The Lilac House: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  ‘Why will she talk to you?’ Rishi asked.

  ‘She will. She lost a daughter. How can she not be angry and bitter? Once I have her on tape, we can leave. I promise!’

  Rishi felt his muscles relax. He didn’t like the thought of her going out alone. But it was daytime and they would be gone soon. He didn’t want to spend another night in this cursed town or this dump of a lodge.

  ‘I’ll be back by six,’ she said as they ate biriyani from a banana-leaf parcel. ‘If you pack up, we can leave as soon as I am back.’

  He nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said suddenly.

  She looked at him for a long while. ‘Thank you,’ she said in reply.

  That was the last time I saw Smriti. Those were the last words I spoke to her.

  They came for me early in the evening. The younger man and three other men. I opened the door thinking it was Smriti. ‘You are early,’ I said as I unlatched the door. They pushed their way in silently.

  ‘Look, we are leaving,’ I said, pointing to our packed bags. ‘I told you we are leaving. We’ll go right now.’

  The younger man looked at me carefully. He gestured with a careless toss of his hand.

  They began beating me up. When I screamed, one of them gagged my mouth. At some point they used a knife. I was curled into a ball on the floor and with every kick and every stab of pain, I prayed I would die. I didn’t think of Smriti. Not once.

  This wasn’t cinema, for me to fight the villains and rescue Smriti, and for good to prevail.

  That was when I knew how human I was, how full of frailties. I could think only of myself and if this was how I was going to die.

  They left me broken and unconscious. Arul Raj found me an hour later when the hotel boy raised an alarm.

  Arul Raj took me to a hospital in a nearby town. He had me admitted. I needed some stitches on my back and my wrist was broken. There were some internal injuries too. He said I was sedated for a couple of days.

  When I opened my eyes, he was sitting there. He didn’t ask me what happened, and I didn’t explain. He either knew or didn’t want to know. ‘Smriti?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘She didn’t come back. I left a message for her at reception…’

  I looked away. I hoped that she had escaped in time. I borrowed his cell phone and tried calling her. An electronic voice said, ‘The subscriber you have dialled is out of range.’ I felt less afraid then. She must be with the theatre group, I thought. She must have fled to Madurai when she saw the mess in the room. Or, maybe someone warned her to make her escape. I sought refuge in that. That was all I could do. I was in too much pain to focus. What could I do? What could I have done?

  My cousin came to fetch me the next day and took me to Coonoor.

  A month later, when I returned to Bangalore, I heard about Smriti and the accident she was in. I thought it best to not get involved. To visit her would mean opening up old wounds

  Later, Jak sits by the bed, unable to still his frenzied thoughts that echo Rishi’s words: What could I do? What could I have done? Seeking penitence in a desperate need for forgiveness for not having been there to protect his daughter.

  The next morning, he waits for Meera to arrive. He will return to Minjikapuram, he has decided. A name in Rishi’s story seemed familiar, now he remembers where he first heard it. Chinnathayi – the elusive sweeper at the lodge.

  If she will not talk to him, she will to Meera.

  STAGE V

  THE EYE OF CALM

  I have often asked myself what represents a state of calm. Is it the sea that lies still as glass? Is it a clear blue sky? Is it the face of a sleeping child? Is it in the curve of a cat sitting on a window sill?

  Then it comes to me. In the summer of 2006, I was in London and went to see for myself the much discussed Alison Lapper Pregnant at Trafalgar Square. I went prepared to be revolted, angry even. What was Marc Quinn, the sculptor, thinking of?

  But in the whiteness of the Carrara marble, in the stillness of that form, in the full swell of the abdomen, I saw more than the celebration of the spirit. I saw the fall of the wind. I saw the calm that arises from the acceptance of the inevitable. A life would be born and with it all would change. But for now there was this. The quiet before the storm.

  In everyday life, as in a storm, the forces that determine the nature of events are bound to spin closer as the most important moment nears. But with the increasing speed, something else is born: an outward directed force from this frenzied spinning of circumstances.

  The scientific term for it is centrifugalforce. The ancients called it the acceptance of the inevitable. Without it, as the science of absolute teaches us, the universe would destruct itself to nothingness.

  The air spins. Faster and faster. One expects this, the eye wall, to be where the greatest fury of the storm resides. Except, the heart waits beyond the rim.

  As the centrifugal force draws out the spiralling air, it causes a vacuum. ‘Shunyata’, or the substance of nothingness. Mathematics and Philosophy corroborate this concept of zero.

  But the organic world has no room for fanciful notions. Either something is there or it is not there; everything has to become something else. For this is the law of the living world. All of nature abhors a vacuum, any vacuum. So, into that emptiness, some of the air flows from the top of the eye wall, causing it to sink.

  A cloud-free aperture emerges, of sinking air and light. This is also the calmest part of the storm – its eye.

  Professor J. A. Krishnamurthy

  The Metaphysics of Cyclones

  Meera’s eyes seek his:

  Do I have it in me? Do I want to be with him? For there will come a point when life and time become irreversible. Change will be born. Do I have it in me to live with that change?

  Hera knew where to keep the monster she had reared. It would appear only when she summoned it. But Meera reared the multi-headed Hydra within her. Every time she wanted to do something for herself, Hydra reared. Why? it hissed. How can you? Aren’t you being selfish by putting yourself first? Gradually Meera learnt to shut Hydra in its cave by submerging herself into the woman Giri wanted her to be.

  But this Meera doesn’t fear the hissing, many-headed Hydra. She knows how to chop its head of uncertainty off and bury it deep so it stays there.

  When Jak asks her if she will go with him to the little seaside town, she doesn’t hesitate.

  ‘Yes, I will,’ she says. ‘But why, Kitcha?’ This morning is a Kitcha sort of a morning. ‘What do you mean to do there?’

  He is perched on the table and she feels the pressure of his thigh against her arm. He shrugs. ‘Closure,’ he states, picking up her cup of tea and sipping from it.

  Meera clasps her hands together. It is seldom that a woman has a second chance. Actually, it is seldom that a man does either. Perhaps this is theirs, hers and his. Theirs.

  Chinnathayi flinches at the sight of the stranger framed in the doorway.

  Somewhere at the back of her mind, she has always known he will seek her out one day. That first time she heard he had come to Minjikapuram, she had gone away. She heard later that he had come up against silence everywhere. That was how it would be. They had bought her silence as well. She was forced to sell it. On it hinged the lives of her granddaughters, and hers too. She didn’t care about herself, but the girls would be orphaned if something happened to her. And she would have failed her daughter again.

  She knew no one would talk to him. Neither was she going to give him an opportunity to find her, she had decided, as she stuffed a change of clothes for herself and the girls into a cloth bag that evening and rushed to the bus stand.

  If she saw him, there was no telling what she might do. Or say.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asks baldly.

  The stranger smiles. A grim smile of knowing. ‘It is strange you do not ask me who I am. Does that mean you recognize me?’

  Chinnathayi doesn’t speak. Then she asks, even though she knows
who he is, ‘Well then, who are you? And what do you want?’

  She moves deeper into the house. The man doesn’t cross her threshold. He stays resolutely on it. ‘I am Smriti’s father. Do you remember Smriti?’

  Chinnathayi takes a deep breath. ‘How is she?’ she asks quietly.

  His expression doesn’t change. ‘It would have been better if she had died,’ he says in a voice devoid of all emotion.

  ‘Yes, it would have been better if she had died,’ Chinnathayi agrees, turning away. Her face is in the shadows. ‘Come in,’ she adds. After all these months of dithering, her mind is made up.

  She had sent Smriti away, she says. Chinnathayi sits with her back against the wall. The man and the woman are not used to sitting on the floor, she can see. Not like the girl.

  Smriti had squatted on the floor easily, playing with Vana and Kanaka, her nine- and seven-year-old granddaughters. ‘I told her there was nothing I could tell her,’ Chinnathayi says again.

  ‘But why did she come to you?’ the woman who is with Smriti’s father asks. ‘What information could you have given her that she didn’t have?’

  ‘My daughter died. She was almost five months pregnant when her doctor asked that she get a scan done. The doctor said she wanted to make sure everything was all right. What is the need? I asked. Did I have a scan when I had my babies? But her husband insisted we do as the doctor asked and he said we should go to the Meenakshi Nursing Home. It was he who wanted to know the sex of the baby.

  ‘The scan doctor said it was a girl child. Her husband walked away without speaking a word.

  ‘On our way home, my daughter asked me if I would be her midwife. I knew what she wanted. “No,” I said. “I will never be a midwife again. I swore that when you became pregnant the second time.”’

  Chinnathayi’s voice cracks.

  ‘She wept and pleaded. But I wouldn’t listen. I thought if I was firm, she would let it rest. Her husband arranged for the baby to be aborted. They didn’t tell me. I knew when they brought my daughter’s corpse home.

  ‘I ask myself this now. If I had been her midwife, she would have wanted me to snuff that life out. I used to do it once, after all. And my daughter would be alive. Unhappy but alive.’

  Chinnathayi reaches for her tobacco pouch and then pauses. ‘Your daughter heard about mine… she wanted to know exactly what happened. But I sent her away. My daughter is dead, what is there to talk about, I told her.’

  Jak shifts on his haunches. His leg has gone to sleep. He gazes at Meera, who looks shaken. Afraid, even. He knows remorse then. What has he done by dragging Meera into this? All he had thought of was himself – the real horror of Smriti’s last hours waited in Minjikapuram and he needed a bulwark. He has been thoughtless and selfish. He finds his hand groping for Meera’s.

  ‘But it didn’t end there,’ he says quietly.

  Chinnathayi nods. She sighs and stretches her legs out straight. The soles of her feet are cracked and there are deep furrows scoring the underside. She crinkles her toes a few times. ‘No, it didn’t end there.’

  They came to her house a little after Smriti left. ‘Where is she?’ Srinivasan asked.

  Chinnathayi pretended she didn’t know who he was asking about. ‘Who? My granddaughters? They are here… Vana, Kanaka, come here.’

  Srinivasan peered at the girls. ‘Don’t pretend, Chinnathayi. Did the girl come here? Saravana saw her.’

  Chinnathayi blanched at the name of her son-in-law. The nursing home had bought his silence when her daughter died. He was an attender there now. He didn’t see them for the butchers they were. The murderers who had killed his wife. Instead, he was their dog. Their loyal, boot-licking dog. The servile, conscienceless koodhi that he was.

  ‘Oh, him! He is a drunk. He doesn’t know his elbow from his knee.’

  Srinivasan frowned. He understood her implication well enough. ‘Saravana may be wrong but there were others who saw her come into this alley. They all remember her well enough. How many girls in our town will be seen wearing a jeans pant?’

  ‘What? That girl?’ Chinnathayi waved a dismissive hand. ‘Why didn’t you say so first? She left. About an hour ago.’

  ‘Do you know how to contact her?’

  ‘Why would I? I don’t even know her name.’

  It was Kanaka who chirped up. She had heard the flow of words between Paati and the old man who looked like a school headmaster. She could see fear in Paati. Why was Paati so worried? She knew how to help.

  ‘Aiyah, aiyah!’ she cheeped. A little bird with a big beak. ‘I know!’

  She felt Vana pinch her. She knew that Vana grudged her speaking out first. Vana pinched her all the time. She talked too much, both Paati and Vana said. But this time she was going to make it right for Paati. ‘Aiyah! I know that Akka’s name. It is Smriti and see, she gave us this paper with her number. She said you must tell Paati to talk to me and when she agrees, call me on this number. I’ll come and bring with me a doll and sweets, she said.’ Kanaka’s words echoed in the suddenly still room.

  Srinivasan leaned forward to pat Kanaka’s head and remove the slip of paper from her hand. ‘Clever girl! You have saved me a great deal of trouble. Here, Selvam, give her a twenty-rupee note. Buy yourself some thenkuzhal with it. And don’t eat it all at once. You’ll make yourself ill. Give some to Paati and your sister, do you hear?’

  Kanaka nodded her head happily.

  ‘That akka is going away tonight, she said. She took photos of us on her phone,’ she added, pleased with all the attention that was coming her way. She couldn’t stop smiling.

  Srinivasan stretched his hand out to Selvam.

  Chinnathayi spoke into the phone the words Srinivasan asked her to: ‘I thought about what you said. I will give you the papers, the scan report, everything. But you can’t be seen coming here, and I can’t be seen coming to the lodge. It is too dangerous. Come to the seashore. There is a vacant stretch with a casuarina grove, a little before the fishermen’s colony. I will be there by six. It is better if it is twilight. No one will spot us then.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks. You are doing something truly noble!’ she heard Smriti say into her ear.

  ‘Don’t hurt her, Aiyah!’ Chinnathayi heard herself plead. ‘She is a young girl. A young girl who doesn’t know what she is doing. She is going away later today. Please leave her alone!’

  Srinivasan smiled. ‘I am not a rowdy. What do you think we’ll do to her? We’ll deal with her as she deserves to be dealt with. No more. Now put this conversation out of your head.’

  Chinnathayi nodded slowly. There was nothing she could do.

  If there was a god, he would watch out for her. But god, she knew, sometimes closed his eyes when it came to women.

  Shanta had sent word for her to be there when it was time for the first baby to be born. My mother has brought many babies into this world, she must help me bring mine too. She has to be here with me, she insisted when her mother-in-law wanted to know why. Chinnathayi had said that she wouldn’t go unless Shanta’s mother-in-law wanted her there.

  ‘Is it a boy?’ Shanta whimpered.

  ‘A girl! A beautiful girl,’ Chinnathayi said, expertly tying the stump of the umbilical cord and swaddling the infant in a cotton cloth.

  ‘Oh!’ Shanta said, afraid to meet her mother-in-law’s eyes.

  ‘That was a fine birthing indeed!’ the woman said. ‘I thought you said she had a lucky hand. I thought she would bring a boy child into our home. I told you that I would call the woman who helped bring Saravana and his brothers into this world but you wanted your mother and no one else.’

  Chinnathayi went about settling the mother and child without speaking. ‘God decides. How can a midwife change things?’ she said.

  But the woman shook her head, her grim face unwilling to relent. ‘We have always had boys in our family. This is the first time a girl has been born in this house.’

  ‘Well, we also need girl children. The human race w
ould die out otherwise. What if your mother and mine thought of us as you do now? I was so happy when my Shanta was born,’ Chinnathayi said quietly.

  ‘Perhaps. But we don’t need girls in our family. Let someone else have them. As far as I am concerned, they are trouble, just trouble.’

  Later Shanta would agree. Her infant sucked hard at her breast. But she had little milk. Hungry, the child wailed, its persistent wailing echoing through the house and her. ‘She is right. Girls are trouble. Look at this creature. Useless waif, and it thinks nothing of demanding milk all day.’

  Chinnathayi took the baby in her arms and rocked it gently. ‘Don’t be cruel,’ she scolded her daughter. ‘What does this child know? As for your mother-in-law, it is the disappointment,’ she comforted Shanta. ‘The next time, when you have a boy, she will be over the moon, you’ll see!’

  ‘But what if I don’t have a boy?’

  When Shanta’s next baby was due, Chinnathayi timed herself to reach late. Let someone else be the midwife, she thought. And it was a girl again.

  ‘What will I do, Amma?’ Shanta wept.

  Chinnathayi didn’t know how to comfort her. It was this she thought of as she laid out her mat and curled up on it. It was three in the afternoon, but Chinnathayi felt a great fatigue wash over her. All she wanted to do was rest her head on a pillow and close her eyes for a while.

  In the folds of the sari, it waited. A tiny kernel of paddy. A baby’s fingernail. Glistening. Golden. Plump with grain. The ends tapering to a fine point.