Hadal, A review: Stunning lines, meditations on what it means to be a person, and the sameness of people.

(A shorter version of this first published here)

To read a work of fiction that is drenched with splendid lines, intense examination of human complexity and a scathing criticism of a country’s systemic failures isn’t easy. CP Surendran’s latest novel, Hadal, is all of this, including being a compelling, difficult read.

Hadal, a word referring to oceanic depths greater than 6000mts, is a befitting title for a book that is, constantly, wave after wave of tight story-telling, and imagery that has lent itself deftly to the author’s will.

Honey Kumar, a police officer who is transferred to Thiruvananthapuram after being accused of graft, might be called the protagonist of the book, but only just. A deeply complex man constantly in denial of everything within and without him -- a fact that repeats itself in his addiction to cough syrup, his compulsive grip and dwelling on a painful past, and an affinity for masks – Honey Kumar makes life miserable for Miriam Zacharias, a Maldivian national and an aspiring writer, who has come to Kerala in order to finish her book.

In a classic plot development, Honey Kumar propositions Miriam when he realizes she needs her visa extended; when the attractive Maldivian woman says no, Honey Kumar is unable to take rejection and goes down a destructive, vengeful path. Slighting him further is obvious proof that Miriam is having an affair with Paul Roy, a suave, charmer of a scientist who is also the director of an ISRO centre.

Honey Kumar, in pure rage and evil pain, puts two and two together and comes up with 35, thereby throwing Miriam and Paul into a spy-scandal whirlpool entirely of the police officer’s making.

If your memory goes back to the news from the 90s, the above synopsis will tell you that the book is based on the infamous ISRO espionage case where a scientist was kept in custody and tortured after being accused of passing on secrets to a Maldivian woman. It took nearly six years for the case to be dropped and considered baseless. The risk one runs with rooting a book in a true life incident is that readers tend to expect a spiced-up version of the sequence of events. If that’s what you are looking for in Hadal, you might want to recalibrate your expectations. Make no mistake, the ISRO espionage case only serves as a starting point for the meditative but rakish ride this book is.

Replete with detailed boxing references, Hadal carries an almost ghost-narrative of pain; masterfully sculpted meditations of the various kinds of pain a human being can experience. From Honey Kumar’s never-ending trauma at his mother’s near-comical death, his being caned as a child by Father Almeida (and his cruel, cruel taunt when the former visits the priest later in life) to the physical agony that the author puts Miriam, Paul, Honey Kumar’s left foot, an American anti-nuclear activist Haws and even a dog through, pain is a recurrent and startling theme. Sweat, rain, and even a drink become painful as does the book’s reading, but only because of the keen, uncomfortable truths it holds.

Marriage is the other idea that the book criticises. All the marriages in the book are crumbling relics: oppressive, unnecessary and soulless. Miriam, herself somewhat cold, is married to an alcoholic college professor who has been unemployed since the recent change of regime in her country.  Paul Roy is married to the irascible Grace, and is himself a bit of a philanderer. Honey Kumar’s parents’ inter-caste, inter-community marriage is passingly referred to as a mistake. Ram Mohan, Honey Kumar’s erudite, deeply sensitive and thinking boss, lives in a marriage that he is sure will kill him. His wife Anita is said to be heartless and, in a shocking moment of realization on Ram Mohan’s part, completely wrong for the role of spouse and parent. Just like him. In detailing Ram Mohan’s marital trajectory, the language is often martial and you sense a parody, a role reversal, of the popular woman-stuck-in-a-bad-marriage stereotype. If Hadal’s characters are all heavy, burdened individuals careening to their inexorable fates along with the soul-searing rain that is constant in the narrative, the passingly-mentioned Anita is possibly the only one who seems empowered as she removes herself more and more from Ram Mohan’s life. Anita, and Vasu, an almost silent presence in the book.

The book’s greatest diatribe, however, is against the way systems in India work. Corruption, complete failure of humanity, a lack of basic facilities for its citizens and the scary things power and its illicit handling can do are all attacked in Hadal in biting, ironic, fluid passages that creep up on you, take hold and, sometimes, make you laugh in surprise.  Take, for example, an exchange between Ram Mohan and Honey Kumar at a point in the narrative where the former believes that all might not be as he thought.

“Honey Kumar, what do we think we are doing?”

“Getting to unearth an espionage racket?” …

“What’s the fundamental problems we face as a people?

Toilets? Sixty percent of India defecated in the open.  “Corruption?”

Dialogue between characters, in my opinion is incidental, in the book. There's no painstaking detailing of interaction between characters that furthers the story, no pauses and extensions. The more important dialogue, in fact, is an internal one. A constant making sense of the world they inhabit, a consistent attempt at understanding their own motivations, confusions, ruminating their fates, deciding their futures. There are no pauses in those dialogues; the relentless seeking of whatever resolution Miriam, Honey Kumar or Ram Mohan undertake is a constant gentle assault in the book, with no room to breathe. 

Speaking of relentless, the rain in Hadal is something else. A giant green monster breathing heaving and groaning at the universe and the machinations it holds within its belly. Read carefully enough, you can hear the rain long after you've finished the final pages of the book. Surendran's pen is perhaps most keen and strong here; the rain is a character in itself, almost influencing gently, like a reluctant, ancient puppeteer everything that happens in the book, in one way or another.

Silences in any book interest me and while this book is anything but silent (it is, in fact, worlds colliding), there are spaces and silences that I want to walk into and explore. Is there any truth to Ram Mohan feeling victimised in his marriage? Is Honey Kumar worthy of pity or should we revile him? What is Vasu's double life? Why does Miriam choose to go back on a safer path? What does Honey Kumar see in Ram Mohan that he offers kindess and deference to him that he extends to no one else? But silences are always telling and these form alternate stories that for me to personally explore, if I choose to.

Much like the author, the book is eminently quotable; but Hadal holds back in certain places: how it portrays its women, the forceful seeking of resolution and the inexplicable sadness of some of its characters. Surendran’s craft is impeccable, as you will discover, to your delight, in the many, many heart-stoppingly poetic lines in the book. Clever, unselfconscious word play peppers many chapters. (“Waxed legs, and veined too.”) Balancing poetic perfection, then, is humour that is subtle and wicked, coupled with a sense of irony that is reminiscent of M Mukundan, and dare one say, Marquez. The latter’s influence is also seen in the effortless weaving of absurd reality, and fantastical imaginings that the characters induce in their minds either through circumstance or substance. Or plain geriatric illness. 

***

"My Brother's Wedding" by Andaleeb Wajid. A review

Weddings are always fun to read about, especially Indian weddings. Romance, intrigue, larger than life family members and all the shopping make for a riveting read and that is exactly what Andaleeb Wajid’s third (published) book “My Brother’s Wedding” is all about.

“My Brother’s Wedding” starts with Saba’s blog. A 19 year old, Saba starts an anonymous blog that helps her deal with the circus that her brother’s wedding is. Soon enough, though, the actual wedding takes a back seat and all the events that change Saba’s life gently, yet permanently, play out on the blog. From the whiff of first love to how a family sticks together in times of trouble, Wajid takes you through a gamut of emotions, without leaving you drained of them. You just can’t help wanting to know what happens to the characters next.

Wajid is a consummate story teller, and fortunately enough, she has the language skills to tell a tight, funny, poignant story that hits the ground running from word go; right in the beginning, what you read is Saba, not the idea of Saba, not a slow movement by the author towards bulding Saba, but a lively, intelligent Saba, who lives in Bangalore and is different from the rest of her family. Saba’s family is educated and yet deeply traditional, in so much that she wears a full burqa and the women in her family still avert their faces when they come across strange men. Arranged marriages are still the norm and marrying out of the community (even though to another kind of Muslim community) still vexes families.

In the midst of all this is Saba,clear conscience and burqa intact and audacious underneath it. She has strong opinions on her siblings Zohaib and Rabia, her best friend is a world-weary Riya and finds herself taking the first step to pursuing a goodlooking boy who she has an instant crush on.  Not quite the girl most people think Muslim girls are.

Wajid has a strong narrative style and her characters, at least those who occupy most space in her book, are well-rounded and journey to a different place by the time she ends her book. But she is also a cruel author, rarely ever giving readers what they think they want; she snatches and obliterates, she erases and takes away, and presents you with a twist here and a turn there that will have you groaning in frustration. She has no qualms in doling out the worst fate to her characters, and in the end, that very cruelty is Wajid’s biggest advantage. There’s never predicting what the people in her books will do.

Women in Wajid’s writing, apart from obviously being women, are portrayed in the complexity that is associated with them in pop culture. They have many inner conflicts that are rarely shared with others, they are hesitant about love, and not afraid of lust. They are bright, not very stereotypical and question things around them regularly. I have found, Wajid is true to the Muslim women in her community who will accept their lot, but continue to struggle with their questions and complexes. The men, however, are a girl’s dream come true. They are always good looking, charming, cultured and respectful. Unafraid of their love for their girl, they are expressive and don’t hesitate to kiss the love of their lives, although the sex can come once they are married.

“My Brother’s Wedding” is a fast read because Wajid spins a story on a tight plot and delivers a satisfying end. I started in the morning and, with many interruptions, was done by late night. Of course, I do have a lot of time on my hands, but that’s a different thing. The paperback is published by Rupa and pitched as a young adult novel, although at 33, it kept me quite engrossed. I loved the cover,  a bright yellow background with ornate designs that served as a border to a girl sitting at a laptop.  Structurally, the novel shifts between Saba’s posts on her blog and an omniscient perspective that describes the goings on in Saba’s household.

Priced at Rs 295, I totally recommend this between two heavy reads.  

And if you’re in Bangalore tomorrow, June 15, 2013, do brave the traffic to attend the launch of this book at the Oxford Book Store,  1 MG Road Mall, next to Vivanta by Taj at 6.30 pm. 

(Disclosure: Andaleeb Wajid is a friend.)

Ghost words

Her nose touched his; he could barely see the colour of her autumn-leaf eyes, their faces were that close. What he could see was the tide of tears in those eyes, a gentle swell, rose-veined from no sleep, from some more crying, and then a rolling leap off the cliff of her lashes; tears finally struggling for space between his fingers where he held her face and her skin, in an effort to seek the maze of her ear. Their bodies were weightless as they lay there, clothed, one on top of the other, touching head to toe, weighed down by love and unbearable heaviness of an impending end. "I am not leaving you. I am just going away. No?" he asked in a tone so tender, so full of love that there was nothing left in the world but this, nothing but them and their love.

The lie brought a smile to her and opened up the stream of her tears, where earlier they were a mere trickle. You see, then she believed it was the absolute truth. She knew he would ever lie to her. Maybe he never did. Maybe he just changed his mind. But isn't that a lie too? Changing your mind?

They kissed then forgetting the difference between hunger, spit and tears. They all tasted the same in her mouth, and his too. Probably. Everything that usually followed their kiss followed; they made love, they cooked, he fed her, she dangled her feet off the kitchen counter watching him move around the kitchen, she telling little stories. What did they talk about, she wondered. What did they talk about before they argued, she corrected. Everything and nothing. As much of a cliche that was, it was true. That's what love does to you, she said. It gives you the capacity to endlessly talk about everything; suddenly you have stories you've never told. Suddenly, just as the conversation started ("You mean to say apple juice has no sugar?") it also ends and then there are only kisses and sighs; moans and screams, depending on whether you're a screamer in bed, whether you're a screamer when you argue.  Silence is rare, because even when you're asleep, your breath is getting in each other's way. Your long hair tickles and you are far too polite to pull away that stuck, numb, pins-and-needles hand from between two resting bodies.

But sleep was always beautiful, she remembered. He'd twitch -- toes, fingers, elbow, knee -- before his body would finally settle down to satiated, protective sleep, an arm around her. She'd rock gently between sleep and wakefulness, waiting for the arm that held her to fall aside as he slept deeper. A completely futile exercise because not once did his arm go slack, releasing her from the warm enclosure of their bodies. But sleep came to her rarely. She willed it away because she didn't want to miss him when she fell asleep.

She smiled at that thought. Some times, sleep had gently rested on her and she had woken up by his waking. And yet, she'd pretend to be asleep just so that they wouldn't have to end this. So they didn't have to go their own way when this was done because going away meant debilitating. Like that cheesy song, every time she left him, she left bits of herself with him. Sometimes her kisses, sometimes her breath. Sometimes all the love she could carry in her heart. Other times her energy, her excitement, her wetness. Yet other times, her wallet, her keys, her earrings. He took as much as he gave. Or maybe just a little less.

As she lay in the dark a thousand times more, on the same sofa, after that tearful afternoon, imagining their weightlessness, their heaviness of parting, she willed herself to hear that voice again. "I am not leaving you." Most days she heard the voice, she heard the strength it took for him to say that to her, knowing he was wrong, not knowing he was lying. But as time passed, just like with the noise of the world around her, the voice began fading. Until it became a ghost of the words that were said, until, like ghosts, she doubted they'd been said at all.

How does this one end

She opened up her email and there it was. A single question in the subject line, the rest of the email blank. "How does this one end?"

Anagha smiled and went offline. She got up, got herself some fruit, green tea and chocolate; she creamed her feet, put socks on, cleansed her face, moisturised it, tied her hair up and came back to her computer. It was going to be a long and adventurous night and she wanted to get all the mundane things out of her way.

How does this one end, she said aloud, before she began her writing. This one ends like every other one before this, she thought, with me putting out the shapely leg of my words in silk stockings for you to glimpse and come back to me, asking me how this one ends. You have a leg fetish and I am an exhibitionist. A velvet string binds us and that is how this ends. Or begins.

"This one ends with Suman running away. Can't you tell? She married the perfect man. And hated herself for it. She had a child with him and named him the perfect name. And in two years, she couldn't bear to be a mother to him. So she ran away, to another city, where she would work like a fiend, let her ruthlessness shine, where soon her liver would deteriorate and where she could make silent calls to that number in Bangalore, repeatedly, till a little child of three or four answered and lisped "hello". Then she'd listen to the voice with her heart filling up and growing heavy like a blanket soaking in water. Then she'd hang up and wring that blanket out dry so hard that the tears would envelop her cheeks, chin, lips, neck and the neckline of her cotton blouse. She'd let all her sorrow drain away, empty her heart out and go on for a few more weeks, light and airy till she needed the catharsis of this particular piece of sorrow. For other days, when she felt more self-pitying and less masochistic, she had other tricks. Like stalking online an old love, her only love, if you were to believe her.

"Does this sound familiar to you? Or do you think it's a bad ending? What is indeed a bad ending? Would you rather have Suman stay in that marriage, where she felt no conviction, where she felt compelled to stray because she justified it with lack of love from her perfect husband? That's possible too. Let's look at that tack and see where it takes us.

"So Suman stays back. She stays back in Bangalore, with her perfect husband, in her perfect suburban home with a child that is perfectly named. She plods on for the love of her son, going to work, excelling at it, making money and taking holidays at least twice a year, holidays that would she would invariably show off about. But inexorably, I think she'd be drawn to all the things a "lucky woman" in a "good marriage" was not allowed to be drawn to. She'd neglect her son ever so slightly because just one more drink with her friends was not going to harm him. She'd find gentle excuses to not spend time with her undemanding perfect husband. She'd fall in love on the side. I cannot but see her getting caught by the husband if she continued to live with him. And that would be disastrous, don't you think? Because for Suman, that she got caught would be far more painful than the fact that she cheated at all.

"Because Suman can cheat rather easily. Didn't you notice? She doesn't see it as cheating at all. Every time she finds another man attractive, she convinces herself that that doesn't change whatever love or loyalty she feels towards her husband. And if her heart's not in it, why should she not step out a bit, embrace the excitement of a new man, new attention, new love and then come back when it was done? It would keep everyone happy, is what Suman would think. What she doesn't see, however, is that every time she gives her heart to someone else, or her body, she's making it more and more difficult for her to go back to a man she doesn't love.

"Now, on the other hand, if her husband was the kind of man she was irrevocably, irredeemably tied to, then coming back would have been tremendously easy. Because the core of her heart, the core of her entire being would belong with him. In fact, I'd like to think, Suman wouldn't stray at all if her husband was the one she imagined in her head. And if she did stray, it would only be because she was in love with the idea of someone falling for her, someone loving her without truly knowing who she was deep down, someone idolising her and keeping her on a pedestal; where she was all that was dazzling and covet-able. Then, her straying wouldn't matter at all because the only man she ever loved was back home. And this was her werewolf phase, where blood and wild would call, she'd mutate, go out and make her gentle, loving kill and come back. And hope she never got caught.

"Is that a better ending for you? It's a painful, torturous ending. But an ending all the same. Now, my ending, where Suman, after having wreaked destruction on a perfectly placid life, ran away to another city to start life afresh and spend all her money on silent calls feels like redemption. Mine and hers. After a point, Suman wasn't part of my fingertips anymore, she just wrote her own story. After all of Suman's lying and cheating, this was the only thing she could do to redeem herself. If, at some point, guilt crept up on her tiny body before she died, this was the one thing she could use as armour. She could fashion this into the strongest armour she'd have ever worn because this was the metal of truth, the pure, untainted element of honesty in her strife-ridden life. That she was honest to herself, her son (whom she wished she would forget and hoped she never would,) that she was honest to the man who took her in when she needed to marry someone on the rebound. This was her act of pure, blazing white truth. With this she could live with any other lie, she could live with herself.

"What do you think? One day, I'll tell you about her son."


Anagha then hit send without editing or reading it again because she was sure self-loathing would take over and she'd never ever send it. With that, she started writing her next story, one that she would post only four weeks later, even if it killed her to sit on it. Because she enjoyed this game. She enjoyed blindfolding the man at the other end of this communication and touching him in places he didn't know she'd touch. She enjoyed tying him up in the cutting ropes of waiting while he wondered what she was doing with her words, with her time. She enjoyed not knowing his name and she enjoyed that he would wait, patiently or not, that he had no choice, till she wrote her next story. She enjoyed that he would never know that she wrote her next story the minute she got his email, that she yearned and craved for that question and if it didn't come, she was afraid all the words she had (and that's all she had) would cover her like magical scales and drown her in the water of her despair. She enjoyed that he would never know he held the strings in this game, that she would, for as long as it lasted, be played by that single line "How does this one end."


*****

Seek

With the summer, you come. As irregular as my period, as sure as an unexpected pregnancy. Always you. Just when I think you've forgotten all about me; when I think I've forgotten all about you. How long will you stay this time? A week? A year? A promised lifetime that will surely be struck down by the cancer that we are?

But first, sit down, let's have a drink. You must be tired from looking for me. I am not easy to find, they say, being one of a kind and all. And yet you find me, every single time. Whether I am wed to one man or loving another; whether I move to the city by the sea or hide up in the mountains where the mist becomes my breath: my entire being hoping the fog, the hated cold and the river sounds hide me completely. Through all of these wondrous escapes, you find me.

Do I leave a trail like Hansel? One that's not just bread crumbs. What are my telltale signs? My famed belief in ESP or the fact that I send you a postcard from wherever I go, but without a return address and from at least two towns away? Is that how you find me?

You like my postcards, you said once. You liked my uneven, irregular, pretending-to-be old fashioned handwriting. It is old fashioned, you finally said, because I write in cursive. And you find that strange, that something so intrinsic about me is old fashioned. Did you miss, genius, that I send postcards? When was the last time you received one from someone other than me? I am old fashioned; I believe in loving forever, no matter how many times it takes to reach that forever, I love each of those people for the rest of my life, and theirs. Sometimes, even after because they're so much more dearer when they are dead. I believe in thank-you notes and paying a visit to ill friends and relatives. I believe in carrying flowers to someone's home if I am going there the first time. I believe in apologising if I've rudely interrupted someone. As I should now. I am sorry, you came all this way to tell me something, as always. What was it?

How do I know you've come all this way? Your shoes are clean, your fingernails freshly clipped and the first thing you reached for when I offered you a drink is beer. If you had just come past two neighborhoods your shoes would wear the film of dust of a short walk and you wouldn't have bothered with your finger nails because they wouldn't have been dirty in the first place. Ah, you still smile at my basic Holmesian deductions, I see. You know, I could make these silly assumptions all my life, sitting across the table, making a complete, but, you'll agree, pretty ass of myself just to see you smile the way you do. I can barely ever tell what that smile is like. All I know is it is the smile I expect to see every few years when I know I've forgotten about you and you have forgotten about me.

But I digress. And hijack your time. Why are you here?

"To hear you talk," you say? Well, your timing couldn't have been more perfect. I've been married three years now and I've had a lot of time to gather enough that I could talk to you about. Where do I begin, though? Shall I tell you the mundane, the everyday and inevitable? Like this little life growing in my body, swelling my body in ways I don't recognise. Let me tell you about that. Have you been around a pregnant woman since you left the last time, or ever, for that matter? They're far from anything remotely maternal, I tell you. Or maybe the way they are is what maternal is about? Growling, restless, demanding and ready hide at the smallest hint of danger. Or being called fat. We are happy most of the time, but boy, you've got to be inside our heads to know how much it takes to enjoy this without consistently reminding yourself that there's no going back. The baby's got to pop.

Oh you didn't notice? Here, let me show you. Place your palm right there and see if the little one will be friends with you. It needs to be -- I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, so "it" it shall be. I'd like it to be friends with you, after all you're probably going to appear at its fourth birthday and I am not going to be able to explain who you are. "Friend" would mean she'd leave you alone, and if I said my heart, she'd want to know why it was walking outside of my chest. That's an idea, huh? Why are you walking around outside my chest and disappearing for years together? Aren't you supposed to be right here, pumping blood into my life, helping me choose the crib and losing yourself to the darling blanket? Well, never mind the sentimentality. Feel the baby, feel how I want to hide you when I want to protect you from the world, tight and secure in my womb, not breathing yet living, safe and warm and liquid. That's what I want for you when I want to save you.

So, hear me talk. You're leaner this time, but you've always been thin. No, sinewy and yet trim, whipcord slim, not thing. No obvious muscles and yet unbounded strength when dragging me across the road to cross it or lifting boxes into the truck the time I left town because you said you needed space. And the telltale signs of your smoking have disappeared. I guess I should be happy for you that you've given up, except I am not. I liked stepping out with you for a cigarette. To watch the distance at which your feet were placed, to wave the smoke away from me as if it offended me, even as I blew my tobacco clouds at you. I hope you knew it's just that I didn't like my hair and clothes to smell of smoke. I am a lady, you know, and old fashioned at that. All this cooking for yourself is making you look taller than your tall. I have to really reach up, and look at the sun if I have to find the rich bark of your eyes. They're still the same, those eyes. Always promising, always lying, always full of love for me. And that is why I open my door for you every time you come. Your promises are like a drink of good whisky. I take my time over it, the flavours, the smoke, the colour, the gentle swirl of words that is water. And I get sufficiently drunk, the first of it going to between my legs, to my core, warming me up from there to the very tips of my toes and fingers. When I wake up in the morning, though, I am hungover, and your whisky promises are replaced by wooly-headed lies that you speak. A gentle, groggy untrue reminder of last night's grand plan-making.

But when you leave, and you always leave, in a day or two; or even a week, you always leave me with love in  your eyes. And that takes me through the next few years, I pack that in my baggage when I pack to hide, to run, taking out tiny bits of it like precious, expensive chocolate that I am greedy for, an avarice of the soul but only eat bit by excruciating bit so it lasts me till... I don't know when. Because I never know when you'll turn up at my door, freshly clipped nails, clean shoes and a heart full of dross that you collected looking for me, just as we have almost forgotten about each other.


*****

Maya's mother

She was always on the outside, looking in. It was her birthday party and yet, she was farther away than the guests. A stranger to her own friends. Her cake didn’t look good enough, nor did the games, the music wasn’t what she’d have liked. The food was the only thing she’d approve of. And strangely enough, today, after so many years, she couldn’t remember the cake she had that fateful birthday.

34. Old enough to have teenaged kids if she hadn’t been foolish enough to go in search of an abortion clinic. As old as her mother had been when she had sneaked up on her little 14-year-old’s diary and ruthlessly discouraged the cause of young, puppy love. 34 -- a nice, neat, empty little number.

Maya took her clothes off and gave in to the warm smell of her own body, gently twisted with traces of smoke-and-aftershave from another’s. She slowly turned the evening over in her mind when she started to detect the faint spit-smell of his kisses on her skin. What a nice thing it was to be with a well-groomed man. Or a well-spoken one; even a talented one who played really well the violin, a flute, a woman. Ah, but poets, those are the ones that were best left for a weekend; and also left behind at them. Going anywhere with a poet was a fascinating journey till you realise he is making this journey up as you went along. That he has no clue where he’s going is not the bigger crime, it is that he has no regard for his companion, was the bitch.  She took off her shoes: like she said, best left for and at the weekend. No more.

The neutral beauty, the dry, clean floor more importantly, of the bathroom beckoned. How foolish to give this up for togetherness, no? She walked into it and realised 34 was indeed here. She couldn’t get away with leaving someone’s bed and heading back home, no matter how late it was. Her skin was paying the price. In this case, it was 3.45 a.m. She’d have much rather stayed the night, if it hadn’t been the imagined horrible moment when she’d look at his face in the morning and wonder if he was thinking why she was still here. Every single time. No matter who it was. Sometimes, just before she woke up she’d semi-dream the noises of a sunny morning and with a man staring at her sleep, watching her come awake. Then she’d wake up fully, in her own bed, bright, white and alone. The water came on and she stepped out of that picture. That wasn’t meant for her. That was meant for teenage girls who didn’t know what it was to be liberated. Who didn’t know the comfort of waking up in their own beds and having the power to leave a man to wake up to himself, without as much as a note. No matter how tender the love making was. It was for needy, impressionable, clipped-winged women who didn’t have a feminist mother. It wasn’t meant for women like her.

She rubbed her wrists gently as she scrubbed up her hands and face, smiling at the tingling the memory of last night brought her. Velvet cuffs had been too soft for her. She wanted to feel a little more powerless. She said that to him, in a low mocking tone. The manipulation took effect. He had looked around for a minute as she lazily watched him, and had torn up the sheets into strips to tie her wrists, wrinkling her skin there and slowing down blood supply to her palms, not stopping for a second before he tied her feet up too. And it was that lack of hesitation, that complete confidence that this move would pleasure her, a near-stranger, which had her plummeting into a violet swirl of passion all evening. It helped he was younger than her and completely enamoured with her curious nature. There was something to be said for youthful enthusiasm.

Bondage. What a strange thing. A word, a feeling, a concept that she had been driven away from, all her life. Bondage: that word she had been taught to hate since that fateful birthday when her mother had calmly sorted through her presents and found not a single one worthy of her daughter who was going to be no man’s woman, for a daughter who was going to join the suffering sisterhood, for a daughter that she would shape when she had the time and convenience to. Bondage: Maya's final and comfortable undoing.

That birthday, Maya's eyes filled with wonder as present after present tumbled out of impatiently torn-up wrapping paper, pink and wonderful. There was a breakfast set, a bead-jewellery making kit, a doll that needed to be picked up and pretend-fed when it cried, a book that told stories of lizards, princes and far away lands. A world of presents she had waited all year long. A world of presents in complete contrast to her pale, recycled wood modeling kits (dinosaurs, vehicles, insects – she could build just about anything), presents nothing like her books that had been signed, “With love, C”. Once, when she had been a teenager, she had taken her room apart in order to find one book, one memory, one ice-bound moment in time where her mother had acknowledged that she was her mother. All she ever found was, “With love, C”.

Well, at least there was love, she thought. Like tonight. Tonight, with this young and exciting man she had met two weeks ago, there was something akin to love. Her worshipped her and she, well, she was a slave to all that he brought out in her. He let her revel in her anger; she had so much of it. He scooped up her helplessness, when she wasn’t watching, and carried it in the palms of his hands. She unraveled when she undressed for him and he gathered her up, gently winding her around the serenity of his acceptance. He never asked for more, and she didn’t know a better of way of ensuring that he’d get all that he never asked. She left him, and he came back every single evening. She cried and he kissed whatever it was she was crying away. She stepped up the wildness and he cut her down to size. She shone and he caught her light, showing it off. When he approved, she bloomed, slowly climbing to a high that her dancing had never given her; an applause that made her audience’s seemed like a whisper. Tonight, it wasn’t just her arms and legs he had tied, it wasn’t just her femininity and sexuality he had dominated over. With his cool aggression, he had shown her gentleness like she had never known, with every disregard for her manufactured protests, he had acquiesced to her each unspoken demand, with every single caress that was designed to meet her need and yet make her feel powerless, she felt strength in trembling leaps and bounds. His need to subjugate had set her free. In tying her down, he had set her up to fly. And flown she had, until his snoring had woken her up and she came back home, unable to shake off a habit of over a decade.

She eased into her bed and stared at a ceiling that was her graffiti wall. Her mother’s face swam before her eyes. Her feminist mother who didn’t help her buy her first bra. Her firebrand mother who was a sister to any woe-begotten woman who came to her for help, her feisty, dogged, cowardly mother who didn’t know what to do with a child she had made the mistake of having. Her lonely, famous, ambitious mother who taught her to not defile her body by having children; who taught her that men were only worth a couple of emotions, if at all; who taught her that nothing was more liberating than being able to pack up her bags and go off to Macau, at the drop of a hat, if that is what she wanted. At once, she knew why love and hate were the same thing. She looked around to see a picture of neutral femininity – no colours or frills that would have made her happy but her mother sad, no touches of perceived softness. A spare dressing table, a mirror that had been reflecting her beauty to her blind eyes for years, a bed that was stately and even handsome. A bed that was lonely. A bed that hadn’t known the tears that came from joy of making love to a man she loved; a bed that had never been damp with the milk that flowed from a mother’s breast if she slept through feeding times, a bed that forever was strong, proud and alone.

34. Empty, bereft 34. Her tongue softened the Ambien against the roof of her mouth, first one, then another and then a few more. She’d wake up tomorrow and deal with 34, she’d hunt for that dripping faucet of pain that she had cemented shut, the one that had been asking for children; tomorrow, she’d ask if he had flown with her. Tomorrow, she’d wake up and deal with her mother. Or not

Making up

She continued staring at the TV screen as she did every afternoon when the rest of the house went down for a nap. A regressive show played on with every day bringing barely any movement in the story. Despite her superior sensibility, the habit-loving part of her had gotten used to watching this baseness on TV where blood warred with blood, where love meant being a doormat, where the children were all precocious and  taught no manners. The credits rolled soon and her stiff-dough body needed to shift position so she could lie down. She raised her gentle voice to call for the girl who looked after these needs. When no one came, she slowly stretched out a wasted hand, glowing skin sticking lovingly to bones, to grab the headboard. She struggled, as always, to get a good grip. Many years of severe spondylosis had left her limbs stiff with nearly no feeling in her palms and soles of her feet.

Holding on tight to the headboard with one hand, she swung legs that weighed a ton onto the bed. That took as much effort as it took time. Flopping her head and shoulders back onto her bed, she lay for a few seconds as the sweat she worked up with the effort cooled on her forehead. Madras was always unforgiving, she mused. She wanted a sheet to cover her feet but there was no one awake so she could ask;  she lay down willing her body to ignore the pinpricks that the sharp breeze the fan generated turned into when it hit her skin. She lay quiet and stared at the ceiling, a canvas for her life, where, everyday, she watched and rewatched, as if on loop or shuffle, moments from her life of 73 years. Sometimes the scenes had her children when they were young, at other times when she herself was a pampered little darling of the household. Sometimes, she'd watch her life all in one go as if on fast forward and ponder in amazement at all the strangeness of it, much stranger than any fiction that her repugnant TV shows would ever offer her. She took out her favourite bits on some days and carefully played them out in vivid colour, replete with music, smells and weather, a smile draping her bad teeth without her knowing, her strong fingers laced on her stomach, keeping time gently to a rhythm only she heard.

Then someone would come, either her grandchildren for their ritual hello or their mother. Or the maid, for it would be tea time and someone would exclaim that she had forgotten to take off her glasses when she lay down in the afternoon. She had wanted to ask, "Why should I take them off? How else would I clearly see all that I see when I lie down?" But she reined in her wicked sense of humour these days; apparently grandmothers were supposed to be well behaved, she sighed, and sipped on yet another cup of coffee that no one in the house could get right. She drank it gratefully, however.

If there was one wish she had when she realised she had grown old at around 69, it was that she wouldn't be dependent. Having thought often about impending death, she knew she wanted to die without having to bother anyone, even her children. A fall when she lived alone in her house in the village, however, took care of that. She thought she'd heal, that she'd walk again and for sometime she did. She used a walker painstakingly, and walked. Stiffening up her body for the onslaught of pain and unwillingness that her legs and hips presented her with when she grabbed the four-legged aid and tried to stand up, she told herself every day that she would walk without this. She plays that bit on the ceiling some days, watching slowly to see when it was that she stopped even doing that. She watched carefully to see who was to blame for allowing her muscles to atrophy, so much so that her ability to even sit up on her own was taken away. She knew, though, just like everyone else did, that she would never blame anyone but herself.

This afternoon, she took out one particular memory, a favourite, in fact. It wasn't so much a memory as it was a theme into which a series of memories fit. The memory of her husband when he was angry. She smiled as she remembered his handsome face. At first look, they were an unlikely pair. If you were to strip down to genetics and look at physical beauty, not taking into account the flattering makeup years of loving and experience bring, he was the more attractive of the two. Tall, a classic face that comprised an aquiline nose, balanced lips and eyes that held a lifetime of calm. Her face, she laughed to think of it, was half forehead and half a big wide smile. Aishwaryam, they'd say her face had, as she placed a perfect circle of kumkum in the middle of her forehead.

Temperaments too differed, as with most well-matched couples. It took an entire week of extra salt in his food to elicit even the smallest bit of remonstrance from him, and even then, a stern comment is all that  he'd indulge in. She had the temper of the devil's handmaid. She'd explode in a series of threats, words and before she turned on her heel and walked away, it would be gone, that tempest of rage. This time, she played on the ceiling the quiet vignette of an afternoon where something she had done had irked him. The sunny, ill-constructed  hall, the larger than necessary table, the inexpensive curtains, the alcove for the fridge all came into fuzzy focus, awash with the faded colours of memory. She had just woken up from her nap and had brought them tea and a snack, a comforting retirement ritual they had developed. She said something and when she got no response, she thought he hadn't heard her, considering he was pretty deaf. She touched his arm and spoke again, gesticulating mildly and enunciating so he could read her lips. Silence. Mildly amused and mostly puzzled, she wondered what had happened between tea and a bite of the snack for him to ignore her, his usual way of showing his displeasure.

She quickly took another bite of the snack, did it taste okay? The tea was fine too. What, then? She asked him with a raise of her eyebrows, an almost-smile waiting to burst free on her lips. He quietly murmured something; it took a while but when she remembered that they had quarreled over something silly before their nap, that smile she'd been taming flowed like a gentle waterfall and hit the silence with drops of laughter, shattering a quiet only she heard. Her laughter too, only she heard. He saw her teeth, the habitual covering of her mouth with her hand and he deigned to smile, a small excuse for one, because the mirth was all behind the thick-rimmed spectacles, in his eyes. And just like that they had made up.

As she lay there feeling the afternoon sun that fought with leaves of jack-fruit and mango to reach their courtyard, she couldn't feel the prickle of the breeze from the fan any more. She lay there waiting for sunset when the sun would wrap her home in a rare gold light, and her husband would perhaps play the flute even though his asthma didn't let him; when she would walk barefoot, less than a mere kilometre away, to the temple where she went every dawn and dusk to offer her thanks, because that is all her prayer ever was. She lay there waiting for the night to come when both of them would have a simple dinner and stay up late into the night in the small bedroom that was decades old, counting and recounting the panels on the wooden ceiling, listening to classical music on the radio. And as sleep claimed that old couple in a small room full of memories, cantankerous noises of something the rest of the family was watching in the hall brought her away from that bedroom of domesticity of another time. Her ears were filled with familiar tears that had crept into them as she lay down and cried without knowing. The silver hair at the nape of her neck was damp and the spot on the bed where her head touched it, too.

Dinner would be ready soon and one of them from the family would come and sit with her a few minutes to ease their own conscience or perhaps to genuinely give her whatever little time they could afford to. As she wiped her blurring eyes, she didn't mind that her glasses didn't help her vision -- it was impossible for her to be taken to the optometrist because getting her out of bed, onto a wheelchair and into a car required way more effort than most people could make. She was just grateful to have her hearing intact, she relied on it so much. Life went on in a full swirl around her, outside that room she had been laying down and being seated up in for the past two years. Guests came, birthday parties happened, once in a while she'd be dressed up in starched clothes and taken to the hall. She didn't know what was more depressing: to be left in the room or to be taken out. Because then she hated going back in.

It had been at least two years since she had felt the sun on her skin. Or seen the rain. She had heard it often enough alright, but she longed to see fat drops coming fast and compulsive, like someone had lost control up in the skies, drenching sun-warmed clothes. She longed to feel the cruel poke of gravel on the clean, soft soles of her feet. She sighed as she smelt dinner being brought in. Ah well, maybe it's the rain that I'll watch on the ceiling tomorrow, she thought as a hand slipped under her shoulders to sit her up.

***

Every kind of extreme.

(This is a work of fiction) 

What’s a good love story made of, he asked her. Every kind of extreme, she said. But that’s bound to end, he countered. Would you rather it went on for ever, she asked. “I like love stories to have an ending, preferably not the ever after kind,” she finished and continued to stare into the sea. Afternoon waves ate up the silence that the finality of her preference brought.

What a cliché we are, he thought. A good head taller than her, his broad shoulders and her sharp, petite ones. His fair to her dark. His earthiness to her pointed edges. Sitting by the sea in typical couple fashion. Except, it was a hot afternoon and the Marina was practically empty but for a few couples dotting the simmering sand, dupattas shared over two heads that were too close, yet not close enough. Couples with more money were parked in the parking lot, facing away from the road looking at the blinding expanse of hot dirty sand and the languid sea. Except, they were not love-struck. Except, at the first sign of trouble, they’d blame each other violently, burst into spontaneous flames and singe everything around them. Till, realizing the lackluster life that ash led, one of them would gather up the will to beat one’s wings and resurrect the other. Soon, they’d be back at the Marina, switching the engine on and off for the air conditioner, sometimes hot for each other, sometimes hot from the beach.

Today, she had called. Let’s go, she had said and he had never been able to say no. Just as she never could. The drive invariably made them want to give up on this thing they called love; for they couldn’t decide whether they should use the time to listen to music together, an act of foreplay like none other; or to talk to each other – a stimulation entirely different. But this time around, she turned up the sound and listened without moving a muscle, like if she sat still enough she’d become the screaming, ragged voice of the lead singer. You’re looking for a fight, he said. She looked at him and in that moment she was an ordinary girl, just like scores of women who look at the men they choose to be with and roll their eyes. In that instant, he wanted to pull over and kiss her. But roads in Madras in the middle of the day don’t allow for that sort of romanticism. He’d just have to wait till she was done fighting. Maybe more fun then, too, he grinned secretly.

Turning into the beach road, he always felt he had entered another city altogether suddenly. Wide, calm, clean roads, sweeping expanse of beach and a sea that was mostly murky. No romance here either. Oh well, he sighed, and parked, switching off the engine. She swept up her hair off her neck and tied it up, folding one leg under her, continuing to gaze out the window. So sad, no, these couples, they’ve got to sit on the hot sand to get some privacy, she said. And we have to waste petrol to do the same, he said. She smirked. You should thank your stars I find you funny, she said. The waves growled again, coming forward to claim their morsel of silence. He almost let it pass when a bird that swooped into the sea stole a heartbeat. That white flash of hunter slicing into the water rooted him, even as it undid him. If they hadn’t been sitting in the car, he’d be at her feet, dissolved and undone, worshipping her just as the waves did the dirty, giving shore. I do, he said. Do what? She had already forgotten. I do thank my stars you find me funny; and everything else that you find me. Just that you found me, he said and took her hand. She continued looking resolutely out of the window, but her hands were telling him things her eyes and her mouth weren’t. You know I don’t believe in happily ever after, right? He told her he knew that and it was one of the things that kept him on his toes. So you won’t pine away when I move on? Who says you’re going to, he countered. Hypothetically speaking. These things happen you know, she said, turning the full impact of her gaze, burnt from staring too long in the sun. If his skin wasn’t already burnt, he’d be in agony. Whoa, this is a big one, he thought waiting for her weaponry to come out and bruise him, nervous but mostly defenceless.

Three years I waited for you to see sense and come back to me, she said. Ah, so that’s what this is about, he said. “Look, I am sorry, I honestly thought you’d moved along because when I called…” Shhh, she said, that’s not what this is about. Three years when I knew a freedom that I haven’t known before or hence, three years when my confidence soared and I felt appreciated, three years of not thinking about how to handle you, she paused for breath. And he was fast losing his; his measures hadn’t worked after all. It was like the dread that he lived with every day, an almost person, was becoming real. She was leaving him, like he had left her. “I am sorry.” I said shhhh, it’s not an apology I am looking for. Three years I went everywhere on my own and found no one was better company than me, three whole years of growing up. Then you came back. Did you even notice me hesitate before I took you back in my life, she asked and continued without waiting for an answer. I spent three years in hell, you know. Heaven is not having the freedom to do what you want, it’s the freedom to be free of you. There’s only two things I couldn’t get rid of about you. Your ghost in my breath and that lock, she said. And touched his left shoulder lightly with the back of her hand. In an instant, his heart broke. She wanted to get rid of the lock and key. He reached over, sliding the neck of her blouse till her biscuit shoulder was bare. There it was – a dancing lock, securely couched in notes of a melody, because what good would their love be without the music. She gently reclaimed her shoulder, reaching out to reveal his. The key. I wish we’d waited to get these done, she said almost to herself, staring intently at it. Just for this, we should stay together, no, she giggled, otherwise we’ll have to go searching for new locks and keys. But I am not going anywhere, he said, puzzled, I thought you were. I am, she said, turning away. She then untangled herself from the knots she had gotten herself into, stretched her hands and got out of the car. She walked a distance, hot sand slipping through shoes, under her soles. She dialed a number; the hot breeze slid black strands across her moving lips. She said into the phone, facing a loud, lazy sea, “What’s a good love story made of? Every kind of extreme. Marry me.” In the car, he grinned into the phone and said yes.  

Note: This story is inspired (only inspired) by tattoos that @nelsonnium and @phulkadots sport, which they have graciously given me the privilege of knowing about. 

Also, disclaimer: this is NOT their story.

My mother loves jasmine flowers

This is a work of fiction

*****

My mother isn't too happy with me these days. Nothing I do could make her feel better about her being a mother. In effect, she isn't happy with herself. I mean, what good mother would end up with a daughter who was all that I was, right? Where had her parenting gone wrong? Why wasn't her daughter the epitome of all that potential-fulfilling daughters are? My mother isn't too happy with herself these days

I am not sure where it began. Maybe it began the day she chose not to open her door to me when I'd try and knock it down thinking I'd go crazy staying awake in the warm, ochre afternoons -- not being used to naps at noon as a nine-year-old in a new city. It led me to find my own handfuls of amusement. Or perhaps it began the day I discovered she had read my diaries. It was then I knew that I could tell her anything and she'd react unexpectedly -- either with a laugh without me noticing or with a sigh, a scolding and silence, sometime later.

I remember her long beautiful hair from photographs. I don't ever remember it in real life, even though I knew I was old enough to have registered a memory. There are photographs of her hypnotic black hair, sometimes in soft, soft waves flowing down her back in Friday picture of domesticity. There are other tiny prints of her rope-like braid snaking down her elegant bosom as she smiled shyly at the camera. My mother doesn't like the way her upper teeth are aligned and so all the life of her real smiles are hidden behind the prettiness of tiny ones in pictures.

Why doesn't she leave my dad, I used to ask her when I was a teenage feminist and noticed how he ordered her about. It was that heady age when I felt everyone was out to get my mother and that I had to protect her. Even from my own gentle father who, albeit a bit insensitive, would drift away in thin air without my mother. I failed to see how quietly and patiently she had come to own him even though he made most of the decision at home. Now I see it's because she let him.

The fighting, these days, it seems is as endless as this brilliant summer sun. The first thing I hear from my mother is a bit of her angry soul overpowering her yellow brightness and taking the sunlight away from me. The rest of the day passes in brooding how to deal with her. To me she seems to be saying and behaving in complete opposites as if she were a chess game all on her own: diligent sprinkle of black and white, fighting each other, winning some, losing the others, only to start all over again. There's never an end to chess games, is there?

Today, as I sit wondering what it is that I must do without compromising my own reason or my own self and yet giving in to her just so she doesn't make us both sad, I decide to take a walk in the woods to see if the trees will give me a lesson. All I hear is silence. If I listen, I know there's a song, that may soothe my soul or give me lyrics that will make sense. But I can't hear, you see. Apart from going a little deaf, there's a bit of resistance that comes from collecting too many things that make me happy, momentarily. Sometimes, they are dried leaves, other times they are little insects of colour that could have only come from some secret place deep within a green leaf, and yet other times they are people that disappear. All beautiful, all transient. When they are gone, there's place again on the shelf, the emptiness calling out to me to be filled. So I develop this resistance -- to the good and the bad. And so I don't hear the song, nor the words: all I see is an unrelenting sun. And no lessons.

I walk back, and just as I enter the box that keeps me going, I spot a jasmine bush. My mother has the most sensuous love of jasmine. It will always be her flower. The flower will always be her. I pick some of the flowers, I want to smell them but I fear I'll ruin their creamy purity if I do. I pick some flowers -- some open and voluptuous, some reticent and miserly, others tight and unready to face the head of hair that the world is, much like me. I gather them in my palm and the perfume wafts up to my face. I close my eyes, think of another love, a song, a smile and a chat window. I close my palms and vow to make it better for my mother.

*****

From my diary

It's the sun that worries me, seduces me with its heat

Like you do with your promises that we can do anything.

I believe you just as I believe summer will come 

And kill the crocuses I have planted for you.

My knees are stretched taut, the skin on them shiny

As I sit with my legs tucked under me

Looking for rain in the wind-herded clouds.

I watch a green arm of the Meenachil

That flows so close to where my summer memories stay

And it reminds me that I have made promises to you

That I may never keep. 

I am that sung-about woman who takes

As if it is her right.

Men will give me anything, I need only ask;

Including their hearts, which I'd rather not take.

I wasn't called butter fingers for nothing, growing up.

My attempt at the short story. Part 1

Sharada

When it rains heavily I always think of an evening that glows like a bright lamp in my memory. An evening of paddy whispers and a ripe-mango sunset, an evening where, I like to think, the birds called my name and that was all the sound that you could hear, apart from the restlessness of the breeze and the incessant prayer of a river, a little away.

Before dusk stole onto the mud patio of my little shack, I heard the far-away sound of the edakka steadily beating out a divine rhythm, accompanying an off-key voice in praise of some god who gave children to the devout and brought famine upon the evil. Soft and rhythmic, the noisy prayer was not something Else; carried on the somber wind as it was, it became part of the warm, moist air I was breathing.

Soon, the sun would dip its fiery toes somewhere beyond the swaying tops of the coconut trees and I would get melancholic. The swaying, the golden light that I wanted to cut a patch of to make a blouse, the settling down of all things but mosquitoes would all make me yearn. For what, I did not know. All I knew was that there was a room in me, and it was almost empty. Waiting: clean, fragrant and riotous with sample-swatches I wouldn't show anybody. And when the light stole away from that room at sunset, melancholy would be mine. There were no reasons; except that timelessness and purity are excruciating in their essence. Purity undid me like nothing else. And this song of the devout in the temple, the edakka offering its lonely, stoic dance drew tears from me every evening. Each day less than the day before. Each day more intense than yesterday.

But that day as the song died out and the tolling of the bell signaled the close of the temple so that the black gods could rest, a pink ribbon came into view from across the fields. A fluttering, garish ribbon that always caught my eye in the "ladies' store" that sold the soap, cheepu, kannadi. And obviously hers too, because she was old enough to leave her hair free of ribbons, I realize now. But then I didn't know. Her swaying form told me nothing about her age except that she was ripe for all the things young girls are ripe for.

Her face, always wearing a hint of oil, shifted ages. The first time I saw her, she looked a lovely 22, but then the sun was dying on us and the walk to my shack had given her cheeks a healthy glow of exertion. A few mornings later, when she came to me again, I thought she was still younger, hair in braids, no kohl in her eyes and clothes that young girls in the village wore. And when she finally ran away with Rajan, her mother told me she would have turned 27 that Onam. Old for a girl in those parts.

The ribbon came closer. I felt a sense of pleasure in watching a young girl walk like I'd seen them walk in so many films that show village belles. A full skirt swaying, hips that were completely unaware of their own rhythm, a waist that wasn't really small but not big either. Her neck with the sheen of sweat and oil, dissolving into small shoulders disproportionate to her hips, was made more beautiful with the black thread she wore her cylindrical amulet on. Her breasts were unfettered by the cheap, pointy cotton bras that the village girls wore. Instead she had her blouse tailored so fittingly around her chest so that her breasts remained high, unmoving and rather distracting.

She walked with a steady pace, looking around appraisingly as she neared where I was standing. When she came within talking distance of me, she stopped, looked at me and asked, "Why haven't you lit the lamp?" A little abrupt, I thought mildly surprised, but couldn't help but smile and tell her that I didn't believe in silliness like that. If I needed light I'd light a candle or use my torch. For now, this darkness was my treasure. "Silliness? Since when does a symbol of knowledge be called silliness," she asked me coolly, no hint of judgment or displeasure in her voice, just a shadow of a challenge.

I told her I thought we were talking about lighting the evening lamp to honour the gods, where did knowledge figure in that. "You really think the devanmaaru care about a vilaku," she mocked me mildly, a perfectly symmetrical smile appearing for the first time. A smile devoid of anything but beauty. "Don't they?" I shot back. She cocked her head to one side, looked at me intently as if to see if I was just humouring her or if I was really as daft as I sounded. "We light the lamp so that we dispel the darkness that comes with this sandhya. It is not because god will be happy and grant your wishes," she said. I felt a little foolish for having forgotten the conclusions I had drawn when I was growing up and questioning the Hindu rituals of evening worship.

I decided to let that go without praise or argument, though both sprang to my mind. I asked her who she was and what she wanted. "I am Sharada from across the river. My mother told me a lady from the city had come because she had just lost her husband and wanted to spend time alone. I got curious and came to see you," she said, as matter of fact as the setting sun. "But isn't it late for you to be out," I asked and she replied it was but she didn't care. There would be a little noise at home when she went back but that would be it.

I then asked Sharada in but she refused saying she didn’t like the darkness inside my shack. She sat down on the mud-floored cool patio and looked around to see if I had made any changes to the place in the two weeks I had been here. "You haven't brought anything with you? No clocks, no photos?" Sharada was either insensitive that I was grieving or her curiosity was irrepressible. I gave her the benefit of doubt.  "I brought some things, but I honestly didn't think of bringing a clock. I should have though. I use my mobile phone to check time," I told her.

"I have a mobile phone also. Rajan got it for me. I think he stole it but he could have bought it too. I know he loves me enough to buy one," she said. Who Rajan? "The man my family will do anything to chase away. The man I am going to marry," she told me, her eyes looking straight into mine as if to convince me that this was going to indeed happen. No "The man I love", no hint of a shy smile that a lot of the village girls have when they talk of their boyfriends, or their fiancés. Surprisingly, not even the usual "aetta" that the girls call their other halves. She had used his name.

"Why don't they want you to marry him," I asked in the same vein of directness she had used. "This isn't the time to talk about all that. I just came to see what you are like. I think you are okay and I'll come back later. Now I have to get back before Amma finishes laying the dinner out," she said and quickly got to her feet. I  

now realized why she had asked for clocks.

To be continued.  

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