This is an English translation of “Thanimaiyin Vasanai,” a short story written by Dhamayanthi. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
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The distance between you and him is as lengthy as the panting that would come from reading long sentences. A lizard, which seemed to have been impregnated, was stalking an ant in the reception hall of your house. It stops suddenly, looking confused as it couldn’t trace the ant in the shadow of the almirah. The ant must be lucky; it isn’t visible anywhere.
You might think that the lizard had swallowed up the ant the moment it wasn’t seen. Some people pick their moments of joy from the joys around them. Some people would make their surroundings joyous with their presence. You do smile. But it is not lively anyway.
Even a small particle washed away in the waves had a chance of coming back in the retreating waves that break on the shore. But you are like a current in the river, and you just float in the direction of the river. Come out and see the flower that has blossomed out there. But all your worries are just about him—why he hasn’t eaten those round-shaped idlis kept on the table.
The days he ate those idlis with a teasing, “What will happen if I throw these away? There will be headlines that there is a bomb attack in” India"—were still alive as shadows in your eyes before they had melted to become tears. What sort of a woman are you? Have you taken your birth just to cry for the sake of emotions? Your eyes carry the discomfiture of emotions that have no justifications.
Even the petty whirring of the fan sounds louder in the face of sharp moments of solitude. Has he realised the pains of your solitude? Or does he possess the same collective disgust the men used to boast to negate the very existence of women?
Look here. This is the photo that he and you had taken together. There is a streak of a smile on your face while his face bears a sternness. Did he marry you out of any compulsion? Don’t stare at. Can’t I even ask questions to clear my doubts?
Everything will be set right if he could understand that you are still too stubborn to let him down. Will he understand this? You might either be one of the negligible particles in his countless number of problems or the centre of all his problems.
Every Sunday your mother, sitting in the main hall, would knead the flour for making puttu. She would sprinkle the saline water that she used to keep in a bowl near her into the flour while kneading. She would then roast green gram with mustard seeds and dried vegetables before doing them up with coconut powder. All these ingredients have their eccentric scent. What about the scent of your solitude?
It is a room of empty air. There is a radio looking like a mystic box that carries the soul of a princess. The music coming out of it embraces you before it escapes through the window. Nothing stays with you other than you.
The god said that you are trying to listen to the voice of your child you have lost. You might be the only woman who is seeking help to listen to the voice of a child that hasn’t yet been born. A cursory look at the almirah offers a view of idlies. A dress in orange. A thread tied with a piece of sweet flag. A red clip to bind the hair. I must show your cupboard to the god.
You know Thangam akka. Don’t you? Such a ruthless woman who beats her mother-in-law by enticing her husband into her hands. Can you speak philosophy like her? Do one thing. Ask the god for a boon to give all your books a life so that you can marry a man you love from that. Ha ha ha ha …
You wrinkle your eyebrows at seeing me laugh. The moments you wrinkle your eyebrows are the moments you look very beautiful. The happiness from the words you are beautiful just vanishes like a moon that disappears in the waves of a river when you ask yourself how it will be if he says this sentence.
Where did this distance occur? How did it occur? You ask him “Will you have your meals?” - a voice that nearly resembles the mammoth dimensions of a sound a tiny piece of paper makes while falling onto the ground. He just replies, ‘Mmm.’ You bring him an eating plate. “Do you need curry?” you ask him. He says, “Mmm…a little,” and gulps the saliva as though he has spoken a long sentence.
Suddenly there is a huge noise somewhere. You peeked out, reflexively. It is the sound of the window that shut with a noise in the wind. You sit down. He is still eating without lifting his head. You stretch out your fingers to his plate and ask, “Do you need vegetable curry?”
“No”
“Why don’t you say anything?”
“Hmm,” he says.
“I mean…”
“Rasam” he asks.
Your eyes well up with tears. You want to lock the house and go somewhere immediately after he leaves the house. You want to let him speak those words “mmm” and “rasam’ himself.
He rose, leaving the plate half filled. You could have reared a dog, or at least you could have had a tail. You are staring again. Why does your anger disappear when you are angry with him?
That lizard might catch the ant. It might dawn tomorrow. But the distance between you will remain longer with a retentive stillness of a python that has eaten its prey. Finding no way to dispose the remaining food, you keep it covered with a plate taken from the shelf. The scent of your father’s words about Ambur Briyani filled your mind now.
Do you feel that you could have taken birth as a lizard, or an ant, or a dog, or a radio box? Do you feel standing atop a hill and shouting as your tears roll down that all good souls are bound to fail?
He has the shoulder you could lean against and a soft touch that could protect you. Yet, he is the only one who has it all. The ant that escaped the teeth of the lizard might now eat the grain of rice sticking on the outer edge of the plate you used to cover. The thread with sweet flag kept in the almirah might be waiting for an unborn baby.
The swiftness with which you shut the window as you got up slowly shows that you don’t prefer keeping this distance alive. It seems you will go out tearing off that distance.
While shutting the last window, you are watching the road he has just taken. Will the eyes become orphans? Your eyes carry an unending journey of an orphan. For the first time, you grow nervous that you might end your life either by taking sleeping tablets or hanging.
You pace, composed, into the toilet. It is a room of four by eight feet. There are old Tamil weeklies kept on the shelf. Your lips mumble “nenjukkul peithidum maamazhai” (It will rain splendidly in my heart). When you think of him coming to you, knocking on the door like Surya in Varanam Ayiram movie with a guitar on his back, you open both the taps unknowingly.
When the sounds are unable to escape through the closed door and window, the drops dripping down from the tap fall on my feet like a noisy waterfall tearing off the silence out there.
***Ended***
