MS

- 3 min read

Monthly Story, July 2022

Image → Claudio Schwarz

Rasa → Kāruṇyam (कारुण्यं): Compassion, mercy. Presiding deity: Yama. Colour: grey, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Wonder, amazement. Presiding deity: Brahma. Colour: yellow

Archetype → Magician

Kusum waited patiently for the bus conductor to punch the calculator for her balance; she had already done the mental math. She was used to calculating ahead of everyone in general. The painful hours waiting for the temple committee to figure out that her idea was, in fact, the most efficient… The years lived for her husband to finally comprehend her complex maneuvers to get ahead in life… These had made Kusum grow accustomed to waiting for others to catch up. After the conductor had moved to the next passenger, Kusum opened up her purse and peeked inside out of sheer nerves. Yes, the six-digit cheque was still there, safe.

Money had a strange dimension to it. It freed and weighed you at the same time.

Kusum felt the weight of this money particularly. She had taken it out of temple head monk Gunasāra’s drawer the day his unconscious body was rushed to the hospital. Being the chief donor’s wife, and the temple treasurer, Kusum had borrowed money from the head monk several times. He charged her a minimal interest and she returned the favour by overlooking many discrepancies in the temple accounts. That day too, Kusum had come to ask him for a loan to fund her daughter’s dream to start a hair salon in the city. But, in the calamity of the shaken-up temple rushing Gunasāra to the hospital, Kusum realised that she didn’t have to ask for the money. It was simply there, in Gunasāra's drawer—already stolen, as far as Kusum was concerned.

Throughout the week that followed, Kusum revisited her decision. Each time, she reminded herself how it was for a good reason. After finding her daughter Nimali on the bathroom floor—shaking and crying in hysterics holding chunks of cut-off hair—Kusum found a whole new part of herself awake. It was a part that awoke in every parent, when finding their child kicked in the gut by life, broken, and crownless. Kusum was ready to do anything to help Nimali live her dream—even if it meant finding amounts of money that she couldn’t acquire in the decades spent accounting.

Everything had a good reason. Life always evened out all checks and balances.

As the bus came to a halt, Kusum saw Nimali waiting for her. She asked Kusum a string of questions from what took her so long at the bank, to where they’re heading now. “I got you a place,” Kusum said, while crossing the street at the junction; She thrust her hand out at the careless motorcyclist who almost missed the red light. “A place? For wha...FOR MY SALON?’ Nimali asked, tripping on the sidewalk. Kusum smiled furtively and stopped in front of the crowded city mall. “Where???”, Nimali asked, wide eyes darting around in disbelief. Kusum pointed at the vacant storefront on the city mall’s ground floor. It faced one of the city’s busiest roads. She laughed out loud finding Nimali’s weight swung abruptly around her midriff, as the girl cried uncontrollably. “Come now..,” said Kusum. She tried to tuck what’s left of Nimali’s obliquely cut hair behind an ear, avoiding the stares of passersby. “How did you…?” Nimali asked, looking towards the large space. “Come, we must meet the building manager and put down the lease balance. Did you bring your ID?” asked Kusum, starting to climb up the mall stairs. “But, how?”, Nimali asked, wiping her face. “What are we accountants good for?,” Kusum asked without meeting her daughter’s eyes. “Saving up…?” Nimali asked, half frowning, half smiling.

The hardest part of weaving the bridge between reality and dreams was explaining it.

Kusum didn’t have to answer. Ecstatic, Nimali had flipped around and put her palms against the glass doors, eyes glistening and mouth open. Kusum smiled, seeing her girl crowned again. She basked in it for a moment until that familiar feeling of waiting for the world to catch up started to creep in from the corners. “Come on, let’s lock this lease in,” Kusum said walking inside with Nimali scrambling to keep up behind.

Read the previous story

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

- 3 min read

Monthly Story, June 2022

Image → A.Savin

Rasa → Raudram (रौद्रं): Fury. Presiding deity: Shiva. Colour: red, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Wonder, amazement. Presiding deity: Brahma. Colour: yellow

Archetype → Creator

Nicole watched the homeless man by the Colombo rail from under her long bangs and lowered eyelids. This man’s hair seemed to have somehow been dried, blown and sprayed to perfection from nothing but the Colombo heat, salinity of June air and the monsoon winds. Thinking about how she failed to create the same beach waves at her hairstyling course exam that morning, Nicole felt something searing painfully in her gut; It shaped a toxic orange feeling.

When the world hands out what you’ve bled for, to someone who doesn’t even care, what the hell does that even mean?

A familiar voice inside Nicole’s head started a monologue of everyday injustices, stinging against her threshold. It was a chili-red coloured voice that always triggered the memory of sour mangoes in her taste nerves.

Seeing the homeless man’s beach waves had also scratched Nicole’s faith in the world. Things like the heatwave that passed through the city this morning (altering the very dynamics between keratin and water particles) and the model’s hair appearing surely vitamin-deficient no longer seemed like coincidences, but pitfalls set up by a conniving world. A few hours later, by the time it was her stop, something in Nicole was screeching in unison with the train coming to a halt.

Nicole hated coming back to her parents’ village where everyone knew her as ‘Nimali’—the given-name that she no longer identified with. Head lowered, but eyes scrutinizing from behind her long fringe, Nicole found offence in how the villagers on the street had the same hair—oiled and tied back or combed to a side.

Can a homogenous bubble be called life? Isn’t sameness a state of death than of being alive?

Nicole's chili-red voice muttered all the way home, prickling the sides of her tongue with a pleasurable sting. Her mother was standing by the gate, waiting. She showered Nicole with questions about lunch, breakfast, the house keys, laundry, reducing the length of the fringe, the exact temperature in Colombo... Nicole answered everything and nothing with ohs, hms, nuhs, and mh-huhs.

Is it still home if your instinct is to escape it?

Nicole walked in with her mother following two steps behind questioning what she’d like to eat. Sitting on a kitchen chair with hands quietly clasped on the table, zoning out from her mother’s string of questions, Nicole seemed almost composed. But, she had a scream welling up inside. Nicole knew this scream; It always came in a voice of deep burgundy and brought on a metallic taste on her tongue.

When her mother started asking about the hairstyling course exams, Nicole could no longer take it. She covered her mouth and ran into the bathroom. The trail of her surprised mother’s voice shouting in the background—about getting a bladder infection from holding it in for so long—came to an abrupt end when Nicole locked the door behind herself.

Between aspirations and expectations was a hellish place.

Hands clasped tightly over the mouth, Nicole watched her reflection in the bathroom mirror as the silent scream unraveled inside. It felt as if the burgundy-coloured loathing was being spewed all over her interiors. From the burgundy-bathed inside, came another voice—a new one Nicole had never heard before. It was an ugly shade between purple and wine red and induced a tinge of bitterness at the back of her tongue. The new voice spoke heavy and monotonous. It dropped words like a shaman’s drum beats inducing an altered state of consciousness; Words that Nicole couldn’t bear to hear; Mediocre. Dull. Forgettable...

In a moment of noxious revulsion, Nicole grabbed the little trimming scissor inside the jar with tweezers, combs and clippers. With shaking hands and short scissor blades inadequate for the task, she cut off her long, thick fringe in careless, irregular strokes. Nicole felt the weight of the entire year that she spent devotedly growing and shaping her fringe dissipate into air as the cut hairs fell at her feet.

Maybe it’s best to get nothing free from the world, and owe nothing free in return.

Nicole swallowed the last of the bitterness as the wine-purple receded, and a jagged hairline hung like a torn curtain above her face.

Read the previous story

- 3 min read

Monthly Story, May 2022

Updated: Jul 30, 2022

Image → A.Savin

Rasa → Karuna (compassion, sorrow), with Adbūtha (wonder) as secondary and tertiary bhībhatsa (disgust)

Archetype → Caregiver

Although Siri’s hands were watering the turmeric plants with perfect automation, her ears and mind were elsewhere. The loudspeaker tied to the coconut palm down the street was screaming something from the political protest being held at the edge of her watta—the little suburban quarter that Siri lived in. It bordered the dirty canal. Siri didn’t care for politics; She saw it as a game already lost. But, this government has pushed things beyond loss. The prices were brutal. Business had been so bad; and most of her clients, being as broke as she was, could no longer afford to escape their homes or wives. So, she half-listened to the political clamour while wishing they would just shut up and elect a real human for President. Why is the President never a real person who has had to stand in the gas line, or walk on asphalt under the Colombo sun when the bus fares hike?

Why is the President always a clown, a thief, or a psychopath dressed in human skin?

She sighed into the plants. At least, the turmeric plants were doing well. They’re going for two-fifty for fifty now. Siri scanned the leaves, picked up a young snail and flicked it into the canal through the wire fence. She watched the snail float away in the black waters with a flicker of guilt.

Do we live in a world where we have to steal someone else’s opportunity to feed ourselves?

Siri told herself that the snail will find sanctuary on the drainage barrier stopping the leftovers of city greed from floating into the sea. She caught herself reflected on the canal waters, broken into streaks of small currents. Siri felt utterly alone. Her bedmate hadn’t come home this week either; He could barely afford to drive his tuk-tuk to Colombo after the fuel shortage. But, what made Siri feel more lonely was the realisation that she didn’t really miss him; she just wanted someone to tend to. She watched the slow flow of the waters, unconsciously pulling at old hurts that are better left lost.

Siri was Siripāla then; another man with a job, wife and kids. Everything changed the day Siripāla came home to find his wife Leela arrested by the police counter-subversion unit. Soon, all that was left of Leela were old clothes, photographs and a certificate of disappearance. Their two boys were sent to their grandparents amidst the hills and paddies while Siri rented a cheap bunk room in the city to save every possible Rupee. This is where Siri first shared a room with a man. In the strange years that came, there were fewer and fewer visits home to the boys. Siri thought of her two sons; Jayantha would be fifteen now, and Jothi ten. She briefly toyed with the fantasy of bringing them here to live with her, but quickly threw the thought into the canal to float away with the snail.

Too much had changed to go back again.

Knees creaking laboriously, Siri got up to her feet and stood over the turmeric patch. The smell of sea salt came with the wind, making a strange combination with the canal stench. The protest up the street was still shouting about the cost of living. Whatever said and done, Siri was glad to have her house; She was free from the weight of rent that hung over the many heads in her watta. The ownership certificate for this perch-and-a-half plot cost her life’s savings. The canal bordering it was filthy, and the house was mostly gypsum board. But it’s hers. Siri just wished it wasn’t so empty. The devilishly loud children next door were getting an earful from their mother. Siri thought of the pandemonium that surrounded her in the tiny rented house all those years ago when she had a family—in another life. A full moon was swimming on the black canal water; it also swam in the liquid in her eyes.

Like the ocean, like the river, like water… always one with the other.

>>Reading list for this MS episode