Reminiscences of a Daughter

I had thought before it was a coincidence that all this had happened. That it could not have been helped, that the gap between papa and ammi had been too large to let papa be nicer to her. Not leave her way alone how she had been. But that night I found out it was not so. He had left her alone deliberately; when he insulted her it was on purpose. He was taking revenge against the world that had snatched away his Trishu, killed his Beji; and ammi in his eyes represented that world - he was taking revenge against ammi when he said those venomous words to her that night. I remembered ammi’s stricken face when he had turned on her and her crying afterwards, and I hated him for making her so miserable. How was he different from those guys whom he so snootily detested? Both were similar, immured in the world of their dogmas, acting on their prejudices, never knowing never understanding or even trying to understand how that hurt people around them. He indirectly claims to be so sensitive and understanding, but he is not. Could he see, ever, ammi’s pain as I did? He should have, isn’t it? He knew her as well and better. Either he was blind then, or worse, uncaring.

But I don’t think he was blind. He knew well what he was doing, that is why he so revered Atticus. He wanted to be like him - in those times when he fought ammi he was standing up for us against her, redeeming us from her stultifying influence. Ammi would not snatch us away the way Trishu had got snatched. And when ammi withdrew or cried after getting stung by him, he had won. I know it’s comical to put it that way, but I think I am right. He would often bandy lines from Mockingbird at her before trying to hurt her, before aiming at her his poisonous darts. And he had chosen Mockingbird precisely because Atticus didn’t seem real, because there was a mild halo round Atticus that he could appropriate. Speaking about Atticus was his beanstalk, on which he could climb to that seventh heaven where he and Trishu had been - from where he thought he had fallen after he had entered the everyday life of drudgery with ammi, after he had begun hating the world. That’s when I realized Mockingbird was a fairy tale too, a fairy tale that suited his intentions perfectly. A fairy tale that would let him hate the world without bearing the guilt for it. A fairy tale of a perfect Atticus. A tragic fairy tale, but nonetheless a fairy tale. Oh! How he loved it because Atticus was never wrong. Never quivered with fear, never burned with hatred. Never got tripped over by his emotions. Always spoke calmly the most sensible, the profoundest of lines. The paragon of justice, the modern Buddha. But did he ever see the modern Buddha was never tested? That for all of Atticus’ trials, Jem and Scout didn’t die under the knife of Bob Ewell. What would he have done if they had? Still talked about justice, still walked around in the shoes of Bob Ewell, still tried to extenuate the murderer for his blind spots? Perhaps he would have. That’s why he was not real, that’s why papa so loved him. Remember how I made you read the book before you met papa. You must have thought me mad, but I was badly scared. I wanted desperately that he like you, and I thought what if he doesn’t? What if he puts you in category of them? He would never outwardly show his dislike; no that would be unlike what he would think was the right thing to do, what Atticus would have done. After all I was an independent person, he should respect my choice. But he would have detested you all the same, tried to hurt you verbally the way he hurt ammi, tried to make you leave me because you were unsuitable for me. All because he would have thought I was a Trishu and I deserved somebody like him.

Sometimes I hated Trishu. We would be sitting in a room, all three of us, and there would be a deep silence. Even if it was broken accidentally, it would be papa talking to me. Between papa and ammi there was no talk, no exchange of looks or gestures, not even the least pretension to any domestic intercourse. They would always be looking in different directions. Ammi mostly at her work, papa at his books because he was reading something, or if he wasn’t then he would be staring vacantly at the ceiling or gazing out of the window. And I would rage why can’t he look at ammi or talk to her once. You even pay a stranger more courtesy. Or perhaps he only paid strangers more courtesy. Then I would imagine he was thinking about Trishu, dreaming about her, and I would feel a strange helplessness, a stab of pain in my heart. More than that. I wanted to stop him from doing so. Throw a stone and break that invisible mirror in which he was seeing Trishu. Grab his head and turn it towards ammi. Look at her. She’s also nice. Why did you marry her if she wasn’t worth looking at? The least vision of papa and Trishu together would set me wriggling; in throes of a feeling that was indescribable, that would leave me bitter all over. I wanted to get my nails on that vision pouring all my hatred into them, and scratch Trishu out of that vision. How could he dream about somebody who was not ammi? I hated love until I met you.







‘Can you tell me something?’

‘What?’

‘Why shouldn’t Monk hate Agnes, hate Oliver Twist?’

An Argument About God

Six months went by. The seed sprouted into a young and comely Night Queen with a voice that was musical, quite different from the one in which she had first asked the stone with childlike candor, why was he so hard to rest against so that her head was aching from leaning against him for a day, and could he be a little softer, she would be grateful to him for that. The stone, made woebegone by the request, replied that he was sorry but that was the way how he was made and it was not in his power to change himself. But soon there would come powerful northerly winds and they would lift the seed, lighter than a leaf, into their arms and lay her upon the soft ground, where she would find food, water and a comfortable rest. After that he had fallen silent, till the seed had prodded him to ask where was she.

‘In the Himalayas,’ replied the stone in a pensive voice.

‘It’s a beautiful place,’ said the seed, looking down into the valley, where there was an abundance of ladies-mantles and primroses and orchids spread one after another, swaying together in the wind in a cyclorama of newness.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Then why are you so sad?’

‘I wish I could be softer, and make you more comfortable.’

The seed then realized her request had hurt the stone. She tried to think of something to palliate it.

‘But if you were softer, you couldn’t have freed me, isn’t that so? God knows for how long I would have remained inside that locket,’ she said, and was happy the next moment at having thought of such a convincing argument so soon by herself. She felt it meant she was growing up.

His spirits revived by the seed’s words the stone rolled back a bit, just enough not to let the seed fall down. So where have you come from, he then asked her, and the seed replied she had come from a place that was far away down south. There was a Night Queen in a beautiful orchard on the side of a pond next to a big temple in a place called Gaya, where men worshipped a fat man with a very benevolent smile, and on that Night Queen, there was a fruit in which she had lived with many of her friends. The stone, baffled by the chain of references and not understanding much of what was said either, contented himself with asking what was Gaya.

‘Gaya, is a city,’ emphasized the seed.

‘What’s a city?’

‘Huh…’ sighed the seed. She had really come far from civilization.

‘A city is a place where many men live together.’

The stone became curious. He had never seen many men together. Just a few solitary wayfarers, who had sometimes passed by him in their quest for the next resting place.

‘Men live together?’

‘Hmm…’

‘Like sheep?’

‘Not like sheep. They make houses for themselves to live in.’

‘They make what?’

‘Houses. It’s a place in which they go inside, and it covers them up completely, and neither sun, nor rain, nor wind can touch them unless they want it to be so.’

‘How do they do that?’

‘They take… Forget it.’

‘Why?’

‘I have forgotten how they make houses.’

‘Oh! You also lived in one?’

‘No! I lived in an orchard by the side of a pond next to a temple, and a temple is a place where you worship gods, and god is…’

The seed gave up. It was a rather uphill task, explaining things to a stone.

‘I know what god is,’ the birch cut in at this point.

The discovery that the seed could indeed talk had astonished him, and for a while he was in the lookout for a way to join the conversation.

‘I am tall, and so I can see far and hear sharp, and I had once seen groups of men talking about god who lives somewhere yonder, among those peaks,’ he said pointing with his longest branch westward. ‘He is a crazy fellow they said, dark in color, is drunk half the time, and always sits thinking about something with his eyes closed, he has three of them by the way, and woe betide you if he opens his third eye. And that’s not the end; he actually has snakes entwined round his neck! Eeks! I wonder how he survives! Once a krait climbed up my trunk, and I got so scared, I almost fainted. Shook it off as soon as it climbed a branch.’

‘True, snakes are scary,’ agreed the stone, happy to have finally made sense of something and quite disliking god for allowing a snake to curl around his neck, ‘once one of them…’

‘That’s rubbish,’ the seed interrupted hotly before the stone could go further with his tale, ‘god doesn’t have any snake round his neck, or a third eye. He isn’t dark either. He is fat, fair, looks quite good you know, and his face always shines because there is sun behind his head. And he lives not on a mountaintop, but in a temple, where he is worshipped by many other fat men who carry bowls in their hands and go around with their heads bowed. Ya, he thinks all the time, on that I agree.’

‘Why does he think so much?’ asked the stone, getting pretty confused again and latching onto the one trait of god that both his friends agreed upon.

‘How could he have made the world if he didn’t think enough,’ it was the birch. ‘And by the way little girl, nice to know you can speak so early in life, but you should also learn to differentiate between reality and fairy tales. How can there be sun behind god’s head? We all can see the sun clearly. Is there a head in front of it? Don’t believe everything people tell you, men or not.’

‘I think I heard somebody saying god had snakes round his neck!’ was the reply he got.

‘When he’s made the world, he can have anything round his neck.’

‘When he’s made the world, he can have anything behind his head.’

‘Grow up kid.’

‘You stop acting so high and mighty first.’

‘To hell with god, whether he has made the world or not,’ exclaimed the stone, fed up with god by now, ‘why are you fighting about somebody who lives miles away, whether in a temple or on a hilltop. He might do as he pleases with his neck or head and no one the worse for it. Let him be, and think to his heart’s content. We have better things to talk about.’

And so the stone tried to turn the conversation to more cheerful things, but the birch and seed were not convinced and shortly fell silent. Though later on, when she felt the birch was not looking, the seed whispered to the stone that it was likely the birch was right too. The fruit in which she had lived with her friends had once told them that long ago, when god had decided to come down on earth, he was not fat the way men worshipped him in temples nowadays. He was a lean and thin fellow, roaming here and there, making many friends, and telling people good things so that they became happy. And then one day, deciding to go back from where he had come, he had died. But maybe that was not true, and it was probable that while wandering he had just got lost, and had sat down on the hilltop - tired after so much of walking. There he must be still - dark because of sitting in sun for a long time which he must have removed hence - and finding no one else, would have made friends with even such a scary thing as a snake. Quite possible, though she couldn’t imagine how he had grown a third eye or was threatening people with it. He had the most beautiful smile she was told. Maybe he had just grown grumpy with solitude. Hmm… that must be it.

She went on talking like this till the northerly winds arrived in the night, lifted her in their arms, and laid her upon the ground nearby. After that she promptly fell asleep.

The First Kiss

Celebrations followed the first kiss. Not the kind where you eat nice things, burst crackers, and catching hold of your love by her waist, swing her around and say, ‘hey! Let’s boogie woogie’; but where it takes place inside the heart, hidden, the joy unnoticed by any except for a pair of swallows about who you could wonder, what the hell were they were doing at this time of the evening out on the trees when it was so damn cold, and you sat down at a quiet place in the garden close to each other and yet shivering, tried to get closer, and then face to face, so close, you suddenly found your lips almost touching, and then imitating a nearby dream, reciting the beginnings of its rarefied verses, you let them tantalizingly brush against each other’s, and then again, and again, cupping the verses, drinking, more of them, then missing something deeply, savagely, trying to tear out that which continuously slipped from your hold, the verses now gone and in their place an anger, an intense pain, the strings of a violin tweaked till they were almost torn, and still the scorching want, to pull her inside you, to decimate, you wanted in your arms, nothing.

And then defeated, you parted, and yet it was a sweet defeat, because all that was inside you had gushed out, almost bringing out tears, the biting cold clawing out the slabs in the mountain that had blocked a spring, the unbearable pain replaced by a calm emptiness. And the world looked beautiful, the moon whiter, the snow clad treetops like monks clad in white fur gazing down at you with a beautiful smile and you laughing at what you had just imagined, the night cozy because day was much harsher, you wanted more swallows, and there was suddenly so much of happiness when you remembered the future will bring more kisses.

Passages

‘A friend, a very good friend,’ he said dreamily. ‘She was so eloquent I remember, explained so beautifully what I felt about that passage, about Maggie. We felt nearness to some passages, she said. They gave us succor, delight, a rousing of anger, a feeling of grief. They were the mason of dreams. Sometimes we passed by them without noticing their beauty, as a person looking for loved ones on a train docked in the station might pass running by their window without more than a glance, his mind consumed by the very desire to find them, disturbed by the joy of anticipation that filled his heart. But often, if we read slowly, the strokes on the paper would remove themselves from their sleeping nests, from their flat world of black and white, whirl up into the air and get transformed into iridescent objects, into frisson of emotions. Through such wizardry had a man once turned moonlight into a dove’s gift to the moon; another had turned the moon itself into a luminous clock; a woman had found bulbs of silvery music rolled inside a lark. They waved the wand of their muse and the letters curled into one another, making us see the bluest lake ever imagined, hear the sweetest song ever sung, kiss the softest lips ever kissed.’

The Lost Word

‘I was seeking him on orders from ammi, and saw he was searching for something. Searching vehemently, throwing books from his bookcase upon his bed. He was seldom that impatient with books, always treating them tenderly, making a fuss over them. I knew something was wrong then. So I went and asked him what was the matter.

I have lost a word, he said.

Lost a word?

Yes I am looking for this word. She’s somewhere stuck in here, he said tapping his throat, but she won’t come out. I have to find her, winkle her out. Where’s the blasted thesaurus?

Is it that urgent? Ammi is asking for you.

It is. Haven’t you ever lost a word? Don’t you know what it is like?

No, I said confused. I had certainly lost words often, but I was alright with it. Why was he being so impatient?

Then he told me how it was with him when he had lost a word.

It’s almost a physical pain you know, not being able to remember the word, the word that was living on the tip of your tongue. It was like making love to her in a dream. You were almost there but you never did it. The word slipped away.

You couldn’t find her then, didn’t matter where you were looking for her. She wasn’t sleeping in any dictionary; no thesaurus framed her sitting with her pals. Friends feigned they couldn’t understand you when you asked them about her, as if voicing her would be a sacrilege, and you wondered if this was a plot to keep her hidden from you – the word you had loved so, nurturing her, hoarding her carefully in your mind. It seemed as if the whole earth was colluding against you, shielding her from your senses, your thoughts.

Then resisting them all you resolved to remember her, closed your eyes clenched your teeth strained your mind when out of the blue, while the fingers of memory were caressing your eyes, you had this. A pair of twinkles. You felt there was surely an m in her, and maybe maybe an r too…. And then a void. Momentary blackness, the fingers groping hard inside it to claw out something.

An exercise in futility. It was all you got, two flighty drops of rain from a clear sky. Every other letter still kept away, distant, like those paper stars hanging from the roof on festive nights, tempting you to continually stretch for them but then gliding away at the slightest brush with the tip of your fingers, glittering, mocking wherever you looked, never giving you a moment’s rest, but never letting you hold them possess them either. Yes, the letters were like those paper stars. The word was like her.

That’s what he said. And when he had found his word, he was almost ecstatic. Got it, it’s marmoreal, he shouted from his room. Then looking for us he walked in the drawing room where we were sitting, waving a dictionary. It’s marmoreal he repeated, beaming at us.

What does it mean, I asked.

Like marble, he replied. Beautifully white and polished, but at the same time cold and hard. Marmoreal, he pronounced it slowly, stressing the middle syllable and the r, relishing the sound he made. Beautiful word, isn’t it? Gives you a gratifying sensation.’

Partings

When I found her I was overjoyed. Or rather she found me. Most of the times it happened that way. She was the active one, doing things, taking decisions, defining boundaries. Let’s go to the beach, we shouldn’t talk right now, let’s part. She was the one who left me. We parted at her insistence.

You know partings are not always the same. Some people fade into landscape, slowly but surely. Sadness fills you up and yet you know you won’t raise your voice and call them back. And they will at last blur against the horizon. Some disappear suddenly. Without a moment’s notice. As if they had gone over a cliff. And on some a curtain falls upon from the sky. The bare outlines can still be seen, but everything else gets swallowed up in blackness – of anger and hate. Even nearness doesn’t make any difference. They get lost to you. These partings are endurable. But there is one more that is not - when you clutch the hem of their shirts refusing to let them go and they drag you along with them over a cliff. You part while you are falling. Before crashing into the ground. Before going to pieces. But I didn’t go to pieces when she left me. I should have but I didn’t. Let me break into fragments. Have you ever felt like that? I felt like that. Wanted to cut my heart out it pained so much. All I wanted was emptiness, a moment’s calm. Wanted to clutch it in my hands and crush it, stop it for a moment. Let me be. I took a knife once and scratched deeply a piece of thermocol on which I had pasted the painting of a swan. A thrust on its body and then eight lines drawn outwards from that small dot, like the legs of a spider. A proxy for my breast. Then I took the pill – the key to help me keep my pieces together, preserve myself. I opened the room full of lampblack and rolled into it. The pill of cynicism.

It was all Beji’s fault. She had taught me everything but she hadn’t taught me how to go to pieces. How to accept it, let it happen. She never went to pieces. She was damn sure of herself. Of me. Firoj love is beautiful, she said. It has to be beautiful, that’s when it is true. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s important to remember this cliché. That’s why it has been repeated so many times, become a cliché. Wait and love will come to you. But you have to know what you want, recognize her when she comes. She made me feel that was all. I had just got to recognize her when she came, and everything would fall in place. There was nothing else. A closed world. Just her and me. Two tiny drops in a closed jar, waiting to become one. It happened that way. There was no other world, of complexities, of pain, of helpless drops that were more like puppets. Whom the finger of fate, the boneless wrist of time could flick around as they pleased. Send them somewhere else or leave them to dry. So I couldn’t accept it when they played around with us. I wanted to kill myself. Not my body, but the soul. I wanted to smother my heart in the black flakes. Stop the pain. Replace it with emptiness. I went and got myself married to a girl I didn’t even know.

A Dream

She stands, resting her back against the gulmohar tree. He stands in front of her, covering her. It’s a rainy May eve, the sky is clouded and it’s slightly cold. There is no one in the park. At least they cannot see anyone. They stand beneath the crimson umbrella. At times a stray drop of water, after having slept longer than its friends on the bed of leaves and flowers while seeking a temporary halt in the gulmohar, decides to continue its journey downwards, but finds unexpected rest on their bodies instead. One such big drop has just fallen on the swell of her cheeks beneath her eyes, and he watches it, mesmerized, as it slowly travels down her cheek. She expands her eyes by stretching her facial muscles downwards and tries to see the drop he is staring at. She cannot see the drop, but her attempt makes the drop travel faster and then it falls off her chin. He looks up and laughs. She looks comical. His laugh breaks her concentration. She raises her eyes and returns his gaze. She feigns petulance.

What’s so funny?

The way you are making faces.

I am not making faces; I won’t talk to you.

Why?

Come on. I am hurt by you laughing into my face!

I was not laughing into your face.

Literally you were.

Literally let me give you a kiss then. To make that fine.

She pretends for a second as if she is giving that offer careful consideration.

Ok, literally you may, but let me make that a bit unliteral. Have you heard Browning’s views on a kiss?

No, please proceed.

Thank you.

The moth’s kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made me believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide open I burst

That’s all. There is a second stanza and it has to do with a bee’s kiss I believe, but I don’t remember it.

So you want me to kiss you like a moth.

Yes.

He kisses her like a moth. He gently brushes his lips against hers, moving his face side to side. Once. Twice. Thrice. But she is not opening her mouth. It’s suddenly dark. He hits something with his lips. It’s not her mouth. He backs off. She’s not there. She’s there but she is far off. It’s dark everywhere else but he can clearly see her. There is a moth sitting on her mouth. She’s flapping her hands. Her face is contorted. She’s trying to say something. She’s in pain. He feels she can’t breathe. Take that moth of your mouth. But nothing happens. She’s frantically waving her hands. She’s pointing somewhere. What? The police have arrived. They are knocking at the door. She’s inside. Clarence! Clarence! But she can’t reply. She is choking on the moth. There is no one inside somebody says; let’s burn the house. But she is inside! Don’t burn her. Break the door. He is clawing in the air. They are burning the house. Run out! He puts out his hand through the walls. Catch it. But she’s slipping backwards. She’s stumbles over something, falls, and disappears from sight. She’s fallen into a well, and he’s lying over her. He looks into her mouth and there is a dark void. There are no teeth. She has a terrifying smile on her face. She looks horrible. He screams and sits up to find that he was lying curled up on the sides of the burnt badminton court. He breathes. Again and again. The sudden disturbance makes Greasy raise her head and she stands up energetically, but seeing him and no one else she sits back on the ground. She rests her head on her paws and whimpers. He is still exhausted and dizzy and his head throbs because of continuous weeping, and so he goes back to sleep. He is feeling cold.

A story dreamt from Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerto

The girl got up from her bed. Nimbly she put her step forward. One. Two. Three. Thump. She rose in the air. Four. Thump again. She went up once more. She bounced like a balloon on its exquisitely small buttoned tail, and went up so high she hit her head on the roof. ‘Ouch! That hurt,’ she exclaimed. Bouncing in the room was boring. So she went out of the room and still bouncing, balanced herself in the air before the staircase, her hand on the banisters. Then chuckling she attempted a cartwheel on the stairs. The staircase let out a shrill warning. ‘Are you crazy, you’ll hurt yourself,’ it told her and pushed her back when her small hands and feet touched it. It made her roll in the air, her limbs cutting a circle like the hands of a clock. She giggled.

Thankfully she landed on her feet on the floor and bounced. Bounced up and down, up and down, at the same place. She was hooked. The view ahead had made her look at it with curiosity. There was silence for a while as she stared at the half-open doors in her front, green light coming out of the opening. She could also see a luminous round ball behind the doors, floating in the air in the centre of the room. As luminous as the moon. All of a sudden there was a thunderous sound and the ball disappeared. She screamed, ‘let me down,’ and her feet came to rest on the floor. She skittered to the door and flung it open.

She found it was a green kitchen she was looking into. Everything was green, except for the teapot. The teapot was white, made of china, and with a Chinese painting on it. The painting was black except for the fire coming out of the dragon’s mouth which was red. She felt playful, went and climbed the green table in the middle. It was made of leaves joined side to side. Its legs were made of vines. She jumped up and down on the leaves and they made a screeching sound. ‘Don’t stretch us so much or we will tear,’ they told her. But she ignored them and kept at her play.

Suddenly with a scratchy sound the leaves tore and down she went, hurtling like lead pellet in a black well. Afraid, she closed her eyes. She stopped with a jerk after some time. White light flooded her face. She opened her eyes and saw the intensely bright ball in front of her nose. Its light burned her eyes and she shut them back. ‘Open your eyes,’ a voice said, and she replied back that she won’t because her eyes hurt. ‘It won’t hurt anymore,’ the voice said. Gradually she could feel the light around her face mellow down till it was almost gone. Then she felt a light touch on her nose. She opened one eye and saw the reduced ball sitting on the tip of her nose. It tickled her. She sneezed and it bounced on her nose. She could hear it laughing. It had a musical laugh with crinkles in it, with a deep breath drawn at the end as if it was smoothing those crinkles.

‘Where am I?’ she asked it.

Beneath the table, it answered.

‘Why it’s so dark here?’ she asked it again.

‘To punish you for your naughtiness. You hurt the leaves.’

‘How shall I get out?’

‘I’ll take you with me, but first tell me this. Can you bounce?’

‘Yes, I can. At least I could.’

‘Then it’s ok. Bouncing is like cycling. You won’t forget it once you have learned it.’

‘I didn’t learn it. It came to me by itself. One morning I wished I could bounce, and well, there I was bouncing all over my house. Bouncing over my bed while sleeping, bouncing over the floor while walking, bouncing over the chair while eating. My brother got really angry when I bounced over the bicycle once, while he was taking me through the meadows, where there was complete silence except for the birds singing a cantata.’

‘Birds can’t sing a cantata.’

‘I know. I made that up. But I don’t bounce except when there is silence or music or my own voice, so they must be singing something.’

‘They have their own melody. Ok then, come with me since you can bounce. I will take you up with me,’ it said.

‘But how?’

In response it left her nose and went up in the air. From there it dropped a luminous thread, as if a string was unraveling from a ball of wool. Wrap it around your wrist, it told her. When she had finished wrapping the thread, it asked ‘are you ready?’

She replied yes.

‘Zoom along then,’ it said, with a shake of the thread which sent her swinging in the well from side to side.

‘Don’t do that,’ she cried. Her wrists hurt when she swung.

‘Oh! Sorry,’ it apologized and slowly rose up and she rose with it, pulled along by the thread. Soon they were going up so fast that she felt giddy. They continued their journey till they had reached the leaves. She could see the leaves from afar, their greenishness in the white light of the ball. She could also hear their voices. They were screeching again, though in a language that she couldn’t understand. The ball stopped when they had reached the leaves. It told them something in their screeching language and they replied back to it, their voices louder. It looked as if it was fighting with them. She closed her ears with her fingers, there was so much of screeching. The ball managed to persuade the leaves to give way at last, since they opened up after a while.

She saw she had come back into the kitchen, and was standing on the table. Atop the table there was one more thing besides her and the teapot. A mandolin. She looked up questioningly at the ball. In reply it rose again, taking her with it towards the roof. It dropped her off on the floor, away from the table.

Then it spun once, and the table disappeared suddenly. The mandolin and the teapot seemed to hang in mid-air. She looked at the ball with wonder. What was this thing? The ball discarded the luminous thread it had given her, which fell down and hung from her wrist like a new-fangled piece of ornament.

Shall I make the mandolin bigger, the ball asked her? She nodded a yes. Clap your hands then, it said to her, and she clapped. The mandolin grew bigger. Clap again. She clapped again. The mandolin grew bigger still. She clapped and clapped till the soundbox of the mandolin had become half as tall as her.

The ball told her to stop there. She saw it move near to the mandolin, fly slowly round it as if inspecting it. Then it went, sat on one of the thick steel strings, and moved up and down. There was faint music from that effort.

‘Bounce,’ it commanded her. She willed herself to bounce to the tune of the music. One. Two. Three. Thump. She went up in the air and bounced, as always like a balloon. But the ball was not content with that. ‘That’s not high enough,’ he told her. ‘Bounce high enough to come up here.’ She hit the ground hard on her next descent. It hurt a bit, but she bounced high, higher than the ball, almost touched the roof. ‘Good,’ commented the ball. ‘Now come near me,’ it told her; she was still some distance away. She then swung her hand and tried to whirl in the air, attempting to move towards the ball. She succeeded; better than what she expected, even better than what she wanted. The air lacked the friction provided by the ground. She moved erratically, like an out of control top, and fell over the mandolin.

‘Easy girl,’ the ball told her. It then did its spinning act once again. The act lifted her magically, in slow motion as if a puppet was being raised by a thread by its scruff, and she found herself standing in the air above the taut strings.

‘Now bounce on the strings,’ the ball told her. She bounced. The ball bounced too. They bounced together. They made music for some time. Slowly everything in the room began to rise. They, the mandolin, the teapot, the green almirah, the green utensils on the green shelf. The roof opened up and she could see the blue sky that was ready to receive them. But then there was trouble. She heard a crash; one of the utensils has crashed on the floor. More utensils crashed. All of them crashed one by one. Then the almirah crashed too. Only four things were left floating in the air: they, the mandolin, and the teapot.

Then a stranger thing happened. The Chinese picture began to peel of the teapot like the rind of an orange. She could see the teapot hanging from the ends of it, before the teapot crashed too. Only the small two-dimensional dragon, as if made of paper, continued floating along with them.

‘Do you want a magic carpet the shape of a dragon,’ the ball asked the girl. She said thank you, that would please her very much. Then clap once more, it told her. She understood and started to clap, as she continued bouncing on the mandolin, till the paper dragon had become big enough to hold them all. ‘You can stop bouncing now,’ the ball told her. ‘This will hold you and me and the mandolin. We can fly away.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere.’

They flew away.

The Chosen Planet

She was happy. We were finally climbing the hills. It was an easy climb and we would be at the caves in no time. She wanted to come here for so long, she said. But no one was ready to accompany her and she was afraid to come alone. She scooted ahead of me whenever there was level ground and beckoned me to come faster. And then fell behind again when the climb started. It was funny. She was aware I was more athletic than her, and hated that. She at times paused to catch her breath and stood silently with her hand on her hips. For a few seconds, not knowing that, I would keep climbing blithely. And then suddenly I would turn around to find, where that was possible, that she was standing a few meters below, panting and gazing calmly at the vista.

When I asked her why she wasn’t asking me to stop for her, she replied haughtily that wasn’t needed. She would catch up with me. I started being careful then. Slowed myself, stopped and looked back every minute whether she was right behind me or not. That irked her further. She informed me in chaste Hindi that she was not a child and that I should continue climbing at my own pace – there was very little danger she would tumble off the hill. I told her it was not consideration for her safety that made me slow down. I just wanted to be with her. That mellowed her; she gave me a warm smile and said graciously thank you very much. Yet she refused to take my help. When I once offered to pull her up over a rock, she smiled, shook her head, and clambered up using her hands.

When we reached the top of the hill I helped wash the grime off her hands she had accumulated over the climb. And then she discovered she had forgotten to bring her hanky. I seldom carried mine and pretended I too had forgotten it. I naturally assumed she would use her dupatta as a substitute, but discovered it was not that natural to her. I offered her alternately my shirt and my trousers to wipe her hands on, but she grimaced and said no. What then I asked? In reply she shook her hands vigorously, thrice, and then got down on her knees to wipe them on the grass. She rubbed them slowly on the grass - first her palms, then the back of her hands, and then the sides of her fingers. Then she put both her hands on the grass palms down and sat back on her legs like a Japanese lady preparing for the tea ceremony. And then she tried to lift her face towards the sky, not wanting to take her palms off the grass, somewhat like a puppy sitting on its haunches and looking up to you. Her eyes were closed and there was a blissful smile on her face. She let out a contented moan and uttered the words: ‘the grass is so soft.’ Then she, as was her habit, clutched the grass in her hands and tugged at it, shaking her head with teeth clenched, as if the puppy was getting himself rid of water after having a bath. I laughed.

We looked at the sun as he went over the hills. The horizon was a color I didn’t know the name of, and wanted to know. Isn’t it beautiful, she said to me. Her voice surprised me. It was wistful, sad than happy. I asked her why she was unhappy. She said it was because she wanted to see such a sunset everyday. Where she lived in Berhampur the sunset was boring, and the sun went over brick houses. Who wanted to see the sun set behind bricks? She wished she lived here. Hills were so beautiful, so green. Then she paused and thought for some time: but at least she was happy she was not born in a desert.

I told her I had heard sunsets in desert were beautiful. But that didn’t flutter her at all. What about the rest of the day, she asked. I can’t imagine living without trees around me. At least a few trees. Imagine if we lived on the moon, could survive there without water. Without any trees or other animals. Just the endless dusty lands, the craters, the rocks, the plateaus, the mountains. Wouldn’t it be horrible? You need life, and life around you other than yours. We should thank god he didn’t put us on moon. What was he thinking? To have made one planet so beautiful and others so ugly. I think he put all his life’s effort into creating earth, to make it as beautiful as possible. Perhaps we are really his chosen planet.

A Small Conversation

‘If we were to after death stay forever in the way in which we died, then I would choose to die with my head resting on the window of a bus traveling on a boulevard lined by tall eucalyptuses, listening to music. It would be night and there would be a cool breeze caressing my face.’

‘Have you ever kissed a girl?’

‘No.’

‘Shows. I would die kissing my sweetheart.’

Music

Music makes Firoj Ahmed cryptic - in both body and soul. His words, usually strong, tricky and profuse, an undercurrent of a torrential mountain stream, become sparse in the times he is leaning back in his chair, hearing one of his many cassettes play - cassettes that are kept in three wooden baskets lying on the floor besides the music system. He says it is like eating during a widespread famine, crumbs of cake that have been preserved over years of poverty. So while he is eating those scrumptious crumbs, he wants to savor their every atom.

Even when the words do find expression, they are uneven, abrupt. As if among the ones he’s been thinking of during those silent moments, translating them into sounds and gathering them upon his tongue, some have slipped out of his mouth mistakenly, it not being capacious enough to hold them all. The words retain their trickiness, but now they are much softer. So is his voice.

He is not happy or sad along with the mood of the music, or the song. He floats upon those he’s created on his own, prompted instead by the thoughts and memories the music evokes.

Sometimes he gets up from the chair and walks to and fro feverishly, when the notes of an exuberant song have filled him with animation, with an uncontrollable urge to move his fingers along its crests and troughs. But walking on the strings of melody, it’s sadness that often enters his heart. Then he puts his arms on the arms of the chair and leans back on it, his eyes closed.

The sadness slowly deepens - in stages. After a few moments he tilts his head sideways, resting them upon his fist. As if the sorrow has taken away his strength to hold it high. He becomes almost motionless then, except at times when a quiver passes through his body, and the eyes open vacantly upon the room. For a while they take in nothing.

While moving down and down with the tune, his heart has paused for a brief instant in between. Then it goes down on its way again. Like a cascade of water down the stairs. And his eyes close.

She

She is, as he sees her, a small woman. He sees the small fingers that clutch the bars of the grilled gate like an anxious child; the small ears that the cropped hair like that of an army man cannot cover; the small waist unencompassed by the sari on which are visible loose folds of skin, the sign of old age, and a small scar made by a surgeon’s scalpel; the small feet that rub against each other at times showing her restlessness - something the tranquility of her form is perhaps trying its best to hide. Is she really a clever murderess made restless by his presence (does she even know he is here?) or are these the signs of absorbed grief?

He has been given the task of finding that out. He is nervous himself. He is a rookie; having joined the police force not weeks ago, he is a good choice to probe a murder that nobody is bothered about, yet the end-result of which seems clear to most near him. Hundred to one the wife did it, his boss has told him. It’s a no-brainer, you just have to go there and tighten the particulars so that the defense gets no space to maneuver, another of his friends has said.

They would know; they have been in the department for a long time.

But now that he is here, he is not so sure. She looks too frail to commit the violent killing that she has been accused of. He has seen pictures of the crime scene; the man while sitting on a sofa was murdered by someone who had repeatedly bashed him over his head with a stainless steel pan. The pan was found lying on the blood-stained sofa next to the body with her fingerprints on the handle. She was his wife, and the case as far as the police were concerned was over. He has been sent to complete the formalities and gather some safe experience in the process; he cannot possibly bungle such a straightforward case.

One of the few things in life that make him afraid is an unexpected silence. Because of this weakness in spite of his better than average looks he has been a failure with women. He is not a great talker, nor can he cope with the awkward drop of sudden silences that a conversation now and then sidles into when the thread of a topic has been stretched too far. He has this propensity to rush into those silences bridging them with humorous one-liners. His attempts usually fall flat earning him suppressed snickers at his inanity, and one more of his numerous dates goes for a toss.

A while ago, when he arrived at the doorstep of this house, he was greeted by the same old enemy. He had shambled over the gravelly path nervously like a schoolboy to his first debate expecting to be heckled by an angry household. The gravelly path ended in a small flight of dirty steps leading up to a matted portico and thence to a white single-paneled door that was slightly ajar. With effort he had suppressed the urge to peep inside the house through the slit. Those are the traits of a common detective, not an upright policeman he told himself, and looked for the absent doorbell. After half a minute of fruitless search he decided he would have to make do with knocks on the white panel. He knocked twice on the door, two powerful knocks, and climbed down the flight of steps to wait on the gravelly path.

That’s when it hit him – the house was unexpectedly quiet. There was not a drop of sound plopping against his eardrum. The leaves of the unknown tree in the garden, but was it a tree or was it a shrub and he pondered over the doubt for a moment trying to extract from a long unused corner of his brain what differentiated a shrub from a tree before the menacing silence dragged his thoughts back into the scrimpy realms of fear, were motionless. He could not hear grating windowpanes, noises from the scullery, human voices trying to communicate, or when he looked the other way, sounds from any vehicle moving on the stretch of the road as far as his ears could hear. Even the bluebottles were silent.

What is this house he wondered? Perfect for a murder because no sounds escaped its walls? Or the most unsuitable as even the slightest scream would light up this cove of silence, bring forth unsuspecting eyes to enquire as to the scream’s whereabouts?

He climbed the flight of stairs and knocked again. Thrice this time, and then he scurried back to his waiting place as if he suspected a phantom would emerge out of the door any minute and chase him down the gravelly path. How he with such a craven disposition had become a policeman of all things, he wondered to himself with self-deprecating smile and an incredulous shake of the head.

When even the wait of a few minutes after the second bout of knocks proved useless, he decided perhaps he would have to enter the house uninvited. He tiptoed up the steps making as little a noise as possible and peeped inside the house through the thin opening hoping to see a human form that he could call to get a formal invitation. His hopes were in vain; all he could discern from his safe harbor were a couple of wall hangings made of small chiming bells (or bells that should chime but were now obstinately silent), a wall clock, and one-half of a wooden cupboard on the top of which was kept a salt-dispenser, a jar of pickle, a big box of matchsticks and a few glasses. He had an idea. He bent down, picked up a small chunk of gravel from the mat, and aimed at the glasses. Perhaps the loud clink of the impact would alert some denizen to his existence. Hope takes time to die. He missed.

He entered the house then, into a drawing room partitioned by a white chintz curtain dotted with big purple circles. The curtain was closed. To his front was a door leading into a narrow passageway; he could see doors on either side of the passageway.

A French Kiss

I had a French Kiss
Oh with a French miss
And her soft French lips
Were oh! so piping hot

That when she kissed me
A little teased me
Oh it so pleased me
Leave her for a moment I could not!