To say I was messed up is an understatement (FC85).
The
murder of my Romeo plunged me into a hole – of pain, a sense of betrayal, nothing could ever
be right, I’d never trust my own, I was scarred for life, I felt deep horror
that my beloved bird could be so brutally punished for my sins. It was a morass
I seemingly couldn’t climb out of. It hampered my breathing and my head stayed under
my pillow, most of the time, to smother the sound of another human being trying
to talk to me.
By
the end of day 2, I had not eaten for two days, despite my parents’ desperate
pleading, and had a high fever, eventually requiring the services of the good
doctor Lal. He sat next to me on my bed, his face grim. He tried to joke about
cheering up else I’d have to take an injection. He gave me one anyway and told me
all would be well. Hah. My cousins ogled him from the doorway. My older, stupid,
cousins had worn nice salwar kurtas. When he looked around and saw
Georgiechyan, he jumped up and they left the room together.
My
mother covered me up with my sheet again and I cringed when I saw my
grandfather enter the room. I pulled the sheet over my head and turned away.
There was a long silence and then Appachan cleared his throat and asked about
my fever. Amma mumbled. Appa stood staring out of our bedroom window, his back
towards the room.
He
had spent the night holding me tightly while I cried, slept, and vomited bile.
Revengeful scenes played in my dreams. Mostly of a burly, faceless goon chasing
my aunt Sarayumama with a fat stick and hitting her more times than was humanly
possible. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Hit hit hit with stick stick stick.
When
I was awake I imagined how Romeo was killed. Did the person enjoy it? When I eventually
found my voice, it was to ask who had done the deed.
“I
don’t know,” Amma looked down. I looked at Appa and he looked away.
On
the rare occasions my parents disappeared from our bedroom at the same time,
they left a strange minder. My uncle Pilipochyan sat in a chair, about a feet
away from the bed, the newspaper in his lap, his hands loosely resting on the
arms of the chair. “You know your parents have not eaten for two days.”
Shame coursed through me. I hadn’t bothered about my parents. There was a
strange blank look on Uncle’s face. I knew there had been an angry exchange
between Sarojmama, his wife – my father’s youngest sister, and Pilipochyan,
that night (FC85). According to Roma, his children had cowered in a corner of
their bedroom room until Georgiechyan had stood in the doorway and tapped the door
sharply. I couldn’t imagine that stopping my aunt making her point.
Pilipochyan
sat in a chair in the corner of my room for a few hours every day, with the
paper in his lap, unread, and his wife peeping in occasionally. Every time she
came into view I closed my eyes because a horrible feeling would creep over me – that she had been party to what had happened to Romeo.
And as
soon as Pilipochyan left the room, or my parents did, I yelled out every awful swear
word I knew – but it wasn’t enough.
“Who
cut Romeo’s throat?” I felt there was a greater chance of
hearing the truth from Pilipochyan.
“I don’t
know, mol.” At my incredulous look, he said, “Believe me, mol, I don’t.
All I know is that when I reached the dining room, your parents were very upset
and I understood what had occurred.” He opened his mouth and closed it a few
times, his face thoughtful.
My
eyes bored into his, trying to catch his lie. But he held my gaze.
“You
have to know who did it! Someone would have talked – they would have gloated!”
His
nostrils flared and for a moment I was afraid he was going to be angry. “I have an… inkling. I can’t be sure. No one is saying.” When I opened
my mouth in protest, he said, “If I know, I won’t say either. Because there
won’t be an end to this wickedness, you understand?”
“No!”
“Yes,
mol. I know you understand what I am saying. The mulish, stupid nature of the
act should tell you something about the person, about the people who did it and
were part of it and who let it happen… about the person who tried to make you
eat it. Do you think matters are going to end with you retaliating in some
way?”
I opened and closed my mouth several times, my eyes filling. The brutes would get away with it. “So what do I do?”
He
didn’t say anything. And that was that. A few minutes later, my cousin Rita
pushed the door open for her sister Roma, who was carrying a tray with a large
blue bowl containing kanji, a thick starchy broth that comes from cooked rice. The bowl
was one of my grandmother’s treasured blue flowered China bowls, made by some
rich uncle who had a factory that had shut down a long time ago. Some plates
existed, screaming of those forgotten aristocrats.
“She
let you use her blue plate?” I said in disbelief.
“No,”
Roma said.
“Then?”
“I
took it,” Rita said, and grinned. She tucked a thin white towel into the top of
my nightdress and Roma set the tray on my lap. I wanted to continue my hunger
strike, but I was very very hungry and I looked at Pilipochyan who nodded
encouragingly. I thought of my parents and took one of the ornate spoons that
was part of my granny’s inheritance, had a sudden thought of locating all her
old plates and cracking each of them, dipped the spoon into the kanji and
started swallowing it. I pushed the large piece of mango pickle around the bowl
and soon the kanji was orange brown and tolerable.
My parents came in, carrying their plates and smiled. They sat on the bed with me and ate quietly.
******
A
couple of days later, I had shed the fever and
begun to roam about, avoiding my grandmother and, thus, any chores. My father’s
sisters, Sarayumama and Sarojmama, stayed away from me, strangely backing away
and disappearing when they saw me. I was fine with it. I used my slingshot to
shoot down mangoes from the trees further away from the house and shared them
with Roma, Rita and Sarah. She had sought me out every day and spoke to me even
though I refused to speak.
When we returned, the sitting room was filled with family. They quietened when I
came in. My eyes were immediately attracted to the basket that lay in front of
my great uncle’s feet. Kunjappachan, my grandfather’s older brother, and his
wife Mathuram amachi had come to visit. He held out his arm to me and I sat on
the arm of his chair.
“I
heard you were ill,” he felt my forehead and cheek. “But when I saw you aiming
your slingshot at Bobby I knew you were better,” he murmured at my cheek and chuckled.
I flushed. How had he spotted me! I had indeed seen my idiot cousin and slowly
turned my slingshot at him from across the field. He was too far, of course. It
would have required a cannon to shoot a missile at where Bobby was standing.
Kunjappachan asked me if I had been eating well. I told him I was being fed prison gruel. And he laughed some more. I liked seeing him laugh and so I fibbed about my circumstances outrageously. When I looked at the others, I saw some angry looks, some jealousy, some warm smiles. Through it all I had understood one thing – to trust my instincts because the vibes didn’t lie.
Uncle
urged me to open the basket. Noises came through and I immediately knelt by it,
my little cousins coming nearer to see what was in it. There were little chicks,
black, yellow and brown, immediately trying to jump out of the basket. My
cousins squealed, picking up the chicks and nuzzling them. I picked up two,
desperately wanting them.
I
looked up at Kunjappachan. My grandfather’s face was expressionless. My
grandmother was angry. Normally livestock of any sort was not brought into the
house. I sat on the arm of Kunjappachan’s chair and looked at him, smiling. He
smiled back broadly.
“You
can keep them.”
I
suddenly felt cold. No. No. NO.
“Why
not, mol?” he frowned.
“Umm,
I can’t take them back with me to Bombay,” I lied.
“I
am not asking you to.”
“Yes.
What will she do with a chick. She will only spoil it silly like that rooster
she pampered. It thought it was a human!” Ammachi grumbled.
The
room went silent, I could see distaste form on some faces. Ammachi never spoke,
especially when my grandaunt visited. She couldn’t get along with the family next
door. I could see Kunjappachan’s mouth tighten, a sudden fury on his face. “Mol
can play with them and return them if she can’t take them back with her,” he
said quietly. “Elle*, mol? Besides, one chick will be too small for a curry.”
I
felt sick with the memory of that curry in Ammachi’s prized blue flower-patterned
tureen. Why had she used that one? She usually used the large melamine ones her
daughters kept gifting her. A guffaw startled me. I couldn’t make out who had
laughed, but people were trying to stifle their smiles.
My
granny was furious. “She doesn’t want the chick!”
“She
hasn’t said so.”
“She
just did!” At this Appachan raised his hand and Ammachi smouldered in silence.
There
was silence in the room and we continued to play with the chicks. Even the
older boys leaned down and plucked them off the ground, holding them in their
palms and giggling.
“If
chechi doesn’t want it… ” Eva, Sarojmama and Pilipochyan’s older daughter, looked
at me warily and then turned her pleading gaze at Kunjappachan, all the while
holding out a chick in her palm.
“Eva,
they are for mol, you cannot ask for them,” Sarojmama said.
“They
are for anyone who wants them,” Kunjappachan said.
Eva
quickly picked up another chick, a brown one, but her younger sister Tina held
back even though Eva urged her to take one. None of the children came forward.
And slowly the boys too began to put the chicks back in the basket.
Kunjappachan
looked incredulous. “No one?”
I
felt bad for Kunjappachan. He had just wanted me to feel better. I whispered in
his ear. “Everyone’s afraid that if they’re bad, their chicks will get cooked.”
Uncle’s
face twitched. I murmured again, “One chick won’t make a curry, but what if
Ammachi manages to catch all of them.”
Kunjappachan
guffawed and I laughed too. Ammachi's face was red, certain we were talking about
her. I felt my dear granduncle’s arm around me. He said, “You come over and
play with the chicks.”
“Thank
you, Appacha. I will.”
******
In
the evening, a couple of hours before dusk, we cousins went to the river to
bathe, with our cousins from next door leading the way via the clay dirt roads
behind our homes.
The
boys had been bathing at another spot every evening. The girls not so much
because of the fear of peeping toms.
But today we were planning to have some fun. It was cool now, the sun wasn’t shining as much and a recent downpour had cooled the air, including the river water. A faint breeze moved through the spindly tall grass, but could budge little else. I wasn’t a good swimmer like some of my cousins and so stayed in the shallows. Despite the breeze, the water stayed stagnant. Unusually, there were no ripples. The river was at a slight incline and on most days moved constantly towards the dip further on.
I
found the spot I usually squatted in. I stretched out carefully in the
water, taking care to rest my neck and shoulders on a small mound of silt. So while
my body stayed submerged, my face and ears stayed above the water. It
was as near a state of bliss as I had ever experienced and every time I visited
the river I was able to locate the mound.
A
shadow blotted out the sun and I opened my eyes reluctantly. Sarah smiled, “You
should practise your swimming.”
“No
swimming pools in Bombay.”
“That
can’t even be logically correct.”
“Okay…
no swimming pools in the vicinity, none that Amma will let me swim in, anyway.”
“That’s
better. Makes sense. Still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn. You could swim in the
sea. What if you decide to become a marine biologist. Or travel to Australia’s
Great Barrier Reef?”
I blinked.
That was the first sensible thing anyone had said to me in terms of a career. I
had never heard of marine biologists, but that sounded posh and adventurous. Sarah
was still speaking, “Have you been thinking of what you will do in college, your
career options?”
I
swallowed some water and choked. I sat up and Sarah slapped my back. “Not
thought of anything. Er, but I’m still thinking.”
Sarah
looked irritated. “Right. Don’t think too much, or for too long. Ammachi may
get you married off after 12th standard.”
“Appa
and Amma would never let it happen!”
“Ammachi
and Appachan would come to Bombay and bulldoze them. See what happened to me.”
“But,
but… but it worked out, no?”
Sarah’s
eyes moved slowly over my face and her mouth opened. Just then Sheelamama,
my youngest aunt next door, waded into view, carrying her young daughter. She held out a hand to Sarah. Sarah grabbed it
and pulled herself out of the water. She reached down and helped me up.
I looked at the river one last time. A shiver ran down my spine. The water still had no ripples despite us frolicking in its depths. The peace I felt lying in the water had now evaporated.
Later, I would realise it was the calm before the storm.
******
*Elle translates to ‘Isn’t that right’ in Malayalam.
******
This series is fictional and follows the narrator who is remembering events related to a family vacation in Kerala during her childhood.
When her family cooks her pet rooster (FC84) to punish her, the young narrator becomes depressed. Her granduncle visits, bearing gifts.
Read the entire The Webs We Weave series here FC69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94
******
#fiction #keralasyrianchristians #lifeinakeralavillage #FishyChronicles #mumbaimalayalis #malayalam #clandestinelove #love #rooster #romeo #chicks #river #fever #bonechina #aristocrat #chinafactory #tureen #kanji #feverishsouls #greatbarrierreef #marinebiologist #bombayswimmingpool #swimmer #career #dirtroad
