The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  I sat, awkward at this elevation. Rosalind began to dish out food for me. I tried to stop her giving me too much, but she would not hear of it. “Look at you, baba, you’re so thin. Chee! I thought Canadian food was supposed to be healthy.”

  My grandmother did not eat much and instead, like Rosalind, watched me. I ate to please them both.

  After breakfast, as I sipped a cup of tea, a sudden exhaustion swelled through my limbs. My head jerked as if in protest against sleep.

  “Why don’t you take a nap, Puthey,” my grandmother said. “We’ll wake you for lunch.”

  I lay down on my bed. The next thing I knew, it was early evening. Despite the fan above, I was sweating. The glare of the sun hurt my eyes and there was a metallic taste in my mouth. I pushed myself up on my elbows but then fell back, putting my arm over my face to block out the light. After a few minutes, I forced myself out of bed and went to take a shower.

  When I stepped out of my room, the saleya was deserted. Beams of sunlight cut across the floor, a thousand dust motes whirling in them. My grandmother had left for the temple, as she always did at this time. I walked around the saleya, picking up familiar objects and putting them back. From the kitchen I could hear the muffled thumping of pestle against mortar, but before I could go and chat with Rosalind, my grandmother’s car pulled into the carport, and I went to greet her with a smile.

  13

  THE NOVELTY OF BEING BACK IN SRI LANKA soon wore off. Without the routine of school or visits to the American Center Library, without the bickering, complaining, laughing companionship of my mother and sister, time became a boggy thing that pulled me into a torpor. Because I had been so solitary when I lived here, I did not have old school friends to invite me on trips or to dinners, clubs and the theatre. My grandmother did one errand each morning and I always went with her. Afterwards, she stayed in bed to gather enough strength to attend the temple. She never had dinner with me, as the evening pooja left her exhausted, and also because she did not eat much anymore. At seven, she would have a cup of Bovril and a piece of toast in her bedroom, then fall asleep. I had forced Rosalind to give up serving me at dinner; my years in Canada had made me uncomfortable with this. I dished out my meal in the kitchen and ate alone in the darkened saleya, a book propped in front of me, rereading one of my old classics by the dim light above.

  Boredom drove me to call Renu’s old professor Sriyani Karunaratne.

  I had met Sriyani only once, when my sister and I had gone to see a play at the Lionel Wendt Theatre. Renu knew her heroine would be attending, and as we waited for the performance to begin she kept getting up from her seat to scan the theatre. At last she cried out, “Oh,” and signalled frantically to a woman with greying hair cut in a pageboy style, dressed in white slacks and an emerald-and-gold striped Barbara Sansoni shirt.

  “Sriyani-akka,” Renu gushed, as the woman came up to her.

  “Ah-ah, you’re here,” Sriyani replied in an even, pleasant tone. She was short and plump, with an olive complexion and a hooked nose that had a tiny diamond mukkuthi in it. She seemed rather amused at my sister’s adoration, and she nodded at me, eyes crinkled with goodwill.

  My sister introduced me, and Sriyani declared, “But, my, you look just like your mother.”

  I blushed under her gaze and blurted, “You know my mother?”

  “Of course. We were in school together. I was a few years senior, but, you know, your mother just stood out. Miris, they used to call her. Fiery, like a chili, and so extremely smart.”

  I liked her, though I had not expected to, imagining that she would be sharp and self-righteous like Renu. I sensed a quick mind at work beneath her serene, mildly amused manner.

  When I finally telephoned Sriyani one evening after my return, a male servant answered and asked suspiciously who I was. He conveyed the information to Sriyani, who said in the distance, “Ah-ah, yes-yes.”

  Her footsteps approached the phone at a leisurely tip-tap. “Hello,” she said, in her low, cultured voice, “is that you, Shivan?”

  “Um … yes.” I did not know what to call her. It should be Aunty Sriyani, as she was an older woman, but I knew this was not right.

  “Well, well, it’s nice you’re here,” she said evenly. “You must come and visit me.”

  “I would like that.”

  “Yes-yes, you must come,” she continued, as if she had not heard me. “Why don’t I send the car for you tomorrow and we can have lunch, hmm?”

  “Thank you. Um … what time shall I be ready?”

  “Oh, you know, lunch time,” she said vaguely. “See you then,” she added briskly and put the phone down.

  I was dressed by eleven thirty and lay on my bed, reading under the fan. About half an hour later, someone rang the bell at the gate. By the time I had put away my book, fixed my flattened hair and straightened out the wrinkles in my shirt, Rosalind had answered the summons. “Someone has come for you,” she said, as I passed her in the saleya. “A young mahattaya on a motorcycle.”

  At first, when I came out the gate, I did not recognize Mili, leaning against his motorcycle, arms folded. He had grown a moustache and beard and was dressed in jeans, a white kurta and Indian sandals. “Shivan, it’s been a long time.”

  I stared at him closely. “Mili Jayasinghe?”

  He nodded and laughed shyly. “Ah! I got you!”

  The dark brown silkiness of his beard and moustache brought out the caramel of his eyes. A lock of hair had fallen over his forehead. He pushed it back, then held out his hand. “I work for Sriyani now.”

  “Ah,” I said, as I shook his hand. “So you’ve done what you wanted.”

  He frowned questioningly.

  “To work with the poor, to better Sri Lanka.”

  “You have a good memory, Shivan,” he exclaimed, sounding grateful I had remembered. “I completely forgot I told you.”

  Then we had nothing to say to each other and I felt I had become again the awkward boy of my adolescence.

  Mili got back on his motorcycle. He offered me the extra helmet. “Hop on. Sriyani is waiting.”

  I hesitated for a moment, then clumsily swung my leg over the back seat, my jeans stretching so tight I was afraid they would rip. I did not know what to do with my hands, and Mili, sensing this, said, “You better hold on to my waist, I go fast.”

  I put my arms lightly around him and he was off with a roar. I gasped then held on tight.

  The office was not far away, and in ten minutes Mili screeched to a halt at a gate and beeped his horn. A young man in a sarong came running to let us in. When we reached the empty carport, I struggled off the motorcycle, my legs weak from the ride. “Um, thank you very much.” I handed him the helmet.

  “You’re welcome.” He appeared wounded at my polite formality. I nodded, smiled faintly, and went up the front steps, surprised at his reaction but not knowing how to remedy the accidental slight.

  The office was in a converted house, living and dining rooms subdivided by partitions. There was a desk in the foyer where a receptionist sat. She sent me upstairs immediately.

  When I got to the first landing, Sriyani was standing above at the top of the stairs, one hand resting on the banister, watching me with that mildly amused smile of hers. She was wearing grey slacks and another of those vividly striped designer shirts for which she seemed to have a fondness.

  “So, I see you survived the ride.”

  I grinned and nodded, sheepish for some reason under her gaze.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll send you back in my car. It will be much more comfortable, hmm? Come,” she beckoned me up the last steps and we shook hands.

  “Now, how is your sister? I get her very interesting letters. Seems she loves her studies and has made lots of friends.”

  I told Sriyani the good news about Renu’s scholarship to Cornell. As I was speaking, Mili bounded upstairs, taking two steps at a time, panting slightly from the effort.

  “Ah, Mili, are you happy now tha
t you are reunited with your old school chum?”

  Mili smiled at me diffidently.

  “When I told Mili you were coming, he insisted on picking you up.” She raised her eyebrows at him teasingly. “I think you have frightened our guest. Poor fellow, he’s from Canada, he’s not used to our wild ways on the road.”

  “Sorry, Shivan, I—” he began, but I cut him off with a gesture.

  “No, no it was fine.” Then, to break this barrier of politeness between us, I added, “I see you’ve become the Peter Fonda of Sri Lanka. Whizzing around on your motorcycle, and all that.”

  They stared at me, taken aback, as people often are when someone shy attempts to be witty. Mili threw back his head and laughed, and Sriyani made a small “humph” of amusement.

  He squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll take that as a great compliment. Easy Rider is one of my favourite films.”

  After Mili had excused himself and gone to his office, Sriyani gave me a tour, taking me from room to room, introducing me to workers and showing me a bookshop they ran. The focus of Kantha had expanded from women’s rights to human rights in general. The organization compiled reports documenting cases of abuse, torture and killings, and these were used by groups like Amnesty International to pressure Western governments to tie the giving of aid to a good human rights record. One of the main projects at Kantha was to help organize meetings between Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim women whose children had been tortured or killed. “We must start with the mothers,” Sriyani said to me. “That is where the solution to our problem ultimately lies.”

  When we got to Mili’s office, which he shared with a woman named Ranjini, he was standing by a cabinet, going through a file. There was something studied in the way he rested elbow on cabinet, right ankle cocked over left, frowning as he read. He had kept track of our progress towards his office. “Ah, Shivan, come, please sit.” Mili gestured to the chair across from his desk.

  “No, no, you cannot monopolize your old chum. Poor fellow must be starving. I must give him lunch.” Yet having said that, Sriyani went off to deal with a peon, leaving me alone with Mili.

  We grinned at each other awkwardly. “What do you do for Kantha?” I finally asked.

  “Ah, yes.” Mili began to tell me about his work, which was to compile reports and send them off to foreign organizations. He came around to where I had taken a seat, placed a report before me and leant over as he flipped through the pages, explaining. His kurta, swelled by the overhead fan, brushed lightly against my cheek, bringing with it a smell of sweat mingled with the cloves used in cupboards to freshen clothes.

  “But the work I do is really nothing,” he said ruefully, taking back the report. “Unfortunately, my anglophile Cinnamon Gardens upbringing has made me useless in Sinhala and Tamil.” He gestured to Ranjini, who had been following our conversation with birdlike curiosity, head tilted to one side. “She is the real hero of Kantha. Was even jailed once by the Special Task Force.” Ranjini giggled and gave me a droll look to say Mili was exaggerating her accomplishments. With her long traditional plait and modest ankle-length Sinhalese dress, I found it hard to imagine her as a champion of human rights.

  Mili perched against the desk, so close his leg pressed against my thigh. Half glancing at me, half gazing out the window, he began to fill me in on the situation in the country. The Special Task Force (the STF, as he referred to it) was using the Prevention of Terrorism Act to arrest Tamil men without laying charges and hold them indefinitely. The victims were frequently stripped and beaten, chili powder rubbed into their eyes and genitals, their bodies burned with hot rods or cigarettes and subjected to electrical shock. Meanwhile, the Indian troops were also guilty of torture and executions. Last October, following a confrontation with the Tigers near the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, the Indians had stormed the hospital and massacred over seventy doctors, nurses and patients. The Tigers were no better and had slaughtered en masse Sinhalese people who had returned to Jaffna, where they lived.

  Then there was the JVP, who were slowly crippling the country by calling for strikes and announcing the closure of various government departments. A few posters by the JVP announcing a general strike were enough to shut down a town or city in the south. Anyone who disobeyed was murdered. They targeted not just civil servants and politicians but also their families, relatives and friends. In retaliation, the government had secretly formed a Sinhalese paramilitary unit called the Green Tigers who were killing suspected JVP activists every day, leaving their bodies on the sides of roads as a warning to others.

  What Mili was saying seemed so removed from the normality all about us, he could have been talking about another country. Next door was a Montessori, where the children were singing “Hickory Dickory Dock.” The sound of the piano, the students’ shrieks of “dock” and “clock” and their giggles drifted in to us.

  I was also distracted by the heat of his leg against my thigh, the shift of his hips under the thin cotton of his white kurta. Our meeting at the American Center came back to me, that way he stood leaning against the araliya tree, one leg cocked against the trunk, neck tilting upwards. Had he been displaying himself for me all those years ago, and was he doing the same now? Mili had come to the end of his narration. In the pause he caught my eye, then looked away. A warm pulse, a small terror, really, started up at the thought that he desired me. “And so how is the tits-viewing going in Cinnamon Gardens?” I asked with a nervous laugh. “Have you written your bestseller exposing the marvellous mammary glands of the moneyed classes?”

  He chuckled, gently cuffing the side of my head. “Gosh, you have an amazing memory. I forgot I even told you that.”

  “And?” I asked, grinning, persistent. “How is the tits-viewing going?”

  A tremor crossed his face and he turned to shuffle papers on the desk. “No, no more tits-viewing.”

  “Taken up other forms of perversion, perhaps?” My tone was light, but I was skirting close to the edge.

  He pressed his lips together and nodded, noncommittal, his eyes skittering away from mine.

  Sriyani came in to our silence, saying, “Goodness, goodness, how time flies. We must have lunch.”

  I followed her, my eyes lingering to make sure Mili returned my smile, which he did in a shamefaced way.

  Sriyani had to get her handbag and give some instructions to an assistant. When she and I were finally on our way towards the stairs, we passed Mili in the corridor, frowning at a cork board that had various postings on it.

  “Mili,” Sriyani said wryly, as we drew level with him, “aren’t you going home for lunch?”

  He blushed. He had been hanging around in the hope Sriyani would ask him along.

  As I followed Sriyani downstairs, I glanced back at him. Mili had changed. He had lost the old languid poise that had made him so worshipped during our school days. There was a new restlessness to him.

  A few days after I met Mili, my grandmother took me to see a new property she had acquired. She instructed our driver to take us to the “Wellawatte house.” Then she sat back in her seat and fussed through her purse. This was the first time we were seeing one of her properties since my return, and as we drove through Colombo I felt as if I were falling back to the years of my adolescence, trapped under the weight of her dominance. I shook my head to dismiss this notion, but it sat huddled in a corner of my mind.

  When we reached Wellawatte, my grandmother said, “Ah, yes, Chandralal is meeting us there.”

  She smiled at my alarm. “Don’t worry, it’s not that. Our Chandralal is a big mahattaya now, much richer than me. He does not need my money anymore.”

  I was about to ask why he was joining us, but then we turned down a street and I caught sight of the burnt and boarded-up houses on either side. Wellawatte was a Tamil area and had suffered greatly during the riots five years ago. These destroyed houses, sprayed with Sinhalese graffiti saying, “Tamil pariahs,” “Tamil dogs,” “Rape a Tamil woman for Lanka,” made me even more uneas
y.

  “Puthey, all that is past now,” my grandmother said, seeing my dismay. “Riots will never happen again in this country, and do you know why? Look who has suffered the most. The Sinhalese. As people are saying, the Sinhalese have eaten themselves.” She waved her hand at the ruined houses. “And all these Tamils have emigrated to Australia and Canada and are even richer than before.”

  “No, Aacho, that is not so. Tamils are poor in those countries, very poor.”

  “Rubbish, Puthey. All their children are getting free foreign educations, while our Sinhalese children cannot even go to university with all the student hartals happening here. Those Tamils will end up doctors and lawyers making dollars, not useless rupees.”

  “There are no free university educations over there. That’s just a myth.” I glared at her stubbornly.

  After a moment, she let out a little laugh and patted my shoulder, smiling fondly, as if she found my views ridiculous but endearing.

  I looked out the window, annoyed at her dismissal.

  The car stopped in front of a grand house with a large garden, the only building on the street that was intact. A Pajero with tinted windows was parked beside the gate. My grandmother grimaced ironically towards this expensive SUV which was the vehicle of choice for politicians, drug lords and newly rich mudalalis. “See what I mean about Chandralal?”

  A driver came around and opened a passenger door. Chandralal got out. He wore a white kurta and sarong and had grown so corpulent in the last five years his new crescent of a moustache looked like a pencil slash on his bloated face.

  My grandmother tittered at my astonishment. “Our Chandralal is trying to be a politician, that’s why the national costume. The next time there is an election he is going to run for Kotahena.”

  Despite his newfound wealth, Chandralal came up to our car with a humble, foolish grin and opened the door on my grandmother’s side.