.’

  Kamala feared that one of her twins was blind. Shiva was born just after midnight, while Kamala was still shrieking with pain in bed. She didn’t open her eyes to look at the blood-smeared baby, for she was carried away by a physical pain more powerful than her maternal emotions. The warmth of blood caressed her thighs and travelled along the length of her body. The possibility of a second baby had not been mentioned during her medical exams. But there the child was, blocking the vaginal passage, ready to die. The doctors had to carve open her belly to untangle the second baby from the cord—it was that reluctant to leave the dark maternal fluid. The child was underweight, like a strip of fabric in the wind and they had to transfer him to the incubator. Meanwhile the other child, the one who descended first, opened his eyes and smiled at everyone, and his mother, who was disoriented thinking about her baby in the incubator, crushed his nose many times against her heavy nipple, making him sneeze and suffocate from time to time. It took another ten to fifteen days for the baby boy in the incubator to open his eyes, and when he did he trembled in the light. He closed his eyes faster than he had opened them, and smiled in his sleep.

  The exhaustion of the weary night in the resort made her sleep in the car. Dented memories and displaced fantasies made her fidget in her sleep. Madhavan had to wake her up at one point and force her to wear the seatbelt. Again she fell asleep, again the visuals of Aadi and Shiva clogged her closed eyes, her brain. She saw the children playing hide-and-seek, not only them but almost all the kids in her ancestral home—including herself, when she was a girl of eight, her husband when he was small and good, his hair combed to the right and his shirt neatly tucked in his shorts. Some kids were playing happily around the merry-go-round and some others were on the slide. The slide had two big holes on the wall, two very big, very dark holes. Aadi was looking for a place to hide when he saw the holes. Somehow, he managed to get inside a hole and there, with his heart pounding hard, he waited for Shiva. Meanwhile someone picked up a stone from the ground and placed it near the hole. In no time the stone grew to a certain height and width, blocking the hole completely. Kamala could hear Aadi cry from far away, he was calling her name, while she was playing with her friends. Madhavan was playing too. And when th
e cries grew louder, and became a real annoyance she couldn’t resist any longer, she came to complain to Madhavan. He was telling a story to a large group of children, and to her relief she thought she found Aadi and Shiva in the midst of the children, listening eagerly to whatever Madhavan was saying. He continued, ‘And when they all looked in that direction, they saw Lord Shiva emerging out of a cow’s ear! Isn’t it funny? Just imagine, gods can do anything they want to do.’ Kamala observed closely and when she saw Aadi clapping his hands and smiling with the other children, she felt relieved.

  Kamala woke up, embarrassed, and drew away from Madhavan’s shoulder. She realized that he had taken a diversion from the highway as he always did on a long journey, as if to manoeuvre his moods with the jet of air that whistled at the windshield.

  He pulled off the road thinking that Kamala might be in need of a little break from the drowsy coastal drive. But she showed no interest in getting out of the car.

  ‘Look here, Kamala, I hope you know why we are here . . . we are definitely not vacationing. We have to take decisions regarding Aadi and Shiva. We can’t let them suffer the consequences of our mistakes. And I want you to speak. Today you are my wife; it may not be the same tomorrow. You are their mother.’

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t even raise her head or comb back the lock of hair that blocked his view of her eyes. She sat with her eyes downcast. Frowning, he turned the ignition on.

  ‘Damn it!’

  He lowered the window and threw something out in anger, with force, letting the harsh air in, then set off at a speed he really didn’t intend to drive at. Kamala wiped her eyes with the pallu of her sari. Relentlessly, the car sped through Shimoga, through the long and winding rows of casuarinas that lined the roads like tempting belly dancers, through the abandoned squares; they had to reach Bangalore before nightfall. The car left behind two enormous temple chariots and the sleepy old streets of the village which was formed by the ear-shaped union of two rivers. When they came across Apsara Konda Falls, the pond of the celestial nymphs, Madhavan stopped the car. He had often nonchalantly told her that a fine black tea brought freshness back to life and Kamala would need to empty gallons of tea if they were really going to resurrect her.