Best Australian Yarn: Jalindra by Jennifer Curtis

MUMBAI, INDIA As I step off the train, the city of Mumbai slams into me. My senses are assaulted by smells, sounds, people — chaos. I’m hit by a wall of diesel and petrol fumes, by the odour of cow dung and then beedi cigarette smoke; sweet and heady. Afternoon rains have soaked the ground, and I’m walking through a thick, heavy steam bath of oil and smoke, of human sweat, of sweet and sour, all the while being pushed and propelled along the station’s platform. On my back, I carry the weight of my father’s dreams, the weight of unopened books. The straps of my leather satchel cut deeply into my shoulders as I press forward in the crowd, holding myself to attention, trying not to let the skin of my brown hands touch the skin of another’s. The colours and sounds, people pushing and shouting, the cars and horns, even my ears feel pummelled by the loudness of everything. And all I want is clean air and space. Already. Along the roadside and down laneways, incense burns, and hawkers prepare food for afternoon commuters. Hot spicy aromas punch the air, and a memory of my grandmother vies for attention as I breathe in cardamom, turmeric, garlic, and ginger, spices my Nani cooked with, the dishes of my childhood. The smell of aromatic galangal lures me along with the masses, and something else lingers, the wooden flower she calls star anise with its promise to bring luck and protection. Words of Indian superstition, no doubt, for luck and protection had not been given but taken from our family. I am already missing the sounds, the smells of my village. With each step forward, I try to imagine a semblance of the stillness I feel when I’m sitting high in the banyan trees by the river, its soft water passing over the cool stones. Yet, I know here that calm will not be found. Questions of the spirit cannot be answered in a city of looming buildings and booming voices. Weary from all that surrounds me, I cast my eyes downward and watch my feet moving me forward, taking me towards the concrete city. And I feel my spirit splinter from the heaviness of my burden: eldest surviving son, student of medicine, provider for all. But what of me? In my heart, by far, my greatest burden was to wish my older brother dead. And now I was paying the price for my cold heart, for my wish coming true. I had been gifted two years, four months and three days more of life than Suresh had lived. I saw the gift as a curse, a punishing reckoning I had brought upon myself and I wondered, did he know this? As I stepped off the train was he watching me? Was he sitting in judgement with his Gods high in the heavens? Was he thinking, Shameful Jalindra, spineless Jalindra, a boy more fragile than a stinging wasp? Sometimes, when I bathed in the river or bartered in our village, I thought I felt his stare. I could feel the heat from his dark shining eyes burn through me, whether I was high in the trees or close to the ground. My brother’s shame of me in spirit was my faithful companion. Before this, before I got on that train, I’d come from a small village, my grandfather’s farm, where the air was light and still, the land open and unfolding. Where I could hear the river running through reeds, over rocks, and I could watch the rain falling through the tops of the rubber trees as I climbed amongst mangosteens, breathing in the heady fragrance of sweet, tangy flowers. And I could sit up high on the peeling branches of the flowering champak and watch a shower of yellow petals falling to the ground. EIGHT YEARS EARLIER Today I am 10 years old. My grandmother has washed my clothes in the waters at the end of the path; she has bashed them hard against the flat stones to clean them. They are hanging on tree branches dripping wet, so today I wear my sister’s salwar kameez, the red one, and I feel shame that I might look like a girl in the cloth’s colour and sheen. I’m more comfortable when there isn’t a festival when I can wear my Levi jeans and my Rahul Dravid cricket shirt. He is my hero. They will be dripping from the trees today too, and in my village, we mainly wear sarongs or lungis as we call them, and I am not allowed to wear western clothes on a festival day. I like to blend in with the paths, the stones, and the waters. So, I like my milky tea lungi the best. It got its colour from all the washing in the river, the bashing on the stones. I don’t get noticed when I wear this, a sarong once as white as Rahul Dravid’s cricket shirt. Wearing this, I feel like me. “Jalindra, Jalindra, where are you hiding?” is always how my grandmother calls me. She thinks I spend too much time in the trees by the waters. She forgets she has told me, “…the rivers have stories to tell.” “I like it here,” I tell her. “It’s quiet and still. When I’m high in the trees, I feel as light as the Sunbird in flight. I can breathe in the flowers and the fruits. I can listen to the water’s whisper. Not like the city, with its honking horns and bitter smells pushing their way up my nose.” “But you spend too much time in the trees, child. It would help if you got to like the city. One day soon enough, you’ll be a big boy, and you’ll study in Mumbai to become a doctor so that you can take care of your family. You are the man of the house now, Jalindra. The family depends on you.” I have to come down from the branches to get her to stop. She knows where I am anyway. The leaves are wet between my fingers. I hang onto fronds as I slip down the tree’s trunk to the ground and make my way along the forest path. It’s cool and dark beneath the plantation, with thin beams of light breaking through treetops from the late sun. I move quickly, feet bare against the cold steps I’ve just reached. I take them two at a time, quick as lightning, fast as a train. I don’t want the scolding coming my way from ‘lateness’ again. When the festival is over, I can come back to my hidey place later, after supper, while the adults are taking their tea and sweet rice cakes. They’ll be too busy talking about the festival and won’t notice me slip out when I do. Grandmother might know I like to spend time with the trees, but she doesn’t know my secret spot, where I can make myself as small as a forest animal and not be seen. Invisible Jalindra is who I am. My father calls me “the missing one,” but he doesn’t bother trying to find me. I like it that way, anyway. When I am near him, it’s just, “Jalinrada this, Jalindra that,” or “Why must you walk like you carry the weight of a goat across your back?” and “When you are a doctor, my son” or “When you are a lawyer, my boy…” What does a lawyer do anyway? When I’m high in the trees or by the water, I don’t have to hear these words from his loud, smelly mouth. It was my older brother’s job to grow up and be a doctor, but now that job has been handed to me. Suresh was sixteen when the mountain took him. My grandfather said the Gods had taken him because he was special. He was the chosen one, and I had been left behind to take care of the family. It had rained hard the day the mountain fell. My brother was building a house at the bottom, in its shadow, hammering and climbing like a monkey on wooden frames, and the house tipped over as the mountain fell; and he was swallowed up by the mud, by the stones, by the rain. I was secretly happy when my grandmother told me. I kept my face still and looked down at my naked feet holding me up in the grey dirt so that she wouldn’t see the smile in my eyes. But yes, I was pleased he was gone. “The special one,” my father called him. “The clever one.” Now I feel small and sad and don’t want to go to the city when I finish school, in place of Suresh. Now I wish I hadn’t had those thoughts. I wish my big brother were alive, back with our family, back with my father; then I could be left alone. Maybe, if I stay out here with the trees long enough, the brown bark and golden leaves will cover me over, soak me up, and then I could be out here always, away from my father. Then I wouldn’t have to be a doctor or a lawyer or go to that stinking city, on that noisy train, with all the colour and sharpness, all the loudness punching its way into me. MUMBAI, INDIA, PRESENT DAY As the city of Mumbai engulfed me, I walked through dusty streets, past temples, coffee carts and shopfronts. I walked and walked, away from the loudness, lights, and music into the darkened shadows of nightfall. I walked until the waking day appeared. Its soft rim of light washed over buildings I would never frequent, over a university I would never enter. I looked towards the outline of greens and golds in the far-off distance and wanted to reach out and touch them. The softly peaked mountain tops looked ethereal, as a blushing skyline rose majestically behind them, casting luminescence across the land. I felt this unsurpassed beauty move me. I didn’t know it at that moment. I would only know it in years to come. I was walking towards brightness, my light. My father, my books were forgotten, the steps of the university behind me. And as I walked away from my father’s dreams towards my own, I felt my spine lengthen with every step I took. And as I moved towards the colours and scents of the land, to where the sounds of the water would be found, the goat I had carried across my back was gone. Afterword: Jalindra: Indian boys name meaning Lord of the Waters Suresh: Indian boys name meaning: Ruler of Gods

Best Australian Yarn: Jalindra by Jennifer Curtis

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