Under The Mango Trees

Chapter Twenty Eight : In Between Sorrows of Young Tulsi Part Two

Lila wasn't answering my texts or calls. Her last message to me was, "Are you sleeping?" which she had sent me on our way back home in the car. I had been snappish because Raul was closely watching us like the police inspecting a suspect. I didn't get any time to later justify my uncouth behaviour to her. Rather, lack of behaviour and more of pushing her away. I didn't get to kiss her either, she had to kiss that stupid plant instead. It had been two days and I didn't expect her to be so obstinately and consistently angry. The Lila I knew would be pissed (in her cute, pouty way) and laughing and hugging the next moment like light playing peekaboo with us throughout the day, letting shadow deluge it one moment and the next, revolting and hurling its blazing beams everywhere.

It was late in the night and I regretted not visiting her today, the difficulty in sleeping attested to that. Meanwhile, Pavitra snored in her slumber, occasionally clicking her tongue at the creaks of my bed from all the helpless tossing and turning. Lila was sleeping there some weeks back, the moonlight teasing her and not letting her sleep peacefully. The more I imagined her to be there, the more my eyes stayed wide open like an owl.

"What the hell? Go to sleep, weirdo," Pavitra barked and clicked her tongue, her voice layered with thickness from her sleep as she heavily flipped over, faced the wall and stilled. I tried sleeping for the next hour or so, switching sides, playing with the temperature of the air conditioning, counting sheep and whatnot. Somehow, the guilt of not treating Lila well crawled from the back of my mind to the spotlight to torment my existence. Just when I thought that I could manage to sleep, I felt a deathly shadow looming over me. "Get out right now."

I obeyed Pavitra, hastily grabbing my blanket and pillow and scrambling to the living room, not wanting to face her wrath in the middle of the night. Ever since she had returned from her in-laws' place, she had murder written all over her. Before getting married, she had a mean streak, especially some days where everyone in the house wouldn't dare to breathe around her. But those were some days . . .  Now it was as if we were living under a dark cloud which was ceaselessly thundering. No sunshine, no rainbows . . . Out of all the times in my life, it was now that I needed Lila the most.

Fortunately, there was the copy of Sorrows of Young Werther vegetating on the television stand. I dragged one of the chairs of the dining table and sat by the window, the moonlight trickling in between the words. It was that part where the protagonist was away from his love. I read and re-read, pondering over some sentences like strolling in an art gallery and coming back to the same painting that piqued one's curiosity. The moonlit words of the page read, "I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her, it all comes to nothing."

This was not helping at all. I shut the book and put it away, reclining on the couch and closing my eyes. One good thing was that the lack of space didn't allow me to listlessly move so it wasn't long before I slept and woke up in the morning with a bad neck ache and the usual yelling of my mother. Pavitra was still sleeping so my parents were back in their spirits, my father reading a newspaper and my mother flipping omelettes in the kitchen. Neither of them noticed my early rise and I took that as an opportunity to bathe and get ready to visit Lila.

"Aoh, look at her!" My mother pointed me out to my father like I was an animal in the zoo, stunned that I woke up early. "Your daughters have gone mad!" My father regarded me suspiciously, expecting me to drop some bomb like I was queer or something. I wondered how they would react if they knew, my clammy hands were dripping with cold sweat just imagining their confusion. "Why are you standing there? What happened? Why did you get up early?"

"I'm going to meet Lila," I said slowly.

Their worries disappeared, my father went back to his reading and my mother smiled affectionately. "Take these snacks with you. I prepared them yesterday. Lila's mother once appreciated my rava laddus a lot. Doesn't Lila like them too?"

So off I went to Lila's apartment, swinging a plastic bag full of laddus and hoping to spend a lazy afternoon with her head on my lap. The door was opened by Lila's mother, but she didn't let me in. Instead, she popped her head out of the door as if she was attending to a courier boy. She wasn't wearing her signature dark lipstick and her chic salwar set was full of creases like the worry gathered on her forehead. I was struck by her lack of hospitality as normally she would invite me in with a big warm smile and something warm to eat. Before she even spoke, I knew that things were wrong, I could feel the barrenness in the pit of my stomach. As if I had lost someone forever.

"I-I just came by to see Lila," I said, unable to stop the anxiety from clawing at my words.

Her voice was equally distressed as she clutched the door harder and smiled with effort. "Didn't she tell you? She went to the US to study."

"What?" I didn't know why I laughed then, but I did. That made her incredulous because she didn't know whether to laugh along or tell me to stop. All I knew was that she wanted me to go away as soon as possible. There was an evasive quickness to her intonation which made me feel unwanted. When I felt unwanted, I became quick too, wanting to escape. I stammered in my strange laughter and hurry, "What-what do you mean? Doesn't her semester begin in-like August?

"She just wants to settle in," she lied. Lila wasn't the girl who would want to "settle in" and she knew that, being her mother and best friend. Lila was the girl who loved spontaneity and newness, she would thrive in such electrically charged environments. 

I peeked above her mother's short stature as she continued making excuses, but her living room seemed empty. "That can't be true . . . Lila would have told me if she was going to go."

"She didn't?" She feigned ignorance again, knowing that her lies weren't convincing. Her shaken disposition gave me a malicious kind of confidence which was rising above my timidity and confusion. "You know Lila . . ."

"Yes I know her," I said bluntly. "She would never run away without telling me."

At that moment, the door of the elevator smoothly slid open and Lila's speechless mother became permanently mute. I turned around to see Lila's father stepping out in his gym wear, grasping a black gym bag. His eyes fell over me for a brief second before they quickly flickered to the door as if I was someone to be feared. He was avoiding me too. And that was when it hit me, as he brushed past me and disappeared inside, the feeling of being unwanted consumed my entire being. People avoided people who were different. They were scared of me. Difference scared them.

"I'm sorry, but Lila isn't here . . . Please don't come back, she's gone," her mother said to me in a pleading voice and cautiously shut the door, her swollen eyes connected to mine the entire time, those upsetting and begging eyes. I had never seen an affluent woman like her, especially her, begging. I stared at the closed door, shunned from Lila's world forever.

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Glossary :

Rava laddus- a round ball-like sweet (I admit that I'm having fun figuring out how to translate such stuff in English)

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