2016 DNA-OUT of PRINT Short Fiction Finalist: R K Biswas

The Rabbit

R K Biswas

The night he died, Ratnankur Roy-Dewanji saw the rabbit he had killed more than sixty years ago. His head was not playing tricks. He was not dreaming. Nor was it the effects of the drugs they’d been feeding him. His mind was lucid. Clearer than it had been in the past two years. He was certain. The rabbit was real. He saw it as clearly as he had first seen it hopping across the road in front of his father’s car on that long ago rainy night. Ratnankur had just learnt to drive, and often used the excuse of running errands in order to take the car out for a spin.

Ratnankur’s father had bought the Rover from a Scotsman departing from a newly independent India. The car shone like a new penny and purred like a just fed cat on a warm lap. Ratnankur’s father always gave his long and luxuriously bushy moustache a twirl before turning on the ignition. And another when the car hummed into life and rolled forward. Ratnankur merely sat straighter when he was behind the wheel; he didn’t have his father’s moustache. And the car didn’t purr as much when he drove.

Ratnankur took the short cut to town past a quiet stretch with thickly growing deciduous trees on either side. The rabbit hopped ahead, and kept at it. Not once or twice, but almost every time. It had an unmistakable coat – brown with a large scalene triangle of white fur on its back. There was a spot of white on its left haunch, and its tail was brown on top and white underneath. The rabbit ran ahead, then stopped to twitch its whiskers and look at Ratnankur provocatively, with a gleaming black bead of an eye, before kicking its hind legs backwards and vanishing into the undergrowth. The rabbit was challenging him, perhaps even calling him names in his cheeky lagomorph way.

Ratnankur was not sure when the idea first came to him. It was a thought that quickly translated into desire and then into strong need. Before he even realised it he found himself chasing the rabbit whenever their paths crossed. He reasoned that the rabbit had thrown a silent challenge at him. He began driving down the rabbit’s road regularly only for an opportunity to blossom. But the little fellow was always a step ahead. In rain or shine, windy weather or sultry stillness, the rabbit stayed ahead.

Ratnankur grew angrier with every failed attempt. Initially he had thought to only scare the rabbit. He had read or heard that rabbits were easily frightened and could even die of heart attacks. The thought of his tormentor freezing into shock and then toppling over with the quick twitch of rigor mortis sent a thrill down Ratnankur’s back. But the rabbit was proving to be too fast. Or plain lucky.

Fate favours the patient. And Ratnankur managed to get the rabbit one day. Perhaps it had grown tired of the game. Perhaps it had grown old. Or injured. It did look like it was slower than usual, and Ratnankur thought he detected the hint of a limp in its gait. Whatever the reason, the rabbit could not hop away from the Rover’s wheels in time. A mini fountain of blood shot up staining the wheel.  A few drops reached the fender and one of the headlights. When Ratnankur returned home, his father asked him about them. The old man shook his head disapprovingly, saying that now, since Ratnankur had given the car a taste for blood he had no desire to drive the Rover or even sit in it. Ratnankur was welcome to drown the damn machine in the Ganges for all he cared. Ratnankur was pleased that his little tryst with the rabbit had ended up making him the car’s de facto owner.

Ratnankur reached for the bell. He was thirsty. The night nurse took her own sweet time to respond. And when she did come in she was sloppy with the water and spilled some of it on his quilt. The room was air conditioned so the damp patch became almost instantly cold. She tucked him in a little roughly. Then she turned away without making eye contact, and shut the door after her with an insolent click.

Ratnankur rolled the cold part of the quilt away from him. But he felt chilly. They hadn’t bothered to adjust the temperature to his liking. Ratnankur pulled up the quilt again. The rabbit hopped around in the soft smoky blue of the night light. It sat down and scratched an ear with its hind paw. Then got busy grooming itself. It fixed an insolent black stare upon the prone man once it finished.

Ratnankur wished he could prop himself against his pillows. He felt certain he could have had a conversation with the animal. He wasn’t sure what they would talk about though. Ratnankur, at that moment, had no intention of apologising to the rabbit. Nevertheless, he did believe that given the same circumstances today he would not have killed the poor creature. He would have merely scared it off the road. He made an effort to prop himself up. But he had no strength and did not feel like another visit from the night nurse. He closed his eyes and hoped it would be morning soon.

He woke up to the sound of soft snorts and snuffles. It was eerie in the gloom. The wall clock’s phosphorous-coated hands told him that it was two hours past midnight. Ratnankur was certain it was the rabbit again. Maybe it had never left at all. Why was the rabbit after him? What did it want? After so many years? Did rabbits have spirits?

Ratnankur sat up in bed without effort, surprising himself. He felt around for the light switch, pressed the wrong one and set off the red light outside his room. Ratnankur groaned. Now one of the attendants or ward boys would bungle in. They would insist on giving him the plastic urinal even if he protested; there wasn’t any urine left in his bladder. The doctors encouraged him to drink as much liquid as possible, and he tried his best. But his bladder, which had acquired a will of its own these days, was decidedly disobedient. He lay back in bed and waited for the rabbit.

The rabbit peeped from behind the curtain. It was wearing a collar with a leash attached. Ratnankur was surprised. Whoever saw such a thing? It looked cute and funny though. He was sorry he had killed it all those years ago. The sorrow welled up in his heart, which had so far preferred to pump only blood. The feeling pushed its way into his throat. His hands that lay limp against the bedclothes began to shake. His lips trembled.

‘I am sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you. Kill you like that. I’m sorry. My father disapproved. At that time I didn’t realise what he’d meant by rejecting the Rover. That was his gentle protest. Yes. That’s just what it was.’

Thinking of his father brought tears to his eyes. He wished he had been a better son. But when he had the chance it had seemed like a daft idea to do things simply to please his old folks. He had never taken much interest in his own progeny, but when they grew up and left him alone, he felt affronted. He had never stinted on their education and other things. Spent fortunes on their marriages and bought cars and jewellery for them. But the ungrateful wretches had no time for him.

Ratnankur grimaced. He tried to stop the flow of tears. What was wrong with him? Why was he suddenly splitting up into two different personalities? One sentimental and maudlin, and the other his usual practical and hard headed self. But the memories came trooping in. They were not the remembrances of his victories and conquests in business and love and life in general. They presented events and occurrences he had never given a second’s thought to before. They, the squeaky little losers, now twitched their whiskers and pointed their thin furry paws at him accusingly.

Ratnankur remembered with a start that he had forgotten to scatter his father’s ashes into the Ganges at Gaya a year after the cremation. It had been his father’s wish. The small clay pot had stood in a corner of the old man’s prayer room, gathering cobwebs. Ratnankur couldn’t remember for how long.

‘Why didn’t anyone remind me?’ He muttered in anger.

His wife was the one who should have. But she was missing. Worse, he could hardly remember her face. It occurred to him that he had spent his whole life with a strange woman. And now she was nowhere to be found, and he was too helpless to go out and search for her. He tossed his head about on the thin hospital pillow. Was she dead already? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. He tried to visualise his children’s faces in the dreary air of the room. But the images faltered. He thought of his father again, the Rover and the rabbit. They were as real as the pain crawling about inside his torso.

Ratnankur’s father looked at him and shook his head sadly. He lit his pipe and walked over to the car, still shaking his head. The right headlight had some blood splattered on it. The rabbit sat impudently on the car’s bonnet. Ratnankur hobbled after his father. A part of him was surprised that he could move at all when just moments ago he could barely lift his hands up. It occurred to him that a hospital room was an unusual place for a Rover or any car to be parked in. But he dismissed the thought. He was still a powerful man, and the room and medical treatment his money had purchased was the best the country could offer. His sons knew how much he treasured the old Rover, much more than his other cars.

‘Baba wait. I didn’t mean it. Look the rabbit is sitting on the car. Please just stop and turn around. Baba please.’

The older man stooped to examine the blood on the headlight. He took out a spotless white handkerchief and began to wipe off the stain. Soon the headlight, fender and wheel were clean. He shook the now no longer white piece of cloth and smoothened it with both hands, pipe clamped between his teeth. He folded the handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket. He then got into the Rover and backed it out of the room.

Ratnankur stared. The car, his car was gone. He returned to his bed feeling petulant. What kind of a father, on the pretext of visiting his sick son, makes off with his car?

‘It was my car,’ said Ratnankur to the rabbit who now sat on the floor exactly where the Rover had stood seconds before. ‘Baba said he would have nothing to do with it. He did. That makes it my car for I am his son. You know that don’t you?’

The rabbit flopped its ears back and did a complete about turn. It kicked its hind legs towards Ratnankur and hopped out of the room. Ratnankur felt an uncontrollable rage bubble up inside him. He snarled at the rabbit’s twitching tail. Something solid and stone smooth rose up from his throat and rolled into his tongue. Involuntarily he coughed and then spat with as much force as he could muster. The thing shot out like a bullet. The rabbit vanished instantly. The lights began to dim around Ratnankur as he watched a small and curiously circular black body hit the floor where the animal had been seconds ago, before dissipating into the darkness.

RK Biswas is the author of Culling Mynahs and Crows, Lifi Publications and Breasts and Other Afflictions of Women, Authorspress. Her third book Immoderate Men is forthcoming from Speaking Tiger Books. Her short fiction and poetry have been published worldwide, notably in Asia Literary Review, Eclectica, Per Contra, Etchings, Markings, Pushing Out the Boat, Muse India, Out of Print and Nth Position. She won second prize in the 2016 India Currents Katha Literary Fiction Prize for her story It Comes from Uranus. Her novel was listed as one of the 20 most popular books published in 2014 by The Readers’ Club, Delhi. In 2012 she won first prize in the Anam Cara Writer's Retreat Short Story Contest. The recipient of numerous other awards and accolades, she blogs at http://biswasrk.wordpress.com.

2016 DNA-OUT of PRINT Short Fiction Finalist: Zui Kumar-Reddy

1977 

Zui Kumar-Reddy

For my grandmother, Snehalatha Reddy 

It is always 3 o’clock in the morning, day after day. Breathe. Let’s talk about dissent, I fucking loathe you – I had only known her by the lace curtain windows she left hanging in the bedroom and the pink chiffon glaze she coated my life in. Breathe. Ravage me, tear off the tattered ends of my veins. I had only known her as the goddess we lit the lamps for, outlining the pathway back home. It is always 3 o’clock in the morning because when I arrived she was gone but the flowers still sat in their vases … please, breathe … I had only known her by my grandfather’s handwriting on the fronts of old books: let’s dance our way back into those halcyon days … breathe … 

I dreamed her up in this way, with less cursing, moulding her from memories that were clung to like nobody’s business, I tried to gather every single detail so that I could be the perfect reincarnation of this whirlwind of chiming ankles and fairy dust who only just passed me by. I am told that it happened like this … somewhere in Masinagudi, while we sat under a sky broken to bits by green leaves and silly conversation, I asked my grandfather, Paabi … did Sneha wear a brassiere? At four I had wanted to be two people: Parvati meditating in icy cold Manasarovar waiting for her man to wake the fuck up, (I would sit in a freezing bucket with my eyes glued shut), and Sneha.

#1: Part truth part fiction she’s a walking contradiction

#2: a prophet and a pusher… a riddler and a fiddler

June 25th 1975

Whispers of a coup had scared everyone shitless. The alarm bells turned to massive gongs that had been clanging together all year, it was apocalypse now all you can eat. Lay your cards on the table. Let me be the rose petal milk that bathes your feet. Soon it would turn into a flash flood, they’d have us like hoards of ants flocking together to be whizzed into beetroot juice, as easy as that, a whisper, some fear and bubble gum laws, silly putty in the wrong hands. At the end of the day what could one want but to Breathe? Yes, exactly, let us crumble into our foetal positions and retreat to our soiled pits where we can breathe when we are told to, speak like you want us to, write out our lives as prescribed, bleeping out all the shit that scares you ... we think it’s better this way, that it’s taking less out of us, but it’s gutting our insides like a fish out of water on a sweaty sidewalk and we don’t feel anything because we’re just screaming – Breathe.

Years ago I had crossed paths with a dreamer from up north, an idealist, yes an idealist, and why not an idealist, for if we weren’t put here to attain our ultimate glow in the dark, swords ablaze, white horse running free, ideal, godlike forms, then what’s the point of living and dying? 

loving you, holding you, knowing you. 

He stood against it all. He had hope for humanity to culminate in its purest form. He saw his life as a means to seek out a higher truth, freedom, justice. He was a kind man, gentle in every way, brave like you wouldn’t believe; he once stood in front of the evening tide sharing some of these ideals that unsurprisingly shook everyone into a rabid and resentful froth that soon had them pelting him with rocks and boulders and an innate fear of questioning … see, we have to shake things up, to avoid complacency, and to stay focussed on glowing in the dark, a few rocks here and there never hurt anything …

But he was gone fast, there was an illness and a hospital and then that was it. I often wonder whether death stopped by on its own accord or was a plus one to that upsurge of froth … all those rocks.

He left behind him a yearning for something greater, an army of insatiable youth, questioning everything, full on, non stop ... but filled with just enough post-pubescent arrogance to aggregate into a maniacal gang of fire breathers. Simultaneously enraged and on a quest for the immortal, they set themselves forth and ablaze with these poorly measured values, to change the world, urgently, it was an emergency. 

May 1976 

Motherfucking breathe. Not as easy as that. It was one disease devouring me from two ends. Rusting my insides while tightening its chokehold. But you brew the sickness, watch it fester and corrode my skin, I’ll sit here in my fifteen by twenty pool of light questioning every little thing you were taught to believe in. 

Because see … yes, you caught me red handed, there I was unabashedly disagreeing with you. Screaming dissent, defiance. There I was waving a flag of a socialist dream, injecting its ink deep into my skin, more late nights and needles and deep breaths. MISA. Guilty. Withholding information. Right? Guilty. There I was dreaming up my old friend and his wide eyes that gleamed for truth and hope and justice. Guilty. as. fuck. And here I sit now, gasping for breath, breathing for my life, pitying the shit out of a pitiless, power pusher, prime sinister, primeval, prime evil, prime minister. In terms of fear, I’m a far stretch from you, my dear. All that I am is safe in knowing that when I scoot on out of this here I will have ingrained on every inch of my tired body, as if they were the map of my life, the ideals that make you burn and blister. It will be the very essence of humanity and goodness that will flood over me and soak my hollow bones, and it will having nothing to do with you and nothing to do with this box you’ve locked me in. It is not an emergency. Take your time. I breathe still. 

And if you did breathe still, my dearest, what would I say to you? That I yearn for it to be your voice that guides me from here into your arms? Or that I was six inches away from blowing the head off the warden, that I dreamed him dead every time I prayed for your life.

October 1976 

But before you know it, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning again. They treat me like scum. Level two. One up from the prostitutes whom they treat like human waste. Level two, a political prisoner with lunch privileges. A chronic asthmatic with a countdown timer. A death wish and a poorly ventilated jail cell. And you know it too. Don’t you? How much longer can you hold out, how far does your inhumanity stretch before it turns to liability? Take your time, kick me to the curb with my last three pulses and no one will remember you had anything to do with it. Forget it all and forget it now, wipe your slates squeaky clean and begin again! Renew, erase ... forget all the prisoners ... in circular motions ... forget the changing of the laws ... bleach it dead ... forget the torture ... shave your head ... forget about the man who had six cops drag him out of the sewer he was cleaning, forget that he was beaten to a pulp while being asked how many children he had, forget that he was beaten till he passed out and had his balls cut off … forget that shit. It was all government mandated anyway. 

So instead, at 3 o’clock in the morning I have taken to thinking of a honeydew summer that I spent crossing kingdoms with the love of my life in the back of a raggedy ann caravan ... I think these things as I wait for the warden to answer my calls. I think of pomegranates, Granada, rubies that dance in the sun, I want him to remember me when he eats pomegranates. I have bloody wrists that are banging on a forgotten door. I think of goodbyes, the simple kind like sending your baby away to school … this does not help the breathing ... I think of my love’s face, of how in these past years I had managed to draw our lives out in the small space allowed by his dimples ... a hundred times over. I think these things as I wait for the warden to answer my screams. I think of muscle memory, muscle machinery, practice that will turn my fingers into robots, retracing the same life and the same face into eternity. I think of the ocean as I hear a bell ring, meaning the gates were opened and someone was sent to fetch a doctor. I think of how the dark, wet sand lights up when you squeeze your toes into it, tricking you into believing your footsteps are made of light. And I think that they must be, made of light, at least they must have the capacity to be, to leave behind them these little pools of luminescence and that it must be this which is the essence of humanity, this which makes us glow in the dark. 

January 1977 

It was no longer 3 o’clock in the morning. You were making tea and setting out flowers. We thought our fight was over, but I had not one week to breath beside you, to practice memorizing the outline of your face, your fingers, your aching body, protruding bones, your toes. You were gone like that, a jail sentence, an illness and a quick fix dodging of liability. You spun out like a whirlwind, glowing in the dark. ‘We won’t forget’ the crowds cried in the streets, playing it on repeat, machines, robots, infallible; with practice we perfect ourselves. But how little we know, and how far we have to go, and how long must I hold onto the ideals that cost me you? ‘We won’t forget’ they yelled as they walked into the future, ready to take it on, haughty and hopeful they entered the corral, outraged they lay down to have it all sucked out of them, infuriated they gasped for breathe. How little we know.

Zui Kumar Reddy is a senior at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. She hopes to graduate with a degree in Biology so that she can move back to India and write a lot. With her story, Anagrams and Barbed Wire Jesus, she was the winner of the 2015 Out of Print-DNA short fiction contest and was published in DNA and on the Out of Print blog. She has also been published in The Legendary and The Peal. She was selected to be a part of Sandbox Collective and the Goethe Institut’s Gender Bender 2016 where she screened her music video on the subject of female sexual desire in India, GOEF JOSEF. She is currently working on her thesis on the efficiency of Toxoplasma gondii detection using different methods of PCR. 

2016 DNA-OUT of PRINT Short Fiction Finalist: Karthik Shankar

Appa’s Scooter

Karthik Shankar

I get out of the bus near the halwa shop and carry my frayed duffel bags. It’s late in the evening so there are few people around. Since this is Tirunelveli, all of them are men. As I walk, I become awfully conscious of a man in the corner chewing paan and observing me. Once, a creepy guy on a scooter followed me along an entire stretch of the IT corridor in Chennai. I finally stopped and screamed at him. After that he continued following … at a respectable distance. I adjust my sari around the waist. I love orange and gold shades but today I opted for the relative anonymity of a sober blue.

I walk down the road on which my grandfather taught me to ride Appa’s scooter. I was seven and I begged him to let me take it to school but Thatha refused. When you turn eighteen, he patted my head, grinning. Of course, that turned out to be a false promise. Neither of us knew the direction our lives would take. The heirloom now sits rusting outside my grandparents’ house.

I finally see the tiny two-storey complex. It had permanently taken on the air of a mausoleum. The last time I had entered the place was three years ago when my entire family wordlessly agreed that death suited Amma. Finally, her body mimicked her spirit.

I open the creaky gate and wait a minute before knocking. The door opens with a dramatic flourish. When my grandmother sees me, she grimaces and quickly lets me in. Her eyes dart around to see if the neighbours are in sight. ‘Fine?’ she asks nonchalantly while closing the door. ‘Yes Patti, I…’ She cuts me off before I can finish. Making Kapi for Thatha. Want?’ My grandmother hasn’t lost her gift for swallowing words. ‘Ok’ I say.

I deposit my bags near the door and look at the grizzled old man, with his back hunched on his cane chair. His eyes are glued to the television, seemingly oblivious to the woman who just entered the house. The house was far too tiny for this kind of charade but the old bastard was a ‘cold shoulder’ master. Several years ago when Patti’s sister and husband visited, he successfully ignored them for an entire week.

‘Thatha!’ I gush, a little too cheerfully. He cranes his creaky head and turns towards me. ‘The truant grandson returns’ he grunts and laughs loudly. I can see that he’s lost a few more teeth since the last time I saw him. I chuckle along because that’s who I’ve always been, ever-eager to please. It was why I’d even let my brothers take over most of our parents’ inheritance. Eager to agree. Eager to laugh. Eager to fuck.

‘What are you going to do Anjan?’ my grandfather gruffly demands. Flecks of spit fly out of his mouth and land on my cheek. Even when his mind was sharper, he had a way of physically attacking me with his words. I answer his question at face value. ‘Thatha, I will be working as a schoolteacher at Sishya Vidyalaya’ I answer calmly, a wide grin plastered across my face. I will be the epitome of dignified grace.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks me again. His hearing has gotten worse. I laugh and repeat my answer verbatim, wondering when Patti will emerge from the kitchen and save me from this awkward interaction or at least launch me into another one.

That question is posed to me two more times before Patti emerges from the kitchen with three steaming cups of filter-coffee. By then it has become an existential one. ‘What am I going to do?’

As I stand up to help Patti, I almost trip over the hem of my sari. As I straighten myself, I barely see any concern on their faces. As far as they are concerned, their grandson is still method acting the part of a woman.

Our family would be right at home on a Sun TV reality drama. Dramatic beats come on as a TV therapist with more degrees than hair on his head psychoanalyses a dysfunctional family and concludes that the truant daughter was where it all went wrong. Tears would be shed, lessons would be learned and the girl would return to the warm cocoon of patriarchy, tail between her legs.

We eat dinner, mostly in silence. Thatha and Patti are too scared to ask what I was up to in Hyderabad. It didn’t matter what I said though. They would have made up their minds anyways. I later sleep on a moth-eaten mattress in the living room. As I drift in and out of sleep, I can hear my grandparents argue loudly. No prizes for guessing who it is about.

In the morning, I wake up early and go to the shower constructed in the courtyard. I take off my clothes, wearing only my blouse and petticoat and wash myself. As I dry myself and come inside, I’m suddenly reminded of a moment in childhood. Coming out of the outhouse and thinking no one was around, I wore my towel as a dress. I wanted to look as beautiful as Madhoo dancing in the river in Roja. I didn’t realise the neighbour’s boys were hiding nearby to playfully scare me. What they saw served them with ammunition for life. I sashayed around moving my hips and had an imaginary conversation with someone where I responded to female pronouns. When Thatha found out, he was furious and thrashed me with his belt. I still remember that day vividly. I was hunched over the bed, Thatha’s hands firmly grasping my hands and his belt lashing my back. Years later, I almost wished I could feel the familiar sensation of his fingers on my wrists during my sex reassignment surgery.

I look at myself in front of the mirror. It’s still a strange sensation at times. My comb gets caught in my hair. It’s far too long. I want to get one of those stylish Western bob cuts. My Guru would have been scandalised, saying I would relinquish my femininity. ‘Womanhood lies in your hair’, she used to tell all of us. Shame that the household that helped me transition to womanhood never felt like home. 

I put on a bright gold saree. At breakfast, Thatha and Patti are still sticking to their vow of silence, though they make their distaste for my clothes clear. After I clear my plate, I clear my throat. ‘Thatha, I wanted to know…’ Oh this would be hard. ‘… to know if I can borrow Appa’s bike. Atharva Anna was telling me you don’t use it anymore.’

Thatha looks up as if I have asked him to find me a groom. For a second I think he hasn’t heard clearly. ‘That’s a men’s scooter’ he tells me in a pointed act of cruelty. My gender is malleable, always malleable. I look to my grandmother for support but her sallow face barely moves a muscle. In my teenage years when my grandparents found out I was hanging with a group of Hijras, Thatha got into a screaming fit and Patti stood by with that same inscrutable expression on her face.I don’t say anything more as I walk out. They don’t give me blessings for my meeting at school. It’s a hot day and the bus will take at least forty-five minutes.  

As I get on to a bus going that way, I move towards an empty seat. I get stares from everyone around. It’s like a dark mirror image of my childhood fantasies. I always imagined myself as a dignified, beautiful woman, noticed by everyone around her. These days I resent the feeling like I’m on stage all the time. At the bank, everyone hunches forward to hear me speak. In the bus a kid sitting on an adjacent seat notices me. He elbows his friend and slyly points at me. ‘Ombothu’ he loudly whispers. I give him a dirty look.  

When I reach the school gate, the watchman eyes narrow. ‘No begging,’ he squeaks. He tries to shoo me away but I tell him that I have an appointment with Vasantha Jayakumar. He’s surprised but directs me into the principal’s office. She’s a mousy woman with round spectacles.

‘Good morning sir ... ma'am’ she says and beckons me to sit down. I’m already fuming but I know I have to pick and choose my battles. ‘Good morning ma’am’ I say softly, making sure the pitch of my voice is turned up.

‘So Ranjini madam had wonderful things to say about you. I met this amazing woman Anjali in Hyderabad. She'll be a good fit for our school.’

‘Yes. She was saying that she wanted Sishya Vidyalaya to become more modern’

‘Modern. Yes. Yes, but at the same time we have to be aware of our culture.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘We have to teach women to respect our elders, not to be obscene and dress modestly.’ The last part of her sentence seems directed at me. 

  

I nod curtly. At least she felt like I was letting down the female gender. We talk for a few more minutes while the principal ascertained my moral character. Finally, I take her leave. We agreed that I would start taking English and Tamil lessons for students from tomorrow. I walk out with a spring in my step. 

On the way I notice a flyer on the message board. A room for rent. It was next to the Nellaipar Temple, not too far away. Maybe this was a heavenly message. I give the person and a call and she agrees to meet me. When I turn up, her face falls. I’m used to this though. Thankfully because she’s god-fearing, she reluctantly agrees to try me out as a tenant for a month. Near the Nellaipar temple, we become religious apostles. Deny us, especially in the month of Aani and you incur Shiva’s wrath. Quite convenient for me.

I finally go back to Patti and Thatha’s house in the evening and tell them I’ve found a place to stay. Thatha scoffs. ‘Once the neighbours start complaining, she’ll kick you out.’

Something breaks and I have a realisation I've had multiple times before. I can’t stay in this house a minute longer. I get up quietly and start packing my things. I ignore the taunts of my grandfather and the complicit silence of my grandmother. When I walk to the front door, I see a pair of keys in a bowl and quietly pocket it.

I walk outside. My grandfather follows. He unleashes a stream of insults. ‘No family deserves to have someone like you. Woe was the day your mother gave birth to you…’ I quickly realise this is a public performance, aimed at the neighbours. In the morning all of them will visit in solidarity, bringing fruits and exchanging horror tales of daughters who crossed the limits and sons ‘pretending’ to be daughters.

I open the gate and then place my bags in front of the scooter seat. I take out the keys and defiantly stare back at him. That’s when he stops his diatribe. In front of him, I kick-start the scooter and zoom out, all in the matter of seconds.       

The bike is old and clearly needs to be serviced but none of it matters. As I accelerate, I feel the night wind whip my face. I zip across the road where Thatha taught me to ride the bike years ago. Maybe this is what it feels like; to live your own life, rather than feeling like a spectator in it.  

Karthik Shankar is the editor of Karadi Tales, a children's publishing house based in Chennai. He was previously a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University for the year 2015-16. In 2015, he was among a hundred young leaders selected for The Third Hague Peace Conference. Karthik has written for The Times of India. In addition to that, he has contributed to Scroll, Youth ki Awaaz, South Asia Monitor, Observer Research Foundation and Chennai Centre for China Studies.