The Lilac House (23 page)

Read The Lilac House Online

Authors: Anita Nair

Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage

A
gentle press with two fingers on his shoulder. She didn’t know how else to comfort him. So she did the only thing she could. Offer a tentative caress.
Meera snuffles her face between the pillows. What was she thinking of?
 
All she knew was that when Jak rushed out of the house as if possessed, she couldn’t leave even though her time to go home had come and gone… So she waited. As had Kala Chithi. Both keeping vigil and yet pretending not to.
Meera had looked at the austere-faced woman who sat purling plastic wires into a basket. ‘Why now, Kala Chithi?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I don’t understand what happened. Kitcha… he…’
Seeing him distraught had twisted something in her. A secret place in her had looped and curled, turned and knotted at his anguish.
The old woman looked up while her fingers worked the wires almost blindly. ‘My mother was bedridden for several months before she died,’ she said in explanation.
Meera blinked in incomprehension. Had she missed something Kala Chithi had said?
‘When the bedsores appeared, I felt as if I had been clubbed. How do I explain it? You feel guilty, as if you haven’t done enough.’ Kala Chithi put down the half-worked basket. How could she explain to Meera the weight of guilt a bedsore can burden one with?
‘You feel helpless, knowing there is nothing more you can do. You feel weary with all that is expected of you. You feel hopeless, knowing that nothing will change. You feel trapped in another person’s misery while your life is put on standstill. You feel resentful, angry. You feel grief, you feel confused. There isn’t enough space in one’s brain to hold all this and not explode. She was my mother. Her life came before mine. So you tell yourself that this too is part of the cycle of life. That samsara consists of both joys and sorrows, of bedsores, too, perhaps.
‘What made me feel marginally better was that I was there to tend to her. In the natural order of things, children care for ailing parents. But this is his daughter. No parent can be prepared for that.’
Meera swallowed. A hard lump had lodged in her throat. She thought of how it would be if it were Nayantara in place of Smriti.
Meera rose from the sofa. She knew she couldn’t continue sitting there any more. It reminded her too much of waiting for Giri to come home. She was no longer that Meera. This Meera could do both, wait and keep herself occupied. She would write Nayantara an email or log into Facebook and see if she had added any updates. They could chat if Nayantara was online. Or, she might even look at the notes she had made for
The Corporate Wife Abroad
. Anything but this long wait for Kitcha to come home.
‘Are you a Hindu, Meera?’ Kala Chithi asked.
Meera paused. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Our epics, I have heard, tell us that the person you do the most grievous harm to in a previous birth is born to you as a child. So
you pay for your sins. So you know the extent of the torment you caused. So you have a chance to make amends. When I think of Kitcha, I think it must be true.’
 
In the silence that crept in, Kala Chithi spoke up suddenly: ‘My poor Kitcha!
‘It is a terrible burden he bears. When Nina wanted to take Smriti to America so she could get organized care, Kitcha wouldn’t allow it. She would feel abandoned, he said. As if even her parents have no hope of her ever recovering… All his pain, his sorrow, what does he do with it? I have often asked myself this. Plus, he holds himself responsible in some way. My poor Kitcha. How much more will he take upon himself?’
In her head Meera formed sentences, each one meant to comfort, to heal. What emerged was a platitude. ‘I wish I knew what to say. I wish I knew how to comfort him.’
Kala Chithi nodded as if comforted by even this banality.
 
Meera sat in front of the computer, forming sentences in her head.
Hi Nayantara, she thought she would write, what’s up? And then she floundered. A tumult of thoughts, each with a little twinge. That poor child. Wouldn’t it have been better if she died? Bedsores. What next?
For a moment, she wondered what Nayantara would do if she were to write to her of the searing fear that had flashed through her when she saw the broken skin on Smriti’s back. The one thought that had coursed through her: ‘Thank god this is someone else’s daughter!’ And then the panic: What happened to this child could very well happen to mine.
She remembered the summer when Nayantara was fifteen and Meera smelt smoke in her room. It must be Giri’s cigarettes, she told herself. The smoke wafted in through the open window and lingered.
And then, in the toilet bowl, a cigarette end floating. No one else used the bathroom in Nayantara’s room. Meera had stared at the butt and felt fear and sorrow tussle in her. Her child had grown up. Her child was no longer hers to lead through life to a safe haven that she would create for her. Her child no longer needed hand holding. But you don’t know what’s out there, she wanted to tell Nayantara.
In the end, what emerged from Meera’s confusion was an accusation. ‘I know you are smoking. How dare you?’
And Nayantara bristled, ‘Have you been checking up on me? Going through my things?’
‘Answer me, you are smoking, aren’t you? What else are you up to? Alcohol, drugs, sex?’ Meera was appalled to hear herself say the words she had thought she never would. Accusations Saro had hurled at her when she was eighteen. But I was eighteen and Nayantara is fifteen. Still a child, she told herself.
Nayantara stalked out of the room, slamming the door shut with a loud thud.
Meera wanted to go after her. Explain to her what had triggered those ugly words. It is you I am thinking of, darling, it is your welfare.
When Meera did find the courage to bring it up with Nayantara, there was only awkwardness. ‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ Nayantara said, brushing the tangles from her hair.
For the first time Meera saw her child had become a woman. Her flesh had curved and her mind was her own. ‘Why don’t you let it be? You have to let me live my life. Please. Why can’t you understand?’ Nayantara said quietly. ‘Do you have to be like your mother?’
Meera gave up then. Nayantara would never comprehend what Meera feared. Not until she had a child of her own.
Besides, Meera couldn’t forget for as long as she lived, the expression of dislike that had crept into Nayantara’s eyes when Meera had continued to stand in the room. She hadn’t known if
she should prolong the discussion, try and reason with Nayantara. But the barely veiled resentment, the blatant dislike, had chilled her to the bone. How could her own child look at her as if she were the enemy?
 
Then she heard the car in the driveway. Meera stood by the computer, undecided.
Kitcha came into the room. He didn’t see her at first. When he did, he stared at her and said slowly, ‘You are still here.’
He went to Smriti’s room. She followed him. Meera watched him open a jar of lip balm and anoint his daughter’s lips. She felt a huge wave of feeling engulf her. A wave that propelled her forward to touch his shoulder in a quiet gesture of intent: ‘I am here’. When he turned to her, not bothering to hide the pain in his eyes, she knew what to do. She held him. With neither coyness nor fuss, she wrapped her arms around him. He stiffened, then relaxed against her.
‘It hurts… how it hurts, Meera.’ Muffled words, the depth of his sorrow, all against her skin.
She wrapped her arms around him with greater fervour. To even slightly loosen her hold would break him.
‘How am I to bear it, Meera? Where do I find the strength? You have a daughter of your own, Meera. How did you know what to do? How did you know where to draw the line?’
Meera shook her head. ‘There is no knowing, Kitcha. We do our best for our children. We want the best for them. You can’t blame yourself for what happened to Smriti.’
 
Meera’s mouth was dry. His anguish devastated her. What must the poor man be going through? No matter how old our children grow, we do not relinquish them easily to the world. Perhaps it is only our instinct for self-preservation kicking in.
Ever since Nayantara became a young woman, Meera has
known what it is to keep burning coals in her heart. A piercing, consuming heat as she waits for Nayantara to come home. Waiting by the phone for her to call, ears cocked for the doorbell to ring.
The squabbling, the heated arguments, the left hook and the right jab in places where it hurt as a once angelic child turned into a cruel monster if she didn’t have her way.
Accusations, recriminations, anger – this is the coinage our grown-up children deal us:
‘Why do I have to call you from Ria’s home? Why do you need to talk to her mother?’
‘Why can’t I go for the party? All my other friends are going.’
‘I was only drinking a Breezer. You should ask your grandmother to lay off the bottle if we are talking about drinking.’
‘I am not fucking him, if that’s what you want to know…’
And then, as if to compensate, with the minted freshness of a new coin, the return of the angel in a little deed, a thoughtful gesture, a card, a flower, a shimmery ill-fitting top, a box of napkin rings she would think twice about using, an impulsive hug. How it sparkled, that moment, the exultation that leapt within her to see her child come home to her again.
All of this was denied to Jak, perhaps forever. How did he bear it?
 
Many minutes later, it was he who moved away. It was he who slowly prised her fingers apart so that the embrace sundered into two bodies.
Meera did not speak. She had no words then, as she has none now. She hides her face between two pillows. What must he think of her?
 
Kitcha turned to her in urgent need of comfort. Anyone would have, at that moment. How could she have read more into it? He is fond of her, that much she knows. Perhaps it is her own loneliness,
her own need shaping something out of nothing. She is projecting her yearning onto him.
And that way lies hurt.
‘A
re you in pain, baby?’ Jak asks quietly. He sits at the bedside and looks at his daughter. Her eyes are open and staring. Smriti continues to stare. Then her jaws unclench and from the gaping hole that is her mouth, a scream emerges.
An animal howl layered with terror and pain, grief and anger, horror and disgust. An animal howl that goes on and on, snaring his soul and jerking him up from where he sits, pushing him out in blind panic.
 
You thought you had arrived at the stage of letting go. That tracing Smriti’s days before the accident was a pointless exercise in pain. An indulgence that did more harm than good. An anxious tongue probing again and again the empty arc of a pulled out tooth. All it did was redefine the loss. The actual loss and the sense of it.
The hours with Mathew caused in you a deep weariness. The story of your daughter had unravelled to be nothing more than a teenage girl’s reckless impetuosity. You abandoned all your theories of it being more than an accident. You thought Rishi, who Mathew had said would know what really happened, would only add to what you knew. That Smriti, your child, your pretty daughter, had a flair for instigating chaos. And accidents spring out of chaos.
So you decided to let it rest. You wouldn’t look for Rishi. You wouldn’t pursue it any more.
Then you saw him with Meera at an art event. You wondered who the boy was, at first. No, not boy. Young man. None of them,
neither Shivu nor Mathew, had told him that. That the third angle to the triangle that enclosed Smriti was much older than all of them. And had the swagger of the handsome man who knows he is handsome.
Rishi Soman. Only, what was he doing with Meera?
Meera’s voice had risen and struck a note of querulous fear. ‘Soman. No, he’s not Nayantara’s friend. He is someone I know…’
You kept your expression as controlled as you could. You didn’t allow even a flicker of excitement to show at the name. At the confirmation of your suspicion. You saw Meera search your face. ‘Why? Why are you asking about Soman?’
You shrugged. ‘I was just curious. He reminded me of someone…’
‘Oh,’ Meera said, the relief palpable in the relaxed set of her body. ‘He is an actor. He has modelled for a few things. You’ve probably seen him on TV.’
‘Probably!’ You were cryptic in your dismissal of Rishi Soman.
You wondered what she was seeking to hide. Could they…? You paused. When it came to Meera, you found you couldn’t use terms of fornication – fuck, screw, bonk… Meera wasn’t that sort of a woman. Besides, he was way too young. And yet, you sensed an unease in Meera. You didn’t like it. You didn’t like it one bit.
 
It takes Jak two days to make up his mind. Two days of endlessly looking at the computer screen, trying to make sure the third boy – no, man – is Rishi Soman. Smriti’s boyfriend, if what Shivu and Mathew had suggested is the truth.
Two days of sitting at Smriti’s bedside and trying to see beyond the grimace that was her habitual expression. Smriti, Smriti, tell me, is he the one you were in love with? Is he the one who went with you? Was he there when it happened? Why then did he abandon you? Shall I go looking for him? Shall I demand of him the truth? Shall I, Smriti?
She lies there without moving a limb, her face contorted into a
mask. She lies there looking beyond him. Seeing what? Countless versions of those last minutes? It is this replaying of what could have happened that settles it. Jak would call Rishi Soman and ask to meet him.
 
In the morning, Jak knows there is no point in putting it off any longer. Besides, if he doesn’t do something to take his mind off what he has to deal with, his sanity will unravel. As long as he is busy, he can find respite. A semblance of normalcy, even.
The first thing to do is get Rishi Soman’s number. Jak doesn’t want to ask Meera, so he calls Sheela. ‘What do you need his number for?’ Sheela asks. ‘He is a small-time actor. A charming creature, so he is on everyone’s list. And he is rather pretty. Photographs well, too!’
Jak mumbles an excuse about a friend of a friend wanting to use him for something… It sounds lame to his own ears. But Sheela doesn’t probe and instead, begins haranguing him for not calling her except when he needs a favour. ‘When is that long promised dinner date going to happen? Or is there some hottie in your life?’
 
He tries calling Rishi Soman. ‘I am Smriti’s father,’ he begins, thinking open confrontation to be the best tactic.
There is silence.
‘Hello, hello,’ Jak urges.
‘Yes, I am here,’ a low voice says.
‘We need to meet,’ Jak says. ‘I need to talk to you.’ But Rishi will not speak to him. He hedges in a most polite voice. I am busy this week, he says.
‘Sure, I understand. How about next week then?’ Jak offers in his most placatory voice. ‘I won’t take too much of your time.’
‘I’ll have to see. I am not sure. Let me call you…’ Rishi hangs up.
Jak waits the whole week for Rishi to call. But he doesn’t. And when Jak tries to reach him, he sends him a busy tone in response.
Jak sinks his forehead into the palm of his hand. He is weary. How is he going to get the boy to talk to him?
‘What is wrong?’ Kala Chithi asks quietly.
Jak looks at her blankly. She touches his shoulder. ‘Tell me, maybe I can help.’
She listens patiently to his words of frustration. Rage, even. ‘Why won’t he talk to me? He must know something. That’s why he’s avoiding me.’
‘Didn’t you say that you saw him with Meera?’
Jak nods.
‘Then all you have to do is ask Meera to engineer a meeting,’ Kala Chithi says.
‘But will she?’
‘Tell her. Explain to her the connection. She will then. How can she say no? She knows Smriti’s condition, she’ll understand why you cannot rest till you know.’
Kala Chithi pauses for a moment. Then she says in a voice soft as lace, ‘Besides, don’t you realize that she is fond of you…’
Jak is startled by this revelation, but he doesn’t pursue it. Instead, he goes to Meera’s room. He will tell her what he has discovered. And then it is up to her.
 
Jak waits in his car in Cockburn Road. He looks around him with interest. He didn’t even know such a place could exist in the heart of the city. But here it is. A tiny bar in a row of broken down buildings and dilapidated shops curving into Bamboo Bazaar and leading on to Cantonment Station.
He looks at his watch again. Twenty past eleven. Meera should be here any moment now. He searches the entrance of Dewar’s, the faded doors flung wide open, men in office clothes sitting alongside autorickshaw drivers. As he watches, a girl parks her scooter and walks in. And he knows again the thrill of discovery. Could such a place exist? And for Meera to know about it and suggest it…
Jak sees a bike come towards Dewar’s. A man and a woman. The woman holds the man’s waist in an almost intimate clasp. When the bike screeches to a halt, he feels the impact of the woman’s breasts against his back. He grins. He has done it too, like all his friends have. That abrupt braking. The squashing of her breasts, the tightening of her grip, the smile that splashes across the face on knowing he has made it happen. The leer of knowledge – the girl wanted it as much as he did.
Jak feels a queer sense of regret. He has had those days too. A bike, a chick and endless carefree hours of youthful animation. It isn’t that he longs for them any more; he doesn’t. Is this what growing old means? A certain reconciliation with one’s subdued spirits and not-so-youthful self?
The woman is laughing as she dismounts from the bike. She slaps the man’s shoulder playfully. Jak snaps out of his reverie when he sees the woman is Meera. A Meera he doesn’t recognize. He sees the casual case with which she wears the unfamiliar clothes, and her manner. Jak’s mouth tightens. So this is Rishi Soman, Smriti’s friend who is Meera’s friend too. More than a friend.
Jak looks at the dashboard clock. Ten minutes, Meera had said. Wait for ten minutes and then call me. I’m going to ask you to join us. You wait another five minutes before you come in. I don’t want him to think I set it up. And it’s going to be about this key that you have tracked me into Dewar’s for.
What key? Jak’s eyes questioned.
‘Does it matter?’ Meera sighed. ‘Filing cupboard key, if you need a name for it.’
‘All this subterfuge…’ Jak mused.
‘Indeed! How do you think it makes me feel? But it is Smriti I am thinking of,’ Meera said gently.
She picks up on the sixth ring. He imagines her making a moue of her lips. ‘My boss. I have to answer this!’ she would say, perhaps smiling apologetically. Rishi Soman would lean back in his chair and smile back at her lazily, languorously. I would if it were me,
Jak thinks unhappily as he speaks the words he is expected to and hears her planned response. ‘Yes, the key is with me in my bag. I am at Dewar’s. Do you know the place? You do. Can you pick it up from me?’
 
She sits in one of the faded cane chairs facing the door. Rishi Soman is seated with his back to the entrance. Jak sees him reach over to pop a peanut into her mouth and Meera part her lips willingly enough. Jak’s jaws clench. Then he sees her catch sight of him and the flash of relief on her face. Jak smiles. Rishi Soman turns his head to look at the recipient of Meera’s beaming smile.
And soon Meera is saying, ‘Did you have trouble finding the place?’ She fumbles in her bag for the key and holding it out to Jak, she feigns confusion. ‘Oh, how I forget my manners. Rishi, this is Jak. And Jak, this is Rishi Soman.’
Jak looks at the young man and with the consummate voice of the thespian queries, ‘The actor?’
Rishi Soman’s features relax into the wide gratuitous smile of one who aches to be recognized in public and seldom is. The little shit, Jak thinks. He really thinks that I would know him from one of those mannequins who populate the afternoon soaps on TV. What an idiot, with his wet-hair look and one size too small T-shirt and the compulsive need to show off the profile that someone must have told him is his best angle.
‘Oh, do join us,’ Meera says.
‘Yes, do,’ Rishi Soman says after a moment, not entirely pleased, but not willing to relinquish a moment with someone who actually recognized him.
Jak pulls up a chair and settles down. What now?
Meera is a practised hostess. She knows how to expand the conversation to include both Jak and Rishi Soman. So in the manner of the experienced corporate wife who knows timing is all, Meera says, ‘Jak’s daughter was a student at Mounts.’
‘Was she?’ Rishi Soman queries politely. Jak can sense his restlessness.
‘I think you knew her,’ he says suddenly. ‘She mentioned you…’ Rishi Soman wears an abashed look but his smile is smug. He shrugs. ‘College girls. Without them the actor is nothing. They are the ones who bolster our egos even if the critics pan us… For instance, would this gorgeous lady here ever ask me for a photograph and then hide it between the pages of her diary?’ He throws Meera a boyish grin.
Jak thinks he would like to slap that silly, smug look away. But he can also see what it is that lured Smriti and seems to enchant even someone as sensible as Meera. She is wearing a strange expression, he sees to his consternation. The foolish smile of the besotted.
‘No, she wasn’t one of your anonymous fans.’ Jak’s voice cracks. ‘I think you knew each other very well. Smriti. Smriti Krishnamurthy.’
A silence creeps into the room then. A mangy silence on the four legs of a hyena who waits for someone else to make the kill.
 
‘You set this up,’ Rishi Soman hisses. ‘You planned this between the two of you. And I thought you wanted to see me, Meera,’ he continues, oblivious to Jak’s presence. ‘I thought we had a connection. You were just using me.’
Meera flushes. Jak leans back in his chair. ‘Meera did as I asked her to.’
He holds Soman’s gaze steadily. ‘You forced my hand when you refused to take my calls.’
‘What is it you want to know? I told you I had nothing to do with it.’ Rishi Soman’s face contorts into a mask of misery. ‘How can you hold me responsible?’
Meera reaches across and takes his hand in hers. ‘Rishi, no one is holding you responsible. But don’t you think the Professor has a right to know what happened? You were the only person there… Look at him. Put yourself in his place. Wouldn’t you want to know?’
Jak feels Rishi’s eyes settle on him.
‘Tell me,’ Jak says in his quietest voice.
 
At first, Smriti was a game. The queen of the chessboard pursued by the bishop, the rook and himself, the knight. At first, Smriti was a piece he wanted to prise away from the rest, whistling under his breath. Then one day he paused, sized her up and murmured: Checkmate?
The other two watched helplessly as he made his move. The rook toppled over and removed himself, the bishop fumed, but it was the knight who with the powers vested in him could move two paces to the front, one to the side, and stake his claim.

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