Kanyakumari
On the first day after she landed, still jet-lagged and woozy from the 18-hour flight, Selvi found herself pleating her sari the wrong direction. Clicking her tongue, she let the silk fall out of its rows and wound them around her fingers again. Pinky, then pointer. Pinky, then pointer. She tried not to get too frustrated when the rows were not neatly lined up like they had been in her mother’s hands.
She missed her mother. But after months of bedridden pain, it was best that she was long gone, Selvi affirmed herself. Her mother’s ashes had received the great honor of being scattered in a muddy tributary of the Potomac River five years ago. Ganesh had not wanted a trip to India so soon after his promotion, and Selvi had not found the strength to argue. Her mother’s ashes would find the same ocean as ashes from Varanasi.
She wondered what her mother would think of her now. Her daughter, divorced from her husband, fending for herself with two children she can hardly keep track of, and struggling to even tie a sari the right way. She felt even more of a traitor, for not knowing this most basic thing, and for taking a week to bring her father’s ashes to Kanyakumari.
Selvi shoved her misshapen pleats into her petticoat and smoothed her hands over her hair, taking a long, slow breath. Five things you can see, said the voice of her psychiatrist when she took her calls in the biting cold of the garage so her husband wouldn’t hear. The peeling turquoise paint in the corner of the room, the wrinkles in the white cotton of her sari, the unfinished filter coffee on the nightstand, her phone charger dangling from the outlet, the clay pot which held what was left of her father’s hopes and dreams and memories.
Four things you can touch. The wisps of hair on the back of her neck-
“Amma[i],” came the voice of her darling son, who she had struggled to push into the world, while his sister had neatly popped out hours before, “I can’t find my watch!”
“Ask your sister,” Selvi said, trying to focus. Four things-
“Aruna said she didn’t see it!”
“You don’t need your watch right now, Shiva,” Selvi sighed.
“Yes I do! It tells me the time and the date and the-”
“Oh, my god,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Selvi!” Her twice-removed-something-or-the-other aunt Kamakshi’s voice pierced above her son’s in Tamil, “We are late, he is waiting!”
“He” was the driver, likely chewing paan[ii] and waiting for his charge to work up the courage to get out of her room and make sure her son had his watch and her daughter was dressed and they all got in the car so he could drive them the ten minute distance to the beach.
“Coming!” Selvi responded. Four things; the cool clay of her father’s urn, her son’s clammy hand in her palm, her daughter’s faint touch on her back, and the rubber of her sandals as she slipped them on and went outside.
Shame trickled down her spine as Kamakshi Mami[iii] tsked and turned her so she faced her to fix her pleats. The woman was a head smaller than her with a striking resemblance to her father’s mother. Selvi could not for the life of her remember the specifics of the relation that she had with the woman. Her inability to answer Shiva’s repeated questions about their family tree still tasted bitter.
At some point, a few other family members joined them and Kamakshi Mami ushered them into the car. Eight people packed into the six-seater, arranged so that Selvi sat next to the window that was stuck half-open, her quiet Aruna on her lap.
As the car lurched to life, Selvi fingered the braids in her daughter’s hair. “Who did your hair, Aru?”
“Nalini Aunty,” she said, her small voice almost drowned by the honks of the cars and trucks next to them.
“Ah.”
“She has beautiful hair,” Nalini Mami piped up from the backseat, “Do you put coconut oil in her hair? It will be very good-”
“I do put oil in her hair,” Selvi gave her a smile and hoped it didn’t look too strained. She never forgot to keep a stock of those blue Parachute bottles in her cupboard.
At least the topic of her divorce had not been breached. On today, of all days.
As the dusty, packed streets made way into salty ocean air, Selvi took in a deep breath. The chatter of the occupants of the car around her faded into the background. Three things you can hear. She plucked them out of the distant noise. Shiva, sitting on the lap of Subramanian Mama[iv] next to them, chattering about some video game or another while the taciturn man hummed here and there. Meenamma paati[v] sitting at the front, tapping her fingers on the dashboard to the old movie song on the radio. The singer had what her father called a keechu-keechu kural, the high pitch of her voice teetering on grating. Nalini Mami’s soft discussion in the back of the car with Kamakshi Mami, the other woman’s louder voice rising to a pitch every so often.
Selvi leaned forward and rested her head against Aruna’s back.
Her daughter tugged on her fingers.
“I’m okay, kanna[vi].”
The car rumbled to a stop in a parking lot right by the beach. Selvi waited for Aruna to clamber down from her seat before following. She looked around as everyone else made their way out of the car with no insignificant amount of groaning and complaining about old bones. Children played on the beach, hawkers sold their wares, colorful kites flew in the ocean breeze. But further down, figures of white lined the shoreline, scattered on the sand like grains of rice.
There was blissful anonymity here. Her plain white sari, the earthen urn smeared with vermillion and turmeric, her brown-skinned children, were one of hundreds gathered on this stretch of the sea. Here, they were not tokens to be stared at or infiltrators to be watched or strange women in white clothing kneeling at a stream by a highway. Here, she was not the divorced daughter of the well-known now-dead neurologist, with one child far too loud and the other far too quiet. Here they were simply a mother, a son, and a daughter in mourning.
How awful, she thought, that she should feel so free when performing her father’s funeral rites. How sad that it had taken her so long to get there.
“Selvi?”
Selvi turned to see Meenamma, her great-aunt, peering up at her. Her eyes were owl-like and watery through the thick lenses.
Her great-aunt Meenamma had lost most of her teeth, so her Tamil was a far cry from what Selvi had heard her parents speak. She relied mostly on head nods and affirmative noises, not wanting to disappoint the old woman by telling her she understood perhaps half of what she said. Still, in the press of her wrinkled palms against Selvi’s cheek, the affection needed no translation.
Selvi faced the ocean and took a deep breath. “Shiva, Aruna? Come with Amma.”
The three of them took off their slippers and put them in the car then walked onto the sand. Shiva ran ahead and chased the seagulls while Aruna held Selvi’s hand, staring off into the horizon. Selvi kept walking, focusing on the feeling of the grains shifting against her feet, slipping her toes into the cooler sand underneath.
She kept walking until the water barely touched her toes. Aruna pulled back, shaking her head.
“What’s wrong, kanna?”
Aruna whimpered and shook her head, pointing at the water.
“You don’t like it?”
She shook her head again.
“Okay. Let’s stay here.”
Selvi called out to Shiva, who had run halfway back across the beach in his seagull-chasing efforts. He refused to listen until she did it three times.
As he came towards them, she knelt on the wet sand.
“Remember how I told you that thatha[vii] had died?”
Both of them nodded their heads.
“For us, when someone is dead, we let their ashes go into the ocean.”
“Why?”
“I-” Selvi pursed her lips. She didn’t know. How was she supposed to explain the comfort in a thousand-year-old practice they were supposed to have left behind with modernity? “Ask Kamakshmi Mami later, okay?”
Shiva pouted. “But I wanna know now.”
Selvi sighed. Ganesh would have known what to say to their rambunctious son so he could understand that his mother couldn’t answer him right now. But he also likely wouldn’t be there with them, unwilling to give up a week’s time to support his wife. Now ex-wife, she thought bitterly. He had been good with the children in the early days, but that patience had soured to apathy until she couldn’t swallow it anymore.
“Not now, Shiva,” she said with a stern look. Surprisingly, he did not complain.
Selvi pushed forward. “We let their ashes go in the ocean so they can find peace. We are going to do that with thatha’s ashes now, okay?” They both nodded. “Do you want to say anything about thatha now?”
“I liked when we played Connect Four together,” said Shiva, “and when he made jokes. I miss his jokes.”
Selvi nodded, smoothing her son’s hair.
“I-” Aruna started, then quieted. Selvi waited – she knew she would take her time.
“I miss how thatha told me stories. And he listened a lot. To me.”
Selvi chuckled. “That was only for you, kanna. He didn’t listen to anyone else.”
Her daughter looked up with a glint in her eye. “I know.”
Selvi grinned. The cold of the water lapping against her feet brought her back to reality. “I miss his paper thin dosas. And when he would fall asleep on the couch. I miss when,” she swallowed, “When he would watch the Mahabharata serials on the TV so loudly you couldn’t hear yourself think. And then when you asked him to turn it down, he would never do it. He would always tell you all the life lessons you could learn from it, how the Bhagavad Gita explains how one should live in the world. And then he’d just keep watching it at full volume.”
Selvi felt a tear trickle down her face.
“It’s okay Amma,” Shiva said blithely, “We can watch Mahabharata and make dosas at home.”
Despite herself, she let out a watery laugh. “Yes, we can do that.”
Letting out a long breath, she stood up. “Let’s go let him go, hm?” She began to walk into the freezing cold of the water, Shiva beside her. A small hand tugged at her arm, and she looked back.
Aruna.
Selvi cursed. “Aru, can you come into the water with Amma?”
She shook her head vehemently. Her braids bounced between her shoulders.
“I can’t let you be there by yourself.”
Her daughter took a step back as the waves came close to her feet.
“Aruna,” Selvi bit her lip, “Please.”
“Amma, I wanna go look at the seagulls!” Shiva piped up at her side, tugging on her sari.
“No, Shiva,” Selvi closed her eyes. “Not right now.”
“But Amma!”
“Aruna, can you go back to-”
“Amma, look at them over there-”
Selvi felt like ducking her head under the water and screaming. What was it after three things you can hear? Two things you can smell. The fresh breeze off of the waves and the faint smell of coconut oil in her hair. She wished she could have worn jasmine today.
“Dai! Aruna, you come with me. Shiva, stay with your mother.” Selvi had never been so glad to hear Kamakshi Mami’s voice coming from a few feet away. She lifted Aruna up onto her hip and waded into the ocean, followed by Meenamma helped in by Subramanian Mama.
Shiva pouted, but before he could say anything, Nalini Mami called from the shore, “Shiva, if you stay there, I will buy you some Limca on the way back.”
At the idea of his newfound favorite soda, Shiva stayed put.
As Kamakshi Mami neared her, Selvi found she was terrified to look her in the eyes and see pity. She could not stand pity, even from family she hardly knew. But when she looked up, she only saw understanding in the older woman’s eyes.
She turned around and leaned down, opening the urn and letting the water lap inside, taking her father back into the sea.
The waters of Kanyakumari looked like every other expanse of ocean in the world. How miraculous that the point where three oceans met, the triveni sangam, seemed perfectly normal on the surface. The waters melded together seamlessly. No great waves crashed together, no battles between three territorial gods took place. Instead, the water recognized its own, and calmly they slipped into the tides together. Her father had joined them, one more droplet amongst a trillion.
Selvi cupped some of the water in her hand, as if she could learn the secret of coexistence of all of the selves that made her.
One thing you can taste.
Salt. From her tears or from the sea, she didn’t know.
At her side was Meenamma, who guided her face to her shoulder, despite how much shorter the older woman was. Selvi stood there, half-crouched and sobbing, lost in the scent of sandalwood Meenamma wore. She knew the powder well. It was the same her father had worn every day until his last.
Her fingers loosened on the clay urn, and she let it go, watching it bob along the waves before it, too, dissolved.
[i] “Mother” in Tamil
[ii] Betel leaf in Hindi
[iii] “Aunt” in Tamil
[iv] “Uncle” in Tamil
[v] “Grandmother” in Tamil, used to denote any old woman.
[vi] Term of endearment in Tamil
[vii] “Grandfather” in Tamil