Baby Doll

by Gracy

  Despite all this, Latheef came rushing into Albert’s classroom at noon and urged him to come outside. The words that he scattered between his panting breaths were enough to shock anyone: ‘What happened to your Vanaja? When I went up to her at the railway station, she didn’t even recognize me. Didn’t respond either. I had gone to see off a relative.’ Any wonder then, that Albert threw his books and ran out crying, ‘My God!’ But Vanaja was not on the platform. When Albert crossed the tracks and reached home, the front door was open. Vanaja was deep in thought, gazing at Kannan’s face. She didn’t even respond when Albert touched her shoulder. When he lifted her face, her eyes were frozen like those of a wax figurine. She didn’t recognize Albert at all.

  Distraught, Albert sat on the chair on the veranda. It was Latheef who came looking for him that evening and suggested a solution: ‘Why don’t we take her to a psychiatrist?’ For a second time Albert cried. ‘All of them are frauds, Latheef. What can they offer other than sedatives? Kannan can only drink breast milk right now. It will affect him as well.’

  Albert took leave for a few days and started helping Vanaja take baby steps back into life by holding on to small details. At some point, Vanaja asked, ‘Why did you take so much leave, Albert? Won’t they reduce your salary? Shouldn’t we raise Kannan well? Have you forgotten that I don’t have a job?’

  Albert unlocked his throat, which had suddenly gone hoarse, with a false laugh as the key. ‘Now Latheef is helping us, Vanaja, and I’m trying for a new job too.’ Vanaja started again, ‘When will we be able to repay Latheef?’ Who knows if Vanaja heard his murmur of disappointment? ‘There will be a way for everything. Don’t you worry your head.’

  Anyway, Albert went to work the next day. Vanaja lay beside Kannan for a long while, keeping him warm. Then, tucking the blanket around the sleeping baby, Vanaja went to the railway station again. While waiting there, she looked like a commuting employee. She hurried into a northbound train. It was not because she saw the board saying ‘Thrissivaperoor’ that Vanaja alighted there. She just got out because she felt like it. She waited for the southbound train. Then she put on the face of a woman returning home from work.

  When no train arrived, Vanaja grew disturbed. As evening advanced, her anxiety rose. Worried that Kannan must have cried himself to sleep, she crossed the railway tracks. Because of the similarity between the Aluva and Thrissivaperoor stations, she felt certain that she was now in Aluva. Nevertheless, she was vexed at the missing pathway on the opposite side. She had never heard of roads disappearing suddenly. Under the red light, she stood lost and agitated. Why would she feel uneasy that a young man asked her what the problem was? ‘I’m going home. But the road which was here this morning has vanished now,’ Vanaja said truthfully.

  Was there something untrustworthy in his smile? Vanaja hadn’t even noticed it. ‘The road must be there. Let’s see,’ he reassured her while walking with her beside the tracks. Vanaja did not notice that three or four other shadows had joined them. It was when she was exhausted that Vanaja stopped. The nails of darkness pressed into her shoulders. Someone’s rough hands caressed her face. That was when she became all anxiety, holding her breasts dripping with milk: ‘My Kannan must be really hungry.’

  Cupping her dripping breasts, one of them shouted joyfully, ‘Wow! What breasts! The milk is just flowing, buddy!’ Shoving his hand aside, Vanaja cried that the milk was for Kannan to drink. Then, another one laughed, and the poison brimmed over. ‘Why, sister? Will it not digest in our stomachs?’

  Seeing Vanaja standing there, surrounded by hunters in the thicket of darkness, who can remain unconvinced that a silly, romantic story can only end in this way?

  (Oru Painkili Kathayude Anthyam)

  27

  Theechamundi32

  Maybe because she had slept late, Tara felt very lethargic when she woke up. Her eyelids were still heavy with the previous night’s vision:

  It was when the last drumbeat rushed down the hilltop and petered out, that Amma got swept away with it. Before she could realize what was happening, Amma had reached the serpent’s kavu.33 Tara could do nothing but stand frozen. The sacred serpent’s kavu was always overrun with the shadows thrown by the snake-like creepers and inja34 bushes that weighed on her mind. Sensing her fear, the enormous tree in the kavu laughed its head off. Over and over again, Amma had warned Appan not to plough the serpent’s kavu. But Appan did not believe in these things. His shovel had chopped a black cobra into two neat pieces. The head had come flying and struck Appan’s calf. However much he tried, he could not yank it off from his flesh. On hearing his screams, Amma had come running. But by then, he had collapsed. Seeing the snake’s open mouth still latched on to Appan’s leg, Amma fell on her back like a freshly felled tree. Froth bubbled out from her twisted mouth. Her limbs thrashed for a while, and then she lay still.

  Then, Tara remembered one of the tales that Cheeru, the washerwoman, brought with her bundle of memories every week along with the washed clothes:

  ‘Even after your Appan dissolved into the green of the grass in the cemetery, your Amma was never really able to return to the real world. In her evening prayers, she scolded the Virgin Mary, “How could you be so heartless, my mother! Aren’t you a woman too?” Her blazing eyes remained sharp, trained unblinkingly on the icon of the divine mother. Little by little, the flame in your Amma’s eyes died down. The scolding became a murmur. Finally, she removed Mother Mary from the wall, locked her up in a cupboard and became silent.’

  All through, Grandpa had remained with Amma, always supporting her. That is why Tara did not understand why he abandoned her house suddenly and went to live with his eldest son, Tara’s Valyappan.35 It was after Grandpa’s departure that Tara began to fear that the house was about to swallow her. She realized that her life was freezing because of the snow in her mother’s eyes. Tara hid her fear from Grandpa whenever she went to see him, since she had often glimpsed the impatience of caged animals pacing incessantly in his eyes. The wrinkled muscles on Grandpa’s face would stretch and tighten when Valyappan’s face darkened like an old rice pot. Seeing that, Valyamma’s lips would twist into a sneer. These days, Tara had begun to feel that all of her twelve years were not enough to understand the meaning of those faces.

  Anyway, I need to see Grandpa today, she told herself. Only when she could hold on to the tips of his fingers would Tara feel assured that she was not an orphan.

  Tara got up from the bed. A glass of black coffee was kept for her in the kitchen. Rice was boiling on the stove. Tara could not read her mother’s eyes as she stood watching the stove. Her face was very pale. Drinking the tepid coffee in one gulp, Tara stood around for some more time. Then she set off for Grandpa’s.

  Grandpa was dozing in an armchair on the porch. Tara sat by his feet on the floor and shook him. Grandpa, who was swaying on waves of sleep, woke up with a start and asked, ‘What is it?’

  Tara’s suspicion unspooled. ‘Grandpa, how did our Christian house come to have a serpent’s kavu and idols?’

  Grandpa’s face assumed an inscrutable expression. Still, he started speaking, ‘All this could be hearsay. It is said that our ancestor was a Namboothiri36 who was excommunicated. He married a Christian girl and built a mansion with many rooms here. He prayed to the serpent god and installed it in the grove. He also dug a pond for the Nagayakshi.37 The arayanjili38 tree in that grove was planted by him.’

  Emptiness flew into Grandpa’s eyes. It roosted there for some time, preening, before it flew away.

  ‘It was from an illam – the house of Namboothiris – that this house got its name, Chennillath. When we begin to speak, mustn’t we say everything? When I was a child, there were many practices that were taboo for true Christians. Feasts for dead ancestors. Songs sung by the Pulluvans39 to appease snakes. It was after I became an adult that those things were scrapped. The attic had a heap of old palm manuscripts. I was the one who brought them out and burnt the entire lot. Who knows what was w
ritten on them? There was nobody around who could read them.’

  Drifting through memories for a while, Grandpa came back.

  ‘Sometimes I think there must be some grain of truth in the old tales. But what’s the point of thinking of that now?’

  Valyamma’s face appeared at the door.

  ‘What’s today’s problem, Tara?’

  Without taking her eyes off Grandpa, Tara shrugged uninterestedly. Though Grandpa’s eyes were closed, it was obvious that he was not sleeping.

  ‘Come on in,’ Valyamma called her inside.

  As she served snacks, Valyamma prodded, ‘What news of your mother?’

  Whenever she spoke of Amma, a poisonous smile would slide over her mouth. Tara always felt the surge of an unreasonable rage each time she saw that smile. Still, as Valyamma was the only one who asked after Amma, Tara relented: ‘Looks like Amma has started getting the sleepwalking disease.’

  Valyamma’s smile widened further. ‘That is hardly news. Didn’t it begin sometime after your father died?’

  Holding a round snack between her forefinger and thumb, Tara rotated it slowly like a planet around an illusory axis. ‘I do ask God why my father died so early.’

  Valyamma’s smile disappeared into a hole. ‘But everyone has to die one day, girl!’

  Then Valyamma’s face clouded over. ‘However, mothers with growing daughters should stay put inside homes.’

  From the porch, Grandpa called out a warning to his elder daughter-in-law, ‘Annakutty!’

  ‘Oh!’ Valyamma twisted her lips. Again that old smile reared its head slyly.

  This Valyamma was not at all good-looking, thought Tara with irritation. Her hair was gathered behind her head into a bun the size of a small, immature coconut. When God was moulding her face, perhaps his fingertips had gotten stuck on it. Maybe that’s why her face was so pointy. Tara had a revelation that all sharp-faced people were full of malice and grouses. When she thought of her mother, Tara’s face radiated with pride.

  ‘Valyamma, do you know what the colour of the shoshanna flower is?’

  ‘Who knows!’ Valyamma looked away with obvious hatred.

  Tara’s smile brightened further. ‘I know! The colour is like that of my mother. Maybe that’s why she was named Susanna.’ All of a sudden, Tara’s face fell. ‘But my mother has gone so pale now.’

  Valyamma’s expression became harsh. ‘The Chamundi on the hilltop must be drinking your mother’s blood.’

  From the armchair on the porch, a lion roared, ‘Annakutty!’

  Valyamma and Tara looked at each other in shock.

  2.

  Long ago, Tara had climbed the hill behind the house and seen the Chamundi. Her cousin, Josootty, was also with her. They only got to go up to the fence made from stakes of jatropha. In front of a hut that looked like a recently sprouted mushroom stood a shapely female idol carved from black stone. She had four arms. She carried something in each of them. Tara could only recognize a chopping knife. Beneath the idol, blood had pooled. Scared that her wildly thumping heartbeat would betray her, she peeped through the gaps in the fence. When she spotted the priest, Muthappay, step out of the hut, she froze. His grey hair was gathered into a topknot which stood erect on his head. His eyes were like wilted hibiscus flowers. Ash streaks were dabbed across his chest. When he looked at the bushes near the fence and blew, the children flew up in a swirl of dead leaves. For a long time after that incident, a whooshing sound used to come sprinting into Tara’s dreams without anyone in tow. Trying to outrun it, she would pant and stumble on some root, and wake up with a wild cry: ‘Amma!’ Then, realizing that she was all alone in bed, she would lie face down as utter panic refused to let her breathe. When her mother would come into the room sometime later in the night, Tara would feel sad that her mother no longer smelt of freshly cut paddy.

  Tara knew she was no longer a child. She wanted to meet Muthappay and ask him a few things: Will Chamundi drink the blood of human beings? If so, how to rescue Amma from that?

  When Tara took off all her clothes near the stream and covered her bosom with a thorth, she felt shy. Two brownish, sharp, little breasts. When will they rise up to be rounded like her Amma’s? Amma’s small waist and her bottom that looked like an upturned pot had always fascinated Tara. She had heard that Appan was a brawny fellow. So many times she had heard from the betel-stained mouth of the washerwoman, Cheeru, the story of how Appan had carried his wife who was in labour – how he had gathered her into his arms like a flower and held her close to his chest as he crossed the stream and fields to reach the public road! Cheeru used to spit into the yard and exclaim, ‘Why, this girl alone ended up looking like a reed!’ When Tara spread out her copper-coloured hair, she thought about her mother’s long strands that touched her derrière, their tips curling like the head of a black snake.

  To escape from her thoughts, Tara held her breath and dunked herself three times in the water.

  After her bath, she dried her hair and started climbing the hill, picking her way through the pathway strewn with white river stones. Halfway through the climb, she saw the sculpted, ebony body of Pushkaran coming down the hill as if he had spilled over from a hummed song. Pushkaran did not even glance at Tara. Tara wondered who Muthappay could depend on if this Pushkaran spent all his life loitering around like this. Muthappay’s wife had died during childbirth. The wife of his one and only son had also died in labour. A while later, the son too followed, succumbing to some mysterious disease. His grandson, Pushkaran, must have been refusing to marry because he was worried that his wife too might die. Tara looked back once and continued climbing.

  From the top of the hill, she looked down. Far away, the stream was sparkling like a silver waistband. Below, Tara’s house with its tiled roof looked like a tortoise shell. As she stood there, her heart felt like a seed tangled among thorns. Tara was immersed in thoughts about what was happening in her life these days. Unable to make sense of anything, she sighed deeply and turned back to walk towards Muthappay’s hut.

  The jatropha fence had dried up. It did not look like there was anybody in the house. Dead leaves with their green wrung out lay scattered around in layers. Affected by the intermittent rain, the harsh sun and snow, the Chamundi too had lost her vitality and seemed orphaned. Only then did Tara see Muthappay, hunched like a toad on the edge of the small veranda. While she was crossing the front yard, the dry leaves murmured. Tara went closer and called, ‘Muthappay, it’s me, from the house down the hill.’

  Opening his eyes gone grey with age, Muthappay looked at her indifferently. It was a look that came from beyond life. Muthappay must be starving, Tara thought. She felt guilty for having come empty-handed. Hesitating for a moment, she continued, ‘I’ve come to ask you something. Does the Chamundi drink the blood of humans?’

  Muthappay’s grey eyes remained unblinking. Tara was stunned to see that his face was a cobweb of criss-crossing wrinkles and spots. A breeze crept up from somewhere near the Chamundi idol and swirled the dead leaves around Tara. Tara was frightened that she would get uprooted and become entangled in the cobweb. She knelt in front of Muthappay. ‘Muthappay, please help me. Valyamma said that the Chamundi drinks my mother’s blood.’

  Muthappay’s eyes lurched away from Tara’s face. Then they wandered around the valley like wayward souls. A spark flew into his eyes from somewhere. They started glowing, and Muthappay’s face was uplifted into a trance-like state. The irises disappeared behind the eyelids. His eyes became rotten eggs. The reek of life broke out from them, oozing free of their confines. Scrunching up his nose, Muthappay grunted, ‘Pushkaran’s children!’

  Tara wondered if Muthappay had gone crazy. Perhaps enticing illusions were welling up in his old eyes. Tara was disappointed.

  ‘Che! Where does Pushkaran have children?’

  Muthappay nodded. His face smouldered. In the baleful voice of the mottled wood owl, he said, ‘Yes, the children melted!’

  Tara was stunned.
She jumped up and flew down the hill without turning back.

  3.

  One day, the mammoth arayanjili tree in the serpent’s kavu shrieked and collapsed. Anxious, Tara turned to her mother. Amma just stood there, unconcerned. Tara walked up to the edge of the yard and peered into the kavu. Uprooted, the idol of Nagayakshi was lying on her back. The idols of Maninagam and Karinagam too lay scattered here and there.

  Tara was astounded that not a single neighbour peeped out despite such a loud noise. As her glance surveyed the path to the house, the shadow of Pushkaran’s ebony body fell across it. Tara was irritated for no reason when she saw him standing there like the image of a king in her school text, with his left leg planted upon the fallen tree and his right hand on his hip.

  Tara’s face clouded over as she walked to Grandpa’s house.

  Grandpa was not on the porch. When she saw the preoccupied Tara enter the house, her aunt who had come visiting, asked, ‘What’s the matter? Why are you so hassled?’

  Maybe it was because she was childless that her aunt had such a satanic disposition. Though she made Tara mad with her dagger-sharp looks and barbed words, Tara asked, ‘When did you arrive, Aunt?’

  Looking her up and down, Aunt grunted in a voice with no softness, ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you come to our place?’

  Aunt’s eyebrows rose and twisted. ‘Aren’t enough comings and goings happening there?’

  Tara was astounded. ‘Who?’

  With a razor-edged smile, her aunt prodded, ‘Does your mother still sleepwalk, girl?’

  Tara’s face fell. ‘I don’t know, Aunt. I’ve only seen that once.’

  Dangling her smile from the edge of a blade, her aunt pulled out the next question: ‘Doesn’t she still go to the hospital regularly?’