The Lilac House Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jak walks out into the balcony. He feels his legs tremble. He sees the sea as she must have. And he feels that familiar crouching ache rise and stretch its muscles. She had come here chasing a memory. His memory of this little seaside town, Minjikapuram.
    He begins to understand now. He had described to her his first time in Minjikapuram, dredging out the only phrase he remembered from his Perry Mason days: ‘Out there what you get is a lungful of storm!’

    He had painted a picture for her. The surprise of it, the grandeur. The overwhelming of the self by the sea and wind. She had wanted all that he had known. And so this.
     
    The taxi driver had looked at the piece of paper he had written the address on. ‘I’ll take you to a better hotel. With cable TV and fridge in the room.’
    He shook his head. ‘No, I want to go here,’ he said, stabbing the paper with his forefinger.
    The taxi driver shrugged. Each to his own, but don’t blame me if you hate it, the set of his shoulders bristled.
    The hotel at Madurai had arranged the taxi for him. ‘The driver is from those parts. He should be able to find the place you want to go to,’ the reception clerk said.
    Jak had nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That will save me some time.’
    ‘But sir,’ the man’s eyes had brimmed with curiosity, ‘what is there in Minjikapuram? Why are you going there? Are you visiting relatives?’
    Jak shrugged. ‘Research! Just research work. I am a cyclone expert. And there are some interesting developments on this coastline that I want to study.’
    ‘Ah, I see!’ the man said, printing out Jak’s bill. ‘After the tsunami, some scientists came here. They were on a research trip and were going further south, they said. But you know what I think…’ He paused expectantly.
    Jak stood there silently, knowing he would hear it anyway. ‘You can study nature as much as you want, but you can’t ever predict it. Actually, there is nothing in life you can predict.’
     
    Jak remembered this as the car turned onto the market road. Had he ever thought he would come back here again? It was almost thirty-one years ago that he had come to Minjikapuram. After the hustle and bustle of Madras, it had appeared quiet and provincial. He searched the road for some familiar landmark. All he could
remember was the bus stand with a façade of shops in front. And the temple on the hill.
    ‘Do people still come to the temple here?’ he asked.
    ‘Not as much. Everyone’s rushing to Tirupati or Sabarimala these days. But the people around here still pray to Minjikaiyan and Minjikammal for the welfare of their children. My wife comes once a year and she insists on dragging me along. When it is for one’s children, I suppose you don’t want to take chances. Our children are our wealth, after all.’
    The driver’s matter-of-fact pronouncement was something he had heard several times before. But now it had the edge of a gutting knife. It tore into him, eviscerating in one sudden turn.
     
    Jak scanned the shop fronts that flanked either side of the road. The familiarity of it all. Aluminium vessels in one. Sacks of grain in another. A barber shop and an old newspaper and bottle shop. Rolls of fabric at an entrance and saris draped from hooks on the ceiling. The glint of gold from a secluded interior. The fragrance of coriander and coffee that filled the air. The row of flower vendors with huge garlands of marigold and jasmine. A pushcart vendor frying pakodas in a giant frying pan. Beneath a tree sat another vendor with an array of brightly coloured plastic articles spread on a tarpaulin sheet and further ahead, a fortune-teller with his parakeet in a cage. Nothing much seemed to have transpired in the last three decades. It was still a town that happened to be there, going nowhere.
    Which was why Jak had been puzzled at first. Why had she even wanted to visit Minjikapuram?
     
    The taxi continued down the market road, past a church. The shops began