Latha peers closer into the iPad to observe her great-granddaughter’s smile, the way she effortlessly jokes with the world.
“Grandma, move back a bit. All I can see is your forehead on the screen!” Her grandson puts his face into view.
“Sorry, kanna. Just so happy to see Maya.” Latha admits, adjusting the iPad. She is surprised to see her grandson’s hairline has receded since she last saw him, replacing the pudgy pre-teen with silver-rimmed glasses buried in books etched in her memory, the decades in between compressed like a folded fan.
“Grandma,” her grandson begins again, moving the iPad away from his giggling daughter to himself, “How are you doing? Dad was telling me your back pain is getting worse.”
Latha gives a resigned sigh, “At this age, pain is a daily reminder I am still alive. But tell me, how is Maya doing? Does she understand any Tamil?”
“Well, I barely know any myself, so I have no business teaching her,” he shrugs, then adds, “but she’s already so smart she’s outwitting all of us.” He kisses his daughter’s head, eyes soft with pride. Maya pays no heed, babbling while flipping through a book titled Baby Feminist.
“I am not surprised that she is smart,” Latha says, suddenly nostalgic for the boy she spent so much time with in an expansive Texan suburban home. “You would read so much when you were younger. Every day after school, when I would make you snacks, you wouldn’t put your book down. To make you talk to me, I would ask you to tell me an interesting fact.” The memories flood back. “I would make dosas and idlis for you after school, but you only ever wanted to eat mac and cheese,” she laughs. Latha wonders who would introduce Maya to the foods of her ancestors.
“Grandma,” her grandson’s voice takes on a serious quality, foreshadowing a change in subject, “Dad and Suresh uncle are saying you won’t come back to America. Why not? Why do you want to stay by yourself in India now that, you know, you are alone?”
Latha has been fighting this battle ever since her husband stopped breathing in his bed. A death as uneventful as his life. They hadn’t spoken much in the last forty years, but her life had been intertwined with his since she was seventeen. The house is no quieter without him around, but she has this constant feeling like she is forgetting something, like leaving the house without shoes on.
“Kanna, I am old. I cannot travel for twenty-four hours.” Latha attempts a diversion, “You know, when I made my first trip to America, you came to the airport to greet me. The first thing you said to me was, ‘Grandma, do you know how many teeth snails have? Fourteen thousand teeth, more than any other species.’” Latha wonders again how the bespectacled boy with the face shaped like a moon had become the man on the screen, weathered by gravity and responsibilities.
“Maya! No, stop it! Whitney, can you grab Maya from me so I can have an adult conversation,” Latha’s grandson huffs, jostling the iPad as he hands his daughter to a pair of white arms extended into view. Latha doesn’t particularly want to make small talk with her daughter-in-law and is relieved that the arms disappear, though she wishes Maya hadn’t left with them.
“Things have changed a lot since that trip,” her grandson resumes in a stern, professorial tone, “these days there are direct flights. I can book you a business class seat on Delta or something. Not that Air India crap…”
“Vik!” A voice calls to him, cutting him short.
“Hang on, I’ll be right back.” Her grandson disappears, leaving Latha looking at a white leather sofa that looks like it hasn’t left the furniture showroom. She remembers how paranoid she had been about staining the cream carpets in the Texas house; how that house, even when full of people, felt empty. Latha looks around her living room now; not a soul around, but so full of the life that was lived in it. She hears the tring of the bicycle bell letting her know the newspaper has been delivered. She spends the first whispers of the morning on a patchworked chair with a brown cushion moulded to her husband’s shape, reading the newspaper cover to cover while the melodic blessings of Suprabhatam mingle with the crunch of turning pages and the incensed air. She is the only one of her sisters who learned English in school, later honed over her time living with her elder son’s family in Texas. She would spend most of the day with herself in the echoing silence, watching The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless, marvelling at how like Indian soap operas they were. She enjoys reading the paper daily now, if only to confirm to herself that she still has all her wits about her. Watching her older brother die in his mind before his body was the hardest one of them all to bear. Now, out of the twelve siblings, it is just her and one remaining sister, whom she calls three times a day to exchange the same three sentences: “How are you; did you eat; talk to you later.”
“Sorry, sorry,” her grandson sits back down, pulling Latha back to the present, “Whitney and I are leaving for Paris tomorrow, and Mum is supposed to pick up Maya in the morning, and we have to get everything packed, so things are a bit chaotic around here. Anyway…”
“Kanna,” Latha cuts in, “I must go do my prayers; it’s Krishna’s birthday today. Remember the blue God who likes to steal butter? You used to laugh at his stories when I would tell you about how mischievous he was.” She catches her grandson’s undisguised eye-roll and wonders if he remembers any of the stories shared over meals where it would just be the two of them. She still remembers how many teeth snails have.
“Can you just show me Maya one more time,” Latha pleads, “I want to see her laughing before I go.”
Her grandson clicks his tongue like he always does when he is displeased. “You know, if you were here, you could see your great-granddaughter playing as much as you want.” He always needed the closing argument, true to his trade.
Latha watches as her iPad emits giggles that displace the dusty morning air. Lately, she has been reliving her life in her dreams, like a movie she is watching. One night, she dreamt she was seventeen again, sitting on the mandap on her wedding day next to a stranger, itching under nine yards of burgundy silk and gold. Another night she was fifty-five, sitting on her first cross-continental flight to Texas, refusing to eat any of the food they served on the plane. Last night she was five, running around naked, playing with all eleven siblings, her hair wild against the wind. In the earnestness of the day, it seemed impossible that all those versions were her, that she hadn’t always been eighty-two and hunched over with a cataract in one eye. She wonders if this is what happens near the end. Decades syncopate into clips, and your dreams remind you of the life you have lived.
“You know how stubborn Amma is,” Suresh shrugs off what feels like sixty years of obligations.
Savita clanks the utensils with greater speed in the sink, suggesting she is getting worked up. Suresh knows all the tells, honed over thirty-five years together. She aims a ladle at him, bridled with accusation.
“But it’s not good that we are making her other people’s burden. If something happens to her, we can’t even do anything. We need to beg her neighbours, or a second cousin we barely see, to help her out. And at this age, something is bound to happen, sooner than later.”
“Savi,” Suresh pauses as he often does when his wife is tense, “we got the Ring camera installed so we can see what she’s up to. I am feeling so much better since then.” It had been his mother’s concession to her sons after she refused to relocate, after both he and his brother had tried everything from guilt to fearmongering to persuade her. What if you slip and fall down the stairs and lay there paralysed for days, they had asked, don’t you want to spend more time with your children, Amma?
Savita slams down a steel wok and looks at him, her eyes rimmed with kohl and scorn. “Do you know what I caught her doing yesterday when I was looking at the Ring app? She had brought in some strange old man from the street who I have no doubt claimed there was an evil eye on the family or some nonsense. She was giving him money, money that you had given her for emergencies, to go do a ritual on our behalf. I mean, one of these days…”
Savita trails off, which is unlike her. She was never one to keep words in reserve; her body shed them like her dark hair strands that laced the shower drain.
Suresh adjusts his back to make it snug against the sofa. If his daughter saw him, she would scold him for his posture, but she is somewhere between the Pacific Ocean and the Arabian Sea. He has no idea who she gets her adventurous streak from; it wasn’t from him. His greatest adventure has been raising a family as an immigrant, but even that had been a calculated financial decision. Unlike his older brother, who had West Side Story posters on his wall and read The Catcher in the Rye like it was his life manual growing up, Suresh hadn’t rushed out of India. He hadn’t even imagined he would leave his hometown, much less the country. His brother would call from his newfound home in Texas, bragging about how much better his life was “having left the third-world hellhole” to entice Suresh to join him.
“Suresh…” Savita’s voice lowers to an urgent whisper, even though it is just the two of them in their expansive suburban Maryland house. Even their dog is out getting groomed, and even though he is a mere fourteen pounds, the house feels empty without him scurrying around.
“One of these days, your mother’s shenanigans are going to get her hurt.” Savita furrows her eyebrows and purses her lips. “As it is, her big mouth is getting her into trouble. Your cousin Ranjini called me yesterday and was complaining about your mother’s insensitive comments about why her daughter was still unmarried at this age and wasn’t she going to be like the rotten aubergine at the market no one would want anymore.” The mustard seeds start sputtering in the oil, and Savita empties the diced potatoes into the wok. The crisp November air is soon redolent with spices.
Suresh feels his back pinch him despite his realignment. Somehow, he never noticed his aching back when sitting at his office desk five days a week. Now, after retirement, even though his shoulders are free from the weight of familial duties, it’s like his body hasn’t learned to cope with the lightness. Twenty-five years ago, when Savita had asked him with accusing eyes whether he could afford to give their children a good education, Suresh didn’t have an answer. Savita had stayed home to raise the children so he could be the breadwinner, and if he didn’t succeed at that, what else could he stand on? Where Suresh had imagined an undemanding life in known surroundings—after all, that’s what his father had done—Savita’s ambitions for their children tipped the scales toward a flight a thousand miles away from his mother.
“I’ll talk to Amma and get her to stop causing trouble,” Suresh finally says to appease his wife.
“Po da, as if! You will always be your mother’s golden child who never wanted to leave her side. I’m going to talk to your brother; he’ll put her in her place.” Savita rolls her eyes and walks out of the room.
Suresh’s eyes linger on the space his wife had occupied, catching glimpses of what could have been. There was a time he had imagined that once retired, he would spend his parents’ last years with them. But his father’s death was sudden, and Suresh finds that since his passing, he can’t bring himself to spend more than a few weeks in India. In the last few years, he has come to realise that while he is still holding on to an idea of a life he could have lived back home, the people back home had moved on without him. No one, including his mother, needs him in India. He would be going back for himself, and that felt indulgent.
Aarti shrugs off her backpack and holds on to a tree while flattening out her back for a stretch. She thinks of her father’s recent back issues and whether he is watching his posture. Hoisting the pack back up, she puts her arms through the straps, so the pack sits on her chest, to air out the back of her dress clinging to her like Velcro. Walking down the sandy path to a thatched hut flanked by surfboards, Aarti looks around her destination, unsurprised that she sees as many white people as brown.
“Hi, I have a room booked here for six days,” she says to the man standing behind a desk, with hair the colour of the beach at dawn, and whose skin gleams like polished copper. Surfer boys, she thinks to herself, God bless them. She isn’t yet sure of her last-minute decision to book herself into a surf camp in Sri Lanka, but it feels in line with her post-separation, pre-enlightenment sojourn. She needs a water rebirth.
“Yes, we have you in a single. Aarti? Welcome to Weligama! First time here?”
“Yes, yes, it’s my first time in Weligama,” she hesitantly adds, “first time surfing as well; not sure how well I will do.”
“We have lots of first-timers here,” he says, flipping his shoulder-length hair with the air of a beauty pageant entrant. Aarti averts her eyes from the incisive muscles glistening on his chest. She sucks in her stomach, so it doesn’t tent against her cotton dress, and then sighs to herself. Her body was so much more malleable a decade ago.
“Let me show you to your room and give you a little tour. Here, I’ll take your backpack. I’m sure you are tired of carrying it.”
Aarti winces to herself, thinking about what a stereotype she must seem, running from life’s baggage with the trademark oversized backpack. If anything, the least stereotypical thing about her seems to be her age. All the backpackers she has encountered in her three months travelling around Asia seemed to be twenty-three and convinced they had their lives as digital nomads all figured out. Meanwhile, at thirty-three, when all her friends are contemplating if they can afford a mortgage and a child or neither, Aarti is on her way back… home?
“What brings you to Sri Lanka? By the way, I’m Bosco.” The golden man reaches out his hand, and Aarti feels her pulse leap when she feels the warmth of his skin.
“Why is anyone here?” she tries on an evasive answer to see if it fits. Nope. “I recently went through a breakup and wanted to take a break from my life. I want to go see my grandmother in India, who lives alone. I am sort of making my way to her.” Aarti looks down at her feet, sore and grimy. “I guess I am taking the long way there.”
When Kevin had broken up with her, and her eyes were wet with the burst bubble of their future together, she felt invisible, even to herself. She couldn’t make sense of the last five years with Kevin, much less the loss of the life she had imagined for them. In those days, when she felt untethered and like she was fading out of her own life, she felt a deep longing for her hometown. She wanted to retrace her steps—from the very beginning—to find herself again along the way.
Bosco points to an area with four people lazing on hammocks and bean bags. They have matching tans, singlets, and looks of relief at being so far away from responsibilities.
“This is the chill area. You can get a beer from old Yaddy in the shack there and camp out here all day if you feel like it. No questions asked.”
Aarti nods to an old man with close-shaven white hair and several silver hoops studding his ears waving at her. He must be Dad’s age, she thinks to herself.
“Hey, it’s pretty cool that your grandma is just chilling by herself.” Bosco gestures down a hallway, and Aarti follows, “How come? Doesn’t she want to come see you in America? You are American, I assume, or could be Canadian, I guess. We get a lot of Canadians here.”
It’s the question everyone in her family is asking, exasperated at her grandmother’s obstinacy. Only Aarti seems to understand her grandmother’s decision.
“My grandmother, she’s spent eighty years being someone’s daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. I think she wants to spend the rest of her life just being her. You know?”
“Sounds like you and your grandmother are on a similar journey,” Bosco muses.
Aarti had spent the first five years of her life living with her grandparents in Bangalore, and every summer till she was fifteen visiting them. Her grandparents never spoke much to each other, but she’d watch as they read the newspaper together, as the day broke, content in the silence that only familiarity forges. Her grandfather had been a simple man with a childlike disposition trapped in an adult world of obligations for which he had no affinity. He would take Aarti on long daily walks around the neighbourhood, where he’d stop to feed biscuits to street dogs, and check which of the guavas were ripe enough to pluck and give to Aarti. When home, he’d reread the newspaper cover to cover, clipping out certain articles with the care of a sculptor, mailing them out to his sons who had long left him behind. These envelopes contained no words from him but conveyed what interested him about the world.
Bosco drops Aarti’s backpack by a door with a miniature surfboard hanging on it, facing the expansive waters that are hugging in the remnants of the day. The sun is ready for its own water rebirth. Aarti wonders how she’s sure she knows the answer to Bosco’s question. She has only seen her grandmother intermittently in the last few years, watching her back bow lower to gravity between visits.
“You might not find exactly what you are looking for here,” Bosco turns to face the marmalade sky, “but this is one place you don’t have to be anything to anybody.”
He turns to hand Aarti a giant brass key with a seashell tied to it. “This is your room, Aarti,” Bosco gives her a playful wink, “Welcome to our paradise.”
DoubleSpeak 