again, he would tell her to stop being silly, she would ask for details, and he would tell her to mind her own business.
“I was thinking,” said Mrs. Kohlah, shifting to a less risky subject. “Since you have come after so many years, maybe you should take the chance and visit our relatives. Everyone in the Sodawalla family is dying to see you again.”
“It’s too far to go, I don’t have time.”
“Not even two-three days? You could also say hello to the lady you lived with when you were in college. She would be so happy to see you.
“She’s forgotten me after all this time, for sure.”
“I don’t think so. If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t have finished your certificate. You didn’t like the college hostel, you wanted to come straight back home, remember? You owe your success to Dina Dalai and her accommodation.”
“Yes, I remember.” Hearing his mother say “success” made him cringe.
Dusk fell, and the lizard he had been watching began melting into the stone wall. When it moved, it became sharply visible again. But the creature’s appetite must have been sated, he thought, for it no longer darted at flies — its belly seemed distinctly bloated.
“Maneck.” She waited till he turned his head towards her. “Maneck, why are you so far away?”
He narrowed his eyes to examine her face — his mother was not usually given to such inanities. “It’s because my job is in Dubai.”
“I wasn’t referring to that distance, Maneck.”
Her answer made him feel foolish. Gently touching his shoulder, she said, “Time to start dinner,” and went inside.
He listened to the kitchen noises travelling to the porch, timid as his mother’s words. Pots and pans, and then the knife — a flurry of taps against the board while she chopped something. Water running in the sink. A thud, and a bolt rattling into place, as she shut the window to keep out the evening cold.
Maneck shifted uneasily in his chair. The cooking sounds, the twilight chill, the fog rising from the valley began escorting a host of memories through his troubled mind. Childhood mornings, waking, standing at the enormous picture window of his room, watching the snow-covered peaks as the sun rose and the mountain mists commenced their dance, while Mummy started breakfast and Daddy got ready to open the shop. Then the smell of toast and fried eggs made him hungry, so he pushed his warm feet into the cold slippers, enjoying the shiver that shot through him, brushed his teeth, and hurried downstairs, gave Mummy a good-morning hug and snuggled into his chair. Soon, Daddy came in rubbing his hands, and took great gulps of tea from his special cup while standing, gazing out upon the valley before sitting to eat his breakfast and drink more tea, and Mummy said…
“Maneck, it’s getting chilly outside. Do you want a pullover?”
The intrusion jolted the elbow of memory; his thoughts collapsed like a house of cards. “No, I’ll be in soon,” he called back, irritated by the interruption, as though he could have recaptured, reconstructed, redeemed those happy times if only he had been given long enough.
The lizard still clung to the stone wall, camouflaged within the stone colouring. Maneck decided he would go inside when the fading light made the creature disappear completely. He hated its shape, its colour, its ugly snout. The manner in which it flicked its evil tongue. Its ruthless way of swallowing flies. The way time swallowed human efforts and joy. Time, the ultimate grandmaster that could never be checkmated. There was no way out of its distended belly. He wanted to destroy the loathsome creature.
He took a walking-stick leaning in the corner of the porch, crept forward, and swung at the lizard. The stick made a flat
Now he felt relief that he had not killed the lizard. He wondered at what point it had departed, leaving him to conjure up its saurian presence. He looked closely at the wall’s texture. He ran his fingers over the surface to find the spot. There must be some curious marking in the stone, a bump or crack or hollow that had tricked his eyes.
But the outline had vanished. Try as he might, he could not bring back the picture. The imagined lizard had escaped as cleanly as the real one.
The morning after the cremation, Maneck and his mother set off with the wooden box to scatter his father’s ashes on the mountainside where he had loved to walk. He had wanted to be strewn throughout these vistas, as far and wide within the panorama as human effort could accomplish.
“I think Daddy is forcing me to take at least one long walk with him,” said Mrs. Kohlah, brushing away her tears with the back of her hand, keeping her fingers dry for the ashes.
Maneck wished he had accompanied his father more often on his outings. He wished the delight, the eagerness he had shown as a child could have endured in later years, when his father needed him most. Instead, he had succumbed to embarrassment in the face of his father’s growing effusiveness about streams and birds and flowers, especially after the townspeople started talking about Mr. Kohlah’s strange behaviour, his patting of rocks and stroking of trees.
The air was calm this morning. There was no breeze to help disperse the ashes. Maneck and his mother took turns dipping into the box and sprinkling the grey powder.
When half the ashes were gone, Aban Kohlah felt a pang of guilt, felt they were not doing it as thoroughly as her husband would have liked. She ventured into more difficult places, trying to throw a fistful in a hesitant waterfall, mingle some in an inaccessible clump of wildflowers, spread a little around a tree that grew out of an overhang.
“This was Daddy’s favourite spot,” she said. “He often described this tree, how strangely it grew.”
“Be careful, Mummy,” warned Maneck. “Tell me where you want to scatter it, don’t lean so much over the edge.”
But that would not be the same thing, she thought, and persevered in her precarious clamberings down steep paths. Finally, what Maneck had feared came to pass. She lost her footing and slipped down a slope.
He ran to where she crouched, rubbing her knee. “Ohhh!” she said, rising and trying to walk.
“Don’t,” he said. “Just wait here, I’ll get help.”
“No, it’s okay, I can climb up.” She took two steps and sank to the ground again.
He tucked the box of ashes safely behind a boulder, then hurried to regain the road, shouting to someone going by that his mother was injured. Within thirty minutes, a group of friends and neighbours came to the rescue, headed by the formidable Mrs. Grewal.
The wife of Brigadier Grewal had become more and more leaderly in her demeanour since her husband’s death. Wherever she found herself, she automatically took control of things. Most of her friends welcomed this, for it meant less work for them, whether it was planning a dinner party or arranging an outing.
Sizing up Mrs. Kohlah’s predicament, Mrs. Grewal sent for two porters who now worked as waiters in a five- star hotel. In the old days, the duo would carry elderly or infirm tourists in a long-armed viewing chair along the mountain paths and trails to enjoy the scenery. When the new road was built, wide enough to accommodate sightseeing buses, it put the porters out of business.
But the two were happy to get the palkhi out of storage for Mrs. Kohlah. Maneck asked if they would be able to carry her safely, since they might have lost their surefootedness after years in their soft hotel jobs, padding between kitchen and dining room.
“Have no fear, sahab,” they said. “This work was our family tradition, it is in the blood.” They were visibly excited about the chance, however brief, to exercise their old skills.
“Maneck, will you stay and finish the box?” asked Mrs. Kohlah, as she was helped into the palkhi.
“Yes, he will stay,” said Mrs. Grewal, deciding for them. “Maneck, you finish the ashes and catch up with us later. Your mummy will be safe with me.”
She motioned to the porters; they hoisted the palkhi to their shoulders and trotted off in perfect unison, their legs and arms moving like well-oiled machinery, finding a smooth rhythm over the rugged paths to spare the passenger unnecessary jolts. Maneck was reminded of the steam engine his father had once shown him at close
