Anita wasn’t sure where the moon was, but neons in Bombay were insomniacs, their light made frescoes on any surface that blocked their way. She avoided looking at the wall, didn’t want to find frescoes in her bedroom. She had been hearing voices lately and could not think whom to confide in. She’d rehearse the lines in an imaginary narration to her husband, his younger sister, her work partner and then a random stranger on her route to the University. She could almost picture their responses and she didn’t go further. Cynics and sceptics were a given for the postdoctoral degree that she was working on. Her topic of study was dreamscapes; having nightmares felt like a logical side effect, but she wanted to reclaim her sleep, which was now a thing of the past.
The skies had been a consistent shade of grey that made way for the occasional darker clouds that swept in from the south west. Coconut trees swayed as they bathed in the monsoons, to an invisible music. Anita wasn’t feeling particularly gung-ho. One kitchen wall was dank. A mouldy smell persisted but had stopped bothering her; only last week when the Amazon delivery boys rang the doorbell, they mentioned it. The cleaning lady had decided to go on a vacation and had forgotten to tell her. Anita was marooned in her own home with her thesis, internet and a voice.
Days went by, the apartment spoke to her when she was alone. It was her mother-in-law’s voice. It was a little more than four months since her mother-in-law had died. Anita counted once more on her fingers, nodded to herself. She didn’t know how to calm her mind. She heard this voice every other evening when she was alone at home. The husband was somewhere near the border, taking on enemies of the nation, holding off collective imaginary fears. Anita didn’t want Arun to hear about his dead mother’s voice waking her up in the nights.
*
Anita had fallen asleep in the last few seconds. She looked for the smartphone on the bedside table, her hand seeking obvious corners of the shelf. She winced as she propped herself up on the pillows. Her left shoulder had a sprain from morning bouts of badminton. The monsoons weren’t the best time for sports, but this slicing pain reminded her of an active summer. For a brief moment she felt happy. She tried to look at the phone screen but her eyes didn’t allow it. A part of her was reluctant to look at the time, maybe it was time for her morning walk, but it was pouring outside. Finally, she sat up, realised she was thirsty, tried to recollect if it could be because of the vodka. It wasn’t. She just wasn’t drinking enough water. She gulped down half a bottle of water, she liked the faint chill on the glass bottle. Monsoon was the only winter this city had, she pulled up the light blanket that she used on nights such as these. She liked the blanket for its warmth but even more for its colour, uncommitted yet certain. A shade somewhere lilac and mauve.
The phone screen stared at her with a cold gleam, it was 2:53 am. A mother-in-law’s spirit at home wasn’t something anyone would want to live with. Anita couldn’t explain the presence that she had been feeling lately. They said spirits hovered and visited only if there was something yet to be concluded. Anita tried to recollect as she stood by the kitchen window watching the rain, pelting away but she couldn’t think of any unfinished business that Maa jihad shared with her. She sought the comfort of electronic love on social media but found fewer ‘likes’ than expected to her new display pic on Facebook. Felt that the nagging pimple on the bridge of her nose was suddenly a little more painful, touched it and regretted doing so the next moment. Her favourite icons on the computer screen seduced her to click. She tried to blame the anxiety and this ‘voice’, on Netflix, she had to stop binging on her staple diet of watching ‘crime, murder and the supernatural’.
Anita started, realigning the workstation. The way the table was placed felt all wrong. She could see fleeting reflections on the moody black screen. Any movement near the door of the study, felt like pressure on the nape of her neck. She paused after placing the chair differently, and turned the table. Her chair, of course, faced the screen of computer but now the door to her study wasn’t right behind her. She faced the door while she sat at her computer. Maaji, when she was around, would stand at the door often, waiting for her fingers to pause on the keyboard to put in a word. More than feeling good, the idea of being watched till the next pause was uncomfortable and too pronounced of assured goodness being extended to the son’s wife. Anita had gradually learnt the art of ignoring such nuances. On a good day, after a complaint or two about her digestion and a hint at her daughter’s failing marriage, Maa ji would ask about Anita’s progress at work and offer masala tea. For that Anita was forever grateful, her world was built around her plants, books and tea drinking.
Anita stared at the door, this time a little longer. Sat on her favourite chair, leaned forward, leaned back, bent a little. The perspectives were new, it felt better. She could see the corridor leading to the living room, and the mirror there which reflected part of the entrance to their flat. If she moved the chair a few inches and bent over she could even see that one large favourite painting right next to the door to their apartment, she liked that.
She got up and walked to her mother-in-law’s room. She had kept the room as Maa ji would have liked but now increasingly felt that the apartment could do with a fresh coat of paint. The repairs had been delayed enough. Gradually losing an elder to Alzheimer’s, the thesis she was working on had to be about dreamscapes. She had built her days on the need to be good to someone who however caustic in her tongue and self-obsessed in her choices could be cured with care and a dash of love. The doctor, after one long look at Maa ji’s brain scans, explained that the frontal parietal lobe of her brain was just pixels, for lack of a better analogy. Anita had held Arun all night that one long evening. She had cried, he hadn’t. He was a supportive son, his strength powered Anita to go that extra mile, though sometimes in the wrong direction.
The moment, she stopped inventing excuses to keep the repairs at bay, something snapped inside her. She grabbed some cartons or two from the online deliveries and started checking and emptying drawers, first Maa ji’s room. Despite all the sweeping, swabbing and shampoo, that room was still like her mother-in-law, except the sulphur in the air was a notch higher than when Maa ji was in this world. Most of her personal belongings had been given away. Old quilts had been sundried, given away to the car cleaner, the mattress and sheets gone, but the place still whispered memories. The room was bare but swimming in images in which Anita found a petulant presence. She put on music that she did not play when his mother had been around. There was this code of conduct followed, that could be broken now but Anita felt strange, fighting with a memory. The first moment felt like triumph, she poured herself some vodka, breaking as many rules she could in one evening itself. Maybe that could counter this voice, she would be bold, and the ‘voice’ would leave.
She walked into Maa ji’s bathroom, spent water in the shower as if to wash away traces of the fancy body wash the lady had started using. Anita looked at herself, but she didn’t shut the door. Neither did she drink the vodka. Moments later she walked to the main door and checked the latch and the bolt, so far it was all quiet except for the occasional thunder. She got back to the bathroom, shut the shower. She looked at herself in the mirror but she didn’t feel she was alone there. Anita shut her mouth to prevent herself from letting out a scream. She didn’t want to hear her own voice as she felt something move behind her, a flash of something on the bathroom mirror. Her heart was, pounding, a headache was slowly gripping her, a throbbing along the temples. She got a bunch of incense sticks, lit them, and put them on the fragments of eroded washing soap on the counter and went back to emptying the almost empty drawers when she found a fresh candle in the drawer which housed her mother-in-law’s reading glasses and her medicines. It was a yellow candle, sealed in plastic.
Anita had begun to dislike yellow, Arun’s mother liked yellow. Yellow for everything, not just sarees or bag or curtains. She had liked even the food to be yellow. Anita dug through drawers and cupboards but all that seemed scented and accessible was that lone yellow candle. She lit it in the empty room, kept it by the bedside table on a coaster that was once a tile. A younger Anita would have watched the shadow dance, but this Anita didn’t.
She noticed the tube light which had been flickering, now shone bright, but the candle went out. Anita sensed something on the small of her back, couldn’t find the courage to turn. She closed her eyes, then from the safety of eyes cupped in her palms, she watched. It was an insistent monsoon that refused to listen. There was one slat missing in the window by the toilet, and the breeze and a coconut frond were making friends with her home. She breathed out sharply and washed her face, before she continued to pack memories. Her hand looked for tissues in the little niche near the switch board where she always kept fresh packets. Just when she was giving up, what showed up was a round container, as big as her palm. That container had been home to her mother-in-law’s dentures. She didn’t open the box but brought it up to the tubelight, sure enough, there they were, pink gum, unreal white teeth and a wire. Her first instinct was to throw the whole thing away but something stopped her. The container stayed where it had been. Incapable, but it had a grip over her.
Her phone glowed to a few likes of Instagram, Anita smiled when she saw Arun had seen her post. He had always looked forward to this posting in Kashmir from where he seemed to have no desire to leave. As if his ma’s death signalled the end of his duties at home, as if he knew Anita could take care of herself. He wasn’t sure about her choice of wanting a baby though. She would send him reminders of ovarian cycles. This was not the girl he had married but then he wasn’t the guy she had agreed to spend her life with. His staying away from home was perhaps his way of wanting to be away from all that pinned him to real life.
Anita suddenly felt sleepy. The lavender incense had worked and also ‘seeing’ her husband alive was something not many women had to deal with. Arun’s return to her page on Instagram, and the downpour, felt therapeutic. The rain was an even sheet of water now, running miles to meet the ocean.
*
Anita was perched on a stool in Maa ji’s room, checking the contents of a large cookie jar which was full of audio tapes. She wasn’t sure they had a player which could play those tapes. She began rummaging through cartons and small trunks and found a tape recorder and player. The eject button worked, the chamber opened on a sprightly note. Anita inserted the cleanest looking cassette in the chamber, shut it and pressed ‘play’. There was a rustling sound that continued to a long hiss. She looked at the jacket of the tape. All it declared was a date, some fifteen years back. Perhaps the last of the generation before tapes became relics. She set the tape to rewind and went to fix herself a masala tea. Anita liked the warmth of the flame and the fact that she found some ginger in the basket where she kept potatoes. Pounding ginger with some peppercorns felt therapeutic. As she added the mash to the water it boiled over like a protest and her mother-in-law’s voice lilted in as a song, the flame went out. Anita gathered her nerves and struck the match again. She felt calmer with the fire lit. It had taken some time to get her bearings and biscuits in place. The song that played felt out of tune. She pressed the shut button, ejected the tape, tightened the spool with rear end of a pencil, pushed play. The song was out of tune. Just when she chose to shut it, she heard a conversation on it, she stopped it, listened and time-travelled with the eavesdropping.
The audio was feeble. Maa ji tried to sing better but there was a holler of booing and wolf whistles. This was around the time Maa ji lost the stage to people with real teeth. She never sang after that in public and then, not even at home. She had soon lost her job as a radio artist, lost her husband few months later, the daughter left to begin a new life in Indonesia and the son went to serve the Indian Army. Her dentures in the yellow container were a bridge from shame to acceptance. The tea boiled over while Anita stared at the niche which held the yellow container. She held it for a moment, this time, with wonder.
Back in the kitchen, Anita worked towards her new round of tea, she knew this would have no ginger, it was all gone. As she washed her favourite red teacup, Anita hoped for some magic to wash away the blues which were creeping in. The rains hadn’t ceased. It was the fourth consecutive day of this downpour. Bombay must wear her gumboots and wished for a genie to appear from the soap bubbles. She liked the smell of this dishwashing liquid, smiled to herself but soon was back to taking out the books and journals from the upper shelves of the almirah in Maa ji’s room.
She successfully lost her second mug of masala tea, this time not to the fire but in the pile of stuff that she took down from the higher shelves. She found it only when she managed to kick it – right in the centre of the mug. The mug went careening towards the bed but stopped almost magically as it hit a folder, but the tea was unstoppable. Part of the piles of paper soaked up her tea. She swiftly pounced on the pile, saved the contents, almost. Lot of the ink was smudged but thanks to her agility, a lot of the old family photographs were safe.
She found a bunch of pictures where Maa ji and she were seen looking particularly uncomfortable being in the same frame. The moment had been somewhere near Joshimath that one summer when Anita had volunteered to take his mother for her much awaited pilgrimage. Arun was too busy and his sister was pregnant. Anita had offered Maaji a week but kept aside a fortnight. With the Himalaya, one never knew. Arun wasn’t sure this was a good decision, but he went along with it. That suited him fine and he remembered his mother saying nice things about Anita.
After a successful visit to Lord Vishnu at Badrinath, Maaji had taken slightly ill. Anita called up the family doctor who was more to keen on knowing how she got permission to take the high-altitude journey with an older woman. Risks are taken for dreams, not permissions, Anita’s words had remained within her. The doctor, before hanging up, had ordered them to return to real life, pronto.
Maa ji had recuperated fast and was ready for a quick visit to Tungnath, an ancient temple, further north. Their driver, Pankaj, who had travelled with them from Haridwar was grouchy by now. This was the fourth evening in the hills. He hadn’t found his preferred bottle of rum. He made unpleasant noises about not wanting to drive them to Tungnath at this hour in the evening. But it was summer, the sky was still pink. Maa ji liked it when Anita could convince the guy; she had looked at her daughter-in-law rather lovingly on more than one occasion along this trip and had shared some wisdom with her. Temples allowed women to be in public places and were a wonderful alibi for wandering. Anita fell silent along the drive.
The two had dashed into the temple just before it closed. Anita was lost in prayer when suddenly she heard Maa ji sharply call out her name. ‘Run!’
All the doors around them seemed to be locked. There was just one door, more of a longish window, which still hadn’t been bolted. Maa ji’s large frame rushed towards that one window which was still ajar but on trying to push it open, they discovered ropes fastened it from the outside. A loud chant was on and no one could possibly hear even if they screamed. Anita’s mind wasn’t working but she had soft hands, she was able to put her hand out and pulled the rope. It was covered in flies and dung. Her fingers faltered, they weren’t nimble enough. Moments later, Maa jitook the ropes and with her teeth, tamed the knot and unfastened the big one. Anita pushed open the window and they escaped. They noticed a sage staring at them. He had been locking the doors of the sanctum sanctorum, a big bunch of keys hung from his dhoti around his waist. That stare Anita remembered, but not what it meant. Was he unaware that two pilgrims were inside, or were they women forsaken by their God, inside a temple he didn’t care to look at enough, or had they just brushed a darker truth than that. The two women let that truth lie.
On the way back,Maa ji had been silent. She had not looked at her daughter-in-law even once, and when she spoke, she had a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Women have to be more careful…’
Anita remained quiet, and had nodded.
*
The doorbell had been ringing, and sleep deprived Anita was a little slow with her movements. When she finally answered the door, there was no one there. She stared at the staircase, looked at the main latch, no telltale marks or tags from a new Pizza Hut nearby or a new takeaway. She closed the door but didn’t lock it and stood behind for what must have been several minutes, when the doorbell rang again. She realised that perhaps she had dozed off, just leaning against the bookshelf by the door. This time it was a bill, stuck in the door latch, the man who delivered coconuts, he left the bill first and collected the money later. She heard the voice again, this time much softer and calmer than she remembered her mother-in-law’s drone. Anita kept the main entrance door open. The cross ventilation brought in the sea breeze which also brought along smell of the marsh and rotting fish. She needed fresh air, for nearly three days she hadn’t seen humans. She had lived with the internet, her thesis, and a voice that sounded like her mother-in-law and some of Maa ji’s DNA on the dentures in the yellow container.
The breeze shut the door with a slam, Anita sat down and listened to her breath, and before long, she heard her own stomach, she felt hungry. The weather was just right for tandoori chicken but Anita didn’t feel like biting into flesh. She opened a kitchen cupboard which had a brand new, red pressure cooker. Attacked an onion on the chopping board. Washed rice and lentils, and the cooker was ready to take on some khichdi. She rescued remnants of what was once cauliflower from the third shelf of the fridge, cut blocks of it, then tossed them in the pressure cooker. The lid found its groove and a blue flame started doing its job. The sound of the whistle would overpower the voice she thought. Anita liked her task, suddenly. And Maa ji didn’t like anything but greasy, spicy food so there was no worrying about unfinished business with khichdi.
Anita changed, laid out a fresh set of clothes on the bed and headed for the shower. Just when she was drying herself with a song in her head, her phone rang. She wanted to dash out but she skidded slightly on the floor and checked herself. She couldn’t afford a twisted ankle or broken bones. The urgency … she recognised the ring tone, it was Arun calling. Must have been his first in more than a fortnight. By the time she had the phone in her hand, it had stopped ringing and when she called back, a recorded voice announced that the phone was out of coverage area. The pressure cooker summoned her with urgency, she could smell the dal burning. The water – she had put in less. The kitchen was full of smoke, but she saved the top layer of the meal, piled on pickles and felt ready to face anything – except the voice. Chose to play jazz on her phone and sat down to read after lunch. She was fickle when it came to picking a book, didn’t feel the need to complete reading the book that was at hand, and picked up another. This one from Arun’s desk, left it after two pages, too much spirituality. She browsed the internet for porn. On most sites, found a paywall. She’d rather pay for a pedicure she told herself but felt herself warm up as she moved in her seat, heightened her thoughts with anticipation but, Maa ji’s voice interruptted. Anita grew cold. Moments later the image on the computer screen hung there, splayed between cyberspace and her desktop, the buffering wouldn’t stop. The internet had gone kaput, the thunderclaps broke her half reverie from an alternate world of pleasure. She called the internet service provider, there was no response. She cursed aloud, it didn’t help. She listened to a vile caller tune again and again and something stirred again, within.
Anita touched herself, this time her nipples, they were seeking attention, she felt the need to listen to them. The rain had aroused her far more than any other image had, she wanted to surrender to her body with her body. She found the vodka that had been ignored, drained it to the last bit, said aloud that she now didn’t hide it in the orange juice to avoid hurting her mother-in-law. Drew the blinds, smirked as she told herself that the height which their apartment was on the oceanfront, only mermaids could see her, if they looked. She was now moving naked with no one in the house, something which she hadn’t done before, but felt watched. There were times when she had seen her mother-in-law stare at her breasts, and then her eyes would have that faraway look. In the early years of her marriage, Anita felt she was perhaps listing reasons why Arun chose Anita, but as time went by Anita wondered if Maa ji coveted girls.
Anita stood by the bedroom mirror, stared at her navel, delicate and little inclined to the left. She didn’t mind the luxuriant love handles she had grown. She only wished she was tall. Tall enough to see longer legs as she looked at herself, all the way to her delicate feet. As she gently sat on the edge of her bed near that part mauve, part lilac blanket, she felt she wanted no hair on her body.
The razor that Arun used felt more virile in its intensity than any fantasy could have. She tried to reason, that with babies coming these lapses were going to be a thing of the past. She liked the razor on herself, she didn’t quite like the sound of it but she felt aroused. She got herself wrapped in foam and she started coming and then, she heard a door slam. She nicked herself with the razor, there was blood on her inner left thigh. Anita was not giving up, she washed the wound, applied his after shave, a Calvin Klein favourite, which Arun had hidden. She was hell bent on finding her haven, and started realigning the furniture in Maa ji’sroom, but the nick was savage. Anita was drained of all reason but she wasn’t ready to lose to nothingness.
She switched off all the lamps but there was still some light from near the kitchen. It was the light from the fridge, it was open. The breeze couldn’t do that, she went to look. The fridge didn’t shut properly lately, so unless she flung the door, the door would fall ajar. She shut it tight, went to find herself a pad, the blood was now a trickle. After mopping the floor, and a hot bath, she slept like a log. She woke up, thirsty. It was about ten hours later and the smell, which she had been choosing to ignore, was now bad.
Anita had to look for the smell, she missed having a pet who would have made this so much easier. After opening every cupboard and unsettling her entire home, she found the ‘smell’, it had been there all along, right under her nose. It was in the living room, right below the old gramophone, she knelt to look, it was a cabinet that no one but Maa ji was allowed to access. Arun had asked her to not confront his mother on this issue, it had special chapters of memory she had guessed. Now she took a peek for the first time and what she found was not memory. The cabinet held a fridge. A tiny white fridge which had stopped working. The smell was so pungent that she left in a rush, a flood of nausea overpowering her. Anita tied a towel around her nose, after dunking it in the Calvin Klein aftershave. The contents of the fridge were rotting. She found a packet of lamb meat with a recipe wrapped tight around it. The rain had stopped. Anita picked the intercom.
*
Moments later a security guard appeared, she showed him the little white fridge. Told him he could have it repaired, and she would foot the bill. On his way out, he ran into a delivery boy, who handed over a packet to him. The security guard called out loud ‘Madam, did you call for mutton?’ Anita literally snapped it up from his hand and paid the delivery boy off. ‘But I thought madam, you all were vegetarian.’ Anita didn’t respond but held open the elevator for him, he looked a little clumsy with the fridge. Anita returned to the kitchen. She had that recipe in her hand, the one around the mutton. She started reading from the recipe that Maa ji had left, which bore the heading ‘how to cook vegetarian mutton, no onion no garlic’.
She wondered aloud if this was the unfinished business. She looked at the recipe again and this time noticed something on the flipside. As if Maa ji was preparing to reveal her notes to someone who would discover this. Maa ji’s writing in Hindi said, ‘I need to eat meat at times. I think, when Queen Sita asked her husband King Rama, to go for the golden deer when they were in exile, it wasn’t about the sheen of gold, it was for the meat we women sometimes need. Epics don’t lie, they just don’t tell the truth straight.’
*
Barnali Ray Shukla is an Indian writer, filmmaker and poet.
She has featured in anthologies in India, USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and the UK.
Her maiden poetry collection is called Apostrophe, RLFPA 2016.
In her cine life Barnali has written and directed one full length feature, two documentaries, and two short films.
She lives in Mumbai with her plants, books and a husband.