Burning
Photo: Jyoti Singh
Fiction: ‘Some people tell me they were in love once. They had loved in the time when love brought disrepute; and separation even more.’
My memory of that night was a smell: candle wax, with smoke overpowering its green scent. Memories of gray smoke mixing with modern grayscale of the walls, in a room peppered with checkered curtains, and old brown furniture on the cold, marbled floor. The early winter air coming from the balcony wafted it around. Fat drops of water from a leaky tap seeped into my dream.
I had woken up from a nightmare that had stopped being so: The death of my parents. They took turns appearing, like a persistent knock. A door would open into an endless room with a lonely cupboard in the middle, filled with fraying binders or unused saris.
I had skipped Holi and Diwali in the same year, and now New Year’s was staring at me. My visits back home would throw us all in the same room, thinning the air with our heaviness, and it would be days before we could breathe freely again. Markers of their discontent—the wrinkles of time on their faces—filled me with dread.
I had not turned out how they had imagined, and I couldn’t imagine how else they could’ve turned out. They looked like siblings and behaving like estranged couples, year after year, layer after layer, living in two houses under one, the quiet terrorists. Some people tell me they were in love once. They had loved in the time when love brought disrepute; and separation even more.
I had happened somewhere in between.
Instead of trying to go back to sleep, I wrapped myself in a shawl and walked out. It was past midnight. I had slept for a couple of hours already, and my stomach was growling. In the kitchenette, I made myself a cup of chai to go with my leftover dinner, before settling into a chair on the balcony, looking at streetlights and construction sights, and the hanging red dots of blinking urban skyline. Beyond a dome where a security guard was dozing off in the glow of his phone, a woman, a man, and three boys were playing ‘House’ under a flyover across the manicured lawns and European-style lamp posts. The woman was flipping rotis, the man was laying mats for bedtime, and the kids wore Santa caps and played hockey with red decorative sticks and ornamental balls, picked from the Christmas dump outside a nearby shopping mall.
In and out of borrowed walls of rented rooms, to celebrate this austerity of not owning—his more than mine. I liked the shelter of his armpits and his stale breath; he liked my perfume. Our nonnegotiable desires lying on a spectrum, crisscrossing, and pulling and tugging but never bending.
A big halogen lamp on the street lit, as though on cue to light their dinnertime— and mine. Feeling exposed, I moved my chair behind the door frame, closer to the curtain. The boys poked the fluffed rotis, shrieking with joy. I tried to recall its aroma, which took me 25 years back in time, to a house that wasn’t mine.
Turmeric-skinned, with an orange parting in her hair, our cousin made hot rotis for the few of us who sat in the kitchen, enamoured by her sudden, overnight adultness. She had recently gotten married. Her giggles had been replaced by a smile that deepened her dimples. Her limbs moved like she knew something that we didn’t.
We were only three years apart, yet I was a child. The steam from a hot roti had burnt my fingers, and the rest of the kids had laughed.
On my balcony, I ran my thumb on the fingertips, and I could touch the smell. I looked at the family below the flyover again, where the mother had served herself a couple of rotis. She ate next to the stove, while flipping a few more.
I thought of my own proximity to the kitchen, which had long been severed, long before time became money. Now a maid cooked for me in the morning, and I reheated the rice at night.
My eyes moved to a commercial high-rise a few buildings away, where a white square had just come on. A smallish shadow appeared against the window and slid down. I squinted for clarity, but, instead, an electric cable in the foreground focused in and out. I got distracted by an owl sitting on the wire with its head tucked in. It struck me that I had never seen an owl before, but I recognized its silhouette.
I heard my phone on the desk vibrate and chime. I didn’t go back to the room. I felt the large empty bed behind me close in on my shoulders, where kisses like whispers had sat a few hours ago. Entangled in the sheets, naked, my feet curled and sandwiched between his calves, and his face buried under my hair. It hadn’t been long. I had heard the door latch in my sleep. My feet in the socks were still cold. The slippers would be in the bathroom, I thought, warm and bands stretched out.
I had bought a pair for him last year. He wanted to share everything, and yet we shared nothing: not life, not sleep. In and out of borrowed walls of rented rooms, to celebrate this austerity of not owning—his more than mine. I liked the shelter of his armpits and his stale breath; he liked my perfume. Our nonnegotiable desires lying on a spectrum, crisscrossing, and pulling and tugging but never bending. Love.
Two minutes later the text reminded again, but I stayed in my chair. I knew the message: At the airport, ready to board. He preferred to take the late-night flight back, every time, because he liked waking up in his bed. His bed. The domesticity in his text was out of habit, the habit of being married. They weren’t for me. He had his quirks.
I craned my neck to look for the moon in the pale blue sky above me. There was an app in my phone, which I could hardly care to look at, capable of telling the direction of the moon: its phase, visibility, and including trivia like ‘the same side of moon always faced the Earth’. I thought of the Earth, a truth so impossible to fathom, lonely, suspended, pulling and being pulled. I looked for the fog of the moonlight—our small comforting lie—but it was somewhere where I wasn’t.
The air was getting nippy. Cocooned in the chair, I pulled my knees to my chest, and waited for sleep to come. Just then, I heard urgent, indistinct voices and shuffling of feet under my door. Within minutes, a faint sound of an incoming ambulance tore into my ears, stopping right under my balcony. The security guard jumped out of his dome, rubbing his eyes and disentangling the headphones from his neck.
By now many windows in the building complex were lit, and a few people stood in their balconies.
I dragged my chair closer to the railing. I caught a glimpse of a nest of white hair shaking on a gurney, followed by a couple of women and men in their middle age. Two men in uniform shut the ambulance doors, and the vehicle drove off. An SUV came to a screeching halt, and the men of the family hopped in to follow the ambulance. The women looked on as the vehicle left the driveway and was out of the gate. Shortly, they were surrounded by curious neighbours nodding and patting reassurances. Unsatisfied by the news, some of them quickly dispersed. Others who lingered on a little longer were left praying or yawning, or both. A few of them had looked in my direction and frowned, or whispered or pointed at me: the outsider, a voyeur. I pretended not to notice.
*
I imagined an old woman. A woman I knew once who was taken like that in the middle of the night had only come back in a coffin. Uncle Julian had sat by her weeping silently all day, his tears running down into his shirt collar. He had old blue eyes and a gray mole with a center on his left cheek. To us, he had been a pair of magnifying glasses for a face, a torso covered in a checkered shirt tucked neatly into his pleated pants, and two feet in cakey white tennis shoes. But that day he wore his black shoes, the ones he wore on Sundays at church, and his glasses rested in his hands. No one had seen his face up close before, but it probably looked different than how it looked that day.
I thought of the Earth, a truth so impossible to fathom, lonely, suspended, pulling and being pulled. I looked for the fog of the moonlight—our small comforting lie—but it was somewhere where I wasn’t.
Mrs. Moore was eighty and he was seventy. They say they had both been married to other people, who were dead now, but their children did not want them to remarry due to the mess of property disputes it could create.
The first time I saw toilet paper was in Mrs. Moore’s bathroom. It was a bathroom in which you didn’t have to wear slippers, a bathroom with dry floor, where lacy undergarments hung delicately from clothespins against a tiny ventilator window. Her crammed room—where a bed wrapped in cool silk stood intimidatingly in the middle—had a mustiness mixed with smell of bread and biscuits. I put her bundle of stuff she walked around with everywhere, on a crowded dressing table, and stepped out. I was immediately hit by the dreary brick and brown of the summer heat. I hoped to go back in again, someday.
Only a handful of us were allowed into this portal, and I wasn’t usually one of them. A mispronunciation of my name during rollcall, like my other two namesakes, was all the relationship I had with her. That day I was filling in for a friend, a favourite student of Mrs. Moore’s, on behalf of whom I had once written a love letter, and Mrs. Moore had made corrections in red ink. I felt a little embarrassed every time I passed her in the corridor after that, unsure if it was because I wrote so confidently about feelings I had never felt—or of the sheer number of red marks.
Junior Ms. Moore, a spinster in her fifties, was to be the new warden after her mother’s death. She had hugged Uncle Julian like family and wept. He began bringing goody bags for her on some weekends just as he had done for the elder.
I remember crying nonstop, inconsolably for two days. Throwing fistful of soil at the burial, with the words ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust’ in the backdrop, I was reminded of scary scenes from a horror film I had watched over summer. My friend— the favourite— looked at me curiously and exhausted because I had outdone her in grieving. Unremarkable until then, I became quite famous. Some of the teachers even learnt my name. Finally, after the body was out of sight, and my periods came, I stopped crying.
*
Within fifteen minutes, all the commotion around the neighbourhood caused by mortal life had quietened, settling into the sounds of occasional cat’s mew, dog’s intermittent barking, and an orchestra of heaters going off and on.
My cup had invited a small bug now, stretched out dead and floating. I went inside to get myself hot water to soothe the tickle in my throat, and slippers to warm my feet. The place was a little more stained with the lives of others than a few others we had been in. The microwave had a spattering of yellow; tiny strands of crinkled hair hid under the dustbin; impressions of feet on the bathroom mat; a piece of Lego stuck behind the TV stand. I heard another episode of shuffling in the hallway and felt an urge to see if all was well, but as a weekender in a residential building I was aware of my status as no more than a nuisance. I checked myself at the door. Would the slippers be appropriate to step out in? But the other option was worse: stilettos. I only had bed clothes or formal clothes, and they both cost the same. There was a time when going-out clothes transitioned into home clothes that turned into bed clothes. The waves of transition I realized had been still for years and I had turned into a curator. Nothing just happened anymore. I orchestrated, maneuvered, bent, shaped, and willed everything in my life.
There was a time when going-out clothes transitioned into home clothes that turned into bed clothes. The waves of transition I realized had been still for years and I had turned into a curator. Nothing just happened anymore. I orchestrated, maneuvered, bent, shaped, and willed everything in my life.
I looked at my legs dangling from the bed. They reminded me of my mother’s feet: dusty and purple. Patches of skin looked like rexine. I quickly rubbed in a few squirts of lotion on my shiny knobby ankles, instantly making them red and plump, and bearable. I closed my eyes.
The next morning, I woke up to the loud ringing of the room phone. I took the call and looked at the time. I had fallen asleep with my slippers on. The bug in the teacup from last night had perhaps sunk to the bottom. The balcony door was wide open, and the room was very cold. All I could see was a morning haze that looked like afternoon. The family under the flyover was folded up into a bundle. The high-rise window that was lit all night was the only one where the lights were out.
As I closed the balcony door, I noticed a smell in the room that wasn’t from the candle. I walked across the room and looked through the peephole. The door opposite mine was open with a jostling of slippers at the threshold. I took a deep breath, and wished I wasn’t stepping out alone.
Promptly, I got into the same clothes I had checked in two nights ago. Once out, I locked my door quickly, clicked open the handle on my bag, and swiftly walked the walk I have for the world. Someone was dead, and I couldn’t have pretended to care. I again felt like the wrong woman. The smell of incense followed me out.
An airport taxi was waiting under the building. I handed over the key to the caretaker of the flat and got in the backseat. Out on the road, vehicles were inching. Soon the honking began, and I closed the half rolled-up window. I tapped my phone; there were no new messages. He had gone back to his world, and I was going back to a house.
From the window, I saw a large bird, camouflaged, perched on a bald tree on the footpath. It was an owl! It opened and closed its mouth a couple of times, and a loud barking reached me through the traffic. It was so unpleasant that I shut my eyes for a while. When I opened them, I noticed the two bobble-head puppets at the dashboard: a man and a woman, an old couple. Their expressions looked oddly familiar.
I imagined a day when I’d receive a telegram-like phone call, where economy of words would mean paucity of emotions, from the drunk neighbour, the grocer, a random uncle.
The car picked up speed. I was flying with the vehicles, looking at the clouds running along the bridge, and a faint wailing of a woman ringed into my ears, travelling like a memory from a hallway where I had trampled on everything under my feet.
***
Jyoti Singh lives a quiet life in Texas with her husband and a five-year-old daughter. She used to live and work in Mumbai as a screenwriter in another life. You may find links to some of her published work at www.jyotiwrites.com.
