He had left behind a brief note. Not a letter. Just a brief note.
I am leaving. This house, and the life around it, no longer interest me. Thenmozhi who looks unblinkingly at my lips when I speak.The question mark evident in her face. Why, your smile as if nothing is the matter. I can’t stand anything. I don’t need to. I am a free man. I hate all bonds. You know it. So, I am going.
Holding the note in her hand, she looked out of the window. Green trees. A banyan planted by someone sometime spreading its branches. The guava tree that suffered from stone attacks every day. In between, finding its place, the maulsari tree. A duo of palm trees. A male and a female.
Sparrows and squirrels have become rare in Mumbai. It seemed as if crows and kites had multiplied. The pigeons came searching however, when it was time to build nests. The crows and the pigeons build nests suited to the urban environment. Why, even yesterday, a kite was flying with a piece of electric wire in its mouth.
The ones which never lost hope were the honeybirds. Screeching keech keech.
Her thoughts ran all over uncontrolled, and her eyes were focussed on nothing, as she looked out.
“Vasanthan could have talked about this,” she said loudly.
There was no answer. She realised that she had spoken looking away from Thenmozhi instead of facing her. Thenmozhi couldn’t hear. But she was trained to read lips and speak. Nobody could realise that she was deaf when she spoke. But sometimes, when she got tired after speaking for a while she would start to talk in sigh-language.
One couldn’t forget the day a hearing aid was fixed to her ear. She screamed so much. She was in agony. Distressed. It was only when she fixed it to her own ear that she realised that everything – the noise of motorcars, the din of birds, the sound of flying planes, the crash of sea waves, speech – was at the same sound level, whether at a distance or near.
To separate human speech from the general noise was a very difficult task. When she gave it to Vasanthan, he fixed it to his ear and exclaimed, his face going pale, “Aiyo, it seems that sound is assaulting my ear!” He had expected that Thenmozhi would start prattling immediately once the machine was fixed. He held the machine in his hand and cried. He was the one who had named her Thenmozhi, honey-tongued.
Thenmozhi was in the kitchen cutting vegetables for dinner. She was deseeding capsicum, hollowing them out with a knife. She had kept paneer ready. It seemed that she was going to make paneer-stuffed capsicum for the night. Thenmozhi would feel like cooking only once in a while. Today was one such day. Paneer stuffed capsicum was one of Vasanthan’s favourites.
She went to Thenmozhi, touched and made her turn. “Then, Appa won’t be home for dinner,” she said. Thenmozhi, who was reading her lips, kept the knife down.
“Why?”
“Appa has gone out of town in a hurry. He will be back only in a few days.”
Thenmozhi looked at her closely. She had X-ray vision. She came near and said, “Lies!”
“What is that in your hand?” she asked and snatched the note Vasanthan had written before she could hide it. She read the note. Bit her lips. “Sorry, Thili,” she said. “So sorry.”
Thenmozhi leant on her and she hugged Thenmozhi and both of them broke out in great sobs.
It took them a while to calm down. Then, both of them sat down in silence. Thenmozhi was curled up on the sofa and she was rocking on her rocking chair.
She had come to the hospital founded by the missionaries to have her child – she was twenty-five years old, they said. There was some address in Madhya Pradesh written in the Register. Her name was Sureela, sweet-voiced. It couldn’t have been her real name, they said.
She hadn’t said anything about her background. But she looked well-educated. She seemed clear and determined. She wanted to leave her to-be-born baby at the orphanage run by nuns, which was attached to the hospital. She didn’t even want to see the baby.
Vasanthan used to help the hospital in various advertisement campaigns. He helped them to raise money for poor patients, he helped them to get favourite actors of the children in the cancer ward to cheer them up, he would dress up as Santa Claus at Christmas – Vasanthan did everything for them.
Sometimes, after drinking, Vasanthan would start whining to the senior doctor of the hospital.The doctor was a Parsi.
“Doctor, I have nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Come on,Vasanth...”
“What haven’t I done, Doctor? I even went to Baby Jesus Church. Haven’t left even a single temple. Have tried even IVF.All the medicines that Mythili took only made her bloat. Not even one child, Doctor. Nothing at all, Doctor. The sperm has to swim towards and touch the egg. That’s all. Is this any miracle? In fifteen years, how come not even one sperm has managed this?”
The senior doctor would sometimes drop him home. He would tell her about Vasanthan’s laments. He too, for his part, wrote some medicines. All the medicines were only for her. The slithering sperms continued swimming in their thousands.
The senior doctor was the one to attend on Sureela. She needed special attention since she had taken some medicines to try and abort her foetus.When the baby was born and was taken out to be cleaned, Sureela disappeared, leaving an empty bed. It was the Mother who was in charge of the hospital who gave the idea to the senior doctor in a low voice. “This is not legal. But call Vasanth,” she said.
Swaddled in white cloth, with only the face showing, the baby had curly hair and round eyes.
Vasanthan arrived. As soon as he saw the baby, he lifted her in his trembling hands.
The senior doctor examined the baby properly. A healthy baby. The names registered in the birth certificate as parents read Mythili-Vasanthan. When asked what the child should be named, the senior doctor told him that the mother was named Sureela. Vasanthan said, “Even she will speak sweetly. Her speech will be sweet as honey.” He whispered into the baby’s ear, “Thenmozhi”. The baby opened her eyes and grasped his thumb tight in her little hand. His body trembled.
He would recall it again and again as if it was a scene from a movie. “She grasped my thumb...”
She was taken aback when the baby was brought home. “Vasanth, you could have consulted me? I am forty years old. You are forty-five. Can we raise her?”
When she was saying this, the child started to cry kicking its legs. She felt that there was nothing more beautiful than a crying baby.With a scrunched-up face, it would open its mouth like fledglings in a nest opening their red beaks and asking for food. From where did the strength come to that small body to bawl so vociferously?
Vasanthan was crying along with the child, she saw when she looked up. Later, Vasanthan’s athai, his paternal aunt, came to help them raise the child. “Thenu, hey Thenu,” she would call the child. To bathe the child, to feed her, to change her diaper after she piddled or shat, all this was done by Vasanthan along with Athai. He worked from home for his advertising firm. His was not a morning to evening job like hers. He needed to go out only now and then.
Mythili was a drawing teacher in a school. “What was the point studying in art school? Correcting the elephants and cats drawn by children?” he would say. She ran a painting class for kids during holidays, in the attached garage. He would join her then. He would appreciate the colourful efforts made by the children using oil crayons any which way on paper.
Even before she turned one, Thenmozhi stepped into the world of colouring. Her face, arms, and body would be a mix of colours. He would shower kisses on the colourful girl. The child was also attached to him. He was expected to lift her all the time. She would sleep on his chest, holding on to his beard. If he had gone anywhere, she would wait for him to come back before eating.
Once, when he returned after spending time with friends and Thenmozhi turned her face away when he came close, he began to think that he should quit drinking. “This is the first time in your life that you are considering this,” Mythili made fun of him.
Excerpted with permission from A Red-necked Green Bird, Ambai, translated from the Tamil by GJV Prasad, Simon & Schuster India.
