Two for the Guava

by Anushree Bose

Anushree’s story is a narrative on the lingering fondness between two friends who are forced to live in separate cities because of circumstances. The ‘missing’ is ripe; even as the narrator waits to hear from her friend, she doesn’t want to consider the possibility of the two drifting further apart. 

It has been over a month since her rapturous, unabashed laugh tickled me. I should not worry, I remind myself.  She could be patiently wading her way through the sweet sticky mess that fully living entails, or she could be doodling, humming something reggae, absolutely unperturbed that her phone’s battery has died. Ramya would call soon, I tell myself. She would laugh my favourite laugh and tell me another of her incredible stories.

***

Last October Ramya had to circle back to her hatching place. The nest had dwindled since Ramya and her siblings moved out and became rooted elsewhere, but right now it wilts from the demise of the father. The wilderness continues to claim the porch and the walls sag from sadness, yet her mother, clinging on to her father’s memories, is refusing to leave. Basking in his lingering presence, she is peacefully decaying a little each day, her soaring arthritis paralleling the furniture’s crumbling from termite infestation. Every morning she hands out Ramya a lunchbox and fondly awaits her return. Simple rituals seem to stitch back some of the gashes, and the home persists against the odds.

Ramya drives her father’s teal blue car to work and brings home greens and groceries. Every once in a while she encourages her mother to relocate. ‘Did aunty reconsider?’ I had asked over the phone once. ‘Not yet, but maybe someday…’ she sounded vague. ‘How long can this go on?’ I wondered aloud. It had been many moons of cleaning and sealing disused rooms. A portion of the house was reluctantly rented to keep it breathing. Clearing cobwebs seemed to be making more room for life to leave. The house still resisted reclaiming, she said.

I can sense the inevitable change in lifestyle hovering over Ramya’s and her mother’s lives. They are like peas in a pod now – they are going to stay together; either Ramya would give up hope of escaping the confinement of her present or her mother would give up hope of preserving her gratifying past…

Our calls have dwindled. ‘How is life?’ I would ask whenever she managed to ring me.

Cochin is still humid and crammed with beliefs, she would say. Power failures during monsoons are frequent and long enough to allow for rethinking one’s whole life; but instead, they swat at mosquitoes, make phone calls to cousins nearby and siblings overseas, and sip unsweetened chai. The neighbourhood has not changed except for the extension of the temple premises. Here the sons grow up to be like their father, and the daughters take more after their mothers-in-law.  The whole community thrives on binary fission. Homes are kept homogenous and wayward spirits are weeded out of the system.

People are simple, similar and over-familiar, Ramya had once mentioned. As neighbours, they bring you food and also tell you how to live your life, prescribe the ideal length for your unruly hair or measurements for your billowing skirt. They enquire why you are single, especially as a woman of thirty-something, and take it upon themselves to liberate you of the “misery”. Their paraphernalia of solutions span pujas and fasting for mangal dosha remedy and the nice but divorced, wealthy cousin from Dubai. They have you all covered. And you listen, nodding politely, without choking on the heavenly bite of appam soaked in creamy coconut stew. You are allowed your unpopular, outlier opinion as long as it doesn’t blotch the monochrome, as long as you preserve tradition.

‘How do you walk in shoes that no longer fit?’ I had asked the last time we spoke, and she said ‘I don’t know’. She added that she was done with the fish curry, and it had turned out well. She was going to fill the casseroles now and deliver them to her neighbours in time for dinner. It was thoughtful of them to bring over breakfast. I wished we could speak some more but there was nothing left to say.  

***

Our friendship had bloomed unnoticed and effortlessly like a wildflower. Five years ago, we met at a large hospital that is also a medical teaching institute. We were batchmates. As harrowing as the PhD coursework was, it was a fated way to meet people. When we met, it didn’t seem like we had much in common except for academics. We were acquaintances who had few friends in common, until we didn’t.

Three years into PhD, when I was due to write my thesis and submit, my three longstanding friendships were abruptly terminated, as if I was suddenly deemed unfit. As I figured out that I had been cut off by people I counted on most, a rust-like film of numbness settled over me, precluding me from everything. Gradually my angry bewilderment morphed into grief. Ramya and I started to bond in the hazy afterglow of my thesis submission. Ramya showed up for me like rain in summer. She knew how to be balanced. She continued her friendship with my ex-friends, and also became my safe house while I was growing scar tissue over the rejection wounding from them.

Once we went to a stand-up comedy act at the campus convention centre. One of my ex-friends showed up smiling brightly and sat next to us. Ramya was sandwiched between me and the ex-friend. They spoke until the play started. It was a casual exchange full of genuine warmth. The bird in my throat had gone mute and my heart was in spasm. As the lights dimmed and the show began, Ramya held my palm. I sat through the blur. Later when we were headed back to the hostel, I broke into tears without warning, with all the angst of a jilted lover. I was alight with shame and hurt!

Ramya stood by me, in the middle of the brightly-lit lane, without interrupting. She made sure that passers-by did not get alarmed or interfere. When I composed myself after several long minutes, self-conscious and apologetic, she didn’t rush to break the silence. She cradled it like something broken should be. By the time my deep cut turned into a fading scar, Ramya had begun to open up to me as well.

Once we were preparing dinner together, something homely and godly to balm our nostalgia with. I had diced the vegetables and requested her to slice the red onion. ‘Is it okay if we chop instead?’ she asked. That felt a tiny bit odd, so I enquired what influenced her preference. ‘My grandma ensured that there is symmetry to whatever goes into the pot or pan.’ ‘Ah!’ that seemed sensible; I had a flair for order myself. However, Ramya hastily added ‘…but we don’t have to. It is her idiosyncrasy or maybe her pathological insistence…’ ‘Mmm… let’s chop nonetheless,’ I offered. ‘Symmetry sounds indulgent!’ And with that Ramya melted like caramel on a flame. Soft sobs escaped her throat like canaries uncaged. Until then, I didn’t know how recent her loss was or how raw it had left her.

Ramya’s grandmother had to be hospitalised in her last days. She took Ramya to be her neighbour, and not her granddaughter. Ramya would climb into the hospital bed with her grandmother and braid her long pepper-salt hair. She had fun impersonating the neighbour she couldn’t recall and enjoyed the phoney conversations. This uncensored gossip nourished them both. Amidst this innocence and trust, so much of Ramya’s own life came together, side by side like proportioned sections of hair forming a plait. As Ramya fed and bathed her grandmother with an ineffable tenderness, some of her childhood, which was somewhat like a broken bone, healed and rearranged itself.

And when her grandmother was wheeled into ICU for the fourth time in a row, peering through the Plexiglass separating them, all Ramya prayed for was a better place for her grandmother: be it home or heaven. It really takes strength to let go like that, I thought, to know that you will be alone on your way back and way forward. 

***

Vulnerability had brought Ramya and me together, and it continues to cement us. It’s pratfall effect; we huddle because we are set in our own ways, often misunderstood and distanced because we are not inclined to mould ourselves to familial expectations. We make a wonderful surrogate family, substituting for the biological one that is mostly unavailable, sometimes even hostile. Until Ramya left the institute, we cooked, dined, and shopped together. We were each other’s repository of lived stories and unlived dreams.

My first memorable experience of Ramya was particularly sublime. It was late afternoon. The sun was on its slow descent, the sky was clear, the heat bearable and the breeze crisp. We met outside the library and sat over the warm oblong marble steps. Gulmohar trees were in full bloom and butterflies were skittering over floral bushes nearby. We joked about how underpaid and impoverished PhD life was, how mercurial our professors were, and how lonely scholarly life was. She mentioned her recent visit to Japan and the friends who had ghosted me. I flinched. She noticed. I confessed my soreness from losing important friendships.

She listened intently, smiled in a kind and supportive way, and she held out guava slices clustered in parchment paper. They were raw and fresh, cut into quarters, sprinkled with salt and chilli flakes. I kept declining; I hope I did so politely. Ramya kept insisting that I have some. I was baffled! I was telling this woman how devastated I was, as undramatically as I could, and she was fixated on the guava! I sighed and asked why. She laughed and replied, ‘Because they are really, really good.’ I gave in and sampled a slice. It was cool, crunchy and spicy. Though my pain stood right where it was, snuffling like a miffed militant, at that moment, I had taken one tiny step away from it. And it had felt really, really good indeed. 

I miss that goodness. I look at the phone that doesn’t ring.

Anushree Bose is a clinical researcher who loves to write, read and wonder. She holds a PhD in Psychiatry and a Master’s degree in Psychology. Her work centres on Schizophrenia, especially understanding of auditory hallucination.