by Anita Nair
She rises and puts on the light. She needs to talk. And in Smriti, she has found her perfect listener. Someone who hears her patiently and doesn’t twist her guts with unspoken recrimination.
Kala creeps into Smriti’s room. In the greenish light, she can see that Smriti’s eyes are open. Is it possible to sleep with your eyes open, she wonders. You can have eyes with perfect vision and still be blind; she knows someone who has been diagnosed with hysterical blindness. So perhaps it is possible. With Smriti, who can tell? But she is certain of one thing. Smriti can hear.
‘Are you awake, my dear?’ Kala asks softly.
The grimacing monster stares at the wall.
Kala sighs.
I know you are listening. I know that, Smriti. I know somewhere in that brain of yours, these sounds I make are being deciphered and decoded. I know that, child.
You are wondering, aren’t you, how I figured it out?
I found out the day I talked to you about making beans parpu usili.
That morning, at breakfast, Kitcha was in an unusually talkative mood. He seemed to want to talk about the past. Kala had been surprised at what seemed close to garrulousness on Kitcha’s part.
‘What I often dreamt about when I was in the US was your beans parpu usili,’ he said suddenly.
Kala smiled. ‘Yes, I had forgotten how much you liked it. I must make it for you,’ she said, planning to go to the Cox Town market herself for tender young French beans with just the perfect snap to them when you broke their backs with a push of the thumb.
As Kala sat there topping and tailing the beans and paring away their stringy sides, she told Smriti how she was going to prepare it. There was no one at home that day. Smriti’s nurse had called to say she would be late by an hour. I’ll be there in time to bathe and feed her, Sarah had said.
Kala hadn’t been pleased. She knew Kitcha wouldn’t be, either. But she heard Sarah’s fervent plea. Please, madam, it is really urgent. Otherwise I wouldn’t ask. If you sit there in the room for a little while, every fifteen minutes or so, she will be fine. She is frightened only if you leave her alone for long periods.
Kala sucked in her breath. They hadn’t known. ‘You never told us this.’ She heard the accusation in her own voice.
‘How could I? There is no way to validate it! And with a patient in her condition, I didn’t want to raise any false hopes, not even the tiniest one.’
Kala had a little chopping board. She placed it on a table and slowly began chopping the beans. ‘Your father, my Kitcha, has a great fondness for beans parpu usili. It’s been a long while since I made it for him. Do you think he will like it now? Memory is a strange thing, Smriti. It makes us add mythical dimensions to the ordinary. When Kitcha says, “the memory of your beans parpu usili still lingers on my tongue”, it scares me. How can I compete with memory?
‘See this, Smriti. The beans are all chopped. The thoran parpu is soaked and cooked. Now all I need to do is add the steamed beans to the parpu and sauté it. You know what parpu is, don’t you? Dal… lentils.’
It was then Kala thought she saw a movement in Smriti’s throat. Could it be that she had salivated? A wave of excitement rippled through her.
When Sarah came into the kitchen to make the pap she fed Smriti, Kala offered a bowl of beans parpu usili mixed with rice and ghee and puréed into a mess. Sarah frowned. ‘What’s this? The patient’s intake is so little that it has to be nutritious.’
‘Give this to her for once,’ Kala urged. ‘I think she will like it.’
Kala went with Sarah. She couldn’t usually bear to watch her feed Smriti. The patience with which Sarah slid the spoon into Smriti’s clamped mouth, knocking it against her teeth so she could wedge it in and allow the food to slither down. Mush would trickle out of the corner of Smriti’s mouth. Sarah would use a wet wipe. And she would continue till she had gone through the entire bowl while the heap of wet wipes crusted with Smriti’s spit and food grew in a pile.
But Smriti ate more than she had ever done before and when Sarah turned to Kala with a surprised look, she hid the triumph in her eyes. ‘She seems to actually like it!’
‘Maybe every now and then I could give you a bowl of food to feed her,’ Kala said hesitantly.
‘Yes, once in two-three days. She needs the special diet to ensure she gets all the vitamins, proteins, etc.’
Kala nodded.
But she wouldn’t tell Kitcha what had transpired. That somewhere in the body that held Smriti prisoner, life lurked. A life force in the movement of a muscle, in the constriction of her throat. Kitcha would dismiss it. As would Nina. But Kala had hope for Smriti.
Smriti, child, are you listening? I wasn’t able to sleep so I thought I would sit at your side and talk to you. You like that, don’t you?
Kitcha wanted to know what I talk to you about. I told him that I plan the menu with you. I discuss what I am going to cook.
Kitcha had smiled.
What else is there for me to talk about? I asked him, annoyed by that teasing smile.
We need to talk to her. Not just read aloud to her, I added.
He frowned then. Kala knew that he thought she was finding fault with him. Like Nina had when she discovered Kitcha reading out to her the emails Shruti sent.
‘What’s wrong with you, Kitcha? Do you think she comprehends anything? Snippets from the newspaper, sections from the books you read. You might as well play an audio tape for her,’ Nina had said, watching Jak.
‘No, don’t look at me like that. You like to think I am this heartless bitch. I am not. All I want to do is take my daughter home where she can receive proper medical attention.’
And Jak had snapped, ‘She will get the best medical attention, but do you have the time to be with her?’
I do. I have all the time for my daughters. My baby Shruti at fifteen is turning into an adult. But am I part of that process? She barely knows me and I, her. I know nothing of her dreams and desires, her likes and dislikes. You have made sure that Shruti has little to do with me. So you see, I am not going to give up my other child for you to put away, Jak had thought furiously, trying not to let his consternation show.
Kala could almost hear the wheels turn in Kitcha’s head. She touched his elbow gently and said, ‘Reading aloud makes it impersonal. When you talk, she is involved.’
How could Kala tell him what she knew? How could she allow him to hope unless Smriti give her a sign that would satisfy that forever doubting mind of his?
Kitcha turned away. ‘Do you think she knows the difference? It is just the sound of a voice!’
IV
A low murmuring voice. Jak wakes up abruptly from a deep sleep, hearing the cadence of quietly spoken words. For a moment time shifts backwards and he is once again Kitcha, the boy who liked to wake up to the hum of conversation. He would lie in bed with his eyes half shut, strangely comforted by the voices. His father and mother’s as they went about their morning chores, his mother keeping up a constant flow of observations while his father interjected with a short reply or a grunt. Kitcha would snuggle his face deeper into the pillow, a warmth pervading him from deep within. A sense of well-being. Even as he slept, his world continued to turn. The voices were testimony to that.
Then reality prevails and Jak sits up in alarm. Smriti. What is wrong? He slips a T-shirt on over his shorts and opens the door.
Smriti’s room is cast in its greenish light. He sees Kala Chithi seated at her side. Her chin is in her palm and her face is pensive as she talks.
‘I was thinking tonight of the time all of you – Kitcha, your mother, Shruti and you – came to see me in Madras,’ Kala Chithi says.
Jak pauses as a memory dislodges itself.
A ten-year-old Smriti. A six-year-old Shruti. Nina still revelling in her triumph of having written a non-fiction bestseller women all over the world were lining up to buy and read. No one had expected The Nine Yard Noose – Nina’s dissertation on the sari and its role in the conditi
on of Indian women – to become the success it turned out to be. Neither Nina, nor the small university press. You had watched from the sidelines, amazed and amused to see Nina metamorphose from quiet academic to celebrity writer. It was Nina who had wanted to go to Madras. She was researching her next book, she said. They had stayed at the Connemara and driven around in airconditioned cars that had protected them from the heat and dust of Madras.
Then, standing outside Kala Chithi’s door, you breathed in the fragrance of jasmine shikakai freshly ground coffee coriander and felt a great wave of nostalgia.
‘I miss all of this!’ you said.
‘You would!’ Nina laughed. ‘Oh Kitcha, what am I to do with you?’ She crinkled her nose and rubbed her face against your sleeve like an affectionate kitten.
Kala Chithi opened the door and ushered them in. Lunch was served amidst much chit-chat and catching up. Kala Chithi had cooked a Kitcha favourite, the urunda kozhambu.
Shruti had picked up an urunda and asked, ‘What’s this?’
Smriti bit into it and said, ‘Mmm… I love it!’
And you asked, ‘Better than the Swedish meatballs you like at the IKEA restaurant?’
‘Yes, yes, much nicer. I love this!’
Was it then you saw a flicker of irritation cross Nina’s face? She didn’t seem to like the idea of her daughter preferring something that she had relegated to a distant part of her life. The ‘was’ section that Nina didn’t like going into.
Nina said, ‘Dumplings. That’s all it is. Vegetarian dumplings!’
And Kala Chithi said, ‘I don’t cook meat. I can’t bear the thought of cooking, let alone eating it!’
‘You don’t know what you are missing,’ Nina said. ‘Actually, Kala Chithi, you don’t know how much you have missed out in life by choosing to remain here. You should have taken up Kitcha’s invitation to join us in the States.’
Kala Chithi’s voice again. ‘Child, your mother said something very stupid that day. She said I didn’t know what I was missing. I wanted to snap at her. There was plenty that I missed. Enough losses and absences to lament over. What does she know of my life, I thought. Yet, here she was, implying my life would have been different had I taken to eating meat or gone to America.’
Jak halts in his tracks. He doesn’t want to eavesdrop but he feels compelled to stay on and listen. Kala Chithi is such an enigma. She told you only what she thought you needed to know.
At first I thought I must be the luckiest woman on earth. How could I not? He loved many things about me. He loved even my hair that I hated.
You didn’t know this, did you? Once I had hair that almost reached my knees. Hair that fell like a cascade when I unpinned it. Straight as rainwater hair, with not a kink or even a wave. I could run a comb in one swift motion from the root to the tip. And every morning I would comb it through and braid it and pin it up. The weight of it made my head ache, my neck droop. The hair made me a demure girl first and then a demure woman. I was the daughter who pleased my father and later a wife who pleased my husband.
All through my school days and university too, I let my hair grow. Then I began to see how the other girls were less burdened. Only I seemed weighed down. I wanted to cut it. My father was aghast. ‘Are you mad?’ he demanded. ‘Look at your hair. Do you know what an asset it is? Not everyone has hair like yours.’
I couldn’t understand it. When everyone else stopped their daughters’ education after high school, my father insisted that both my sister and I continue to study. He wanted us to be university graduates. How could such a progressive man be so regressive when it came to hair? It was my hair, after all.
It took my father almost a week to recover from the shock of what I had merely proposed. The doctor prescribed pills to tame his blood pressure, quell his anxiety and settle his nerves. The doctor who was my father’s friend also advised me to not provoke my father with silly childish gestures. ‘You can cut your hair off and do what you please when you are married,’ he said, echoing my father. ‘But why would you want to do that? It is beautiful hair, after all, Kala!’
My neck hurt that night. An ache that crept down to my shoulders and lodged there. My mother, who hadn’t said much until then, found me whimpering with the pain. ‘What is it, Kala?’ she whispered. ‘Is it the time of the month? Do you want me to give you a hot water fomentation? Will it ease the cramps?’
‘It is this,’ I cried, gesturing to my hair. ‘The weight of it! My neck and shoulders hurt. It is worse than the menstrual cramp, Amma.’
She said nothing. I pulled at her elbow, wondering if I could rally her support. ‘With the cramp I know it will go away in a day. But this… and Appa won’t let me cut it!’
‘No, you can’t. Of course you can’t. He is right.’ She could be just as stubborn as he was, I realized. Or, was it that when it came to his wishes, she would be stubborn on his behalf.
‘What am I to do then? Live with this pain till I die?’ I snapped, angered by her inability to see my point of view.
‘You don’t have to tie it up every night,’ she said, opening my braid and unravelling it like it was a skein of rope. She took a comb and began combing its length. ‘A loosened plait is what you need so that you don’t damage the hair… see,’ she said, weaving it deftly. And then she began massaging my neck. ‘The pain will go away, Kala. I promise you. Besides, there is much greater pain waiting for us women in our lives. How can you be cowed down by something so negligible?’
The loose plait arced around my neck and fell over my breasts and belly to my thigh. I wept then. I felt imprisoned by my hair. And she was the jailor. For my father must have confided his fears to her. ‘She is impetuous. Keep an eye on her so that she doesn’t do something silly like chop it off in a rage.’
When my husband and his family first came to see me, my father had my most valuable asset enhanced. It wouldn’t have been seemly to leave my hair loose, not as you girls do. So my mother and my aunts combed it till it shone like silk. They braided my hair and wove jasmine into it. Thereafter, it didn’t matter that my complexion was dusky or that my singing was, to put it kindly, mediocre, or that our house was shabby. My hair overwhelmed them. Even the dowry they asked for was modest. Appa needed to take a loan but it wouldn’t ruin him, he said.
‘See, see,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I was right. If I had let you cut your hair, you would still be here, waiting for a suitable boy. But this is fantastic, Bhanu,’ he said, turning to my mother. ‘Did you see it? I was watching them. The boy couldn’t take his eyes off Kala’s hair! Do you see why I insisted that she keep her hair?’
‘Are you in such a hurry to send me away?’ I demanded, only half in jest. I had never seen my father so animated.
‘You have to go sooner than later,’ my father said sternly. ‘Daughters are never for keeps. They are loaned to us for a while. Besides, after what happened to Sarada, it is best to marry you off before grooms and their families start asking awkward questions.’
‘But how can you blame Akka? Athimbair is the one who went away, all of us know that!’ I protested. ‘Amma, tell him!’
Amma wouldn’t speak. She sat on the swing at my father’s side, her lower lip trembling, but she wouldn’t speak. I was terrified. How could I not feel as if the world was coming down upon me?
I realized then that they held Akka responsible for her husband leaving her. She just wasn’t a good enough wife, one who could keep her husband at her side. She was a failed woman. My sister, who had taken to being a wife as though it was the calling of her life. ‘He left her to become a sanyasi; it wasn’t as if he went off with another woman. How can you hold her responsible for that?’ I spluttered in my anguish. I had never been as afraid as I was then. A word of support for my sister would have given me some courage. One word of anger on her behalf and I would have known that if anything went wrong in my life, they would encompass me with their love, their strength.
But they wouldn’t speak. Like Akka, I wou
ld be on my own if I didn’t make my husband happy. My destiny was linked to his. I had no life to call my own. I was nothing on my own. So when I saw how much my husband loved me, I was comforted.
On our wedding night, my husband had me stand with my back to him. He looked at my loosely woven plait and hefted it in his palm. ‘Doesn’t your head hurt with the weight of it, Vaidehi?’ he asked slowly. I had been given a new name at the marriage ceremony, as was customary. I was Vaidehi now. And expected to be as acquiescent as she had been. The ideal wife to the ideal man, Rama.
I nodded. Would he ask me to trim it to a more manageable length?
‘Open it, Vaidehi. That should make it feel less heavy,’ he said. Then he placed his arm on my shoulder. ‘No, let me do it.’
I felt him prise open the plait, remove the flowers. He was gentle, taking care not to snag or pull. Relief filled me. He would free me of my burden, I knew. When he saw how long it was, he would do it himself, perhaps. Lay a newspaper on the floor and chop it to the length he liked best. Even an inch less would be less of it, I told myself.
I felt the hair on my back. I felt his eyes on it. I heard him say, ‘Such beautiful hair. Vaidehi, promise me that you won’t ever touch a hair on your head without my permission.’
The next morning I coiled every last rebellious thought with my hair and pinned the weight of it with my braid to the nape of my neck. The weight of that burden caused my neck to droop even further. The pain was ceaseless. But my husband was a happy man and so was my father.
In my husband’s home in Minjikapuram by the sea, I lived the careful, well tended life of a content wife.
My husband and his family were good people. They even let me have all of Friday morning to groom my hair. My sisters-in-law helped me oil my hair. My husband filled the cauldron so I would have plenty of hot water. Every Friday morning, until I left that home, my mother-in-law would ask me if she could assist with the shikakai. Help me to work the soapnut powder into a lather. And then, while I lay on the swing, she and my husband would take turns to air the damp out of my hair with the sambrani smoke. They would sit there passing my hair over the basket in which camphor burnt, exclaiming at its length, sheen and health. I would feel my eyes grow heavy and sometimes I dozed off, weary after the rigours of the Friday wash.
