The Lilac House (20 page)
Authors: Anita Nair
Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage
Should I feel guilty about this, Giri? she asks him. Should I feel remorse that I lie in a bed in what was once our house, almost
smothered by the weight and need of this man? But we never talked about what we meant by guilt; what made us cringe and cower. Actually, we never discussed anything significant, did we?
smothered by the weight and need of this man? But we never talked about what we meant by guilt; what made us cringe and cower. Actually, we never discussed anything significant, did we?
What is it we did with our lives? All those years of mundane details. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Shopping. Spats. Vacations when we could. Hours and hours enmeshed, without our ever speaking a true word to each other. We played out our lives without ever knowing each other.
This absence of feeling I have now, is this what you felt when you left?
Do you remember the time when your father died? I wanted to go with you but you were adamant. You said your father and you were estranged. And you were going there to merely settle the loose ends, you felt no grief.
I was frightened that night. I thought, how could you sever your ties with your past so easily?
But the night you came back from your village, you couldn’t sleep. I heard you toss and shift. I saw your eyes glitter. When I touched you, you turned away and pretended to sleep.
I wanted to comfort you, but mostly I felt relief. You were not as impervious as you pretended to be. Your father’s death had unsettled you. Was it guilt you knew, Giri? Or did I read too much into the moment?
You left me. Why should I feel guilty? Do you know what Vinnie says? Vinnie, my new friend. She says, in the beginning, each man seems different – his skin, his odour, the texture of his hands, the shape of his fingers, even the contour of his shoulder: hard, fleshy, bony – but in that final moment when you hold him against you, there is a sameness to it. In the dark, all men are the same. That is perhaps why Vinnie feels the absence of guilt.
It is what the man means to a woman that makes him unique, irreplaceable. So what of this boy?
He means nothing to me, he is nothing but a conduit for a need.
And I don’t particularly feel the need for sex. So what am I doing?
Meera’s arm aches from the angle she is holding it at. She extricates her hand slowly. Soman stills. Their meringue moment of lightness has dissipated. What’s left are a few crumbs of cleaning up.
‘I don’t know, it’s never happened before,’ he says against her breast, ashamed at the unwillingness of his flesh to acquiesce with his hopes for it. ‘I can get really hard, really big… perhaps if you would…’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Meera pats his cheek and moves away, trying not to reveal her hurry to be out of his embrace.
In the shadowed room, they dress quietly and quickly. Meera looks at herself in the hallway mirror again.
He joins her reflection and Meera looks away. ‘Would you like some tea?’ she asks.
‘No, I should be going,’ he says. As they walk to the door, the bell rings. And she hears Nikhil hammer on the door. ‘Open up, Mummy, open up! Where are you?’
W
here are you going? What were you doing? Why are you looking away? What are you thinking?
here are you going? What were you doing? Why are you looking away? What are you thinking?
In the days after the funeral, she feels her children’s eyes dog her every step, every thought. It is unnerving, this constant scrutiny. Meera has felt near invisible all these years; an apparition who glided through the house and their lives, cooking, cleaning, sorting laundry and helping with the children’s home projects. She, who in her head told herself off for being such a doormat, there and not there, doesn’t enjoy the consciousness they now endow her with.
Questions. Puzzlement. Reproof. Curiosity. Fear. Meera is stung
by the forked tongue of each glance. When she leaves home, it asks, where are you going? When she returns, she is greeted with, where were you? When the phone rings, it demands, what is it about? When she smiles, it queries, why are you smiling? When she lets her features settle into a mask, it nags, what are you thinking of? They, she notices, never use the word ‘who’!
by the forked tongue of each glance. When she leaves home, it asks, where are you going? When she returns, she is greeted with, where were you? When the phone rings, it demands, what is it about? When she smiles, it queries, why are you smiling? When she lets her features settle into a mask, it nags, what are you thinking of? They, she notices, never use the word ‘who’!
To accept the possibility of a who in her life would be closing the door on their father, they think. And it is this they fear.
Meera wants to gather her children in her arms and quell their fears. But how can she? For they sense the presence of a man. Nikhil has seen his mother chew on what looked like a smashed lip and murmur, ‘This is my friend. He was just leaving… say hello, Nikhil.’
Nikhil had ignored the outstretched hand and rushed back to open the gates wide. That was when Meera saw the ambulance with its blue revolving siren and knew her heart drop once again.
Saro was still in the hospital, they said. Lily had needed a few stitches and her bruises had been dressed. But Saro had borne the brunt of the water tanker that had smashed into the car they were in. Saro and the driver, Saro’s friend had wept.
‘It was instant, the police said; she wouldn’t have known any pain.’ The woman touched Meera’s elbow.
Meera looked around her helplessly. ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said, not knowing what she was saying and wishing the woman would go away.
She needed a few moments alone to compose herself. Her mother lay in a morgue somewhere. She had to bring her home. Then there was the funeral. She had to inform everyone… Meera slumped in a chair.
It was Nikhil who called Nayantara. It was Nikhil who insisted on speaking to his father even though he was in a presentation and couldn’t be disturbed, his secretary said.
‘What is it, Nikhil?’ Giri didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. ‘What now? I told you that you can’t ask me permission for anything your mother has said no to.’
‘It’s Grandma. Saro. She died. And Grandma Lily is still in hospital. Their taxi was hit. The driver died too!’
Giri was silent then, Nikhil told Meera later.
‘Your mother. How is she?’
‘Mummy is alone, Daddy. You have to come now. She needs you.’
‘Son, I’ll handle everything. Don’t worry. Give the phone to Meera.’
From a long way away, Meera heard Giri tell her that he wouldn’t be able to come that day. But he was going to ask someone from the Bangalore office to help her with the police, getting the body out, organizing the hearse and the crematorium, etc.
‘Don’t you want to see her?’ Meera’s voice trembled.
The silence again.
‘You know that we were…’ Giri began and then shaped his reasons differently. ‘I am in the middle of a presentation, Meera. We have another round of meetings tomorrow. I’ll come as soon as I am done. Don’t wait for me.’
‘Giri, it’s my mother!’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. How is Lily?’
‘She is resting. They sedated her at the hospital and sent her in an ambulance. She is in shock. Every now and then she asks for my mother. She won’t stop weeping…’
But Giri had to go and Meera was left with a lifeless phone in her hand. More than ever then, she knew that Giri had moved on. And Nikhil, seeing the slump of defeat in his mother’s back, called Jak.
It was never easy, the relationship Meera and Saro shared. Saro was set in her ways and wouldn’t tolerate any change. Even when
their circumstances changed, Saro wanted everything to remain the way it was when her husband was alive, and it was left to Meera to find a way.
their circumstances changed, Saro wanted everything to remain the way it was when her husband was alive, and it was left to Meera to find a way.
Meera had resented the demands her mother made of her. Angered, even, when her mother insisted on ‘keeping up standards’ as she called it. Your life may fall apart, your heart may be breaking, but by keeping a semblance of order in your routine and day, your life will be yours again, Saro said.
Her mother is dead. Their lives are askew. But as Meera lays the table for lunch, it occurs to her that she is doing precisely what Saro would have done. Keeping the fabric of their days unruffled. With a pang of remorse, Meera thinks that the only worthy thing in her life springs from what her mother had taught her. And she never thought to acknowledge that, ever.
When Meera goes looking for Lily, she finds her in her bedroom, sitting on the bed. Her face is drawn and her body is perfectly still. As if to move even a muscle would snap her.
Lily clutches the little urn tightly. ‘This is my child in here,’ she tells Meera. ‘How can I bear it? This is my daughter, Meera.’
Meera sits next to Lily and puts her arm around her. ‘I miss Mummy, Lily. I miss her so much… I wish I had told her what she meant to me.’
Lily looks away. ‘I should have died. She got in on the side where I was sitting but I insisted we switch places. If I hadn’t been difficult, you would have your mother here.’
Meera wishes she knew how to comfort Lily. Poor Lily. To bear the burden of guilt along with the grief. But she doesn’t have the words to console her. Her own grief binds her tongue.
Nayantara lies on the bed in her room, staring at the ceiling. Meera goes to sit at her side. How would she bear it if something happened to her daughter? How does Lily? Until now, it has never occurred to her that grief can have its own weightage. What is worse? The loss of a parent or one’s own child?
Meera aches to lie someplace quiet and wrap her arms around herself, to weep and grieve. Instead, she strokes Nayantara’s hair. ‘Darling, when do you have to go back?’
‘When is Daddy coming?’ Nayantara asks the ceiling.
Meera shakes her head. ‘I don’t know… Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Do you think he will come at all?’
‘I don’t know.’
And Nayantara, who hasn’t until then spoken a word of censure about Giri, turns away from Meera with ‘What a bastard!’
Meera gasps. Don’t speak like that about your father, she begins automatically and then stills herself. Nayantara is old enough to make up her mind. And yet…
‘She was only his mother-in-law. And ex-mother-in-law now. So maybe he is right to stay away.’
‘So you are getting divorced!’ Nayantara sits up.
‘His lawyer called a week ago, wanting to set up a meeting…’ Meera’s voice breaks. ‘You knew it was going to happen.’
‘And him? Are you planning to marry him?’
‘Who him? There is no him in my life. You know that!’
‘Nikhil said you had a man here. A young man. It was Soman, wasn’t it?’
Meera sighed. ‘He is a friend. Just a friend…’
‘Nikhil didn’t seem to think so.’
‘Nikhil is too young to understand these things,’ Meera says.
‘Well, he’s decided that you are marrying him.’
And so Meera goes in search of her son. Jak sits in one of the cane chairs in the patio, Nikhil in another. When he sees her, Nikhil gets up and walks away.
Meera drops into a chair.
‘How is Lily?’ Jak asks. ‘You look very tired, Meera. I am worried about you…’
‘I am fine. I swear I am all right. But they are not.’ She speaks with a sweep of her arm to encompass her world.
‘I haven’t thanked you enough for all that you’ve done,’ she begins.
‘Don’t be silly. I am glad I could pitch in. It was clever of Nikhil to think of calling me. And it was fortunate I was in town!’
It was Jak who knew what to do, whom to call, and he remembered to ask Meera to carry a little brass pot. For the ashes, he said quietly. They did it all together. Meera, Nikhil and Jak. And when Nayantara arrived, that strange desultory ride to the crematorium.
It was Jak who stood by her side and took the pot of ashes from the attendant.
‘Yes, Nikhil did the right thing by calling you.’
Meera rubs her eyes. ‘It’s Nikhil who worries me most,’ she says.
Jak waits for her to continue.
‘It has been a really hard year for him. First, there was Giri’s disappearance. Do you remember when we first met? The time you dropped us home. Giri walked out on us, the marriage, the children, all in one go that afternoon. It was Nikhil who discovered that he was missing. And now this…’
Saro and Lily were on their way to Bishop Cotton Boys, Nikhil’s school, when the accident happened. They had planned to take him shopping for his birthday.
‘I called home but no one picked up the phone,’ Nikhil said, not meeting his mother’s eye.
Meera’s heart sank. Where was she then? She remembered a phone ringing far away in those first few minutes but Soman had wrapped his arms tightly around her. ‘No, no, let it ring.’ He had shut it out with his caresses and the frenzy of sensation he evoked had swallowed the sound.
‘Grandma Saro wasn’t picking up her phone either. So I thought I would wait at the school gate. Someone told me there had been an accident a little ahead where Vittal Mallya road cuts into St. Mark’s road. I walked there, and Mummy…’ Nikhil’s face
crumpled. ‘It was horrible. The police were standing there near the wrecked car. They had covered Grandma and the driver with two pieces of sacking. I didn’t know it was Grandma… I saw Lily then. They were carrying her into the ambulance and… I ran. For a moment, I thought it was you beneath that sacking. Then I saw the hand with the rings and knew it was Grandma. It was horrible, Mummy. I know I shouldn’t have thought it, but I was glad it was her and not you.’
crumpled. ‘It was horrible. The police were standing there near the wrecked car. They had covered Grandma and the driver with two pieces of sacking. I didn’t know it was Grandma… I saw Lily then. They were carrying her into the ambulance and… I ran. For a moment, I thought it was you beneath that sacking. Then I saw the hand with the rings and knew it was Grandma. It was horrible, Mummy. I know I shouldn’t have thought it, but I was glad it was her and not you.’
Meera leans forward, her head in her arms. ‘I am so afraid that I am robbing him of his childhood; his father and I. It’s sad, isn’t it, how children have to suffer the sins of their parents.’
Jak takes Meera’s hand in his. ‘Nikhil will cope. Trust me, Meera, I know. Children cope better than adults.’
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