#16. Telling Lies, Episode 2.

Vishnu, Inevitably: When Vishnu was fifteen he told his parents he was going to drop out of school and become an entertainer...

Below is an excerpt from Episode 2 of Wit’s End’s fiction section, Telling Lies. You can find Episode 1, here! You won’t need to read the episodes in order, they are a collection of interconnected stories, a tapestry. The principal cast of characters includes Aisha, Vishnu, Arjun and Nayna, and their lives unfold mostly in contemporary Bombay and Goa…

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Wrung out from a week of relentless cooking and praying, his mother made a striking contrast to the tall, beautiful boy standing behind her. ..

Diwali was around the corner, it really wasn’t an ideal time for all this. But he knew it couldn’t wait any longer. Vishnu’s gaze drifted from the idol of the goddess Laxmi near the rice cooker to the back of his mother’s head, who in a floral nightgown was bent over the stove. I’m going to stab her in the back, was the thought that came. In the moments it took his mother to put down the slotted spoon and turn towards him, a vision of the mythical battlefield from his favourite childhood story flashed before his eyes. The scent of shankarpali filled the air. The bow was drawn. 

Vishnu’s mother looked up at him with her ocean-blue eyes. Eyes inherited from the lost tribes of Israel, Professor Zacuto would say every time he saw her. He looked at Osho, the calico cat asleep near the water filter. Her burnished orange, black and white fur glistened in the sunlight. Vishnu opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. His mother turned back to her cooking. It’s okay, she said. I saw the dress. The pressure cooker whistled.

He kissed the top of his mother’s head and grabbed the keys to the scooter. Osho chased him to the door and wrapped herself around his leg, the way they do. I will bring you a stinky old fish, Osho! Vishnu said. She winked at him with her odd eyes - one gold, one blue - then turned around and sailed away, all four paws treading an imaginary tightrope. Why are you so perfect Osho? Why? The cat’s ears swivelled, tail held straight in the air, but she didn’t turn around and didn’t say a thing. Not even a meow? Vishnu asked. Meow, she said.

As he wove the pale blue two-wheeler through the slow line of cars along Mahim Bay, the name slipped off his tongue: Salsette. As he waded in the filth and sludge, picking up pieces of plastic trash from among the mangroves at the mouth of the Mithi River, he said it again: Salsette! He’d done this as a sort of penance in the years after The Deluge, but now it was just a way to clear his head. Vishnu had not learned a lot at St. Paul’s, but he would not forget Dr Zacuto’s lessons. All the tales of the swampy islands from which Bombay, Mumbai, Prima in Indus, was extracted, gouged out, fused together, bubbled inside him every time he rode by the sea.

Now, knee-deep among the pneumatophores, the archipelago’s strangled creeks and foamy shores, its leopards and tigers, and its lush malarial swamps were not so hard to imagine. Later that night, on the stage, in the spotlight, searching for Aisha’s face in the crowd, he would think about this dying river, and how she tried to drown them all that furious monsoon day. He would also wonder, between sets, who he was, really. This vision in red? The boy on the scooter? The man in the mangroves? All of them? 

© Tara Sahgal