My grandfather died on an oppressively hot afternoon in 2008. Sweat rimmed my brows and dampened my shirt as I watched Amma hold his wrist, then press her ears against his chest.
“He’s gone. It is over.”
My grandmother wailed. She slammed her palms on her chest and screamed like she loved him. “Who will I cook for now? Who will I live for?”
I wished someone would turn on the fan and imagined the relief that would bring. I almost switched it on myself, but it did not feel like the right thing to do. The wailing intensified as my grandmother’s sister joined in.
“My brother! Oh God! How could this happen?”
“Ayyooo…. How do I bear this?”
“I made him tea yesterday. How could this happen?!”
“He was reading the newspaper this morning. Walking around like beans!”
Their voices rose in tandem, tangoing, alternating crescendos like they had rehearsed this all their lives. Sweat dripped down their foreheads, mixed with their tears and snot, and flowed down their chests like rivulets. They did not wipe it away. Good women must wail when their men die.
The wailing went on and on, waxing and waning depending on the number of people watching. I never noticed when they stopped because by evening, my cousins had come and I was very busy. They were ten and twelve, slightly older than me and much older than my siblings and therefore dictated what we played and made up random strange rules. We played “Sat” and “Ice and Water” and told each other scary stories that we pretended were real. We ran in circles and laughed loudly, much to the chagrin of the adults.
Soon other relatives and cousins started showing up, and the house was filled with people I barely knew. My mother became busy making tea. All of them wanted different kinds of tea—strong, light, creamy, dark, sugar-less, lots of sugar, please… I was in charge of conveying tea demands to Amma, who continued making tea all day, her sari drenched in sweat, her face dark with soot.
The next day, they burned my grandfather. First, they bathed him and laid him on the floor. Covered him up with a white bed sheet. Tied up his head with a white cloth and put cotton in his nostrils. They placed rice grains over his mouth, and a stranger sat beside him, reading the Ramayana. My grandmother, her sisters, and my aunt sat on the floor, taking turns to cry. Some consoled them while others watched, shaking their heads silently, palms placed on their cheeks. “What a good man he was,” they lied. They carried him on their shoulders to the pyre, set up under a huge jackfruit tree in the yard. The fire made the heat unbearable. My eyes watered, and I thought my brows would burn off.
Later in the evening, everyone had chili bhaji and tea. The men sat out on the front porch, smoking and talking loudly about the state of the world, swatting mosquitoes with newspapers, longing for a breeze with all their being. The women sat in circles in the bedroom, in the kitchen, and on the back verandah, talking about the state of their world, occasionally asking the kids to quiet down and sit still. We ran around the house like it was the Olympics—our hair sticking to our red, sweaty faces. We ignored my uncle, who said we mustn’t run or Grandfather’s spirit will be angry and restless. We only settled down when someone gave us cold Rasna and teashop pazhampori wrapped in the obituary page of Malayala Manorama.
I liked reading the obituary page, especially if it was used as snack wrapping. I would munch on the snacks and look at all the many different people, mostly old, sometimes younger, sometimes even babies. Grimy black and white faces with oil stains from the snacks. Most people just had a tiny photograph and short paragraph with their name, age, time of death, and names of family members they were survived by. Some people had bigger obituaries, with large portraits taking up almost a quarter of the page and poetic phrases professing undying love and wretched grief at their demise.
My grandfather had an obituary that was the size of a small orange. They put a picture of him inside an oval golden frame with a blue background and two roses on either side. He looked super angry. They also took a huge printout of this photograph, complete with the frame and roses, and placed it in front of the house. It was as tall as me. And so, my grumpy grandfather, for sixteen days after he died, watched the kids playing on the road with the same disdain he had when he was alive.
*
Many days must have passed. All the games and the noise and the brain-melting heat made it difficult to keep count.
When I woke up one day, the house was quiet. It was still dark outside. I did not move immediately because I didn’t want to wake everyone. There were ten of us in total, including my siblings and cousins. We lay on a mat in the living room like dead fish arranged on a fisherwoman’s stand. My left calf had a sweaty patch where it was touching Appu’s leg. Pinky’s arm was wrapped around my stomach, her knee pushed against my hip. Someone snored gently. I stared at the fan that had been switched on and left at maximum speed. I watched its blades merge and become a blurry circle. Its center became an endless spiral. I think of nothing. I tried to think of something, but I ended up thinking of nothing; my mind was blank except for the blurry circle with a spiral center.
I could hear the grinder in the kitchen; Amma must be up. I got up slowly, disentangling myself from the mass of torsos, arms, and legs around me, and made my way to the kitchen.
I peered at Amma from near the kitchen door. The grinder was running, and she stood in front of it, her back turned towards me. I walked up to her, all sneaky, grabbed her hand, and said, “TTO!” She wasn’t startled like I intended but was very annoyed.
“Look at the state of you!” she said, grabbing my forearm with one hand and using the end of her sari to wipe dirt off my face with the other. I tried in vain to push her off. She let go of me eventually but only to get hold of some coconut oil, which she vigorously rubbed on my scalp and hair. “GO! Now! Brush your teeth. Poop. Then take a proper bath. If you create a ruckus today, I will spank you till your bottom is red!”
I sullenly grabbed the Thorthu, white with a red border and little black mildew dots and dejectedly walked to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and sat on the commode to poop. I extended my hand to grab the sprayer to play with, and that is when I saw her. The scariest other-than-human I have ever seen in my life. She was huge, bigger than my little palm; her brown body had hairy legs sprouting all over, and on her back, she carried a huge white egg sac. I imagined all her babies in it, ready to burst out any time and swarm all over my grimy body. All the air in my body got stuck somewhere in my chest, and my voice got lost somewhere in my stomach. I gazed at her, transfixed—my mouth open, my hands trembling. She was magnificent, beautiful perhaps if I had the eye to see it, and terrifying. So, so terrifying. It was only when she moved that I found my voice again.
“AMMMAAAAAAAAA……” I screamed like I was possessed, and my mom rushed to the bathroom thinking I had hurt myself. She did not wait for me to open the door; she threw her body against it, the flimsy lock gave way, and the door flew open. Sitting on the commode, my skirt on the floor, crumpled around my ankle, with terrified yet grateful eyes, I stared at her like she was Christ in his second coming and whispered, “Amma… a spider.”
“Oh my God! This child will be the end of me!” she said, slapping her forehead.
“Please do something!”
“Fine! Move!”
I grabbed the thorthu, wrapped it around my waist, and rushed out while she dealt with the spider. I closed my eyes tightly and covered my face because I did not want to see what was happening. I heard the rustle of a broom, and a few seconds later… SMACK. A smack that made me flinch and think of her little babies in their sac. I opened my eyes only after Mom said I could.
I was sad for the entire day after that. I spoke to no one. I sat on the verandah floor all day, next to my grandfather’s empty armchair. I watched the birds that visited the Ashoka tree and read my Balarama. It smelled different without him smoking his beedi. I struggled to read without him occasionally helping me out with difficult words. It was hot, and I was sweating because there was no fan in the verandah, but I couldn’t move—like when I saw the spider. I sat there, unmoving, my chest feeling weirdly heavy. I knew that no one liked him; he used to drink a lot and steal money from the house to drink more. I felt like they were glad he was dead, and I was the only one who wasn’t glad. I did not have dinner because nobody called me for dinner. After it got dark, Amma made me go to bed.
We had to wake up early the next morning to immerse his ashes in the river. After that everyone came back home and lined up in front of the well. We had to pour a bucket of water over our heads before we got back into the house. The water was cold and clear, but I barely felt it flow over me. It just made me feel hotter and sweatier. Then we had idli and sambhar. The kids were forced to spend the whole day indoors because the heat had become unbearable. The fan felt useless as it whipped hot air around the room. By late afternoon the sky had become grey, and we waited with bated breath for the clouds to be kind. The rude grey clouds just made everyone sweatier, and we became small clumps around ceiling fans. Swarms of mosquitoes enveloped us like halos. Everyone was sweating; everything was hot. The air was thick and still. The leaves did not rustle; even the crows were quiet.
Dinner was appam and beef curry because that was Grandfather’s favorite food. I had two appams with curry, a slice of pineapple, and some custard. Then I wandered off because I wanted to be somewhere nice and quiet. I walked around the house to the back, to the stairs leading up to the terrace, and was surprised to see Amma there. She sat on the fifth stair, which was my favorite stair to sit on, looking up at the sky. She smiled when she saw me.
“Come here, baby.”
I rushed to sit on the step just below her. I laid my head on her lap and wrapped my arms around my legs. She stroked my hair gently.
“Amma?”
“Yes, darling?”
“I think Grandfather sent the spider to make me sad so that his soul can rest in peace.”
She chuckled and continued to stroke my hair.
“Knowing him, he actually might have.”
I smiled. A single tear rolled down the side of my face onto her lap. Then a single raindrop fell on my arm. Then one fell on my cheek. Then one on my shoulder. One became ten, ten became a hundred, and a hundred became ten thousand. I sat there with my mother, letting the rain fall on us. Letting relief wash over us.
Gourilekshmi Hari (they/she) is a writer based in Bengaluru. Their first short story was part of The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF.