The Silent Raga Read online

  “If I can get a visa, I have vowed to shave my head in Tirupati temple,” she recalls a student saying with a chaste glimmer of hope in his eyes. “I am only hoping that it is not that African lady officer for my interview. She is the strictest, no?” Only a rubber stamp between him, his hair and his dreams. The black American visa officer, his moody Statue of Liberty.

  And there are other dreams in that lineup, Mallika knows. There are brides waiting to be united with their husbands. Computer professionals looking to snatch H-is for contracts in Silicon Valley. The notorious Burma Bazaar smugglers hoping for import-export, multiple-entry visas. Even pouring rain does not deter them. They curse and sing and spit and chat as they wait with visions of a distant paradise. And when the gates open at eight, there is a mad scramble for tokens. A free-for-all push and grab for the small copper coins with the engraved bald eagle spreading its wings in welcome. The chance of an interview. The Promised Land almost within reach.

  As was only to be expected in any room saturated with mixed emotions and high blood pressure, there were also breakdowns and cathartic screams. Men and women collapsed with “Ammadi, oh, please,” and passed out when their application was turned down. Ambulance sirens could sometimes be heard on the northern side of the building. From her office window, Mallika had seen paramedics carrying away people with freshly crushed dreams.

  “You are not interested in settling in America, madam?” Gopalan asks, tapping his pencil on the desk and into her thoughts.

  “I don’t know, Gopalan,” Mallika replies, irritation creeping into her tone. “I don’t think so. But I know people have their own motivations.” She is ready to end the conversation. “Can I keep this program?”

  “Sure, sure,” Gopalan blusters, a man now unsure if he has crossed the line into familiarity. “Madam has no umbrella?” he says, relieved that she has changed the subject. “Supermazha is on the way,” he says, his “zha” on an expectant curve. He must be from Kerala, she thinks. “Heavy rains, looks like. See the clouds!” Gopalan grins.

  For a twenty-six-year-old I get called madam a lot.

  “Good night, Gopalan.” Mallika pushes her glasses firmly back on her nose and lets herself out through the rotating gate.

  Does he know I am Janaki Asgar’s sister?

  “Good night, madam!”

  MALLIKA TRIES hailing an autorickshaw on Cathedral Road. The driver demands ten rupees over the meter. That’s of course assuming the meter is not doctored to jump twenty paise every three seconds. Brahmin frugality prevails. She resolves to walk home.

  “Why seeing for ten rupees, madam? I will dropping you to house doorstep! Nobody is coming for this climate!” The rheumy eyes of the driver, and the bidi dangling from the corner of his cracked, bulbous lips, make her quicken her step. “Find someone else.”

  He’s not the type to take no for an answer and trails her for a furlong, his voice loud over the humming engine. “Eight rupees, final. Come, na, come, come, nati, go!”

  She doesn’t look back.

  The first drop lands on her nose as she’s passing the gates of Stella Maris College. Then the asoka trees in the college compound, tall and gangly, begin to sway like giraffes in lengthy leaf skirts, and a molten yellowness lights up the dark clouds from behind. By the time she reaches the Music Academy the drops turn into long, endless threads of water and come down with great force.

  And then there’s nowhere to hide.

  When she ducks into the little thatched coconut palm shelter between the walls of the Music Academy and Taj Mahal Tea Stall, she’s sure there’s not a dry spot in the whole city. She manages to keep her hair from getting wet by pulling her sari pullo over her head like a scarf, but the rest of her body is soaked, with her sari clinging to her thighs. Even after all these years she is never really prepared for these sudden downpours, the way they bring everything to a stop, muddling directions and changing destinies.

  There was nothing like this in Sripuram. But here, in this sprawling concrete capital, hot, humid afternoons slowly churn the sky as the dust rolls and whirls on the busy inner-city highways. In the intense glare of the sun, if you tuned out the sound of the traffic, you could hear the quiet brewing, the early signals of a storm. Sitting in her office, with the hum of the air conditioner and the UV tint on her windows, she sometimes felt the heat layering the glass. If she peered over the window from her corner of the building, she could see little waves of dust suspended in the air, spinning and moving, and a hazy, blistering carpet of torpor right above them. By evening, the colour of the sky would turn a deeper mauve and the clouds would move in, ready to wail as at a funeral. And then, without a touch of restraint, the wet, sloshy requiem would begin. But that afternoon she had not noticed the storm gathering outside her office window.

  Mallika bunches up her sari around her knees and wrings the pleats. She looks around the little thatched shelter and discovers that it is actually a roadside temple for Vinayaka, the elephant god of good beginnings. A few fresh marigold garlands adorn his tar-black trunk, and the small statue glistens with the spray of raindrops. She moves into the far corner of the shelter and rests against the wall. Rain lashes the city, a grey screen of water accompanied by an incessant roll of thunder.

  In the adjacent tea stall business is brisk, packed with men—mostly labourers from the nearby construction tenements—slurping hot, steamy chai and coffee. They huddle beside the hot water boiler, listening to film songs from a smoke-stained loudspeaker. The smell of deep-fried masala vadai—pungent turmeric and ground Bengal gram sizzling in cheap, reused oil—filters through the rain screen, and Mallika quickly covers her nose. She closes her eyes.

  “Next in Thaen Kinnam, your bowl of sweet music…” That was Janaki’s favourite radio program.

  On Friday evenings Janaki made sure all the housework was done by seven thirty, and around eight she would sneak into Mallika’s room and say, “I know you are doing your homework, but I’ll sit near the window and listen to the radio, sariya?” And while Mallika grappled with the many mysteries of algebra, Janaki sailed away on a flotilla of film music. She even sent in her own request to All India Radio, Madras, and they played her song. Janaki couldn’t contain herself when she heard the host announce her name with a list of others.

  “V. Janaki from Sripuram! My name was the last one, too!” She laughed in happiness. “I wonder if Revathi heard my name? Oh, I only hope she was listening! I told her to…” Then she began singing with the radio.

  Although Janaki’s voice did not match the miracle of her hands on the veena, she still enjoyed her escape into film music. She lip-synched with the radio and performed small dance steps, just like the heroines in Tamil films.

  When Appa was away in Madras for the weekend, she undid her plait and brushed it till it shone like a dark river in the noon sun. Letting her hair hang loose, she pulled out Amma’s purple and gold border sari from the top shelf of the Godrej cupboard and draped it around her without bothering to wear a bra or a blouse. She dipped the middle finger of her right hand into the small rose box of kungumam and circled a huge red bottu in the middle of her forehead. Descending the stairs, she looked possessed by a divine, inner peace.

  She pulled out the jamakalam from the shelf in the puja room and spread it on the floor of the hall. She placed the veena right in the middle of the paisley-bordered orange rug. After she was certain she had tuned the strings to the right pitch, she began her alaapana. With her eyes half closed, her hair falling onto her shoulders in lush black cascades and her bottu flaming bright and magnetic, she took on an unearthly incandescence. She was a spirit, an enchanting Mohini, from another world.

  And then a slow, undulating mellowness filled the air, and her plaintive raga began pleading with the gods in heaven.

  “SHE HAS . . .WHAT?” Appa had whispered on hearing the news of Janaki’s betrayal. Mallika can still hear the horror of that whisper, the pain in his voice like the sound made when you stretch the blowing edg
e of a balloon as air escapes from it. She remembers his slow slump into the chair, a half-stifled sigh caught in his throat, his hands stretched out, his palms upturned, her father-mother guru, Mr. Venkatakrishnan, Assistant Manager, Indian Overseas Bank, City Market Branch, Sripuram-18—suddenly pale. He resembled a man who was either donating blood or had just slashed his wrists.

  He sat in his chair for hours without moving, his eyes closed and his lips softly chanting Sai Narayaneeyam. He repeated his petition to Lord Vishnu again and again, asking protection in that hour of shame. Then he opened his eyes and looked up at her, his gaze direct and emotionless. “I will apply for transfer to Madras tomorrow. You will finish your studies there,” he said, with the absent-minded casualness of a man reading a newspaper headline loudly to himself. He stood up, lifted the chair off the floor and set it firmly against the wall, right below Amma’s framed photograph. “Kamakshi!” he cried, calling out to his wife whose name he had not uttered since the day she died.

  But Amma, who was tongue-tied for the better part of her life with him, remained consistent and did not come to his rescue. Then he took determined strides towards the puja room and returned with a copper tray, camphor lit and burning at its centre. She can still smell the sick, dense, medicinal odour of that one karmic moment.

  He stood in front of her. She remained still, her eyes on the cement floor. And then, before she could fully comprehend what was happening around her, in one fleeting and definite move, he transferred the small glowing ball of fire from the tray onto the palm of his right hand.

  “Look at me!” he said with a quiet authority. His eyes were bloodshot when she raised her gaze to meet his. In the soft glow of burning camphor he looked like a tiger, mystical and feverish. “I want you to swear that you will never be in contact with your sister again.” Without giving her a chance to respond, he took her right hand into his left, lifted it above the flame and brought it down on the charred blackness of his palm. She felt the icy singe of heat below her ring, and then the fumes curled and died in the air. He released her hand and let it drop. Then he walked into his room and carefully shut the door behind him.

  Mallika sat in the darkness of the kitchen, unable to cry and too shocked to move. She sat there expecting him to step out for his dinner, or to use the bathroom, but the door remained shut. The burning sensation under her finger worsened, but she could not bring herself to look for the tube of antiseptic. Around midnight the light in his room went out, and the whole house was quiet, still. A morgue, and a museum. She remembers that silence.

  But that was in another place. Not here. Ten years ago.

  This was not the original scene of the crime. So, why was the criminal returning here?

  THE VOICE COMES to her from a distance. “Yakko?” it softly reverberates before it fully registers. When Mallika opens her eyes, she hears the rain, still relentless, but its force somewhat diminished. It might not be long before it completely stops. The boy is around twelve, wearing khaki shorts and a tundu around his torso. He is holding a glass of steaming tea in his hand and is offering it to her. “Saar sent this for you,” he says, jerking his head in the direction of the tea stall. Mallika looks up, and she sees the considerate saar behind the cash counter smile and wave to her. Did he really expect her to wave back?

  “How much?” she asks the boy, beginning to open her purse for some change.

  “Free because of rain!” he replies grandly, and smiles, revealing even gaps between his front teeth. She pulls out a two-rupee note and gives it to him.

  “This is for you, then,” she says, taking the steaming glass from his hands, suddenly craving its warmth. He quickly pockets the money.

  “I’ll return the glass, tell saar.” He nods and runs away.

  Listening to the rain she relishes the dense, hot sweetness of tea and milk on her tongue. She feels the slow fuzziness as it spreads and travels down her throat. Divine. She runs her gaze over her surroundings once again.

  The Vinayaka statue is wet and washed many times over, but right beside it, hidden from the road, she now notices a long-abandoned One Way arrow sign pointing towards the sky. “Yes,” she thinks, “there is only that after this.”

  Rajiv Gandhi beams from a poster plastered on the wall. “He is the only Prime Minister for India,” Youth Congress claims. “Re-elect him!” Another second-chance seeker. Someone has hand-etched two chunnambu-paste earrings on either side of the face of the country’s only future. A buffalo, its tail swatting the rain puddles, sits right outside the shelter completely oblivious to the car horns and the cussing of pedestrians walking past.

  Mallika takes another sip and looks at her wrist. The watch, she remembers, is on her desk at home, ticking away forgotten time. It has been a day of that. A rummage sale of memory. There is no way she will find a bus or autorick-shaw now. The rain has turned to a drizzle, but the roads are clogged with water. Cars and trucks are lined up as far as her eyes can see, and a few cyclists are wading through a knee-deep river of floating garbage and orphaned footwear.

  Bejaar pudicha mazhai! And now this stupid buffalo!” “someone curses as they cross the puddle in front of the shelter.

  Mallika finishes her tea and plots her route.

  She will circle Alwarpet and get to Adyar Gate. If she can hire an autorickshaw from there, she will; if not, she will continue her walk down St. Mary’s Road towards her apartment. She knows she will not be alone in the dark; others will be taking the same measures to get home. Waiting for a bus at this hour, and under these circumstances, would be foolish. Like wishing for mangoes in winter.

  Her journey all mapped out, Mallika returns the glass and thanks the tea-stall man. Then, with her handbag securely clutched under her left arm, she steps into the flood, having already imagined the worst.

  THE VEENA FLOATS like a gondola on rainwater. It rides the waves, tosses and turns, tosses and turns. When Mallika reaches out, it slips from her hands. She can see the eyes on the lion head, two tiny red beads raging, mocking, as she trips and falls and grabs only water. The veena circles the walls of San Thome church, stopping the congregation in mid-mass, and someone says, “Aiyyo paavam, so sad.” Then they move away from her, as they would from a madwoman.

  She tries to shout, flailing her arms, “Stop it! Catch it!” but the words don’t form. That’s when the lion head turns around and blows fire in her direction.

  “Bring me the kerosene can!” Appa says. He pours all of it over the veena and strikes a match. It doesn’t burn. Gayatri Chitti starts to laugh and stubs her cigarette in the ashtray (where did that come from?). “You are so pathetic,” she says. “Even your kerosene is impotent!”

  Her laughter echoes down the hallway, banging against the walls and entering the quiet stacks of USIS library, where everybody looks up from the books on their desks. “Sing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’…” they chorus in a monotone. And the nursery rhyme is played again and again on the internal audio system, “You are listening to a veena recital by V. Janaki,” and the sound surrounds her, her head twisting in a whirlpool of random notes and images, and the air filling with just one strum, a row, row, rowing…

  The slap stings her face. She misses the bloodthirsty mosquito, and her cheek burns with the tinge of rude awakening.

  What time is it?

  The ceiling fan has stopped spinning. She can hear the slow, constant trickle of rainwater trailing off the sides of the window and into the balcony drain. She reaches for her wristwatch on the bedside table and presses the radium screw. 3:45 AM.

  Power failure.

  She rises from the bed and unhooks the chimney lamp hanging from a nail beside the cupboard. She locates the box of matches on the ledge of the door and raises the wick to meet the burning stick. Everything is quiet except for the occasional swishing of the coconut palms outside the window. The rain has finally stopped, and that damp chill of the aftermath is suspended in the air. Mosquitoes couldn’t be happier.

  Mallika fin
ds the packet of insect-repellent coils in the bathroom, under the sink, and decides to leave it lit in the corridor, right outside the bathroom door. That way the fumes will not be too strong in the bedroom, and she will be able to sleep without coughing herself to death. She places the chimney lamp on her writing desk and sits on the bed, willing the power to be restored. She sits reclining against the bedpost and listens to swamp-water frogs gurgle and croak from fresh pothole ponds, and the crickets buzz and hiss outside the window. The blades of the fan have not moved an inch in fifteen minutes.

  Restless once again, she gets up and looks out the window. No lights are on in any of the houses. It is a full power cut. God only knows when the men from the electricity board will have it restored.

  Then, before she can stop herself, she walks to the Godrej steel cupboard and opens it. She carries the Nalli Silks cardboard box to the writing desk. It’s still there—that bundle of letters and photographs—wrapped and knotted in the parrot green handkerchief. The letter she is looking for is the last one under the pile. Mallika knows exactly where it is. She stares at the melon-coloured envelope and reads the blurred, smudged letters looping in red ink. Five more days and she will meet the author of that turning point in all their lives.

  Thangame, my precious. Fading red on bleached melon. History written and placed between coffee packets. Reread and folded into four, more than a million times. Did other families have such letters? Such creased, inexorable paper-pulp ghosts? In the steady glow of the chimney lamp, Mallika begins to read Janaki’s manifesto of freedom one more time:

  Thangame,

  This is not my suicide note. Dying is too easy. Living is the real challenge.

  I won’t ask you to forgive me. There is nothing to forgive. Do well in your studies. Find your own happiness. Wish me well.