Island of a Thousand Mirrors Read Online Free PDF Page B

balconies. Dirty water dripping on our heads. Enough to give a nonstop headache.”
    From upstairs, too, come complaints. Once a week, the Shivalingam patriarch comes
     to grumble that his grandchildren cannot study because Sylvia Sunethra’s daughter
     is again playing her Western songs too loudly or that the smoke from Alice’s kitchen
     is rising into his windows.
    The two heads of state engage in battle.
    “Please, lady, understand that this all-the-time singing of Elvis the Pelvis, as he
     is known, is not suitable music for the ears of my various unmarried daughters and
     small grandchildren. In our house, it is permitted for the females only to listen
     to classical music and sometimes the music from Tamil films. Perhaps, it is advisable
     that you, likewise, restrain your good daughter in her musical tastes.”
    To which Sylvia Sunethra responds, “Yes, Mr. Shivalingam, having only just come to
     Colombo from the outstation places, you are not yet familiar with modern music. But
     in my part of the house, we embrace change and progress.”
    “Yes, but perhaps you will be kind enough to keep this ‘progress’ limited to your
     own part of the house.”
    “Maybe that can happen if we downstairs are also no longer bothered by that army of
     small ones running up and down the stairs.”
    Ten minutes later they exchange polite farewells and retire to their respective empires,
     muttering icy sedition under their breaths.
    The greatest wars are fought over the mango tree. In season, fruit-laden fingers dip
     straight onto Shivalingam balconies, ripe mangoes press wetly against Shivalingam
     windows and splatter on their roof. When Sylvia Sunethra finds Shivalingam boys with
     their fingers sticky, upturning yellow pulp into their open mouths, she turns apoplectic.
    Visaka, attempting to soothe, “But Amma, what are they to do? The tree grows straight
     onto their balcony.”
    “Doesn’t matter! Stealing is stealing. This is our land. Anything that grows on it
     belongs to us. They should keep their fingers off our things!” She calls to unmerciful
     gods, “Bloody Tamils everywhere. What all have I done in another life to deserve this
     invasion business?” and hires little boys to skim up the tree to collect red, yellow,
     or even hard, pubescent, green mangoes, until the house reeks of them, first heady
     and pungent, then overripe and rotting, and Visaka faced with one more mango curry
     with mango chutney and mango sorbet must push fingers against her mouth and run for
     the toilet.
    Perhaps it is this preoccupation with the mango tree. Perhaps it is her daily struggle
     to keep the family clothed and fed. Whatever the reason, at this time, Sylvia Sunethra’s
     eagle eye is missing certain unforgivable breaches of propriety. Daily, Visaka on
     her walk home from school is followed by various schoolboys on bicycles who disperse
     when she reaches her gate. On the bus, there are always haggard, languorous-eyed young
     men attempting to drop notes promising eternal devotion into her lap. So far, none
     of these attentions has caused the slightest ripple in her slumbering biology. But
     now, the youngest Shivalingam boy, a few years older than her, nineteen or so, she
     guesses, loiters at the front gate at the exact time she arrives home. Most days she
     is unable to lift her eyes to his, but when she does, he is looking at her so intently
     that she must rush past, hurry into her room, throw herself on the bed, and wait until
     her heart has stopped thudding.
    Because, after all, how is it possible that she feels this recognition? As if she
     knows him! So that despite his foreignness in so many ways, the oil shining in his
     hair, the scents of unfamiliar foods on his clothes, he feels intimate in a way that
     shocks her.
    His name is Ravan. She learns this when his sisters call him for tea or his brothers
     for cricket in the lane. She writes this name in minuscule letters in her exercise
     books, then