Swimming in the Monsoon Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

people did look at him oddly, when they thought he was unaware of their gaze. And he also began to notice that mothers tended to be watchful when he was talking to their daughters, at the club or after church. He knew that part of this watchfulness was because he was growing into manhood, and so boundaries needed to be put between the sexes. But he also felt sure that another part of their vigilance had to do with his flawed past. Amrith had no interest in girls, and he had never really thought of marriage before. Yet, it frightened him that his past might prove a barrier, when he did want to get married.
    Without realizing it, Amrith had got off his bed and gone to his chest of drawers. Opening the top drawer, he took out a leather-bound photo album. A few years after he came to stay with the Manuel-Pillais, Aunty Bundle had given it to him. It contained all the photographs she had of his mother, in the time they had known each other as girls.
    The first page was titled
Asha at 12. Holiday in Galle Fort
, and had photographs of his mother about to bat in a cricket field with ramparts in the distance, his mother leaning on a balustrade with her hand against her cheek, his mother and Aunty Bundle on bicycles in a narrow street with houses on either side that had pillared porches. Another page was titled
Asha at 15. Jaffna Holiday
, and showed his mother and Aunty Bundle in identical sundresses with spaghetti straps and rows of embroidery and piping on their skirts. They stood with their arms around each other, against a stark sandy background with palmyra trees in the distance. On the same page, they were both in bathing suits having a well bath, flinging pails of water at each other. Another page,
Asha at 10. Ballet
, showed his mother in a ballet costume, striking various poses; in yet another —
Asha in Great Expectations
— his mother was dressed as a man with top hat and tails, the other girls in crinolines. The last picture in the album took up the whole page and it had probably been taken not long before his mother eloped with his father, for she looked like the woman he remembered. It was a studio portrait from the chest upwards. She looked vulnerable and beautiful, her chin lifted exposing her bare neck, her head turned slightly to the left, her frizzy hair pushed back behind an ear that had a pearl on it. She was wearing a checked sari and a blouse with short sleeves.
    He shut the album, an angry sound escaping from him. He was sick of the past, just sick of it. He drifted to the French windows and stared out into the side garden. Themonsoon shower had abruptly ceased, and there was a silence all around him, broken only by the
drip-drip-dripping
of water from the trees and gutters. In the quiet, he could hear the girls in their bedroom, across the side garden. Amrith put on his rubber slippers. He did not want to be alone with his thoughts anymore.

    The girls had seen him coming across the garden, for the moment he stepped in through their French windows, Selvi sprang out from behind the curtains and grabbed him from the rear in a headlock. “What is the password?” she cried, with the glee of an older sister dominating her younger sibling. “You cannot enter without giving the password.”
    He tried to struggle out of her grip, but Selvi, who remained a tomboy even though she was almost sixteen, held on with great expertise.
    Mala, as usual, leapt to Amrith’s defence. “Sin, men,” she cried at her sister, “leave Amrith alone.” She jumped off her bed and tried to rescue him from Selvi’s grip, which only mortified Amrith even further.
    When they were children, he and Selvi would scuffle frequently, rolling on the floor as they tried to get the best of each other, Amrith often losing. Mala hated their fighting and she would stand by, wringing her hands and weeping, begging her sister to stop hurting him.
    “Akka!” Mala tried to come between them. “Leave him alone!”
    A significant look passed