Stories We Tell Ourselves

Some stories take more time than others. They are harder to tell. Neither chronological or epistolic. Proleptical or analeptical. They are the foundation on which the narrative is built. The truth behind the lie.

Betrayal comes on tiptoe, creeping up on your shadow when you least expect it. But you see it there. Sometimes. In the mirror behind you when the light is shining, reflecting in a sharp white arc towards the ceiling. It's almost beautiful. Exquisite even. You want to touch it.

It begins with a moment, but you don’t know it.

Not then.

Their separation didn’t come as a big surprise. Their morning hugs had diminished into a mere nod of acknowledgement. A polite 'Goodbye'. But, for the kids.

Of course, for the kids.

Who already knew. They could feel it circling in the air like a thundercloud gathering before the rain.

The denouement came in a duel of sorts, a battle where there would be no winners.

She heard the door creak downstairs. And the bang as something fell headlong into the radiator. It had shattered through the connecting pipes and into her bedroom.

And, then the garbled shouting that ensued.

She heard his thumping tread on the stairs, felt the draught of his fury as he stormed into like a sheriff hunting escaped convicts. He dragged her out of bed by her hair.

She had never seen this side of him before. Her father had always been a gentle man. Soft.

He propelled her down the stairs, feet first. She tumbled to the bottom, yet, miraculously, like a cat she managed to find herself on stable feet.

“Look at her, look” his voice otherworldly, distorted and unrecognisable reverberated around the room. “Look at her,” he flailed his arms like a conductor of an orchestra.

“This is your mother. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. And she’s fucking drunk.”

With this profound assessment, he stalked back up the stairs he'd dragged me down, slamming the door violently for extra effect.

and the man in the mirror looks on

as the cuts begin.

She was 8.

And, in a bit of a pickle you might say.

She had absolutely no idea what to do with a drunk mother, much less one who was now beside herself, sobbing into the parquet floor, and mumbling incoherent nonsense like a shaman in the throes of a trance.

It wasn't too long before she vomited up the wall, which was rather weirdly somewhat of a relief because she fell quickly into an unconscious sleep.

By some magical intervention and a burst of adrenaline, the girl managed to drag her mother to the couch, where she lay on the carpet, huddled into the base, long after the girl, seeing no sense in remaining in the living room, had returned to bed.

That night she lay between the snatches of two lives. The one she had and the one she needed for survival.

Outside the mandir plumeira grow. You hold out your hand to touch their fragile white tips. Such beauty, in amongst the ravages left by the monsoon You hold up your fingers to your nose, deliberately, slowly inhaling the sacred earth-Imarti-honey candied and vanilla spice uniting with the musky earth of jasmine. But this is not your home.

A moment of solitude before you continue onwards towards the paddy field.

“Daljeet, Daljeet-where have you been? You are late, hurry, hurry before Parvan sees” Her lotus leaf eyes, pleading, earnest. Ebony strands of hair, matted with the dried mud of the arable, frame her flawless cheekbones like jacaranda leaves enfolding the purple flowers it yields.

Her black bindi smeared with red turmeric.

You shrug indifferently “I do not fear Parvan” you snap back arrogantly as you saunter away.

She watches you, exasperated but entertained by your show of masculinity. For one so young you have the tiger’s temperament.

Before I woke in the morning, I knew that he would be gone.

My elusive feline father.

And there are some stories that can only be told many years later. And still only in the voice of another. Seen and unseen. Always writing between half-lives. Searching for the truth and meaning of the in and in-between. And wondering more and more how to reconcile the two. And some may never be told at all.