The Long Route

It’s about to happen. 

The delirious fan moans above Pramila. It is going to detach from its rusty holder on the ceiling. Whatever is going on in her viscous dream will float still and jiggle to a halt. Pramila will awaken, but the windows and the walls of the narrow room will remain blurry. Every speck of dust and rust on the blind old fan will come into sharp focus. Thirty-five years of her existence, her life and strife, her flesh, the painful move to this house, the years of saving up and haggling to lease this house and be under its fan—all to bring her to this moment. 

For a split second, the fan will dangle by a metal hair. Then . . . snap. The head of the fan with all its chopping blades will fly towards her. Her upper body will become warm chutney. And then the thing she had pictured a million times will finally happen: all thinking and feeling will stop. Her mortal lights will go out. 

Now.

The fan staggers like her drunk father, wheezing in anger, unable to deliver the whips on her too-quick brother.

Now?

She opens a window. A luminous inky sky hangs suspended above the dirty jagged contours of the city. A single crow’s hollow cry rises above the deathly stillness. The coolness is heavy, like after an earthquake. 

It is three in the morning. Mayu is talking in her sleep. “Ma’am,” she whimpers again and again in a thin, pleading voice. Pramila can only make out the words “not lying.” Mayu shakes her head in big nos like she used to as a toddler. Her sweaty bangs run in rivulets on her forehead. Pramila waves a humming mosquito away from the small contorting face. 

The soft strands of Mayu’s hair are stirring, drying and freeing themselves. If only she could peep into that head. It seemed to be buzzing with activity. If only Mayu could be less stubborn, easier to mother, like she used to be as a baby—a joyous, pliable creature. 

When Mayu was less than a year old, she used to wake Pramila up early in the morning, peck her with slobbery kisses, and demand to be played with. Pramila would pretend to be asleep. But she had to give in to the coos and deliver big brrs on the jelly-soft belly. Mayu would break into uncontrollable giggles, holding her breath and revving like a delightful engine. They would go on ’til milk vans rattled on the streets. As the first rays of the sun shone through the curtains, Pramila breastfed her daughter into rest, and put the dozing baby into a fortress of pillows. She listened to the baby’s soft snoring. Mayu’s jaundice had gone, her pneumonia had gone, the congestion had cleared, and there was even a weight increase: a whole kilogram over two months. And impossibly, money would be better too, now that Pramila had landed a job. On those mornings, she felt like a person on death row, interrupted just before the hanging. Her tears fell, hot, as if a great icy cloud had suddenly, fiercely found permission to explode.

Along with the sunlit memories, the morning brings the swollen, sluggish feeling of not-enough sleep. How long has she been like this, Pramila thinks. How long had she been dragging her achy flesh around, wading under water, asking people, how are you, and saying, oh, I’m doing great? Trudging through the cold tunnel of keeping things afloat, paying bills, saving up for unseen contingencies. This is what it must feel like to be dead, to be a ghost, and not know it. 

Pramila wonders if people could carry on all their lives like that—living ghosts condemned to walk the same streets, repeat the same sentences, watch the same horrors. She remembers a ghost, the strange man who barged into the clinic in her first week as a receptionist. He passed the waiting room while she was on the phone, and headed quickly to Doctor Gopal’s room. Pramila ran after him, but he had already swung open the door. The man’s acid green shirt smelled like the inside of a medicine cabinet. Even Doctor, otherwise a stoic man, flinched before pulling the torch away from the throat of the child who sat open-mouthed on the exam table. Doctor had given Pramila the imperceptible nod of “Don’t worry.” The parents of the child were surprised. The grandmother, crouching in a corner and hugging her knee, threw a plastic water bottle at the intruder. It grazed the stranger’s dusty polyester pants and rolled away, leaking water in little glugs. 

Doctor and the man stared blankly at each other for a minute. Then Doctor said, “Hello, Prakash Swamy. I’m with a patient.”

“I want to know what the hospital is doing to improve the condition of my daughter, Manjula Swamy, age 12. I demand to know,” the man declared with the eloquence of a politician. His voice boomed inside the room. To Pramila, he sounded like a stubborn child. The man stared accusingly at everyone, even the child with his mouth open. The room held its breath.

Doctor spoke, like he would to a child. “Yes, Manjula Swamy. Let me see . . .” and rested his gaze on the water bottle that had poured out most of its contents. “Ah, yes,” he continued, as if remembering, “we are waiting on the reports. We’ll send them over to you today evening.” 

“Today evening. To-day e-ven-ing,” the man repeated. The stranger showed no signs of comprehension.

“Yes,” Doctor said. “You can go home and rest. Someone from the hospital will be in touch.”

Calls were made and the boy from the steel shop, who seemed to know the drill, showed up to drop Prakash Swamy home. Doctor squeezed his shoulder and helped him onto the boy’s bike. In the waiting area, the sneezing, drowsing children were roused by the drama. 

Eventually, Pramila learned that Prakash’s daughter was dead. But every few months, he would stray into the clinic. Doctor mostly stuck to his script about the daughter’s reports, and someone showed up for the job of getting Prakash home. Besides the steel shop boy, there was the wheezing old man from the electrical shop, and the bald auto rickshaw driver. Doctor had his motley crew of volunteers. 

Over the years, Pramila had often wanted to scream to Prakash Swamy that he needed to get a grip on reality. Something had to slice through the thick goop of grief in his head. 

Of late, she noticed Doctor watching her in anticipation. Would she change the script? She had changed so many things at the clinic—their signboards, their working hours, the consultation charges. She didn’t have any ready solutions in Prakash’s case but wished she could throw something at the situation, like the grandmother in the exam room. 

Pramila watches flies in their death spirals under the street lamp. She wonders how her life would be without Mayu. Would it feel lighter, unfettered, without all the planning—the child’s food, her studies, her behaviour, where she stays after school, the meaning of her obsession with getting teachers to like her? Would there have been a sense of freedom? Would that freedom feel good?

When she turns around, she finds Mayu sitting up straight, her round eyes wide open, staring at Pramila, as if she’s been reading her mind. 

“I need to go to school today,” Mayu declares, still dazed from sleep.

Pramila chuckles, “Did you forget what day it is, silly?”

“No, you forgot what day it is,” Mayu frowns, “I had told you about the play rehearsal. It’s today. You remember? I told you.”

“Okay. We are not doing any of that. I need to be at the clinic today, and you’re going to Ajji’s. That is that. We’re not changing the plan.”

Pramila moves to the living room and pulls out the school diary from Mayu’s bag. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, Mayu is wailing. 

“Stop it! You’ll wake the neighbors,” yells Pramila. “Besides, there is nothing in the diary. It must be only for the kids the teacher has selected. Doesn’t make sense for all the kids to show up on a Saturday for a silly play.”

“Silly play? Everything I want is silly to you, isn’t it? Ma’am told me that I . . . that I have a chance. But I have to be there and show her, don’t I? It’s been my dream since first grade. You don’t even understand.”

Pramila stares at the towels on the plastic chairs. She wants to ignore the whole thing and carry on like she had not heard Mayu. She takes a brisk bath and packs their lunches from leftovers in the fridge—sour curd rice with a dollop of pickle bleeding into it. Mayu is at the front door too with dishevelled hair, struggling with the buckle of her uniform skirt. 

Soon they are locking up and going down the groaning metal staircase. Mayu does a little dance of the shoulders to balance her backpack properly. She hops onto their narrow street and looks back at Pramila triumphantly. Pramila makes a twisty pout of mock indignation. Mayu responds with her monster laugh.

The houses of their struggling neighborhood are piled one over the other. They are all painted in gaudy colours—yellow, orange, magenta, sickly green. As if to hide the poverty, the squabbles over water, the power cuts. But even these houses are made tolerable in the morning light. There is a warmth, even a nostalgia. She hopes to remember these houses and this street from a better place in the future, with the privilege and distance of memory. 

They turn into the main road. Bright red gulmohar flowers are pressed into the jet black of the fresh tar. There is no one around. 

“We are far too early,” says Pramila, looking at her watch.

“Can we take the long route? Please, please, please,” Mayu begs. 

The long route is like candy for Mayu, and something Pramila avoids. It is nothing like their neighborhood. It goes through the wide residential roads lined with posh bungalows. Creamy lace curtains in the polished wood frames of the bay windows, balconies with wrought iron swings, misted foliage bursting in planters, large porticos with shiny cars. Mayu never hesitates to peep through the gates to see the manicured lawns, the roses and hibiscuses. All along, she’ll describe the bungalow she would build when she becomes a famous actress. They had taken the long route only a few times, and almost every day since, Mayu had asked to go that way. With all the time they have today, Pramila can hardly say no.

They walk quietly, Mayu matching the rhythm of Pramila’s footsteps.

“Did you even brush your teeth?” Pramila asks.

“Of course I did.”

Pramila gives her a stern stare.

“It’s okay, my teeth are clean; see?” Mayu says, flashing her pearly whites.

“You’re disgusting.”

Mayu chuckles. “Why do I need to be at Ajji’s house? Can’t I stay by myself in our house?”

“You’re too young to be on your own. And don’t you like it there?”

“Of course not! Uncle is always yelling. And Ajji thinks I steal her loose change.”

“What? Do you?”

Mayu shoots an offended look at Pramila.

“Sorry! Gosh, I know you would never.”

“It’s not like you are very fond of her either.”

“What does that mean?”

“Don’t you get mad at Ajji?”

“I do,” Pramila hesitates, “when she’s disrespectful to me.”

“But she’s your mother.”

How does one answer this, wonders Pramila. Thinking about her own mother was like thinking about an open wound that she must hide. As a child, she had clung to the idea that her mother would keep her safe from the world. Growing up, she learned that just about anyone in the world was safer than her mother. No one else had called her lazy, fat, a dark-faced devil, a retard, a slut. No one else had made her hide under beds when she needed to nap or steal second helpings in her own house. No one else had made her worry that everything she touched would turn to ash. Pramila had made up her mind a long time ago that no child of hers would see that open wound. 

“Would you take it if I’m disrespectful to you?” Pramila asked.

“Sometimes,” Mayu giggles.

“Anyway, don’t bother yourself with all this grown-up stuff, okay? And for all your smartness, why on earth didn’t you tell me about the play yesterday?”

“I . . . I wasn’t sure about it.”

“You weren’t sure about what?”

“If . . . if my plan would work.” 

Pramila stops in her tracks and faces Mayu. “Your plan? Is this a joke? Tell me clearly—did your teacher really ask you to come?”

“You need to relax. Gosh!” Mayu says, in her most grown-up tone. She is a thin child with short wispy hair. In first grade, she broke a girl’s finger for throwing a ball at her head. The year after, she started making cards for all her friends and teachers.

“Tell me exactly what your teacher said,” Pramila demands.

They are under a large swaying tree. Mayu grinds an African tulip with her heel.

“That’s it. We are going to Ajji’s house.”

“Okay, okay, relax. I’ll tell you everything. Ma’am told us that the play rehearsal is today. No one knows what the play is about, not even the ones selected for it. But we know there is a princess role that Saranya was selected for. But I know another little secret.” Pramila is squinting incredulously, but Mayu is feeling smarter with every word. “And the secret is that Saranya is not turning up today. So, you see, it is important for me to be there.”

“What the hell did you do to Saranya?”

“Why would I do anything to her? It’s always me, isn’t it? I’m the worst person, am I not?”

Pramila takes a deep breath, “Just tell me how you know she’s not coming.”

Mayu becomes agitated and speaks very fast, “Because Saranya’s grandmother was really sick and might die today. So, there’s a chance she won’t make it. Happy? It’s not like I’m killing her grandmother, okay?”

“God, who said anything about killing?” Pramila starts to walk. “One thing you’re surely good at is drama.”

“I know, right?” Mayu chirps. “So, I have it all figured out.”

Pramila rolls her eyes. “Do you hear yourself, Mayu?”

“You don’t believe anything I say, do you?” Mayu asks. Her lower lip is curling, her nostrils are quivering, and a film of water covers her eyes.

“Listen, I drop you off at the school gate, you do what you have to, and I’ll pick you up at two o’clock. Is that clear? I’m going to get a headache if I try to follow all your harebrained plans.”

Mayu is sniffling. They walk quietly for some time. The bungalows dwindle. In the block they pass, old houses are being demolished to make way for apartment complexes and commercial buildings.

Pramila eyes Mayu, who is still sullen. 

“Look at that, Mayu,” Pramila points to a pudgy stray puppy with glossy eyes. It is digging up a mound of construction sand. 

Mayu’s eyes light up. “Can I touch it?” she asks.

“No! God knows what disease it has.”

Mayu lets the puppy sniff her shoes and squeals when its wet snout touches her calves. She moves in circles for it to follow her. The delight on Mayu’s face soon disappears when the puppy starts to follow her, growling and biting into her shoes. 

“Amma, make it go away,” she screams. 

Pramila tries to shoo it away. “Don’t run, Mayu,” she calls out.

But Mayu does exactly that. She runs as fast as she can down the road. 

“Mayu, don’t run. It’s just a puppy,” Pramila calls out, running after her.

Pramila feels the presence of something else behind her. She freezes. A big dog stands in the middle of the road. Patches of its fur have rotted off, and its blackened teats hang from its ribs like dirty rags. As she slows to a halt, Pramila hears its low, menacing growl echoing through the empty road. Mayu and the puppy are nowhere to be seen. 

“Ma-yu . . . Ma-yu,” Pramila calls into the road ahead. The dog lets out a powerful bark, a sound that booms from its belly and chills Pramila to the bone.

She takes slow, calculated steps away. The dog moves towards her. 

She assumes Mayu has turned a corner and run off into one of the side streets. She walks slowly with the dog behind her, keeping pace. Its teeth are bared into a grotesque smile. Something drips from its mouth, its eyes.

She turns into one of the streets, still calling out to Mayu as loudly as she dares. A flock of parrots bursts into flight from a mango tree. She turns corners twice to join the main road where she lost Mayu, the beast at a constant, uncomfortable distance. 

She finds a long stick under a tree and picks it up. She is sweating profusely. She loops around side streets, walking aimlessly. A thin morning mist lingers as people inside the houses sleep through their Saturday mornings. She hopes for anyone, just anyone to show up. Nothing, no one, stirs.

“You stupid, stupid girl. What have you gotten me into,” she mumbles.

“Amma,” she hears a pained cry from another world. 

A new energy surges in her knees. Pramila begins to walk briskly toward the sound. 

“Coming, Mayu. Don’t worry,” she calls out. 

As she starts to jog, she senses the grimy dog getting closer to her. She can’t risk letting it anywhere near Mayu.

She gathers her pluck and turns around to face the dog. She wants to be done with it. Standing with her legs apart, her dupatta tied around the waist, she swings her stick at it, challenging. It hesitates. She takes a few steps back, and it lifts a paw to move closer. Pramila swings the stick again. The dog retreats and stays put. 

She turns around slowly and begins to walk, closing her eyes and praying it had worked. And it has. Somewhat. It moves but much more slowly. She has no idea where she is anymore and longs to hear Mayu’s voice again. Look at all these jacarandas, she wants to tell Mayu. She wants to see her twirl as the flowers rain down with every breeze. 

Pramila calls, “Mayu, give me a shout if you can hear me, baby.”

Pramila passes house after house with faded pastel exteriors, flat wide hoods over porticos and windows, wide arches, circular windows at the tops like little birdhouses, terrazzo flooring— it’s like a museum of middle class home design from the 1970s. What is this place, Pramila wonders. 

When she passes one of the old houses, she pauses, sensing something. She looks straight in the direction she thinks Mayu will be. Why did its fading paint and overgrown bushes look familiar? It was like a name at the tip of the tongue.

“Amma,” she hears an irritated call from inside the house.

“Mayu? Can you hear me?” 

As she tries to pry open the rusted front gates, she hears a muffled, accusatory mumble.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Why did you go in here of all places? Gosh, Mayu, sometimes you have no sense.”

She hears a sarcastic laugh. The familiarity of the house imposes itself on her senses as she tries to ignore it and locate Mayu. She looks for a side alley, or some way to get to the backyard. 

“You know there’s a crazy dog out there, Mayu? I think it’s looking for the puppy.”

With the alleys blocked by rubble and weeds, there is nothing else to do but make her way into the house.

“Don’t you remember this house, Amma?” she hears Mayu say, but her voice sounds strange, ominous. 

She pushes the heavy, termite-eaten front door. There is more rubble on the floor and bits of familiar sea green walls. 

“You grew up here. Didn’t you?” says the voice.

“No. No, that’s not possible.” Pramila looks around in horror.

“This is where your grandmother died. And when they brought her body, your uncle was drunk and laughing. Remember that?”

 “Did your uncle tell you all this? That man has no idea what to say to a child.”

“But I’m not a child . . .” says Mayu’s voice. It is not a child’s voice at all.

“Come out, Mayu, enough of these games. This is not a good place.”

“Why does it scare you, Amma?” comes the voice, now with little resemblance to Mayu’s, sounding raspy, like a low growl.

“I don’t know . . . I don’t know,” Pramila fumbles, stepping through the rubble.

She sees a patch of the old red and green oxide floor from the kitchen. For many years, she had walked only on the green strips that bordered the floor, hugging the walls. She thought stepping on the red parts would kill her. She remembers her lonely childhood, locked into superstitions like these. No one would understand them, not even herself. 

She slaps her own cheeks and wants to shake the contents of her head. She needs to cut through the goop right now, this minute. A single moment of vulnerability might be all it takes for a spell to be cast, for her to turn forever into Prakash Swamy.

“Mayu, chinna, wherever you are, tell me you’re okay. Please,” she says. She hears her own voice echo and beg, “Please.”

There is a large thud close to her that makes her scream. A piece of the ceiling has crashed.

“I’m not okay. And neither are you, Amma. Don’t you see? That festering bitterness in your family, in you. And how do you deal with it? Of course, by being as hard as you can on yourself, on me. And I . . . I may not come out of it, ever,” she sounds like a grown woman with every word.

“Listen, you,” says Pramila, wiping her face. “You’re still a child. I want you to stop this right now and come out. Or else.”

“Or else what?” comes a voice so cool that the hair on Pramila’s hands stands on end.

“You . . . you are going to get such a beating, you’ll remember it for life.”

“Like the beatings you got?”

“Shut up. Shut up, and come out.”

There is heavy breathing inside the house like an angry person keeping from crying or screaming. The house seems to breathe, too. It seems to challenge her. She reties the dupatta. She needs something else now. A memory floats in—of her mother dragging her onto the red part of the floor, boxing her ears, right then left. Let that cut into the goop in your head, she had always said. But it never did. It just added to the pain. Perhaps that is why Doctor never rebuked Prakash Swamy. Pramila wonders how one melts the goop. She closes her eyes and tears pour. Perhaps this is how it melts. She wills a different heart to beat inside her.

“I’m sorry, Mayu,” she says, trying to steady her voice. “I’m angry. I’m scared. And more than anything, I’m exhausted, baby. I would never beat you. No way I would do that to you. You hear?” Her voice is shaking and she can no longer speak.

There is silence.

Pramila looks around all the rooms, the roofless kitchen, the old bedroom with a whole wall crashed in. She throws her weight desperately at the back door to open it.

With every big push, she breathes out, “Mayu, tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m not a child,” comes a reverberating voice from the ceiling. Pramila looks up. The voice continues, “I look out for love. The teacher I’m trying to impress for a few crumbs of attention is about to humiliate me. You already know that. It’s going to hurt me. And I keep looking for love like that. Desperately. I keep hurting myself, fall into bad company, a bad marriage. Of course, I’ll kill myself. Can’t you see?”

“What are you saying?” she says, addressing the caved ceiling.

“Just like your aunt, the one with the pretty mole. Remember her? Yes, the one who married the politician. Remember how they found her? Why doesn’t anyone mention her?”

Pramila can’t breathe. Dark shadows move on the walls. Mouldy bits of ancestry float in her bloodstream. They will swell as they please and choke her veins. An icy breeze sings through the holes in the ceiling. It sounds like a hundred wailing women. The shadows can seize her, tell her in a mother’s voice that it’s for her own good, and walk her around like a puppet on their strings.

A gong goes off somewhere. There’s a fan above her. It’s familiar. It could fall any minute. It could slice her into chutney. She takes a jerky step back. She realizes with some relief that she could move. If a fan was going to fall, she could move, she could throw something at it, anything—even a water bottle. She could shake things up. 

She coughs to force herself to breathe. Straightening her back, she yells at the ceiling, “Do you think I’ll stand back and watch you go through all that? Do you think I could do that?”

The house doesn’t answer. 

She steps back into what is left of the living room, where the old swing used to be, onto which she would leap after walking on the green part of the floor.

“Mayu, this is a bad pace. You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. Come, hold my hand. Let’s walk out of here. Look, I’m going to the front door. I know you trust me. I’m the only one you have. And you’re the only one I have. And we’ll walk out together.”

She keeps walking, out the door and out the crumbling gates, too afraid to turn around. Her heart is thumping in the blinding sunlight.

Walking ahead, she hears what sounds like a puppy yelping and a girl learning to play with it. It is coming from a joggers’ park very close to Mayu’s school. Pramila sees it now—they are at the end of the long route.