The Hungry Ghosts (8 page)

“Shame is for the unwashed proletariat, so I don’t deign to—”

“Don’t talk to me in that ridiculous way. You’re not on a stage.”

“Ah, I see that Mother Dearest, Mother Fairest, is offended.”

“Shivan, shut up.”

“Or perhaps I should say Mother Unfairest.”

“I know she hit you first, but you were annoying her. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you can’t hit your sister back. A man must act in a chivalrous manner towards his women folk. No matter how much they provoke him, a man must never touch his women folk. He can scold them or even berate them, but—”

“Yes, yes,” I yelled, “take her side the way you always do against me. You always do.”

“No, Shivan, that is not true.”

“It is, it is, you love her more than you love me.”

“Ah, Shivan, how could you even say that.” My mother stepped back.

“How can I say that? You ask me? You dare to ask me that?”

I ran to my room, flung myself on the bed and beat the pillow, letting out a muffled howl of rage.

5
 

W
HEN THE MIND BURNS WITH ANGER
,
immediately cast aside those angry thoughts or they will spread like an unchecked fire travels from house to house
. Those were words my mother repeated, from a book called
Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
, when she told me the story of her life many years later.

For my mother, too, the pivotal moment of her childhood was her father’s death when she was eight years old. He was a distant but kindly presence, a man who was often away on circuit as a judge. He would sometimes bring her toys from his travels around the island. Depending where he had been, the gift would be brightly painted clay cooking chatties from the south, or a woven palmyra elephant from Jaffna. He seemed unaware that he often brought home the same gifts. My mother never pointed this out, shy around him because he, too, was shy. When he talked to her, he would periodically suck in his breath through gritted teeth, as if he had a toothache. At fifty-five, he was less like a husband to my grandmother than one of those self-effacing elderly bachelor uncles who live on a niece’s charity. He had married when he was forty-six and my grandmother just seventeen. They had separate bedrooms because my grandmother claimed he stayed up too late at night working and disturbed her when he came to bed. The room she assigned him was at one end of the front verandah, a room typically allotted to a relative living on charity.

By the time my grandmother was twenty-four, she had already amassed many properties, and my grandfather regarded his wife with the befuddled look of someone who had just noticed some object that had been there all along. He was particularly awed by her tantrums, the way she would yell at Sunil Maama for some incompetence, Sunil wringing his hands and gasping, “Sorry, Daya, sorry.” She would also rant at tradesmen who tried to sell
her bad goods, and at carpenters or pipe-baases who had done a shoddy job. When she began one of her tirades, my grandfather would creep away to his room. Occasionally, he gently protested at dinner, particularly after she had humiliated Sunil. She would hear him through and then say mildly but firmly (for she was often tranquil after a tirade), “But I am right about this, nah? I am always fair-thinking.”

He was never able to deny that she had lost her temper for good reason. “But, dearest, is it necessary to be so fierce about it?”

“Otherwise?” My grandmother would indicate for Rosalind to refill her husband’s plate. “I am, after all, a woman. Men, by their very nature, will always try to take advantage of me. If I am not strong with them, they will rob me. And,” a steeliness would enter her voice, “no one is going to shame me by taking advantage and then laugh behind my back, telling everyone I am some gullible, pathetic fool.”

This always shut her husband up, and my mother would be aware, in that way of children, that something heavy and unspoken muffled the clink of her parents’ cutlery against their plates.

When my grandmother passed my mother on the verandah while she was doing her homework, she would sometimes stop to say a few stiff words like, “Ah-ah, very good, doing your school work,” or, “Now, have you eaten properly today?” or, “That uniform is looking a bit worn. Ask Rosalind to take you to Mrs. Deutram’s to get some new ones made.” All this was said in a distant but pleasant tone, as if my mother was a servant’s child or a cousin’s daughter sent to board so she could go to a good Colombo school. And my mother was grateful for this lack of interest. She did not want to be noticed. All the love she needed, she got from Rosalind.

What my mother remembered most about her father’s funeral was the novelty of my grandmother’s dry hand in hers as they stood watching the coffin slide into the roaring red of the crematorium furnace. The moment the doors closed behind it, my grandmother dropped her daughter’s hand as if unaware she had been holding it and walked away to greet important guests. Among those present, my mother had noticed a group of unknown women, some of them ancient. They were country folk in puffed-sleeve blouses and sarongs that were out of fashion in the city, where Colombo ladies wore the sari. She
had thought they were servants because of their clothes, but also because her mother ignored them. Yet soon after these women had appeared at the cremation grounds, Sunil Maama and his wife had touched the older women’s feet as a sign of respect. One of the oldest, who was massive and square, had taken Sunil Maama’s arm for support as they stood watching the smoke whirl from the chimney.

Rosalind led my mother away to sit on the marble steps of a nearby mausoleum and poured her some iced lime juice from a flask. “Who are those women?” my mother demanded.

The ayah took her time replacing the lid on the flask. “They are your amma’s aunts and cousins.”

My mother already knew that her grandparents were dead, but the news that she had other relatives on her mother’s side, not just Sunil Maama, was a shock. She turned to gawk at them, but Rosalind pulled her gently around by the chin. “The old lady who is leaning on Sunil Maama’s arm is his mother. Now drink your lime juice.”

Back at the house, these relatives were sent to sit in the garden with the peons, lowly clerks and old servants who had come to pay their respects. My mother hid in a nearby araliya tree and watched how they leant over to whisper urgently about this insult, their faces prim with outrage. The older women chewed bulath leaves, their teeth and lips discoloured red, the wad like some living thing scurrying about in their cheeks. They wore elaborately carved circular brass chunam containers, like fob watches, attached to their hips by chains. The women would flip the lids open, scoop the white paste onto a bulath leaf then cram it into their mouths to augment their wads. My mother was intrigued by the dexterity with which they spat out red streams of bulath juice into the garden, never dribbling on their chins or staining their white blouses.

The women kept their voices to a discreet murmur, except for Sunil Maama’s mother, whom the others addressed as Thushara Nanda, and who seemed to be the matriarch of the clan. She was quite deaf, leaning into the conversation, ear cupped. “Yes-yes,” my mother heard her say in a loud nasal tone, “that is in the past now. Why is Daya still holding a grudge against us? After all, she was the one who got herself into that position, nah? She is the one who made a vesi of herself with that man.” The others tried to hush the old woman, but either
because she did not notice or did not care, she continued, “And who had to face the consequence of her lasciviousness? We did. After she went off to live in Colombo High Style, it was our young girls that bore her shame and had difficulty getting proposals.”

My mother was stunned to hear her own mother, who seemed so indomitable, called a “vesi,” a term she did not understand but knew was the ultimate insult to a woman.

When these women were ready to leave, my grandmother came out to them. “Ah-ah,” she said with a rictus of a smile, “you are going.”

Sunil Maama had come along behind her, having been detained earlier by fellow lawyers in the house. He went around now, giving the women envelopes of money while my grandmother stood, clasped hands pressed to navel. The women took the envelopes stonily, but my mother sensed their need. Vindication flickered at the corners of my grandmother’s mouth. Yet once the women had left, her face buckled into an ancient tiredness and sorrow as she gazed after them.

And so my mother Hema saw for the first time that her mother had weaknesses, too.

When she was fifteen, my mother sat for the Senior School Certificate. Exam results in those days were published in the papers, with students who had done best at the top of the list, failures at the bottom. My grandmother was vaguely aware that her daughter had sat for the certificate. The day the results were published, my mother rose before dawn to wait with Rosalind for the paper, so she already knew how she had fared when, at breakfast, Rosalind, hand fluttering with excitement, laid the paper in front of her mistress, folded to the results page.

“But what is this?” my grandmother snapped at the improperly arranged paper. Then, seeing what was on the page, she gave her daughter a keen glance before bending to run her finger along the list from the bottom up.

“At the top, Loku Nona,” Rosalind cried. “At the very top!”

My mother had won distinctions in all eight subjects, one of only twelve students to do so island-wide, and one of only two girls. My grandmother stared at her daughter, then turned to Rosalind, who beamed and nodded. My grandmother scratched her cheek as if she did not know what to do with
this piece of news. Then she nodded at my mother. “Ah, very good. Yes-yes, very good.”

The phone soon began to ring: first Sunil Maama and his wife, calling to congratulate my mother; then my mother’s principal, various friends, the mothers of these friends, her father’s relatives. Soon my grandmother was getting phone calls, too, from business associates and bank managers, colleagues of her late husband in the Ministry of Justice. As my grandmother answered the calls, my mother noticed that her tone grew more and more proud and proprietary. Soon she was saying things like, “Yes-yes, I had no doubt she would get eight distinctions. It was no surprise at all. Hema has always been a very bright student.” Or, “She is my daughter, after all, why are you acting so surprised, ah?” Or, “From the time she was a little girl, she was smartsmart.” Or, “Yes, indeed, I have very big plans for her. No marrying at seventeen or anything like that. My daughter is a modern woman.”

Sitting on the verandah listening, my mother felt strangely deflated.

A few days later, my grandmother took her daughter to lunch at the Grand Oriental Hotel’s Imperial Room, which overlooked the harbour. She invited Sunil Maama, too, because she felt it was unseemly for women to dine out alone; also, she really did not have anything to say to her daughter. During the meal, she spoke only to Sunil Maama, but gave sidelong glances at my mother, saying, “How wonderful it is for young women these days, nah, Sunil? All the advantages. Why, you can become a doctor or a lawyer now. Who knows? One day a woman might rule the country.”

Later, when they were alone in the car going home, my grandmother, face averted, slid a royal-blue velvet box across the seat to my mother. It contained a Ceylon Stones jewellery set—a matching necklace, earrings, bracelet, ring and brooch.

When my mother thanked her hesitantly, my grandmother declared with relief, “Ah, you like it? Well done, duva, well done.” She reached out, hesitated for a moment, then patted my mother’s hand. “Take out the necklace. Try it on.”

My mother drew out the necklace and rested the cold stones against her clavicles.

My mother’s success at school had wrapped itself around her shoulders like a gossamer shawl. She had loved her classes, loved the validation from teachers and schoolmates. She had felt a happy lightness, studying in the library after school, the sun slanting in through the window, mynahs chirping outside, a breeze coming to her, smelling of salt from the distant murmuring sea. Then there had been the week before the exams when she, along with other girls hand-picked to succeed and bring prestige to the school, were kept back for afternoon tutoring in the staff room. This was a hallowed place, forbidden to students, and my mother had felt grown up to be invited in. The teachers had treated the girls like equals, with a relaxed merriness. My mother enjoyed how they had turned girlish recalling their own school days, teasing each other and the girls, divulging their college nicknames, letting their hair out of rigid buns to lie in coils about their shoulders. A peon had been sent to get treats such as mango or pineapple achcharu, freshly fried vadais or mutton kotthu roti from the nearby Muslim restaurant. As they sat around spooning the food into their mouths, the girls, grown bold, would ask the teachers about their lives and marvel at who these women had been before they came to work here, at who they were outside the institution. The teachers had painted an irresistible picture of university life, seducing the girls into trying even harder.