It was May in Nagapatinam, which had been her hometown long ago, where the magnificent sun up above was unkind. She and her son took a cab from the hotel they had booked the previous night. As the cab drove along, an expansive wilderness of salterns and salt mounds trailed her on the left, right, and beyond, but Nalini did not wish to see them.
“How much cash do we expect?”
“One million,” replied Mom to her son.
“Oh, roughly, good enough,” sighed the son happily, as this nearly equaled the outstanding balance due for his Master of Science program in the US.
“Yes, whatever. Now that your study has forced me to sell the Lotus Villa today, a symbol of my parent’s earnings,” said Mom in a louder voice. “Probably this study should move you ahead of your peers, but all this depends on this one bundle that the buyer will give,” she added, looking at her son.
“Mom, how do we carry this bundle in the train on our return night journey?” Son had raised a troubling question.
“Oh, I didn’t think about it. Well, we can give it to my niece there; I can trust her, and she can send it through the Indian Bank, where she has an account. But then, this will be the talk of the town,” said mom doubtfully and continued, “I hope everything will go smoothly today, except…”
“What is it that except, mom?”
“Nothing,” she cut in, forbearing to open the implications of that word, ‘except,’ as the cab cut through the endless salterns.
***
Two decades ago. In the Lotus Villa in Nagapatinam. One fine evening, as the bright crimson sky was announcing sunset, a team of six or eight older people entered with hope, and an agenda. They sat around a hefty but bedridden man of sixty. Medicines had failed. He was in his death throes. They were silent sometimes, and at others babbled about illness, death, and the afterlife. Finally, the leader — a man with a wicked moustache — said, “We all shall pray for your recovery, Muthu. Don’t worry. A miracle will happen soon by the grace of God.”
After a pause, he continued, “We all follow our age-old custom from generation to generation. We prepared the deed respecting this custom, by which the son inherits all the properties. Let us bless this deed.” Having said that, he looked for responses from the crowd around him and handed the portfolio of the deed to the sick man for his signature.
“Yes, yes. We all agree,” chanted the crowd.
Nalini and her sister-in-law, standing in the kitchen and chopping vegetables, strained to overhear the discussions in the bedroom, while her brother in the parlor was doing the same. Soon, Nalini rushed out and joined him. She drew him away.
“Natesan, did you listen to what that moustache man Venkat was speaking about?” enquired Nalini fretfully, annoyed by Venkat’s emphasis on age-old custom.
“Yes, sister. I heard him,” replied Natesan, unperturbed. He was ten years younger than Nalini.
“Go, go and stop him. After all, he is your father-in-law,” said she stoutly.
“How can I?” he said listlessly.
“It is a matter between brother and sister; that means between you and me, and none in between. Dad should be angered by the deed, and by Venkat’s intruding himself,” said Nalini.
“What am I to do?” replied the bewildered Natesan. Displeased with Natesan’s apathy and his pose of nonchalance, and also fearing the ill-tempered sister-in-law, who was waiting for her turn to strike, Nalini drew him away again to persuade him.
“Natesan, it is fresh in our memory…that moustache fellow and his daughter Mala disappeared when we were to pay for dad’s surgery. If they had hearts, they could have broken the fixed deposit of your dowry to lend something. By God’s grace, my husband flew from abroad to save our faces. Why can’t one understand that the pension could repay?”
“Wait sister. Listen. I can’t stop him. Mala is watching from the kitchen. Anyway, they are all senior people, and our dad is not protesting.”
Suddenly, the portfolio of papers flew out of the room, and Mala regarded it, startled. The crowd, taken aback, rose to their feet.
“Look. Our dad protested,” exclaimed Nalini in delight.
Suddenly there was a sharp noise from the kitchen. Natesan rushed into the kitchen. He saw on the floor splinters of broken glass bowl, strewn vegetables, and the portfolio on fire, amidst all of which stood Mala, seething with rage, but reveling at the ugly scene she had created.
Mala, whizzing past Natesan and Nalini, followed her father to his residence — where she used to stay most of the day, unconcerned about her bedridden father-in-law.
Nalini, along with her son, stayed in Lotus Villa to attend to her sick father.
Nalini welcomed street gossip carried to her by visitors, among whom, one toothless hag drew her into the kitchen and whispered in her ears that someone who opposed Muthu’s seeking a second term as president of that XY Association had sent in a ghost, and that Venkat knew the story inside out, including why medicine had failed.
In addition, in the dead of night, the street mongrels howled in a way that gave everyone the shivers.
With these clues, she drew the conclusion that a ghost was now inside the house to take its victim.
On the sixtieth day, Muthu died.
As months passed, the air of grief began to disperse. When Natesan asked Mala to stay in the Lotus Villa, she refused, saying that she had heard strange noises, including frequent squeaks at the hinges of bathroom doors in the night. Mala and her father Venkat hatched a plan to sell the Lotus Villa and to build a new home. In a year’s time, Natesan moved his family into a new bungalow of his own, Rose Mansion. Natesan began to complain to his sister that he was running short of money to pay the Equated Monthly Installment on the housing loan, and pressuring her to sell Lotus Villa.
He had not always been so.
Natesan, in his childhood, learned to ride bicycles secretly, without the approval of his dad, and this was naughty, but to Nalini’s soft heart, that did not call for any chiding or thrashing from his father. Nalini often rushed to protect him when her dad flogged him.
After university, his lifestyle changed—he attired himself like an upper-class dandy and spent like a profligate; to contain his wayward life, Muthu soon contracted an arranged marriage between Natesan and a certain Mala, unknown to Natesan. After marriage, Mala had her own plans and often opposed whatever Muthu advised on matters like savings, insurance, and real estate.
Natesan, like all men of youth and vigor, was no saint and indulged those needs that his natural instincts urged on him, but he was so tactless as to have opened this premarital page to his wife that it turned out to be a source of upheavals.
She resorted to wild tactics—threatening to slash her wrists with kitchen knives and bolting bedroom doors from inside, as Natesan watched. Mala counseled him during such upheavals. Thereafter, the locks were removed from the doors, as Nalini saw when she visited Rose Mansion.
And now their father was gone.
As Muthu had left no will about who should inherit the property, Mala and Venkat tried, through intrigues, to exclude Nalini from the list of heirs. Hearing of it, Nalini lamented, “What kind of society is this? Why is it so unkind and unfair as to deny a female child a right to parental property? Don’t they know that a law of late stands to guarantee equal rights, breaking the age-old custom?”
When the certificate settling the inheritance was issued, Nalini’s inclusion surprised and upset Mala and her father Venkat: they said it went against the age-old custom by which a female child ceased to be an heir after her marriage.
Nalini saw that they were scheming against her endlessly, and that their outward smiles and obsequious manners were deceiving.
But of late, Natesan had intensified his insistence on the sale of Lotus Villa. Nalini saw the hand of Mala in it. When Natesan faced financial hardships, suffered curtain lectures from his wife, took to drinking, or absconded from the house for some time, Nalini again saw Mala behind it. Natesan used up all the pensions for his Rose Mansion, leaving not even a farthing for Nalini, and in it, his avarice and tendency to ostentation were visible enough, but Nalini again blamed Mala. His display of politeness and candor endeared him to his pliant sister, for which he received her unwavering support, unremitting love.
***
And now, two decades later, Nalini had to give her consent for the sale of the Lotus Villa, for she needed money for her son’s Master of Science in the US.
The cab braked suddenly. Jolted, Nalini saw old men and women working in the saltern, crossing the road with headloads of white salt crystals. Minutes later, the cab arrived at the Sub-registrar office. After some time, her brother’s sedan drew up alongside.
Clutching at Natesan’s shoulders, their mother climbed laboriously from the car. When Nalini appeared in front of her, she, as anticipated, was assailed with the same question she had suffered for the past ten years: “Who are you, girl? I don’t remember.” Nalini knew her mom’s memory, on the contrary, had not failed to recall Natesan, and that was the disparity that a female child was fated to suffer.
Nalini greeted her brother with an unaffected smile as he finished locking car doors remotely, but he returned a curt smile, and the insincerity of it disturbed her. However, she was quick to console herself: it might be due to nagging from his wife.
Nalini, her mother, and her brother entered the office and sat on a wooden bench placed farther away from a cubicle in which the lady sub-registrar sat majestically. A wall clock hung behind her. All of a sudden, Natesan rushed out of the office towards his sedan. Nalini and her son followed him instantly. The boot was wide open; a pack of street mongrels were howling in fright. The commotion drew a crowd of spectators.
“Oh, the ghost has arrived!” murmured Nalini in shock.
Natesan closed the boot. The mongrels bolted and distanced themselves as the crowd hurled stones.
“How did the boot open? It’s strange,” wondered Natesan, raising his eyebrow as he returned to the bench.
“Mom, now I have decoded your ‘except’!” whispered her son in mom’s ear.
“For heaven’s sake, keep quiet.”
Time neared eleven in the clock behind the lady sub-registrar; it was the auspicious hour as per calendar, beyond which Nalini wouldn’t dare to sign the deed without spoiling her night’s sleep. Four million was her share, fifty percent, of which she had received three into her bank account, and the rest she would receive today.
Suddenly, Nalini’s attention was drawn by the lady sub-registrar who was just rising from her seat, and by her bright green silk saree that strikingly matched hers. So this was another favorable sign that comforted her, against the deadly ghost lurking close by.
The lady officer looked at the clock and called out the signatories one by one. When the sale deed was officially executed, Nalini and Natesan received their share of bundles, and then Nalini handed the keys of Lotus Villa to the buyer.
Nalini came out of the office clutching her bundle as though it were a baby. She and her son got into the cab, taking the rear seat, and said, “Back to the hotel, please.”
Her son looked outside toward the boot of the sedan as his grandma and his uncle Natesan neared it. It remained shut; the mongrels were unseen.
“Mom, the ‘except’ disappeared!”
As the cab drove on, the expansive salterns and salt mounds trailed her once again, persistently, on her left, right, and beyond, but she did not wish to see them.
Her son was tightly holding the bundle at his feet.
He suddenly said, “Mom. What happened to Uncle? Something wrong…”
Nalini replied quickly, “Nothing wrong, but that shrew should have scolded him.”
Upon reaching the hotel room, both started counting the currency notes, the splendor of which filled their hearts, and for her son, the bundle seemed to guarantee a bright career. The room resonated with delightful conversation. They were to board the evening train to Vilupuram for a night-long journey. A couple of hours yet to go.
Then. Thud…Thud… An unpleasant hammering at the door. Natesan entered the room without any invitation. His eyes focused on the bundle.
Natesan said, “Why, sister? Why do you take risks? The journey is during the night. I can send it through the bank tomorrow.”
After a pause, Natesan said again, “Sister, why should you take risks?”
Suddenly, she pushed the bundles towards him.
Her son stood dazed and immobilized. With a smile, Natesan seized the bundle, dashed out of the room, and disappeared from their sight.
***
Nalini and her son returned to her home in Vilupuram without the bundle, but with the hope that Natesan would send the money through the bank. The next morning, she called her brother, but he did not respond. She made more calls, one after another, but to no avail. Her husband had no better luck.
“Mom, did you see his eyes in the hotel room?” Son had raised a doubt.
“What do you mean?”
“I did. Something odd,” added her son, with a wry face.
“Then why didn’t you intervene?” admonished Nalini.
“Mom, don’t blame me. You were so fast and forceful that I was completely lost. You forgot about your niece.”
The ongoing failure to get an answer on the phone vexed her. Had she been cheated? “Impossible”, she reassured herself. How was it possible for a brother to deceive his sister in this world? He was not a simple brother, but a loving brother! “No, no, it is too early to doubt his candor,” she consoled herself with renewed hope at each sunrise. But then came the fear with the sunset. Between fear and hope, the presentiment raised questions in her: what if the intrigue of Mala and her father corrupts my brother, makes him an accomplice to their sinister design? What if my trust in him has made me blind?
***
Unexpectedly, one fine day Natesan answered her call, but his tone was so impudent and indignant that Nalini quivered. She couldn’t find the strength to upbraid him.
“I need the bundle urgently.” Her voice was feeble, distraught, and hysterical, and her eyes filled with tears.
“What urgency? Your husband has earned a lot.” Natesan roared to eclipse her, trampling on her sisterhood.
“I need this for my son’s Master of Science in the US,” she entreated.
“What you have is enough.” A blunt reply again. “You take one-third. Two-thirds are mine. Mother’s one-third is for me because you are married,” said he.
“You are also married?” argued Nalini, and he did not answer, and she continued, “You drained out five million plus from our parent’s pension for your Rose Mansion, and another one million bundle now.”
“You know the nominee in the pension deed is Natesan, not Nalini. It is what our dad decided,” said Natesan to justify his stance. It was the first time he had had the courage to call her by name, and Nalini felt distanced and abominated.
“But wait a minute? Nominee—that was an oversight by our dad. Had he lived, he would have corrected this omission. Our dad promised an equal share to my husband as part of the dowry. All along, I feared that your wife and your father-in-law were treacherous creatures, but never did I imagine a beloved brother ought to be likewise,” fumed Nalini, her heart pounding.
“Think about the customs in our community. Didn’t you hear what Mala’s father said before?” He countered her, unperturbed.
“What about the law, then? It prevails!” cried Nalini in a shrill voice, wondering how she had been fooled.
He then ended the call abruptly, leaving Nalini breathless and devastated. She burst into tears, and plaintive moans.
Soon, Nalini collected herself to restore her characteristic dignity and moved past her husband, who, reclining on a chaise longue, was reading a book. Startled, he dropped the book and rose to his feet.
Soosaiya Anthreas is the author of The Dance of the Sea, and The Project Execution of Mega-Projects for the Oil and Gas Industries, under the genre of Industrial Engineering, published by Talyor and Francis Group USA.
https://www.amazon.com/Soosaiya-Anthreas/e/B01BUOAB6M