Funny Boy (5 page)

I rushed into Janaki’s room.

“I’m going to tell Janaki you’re in her room!” Her Fatness cried.

“Tell and catch my long fat tail!” I shouted back.

I looked around Janaki’s room. Her Fatness must have hidden it here. There was no other place. I lifted Janaki’s mattress. There was nothing under it, save a few Sinhala love-comics. I
went to Janaki’s suitcase and began to go through the clothes she kept neatly folded inside it. As silent as a shadow, Her Fatness slipped into the room. I became aware of her presence and turned. But too late. She took the sari from the shelf where she had hidden it and ran out the door. Leaving the suitcase still open, I ran after her. The sari clutched to her chest, she rushed for the kitchen door. Luckily Sonali and Lakshmi were blocking her way. Seeing me coming at her, she jumped off the porch and began to head towards the front of the house. I leapt off the porch and chased after her. If she got to the front of the house, she would go straight to Ammachi.

Just as she reached the passageway, I managed to get hold of her arm. She turned, desperate, and struck out at me. Ducking her blow, I reached for the sari and managed to get some of it in my hand. She tried to take it back from me, but I held on tightly. Crying out, she jerked away from me with her whole body, hoping to wrest the sari from my grip. With a rasping sound, the sari began to tear. I yelled at her to stop pulling, but she jerked away again and the sari tore all the way down. There was a moment of stunned silence. I gazed at the torn sari in my hand, at the long threads that hung from it. Then, with a wail of anguish, I rushed at Her Fatness and grabbed hold of her hair. She screamed and flailed at me. I yanked her head so far to one side that it almost touched her shoulder. She let out a guttural sound and struck out desperately at me. Her fist caught me in the stomach and she managed to loosen my grip.

She began to run towards the porch steps, crying out for Ammachi and Janaki. I ran after her and grabbed the sleeve of her dress before she went up the porch steps. She struggled
against my grip and the sleeve ripped open and hung down her arm like a broken limb. Free once again, she stumbled up the steps towards the kitchen door, shouting at the top of her voice.

Janaki rushed out of the kitchen. She raised her hand and looked around for the first person to wallop, but when she saw Her Fatness with her torn dress, she held her raised hand to her cheek and cried out in consternation, “Buddu Ammo!”

Now Her Fatness began to call out only for Ammachi.

Janaki came hurriedly towards her. “Shhh! Shhhh!” she said, but Her Fatness only increased the volume of her cry.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Janaki cried impatiently.

Her Fatness pointed to me.

“Janakiii! See what that boy did,” she replied.

“I didn’t do anything,” I yelled, enraged that she was trying to push the blame onto me.

I ran back to where I had dropped the sari, picked it up, and held it out to Janaki.

“Yes!” Sonali cried, coming to my defence. “She did it and now she’s blaming him.”

“It’s her fault!” Lakshmi said, also taking my side.

Now all the voices of the girl cousins rose in a babble supporting my case and accusing Her Fatness.

“Quiet!” Janaki shouted in desperation. “Quiet!”

But nobody heeded her. We all crowded around her, so determined to give our version of the story that it was a while before we became aware of Ammachi’s presence in the kitchen doorway. Gradually, like the hush that descends on a garrison town at the sound of enemy guns, we all became quiet. Even Her Fatness stopped her wailing.

Ammachi looked at all of us and then her gaze came to rest on Janaki. “How many times have I told you to keep these children quiet?” she said, her tone awful.

Janaki, always so full of anger, now wrung her hands like a child in fear of punishment. “I told them …” she started to say, but Ammachi raised her hand for silence. Her Fatness began to cry again, more out of fear than anything else. Ammachi glared at her, and, as if to deflect her look, Her Fatness held up her arm with the ripped sleeve.

“Who did that?” Ammachi said after a moment.

Her Fatness pointed at me and her crying got even louder.

Ammachi looked at me sternly and then beckoned me with her index finger.

“Look!” I cried and held out the sari as if in supplication. “Look at what she did!”

But Ammachi was unmoved by the sight of the sari and continued to beckon me.

As I looked at her, I could almost hear the singing of the cane as it came down through the air, and then the sharp crack, which would be followed by searing pain. The time Diggy had been caned for climbing the roof came back to me, his pleas for mercy, his shouts of agony and loud sobs.

Before I could stop myself, I cried out angrily at Ammachi, “It’s not fair! Why should I be punished?”

“Come here,” Ammachi said.

“No. I won’t.”

Ammachi came to the edge of the porch, but rather than backing away I remained where I was.

“Come here, you vamban,” she said to me sharply.

“No!” I cried back. “I hate you, you old fatty.”

The other cousins and even Janaki gasped at my audacity. Ammachi began to come down the steps. I stood my ground for a few moments but then my courage gave out. I turned, and, with the sari still in my hands, I fled. I ran from the back garden to the front gate and out. In the field across the way, the boys were still at their cricket game. I hurried down the road towards the sea. At the railway lines I paused briefly, went across, then scrambled over the rocks to the beach. Once there, I sat on a rock and flung the sari down next to me. “I hate them, I hate them all,” I whispered to myself. “I wish I was dead.”

I put my head down and felt the first tears begin to wet my knees.

After a while I was still. The sound of the waves, their regular rhythm, had a calming effect on me. I leaned back against the rock behind me, watching them come in and go out. Soon the heat of the rocks became unbearable and I stood up, removed my slippers, and went down the beach to the edge of the water.

I had never seen the sea this colour before. Our visits to the beach were usually in the early evening when the sea was a turquoise blue. Now, under the mid-day sun, it had become hard silver, so bright that it hurt my eyes.

The sand burned my feet, and I moved closer to the waves to cool them. I looked down the deserted beach, whose white sand almost matched the colour of the sea, and saw tall
buildings shimmering in the distance like a mirage. This daytime beach seemed foreign compared with the beach of the early evening, which was always crowded with strollers and joggers and vendors. Now both the beach and the sea, once so familiar, were like an unknown country into which I had journeyed by chance.

I knew then that something had changed. But how, I didn’t altogether know.

The large waves, impersonal and oblivious to my despair, threw themselves against the beach, their crests frothing and hissing. Soon I would have to turn around and go back to my grandparents’ house, where Ammachi awaited me with her thinnest cane, the one that left deep impressions on the backs of our thighs, so deep that sometimes they had to be treated with Gentian Violet. The thought of that cane as it cut through the air, humming like a mosquito, made me wince even now, so far away from it.

I glanced at the sari lying on the rock where I had thrown it and I knew that I would never enter the girls’ world again. Never stand in front of Janaki’s mirror, watching a transformation take place before my eyes. No more would I step out of that room and make my way down the porch steps to the altar, a creature beautiful and adored, the personification of all that was good and perfect in the world. The future spend-the-days were no longer to be enjoyed, no longer to be looked forward to. And then there would be the loneliness. I would be caught between the boys’ and the girls’ worlds, not belonging or wanted in either. I would have to think of things with which to amuse myself, find ways to endure the lunches and teas when
the cousins would talk to one another about what they had done and what they planned to do for the rest of the day.

The bell of St. Fatima’s Church rang out the angelus, and its melancholy sound seemed like a summoning. It was time to return to my grandparents’ house. My absence at the lunch-table would be construed as another act of defiance and eventually Janaki would be sent to fetch me. Then the punishment I received would be even more severe.

With a heavy heart, I slowly went back up the beach, not caring that the sand burned the soles of my feet. I put my slippers on, picked up my sari, and climbed up the rocks. I paused and looked back at the sea one last time. Then I turned, crossed the railway lines, and began my walk up Ramanaygam Road to the future that awaited me.

A
PROPOSAL
arrived for Radha Aunty even before she returned from America.

I was in my grandparents’ drawing room, dusting all their teak furniture when I heard Ammachi telling the aunts and uncles about it. The Nagendras were the family interested in Radha Aunty. At the mention of the name, the aunts let out little sounds of pleasure and admiration. Old Mr. Nagendra had been at Cambridge with Appachi, and the families were known to each other. His son, Rajan, had met Radha Aunty at a dinner party in America, and he had been so taken with her that he had written to his parents asking them to make a proposal on his behalf. Ammachi had phoned Radha Aunty and, according to her, Radha Aunty seemed very amenable to the idea. Rajan would be returning to Sri Lanka a few months after Radha Aunty was to come back.

“What kind of a man is he?” one of the uncles asked.

“An engineer,” Ammachi replied. “Works for a big company in America. Very well off.”

“An engineer!” one of the aunts cried. “How wonderful for Radha.”

“And such a good family, too,” another added.

“What about his character?” a third asked.

“Excellent,” Ammachi replied. “Doesn’t drink or womanize. And we know for a fact that there is no insanity in the family.”

As I listened to them, I felt an excitement stir in me, an excitement that had died with my expulsion from the world of the girls. There was going to be a wedding in the family! A real wedding, in a real church with a real bride. I had been at other weddings, but never had a chance to take part in the preparations that went into the marriage ceremony. Now it would be my turn to experience all those delights. I looked around the drawing room. In a few months this room would be transformed by the preparations for a wedding. I saw it all in my mind: the buying of the sari, the making of the confetti, the wrapping of the cake, the delicious pala harams, the jasmine garlands, the bridesmaids.

Radha Aunty, who was the youngest in my father’s family, had left for America four years ago when I was three, and I could not remember what she looked like. I went into the corridor to look at the family photographs that were hung there. But all the pictures were old ones, taken when Radha Aunty was a
baby or a young girl. Try as I might, I couldn’t get an idea of what she looked like now. My imagination, however, was quick to fill in this void. Since my idea of romance and marriage was inseparable from Sinhala films and Janaki’s love-comics, the picture I formed of Radha Aunty bore a strong resemblance to that goddess of the Sinhala screen Malini Fonseka. The Radha Aunty of my mind was plump with big rounded hips. She had a fair complexion and large kohl-rimmed eyes. Her hair was straight and made into an elaborate coiffure on top of her head, and she wore a Manipuri sari with a gold border.

I was so engrossed in my daydream of this lovely creature that I didn’t notice that the aunts and uncles had left and Ammachi had come out into the corridor.

“Ah, ah!” she cried angrily when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”

Without replying, I turned and ran back into the drawing room.

“I’m coming to check your work soon,” Ammachi called out warningly. I began to fervently dust her furniture.

Since that fateful spend-the-day a few months ago, when Her Fatness and I had fought, Ammachi had undertaken to master what she considered my “devil’s temperament.” In addition to the caning which I had received, a caning so severe that she broke the cane while administering it, I was assigned a task each spend-the-day which would keep me occupied and “out of mischief.” The tasks were unpleasant, and what made them unbearable was Ammachi’s constant supervision,
the high standard of excellence she demanded, and the cuffs I received on the side of my head for any mistakes I made.

The only respite I had was in the afternoon, when Ammachi retired to bed for an hour. Janaki had taken pity on me and, during the time my grandmother rested, she would allow me to read her Sinhala love-comics in the open corridor that joined the kitchen to the main house. That afternoon, her love-comics took on a new significance. My favourite was the love story of Mani-lal and Sakuntala and, as I re-read, I saw instead Rajan Nagendra and Radha Aunty. I imagined them standing under an araliya tree, Radha Aunty leaning against its trunk with her head bent modestly, a slight tear in her eye; Rajan Nagendra, his hand pressed against the tree, his face serious as he implored her to marry him. Now Sakuntala started to cry, just as I imagined Radha Aunty would. I turned the page, and, there, Mani-lal had taken her in his arms. He would ask her parents for their consent. Sakuntala now nodded meekly. I turned the pages rapidly. The part about asking the parents and their refusing didn’t interest me. I wanted to read the inevitable end, about the wedding. Sakuntala smiling through her tears, Mani-lal, a look of fierce pride on his face. I closed the comic book. My feelings were so stirred up that I couldn’t sit still any longer. I went down the steps into the side garden and began to walk along the edge of the drain that ran along the ground under the kitchen window. I could hardly believe that all I had read in those comics was going to come true. Soon Radha Aunty would return, followed by Rajan Nagendra. Then they would be married, and I would find myself in the midst of a real-life love story.