After Love

After
Love

Praise for Subhash Jaireth

For
Yashodhara: Six Seasons Without You

‘A book that will charm you with its lucid and pungent distillation of desire, longing and loss.' Judith Beveridge

For
To Silence: Three Autobiographies

‘A unique insight into the lives of two fascinating people, whose experiences illuminate a shared humanity that bridges language, culture, time and eternal truths that cannot be silenced.' Peter Wilkins,
Canberra Times

‘A must read for anyone interested in the long march of history and the frailty of the human condition itself.' Mridula Nath Chakraborty,
Mascara Literary Review

‘A finely crafted book that reads like poetry.' Claudia Hyles,
Australian Book Review

‘Ultimately about the mystery of creation itself, the silence from which all things come and to which they inevitably return.' John Hughes

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

www.transitlounge.com.au

Copyright ©2012 Subhash Jaireth

Published by Transit Lounge Publishing

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by
any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

Cover and book design: Peter Lo

Printed in China by Everbest

This project has been assisted by the Australian government through the Australia Coucil
for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

9781921924408 (e-book)

A cataloguing in publication entry is available from

the National Library of Australia:
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

For HJ, KJ and MJ & for Moscow

Part One

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened …

T.S. Eliot,
Burnt Norton

No story is ever told just once.

Michael Ondaatje,
Running in the Family

I Don't Believe in Fate

Vasu

I wish it hadn't happened
, I could have said. But I didn't because I don't like to look for excuses. It happened because we both wanted it.

That day in the café of the library there was simply a brief exchange of words. All hers. I just smiled.

‘You smile too much,' she would often complain afterwards. ‘It's a mask, isn't it? An excuse not to speak.'

‘Is this chair taken?' she asked that day and, when I shook my head, asked if she could join me.

I simply nodded again.

She sat looking out at the roof-tops covered in snow, pigeons pecking in the bright sunshine of the square and the steady stream of people entering and leaving the library. She opened her bag, took out a diary, pulled out a piece of paper and copied a number. She closed the diary with the pen still inside. Then she suddenly raised her right arm and waved to someone outside. The man responded, paused for a minute, then walked away.

She pushed her chair back and got up, and the pen in the diary fell to the floor and rolled in my direction. I leant to pick it up.

‘
Sposibo
(thank you),' she said, as I handed it to her.

I could have replied
Pozhaluista
(You're welcome). But I just smiled.

My Jijee-ma in India asked me to send her some photos of the snow in Moscow. She didn't like the picture postcards I had mailed her a few months before, although there was lots of snow in them. She wanted real photos of me in the snow. I asked Kobe, my friend from Uganda, to help. He knew how to take good photos and had his own camera. We walked up to the pine grove near the lake not far from our hostel and hired a pair of skis. He photographed me on skis with mounds of snow in the background.

‘I want to make heaps of money, man,' Kobe often told me. He was crazy. At first he tried to pimp his girlfriends but soon realised that his camera provided a much better opportunity. In no time at all he gathered together a group of sexy girls who needed no excuse to take their clothes off. He was thrilled. ‘Here's a number for you to ring,' he told me one day. ‘Five roubles and a few packets of chewing gum for a whole night's fun. Do whatever you like.'

His photo albums were hot and sold well on the black market. Soon there was money everywhere, not only roubles but real American dollars. But good things never last and after a year or so a disgruntled militiaman dobbed him in and he was expelled from the country.

Jijee-ma liked the photos I sent her. In return I received a woollen jumper and a jar of mango
muraba
. The jam was delicious. ‘I have followed Amma's recipe,' she wrote in the letter that came with the packet.

I remember nothing at all about Amma, our mother. My Jijee-ma, my older sister is, in a way, my real mother. Amma died five days after I was born. I was the eighth and the youngest child in the family. Amma endured twelve pregnancies in eighteen years of marriage, including four terrible miscarriages. ‘Don't blame yourself,' Jijee-ma would often tell me later. ‘Amma was exhausted. She couldn't take any more.'

I used to carry my mother's photo in my wallet. It is half the size of a postcard and although it is black and white, the smile on Amma's face is so bright that it is hard to look away. The wrap covering her head has slipped, revealing dark hair and a large silver earring hanging from the tip of her left ear. It glitters as do the little stars stitched across the wrap, her
dupatta.

A few days before I left for Moscow, Jijee-ma showed me the earrings again. ‘I have kept them safe for your bride,' she said, and laughed.

The day Amma died, Jijee-ma gave birth to a girl, Mithu. Jijee-ma suckled us both: me always from the left breast. Mithu preferred the right. ‘Father didn't like me feeding you,' Jijee-ma would tell me later, ‘and my husband hated it. He made me put you on the formula, but whenever I got a chance I gave you my breast. You are my son, my first-born.'

Anna and I met again one late Wednesday evening. I remember the day because I had not been able to sleep the night before because of a small fire in the hostel. On Wednesdays I used to work late in the library. That day it was hot and stuffy in the reading room and feeling sleepy I decided to go out for a stroll. I had reached the steps when she appeared out of the dark.

‘Do you have a light?' she asked, holding a cigarette in her hand.

I took out a lighter from my pocket, although I didn't smoke. When she turned to walk away, I don't know why I decided to follow her. She noticed and stopped and waited for me. Together we descended the steps and turned towards the statue of Dostoevsky standing like a doorkeeper to the library. We said nothing about the freezing weather or the snow or the flu epidemic then running wild in Moscow. We just listened to one another's footsteps. With each puff on her cigarette Anna's face lit up for a few seconds. We strolled for as long as it took for her to finish smoking. Before I could ask her name or introduce myself, she stopped and said, ‘I'm cold.' I just gazed at her, doing my best not to smile. ‘I'm going back in,' she told me. Just before opening the door she turned and waved, then vanished.