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Photo credit: A. Peter |
On their last day at
home, Roy had visitors. A pair of foreigners visited Kunjappachan’s house and
some of the younger kids went over to gawk from the doorway. I felt my face
turn red at the sight of the very handsome Japanese man, but shuddered at the
cold look his partner – a mannish-looking Scandinavian woman – gave all of us.
‘All of us’ were the girls, of course. Word had spread that a blond woman was
in the village and I could see my male cousins hurrying over from next door.
It was normal for us to
stare at visitors. We peeped through windows and open doors or nonchalantly lolled
on the broad ledge that ran around the front of our granduncle’s house. You
could tell we were bored out of our minds.
Anyway, Roy and his
father soon left to drop off the couple at the nearest railway station, much to
our intense disappointment.
Things had become dull.
We had to stay indoors whenever it rained. That meant many chores. I loved the
rains here. It swished and poured, one moment it would turn grey, because of
the sudden darkening of the skies, and then you could see sheets of white pouring
rain in the distance. I saw this in Mumbai too, but grey shabby buildings
interrupted the beauty of it all. Here the trees bent from side to side with
the rain and wind and shook themselves, their leaves dancing. They shone and
glinted. They looked nourished with a newfound green. If we were lucky, some mangoes
fell off and we might find them intact the next day. In the mornings, my
father, his brothers and Appachan did a recce of the fields and the rattan
trays in the kitchen would be full of assorted vegetables and fallen fruit. I
sorted through them every day, finding small chillies, the occasional cashew
fruit. One day there were even wilting white nutmeg flowers, that an aunt had washed
and offered to the youngest child. The flowers often gave the tongue a nice
zing!
I thought of Romeo (Mob Justice) often, but resisted the idea of getting close to another animal as I would be leaving
for Mumbai in a few weeks. I didn’t want to pet another animal either in case
someone turned on it out of spite for me. But every now and then I stood under
my favourite guava tree during a downpour, and under a wide umbrella and felt pure
bliss – even though the effort drenched me. It was in moments like these that I
didn’t need to talk to or be with anyone.
One day my father
gestured to me, “Do you want to go with me to the village market?” It happened
once a week.
“Yes!”
“Ok, change your
clothes and go and tell your grandmother and mother.”
I hesitated. “What
mol?”
“What if Ammachi says
no.”
My father sighed and
went to the kitchen. He came back in a few minutes and I dashed off to change.
I wore the kurta salwar I had worn yesterday, and scraped a comb through my
tangled hair. It poked out oddly in places, but it didn’t matter.
I rushed out of the
door, with Rita screaming at my back demanding to know where I was going. Appa
and I were out of the gate before she could finish her questions. I waved my
dupatta in the air, let the breeze man it like a sail, and then flapped my
wings like a bird. What joy to be out of the house.
The men had gone to the
market earlier in the day, so my father was likely on a personal errand. I
wondered if I could get him to buy me a meat puff or an icecream. But then
thoughts of the handsome Korean, not Japanese as I had thought, entered my mind
and I forgot food. Maybe it was worth studying hard and going abroad to the US.
There might be a romance in it. I shivered at the thought of my cousins hooking
up… and my thoughts drifted to my male cousins. Hooking up with any of those
idiots was a fate worse than death. Anyone planning a future with them needed
to be warned. I hoped anyone planning a future with any one of my cousins had a
premonition about it. Then I ticked myself off for those thoughts. Them
marrying had nothing to do with me. Maybe they were not all bad. Maybe.
Appa braked hard at one
of those signals that are rarely seen in villages in Kerala. Our road was
laboriously tarred, narrow for a main road, and with space for very large
puddles. As children we sailed paper boats in them. But for any soul that
wanted to walk alongside the road, there was no kaccha path in spots but steep
drops into the lush green overgrowth of someone’s estate. I would have said
bowels of the estate, but with everyone owning a toilet now we rarely saw a
stranger’s bare defecating bum.
A large car braked near
us as well and I lowered my flailing arms self-consciously. I could see the
amused looks and then the faces turned away. I leaned into my father’s back and
whispered at his ear, “Appa, don’t turn. Johnnychyan and his family are in the
car next to us!”
But of course my father
had to look, and after an uncomfortable few seconds Johnnychyan nodded, tried
to smile, and said, “Hello, Uncle.”
Appa smiled back,
“Hello, mon (son).”
Johnnychyan looked my
way and gave me a broad smile that faltered near his eyes, and my good mood of
the last 10 minutes evaporated. It felt awkward and I couldn’t drag my eyes
away from Johnnychyan.
“How are you, mol?”
I was tongue tied. What
do I say? I stared aghast for a long time and then heard Appa murmur, “Say,
fine, thank you.” I looked at the people in the car – his parents and an aunt.
They looked ahead as though they didn’t see us.
“Er, good Achacha, and
you?”
He nodded many times,
like his neck was jelly and he couldn’t stop. “Very good.” He held out
something. He reminded me of those bobble dolls that we kids wanted but couldn’t
convince anyone returning from America to get us.
Appa murmured again,
“Be kind. Remember your manners.” There was a bar of chocolate in Johnnychyan’s
hand and he was trying to drop it in my lap.
“T-Thank y-you
Johnnych-chyan. Th-Thank you.”
Suddenly the car shot
forward and immediately swerved to avoid a scooter coming from a side road.
Johnny’s father just about avoided hitting a lamppost, before braking to a hard
stop. The passengers looking stunned. The scooterist drove up to Uncle’s window
and swore at him. Uncle began to apologise profusely. Appa rode near the
scooterist to see if he was hurt, but the man ignored him and drove off at top
speed.
“Are you okay, Chetta
(older brother)?” Appa asked Johnny’s father.
“Y-yes. I’m fine. Just
got a fright. We’ll be okay, thanks.”
Appa took in the shaken
passengers, nodded at them, and then slowly accelerated away.
“Why did they drive
ahead when the signal hadn’t changed, Appa?”
Appa’s shoulders shrugged.
“Why, Appa?”
“Difficult situation –
meeting your ex to-be in laws at the signal. Hard to avoid in a small village
like ours,” Appa smiled. That was true. Random neighbours even remembered I had
worn the same dress two days in a row. And I didn’t even know who they were!
Only outside Appa’s
friend’s office did I realise that the chocolate in my hand was now squished
into a shapeless mass. Nevertheless, I sat in a corner of the office and licked
the chocolate wrapper clean and marvelled at how my dad could stay so cool and
polite in a state of siege. Well, not siege, exactly. Maybe war-like
conditions. Or, a state of duress. There, that was better.
Afterwards we inspected
baskets of wares on the roadside. People jostled each other along the narrow rough
concrete paths and everywhere you looked there was red earth and puddles. We
walked in and out of the small streets down the main road. I took care to walk
slowly, because I had worn white pajamas, and mud stains were difficult to
scrub off. I had stopped washing my clothes everyday, and wondered when my
parents would discover what I was doing. They were probably just ignoring it. A
few days ago I had tried putting some of my clothes in my absent-minded cousin
Shyla’s bucket of soaking clothes, but at the washing stone she had thrown a
hissy fit and had tossed my clothes into the wet mud, which had led us to
argue.
“Why didn’t you scold
them, Appa?”
“Scold who?” Appa
asked.
“Johnny and his
parents!”
“For trying to run
through a red light?”
“For the broken
engagement!”
“It is over. There’s
nothing to be said.”
“But why? They looked
guilty.”
“Rubbish. Things are
just awkward. Life is not a bed of roses, you know. There is no happily-ever-after.
If you read fewer romance novels and tried to read the good books I give you,
you would know better.” Appa gave me a dirty look. This discussion popped up quite
often.
Did Appa know I was
currently ploughing through a Georgette Heyer. If he knew I was finding it
tiresome he would have been happy. Roma had told me the best way to handle a dull
book was to skim-read the boring parts and then slow down when the juicy bits
arrived. Luckily, someone had decided to pencil in crosses on the
corners of the important pages, and our reading had sped up. Some of the older
girls had brought many such books with them and were passing them around. Even
Rita was reading one which had sex in it. Everyday Roma and I expected a
question from her, but strangely she stayed silent. Had she understood what she
was reading? Probably not.
“And what is this I
hear about you not attending Sunday School? Where do you go when you leave the
house?” Appa was pissed now and was in his ‘stream-of-thought-pick-a-fight’
mode.
“Eh?”
Appa’s lips pursed,
“Joychyan told me that Roma and you have been skipping Sunday School. Where are
you girls going?”
“Er… to… the river.” We
loafed about in the fields, around the junction, and near the river, but Appa
didn’t need to know such details.
“Why?” Appa demanded.
“It’s all in Malayalam
and very boring. Besides, I have to go back and do Sunday School in Mumbai. It
is a waste of time doing it here.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong
choice of words! “You let me decide what is a waste of time! When we are here,
in this house, we do what Ammachi and Appachan want. And if I tell you
to go to Sunday School you jolly well do it. Understood?”
“Y-yes.”
“And if I see that
filth in your hands again, I will tear it. Clear?” Appa was referring to
the Mills and Boons, Silhouettes and Harlequins hidden in various nooks of the
house, some even in Appachan’s book case.
“Y-yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, er… Sir?”
Appa snorted, and
chuckled, shaking his head. He put his arm around my shoulders and said, “If I
thought those kinds of books were good for you, I’d have got you many. But all
it does is lead you to think there’s a good-looking man out there waiting to sweep
you off your feet and take care of all your troubles. That’s not true. You’ll
have to troubleshoot and fight fire all by yourself. I’d rather you learnt to
do these things yourself than assume some silly boy will come to your rescue.
Don’t wait. He’s not going to come.”
That one line made me
feel glum. What good was life if there wasn’t any romance in it and, worse, no handsome
boyfriend quickening your pulse.
“There will not be a
handsome man lying in wait for you… to rescue you. There will be a thousand
other beautiful girls he will try to rescue before you.”
Thousand? Now Appa was
rubbing it in! “But Johnnychyan is handsome!”
“Yes, and look what
happened. And Sarah is extremely pretty, many handsome men will make a
beeline for her. So what? Do good looks or money guarantee a happy life?” Appa
dared me to argue.
Was Appa asking me to
ignore good-looking guys and only aim for ugly ones? I was very confused. I
nodded like I understood and agreed with what he was saying. If this lecture ended
on a good note, I might still get my meat puff.
“Where do you go when
you bunk Sunday School in Bombay?” he said suddenly.
The corners of my lips sank
to my crotch.
“Mrs Jeelu Kurian
called me. Apparently your group stays away regularly.”
ILU (I Love You) Jeelu
was a pain. We called her that because she preached about loving your brothers
and neighbours all the time. But never about loving your sisters. Our last
Sunday in Mumbai before our vacation began, Roma, a couple of Sunday School
classmates who were also in school with us, and I had gone to see a morning
show with my best friend Anjali. It must have inflicted some pain on Jeelu,
because it was the first time she had ratted on me.
“You will not be able
to get married if you don’t pass Sunday School or have full Sunday School
attendance,” she had made the outrageous claim one day. When I checked with
Appa, he confirmed it was a new dictat, which was still being debated in
church. This was a huge source of amusement for him.
“What’s the connection,
Appa!”
“Just a way to bring
you closer to God. You go into a marriage prepared for a life of service. Of
course, you can get married any way you want, but you should know the
scriptures and at least know what the basic tenets are about. You should be
able to instruct your children. By the way, you don’t know anything. You would
have to cheat to pass. I am not sure you will be allowed to marry.”
Appa laughed till the
tears fell. He had to blow his nose and hold his breath for a few minutes to
compose himself, while I hopped on each foot feeling appalled and enraged in turns.
I don’t know why, he was merely stating fact. It took me a while to locate the
books in the Bible and I could barely keep awake in class. Each exam was touch-and-go
only because I wouldn’t study for it.
Appa caught my hand to
his chest, and said hoarsely, “Promise me you will never run away to get
married. That you will make an effort to pass those exams.” He laughed some
more.
I walked ahead. I
didn’t feel like eating a puff. Now I was sure I would never get a handsome husband, and Appa had just ruined romance for me. Also, for all her preaching, ILU
Jeelu did not love some of us Sunday Schoolers. So much for loving your brethren.
I heard Appa shout, but
ignored him. Another shout. I hesitated. I wondered how to have a tantrum and
get away with it. But I was at fault here, I had played truant at Sunday
School. I would be forced to attend the Malayalam version here and the Hinglish
(Hindi and English) version when I returned to ILU Jeelu.
If I kept walking, it
would make Appa angry and force him to give me another lecture. The most
popular theme now was my lack of manners. I exhaled and turned, marching back.
But… ahead … I could
see my father’s good friend Sam… and my footsteps began to slow. My breathing
became laboured and my heart raced. As was usual my tongue felt too big
for my mouth but I couldn’t take my eyes off the two people with Sam Uncle.
“Come quick, mol. See who’s here!”
******
The Webs We Weave series follows the travails of a 14-year-old narrator on a family vacation. An innocent incident spirals out of control and one thing leads to another.
You can read the full series, at 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
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