Habitations, page 32
Vega laughed. “That’s nonsense.”
“It isn’t. And my granddaughter has practically become a stranger.”
There was some truth to that. Asha had been devoted to Vega’s parents before her cousins and brother arrived, but now couldn’t be torn from P.N. and Kamala’s house. That night, as she was helping Asha brush her teeth, Vega said, “Your paati and thatha are missing you. Maybe after I come from work, we can have lunch here. Then we’ll go to Ruku Paati’s in the evening.”
Asha spit and rinsed her mouth, then looked up at Vega. “Tell Ruku Paati to come here. I want to all be together.”
Asha still viewed her relatives as a morass of people who, because they were related to her, must also be related to each other. But her request was enough to coax Vega’s parents. They began eating dinner all together, four children and eleven adults, the girls always finishing their meals quickly before running off to play, Vikram always falling asleep on somebody’s lap. Kamala’s former cook, Madhu, emerged from retirement, preparing industrial-sized pots of bisibeli or pongal and staying late to pack up leftovers and clean up the mess. Watching her, Vega was reminded of the constant cycle of cooking and cleaning that awaited her in Baton Rouge. She hadn’t so much as picked up a dish towel since arriving in India.
One night, Vega and Suresh were the last ones left at the table. The rest of the adults had gone to sleep and the girls were sitting on the porch, where Madhu was serving them tiny bowls of ice cream.
“I’m going to declare an ice cream moratorium when we get home,” Vega said.
Suresh smiled. “They only spoil her because we visit so infrequently.”
There were other reasons too. In the States, Asha was a middle-class kid. A first-grader at Grant Elementary School. Nobody special. In Chennai, she was anointed by caste. If they lived here, she would eventually be steered towards St. Agnes or Rhodes. The Boat Club. Vega didn’t want this for her. She was tired of the loneliness of Baton Rouge, dreading their return, but the thought of this cushioned life made her uneasy as well.
“I forgot to mention this to you,” she said to Suresh. “Your mother is threatening to vote BJP. She’s become a right-wing hardliner in your absence.”
“She won’t do it, in the end.”
They stared at the girls. Tara and Asha sat with their legs stretched out, Veena with her arms wrapped around her knees. Then, Suresh said, “My mother is lonely. That’s the problem, I think. It makes her act irrationally. It isn’t a decent way to live. So far away from one’s children.”
“She can spend more time in New Jersey, maybe? She can be helpful with Vikram. And Asha and I can come home more often to be with her. Keep her company.” He was still staring ahead, and she jostled him with her elbow. “If nothing else, you can ensure she misses the election.”
He laughed thinly. Only later that night, as she was tucking Asha into her cot on the living room floor, did she realize Suresh wasn’t talking about his mother. He was the one who couldn’t bear to live so far from his child.
34
Gayatri’s cousin, Sudhir, was coming to town. Vega hadn’t seen him in two decades, but she remembered him as a gangly and bespectacled boy, aggressive about his knowledge of cricket statistics and World War II. The sort of kid who was endearing to adults but unbearable to other children.
“You’ll like him now,” Gayatri told Vega. “He’s working as a journalist for Al Jazeera. Real sharp fellow.”
“Excellent. I love sharp journalists.”
Her words came out more bitterly than she had intended, and Gayatri looked hurt. “I’m saying only that he’s an interesting man. In any case, he’s based in Dhaka, so I’m not suggesting anything long-term.”
They were sitting in Gayatri’s flat in Santhome. It was three kilometers from the Presidency campus, and it had become a welcome escape over the past few weeks. Gayatri had given her a spare key, and Vega would often come during her afternoon break to make a cup of tea and enjoy the quiet of Gayatri’s sitting room—a room blissfully empty of scattered toys or Amar Chitra Katha comics.
Gayatri had been pushing Vega to stay a bit longer in Chennai, to explore a permanent position at Presidency. Sometimes Vega daydreamed, looking up Montessori programs for Asha and browsing side streets in Annanagar and Nungambakkam—neighborhoods that would be too expensive for an Indian academic, but that she could afford if she offered a down payment in U.S. dollars. She should have felt some freedom. Instead, her former in-laws’ house had begun to overwhelm her, with Kamala’s flurry of cooking and feeding, and the constant chirp of the girls’ voices. She craved time with her parents, but the moment she was with them, she found their presence grating. Rukmini kept pressing Vega to clean out the trunk, to take what she wanted of Ashwini’s old belongings. At night, Vega stared at it—a wooden, leather-bound thing with a vaguely diarrheal smell that had belonged to her grandfather. She wanted nothing to do with the trunk. She wanted nothing to do with her mother. But in the mornings, when she left for campus, she felt the same aching loss that used to surface every time she dropped Asha at day care on Monday mornings. So desperate to be alone, then so lonely when she finally was.
The verandah door slammed. Gayatri came inside holding a pile of laundry and dropped it on the floor. Vega reached for a sari and started to fold. “You look lovely in saris. I wish I could pull them off.”
“You could pull anything off, if you wanted to.”
Vega set the folded sari aside and stared at Gayatri for a moment. They had always had an easy friendship, free of the small tensions of growing up together. After Ashwini’s death, Gayatri had said to Vega, “You can yell and scream at me any time you need. Take out all your anger.” But Vega could not imagine doing that. It would have brought her no comfort to hurt Gayatri.
“Hey,” Vega said. “I’m happy to meet Sudhir. Really.”
“There’s no obligation. It was only a suggestion.”
“I know. But I’m sure he’s interesting. And if nothing else, if we all get together, then it will be more time spent with you.” The kettle whistled. A few moments later, Gayatri returned with the tray of tea and set it on the floor. Her expression was still stiff.
“Gayatri. I feel there’s something I should apologize for. But I’m not sure what.”
Gayatri shook her head. “I was seeing someone. Just recently, I called it off. I’m upset, only. It will pass.”
“You were seeing someone?” Gayatri’s love life had long been a mystery to Vega. Among the girls they had grown up with, she was the most open about sexuality, the first to talk casually and unapologetically about men she had slept with. But as far as Vega was aware, Gayatri had never been in a relationship. She remembered something one of her Sri Vidya classmates had said of an anthropology professor on campus—a brilliant but aloof woman who published widely on indigenous art but could never remember students’ names: “She’s interested in peoples. Not as much in people.”
“He’s a typical Brahmin. Spoiled by his mother and won’t move from his parents’ house. A few days back, he told me that his parents still don’t know about me. He thinks this is a joke. He says, ‘My mother is looking for a match for me.’ Later, when I ended things, he told me his mother would never have approved of our marriage because my father is a Nair, and his family does not accept caste difference. As though he’s a little boy who needs permission.”
“He sounds like a fool, Gayatri.”
“Then I’m a bigger fool.”
“That isn’t true.” But it puzzled her that Gayatri, who so easily saw through the idiocy of Sukumar Reddy, could have fallen even briefly for a man like this. “How long were you seeing each other?”
“Nearly a year. We met at a biology convention.”
“Nearly a year? I’m sorry, Gayatri. I wish I had known.”
“You’re difficult to talk to sometimes.”
Vega started to protest, but she knew there was some truth to this. Gayatri called and emailed more often than Vega did. And when they did talk, Vega didn’t ask many questions, or probe beyond Gayatri’s casual updates on work, family, politics, the occasional weekend trip to Kerala or Pondy. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It just never occurred to her to probe. For the two decades of their friendship, she had operated under the assumption that Gayatri was doing just fine.
“I’m sorry if I don’t express this well. But I miss you and think of you all the time.”
“I believe that, Vega. And I miss you. But sometimes, when we talk, I feel as though I’m interrupting your thoughts. I don’t know how else to describe it. You’ve seemed so sullen and angry lately.”
Vega squeezed her knee. “Come on, Gayatri. I’ve been sullen and angry my entire life. This is nothing new.”
“Not your entire life. Just the past fifteen years.”
Vega couldn’t counter that. She had been a happy child, unaware there was anything to be unhappy about. Even as an abstract concept, she hadn’t really understood unhappiness. She experienced it in the way characters in books did—fleeting disappointments felt in one chapter and resolved in the next. She hadn’t been aware, until Ashwini died, of this deeper, lasting variety.
“I’m sorry about your relationship, Gayatri. I’m sorry it lasted so long, and I’m also sorry it ended.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It is something. These losses hurt. And I know there is no sense in telling you this now, but you will meet the right man. And when you do, it won’t be full of bullshit and casteism and moral compromises.”
“I know. I really do know that. And I’m not interested in discussing him further. I’ve wasted enough hours.” She paused. “There is something I want to mention, though. A few weeks back, when I stopped by your parents’ place, I was sitting with Asha. She was showing me some of her drawings, and I told her, ‘Your chiti used to be a wonderful artist.’ She didn’t have any reaction. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought Ashwini up so casually, but I assumed that she knew. And it’s been bothering me these past few weeks.”
“You’re bothered that you told Asha about Ashwini, or that you think I haven’t?”
“Both, I suppose.”
“I talk about her in front of Asha. And she’s seen her photographs, of course, but she’s never asked any questions. I realize how vague that all sounds. And if you’re asking whether I have ever explained to her, ‘I had a sister, and my sister died,’ then the answer is no. How would she even make sense of that?”
“How does anybody?”
Vega distracted herself with a loose thread on her kurta. “Do you remember how much Ashwini used to love her music lessons?”
“Of course I remember. I remember everything about her. She was like my own sister.”
That was true. In some ways, Gayatri’s affection for Ashwini was simpler and easier than Vega’s, uncluttered by the actual challenges of sisterhood. Ashu, she used to call her. Gayatri was always happy to let Ashwini tag along on their walks, happy to play endless rounds of carom or rummy or Twenty Questions with her. It hurt to remember this. Vega should have been the one to give Ashwini a nickname, to let her join for anything she damned well pleased.
“Do you remember that she insisted on continuing veena lessons when we came back from Cleveland? Her teacher’s house was on 8th Cross. Where that restaurant is now. Zaytoon.”
“I know, Vega. We walked her there a thousand times.”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago, when we used to walk her together. When we came back from Cleveland, I would walk her to class alone. It was our ritual, for some reason. On her last class, she told me she was having difficulty breathing. I thought she was just fussing. But by the time we arrived, she was so tired she couldn’t even walk up the steps. It was stupid of me. Why would I insist she go if she could hardly breathe?” She had replayed the details of this memory over and over, but she had never described it aloud. Despite logic, despite science, she believed if she had just let Ashwini rest that day, she might have survived another year. Or another five years. And what else was life but those small increments? Five years might have become ten. Fifty.
“You didn’t know she was so sick.”
“Of course I knew she was sick, Gayatri. We moved to Cleveland because of her condition. I was fully aware how sick she was. It’s as though I were being deliberately cruel or something.”
“That’s really what you think of yourself? That you were deliberately cruel to your sister?”
“They took her to the hospital that night. And it was too late. Her lungs collapsed. She was dead after a week.” At least that was how Vega remembered it, though it was possible her memory was incorrect. Maybe more than a week had lapsed, or maybe it was only a day or two. What she recalled, with certainty, was that it was the last walk Ashwini ever took. The last afternoon she was fully alive.
“She adored you. You were good to her. And there was nothing you could have done to make her live longer.”
“I want to scream sometimes, Gayatri. I don’t know about what, or to whom. I just want to scream.”
“Then scream.”
“I can’t. That would be ridiculous. Do I look like a child to you?”
Gayatri laughed, then she pulled Vega towards her and kissed the top of her head. “I want you to know something, Vega. You are among the best people I know.”
“Then you need to keep better company.”
“Vega. Shut up. You were a wonderful sister. You’re a wonderful mother and a wonderful friend. You’re even a good ex-wife.”
Vega started to protest, but some part of her wondered if Gayatri was right. If she was, in fact, a good enough person. If, despite everything, she was doing just fine.
* * *
Gayatri had planned an elaborate evening out for them, but Sudhir’s flight was delayed, so at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night, they sat at a plastic table outside of Rotiwalla Cafe, tearing into large, communal parathas. Sudhir had a relaxed, unshaven look. He was the kind of man who, were he a few years younger, Vega might expect to see on a layover at the Frankfurt Airport carrying a towering backpack, surrounded by an eclectic and international circle of friends. But he was also attentive and modulated, a good listener, curious about a dam safety review Gayatri was conducting in Orissa and asking detailed questions about Vega’s students.
“It’s a different generation, no, than what we were used to? I teach one graduate course at the University of Dhaka and the students actually give a damn. They’re curious. I love it.”
Vega was so attracted to him that it was jarring when he spoke to her directly, and she knew, even before she opened her mouth to respond, that whatever she said would come out as drivel. She was right. “The humanities field here is rethinking the model of rote learning and quantitative exams. Students seek professors who will assess them more holistically.” What the hell was she talking about? Assess them more holistically? She hated herself.
“That’s the work too, no? They say the problem with higher education is that the student body turns over every four years, but the professors stay for thirty or forty.” Later, when Gayatri left to use the bathroom, his voice softened. “Gayatri tells me you have a daughter.”
“Asha. She’s eight years old.”
“She’s here with you in Chennai?”
“She is. She’s with her grandparents. Soaking up the last few weeks of their attention.”
He smiled and dragged a last piece of paratha through a smear of lime pickle. “I remember you when you were small. Rather, when we were both small. You had a younger sister, I remember.”
“I did. She passed.”
“I know. I’m sorry. That must have been a terrible loss.”
“It was.” Gayatri had returned from the bathroom but was lingering inside the restaurant, gathered around a television with a small crowd, watching what looked like an archery competition. It was something Gayatri would have had no interest in, and Vega was grateful for yet another small gesture of kindness. “I remember you were a sort of trivia whiz,” she said to Sudhir. “You delivered some long list of facts about bauxite mining. I had never heard of it before, but it stayed in my head. I went to a World War II Museum a few years back and there was a large didactic plaque on the history of bauxite mining. I remembered you so clearly.”
He smiled more broadly this time, and Vega felt something inside her open. The desire to touch and be touched. To discover a new body, a new sense of humor, a new worldview. But later that night, standing outside the gate of her parents’ house as the rickshaw idled, the fantasy faded. There had been a good stretch, even after Asha’s birth, when she felt alive and desirable. Now she felt both infantile and stale. A child living with her parents, and a mother bound to her child.
“How much longer are you in Chennai?” he asked.
“We leave in two weeks.”
“Back home to Louisiana?”
“That’s the plan.”
He scratched his head, and she saw, suddenly, a trace of the boy he was. Bespectacled and antsy, always chewing his lip.
“I leave for Bangalore on Thursday morning. Just through Sunday. Perhaps we could see each other tomorrow. Or I can call you when I’m back.”
She imagined seeing him tomorrow. Maybe she would wear the red dress she had no business buying. “When you get back, then,” she said.
“What’s the catch?” she asked Gayatri, later. “He’s married, isn’t he?”
“He isn’t. He was married. Briefly. Perhaps you can bond over that shared experience.”
“Any children?”
“No children.”
“What is the story of his ex-wife?”
“Bloody hell, Vega. I met her only once. She’s a photographer. Bengali girl. Dhina was her name. I think they parted on decent terms.”
She thought about him constantly. On the nights when Asha slept at P.N. and Kamala’s house, she touched herself, imagining his hands and his tongue. But in the mornings, she felt ashamed. What kind of adult masturbated in her parents’ house? As promised, he called when he returned from Bangalore, but she demurred.
