‘How did she get out? I wanted to know.
‘“I just swam,” she told me.
‘Where did the creature go? Were there other creatures? If it was a sea, I reasoned, there must have been other organisms.
‘“The creature disappeared as soon as I entered,” she responded. “And then there was nothing at all, not a single fish. Not even light. It was the most frightening yet beautiful experience.”
‘The following day, she gathered the villagers and told them what had happened. She wanted to see if others had seen it too. Most of her audience were just as perplexed as I was. The children listened intently as if being told a fairy tale, but left to play as soon as she finished. But one man became particularly fascinated. He was a bald man with a piercing look, about sixty or so, who claimed that he had been searching for what he called “the world of water” for as long as he could remember. The villagers addressed him as Grandpa. All day long, Grandpa followed your mother and asked her questions. What did the creature look like? What did she mean, man’s head and fish’s body? So your mother began making these sculptures for him, carving them out of anything she could find around the village.
‘“Here,” she would tell him. “This looks about right.”
‘Your mother and Grandpa marched down to the river every night in search of the world of water, but not a single time did they come across it or the creature again. Disappointed, they’d return to the farmhouse early in the morning, sit around the table, and carve more of these sculptures while discussing this new world that had been forced into our lives.
‘Once, while they were carving, I asked Grandpa how he had come to know about this world. He told us that in the mountains where he was from, there used to be an abundance of wild tulips. Unlike the ones we knew, these tulips had larger petals. They’d all bloom overnight and occupy entire fields, and then they would all wither together again, as if they were nothing but a fleeting dream. Rarely would you spot two different-coloured tulips in the same field. The beauty of it all was difficult to put into words, he said wistfully.
‘The first time Grandpa heard about the world of water, he was still a child. Someone had tripped on a rock amidst a field of white tulips and tumbled into that world. The man came back shivering, frightened like a beaten dog. After that day, the man who fell into the world of water would never again leave the farmhouse alone. If he had to go somewhere, he would take a yak with him. Whenever that man was forced to remember the world of water, all he said was, It’s black, it’s black. However, none of this frightened young Grandpa. He felt that an invisible string had been woven during the years of his past life and the lives before that, and that the purpose of his current life was to continue extending the string. He made up his mind to look for the world of water. To him, it was not even a choice, but a destiny of some sort.
‘As the years passed, the man who had seen the world of water died, and people gradually forgot about the entire thing. Grandpa, however, went to the tulip fields every day. Until one particular sorrowful year, when the tulips didn’t grow. Not a single one. The year that happened, Grandpa had just turned thirteen and lost all his family members in a kitchen fire. It was as if the tulips had taken with them everything from his life, and he came to understand what it meant to be truly alone, and the fact that life was ever-changing. He sat in the mountains for three days and three nights, staring at the bare fields, hearing the wolves howl up at the moon.
‘Then he left, in search of the one last thing that he still had – the world of water.
‘“Why did you stop here?” we asked him.
‘“It felt like home,” Grandpa answered.
‘Afterwards, your mother and I began gathering tulips for a few days. We took our motorbike and spent all our mornings out in the mountains, searching for those wild flowers. To our surprise, these tulips were not rare, and we were able to find quite a large quantity of them. Just as in Grandpa’s memory, they grew densely, filling up entire fields. Your mother picked anything she came across – white, yellow, red, blue, purple, you name it. As long as it was a tulip, she brought it home with her. We filled the room up with these beautiful flowers.
‘But things took an unexpected turn. I could never have imagined that one rainy afternoon, in that little Tibetan village, amid the honey-like scent of blooming tulips, I would lose my entire world.
‘That day, your mother woke up from a nap and found herself submerged in the world of water. I was there in the room too, but there’s a blank white spot in my memory. No matter how hard I try to think back to that afternoon, all I remember is the two of us going to bed for a nap, and the mist blanketing over the village. Then what I recall, clear as the sound of a trumpet, is the moment when I opened my eyes and saw the tears all over your mother’s face, the blood oozing from the cuts on her arms, and the knife she held at her throat.
‘“What on earth are you doing?” I asked her.
‘“Kill me,” she said.
‘I told her to give me the knife. She made me promise to kill her. I begged her to calm down, and asked her why she wanted to die. I assured her that we were going to go home. It would all be over soon.
‘“It’s already over,” she said calmly, tears still rolling down her face. “My body is still here, but it won’t be for long. The thing that gives this body meaning has been taken by the water. It’s hollowing me out. I left a part of myself there. It’s going to take all of me eventually.”
‘I didn’t believe her. More accurately, I couldn’t fathom the meaning behind her words. I called her selfish, for thinking only about herself and not our family. I knew that I was attempting to handcuff her with my idea of family again. I told myself that keeping her alive was enough to make a family.
‘I regret it all. I regret not being able to hold her hand and pull her back from the world of water. I keep thinking that had I been more understanding, had I accepted her way of living, things would’ve turned out differently and she would’ve found something to hold on to. But I was foolish. I couldn’t pull her back, even if I tried. Your mother said that there was nothing in the world of water, but I have come to the understanding that all she ever wanted was there, in those deep waters. And she left me alone here, in this world, searching for whatever it is I want.
‘I grabbed the knife from her by force. Grandpa must have heard our quarrel and seen your mother with that knife. Because from that day on, until we left, he didn’t speak another word about the world of water.
‘We returned home, and after a few months, your mother gave birth to you. She loved you with an intensity that I had never seen in her love before. I can say for certain that you were the only reason she held on to this family for all those years. She took on the role of the mother I had always believed her to be. Whatever was left of her, she gave it all to you. But during this time, I watched her drift from me, getting lost further in a world that I’ve never come to know. I learned that there are two kinds of people: those who need boundaries, and those who will die from them. Making your mother live the way I wanted us to be together was no less cruel than keeping a fish in a bowl.
‘It was an incredibly lonely experience for us both, I believe. Apart from living in the same space and sharing a child, we had nothing else in common. Throughout those years, she didn’t speak about going back to Tibet. Occasionally, she’d mention the world of water, but never anything more than a brief remark. Sometimes she’d buy tulips, and together we’d watch them flower and fade.