Island of a Thousand Mirrors Read Online Free PDF

behind
     the water’s roar. She waits, teeth chattering in the morning chill, arms wrapped about
     knees until far on the horizon there is a single hair of pink and suddenly the skies
     are alight, the ocean sparkling emerald and her mother is climbing back. They walk
     home together and no mention is ever made of these sobbing dawns to which the sea
     and Visaka are the only witnesses.
    It is in these days that my mother learns survival is the walking of a tightrope stretched
     between hunger and satiety, that relatives will mock and look away, that fathers die,
     that the sensation of being held and given succor is an illusion. These are the lessons
     she will carry with her into adulthood and whisper into the ears of her children.
    *   *   *
    A year after the Judge’s death, the house is finished but the family’s accounts are
     empty. Only one thing of value remains. Sylvia Sunethra has started to notice the
     love-struck boys who cycle up and down the lane, hoping for a glimpse of her youngest
     daughter. She has noted the scouring eyes of male cousins, the dresses that need to
     be let out at the bust and hips, cinched at the waist. She has made measurements and
     calculations.
    One morning, she calls Visaka into her room, pulls her stiffened fingers through the
     girl’s bath-wet hair, massages coconut oil into it, and lets the mass fall from one
     of her forearms to the other. Fingers pulling gently, easing knots, Sylvia Sunethra
     says, “You’re a big girl now. We have to start talking about what will happen to you.
     This studying business was fine when your father was alive. But now what good can
     it do? We must start looking for a boy who can take care of you.”
    Visaka cries, “But Amma, what about university?”
    To which Sylvia Sunethra purrs, “No, my darling, there is nothing to be gained from
     bending over books all the time, except a hunch as big as Alice’s. We must start looking
     for a nice boy. Amma won’t be here to take care of you forever, you know.”
    Visaka sees her best-laid plans, nurtured over dusty textbooks, over nights of sleepless
     study, softly gasp and die. There is a corresponding constriction in her throat as
     if suddenly the air itself is in short supply, it too regulated by maternal will.
    *   *   *
    Soon afterward, searching for other ways to stave off her mounting debts, Sylvia Sunethra
     places an advertisement offering the upstairs of the house for immediate rent. When
     an extensive family of Tamils collected under the name of Shivalingam telephone, she
     is wary. “Named after Lord Shiva’s privates. These Tamils. So shameless. Who can tell
     what all kind of nonsense they could get up to. Anyone but them.”
    But when the Shivalingam patriarch shows up early the next morning with a fan of rupees,
     spread beautifully blue-green like a peacock’s tail, an offer of three months’ rent,
     she suspends her suspicions.
    Soon thereafter, ancient furniture, cooking pots, bags of flour, statues of Ganesh
     and Shiva, Tamil and English books are borne upstairs and the Shivalingams settle
     in.
    Overnight, the upstairs becomes foreign territory, ruled by different gods and divergent
     histories, populated by thick-braided, Kanjivaram-saried women; earnest bespectacled
     young men; a gang of kids; one walnut-skinned grandmother; and the unsmiling patriarch.
    This is the beginning of what we will come to call the Upstairs-Downstairs, Linga-Singha
     wars. When Sylvia Sunethra calls Buddhist monks to the house, their monotone chant
     is interrupted by the voice of a Tamil film heroine winding seductively down the stairs.
     When her flowers die, she is convinced that Shivalingam boys hold pissing contests
     off the balcony. When she finds splashes of red among the yellow, she is sure the
     ancient grandmother shoots betel as expertly as her grandsons shoot urine. Counting
     her rent money she mutters, “Bloody Tamil buggers. Hanging their washing from the