Monsoon Memories (6 page)

Madhu was washing clothes on the little granite stone by the well, in the shade of the tamarind and banana trees. The heavy thud of clothes hitting stone guided Reena there.

Deepak had tried countless times to get Madhu to use the new washing machine he had had installed in the bathroom. But Madhu was having none of it: ‘I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.’ Since then, the washing machine had sat forlorn in the bathroom gathering dust and chicken droppings where the hens perched on it when being chased by Gypsy, the gleaming white exterior fading slowly to dull grey.

Reena sat on the cement rim surround of the well and watched Madhu. Her sari was tied up, the pallu tucked tightly into her waist. Her worn apron was wet and hair escaped the confines of her bun and collected in greying tendrils around her face. Every once in a while she used her arm to push it away, leaving wet soapy smudges on her face. She had finished scrubbing the clothes and was wringing the water out of them by rolling them into a tight cylinder and then bashing them very hard against the stone. The bar of Rin soap that she had used lay on the stone beside her, bleeding dark blue water onto the streaky granite surface. Gypsy, who followed Madhu wherever she went, lay curled beside her feet. She looked lost to the world, except for the deep growl that escaped her every once in a while and the little twitch her nose gave when a fly landed on it.
Do dogs dream?
Reena wondered.

Every so often the spicy, scented breeze stirred the tamarind and banana trees, releasing a little flood of raindrops that had adhered to the leaves. The garden in the front courtyard which Madhu diligently tended was in full bloom, and Reena breathed in the sweet honey aroma of the hibiscus and jasmine flowers mixed in with the earthy smell of rain-washed mud. Bees buzzed, butterflies flitted and a fat frog stirred in the grass next to the well. Reena sighed, for just a moment loath to disrupt the peace and stir up old secrets. The moment didn’t last long, however.

‘Madhu,’ she said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

Madhu jumped, startled. Gypsy barked. ‘Gypsy, shush. Rinu, you gave me a fright. How long have you been sitting there?’

‘Not long. I like sitting here, watching you. It’s peaceful.’

‘What’s that?’ Madhu rubbed soapy hands down the sides of her apron and extended wet fingers to receive the photograph Reena was holding out to her. Reena watched as she squinted at the picture, as her smile stilled and her face lost colour.

‘Where did you find this?’ Madhu asked.

‘Oh, you know...’ said Reena vaguely, deliberately nonchalant, even though her heart was pounding.

Up until now, though she had wanted to find out more about her lookalike, wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery, a part of her had thought that it was all in her head. The adults would pooh-pooh her wild theories as just that. There would be a perfectly simple and straightforward explanation.

Although she’d hoped to have stumbled on something, now, as she looked at the myriad emotions flitting across Madhu’s lined face, as her breath came out in long sighs, as the smile fled her face to be replaced by grief, Reena wished she had never found the photograph. She wished it had remained hidden in that old woodlice-ridden album. For the first time, she considered the fact that the girl might be dead. But that didn’t make much sense either. Why hide her photographs? Why forget her? In Reena’s experience, the dead were revered and remembered all the time, even more than the living, she sometimes thought. There was a seven-day mass after the funeral, a thirty-day mass, a yearly mass, framed photographs adorned with garlands taking pride of place next to the altar...

Again she found herself asking the same questions. Why the secrecy, the conspiracy of silence?

Madhu used the pallu of her sari to wipe away the tears streaming down her face.

Reena was horrified. She had never seen Madhu cry. She didn’t know what to do. Guilt, sharp and painful bound her to her perch on the rim of the well. Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to move to comfort Madhu.

The frog hopped away in wet sticky plonks, drawing arches in the air. Gypsy stirred and ambled up to Madhu, licking away the salty tears which kept on coming.

‘Shoo, Gypsy,’ Madhu murmured, patting the dog’s flank. ‘I saved it in a safe place, but couldn’t remember where I had put it. I looked everywhere, but in the end had to accept it was lost. And now...’

So the photograph had been Madhu’s.

Madhu ran her fingers gently over the girl’s face, her hair.

And Reena understood why the picture was worn.

‘She had lovely hair, thick and long. I used to plait it for her in two long braids, and tie it up behind her ears. She always made sure I used matching ribbons.’ Madhu smiled. ‘She sat so still while I oiled it and combed it, no matter how knotty it was, no matter how much it hurt. And I talked to her the whole time. She was my favourite, you know. It was a secret—hers and mine.’ Madhu’s voice broke.

Reena waited until Madhu had composed herself somewhat.

She hated herself for doing so but she had to ask. ‘Did she die?’

Madhu blanched. Years of living in a Catholic household had rubbed off on her and she made the sign of the cross, her puffy, red-rimmed eyes sprouting fresh tears. She spoke so softly that Reena had to strain to hear. ‘No. Thank God, thank Jesus, no.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Blue-Green Soda Bottles

‘Y
ou’re early today, Shirin.’ Kate said as she and Shirin took the lift up from the car park together.

‘Yes, well, Vinod had a breakfast meeting and I was awake,’ Shirin said, yawning.

‘Wide awake, I see,’ smiled Kate, who always turned up at the office at the crack of dawn—which would have been an extremely annoying trait in any other boss. ‘Journey here okay?’

‘Yes.’ She had sped past that particular pedestrian crossing, ignoring the two people waiting to cross. No haunting eyes.

‘It’s not the nightmare keeping you up?’ Kate’s voice was tentative.

Sister Maya’s face—thick bushy eyebrows joined together at the top of her frog-like nose; a moustache replete with the beginnings of a beard; moles dotting her face, with curly black hairs growing out of the larger two, located rather symmetrically on either side of her nostrils—flashed before Shirin’s eyes. She smiled. ‘Not the nightmare, no. An ogre called Sister Maya.’

‘Huh?’

‘She was my primary school headmistress.’

Kate’s eyebrows were two question marks, her lips curved in a bemused smile. A query.

‘Memories,’ Shirin continued by way of explanation. ‘They’ve been overwhelming me.’

‘Since the dream?’

Shirin nodded. ‘Vinod thinks it’s the healing process. He’s read all the books that counsellor gave us. He says I am ready to revisit the past.’ Words tripped over themselves in their hurry to get out of Shirin’s mouth, a bit like the memories that hovered, ready to spill out at the slightest provocation. ‘He thinks it’s the only way I can let go. Move on.’

‘And what do
you
think?’

Numbers blinked red on the panel by the lift door: 2, 3, 4. ‘It doesn’t hurt to remember, Kate. Not anymore.’

Kate smiled. ‘Good. That’s good.’

The lift pinged, the doors opening with a sigh. Shirin looked at the rows of desks, bereft without their occupants. ‘Right. Work,’ she said.

‘If you need to talk about anything, you know where I am.’

‘I know. Thank you. For yesterday.’

‘Don’t be silly. See you around ten-ish for the UAT meeting.’

‘Oh, Kate, I almost forgot. That guarantees spec you requested is ready. Shall I email it to you?’

‘I think it would be better if we went over it together. Print it off. I’ll be at your desk in a tick.’

As she waited for Kate, Shirin clicked on the first message in her inbox, one of those forwarded emails that she usually deleted unread: a photograph of a Stella Artois bottle
sans
label, sitting on a windowsill, a ray of weak winter sun illuminating it, making it glow. To Shirin, it looked just like the blue-green soda bottles of her childhood.

A memory, long forgotten, suddenly vivid
:
Pelam beach. Sea roaring; sea gulls hovering, scavenging for fish scraps; noisy crows swooping and cackling; men with wicker baskets of churmuri slung loosely round their necks peddling their wares; the overpowering stench of rotting fish masking the salty-sweet tang of sea and the inviting spicy oniony aroma of churmuri; Madhu haggling for fish; Deepak wandering off to the little shop on the far side of the beach, drawn by the soda bottles, meticulously counting out all his pocket money; Shirin and Anita impatiently hopping from one foot to another—they were barefoot and the sand was quite hot, even in the setting sun—urging him to hurry: ‘Madhu will be looking for us, Deepak. Quick.’ Deepak looking up at the shopkeeper, eyes shiny with hope, ‘I have fifty-five paise here. Mummy also said I have five rupees in the bank. Will that be enough to buy the bottle?’ The shopkeeper smirking, displaying black, paan-stained teeth,

‘Shoo. Go away. The bottles are not for sale.’ Deepak’s face crumpling. And Shirin, boiling with a rage she hadn’t known she possessed, shaking her fist at the leering shopkeeper, using the very bad English word she had overheard once, ‘You—you bastard.’

‘What are you looking at?’ Kate perched on the arm of her chair, looked at her monitor and guffawed, ‘A Stella Artois bottle? You in the mood for a pint, girl, at barely nine in the morning?’

‘It looks just like the soda bottles of my childhood.’ If she closed her eyes, she could see the beguiling crates of blue-green glass bottles outside the thatched entrance to the little shop by the River Varuna, which sold sweet milky coffee, onion bhajis, green plantain crisps and whole clusters of tiny ripe bananas, yellow skin flecked with black, each shaped like the tail of the letter ‘y’.

‘The bottles were sealed with a marble on top to stop the gas escaping and they used to fascinate us kids. We often tried to prise the marble out, under the watchful gaze of the shopkeeper. We had to pay twenty paise—our sugar-cane juice money—for the privilege.’ Sugar-cane juice: thick, frothy, the colour of milk sprouting from between the brown hands of Ananthanna’s wife as she squeezed Nandini’s udders, sweet as Alphonso mango mixed with honey, served in cloudy glasses that had once upon a time been clear. It was freshly pressed courtesy of the booming enterprise that was Jenna Uncle’s sugar-cane machine, headquartered under the shady, all-enveloping branches of the banyan tree beside Muthu, the fisherwoman hawking fresh fish caught that morning arranged in neat piles on a dry banana branch, which slotted onto the two handles of her basket: an impromptu tray.

Kate laid a hand on Shirin’s arm and smiled. ‘Shirin, your face, it’s glowing. From the inside.’

‘It’s such a relief, Kate, to let the memories come instead of always pushing them away, repressing them.’ The Varuna River rippling silvery grey beside the shop with the soda bottles; the coven of crows conversing in their secret language as they perched on coconut trees that bowed down to the river as if drinking from the water; the boatmen humming a catchy, elusive tune as they ferried people across, their dark muscles gleaming, beads of perspiration forming little rivulets down their bare torsos, soaking their colourful lungis. The bus from Dommur, creaking and complaining as it disgorged its straggling passengers, the conductor yelling instructions to the driver to turn the bus around, slapping the back of the bus when it was in danger of going too deep into the river, inadvertently waking the drunk snoring open-mouthed in the back seat; the conductor balancing on one leg on the steps of the bus, his skinny body dangling, yelling, ‘Dommur! Dommur!’ urging the few people clustered around, dressed in their best clothes for the trip into town, to climb aboard, and, once they’d boarded, blowing his ear-splitting whistle and shouting, ‘Right, Poi,’ scaring the few crows perched delicately atop the bus into squawking in fright and flying away.

‘Earth to Shirin... Shirin, you in there?’ Kate gently tapped Shirin’s forehead.

‘Sorry, Kate.’ Shirin shook her head to clear it of the images. ‘Was miles away.’

‘I could see that,’ Kate grinned.

Shirin blinked to rid herself of the sudden urge to run away, to go home. Why did her mind insist on calling Taipur home when it had not been that for years? ‘I know—guarantees beckon.’

‘Yes, sadly they do. But we are early and you’ve finished the spec ahead of schedule, so what the heck, you are allowed to daydream for, let’s see—’ Kate made a show of looking at her watch, ‘—a minute more.’

‘Aw... just one minute?’ Shirin feigned a whine and they shared a laugh.

Kate stopped abruptly mid-laugh, clapped her palm on her mouth. ‘Shirin, I forgot to tell you before. Jenny’s back. She starts tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’

‘Will you be okay?’

Shirin willed her lips to move, curve upwards in a grin. ‘Of course. Shall we begin?’ She waved the sheaf of paper she had printed in front of Kate.

Kate looked piercingly at her and nodded, morphing into brisk work mode. ‘Let’s.’

Shirin let out the breath she was holding, glad of work to take her mind off things. Work was her saviour, and she was grateful to Vinod for persuading her to do the software course during those early dark months in the UK—which had led to this job—when all she’d wanted was to wallow in depression. It had given her a reason to get up each morning, to face the world, to escape her past—however briefly.

She would keep the smile fixed on her face and deal with Jenny tomorrow—but right now, guarantees beckoned.

CHAPTER SIX

Madhu’s favourite

‘S
hirin,’ Madhu said. ‘Her name is Shirin.’

She was calmer now. They had moved to the kitchen and she was sitting on the cold cement floor, her legs bent and her knees touching her forehead. Her hands circled her knees and she nursed a tumbler of sweet tea in them.