By Angana Bharali Das
The strident yet soothing familiar notes of the band brought Lilly to the porch of her home. They were all there: the brass band and dancers and the congregation of her parish in Bandra. Colorful and joyous and free flowing; laughing and drinking and praying. Unconsciously, Lilly swayed her head, her feet finding the dance steps of her youth, beating a gentle thump, thump on the wooden floor. Praise be to the lord, Lilly sent a silent prayer up, forgetting all the little humiliation and tribulations of the year. This was a special time for her community in her Mumbai neighborhood.
Soon the dancers came into view. The three lead dancers swayed their ample hips first to the left and then to the right, a strange, trance like rhythm in their movements, accentuated by the thick, cotton saris that they wore like a dhoti tucked into the waistband at the back. In their hands were brass urns, decorated with red vermilion and mango leaves for luck.
‘Hey Doris,’ Lily shouted, recognizing one of the dancers and hurrying to the gate with her hands on her stomach to block the pain from the operation. ‘What say, Doris? Call me, it’s about the tombola.’
Doris mouthed something but her voice was drowned out by the music. She freed one of her hands to wave at Lily and took a quick swig from the plastic cup of the man standing behind her. Then she continued dancing, looking back at Lily once to smile. She looked as though she was having the time of her life.
‘Lucky Doris,’ Lily said to no one in particular. ‘Quite young at heart that one.’
‘And you, young man. Be good and give thanks to the lord,’ Lily said to a particularly merry young man, who happened to be passing by. ‘May’s son, aren’t you?’
The boy, for he was hardly a man, electrified at the mention of his mother almost dropped his plastic cup. He recovered quickly and said,’ Good evening, Aunty. Just a small something. Xmas spirit and all. Season’s greeting, Aunty.’ He then resumed waving his hands about and moving to the music.
Lily waddled back to the porch and craned her neck to see where the procession was heading. Sometimes there was a feast to mark the beginning of the holy month when the procession ended.
The pain when it came was swift and sure, tearing through her body with a searing force. Lilly drew herself up and for the umpteenth time cursed Lydia for beating her to the ground and abandoning her to face life alone, just as she had beaten her all their lives.
The competition began early in their childhood. ‘Come girls, let’s see what you can do,’ their father would say, addressing his words to Lilly instead of both sisters with an apologetic smile, as if he already knew who would be the first to return to the shore after their weekly competition. Lilly, heavy even then, would barrel her way through the silver ripples that Lydia left as she swam in a straight, uncompromising line, the sea only one of her battlegrounds.
The sea was different then. A frothy mass of barely contained aggression and independence, unlike the hobbled lashing of waves that rolled up the shore now. Lilly was still following Lydia; her operation and pain a dim reflection Lydia’s. ‘Third stage cancer, my dear,’ the doctor had said. Old Dr. Thomas. Their father’s friend. Lydia had lain on the bed, her arms inert on her side and eyes riveted to the ceiling. It was as if her mind was furiously trying to decipher a puzzle, an unsolvable puzzle.
Lilly’s tumor was benign. Operable. Lilly blocked the pain with her hands. The site of the operation had risen. It was puckered and mottled with little specks of ingrown hair follicles. Lilly touched the site gingerly. She could see Brian, now, in the procession. Brian, Lydia’s son, with whom Lilly had learned to live. Brian of the greedy mind and indifferent ways. Brian who had insisted on building the mocking white wall that divided their home.
‘You live in peace, and we will have privacy,’ he had said.
Sometimes, Lilly took it upon herself to reassure Lydia and her father that they were still family—Brian, Matilda, his wife and Chloe, his daughter, and Lilly. The Fernandes.
Brian was mid-way through the procession, drinking beer from a bottle and shaking his hands and legs in some form of a dance. Chloe, a pink sash fixed on her white lace dress, behind him was holding the holy cross.
‘Good evening, Chloe,’ Lilly called out again. ‘How come you forgot to include your grandmother in the procession.’
But Chloe, for once serious, did not look in Lilly’s direction, or at the house. She was one of the few who were reciting the holy prayer with rosary beads in their hands. Maybe she had not heard her grand-aunt.
Soon, Brian’s dancing figure stopped, and he detached himself from the procession and opened the gate.
‘What say,’ Lilly asked Brian as he came up the path to the house. ‘You don’t say anything. Old Aunty forgotten. What about the feast? Any gathering later in the evening?’
Brian didn’t reply. He just ran into the house.
‘Need beer,’ he said, as he disappeared into his side of the house.
‘Is Matilda home, now?’ Lily asked, as Brian emerged carrying a case of beer.
‘Yes, cooking. Cooking, cooking all the time,’ Brian said, as he hurried out. A stocky figure besieged with a perennial need to enjoy himself and to prove his bonhomie and good cheer.
‘Close the gate,’ he shouted from the road, dispensing beer to anyone who asked.
Damn that boy, Lily thought as she laboured down the steps again. She should have listened to that nice doctor who had advised bed rest after her operation. But she had thrown herself back into her family, the ones she cooked for.
The procession wound its way slowly through the narrow lane in front of the house. Lilly waved to yet more friends and acquaintances. When Lydia was alive, she and Lydia would be right there in front of the procession, singing hymns and crossing themselves.
‘Now be good ladies and gentleman,’ she told the few stragglers who were left behind. ‘And don’t forget to spread the Lord’s word and sprinkle holy water.’ And she struggled to Brian’s side of the house. The fairy lights strung all over glimmered and twinkled. The tiny lights accentuated the blue tarpaulin stretched across that hole that had sprung up in their century-old roof this summer. When it rained, the roof leaked. Lilly collected the water in buckets to stop the floor from becoming one huge puddle.
Lilly’s side of the house stood quiet and dark.
‘God’s will,’ Lilly had told her friends and neighbors, when Brian had divided the house, not long after Lydia’s funeral. Nor had she protested, when he had demanded the bigger side. Matilda was a bride then, with baby Chloe, growing inside her.
‘Matilda, you at home, child?’ Lily shouted when she entered the drawing room. As always, her eyes strayed to the huge portrait of Lydia that stood bang in the middle of the drawing room. Lily crossed her heart as Matilda walked into the room carrying a number of small boxes, one on top of the other.
‘Good evening, Aunty. Take this with you when you leave,’ Matilda said. ‘I was coming over.’
‘What say,’ Lilly said, and hurried to relieve Matilda of the boxes.
Matilda looked harassed. The laughing girl, who married young Brian had evaporated in small increments over the years. Her face was obscured by sweat and a longing for a better life.
‘Aunty, I baked a baath coconut cake. Your recipe. It’s a bit soggy though,’ Matilda said.
‘You are too good for that nephew of mine,’ Lilly said as she sat on the sofa to rest. Back on her side of the house, Lilly impatiently opened the boxes right there on the porch, examining the content of each and placing them on the armchair. Matilda had baked tiny hearts of marzipan and chocolate animals. There was parrad guava cheese and kulkals. Lilly sighed and tentatively stretched her back, wondering whether to keep all the food or distribute it to her friends. In the old days, she and Lydia would bake coconut cakes and burn their hands making mounds of kulkals for their neighbors. Their mother, who lived only in their father’s memory, had been a master baker.
‘Now don’t get me wrong girls, but your mother’s cake was different. Luscious sponge of fine coconut sometimes interspersed with bits of chocolate. Her personal touch,” their father would say each Christmas season, when Lilly and Lydia made their rounds of the neighborhood, bearing plated gifts of homemade goodies. These days, Lilly made her way to the bakery, instead of cooking, and carefully chose the sweets that spoke of the grandeur of Christmas and generosity, her meager savings counted beforehand and divided into small piles for different things.
The frock Lilly had stitched for Christmas stretched tight over her body. She ran her hands over the dress, smoothing it over the curves and turns of her body. Must go and see the doctor, she thought. She could still hear the faint strains of music.
Lilly was still on the porch when a man opened the gate and walked up the path. When he came near, Lilly realized he had not been in the procession, nor was he someone she knew.
‘Can I help you?’ Lilly asked.‘I am the real estate developer,’ he said, his voice low and cultured, and words well-formed and precise. ‘Brian must have told you about me.’
‘Yes,’ Lilly said cautiously, wondering which of Brian’s random intentions the man was referring to. Brian juggled ten ideas about earning money at any single time. It had driven poor Lydia mad.
Lilly had shrugged away his projects and never paid attention when he expounded one of his ideas. She was relieved to live alone. Although Lilly would never admit it, not even to herself.
‘Why don’t you come in?’ Lilly said.
‘My name is Loveleen,’ the man said, nervously. ‘Traffic,’ he said, as he pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. ‘Can I have a glass of water?’
He looked like he was boiling in that silk shirt and synthetic trousers, Lilly thought, used to air conditioners. He was young enough to be her grandson, barely in his mid-twenties.
‘Come to the kitchen, son,’ Lily said, gauging that he was harmless. ‘I will make a ginger lemonade for you. My lemonade was famous. I used to sell it by the liter once upon a time. I still take party orders now and then.’
But the man would have none of it. He looked sulky. ‘I am all right,’ he said. ‘Dad will be joining us in a minute. I dropped by early to talk to you.’
‘Maam, as you know this house has great possibilities, and Brian has agreed.’
‘Yes, young man. I know the house is solid. I’ve lived here all my life, you know. No doubt, the lane near our house has also become better. But the fishing is gone. We used to go fishing, do you know that?’ Lilly said and sighed, looking hopefully at the man’s face.
Sometimes, she pined for company.
‘Son, are you sure you don’t want that lemonade. I sure do, and drinking with company will be a pleasure. My sister Lydia passed away, you know, five years ago. God rest her soul. A lovely lady.’
‘But maam think about it. You will have an entire flat to yourself. The money will not be bad either.’
Lilly scratched her head. Her scalp felt tight and dry.
‘Yes, I could do with water whenever I want,’ Lilly said, thinking about collecting the thin trickle of water that half-heartedly made its way from the tap, bucket by bucket, each morning at dawn. Brian’s water pump was too small to service the entire house.
Lilly stood up, her hand on her back for support. ‘Son, where did you study? St Peters? All the teachers are girls I saw grow up,’ Lilly said, and having succeeded in disconcerting the man continued, ‘This is a heritage area. You haven’t done your homework.’
‘No,’ the man said, ‘We have ways of getting things done. We have many good friends in the area.’
But Lilly had had enough of Brian and one of his schemes. And she cursed Lydia for leaving her alone.
‘Money is useful, no doubt. But one must be happy,’ Lilly said.
‘Sure you don’t want that lemonade. I am having some myself. I have to go to work soon, you know,’ Lilly said.
Then she said more to herself than to him, ‘Brian is a good boy. But don’t take him seriously. Why should I leave my home and neighborhood, and go where? Further into the suburbs with no friends and family?’ Then she stalked to the kitchen, carrying the boxes with her. She did not want to tempt the man.
Lilly was not feeling generous. From the kitchen, Lilly watched as the man left.
Later, as Lilly plodded to Yashi’s house to cook, she decided to put a not-for-sale sign on her side of the house.
‘Cook what you want dear. You know how it is in our house. Someone wants to eat this, someone wants to eat that, and poor mother has to please everyone,’ Yashi said when Lilly reached there.
Yashi, fat, voluble and ancient, existed for the family. She had dedicated her life to the daily orchestration of the family’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her slim, stylish daughter-in-law was ineffective, fluttering about in the periphery of the constant hum of activity in the household, with three children going to school and three men going about their business. Yashi had been kind, plying Lilly with small treats and little caches of cash when Lilly had lain recuperating in the hospital.
‘Yashi,’ Lilly said, “I may need a day or two off. That Brian is playing up again. Why my sister had to leave all her affairs in my name, even the money, I have no idea. The boy has never forgiven me for that.”
Walking back to her home, the cooking done, Lilly tried to avoid meeting anyone. But Irene was standing at the entrance of the lane. Maybe Lilly should have listened to that good doctor and been on bed rest.
‘Why have you started working again?’ Irene called out.
And a second later, ‘You are rich now, enjoy your life.’
Lily looked at Irene, surprised. She had known her since Irene came to the neighborhood as a bride and had watched her raise three young sons as a widow.
Irene’s demeanor had changed. Gone was the modest woman of straitened circumstances. She was replaced by a loud, pushy woman who wore silk pant suits and leather high heels, and fancied herself as a real estate agent. Irene now spent her time urging families to sell their ancestral property to developers, sometimes for half their value.
‘Irene, I have lived without money for most of my life. I am not rich,’ Lilly replied. ‘The Lord did not see fit to make me rich and I have no complaints. Why say such things?’
Irene fiddled with her watch and took her time replying. Finally, she said, ‘You should not walk alone so soon after your operation.’
‘I suppose you are not going to the feast? Doris is organising it this year,’ Lilly asked.
‘Come aunty, I will walk you to the house,’ Irene offered, instead.
Lilly, resigned, fell into step with Irene, as she pattered on. ‘Aunty I have heard that developers are going to build a seven-story building on your land.’
‘How can they?’ Lily asked, “’ have not signed any papers, or taken any money.’
But a niggling thought began to gnaw at her. ‘What were you doing at Brian’s the other day?’ she asked, and then stopped abruptly in the middle of the lane.
The blood rushed to Lilly’s ears as she grasped Irene’s upper arm.
‘Tell me,’ Lilly demanded, remembering meeting Irene at the gate and wondering why Irene had not come to her side of the house as she usually did.
‘Irene,’ she shouted. ‘Answer me? Was it you the developers sent? Has that fool, Brian taken my money?”
Lilly let go of Irene as abruptly as she had grasped her. The pain at the site of the operation exploded into a white-hot flash that radiated down her abdomen to her feet. Lily shifted from one foot to the other to disperse the pain. Irene was saying something, but Lily did not want any explanation, any justification from the woman she had considered a friend, even a younger sister. Hadn’t she always visited Irene’s house on Christmas eve with packets of guava cheese and bebinca bought with the rupee notes carefully counted and kept under her mattress for indulgences and emergencies? She had to speak to Brian.
From far away in the neighborhood came the sounds of celebration. Perhaps the feast had started early in Doris’s house. Lilly threw the vegetables she had bought in the market on the kitchen counter. Then, noticing the goody boxes, flicked them off the counter. They burst open, spraying the kitchen floor with marzipan and chocolate candies and cake. The treats lay on the floor, barely discernible in the dim light of the bulb that hung from the ceiling.
‘Brian, where are you?’ Lilly shouted and rushed to the other side of the house. ‘You imbecile. What have you done?’
Irene, who had been waiting for her on the porch, ran after her, heels clacking. ‘Aunty, be careful. Everything will be all right.’
‘You knew,’ Lilly spat at Matilda, who came out to the porch. ‘You have no sense. You are always a reservoir for what Brian wants, and then Chloe.’
Matilda stood quiet, her face darkening with embarrassment. ‘Aunty,’ Irene said again and put a restraining hand on Lilly’s arms.
‘You spineless woman,’ Lilly shouted. ‘You are weak, Matilda. Always have been.’ Lilly pushed Irene’s hand away from her arms and brushed off Matilda’s half-formed words.
‘Brian, come out. I know you are in there,’ Lilly called out and bounded up the staircase. The door that led to the room on the terrace was closed. ‘Come out. Why are you hiding there?’
‘Stop bleating, you two,’ Lilly blew up at Irene and Matilda, who were muttering something at the bottom of the stairs. But the door remained shut.
‘Aunty, come down. You should not be climbing stairs,’ Matilda said. She had come silently up the stairs.
Lily thumped on the door, again and again.
After what seemed like hours, Lilly grew tired and dizzy. She held on to the balustrade, but refused to give in and sit.
Brian remained inside.
Lilly could hear the faint strains of music wafting down from the balcony. Brian had switched on Chloe’s music system, perhaps to drown out her shouts. Maybe he was drinking a bottle of beer. Maybe he had a stack of beer bottles up there.
‘Why have we come to this?’ Lilly shouted, addressing no one. ‘All of us buried under our notions of past glory and family history, unable to move forward.’
She looked at Matilda who was still standing on the staircase, half-way up from the bottom, a young woman of promise being consumed by the quagmire of slow poverty.
Matilda brought a glass of water, but Lily brushed the glass away. She wanted Brian and his assurance that he had not signed away her property, her way of life. Lily waited, until her legs could no longer support her. Then she sat on the stairs. Her knees drawn up to her chest to ward off the pain. The music stopped at some point, and there was no sound at all. Matilda had left too.
The darkness gathered strength. Still Lilly waited, postponing the moment when she would go to the police station to lodge a complaint against her own kin. Lilly rested her head against the closed door, trying not to take notice of her father and Lydia who fluttered about her trying to say something.
Angana Bharali Das is a financial editor. She has also worked as a journalist. She started her career at Press Trust of India, and has written news and feature articles. Her short fiction has been published or forthcoming by Jottings (Bound India) and Kitaab. She lives in Mumbai, India.
Banner image is by Geran de Klerk and is downloaded from unsplash.com