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Twenty-four years ago, I said goodbye to Kerala on the west coast in southern India, land of my ancestors and my terre natale. I wasn’t aware then of the shroud of mysticism veiling that ancient subcontinent. I didn’t promise to return. I didn’t know when. Or if. Women in my family have always left. India was behind me and I looked to my future westward. I knew it meant marriage and motherhood. But what else? I left behind temples swathed in incense, shimmering silk saris and jasmine garlands, lush green palm groves and smoky kitchens where the aroma of spices was ingrained in the stone walls. I exchanged it all for eight months of winter, a steady income, tulips and daffodils, pine trees, a dishwasher and a microwave. I exchanged a world of odours, noise and colours for a pristine white landscape embalmed in comfort and serenity. Now I was going home after a long, long time. It had been so long that I found myself searching for words in Malayalam. I hoped that it was only a momentary lapse and that once I was there, it would all come back to me. It was not a happy occasion. Just a week ago, I had received a call at 2 a.m. I hated these early morning calls: they were always transcontinental and they were never good news. Father has had a heart attack, my brother Suresh told me, his voice shockingly unfamiliar. Come home quickly, Nalini. It took me a week to get together passport and visa and to brood briefly over the matter of cholera vaccine and malaria pills. I made no list of things to do. I took no gifts. I wondered how my mother was bearing it. Would I recognise her? It had been so long! Would she be terribly aged, wrinkled and broken with sorrow? In my mind she was the age I was now: forty-three. All through Dorval and Heathrow, images of my life in India flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t believe so much time had passed. In Kerala, I’d been the child from the city. In the city—Bombay, Dibrugarh, Shillong or Darjeeling—I was a Madrasi. So the transition to the West had been a smooth one. Being different was a part of me. It was how others perceived me and so it was probably who I was too. Bombay was a brazen assault on my senses. Bombay was loud and congested. Bombay was one festering heap of humanity. I recoiled, eager to get away to the palm groves and backwaters of Cochin. The airport in Cochin was no bigger than a cowshed. But outside a rhapsody in green awaited me: green coconut palms, shiny plantain trees set against the dark velvet of the backwaters broken by the tender parrot green of the paddy fields where young shoots wallowed in water. No sooner had I taken a step into the sunshine, than water oozed out of my pores, running in rivulets down my back and temples. The 40ºC heat warmed my frozen soul. I suffered terribly though. The hot sun gave me a headache and I had to wear my sunglasses all the time. It immediately stamped me as the outsider. Each village that spilled into the next one boasted of a temple, a church and a mosque. Religious tolerance and political magnanimity flourished side by side. I noticed similarities submerged in the masses while contradictions appeared even starker and more unbearable on this paradise of my illusions. I saw brown skin everywhere. Black eyes just like mine. It was a strange feeling. I was no more visible. I disappeared in the background. The Hindu women with pottu on their foreheads and mysterious dark eyes rimmed with glistening kanmashi, wore saris in spectacular hues. Jasmine garlands in their long black braids released a seductive fragrance. The Muslim women wore white raucas, heads only casually covered, no full purdah. The Christian women had enormous gold studs hanging from ear lobes and their munduhs had pleated fans-like tails fanning out at the backs. Children were everywhere, laughing and screaming, the older ones in school uniforms and the young ones naked, showing brown bellies and bottoms. Only the men looked the same, no matter what their religious leanings. They looked cool in their white munduhs and pale shirts. There was a subtle class difference though. The land tillers, labourers, coolies—basically all who worked with their hands—wore lungis in bright prints. Men who worked in offices, banks and schools wore either munduh and shirt with the tails hanging out or the regular pants and shirt. The more daring ones wore T-shirt, jeans and sunglasses. Students, I thought. Kerala was, as usual, in a political turmoil. That was one of the problems. Education was compulsory, so all could read and write. Everybody knew what was best. But nobody knew how to do it. Everybody went on strikes, taking turns. The hottest hotheads were the bus drivers, then came teachers, bank clerks, and even students went regularly on strikes. It was the constitutional right of a Keralite. As a child, on my summer visits from various cities, I’d visit Kerala for short periods. The visits remained in my mind as always too short. I loved the boat rides. Now, in the boat, nobody crowded me. They sat at a respectful distance away from me. My hair, my behaviour betrayed me. The children stared curiously. Nobody said anything, but they knew. Once again, I was different. My father’s body couldn’t wait for me. He was cremated according to strict Hindu rites near his favourite cashew tree. It never bore more than a couple of fruit that my father guarded jealously, waiting for the day when it turned red, then yellow. I ran into my aunt’s arms—she’d always been more generous with her hugs than my mother—and we both wept. Then she led me through the sandy courtyard to the cashew tree and I prostrated myself under it, calling upon my father’s soul to watch over my children and me. To bless them and to forgive me, for they had not known him. Then my mother’s arms were around me. She was a little rounder. She sniffed and cleared her throat in that manner that used to irritate the hell out of me before. My daughter did that too. Now, I just hugged her closer to me. “Nalini molu,” she said. “It’s been so long.” The Arabian Sea shimmered in the hazy air. I stood on the banks of the backwaters. The air was sultry. Coconut groves cut into the waters and disappeared. The waters widened and merged and mingled with that of the sea. In the shimmering horizon, I saw the graceful arches of the fishing nets; the sky filled with the cries of the water birds whose names I couldn’t remember anymore. Close by, a fishing net heavy with silver fish was being reeled in, the fishermen singing to the rhythm of their movements. The zenith was a steely blue with wispy white fingers of cloud floating lazily across the endless expanse. I waited for sunset to hit the waters. The waters turned dark and dappled with the amber flashes of the setting sun. The sky turned a flaming orange that exploded into a bright molten yellow while the horizon turned a tangerine red. The fishing nets hung like giant cobwebs, spread-eagled like an outstretched palm. The bamboo poles anchoring the nets swayed gently in the evening breeze. In the next instant I was enveloped in darkness. The stars lit up a midnight blue sky and the air was heavy with the fragrance of the night blossoms. The darkness brought with it the scent of coriander, cardamom, ginger and cloves from the hearth of the evening fires. The waters were leaden, quiet and full. There was a catch in my throat. How could I have forgotten it all? I remembered that same ache in my heart when I first glimpsed the grey ribbon of water with the palm groves glistening in the sunshine and houses—palm thatched and shingled—as the train from Bombay chugged into Ernakulam. I had that same feeling now. The same sun, the same sky, the same sands under my soles. Yet everything was different. I had changed. I’d been barely twenty when I had left then, now I was forty-three. I promised my mother I’d return. Soon. With my daughter. I wouldn’t wait for the early morning telephone summons. Life was too short for that. |
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