Read The Lilac House for Free Online Page B
Authors: Anita Nair
Jak tries to interject.
The man shrugs. ‘A man, a group… Would any Indian girl be so bold? They may have been classmates, but she was alone and who knows what transpired? Didn’t you or her mother teach her what to do and what not to do? If you ask me, I would lay the blame at your feet. Her parents.’
Jak rises from the chair. He will not sit here, listening to this pathetic, corrupt creature lecture him on parental responsibility. What does he know about them? Or her? To him, she is just the naked accident case.
‘How is she now?’ the doctor asks suddenly.
Jak pauses. He stares at him. He sees the tapping fingers, the beads of sweat on his forehead; he sees the evasiveness in his eyes,
the compromise he has made with his conscience. He sees a man who has doctored the case sheet.
‘You do know the condition she was in when she left here. What do you think could have changed?’ Jak says, feeling his shoulders slump.
‘But hope is all we have. Don’t you see that? You have to believe that somewhere in her, there is a part that is still alive. It tells her that things will change. It will bring her back to us. We have to cling to that thought, Kitcha,’ Kala Chithi said in that low, measured voice of hers, which he knew so well and loved. All through his life, hers alone had been the voice of reason.
They were sitting in Smriti’s room the day before Jak left for Minjikapuram. ‘Look at this,’ he had burst out, demanding she see what he did. The room was filled with all the little odds and ends Smriti had collected in her lifetime. Postcards and pebbles. Feathers and paper clippings. Photographs and books. All day they played her the kind of music she used to listen to. On a wall were shelves of her books. And on all the remaining surfaces, the dolls. Plastic, shell, bone, terracotta, metal, rubber, poly-fibre-filled velvet shod dolls… All of Smriti’s dolls that had lain in storage in Nina’s attic for the last four years. Nina had complained when Smriti packed them away, ‘I wish she would let me give them to the Children’s Hospital. Why does she want to keep them?’
Box after box of dolls from day one to age fourteen and two months, when Jak and Nina separated.
When Jak sent for them. Nina’s voice had cracked on the telephone: ‘What perverse idea is this, Kitcha? What are you planning to do with the dolls? You are not making this any easier for any one of us… to handle this… to deal with this tragedy.’
‘Tragedy! You sound like one of those plastic women in a TV newsroom,’ Jak had snarled. ‘She is our daughter. You do not get past her or deal with her. Smriti is our child!’
Nina’s voice was quiet when she spoke next. ‘What about Shruti? Think of what this is going to do to Shruti. Do you remember you have another child? Think of her, Kitcha, for heaven’s sake! You haven’t even asked about her.’
But Jak had wanted to surround Smriti with all that she loved in her once picture perfect world. In every doll was a wealth of memories. Who knew what would bring her back? The boot black of an eye, a blonde curl, a gingham pinafore, a white rubber shoe…
‘It’s like the tombs of the kings. Everything she loved, all that was precious to her – except that she isn’t dead. Do you know what we are doing? We are burying her alive.
‘Look at these dolls.’ His fingers trailed along a row of cabbage patch dolls. ‘Her babies, she had a name for each one of them when she was just six years old. “I am going to have a houseful of babies,” she’d say and we would laugh at the notion of our Smriti becoming a mother. Can you imagine our Smriti a mother, Nina and I would smile at each other.
‘It kills me, Kala Chithi, to think that my Smriti’s life is over. That she will never have anything of what she wanted… Nina thinks I have forgotten Shruti. That she doesn’t exist for me. But I am scared to even think of her. How can I love again? How
The man shrugs. ‘A man, a group… Would any Indian girl be so bold? They may have been classmates, but she was alone and who knows what transpired? Didn’t you or her mother teach her what to do and what not to do? If you ask me, I would lay the blame at your feet. Her parents.’
Jak rises from the chair. He will not sit here, listening to this pathetic, corrupt creature lecture him on parental responsibility. What does he know about them? Or her? To him, she is just the naked accident case.
‘How is she now?’ the doctor asks suddenly.
Jak pauses. He stares at him. He sees the tapping fingers, the beads of sweat on his forehead; he sees the evasiveness in his eyes,
the compromise he has made with his conscience. He sees a man who has doctored the case sheet.
‘You do know the condition she was in when she left here. What do you think could have changed?’ Jak says, feeling his shoulders slump.
‘But hope is all we have. Don’t you see that? You have to believe that somewhere in her, there is a part that is still alive. It tells her that things will change. It will bring her back to us. We have to cling to that thought, Kitcha,’ Kala Chithi said in that low, measured voice of hers, which he knew so well and loved. All through his life, hers alone had been the voice of reason.
They were sitting in Smriti’s room the day before Jak left for Minjikapuram. ‘Look at this,’ he had burst out, demanding she see what he did. The room was filled with all the little odds and ends Smriti had collected in her lifetime. Postcards and pebbles. Feathers and paper clippings. Photographs and books. All day they played her the kind of music she used to listen to. On a wall were shelves of her books. And on all the remaining surfaces, the dolls. Plastic, shell, bone, terracotta, metal, rubber, poly-fibre-filled velvet shod dolls… All of Smriti’s dolls that had lain in storage in Nina’s attic for the last four years. Nina had complained when Smriti packed them away, ‘I wish she would let me give them to the Children’s Hospital. Why does she want to keep them?’
Box after box of dolls from day one to age fourteen and two months, when Jak and Nina separated.
When Jak sent for them. Nina’s voice had cracked on the telephone: ‘What perverse idea is this, Kitcha? What are you planning to do with the dolls? You are not making this any easier for any one of us… to handle this… to deal with this tragedy.’
‘Tragedy! You sound like one of those plastic women in a TV newsroom,’ Jak had snarled. ‘She is our daughter. You do not get past her or deal with her. Smriti is our child!’
Nina’s voice was quiet when she spoke next. ‘What about Shruti? Think of what this is going to do to Shruti. Do you remember you have another child? Think of her, Kitcha, for heaven’s sake! You haven’t even asked about her.’
But Jak had wanted to surround Smriti with all that she loved in her once picture perfect world. In every doll was a wealth of memories. Who knew what would bring her back? The boot black of an eye, a blonde curl, a gingham pinafore, a white rubber shoe…
‘It’s like the tombs of the kings. Everything she loved, all that was precious to her – except that she isn’t dead. Do you know what we are doing? We are burying her alive.
‘Look at these dolls.’ His fingers trailed along a row of cabbage patch dolls. ‘Her babies, she had a name for each one of them when she was just six years old. “I am going to have a houseful of babies,” she’d say and we would laugh at the notion of our Smriti becoming a mother. Can you imagine our Smriti a mother, Nina and I would smile at each other.
‘It kills me, Kala Chithi, to think that my Smriti’s life is over. That she will never have anything of what she wanted… Nina thinks I have forgotten Shruti. That she doesn’t exist for me. But I am scared to even think of her. How can I love again? How