The Lilac House by Anita Nair Page B

more. You tried logic; all the theories you knew, all the reasoning you could muster to make sense of the situation. That was all you had, to help her make sense of the constant bickering, the fault finding, the relentless criticism, the snapping and snarling that grew into cold quarrels that wounded and crippled. The palpable resentment when Nina and you were merely in the same room together.
     
    Smriti became a child caught between two fronts. She wouldn’t buy into the sometimes-people-grow-apart-it-is-inexplicable explanation. Was that what caused her to flee their warring world? And from a distance, she tried to instigate Shruti’s relocation. ‘We will be happy here,’ Smriti wrote. ‘This is our home. Here family means everything!’

    Were Nina and you the perpetrators of what happened to her? Was that ass of a doctor right after all?
     
    All your life, all you ever wanted to do was protect your children. From demons and heartbreak, big and small. From hurts and wounds inflicted by a careless, callous world. Even when all you could do was watch from the sidelines: when Smriti was not chosen for the school play, when Shruti’s friends didn’t turn up for her birthday party, when Smriti’s boyfriend dumped her.
    You shared with them all that life had taught you about life itself so they could avoid the mistakes you made. And yet, when they chose to make their own mistakes, you had no option but to be there for them.
    How can you cease to be a parent even if your child is determined to shrug off the mantle of being a child?
    When do you let go? Where do you stop? How does one draw the line?
     
    Jak treads water and looks around. He can see the temple in the distance. How could you have not looked after my child? When she came here, it meant you became responsible for her. How could you have let this happen? Jak rages at the brother and sister duo and then abruptly ceases. What is he doing? Trying to shift responsibility to deities of stone in a derelict temple on a hill?
    If he is swept into the sea, there will be no one for him to throw accusations at but himself.
    And Smriti, what would happen to her then? Nina would have her put in a home somewhere. Nina is no longer the woman he knew. What was once a chitinous shell, easily cracked, has turned into stone.
     
    Nina sat there by Smriti just before she returned to her life in America. An inert Smriti, for once. She often sat at her bedside, looking at her daughter’s face, studying it for some sign of change.
‘You, Kitcha,’ she snarled suddenly, ‘I hold you responsible for this. You and only you. I don’t want you to come anywhere near Shruti. I will get a court order if I need to. I won’t lose another daughter to you, to India.’
    ‘Nina.’ He reached out to take her hand in his. But she flung his hand away.
    ‘You wouldn’t listen to me ever, the two of you. You ganged up against me. I was the stick in the mud. I was the gargoyle spitting advice, I was the one you had to defy and even spite. Fine! Now you look after her. You take the responsibility.’
    Jak turns towards the shore.
    Out there on land is Smriti. The responsibility of her life. The burden of the past. Her petrified future.

VII
    M eera’s petrified future. It begins thus:
    The raucousness of a rowdy flock of mynahs in the avocado tree by the bedroom window.
    Just for a moment she knows respite as she stirs from sleep. A sleep she had lured in the early hours with a Restyl tablet. She had lain on her side reading the chemical composition of the little angel who would lull her nerve ends to repose.
    She keeps her eyes shut and holds her breath. What if Giri crawled into bed while she was asleep? A movement at her side. A breath. A hand that snakes its way to drape around her hip. A clearing of throat. The presence of Giri.
    She lies there with her eyes pressed tightly shut.
     
    Meera lets her fingers crawl and encounters the unslept side of the bed. She knows then it is the