Rewrite, recreate, revise. Giving words to a story is a symbiotic process…and there is much more revision than creation involved. Shakespeare, arguably one of the finest writers to grace us, borrowed liberally.
Last week, I went through my personal writing archive. I came across this short story, inspired by Khalil Gibran, that I wrote in 2014. I plan to rewrite in the coming weeks and thought to share the original today.
The Arrow That Flies by Aarthi Sambasivan, first written in 2014
I do not know what I had expected to find at home but certainly not such stark silence. Tumult and tears would have been easier – they would have stifled my thoughts into submission, into silence. The humid air clung onto my skin, punishing me for my four-year absence. I was back in Settur for the first time since my fight with Appa. In my anger, I had decided that if my father wanted reconciliation, then he needed to take the first step. I had deferred visiting home, even telephoning home, from sheer obstinacy. Now I regretted it all.
The call had come from my sister, Nina.
“Appa had a stroke, Sid. He…he…he is gone. It was too late by the time we reached the hospital.” My knees buckled; my mind suffocated in disbelief. I thought I did not hear correctly at first; but then I heard Nina explaining how Appa had been at dinner when suddenly his face fell flat onto the plate in front of him, directly into his curd-rice and pickles.
Nina led me into Appa’s study. I recognized the look in her eyes – concern, fear, and shock wrapped in exhaustion. Only a brother could have read that look. My mother rocked back-and-forth in his reading chair, cocooned in a shawl despite the excessive warmth in the air. A book of verses by Kahlil Gibran lay forgotten beside her, as if set there upon an unexpected interruption.
The final rites had awaited only my arrival, and they now quickly took place. Nina stayed stubbornly by my side for the next thirteen days, even at the male-only functions. Her uplifted chin and determined eyes waged a silent war with the priest, daring him to ask her to leave. “Once you light his pyre, walk out without turning around to look at it,” he said authoritatively to me while ignoring Nina. These were not figurative but literal instructions. Burn the body but do not look back – this was the Hindu ritual for their dead. Could a crueler directive be given? No matter how cold or how blue the body looked, this was still my father and not a corpse. I had to set him on fire! More than anything else, I wished to turn around.
“I was an idiot to fight with him, Nina.”
“You were idiots for fighting with each other.”
“I should have swallowed my pride.”
“No one blames you.”
“I blame myself.”
“Appa had forgiven you.”
“That makes it worse.”
“He was from a different generation, Sid. He did not know how to reach out to you.”
I stayed for a week after my father’s funeral. In the days that followed, I frequently took solitary walks along the river. A few of the men in the round, thatched boats recognized me, but most passed me off for a tourist. Of the many scenarios in which I had imagined myself back at home, in not one of them was my father absent. Nor was I ever a stranger in my hometown. It was unsettling. I wanted to return to Bombay. At least I could lose myself under the pretext of job-hunting. I would have Gita by my side.
The old house, its even older grounds, and the lifestyle had changed little since I last visited. I had forgotten how low the doorways were – I used to regularly bump my head crossing thresholds from the age of fourteen. I found that I still did so now. Even a makeshift rope-swing that I had tied to the branch of a tamarind tree for Nina was still there.
But I had changed. My English was better, fluent even. I neatly combed my hair to the right, like other city boys. A Bombay dentist had fixed the gap in my front teeth. Perhaps I had changed in more ways than this.
On one of my walks, I peeped into the Settur High School. Students still overflowed onto the veranda, oblivious to the scorching sun, furiously scribbling equations on their slates with small stubs of chalk. Lorries, overloaded with sandalwood, screeched outside the compound walls. I found myself overcome with sadness.
…
I had been sixteen years old – incorrigible but charming myself out of detention with the flash of a toothy grin. Appa picked me up after school that day. Considering this only happened when I was in serious trouble, I prepared myself for a thrashing. He surprised me by heading to the railway station instead. We found seats in the Third Class Unreserved compartment of the train to Bombay.
I slept on the upper bunk; Appa on the lower bunk. I was always nervous around him, so we did not speak much. When we did, it was mostly Appa talking about Bombay, the importance of pre-university studies, and the grandmother with whom I would be staying. I gathered from all of this that I was to complete my eleventh and twelfth forms in Bombay at an English-medium school.
My grandmother’s flat was dingy and located in a dirty Bombay suburb, a far cry from the sandalwood-laden hills of Settur. I hated the unfamiliar and moist scent of monsoon impregnating the air – I desperately wanted to return to Settur.
“Do you remember Paati, boy?”
I nodded an assent but did not.
“You will be staying with her. Study hard. Do what she asks. Do not get into any trouble. Never talk back. Understand?”
In my new school, uniformed students sat in orderly rows of study desks. They used calculators and covered their books with brown-paper. They milled around in set groups during recess, sneaking cigarettes near the samosa seller outside the front-gate. I did not smoke, nor did I like these Bombay-style samosas.
“Hey Beaver Boy,” I heard a female voice behind me a few weeks after the start of term. Beaver Boy had become my nickname in school. The bell for recess had rung ten minutes ago. I had assumed that I was alone in the classroom. What did she want from me? The awkwardness that prevented my making friends with the boys in my class was only heightened in front of the girls.
“Bea-ver-boy!”
I could no longer ignore her. I turned around.
“Why do you do homework during recess?” she asked.
I mumbled something that was incoherent even to myself.
“You’re from the South, no?”
I could not speak so I nodded instead.
“I am also new.”
I was surprised. She was so confident.
“The others laugh when the teacher asks you read aloud,” she was pushing me for a reaction.
It was true. The others did laugh at me when I spoke. I tried hard to imitate their fluency but could not.
“Why do you have such a strange accent?”
“My accent was not strange until I got here.” I had finally managed to say something.
She assessed me critically for a full minute. “When they call you Beaver Boy,” she said, “flick your middle finger to them, like this. Only it is really rude, so never do that in front of a teacher!”
When she explained what the gesture meant, I burst out laughing.
That was how I met Gita. She was a tomboy and found the girls in our class too catty. We became the best of friends. I soon started liking samosas. Cigarettes too. Gita and I would go everyday to buy a samosa at recess, just like the other kids. We would even have enough change left over to buy a single cigarette to share. In return for helping improve my spoken English, I allowed Gita to copy my mathematics homework.
“Is Gita your girlfriend?” Paati asked me one day.
“No!” I exclaimed, but whom was I kidding? I desperately wanted Gita to be my girlfriend.
…
It was reading period. I was in Settur to prepare for my 12th form exams. I had been accepted into IIT in Madras and needed an average score of 98/100 in my secondary certificates to enroll. I also had an unconditional acceptance from Bombay University for an economics degree. Gita, now my steady girlfriend, was already enrolled at Bombay University.
I revised in a new study room that Appa had specially constructed for me, in the back and away from the noisy main road. We rarely spoke, but I often heard him speaking about my IIT engineering admission to others. This was not the time to discuss my preference for economics, I thought to myself. Better to leave that to after the exams. Besides, there was a good chance of not making the 98/100 cut-off.
That would be the last time that I was in Settur before my father’s death.
…
“Why are you giving up your IIT admit?”
“I told you. I prefer economics to engineering.”
“Since when? Then why did you apply to IIT even?”
I was silent. This phone call was costing me a fortune. “There was a time when I wanted to study engineering but things changed!”
“Is all this for that Gita girl? Your girlfriend.”
“Not at all! Have you ever thought that maybe I prefer economics to engineering?”
“If you want to go to Bombay University just for this girl, then you are an idiot.”
“She is not just a girl, Appa. We want to marry. We prefer to not be apart during university, yes that is true. But it is also true that I don’t want to study engineering. I like economics.”
“If you want to get married, then get married. I never stopped you. I did not say a word when you brought home the Maharashtran girl. Now it is her turn to do some compromising. Get married. Then she can move to Madras; and you can go to IIT. I didn’t send you all the way to Bombay to get a second-rate economics degree. Only idiots who fail engineering do economics.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I am listening to everything, Sid. I am listening to you tell me about how you want to wreck your future. You know very well that an engineering degree from IIT will set you up for life.”
“Gita’s parents said that the road to success is found by following your passion.”
“If Gita’s parents said the road to success is found by jumping from a cliff, then are you going to jump from the cliff too? IIT will give you job security for life. If you do this economics thingy then you will end up no better than a jamadar, cleaning the toilets in Gita’s parents’ house.”
“You are being ridiculous!”
“Do not talk back to me, Sid. We taught you to respect your elders. This is the Maharashtran’s doing.”
“Please stop!”
There was a long silence on both sides of the telephone.
I was shaking with anger. Why did he refuse to hear what I said?
“Appa, please understand. I have enrolled at Bombay University. I have given up the IIT seat. There is no turning back.”
“You have forgotten who you are and where you come from.”
“If I have forgotten, then blame yourself. You are the one who chose to send me to Bombay!”
Another silence. Then phone went dead. He had hung up on me. My father and I never spoke again.
…
I sat on the riverbed, my eyes closed and my face turned to the sky. Yet again, my regret overcame my logic. All the things that I could have said but didn’t; all the things that I never should have said but did. Oh senseless pride! Why had I not apologized? Waves of hysteria overcame me. I stood up. I ran. I ran all the way to Appa’s study.
I rushed inside. I looked around desperately. His fountain pen. Then the old ivory box in which he kept toothpicks. My eyes fell upon Appa’s Kahlil Gibran. There it was – probably exactly where he had set it down when called for dinner. He was never able to finish reading it. My trembling fingers hesitated around the edges of the book, seeking the bookmark. I opened to its page.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
The words had been underlined with a pencil. I could not finish reading. I was overwhelmed by an onslaught of emotions. Was that my name? Were these my thoughts? Can I ever be myself again? I remembered nothing; only Appa. I was sinking. I registered pain in my skull. I collapsed. I cried. I was crying in fact for the very first time.
In the midst of this fog, I somehow noticed the bookmark itself: a sheet of paper folded in half. A sheet that had long ago been torn from a notebook. It was filled with scribbles, my scribbles. “Siddharth’s” was written neatly on top, in an adult’s handwriting, unmistakably my father’s.
After staring at his handwriting for a long time, I decided to re-open the Kahlil Gibran, only this time I read it from beginning to end. I finished it for Appa. The pain was easing. I held on tightly to the book and walked outside into the shining, glorious sun.