Sister to call my own

She was not what I was expecting. From our phone conversations, I imagined an older woman, plump, with tired, black circles under her eyes. But P, she was young, slender. She wore an orange kurta over blue jeans. She didn’t look the part of mother to two teenagers. A boy stood a few steps back of her, immersed in the shadows of the alley, looking at us curiously. His eyes were a striking brown-green, cat eyes they call it. That must be the son, I thought. He edged away as he caught my eyes on him. She led us deeper into the alley. This was the first time I was moving into a place without actually seeing it beforehand. With bated breath, we lugged my luggage down a small slope to their home.

It was a modest one, one storey. There was a small parlour, two bedrooms (one of them had a bathroom attached), a dining room and a kitchen. There was a bathroom in the back, outside, but it didn’t work. If I chose the room with the bathroom, I wouldn’t be able to lock the door in the night since it was a common one. So I chose the other room. There’s one other girl, she told us. I didn’t mind honestly. After rooming with an average of four to five roommates for the past five years, one girl wasn’t going to be a problem. Or so I thought.

She turned out to be a huge problem though, and not in the conventional way. She didn’t have any weird, annoying habits. She didn’t go through my things. She didn’t mess up the room. Yet after just one night, I became emotionally invested her. I called her my sister. And not in the superficial way we call our seniors, store keepers or people you just meet. I actually meant it when I called her chechi.

“My father died a few weeks ago.” She told me quietly once we were alone.

I didn’t know what to say. My mouth was dry. Back home, I’d offer the common condolence, “I’m sorry.” 

Here, I couldn’t say that. It felt wrong.

I guess I didn’t need to say anything because she continued. She told me how her mother died from cancer three months before her father’s passing. How she became an orphan in less than a year. How she was engaged but her wedding kept getting delayed because of the disease and subsequent deaths. She explained how she racked up a hefty debt for cancer treatments. How this was the first time she was staying away from home. It was heart breaking to listen...

I learned a lot that night. I finally understood my mom’s feelings. Why she kept bringing up marriage lately. Her pestering was because she was afraid. She was afraid if something unexpected like this happened, I, an only child, wouldn’t have anybody to call my own. It was a scary thought.

Later on, chechi would tell me, “It’s as if someone sent you to me that night.”

Apparently, her sister had stayed with her for two weeks to ease her into this home-away-from-home. However, her sister had to go back home the previous night. As chechi wondered what she would do all by herself in this lonely room, I came.

And we became close, quickly. She introduced me to Thiruvanthapuram. I, in turn, listened to all her amazing memories of her childhood, her parents, her siblings... I understood it was her release, but she was a brilliant story teller. I could get lost in her stories.

Our sudden closeness seemed to irritate our landlady for some reason. And she took it out on chechi.

P started saying insensitive things like “death is natural” and how we should come to terms with it. I saw how it was affecting chechi. When chechi walked away distraught, P scoffed, “she needs to accept this.”

I was like, “death is natural, but when you have two parents die recently, you don’t want to consider the mechanics of it, you just want to mourn.”

P didn’t appreciate my support of chechi. I feel as if that only increased the animosity.

P continued to do and say things that would hurt chechi. I was struggling to understand why though. P’s situation couldn’t be called similar, but it was traumatic just the same: an abusive husband who split when he saw a younger woman. You would think she would be more sympathetic to chechi’s suffering... When I discussed this with my friend J, she told me about this article she read in Vanitha, a Malayalam lifestyle magazine. It was entitled “Why are Women so Cruel?” Although I couldn’t read it, she gave me the gist.

With P’s cruelty and a neighbour who echoed Shobana from Manichithrathazhu, it got to a point where chechi couldn’t take it anymore. She left.

P was embarrassed. She thought chechi may have talked bad about her to me. So she talked bad about chechi. She didn’t realize that she was digging her own hole. Once she said, “Hum. She didn’t like my food. If she liked her mom’s food so much, she should’ve gone with her.” I realized I couldn’t stay in this environment anymore.  I also left, following chechi to another accommodation.

It’s crazy how bonds form, isn’t it? Sometimes it takes years, and sometimes it just takes a few sentences. I came to this city not knowing anybody save a few internet friends. And now, I have an older sister to call my own.  

Paging Dr. Sunny

There were many things wrong with the place I moved into in Thiruvanthapuram. There was no fridge, no gas stove, and the flush didn’t work properly. Still, I could overlook most of this because the people renting it to us were friendly: a sweet young mother and her two kids. Then, there was my hilarious, laugh inducing roommate with a tragic present, in whom I saw an older sister. I’m in the mindset if the environment is good, then you can overlook all the little stuff. Some of my friends would beg to differ though.

So when I was asked by my friend G, “How’s the new place?”

I said, “it’s awesome” right off the bat.

She was like, “Girl, even if you lived in the gutter, you’d say it was awesome.”

I laughed along with her because it was true. I didn’t mind roughing it. 

It was around this time something strange begin to happen.

That night, long after everyone had fallen asleep, I awoke, startled. I had heard something. Something strange, horrible... Yet I wasn’t completely sure if I imagined it or not. As I pondered in the dark, the possibility of the sound being real or not, I heard it again. It was a strangled scream which echoed the style of theyam performers. I gulped and nudged awake my sleeping roommate. She leapt up, fearing the worst. When I described what I heard, I would assume she looked at my figure in disbelief and irritation. But then, the sound came again, and this time, we both jumped.

“Wha-what was that?”

We pinpointed the direction of the sound. It was coming from the neighbouring house. Their lights were on too. When we went to our landlady, P, she drowsily told us there was nothing wrong and to go back to sleep. By that time, the sounds had gone and the lights were off.  We grudgingly made our way to bed, thoughts focused on the screams next door.

The next morning we were told that it was a religious thing. Apparently, the next door patriarch has screaming matches and randomly starts spouting samskritam. It’s called anugraham (blessing). Since my roommate and I both were not Hindu, we couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Later, when I asked my co-worker A, he started laughing.

He was like, “Athu anugraham alla. Athu bhaathaya.” (That’s not a blessing, it sounds like a spirit.)

Needless to say, his explanation didn’t make things better. It only increased our anxieties at night. It reminded us of movies like Manichithrathazhu and The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Things began to deteriorate when the neighbours continued to burn organic waste in front of the house. Our landlady has asthma and the smoke makes her really sick. She had continuously told them not to do it in front of the house, but to no avail. The funny thing is they actually have a bit of a lawn so they could totally make a compost pit. One evening, she caught them in the act and started asking why they would keep doing something which is not only detrimental to people’s health but the environment as well. They began to talk back and we were witness to the samskritam and theyam-esque screams again.

That night was what Malayalees would call a kaalarathri. The steps to their terrace were right near our room and we could hear him running up and down the stairs, screaming till one a.m. 

     

The fights continued as did the sleepless nights. In desperation, the police were called. The neighbours were disciplined like children, but threats soon followed. The neighbour patriarch claimed the Attukal Amma would help him kick us all out as soon as Pongala finished.

It so happened that my awesome roommate soon moved out due to some conflicts with P (a story for another day). And suddenly, I was alone. When someone is by your side, you can make jokes and ignore the crazy. However, when you’re all by yourself, everything seems a whole lot scarier. To keep my mind off the screams, I would stay up late texting friends, making funny facebook statuses with the hashtag #livingwithabaadhaneighbour.

One night, there were no screams and I had finally started to doze off. I was dreaming I was in a forest or something when it started raining. The dream rain woke me up in real life. For a second, I thought I was in Inception because it was raining in my room! I shook away my sleep and jumped out of bed. I thought the roof was leaking. Luckily for me, that particular night was Shivarathri and P and children were awake.

I open the door and literally freak out. The children calm me down and tell me that the maama (uncle) next door was watering the garden, and that perhaps the water accidentally came through the window.

“But the windows were closed.” I point out.

They come into my room and they see that. We look around and see that the only opening is the air hole which is way near the ceiling. There is no way he mistook his garden for the roof. There is no way. When I complained to P, she shrugged it off. I think she was tired of fighting with them. But I was also tired. For me, this was the last straw.

So exactly how long did I last in my first accommodation in Thiruvanthapuram? 8 weeks and 4 days.