“How are you?”
I
froze. It wasn’t a question. Just a statement. I had more than a hundred
questions to ask but couldn’t get a single one out.
Rita
grabbed the phone from me and said, “Why did you break up with Sarah chechi!”
I
gawked, and tried to pull the phone from her, but it was clamped vice-like
against her ear, the streetlight illuminating her frowning face. I bent and put
my ear to the phone to listen to what he had to say.
There
was more silence and a little while later, he cut the line.
Rita’s
eyes were round. “We should call Johnnycha back. Let me get his phone number
(FC88). But I don’t have the code!” she said in distress.
I grabbed
her shoulder and took a deep breath. “It wasn’t Johnnychyan.”
“What?”
“Not
him.”
“But-but
you said he calls this time of the night.”
“Earlier,
I mean, before – a little after 12.30. But this wasn’t Johnnychyan.”
“How
do you know?”
What
an annoying kid. Why couldn’t she take my word for it. “I know his voice. I’ve
talked to Johnnychyan a few times,” I said unnecessarily. But this man’s voice
sounded familiar. There was some intimacy in his tone too. Rita looked like she
would burst. She looked agitated and wrung her hands.
I put my hand on hers and she stilled. “Maybe a wrong number,” I tried to sound reassuring.
“So
there’s not going to be a wedding?” she asked faintly.
“Shall
we try to call him?”
“How?
I don’t know the code to the phone.”
“Does
your dad know?” Joychyan was more forthcoming with his kids. He bent rules for
them. My parents didn’t and I’d face an inquisition.
“Daddy
knows the code. I’ve seen him making phone calls. I’ll get the number tomorrow.”
“Worse
comes to worst we can go to the junction and call him.”
“But…
I don’t have money.”
“I
have… some.” Long distance calls cost lots of money. Why had I offered? I
thought of the money I had saved. I had received some gifts from my mother’s
family and my stash was now a princely 1,107 rupees and 75 paise. It was stored
in a tattered wallet that used to be Appa’s. Amma had given me a coin purse,
but even she had no idea of how much I had accumulated. In my earlier years my
parents had relieved me of any money gifts I got from family, but after I
turned 10, my mother’s father suggested that I learn to keep the money and
spend it. He had then sat me down, and explained about our promise to help the
poor and that a tenth of all earnings, including gifts, needed to be kept
aside. I goggled at this bit of information.
When I tried to protest to my parents, separately, they became stern. And so I
kept my thoughts about the tithe to myself. My granddad also taught me how to
calculate percentages that day – how to calculate a tenth of what I got.
Rita
poked me hard in the navel, dislodging me from the memory. “Let’s try tomorrow,
when everyone goes to sleep in the afternoon.”
Shit.
Rita was going to make me spend my money. “Er, don’t you want to try to get the
phone code first?”
“Too
many people around. And we may get caught. You’re already in trouble. If I get
caught too, everyone will think you had something to do with it.”
I
gritted my teeth. It was hard to fault Rita’s logic. She was clever – I would
have said cunning, but never mind.
We sat
on the settee. “Should we tell Sarah chechi about the call?” Rita asked during a
slow part of the serial.
“No.
I don’t think the call was for her.”
“You
mean it was a wrong number?”
Unlikely.
“Yes.”
“Oh.
But… isn’t it too late for one?”
Not
if you live in another time zone – the ring of the phone had been different.
Why had I thought Johnnychyan was travelling. “Yes.” I really wanted Rita to
stop talking and suddenly I was not enjoying this ‘alone’ time.
“So
why dial at all?”
I
wanted to rage at Rita and turned suddenly. Rita tilted her head and looked at
me, her eyes narrowing speculatively. I had a sudden memory
of Roma and Rajiv arguing wildly yesterday near their bedroom, then Roma
pinning Rajiv to the nearest wall, ramming a single punch into his stomach and
disappearing. Joychyan had found his only son, his most favoured child, bent
double and asked him numerous questions but had been unable to elicit an
answer.
I spent anxious moments at dinner yesterday because Uncle had given me a couple of cold looks, but then his eyes had settled on his nephews Mobby and Bobby and then on his daughters – lingering on them for an eternity.
I
shook my head and changed tack. “Some poor soul was trying to call someone else, I imagine. I
wish I had a boyfriend who’d call me in the middle of the night.”
Rita
sniggered and we turned back to the TV.
It
was while we were surfing channels a few minutes later that she dropped a
bombshell. “You know, Rebecca chechi (FC81) is
coming tomorrow.” Rebecca was Sarah’s sister, younger by a year.
Rita
nodded at my incredulous expression. Despite the light streaming in through the
open windows, we had to sit really close to see and hear each other. “Mummy
said she had a few days off and decided to visit.”
I
didn’t know what to make of it. Rebecca had left for the US a few months ago,
saying she wouldn’t visit for a couple of years until her course ended and she
got a job – all of which had not gone down well with Appachan and Ammachi who
felt Sarah and Rebecca were unnecessarily focussed on studies and
careers instead of getting married. This was strange because their mother
Anniemama had a PhD in Chemistry and was a professor in a college in Bangalore.
“But why?” I hissed at Rita’s
ear.
“What do you mean why?” she
hissed back.
“I mean it doesn’t make
sense. Airplane tickets are very, very expensive. And now Sarah chechi isn’t getting
married.”
“Maybe she feels bad about
Sarah chechi and is coming to make her feel better.”
“A phone call would have been
cheaper.”
Rita looked doubtful. “Mummy
said Rebecca chechi is being a good sister.”
The snort escaped before I
could control myself. Rita’s head whipped around. How could I tell Rita that
two sisters couldn’t be more similar in outlook and ambition than the George
sisters – they were joined at the hip, or probably shared the same egg but one
just dropped out of her mother’s womb a year later. Appachan and Ammachi
grumbled about them to all their children over and over and over – especially Ammachi
who took it as a personal failing. In recent years the sisters had avoided
visiting, using college and extracurricular activities as excuses. But it was
getting harder for their parents to arrive at the ancestral home without their
children.
“Oh, and Rajanchyan is also
going to visit.”
“Oh.” I felt intense shock.
Rajanchyan was my oldest uncle after Georgiechyan. He was
something of a black sheep, unable to see eye to eye with Appachan and rarely
visited. It had to do with the ultimate act of rebellion, and once unthinkable
among Syrian Christians – that of eloping.
Rajanchyan had fallen in love with his wife Sislymama in college. When
he broached the subject, his parents were against their union even though
Sislymama was from our community. There was no particular reason they could
offer, though family status may have been one. He soon got a job and moved to
Delhi and some years passed that way. When Ammachi began to press Rajanchyan to
marry a family friend’s daughter, he quickly married Sislymama, letting his
family know via a telegram. It led to years of strife, with my grandmother
making no effort to accept Sislymama. Even now.
Family get-togethers with Sislymama and Rajanchyan and their four children – Shyla, Nina, Joey and Tomo – were fraught with silences and awkwardness, with everyone looking for cues from the patriarch and matriarch. Eventually only Rajanchyan’s children stayed over during the holidays. Even that proved awkward for everyone because my grandparents didn’t make an effort to be close to these grandchildren, forcing their children to make the effort. In the pecking order, Ammachi favoured her daughters’ children. Her sons’ children vied for whatever affection was left over.
“What happened? Why is Rajanchyan visiting?”
I said as normally as possible.
“I don’t know.”
“You know that he’s coming here, but you
don’t know why. Why aren’t you saying?”
“I don’t know, Chechi. I only tell you
what I hear Daddy and Mummy say.”
“Ok.”
“Let’s try and make that phone call
tomorrow.”
“What phonecall?”
“The one to Johnnychyan.”
“You still want to ask him why?” I had
hoped she would forget our mission.
“Yes. We need to know.”
“No. We don’t.”
Rita’s head whipped around and she gave me
a filthy look. Despite the white streetlight dulling my view of Rita and, in turn, every
emotion of hers, I moved back a bit.
“I m-mean only Sarah chechi needs to know
and Johnnychyan may not bother talking to us,” I was having second thoughts big
time. We were poking our noses into things that were best left alone. Who knew
what would happen.
“Oh, like that. We’ll see.” She shoved the
coffee table away with her feet and mine hit the ground – pain radiating
upwards through my heels. The idiot got up, switched off the TV and went back
to her room.
I surveyed the settee and floor. For all
her previous gyaan* about Ammachi spotting the crumbs and them leading
to us, the floor and settee were littered with food particles. I wanted to
watch some more TV, but it was past 2am and someone was bound to get out of
their room for a leak.
I saw one of my aunts’ super-starched
cross-stitched table cloths on a small table and used it to dust the settee and
mop up the crumbs from the floor. I emptied the table cloth out of an open
window. There were oil stains on the rexine seat where we sat, but someone’s bum would rub
it clean tomorrow.
I draped the embroidered cover over the TV,
looked out of the window one last time and went to bed.
Tomorrow I was going to make certain we
got the code and didn’t go to the junction.
******
*Gyaan – Hindi colloquial word.
Means unwanted advice
*Chechi – Older sister in Malayalam
This series is fictional and follows the
narrator who is remembering events related
to a family vacation in a rural part of Kerala.
Rita and the narrator receive a late night
phone call but the caller disconnects without speaking. The girls believe it is
Johnny and decide they need to speak to him and find out why he's decided to
end his engagement to their cousin Sarah.
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
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