Meera

PS: I want to be a veterinarian (hence the vegetarianism, since you asked).

30 March, 1972

Dear G

Don’t leave. I couldn’t bear it.

My mother was nineteen when she met my father. I can almost see her: reed-thin, double plaits and half sari, twinkling nose-ring. Her family were a hybrid of Tamil Christians who had intermarried with Hindus, and as such, they were a syncretic household, befitting the town of Tranquebar, where every evening you would hear the adhan intermingling with the sounds of temple and church bells. Jesus was the main point of focus in my mother’s house, of course, but there was a dedicated puja room where concessions were made for major Hindu deities.

Grandpa Samuel was treasurer at the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, which is where my parents first met. Later, Auntie Kavitha would tell me that it was my mother who pursued my father. That ever since she had known her, my mother had had an irrational longing to escape. ‘Always, there was something calling her away.’ And here was this strange, brooding foreign man. Surely, he would help her leave behind this congested brick house and her doltish siblings, her father who would have her be a nun, her mother who, boringly, favoured her sons?

Their wedding photo shows a small, unremarkable gathering outside the church. My parents look like people I don’t know and never will. They aren’t smiling exactly, but there’s a sense that whatever they have around them is something of their own making. No one from my father’s side of the family is present, although the family ring had been sent with a shipman from Vicenza – a simple cluster of emeralds and diamonds in the shape of a cross, courtesy of Nonna Rosa. My mother wore that ring every day of her life, the gold getting worn and dark, until she passed it on to me on the eve of my own unsuccessful marriage.

3

In the weeks after Ma’s death I plummet into childhood. None of it seems credible.

Auntie Kavitha tells me I will learn nothing by confronting my father, but she understands my determination.

I called him the afternoon after Ma’s funeral. It was as if he’d been expecting the news. ‘I was in Guidecca, after dinner with a friend, walking by the water, and I saw a flash in the sky. I don’t know why, but I thought of your mother. It was something so real, so powerful. I marked the time. It was five after midnight.’

I told him we hadn’t established the exact time of Ma’s death. She had had an unremarkable day. All morning and afternoon in the house. At five Murali had driven her to Nilgiris to do her weekly groceries. She’d complained of the heat. The maid who came to cook three times a week had been the last to see her alive. She left at 8 p.m. Dinner was paratha and vegetable stew. Ma got into bed and never got up.