The Lilac House (21 page)
Authors: Anita Nair
Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage
C
hildren cope. How easily he had said it. That they have a greater depth of understanding than adults expect them to have. But that was what Meera wanted to hear. And so he offered her the comfort she so desperately sought: that she hadn’t failed as a parent.
hildren cope. How easily he had said it. That they have a greater depth of understanding than adults expect them to have. But that was what Meera wanted to hear. And so he offered her the comfort she so desperately sought: that she hadn’t failed as a parent.
Jak jogs through the streets at a steady pace. The night air is cold and he has pulled a light sweater on over his T-shirt. Dogs bark from behind gates but he continues to run, trying to keep pace with his thoughts.
He feels a stab of pity for Meera. He knows what lies ahead. There is no escaping it. Those black spots in the future when certain days would come to haunt her. The vortex of fear. Nikhil may not be able to forgive you now, Meera, he had wanted to tell her. But there will come a time in his life when he will begin to understand your circumstances and with that will come acceptance and forgiveness. Until then you must seek refuge in the thought that he will cope. Nikhil will engage with life on his own terms.
No one knows this better than he does, Jak’s mind and feet synchronize. Children cope but not without being marked. Children learn to understand but not without losing an element of hope. How can adults expect forgiveness of children? It is an adult emotion. It is not a child’s natural instinct to make compromises on behalf of a parent. An exemplary rare child, perhaps. He wasn’t one. All he knew was a black rage at what was expected of him.
Kitcha came home from college to find his mother in a strange mood. He was a B.Sc. Geography student at the Presidency College then. He studied his mother’s face as if it were the sea. The ever changing sea, now so calm, now so volatile. What seismic forces had shifted, he wondered. What had brought it on this time?
From the corner of his eye, Kitcha searched the house for Kala Chithi. She had arrived a month ago, all of a sudden. ‘I have left my husband and I have left our parents’ home. I have nowhere else to go,’ she had stated baldly.
Sarada’s hand had gone to her mouth. ‘What have you done, child?’ she had exclaimed. ‘And your hair?’
It was Kitcha who had taken the suitcase from her hand. He saw the stillness of her face and remembered her as he had seen her last on the beach, her hair loose, her eyes sparkling, her soul leaping. What had happened to her in these last few years?
‘He wanted to marry another woman. A woman who could give him a child,’ Kala Chithi said.
‘He wanted us all to live together. The indignity! The indignity was what made me leave. And you know our parents…’ She had looked away, not wanting either her sister or her nephew to see the wetness of her eyes. Kitcha and his mother had said no more. And so Kala Chithi became part of their household.
Would Kala Chithi know why Amma’s eyes glittered when she talked, or why her face was lit with an unusual animation? It scared him. In the last seven years there had been two occasions when his
mother had come alive from her catatonic state. Twice, when they had had news of Appa.
mother had come alive from her catatonic state. Twice, when they had had news of Appa.
The first time, a relative who had met Appa at an ashram had come to them with a little pouch of dried flowers, holy ash and vermilion. Kitcha had never been more furious with his father.
‘He has sent this for us, Kitcha. He has. What does it say? He hasn’t forgotten us,’ his mother cried in delight, oblivious to the embarrassment on the man’s face. Kitcha looked away, unable to stomach the naked want in her eyes.
Later in the night, when the relative had been fed and given, the gift of a new veshti and a small sum of two hundred rupees, pressed into his hand with an ‘Oh, some money for the bus fare’, Amma looked up from the little pouch and asked in a voice aching with hope, ‘Do you think he means to come back? Is that why he sent the kumkumam? Do you think it is his way of telling me?’ She sat there caressing the vermilion dust with the tip of her finger as if it were her husband’s arm. Needing to touch it to tell herself he was there and with her.
Kitcha wanted to snatch the pouch out of her hand and fling it out. What about the ash and the dried flowers, he wanted to demand. What do they tell you? That all is over. Can’t you see that?
Kitcha didn’t speak then. He didn’t when the letter came either. It was little over a year since the relative had visited. There had been nothing until then from Appa. Amma had begun working in a small school in the neighbourhood. She had fished out her degree certificate in Mathematics which she had set aside when she married. Now the school needed a primary teacher in Maths and Amma had been fortunate to find the job, they said. So close to home; a small but steady income; regular hours and long vacations. Kitcha had been glad when she found the job. It was precisely what she needed. A diversion and a purpose. She was tiring herself by being this needy creature who rose with bare-faced hope each time someone buzzed the doorbell.
The letter was addressed to him. Amma held it in her hand as she waited for him to come home from school. Kitcha was sixteen then. ‘I’m going to study the weather,’ he joked to anyone who asked him his future plans. ‘At least it is predictable in its unpredictability!’
Amma looked away each time he said that.
Kitcha felt a weight settle on his brow when he saw the letter. What now? ‘Open it,’ Amma urged. ‘I didn’t want to. It’s for you… But it’s from him. Your appa!’
Kitcha placed his books on the swing. ‘Can I change my clothes first?’ he asked quietly, wanting to delay the moment. Couldn’t Amma see it? How could she raise her hopes so? When would she accept that he wasn’t coming back?
‘Kitcha…’ The plea in her voice made him grab the envelope from her hand. Within was a card announcing Appa’s decision to move to Rishikesh where the ashram would help him seek the unconscious better. There were shlokas and explanations, and in the final line a quiet repudiation: ‘Nainam chindanthi shashtrani…’ It is time to move on. As I must. You must.
It was an irrevocable parting of ways.
Amma applied for a BEd thereafter. And when it was time to pick a subject for his university degree, despite everyone telling him that he was guaranteed to be unemployed after such a useless course, Kitcha sought his clouds and seas.
Now here was Amma again with stars in her eyes. ‘I have something to tell you,’ she said that night.
Kitcha stared at the TV. ‘Yes, Amma, I am listening,’ he said, not wanting to see the anticipation in her eyes.
‘I have been thinking,’ Amma began. Then she reached out and switched off the TV. ‘I want you to listen carefully.’
Kitcha looked up then. Kala Chithi, Kitcha saw, was pretending to read a magazine. Any minute now she would get up and leave. Kala Chithi had little time for Amma’s ‘one of these days he will be
home’ delusions. ‘You have to get on with your life, Akka,’ she said. ‘You have to accept that Athimbair isn’t coming back!’
home’ delusions. ‘You have to get on with your life, Akka,’ she said. ‘You have to accept that Athimbair isn’t coming back!’
In recent times, though, Amma no longer talked about her husband or even referred to him. She was finally learning to let go, they had decided, relieved. Appa had been a cancerous growth in Amma, gnawing away at her insides, turning a vibrant woman into a hollowed out shell, brittle and dry.
Kitcha worried that there had been some fresh communiqué from Appa.
‘Your father is gone. He’s never coming back. Do you accept that?’ she asked, touching his shoulders gently.
‘Yes, I know that,’ Kitcha mumbled. ‘I always knew that.’
‘But my life isn’t over.’
‘What is it, Amma? Is it this MEd thing? Do you need to go elsewhere for it?’
Amma exhaled. ‘No, it isn’t this MEd thing. It is that I have met someone and we would like to get married.’
And Kitcha, who should have sprung to his mother’s side, made it easy for her and said, ‘Yes, Amma. You are young. You need a husband. And I… I would like a father too. A father who is here.’ Kitcha, who could already read the colour of the sea, the density of the clouds, and in whom there was a natural sensitivity, ought to have found the compassion to take his mother’s hand in his and absolve her of any guilt she may feel by telling her, ‘You must marry again. And this time, Amma, choose a man who loves life. Not one who wants to run away from it,’ had snarled, ‘What’s wrong with you? How can you get married again? You are still married to Appa!’
Kala Chithi hissed at the ferocity of Kitcha’s tone, the venom in his words. Amma stood there, her head bent. Then she raised her eyes and searched his for a long while.
Kitcha felt shame crowd him. What had he done? But shame
was erased by the violence he felt at the image of his mother with another man. He turned away, unable to stand there any more.
was erased by the violence he felt at the image of his mother with another man. He turned away, unable to stand there any more.
When he returned, he was calmer and penitent. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He fashioned contrite words to redeem himself in his own eyes rather than hers.
But she, too, could be unrelenting. ‘You meant exactly what you said, Kitcha. I was a fool to think you would see it from my point of view. How can you? You are still a child.’ With that his mother dismissed his attempts to take an adult stance and relegated him to what she thought he deserved – a child’s place.
It took a year for her to get a divorce. And the next day she was married to her man. A quiet Physics teacher from Hyderabad. A year later, they moved to Tanzania. Kitcha heard occasionally from them and he went to visit them a few times. But something had died between Kitcha and his mother. There was no going back to how they used to be. He had failed his mother and yet, how could she blame him?
It was to Kala Chithi he unburdened his guilt and remorse. And it seemed to him that only she understood.
Some years later his mother died of cancer. By that time Kitcha had already moved to the US. He couldn’t attend the funeral but as he told Kala Chithi, they had already said their goodbyes. That time when his mother left him in her care and went away with her new husband.
It was only then Kala Chithi had snapped, ‘Do you have to be so unforgiving even after her death? Till the day she died, she didn’t stop tormenting herself with the thought that she failed you… Let her go in peace now, Kitcha. Let her be.’
‘How can you let her get away with it? How long will you make excuses for her behaviour?’ Monique had demanded of you one summer evening. The two of you were working in the garden. At
least, she was weeding in the backyard of the cottage she and you had been offered for the whole of two months.
least, she was weeding in the backyard of the cottage she and you had been offered for the whole of two months.
Rich Monique with godparents who had a cottage in Umbria which they offered to their godchild and her lover while they were away in Argentina. Polyglot Monique who switched from English to Italian to French to Spanish, all in one sentence. Dealing with stewards, taxi drivers, marketplaces and bureaucracy with a breathtaking ease, no matter where she was. While you watched helplessly as you were subjected to what seemed like a long stream of nonsense.
Silly, frivolous Monique who could never bury her nose in a book and live vicariously through her characters. But knew every wild plant and made soup of sorrel and then went out to dinner in her Armani sheath and talked fabrics and styles to her buyers with a hauteur that overwhelmed them.
She perplexed you. A beeping dot on the radar that you puzzled over. She called you her cloud reader, her weather man, trailing kisses from the hollow in your neck to the line of your pubis. And you thought it must be the same for her: I wear the magic of the unknown.
Only now, eleven months into their relationship and three weeks into their holiday, Monique couldn’t keep the vexation out of her voice when she looked up from the roses and demanded, ‘This isn’t the first time, right? She’s done this before. Got into trouble. Didn’t you know that your daughter was furious about your coming away with me? That she would do something to ensure you went back… I knew it would happen. That, or you would have had to bring her with us.’
You ran your hand through your hair, rubbed the bridge of your nose, stared moodily into your glass of white wine and said, ‘I wish I had. I wish there was a way of knowing what Smriti will do next. It is ironic that I who study the clouds and the sea, I who can forecast storms and chart their path almost intuitively, I can’t read Smriti, her moods and phases. She defeats me.’
Sometimes you thought that you were just paying for what you had put your mother through.
Monique didn’t speak at first. When she did, she didn’t hide the anger in her voice. ‘You can perhaps forgive her for what she puts you through. I can’t. Not when she called me a fucking cunt, and she and her friends ruined my home. I love you, Jak, but this… this is ridiculous, your quiet acceptance of her unruly behaviour. Sometimes you act as if it was inevitable!’
You flinched then.
Smriti bared fangs when she saw Monique. She saw her as an usurper. It wasn’t Monique – any woman would have been subjected to the same hate. Smriti was merely replaying what you had done. ‘She will like you once she gets to know you,’ you said soothingly.
Monique snorted. She still hadn’t forgiven Smriti or you for ruining the Christmas vacation in Venice. You had insisted on taking Smriti along. It was the safest option during the whirl of parties in the holidays, Nina and you had decided – to remove her from her environment where she could get into trouble. The two of you took turns every year, ever since the separation. Shruti was going with Nina to England. Malleable, pliant Shruti who could be trusted to amuse herself. But not Smriti, who would sneak away and do something stupid that could jeopardize her future, her life.
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