Ruffled Feathers, page 15
‘You met the Ayurveda doctor?’
I had gone to a house without a board where a doctor without a certificate gave me dark potions that smelt from a distance.
‘My joints are so stiff. I am having trouble with buttons. Since yesterday, there is a twitch in my left leg.’
‘The doctor said don’t eat onions and garlic. And eat less lentils. Are you listening?’
She pointed to the gap beneath the door, to cracks in the wall where the newly formed stonework had crumbled. There were lizards getting into her room.
‘There is a big one. Can you see him?’
When she slept, she dreamt she was an insect, smaller than a priest’s toe. She couldn’t fly.
‘He will get me,’ she said.
The lizard moved slowly in her direction. His eyes rotated, his tongue forked. My mother shivered.
‘Amma,’ I said, ‘what have you become?’
A dancer who could twirl on her toes, tall, statuesque, born to grace the stage, to impale her adoring fans with her large, expressive eyes.
‘When I struck a pose, I would pause and turn into a deity. The stage became a temple.’
I was tasked to write about her. The project was hampered by the games she played.
‘Do you know who your father is?’
This was a taunt more than a question. There were many men in her life according to sources, sources that took vicarious pleasure in guessing what went on in her storied life. She married more than once. Temple weddings, she said.
Which temples?
‘How does it matter?’
The first was an old man, feeble, a father figure who belonged to the 1950s in a town called Karaikudi. He was a Chettiar from a prosperous business family, he had a mansion the size of a fort. Ten steps up from the road was the entrance, a huge carved teakwood door.
I spent summers in that mansion till a family fight erupted, relatives surfaced and they usurped the place. Amma landed in Chennai where my elder brother Ravi and I stayed in her family house under the care of a maternal uncle.
Money came in driblets, from performances, from certain donors. We went to a convent school. I wore hand-me-downs, sizes awry, some loose threads and half-broken buttons. My brother was a star and I was moon shadow.
Amma started a school where she tried to teach Odissi. The dance school was one of many in Adyar. The school made for a noisy home. We didn’t mind. For a while, girls came home, each more beautiful than the other.
‘Chettiar loved me,’ said Amma. ‘He had a piercing gaze, and he knew his music. I would lie in his vicinity and he would keep looking at me. He liked feeling my pulse. It has a different timbre, he would say.’
Her eyes misted over.
‘He attended my performances, sat on the side, dreamy, like he had inhaled something. After an hour, he couldn’t sit and they would take him away.’
‘And he called you…’
‘By my name. Kamala.’ She said it like he did, with a degree of affection.
Now Kamala was old. Most mornings she was fine. Then the day caught up with her.
‘What exactly is wrong with you?’
She had a harsh, dry cough, poor digestion and frequent headaches.
‘Some kind of allergy,’ the doctor had said.
In the hunt for an allergen, she gave up many things. A pared-down life made things worse. Stop complaining, we told her.
‘You boys don’t listen.’
Ravi and I were in our fifties, an age when we had our own stash of grouses. I stayed in Chennai, Ravi was in Dubai. He was impatient and dismissive. She spoke to me. ‘Ravi doesn’t understand. I don’t want people telling me, you are old, so does it really matter? What is inside you has let you live for so long, so why hunt it down?’
‘Amma, there was a time when all that bothered you were your tired feet.’
Ravi set his glass down, it held nouveau Beaujolais, a light red wine that he bought on impulse from a supermarket, a cavernous place that sold things by the bushel. Ravi was single, by choice. Most days he was alone. He was number three in the pecking order, the CEO was a polished Brit, the COO was an Arab, an absentee landlord.
Ravi designed the systems and made himself redundant. This gave him time to pursue his interests. He took his holidays seriously. He was afraid of returning to India. India from a distance assumed a fearful form, every day a disaster, every other day a strange mishap. His friends in Chennai complained when he called, his mother stoked his guilt, Kumara, his brother, kept asking for money.
He stayed in a compound that had thirty villas, two swimming pools, a vast clubhouse and hedges trimmed to perfection. Abundant help that came from all corners of Asia cleaned, cooked and handled the appliances. Two refrigerators stood like sentries in an open kitchen. In between was a wine chiller that held five continents.
Shopping was fun, a sport, a pastime. He drove a large American SUV, marvelling at the roads, the large malls, the multilevel parking. He dragged a large trolley past carrel after carrel, picking, choosing, replacing. There was so much he didn’t need. He wished Amma would visit him, his brother Kumara too, and both could then see what they were missing.
He liked the Gulf landscape. No politicians, journalists who did not dig deep, glossy newspapers that packaged the banal. Vertical glass towers, water in public spaces in large concrete saucers. Plants and lawns on a drip feed. A few dust storms, a large airport straining to cope. He wandered through bakeries sniffing bread, he paused at rotisseries where knives sliced through shawarma, meat was impaled on skewers and vegetables were stewed in vinegar.
He was part of a group of oenophiles, serious fellows who swirled, sniffed, sipped and spat into buckets. They were European, unused to an Indian with knowledge of wine. Ravi had a developed nose that could sift through spices.
‘I heard Dubai has ghettos,’ said Kumara. ‘I read the labour class is put up there.’
‘I stay in a high-class ghetto,’ Ravi said. ‘We love it here, the comfort, the convenience and the security.’
A few years of stasis followed. Ravi overstayed. ‘You are no longer at the forefront of your profession,’ warned one of his friends. ‘More exciting things are happening in India.’
She coughed, it sounded hoarse. Inside her throat was an irritable pincer.
‘No phlegm,’ she said.
The doctor peered, adjusting his face mask. The torchlight travelled inside her looking for telltale signs. He straightened and searched for his stethoscope, his sonar device.
‘Breathe deeply.’
She heaved, her bosom lurched. A teardrop fell from her left eye.
‘No use crying.’
She bit her lip.
‘X-ray?’
I gave him the cover. He placed it on a backlit board.
‘Hmmm.’
He sounded clueless.
‘Blood report?’
‘All clear,’ I said, handing him another cover.
Her coughing returned and went on for a while. She couldn’t stop. The doctor stood, his shoulders slumped. He scratched his head.
‘What does your husband do?’
‘Which one?’
The doctor looked to me for help.
‘The first was a benefactor, he is gone,’ I said. ‘The second was a painter.’
‘Was he the artist you brought with you some years ago?’
‘Yes.’
It had been a fruitless consultation.
‘Hard of hearing, right?’
Amma nodded, not trusting her throat enough to speak to the ENT specialist. She remembered suspecting his credentials. He had strange questions.
‘How does he paint if he cannot hear properly?’
She had laughed, tears streamed down her cheeks.
‘What is so funny?’
She couldn’t even begin to tell him.
‘We are so helpless,’ she said.
‘Helpless?’
‘I find the desperate funny.’
‘I am sorry?’ said the doctor.
‘His eyesight is good,’ she said.
‘But tell me,’ said the doctor, ‘doesn’t lack of hearing affect what he makes?’
Amma had spoken to me about her second husband, Ravi’s father, an artist she had met by chance. She had described a visit to his studio, how she had climbed a narrow wooden staircase that opened into a ten by ten sunlit paradise. The painter was deaf, she had been told.
It could have been the harsh sunlight but she felt his colours were muted.
Maybe it was just her.
He painted portraits. Of people he met in passing, he said. He had a sharp eye, she thought, to be able to capture someone so well. The portraits were intriguing. The people he had painted were oblivious to onlookers, if at all they seemed to be searching within themselves. How did he do it? How did he make something so arresting that viewers couldn’t help standing and staring?
There was a work on the easel that grabbed her attention. It showed an empty room, a man sat at a table, and time for some reason stood still. By his posture he wasn’t waiting, not for anyone or for anything to happen. She stood and looked at it till her feet hurt. It taunted her, that work. It held some secret that she would never unlock, a truth that was perhaps the perfect lie.
‘It was him, painting himself,’ she said later. ‘That stillness was his silence. I was moved to get to know him better, to change his life in some way. I tried.’
Ravi’s father was of modest circumstance, a man who had barely managed to subsist, who was clearly a rare talent that deserved better, but the art world was fickle and refused to be democratic in its largesse. She sought him out, took him to the salon that mattered, secured the backing of a collector who was a Pied Piper in Mumbai. His work moved into rooms where the important gathered. Museums took notice and it was only then that she let up.
‘We have an antique wall clock,’ she told the doctor.
‘And it tells time?’
‘My husband says he can hear it.’
‘I see.’
‘In the meanwhile, I have started shouting at people.’
She began laughing again and this time the doctor smiled.
‘Sometimes I don’t understand my patients,’ he said.
The Dictaphone was on. Amma began to ramble.
‘On the other hand, some people were just what they were. You wished for more.’
Her third husband was peerless in his behaviour. He was a calamitous bore. Every social occasion unmasked him. In private, at home, there was no place to hide and she had seen the low limits of his intellect, the repetitive nature of his inquiry on life. The most prosaic future lay before him, dull as could be imagined.
‘Let us say he was a man in a cocoon of his making. He would go to any lengths to protect that cocoon. What did we share? Ordinary moments, predictable days, everywhere a sameness.’
‘What did you see in him, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘So what did you do?’
She had to engineer something, a life-affirming manoeuvre. She did so without hesitation, freed herself and sought the company of someone else. That someone else wasn’t worth recording.
‘Can you tell me more about Ravi’s father? The painter.’
‘Do you know that Ravi’s father could speak? He was deaf but he spoke clearly. He sounded different.’
She cocked her head to a side as if she was listening to him.
‘Tone-deaf,’ she said. ‘It sounds cruel but he was tone-deaf when he spoke.’ After a while, ‘He spoke a lot when he had had his two drinks. He would call me things, belittle me.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t mind his words. His tone was what I couldn’t stand. It was monotonous.’
‘Amma,’ I said. ‘A question.’
‘What?’
‘How come you made nothing of me?’
The question threw her.
‘You?’
‘Yes, me.’
She thought for a while.
‘Why have children, Amma?’
‘Kumara, you just happened,’ she said.
She placed a hand over her mouth, a sign of regret?
‘As did Ravi?’
‘Ravi I wanted,’ she said.
There was a silence that made her uncomfortable. ‘I could have done better,’ she said. ‘Admittedly.’
It was too late, it was also pointless.
‘You could do better, you know,’ said Amma. ‘But you are afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘I don’t know. Confrontation perhaps. Complexity?’
‘I have done very little that people will remember,’ I said.
She scratched her head. ‘You take simple decisions. I can predict them.’
It wasn’t a compliment. I guessed at that moment who my father was.
‘Life is too short, Kumara,’ she said. ‘I had my talent. I couldn’t sit around and worry about you. Or Ravi for that matter.’
I did something bold after this conversation. I met my former boss who in many ways was a stranger to me. We got talking. Over a couple of hours, we spoke a lot about ourselves. I slipped into confession mode.
‘I have no secrets worth revealing.’
‘Hmmm,’ he said.
‘You know my career, it was predictable. I have nothing to hide.’
‘You have never done anything regrettable?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You sound like you are full of regret.’
I invited him home for a bite. He had never been to my place. He liked it.
‘A house that has interim spaces,’ he said. ‘Is this you?’
‘My mother,’ I said. ‘This is her place.’
There was a porch, there were verandas, galleys and corridors. The kitchen was separate, a few steps down, a few steps up.
‘This was also a dance school?’
‘Yes. The dancers were all over the place. They are a communal lot. They would gather, sit on the floor, pose in doorways. They swayed when they walked.’
My boss walked around, stepping lightly.
‘She is so famous,’ he said, ‘and this is her place. I must thank you.’
There were photographs on the walls, freeze frames from her performances. He moved from one to the other.
‘Arresting,’ he said. ‘I can imagine what she must have been in full flow.’
‘These are from another time, boss,’ I said.
He saw the photographs on the mantelpiece.
‘Were you married? Do you want to talk about that?’
My wife had walked away. Five years together and she said I dulled her senses. We had a sensible discussion and an amicable divorce. We meet up now and then. I like what she has become.
Months whizzed past us. Amma had trouble moving around on her own. She fell badly in the bathroom and broke her hip. She was bedridden for a while.
I called Ravi. ‘When are you coming? It is time you took care of her.’
‘I will come,’ he said. He didn’t say when.
‘Why don’t we sell the house?’ I said. ‘We need the money. I could do with some.’
‘You asked her?’
‘Not face to face. On the phone. She hung up.’
The topic irritated her. No discussion. She said later the house was precious. What was precious about it? Memories, she said. It didn’t matter to her that she was stuck in a home and poor Kumara was struggling.
I kept looking at my phone, willing it to come to life. It rang as I was about to sleep. It was Ravi. His voice was faint, I could hear an onrushing wind.
‘Machan?’ he said.
‘Are you out somewhere?’
‘Yes. We are in a vineyard.’ The phone crackled. ‘You won’t believe how old this vineyard is.’
‘Like I care,’ I said.
‘Take a guess.’
‘Eighty-nine?’
‘You said it!’
That was our mother’s age.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
He had the right to ask even if he hardly met her. He sent money you see, for maintenance, a kind of old age alimony.
‘How is the wine?’ I asked in turn.
‘Haven’t tasted it yet,’ he said. ‘We are doing the vineyard tour first, then we will go to the tasting room.’
‘Nice,’ I said.
There was so much my brother had to say about his obsession with wine. He called me often, usually after a tasting, in a mood to share his intelligent passion. I wasn’t convinced there was anything more to wine than language that sought to obscure an addiction, which made a virtue of being dissolute. It did not help that invariably I would be in the home smelling lemongrass cleaning fluid, watching lonely, old people.
‘I am standing next to a vine,’ shouted Ravi. ‘An old vine.’
‘You don’t have to shout,’ I said.
‘You should see it. It has a twisted trunk and gnarled branches. It is making faces at me.’
I had seen pictures of a vineyard. Orderly rows of shrubs, five feet high perhaps, green and leafy, on a gentle slope that stretched into the horizon.
‘This is an old vine vineyard,’ said my brother. ‘It is very different. These vines are so rowdy!’
My brother, a dry chap, sounded like he was moved. ‘Right now they have no leaves, leave alone fruit.’
‘Sounds bleak,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘quite bleak. Imagine, smoke in the air, the land barren, some scattered vines, crooked and dark, and no people. It is like walking into an Anselm Kiefer painting.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘You walked into what?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
He carried on. ‘Wine from these old buggers have such mystery, machan! So much character. It is hard to explain.’ He tried explaining. ‘Age-old vines produce small berries that are more intense. The wines have more structure.’
Next comes poetry, I thought.
