MY OLDER BROTHER DIED while I was still an egg floating inside my mother’s ovaries. I must have talked to him before he left me with his egg- shaped hole.
Until I was five though, I had no idea about him. A few weeks after my fifth birthday, one hot summer evening, my amma sliced mangoes into little boat shapes for me to eat. She tackled the leftover flesh clinging to the oval seed, biting, licking and sucking it with relish until all that was left was its hairy core. With the satisfaction of a job well done, she said to me,
‘This one seed can now go back to our garden to produce another tree with even more mangoes.’
‘Is a tiny mango tree hiding inside this seed?’
She laughed, her teeth yellow with the sweetness of the fruit.
‘Yes. It’s not a tree yet, but it will be soon once we hide this seed into the soil in our garden.’
‘Can we place it in a glass of soil so I can see it? Like the mustard plant.’
‘No. Trees like to grow in secret, under the earth.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they have their other baby tree friends there.’
‘Is the earth full of tree babies then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do human babies also live inside the earth?’
‘No, inside their mummy’s tummies.’
‘Does the tummy have soil for them to grow?’
‘No, it has water.’
‘And the baby seeds grow in water?’
‘Human babies grow from tiny eggs.’
‘Eggs?’
I imagined myself then, atop some sort of shelf inside my amma’s tummy, not unlike the ones in our refrigerator where we stored chicken eggs alongside chocolate bars, butter, and paneer. I felt good about having been an egg then. But, just a few weeks later I learnt that my imagination had carried me away. There was no fridge or shelf and indeed no space for chocolates. Instead, I was told that the inside of a belly was more like an ocean.
‘An ocean? How will so much water fit inside a small stomach? Won’t it burst?’
‘Sorry, maybe ocean is not the right word. Inside the tummy is a little expandable mug of water.’
‘Like a water balloon?’ ‘Exactly.’
For a while, I felt sad for my past self. It must have been no fun being an egg inside a small water balloon with millions of other eggs for company. How boring. How crowded.
One afternoon towards the end of that summer, the sun and the clouds had been playing hide and seek in the skies all morning but Amma had still strung the damp, washed clothes to dry on the clothesline in the terrace. When I asked her, what if the clouds won against the sun, she said that you needed to have hope that they won’t and try to make the most of that hope. By late afternoon, the sun had been in hiding for a long time and my amma still hadn’t reached the end of her siesta. I didn’t want to wake her up yet because she had asked me to do so only if it began to rain, which, she also said, wasn’t likely as it wasn’t time for the monsoons yet. So, I waited, and when the rains came on, I shook her awake.
We ran up the stairs to the terrace. The almost-dry clothes were speckled with rain splotches. Amma began to pull at the wooden clips holding the clothes and threw them around. The clips scattered all over the brick-red floor of the terrace. I wanted to pick them up and arrange them in a pattern. I thought a square kite with a spiky tail would be good. But, as the rain had grown faster and a strong wind had blown some of the clothes to the ground, I had to pick those instead. I did this as slowly as possible so I could at least get wet properly.
‘Quick, run inside now or you’ll get drenched.’
I lingered, pretending not to have heard Amma as she went in and began to go down the stairs.
‘I asked you to come inside. Right now.’
I was startled. Her voice was louder, and I realised how quickly she had become annoyed with me. Trying not to drop any of the clothes I had picked, I started to run inside, but slipped on the wet landing and fell face-first to the ground. I began to cry. Amma rushed back up to the upstairs landing.
‘Are you okay dear?’
She dropped the clothes from her hands and picked me up. I could see spots of blood on the floor and some on the clothes I had been holding. Amma’s eyes widened, and her voice became softer as she said oh no your nose. Picking me up,
carrying me downstairs, she called out to my appa. She cleaned and washed the blood off my nose, applied a mix of turmeric powder and coconut oil to the wound, and left me to rest on my bed, placing my favourite doll next to me on its pillow.
I heard her and Appa talking in the dining room where they were having coffee. Amma said she was sorry she rushed me. I felt good about it but also felt sorry that she was feeling sorry. Then she said that the incident reminded her of that other dark day when a different rain had poured unexpectedly, when the sky became her enemy and gave her a never-ending supply of tears. Here, she said something in a hushed tone, and I heard her cry. I got up and stood by the entrance to the dining room. Hiding myself well behind the closed door to the left, I listened as Appa told her that it was not her fault: there was nothing she could have done to save my baby brother. Then, they fell silent.
I went back to my bed. A baby brother? My baby brother? How did he die? Did he also fall like me? Did he bleed? I realised I couldn’t talk to my amma about this. She might cry again. I decided to ask my appa. That evening, as he was watching TV, I went and sat on his lap. After whispering in his ear to not tell Amma about this, I began.
‘Can babies die?’
‘What? Who told you to ask that?’
‘I told myself. You said babies don’t die.’
‘When did I say that?’
‘After I dropped my baby doll Coco on the road and thought she would die.’
‘Why are you asking this suddenly? Is Coco hurt again?’
‘No. But my baby brother is. I mean was.’
‘You don’t have a baby brother.’
‘No, I had one. I heard you and amma talk this afternoon.’
Appa fell silent. He looked around for Amma sneaking on us and let out a big sigh before speaking again.
‘Sometimes, God wants babies back because he needs smart assistants for his millions of jobs. So, he sends a special rocket from the heaven for some babies to fly back. He sent one for your brother.’
‘But what good are babies for jobs? They can’t even walk.’
‘Well, you are a kid, but you are so good at kneading dough to help your amma, right?’
How I wished then to go to heaven and have a look about those jobs that my brother was doing. I felt I had been cheated of a good opportunity to do something fun as a baby. I had spent all my baby years just drinking milk and toddling about in nappies when I could have flown on a fast rocket to the skies to help God with some important tasks.
We could have created a lollypop tree to have in our house instead of the coconut and guava ones. Or made enough blue ink from the sky to last forever inside our colouring pens. I could have used real stars in the birthday cards I made. I would have been flying with God, in the actual sky. When new babies were created, I would have helped God to place some fish or duck dolls with them inside their mummy’s tummies, so they feel nice and aren’t lonely in a pool of water. But mostly I would have loved to be with my brother. I felt sorry for him. He was away from all of us, his one and only family. And he was always working. I said to Appa,
‘But I don’t want to knead dough forever. I like to play. Can babies also play in the heaven?’
‘Of course. They have huge parks there. And you know what? They eat a lot of chocolates, but never get sick.’
‘What? Do they never ever get sick? What about ice creams?’
‘That too. But no one gets sick in the heavens. And babies have so many friends but no school or homework either.’
That night, before going to bed, I prayed for God to send a rocket for me. I wrote down our address on a piece of paper and placed it by my window, in case he was unsure.
‘This one seed can now go back to our garden to produce another tree with even more mangoes.’
‘Is a tiny mango tree hiding inside this seed?’
She laughed, her teeth yellow with the sweetness of the fruit.
‘Yes. It’s not a tree yet, but it will be soon once we hide this seed into the soil in our garden.’
‘Can we place it in a glass of soil so I can see it? Like the mustard plant.’
‘No. Trees like to grow in secret, under the earth.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they have their other baby tree friends there.’
‘Is the earth full of tree babies then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do human babies also live inside the earth?’
‘No, inside their mummy’s tummies.’
‘Does the tummy have soil for them to grow?’
‘No, it has water.’
‘And the baby seeds grow in water?’
‘Human babies grow from tiny eggs.’
‘Eggs?’
I imagined myself then, atop some sort of shelf inside my amma’s tummy, not unlike the ones in our refrigerator where we stored chicken eggs alongside chocolate bars, butter, and paneer. I felt good about having been an egg then. But, just a few weeks later I learnt that my imagination had carried me away. There was no fridge or shelf and indeed no space for chocolates. Instead, I was told that the inside of a belly was more like an ocean.
‘An ocean? How will so much water fit inside a small stomach? Won’t it burst?’
‘Sorry, maybe ocean is not the right word. Inside the tummy is a little expandable mug of water.’
‘Like a water balloon?’ ‘Exactly.’
For a while, I felt sad for my past self. It must have been no fun being an egg inside a small water balloon with millions of other eggs for company. How boring. How crowded.
One afternoon towards the end of that summer, the sun and the clouds had been playing hide and seek in the skies all morning but Amma had still strung the damp, washed clothes to dry on the clothesline in the terrace. When I asked her, what if the clouds won against the sun, she said that you needed to have hope that they won’t and try to make the most of that hope. By late afternoon, the sun had been in hiding for a long time and my amma still hadn’t reached the end of her siesta. I didn’t want to wake her up yet because she had asked me to do so only if it began to rain, which, she also said, wasn’t likely as it wasn’t time for the monsoons yet. So, I waited, and when the rains came on, I shook her awake.
We ran up the stairs to the terrace. The almost-dry clothes were speckled with rain splotches. Amma began to pull at the wooden clips holding the clothes and threw them around. The clips scattered all over the brick-red floor of the terrace. I wanted to pick them up and arrange them in a pattern. I thought a square kite with a spiky tail would be good. But, as the rain had grown faster and a strong wind had blown some of the clothes to the ground, I had to pick those instead. I did this as slowly as possible so I could at least get wet properly.
‘Quick, run inside now or you’ll get drenched.’
I lingered, pretending not to have heard Amma as she went in and began to go down the stairs.
‘I asked you to come inside. Right now.’
I was startled. Her voice was louder, and I realised how quickly she had become annoyed with me. Trying not to drop any of the clothes I had picked, I started to run inside, but slipped on the wet landing and fell face-first to the ground. I began to cry. Amma rushed back up to the upstairs landing.
‘Are you okay dear?’
She dropped the clothes from her hands and picked me up. I could see spots of blood on the floor and some on the clothes I had been holding. Amma’s eyes widened, and her voice became softer as she said oh no your nose. Picking me up,
carrying me downstairs, she called out to my appa. She cleaned and washed the blood off my nose, applied a mix of turmeric powder and coconut oil to the wound, and left me to rest on my bed, placing my favourite doll next to me on its pillow.
I heard her and Appa talking in the dining room where they were having coffee. Amma said she was sorry she rushed me. I felt good about it but also felt sorry that she was feeling sorry. Then she said that the incident reminded her of that other dark day when a different rain had poured unexpectedly, when the sky became her enemy and gave her a never-ending supply of tears. Here, she said something in a hushed tone, and I heard her cry. I got up and stood by the entrance to the dining room. Hiding myself well behind the closed door to the left, I listened as Appa told her that it was not her fault: there was nothing she could have done to save my baby brother. Then, they fell silent.
I went back to my bed. A baby brother? My baby brother? How did he die? Did he also fall like me? Did he bleed? I realised I couldn’t talk to my amma about this. She might cry again. I decided to ask my appa. That evening, as he was watching TV, I went and sat on his lap. After whispering in his ear to not tell Amma about this, I began.
‘Can babies die?’
‘What? Who told you to ask that?’
‘I told myself. You said babies don’t die.’
‘When did I say that?’
‘After I dropped my baby doll Coco on the road and thought she would die.’
‘Why are you asking this suddenly? Is Coco hurt again?’
‘No. But my baby brother is. I mean was.’
‘You don’t have a baby brother.’
‘No, I had one. I heard you and amma talk this afternoon.’
Appa fell silent. He looked around for Amma sneaking on us and let out a big sigh before speaking again.
‘Sometimes, God wants babies back because he needs smart assistants for his millions of jobs. So, he sends a special rocket from the heaven for some babies to fly back. He sent one for your brother.’
‘But what good are babies for jobs? They can’t even walk.’
‘Well, you are a kid, but you are so good at kneading dough to help your amma, right?’
How I wished then to go to heaven and have a look about those jobs that my brother was doing. I felt I had been cheated of a good opportunity to do something fun as a baby. I had spent all my baby years just drinking milk and toddling about in nappies when I could have flown on a fast rocket to the skies to help God with some important tasks.
We could have created a lollypop tree to have in our house instead of the coconut and guava ones. Or made enough blue ink from the sky to last forever inside our colouring pens. I could have used real stars in the birthday cards I made. I would have been flying with God, in the actual sky. When new babies were created, I would have helped God to place some fish or duck dolls with them inside their mummy’s tummies, so they feel nice and aren’t lonely in a pool of water. But mostly I would have loved to be with my brother. I felt sorry for him. He was away from all of us, his one and only family. And he was always working. I said to Appa,
‘But I don’t want to knead dough forever. I like to play. Can babies also play in the heaven?’
‘Of course. They have huge parks there. And you know what? They eat a lot of chocolates, but never get sick.’
‘What? Do they never ever get sick? What about ice creams?’
‘That too. But no one gets sick in the heavens. And babies have so many friends but no school or homework either.’
That night, before going to bed, I prayed for God to send a rocket for me. I wrote down our address on a piece of paper and placed it by my window, in case he was unsure.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎
ON MY TWELFTH BIRTHDAY, my amma gifted me a digital camera. But she ended up using it herself, most of the time, to take pictures of me and my sister. Though it annoyed us at times, we didn’t say anything to her. We knew that she regretted not taking any pictures of my baby brother, due to the belief that doing so would reduce his lifespan. I knew, even without her telling in so many words, that she longed for a photographic reminder of him. So, I felt lucky and special when I discovered a photo of his shoes, a clear visual link to him.
It happened one winter evening, as my amma and I were sorting through some photos, collating them into albums. We interspersed the newer, colour-rich prints with the older ones: some were in dull sepia tones while others were in high-contrast, black-and-white. We grouped the photos according to the people in them: kids, solos, couples, groups and so on. There were some that didn’t fit in any category, and we inserted them into random slots within the albums. These will offer the element of surprise, Amma said, as though it were a guiding principle, the cause rather than the result of our actions. One of the odd photos was a shaky solo of my appa. Filling a corner of that grainy rectangle was the precious silhouette of a pair of baby shoes.
The picture itself was unremarkable. A sepia-tinted blur, its focus was off. A few inches from the photo’s left edge sat my appa, presumably talking to someone outside of the picture, for his mouth was open in a funny way as the camera captured him mid-sentence. His right hand was raised slightly, as though he was waving it to make a point, while he himself slouched on a wicker chair. In real life, I knew that the walls of the room were a bright teal. Within the world of this photo though, they appeared a dull brown, despite the sunlight streaming in from the curtainless windows behind my appa. To the right corner of the room, directly below the windows were the shoes. At first, I thought they were the shadow of a bird siting on the window seat. But there was no bird nor any object on the window to cast shadows below it.
The shoes sat in an elegant manner, their toes pressed against the wall. There was a stillness to them that contrasted with the movement of my appa. Yet, I also felt that they were full of some impatient energy that given a chance, they would move with the unstoppable wobble of the toddler they were meant for. When I held the photo at a distance, the pair resembled an oblong object, like an egg or an eye. Only when looked at closely could I make out their silhouette, blurred like an old memory. But memories, however old, can be refreshed by adding details from the present, like reviving a worn-out shoe with a new sole or if that’s not possible, then slipping the foot into the imaginary shoe in the head.
I am not sure why such an inconspicuous object in the picture grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the house itself. My baby brother had spent all nine months of his life there. I missed the chance to live in it because my parents moved out, a few months before my birth. But I still had memories of it, sponged from other members of my family. I understood its layout, for instance, from an old engineering plan of the house that my appa had preserved. I knew the specific type of mosaic floors the house had because my amma got similar ones installed in our current home. When relatives made casual remarks about that house such as the abundant natural light it received, how breezy its rooms were, its elegant layout, fertile garden and so on, I used these details to build a version of it inside my head. I furnished the house with objects that I believed would belong in it. It was perhaps this familiarity that made me notice the room and the shoes.
For a few days, I kept the picture to myself, a secret gift, like a rare shell found on the beach by chance. I placed it on my shelf amidst my books, diaries, pictures, cards, and craftwork. Looking at the shoes from time to time, I tried to glean more details. During the day, when the sunlight was bright, I could see textures and etchings on them like the soft leather ones on the shoes from Light Soles Footwear, where we used to buy sandals for me and my little sister. I still went there with Amma. Though the shop had become unfashionable and sold sturdy, plain-looking, androgynous, sandals, I had a weird liking for them. I don’t remember when exactly my amma mentioned that she had bought a pair of brown shoes for my baby brother like the ones they sold in Light Soles Footwear, or that he never got to wear them. But whenever Amma and I went to that shop, there would come a moment when I would remember the unworn shoes. I wouldn’t say anything to her, nor she to me, and a little silence would surround us for a minute. During these moments, I felt that we both remembered my baby brother in our own ways.
Though there was a strange joy in keeping the picture with the shoe a secret, I also wanted to talk about it with Amma. I felt she deserved to know that such a thing existed. Amma of course could not talk about my baby brother without difficulty. In the rare instances that she did mention him, it was in short, unfinished sentences that ended in tears followed by long silences. So, I kept quiet, and over the next few months, my secret expanded its reach: it first became a part of my wake-up routine, then hung around my mood board for a while before becoming a bookmark.
One Sunday afternoon, Amma complained to me about how unorganised and messy my room was, and, without warning, began to arrange things into neater versions of themselves. She picked up the books scattered on the floor and put them back on the shelf, prised folded chocolate wrappers from under various objects and removed the pile of worn clothes from the bed, grumbling how I was still behaving like a kid. I turned over from my position in the bed to let her drag my blanket from underneath me and fold it. As she propped the pillows, the picture slid from the pillowcase and peeked out, like baby feet from inside a muslin blanket. She stared at it and asked,
‘Why do you have this useless picture here? We should bin it.’
‘I like it.’
‘What’s there to like? It is so blurry. And your appa’s mouth is open as if a fly were about to enter.’
‘I like the house. It’s the one on Middle Street.’
Amma gave me a short, sharp look. Then she turned back to the photo and said,
‘No, it’s not. This is the house near Central Market. The one you were born in.’
‘What? No, this was taken before I was born, right?’
‘Not at all. These windows and this grill? They are from the living room of that house. Can’t you see?’
She placed the photo on the bed and, after tidying the rest of the room, left without referring to it again. Everything was back in its place. The room felt quieter.
I half-crumpled, half-folded the photo and threw it on the floor with some force. After a few seconds, I picked it up and flattened it again. Crumple lines criss-crossed the picture. Like rivers on a map, they partitioned the photo and its objects. Now, I couldn’t see what I saw earlier. I stared hard trying to locate the shoes, but this caused the objects in the picture to squiggle and swim as if they were a primitive form of life. The more I tried to pin them down to one place, the more they moved: the windows shrunk, then crawled on to the floor and became chinks of light coming from an underground sun while Appa flew to the ceiling and viewed the world upside-down like a bat even as the mosaic floor shattered into a thousand bits, covering the picture like war confetti. As for the shoes: they dissolved into the brown light in the room and deepened the sepia tint of the picture into a special darkness.
It happened one winter evening, as my amma and I were sorting through some photos, collating them into albums. We interspersed the newer, colour-rich prints with the older ones: some were in dull sepia tones while others were in high-contrast, black-and-white. We grouped the photos according to the people in them: kids, solos, couples, groups and so on. There were some that didn’t fit in any category, and we inserted them into random slots within the albums. These will offer the element of surprise, Amma said, as though it were a guiding principle, the cause rather than the result of our actions. One of the odd photos was a shaky solo of my appa. Filling a corner of that grainy rectangle was the precious silhouette of a pair of baby shoes.
The picture itself was unremarkable. A sepia-tinted blur, its focus was off. A few inches from the photo’s left edge sat my appa, presumably talking to someone outside of the picture, for his mouth was open in a funny way as the camera captured him mid-sentence. His right hand was raised slightly, as though he was waving it to make a point, while he himself slouched on a wicker chair. In real life, I knew that the walls of the room were a bright teal. Within the world of this photo though, they appeared a dull brown, despite the sunlight streaming in from the curtainless windows behind my appa. To the right corner of the room, directly below the windows were the shoes. At first, I thought they were the shadow of a bird siting on the window seat. But there was no bird nor any object on the window to cast shadows below it.
The shoes sat in an elegant manner, their toes pressed against the wall. There was a stillness to them that contrasted with the movement of my appa. Yet, I also felt that they were full of some impatient energy that given a chance, they would move with the unstoppable wobble of the toddler they were meant for. When I held the photo at a distance, the pair resembled an oblong object, like an egg or an eye. Only when looked at closely could I make out their silhouette, blurred like an old memory. But memories, however old, can be refreshed by adding details from the present, like reviving a worn-out shoe with a new sole or if that’s not possible, then slipping the foot into the imaginary shoe in the head.
I am not sure why such an inconspicuous object in the picture grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the house itself. My baby brother had spent all nine months of his life there. I missed the chance to live in it because my parents moved out, a few months before my birth. But I still had memories of it, sponged from other members of my family. I understood its layout, for instance, from an old engineering plan of the house that my appa had preserved. I knew the specific type of mosaic floors the house had because my amma got similar ones installed in our current home. When relatives made casual remarks about that house such as the abundant natural light it received, how breezy its rooms were, its elegant layout, fertile garden and so on, I used these details to build a version of it inside my head. I furnished the house with objects that I believed would belong in it. It was perhaps this familiarity that made me notice the room and the shoes.
For a few days, I kept the picture to myself, a secret gift, like a rare shell found on the beach by chance. I placed it on my shelf amidst my books, diaries, pictures, cards, and craftwork. Looking at the shoes from time to time, I tried to glean more details. During the day, when the sunlight was bright, I could see textures and etchings on them like the soft leather ones on the shoes from Light Soles Footwear, where we used to buy sandals for me and my little sister. I still went there with Amma. Though the shop had become unfashionable and sold sturdy, plain-looking, androgynous, sandals, I had a weird liking for them. I don’t remember when exactly my amma mentioned that she had bought a pair of brown shoes for my baby brother like the ones they sold in Light Soles Footwear, or that he never got to wear them. But whenever Amma and I went to that shop, there would come a moment when I would remember the unworn shoes. I wouldn’t say anything to her, nor she to me, and a little silence would surround us for a minute. During these moments, I felt that we both remembered my baby brother in our own ways.
Though there was a strange joy in keeping the picture with the shoe a secret, I also wanted to talk about it with Amma. I felt she deserved to know that such a thing existed. Amma of course could not talk about my baby brother without difficulty. In the rare instances that she did mention him, it was in short, unfinished sentences that ended in tears followed by long silences. So, I kept quiet, and over the next few months, my secret expanded its reach: it first became a part of my wake-up routine, then hung around my mood board for a while before becoming a bookmark.
One Sunday afternoon, Amma complained to me about how unorganised and messy my room was, and, without warning, began to arrange things into neater versions of themselves. She picked up the books scattered on the floor and put them back on the shelf, prised folded chocolate wrappers from under various objects and removed the pile of worn clothes from the bed, grumbling how I was still behaving like a kid. I turned over from my position in the bed to let her drag my blanket from underneath me and fold it. As she propped the pillows, the picture slid from the pillowcase and peeked out, like baby feet from inside a muslin blanket. She stared at it and asked,
‘Why do you have this useless picture here? We should bin it.’
‘I like it.’
‘What’s there to like? It is so blurry. And your appa’s mouth is open as if a fly were about to enter.’
‘I like the house. It’s the one on Middle Street.’
Amma gave me a short, sharp look. Then she turned back to the photo and said,
‘No, it’s not. This is the house near Central Market. The one you were born in.’
‘What? No, this was taken before I was born, right?’
‘Not at all. These windows and this grill? They are from the living room of that house. Can’t you see?’
She placed the photo on the bed and, after tidying the rest of the room, left without referring to it again. Everything was back in its place. The room felt quieter.
I half-crumpled, half-folded the photo and threw it on the floor with some force. After a few seconds, I picked it up and flattened it again. Crumple lines criss-crossed the picture. Like rivers on a map, they partitioned the photo and its objects. Now, I couldn’t see what I saw earlier. I stared hard trying to locate the shoes, but this caused the objects in the picture to squiggle and swim as if they were a primitive form of life. The more I tried to pin them down to one place, the more they moved: the windows shrunk, then crawled on to the floor and became chinks of light coming from an underground sun while Appa flew to the ceiling and viewed the world upside-down like a bat even as the mosaic floor shattered into a thousand bits, covering the picture like war confetti. As for the shoes: they dissolved into the brown light in the room and deepened the sepia tint of the picture into a special darkness.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎
MY FIRST SHORT STORY got published a few days after I turned twenty-four. It was about a family fleeing a war, and the indie magazine that agreed to publish it championed stories of displaced people. I sent a copy of the story to my parents, who had, by then, relocated to a smaller town. Soon, I got a call from my amma. After briefly telling me how well-written it was, and without telling me whether she liked it or not, she asked,
‘Is this a true story?’
‘No, it is fictional.’
‘The details about the family’s escape, is that also fiction?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of it?’
‘Why are you asking all these questions?’
‘I don’t know.’
She hung up, leaving a string of pauses for me to fill with words. Two hours later she texted me.
What you wrote… it’s not your made-up story. It is our story.
When she didn’t pick any of my calls, I called my appa.
‘Did you read my story?’
‘Yes, I did. It is beautifully writ…’
‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true?’
‘What I’ve written?’
He paused for a few seconds, then said, ‘Some of it.’
His words became muffled by his tears as he grappled with the parts of my story that overlapped with our story. He tried his best to identify the different grades of truth in it. For instance, the dust storm that my parents had to go through, caused by bomb rains destroying building after building, was somewhat true. But the witnessing of a neighbourhood shop being blown up in front of their eyes was as close to how he remembered it right down to the slant of the calligraphic letters on its signage. The incident about an old man who ordered his family to abandon him, after he was injured and could not walk, was nearly all true except for the fact that it had been an old lady instead of a man, and she was adamant that she be allowed to die among the debris of her home. Some details, like the colour and pattern of the bag that contained our belongings, were startlingly accurate. But the occurrence that came closest to the whole truth was the nature of a baby’s injury mirroring that of my own brother and the ordeal of his death as it played out in the two slowest days of my appa’s life. These incidents had been buried within my parents and had never been discussed since their occurrence. My appa sobbed as he said he lived through it again as he read my story.
I wept as I told him that the details I included were based on refugee interviews. I had no idea about the truth of my brother’s death and never intended to cause pain. When I told him how I regretted writing it, he said,
‘Don’t. If memories form in the presence of something, they multiply in its absence. In that sense, the dead are some of the most alive entities in our lives. And we must remember the dead in as many ways we can. It’s the only solace we have.’
After we hung up, I took a long walk and found myself at the beach, standing on liquid sand, the waves splashing against me. The ocean appeared limitless, but it was only long enough to keep the land on the other side hidden from my sight. If I could walk on the waters, the ocean would have no power to stop me. If I could shout above the noise of the waves, the dead on the other side would hear me.
Near me, a group of kids were eating cherries from a plastic bag and throwing the pits out to the jaws of the waters. The seeds plopped before vanishing into the ocean’s belly. I wished that within the ocean’s depths, these seeds might sprout into fruit trees. Then, one day, instead of swimming through choppy waters, navigating an inhospitable womb, I might be able to walk through the orchard on the ocean and reach the other side.
I remembered a story I once heard, of an army of people who built a floating bridge across the sea using rocks. They made the rocks float by calling out the names of their heroes, their gods and the people who meant the most to them. The strength of their love filled the rocks with warm air, puffing them up, forming a bouncy bridge on the sea. I wondered then, if I shouted my brother’s name out to the unrelenting ocean a million times, and threw rocks and seeds into it, would a floaty bridge rise on the waters and allow me to walk to the land on the other side, the one we swam away from?
I looked inside my bag and pulled out my little book of notes to scribble the thoughts as they rose in me. I touched a little compartment within the bag, feeling for a crumpled photo, inside which, I once thought, my brother’s shoes lived. All these years, I kept the photo with me and looked at it from time to time, the way I gazed at the debris left by receding waves on sand. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment when the light bends just enough and the angle of my vision slants in response, when my imagination’s connection to reality wanes, moon-like, when my doubts recede like low tide, then momentarily I might glimpse the egg-shaped silhouette of a toddler’s shoes. For a few moments, there would be meaning in this blurriness as I mourned the death of someone I never knew. Then the waves would come in and the meaning floats away, one among a million others.
I stood unmoving and silent, brushing the tears away from my eyes. As the waters blurred my vision, the salt rinsed my eyes of any impurities. Armed with a special clarity of the mourning blind, I saw the ocean rise in front of me and turn itself inside out: a vertical wall teeming with strange creatures. Among them I recognised two tiny eggs, full of the secrets and possibilities of life.
‘Is this a true story?’
‘No, it is fictional.’
‘The details about the family’s escape, is that also fiction?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of it?’
‘Why are you asking all these questions?’
‘I don’t know.’
She hung up, leaving a string of pauses for me to fill with words. Two hours later she texted me.
What you wrote… it’s not your made-up story. It is our story.
When she didn’t pick any of my calls, I called my appa.
‘Did you read my story?’
‘Yes, I did. It is beautifully writ…’
‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true?’
‘What I’ve written?’
He paused for a few seconds, then said, ‘Some of it.’
His words became muffled by his tears as he grappled with the parts of my story that overlapped with our story. He tried his best to identify the different grades of truth in it. For instance, the dust storm that my parents had to go through, caused by bomb rains destroying building after building, was somewhat true. But the witnessing of a neighbourhood shop being blown up in front of their eyes was as close to how he remembered it right down to the slant of the calligraphic letters on its signage. The incident about an old man who ordered his family to abandon him, after he was injured and could not walk, was nearly all true except for the fact that it had been an old lady instead of a man, and she was adamant that she be allowed to die among the debris of her home. Some details, like the colour and pattern of the bag that contained our belongings, were startlingly accurate. But the occurrence that came closest to the whole truth was the nature of a baby’s injury mirroring that of my own brother and the ordeal of his death as it played out in the two slowest days of my appa’s life. These incidents had been buried within my parents and had never been discussed since their occurrence. My appa sobbed as he said he lived through it again as he read my story.
I wept as I told him that the details I included were based on refugee interviews. I had no idea about the truth of my brother’s death and never intended to cause pain. When I told him how I regretted writing it, he said,
‘Don’t. If memories form in the presence of something, they multiply in its absence. In that sense, the dead are some of the most alive entities in our lives. And we must remember the dead in as many ways we can. It’s the only solace we have.’
After we hung up, I took a long walk and found myself at the beach, standing on liquid sand, the waves splashing against me. The ocean appeared limitless, but it was only long enough to keep the land on the other side hidden from my sight. If I could walk on the waters, the ocean would have no power to stop me. If I could shout above the noise of the waves, the dead on the other side would hear me.
Near me, a group of kids were eating cherries from a plastic bag and throwing the pits out to the jaws of the waters. The seeds plopped before vanishing into the ocean’s belly. I wished that within the ocean’s depths, these seeds might sprout into fruit trees. Then, one day, instead of swimming through choppy waters, navigating an inhospitable womb, I might be able to walk through the orchard on the ocean and reach the other side.
I remembered a story I once heard, of an army of people who built a floating bridge across the sea using rocks. They made the rocks float by calling out the names of their heroes, their gods and the people who meant the most to them. The strength of their love filled the rocks with warm air, puffing them up, forming a bouncy bridge on the sea. I wondered then, if I shouted my brother’s name out to the unrelenting ocean a million times, and threw rocks and seeds into it, would a floaty bridge rise on the waters and allow me to walk to the land on the other side, the one we swam away from?
I looked inside my bag and pulled out my little book of notes to scribble the thoughts as they rose in me. I touched a little compartment within the bag, feeling for a crumpled photo, inside which, I once thought, my brother’s shoes lived. All these years, I kept the photo with me and looked at it from time to time, the way I gazed at the debris left by receding waves on sand. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment when the light bends just enough and the angle of my vision slants in response, when my imagination’s connection to reality wanes, moon-like, when my doubts recede like low tide, then momentarily I might glimpse the egg-shaped silhouette of a toddler’s shoes. For a few moments, there would be meaning in this blurriness as I mourned the death of someone I never knew. Then the waves would come in and the meaning floats away, one among a million others.
I stood unmoving and silent, brushing the tears away from my eyes. As the waters blurred my vision, the salt rinsed my eyes of any impurities. Armed with a special clarity of the mourning blind, I saw the ocean rise in front of me and turn itself inside out: a vertical wall teeming with strange creatures. Among them I recognised two tiny eggs, full of the secrets and possibilities of life.
Anitha Sundararajan is a freelance writer living in London. Originally from Chennai, India, she writes in a mix of English and Tamil. She has a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge and is working on her first novel.
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