Chitra Viraraghavan
‘Hello, hero!’ one of the aunties called out, seeing him in the top-to-bottom mirror as she had her moustache waxed, and he sneaked down the stairs.
He pelted past them, head averted, eyes fixed on the floor. It was full of small wings of black hair with the dye going out of it arranged in shattered circles.
‘Mohini, I didn’t know he had grown up and all that,’ giggled another.
He could feel his mother grin at them. But she knew he didn’t like it.
They were her regulars, he could tell from their voices: Mrs Puri, the henna-haired forty-something lady who lived on the next street; the giggler was a woman in her twenties, the one with teeth like a straggly off-white fence and black-framed glasses that kept slipping down her short, blackhead-free nose.
‘Fat bitches,’ he muttered, walking down the short brick-edged path to the narrow side-gate set in the garden wall. Why did they bother with all this stuff, waxing their ugly underarms and hairy legs? Who even cared?
By the time he had opened the gate, his mother was at the door of the parlour.
‘Arjun, where are you going?’
‘Don’t know,’ he said, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets.
‘I’m not happy when you do this,’ she said. ‘Please tell me where you’re going.’
‘I really don’t know, Ma,’ he said, shutting the gate behind him. ‘I’ll call and tell you.’
He switched off his mobile and walked down the road towards the beach in a haze. It extended to the horizon, covering a broad stretch of suntanned sand, to where the bay lay like some somnolent animal in the midday heat, dreaming oozily in watercolours.
He imagined the look on his mother’s face. Really, what did she expect of him, to stay like a prisoner in his fake room with the thatch roof above the beauty parlour on a Sunday? Her voice in his head was like ticker tape. Tell me where you’re going. Tell me what you’re doing. I’m so worried about you.
He walked without really seeing anything till he found himself at the end of Fourth Main Road with its bright decaying shops full of export-reject garments. He went to the pottikadai that sold bananas, kadalai mittai balls in glass bottles, newspapers and revenue stamps. Digging in his pocket for change, he bought himself a Gold Flake Filter, and bent towards the electric spring lighter, and held down the switch. It glowed orange. Several short sharp puffs lit the ciggie. The escaping smoke made his eyes water. He took a long, blank drag, and turned away towards the beach. The water glittered. He should have brought his shades.
‘What, pa, mood out-aa?’ the shopkeeper called out after him, winking at the auto man leaning against the wooden shopfront with a water packet in his hands.
Arjun waved without turning back. The heat fused his t-shirt to his body. Sweat dribbled slowly down his back and collected at the base of his spine, just where his red-checked boxers projected out of his low-slung khakhi shorts. That annoyed her, too. What kind of fashion is this, with your chaddi showing.
He sat facing the road on the parapet wall that ran all along Elliot’s Beach. Bad idea. His backside burned. He crossed the road and stood beneath a small skewed square of shade made by the awning of a closed shop. His stomach growled, hoping for some sympathy. One o’clock. He sure as hell wasn’t going back home for lunch. Today was definitely one of those Maggi Noodles days; there had been customers all morning. He finished his ciggie, crushed it underfoot, and started walking down the road. Maybe Jojo would be home. There might even be some lunch.
A car drew up so close, he jumped onto the pavement. He spun around, saw Jojo’s face laughing at him out of the passenger side window of the silver City.
‘You scared me, man,’ he said, peering in to see who was driving. It was that asshole Raja, Jojo’s college mate, wearing Ray-Bans that banished all affect.
He straightened up, smiled briefly at Jojo and kept walking.
‘Come, da,’ said Jojo. ‘We’re going to pick up some beers, drive down to Mahabs. Jump in.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll see you later. Call me when you get back.’
‘Come on, Arjun. I bet you were coming to my place anyway. Just come with us!’
Raja turned the music even louder. Jojo was still talking but he couldn’t hear a thing. The music stopped as Jojo yelled, ‘Come, da!’
‘Stop shouting, da. What, is he coming or not? You coming or what, man?’ Jojo opened the back door and Arjun got in without looking at Raja. He slumped in the backseat. Raja looked at him in the rear-view mirror, shook his head and turned the music up again. They drove through the suddenly crowded roads of Kalakshetra Colony, went past the dance school’s arched entranceway. They turned right at the end of the lane and stopped at a government-owned ‘wine’ shop. Raja shoved some money at Jojo. He pushed his hand away and got out. When Jojo returned, his hands had sprouted several short fat beer bottles. He held another under his chin. Raja took the beer from him and opened it. It made a faint ‘phtttt’. Jojo got in, opened a beer and handed it without turning to Arjun.
Arjun took a swig. The beer moved over his tongue like surf. He took a huge gulp without tasting the bitterness till after. Urrrrhhh. The glare and grime of the dark rectangular world outside receded.
It was someone else’s life out there.
If only he could believe that for a second.
He took another gulp. His head sloshed with pleasanter thoughts. The music beat a tattoo in his head. He remembered the girl in the red track pants who had smiled, offhanded, at him the previous evening on the beach. Should he talk to her? You could never tell with them, friendly one minute, uptight the next. Anyway, what would a looker like her see in him? She probably had all the boys after her. She would probably go for a flashy guy with a car. Like Raja…
He thought of Veena, his half-sister. At least she had got away from Ma. How had their mother messed up so much? Losing one husband was maybe bad luck, but losing two – it was almost careless. The first one had been Veena’s dad, dead, god knows of what, when she was two. Ma had had no way of supporting her, no income, no education – she had dropped out of college to marry – so her sister and brother-in-law, childless in Singapore, had swooped down on her and snatched away the baby. Ma had gone to live with Ammamma. Then, some years later, she had married his father. He had never even seen his father, dead in a scooter accident months before he was born. All he knew was the thin face in the photograph, smiling in a bewildered fashion, with the timeless look that only the dead could sport. Why hadn’t his aunt and uncle come and taken him away, like Veena? They had gone to live with Ammamma. His mother had taken a beautician’s course, and started the parlour. That was twelve years ago. Now even Ammamma was dead.
The car turned onto East Coast Road and stopped at a shop. Raja and Jojo got off to buy something. He could see the white and brown-red striped walls and the tower of the Marundeeswarar Temple. How big the tower had seemed when he was young. Ma and he would take 23A from Besant Nagar, get off at the Thiruvanmiyur bus terminus, and cross that great big river of a road to get to the temple every Monday evening. Ma said that it was the day of the Medicine God. He hadn’t thought much about all that, only about the divine smell of turmeric-and-chilli-flavoured eats frying in the sweet shop on the way back to the terminus. Ma would buy him an oil-stained newspaper cone of crisp hot onion pakoda and they would get into the bus that took them home. He craned his neck to see if the sweet shop was still there, at the exact point where the road bent south. It was gone.
Jojo and Raja climbed back in. Jojo tossed a phosphorescent bag of chips at him. Arjun tore it open and jammed a hasty fistful into his face. The chips tasted slightly burnt but he didn’t care. Salt stung his lips. He took another swig of beer. Jojo turned around to look at him.
‘More beer?’
‘Not done yet. Thanks,’ he mumbled.
Raja flattened the accelerator. The City took the road like something possessed. Arjun could feel his heart untether, billowing and floating freely in his chest. He braced himself against the seat in front. Buildings, people, cars blurred together. Jojo and Raja laughed like ghouls. He felt the smell of fear rising up into his mouth.
‘Hey, slow down, man, you’re crazy!’
‘You don’t want to die today, is that it, man?’ said Raja. ‘You have something to live for? What is it? Is it your mother’s beauty parlour? Tell me, da!’
Something cold and powerful unfurled within him. He wanted to smash the beer bottle over Raja’s head, hear the scrunch of glass breaking against skull, feel the smooth rip of skin, see tissue and hair mix with blood and beer… He touched Jojo’s arm stretched out along the top of the front seat.
‘Give me another beer, da,’ he said.
Jojo handed him a beer. He turned around and grinned at him.
How had he got to this point? His twelfth-class exams were just a month away, and he knew he wasn’t prepared. How could he be, when the years seemed to stretch ahead for no reason except that they did? It was not as if he had skipped school. He had gone every day but nothing – no one – connected for him. It was just Ma and him, and she wasn’t the best at making plans.
They crossed the tollgate on ECR, and went through a small crowded village with a multiplex cinema positioned incongruously on one side, its parking lot full of fancy cars and aimless Sunday folk. Jojo giggled and said something to Raja, pointing out a poster of a blond-wigged movie star in his latest blockbuster, but he couldn’t hear what it was.
He stared at the farmhouses set in deep gardens and gloomy sun-streaked orchards on both sides of the road, built by people who had been smart enough to snap up the land maybe in the ’70s. Small sandy lanes stretched away between the properties towards the east, and now and then he could see brief snatches of shimmering sea. A long elegant stretch of backwater passed under the road at Muttukadu. He couldn’t tell whether the cars on the narrow bridge were coming or going. A few catamarans dotted the backwater, the fishermen still and silhouetted, as though in some other place in time. Far away, the breakers crashed, white against a thin strip of sand.
Past the bridge, close to the sea on the left was a beach resort of the type favoured by Raja. Arjun could not take any more showing up of his inadequacies. To his relief, the car sped on towards Mahabalipuram, past the casuarina groves, their floors mosaicked with pink, blue and green plastic bags abandoned by remorseless picnickers. A sudden long stretch of sea came into view. It looked like land, still and dark. Both sides of the road fell away. He could see a fishing village, set Asterix-style in a sea of land owned by someone the locals called the Lord of a Thousand Acres, so he had heard tell. They passed Tiger Caves, and turned the corner for the final short stretch towards Mahabs. Sculptors’ yards with stone carvings of elephants, bulls and rampant lions casually lined the road.
‘Hey, Mahabali Inn!’ said Raja. ‘I’m hungry, let’s eat.’
He switched off the music and pulled into the treeless parking space in front of the grubby little eatery with its plain metal tables and wooden benches. He got out and walked towards the uniformed waiter and placed an order they couldn’t hear.
Arjun stayed slumped in the backseat.
‘Come, da,’ Jojo said. ‘I’ll pay, you can pay me later or whatever.’
He knew it had been a bad idea to come, a bad idea to get out of the car.
Raja sneered at him, his face full of dosai.
‘So what are your plans, da? Plan to get through your boards?’
‘Stop it, Raja,’ Jojo said. ‘What’ll you eat, man?’
The plain dosai for Jojo and the masala dosai for Arjun arrived. Raja drank another beer. He stared at Arjun.
‘So, tell me, Arjun, your mother’s beauty parlour, is it a regular parlour or what?’
Jojo put a hand on Arjun as he started getting up and pushed him back onto the bench. He looked at Raja.
‘Shut the fuck up, da, Raja, I mean it.’
‘Poor darling…’ Raja beckoned to Arjun with both hands, as if he were a child.
Arjun sprang up. Jojo grabbed him and pushed him down.
‘Raja, cut it out, I’m telling you this the last time, da.’
Raja smirked but shut up.
They got into the car. Jojo handed the last beer to Arjun. He refused it. Jojo opened the freely perspiring bottle and drank it up in one straight shot. Raja turned up the music. He made a U-turn and headed back north.
Arjun was sick with hunger and anger and beer and despair and eating at the wrong time. He lay back and closed his eyes. He remembered the time when they were little when Veena and he had come to Mahabalipuram with their mother, grandmother and Veena’s new parents. They had brought lunch, sat on the rocks near the Shore Temple. Massed clouds over the sea had seemed to mimic the short graceful rise of the temple tower. It had been a happy day, a child’s day, without past or future, a self-contained day.
When he opened his eyes, they were approaching the Muttukadu bridge. He couldn’t tell whether the cars on the bridge were going or coming. As they crossed, he saw a fisherman step out of his boat with a net in his hands and walk on the water.
He had to have a plan, he had to get away. It was now or it would be too late.
It was always quicker, going back home from Mahabs. The salt heaps by the side of the backwater near the road to Kelambakkam, three palm stumps sticking out of the water like a Nat Geo photo, the spreading tree with a shrine inside the hole in its trunk, all flashed by. They had to slow down as they approached the city, with its tangle of cars and people and share autos and cattle islands.
At Jojo’s house, Raja stopped the car and barely waited for them to get out before he took off.
‘Thanks, da,’ Arjun said. ‘I owe you.’
‘Forget about it. I’ll see you later.’
He got home to see the parlour shuttered, the lights off, the ladies gone. His mother must be out or upstairs. He looked at his watch. It was almost six o’clock. He sat down on a chair with the dome-shaped hairdryer attached over it. He pulled the dome over his head and turned the switch on. He leant back a little, feeling the tiny cool jets of air caress his damp head. Closed his eyes.
Slowly, seductively, the hair on the floor, all the different types of hair, grey, hennaed, smooth, coloured, coarse, fine, black, brown, thick, frizzy, wavy, arrow-straight, split-ended, joined in one long strong tress that coiled around his legs and climbed up his body, up and up and up, to his throat, pulling tighter and tighter and rougher and hotter and coarser. Something smooth and warm touched his cheek, and he woke up, sweating. The electricity had failed.
His mother stood there, large and pale and soft. He put his head against her. He could tell she smelt the beer. She hugged him, pushed the hair off his forehead. A late sea breeze rattled the windows. She opened them.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Mmm.’
‘A funny thing happened today,’ she said. ‘Remember Mrs Rastogi, the Bach flower lady?’
‘What about her?’
‘Remember how she said things would improve for us if we moved out from above the parlour and lived somewhere else?’
‘Easy for her to say. Who’s going to pay the rent for two places?’
‘True,’ his mother said. ‘But what she said made sense. She said that people coming here and having their hair cut and nails cut and leaving their garbage behind was having a bad effect on our life…’
‘Rubbish, Ma. Don’t believe everything people say. What can we do about it, anyway?’ He looked down at his hands, examined their insides.
‘Just listen, Arjun. A client from Valmiki Nagar came to the parlour today, you know, Reshma? I happened to mention to her what the Bach flower lady said. Reshma has given us a gift. Says it’ll take away all our problems. Look!’
His mother pointed to the wall facing the entrance to the parlour and the house. A picture hung there in shadow. He got up and went close. It was of a familiar god, with the upward–downward hands, the hands that dispelled, dispensed, set within the characteristic carved gold-coloured overhanging frame. He turned to his mother, not getting it.
She looked at him as if she had stopped breathing. ‘You know how people go to Tirupati to sacrifice their hair, as an offering to god, asking him to take away their troubles? She said we should collect all the hair cut here and send it there, or even to the temple in T. Nagar. Then the burden is god’s, not ours, see?’
The sea blew in a cool kind draught. The room was full of purling airs and shadows and shifting lights from cars on the road that lit up the rainbow-coloured plastic butterflies bought during the local church festival that Ma had stuck on the wall as though they were in flight.
Arjun slung his arm around his mother’s neck as she stood by the window.
‘If it makes you happy, Ma,’ he said.