The Lilac House: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  ‘She is resting. They sedated her at the hospital and sent her in an ambulance. She is in shock. Every now and then she asks for my mother. She won’t stop weeping…’

  But Giri had to go and Meera was left with a lifeless phone in her hand. More than ever then, she knew that Giri had moved on. And Nikhil, seeing the slump of defeat in his mother’s back, called Jak.

  It was never easy, the relationship Meera and Saro shared. Saro was set in her ways and wouldn’t tolerate any change. Even when their circumstances changed, Saro wanted everything to remain the way it was when her husband was alive, and it was left to Meera to find a way.

  Meera had resented the demands her mother made of her. Angered, even, when her mother insisted on ‘keeping up standards’ as she called it. Your life may fall apart, your heart may be breaking, but by keeping a semblance of order in your routine and day, your life will be yours again, Saro said.

  Her mother is dead. Their lives are askew. But as Meera lays the table for lunch, it occurs to her that she is doing precisely what Saro would have done. Keeping the fabric of their days unruffled. With a pang of remorse, Meera thinks that the only worthy thing in her life springs from what her mother had taught her. And she never thought to acknowledge that, ever.

  When Meera goes looking for Lily, she finds her in her bedroom, sitting on the bed. Her face is drawn and her body is perfectly still. As if to move even a muscle would snap her.

  Lily clutches the little urn tightly. ‘This is my child in here,’ she tells Meera. ‘How can I bear it? This is my daughter, Meera.’

  Meera sits next to Lily and puts her arm around her. ‘I miss Mummy, Lily. I miss her so much… I wish I had told her what she meant to me.’

  Lily looks away. ‘I should have died. She got in on the side where I was sitting but I insisted we switch places. If I hadn’t been difficult, you would have your mother here.’

  Meera wishes she knew how to comfort Lily. Poor Lily. To bear the burden of guilt along with the grief. But she doesn’t have the words to console her. Her own grief binds her tongue.

  Nayantara lies on the bed in her room, staring at the ceiling. Meera goes to sit at her side. How would she bear it if something happened to her daughter? How does Lily? Until now, it has never occurred to her that grief can have its own weightage. What is worse? The loss of a parent or one’s own child?

  Meera aches to lie someplace quiet and wrap her arms around herself, to weep and grieve. Instead, she strokes Nayantara’s hair. ‘Darling, when do you have to go back?’

  ‘When is Daddy coming?’ Nayantara asks the ceiling.

  Meera shakes her head. ‘I don’t know… Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you think he will come at all?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  And Nayantara, who hasn’t until then spoken a word of censure about Giri, turns away from Meera with ‘What a bastard!’

  Meera gasps. Don’t speak like that about your father, she begins automatically and then stills herself. Nayantara is old enough to make up her mind. And yet…

  ‘She was only his mother-in-law. And ex-mother-in-law now. So maybe he is right to stay away.’

  ‘So you are getting divorced!’ Nayantara sits up.

  ‘His lawyer called a week ago, wanting to set up a meeting…’ Meera’s voice breaks. ‘You knew it was going to happen.’

  ‘And him? Are you planning to marry him?’

  ‘Who him? There is no him in my life. You know that!’

  ‘Nikhil said you had a man here. A young man. It was Soman, wasn’t it?’

  Meera sighed. ‘He is a friend. Just a friend…’

  ‘Nikhil didn’t seem to think so.’

  ‘Nikhil is too young to understand these things,’ Meera says.

  ‘Well, he’s decided that you are marrying him.’

  And so Meera goes in search of her son. Jak sits in one of the cane chairs in the patio, Nikhil in another. When he sees her, Nikhil gets up and walks away.

  Meera drops into a chair.

  ‘How is Lily?’ Jak asks. ‘You look very tired, Meera. I am worried about you…’

  ‘I am fine. I swear I am all right. But they are not.’ She speaks with a sweep of her arm to encompass her world.

  ‘I haven’t thanked you enough for all that you’ve done,’ she begins.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I am glad I could pitch in. It was clever of Nikhil to think of calling me. And it was fortunate I was in town!’

  It was Jak who knew what to do, whom to call, and he remembered to ask Meera to carry a little brass pot. For the ashes, he said quietly. They did it all together. Meera, Nikhil and Jak. And when Nayantara arrived, that strange desultory ride to the crematorium.

  It was Jak who stood by her side and took the pot of ashes from the attendant.

  ‘Yes, Nikhil did the right thing by calling you.’

  Meera rubs her eyes. ‘It’s Nikhil who worries me most,’ she says.

  Jak waits for her to continue.

  ‘It has been a really hard year for him. First, there was Giri’s disappearance. Do you remember when we first met? The time you dropped us home. Giri walked out on us, the marriage, the children, all in one go that afternoon. It was Nikhil who discovered that he was missing. And now this…’

  Saro and Lily were on their way to Bishop Cotton Boys, Nikhil’s school, when the accident happened. They had planned to take him shopping for his birthday.

  ‘I called home but no one picked up the phone,’ Nikhil said, not meeting his mother’s eye.

  Meera’s heart sank. Where was she then? She remembered a phone ringing far away in those first few minutes but Soman had wrapped his arms tightly around her. ‘No, no, let it ring.’ He had shut it out with his caresses and the frenzy of sensation he evoked had swallowed the sound.

  ‘Grandma Saro wasn’t picking up her phone either. So I thought I would wait at the school gate. Someone told me there had been an accident a little ahead where Vittal Mallya road cuts into St. Mark’s road. I walked there, and Mummy…’ Nikhil’s face crumpled. ‘It was horrible. The police were standing there near the wrecked car. They had covered Grandma and the driver with two pieces of sacking. I didn’t know it was Grandma… I saw Lily then. They were carrying her into the ambulance and… I ran. For a moment, I thought it was you beneath that sacking. Then I saw the hand with the rings and knew it was Grandma. It was horrible, Mummy. I know I shouldn’t have thought it, but I was glad it was her and not you.’

  Meera leans forward, her head in her arms. ‘I am so afraid that I am robbing him of his childhood; his father and I. It’s sad, isn’t it, how children have to suffer the sins of their parents.’

  Jak takes Meera’s hand in his. ‘Nikhil will cope. Trust me, Meera, I know. Children cope better than adults.’

  IX

  Children cope. How easily he had said it. That they have a greater depth of understanding than adults expect them to have. But that was what Meera wanted to hear. And so he offered her the comfort she so desperately sought: that she hadn’t failed as a parent.

  Jak jogs through the streets at a steady pace. The night air is cold and he has pulled a light sweater on over his T-shirt. Dogs bark from behind gates but he continues to run, trying to keep pace with his thoughts.

  He feels a stab of pity for Meera. He knows what lies ahead. There is no escaping it. Those black spots in the future when certain days would come to haunt her. The vortex of fear. Nikhil may not be able to forgive you now, Meera, he had wanted to tell her. But there will come a time in his life when he will begin to understand your circumstances and with that will come acceptance and forgiveness. Until then you must seek refuge in the thought that he will cope. Nikhil will engage with life on his own terms.

  No one knows this better than he does, Jak’s mind and feet synchronize. Children cope but not without being marked. Children learn to understand but not without losing an element of hope. How can adults expect forgiveness of children? It is an
adult emotion. It is not a child’s natural instinct to make compromises on behalf of a parent. An exemplary rare child, perhaps. He wasn’t one. All he knew was a black rage at what was expected of him.

  Kitcha came home from college to find his mother in a strange mood. He was a B.Sc. Geography student at the Presidency College then. He studied his mother’s face as if it were the sea. The ever changing sea, now so calm, now so volatile. What seismic forces had shifted, he wondered. What had brought it on this time?

  From the corner of his eye, Kitcha searched the house for Kala Chithi. She had arrived a month ago, all of a sudden. ‘I have left my husband and I have left our parents’ home. I have nowhere else to go,’ she had stated baldly.

  Sarada’s hand had gone to her mouth. ‘What have you done, child?’ she had exclaimed. ‘And your hair?’

  It was Kitcha who had taken the suitcase from her hand. He saw the stillness of her face and remembered her as he had seen her last on the beach, her hair loose, her eyes sparkling, her soul leaping. What had happened to her in these last few years?

  ‘He wanted to marry another woman. A woman who could give him a child,’ Kala Chithi said.

  ‘He wanted us all to live together. The indignity! The indignity was what made me leave. And you know our parents…’ She had looked away, not wanting either her sister or her nephew to see the wetness of her eyes. Kitcha and his mother had said no more. And so Kala Chithi became part of their household.

  Would Kala Chithi know why Amma’s eyes glittered when she talked, or why her face was lit with an unusual animation? It scared him. In the last seven years there had been two occasions when his mother had come alive from her catatonic state. Twice, when they had had news of Appa.

  The first time, a relative who had met Appa at an ashram had come to them with a little pouch of dried flowers, holy ash and vermilion. Kitcha had never been more furious with his father.

  ‘He has sent this for us, Kitcha. He has. What does it say? He hasn’t forgotten us,’ his mother cried in delight, oblivious to the embarrassment on the man’s face. Kitcha looked away, unable to stomach the naked want in her eyes.

  Later in the night, when the relative had been fed and given, the gift of a new veshti and a small sum of two hundred rupees, pressed into his hand with an ‘Oh, some money for the bus fare’, Amma looked up from the little pouch and asked in a voice aching with hope, ‘Do you think he means to come back? Is that why he sent the kumkumam? Do you think it is his way of telling me?’ She sat there caressing the vermilion dust with the tip of her finger as if it were her husband’s arm. Needing to touch it to tell herself he was there and with her.

  Kitcha wanted to snatch the pouch out of her hand and fling it out. What about the ash and the dried flowers, he wanted to demand. What do they tell you? That all is over. Can’t you see that?

  Kitcha didn’t speak then. He didn’t when the letter came either. It was little over a year since the relative had visited. There had been nothing until then from Appa. Amma had begun working in a small school in the neighbourhood. She had fished out her degree certificate in Mathematics which she had set aside when she married. Now the school needed a primary teacher in Maths and Amma had been fortunate to find the job, they said. So close to home; a small but steady income; regular hours and long vacations. Kitcha had been glad when she found the job. It was precisely what she needed. A diversion and a purpose. She was tiring herself by being this needy creature who rose with bare-faced hope each time someone buzzed the doorbell.

  The letter was addressed to him. Amma held it in her hand as she waited for him to come home from school. Kitcha was sixteen then. ‘I’m going to study the weather,’ he joked to anyone who asked him his future plans. ‘At least it is predictable in its unpredictability!’

  Amma looked away each time he said that.

  Kitcha felt a weight settle on his brow when he saw the letter. What now? ‘Open it,’ Amma urged. ‘I didn’t want to. It’s for you… But it’s from him. Your appa!’

  Kitcha placed his books on the swing. ‘Can I change my clothes first?’ he asked quietly, wanting to delay the moment. Couldn’t Amma see it? How could she raise her hopes so? When would she accept that he wasn’t coming back?

  ‘Kitcha…’ The plea in her voice made him grab the envelope from her hand. Within was a card announcing Appa’s decision to move to Rishikesh where the ashram would help him seek the unconscious better. There were shlokas and explanations, and in the final line a quiet repudiation: ‘Nainam chindanthi shashtrani…’ It is time to move on. As I must. You must.

  It was an irrevocable parting of ways.

  Amma applied for a BEd thereafter. And when it was time to pick a subject for his university degree, despite everyone telling him that he was guaranteed to be unemployed after such a useless course, Kitcha sought his clouds and seas.

  Now here was Amma again with stars in her eyes. ‘I have something to tell you,’ she said that night.

  Kitcha stared at the TV. ‘Yes, Amma, I am listening,’ he said, not wanting to see the anticipation in her eyes.

  ‘I have been thinking,’ Amma began. Then she reached out and switched off the TV. ‘I want you to listen carefully.’

  Kitcha looked up then. Kala Chithi, Kitcha saw, was pretending to read a magazine. Any minute now she would get up and leave. Kala Chithi had little time for Amma’s ‘one of these days he will be home’ delusions. ‘You have to get on with your life, Akka,’ she said. ‘You have to accept that Athimbair isn’t coming back!’

  In recent times, though, Amma no longer talked about her husband or even referred to him. She was finally learning to let go, they had decided, relieved. Appa had been a cancerous growth in Amma, gnawing away at her insides, turning a vibrant woman into a hollowed out shell, brittle and dry.

  Kitcha worried that there had been some fresh communiqué from Appa.

  ‘Your father is gone. He’s never coming back. Do you accept that?’ she asked, touching his shoulders gently.

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ Kitcha mumbled. ‘I always knew that.’

  ‘But my life isn’t over.’

  ‘What is it, Amma? Is it this MEd thing? Do you need to go elsewhere for it?’

  Amma exhaled. ‘No, it isn’t this MEd thing. It is that I have met someone and we would like to get married.’

  And Kitcha, who should have sprung to his mother’s side, made it easy for her and said, ‘Yes, Amma. You are young. You need a husband. And I… I would like a father too. A father who is here.’ Kitcha, who could already read the colour of the sea, the density of the clouds, and in whom there was a natural sensitivity, ought to have found the compassion to take his mother’s hand in his and absolve her of any guilt she may feel by telling her, ‘You must marry again. And this time, Amma, choose a man who loves life. Not one who wants to run away from it,’ had snarled, ‘What’s wrong with you? How can you get married again? You are still married to Appa!’

  Kala Chithi hissed at the ferocity of Kitcha’s tone, the venom in his words. Amma stood there, her head bent. Then she raised her eyes and searched his for a long while.

  Kitcha felt shame crowd him. What had he done? But shame was erased by the violence he felt at the image of his mother with another man. He turned away, unable to stand there any more.

  When he returned, he was calmer and penitent. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He fashioned contrite words to redeem himself in his own eyes rather than hers.

  But she, too, could be unrelenting. ‘You meant exactly what you said, Kitcha. I was a fool to think you would see it from my point of view. How can you? You are still a child.’ With that his mother dismissed his attempts to take an adult stance and relegated him to what she thought he deserved – a child’s place.

  It took a year for her to get a divorce. And the next day she was married to her man. A quiet Physics teacher from Hyderabad. A year later, they moved to Tanzania. Kitcha heard occasionally from them and he went to visit them a few times. B
ut something had died between Kitcha and his mother. There was no going back to how they used to be. He had failed his mother and yet, how could she blame him?

  It was to Kala Chithi he unburdened his guilt and remorse. And it seemed to him that only she understood.

  Some years later his mother died of cancer. By that time Kitcha had already moved to the US. He couldn’t attend the funeral but as he told Kala Chithi, they had already said their goodbyes. That time when his mother left him in her care and went away with her new husband.

  It was only then Kala Chithi had snapped, ‘Do you have to be so unforgiving even after her death? Till the day she died, she didn’t stop tormenting herself with the thought that she failed you… Let her go in peace now, Kitcha. Let her be.’

  ‘How can you let her get away with it? How long will you make excuses for her behaviour?’ Monique had demanded of you one summer evening. The two of you were working in the garden. At least, she was weeding in the backyard of the cottage she and you had been offered for the whole of two months.

  Rich Monique with godparents who had a cottage in Umbria which they offered to their godchild and her lover while they were away in Argentina. Polyglot Monique who switched from English to Italian to French to Spanish, all in one sentence. Dealing with stewards, taxi drivers, marketplaces and bureaucracy with a breathtaking ease, no matter where she was. While you watched helplessly as you were subjected to what seemed like a long stream of nonsense.

  Silly, frivolous Monique who could never bury her nose in a book and live vicariously through her characters. But knew every wild plant and made soup of sorrel and then went out to dinner in her Armani sheath and talked fabrics and styles to her buyers with a hauteur that overwhelmed them.

  She perplexed you. A beeping dot on the radar that you puzzled over. She called you her cloud reader, her weather man, trailing kisses from the hollow in your neck to the line of your pubis. And you thought it must be the same for her: I wear the magic of the unknown.