Authors: Anita Nair

Tags: #Bangalore (India), #Widows, #Contemporary Women, #Domestic fiction, #General, #College teachers, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage

The Lilac House (18 page)

BOOK: The Lilac House

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But my mother-in-law didn’t think it was the thoughtless act of a foolish girl. ‘Silly?’ she snapped. ‘How could you, Vaidehi? You betrayed his trust, our trust in you. It’s not the hair. I hope you understand that. But you should have consulted us before you did what you did. You should have spoken to him. That’s what has made him so angry. How can I intervene now?’

I wept at her feet, seeking forgiveness for my transgression. She softened then. But only enough to say, ‘Maybe he will find it in his heart to love you again when your hair grows back. He is a stubborn man, my Ambi. Once he makes up his mind, nothing can budge him. Pray to Eashwara that your hair grows back quickly.’

And so I waited. All I had to sustain me was the sea’s booty that my hair had fetched me from the waters of the ocean. A handful of shells that echoed with the forlorn music of another time.

In time my hair reached the length it used to be. My head drooped. The ache in my shoulders began again. And Ambi was
back to being the man he was. He had made his point and he could be magnanimous with his forgiveness and largesse.

Only I wasn’t the same any more. I was like one of the shells I kept on my bathroom ledge. Hollowed out.

Seven years after we were married, we were still childless. Ambi decided that he would wed again. It would be amicable and civilized. The new wife and I would live like sisters, he said. The child he would father would have two mothers, he said. Our son would be twice blessed.

I said nothing. I knew that there was no use protesting. Ambi would do as he pleased. And he would do it so civilly, so gently, that no one would even reproach him. That was Ambi’s greatest weapon: to be the most reasonable being even when he was crumbling your life and self-respect into a million pieces.

I finally had a reason to leave him. Not even my father could fault me for this. I was the wronged wife. So I left him. Before I went, I cut my hair at the nape of my neck. I gave it to Ambi. A long braid woven with jasmine and kanakambaram. ‘This is all you ever wanted of me. Keep it. And let me go,’ I said, walking out.

My father wept when I went home. ‘What sins am I paying for?’ He hit his head several times. ‘I have two daughters and they are both destitute. One abandoned by her husband. The other abandons her husband. What am I to do?’

‘And what is this, Vaidehi?’ he demanded, his eyes settling on my shorn head.

‘I am not going back. And I will never grow my hair again,’ I said. ‘If you force me to, I’ll leave home. I will be a whore but I won’t be a wife. Not Ambi’s wife. And don’t call me Vaidehi ever again. I am Kala, do you hear me?’

Jak swallows. The lump in his throat refuses to budge. What had he done? He hadn’t meant to ruin Kala Chithi’s life. All he had
wanted was to see her smile again. The smile that so reminded him of his mother’s, and which he seldom saw after Appa left.

He walks into the room and touches Kala Chithi’s shoulder. She jumps.

‘Hush, hush, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ he says.

‘I couldn’t sleep so I came to sit with her,’ a flustered Kala Chithi says, not meeting his eyes.

Suddenly weary of all the pretence and deceit, Jak takes her hands in his. ‘I didn’t know, Kala Chithi. I didn’t know any of this…’

She doesn’t speak for a few moments. Then Kala Chithi reverts to being the kindly aunt he can always count on. ‘How could you, Kitcha? I didn’t tell anyone. Not even your mother. But you mustn’t blame yourself for my life. No one is ever responsible for what happens to someone else. You have to accept that. It is the truth. Whether it is my life or Smriti’s.’

Jak bows his head. Redemption on a platter. Only, he cannot accept it.

A
ccept this day as a gift. Don’t clutter it up with this and that, Meera tells herself sternly.

She is all alone in her home. It is a Wednesday and Meera cannot remember when she ever had a day to herself in her old lilac house.

She looks at the envelope curiously. The return address is Watermill Press. She opens it and a cheque flutters out, and a clipping. A business magazine has excerpted a small section from her
Corporate Wife’s Guide to Entertaining
. This is her share of the payment, the letter says.

Meera holds aloft the clipping.

THE CORPORATE WIFE’S GUIDE TO ENTERTAINING
AN EXCERPT

1.
Invitations – Write one. How long does it take to write an invitation? But think of the impression it will make on your guests. And do remember to send it at least two weeks in advance. Note: If you are the guest, you must RSVP.

2.
Welcome – Be dressed and ready by the time your guests arrive. You ought to be there to greet them as they come to the door.

3.
Personal belongings – Set aside a place for your guests to leave their personal items. Shawls, briefcases, carry bags, whatever. Find a place where they can be kept and found easily. During the monsoons, leave a bucket in the porch or entrance foyer so dripping umbrellas may be left there.

4.
Gifts – Your heart may balk at the thought of yet another candle or wilting bouquet but learn to accept hostess gifts with a smile. It just might help to turn to your husband and exclaim: Oh, look what xyz has brought us… Note: If you are the guest, choose a small but unusual gift. And avoid desserts and flowers. The last thing a hostess needs to worry about is stretching your dessert among the guests or finding a vase for your flowers.

5.
Children – Some guests may want to bring their children along. While you may not like it, there is very little you can do about it. The best thing to do is to ensure that you tuck the little horrors away before they get into your Swarovski crystal or scratch your antique furniture.

If you have children, ask (read that as bribe) them to entertain the visiting kids. Or, call in for pizza and offer juice or coke in plastic glasses and send them off to watch TV in a room away from the dining area. You don’t want them playing Ring o’ ring o’ roses or Fire in the mountain, run, run, run, around your dining table!

6.
Breaking the ice – Before you offer guests drinks and hors de oeuvres, take care to introduce people to each other and add a sentence or two about what they do so that any embarrassment can be avoided.

7.
Buffet or sit-down – If you are having the party catered for, then a sit-down banquet is a great idea. It is impressive
and will show you and your husband in the best possible light. Note: Check the credentials of the caterers with a few people who have used them before you hire them. Also, caterers can be expensive. In which case, unless you have adequate cutlery, crockery and household help to serve and remove the used dishes, plan a buffet meal where you can convert your dining table into a food counter.

8.
Hors de oeuvres – If you are having caterers, brief them beforehand on the pattern of circulation and at what intervals each eat should appear. If you are doing it yourself, leave clusters of short eats at strategic places. Note: chips, peanuts, savouries are all very well for college parties. Think salads, satays, cheeses, cold cuts, etc., all of which can be either bought or prepared in advance. Note: Look for interesting bowls and platters to serve them in. You want to be seen as a hostess with an eye for the unusual. Use the nibbles time to go to the kitchen to give the rest of the meal a quick dekko.

9.
Dinner – Allow one hour to pass before you invite the guests to the table. Make sure that the salads are crisp, and the hot dishes are piping hot and not lukewarm. Note: It may be a good idea to invest in chafing dishes.

10.
Dessert – By carefully structuring your party, the dessert and coffee phase can be used to best advantage too. It is not just on golf courses and in boardrooms that deals are made. Make the most of that final pleasurable moment by moving the dessert and coffee back to the living room.

11.
Goodbyes – By not delaying dinner, you can be quite sure that your guests leave on time. When they are ready to do so, go with them to the door, don’t get into a long convoluted goodbye and/or make plans for future meetings. Instead, thank them again and return to the other guests. Note: If you are the guest, do not engage the host in a long conversation at the door.

12.
No matter what, remember that if you don’t enjoy your party, it will show. So tell yourself all will be fine, pour yourself one glass of wine (no more), and be the corporate wife you are – gracious, charming and super efficient.

MEERA GIRIDHAR

Meera’s mouth twists into a grim smile. Who is this woman who dispensed such advice with the sagacity of a Sibyl? That life seemed so distant from the one she lives now.

She makes herself a pot of tea, lays out a small plate of biscuits and takes the tray with her into her favourite nook. A little tucked away veranda on the northern side of the house, camouflaged by trees. None of the others like this side of the house. It is a dark spot of disrepair. Broken ladders and bamboo poles used a long time ago to build scaffolding are stacked against the wall. Cement has hardened into boulders in sacks. Even the trees are old and dense with foliage and in one corner Meera has her compost pit. During the rains, a sweet fetid odour of rotting mulch rises from it and settles in the air.

But this December mid-morning, the sun trickles its way in through the trees, erasing the darkness and cleansing the air. Light falls on the grass and turns it an emerald green. Two kittens play hide-and-seek while their mother, the cat Meera is hoping to turn into a house cat, lolls against the ladders, peering through half closed eyes. Meera sips her tea and feels awash with content. We could be sisters, she tells the cat mother, you and I. We have our responsibilities, our burdens, but for the moment we have this: a place in the sun, a life in the shade.

The cat blinks. Meera smiles. She turns the page of the notepad in which she has begun making notes for
The Corporate Wife Abroad
. She has a gut instinct about this one, like she had with
The Corporate Wife’s Guide to Entertaining
. And she isn’t going to just do a proposal. She will write the full book out. There are other publishers she can write to – Penguin, HarperCollins, Hatchett, Random House, Rupa, so many of them. Surely one of them would buy it. The first thing to do is to divide the book into chapter heads. Meera sips her tea and doodles on the page.

Then, from inside the house, she hears the trilling of the phone. Meera looks at the cat. ‘Should I?’ she asks of her sister.

The cat pauses its slow washing of itself. You must do what you must do, while I do what I have to do, it seems to say. It rises slowly, stretches and walks away.

The phone continues to ring. And Meera, chastened by the disapproving tilt of the cat’s tail, rushes indoors.

‘Hey Meera, how are you?’

Meera feels her smile freeze. It is Soman at the other end of the line.

‘I am fine. And you?’

‘What do you expect, Meera?’ he asks quietly. ‘I waited for you to call me.’

Something stirs in her. She had begun avoiding his calls ever since Nayantara made known her displeasure of his presence in her mother’s life. But the truth is, she misses hearing from him, being with him.

‘I am sorry,’ Meera says. ‘I have been extremely busy.’

There is a silence. Then he says, ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Work, work, work, what else?’ she says, careful to sound light-hearted.

‘I’ve missed you, Meera.’

Meera doesn’t speak. She doesn’t know what to say.

‘Can we meet?’ he asks suddenly.

‘I…’ Meera begins, unsure how to turn him down.

‘How about lunch this afternoon?’ Soman interrupts. ‘You have to eat, and I have to eat. Why don’t we eat together?’

Meera laughs. A carefree sound of merriment.

For the day, she will cast aside all her discomfiture – Nayantara’s disapproval, her own repugnance at the idea of a youthful boyfriend – and go out with him. Vinnie is right. She needs to introduce some vivacity into her life.

I
s vivaciousness allowed only in a young woman? Ought she to settle for sedate graciousness?

Meera searches her face in the mirror. She seldom wears make-up.

‘Mine is just a water and Nivea routine,’ she said airily, when Vinnie had insisted she start taking better care of her looks.

‘Your mother, actually your grandmother too, are better turned out for their age,’ Vinnie murmured, laying a few tubes of lipstick before her.

Meera narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you serious? Lily looks what she is – an aged movie actress with her pencilled eyebrows and red lips. And as for Mummy, mutton dressed as lamb!’

‘Don’t be unkind, Meera. They are at least making an effort, whereas you are being priggish and self-defeating.’

Later, Meera lay in bed and wondered if that was what made Giri leave. That she had begun to look her age while he felt the need to cling to his youth. Meera bit her lip to still the trembling. Would it never cease? This drumming of doubts in her head…

Meera sits in front of the dressing table with articles of artifice she has scrounged from the rooms of the other women in the lilac house – grandmother, mother, daughter. Where do I begin?

Foundation dots on the cheeks and forehead; the chin and the line of the jaw. Blend it in carefully, the bottle advocates. A concealer next, to camouflage the fact that she has hardly slept a full night since Giri left and that her mouth has sprung new lines at the corners. A dusting of fine powder; the calming clutch of beige dust that will not allow the ravages of uncertainty to reveal themselves. An eyeliner that turns her eyes into smoky pools of come-hither. A pencil trail that lifts her lips into insouciance. Now to disguise the nibbling, the biting, the chewing of lip when struck by a what-next. Meera unfurls a tube, deep dusky pink, and fills
in the colour. Press a tissue. Take the overlay. Once. Twice. Thrice. And that final coat. Sealed with a lip gloss that Nayantara dresses her naked lips with to produce the same effect her mother has slaved over with much thought and many unguents. Youth, youth, Meera thinks. How little it meant when it bloomed on my skin. How could I have known that it would fade away so quickly.

Having turned herself into an attractive woman of an indeterminate age, Meera sets about choosing her clothes. She stares at her wardrobe, seeing its contents as if for the first time. The pastel shades and the textured whites. The greys, beiges, taupes, and the café au laits.

When did she fall into this rut of equating elegance with dull, insipid hues? Where is the effervescence of a lime green or the airiness of a sky blue or the heat of post-box red? Meera leans against the door, defeated by the thought of having to start all over again. Why bother? she asks herself. Do I need to turn into a hot babe? The siren who with a crook of her little finger will have the entire male populace at her beck and call? Do I want that for myself?

Yet Meera finds herself reaching for what might make her seem alluring. A mustard yellow top with a scooped out neckline and a slim black skirt in a clingy jersey material. Do I look like a taxi cab? she asks herself, suddenly uncertain. Or a hornet queen?

Nikhil, who has a fondness for trivia and often peppers mealtimes with his fund of useless information would call it her mating instinct, she thinks: all animals have the need to preen as part of their courtship ritual.

She looks at her bitten down fingernails and closely filed toenails. Even the southern painted turtle grows long toenails. She smells the Giorgio Beverly Hills she has atomized herself with. The rich bitch scent. The Mongolian gerbil and she have that much in common. Or is she the flamingo puffing up her feathers and strutting? Or the Madagascar hissing cockroach with its Psst … psst… I am here. And then Meera remembers what Nikhil said as an afterthought: ‘Isn’t it funny, Mummy, that mostly it is only the
male of the species who makes the effort? The female just picks and chooses. Why does the male have to make all the effort? I am never getting married!’

Meera sits down on the bed abruptly. She has never felt so silly in her life. All this decking up, all these powders, paints, perfumes and colours. All this frantic rattling of clothes hangers to find the perfect outfit for a lunch. And for what? Meera groans and sinks into the pillow. How could she have got to this? This desperate hunger, this abject need… She is doing what she swore she would never do. Throw herself at a man. And then Meera thinks: What would Jak say if he saw her now? What would he make of her gadding about with a man half her age?

She could imagine the slow shake of his head, his lips twisted into a line and that husky voice enunciating clearly: Pathetic creature, isn’t she?

It bothers her, this notion that Jak may have of her. How did it happen that what he thinks of her has become so vital, so important to how she feels about herself?

How does it matter? He is just her employer. That is the extent of their relationship.

Really? Within her head a voice that sounds very much like Vinnie asks. Is that all?

Meera knocks her forehead against the headboard of the bed gently. Knock. Knock.

What is she thinking of? It is all very well for someone like Vinnie to tell her to take a chance. Vinnie, who was unable to keep out of her voice the unspoken pain of rejection. Her lover had announced to her in bed that afternoon that he would never marry her. He had apparently coiled a strand of her hair around his finger and said, ‘I am not the marrying kind, you know that, don’t you?’

‘But Vinnie, you can’t marry him. You are married already,’ Meera said quietly.

‘That’s not the point. He didn’t think I was marriage worthy.’

‘Then dump him!’ Meera said. ‘You don’t have to put up with it.’

‘I can’t. I have to see it through. An affair is like anything organic. There is a birth, a blossoming and eventually, a death. It is against the nature of things to speed up the cycle or interrupt it midway. Or it will always linger in your mind, a fishbone in your throat, causing countless moments of remorse, pain. I know, Meera. I’ve been through it. So what I am saying is, this thing that’s sprung up between you and Soman, you have to give it a chance, allow it to be born before it can die.’

But Meera is a woman who doesn’t take chances. Besides, she knows what it is about. Soman had in those first days hinted at a love affair gone wrong. The girl was much younger than he was and clung to him. He felt suffocated by her neediness, her obsessing about him, he said. Not like you, Meera, he implied. Soman is drawn to the image of who she is. The elegant home. The society hostess. The composed sophisticated woman. Sure about life and secure in her own esteem of herself. Which, Meera thinks with a pang of sorrow, has as much substance as chaff. When he discovers the truth about her circumstances and sees her for the woman she is, he’ll flee. Does she really want to lay herself open to that again? The rejection, the hurt? Does she have the strength for it? Meera shrivels. She reaches for the phone to call Soman and tell him that lunch is off.

She hears the creak of the gate.

The doorbell rings. Again and again.

BOOK: The Lilac House

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