And then, when they started to enact the killing of sheep, Uncle Anand undressed hurriedly on the verandah steps, discarding pants and shirt, and joined the dance. It was a strange sight, a fake among the pride, dancing out of line in blue-and-green-striped boxer shorts, and the members of the huli vesha split open their black lips to laugh.
“One too many, Brother?” the leader of the pride asked, pointing a yellow thumb toward his mouth, but Uncle Anand only crouched and leaped, crouched and leaped, his face in deep stupor, until Grandmother Indira ran into the yard and slapped him on his back.
“Stop!” she screamed, and he did at once, hunkering down, burying his face in his crossed arms. The drumbeat and the dance of the tigers stopped too.
On the ninth day of the festival, after lunch, Uncle Anand disappeared. A fretting Grandmother Indira, her brow knitted, peeped out at the hilltop repeatedly from the corner room window, but Uncle Anand did not suddenly manifest under the banyan tree like he sometimes did, no matter how many times she looked. By early evening, she could no longer ignore the dread in her chest. She sent Tara down the T-junction to look for Uncle Anand.
“Don’t go too far” she said. “Only up to Beary store. Ask if he was there this afternoon.”
Tara didn’t have to ask, because she caught a glimpse of Uncle Anand just beyond the Beary store, surrounded by rowdies and little boys. The drumbeats of the huli vesha filled the air from somewhere in the neighborhood, and Uncle Anand was dancing again, shaking his head like a tiger and prancing in frenzy. Tara watched with a pounding chest, not knowing how to penetrate the thick ring of rowdies in their printed shirts open at the chest and flared pants, who were jeering, clapping, whistling.
“Anand Circus has come to Morgan Hill,” the one in the gaudy yellow shirt yelled between catcalls.
When Tara returned with Grandfather Madhava, the crowd had dispersed. The beat of the huli vesha drums was only a rumble further down the road. Only Uncle Anand remained, on his haunches, his back against the compound wall, sweat pouring down his face and wetting his vest. Around his neck was a twisted coir rope with a small bell that he was struggling to undo.
Tara wished Uncle Anand would go back to being the Uncle Anand he once was. She missed their evening sojourns to the Beary store, the snacks he bought her. That night, he was in the mental ward at the hospital in Kankanady. It was schizophrenia, Grandmother Indira said. He’d had the same symptoms some years earlier, before Tara was born. Earlier in the evening, a decision was made. There was no more leeway for hoping, praying, pretending, or brushing the matter under the carpet. Uncle Anand desperately needed help. Zeenat’s father Hamabba’s rickshaw was summoned, and he came with his cousin Idinabba to coax a stiff, silent Uncle Anand into the rickshaw for their difficult ride to the hospital.
When Uncle Anand returned home from hospital, the monsters in his head had not disappeared. During his good days, he stayed silent; on his bad days, he often targeted Tara.
One Wednesday, returning from school, Tara was met by a mundu-clad, smiling Uncle Anand who filled the front doorway.
“Uncle, let me pass,” she said.
Uncle Anand moved aside, and when Tara attempted to pass through, her spine prickled in warning. A chill clamped down on her chest when he grabbed her hand and walked her out again to the middle of the yard where he had assembled firewood like a small pyre.
“Divine Mother Sita,” he said, prostrating himself at her feet. “Show them your purity, your virtue. A test of fire is what they seek.”
Tara knew Queen Sita, wife of Lord Rama from the epic Ramayana, was a paragon of virtue; Uncle Anand had told her that just last month, when she had to ask him the meaning of paragon and the meaning of virtue.
“I am not Sita, I am Tara.” Her voice trembled as she tried to reason with Uncle Anand.
“Your subjects, Mother Sita. Prove it to them.”
Tara watched, frozen, as Uncle Anand bounced up and struck a match into the firewood. The pyre burst into golden flames, hissing, dancing, growing in the afternoon breeze.
“Mother Sita,” Uncle Anand implored again with folded hands. “Walk through the fire, I beseech thee. Prove thy virtue.”
Tara ought to have run, but it was as if her legs were pegged to the ground. She buried her eyes in her hands and let out a high-pitched cry.
“Aaaaaah, aaaaah, aaaaah!” she cried, even when she felt a pair of hands under her armpits, when she was suspended in midair and then delivered to the safety of the verandah steps. Grandfather Madhava, who had now retired from his job as postmaster, had saved her in the nick of time.
Following that incident, she latched her upstairs room door from the inside every night. She ached to lay her cheek on Amma’s comforting lap, to have Amma wipe away her tears with her soft fingers, to tell her that all would be well.
Her mind drifted, seeking happier times, and scenes emerged, montages of another life: swinging on a swing in a lush green yard lined with rose bushes, the wind in her hair; helping Amma decorate her birthday cake with pink frosting and Cadbury’s Gems, and then blowing out six candles in a pretty pink lace frock with red patchwork flowers surrounded by her friends Pippi, Leenika, and Runa. Was it all only a fairytale?
Tara did not remain downstairs without reason. She put all her effort into avoiding Uncle Anand, and when she saw him, she averted her eyes. She tiptoed out the back door to school every morning and slithered in the same way, and stayed in her upstairs room all evening until dinner time, away from Uncle Anand’s maniacal reach.
Daddy’s kinder, more loving younger brother, the one who told her stories and bought her snacks, had disintegrated into a million schizophrenic bits. The one person in her corner had pushed her into complete isolation. Nothing in life was ever absolute. Not love, not trust. Only books remained; they were her only escape from life.
She was relegated to a room again every night, this one across the world, but the solace of books remained constant. A couple of times, Sanjay had knocked on her door and burst in looking for a technical book or a manual from the shelf. It made her self-conscious of her new one-piece gown that barely reached her knees and left her slender shoulders and arms almost bare. He had brought in his manliness and the faint smell of shampoo—it stirred and stoked a longing in her, to be touched, to be caressed, to be loved; it morphed to anger when she remembered what had become of their marriage. She had her eyes fixed on the book, Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and he was out as soon as he had found what he was looking for, impervious to her presence, her longings, her anger. How wretched she was, to still cry for his love.
As the months wore on, and her initial shock and anguish plateaued, her imagination sometimes went into overdrive. In her spare time, her mind crafted little fantasy tales. They all ended the same way: with Sanjay realizing his folly, recognizing Tara as the true love of his life, falling on his knees, seeking her forgiveness, taking her with tender passion.
She yearned to tell him that she was the proud owner of a car, which was parked in their common apartment parking lot; that she had the license to zip around in her prized possession; that she could drive and change lanes; that she had even merged on the interstate once. But she knew he didn’t care. She lurked only as a minor inconvenience in a corner of his apartment. Like a roach.