Ink and Paper, And Mother’s Stories
Bachu Hiranmayee
This story has its origins in a purse my mother gifted me. It wasn't quite my style, and in the confusion of finding the right place for it in my life, I stumbled into realising that I loved the purse only because I love my mother. And what it would look like if mothers and daughters weren't like us. Ink and paper explores the question - Can a mother's love ever be too much of a good thing?
A
parajita
Awake, you know you exist, in your head-face-neck-belly-back-hips-limbs-digits; how feet feel on cut grass with freshly perched dew drops. What mornings smell like, what humming feels like. I’d tell you, if I could anymore, that my corporeality changed from bones-flesh-blood-skin to cover-spine-pages. I only contain, splice by splice, stories that pour into me nightly, ink pooling, weighing me down. The memories of sensoriality, now wisps desperately trying to stay afloat in a pool of suffocatingly viscous black ink that threatens to choke and drown them.
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It is almost nightfall, almost time for the goodnight kiss.
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Maitreyi
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I bleed words, black, pressing onto Appu, every night. After every goodnight kiss comes the dreadful spill. And conduit’s guilt. I’m now a nib mouth, a cartridge of tears and ink, a pipe chest without a sphincter, enslaved to gravity. And a cap that clicks neatly. Awareness flows in an involuntary solenoid. I miss hands, and hugs. I can’t tell Appu that I’m sorry. I have no means for my words, only mum’s. As Mum’s tears fall into the inkpot, I sense Dad’s torn-ness between wanting to abandon ship and the guilt that doesn’t let him look away. A protector in a straitjacket.
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After the plink of the teardrop, the kiss on my cap, I can't choose to not do what I have to. Mum unscrews my bladder, fills it up with potiony blackness, and puts me back together. Rests me upside down against the wall for gravity to do its job, of draining the venom through my pointy mouth, onto the blank sheet. The spill begins…
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Aparajita
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Mum’s cool palm, and then her chapped lips. One residual teardrop from her soaked eyelashes. The dull, pointy pain-pressure of Mattu’s nib. I start to blot, choke and splutter. Black ink collecting and congealing into her manic narrative of the day…
Your father won’t go to the market anymore. Not even to get my tablets, so I did. He just sits there and stares and stares you know? He doesn’t even come to our room anymore. Not a word exchanged. He’ll get it one day, as will you both. I’m taking you to the park tomorrow. We’ll see the birds. Chinnari made Jackfruit pottu today, and cried remembering you both. Nowadays she brings the groceries too, but refuses the extra money. She pities us. It’s better this way - you dead to the world, and finally shielded from it. Sometimes the landline still rings with condolence calls! If Eeshwar answers one, he just passes the receiver to me. They think he’s catatonic from grief, they’re not entirely wrong. When I take the receiver, it’s - Leela this, Leela that, do you need help, anything we can do, there are no right words to say, they were so young, still can’t believe they’re gone - Pretending to be grieving is so hard when my heart is full of contentment. I might not have to pretend for long though. They think I’m losing my grip on reality. Oh, how sad, both went mad, they must be thinking. Let them. Whatever floats their boats.
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I’ll never know if you realise this is for your own good, isn’t it?. But at least now you both listen. And it’s better than all those fights…
I soak up the words, more blackness pools, settles down viscously, the binding of my spine feels laden, and it has only been two weeks…
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Maitreyi
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I’m emptied. Like the nights before. I’m resting on Appu, wondering if my weight hurts, pressing on her from a single point. If I could will myself to fall, I would. I pray for Mum to leave the window open and for the wind to knock me down. Snakes. She’s terrified of them. The inkiness outside fades. Pre-dawn purple, to grey, to shades of dancing peach, before metamorphosing into a blazing blue. Mum comes, picks me up, clicks the cap back on. She leaves to start her day.
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Aparajita
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While I was counting days to meet a new baby, at a time that feels an eternity ago now; it had crept up on her - this unnameable, ineffable terror. And then it infected us, every day, incrementally. Like how her belly had slowly bulged, week after week.
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I seem to remember something about the boiling frog syndrome, although I can’t recall if it was my eyes or ears that acquainted me with it. Frogs in a pot, water’s set to boil, but frogs being cold blooded, they adapt instead of leaping out, the heat rises, they adapt. They keep adapting, and then some. Soon they start to boil… they might realise and want to leap out then, but by then they’re already boiling. In retrospect, I wonder if we were all boiling frogs; but you don’t question a mother’s love, because you don’t know that you can, then you don’t know how to, even when it does not compute.
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I remember the morning dairy runs with Dad. Walking… the idea now floats, untethered, in the space between figments of memories. I remember the dishti she would cast out of me, daily, muttering, with a fistful of salt; and then dab a drop of cool water on each of my eyelids, backs of my hands and my feet, making me giggle. In the earlier days, Dad would benignly shrug and shake his head, after Mum had gone to throw the salt in the toilet and flush it. Boiling frogs. Were we the only household that bought packets of table salt weekly? She’d wait at the gate every evening, scowling, I’m sure, for the entire extra half hour I took to reach home. Watching my schoolmates from our colony pass by our house. She would drag me inside by my elbow. Check my palms, with her sweaty ones. Rummage through books and notebooks for any friends’ phone numbers I might have noted down, then rudely shove her hands into my pockets, for any hardened lumps of river clay I’d dig for in the sand heaps in our colony. Take off my pinafore skirt and shirt and socks, callously scanning for cuts and scrapes, bruises, and ballpoint pen tattoos. After a thorough inspection of my underwear clad body, she would send me into the washroom, which never had a latch, to take that off too, and hand it to her, for the fresh one in her hand. That way, she said, she knew I was wearing clean underwear every day. She would then handpick that day’s frock for me. Another fistful of salt, thrice clockwise, thrice anti-clockwise and thrice from tip to toe. Then, for the rest of the evening, I’d sit at the dining table, reading the book she’d have given me, my jaw clenched and teeth grinding, eyes smarting from equal parts glaring at the page, and pushing back tears. And she’d cook, muttering that my school was ruining her peace of mind. I was privy to plans I was never a part of. The landline seldom rang for me, and if it did, she was on the extension, listening and chiming in at the five-minute mark, asking the other side to hang up. I’d sleep in their bed, and wake up to her staring at me in the morning. I luxuriated in day-dreams and wist-and-wishful thoughts of latches. Cubicles in the school washrooms had them, and I started spending more and more time there. A minute more, or ten. Then longer and longer, testing how long I could linger. Once I hid for the entirety of the first period, for a whole week, crying yet not unlatching despite knocks, bribes, appeals, and threats of punishment; like an escapee hiding after being cornered, counting minutes and seconds up to inevitability. Eventually, they called Mum to the principal’s office. They broke it to her as sweetly as her belly was big, that I was a fine student, but that I needed help, could she perhaps consider a child psychologist?
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At home, she had cried about how terrified of school I was, and how they had outrageously suggested I was crazy and needed a psychologist. All her howling and belly beating, Dad had relented. ‘We would find a governess, and we would move.’ ‘Yes, yes, to that house. Whatever she wanted.’ ‘Of course we knew she loved us, of course we loved her.’
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Only she slept well that night. Whatever she wants, she gets.
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Presently, I feel a cinch in my spine. I lose contact with the cool wooden surface of the table, as swiftly as an attracting magnetic pole being reversed to repel... Mum brushes off a bit of a dried leaf from my first page. I land in the satin lining of that hideous purse next to Mattu. Mum leaves the zipper open and I feel the wind and a vague sense of locomotion. The wind slows. We must be at the park…
Maitreyi
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Appu has never liked this purse. And Mum’s going to put us in here till she does. I’d pleaded with Appu so much. To tell mum that she liked it. A harmless lie. But she had chosen that hill to die on, not the other, bigger ones.
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The Night of The Fight Appu had ‘put her foot down’. Next night, there weren’t any feet left to put anywhere anymore.
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Mum had seen Appu’s laptop, MA in Literature, her second one. ‘A real one, Mattu, in an actual college’ she had confided in me. I was proud. Ms. Tino had left for the weekend. Maybe she could have talked Mum down if she hadn’t. At the dinner table mum mentioned, coolly, that Appu wasn’t going anywhere. Dad had said we should just have dinner first. Nodding, she had reasserted that Appu wasn’t going anywhere. Appu, jaw and fists clenched, tears welling up, was glaring at dad when mum told her again, ‘You’re not, Appu…’
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‘Daddy…’ Appu had banged her fists on the table. Mum had said she could throw all the tantrums she wanted, but that her decision was final. She had asked dad 'Wasn’t it cruel to get Appu’s hopes up about impossible things? '
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‘Leela’, dad had only begun, when mum took that menacing register that always got her what she wanted. ‘Was he really bringing this up again? How did he forget what had happened to Appu at school?’ Appu had sat at the table, resolute, holding ground. And fear had made a fixture out of me. Dad had broken the silence, ‘Surely, she was fooling herself? Did she really not know what was happening? Did she think she could gaslight herself or had she already deluded herself past the point of no return?’
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I had dragged my chair, to hold Appu’s hand. Mum’s red lighthouse gaze falling on me before turning back to dad. ‘Had he forgotten that she used to hide in the bathroom, from panic attacks?’
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‘No, he had not. In fact, why had they not seen a therapist if she cared so much? All that belly beating... Appu was scared, had always been, but only OF HER.’
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‘Why was he acting like she didn’t care for her own child? Had she not found a governess? Did he disapprove of Ms. Tino now, too? Had the sea not helped? Did he think she liked this? Her daughter not talking to her? But it was for her own good, it always had been… the world outside… the world outside…’ and cradling her head in her hands, her body had slumped back into her chair sobbing. ‘Latches.’ Appu’s fist was clenched and with her right hand she wiped off her tears and snot. ‘She had done it for the latches, all that hiding. She needed to know there were places no one could come, places that were just hers, even if it was only a few minutes.’ Appu had spoken more words to her that night than all the years I’d seen her. Mum had spoken no further, not until midnight. Damage control delving into distortion…
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Tonight, she’ll tell us about the park, I’m sure of it. It’s a way of reparations, I suppose, to finally do normal things that other normal people do. It didn’t matter though, not anymore. For us, normalcy has always been present in its obvious absence. So it was, and so it will continue to be.
Aparajita
When bits of leaves get stuck near the binding of my spine, she brushes them off with a flat paint brush. If someone sets a coffee mug on me, will she allow a stain to set in? What will happen to us when she dies? Is she hateful enough to doom us to an eternity of this? And call it us outliving everyone…? Saying that’s every mother’s dream? When the ink inside the inkpot dries up, even Mattu will die… Will I not? You know a nap so light that you’re woken up with the awareness of an eye on you, just before the maths teacher is about to throw a piece of chalk your way for drifting off? When you don’t have a mechanism that allows you to make a choice, the act of choosing is a moot point. But when you’re aware of such a mechanism and you’re categorically denied it, you live with anger and the paranoia of always looking over your shoulder. My sleep had been fleeting and fitful, for most of my life. We only had curtains, and the door linking our room to hers, only had a latch on her side. This was our family holiday home, before which, Ammamma told me, it had been mum’s visiting house; for her to come and stay and make art or read… when her episodes got worse and more violent… when she was growing up… A rectangular house with three adjacent rooms, each with its own bathroom, it was built so mum could see the sea at all times, from not too far, but not drowning close. The wrought-iron main-gate guides you to the living room, which expands into an open kitchen/dining space, with wooden screen partitions demarcating the areas. A connecting door leads into Mum’s old bedroom, and another, opposite, into her study-studio. I remember visiting it as a child, and running the length of the house through the neatly aligned doors till she yelled at me. When we moved, the studio became my bedroom, and the latches had already been removed from my side of the entrance and my bathroom doors.
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I had learned how to swim during our vacations there. Ammamma would bring Chinnari to help with chores, and Chinnari made the best daal in all of Chirala. In the early days, when Mattu was only days old, Dad still had humour, and fondness for Mum. Maybe childhood empathies and fondnesses turn you into boiling frogs and forebears of boiling frogs.
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Ammamma used to tell us how they were childhood sweethearts, how Dad divided his week into two halves; three days for his friends and three to come play with Mum. On Sunday’s he’d go with his uncle to the city and get Mum treats. As they got older, he’d get her books from the city library. Mum had stopped going to school completely around the same age as she pulled me out of mine. Generational curses. Thanks to a prosperous fishing business, her parents had found her a governess too. Dad was the only one she went to the beach with; and a fisherman who worked for her father would take them for a sunrise boat ride in the sea. Dad was also the only outsider who was allowed into her studio. Marriage had seemed like an organic culmination of their bond to everyone.
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Dad had taken up a job in Paradeep, not wanting to take the sea away from her. But the unfamiliarity of faces and tongues started to take a toll. To calm her nerves, he encouraged her to take the 10th and 12th grade exams formally. She did. Then graduation through open university. Her nerves were still raging when he put me in her belly. Even after I was out of it. They had bought into the idea of children fixing everything wrong with a marriage. When I was six, they decided that I really needed a sibling. She got six less years of the claustrophobic four walls than me, and I got six more years of open skies than she did.
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Maitreyi
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We’re on our way back. I’m sure there’s wind all around, I miss breathing. Appu still has some softness, in her cursedness. Mine is one of rigidity. Nothing ever moves, except mum’s ink. I’m a hole in a needle through which her black umbilical cord passes to coil around and choke Appu. She has always needed Appu to be malleable, and for me to be fossilised from fear.
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We were products of stories, two generations of girls coming into womanhood, surrounded by stories and governesses. Ammamma’s, Ms. Tino’s, the ones from the books, dad’s, Chinnari’s. Even mum’s. So many words, and only as many people to share them with, as fingers on a hand. Maybe Mum didn’t realise what that could do. When there’s only five people, all the words that would have otherwise found their way out into the world, stagnate, become sludge, bringing rot. And they did. We are an echo-system within the contained sludge of mum’s making.
That night, she had come back into our room with the black purse. She had ordered it online for Appu. ‘A present’, she said, and that she was sorry. Appu had barely glanced at the purse before scorching Mum with a ‘must be hideous like everything else you do.’ ‘Hideous? How dare she, how ungrateful! Eeshwar should see how his daughter’s tongue struck with venom. What did she want?’
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‘Maybe real mothering’, Appu had snarled back.
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‘She had no idea what real mothers should be like,’ Mum had hissed. ‘Real mothers should never let their children out of sight. That they could ever do anything otherwise was beyond her. So yes, she was the only one she knew who was a real mother, not even her own mother had got it right. Appu should be thanking her stars because she had cared enough to want to always protect her. If she had her way, she’d carry both of us in that same hideous purse. Too bad she couldn’t.’ Appu had said that she would rather be dead.
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‘What life was she living, anyway?’ Her voice breaking, she had croaked again about how she had never even given us latches or any privacy.
‘What did we need latches for? Had anyone ever barged in on us changing, peeing or pooping? Weren’t she and Eeshwar always careful?’
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‘What was she talking about? Why should they have had to tell them these things in the first place? What if we wanted to watch porn? Or touch ourselves? Or have a private conversation?’
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At the speed of a flash of lightning, Appu’s curls were in mum’s hand, dragging her out of bed, slamming her onto the mosaic floor. There had been some blood, and Dad had come rushing inside.
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‘That’s quite enough, Leela’, he had barked. ‘We were going to find a family therapist the next day. Things needed to change.’ His voice was matching Mum’s cold register. He had helped Appu up, who clung him out of shock and fright. ‘Family therapy?’ Mum had sneered at us. Then, something in her had shifted. She must have spotted the shoulder strap of our travel bag sticking out of the wardrobe. ‘Was Appu planning on running away? Did she plan to take me with?’ She’d started violently pulling everything out of the bag. ‘As a matter of fact, yes, she had planned on taking me with. She couldn’t doom me to this blackness anymore, now that I was finally 18,’ Appu, having nothing left to lose, had matter-of-factly stated.
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‘An ungrateful bitch, nothing more, throwing away her mother’s love.’
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‘Love? Surely, she meant caging and ring-mastering? Like smart circus animals?’
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At dawn, after their voices had turned coarse from the screaming, a flimsy quiet had finally been reached. Dad was leaving, to get Ms. Tino back early. And would look for therapist recommendations that day. ‘Could he expect peace and silence till then? Please?’ Appu had agreed on the condition that she and I be allowed to spend the day out, at the sea, that we couldn’t possibly stand her anymore. Mom had begrudgingly acquiesced. We had stayed out till sunset, out of Mum’s line of sight.
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When we returned, the house was quiet. Dad’s face even had a shadow of a smile. Mum got up to get two fistfuls of salt for the both of us. Sniffling through unhindered tears, she told us how that was the last time, how Dad had convinced her to let us go, and be. How if it was okay with us, she wanted to sleep in our room that night. ‘Could we please let her have that?’
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The cool dabs of water on the eyelids felt calmingly sharp against the burning tears in our eyes. Appu agreed. ‘Of course, Mum. She would also take the black purse along when we left, she was sorry for calling it hideous.’
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The events of the night before, and a long swim in the sea had left us both leaden with fatigue. We all agreed to a family game of rummy.
She made us dinner, and later, black coffee. Premonitory black. ‘We looked too beat for rummy. Coffee was going to liven us right up!’
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It had been the only night of a happy motherly fawning, and we lapped it up. Like a monster pimple had been popped, and with the poisonous pus out, the crater could finally begin to heal. The Night of The Fever Dreams and Distortion followed The Night of The Fight. I had been sure Dad would leave Mum after that. He hadn’t. I’d like to think he stayed for us. Guilt doesn’t let one abandon or look away.
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Mum’s snug palm picks me up, then a heavy kiss, and the ink starts to fill me again.
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Aparajita
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The goodnight kiss.
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More of her suffocating love blots into me, with the black need to win.
Went to Uppalapadu today, in Shyam’s auto. I’m cautiously optimistic about therapy. Don’t think it’s too little, too late. I wouldn’t change a thing about wanting to protect you two. I’m doing this for your father, maybe I can still salvage that. I went there early in the morning, only a few touristy people were there. I walked. I spotted a few birds - pelicans and painted storks, black cormorants - the ones you called Batman birds. I saw two I hadn’t before, the common coot and the black headed ibis. Beautiful. I even had chai at a bandi. When disorientation started to set in, I asked Shyam to bring me back. The whole of Ramapuram takes pity on me. But, it all works out. I’m sure in a year’s time I’ll be travelling your bucket lists. I’ll go to Iceland and Norway first, and tell you all about the northern lights. I’d like for your father to come with me. He will, won’t he? He’s not one to hold on to anger, even if it’s just radio silence for now. Ms. Tino calls every day to check on me. The therapist tells me I can tell her anything and everything. Ha! Imagine that! Chinnari misses you both, sometimes I see her wiping tears on her kurta sleeve. I wish you’d seen how loved you both are. Ammamma called me today. She still thinks the fishermen will find your bodies. I let her. She wants your souls to rest in peace. Tomorrow, I will visit her, she’s old and needs me like I need you both. I’ll give her your love too. A thousand lies to cover one, but what else can I do?
The ink coalesces into words. I let it pool; it feels like a sludge thickening and congealing within the pages… I wait the unending wait…
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Maitreyi
Dawn is breaking. As the morning stretches, like a lazy cat, Mum clicks my cap back on. We’re going to Ammamma’s today, inside the purse, bumping and bobbing. Another day, another say. Can’t have got far, before we suddenly lurch up and forward, like vomit pushing through the sphincters. When we land, I can feel a crack in my cap. Someone hastily picks me up and shoves me back inside the purse.
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Aparajita
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I’m splayed on cold tar. I feel abrasions and impact creases in my pages and spine. Someone indelicately pushes me back inside and I feel Mattu again…
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Maitreyi
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There’s a lot of hurried movement. And we’re put down a lot. I’m losing my circadian sense. Dad’s coarse hand pulls us out together. He wraps Appu around me, and stuffs us into his pocket. Appu’s hugging me again. He’s almost running, is he running away? Taking us with him?
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The thing about voids is that, even brokenness is welcome. The indefinite isolation makes for an impossibly difficult passing of time. And it’s making me anxious for the next story.
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I’m stably resting on Appu again. And then, an untimely, laboured kiss… I can feel Dad’s warm tears as he too plants a kiss and rests my nib on Appu…
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Aparajita
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Nothing makes sense. Time is sluggish and I feel layers of restlessness. Too many erratic movements. What is she doing with the purse?
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After God-knows-how-long it’s Dad who pulls us out, wrapping me around Mattu, he starts. Did dad get through to her to reverse all this?
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He puts us down. Different surface, different everything. Picking me back up almost right after, he holds me against his face and cries. I can sense his desperation through the rhythmic and quivering sobs. Then I feel it, Mum… lips chapped and cracked, breath frail and shallow. Then the nib…
Curses come back manyfold. This is the last time I’m talking to you. He begged for me to bring you back. I would if I could. ‘I’ll tell them that they had run away, I’ll manage, somehow, anyhow,’ he said. Noble man, your father. I did love you both, I want you to know that. Even with my bones broken and organs punctured, I love you. I had to tell you that. He beseeched me not to make him do it, not the inkpot, no more of that he begged, but in the face of that or nothing, he relented. ‘Only because it’s your last wish’ he said. It hurts, but he’s hurt too. I don’t need him to promise to take care of you. He will. I’m finally starting to see how - an all or nothing kind of love - is different for him and I. He loves you both to death, you’re lucky, lucky girls. I’m going away soon, forever. To some relief, I suppose. Forgive me if you can. If it’s too late, and I failed, then I’m sorry…
Dread builds up, like steam in a pressure cooker.
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Maitreyi
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Mum’s dying?
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I remember his stories about Mum. Leela’s leelas he used to call them. From the time when Mum was still capable of smiling. Despite the lurking, invisible blackness that spread and smothered life. I was aware of it. I don’t think I ever got far from it. She had imparted some of the palpable dread she carried within, to me in her womb. Fear had always held her hostage. Appu had courage, reaching out of the penumbra of the blackness, I was born into the thick of it. Sometimes I helped the blackness pull Appu back. Mum and I, each in our corners with a book, crickets chirping in the background. The tendrils of blackness always slowly engulfing us, reaching for Appu playing chess with dad, or out on the shore, till the tide was high enough to set mum’s curfew alarms off. The Night of The Fever Dreams, mum slept between us, with our heads resting, each on a shoulder. She had patted and hummed us to sleep. The fever dreams had begun immediately. My body, in a state of absolute arrest, with heat peaking to a melting point. I was melting, moulding, re-forming. When I couldn’t breathe anymore, I awoke, to find only phantasmagoria. I willed myself to wake up, trying to clench every inch of my body that had already metamorphosed. When I realised, I was already awake, the horror had dawned upon me.
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Later that morning, she placed me on Appu. I knew right away that the pages were her. She had a softness to her that I didn’t. Mum’s cruelness flowing through me to her, word by word. Took me sometime to realise, there was nothing to be done, but mourn the deaths of our unrealised agencies.
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Aparajita
I don’t know what death and grief mean anymore. I would have grieved her, for even now, my pages seem to be waiting to burst into a heart-rending scream.
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My last night with a voice, I had a heart to heart with Mum, while she lulled me into a restful sleep for the first time. Then nightmares took over, I was disintegrating, into bits, like snowflakes of flesh. Then felted, layer upon layer of fleshy snowflakes being pressed, then splitting along ruler straight fault lines, and binding together once more. My skin like fuzzy moss, and bones, brittle paper.
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I thought I awoke into sleep paralysis that kept on lasting. Anytime now, I thought to myself, kept thinking, till clarity had cut through the fog, like my neatly cleaved pages. I was empty, blank…
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I felt Mattu, icy, metallic, pressing on me, and Mum’s confession.
I had to do it. I didn’t want to but your father would have taken you away from me… the coffee last night… only way I could think of... You both love it so much, so I had to will my Wish pour into you through it... and now we’ll have a better relationship. I will make you understand, we have a lifetime ahead, and no conflict in sight till the horizon. My tears and ink will bring my voice to you both. Your father’s too, if he chooses to. I’ll plead with him to, so that you have us both. I love you. Slowly, you’ll understand. I’ll even travel for you. The harm I could never risk coming to your bodies, I’ll risk with mine. And I’ll tell you everything I see. EVERYTHING!! I know you would have preferred it different, but maybe one day soon, you’ll find it in you… some consolation... And maybe even forgiveness?
Soon, the hope that I was dreaming faded away.
I told Ammamma that you both went swimming and didn’t return. Our fishermen are looking for your bloated bodies in the sea while you’re here - crisp, safe, dry and warm. Let them look, people have a tendency to give up. You won’t talk to me anymore but at least you can’t hate me with venom. Your father glares at me like I’m a murderer. He’ll come around…
The Night of The Fight, in dooming me to silent observance, she robbed herself of the satisfaction of hearing me disagree with her.
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Maitreyi
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I feel the familiar table at home. Appu is next to me. When Dad puts ink in me. I bleed black; for the last time as it turns out.
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Aparajita
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I’m crinkled and fatigued. I feel her nib again… Dad’s tears and ink spill out, seeping in.
Leela’s leelas are at an end, my loves. Your mother is dead, taking her twisted fears with her. Your Ammamma is inconsolable, but her conscience is clean and her grief innocent. I’ve been cowardly, guilty, and helpless. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t deserve to, after what my spinelessness did to you girls. I couldn’t save you. But I will free you. Fire devours all. Sail my little girls, into the dancing flames, with all your stories. It’s the only way. The ambulance will be here soon. I wish you all the peace and rest I couldn’t bring you in life.
Another long bumpy ride. Wrapped around Mattu, I’m snuggled in Dad’s big palms. I can feel him hold us preciously. My fuzzy skin absorbs his tears and snot. When the ambulance ride ends, I sense Dad step out into heat and smoke. Must be the cremation ground. I feel Dad’s body rock with violent sobs as he clutches us tightly. I hope he knows we’d hug him back if we could, and sob with him. He slowed down, breathing in and out, as if steeling himself to let us go. And at long last, it happens. It feels like being flung away from the far end of a Columbus ride, and landing on something jagged and warm. The mossy, fuzzy walls of me singe, releasing the blackness that had congealed into me. The heat rises and rises and rises. The flames lick me tenderly until I curl, crackle and burn. The viscosity boils and eventually evaporates. I feel Mattu close, melting, disintegrating despite the permanence of her metal body. A few crisp moments later, we’re ashes, we’re free.
Maitreyi
​
Throughout the ambulance ride, and at the cremation ground, I’m cocooned inside the concentric circles of Appu and my dad’s sturdy fingers curled around me. He’s holding us tight and snug, and I can feel his wet tears on my metal head, and slipping onto my nib through the crack in my cap. I wish I could wipe them off. The ambulance ride had gone by in silence - with no more mum to breathe further misery into our lives, and the logistics of not having human parts to hear dad or speak to him. I sense him kneel, break into violent sobs as he tries to hold his small-notebook-and-fountain-pen-daughters close to his heart. He awkwardly cradles us against the crook of his neck, and for a few brief seconds, Appu and I settle into the rhythm of the long, grounding breaths that he was forcing himself to draw in, and exhale. We’re flung together then, into burning heat. I melt. I explode. The residual black ink bubbles and sputters. The flames lap up my muted screams. Fear evaporates, with the rest of my body, leaving no residue of itself or Appu or me.
Bachu Hiranmayee
Bachu Hiranmayee calls herself a creature of stories, you’ll often find her gushing about the latest mind-blowing book, story, or piece of writing she's come across. Her favourite writers include - Margaret Atwood, Arundhati Roy, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ted Chiang. She’s a Mental Health Professional based out of Hyderabad, and lives with her friends and three adorable cat-demons. Her writing often reflects real world themes, woven into narratives unfolding in speculative worlds or scenarios. She loves to work with metaphors, and makes them literal in her stories ‘to see what happens’. She’s a vocal advocate for social justice issues, and considers herself a better essayist than an orator. Although typically a fly on the wall, she can be wickedly funny in the company of like-minded friends.
Writer, Mental Health Professional
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