MY  ADOPTED   GRANDFATHER   AND  ME                                                                                  Part II
A Short Story... By Ravi Anbil  

As our  house was juxtaposed to a coffee shop, visitors would smell freshly ground  coffee upon entrance and would often ask for a frothy cup with cream and sugar,  delving into the tender coffee budget my grandmother piously maintained. Past  the front veranda, the interior stretched narrowly with two bedrooms on the  side, a courtyard with skylight, a prayer room and a small kitchen on the far  side. The backyard had a drinking well, a half-dead lemon tree, a jasmine  creeper that had difficulty creeping, a bathroom with a copper boiler, and a  latrine. The parapet wall near the well served as the cornerstone for gossip,  which skipped over many parapet walls along the entire neighborhood piloted by  grandmothers across the board.

My household,  lacking a grandfather, was governed by the matriarchy. I was often imposed a  curfew under strict martial law. My grandmother was the highest-ranking official  whose son, my father, succumbed to her reign which I believe began when he was  born. My mother was somewhere between a General and a Private, depending on the  whimsical mood of my grandmother. My father was a foot soldier; with a horse he  might have gained cavalry ranking. The usurpation of power was a daily battle  between my father and grandmother. But there was immediate ceasefire as soon as  my grandmother embarked on her crying strategy. A similar battle would be waged  between my father and mother in their privacy where my father would often be  seen retreating to the veranda with an invisible tail wedged between his legs. A  grandfather was not at hand to overthrow the government. What a calamity, I  thought!

Except for  the time when my father went to work at the local bank, he was a permanent  fixture on the canvas-backed easy chair on the veranda, flipping through  newspapers both in Tamil and English. It used to mystify me. Was he so bored  that he had to read the same news in two languages, or was he trying to detect  something lost in translation? His friends would drop by to carry on a lengthy  conversation with him in English only to go inside and talk to my mother and  grandmother in perfect Tamil. Why talk to my father in English when they all  knew Tamil? Was English a practiced formality or were they showing off their  prowess? I had no answer. "Don't mind them. The British made them feel  inadequate as an elite class unless they spoke English. How convenient for the  British!? my grandmother would screech between gritted teeth. "India has so many  wonderful languages so why borrow a foreign tongue? No wonder Sanskrit is dead!"  she would complain.

I often took  my grandmother's side since I had no knowledge of English. Nor did I know the  language my baby sister spoke which sounded just as strange. I was not sure if  she made up words as she went along or spoke the language God only knew.  However, I felt sorry for my baby sister because when she was born the spot  above her forehead was soft which meant she had damaged goods underneath. There  were other telltale signs of abnormality. In the mornings she smelled like milk  but as the day wore on she smelled like sour yogurt. I was convinced she was  decaying inside. "Don't hurt my baby sister, Planet Saturn!" I would pray. I  also would wish for her not to drool so much and stop crying all night long as  if she were on fire.




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