The Hungry Ghosts (2 page)

“I … I’m just tired, Aacho. You know, it’s this heat. It is so hot now, and the walk home from school is difficult in this heat, trudging through the dry pola grounds is awful. And it is frightening, too, because there are stray dogs, and some of them I am sure are rabid, and—”

My grandmother let out a peal of girlish laughter. She came over to me and tugged teasingly on my earlobe. “This boy, he is so sweet and thoughtful, can’t even ask for something directly, ah. You were in such a big-big hurry to come to your room, didn’t you see what was right there, leaning up against the side of the verandah?”

I pulled back from her touch, and she nodded to confirm my guess. I leapt up and rushed out to see my new Raleigh bicycle. My grandmother followed, saying to Rosalind, who was waiting for her, “This boy is so funny, but so sweet, too.”

My birthday gift was the exact red and purple colour I had hinted at, and my grandmother had been even more generous than expected. The bicycle was outfitted with an imported headlamp and pedals that glowed in the dark. I cried out in delight and embraced my grandmother. She patted my arms in a pleased, pushing-away gesture. Knowing just how to make her melt, I knelt and touched her feet in the traditional gesture of veneration. “Ah-ah, Puthey, no need for that, no need,” she murmured in the ritual protest an elder made at such an action, then lifted me by the shoulders.

A few days after that visit to her properties, my grandmother summoned me to the front verandah. I found her seated in a planter’s chair, feet up on the wooden planks that swivelled out from under the arms. Her cousin, Sunil Maama, who always smelt of mothballs and dusty books, was in attendance,
seated in a lower cane chair. He was our family lawyer, a gentle man with a sheepish smile and a nervous habit of pushing greying strands of hair over the bald spot on his head. He was not a great lawyer, but was competent enough, and my grandmother stuck with him because he was family and because she could bend him to her dictates.

He was passing her documents, which she examined, holding them some distance away, as she was too vain to wear glasses except in the privacy of her bedroom. She signalled me to come and sit at her right on a stool. Sunil Maama gave me an abashed smile, eyes blinking like some night creature caught in daylight.

My grandmother rustled a document and held it out to Sunil Maama. “Tell them I will not pay more than fifty thousand for the entire property.” The “them” she used was the derogatory “
oong
.”

Sunil Maama pressed his hands together. “But Daya, these people are fallen on hard times, nah? We should not exploit them.”

“Sunil, don’t talk nonsense. Are they going to get a better price than mine?”

He looked down, stroking his battered briefcase.

“No,” she continued. “And at least I am honest. I will actually pay them the money up front. Some mudalali will promise-promise and only give half, then take possession and never pay the rest.” She flicked the paper at him. “They are better off with me and they know it. Why, these people are ridiculous in their expectations, like farmers who do not cultivate their fields but then weep because they have no harvest.”

He took the paper and muttered, “It’s bad karma, very bad karma.”

My grandmother gave me a wry look, as if we were in cahoots against this weak, pathetic person.

“Now, on to the Pettah property.” My grandmother waited as Rosalind brought out two cups of tea and some Marie biscuits and put the tray on a table in front of her. She helped herself, but did not offer Sunil Maama anything, though he was eyeing the tea. Her revenge for his comment about karma. “The rent is three months in arrears. We have to evict them.”

Again Sunil Maama looked pained.

“What else do you want me to do? How can I keep losing-losing money?” She turned to me. “I have been more generous with that Siriyawathy than the elephant Paraliya was with our Lord Buddha.”

“But give her a little time more, Daya. After all, she has been your tenant for years now, and the rent is only in arrears because of the husband’s death, nah? I have talked to Siriyawathy, and she tells me her brother is coming from the village with a cousin to stay. They will help her meet the rent when they get jobs. She might even take in a university student.”

“Look at her, will you!” My grandmother slammed her cup on the saucer, and tea slopped over the edge. “Now she is trying to run a rental business in my property, making it into a chummery and no doubt keeping a tidy-tidy profit.” She shook her head and fiercely nibbled on a biscuit. “That’s it. She must go. Today itself, I must deal with this.”

Sunil Maama gave her careful look. “You know the laws, Daya, you cannot easily evict a tenant in this country. It will take a decade at least in court.”

“Court? The laws?” My grandmother appealed to the skies. “Whoever said anything about going to court?”

“Then what?”

But I saw that Sunil Maama already knew what my grandmother had in mind.

She snorted. “The courts and the law are for bloody fools who want to pay out their fortunes to that band of blood-sucking leeches known as lawyers.”

She gestured to the remaining cup of tea, which was now quite cold. “Come,” she said to Sunil Maama, “drink, drink.”

Later that afternoon, when I was in bed reading, my grandmother pushed her way through the curtained doorway. “Come, Puthey, we must go somewhere.” She straightened her sari palu, then bustled out. When we were in the car, she ordered the driver to take us to Kotahena.

Kotahena abutted the Colombo harbour and was the uglier, mundane side that all port cities have beyond the more scenic areas. The road that took us to Kotahena passed alongside the harbour, but its dirty waters were blocked from our view by unpainted, crumbling buildings, jetties and massive cargo containers. There was a smell of tar and lorry grease in the air. Once our car left the main road and turned down one of the narrow side streets, we were in a slum of shacks that were like stalls in some grotesque carnival, constructed from different hued bricks, cement block and billboards for things like Marmite, Kandos chocolates and Milo. From these rust-flecked signboards,
smug middle-class parents and their plump children in starched white school uniforms beamed at us. An open sewer, green with algae, bubbled along under the raised front steps of the houses. My grandmother’s sari rustled like dry grass as she shifted in her seat. She darted a glance at me, then frowned out the window.

We made our way through a sharply winding ribbon of a road, so narrow I could have reached out and touched the dwellings on either side. Finally the car came to a stop in front of a well-kept brick bungalow, set back from the street. In the centre of the cemented front garden was a mottled pink marble fountain, plastic flamingos and penguins standing around it like guests at a cocktail party. The bungalow’s windows had heavy bars across them, and the front door was secured by an iron grille with a design of strangled vines.

My grandmother ordered our driver to blare his horn. A woman stuck her head out of the window. She nodded, smiled, and soon a man rushed out of the house, buttoning up his orange paisley nylon shirt as he hurried down to the gate, his green polyester trousers flapping to the slap-slap of his rubber slippers.

When he got to the car, he leaned in at the window. “Ah, nona, you bless us with a visit.”

Up close, I could see that his nose was pitted with acne scars. A folded line of flesh down his right cheek gave that side of his face a sucked-in, disapproving look, which contrasted oddly with his merry expression.

“How is the business, Chandralal?”

“Thanks to your generosity, doing very well, nona.”

“I’m always pleased to hear that, Chandralal. I know how to back a good man.”

“I would be nothing without your patronage, nona.”

“Chandralal, I want you to meet my grandson.”

He had of course seen me, but now that the introduction was made his face lit up as if he had just noticed I was there. “Why, nona, he looks just like you.”

“No, no, he is much better looking. But really, you think he does look like me? I suppose people say he has my forehead.”

“I would be honoured if you both came into my home and had a cup of tea. My wife and daughters would be delighted.”

My grandmother’s silence was eloquent. She opened her purse, drew out a piece of paper as if it were soiled and handed it to him. “Something I need taken care of.”

“You don’t have to say another word, nona.”

My grandmother counted out a number of fifty-rupee bills and handed the notes to him with the prim smile of a society hostess proffering refreshments. “I gave you a little extra for doing it so promptly. After all,” she smiled coquettishly, “you’re becoming a big mudalali and everything. Soon I won’t be able to afford you.”

He blushed as he counted the money, his lips moving as he flipped through the notes. When he was done, he gave her a boyish grin. “Thank you, nona.”

I had been observing their interaction and the exchange of money, unsure what it was all about. As the car pulled away, my grandmother, aware of my unasked questions, said, “Chandralal is a good man. He works hard to better himself, unlike a lot of our people, who sit in the shade of trees and hope rice will fall from heaven. Yes-yes, he is a good man. Always remember that, Puthey. You can depend on Chandralal. He will always be ready to help you.”

And just from the way she said this, I finally understood. Our eyes met. My grandmother sighed, fiddled around in her purse, drew out a scented handkerchief and mopped her face. “This heat, when will it let up? Is the monsoon never to arrive?”

I leaned back against the leather seat, the image of Siriyawathy with me, her bewildered eyes in their deep sockets, her son’s distended belly. Then there was Chandralal, with that knife scar on his face.

And yet I was not truly surprised at what my grandmother had just set in motion. For by now I knew her well, and this latest action of hers, though more extreme, was like others I had witnessed in the past.

The next day, after I had returned from school and eaten lunch, my grandmother invited me to come out again with her. I did not want to go, but I could not resist her.

When we arrived at the Pettah property, Chandralal was waiting astride his scooter, back erect, arms extended to clutch the handlebars as if he were riding a horse. Clustered around him were three men in sarongs, their naked upper bodies brawny and matted with hair, their eyes drug-reddened. As my
grandmother got out of the car, Chandralal grinned and saluted, index finger tipping the middle of his forehead. He hopped off his motorcycle and with a bowing gesture ushered us towards the house, grinning like a boy at a cricket match. Furniture was piled in one corner of the verandah, the cracked-open arms and legs revealing the whiteness of the wood under the dark stain, like bone jutting through flesh. The door had been kicked in, a starburst of splinters around the lock. Chandralal had secured it again with a latch and a large padlock. He presented the key to my grandmother gravely.

The house was bare, yet there were remnants of the life that had been lived here, and as we went from room to room, my grandmother complaining about all the supposed damage Siriyawathy and her family had done, I noticed a few broken toys that had belonged to the son, a woman’s comb lying on the bathroom sink, its middle teeth missing. Later I saw, on the living room floor, the shattered photograph of a man who must have been Siriyawathy’s dead husband, judging from the faded garland of flowers around the frame.

My grandmother stepped over the photograph as if she had not even noticed it, and I understood that she was so confident of her dominance she did not fear my judgment. Yet she had miscalculated her power over me. For that was the moment, as I now recall it, when my betrayal of her began.

Tonight, those years of childhood and adolescence with my grandmother are even more on my mind than usual. For tomorrow my mother and I will take a plane to Sri Lanka, then bring my ailing grandmother back here to Toronto; and the life we knew there, the life that has haunted and misshaped us all, will come to a close.

This finished part of the basement, where I stand looking out at the back garden through the barred window, used to be my bedroom before I moved out of my mother’s home to Vancouver. There have been great changes since I lived here, seven years ago. Gone are the mirrored squares pasted to the far wall—remnants of the previous owner’s bar. Some of the squares were missing, and when I used to get dressed before them, I would see myself in fragments. Gone, too, is my box-spring mattress on the floor and the scratchy, synthetic brown-and-white comforter I sweated under so many nights. In its place is a
futon covered in a purple duvet with a pattern of white stars and quarter moons; gone, also, is my rickety table teetering with university textbooks and papers half written. A second-hand sofa with a nice design of lavender flowers has replaced the two tub chairs left by the previous owner (mossy-green monstrosities pocked with cigarette burns). But the biggest change is the odour of the basement. When I lived here, the lime-green carpet would get wet at a certain place whenever the washing machine was on, due to faulty plumbing. Now, grey and white flecked industrial carpeting stretches tight from wall to wall, neatly cut and hammered into place at the baseboards. The smell in the room is no longer musty and waterlogged, but parched, like dust.