Thagam

Thaagam The decision to leave India struck Oviya at the only time that her father remembered to call her every year – her birthday. In the seven years that her father had traveled the world, researching and translating ancient Tamil texts at various English and European universities, he only remembered to personally call Oviya on her birthday. At thirteen, the separation had proved too painful for her, but now, at twentyone, she felt that the space he had left behind gave her enough reason to nurture the relationship with her mother. Slowly, somewhere along the years of school, and college, she turned to him as a companion, a voice, a mentor rather than a parent – his nonexistence giving her room to voice her thoughts without being judged, and to grow independent in thought unlike her many cousins. Occasionally, her father would call her mother, and enquire about the home he had left behind, and the daughter whom he missed dearly – but it was always at a time when Oviya was away at school, or at college. So she waited, day after day, for the only day she knew she could get all of his time – The second of July. The sudden yearning to leave Madras surprised her father as well; it was where generations from their family lived. Oviya’s grandmother still recalled studying at Queen Mary College, and the white sands of the Marina. There was never a question of leaving the city, everything they needed, the city had. Oviya’s own life in Madras

she captured in the many photographs she stored in albums; the first day she wore a Dhavani for her cultural programme, her Bharatnatyam recitals, sports day captaincy oaths, college canteen trips, and finally Kamal. The photographs were the first signs of memorabilia that reminded Oviya that she was tired - tired of the nuances of routine, and obedience. Every time she walked out the sameness began to irritate her – the null bickering of auto drivers, the flower women who garlanded jasmines in front of her house, the tea-shops and the regular office-goers who stood there smoking, and resilient pedestrians who jumped over medians. But then, it was not just the city that was wearing her out; it was coming to terms with the façade of love. She wanted to leave and go far away from Kamal; she wanted a new life, and a feeling of freshness. She wanted to rid her mind of the clutter within. It took her barely a few moments to convince her father that she wanted to apply for a postgraduate course in an English university. In England, she would be far away from the chaos of Madras, and she would be closer to her father. After two weeks of discreet conversations with her father from telephone booths near her college, Oviya faced her mother. ‘Amma, I spoke to Appa about it, I’m thinking of applying to Westminster for post graduation’, she announced at breakfast. Her mother, as she had anticipated did not respond immediately. It was the way she dealt with uncertainty; she sank

into the corners of the kitchen, washing dishes that were already done, wiping cutlery clean, it was the only way that shock and denial didn’t take over rationality. There was a time in her life when Oviya would not have cared what her mother thought, but the sudden fact that she did only reminded her that she had left behind her younger, flighty, teenage years. ‘That’s nice’, her mother had said finally. Nice – the word disturbed Oviya. It bothered her because her mother had now come to accept that she had to stay alone. The thought of her mother coming along with her to England at first struck her as cogent, but then at sixty, her mother couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the only life she knew. Looking after her Thatha, and Paati, watering their small garden, decorating the walls of their spacious, yet plain middle class home, painting on glass during her free-time – her mother wanted this and nothing of England. But Oviya could feel the sadness, the silence echoing off the hallway walls everytime she walked downstairs. In August, a month after she had hurriedly applied to universities, the acceptance letters came. The news was received with warmth, not joy at the household. Oviya’s grandparents expressed their distaste for English customs and habits immediately- ‘Those people have no culture, they do drugs, you see them on TV, they do drugs’. Oviya never argued with them. Generations of vision separated them from her, and a part of her understood that now. Her mother offered little or no comfort too – the

prospect of her only daughter going away to a foreign land, having to live alone and leading her own life was alien to her. As much as she had tried to keep up with a husband whose vision of the world was far greater than hers, and a daughter who equaled him in ambition, her mother often fell back into the comfort of tradition. She tutored children in the colony with their Tamil lessons, careful that she made them pronounce their ‘zha’ and ‘lrah’ till their voices trained. When they grew tired, she told them folk tales from the villages and kept their evenings enchanted with stories that had been told to her as a child. When the couple next door welcomed the birth of their first child, it was Oviya’s mother who held the baby for hours in her sari, rocking it gently to sleep, singing old Tamil lullabies and sharing wisdom with the young wife about bringing up the child. It often made up for the fact that neither her husband, nor her daughter shared her love for the Tamil language and preferred to converse mostly in English to each other at home. Oviya on the other hand, never understood her mother. Brought up and taught in an English medium school, she learned to think of Tamil as nothing more than a second language subject, handy only when she had to get around in the city. Even though she accompanied her mother to the temple every second Saturday, she questioned the traditional pujas at home and disliked the baseless need to follow a traditional code of dressing. She did not understand the Bhajans and found them difficult to learn by-

heart. Both her grandparents, who wanted to see her in a Salwar even at home, heavily frowned upon dressing in her jeans and T-shirt but then, they did not question their granddaughter. They knew that while she had inherited her mother’s softness, she had also inherited a strange primal fierceness from her father. Only informing a few cousins and a few friends from college of her decision, the preparation and packing had begun slowly. Her father directed her constantly over the phone, telling her who to approach to soften the rigorous passport process, and how she must be vary of fraudsters. Her room for a month had looked like a warehouse; she had piles of clothes to discard, notebooks and textbooks to be segregated, letters to be answered and forms to be filled. The stress made her miss Kamal, a part of her wished he was there to help – he had always been good at organization. But a part of her was glad not to have involved him in this at all. When she thought of him now, it is only the girl’s picture that would come to her mind. Kamal had stepped into Oviya’s life in the first year of college. Charming, loud and outrageously rebellious, there was never a time people weren’t talking about him. He was a friend to every boy and the dream of every girl. Yet, it was Oviya who noticed the days that he sat by silently in the shadows of the campus corridors when classes were long over, poring over books of smoking, deep in thought. There seemed something mysterious, another side to

him that she didn’t know. For days, she watched him; eating with the usual boys at the canteen, flirting with the newcomers in college, the way he pushed his hair out of his face when he was tired, the way she curled up and slept in the back of the class during free periods. Without her knowledge, Kamal had become a part of her everyday life. She found herself thinking about him when she didn’t see him in college, when she was too busy with her classes, or when he simply didn’t turn up for days together. At night, when she slept, she dreamed of speaking to him, holding him close and running her fingers through his thick hair. Two months later, they were incidentally caught in a lift jam in college. The power cut had been almost instant, lasting for the ten longest minutes in her life. ‘What should we do, Ovi?’ he asked, finally. He called her by her pet name, as if he had known her all his life. It felt strange, as if she too had known him all her life. ‘Uhm. I guess we’ll have to press the alarm button, or try and call someone. I don’t have a phone’, she muttered, careful not to look at his face. He laughed lightly, ‘well, this is good fun, at least we’ll miss a bit of Krishnagiri’s nonsense’ and settled down on the lift floor. ‘Uhm. Aren’t you freaked out? We could be locked here for hours. I mean, we haven’t even had lunch…’

‘So what? You’ve got your lunch in your bag, and besides they’ll know we’re here, most of the staff are too lazy to walk up. So what did you get for lunch?’. His abruptness made her laugh. They spoke as if they were best friends, as if they had known each other all their lives. They shared the small meal of Dal, rice, pickle and potato curry that her mum had packed in a Tiffin box. He told her of his love for South Indian food, and how tired he was of the Chapattis his mother made at home, and about the boys he stayed with in at his apartment building. Oviya listened, and laughed lightly along; she listened, and nodded her head, each time he ran his fingers through his hair, each time he wiped the sweat on his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. It was a feeling she couldn’t describe to anyone, she felt as if she had stepped into another side of herself she hadn’t known. After twenty minutes, the generator was running and the lift opened onto the third floor. Before she could say bye, he had run into one of his friends. Oviya stepped silently away before he could notice, the moment had passed. Somehow, it was Kamal who she kept bumping into at strange odd moments at college. At the end of the first term, they were caught in the rain. Laughing, they had made their way out of the flooded campus rolling up their jeans and feeling through the sandy muck with bare feet, their sandals slung from their bags, drenched and wet. That day, they had spoken for hours

on the phone, about the rain, and sand, about nothing in particular, and importantly, about the triviality of their lives. There was a connection that Oviya couldn’t describe to her friends, a connection that only she and Kamal understood. From the outside, people barely saw Kamal and Oviya speak to each other. They were never an item like their other friends in college who often fell in love and eventually began dating; theirs was a friendship that Oviya swept under the rug in fear of disconnection. She wasn’t anywhere as famous as he was in college; she was plain and lucid, a girl who passed in and out of class without notice, a girl who scored better grades than any of the boys in class without reading through her notes twice, yet a girl, who like her father, disliked crowds, and hoards of people hovering around all the time. Oviya despised attention as much as she despised half the people in her class; she found them shallow and mindless. She knew part of it came from the denial that she was the only student in class who came from an upper middle class home who could afford to give her much more comfort than she needed. Her friends were a select few who managed to overlook the fact that she had money, but others flatly kept a distance. Money often meant snobbishness and most of them could do better without it. Kamal saw none of this, to him money or no money, he didn’t judge anyone. Yet, at college, for his sake, she left him alone. It was at home while on the phone with her other class friends that Oviya would pry and ask

about Kamal. ‘What’s with the rumours about that Maru guy dating Reena?’, she would ask disinterestedly. And her friends would fill her in. ‘Yeah, she was hitting on him in the canteen asking if he could make it for her party on Saturday, and he said yes’. Oviya would then nod and laugh lightly. During the initial year, the image of Kamal making love to other girls made her cringe but when the pain got worse, she eventually turned to the blade. She stood in front of her bathroom mirror for hours at night, stripped naked, looking for flaws in her body. Why hadn’t he told her he loves her? Didn’t he ever want to love her? Did the feeling ever cross his mind? She never knew. Then she traced her fingers slowly on the contours of her body, along her breast, circling her nipples and down her waist, inbetween her thigh. She imagined her fingers to be Kamal’s, gripping the side of her waist and caressing her hair. When she broke away from the fantasy, she took the blade and pressed hard against her skin. She would wait till the dark liquid slid down her body, contrasting with her clear, wheat-colored skin. Thinking of those days, made Oviya sad now; they made her restless and angry, as if she wanted to punish him for making her feel the way she did. It also made her desperate to leave, for it reminded her more and more of him. She took her books and sorted them into a pile; stuff that she might come as references, and other notes that she had scribbled over lectures. The clothing pile stood neglected in

the far corner, she had intended to do the ironing and sorting last as it was tedious but with her mother constantly walking in, offering a hand with the packing, Oviya wanted everything over before dinner. She felt tired, and overdue for a night of restfulness. Her mind worried over the various documents her father had asked to cross-check; passport, identity cards, ATM cards, flight tickets and admission papers. After an hour, she called his apartment to tell him that she’d meet him tomorrow at the coffee shop near college where they used to hang out in their fresher years. It was the only perfect place where she could tell him goodbye. -------It was a year ago that Oviya first noticed the growing distance between them. She had lost some of the photographs of them in college. Knowing that she often lent him her books to copy notes, she had called him from home. ‘Hello. Kamal?’ ‘Yes Ovi, tell me’. There was muffled laughter at the back, and she knew it was useless asking him about it that time. Yet, she did. Oviya safeguarded her things fiercely, and she did everything to set them in order. ‘Kamal, were our photographs in any of the books you had borrowed from me?’ ‘No.’ ‘Uhm. Could you look through once more? I can’t find them here at home and I’ve

misplaced the negatives’. ‘Alright Ovi, will do, speak to you later’. He had hung up even before she had said goodbye. Days later she found the photographs in Kamal’s textbook. She had borrowed the book to refer to some answers that had been over printed in hers, and three photographs fell onto the dusty floor; in all the photos, Oviya’s face had been skillfully cut out making the photograph look as if holes had been punched near Kamal’s smiling face. Over the months, she dreamed about the incident, waking up her face flushed, and wet with tears. The cruelty of the act left her angry, so much that the very sight of him made her want to scream. She heard rumours about the girls her had been seeing, yet brushed them all away in a shield of denial. He was a perfect amalgam of everything Oviya had wanted, and she tried everything in her ability to understand him. Though she had not mentioned about her leaving abroad, she was convinced that he would pretend as though he had seen it coming. That was Kamal’s way of dealing with unforeseen events – he gave away very little of what he thought, of the world, of the people in his life and Oviya. Now, at the coffee shop, she gave the order and waited restlessly. She wanted to throw up. Silence sliced through the peace in the café, bit by bit, first through the mellow evening sunbeams, which sprinkled across the tables because of the light drizzle, then through the awkward unfinished sentences. It has always

been that way with every other time that she met with him over the past few months. When the waiter brought over another cup of coffee, she bit the sugar sachet slowly and sprinkled it thrice into her mug. Anything to kill time. Anything to give some time for the storm in her head to calm down. She waited for him to say something but he didn’t say a word, he ate into the cake so slowly, so painfully slowly pretending that he was interested that it aggravated the storm in her head. Then without looking up, quietly, not making the slightest change in his tone, Kamal looked up and said ‘It’s so fuckin’ hot and wet. Sick, sick weather.’ She nodded, careful not to look at his face. ‘So how have you been? Long time since we’ve eaten here.’ ‘What do you mean how I’ve been? Of course I’ve been good Ovi,’ he concentrated on his food, biting away the burger with pieces falling across his shirt. A few years ago, she might have brushed it aside, calling him ‘a clumsy boy’, and wiped the tip of his mouth with the napkin after they had eaten but now, the crumbs irritated her. It made her wonder if he’d ever grow up. ‘Kamal, anyway I just wanted to see you so…’ ‘I know Ovi,’ he interrupted, continuing to eat his burger and avoiding her glare. Oviya was shocked but she knew her face would barely give her away. Just as her father, she was silent in dealing with emotions; people

could rarely tell what she thought of them, what she thought of any situation. ‘Well, what do you know?’, she said slowly. ‘I don’t know, you just seemed pissed,’ he muttered, looking away from her, as if he would do anything to avoid looking at her. She controlled herself, not telling him that it was ridiculous to behave that things had been fine between them for a while, ‘it’s nothing like that.’ The waiter interrupted them with the bill, and Kamal put his hand over it not allowing Oviya to pay. ‘I’ll take care of it.’ His voice was final, and for the first time she stayed quiet and allowed him to go ahead. When they were outside, Kamal walked ahead, not waiting for her like he usually did. Oviya could tell he was angry, frustrated at something but she didn’t want to ask him. Her own anger at him gnawed at her incessantly and she took her time to follow him to his bike in the parking lot. ‘So? Do you want to go somewhere or something’, he asked restlessly, ‘ it’s going to come down heavily later in the evening’. The drizzle was light, and yet felt like a thousand diamonds piercing her skin. Beneath her cotton salwar, they stung her. ‘Let’s go to the beach’, She said, looking straight at him, climbing onto the back and saddling her bag on her side.

‘What? Are you insane Ovi, it’s going to rain, doesn’t that strike you?’. His voice wasn’t unyielding and Oviya knew that he’d take her anyway. Something inside her wanted to hold him close from behind, the way she would everytime they were alone anywhere on campus late evening, but a part of her made sure she barely sat close enough to touch him on the bike. ‘I’m not going to the Marina. No way.’ Oviya didn’t say a word; she knew he’d take her to Elliot’s instead. ---As they stepped on to the white sands of Elliot’s’, Oviya was reminded of the time they had come here in college. Besantnagar was far from when they both stayed, yet they braved the distance to hide from prying eyes and get some time alone. They were seventeen then, and the worst of their worries was whether they’d both have enough money to get back home or buy some food at their canteen. But now they were struggling to find words to speak. Earlier, it had been difficult for her to stop looking at him, now it was increasingly difficult to maintain more than a glance of his face. When he spoke of nothing specific; the weather, the tears in the soles of his floaters, and about the friends from his apartment who Oviya knew only by name and had never met, Oviya found herself looking at a different person from the boy she loved dearly. Suddenly, the checked semi-casual shirt with his sleeves

rolled up to his elbow irritated her; his hair seemed uncombed, and the light afternoon sweat that beaded on his forehead made her want to cringe. ‘That’s enough,’ she said, bluntly, cutting him short, mid-sentence. She wasn’t listening and she wasn’t interested in anything he had to say. The fact that it still hadn’t struck him that Oviya was with him after this long, after months of sporadic phone conversations didn’t seem to mean anything to him. The feeling cut through the bone. ‘Oh, alright, I’ll stop’, he said abruptly, ‘ so you tell me something then’. ‘Say what?’ ‘Well, you cut me off mid-sentence and you clearly weren’t listening to anything I was telling you, so you tell me’. His tone was matter-offact, and direct. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and swore at the sand getting into his sandals. ‘I don’t have anything to say, because I don’t think you’d want to know anything’. ‘Listen, Ovi, spare me another one of these arguments alright? I understand that you’re angry at something, or with me, or at anything, but this is ridiculous’. Oviya stood dead in her tracks, and looked at him. She wanted to rave and yell, but no words came out. Instead, she could feel hot tears burning in her eyes. ‘ You’re seeing me after so

long and all you can is be rude to me’, she said, her voice barely a whimper. She was suddenly desperate to leave, telling him about her leaving the country felt unnecessary, as if it might not have mattered to him anyway. ‘I didn’t see you because there was something going on.’ Kamal said, breaking the silence. Oviya could tell that he was beginning to get restless too. The air was humid, and vendors who were selling corn called out to them everytime they walked past. ‘Like what?’. The question was spontaneous, not curious. Kamal hesitated, then went on, ‘ There was this guy who died near my place, there’s been some stuff going on…’ ‘Some guy?’ Oviya said disbelievingly. Earlier, she used to be concerned with the guys he hung out with after college. Kamal always kept her away from that part of his life; later on, she knew that she didn’t want to know them either. ‘ Is this some guy you know?’ ‘No, well… Ya, it’s this kid who used to work at the Grocery store…’ ‘A kid who worked at the grocery store? And you weren’t seeing me because of this kid who you don’t even know,’ she spat the words out literally. His lies were getting too desperate. ‘Why can’t you just tell me that it was because of that girl you were seeing?’ Kamal, exclaimed as if caught off-guard, ‘ which

girl? I’m not seeing anyone!’. His derision washed over her, there was too much that had been lost between them already, and the accusation fell between them, limp and invalid. ‘I heard that you were seeing someone’, Oviya muttered, unsure of herself now. He was staring at her intently, and she didn’t want to turn and face him. She was too scared that it might be true. ‘You know, Ovi’, he paused, thinking, looking away at the vast stretch of white sand. There was barely anyone on the beach but the drizzle had stopped and people were slowly pouring in; Women let loose their braids and sat with their children near the ice cream and corn stands, couple walked by quietly, enjoying the weather and letting the waves wash their feet. At the distance, a family sat sipping on tender coconut, while their children strung kites. ‘What Kamal?’, she realized that he was too lost in thought to speak to her. ‘You don’t know anything, Ovi, I mean that boy shouldn’t have died,’ he went on, disconnected. ‘I don’t understand why this boy is so special, you tell me…’ ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ His tone surprised her. It wasn’t just cold, it was dismissive. Oviya said nothing. She wanted to but stopped herself. It was clear that there was nothing more that could fix the rupture in their conversation, in their lives. He seemed so pathetic, so out of control to her that she found

herself pitying him. If only he had listened to her, he could have saved himself so much trouble. She wanted to hold him, and shake him hard any cry but not a sound escaped her lips. Eventually, they spoke of college; of the classes they missed and the professors whose classes they loved, the empty corridors, and the times they sat around in the canteen whiling away time in-between lectures. When Kamal paused, and held her hand slightly as they walked side by side, Oviya felt her rage dissipate. Yet, when she looked ahead at the sands that stretched before them, she couldn’t help thinking of England. She longed to feel the air on her face, she wanted to forget it all – the city, the people around her, her life here, the few friends she had, above everything, she wanted to be away from him. When they found an empty bench, Kamal ran towards it, ‘finally’, he announced triumphantly. After Oviya settled down near him, she could hear the wind whistle through the leaves in the trees behind her. It had begun to drizzle again, a bit heavier than the last time. The scent of moist earth and roasted corn wafted through the air. A child flying a kite ran towards her mother, stumbling, falling and crying. Oviya watched them silently. She thought of her childhood here, on these very beaches, racing with the wind and licking ice lollies. When she was little, her father and mother carefully planned these special trips to the beach. They would be a treat just after Oviya finished her exams, or if she scored highest in her class.

Kamal leaned towards her and tugged her Dupatta slightly, jolting her out of the daydream. ‘An insect,’ he said. ‘So how is everyone? You know... friends and all’, she found herself asking. She knew that he knew she hated the people who he stayed with, and that she was asking the question because she preferred it to the silence. ‘Hmmm... Shek is fine, the other guys are fine too,’ Kamal said, taking a long drag from a cigarette he had just lit. The name made her cringe. From the time that she had met him, Oviya could never understand why he called himself Shek. The only people who used his real name other than Oviya were his teachers and parents. Abhishek was the son of a wealthy hotelier in Dubai, and yet, he lived a life that was in complete contrast to who he really was. He ate at local restaurants, drank cheap alcohol, shopped at premium stores instead of the mall, he made believe that he was just like everyone else. Years ago, when Oviya’s family moved into Seventh Avenue, it was Abhishek and his mother who had helped them settle in. The fact that they were rich had been conspicuous at instant; there were three cars parked in the driveway, the flowers that bloomed over the compound that separated them gave away a sickly sweet scent in the dry heat. Oviya noticed all this – the way Mrs. Murthy wore jewels throughout the day, the chill of her skin from sitting constantly in airconditioning as she touched Oviya’s cheek, the

freshness of the flowers in her hair, and the generous amount of oil in the curries she set over. Abhishek had stood, almost embarrassed of his presence, behind the pillars on their front yard. His perfectly fitting jeans were frayed at the edges, his hair was gelled, tightly combed back and set, and his T-shirt had a swoosh neatly embroidered near his chest. He never stepped forward to say hello, simply nodding everytime his mother chatted excitedly to her parents about his school, looking towards his side time to time. Oviya hadn’t said anything either. Just like her father, she found it difficult to talk to strangers. A week later, she woke up to the sound of exuberant laughter in the living room. Abhishek appeared without warning, asking her mother if they had some spare eggs since the department stores had closed on a Sunday. Oviya had stepped into the room, midconversation, hair disheveled and uncombed, face puffed with sleep. ‘Oho, still sleeping?’, Abhishek called to her lightly. Her mother who was quite enthralled with the family already, asked him to stay for breakfast. ‘ Stay Khanna, you must stay and have some Rava idlies, it’s a specialty’. She didn’t notice then, the way Abhishek had looked at Oviya. The way he stared into her eyes, and the way he looked her top to bottom. Oviya had excused herself and shut herself up in the bathroom for an hour, sweating, setting her hair. She had been twelve that time – and the sudden rush excited her. In the night, she had

run the scene in her head over and over again, the way she walked in, the clothes he wore, his voice, his laughter resounding in the darkness of her head. She didn’t want to open her eyes and lose the memory. Every night, she had dreamed of him. Abhishek visits had become frequent. He appeared without warning always bringing in specially made samosas, or asked if there were any more bulbs to fix. He came at times when Oviya would just get back from school, an hour before math tuitions. Just this time, when Oviya was aware of his stare, she stole glances at him as well. It became their little secret – their little game of Hide and S eek. At that time, all she wanted was to stand near Abhishek smell the gel he wore on his hair, and float in the musky scent of the cologne around him. She knew it was love. She looked upto him, he was all of sixteen, and he was her hero. Sometime in those many days that he visited, Oviya bumped into Abhishek in her garden. It was Founder’s day at her school, and she had decided to stay home and watch television. Her parents had gone to shop to do their early Diwali shopping in Ratna Street, and give the traffic, they had asked Oviya to stay at home. ‘How come you are here?’, Oviya had called out in surprise. Abhishek, who was busy sorting out something in the toolshed jerked up in fright. ‘Jesus, you gave me a heart attack!’. Oviya stood, arms crossed as he hurriedly put away stuff in a rusted toolkit. The tool shed

behind their home had been unused for years. The family who had lived in the house before them had used it a Dump yard, stacking it with unwanted pipes, bricks, nails and hammers. Oviya’s father too, used the tool shed for the same reason. ‘Well, what are you doing here?’, she had asked, suspicious, her heart thudding against her chest. ‘Come in, I’ll show you,’ Abhishek whispered, cautioning her inside the tool shed. When she stepped inside, she felt his hands around her waist, jerking her in a tight embrace. The scent of musk and the pungent smell of wet rust filled the room. ‘ What are you doing?’ she had whispered angrily, terrified suddenly that her parents might return any minute and see them. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ Give me a break, I know you wanted to do this’. His hands roamed upwards, beneath the light cotton Salwar she was wearing, towards her bra. Slowly, she could feel the hardness against her thigh, as he stroked against her roughly, his fingers pressing into her waist. ‘You wanted to fuck right? I could teach you how to fuck…In fact I’ve been waiting to do this to you all along’ he said, breathing heavily, pulling the nada to her Kameez. ‘Leave me,’ she cried, ‘ just leave!’ she pushed him against the wall, beads of sweat lining her forehead. ‘ Don’t ever do that to me, I’ll tell Amma’.

Abhishek had burst out laughing, ‘seriously, please Oviya, it’s not be who’d be punished, it’s you they’d beat up and lock inside for days.’ Then he’d set his hair neatly back into place, looking into a broken mirror hanging on the wall. The moment had passed – her dream was broken. She felt anger rise within her and engulf her senses. All she could muster was ‘Go home’. She didn’t know why she said it, she wanted to rave and pull his hair out as he stood settling it over and over again, she wanted to punch his face. But she couldn’t. She didn’t have the courage to do it. Abhishek opened the door and stepped out into the garden. The afternoon sun blinded Oviya, who was still standing in the darkness of the toolshed. She watched as he folded the frays of his jeans and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘So I guess you’ll keep your mind shut about this won’t you?’. When Oviya didn’t reply, he stepped closer to her, smiling strangely. ‘It’s our secret isn’t it Ovi?’, he whispered when he was closer, standing between the dark and light of the doorway, ‘ because if you say one word…’ Before Oviya could think, he had jumped the compound. For an hour after, Oviya sat in the toolshed his words ringing in her head. She thought about what he could have done. Would he have killed her? At night, she woke up from nightmares – she dreamed of him watching her from the window. She looked back everytime she was in the bathroom; she bolted doors and kept the

nightlight on. Oviya never told her parents about the incident – she didn’t want to get beaten by her mother, but above all, she didn’t want to suffer the silence that her father would put her through. It was two months later that Abhishek and his mother moved. Oviya had watched from the distance, as trucks loaded their furniture, wall hangings and carpets into them. Mrs. Murthy sat out on a cane sofa on the porch with her jewels glistening in the sun, directing workers as they walked to and fro from the house. A maid brought a tray of limejuice every other hour, while she flung words around at the workmen. Oviya pictured Abhishek’s father who she had never seen; a bald man with a potbelly, wearing numerous rings on his fingers, and ordering people around. She laughed at the thought, thinking of Abhishek and what a strange family they made. It was only Oviya’s mother who felt clearly upset that neither Abhishek nor his mother had dropped in to say goodbye. She would always mention them over dinner. Her father would simply nod, and Oviya would say ‘Yes Amma, but they are gone, it’s alright’. She was relieved that she would never have to see Abhishek or his mother ever again. He would be a memory that she has forgotten. Sitting now, thinking of those years with Kamal made Oviya sad. Kamal had known Oviya’s dislike for Abhishek early on, when he had mentioned it. Yet, she couldn’t tell him why – she didn’t want to dig up the secrets she had swept under the rug.

‘Ovi… Why are we here?’, Kamal interrupted her thoughts, ‘ It’s going to rain. You said you wanted to tell me something… what is it? Come, let’s go, you can tell me on the bike.’ He didn’t wait for her to answer. Heavy drops of rain fell from he sky, and the glorious scent of wet earth filled the air. ‘I wanted to tell you…’ Oviya began. ‘Tell me on the bike, quickly, let’s run…’ Kamal caught her hand and they ran towards his bike, parked in the furthest end in the parking lot. On the way back home, amidst the traffic, she leaned forward, wanting to hold him tight and whisper in his ear. But the rain stung their faces as they sped past blackened buildings, overflowing manholes, and pedestrians skipping over the muck on the streets. Oviya closed her eyes, and felt the drizzle on her face, she disconnected and imagined herself in England, racing up cobbled streets, stone buildings and red phone booths. She cried because she knew that this was probably the best way to leave him, and that the rain washed away the tears from her face.

----The evenings got to Oviya. There was never anything to do. But today, she simply lay down. Nothing in her room except three packed suitcases and the rain pattering against the window. Her mind swam with thoughts. Each time she read and re-read her diary, she wanted to cut herself more. At first the pain was

excruciating; she tried with a seven o’ clock razor she had found in her father’s bathroom. Biting her teeth, she had pressed it hard against the inside of her thigh. Then she waited till the pain literally blinded her and she felt the familiar feeling of warm red liquid slide down to the floor. Of course, she was careful. She always made sure she washed herself and applied antiseptic. Why? Oviya screamed inside her head. Why does the pain never leave from inside me however much I try? She flipped over the pages of her journal and began reading again from the start. A photo of a boy sitting on the branch of an oak tree slipped and fell onto the cashmere carpet. Oviya picked up the picture and looked at it. Long and hard. She wished the photo would burst into flames and destroy itself. I will not cry, she told herself, I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. But the pain was unbearable. She grabbed the cutter on her desk and sliced it deep into her thigh. Then she quivered slightly, biting her teeth. When she felt the warmth of the red liquid ooze and trickle slowly down her leg, she lay back and re-read the letters from that the English university had sent her. There were also some letters from pen friends she had befriended on the Internet; these letters she saved especially for they smelt of another country. The letter papers were often scented, and smelled of rich English perfume, Yardley or Lavender. It was the scent of richness that took the girls away from the heat and dust of Madras.

To her mother, however, these letters were a waste of time. ‘Yethiku? Why do you want to spend money and write letters to people you have never met and will probably never meet?’, she would say. Oviya’s sister Parvathi was the only one who shared her joy everytime the postman brought by a postcard from England, or Philippines. ‘Foreign la Irundhu letter ma!’, he would yell from the front gate. Parvathi would bring in the letters and both the sisters would squeal in delight; then, Oviya would tear the envelope neatly with the edge of the kitchen knife. Together, in the quiet of their room, the sisters would transport themselves to strange lands and strange stories. The postcards often showed the facades of ancient churches, stone fountains, cobbled lanes, quiet English cottages mellowed by late afternoon sun, or lit up by luminous strange lights. And the sisters would spend the hot afternoons listening to the whir of the dusty ceiling fan and dreaming. In the eighteen years that she had lived in Madras, things hadn’t changed. She often comforted herself by believing that it was a city that did not love change. It’s walls were always stained with old cinema posters that clung onto it for dear life; Posters of B grade movie stars, unknown political leaders, a paan splattered redness that eventually mellowed into a brown, the smell of stale urine and shady advertisements for hostel accommodation for students. If anyone had lived in Madras for more than three years, time would conform their lives into

a strange television reel that played over and over again. The people did the same things everyday; they went to the same clubs to play relax, or particular libraries to borrow books. They went to the only cheapest cinema hall in the city, and most often booked the same seats they sat on the last time they watched a movie. They drank tea at the same local coffee shops and took the same auto to work. It was the only life Oviya knew, a life where all she did was flow like water that adapted itself to its course, never knowing when she’d gush out into the sea, a big place with exciting things and adventure. A place where she would be free, a place where she would feel free, a place where her mind wouldn’t feel pinned down by this weight inside her. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to run away. But there seemed no escape from Madras. She was locked inside this city, bound by the memories that refused to leave her, bound by ties that were too strong to break. Occasionally, when her father wrote her postcards from Europe and America, he wrote notes of the great sights he had seen. Life in Madras was nothing like those postcards. Dinner at home was a banal affair; Oviya’s mother had taken special care to make sure the steel plates were all stainless, and sparkling clean. The tumblers matched the sparkle of the plates. There was more than three families could eat, just as her mother always made sure. There were Idlies, Chettinad Sambar, Dal, some

rice and some potato curry. Krishnaveni aunty, her mother’s favourite sister, brought some left over Avvakai pickle that Oviya could swear had been lying rotting at her home. ‘This is brilliant’, said each one the guests politely, as she offered them. Oviya could see they did their best to hide their grimaces. Absolutely authentic behaviour from her relatives who she knew could barely stand the sight of each other. ‘So are you all set and packed?’, the uncle whose name she had forgotten asked finally. It was an obvious question that one usually asked in her family especially right before anyone started a journey somewhere – another reason they asked the question was that it had a short and always positive reply. ‘All set,’ Oviya replied. In the kitchen, she could hear her aunts voicing her concern over Oviya’s ‘English’ habits and the need for her mother to tame her. Will she be living with boys? How can you let a girl live such a loose life? They asked her mother. Her mother’s silence assured Oviya that she didn’t have to worry about anything anyone thought. Her uncles did not question her further. Rather, they talked to her about education abroad, and how she was making the family proud. Oviya listened, nodded, and smiled everytime they congratulated her; she knew they disapproved of her leave-taking, that when they went back home, they would tell their own daughters that they must never follow a bad example that Oviya was setting. If there was anything that

raised the perfect child, they believed, it was family. For this reason, her relatives had stopped visiting ever since her father had left to foreign shores to teach. Even now, she knew they spoke in silent whispers of his supposed affairs with his fellow white teachers, and how much he had been spending on alcohol instead of sending money home. Oviya and her mother rarely spoke of it at home, but she knew her mother had cried every night for days. Overtime, when her father called, they knew that they had nothing to worry. He only spoke of conferences, and his yearning for life back in India. Maybe, he would always say, towards the year-end, they’re release my contract. But Oviya and he mother knew that it would be impossible, that his work demanded constant attention and that he knew they would understand anyway. The July morning was humid and wet, bringing in swarms of mosquitoes, pinching her skin like a thousand needles. Oviya swatted them carelessly and skipped across the puddles along the roadside to avoid getting the sand onto her sandals. Everywhere there was a smell of the warm soil, as if the earth had finally quenched its thirst after the endless summer months. The scent of mangoes sweetened the air as she passed vendors on the street and women in bright sequined saris chatted noisily the silk sari houses along the main road. They also chattered in a strange accented Tamil that Oviya could not tolerate. It amused her in

Madras, the way people became one eventually – Kannadigas, Tulus, Punjabis, and Malayalees… no matter where they came from, they became a part of Madras. They lost that sense of individuality. She opened The Hindu and spread it across the moist earthen floor of their porch. A cup of steaming hot coffee, and some Parle- G biscuits was set-aside in the tray for her to eat. She ran her finger through the city column and saw a small article on the left corner of the page. Youth falls into Adyar River, dies By Our Staff Reporter CHENNAI, Sept. 17. A 12-year-old youth died after falling into the Adyar River from the Kotturpuram Bridge on Tuesday night. The police said Krishnan of Kallipalayam in East Sowcarpet was allegedly pushed into the river after he refused to run errands for three college students, whom had asked to stop by on the way to the bridge. In the struggle that followed, Krishnan fell into the river accidently while the college students fled. The police believe that they might be resident hostel students at Ramoji guesthouse. The police and firemen, who reached the spot after they were alerted by the grocer, were unable to trace the youth. His body was found floating this morning. The police are in search for the youth.

Oviya looked closely but there were no names mentioned. Besides, Kamal didn’t stay in Mint Street at a guesthouse either; he stayed in an

apartment with his friends. She shrugged and turned the paper. Though she knew there were no names mentioned, she felt guilty that she suspected him. Her mother stepped out, asking if she was ready. ‘Yes Amma,’ she replied, irritably, ‘ you’ve asked me that a hundred times already’. Oviya sighed, sat up, and stretched. Puddles of water had formed in their small garden, and the first flowers stared up at the sky. In the summer and monsoons, life on the porch was as normal in the upper class Madras houses in Boat club as was the street and terrace in the average middle class home. The rain still fell, a slight drizzle across their faces. And the flowers dripped heavenly scent all along the pathway, and in earthen terracotta pots lined near the steps. So much so the scent embraced the house to and transported those inside to another world. As she sat erstwhile on the porch, Oviya also envisioned her life ahead. She imagined herself walking past huge concrete blocks of offices, gazing past rows and rows of shops, eating take-away food and playing with snow. It began to sink in all of a sudden, she was going away. She was going away and never coming back. There would be no Bhajans or Idlies in the morning, no strong smell of Bru coffee or the milkman, no tantrums over sharing the Almirah with her sister, no stories from Paati or Thatha, or bickering with the auto-drivers every morning. She walked to the toolshed, and opened its doors wide, hoping that one day its secrets would spill onto the day and that the

rain would wash it away. The taxi to the airport arrived at ten in the morning. It was an old-fashioned white ambassador car, with a small decoration on its bonnet. Muthumani, the driver, introduced himself politely and stacked Oviya’s suitcases in the boot hurriedly telling her that she better bid her goodbyes soon, for they have a long drive to the airport. Oviya’s mother stood silently at the doorway, watching as each bag was carried into the car. From the telephone in the hall, Oviya called Kamal. ‘Hi, it’s me’, she said slowly, ‘ I just called to say bye’. She waited. ‘Yeah Ovi’, he said, his voice groggy, ‘ Bye.’ Oviya waited for another second, then put down the receiver and quickly wiped her tears away. He had not asked where she was going. It was while hugging her mother goodbye that Oviya felt the need to cry. She wanted to ask her to come to England with her, yet a part of her kept holding her back. She knew it would not be a fair trade. As the car drove away, she saw her house and her mother becoming smaller in the rearview mirror. She took a deep breath, and buried her face in her dupatta that still smelled strongly of her the jasmine in her mother’s hair. Then she folded it neatly and put it in the side of her cabin baggage. It was the only memory she wanted to keep close in England.