Ode to Broken Things (24 page)

Jay looked at Agni from the distance.
How that girl paces! Restless as a caged tiger, and just as uncommunicative.

He pricked up his ears. In the balmy evening air, he could actually hear tigers growling; it wasn’t just his imagination. Was it only yesterday that he had said to Mridula, “Rohani tells me that you can hear tigers from your house?”

Ranjan had answered for her. “Yes, but not because they are still roaming wild! The zoo is down the road from us, and sound travels far, especially at night. You must come for dinner sometime and we can relax and talk, with the tigers as background noise!” Then Ranjan had clasped Jay around the shoulder, “Oho, I keep forgetting… who has the luxury of time any more
bhai
?”

“I’ll be back,” Jay had assured him.

Jay was back, but now Ranjan was deeply sedated, lost in a sleep that he had no wish to awake from. Mridula sat morose, surrounded by a group of women who seemed to rise and fall like fluttering doves around her. Why doesn’t she go to bed? Jay thought irritably. Death was too much of a public spectacle in this country. His parents had subdued funerals, and everyone remained quite composed. He didn’t understand this need to call on nonexistent gods throughout the evening in a religious song and dance. People died everywhere. It was sad, yes; even he felt some regret about Abhik, but the living had to move on.

Only very rarely could Death be bent to human will.

When he had been sixteen, so many decades ago, he had learnt this. On his birthday. The birthday he shared with Agni.

Shanti and Jay rowed through the darkness towards a magic shore, shrouded by the inky sky, empty of even a faint sickle moon. Then, turning a sudden corner, they were welcomed by fireflies; thousands of these insects flashing in a transient dance, some stationary, others circling in a sexual exuberance so frenzied that the night glowed with heat. The nightjars and owls added to the soft background chirrups of the night, while tree frogs glided from tree to darkened tree. The
beremban
trees that only flowered at night opened for the bats, and the cup-shaped flowers blew a strong, sour smell into the sudden breeze. Scattered clumps of light softly glowed on the ground as the luminous fungi spread on decaying wood.

Jay’s young eyes took in all this in an enchanted glance for the first time, and he fell in love with this land. He wanted to row forever with this magical woman, and this would be where he would one day die.

He had thought of all this in the silence of the night, wondering how to tell her that she was already irreparable, carrying this incestuous load in her womb, but he would make her his own. If he stayed here, he might never become a doctor, but he didn’t care. The civil unrest on the streets had been bloody, and his father was urging them on to America. It was time to go before racial discrimination became the price for peace.

But he, Jay, would pay any price to remain here with this woman he loved so much.

On the shore of that black sea, in a place where the fireflies cast no light, Shanti’s husband was waiting. That man from Sylhet, the half-educated low-caste
chamar
, how he had begun to sneer at Shanti, his words ringing through the house, castrating them all. This man, who had crossed the oceans as a servant, and could be bought for small change, now touched Shanti whenever he wanted. He could damage her at will.

He had said, “Those people have never been able to treat people of other faiths equally. You were
stupid
to believe one of them would.”

Shanti’s tears had goaded him on. “Even if what you say is true, things are different here.”

“You mean they revised the Holy Book in this country? Hah! I wonder if you have anything in here at all.” He had jabbed a vicious finger at her forehead, flinging her head back.

Jay had seen Shanti recoil at that touch, and quivered inside, fearing for what he knew, and the power of that knowledge in the face of such contempt. Shanti had stopped writing, locking up her poems into the same tin trunk that held Shapna’s wedding
sari
and Nikhil’s silk
dhoti
. The deep cavern which had swallowed Shapna’s romantic dreams now drew Shanti into its bosom and Jay could see his love spiralling, unravelling, until she was just a weed, floating further and further in an immense sea.

Jay, half-crazed with the pent-up frustrations of a sixteen year-old, had searched that tin trunk one quiet afternoon and discovered this:

right now I’d like to

write poetry with my nails

on your skin stretched taut

leaving deep imprints

of me; I’d like to

gnaw you till you can’t think

your tongue in my mouth…

He had felt a wild stirring in his groin at this celebration of unabashed copulation; that was how it was, the most basic instinct of all, spawning over the earth mongrel breeds… that was the history of civilisation. Then he realised who it had been written by and for whom.

He knew Shanti didn’t love her Sylheti husband, but he burnt at the thought of the road ahead. She would never give up this baby swelling up her body so unapologetically; the baby might even bring her closer to the Sylheti. After all, she married him to give the baby a father. Perhaps the baby would be born and sit at this shore, putting mud in her mouth while Shanti told her to stop it, and they would be joined by the man, who would swing the baby up into the air as Shanti clasped his waist, leaning into his back.

Jay couldn’t bear the images in his mind.

Love had been a pot, slowly simmering, coming to a boil, and then escaping into steam, evading his grasp. Jay could imagine Shanti falling in love with this man, a man who was not Jay Ghosh, and he couldn’t bear it.

Then, on that night while the fireflies danced, and her husband sat on his haunches by the shore thinking Jay was only a child, as immature as the wife he had unwittingly married, Jay declared his love for Shanti.

He knew that if he told Shanti the truth about her incestuous baby, she would die. His father had told him that, and so had Shapna. His words would cause her death, so he carefully weighed his options, still drunk on the beauty of the night.

Which was why he began with a declaration of his love, and only that. It was his birthday; the night was perfect; he couldn’t imagine a rejection.

She giggled, unsure how to react. Then she touched her stomach gently, and said, “You don’t know what you are saying.”

“I know.”

She looked into the murky darkness of the water and sighed,

“You are too young for me.”

“Only by two years! Your parents have fourteen years between them.”

“And they are very unhappy.” She shook her head, her black hair blotting the darkness deeper. “Jay, I will forget this conversation; we both will. But I will never stop loving the father of this child.”

He drew into the innards of his fury. He knew he had to destroy this love. He said, “
Your love is so unthinkable that Fatherfucker isn’t even a word in any of the languages I speak.
”

When she rowed him back to shore, telling him she needed to be alone, he had expected her to come back. They sat together at that shore, he and the Sylheti, until the other man hawked his phlegm into the bushes and said that she could go to hell, she was probably fucking some sucker somewhere, she was such a slut. Jay stayed, sleeping off in the humming night, until the commotion woke him up. When they dredged out her body, every bit of her was waterlogged and swollen, except for the demon’s teeth.

He looked across at Agni in her white
sari
. Yes, that was what Shanti had become, whitewashed of all colour.

Jay peered at the mansions of the rich surrounding this property. He could find no correlation between his memory and the reality of this new Malaysia. Across the road, the strings of fairylights edging the stalls of hawkers twinkled brightly. With the ambient lighting casting long shadows into the foliage of the huge mansions, this town looked both gawky and beautiful, like a pre-teen playing at being a woman.

He would take Agni away from all this awkwardness at once – this country’s terrible growing pains, to his holiday cottage in Port Townsend with its open views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca flanked by the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. The white bell-shaped Madrone flowers would be changing to berries now, lighting up the trees with small reddish-orange flames. The green cones of the silver fir would be turning deep purple. He could feel the fresh autumn winds already, and he knew Agni would love that garden. He would take her away from the moist rumblings of every evening, the reek of dankness from an undergrowth fetid with moisture.

He would have to call Colonel S and tell him of his decision. Colonel S would not understand, he anticipated that.

Even Jay didn’t understand why Agni had become so important to him in such a short time. He didn’t want to analyse this. It was enough to know she would make something whole, something he had been carrying around broken for a long time. And that he could try to make her whole.

Jay felt sixteen again, rehearsing the lines that would change his life. He fingered the demon-teeth pendant. He should begin with that. Approach Agni, and say,
Do you know what this is?
With typical arrogance, she would reply,
No, but I am sure you will tell me.

Jay looked down at his sleep-creased clothes and smiled in anticipation. He would hand her the demon teeth and say,
This once belonged to your mother.

Then he would tell her that when a history is buried, it doesn’t remain under the earth forever. The muddy river flows, the silt moves, and the past is spit up like
batu lintar,
the teeth of the Thunder Demons – twice as powerful, twice as malevolent.

It was after five in the evening when Agni awoke after an exhausted sleep. Ranjan and Mridula’s bungalow, originally designed for the large retinues of the plantation bosses, bulged at the seams. Children spilled over into the main living room, where they slept on a long bed, tangled limbs in disarray on the floor.

The mourning period would go on for eleven days. Religious
bhajans
would be sung every evening, and vegetarian food served.

People came and went; Agni couldn’t figure out family from close friends any more. Her eyes felt gummy with fatigue. Life without Abhik? She had never had to deal with the possibility.

Her dreams were fragmented and confused. She dreamt of water nurturing a translucent baby. She dreamt of nurses who said,
You had tears in your eyes
. She did not want to sleep again.

Even the children were totally subdued. Agni watched a group playing together under the shade of a giant Rain Tree. It was late evening, and the leaves of the tree had already started to fold, but the children played on with fists outstretched: One, two, zom! One fist became a bird, swiftly swallowing the water cupped in the palm of the losing child. The winner didn’t shout in triumph, but furrowed his brow and carried on, as if the game was played in deadly earnest.

She touched the flowers that had arrived from Greg, heavy in an oversized rattan basket, bearing the words,
I am so sorry about Abhik. Love, Greg.

Agni searched the periphery of the crowd for Jay. She hadn’t seen him for a long time, but she knew he had come to the funeral.

Her head ached. At the airport, the real threat of terrorism shaped the thoughts of many of the employees dealing with security, beading into the everyday a tinge of panic. Yet, she had not expected the terror to strike so close to home.

She checked her cellphone then put it away. It was stupid to call Rohani about this now, but she hadn’t had the time to tell her about Colonel S turning up with Jay. The trail was so unclear that it probably would not warrant an investigation of any kind; everyone knew about Colonel S and his role in the Tibetan woman’s murder but, so far, he had managed to stay above the law. Agni would make sure Abhik’s murder didn’t go unpunished.

She looked at Jay sitting alone. No matter what it took, she would get the truth out of him. Her grandmother’s discomfort whenever she saw Jay, his relationship with her mother Shanti, his connection with Colonel S – Jay seemed to be key to the jigsaw puzzle of her life. No matter how repugnant he was, she would have to work on him.

A sudden thought hit her: What if the bomb at the airport was a rehearsal? Only a dry run for a larger, deadlier plot? How much time did she have to gain Jay’s trust?

Her thoughts were driving her crazy, and she shook her head to clear it. She would go back to work tomorrow and start with what she could control. She would begin by checking out the Integrated Operations Network thoroughly. Sitting here wouldn’t bring Abhik back. Nothing would. They had not made their relationship public when he had been alive, but now, her white widow’s
sari
told everyone what had remained unsaid.

Tears pricked her eyes as she remembered Abhik dissecting the national anthem. She heard him singing the lines,
tanah tumpahnya darahku
. This land, too, had a spirit that was thirsty for blood, just like any other nation. Spilt blood was the litmus test of loyalty. She looked at end of her white
sari
, fluttering in the breeze like a surrendering flag.
I have made my sacrifices
.

Abhik had been right. There was so much to be done in this country. When so many things could go wrong at this juncture, she knew she could not mourn for long. She reminded herself of a procrastinated promise, of being a child of this soil, and of making it her own.
I, too, am a bumiputri.

There were too many divisions in this land; too much neglect of a shared human history. Perhaps the way to right the wrongs was to start from within. She had to believe that the bombs wouldn’t win. She paced silently, chanting an ancient mantra that her grandmother had given her in her childhood:

May there be peace in heaven

May there be peace in the sky

May there be peace on earth

May there be peace in the water

May there be peace in all