by Preeti Madhusudhan
What theme are you addressing in your piece? Why is this important to you?
Preeti Madhusudhan: Thinking about creative writing made me reflect on the emphasis on expression now. Right from childhood, the importance of expression is stressed upon everybody these days. How well a person articulates his concerns, desires, and every shade in the spectrum of emotions impacts his reception in society, and this becomes the foundation of his success. During the tsunami of 2011 in Japan, what struck me was that more than anything else, the stoic acceptance and the lack of commotion among the general public, Japanese media and the government, was what seemed to affect the western media. They couldn’t come to grips with such a collective calm in the face of disaster. Global cultural exchanges mean that the manner of expression too changes to adopt to a certain accepted norm. One’s thought goes to the outliers.
‘That isn’t how you sing the Abogi’s Ga,’ Komala muttered to herself as she plied the flour, her fingers deftly stretching and re-assembling the gluten. The thin granite ledge that ran along the Italian marble counter of the kitchen bore an assortment of tiny figurines in bronze, brass, terracotta, wood, and the occasional silver, of animals, mythical figures of different countries and times and deities. They shone with the quiet of nourishment: tamarind bath for the brass and bronze, incense ash for the silver and an occasional rub of linseed oil for wood. The very end of the ledge, its edges bevelled, held a tiny pile of thin rings and bangles studded with diamonds and sapphires: ornaments Komala nonchalantly slipped off her fingers and wrists to work.
‘Ri Ga Ga Ri Sa’ she sang, her voice a soft caress, lost in the coffers of the tall ceiling. ‘Ga Ga Ri Sa’ she sang again, slower this time. She could hear Padma mami’s voice from ages ago, as though it was then and there: ‘Let the Ga mate with the Ma and come Komala, it is not just a Ga, it is Ga(Ma)’.
Komala sang again, her thin voice a silken thread in the cavernous room. Pattamma, her old cook, was used to her mumblings and mutterings. Pattamma’s aunt used to be Komala’s mother’s maid, so Pattamma had known Komala since she was a toddler in long skirts and pigtails chasing after stray cats, humming tunes even back then. The family home, a large property lost under the green awning of dense foliage by the banks of the backwaters from the Bay of Bengal, had an abundance of cats, rabbits, squirrels, birds and even the occasional deer across the fence, peeping in from the national forest reserve. Komala was a gentle forest spirit, free to roam and read as she pleased, but clad in the finest of silks and studded with diamonds and sapphires. Her parents, patrons of art, music and culture, were immersed in the affairs of everyone but their only child. She was under the finest of teachers for music, languages and the visual arts, and learnt without passion or thirst. Quiet and unobtrusive, she was, to her parents’ distress, unremarkable. What they wouldn’t have given for a daughter who rebelled, one who charmed and sizzled with oomph, one who ran away in the dead of the night with amorous intent. Being the beacon of women’s rights in Madras, they were alarmed by their submissive child.
Komala met Shivan in her parents’ home. It was evening and as always there was a group of people in the large verandah by the river. Her parents were at the centre, her mom a brilliant jewel among the grey men, in Komala’s mind, her memory tinted by her fascination for her mother, however distant and inaccessible. The evening till that point was literally a blur in her memory as she had raced in after a naughty cat straight on to Shivan’s barrel of a chest. Her pupils flew in a panic towards her mother. She was never to run or chase a stray or even accidentally touch a servant or anyone dark. For all her suffragette front, Komala’s mother had an arrogant and racist core, which she cloaked well with layers of activism and silk. Her obsession over perceived pollution of any kind bordered on being clinical disorder. Yet they yearned for her to break the rules just once. With their good looks, wealth and connections, it looked as though they had had things handed to them on a flashy gold plate. Some struggle, even the tiniest of chinks in their collective platinum armour would add to the ‘mystery factor’, which was what they felt they lacked.
Cowering in shame, Komala held her breath in anticipation of a public chastisement, and could hardly contain her amazement as her mother smoothed her flaring anger with a charming smile in a jiffy. Her mother had transitioned from having an unpleasant and involuntary rush of bile, to its veiling with the practiced smile of saintly tolerance, in a second. A rising star in the world of Indian civil services, Shivan was probably the spark Komala needed. By the time she finished the introductions between the hit and hitter, she had meticulously chalked out her sparkling vision for her lacklustre daughter’s life. The prospective suitor’s latent energy and his masculine aura were greatly promoted to the young awestruck Komala. All Komala needed were the words ‘abroad’, ‘travel’ and ‘away’ to be convinced that it was a great idea.
There was no romance, not that she expected any. There was a lot of ‘abroad’, ‘travel’ and ‘away’ and these she had expected. She was happy, in her own quiet way. Wherever they lived, she knew the language, could understand even if not appreciate the local art, architecture and cuisine. It was a marriage of convenience. For the cover of respectability and the ‘away’ that he provided her within the frame of her parents’ blessings, she gave him the status of being married into the crème de la crème of India’s culture brigade.
They moved from country to country, unpacking her fine china, antique silver tea and dinner service, hand-embroidered linen, silks and thin boxes of jewellery, associating with the local snobs and touring the cities, only to pack up and leave again in a couple of years. Komala formed no bonds anywhere, she seemed to need no friend. She had fallen into a comfortable camaraderie with her husband. It was convenient for Shivan that she was well-educated. The richness of culture, vagaries of weather and the nuances of international politics – there was nothing that he couldn’t discuss with Komala. But the intricacy of the human mind was, as always, beyond her understanding. Her perplexed mother had steered her or rather pushed her from decision to decision. Komala would see and not perceive, hear and not infer, think and not plot.
Komala’s high-functioning memory meant that she retained everything she ever saw, heard or read. It served her well. After many years she could still ask long forgotten neighbours or colleagues about their children, recalling their names. Memory was a great substitute for emotion. On the other hand, words, expressions of her mother from many years ago would crowd around her in the quiet of an afternoon. It was as real then as it was all those years back, and she then would again be the young girl who longed to escape with the cat, feeling the cool air on her burning temples and between her legs. The elegant wife of the cultured bureaucrat that she was, she couldn’t chase after the local cat without raising a few well-shaped eyebrows and curling disdain of genteel lips. So, she would wait out the feelings, sitting still for the tidewater to drain. Remnants from each of these would settle: cobwebs in the recesses of her being.
Pattamma arrived in her life for a specific reason. They lived in Geneva then. A chance spark between the alpha male and the willingly submissive resulted in Mia.
It was the arrival of a daughter that changed this picture perfect tableau into a drama, or rather an opera.
There it was, the Ga wrong again! She kneaded, folding the dough so it enveloped itself again and again. Yes. The baby girl had shaken her sedate life. Komala paused, her thoughts travelling back to her precious girl. Mia had managed to awaken whatever was dormant in Komala for years.
Newly pregnant, she had just finished her customary call to her mother. Her mother, a recent widow, was still actively entertaining, indulging in politics and being herself. And had very predictably not fussed over the pregnancy news.
‘Good, Komal,’ she said, sounding mildly out of wind over the phone’s crackle. ‘Good’ she said again, ‘you know what to do.’
Komala knew not to ask the obvious, ‘What should I do?’ It was apparently so obvious that it didn’t need to be spelled out. That was the first time Komala felt the surge of something phenomenal and sharp inside of her. The phone dropped into the cradle in an awkward tumble, the bulky receiver angrily slamming into the phone and disconnecting the call with a heavy thud. ‘That must have hurt,’ thought Komala; the glee in the knowledge that she had accidentally caused Mother some discomfort tipped her over, ever so gently.
That day, Komala sat in the library, quiet, away from the noise. Every home they had occupied, had had that. Shivan knew nothing of it, this spot where Komala spun her silken web. Her eyes glinted with a murderous rage, her tightly clenched fist white and trembling.
Mia took the gentle household by storm, for the sequined, rebel gene had skipped a generation and come out in bold colours from grandmother to granddaughter. But the similarities ended there. In her own inexpressive way, Komala relished having a daughter. She was wanted and how! The thrill and joy the very sight of her seemed to produce in her baby-girl was the hook Komala had never felt. She marvelled at her child’s joys, sorrows and anger as she blossomed into a toddler, pre-teen and teen. Where her mother had been frustrated, Mia, on the other hand, seemed to rely upon her stoicism. She could laugh, giggle, run amuck, thunder and rebel all she wanted, she knew she had a rock of a mother to fall back on. Mom wouldn’t react to or curtail her thrills. The cobwebs were all dusted away, the dust bunnies burnt, it seemed, for it had been a really long time since Komala had sat still as a statue, her thoughts draining slowly out of her pores.
A late night call from Komala’s mother about an upcoming visit upset this transient, fragile calm. The old woman – frail bodied, with clouds of white hair and a slim string of pearls – was welcomed with non-committal bonhomie by Shivan, curiosity by Mia and a sterile hug from her daughter, who was held at arm’s length for a passing second and inspected. That one glance brought to surface the hidden scum of Komala’s psyche.
The old woman marked her prey, Mia, and set to work on her. It was second nature to her. Putting down her daughter and showcasing her new fascination, the toast of the season, this time her granddaughter: she had done this over and over again, over so many years, that she didn’t even realise what she was doing. Komala watched as her girl delighted in her grandma, her sense of style, her keen intelligence and her knack to befriend people.
Though one couldn’t tell by appearance, Komala could sense a slow unrest gnaw inside of her. She watched as her mother seemed to slowly steal away the joy of her life. All the old woman had to do was open her mouth and Mia seemed to lap it all like a pup. There had been no mention of the end date of the visit in their communications earlier, and there was no way to politely bring it up now.
‘What can I do?’ Komala wondered to herself. ‘I should do something,’ her growing pile of cobwebs would answer back. For appearances, she was still the same, she still talked only when talked to, and she still thrilled at the very sight of the daughter, though no one could tell so just from looking at her. She was still abreast of the current affairs, and looked like none of it affected her. Her daughter, as always, had an air of constant urgency about her, which was always the case with her too. The old fox had talked of the current humanitarian crisis at Europe with great gusto at the dinner table and had been fawned over by the captivated young Mia.
That was the trigger. It was then and there that Komala knew what she had to do. She waited till dinner was over, calmly kissed her daughter and mother goodnight, sent an email, feeling a blast of something powerful exit her being with a thunderous force, and went to sleep, peace immediately invading her senses.
The Ga was sung the wrong way for the final time as the music system was switched off by her husband. She let out a long breath of relief. The dough was kneaded to perfection, just the right way, to make Mia’s favourite pastry, just as she liked it. After Mia had had her pastry and tea served in her favourite blue china with the delicate pink flowers on them, she will tell her that she had registered as a humanitarian aid volunteer in the war zone and that she leaves tomorrow.
Good one !!!!!
The weaving of the tsunami theme from the introductory piece into the story was very well done.
The nuanced description that the author pens from the furniture to feeling reads like a poem. Bravo!