Not Quite a Disaster After All

Contents I AfternoonsII Aunt BIII The VisitIV Lily and ReeceV The ConversationVI Not Quite a Disaster after AllAbout the BookAbout the AuthorPraise for Not Quite a Disaster After AllCopyright I Afternoons OF ALL THE COMPARTMENTS OF DAY THAT PASSED THROUGH that house, the hours I remember most vividly were of the afternoon. When time moved slowest of all, dragging away with it the hysteria from the morning. It was when the sun moved from shutter to shutter, past furniture and bedspreads, over tapestries and rugs and across stone floors, polished doors and brass knobs, room through room, on to the walls on the opposite side of the house. In the safety of the afternoon, nothing happened. Nothing was expected. There was no school, no chores, no aunts or uncles or cousins to endure. In this house filled with voices and footsteps, a time allowed and a time needed to bridge the discrepancy between who you were and who you wanted to become. Under the canopy of the day, you could see, from this distance, how shattered the world was that we lived in and how beautiful its dust. But, from memory, all the people in our house chased the afternoons away—with naps and televisions and the chill of the air conditioner. The women in the house would retire—each to her own chamber, on her respective floor—after having tended to the children, to the kitchen and the prayer room. It was when their real lives began—behind closed doors, in darkness, breathing into their grief. My grandmother, in a mound of white, in her small day room on the first floor, resting before once again bellowing out her life’s losses in a high-pitched rage. My eldest aunt in her room, a floor above, having taken care of everyone’s lunch, pleased that the cake she had toiled over all morning had turned out well. There was always a cake cooling on the black coffee table outside. She had the air-conditioning on even during the day. I can picture her angelic nose, the lips, pointing up towards the ceiling, as a stillness, even calmer than her normal demeanour, took over. I imagine she was thinking about her two children—fussing over their meals in her sleep, their clothes, their school chores. When she’d awake from her nap, she would ask for tea and then her busy footsteps would sprawl against the green stone. Her smile so balanced you’d never know uncle had come home in another stupor the previous night and sat on top of the mosquito net, his heavy frame making the bed poles lean inwards, over her sleeping body. My second aunt, a new addition to our family, in her own room—by the staircase and the little kitchenette on the second floor—watching a Hindi film, the television set kept high on top of a cabinet so she could see it from her king-sized bed. Her room still smelling of the discontent of whisky and cigarettes even though her husband, my other uncle, had long gone to work. And outside, in the living room where truth was knocking—a handkerchief fallen from someone’s waist, a cup with pink lipstick marks. Ruins of their sadness. My mother, like my father and his brothers, was at work. Ganesh had made sure the windows were closed three-quarters of the way to keep the sun out. He had switched off the fans in rooms not being used. And then he too would curl inside the patience of the day in his quarters in the outhouse. I wandered through the silence and the dreams, through the terrace, free and unnoticed. Afternoons were bleak, without the promises of a new day, like nightfall, but afternoons were a time to imagine—of all the things that would never be true. I’d never been at home in that house—even at the age of five. I would look at the green stone floors with the yellow borders that cascaded down like a royal carpet, and know, intrinsically, somewhere inside, that something was missing in my life. I never knew what that ‘thing’ was—other than knowing that I didn’t have it. I would search for it all afternoon, walking from one dark and empty room to another. Touching bedsheets and windows. I would open closet doors and look inside. There was not a crack in the house that wasn’t filled with things—cabinets full of food, antique furniture, carved divans in shining mahogany, chandeliers and statues and glass cases in my grandmother’s room filled with all the mementos she had collected during her travels across the world. A flamenco dancer dressed in white-and-pink lace, her arms moveable and also easily breakable, was my favourite. In my own room, I had a collection of dolls that my father would bring back from London and a small electronic synthesizer I would occasionally pour my laments into. But nowhere could I find what I was really looking for. Somewhere out there was my real life—hidden beneath folds of bliss. It was only when my parents took me abroad for the first time that summer, instead of leaving me with the larger family, that I got a glimpse of it. Amongst various places in Europe and many museums with large paintings, we went to a small town near Zurich, where we stayed in an old, converted palace by the lake. I liked this town the best as it was devoid of any historic monuments and sights and there were only two directions to go: to the left of the hotel which led into a corridor of trees bordered by the lake on one side and, on the other, green that went on past endlessness. If one walked along the pebbled path long enough, one came across a small playground with two swings made of tyre and a climbing wall made of blue nylon rope. The path to the right of the hotel led to the centre of town and to the old wooden bridge you had to cross in order to