“Ammachi, I need to lay down for a few minutes. My head is hurting” I whispered.
“Nina, What is wrong?”
What is wrong? After all that happend today, my grandmother wants to know what is wrong? I thought of asking her what is right? I didn’t even know if there is such a thing called right and wrong!
“Headache” I whispered and went to Ammachi’s room to lay down. I looked at the two beds in the room. We had taken the mat from under my bed with us when we went to watch the Kathakali and now I didn’t have the energy to put it back and lay down. I lay down on Ammachi’s bed and closed my eyes. All I wanted was to sleep, but I just couldn’t sleep.
The jasmine flowers Ammachi had kept in the plate was already stinking and a crow was cawing somewhere outside. The flowers and the crow reminded me of him and it occured to me, I am laying down on the same bed! I felt so sick. I got up to go and lay down on my bed.
“What is it Nina?” Ammachi was standing near the door holding a bowl
“I can’t sleep Ammachi”
“Lay down, I got medicine for you” She showed me the green colour concoction in the bowl. She must have made some herbal remedy
I walked towards my bed.
“Oh Nina, don’t worry about dirtying my pillow. I can always wash it later”
Dirtying her pillows? Oh, she must be thinking that I don’t want to lay down on her bed, because the medicine might stain her pillows. How am I going to tell her, that is not the reason.
I couldn’t, much as the idea of laying down in that bed repulsed me, I couldn’t tell Ammachi what was bothering me.
“Come Nina, lay down”
Ammachi was walking towards her bed and I followed her and lay down on her bed. Ammachi sat next to me
“Close you eyes Nina”. Ammachi took the green herbal paste and started to apply on my forehead. It felt so good, when she applied the cold herbal paste on my forehead
I did what I was told and closed my eyes. But then all I could see was my grandmother and him, singing kananacholayil adine meyikkan(old Malayalam romantic song). Then I saw my mother and father singing the same song, then it was me, I saw myself singing the song with ‘beutiful eyes’. I knew I was going completely crazy. May be everyone will get me admitted to some mental hospital. Perhaps it is all for the best. I could see the sign board outside the door that said Nina Thomas: Mentally ill, instead of MBBS.

“Nina, wake up. You shouldn’t be sleeping at moovanthi neram( at the time of actual sun set). Wake up.” Ammachi started to shake me
I got up and sat down on the bed. Perhaps everything was just a dream. I felt something was stuck on my forehead and I tried to rub it off. As I started to rub the medicine off from my forehead, it occured to, all that happend was not a dream.
I looked outside, it was almost getting dark.
“Come Nina, I made coffee for you”
I gently shook my head to see if I still have a head ache. Fortunately I didn’t have any head ache. I got up and followed Ammachi. The house was almost dark, except for the light coming from the woodfire in the kitchen.
I switched on the light in the living room. I looked around the room. Everything in the room was the same, since the first time I came to this house. I looked at the settee. The wooden settee was handmade by my grandfather. How many times Ammachi yelled at my sisters and I for jumping on the setteee, saying we are spoiling the settee.
Did ‘he’ sit on this settee? Is that why it was so precious to Ammachi?

From the distance I could hear kelikottu annoucing the second day of the Kathakali. I remembered all the times Ammachi took me to watch Kathakali. Wasn’t that an excuse to go and see him? How could she use me as an excuse to go and watch Kathakali?
I tried to remember all the people we met at the temple grounds. I just couldn’t picture ‘him’ amongst all the people. How did he look? What was his name?

“What are you thinking Nina?” Ammachi was looking at me standing near the kitchen table
“Oh nothing Ammachi” I quickly walked to the kitchen. A part of me understood Ammachi’s loneliness, a part of me understood how hard it was for her to meet someone, a part of me also felt the wailings from another woman’s broken heart.
I wanted to hate Ammachi, but the thing about hating is, you just can’t hate the people you love the most, how much ever you wish you could. I felt hatred is like the weed in the paddy field, it grows along with the paddy, it gets pulled out each and every time, yet it still grows, always with the paddy. May be love and hatred are always together. May be a part of me will always hate Ammachi.

Ammachi had made coffee for me and I sat on the bench and drank slowly. The coffee smelled of smoke and it tasted terrible.
“What happend to him?” I asked
Ammachi looked at me and I asked again
“So what happend to him?”
“Don’t know”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I don’t know Nina”
I was tired of these games Ammachi was playing. She was the one who wanted me to know about him and when I ask her anything about him, she says she doesn’t know! I regretted even asking Ammachi anything about him. I thought,as far as I am concerned, he was a jerk. A real one! and I didn’t want to know anything more about him.
“Nina, your mother came home once after Maria was born. While I was at the rubber estate, She went through all the stuff I kept in the cupboard and found the saree that I kept underneath all the clothes. When I came back in the afternoon, she was holding the saree in her hand and standing by the kitchen door”
“I was so mad that she touched my precious saree, so I tried to snatch it from her”
“Then what happend?”
“She refused to give it back, unless I tell her who gave it to me”
“Did you tell her?” I hoped Ammachi had a little bit of common sense and not tell Amma anything.
“No(, I didn’t”
Phew! I was so relieved. My mother is someone, one should never divulge sensitive information, because she will use that information to manipulate you.
“Then what happend?” I asked Ammachi
“Your mother did what she was good at! She went around asking everyone who was my lover? She even went to the church and asked the achen(priest) about the man who gave me saree. Till then I was just the ordinary Thangamma, Methran Thambi’s widow.
In an instant I became the Thangamma, the adulteress, the husband snatcher.
Nina, all of a sudden from a lonely widow, I became the witch who couldn’t control her desires even after having a grand daughter!
Soon the word spread around and the neighbourhood women began to wonder, if I entertained their husbands at night. Can you imagine that Nina?”

“Do you know how much it hurts when people who once respected me started to make fun of me when I went to the market to sell the vegetables?”
I shook my head
“That was not the worst part. Do you know how many times, the society gentle men, who mocked and laughed at me in the morning when I went to the market had come in the middle of the night and knocked at my door, saying Thangamma, it is me, open the door!? Until then, no one dared to walk in to my land during the day time and all of a sudden, people were knocking my door at night!”
Oh my goodness! That is all I could think
“What did you do Ammachi?”
“Dogs! I started keeping dogs, I would unleash them at night”
I couldn’t help smile and I asked Ammachi
“So how many gentle men had to get anti rabies injection?”
“I am sure Nina, it would be my dogs that needed the injection, if they bit the rabid society gentle men!”
I was sure Ammachi was right.
“Ammachi,What happend to the saree?”
“Your mother took it home, to show the proof to your father”
“Did Appa ever ask you anything about it?”
“No, he didn’t”
“You think he knew? You think Amma told him?”
“I don’t know Nina”
“Did anyone know who ‘he’ was Ammachi?”
Ammachi shook her head and said “No”
“Then what happend?”
“Nina, this morning you asked me, if I ever thought about his wife. The truth is, I did. I was worried for her. I knew people will eventually find out who it was and the news would reach her. I didn’t want her to get hurt. So I told him it is over. I told him not to come to my house Nina. I told the only man I ever loved not to visit me!”
Ammachi was crying and I felt so ashamed of myself. I should have known my grandmother would never hurt anyone else.
” I know one day he will come back Nina. I know he loves me. I have been waiting every single day, just to hear his footsteps outside my door.”
“What makes you think that he will come back Ammachi?”
“What makes you think, he won’t Nina?”