Read Online Motherland by Vineeta Vijayaraghavan - Free Book Online

reluctant one.
    Mother traveled a lot, which was fine by me because she didn’t know how to talk to me even when she was home. She had no sense of how to make me feel better when I was lonely or sad or sick. I watched Reema auntie, who was so natural at soothing Brindha, and felt that my mother lacked those primal instincts that told you how to read your children, how to teach them, reproach them, and hold them. Instead, in our house, there was the strained formality and the occasional shrillness of separate and self-conscious people acting out a pale imitation of family.
    The road had widened into two lanes, but now there were four cars abreast and a herd of oxen pressing forward. We had reached Coimbatore, and the car crawled along the main strip of downtown office buildings, until my uncle said to stop. The air was dense with grit, and I smelled gasoline and diesel on the roads. The driver and Sanjay uncle got out of the car, and my aunt also got out to help get packages from the back of the car, and to talk to Sanjay uncle at the roadside. They would never kiss in front of everyone, but he touched her arm fleetingly, jostling her bangles as they talked. He would be back home in three days. He ducked into the backseat of the car to give us both hugs, and to say to Brindha, “Now, please, try to be happy there this year. We will write you every week as usual, and come for the Visitors’ Weekend in two months’ time. Think of your mother, Brindha, and don’t cry today, okay?”
    â€œI wasn’t going to cry,” she said in a small voice. “I promised already.”
    â€œSay hi to Old Granny for me, will you?”
    Brindha made a face. Old Granny was Miss Granville, who had been headmistress at Helena’s forever, people said, at least a century or two. Everyone mocked her behind her back, but everyone was a little intimidated, even the parents.
    Reema auntie got back in the car on my side, so I was now squashed in the middle. I looked at the empty front seat longingly, with its wide open window, but knew asking would be pointless.
    â€œSo, Brindha, shall we go to Aruna’s for lunch, or shall we go to Shantha’s or to a hotel?” Reema auntie asked.
    â€œWhat about that dosa stand that Achan always takes us to?”
    â€œWe can’t go there with Maya, it’s too much of a local place, it could make her sick.”
    â€œBut you told us it was clean there even though they serve so many drivers and clerks.”
    â€œBrindha,” my aunt lowered her voice and switched into Malayalam, “this driver knows some English, so don’t just blurt out such impolite things.”
    â€œOkay.” Brindha shrugged. “Then let’s go to Aruna auntie’s, she serves better food than Shantha auntie.”
    â€œBesides,” Brindha said to me, “Shantha auntie wants to send her daughter to Helena’s, so she pesters me with questions and I have to pretend I have a lot of friends and everything.”
    Aruna auntie is Reema auntie’s oldest sister’s husband’s sister. In our family, that’s still a close relation. Somewhere in my suitcase with all the other things my mother stuffed in there is a gift set from Estee Lauder or an embroidered hand towel set with a tag addressed to her.
    â€œThat’s okay,” Reema auntie said. “You can bring it next time we come down, or Sanjay can bring it to her.”
    Aruna auntie used to be a famous classical dancer, she had even been on Doordarshan, the national TV channel. Now she was on the fat side and had four kids, but after lunch Brindha made her show us all of her fiercest expressions, of the temperamental goddess Kali and the snake god Naga and of the evil Kaurava brother Duryodhana. Auntie still moved with stealth and grace when she danced despite all her extra pounds. She could even enlist her plump cheeks to quiver with a demon god’s fury.
    â€œReema tells me you