Backwards

For Debalina.

ACT I

A pinching sharpness pierced the dark. The hazy shapes of a dream receded swiftly leaving merely an afterimage of a possible past and disorientation. Slowly, slowly and yet, in a rush, it seemed, the shrill pinch aggressed upon the dark until it was no longer dark at all.  Neeli felt her body stretch out around her. Under the harsh noise, she became aware of being a pile of limbs, unwieldy and haphazardly strewn under the rajjai. Her left arm shot out of the sheets in habit and tried to extinguish the assault – her fingers crept all over the fat alarm clock until they found the right button and then pressed it.

All was well again.

Yet the renewed silence failed to bring back the comfortable oblivion. Neeli could not sink back into the pillow. On the contrary, a thin film of sweat began to spread across her body. Still half-conscious, she felt two half-moons of wetness spread into her armpits, just as a thick line of moisture ran from the nape of her neck to the small of her back soaking the sheet. Within a few minutes Neeli began to feel constricted and tried to throw away the duvet which in the chiaroscuro of sleep and awakening had taken the supernatural proportions of a leviathan. The struggle seemed to last for ages. The cunning beast, invisible yet heavy as a sea, caught her limbs in between its folds. Each fold morphed into an antediluvian crag, holding back Neeli’s foot and arm and torso and waist in an adamantine grip, determined to subsume her in its monstrous nightly existence that had nothing to do with the harmless patterned rajjai that lay on the bed during the day. The harder she struggled, the larger and tighter the ropes became until Neeli was so thoroughly entangled that she could only move her head and nothing else.

‘No, no, no, no…please!’

Neeli’s innards and remnants of the cheap vodka from the previous night coalesced into a perfect scream as they tried to rush out of her. She swallowed several times, exhaled and then went totally still. By now her retinas had adjusted to the dark and the room began to make itself known with a menacing stillness. From her trap, she could make out the clock, a large plastic thing she had bought at a sale. It sat round and eternal, emitting a gentle, obsessive tick-tick-tick-tick… She turned her head slightly, very slightly to the left. A windowless wall stood right next to her bed. Faintly bright in the dark, it was a buttery yellow during the day. A dark square hung in the middle, an old film poster her father had sent on a birthday. Nothing else. Just a wall bare except for a poster and a clock. That was all there was to her outside the tangle of the bed.
A wave of despair broke over Neeli. Her temples began to throb and she felt a little hardness form in her throat. Here she was, totally trapped, alone in the dark, in a city far away from home. She could not tell what time it was but it was not morning. She had no idea why alarm had gone off in the middle of the night and she had no idea what she was doing there, on that bed, in that awkward clamminess, flailing in a jigsaw of cheap bedding and underwear. In a rush the images of a cool cement floor, a cotton bed sheet and a jute swing in a balcony in a faraway city flickered through her mind. But before she caught up with them, before she had a chance to protest and forget, the other images crowded in.

Suddenly the old, familiar line of a clavicle fell into her mind. It just floated in nothingness – a dark, supple hue of the skin clinging to the bone and the contour of the shoulder above it, falling to the side in a graceful jigsaw with the bone. Then the image began to grow. A long, mannerist neck soared in a tilt and soon, above it, a soft, pale face with thick eyebrows and the soft shimmering dot of a silver nose ring.

Neeli clamped down on herself, evading the inevitable for long as possible. She tried to conjure up other memories; she forced herself to consider whatever had elicited pain, resentment, envy. She was willing to take little pin-pricks to avoid the avalanche; her limbs shot out and thrashed against the death hold of the tangle. Everything began to dance in fury around Neeli’s confined form until the distractions faded away and the memory inundated her with a colossal, sea-heavy, unbeatable torrent of knowledge, guilt and shame.

Act II

Neeli gingerly picked up the saree by its edge. It was their mother’s and they had both seen it many times in her iron almirah which she kept all her clothes.

Rina had never quite grasped the concept of a wardrobe. All her life, she had put her clothes in a large free-standing closet and this strange medieval almirah was always locked. For Neeli and Tinni as little girls, the gravest privilege was to be present in the room when Rina opened her closet. They would point at the yards and yards of folded silks and zaree and ask what each one was called. The names, as intricate and soft as the textiles, would then float around the  room… kanjeevaram … narayanpet …Varanasi … strange beautiful tissues of music alighting on each folded saree. This privilege only occurred on certain days of the year. They would mostly be birthdays and school functions when the sisters would nag and nag until Rina gave up and let them choose a saree to wear.

Neeli always chose the pale, unstarched cottons. Rina tried very hard to understand the rationale behind her thirteen-year-old’s strange, middle-aged taste but she never got anywhere. Neeli just pointed and waited until her resigned mother brought out the old, modest beige tangail.

Neeli gazed at the border of the blood-bright silk that she held between her fingers. Absentmindedly she stroked the outlandish gold paisleys.

Her first memory of this saree had disappeared a long time back; a heap of later memories of remembering, missing and wanting had crystallized into a perfect, glorious moment of once-upon-a-time rigor and divested it of all imprecisions. This memory of a hundred memories was the beginning of many things in Neeli’s life, and the end of her love for her sister was one of them.

It was a sunny, wintry afternoon. The bedding had been put out in the veranda to be warmed and Neeli and Tinni sat on the warmed mattress as the sun slowly chafed their backs. There was a crispy scent of roasting aubergine and cilantro in the air, and soon enough, Rina appeared in the veranda, wiping sweat from her brow with her saree. Neeli still remembered the efficiency of that motion and the graceful tuck of the anchal into her waist.

Neeli had inherited her mother’s tremendous will and hard looks. Tinni, even in her infancy, was the exact opposite with her liquid, wondering eyes and long neck. If the family had any hopes in the adage of looks being deceptive, Tinni proved them all wrong.

Her name, face and nature formed a seamless symphony that was very hard to ignore and equally hard to recognize. Everything simply came together in her. The pixie grace of her limbs conspired with her disyllabic little cowbell of a name. Her nature was mostly a mystery to everyone because in a family of rampant arguments and fights, Tinni had somehow always managed to smile and murmur her way out of tricky moments. No one had ever seen her angry. Unlike Rina, who saw her daughter as an unearthly being, entrusted to her care but not really her own, Neeli had always been certain that her angelic sister had simply found the key to a secret place where she could stow away the redness of the eye, the tears, the throbbing temples and the stream of expletives that showed them all up.

Rina pulled out her wedding silk gently out of its crepe-paper wrap and spread it out in the sun. ‘The fabric needs to breathe’, she cooed. The airing of the saree was an annual ritual and one of utmost solemnity. Every winter, Rina arrayed her dearest, most delicate sarees in the sun. It was ostensibly for the moths and the damp, but everyone suspected it was also because Rina, most of the time a self-effacing wife and mother, just liked to see her treasures shimmering in the noon sun.

ACT III

Neeli held the same saree now, in her hands, more than a decade later.

The ghastly glare of the tube light blinked and sputtered.

The explosive, unspeakable dullness of the summer twilight coiled tighter.

Neeli continued to stare at the anchal. She was not aware of its being a saree anymore. It could have been a piece of paper or a severed limb.

Behind her blank, unmoving eyes, it was 1987 again and she was a little twelve-year old woman, sitting on the veranda, hugging her knees.

Rina suddenly turned towards her elder daughter.

‘How many times, Neeli, just how many times have I asked you not to sit like that?’

Neeli was too excited about the saree to care – ‘But father is not even here. You said, only in front of father. Besides, I am wearing full pants. You can’t see anything!’

Rina turned red. It was a raging battle in the house. Neeli had just turned twelve and she was simply unable to understand why a girl who had begun to bleed must never sit cross-legged. Every time Neeli was told off, she would retort with the very unladylike –‘But I am wearing PANTS!’

All this would obviously not be a problem if she wore the long, ankle-grazing skirts that Tinni had begun to wear, even though she was eight. But Neeli had refused to come out her ‘tape frocks’. By now the white, child-like smocks were indecently short and Neeli’s insistence on pairing them with the ‘full pants’ did not make it any better.

Neeli had never told anyone why she had refused to wear the skirts. She did not know it herself. But every time she saw Tinni glide down the stairs or sit at the window with her skirt dangling in great folds below her, Neeli had felt a little needle-point of something that she could not describe.  A strange fascination seemed to root her to the spot. A fervent love for the sight rose up until it became a nausea that swirled inside her.
Neeli often stole into Rina’s bedroom and stood in front of the mirror staring at the plain, round, moon-face in it. She would think of Tinni’s soft, long hair. Her own hair hung around her face in glum simplicity. Tinni’s shadow seemed to stand beside her and point out all the bits of the body that needed sewing, cutting and lifting. The blunt, flat nose, the relentless hair on the arms, the plump cheeks...the girl in the mirror was not her. Something seemed to have gone wrong somewhere and Neeli was being punished by having to wear the body of this mirror-girl.

And now, now it was Tinni’s wedding in a month. She would be enclosed in the crimson swirls and folds of Rina’s happy marriage, while Neeli, the older, the expectant, the righful would have to sit in an old yellow room, full of cobwebs and memories of dead men where the walls constantly peeled and the cockroaches quivered harmlessly, feeling their way around twilit kitchens.

ACT IV

The sudden howl of the phone jolted Neeli out of her reverie. She looked up and noticed that the orange of the sundown had dwindled to a bleary grey outside.

Her legs felt strange and heavy as she maneuvered them towards the shrill center of violence. She came out of her room and the dereliction of the house exploded into a violent consciousness.

The rusty meter box full of hungry live wires gaped out of the damp walls of the corridor, snaking around the yellow half-light of fat bulbs. Neeli took slow, measured steps. There was no hurry, not anymore.

Her eyes fell on the large photo of Rina on the wall. She seemed to have sprouted an ethereal plait above her head for a second and then the lizard flicked its tail and scuttled across the wall. Rina continued to hang on the wall, lopsided, patiently smiling through a desiccated string of tuberoses, hung upon the frame on the death anniversary the previous year.

The phone never stopped howling. Neeli had been hoping that whoever was calling would give up before she reached the dark belly of the bedroom. But this was an urgent, desperate call and not to be ignored. Neeli signed and picked up the antediluvian receiver.

Tinni’s effusive rush of pleasantries caught her by the neck. There was no escaping as the enthusiasm about the wedding, her fiancée and her work leaked out of the phone and into Neeli’s skull. Waves upon waves of energetic love and happiness seemed to issue out of the receiver held a few inches from her ear.

At last, Tinni’s voice came to a startled pause. Neeli’s silence had finally punctured the gaiety. They both waited for each other to pick up the conversation until, at last, Tinni asked about the saree.

‘So, um, have you found the saree?’

Neeli heard a throaty, unnatural voice explaining that the saree had always been in Rina’s almirah. It then went on to explain how Rina had given detailed instructions about the bequeathing before her death.
A thin, nervous laughter came from the other side and then Tinni wrapped up the conversation. She was going to be there the day after, and she was looking forward to catching up.

‘Bye, sis! See you tomorrow’

‘Bye Tinni. Call me when you are at the station.’

Act V

The day was here.

Neeli paced the length of the small garden at the back of the house. She felt little hollows of pleasure as she squashed the hibiscus blossoms underfoot.

A quiet breeze had begun to blow.

The grass, the fractured glass on the window, the wooden shutters of windows all began to dance in a great twilight frenzy of oblivion, of innocence, of some alien happiness that Neeli found insulting.

Tinni would be here in a couple of hours. What had she said – eight? Or was it nine? How long did it take from the station? There was not much time left.

Neeli paced back to the grey shadows of the bedroom. The saree lay on the bed where she had left it the previous night. In the shadows, the crimson had changed to a darker gleam as it weaved through the quiet glow of the golden embroidery. The bed, in the unfamiliar, new shadows of the twilight had become an endless continent swathed in white.

In the middle, the saree gushed out, a river of blood and shimmer.

Neeli felt something inside her ribcage contract, a hard thud. Her body convulsed for a moment as if it was getting ready to birth. Then everything went still, everything except some vile, impudent clock, hidden deep in the pericardium, that seemed went on ticking loudly.

As she stood at the doorway, Neeli felt her body being crisscrossed by a thousand live, screaming wounds. They wove their way through her skin, tearing up whatever love she still had for Tinni.
A thousand little fragments of their shared childhood sprung up around her. As two points of dull ache gathered near her temples, Neeli remembered that day once again.

Neeli had been possessed by some perverse energy that day. She had refused to back down. The argument had got more and more heated. Neeli would not sit differently. Rina got exasperated. At first she had been gentle, but after an hour, she lost her temper. What would she say to her in-laws if they saw how badly Neeli had been brought up? How could a twelve-year old answer back with such insolence? Rina had felt more and more helpless. She could never raise her hand like her sisters did. She could never bear to see those angry welts on Neeli’s back that all her nieces bore. What could she do? How could she punish for refusing to listen, for refusing to be a woman?

Then it had struck her.

Neeli had not known what calamity was on the way when Rina had casually picked up the coveted, sun-warmed swathe of silk lying between them. In one graceful swish, she had unfolded the saree and taken it to Tinni, who had been watching her mother and sister bicker for a long time.

‘Tinni shona, you are my good girl. You always listen to me, so I am going to give you my wedding saree. When you grow up, you will be a beautiful woman, and you will look perfect in this when daddy gives you away. What do you think?’

Rina had watched Neeli’s face and regretted her decision immediately. Neeli would never come to know why Rina had insisted that Neeli stay with her, why she had coddled her with sickening affection for the rest of her life. Neeli could only remember that day. She could only remember Tinni’s elation.

Neeli  picked up the saree and carried it outside.

She knew Rina could not have taken her words back. She understood. She really did.

Her breath came in short, loud bursts.

Tinni would be here soon, wouldn’t she? Tinni, who had fled the nest a long time back. Tinni, who had gone out in the world and found her love. Tinni who was beautiful and beloved. And now she was coming back for her inheritance.

The saree weighed down her arms like a dead baby.

What would Neeli say to her brother-in-law? She did not know what he looked like. She imagined a blurry shape next to Tinni. Would she give him a hug? Would she congratulate them? Neeli, the poor, older sister without any prospects, living in their dead mother’s house - what could she say to her sister and her husband?
She dropped the saree on the grass. It rested there - a little pool of gilded darkness in the gloaming light. What had Rina called this light? ‘Koney-dyakha alo’ – yes – that was it, the light to glimpse a bride.

Would Neeli ever look bridal? She caught the stoop-shouldered, rickety shape in the window pane.

Suddenly Neeli realized that she could not see her sister again. She realized that something terrible would happen to her if she saw Tinni in person. The obedient clockwork of her bones would unhinge from their sockets, her limbs would give away and she would cease being Neeli.

So she ran to the kitchen and rummaged through the cupboards. The lighter had been unused since Rina’s death. There was no need for incense burning or candles anymore.

Neeli did not let any thoughts form in her mind. She gripped the lighter tightly in her palm and sprinted back.
The saree still lay there, bits of it swollen up in the breeze, the edge fluttering.


She held the blue glint against the dark fabric until the fire began to stick. Within a few seconds, the flames crept upon the saree, spreading through its length in luminous tendrils.

Neeli felt numb. The fire was so quick, so quiet. There was barely a rustle as the silk began to blacken and disappear under the flames. The little garden suddenly seemed too small to contain the ferocity of the blaze.
A little ball of panic started to push upwards in Neeli’s stomach.

She wanted to put it out but the fire was just so beautiful. Everything was simultaneously aglow and in shadows. The saree had become a long burning rag, all its splendor and length devoured.

Neeli did not know how long it had been when the fire seemed to slow down. It no longer ran through the saree – there was no longer anything left to run on. Instead it continued to burn steadily in a little luminous heap upon the remains of Rina’s treasure.

The panic still rushed through her body, and yet, Neeli felt strangely detached from it. It was as if she merely inhabited the body that panted and covered its nose against the fumes. The saree was now gone. Tinni would soon be here and she would find the scattered scraps of black clothes and the blackened patch in the grass.
Neeli ignored the thudding in her chest and focused on her feet. They were rooted to the spot and lead-heavy. Slowly, slowly, she willed them to move. She took short, delicate steps back into the house.
She stuffed her purse with a wad of notes from the jar on the fridge. She went to her room and emerged a minute later with a handbag. It contained some clothes, her passport and the folder with all her certificates from college.

Meanwhile the blunt thuds went on at the back of her mind but it was all so light, so light.

Neeli felt self-possessed and precise. Everything was so simple.

She picked up her bag and cast a final, sweeping glance upon the room and then began to walk.

She walked past the main door, the gate. She kept walking.

Soon she would become a dark, small shape against the horizon and then, and then, she would disappear altogether.