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  She looked at him now, standing against the background of the waterfall, his hair ruffled in the wind and heavy with water. He was searching in his pockets for coins for the use-and-pay toilets. When she came out of the toilet she gave a stern and severe look to the woman at the entrance, collecting money.

  He headed towards the wayside teashop. She knew that for him a black tea was enough to revitalize his senses; meanwhile, even if she were to drain out this waterfall, she would remain thirsty. She leaned over the rails and watched the water bubbling up, then saw him walking towards her with two cups of tea.

  ‘Would you like to have a samosa?’ he called out. ‘It is really spicy and hot.’

  Nothing could spice up her life at this point, she thought and shook her head. She leaned over the rails again and he warned her to watch out. Of course she didn’t want to jump; she smiled faintly, at the great attention he gave to putting on airs. Her eyes held on to something in the whirlpool of water, maybe it was garbage. Whatever it was whined like an infant, and the whimper vaguely echoed in her ears. She tried to concentrate; it was time she consulted an ophthalmologist. She narrowed her eyes further. Some sort of a bundle, she thought.

  ‘Madhu, what’s that?’ She pointed at the bundle.

  Now he was also leaning over the rails looking at the ripples and listening to the whining. Slowly, very slowly, their eyes got accustomed to the dark and they realized that it was a small puppy, alive and struggling. She caught a glimpse of its frightened eyes, maybe the saddest eyes she had ever seen, and thought it was looking at her, asking her to help. It panted amidst the rises and dips of the water; its heartbeats, loud and petrified, started knocking against their skins, scratching them with invisible paws.

  The playground was almost deserted. Even the last bubble of the dream said goodbye and vanished. Now, with the next bell, the children could go to the toilets and wash themselves, and after that, straight to the mess hall. Those who wanted to take a shower first left the playground long before the bell rang. Two or three girls lingered for a little while, but after that they too ran off. One by one the neon lights came to life, bathing the playground and the green grass in yellow. The boy who was irritated with the bell, who didn’t wish to leave the ground, threw the red Frisbee with such force that it flew out of the grounds. Shiva watched it flying, excited at the thought of getting his hands on it; he followed, in fact he ran, wanting to catch it before it fell. Aadi saw him going towards the gate, the children were not allowed to cross the boundaries, but Shiva was already out of the premises.

  ‘Shiva, Shiva, come back!’

  He might not have heard, for he flew like a Frisbee himself. The red Frisbee was there, underneath a lonely bench near the lake, lying on the lawn. It was already dark outside. A single mynah sat watchful over the bench, it was time it roosted. Shiva grabbed the Frisbee with great enthusiasm and flung it high with all his strength. Scared, the mynah shot upwards. The Frisbee cut through the air like a seabird, it even resembled the little aeroplanes that were exhibited during the Bangalore air shows, but later it surrendered to the subaqueous command, and invitingly landed on the silent rushes.

  ‘Shiva, come back, it is late.’ Now Aadi was outside the gates as well.

  Somewhere in the darkness, somewhere near the lake, death warmed itself by the fire, waiting with an expression colder than that of the treacherous water. Shiva placed his left foot on the ice-cold surface of the water, balanced on the other foot, tried to stretch his arm as far as it would go. Now Aadi was running. He saw his brother kneeling; it seemed he would never reach him.

  ‘Shiva, please.’

  Voice became breath; a faint smudge in the air. Aadi realized that his voice was not forming, not taking shape or dimensions, yet Shiva heard him, and he turned his head and tried to hush him. Aadi thought his sudden appearance might frighten his brother but the composure Shiva maintained unnerved Aadi, and once again he searched for the proper words to call him back. Now Aadi reached near the concrete bench, he slowed down a bit, in fact, he was out of breath. For a while, he stayed where he was, just at the foot of the concrete bench, holding on to it, trying to raise his voice again.

  The depth was widening, brushing aside the water hyacinths, its crystal eyes opened and saw the boy kneeling down. Over the flowers, the moonlight cast patterns and now it was no longer a lake but a fantasy, the Frisbee seemed so near, the one towards which Shiva walked. He floundered, the ground underneath was moving, the rhythm of the outer world was suddenly changing, and Shiva thought he couldn’t hold on. Now Aadi was crying loudly, even though he didn’t move an inch from where he was standing. He thought he saw his brother dissolving on the membrane of the water.

  ‘What could I have done?’ Madhavan looked at Kamala. ‘You saw how strong the current was. Even if I managed to get down it would not have survived. Sometimes we call this fate.’

  Leaving the puppy to its fate, Kamala rushed towards the car. Maybe to alleviate the tension, Madhavan turned on the music. Indistinguishable from the sorrows within, the voice of Narayana Swami echoed faintly.

  Sokamenikkyu mathram . . . sumukhi . . . tharuvathenthe . . .

  Why give the sorrows to me alone, O most beautiful woman

  She thought he was reminding her of the artificiality of life, that it was a pain travelling with him. It was far better confined within the house, no questions, and hence no need for answers. They were like co-passengers, or rather strangers, in the waiting lounge of the airport.

  ‘Your flight is in the morning, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must be planning to sleep here somewhere.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But their flight didn’t arrive in the morning, or in the mornings that followed, sometimes they repeated these questions mechanically, sometimes they behaved as if they were total strangers, sometimes a little bit cordially: ‘What would you like to have for breakfast?’

  ‘Anything but bread and butter.’

  Kamala removed the black sunscreens from the windows and looked outside. Laughing idols, countless effigies with their hands held up as if to bless the passers-by, lined the banks of the Cauvery and spread the toxins of their painted bodies in the water. Some of the gods were floating on the surface of the water. The car sped past. It began to rain, suddenly. The torrents cleaned the mud, thick on the still-sticky paint. By the end of next week, she thought, everything would be back to normal, the floating gods and her abandoned life. The fiery gulmohar flowers, now drenched in rain, formed liquid patterns of red on the stone pavements, like pastel colours in excess of water. The sky, which was still not clear, welcomed them to the traffic jams of Bangalore; how long, how long, each vehicle honked. Only minds were allowed to race in Bangalore on the roads, behind the wheel, in front of the signal lights and mocking queues. Wrinkled whores tapped on their thighs, bit their lower lips, and outlined the darkness irrevocably.

  The windscreen wipers sharpened the vision and both of them saw the yellow lights and flashing torches from a distance. A splash of water blotted out the vision and he had to increase the speed of the wiper. Once again, they saw clearly the searchlights and torchlights and the way people moved around the lake. They sensed trouble, a bad sign, the smell of fear mingled with the strong smell of dampness. She was frightened, she thought, she should not go there, she wanted to see her children at the earliest.

  ‘What is happening at the lake?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe someone is drowning,’ he said.

  The puppy was still there, she saw it again; she thought, it was drowning again, maybe it would be that way forever. Fear choked the insides of her throat; she said she wanted to throw up. It is the drive, he said. He parked his car between two magnolia trees. A few moments from now, the couple would lose what they had wished to hold close to their bosom throughout their joyless marital years. After long and wearisome years of abandoned disorder, they were finally going to be completely disoriented. Fear fi
ltered down his spine when he saw Aadi sitting in the middle of the crowd, his eyes fixed on the stillness of the water. The warden, from whose face colour was leaching away, looked totally unnerved and desolate, yet he was arguing with someone, shouting at someone else. It was evident that he was gripped by anxiety, that he could not answer even a single question, instead he howled at people in an uncertain dialect, racked with guilt. Voices droned like bees on a funeral night.

  ‘Where is Shiva?’ Madhavan yelled.

  Fear was frozen inside Kamala—she could neither walk nor move. She saw Aadi; she told herself that it was her son Aadi and pretended happiness at the sight of him. She realized that his twin brother Shiva was not there; he is taking a shower, she told herself.

  ‘Where, where is Shiva?’ Madhavan was now shaking Aadi. But the child did not respond. She said, ‘Madhu, don’t shake him so hard, he’s a child.’ From a distance she tried to console her son, she even tried to sing a song to him—he whose eyes were crystals by then, looking bluntly at nothing.

  The lake water was half frozen, for it was a December night in Bangalore, and the water was burning with cold. From behind the magnolia trees they heard sirens and saw an ambulance approaching. Madhavan shuddered at the sight of the ambulance with its penetrating cry.

  ‘Where is Shiva?’

  ‘There is nothing to worry about Mr Madhavan, Shiva is safe. The doctor said he will be all right soon. But . . .’

  The man pointed a finger at Aadi. ‘There is no need to tell you how twins behave when one of them is hurt. All of us were busy rescuing Shiva. It was only after he had been carried away to the hospital that we noticed Aadi sitting there. We tried our best to convince him; we thought it would be dangerous to forcibly move him from here. We were waiting for the ambulance. You know twins . . .’

  Twins! Aadishivam! Like a reed in the wind Madhavan stumbled towards his son, sat beside him at the foot of the empty concrete bench.

  ‘Enough, enough, enough, my child, come, let us go to Shiva.’ He lifted him in his arms and carried him towards Kamala. Fear trailed behind them, leaving them no hope. Inside the ambulance Kamala lay prostrate on the floor, unwilling to sit or lie down on the seat. Aadi’s lips trembled and he asked in a soft whisper, ‘Where? Where is Shiva? Where is he?’

  14

  Be notorious, be wanted, plunge into the darkness, the red region, you got to go beyond, beyond you.

  It’d been years on a bed, camouflaged amidst crumpled cotton sheets, like a thick blanket of human flesh, blood, veins and every other thing within the skin; mucus, spittle, faeces, urine and semen at fissures. There was a remote control in his hands nearly all the time, his fingers tight around its waist. Sometimes he spoke the language of an automaton; sometimes he answered his own questions.

  Speed!

  The uncontrollable race of vehicles, countless people crashed on the pavements, the prairies, on every possible spot of nature’s benevolence, spurting the red fountain of human liquid. He had killed people; he loved killing them, listening to their shrieking moans mixed with the deafening roars of speed. Sometimes Aadi came and sat beside him, watching his massacre rituals in the morning; it was he who brought him his bed coffee and morning biscuits.

  He liked having Aadi near him, someone to witness his triumphs, the unconquerable, insatiable desires of a beast, the concentration of a champion, the magical movements of his fingers on the controller, and above all, the kindness of a strong man who let a weakling watch him win.

  This was not a room, what you saw mounted on the wall was not a 42-inch LED, the black box on the left of the table was not a PlayStation, and the one on the right was not an Xbox. To be precise, primarily, this was a kill zone where Shiva the ninja vanquished evil. At times, Aadi had proved to be a useful observer; the soundtracks and the electronic dance music are a bit strange to his tranquil ears though.

  There was one particular bit of music, of rhythm, Aadi thought he liked, though he was not very sure. He had no idea that the voice was actually speaking English. His mind danced to the beats, while his brother, now a reluctant victim, battled with nature, firing at fields of grass. The fiercer the fire, the thicker the weeds, but Shiva was born to be an annihilator, the cosmic dancer.

  When Aadi asked him about the music, he became outraged and said scornfully that it was humiliating to have dubstep play while he was hunting and massacring. He said such awful things happened around us because God had abandoned the human race.

  But back in his room Aadi searched for more music on the Internet, and this time he understood the language. Later, while they were having tea, he reflected on the meaning of some of the lyrics. In one of those songs there was a mother who brought her son up like a crazy dog and let him wander through the streets in a mad rush. But her son went on saying how he loved this life. Aadi wanted to cry for a while after the tea.

  Shiva was about to fall asleep but then he heard the click of a door shutting upstairs and the perfume touched his sinews, his joints ached. Anointed with Opium, she descended the stairs; it was a Thursday afternoon. Maybe it was the exhaustion of the hot afternoon, or maybe it was the expectation of the unknown, he was not feeling well—he tossed and turned in bed. From where he lay on the bed he could see a cluster of crystal hangings shining unsteadily against the backdrop of a painting. In the picture, Venus, the goddess of love, was seducing Cupid with a kiss; while his arms wrapped around her body in search of her creamy mountains, she was reaching to steal an arrow from his quiver. There was one more artwork on the wall, one that Shaly said was a very famous painting called The Stolen Kiss by a renowned artist, an exquisitely preserved moment in time. The rays reflected from the crystals fell directly on the naked breasts of Venus and on the delicate drapery of the other woman’s fabric. Each time the light flickered, it seemed to him that the breasts swayed and the fabric ruffled. On each glimpse, he felt himself aroused. He had access to the Internet, he had visited porn sites, but this was something different, something permanent, like a wife one had till one died. It had been there on the walls right from the first days he remembered. Venus, with her apple-sized breasts and plump hips, and the other woman, with her elegant curves, her arms, her neck, her slightly opened mouth—these two women had been a part of his life; on the conscious level from the first day he touched his sex with purpose, on the unconscious level when the world thought he was a child.

  Suddenly, Shaly came to his room. At some point, the bed sheet was tented, and he felt ashamed. She was asking him something, but he could understand neither the tone nor the voice; he looked at her blankly, he thought he smiled. She noticed the unease on his face and thought something was wrong with him. She touched his forehead, asking in a hushed voice, ‘Are you all right?’ He held her hands against his chest and nodded yes and she noticed the irregularity in the way his heart was beating. She sensed something forbidden; she asked herself, ‘But what is forbidden?’ She truly had no idea whether a bedridden infant whose flesh grew over time was forbidden or not. She embraced him, brushing the softness of her breasts against him and kissed him on the forehead, on his cheeks.

  ‘Can I bring your wheelchair? Can we go out for a while?’ she asked sweetly. But he didn’t answer her. At a certain point she realized with pain that his fingers were grazing her nipples. She didn’t protest. Like a suckling, he felt secure in her embrace. For some creatures on earth, touch is a fundamental necessity.

  People are born selfish, thought Shaly. Me, myself and I, and everything always predominantly me, predominantly mine. All the good things have to be taught; share your food, don’t speak obscenities, no fighting, no quarrelling. Bad things flow, like a natural spring or a fountain or an avalanche through the veins.

  Who was it that drew this bloody fucking fine line between dos and don’ts?

  Fear!

  Basically, people are cowards. Their egos are rooted in duality, thus mankind created texts and subtexts.

  Shaly had no pretexts, no definiti
ve columns for dos and don’ts, no remains or corpses of additions, subtractions and multiplications, no rights, no wrong; above all, she believed, she was good. At times, she found herself confused, her senses muddled, and it was Mimi who answered her confusions, the girl from Mizoram, not more than fourteen or fifteen years old at the time. Mimi said nothing was forbidden, nothing impermissible. She said they tried to block her, that what they feared was her naked body. Nakedness was no sin, but the fear of it was the root of all evil.

  Years ago, when Shaly was just a girl of eight, she used to get upset over her kinky curls; she wanted long, silky, straight hair, just like the kind she saw in films. Rita Mama reassured her, ‘Such lovely hair you have, you should be thankful!’

  True, very true, compared to Rita Mama’s wiry unkempt hair, which was greying at places, Shaly’s hair looked attractive, but that was not what she thought of. It was those girls, the very sexy girls of Mizoram who took your breath away, their long, silky hair that would never get tangled, never lose its shine. They were like dolls with delicate yet firm silk threads hanging from their scalps; silk ribbons of happiness in the wind. Shaly couldn’t take her eyes off these wonderful, wonderful creatures of the forest. But things change, and one day Shaly stopped admiring their beauty. In fact, once she stopped looking at it, the feminine charm of the forest of her hair began frightening her. The chapter was both relevant and reflective in Shaly’s journey as a young woman, for which, later on, she was grateful. It all started with Mimi. It all ended with Mimi. She had a jet-black, lustrous abundance behind her which could in no way be described simply as ‘hair’; it seemed night itself trailed after her, sometimes darker than the darkest night, in the daylight, under the yellow sun.