The Lilac House (14 page)

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Authors: Anita Nair

Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage

BOOK: The Lilac House
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THE SPIRAL BANDS OF DECEIT
The last painting that Salvador Dali ever did was the
Swallow’s Tail Series
on catastrophes. It was the last of the series based on Rene Thom’s catastrophe theory.
There are seven elementary catastrophes: the fold, the cusp, the swallow tail, the butterfly, the hyperbolic umblic, the elliptic umblic and the parabolic umblic. It’s funny, this word catastrophe. A word for disaster that can also mean many other things.
The ancient Greeks considered it the climax and point of resolution in their narrative plots. Stockbrokers call a risk-linked security that shares risks with bond investors a catastrophic bond. Insurance underwriters build in a catastrophic modelling projecting the cost of losses by an act of god.
It is ironic that a natural catastrophe is referred to as an act of god. As if no one or nothing can change the course of what nature has set out to do. And it is here that theoreticians step in with their theory of catastrophe which tells us how a small variation, a tiny discrepancy that we may otherwise ignore, can drastically affect and change dynamic systems. And that is the inherent nature of a catastrophe: its capability to beguile and deceive. So you think danger lies elsewhere while the real peril lurks at arm’s length.
Hidden within the cirrus canopy is a distinct pattern: bands of convective cloud spiralling into the eye wall. From these bands emerge heavy rain and squalls. But that isn’t where the real danger lies. For the spiral bands are master deceivers. They make us believe this is the extent of the storm.
How utterly gullible we are when it comes to celestial forces and acts of god! The tipping point is yet to come.
 
Professor J. A. Krishnamurthy
The Metaphysics of Cyclones
I
nside her home, there are a thousand things waiting to be dealt with. But for this moment, Meera is just another woman waiting for a friend to pick her up. She flicks the end of her light woollen shawl over her shoulder.
 
December. Blue skies above, with hardly a cloud. The sun shines down bright and piercing. Step out of the sun into the shade of a tree, an awning or a portico, and a chill climbs up your spine. In Bangalore, Meera thinks, it is December that wears a dual face, not January. Yet, she stands outside her gate waiting for Vinnie this deceitful December morning and feels something akin to joy limber through her.
She thinks she may have found a worthy successor to
The Corporate Wife’s Guide to Entertaining
. Only this time she will not offer it to Randhir Soni on a platter. If Watermill Press wants
The Corporate Wife Abroad
, they’ll bloody well have to pay for it.
No one is going to profit from her experience unless she profits first, Meera tells herself firmly. What to pack; what not to pack. What to do in those hours when your husband is locked in conference rooms. What to wear to a formal dinner. What to order in a restaurant. What to bring back home. What not to buy your household staff after a trip abroad. For years Meera has been the one Giri’s colleagues’ wives called for tips and suggestions. And Giri had liked it that it was Meera they turned to. It enhanced his corporate guru standing.
If anyone wants any more advice, they will have to buy it. Meera smiles.
 
‘Coffee?’ Vinnie asks as she jumps a red light with the practised ease of a habitual offender.
Meera looks at Vinnie again in admiration. How does one get to
be like her? Vinnie, who runs a boutique, drives her own car, manages the dual life of wife and mistress and never ever has one varnished hair out of place. Even her chopstick stays where it should.
‘So how is he to work with?’ Vinnie parks the car expertly in a slot she finds on Commercial Street.
‘It’s still too early to tell,’ Meera murmurs. ‘So far so good.’
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody cautious for once. Tell me what you really think!’ Vinnie slams her door shut.
Meera stops in her tracks. Giri had accused her of being narrow minded, Nayantara said she was stiff. Now here is Vinnie saying it too. Bloody cautious. Why is prudence always seen as wimpishness?
What shall I tell her? Meera gnaws at her lip. That the cyclone expert has had nothing for me on cyclones but instead had me open three files: Shivu, Mathew, Rishi. Titbits of information about two nineteen-year-old boys and only a blank file on Rishi. That he has me look at railway timetables and tides. That he had me google the net for freak accidents and a women’s group called Stree Shakti. That he seems to have a strange purpose in his head. None of it makes sense to me.
‘JAK?’ Vinnie’s eyebrows reach her hairline when Meera says his name. ‘One of those! What’s his real name? Let me guess. Jagannath? Jagdish? Jagdeep? Jagjivan?’
Meera smiles. ‘Hold your breath. Jayamkondan Anantharaman Krishnamurthy reduced to J.A.K. Hence Professor Jak!’
‘So what do you call him?’ Vinnie laughs. ‘I rather like Jayamkondan. You can call him Jay!’
‘His aunt calls him Kitcha; his colleagues seem to refer to him as Professor Jak. I began with Professor Krishnamurthy but he asked me to drop the Professor. So I too call him Jak now!’ Meera tells her carefully, trying to establish that the casual use of his first name is just that.
‘Hmm,’ Vinnie says in a quiet contemplative voice that suggests she doesn’t believe it is as casual as Meera makes it out to be.
‘He is a very laidback sort of a person. You’d like him, Vinnie. No airs, nothing. And he doesn’t get stressed out if things don’t work. The power cuts, the UPS burning out… he’s easy to be around.’ Meera stops abruptly. Unlike Giri. Unlike my husband, is what Vinnie must think I am implying, she thinks.
 
She doesn’t talk about Giri any more. But she thinks of him often and though it is with a rancour that stings, she misses him a thousand times a day. It creeps up on her rather abruptly, that moment of irretrievable loss, the emptiness, a cruel hand squeezing her heart with a cold clutch and causing a whimper in her: Oh Giri.
There it is, first thing in the morning, when she feels sleep crawl out of her eyes and she snuggles deeper under the quilt, pushing herself ever so little into what used to be the receptacle of his curved hip. Feeling him nudge but lie quietly against the nest between her thighs. The warmth. The presence. The quiet content. And then the whimper: Oh Giri.
At the extra place she sets by mistake. The bottle of fish pickle only he liked. The shirt that came back from the dry-cleaners. A discarded pair of sandals. The music CDs that remain mute. His folders on the desktop. A whiff of aftershave on another man. A particular shade of blue. The hot spicy fragrance of orange peel. The curve of an emptied peanut shell. In how many ways, Oh Giri.
And then at night when she creams her face and braids her hair and slips into bed with a book, the pool of darkness on his side of the bed. The knowledge that unless she chooses to do so, the table lamp on the other side will stay forever unlit, the bulb gathering dust and time. Miss Havisham in a wedding dress never worn. Oh Giri, oh Giri, oh Giri.
 
Across the table, Vinnie looks at her carefully. Meera feels the import of the look. It unsettles her. ‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ Vinnie says and begins studying the menu. Suddenly, she looks up and asks, ‘How’s he with you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You see it, don’t you? He’s a divorced man; you are separated. Does he come on strong?’
‘Oh, no.’ Meera smiles. ‘He is very respectful. Almost avuncular. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t be so…’ she adds as an afterthought.
‘Are you saying you want him to hit on you?’ Vinnie’s eyebrows are sky high again.
Ever since that first time, Vinnie and Meera have met at least once a month. It is a friendship neither seeks to explain. If they had met elsewhere, neither would have warmed to the other. Meera would have dismissed Vinnie as predatory and cold. Vinnie would have shaken her head in incredulity at Meera: could there really be women like her, stuck in a time warp and content to be an appendage to husband and home?
Now they look at each other and gleam: it’s good to be here with you.
Why is it that we veer away from men as we grow older, Meera wonders. Is it that our animal sap ceases to rise and what we seek isn’t a mate but a companion? Do we find comfort in other women – their fortitude, their strength, their calm competence, their unsullied fun? Maybe that’s why I need my Vinnie. This friend who picked me off the floor that first time.
 
Meera looks at Vinnie now. What are we doing here, she wonders. Two middle-aged women marooned in a sea of shoppers. Meera sucks on an ice cube from her drink, a tall cold coffee with chocolate topping and a swirl of cream.
‘I know I shouldn’t. But all day I have thought of nothing but this.’ Meera smiles. Vinnie feels a tug at her heart at such an admission of want, of vulnerability. ‘Have another,’ she says. ‘Would you like a bhatura or paav bhaaji to eat?’
Meera shakes her head. ‘No, no, this is fine. One can’t glut on heaven! Not good for the soul!’
Vinnie pats her hand. ‘It’s all right, you know. You have your needs too. We all do. Whether it is for chocolate or men. If it is Jak who makes you feel like a woman, let it be Jak.’
‘You are getting this all wrong. I am talking about male attention.’
‘Any male attention? You would welcome any male attention so you feel more like a woman and less like a eunuch, is that it?’
Why can’t Vinnie drop the subject? She is like a dog worrying a rag. Meera doesn’t want another man in her life now. Not for a long time. She doesn’t even want a flirtation or an affair.
Meera shakes her head. ‘No, no, you don’t understand. All I am saying is, I feel hollowed out. Jak is irrelevant. He really is, Vinnie!
‘But it would be nice to be seen as a woman. I get lonely too, Vinnie. But no one would like me to admit it. Neither my children, nor my mother or grandmother. It is as if the woman in me had to die when Giri left.’
Meera sips her drink, stemming her words. What is wrong with her? All these thoughts, these words, where do they come from? She counts the dates in her head. Is her period due?
 
Meera toys with the cutlery on the table. She makes a V with the knife and fork. Then an N. An A and an L. With the help of the salt cellar she manages a J. But G stayes resolutely curled away. As does S. One who chose to go away. Another who was trying to sneak into her world.
‘What are you keeping from me, Meera?’ Vinnie demands. ‘You have a secret. I can see it in your smile.’
 
When the phone rang a few nights ago, Meera had picked it up with a shaking hand. What new crisis lurked at the other end? Yet, somewhere in her, that glimmer of hope: Was it Giri? If so, what would he say to her?
‘Hey Meera,’ said the voice at the other end.
Meera paused. It wasn’t Giri, but it wasn’t a strange voice either.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Remember me?’
That strange familiarity. A feeling that she knew the voice from somewhere.
‘I know you don’t!’ A chuckle. A low chuckle guaranteed to send little thrills down the listening woman’s spine.
It fell into place then. The actor. The Adonis of the poolside. Why was he calling her?
Meera laughed into the phone. ‘Hello, Soman. Where have you surfaced from?’
‘The poolside you abandoned me by.’ That low chuckle again. ‘But I am amazed you remember me. It has been a while. I meant to call but just couldn’t summon the courage to.’
Meera held her breath
‘And then I had to go away to Mumbai, Meera. I was in a TV series. I got back only a couple of days ago, and I thought I would give you a call and say hello.’
Meera exhaled. He didn’t know anything about her.
‘I so enjoyed our chat that day, Meera. Do you think we could meet for a coffee one of these days?’
Meera looked at her nails. ‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.
 
Meera knows that Vinnie is waiting for her to speak. In the end Meera does what she always does when Lily or the children ask awkward questions:
How much does Giri give you as child support?
Do you think Daddy has a girlfriend?
Is Lily a drunk? Mummy, is Lily an alcoholic? Have you seen how much she drinks?
She changes the subject with an airy flourish of nonchalance.
A shrug and a leap into a completely irrelevant query: Has your consignment of stoles from Bhagalpur arrived? Jak wanted me to pick a couple to send to someone. A woman called Lisa. What do you think would suit a Lisa? Honey gold or moss green?
Is this really me, Meera asks herself. Did I just say that – ‘What do you think would suit a Lisa?’

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