The Inherited Custody

CHAPTER III

1981

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott. Fitzgerald

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It sometimes astonished him, the amount of chaos that could even fit in one small house. His mother would always keep chopping something: onions, eggplants, spinach, fenugreek leaves; or frying: fritters, sautes; or roasting and blending spices from the market: coriander and cumin and fenugreek and carom and fennel seeds, dried red chili peppers, cassia sticks, bay leaves, peppercorns, and cloves.

On the other hand, his father would be a nightmare on holidays, playing the tiny black radio on and on- listening to the news in English and Gujarati, and then playing searching for Bollywood songs by switching channels, adjusting the antenna, rotating the turner very slowly- all while sitting by a window in the hall.

A child from the neighbor kept crying outside, and the crows kept cawing loudly and tirelessly, the traffic of Bombay spat its shadows on their lowland- the sound so validly repetitive and frustrating, his skin went pale to the slightest. The bell at the temple rang immensely, lingering in the air a couple of seconds after being hit. This was it.

Bell-Frying-Radio-Crows-CryingNeighbors-Traffic. It was as if the world had lost the meaning of the word Quiet, or perhaps the word annihilated itself from the language itself as it heard all the sounds on this planet. He picked up the inherited copy of The Great Gatsby with a pencil stuck somewhere in the middle as a bookmark and rushed to the hall, slipping into his slippers, and already jumping down the stairs, skipping a step at a time.

"I'll be back before dinner!" He called out before he ultimately left the house. By the time he reached the road, he had heard his mother yell something out but did not pay any attention. He walked through the footpaths of the crowd, the wind openly dancing like invisible art, crows flying in groups, and all the motors made to run people from place to place- honking, screeching, heating. He walked, and after a couple of heated minutes, it still felt like he'd walked for hours and hours of the day, and the sun didn't wish to melt.

He reached where his mind told him to- a park. It was quiet, even though there seemed to be a crowd.

The gates were massive, black in color- as black as a moonless night. The grilling on those metal doors were intricate works of iron that twirled around metal rods and stood still in the middle of two bars, like soldiers standing in attention at parade grounds. At the very center of the garden, a beautiful fountain sat patiently, decoratively, asking for attendees to sit on itself, letting them use the water in its body. It wasn't too big, but it was white, cozy-looking. What distracted people while they entered the garden, was the tree?- peacock? Or a tree cut as a peacock, with magenta bougainvilleas strangled at their roots to the stems.

But it was not as noisy, as it was quiet back home. No, even with so many people that walked around, played, read, studied, talked- there was not an iota of muddling. There were people who were walking around the carved pathway, older men sitting with their legs parted and chatting through dentures and then cackling like madmen, or buffoons- whatever made children believe older men to be demons. Of course, there were women, strangling children by their hands, some picking those creatures on their shoulders in their baggy sarees or burqas, some strolling around with friends, smiling as quietly and hiddenly as possible. The children played running and spitting and hitting, some eating mud, some throwing mud, very few sitting alone, away. It reminded Rumi of himself, how away he felt, isolated, unseen, tired.

He spotted a bench thereupon which only an older man's buttocks were resting, and so quickly strode with very long steps. When he sat there, he looked around and then down at his lap, where he held the book. Finally, he thought. He took a deep breath. But before he could open the book and find the bookmark he'd left in there, the wrinkled man seated there addressed him, in his raspy, weak and tired but deep voice.