It is July 1983, and there are riots & curfews in Colombo
Author Chhimi Tenduf-La’s new collection of stories, presents a set of inter-linked narratives from ordinary lives in Sri Lanka. Here’s an excerpt from his story, ‘Sending a Night Breeze’.
By Chhimi Tendulf-La Published by: Pan Macmillan India Pages: 240 Price: Rs 499
He wears swimming goggles and a bright yellow raincoat. I am naked from the waist down. He scratches his bald head and leans over me. No love in his eyes. No hate. No warmth. Nothing. As if he has never seen me before. He tightens the straps on his goggles and sits in a rocking chair, while the fourteenyear-old maid pulls up his Wellington boots. I am drugged up to my eyeballs. As far as I can remember, this is the fi rst time I am not scared of him. Instead, I love him even though he has never coveted my affection. He is my father. The maid lifts one of my legs. The eighty-yearold nurse, chosen because she has no memory, raises the other. It is July 1983 and there are riots and curfews in Colombo. This barely registers with our family, because I am seventeen years old, unmarried, and having a baby.
My father delivers babies for a living, most of the time in a hospital. For a hefty fee, he also performs unrecorded deliveries to spare the shame of anyone in Sri Lanka whose lives are ruled by what their neighbours think. When he does these home deliveries, he is careful that blood does not get onto his person or in his eyes. The goggles, I have always been convinced, are more for effect than necessity, to intimidate in a way he thinks is mischievous rather than cruel. Like how, as a diabetic, he sits at the dining table and injects his stomach in front of us while we”re eating. A smile on his face—and this is a man who rarely shows any joy. Not to his wife and daughter anyway.
I am charged a nominal fee for this delivery, because I am family. My mother insists I pay something even though I could have had it done for free at a government hospital. “But what is the price for being judged?” she asks me. “What is the price of shame?” She is not here, but that”s no surprise. I cannot remember her ever hugging or kissing me. I”m told she never rocked me to sleep as a baby, burped me, consoled me. Those kind of things were left to the youngest maid she had in her employment. Still, I always imagined her holding my hand when I was giving birth. I imagined holding a hand bigger than mine, but now I am squeezing the small right hand of the fourteen- year-old maid. My father, your grandfather, looks at me. He could be a gym instructor. A drill sergeant. “Push, duwa, when I tell you.” “Call me sudu duwa, like you normally do,” I say. Technically “sudu duwa” means white daughter, but I am not all that fair. Maybe it is what they wanted of me. Maybe, since they think it is a good thing to not be dark, my father called me that as a term of affection. “Push, duwa,” he says. “Don” t waste the contractions.” As I scream, my mother pokes her head through the door. “Keep it down.” I push and push until I cannot open my eyes but when I do, you are in the eighty-year-old nurse”s arms. Cleaned, but not clean. My mother nowhere to be seen. My father”s spotless raincoat, boots and goggles strewn on the red cement fl oor. The fourteen-year-old maid has tears in her eyes. She touches my forehead and it feels nice. Now you are on my chest. Feeding. My sudu putha. It doesn”t feel real because it is so familiar. So like I knew it would be, for some reason. This is love. You have been assigned a fake surname on your birth certifi cate, but I am allowed to give you a fi rst name. I am not sure if this is the one act of compassion my mother could muster, or if she could not be bothered to research the numerology herself. I name you Sidhara. In numerology the name has the birth path 6 and its meaning is connected to self- confi dence and excellence.
Your life purpose will be to reconcile your ideals with reality, and to accept the world as it is. As if you ever had a choice. My father”s always been too busy being pampered by younger nurses to notice babies. He delivers them like he would a package for DHL. But my mother? I want her to see you, perhaps then she will change her mind. I know she cannot show affection. I know she hates to touch or hold or kiss. But she loves me. She loves you. She has a heart. More importantly to her, she has fair skin, a Kandyan name, money, marriage to a doctor, kids. She has respect and she creates fear for people who have none of these things. No way could she have a seventeen-year-old unmarried daughter with a baby. No way could that baby be given a Kandyan name.
It doesn” t make a difference that I was raped. It is still my shame. Still the family”s shame. We keep you for two months. Enough time for me to breastfeed. Enough time, my mother says, for me to get back into shape so I can be seen again. So I can get ready for my offi cial return from the UK where she claims I have been when I was actually hiding my bump. A Buddhist monk arrives by trishaw. He has no creases in his robes and I wonder how a man living a simple life irons his clothes. That is a distraction. Me conning myself. I know why he is here. I scream and say, “If they take him, I will tell the whole of Colombo the truth. I will tell them I had a baby and you gave him away. I will tell them who the father is.” And I feel the cold edge of a kitchen knife to my throat. Excerpted with permission from Loyal Stalkers by Chhimi Tendulf -La, published by Pan Macmillan India