Every Thing We Are is a coming of age novel where Sam learns that every thing we are is not always on display. My first attempt at writing a novel, this is being written 1000 words a day through November as part of #NaNoWriMo2020. Hope you will read along as I write. All episodes of this series are available on the ETWA page.
Fire is a short walk from school, Nritya I mean. I’ve been going to the Nritya Dance Studio, thrice a week since I was 7. It was Papa’s dream to make me a Bharatanatyam dancer and that dream has become mine over the years. I love to dance. I am good at it too.
Papa is my biggest fan. He picks me up if practice sessions end later than usual. He goes on early-morning market runs for fresh flowers on performance days. He takes me to competitions. He used to have an embarrassing habit of making invitations for my performances and inviting neighbours and colleagues. I’ve put an end to that, thank God! He gets me an entire Death by Chocolate on our way back from every performance. He gives me foot rubs on the post-performance rest day.
Mama constantly reminds him, “You are spoiling her. She has to go to another house someday.” But I am Papa’s pride and joy. He has all my trophies displayed in the living room. When people visit, he calls on me to perform for them. Papa is trained as a biochemist and he works in one of the oldest biotech firms in Bangalore as the Vice President of their research and development wing, along with Zara’s mother. I want to be a biochemist like him.
Papa and Mama had me a full decade after they had Chetta. They are the earth on which I stand. They are everything. Chetta’s real name is Siddharth, though I don’t ever call him that. He got married last year to Chanchal who is always called Chinnu by everyone. They are both software engineers and have recently moved to Sheffield in the UK. My Mama also holds an engineering degree but she has never worked. She was gearing up to find a job when she had me.
A regular day in my life begins with waking up to bells chiming as Mama prays in a hushed tone akin to gossip. By then, Papa would have gone for a walk with other uncles from the apartment complex. Every morning, Dawn would try to ignore their enthusiasm and hold on to ten more minutes of shut eye before breaking. Before I got ready for school I usually managed to practice an ashtapadi or tillana.
School bus picks me up at 7 am and then I am in my element. At school, time always flies past. There is always more to do than there is time to do it. My zassies and I spend the whole day together usually pulling each other’s legs. Their favourite jibe at me is that my report card often says diligent or dedicated which is teacher-speak for kiss ass! Lunch is the most elaborate affair of the day. We spread out our tiffins everyday and collectively study the peculiar taste buds of our families. Evenings are for dance, homework and family.
“They can say whatever they want. My house was so ancient that it had even developed a hunch. It was just time for that house to go.”
Recently, Papa’s mother, who I call Achams—short for Achamma—has come to live with us. She lost her friend Echmoom, who used to live with her, to cancer a couple of months back. Since then, Papa makes sure that she isn’t alone in her house in Kerala for too long. Either we visit her or fly her down to be with us. Echmoom is what I used to call her. The name in ‘the school register’ as she liked to say was Lakshmi. Achams and everyone else called her Echu. I was supposed to call her Echu ammumma but I coined Echmoom instead. I miss her a lot especially when I think of the old house on the hill in Kerala where Echmoom and Achams lived. As a child, one of the bed time stories Echmoom told me was how she moved in with Achams in the ‘85le pemari’ when her house collapsed under heavy rain in 1985. Every monsoon, Echmoom’s house at the foot of the hill collected water until she move into Achams house till the end of the season. Since she worked all day, every day of the week and went home only to sleep, she didn’t think much of fixing her roof or plugging leaks. Her favourite line in the story was when the village office cited ‘low pressure in the bay of bengal’ as the reason for all weather-related disasters. Her house hadn’t collapsed because of “bangal ulkadalil nyoona mardam”, she would say letting out a laugh. “They can say whatever they want. My house was so ancient that it had even developed a hunch. It was just time for that house to go.”
Achams was awfully quiet and resigned. Since I knew she was grieving her friend, I let Achams be in peace. She shared my room with me even though Chetta’s room was empty, now that he had moved away. My zassy window would always be open, I would often be smirking at the screen or typing too interestedly, on the pretext of studying. As long as I ‘studied’, Achams sat up with me, reading. Never once did she ask me what I was laughing at. It was getting incredibly difficult to continue with this because guilt of tricking her was eating away at me.
One day I asked her, “Achams, don’t you want to know what I am laughing at?”
“Not unless you want to tell me kutta. Do you want to tell me?”
“I could tell you. But if you were Amma, by now would have asked what was so funny in my homework.”
“Ithokke ororutharude private matters alle kutta? If I won’t read your letters, why would I read your messages? Same thing alle?”
I had never thought of messages as inherently deserving privacy. We had always fought against restrictions as a good to have and never as a right. I ended up telling her how Zara had made a fool of herself in front of the teacher she fancied. Achams listened to the story, commenting on how mischievous Zara was for fancying her teacher, “Aha, bhayangari!” And we laughed together, and I saw her face light up for the first time since Echmoom’s passing.
The fifth element—space—I’ve saved that one for love. Space has to be for someone special. Because not everyone gets to go to space.
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