My Mother's Village

Some kids get to play with building blocks, dollhouses and train sets. I got my mother’s village. My father never took me there. But, not a week went by without dredging or touching up that past.

‘It’s four hundred and seventeen steps from your mother’s house to the river,’ he said, and I paced those in some rain-washed fantasy, feeling my toes curl away from sharp stones or sink into mud. I played spy-games, a spook in a spooky double-life, familiarized myself with the shortcuts through paddy fields and rubber plantations, the best spot to swim and the people, at the market, at the temple, my family. His stories invariably revolved around my mother, even when he talked about the other woman who could have been my other mother. Instead of fairytales with knights and monsters, I grew up with the demons he faced there, the uncle who stole from my mother or the man with three ears, and the many-headed ghosts that banished him, us, from that place.

A month after my father died, I went there. Violating the tacit agreement to leave that past alone was not easy. But, the vacuum left by him, or the depressing loneliness, made me want to reclaim that part of me I never had.

My father was in his mid-twenties when he was transferred, as a junior officer, from the city to the village’s lone bank. He married my mother in his second year there. 

‘Ours wasn’t a love affair in the strict sense,’ he admitted. Could not have been a strictly arranged affair either – his pedigree hardly matched with hers. I am not sure if they even talked to each other before marriage. But, he was hopelessly besotted with her.

‘I behaved like a love-struck teenager,’ he recounted with a shy laugh. ‘When I went past her house, I walked on tiptoes, peering over the compound-wall, just to catch a glimpse of her. Every evening, at the temple, I shamelessly stalked her, pretending to pray to every God that wasn’t there.’ He gave me his boyish grin before adding, ‘How I was tempted to follow her to the river when she went swimming… but I did not.’ I would not be surprised if he was being less than candid with me. We were indeed close but he was painfully prudish when it came to discussing such matters with his daughter.

Luck came his way through hard times brought on by a bad monsoon. My mother’s father faced a severe cash-crunch because of a few trades gone wrong. He approached the bank’s manager for a loan. As expected, the manager was not keen on disbursing loans then when default seemed certain. My father took an active interest in the loan-application, managed to convince his boss that there was sufficient collateral and facilitated timely loans to my grandfather. He gained the trust and respect of my mother’s family, and eventually, got her too. Only her eldest brother, the uncle who later stole my mother’s share, opposed the match but his protest did not amount to much then. A year later, my mother died giving birth to me. Her death plus mounting financial losses left my grandfather shattered. My uncle quickly assumed control of family matters and we, my father and I, became outcasts.

My father requested for a transfer and, left the village with me and his meager belongings. The details of the days that followed are sketchy. We lived with his relatives or friends. My father struggled with me, his job and, correspondence courses on corporate finance and portfolio management. When I was five, he got a job offer from an investment bank in Singapore. Our life became a lot easier. We moved from south-east Asia to Europe and then to the US, further and further away from my roots.

We lived comfortably. He could have left me in the capable hands of nannies and other support staff. But I had his clumsy housekeeping and awful cooking. I had to tuck in that tired storyteller who slept before me, and put up with ill-tempered tennis games which neither of us liked to lose. He came late for PTA meetings and stood like an errant schoolboy in front of my teachers. They were actually quite fond of him and also admired his efforts as a single father. I did not realize that he was burning too much fuel. I should have noticed the slouch and the breathlessness in the last few years before his early and sudden death at fifty.

I am twenty three and I feel lost without him, without his deep rumbling voice to comfort me, without him to lean on. I miss his stories, his quirky ways and intriguing contradictions. He claimed to be an atheist but he prayed after bath every evening. To or for what he prayed I never knew. I did wonder if he was praying or reliving an old memory. He was pragmatic and quite rational but, at the same time, he refused to keep photographs or diaries.

‘Nothing like the brain to store stuff,’ he said.

He did not have photos of my mother or her village. Whenever I sulked about that, he gave me a bear-hug and said that I look a lot like her. I think he was just trying to make me happy.

He hardly talked about his family. His parents died when he was in his teens.

‘You got half that trait from me,’ he mentioned in some wistful moment. ‘My side isn’t into marrying, and most are single and anonymous in nameless places.’ I think I have that trait too. My mother’s family is the exact opposite – large and attached, with all its flaws, but still attached. Maybe, that is why I went there.

I hired a car at the city-airport and stayed in a hotel the first day. I hardly slept that night. I got up early the next morning, forced myself to have a muffin with two cups of strong coffee before leaving at half past seven.

I got to the village junction around nine. I did not have to ask for directions. The market looked the same. I spotted the changes – half a dozen brightly painted houses, a hardware store, a reading room and couple of rubber traders. The old ration shop has become a large provision store. Otherwise, the junction seemed as it was twenty five years back when my father was there. The teashop’s ancient glass case displayed thick dosa, banana fritters and puttu. The ‘fancy’ store exhibited bangles, stationery, dresses for kids, buckets, plastic and aluminum vessels. Only the plastic covers for mobile phones that hung over the counter indicated that the shop has moved with time. The Muslims still live near the market, by the roadside, on the border of my mother’s family property. I wondered if the tension between those two sparring parties has reduced with time. My father had tried to be an intermediary. He told me that the fight started when a cow strayed from the Muslims’ side to the other property, and that the situation had worsened with a dispute over a common path. The Muslims were, in fact, the first customers he roped in for the bank. That’s also how, and when, he met that other woman. ‘That wasn’t easy at all, but I tried…’ He did not elaborate. That crush lasted for a few months, till he was totally crazy about my mother. 

I turned left at the junction. People stared at me and young men on the road took their time to make way. My mother’s family property at one time stretched, for a mile or two, from the junction to the temple and to the paddy fields lying further to the south. To the east, it extended till the river and the boundary to the west was the village school where my mother studied. The market area too used to be theirs. Some generous grand-uncle or great-grand-uncle gifted that land to the village. With each passing generation, as the family-tree grew dense, the family property got partitioned and sub-divided. The dependents and the workers were also given their share. Every house on that route must belong to some relative. I was tempted to stop the car at each house, step out, introduce myself and gather relatives. But I stuck to my plan, to be a tourist there to visit the temple.

I parked the car near the temple. I had taken care to dress in a traditional churidaar outfit, with just an inconspicuous bindi and a simple gold chain, leaving behind my nose-rings and ear-rings. I did not want to attract attention. I entered the temple. I am not religious and prayers have never been a part of my daily routine. There, I prayed the way my mother must have done, a pose my father had often imitated and not too difficult to copy.

I was startled when I felt a sweaty palm on my arm.

‘Sarasootty…’

I recognized the half-wit who helps at the temple. He has aged but the thick lips and the kind puppy eyes of my father’s portrayal were unmistakable.

He repeated, ‘Sarasootty…’

He got agitated and his hands jerked nervously. He then left my side and ran towards the temple’s office. I was watching him when another voice addressed me from behind, from within the temple.

‘Kutty (kid), where are you from?’

My father used to fume about that query, ‘Do they want to know who I am or can they figure that out if I tell them where I come from?’ I had tried to reason with him that they just wanted to know his roots, to figure out his lineage. ‘Is that the sum total of who I am?’ I could understand his frustration – without a recognizable lineage.

I turned around to face an unfamiliar middle-aged temple priest. Earlier, I had thought that the mumbling from within the temple was part of the morning prayers. Seeing him tuck a mobile phone at the waist, in the folds of his mundu (dhoti), I guessed that that prayer had been to a terrestrial subject.

I said, ‘A friend told me about this temple, and since I was passing by this village…’

‘Is this friend from this village?’ he probed.

‘I think so. She lives in the city. We work together.’

‘Lots of people from outside come here these days. Even I am not from here,’ the priest said.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘Two years.’

The half-wit returned with a large dollop of payasam (sweet offering) on a banana leaf. He offered that to me, still chanting, ‘Sarasootty… Sarasootty…’

‘Hey, stop that… what has got into this fool?’ the priest scolded the half-wit, ‘Whenever he sees a woman he likes, he goes on like that…’

How could I tell him that ‘this fool’ Achu, short for Achuthan, used to call my mother ‘Sarasu-kutty’ or ‘Sarasootty’? Her name was Saraswathi. Achu was a few years older than her, son of one of the maids, and he grew up in my mother’s house. I held Achu’s hand. He looked thrilled. I too was very happy, to be mistaken for my mother. I barely managed to hold back the tears.

I left the temple after a few mandatory rounds around the sanctum sanctorum. I took the steep downhill path towards the paddy fields. The other road to the east would have taken me to my mother’s ancestral house. I was not yet ready for that. While walking, I had the payasam, eating straight from the leaf, unabashedly licking it clean.

There are no houses near the temple, around the upper part of the path. That area must still be with my mother’s family. They gifted the land near the paddy fields to their work-force, long before my father’s time in the village.  I am not sure if the workers returned the favor with loyalty. With land of their own, electricity connection, television, mobile phones, other modern appliances and, most probably, a family member in the Middle-east, old allegiances must have been easy to forget.

The situation was a lot different a century back, when the upper-castes on the other side of the paddy fields controlled the area and the workers were landless laborers. Those upper-castes’ days were numbered, thanks to their lavish lifestyle, imprudent ventures and senseless in-fighting. Creditors fed on them like vultures and they had to sell their property cheap. My mother’s family was one of the few who did not try to benefit through such ‘cursed’ deals. But only when they were destitute did the upper-castes visit my mother’s house. They still sat like lords, refusing to drink or eat, but took home ‘gifts’ of rice, coconuts and other produce. They borrowed jewelry from my great-grandmother for rituals and festivities they refused to give up.

‘People will never change,’ my father commented, ‘they will always find someone to bow to, someone to trample on.’ He told me that, even during his time, the workers, though they were treated very well, never entered my mother’s house and had their meals served outside the house. Without any background to boast about, he too must have been an outcaste or outcast by way of caste or class, till he turned out to be useful for my mother’s family.

I walked past those workers’ huts and took a path that cut through the paddy fields. Kids stopped their games to watch me. Their parents must have paused too. Maybe, one or two must have said to each other, ‘Who is she? She looks so familiar.’

I made way for a group of women who crossed me on the same path. They smiled and I reciprocated. I could make out the curiosity in their eyes. I am sure that their first question would have been, ‘Did you come here today?’

My father used to list the villagers’ rhetorical questions. Near the river and with a wet towel in his hand, they asked him, ‘Have you been swimming?’ Close to the market, carrying a bag of shopping, ‘Did you go to the market?’ When he got off the bus, after a trip to the city, ‘Did you come back by bus?’ Though we laughed at that, I could sense that he was not making fun of them, just sharing happy reminiscences of my peculiar lot.

I followed a path eastwards towards the river. A good part of the paddy fields has been reclaimed for tapioca, banana, rubber trees and houses. How long will those green swaying fields last? Farming must be difficult even for my mother’s folks, without their old loyal workforce. I daydreamed about returning to my roots, to be one of those tech kids who fashionably shift to farming. I nearly laughed out loud.

At the periphery, an old lady sat outside a house, hunchbacked with age, watching me closely as she made a betel quid for herself, expertly handling the betel leaf, tobacco, slaked lime and arecanut. She called out to a person inside. An old man came out, looking quite fit for his age, smoking a beedi (local cheroot). They looked at me as if they had seen a ghost. I recognized them. They are cousins of my grandparents. He used to have a tea-stall, and played volleyball with my grandfather. I smiled at them and walked away quickly. I did not want to hear them call me, ‘Sarasu…’

I took a muddy path, opposite that house, leading to the river and then walked upstream along the bank to the stone steps at the old bathing spot. The river seemed strange. It has receded a few meters, as a result of illegal and indiscriminate sand-mining, and the once-serene flow seemed treacherous with rapids, undercurrents and unknown depths. Instead of the old sandy bathing spot, I found an ugly mound of rock, weeds and wild grass. I watched men pile sand from the bottom of that ravaged river on to a boat. Even the plot next to the bathing area was not being spared, excavated for clay, and left looking like an ugly pock-scarred face. I remembered that that property belongs to the man with three ears, the brute with whom my father had a big fight. He controls the sand-mining business in that area. I took a few photos, with my phone-camera, of that sad wretched place. I wish I had photos of the paradise it once was.

Two men on that boat shouted at me. I ignored them. I sat on those steps, head on my knees, lost in my thoughts. I thought about my father and mother swimming there.

I was brought out of that reverie by those two men. They had taken a route through the property of the three-eared man, circled behind my back and caught me by surprise.

‘What are you doing here?’ one of the men asked harshly. Both looked like thugs, bare-bodied except for a lungi (colored dhoti or sarong) worn low at the waist, the lower part folded up and obscenely hitched high till upper-thigh. They came closer.

‘What are you photographing?’ the other asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Give that phone to us. Let us look at your nothing.’ They reached for my mobile. I moved backwards.

‘What’s going on here?’ a voice interrupted their advance.

I turned to that side, relieved. But that relief did not last long when I realized that I was staring into the mean eyes of the man with three ears. I stared at that large, dark, sweaty face. True to my father’s description, his ears and nose were similar and incongruous on that head – small, round, puffy, like cauliflower florets. That’s why my father called him the man with three ears.

‘What are you two up to with this girl?’ he asked.

‘Sir,’ they drawled, ‘she was taking photos.’

‘Let her take, no?’

‘She must be a journalist. A troublemaker…’

‘And, what if she is? Are you going to throw her in the river? Now, get lost, you two…’ The thugs went away sulking. The man turned to me, ‘So, are you a journalist?’

‘No,’ I replied. I knew that journalists and the police hardly bothered him, having politicians and the local administration in his greasy hands.

‘Who are you then?’ the man asked.

‘I am a tourist,’ I said. He seemed amused. I wanted to wipe that smile off his face. ‘Someone told me that this used to be a beautiful place.’

‘Yes, it was,’ he admitted, and even looked sad for a brief moment, before the old cunning look returned, ‘So… who is this someone who told you that?’

‘My father, Rajaraman,’ I said. I wanted to remind him of a person who stood up to him. ‘He worked in the village bank, about twenty five years back.’

‘Are you really Rajaraman’s daughter?’ the man asked, smiling broadly.

I nodded.

‘How is he?’

‘He died a month back.’

‘Really…? That’s sad.’ Strangely, he sounded earnest.

‘He told me about you…’ I said.

‘Did he…? Lovely chap he was… so full of life. He used to come here every day. We used to have swimming races, you know. He swam well…’

I nodded. I knew what he was up to – whitewashing the past.

I gathered courage and prodded, ‘He told me that you had started your business just then.’

‘Hmm… that’s right…’

I decided to disrupt his pensive mood, ‘Didn’t he argue with you about this?’ I tried a dramatic sweep of my hand to indicate the sad state of affairs.

He spoiled the act, still refusing to be the villain, ‘Oh yes, not just him, everyone was against this project at first, even me! Everything seemed so uncertain then. But, people quickly realized that they could earn in a year what they could not dream of gaining through decades of farming. Lots of people in this village benefitted, you know… what’s the phrase? Ah yes, climbed ashore instead of drowning. Your father was always after us, to open accounts or to put fixed-deposits in the bank.’ He laughed. ‘We used to run from the scene whenever he showed up. But, he was a jolly chap, and straightforward. People here really liked him.’

I should have felt proud and pleased, or disgusted. I did not like the way he had airbrushed history. I excused myself from that man’s company and left the spot, running up those stone steps and not stopping till I was on the road, panting, breathless. I could see my mother’s house from there, about four hundred and seventeen steps away.

According to my plans, I was not supposed to visit them on that first trip. But the meeting with the three-eared man somehow made me feel a need to enter my mother’s house.

The house has been renovated. But the cowshed was still there, to the left, at the back, behind the well, even though there are no cows now. My mother had a calf she called Unni. There was no one outside. I opened the gate, went up to the door and rang the bell. I heard slow footsteps. The door opened and I knew, without a doubt, that I was looking at my uncle, the one who stole from my mother.

‘Yes…?’ he asked me. He was tall, fair and fit. He must be my father’s age. He stared at me, unblinking, like a serpent.

I did not know how to introduce myself. I tried a partial truth, ‘This is my first visit to this village. A friend told me about the temple and that I should meet you.’

I should have said, ‘I am Saraswathi’s daughter.’ But, I did not want to be chucked out without a chance to enter my mother’s house.

‘Come in,’ he said kindly. I felt uncomfortable with his courtesy.

I entered my mother’s house. An elderly lady and a younger one came to the drawing room. I recognized my aunt but not the cousin. They smiled and remained silent. My cousin went back within. My uncle took the old armchair that used to be my grandfather’s. He showed me to a sofa. My aunt sat next to me. He mentioned some details about the temple. I hardly heard what he said. My cousin returned with a glass of lemon juice and plates of savory. I thanked her. She smiled shyly and stood next to her mother.

I blurted out, ‘I am Rajaraman’s daughter.’

He looked surprised, and sounded confused, ‘Rajaraman…?’

I wanted to shout, ‘Yes, the brother-in-law you chucked out.’

I managed to say calmly, ‘He was a junior officer in the bank. About twenty five years back…’

He pretended to think for a while. ‘Oh yes, I remember Rajaraman.’ He slapped his lap, and laughed, ‘How can I forget him? Where is your father now? Still with that bank…?’

‘No, he died last month.’

My uncle lowered his head and remained silent for a while. I think my aunt let out a sigh, or a low moan. I saw my cousin shake her head sadly. My uncle said, ‘He was here for two or three years. Twenty five years back! How time flies…’

Having decided to unsettle the man without any delay, I asked, ‘Was the village facing a tough time then because of a bad monsoon? My father mentioned that he had to arrange large loans...’ and, after what I considered to be a pregnant pause, I added, ‘for everyone…’

‘Loans…? I don’t think we ever needed that.’ He looked smug and slightly irritated too. ‘I thought the manager dealt with loans. Wasn’t your father a junior officer then? I don’t mean any disrespect, of course…’ That, of course, sounded as if he meant the exact opposite. He quickly added, ‘I remember that period very well because we celebrated my sister’s wedding on a really grand scale… and, we wouldn’t do that with loans, would we?’

I wanted to stop him and ask him about his sister.

But he continued, ‘You see, I was a young man then, studying in the city and gave two hoots for this place. Whenever I came here, during vacations, my father exhorted me to learn from Rajaraman. Your father was absolutely in love with this place, so fascinated by everything. I think he knew each and everyone in this village. We used to joke that he knew the village better than us… though, that’s probably true… we really don't give a damn about each other.’

I wanted to scream, ‘Stop this nonsense. I know what you are trying to do. Do you really have to block us out… totally?’ I remained silent, nodding my head as if I was taking in all that he said.

‘He and his camera were inseparable,’ I heard my uncle say.

I thought of replying, ‘Don’t you know that he hates photos?’

‘Come, see these photos,’ he stood up and pointed at some framed photos lining the wall. I got up too, feeling a little faint but still holding on. ‘He took these… he was quite a good photographer…’

He pointed at a photo of himself, another of a wedding, and then, that of the lady in the wedding photo, standing alone. Next to that were photos of my grandparents. The last three had fresh garlands around the frame, like bouquets on a gravestone.

‘Who is that?’ I pointed at the third photo.

‘That’s my sister, Saraswathi,’ he replied, ‘she died a few months after her wedding.’ His voice was choking. ‘I think your father was here then.’

I looked at the wedding photo. That lady was putting the wedding garland on some man I could not recognize. The lady did not look like me. Or maybe, she did.

‘How did she die?’ I asked.

‘There were some complications during pregnancy and her blood pressure shot up. We didn’t get her to the doctor fast enough.’

‘And the baby…?’ I asked.

‘My sister died in the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.’

I could not take any more of the falsehoods. I remember sitting there for some more time, the man discussing whatever. Then, I left that house. In the car, staring blankly at the closed temple, I wondered about the lies that floated around me. How can they change the past like that? Did she die in the fifth month or after childbirth? Who was the father of that child? Did my father leave the village with that child? Even to me, that sounded like the plot of a B-grade movie.

I decided to make one final stop in that village. I drove to the junction, and turned right. I ignored the same old curious stares, feeling less friendly towards the whole lot. I stopped at a house after the market. I had to meet that other woman who could have been my other mother.

I knocked at the door of the old house. A lady in her fifties opened the door. She was Jasmine’s mother, a jolly character, talkative, very curious and asked lots of questions. I told her that my father used to work in the village bank and that he had talked to me about Jasmine and her father. I got to know from her that her husband died a year after Jasmine’s wedding, and that, after marriage, Jasmine lived in her husband’s house further down the road.

We were standing outside, in the courtyard, while we talked. I noticed with interest that there were breaches on all sides of the compound-wall.

She followed my stare and remarked jovially, ‘Our cow keeps going there. Now, how can you tell a cow not to break a wall, huh? And, whatever the dumb animal does, they have to do too… to go to the market, they say… as if there’s no other way but through here. First, them on the right…’

‘But, those are Muslims… aren’t they?’ I interrupted.

She laughed, ‘Why… they can’t be stupid? They were the first. Then, the others joined in…’ she pointed towards my mother’s property, ‘all copying our stupid cow. What can one do? That’s been going on for ages, even when Jasmine’s father was alive. Ah! That’s what neighbors are for, is that not so?’

She laughed again. Put that way, I could do nothing other than laugh with her. When I took leave, she cautioned me about Jasmine’s husband and mother-in-law, ‘they are very strict and orthodox’.

I walked to Jasmine’s new home. I covered my head with the dupatta (scarf). Her mother-in-law was haggling with a worker. When I asked for Jasmine, she dismissed the worker and called for her son who later called for his wife after I explained to them that my father used to be a friend of Jasmine’s father. Jasmine came outside. She looked young, more like mid-thirties rather than the mid-forties I had expected. Her husband and mother-in-law stood on either side of us.

I asked her if she remembered her father’s friend, a young bank officer. She shook her head at first. Then she went inside and returned with an old steel box. She took out a bank passbook from that, and handed it over to me.

‘That’s my first passbook. My father opened that account for me,’ she said shyly.

I opened it. I recognized my father’s signature within. The passbook also mentioned that Jasmine was a minor at the time of opening the account, and that her father was the guardian of the ten-year-old. Then, Jasmine took out an old photo. It was that of Jasmine, a cute young girl with pigtails and a bold smile, sitting on her father’s lap.

‘The bank officer took this photo,’ Jasmine said.

‘He was my father,’ I told her.

‘Oh, really?’ that’s all she had to say. I had exhausted my questions. I thanked them.

I returned to the car and left my mother’s village.

The Woman He Saw

Lottegollahalli, on the outskirts of Bangalore, used to be ideal for research scholars with a young family living on a pathetic stipend – a neighborhood one rarely crossed, with dusty narrow lanes, clusters of small houses and a deserted railway station. On a Saturday, in mid-winter, Rakesh helped a colleague relocate to cheap new lodgings out there. Most of the day was spent shifting the belongings, cleaning and setting up the new place. Around early evening, a few acquaintances dropped by for an impromptu housewarming ceremony. Rakesh helped the friend’s wife rustle up a quick dinner, and prepared a fiery chicken curry for the booze party. It must have been the steady supply of beer and whiskey that made him volunteer even though he was dead-tired. The party went on till midnight by which time Rakesh was drunk and rather unsteady on his feet. His friend advised him to spend the night there but Rakesh, never comfortable with prolonged company and strange sleeping spaces, decided to get back to his own hostel-room.

That involved a three-kilometer walk, in the dead of the night, on the barely-lit New BEL Road, a stretch with shuttered small shops, few houses, gnarled trees, unfriendly dogs, unsettling play of light and shadows, and rumors of brutal gangs that murdered for a few rupees. Rakesh walked briskly, not due to fright but because that exaggerated sense of purpose rather than a casual meandering stroll suited his inebriated state. The first few hundred meters, he concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other, quickly and pointed in the same direction. He tested his drunkenness by pinching his nose, and laughed aloud when he could feel nothing. That’s when he heard a flurry of footsteps behind him.

He turned around but saw nothing or no one in the dark. Must be the liquor, he thought. He walked faster, paused, then repeated that set in bursts, and listened carefully. The footsteps followed his lead, treading along, braking and keeping pace with him. He continued on that deserted straight road, hoping for a deviation or hiding place to make a quick exit.

After half a kilometer of that nervous walk, he spotted a dark cross-road ahead. On the right, there was an unmanned gate to a housing society. Rakesh thought about scooting inside, but he did not want to get trapped in a cul-de-sac. About twenty meters further, on the left, there was a cluster of shops, partially hidden by a big tree. He sprinted ahead, and near the tree darted to the left. He hid in a dark passageway between the shops. He watched the road. He wiped sweat from his neck and forehead on the sleeve of his jacket.

For a long while, there was no sound or sight of the other. Rakesh wondered if he had imagined everything. When he was about to step out of hiding place, he heard the footsteps again.

A slender form, shrouded by a shawl from head to waist, hurried forward on the road, head down, glancing nervously at both sides of the road, loose tresses hiding the face. Rakesh waited till that apparition was about fifty meters ahead, and then, he stepped out and followed her. She stopped, looked back, still and tense. He too halted, sensing that she could not see him in the dark. The chase, reversed, continued.

Rakesh kept his distance. The lady walked briskly, at times nearly jogged, but it was not difficult for him not to lose her till the junction near Ramaiah College. There were a few shops still open at that hour, catering to groups of affluent college students. He looked around. The young lady had vanished. He glanced at his watch. That episode, from Lottegollahalli till there, happened over two and a half kilometers and in just twenty or thirty minutes, though time and distance had seemed dilated during the chase.

He turned left at the junction, on 80 Feet Road, towards Dollars Colony and Sanjay Nagar, for the last half kilometer of his excursion. Once again, away from the light at the junction and into darkness, he felt her presence. He stepped away from the road, and waited. Again, she appeared, her face half visible, looking tense.

He stepped out onto the road and confronted her.

She gave a startled cry.

‘Who are you? Why are you following me?’ he snarled. He was quite surprised to find little slurring in his voice, wondering if the liquor had evaporated during the chase.

‘Damn! You nearly killed me by jumping out like that,’ she said, standing a few meters away from him.

Rakesh remained silent, staring darkly, waiting for her explanation.

‘I was at a friend’s place near Lottegollahalli,’ she said, moving closer and then paused. She looked deeply worried.

‘Go on…’ he said, not really snarling this time, but still suspicious. How many people can have friends in that godforsaken place Lottegollahalli, he wondered.

‘You are drunk, aren’t you?’ she said, quite unable to check herself.

‘I was comfortably numb,’ he admitted, ‘before you started chasing me.’

She said, ‘Well, I thought I was safe following you… you looked respectable from behind… I could not get the stink from that distance.’ She giggled, as if to apologize for blurting about his odor. When he scowled, she continued, ‘Look, I was at a party… and it turned really unruly. I could not even find my friend. I decided to leave and get home.’

‘At midnight… on your own…?’ he asked incredulously.

‘I know… terribly stupid… but it was worse there.’

‘Where is your house?’

‘In Dollars Colony…’

‘I too live there…’ he said and quickly added, ‘in a hostel… come on, let’s go…’

They did not talk much after that. Near the end of 80 Feet Road, they turned to the right, and took the unpaved and muddy shortcut to Dollars Colony, past clusters of huts and low-class hovels.

His hostel was the first big building in that underdeveloped part of the Colony. She asked him if he had been there for long. He muttered grumpily that he had shifted to that awful place with no shops or life about three months back and that he had a lovely room on the ground floor with a window facing a bicycle stand and little privacy. They walked past the hostel. She did not refuse his offer to walk her home. Her house, which seemed modest when compared to the mansions in that area, was at the other more affluent and well-established end of the Colony. My name is Savithri, she told him before leaving. He waited outside the gate of her house till she entered and closed the door. Rakesh returned to his hostel, and collapsed into a deep slumber, finally feeling the exhaustion.

He woke up late on Sunday morning, had a brunch of eggs, toast and lots of coffee. His legs were aching, because of the excessive booze and not due to the exertions of the previous night, and the headache was an equal blinder. A long shower did not help much. He dozed till evening. It took another shower and a mug of coffee to revive him, partly. He thought of the woman he saw. For dinner, he went to a nearby restaurant and on the way back, took a detour and walked to her house. The place was dark and shuttered. He returned to the hostel.

He thought of going there again during the week that followed. But work and a nasty flu kept him busy. Anyway, he was undecided about whether he should visit her or not. By Wednesday, the fever peaked and he took leave from work. The hostel cooks, three friendly women, took turns serving coffee and toast or hot rice, rasam and fried potato; and, he added a paracetamol as dessert with each meal. He had dreams of overflowing liquor, Savithri and lurking shadows.

Thursday, around late evening, he went to her house. Again, the house seemed dark and shuttered. But then, most houses there were like that – the occupants probably enclosed in some air-conditioned space within. He opened the gate and approached the door.

The door opened as he was about to knock. Rakesh took a step back, alarmed. A lady, in the early or mid forties, stood at the doorway, smiling at him.

‘Rakesh, nice of you to come…’

He stood dumbstruck, wondering how she knew him.

‘Come in,’ she said. She switched on the lights in the drawing room.

He stepped inside, cautiously standing near the door, and managed to ask, ‘Savitri…?’

‘Yes…’

She closed the door and showed him to a sofa. She sat next to him, a leg tucked under her. She faced him head tilted a little, a hand on the back of the sofa towards him.

He noticed that the lady resembled Savitri a lot. But in the place of the girlish charm and nervousness, there was a mature allure, a heady mixture of fragility, experience and confidence. She did not have the girl’s long tresses. She sported a peculiar boy cut, which highlighted the grey in her hair rather than hid it. The body was fuller, the dimple deeper, lips wet and parted, a button or two on the blouse open at the top, and the jeans accentuated the lower curves.

He looked around the room and noticed the photo of the girl in a showcase.

Pointing at that, he uttered again, ‘Savithri…’ He knew that he sounded foolish, croaking the same each time, but that’s all he could manage.

The lady nodded. She waited for a while before saying, ‘I wonder why I keep it there. Looks so young, right?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Twenty years… how time flies... wish I could look so young again’ she said.

Rakesh turned to the lady, wary and reasonably sure that he was being taken for a ride. He laughed.

‘Ok, nice one… where is she?’ he asked.

‘Who…?’

‘Savithri…’

‘I am Savithri,’ the lady said.

‘Yeah, yeah, and I am Saddam Hussein.’ Rakesh got up. ‘Ok, tell her that I was here. Nice meeting you.’ Rakesh went to the door and opened it. He turned to face the lady. She remained seated, bewitchingly attractive, with a smile on her lips and sadness in her eyes. He shook his head, wishing the apparition would just vanish, stepped outside, closed the door and walked away. He was disturbed and angry too. He wondered about the lady’s relationship to Savithri – her mother or most probably a playful aunt. He suspected that Savithri must be hiding in some corner of the house, laughing her head off, enjoying the prank.

The next few days went by slowly for Rakesh. He felt doubly troubled. The girl’s prank and absence angered and worried him. But there was another niggling realization, that the older lady he had met captivated him more than the girl. He wanted to go back to that house but a mixture of pride and hurt kept him away.

By Sunday, seven days after his walk from Lottegollahalli, he had recovered reasonably. That evening, he was in his room, scribbling senseless blank verse to ghosts that troubled him, listening to music on his old stereo, Moody Blues and their Nights in White Satin.

There was a knock on his door.

He opened the door to find Savithri, the girl.

He blurted out, ‘Savithri…’ He cursed the recent degradation of his eloquence.

She smiled and said, ‘Thought of checking on you. How have you been?’

‘Good,’ he replied stiffly, ‘and you…?’

‘Been really busy… had to leave for my village on Sunday and got back just yesterday…’ she said.

‘Really…?’

‘Hey, can you step outside? My mother is in the car and she wants to meet you.’

He followed her without a word, not really wanting to face the older woman, feeling terribly unsure about his emotions and desires.

The car was parked on the road, outside the hostel. Savithri’s mother stood by the door. Rakesh was glad to find that her mother was not the lady he had met on Thursday, though he was also troubled by that. That must have been an aunt, he decided.

Savithri’s mother greeted him with an affectionate hug.

She said, ‘I wanted to meet you last Sunday, but got back only yesterday evening, and you know how it is with closed houses, just a week and the cobwebs and dust gather like it’s been ages.’

‘Ah yes, I dropped by on Thursday…’ Rakesh interrupted.

‘Did you?’ the mother and daughter exclaimed together.

The mother continued, ‘What a pity we were not there. I wanted to thank you for bringing her home that night. This fool…’ she looked crossly at her daughter.

Savithri laughed, ‘Ah, you shouldn’t thank him too much… he chased me half the way and frightened me a lot…’

Rakesh hoped she would not mention his drunken state.

‘And he was dead drunk, too…’ Savithri concluded.

Her mother laughed, ‘I have felt like getting drunk too… to tolerate you and your antics…’

Rakesh joined in the friendly banter. For some reason, not clear to him then or later, he decided not to mention the lady he saw. At first, he was not sure if the mother-daughter team were just continuing with the practical joke. Then, he wondered if he had imagined it all, some type of outpouring from a fever oppressed brain, as the Bard might say. It was the third reason that buttressed his decision to keep mum about the lady.

Savithri and her mother invited him to their house. Rakesh visited them frequently. The same photo in the showcase stared at him each time. The other lady remained absent and he did not ask Savithri. He knew he was falling in love with the girl. And, he was not sure if any query to Savithri about the older lady would sound innocent enough or mask his inner thoughts. That became his secret, nearly a cherished and unavoidable deception.

Me and my wet dreams of mature women, he cursed himself.

How about that photo, he asked himself, more than eager to believe in the supernatural. Maybe, I saw that on the showcase the night I dropped her at home, the rational self tried to convince the susceptible part but with little success.

Three years later, after he got his Ph.D. and also a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship, Rakesh proposed to Savithri. They got married before leaving for Germany. They were abroad for five years and returned when he obtained a faculty position in a new institute in Bangalore. The young couple preferred to live independently in the quarters provided by the Institute even though her mother still lived nearby in the house in Dollars’ Colony.

 They had their fair share of joys and troubles. They were terribly disappointed early on when they realized that they could not have kids of their own. They liked to believe that that did not strain their relationship but brought them closer, whenever they were at home. But, those were the heady days of economic boom. They spent more time in office, not by choice they told themselves. For their generation, me-time and together-time ended in some collective bucket list. That nearly broke that relationship. Strangely, two tragedies saved them. The global economic slump and the insecurity that followed gave the first shock. Then, the demise of her mother around then, in their seventh year in Bangalore, sealed their fate together. They had only each other, they must have realized.

They shifted to her mother’s house. The city had changed a lot but the house remained the same, the same old photo of Savithri still on the showcase.

‘Why can’t you wear jeans?’ Rakesh asked her, a few months after moving to that house. He had asked that question during their courting days too.

‘You know why,’ Savitri said, concentrating more on the stuff on her laptop, ‘I have fat legs, especially the shank. I have never worn jeans.’

‘But try it once, for me,’ he said.

She turned to him, shaking the unruly tresses from her face, staring at him, probing with curiosity and also a challenge. He wondered if he had blundered.

‘Not satisfied with the way I am?’ she asked.

‘Come on…’

‘Do you want me to be someone else?’ She was still smiling but he knew that that question, and it had cropped up more than a few times in their years together, was never really good-humored.

‘Don’t be silly…’

‘Is there someone else?’

He remained silent, and grumpy.

‘Or, was there someone else?’ She continued when he refused to speak, ‘I know that I have nagged you once or twice…’

‘Just once or twice…?’ he decided to go on the offensive.

‘Ok, a few times… but there has always been that feeling that there is someone between us…’

‘Don’t be paranoid…’

‘Fine, I am being paranoid…’ she turned back to her laptop.

Rakesh stared at her back.

He wondered, ‘How can I tell her about the lady who looks a lot like her? And, that I find the other more attracting.’ A fantasy would turn into a nightmare with that admission, he was sure.

Years rolled by, with minor erosion, leaving a few jagged edges but mostly smoothened planes.

On their seventeenth wedding anniversary, twenty years after that night-walk from Lottegollahalli, Rakesh returned home early from office to find the house empty. He found a note from Savithri on the dining table.

‘Will be back soon, love,’ the note said.

At half past five, he heard someone at the gate and he opened the door as she was trying to fit her key in the lock. She smiled and stepped in.

He stared at the boy-cut, a trendy fashion, and the premature grey that unruly long hair would have hidden. He took in the jeans, the white blouse, buttons open; and, the same amused, teasing, confident but still fragile look.

She hugged him, ‘Happy anniversary, love… Am I late? The salon took a while… and the shopping.’

He held her tightly, caressing the ample curves, for the first time his ardor made it appear, and he muttered in her ear, ‘My Savithri...’

Rakesh held back the question in his mind, ‘Where is my wife?’