The Lilac House (8 page)
Authors: Anita Nair
Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage
T
here is no knowing what will happen next in our lives, Meera thinks, walking past the gates of the lilac house. Did Lily and Saro ever know such uncertainty, she wonders. Perhaps they did, which is why they are the way they are. Wary of everyone and everything, jealously guarding what is theirs. In time, will I, too, become like them? Watching out for myself rather than for anyone else? Meera dislikes the woman she is turning into.
here is no knowing what will happen next in our lives, Meera thinks, walking past the gates of the lilac house. Did Lily and Saro ever know such uncertainty, she wonders. Perhaps they did, which is why they are the way they are. Wary of everyone and everything, jealously guarding what is theirs. In time, will I, too, become like them? Watching out for myself rather than for anyone else? Meera dislikes the woman she is turning into.
The cane chairs sit forlorn and vacant in the patio. A breeze ruffles the tops of the palms in planters. Meera stands by the pillars and looks at the house. Her lilac house wreathed with creepers, its garden abloom. Bees drone, squirrels chatter, birds call. An oasis of peace flanked by tall apartment blocks on either side and a shopping complex across the road. Meera sighs and asks the house, ‘How could you do this to me?’
If a few months ago someone had said that this house, her beloved lilac house, would fracture her marriage and throw her life askew, she would have laughed herself silly. And then reached across and tapped their nose playfully. ‘What did you eat last? A magic mushroom omelette? I’ve never heard anything more bizarre! Is this the house in
Amityville Horror
or what?’
Amityville Horror
or what?’
Meera walks into the house. Where is everyone? She can hear the television. She goes to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of water. She takes the glass and sits in the patio.
She has been clutching at straws. Cookbooks are fine for corporate wives with husbands who pay bills and settle the dues. Abandoned corporate wives need more. Meera draws out a diary from her bag. All her household accounts are in it. It seems to her that this is all she does these days. Tabulate the figures again and again as if by doing so she can arrive at a sum that will assure her all is well: Giri may have left but they will survive. One way or the other.
Meera finds Nikhil in his room. He is lying across the bed with his head resting on one arm.
‘So what happened?’ Nikhil asks.
Meera shrugs. ‘Nothing really. He wants me to come up with a book idea like
The Corporate Wife’s Guide to Entertaining
! This one doesn’t work, he says.’
The Corporate Wife’s Guide to Entertaining
! This one doesn’t work, he says.’
‘Is it because of Daddy?’
‘No, darling. Daddy has nothing to do with this.’ Or us any more, Meera thinks but bites down the words. Nikhil still believes that his daddy will come back.
She sits by his side and ruffles his hair. Her eyes sweep the span of his room. A child’s room, though he hates it when she refers to him as one. She thinks of how he clamoured for a book every week. And now he doesn’t any more. Instead, he reads again the books he has. She thinks of how he reads the newspaper, making an effort to seem responsible. He sits in Giri’s chair and holds aloft the pages as his father once did, seeking to fill his place.
Nikhil looks at her. ‘What will we do, Mummy?’ he asks and Meera thinks her heart will break at what she sees in his eyes: Nikhil knows his father isn’t coming home any more. ‘Will you have to sell my iPod?’ he asks.
‘Not yet,’ she says quietly, hating herself for not being able to say, ‘Of course not!’ This way it won’t be such a shock if we have to, she reasons.
One more nail in your coffin, you SOB, she tells Giri in her head. I can forgive you for what you are doing to me. For the anxiety you are causing my mother and grandmother. But not this. Not for robbing my son, our son, of his childhood. Nothing you ever do, even if you come back, will remove that shadow in his eyes. Somewhere in your new happy home in your new happy life, I hope it occurs to you that you have a child who has resolutely willed his tongue to never again utter ‘I want’, or ‘I need’.
‘What will you do?’ he asks again.
‘I don’t know yet, darling. But we’ll manage. I know we can.’
Meera’s eyes swoop on the books. ‘But I’ll tell you what we are going to do, right now.’
She goes into her bedroom and drags out a trolley dolley. From the shelves in the bedroom and the living room, she pulls out books. All the advertising and marketing books Giri bought with the rapacious greed of a child who can’t have enough. He merely needed to possess them; some of the books are still in their plastic jackets, uncut, unread.
‘What are you doing?’ Nikhil asks from the doorway.
Meera smiles. ‘Come with me.’
They take an autorickshaw to an old bookstore Meera has run in and out of when book buying was a necessity rather than a luxury.
She watches the bookshop owner price the books. A small price to pay for stealing a childhood, Giri, she thinks.
‘Buy yourself two books for Rs 200 each,’ Meera tells Nikhil, stuffing the money into her purse.
‘What about Nayantara?’ Nikhil asks carefully. He knows Meera isn’t pleased with her.
Meera wants to reach across and hug Nikhil. Her son who so wants to right the world, their world, where Mummy and Daddy live together and siblings don’t have to choose between parents. ‘When she’s home for the weekend, she’ll have her book allowance too!’ Meera smiles.
Through the aisles of books they wander, seeking paperbacks whose marked price doesn’t exceed their budget and will buy them solace for a while.
Through the mustiness of age, from the patina of dust that clings to the air, a soft voice rises. A child singing – ‘
We Shall Overcome
’.
We Shall Overcome
’.
Meera turns and sees a pixie faced little boy sitting on the floor with a picture book. He is singing as he turns the pages.
Meera’s eyes seek and meet Nikhil’s. They smile. Complicity and hope.
Meera feels a warm rush of love for the child, that unknown child.
We shall overcome, she thinks.
In the newspaper that morning, Meera had paused at an advertisement for editors in a software company. She has a postgraduate degree in English language and literature. Would she be considered too old? What if the working hours are long? What would they – Lily, Saro and the children – say? It doesn’t matter, Meera thinks. I can put up with anything if it will exorcize this constant fear of penury. If it will just let me cope until we figure things out. If it will buy me time…
THE CIRRUS CANOPY OF DENIAL.
Let us compare mythologies. In the mythology of all civilizations, heaven represents an acme. The divine realm where all human destiny is decided before it is etched on the forehead of the life that springs in the womb. The clouds then are what separate the mortal from the immortal, the known from the unknown. As long as we do not see, we do not know.
We expect joy as our birthright, but despair? Though logic assures that where there is joy, there will be despair, we are never prepared for it. Not truly. And when it happens, for a while there is yet another phase before the acceptance of the inevitable.
Like the cover of clouds, it is the scrap that the all-powerful being allows us: the power of denial. When it comes to self-deception the human mind is capable of the infinite. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a singular painting that is an ironic expression of this human trait.
Ceci n’cest pas une pipe
. This Is Not a Pipe is one in the series ‘Treachery of Images’ by Rene Magritte. Look at it. It is the image of a pipe. A larger than life pipe.
Ceci n’cest pas une pipe
. This Is Not a Pipe is one in the series ‘Treachery of Images’ by Rene Magritte. Look at it. It is the image of a pipe. A larger than life pipe.
But Magritte maintained: ‘And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I’d have been lying!’ (Harry Torczyner,
Magritte
:
Ideas and Images
, p. 71)
Magritte
:
Ideas and Images
, p. 71)
So it is in the world of cyclones. As if to deny its very presence, the intense and unstable convectional clouds produce an outflow. An exhalation of a lofty white, fleecy cirrus formation that hides the eye of the cyclone.The cirrus canopy above the storm area puts everything on hold. That which is not seen does not exist. Meanwhile, the eye grows in strength and ferocity.
Professor J. A. Krishnamurthy
The Metaphysics of Cyclones
The Metaphysics of Cyclones
t
.i.m.e
e.m.i.t
m.i.t.e
.i.m.e
e.m.i.t
m.i.t.e
Meera moves the cursor back and forth over the jumbled letters. i . m.e . t. In one glance, she can see three ways of putting it right. But they only want one. Which one is it to be? Meera frowns.
t . i . m . e, Meera decides.
‘I am done,’ she tells the girl who looks like an older version of Nayantara.
‘What do I do now?’ she asks the girl.
The girl stares at her blankly, removes her earphones and says, ‘We’ll let you know in a couple of days or so.’
Meera smiles at the girl. She had shown her where to sit. She helped her locate the tests on the desktop, found her the earphones and said, ‘There are two parts to the test. One where you have to watch the movie clipping and type in the dialogue. There are four clippings. You can watch it as many times as you want but you can’t take more than half an hour for all four. Then there is the language test. You have half an hour for that too.
‘Try and guess if you don’t know the right answer,’ she added as an afterthought.
Meera sat in the cubicle with the computer. Around her men and women who were young enough to be her children walked around taking long deep swigs from their cans of Red Bull or bottles of Gatorade or Coke. There was a pizza box stuffed into a waste-paper basket brimming with cartons and cans… What am I doing here? Meera asked herself. What will I tell the children? Perhaps I could just point to a subtitle when we watch a movie and say, ‘That’s my new job. Subtitling movies. What a great
profession, huh? Watching movies all day…’ Meera pondered as she watched the movie clip.
profession, huh? Watching movies all day…’ Meera pondered as she watched the movie clip.
At first, none of it made any sense. Then the words began to fall into place and Meera let her fingers fly on the keys.
I can do this. I can do this well. I have to do this. Our survival hinges on this. Meera’s fingers flew.
Meera looks at the girl in front of her. Her blouse ends a few inches above the waistband of her cargo pants. The lobes of her ears are festooned with tiny silver ornaments. ‘Bye,’ Meera says. But the girl has already put her earphones back on.
The steel walls of the lift reflect distorted images. And that is how Meera sees herself.
Meera, with her hair pulled back and dressed in her daughter’s clothes. Meera, who at forty-four hopes she will pass for an aging thirty-five. Meera, desperate Meera, desperately seeking employment in a world that has little use for corporate wives of even an exemplary kind.
Meera pulls away her hairband, yet another of Nayantara’s castaways, and lets her hair swing free. Her head hurts. Meera, the masquerader. The abandoned wife pretending to be protectress.
Hera had never dwelt on it too much. For Zeus had always been there to rush forth to her rescue. And so in the battle between the giants and the Olympians, when Porphyrion placed his enormous hands round her neck and began strangling her, Hera’s last thought wasn’t: I am dying. Instead, it was the harried but secure wife’s anger that made her wriggle: ‘Where is Zeus when I need him?’
Hera couldn’t even consider the possibility that Zeus wouldn’t rush to rescue her.
Giri has always been there. All these years Meera had Giri to lean on. Only now, Giri is gone.
All these years Meera never knew what it was to be stripped of dignity. She feels as if she is laying herself bare for the entire world
to see and speculate about. Her hands splay across her chest and pubis. She feels naked and vulnerable.
to see and speculate about. Her hands splay across her chest and pubis. She feels naked and vulnerable.
She cowers as the lift door opens.
T
hrough the open doors of the lift, Vinnie sees a woman huddled against its steel side. A woman with her head bent and her shoulders shaking. Is she giggling into her phone?
hrough the open doors of the lift, Vinnie sees a woman huddled against its steel side. A woman with her head bent and her shoulders shaking. Is she giggling into her phone?
An eyebrow arches by itself. What do these women chatter about all day?
Then the woman raises her head to look at her and Vinnie thinks she has never seen anyone look as depleted by anguish. Or as naked.
Vinnie has a split second to choose. To ignore the woman in tears or get involved. She doesn’t know why, but she finds herself touching the woman on her shoulder and saying, ‘Come. Let’s get a coffee. Whatever it is, you will feel better then.’
The woman stares at her through her tears. Then she goes with her.
‘I am sorry, I am sorry,’ she keeps whispering, trying to dry her eyes.
Across the road is a Café Coffee Day. Vinnie doesn’t like going to these places much. They are teenage haunts. For children on whom tall drinks of fattening chocolate and milk don’t show. ‘A lot can happen over a cup of coffee,’ Arun had grinned at her. They had met there one evening and Vinnie saw how his eyes flicked over the girls, pausing at the smooth, unlined midriffs only a twenty-year-old can possess. And how the young girls feasted on him. ‘They must wonder at us,’ she said.
‘Let them,’ he drawled. ‘What is it to us?’
Nothing to you, perhaps, but I feel like a fool. A middle-aged fool, Vinnie had ached to snap.
It hasn’t been an easy morning for Vinnie either. Arun wants a loan.
Vinnie has been unable to stop the voices in her head and heart. The voices have alternated between raucous heckling and blandishments, trying to out voice each other.
‘Give it to him,’ one of the voices said.
‘If you give in now, you are doomed,’ another said.
Give it to him, the voice in Vinnie’s heart whispered. Give it to him and he’ll give unto you all that you desire, it simpered.
Lady, there’s a name for people like you who need to buy desire, the other voice in Vinnie’s head curled its mouth.
Vinnie patted the coil of hair that sat atop her head. A crown that allowed her to disseminate businesswoman efficiency with the raising of an eyebrow and a curl of the lip. It was the cornice atop a façade of control. Don’t mess with me, it warned the world of employees, shop girls and all minions who contributed to making the earth a better place for Vinnie.
‘I don’t like it when you do this to your hair,’ Arun had said a few days into their relationship and pulled down the careful coiffure. ‘I hate it,’ he said, running his fingers through her hair. ‘As for this,’ he continued, dropping the chopstick she used to hold her hair in place into her hands, ‘it belongs in a Chinese restaurant!’
Vinnie smiled and popped it into her bag. Other women wore brooches and rings; Vinnie had her chopsticks. A whole tray of them to match her clothes and hold her knot in place. In jade, bone, horn, porcelain, wood, and even a couple of plastic ones. Needles to pierce the heart of all her surreptitious wayward longings and keep them coiled and in place.
‘Wanton, wanton,’ Arun murmured as he played with her, her nerve ends, her restraint.
‘Now this is you,’ he said, coiling a strand around a finger. And
Vinnie couldn’t speak a word. For the mere sight of him, her lover, opened a ravenous greed in her. His long musician’s fingers sang on her skin, his mouth feeding tickling licking sucking cupping, how could a pair of lips and tongue know so much, the smoothness, oh the smoothness of his skin, the ridges of muscle on his back, the mat of hair on his chest grazing her breasts, the back of her thighs, her nipples, her pubis, his to do as he pleased. And she could give as good as she got, reaching for his cock, the arc of his balls, hers, hers, hers, to do with as she pleased, her back arching in the pleasure that began at the curl of her toes, riding up through sinew and muscle into the cells of her brain – a thought: I could go on and on. As the thought turned back to her toes, enough, enough, enough, she thought as she collapsed in a heap of satiation, spent fluids and a deep deep sense of regret that it had to be like this. Frantic afternoon groping and fucking, noises escaping his mouth and hers but no words of love or forever. All of it a slaking of lust and loneliness. It was what he and every fortune cookie knew but her husband didn’t: a woman needs to be loved, not understood.
Vinnie couldn’t speak a word. For the mere sight of him, her lover, opened a ravenous greed in her. His long musician’s fingers sang on her skin, his mouth feeding tickling licking sucking cupping, how could a pair of lips and tongue know so much, the smoothness, oh the smoothness of his skin, the ridges of muscle on his back, the mat of hair on his chest grazing her breasts, the back of her thighs, her nipples, her pubis, his to do as he pleased. And she could give as good as she got, reaching for his cock, the arc of his balls, hers, hers, hers, to do with as she pleased, her back arching in the pleasure that began at the curl of her toes, riding up through sinew and muscle into the cells of her brain – a thought: I could go on and on. As the thought turned back to her toes, enough, enough, enough, she thought as she collapsed in a heap of satiation, spent fluids and a deep deep sense of regret that it had to be like this. Frantic afternoon groping and fucking, noises escaping his mouth and hers but no words of love or forever. All of it a slaking of lust and loneliness. It was what he and every fortune cookie knew but her husband didn’t: a woman needs to be loved, not understood.
Vinnie clutched her purse tight. In that older man, mature voice of his when he asked for the money – ‘Only a loan, you understand, I’ll return it as soon as my transfer comes through’ – she saw the deep clavicle that crested his mouth. And she thought of how he had picked from the floor her blouse which she had tossed away carelessly in her hurry to be in his arms and how he had ironed it carefully. Smoothening each wrinkle and crease with a housewifely hand so that when she put it on, she was Vinnie again. The hard, indestructible Vinnie only he could crumble with a tiny nip on her earlobe. She knew he enjoyed this power he had over her. And a tenderness welled up in her.
Did she love him? She didn’t know. But she needed him and was petrified of losing him.
And yet, to give him the money would be changing the trajectory of ‘this thing, whatever it is’ as he called their relationship.
Would it bind him to her? Or, would it just make her his money-dispensing machine each time he fell short? An edge of a wheedle in that deep baritone voice, a hint of helplessness in those eyes. Would he think that was all it took to send Vinnie rushing to the nearest ATM?
Vinnie didn’t know. She couldn’t decide what was right, what was wrong.
She pushes her wandering thoughts away as she leads the woman towards another café a little further away. One of the coffee shop attendants saunters to their table. ‘Two filter coffees, please,’ Vinnie says.
‘We don’t have south Indian coffee.’
‘I don’t believe this.’ Vinnie’s mouth curls. ‘Here we are in Bangalore, south India and you have, what is that?’ she peers. ‘Colombian, Brazilian, Kenyan … and no good old south Indian filter coffee. Bring us two espressos and two glasses of ice water.’
The woman is dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue. ‘I am sorry to have imposed,’ she says, a watery smile creasing her face.
‘Don’t. I am Vinnie. I am sure whatever is troubling you can be resolved.’
‘I am Meera,’ the woman offers shyly. ‘Thanks, Vinnie. Thanks for…’ She pauses, unsure of how to describe the situation she has been found in.
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