The Mali

Chapter 2

The greatest difficulty with Varun's assimilation into the Shastri household was that there was none. Like fresh pond water that had inconspicuously taken the shape of its earthen jug, the boy had melded so seamlessly into the workings of the mansion that for its other occupants, he could have been all but nonexistent. Throughout his first day, Minerva had hovered over him, afraid that he would begin crying again. After sending Goro to the marketplace with a paper around which his feet had been measured to get him chappals and clothes, she joined him in the little grey room that Ashok had said would be his. There, she found the boy sitting on the double bed, with shoulders weighed down by his aloneness.

"You'll have something? Sharbaat? Coconut water? Dinner will come by 7," she said. The air inside the room was stiflingly hot. The boy shook his head almost imperceptibly. Minerva sighed, walked out and closed the door behind her. When she was sure the boy wasn't going to follow her out, she rested her warm head on the door frame. She had known that she wanted to have him, but now, she realized, she hadn't a clue how to keep him. Not a sound was heard through the wood that separated them. A single bead of sweat rolled from her silken bun and into the door, baptizing the wooden frame. After a minute more, Minerva stirred and found her feet turning to the kitchen.

The kitchen, a massive square shaped affair made for women with quiet hands and large arms, had windows, and all three of them remained firmly shut to the elements. At the center of the place, sometimes standing, most often sitting, was Goro, freshly returned from the market place. And around him, a multitude of vessels hissed, frothed, bubbled and boiled, almost as if on their own accord. This particular day, Goro stood on the rickety stool that always followed him around the house, his back turned to the kitchen archway while he wrestled with what would become their meal hours afterward. Sighing, she stepped away from the archway before he noticed her.

She was restless, but she did not remember a time when she had known rest. To the others who inhabited Shastri Mansion, Minerva flitted in and around its confines, a September dragonfly looking for a place to sup before its season came to an end. To Shastri Mansion, she was the most forceful gust of stale wind it had ever known. Her living spirit roved the home, scratching at its walls, hissing at its window ledges, snapping behind her saree's folds. Indeed, like all winds, it looked to change things. But it didn't know how.

Minerva swept herself to the front portico, where everything had begun to rot since Christine had left for love. The trail of her saree brushed lightly against the old swing as she wafted towards the portico railing, setting it to creak in her wake. Then she stood, unmoving, at the edge of the elevated verandah, to gaze at what once was a garden.

What her eyes met was not to their satisfaction. Having gone unloved for so long, the plants had turned against their roots. Wounded, the sitapal trees whose leaves her sister lovingly caressed whenever she had had the chance were greying for want of touch. The jackfruits fruited half-heartedly, dashing their own ill-formed efforts to the ground before they knew what they were being shaped for. The kidney beans in the vegetable patch looked sickly, and grass and weeds grew in flourishing splotches across the yard. Minerva surveyed the garden, closed her eyes, opened her heart, and knew what she had to do.

***

That night, once again there was no current at Shastri Mansion. Dinner was served soon after Ashok entered the house. Varun watched as the single candle at Ashok's right flickered in the still night air, bobbing to unknown rhythms, its light making his shadow dance behind him. Opposite him sat Minerva, presiding over her empire of cutlery. Her saree sang peacock blue while her eyelids were stroked midnight; from where Varun peeked on the left of his uncle, the candle fire seemed to bob strangely along her forehead.