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Penguin Books Ltd - K.R. Meera

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69 pages

English

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A literary heavyweight Indian Express In these bold, wry and ebullient stories, Meera s astonishing range of narrative techniques is on full display as she expertly lays bare the faultlines behind the fa ade of everyday life, sometimes with dark humour and sometimes with astoundingly bitter sadness.

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	27 juillet 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184755947
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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K.R. Meera

YELLOW IS THE COLOUR OF LONGING
Translated from the Malayalam by J. Devika
Contents
About the author
Yellow is the Colour of Longing
Ave Maria
What the Souls Do at Midnight
The Scent of News
A Cat, Utterly Personal
Same-Sex Sorrows
Finally, Sasandeham
The Hanging-Cot
Noor-Light Years of Solitude
The Jugular of Memory
The Saga of Krishna
Alif Laila
The Heart Attacks Us
Coming Out
Guillotine
Translator s Note
Footnotes
Yellow is the Colour of Longing
Ave Maria
Noor-Light Years of Solitude
The Jugular of Memory
Translator s Note
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
YELLOW IS THE COLOUR OF LONGING
K.R. Meera is a multi-award-winning writer and journalist. She has published short stories, novels and essays, and has won some of the most prestigious literary prizes including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award, the Vayalar Award and the Odakkuzhal Award. Most recently, she won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for Aarachar , widely hailed as a contemporary classic and published by Penguin Books India as Hangwoman . She lives in Kottayam with her husband Dileep and daughter Shruthi.
A bilingual feminist scholar, J. Devika has translated Malayali women writers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary authors like Sarah Joseph, Nalini Jameela, Anitha Thampi and V.M. Girija besides K.R. Meera.
Yellow is the Colour of Longing
She had jaundice. Really. So everything looked yellow to her. The streaks of grey in his hair, his intelligent eyes, his well-clipped, clean nails, everything. And he-he had a new strain of viral fever. So her curly hair, pale cheeks and the tiny black bindi on her forehead were all grey to him. Sitting in that room in the lodge in Gandhi Nagar, she actually thought that he was a yellow man; he thought she was a grey woman. Poor things. Nothing more than a woman and a man at that moment. She was thirty-five, plus or minus. He, forty-five, plus or minus. She, a divorcee and the mother of two. He, married, the father of two.
Admitted or not, it was sexual interest, commonly found among women and men, that led them into that room in that middling sort of lodge in that suburb of Kottayam. They had infected each other at the Kottayam Medical College. Who is not infected by lust in hospitals? The longings that are liberated from the many thousand bodies of the dead, are they not flitting about in the air there? Like the way the mouldy growth breaks out, its pleasure bristling upon loaves of stale bread, just the way white mushroom-penises sprout, erect, on fallen leaves during the rains, desires burgeon at each faint favourable moment. These were people not loved enough. And sick, besides. Stricken with many different sorts of aborted desire, the body would turn red-hot and then be dispersed into the air as vapour. If only someone intimate with the wizardry of love would utter a magic spell to draw that vapour back inside, making it solid flesh and bones once again-who cannot help wishing for that? One wouldn t bother about tobacco stains on lips, or bad breath, that moment. That s all there is to human beings.
The Communicable Diseases Ward where they met was the twenty-fourth ward of the medical college hospital. It had glass doors, unlike the other wards, with the number twenty-four on them, painted inside a red circle. And again, unlike the other wards, the outpatient section was attached to it. Linked red plastic chairs lay beneath the black-lettered signboard that read Dr Sujith Kumar . That this ward is right next to the gate is most convenient. Even the mortuary is just next door, if the need arises. No wonder we are all made into patients with infectious diseases at the slightest pretext.
She was the first to arrive that day. Rain fell outside, light and frail. He had run in from the rain. Shaking off drops of water from his shirtsleeves and lightly greying hair, he sat in the plastic chair opposite hers. He lifted his head and before anything else, looked directly into her eyes. The way it happens when one falls in love, even though one is setting one s eyes on the other for the first time. Both of them thought: I ve seen him somewhere before; I ve met her sometime before. Sitting opposite each other, their glances met, greeted each other and parted several times, for no particular reason. Once his glance tripped in her eyes, apologized, got up and left. Another time, her glance stumbled in his, but his eyelashes held her before she fell. In between, when another patient bickered with an attender, he joked and shared a laugh with a neighbour. For some reason he held out to her a slice of that laughter. Then a little later when the woman sitting next to her looked at the OP card and said something, she had to laugh for politeness s sake. That moment she repaid the loan of laughter, the exact amount, he had given her earlier. In between she remembered someone else. As that memory ended, letting go the usual sigh, she raised her eyes, to see him sitting in the chair beside her. He too was in deep thought. She did muse about what might be on his mind. Was he thinking of illness? Of death? Or about his children and wife who would be orphaned if he died? Suddenly she remembered that in the morning s hurry to send the children off to school, she had forgotten her tea. It was that very moment that he turned his head and spoke to her the first time: Care for a cup of tea?
She started. Her reply was slow to come. Just that she reddened a bit.
Our numbers won t be called so soon he continued.
She felt somewhat embarrassed. Was the desire for tea so sharply etched on her face? The thought made her redden further. Well, whatever that was, she looked at a man with approval after a very long time and gave him a pleased smile.
Let s go.
As they walked along the wet footpath, though it wasn t particularly relevant at that moment, she noticed that this was the first time she was walking with a man after the break-up with her husband. Was he worthy of such high honour, she wondered. He was a tall man. His footsteps were firm. But it seemed to her that he was dispirited in his heart of hearts. Women s dissatisfactions show up below their eyes. Men s appear in their stride. She had dark circles beneath her eyes. The intermittent illness that always came back after all the different sorts of treatment disheartened her. She had enough of swallowing medicines and getting blood and urine reports. Today, as she was draping her sari and getting ready for the trip to the hospital, she had even decided that if this doctor too failed to diagnose the illness, she would give up treatment altogether. It was then that her older son came into the room looking for his inhaler. Seeing his little chest struggle for breath, she reversed her decision. Who else would massage his bony back as he gasped for breath, sleepless, through the night, if she wasn t alive? She was all they had. She alone was there to mediate when the kids fought, she alone stayed to attend the PTA meetings at their school, she alone was left to buy them new clothes for Onam, she alone remained to remember their birthdays and get them packets of birthday toffees to take to the school. She alone was there to make the little smiles bloom on their faces.
And then he spoke again: Where do you live?
At Pandalam.
Did you run there from the troops? * He threw her a mischievous look.
No, ran there to light the torches! she replied rather gloomily, thinking all the while of her son. It was when he stared at her, startled, that she realized what she had said and to whom. Who is she? Or, what is she? A woman past thirty-five. Her middle was like a freshly swept front yard, all marked with lines like the streaks the broom leaves behind. Her breasts had lost their self-confidence. Her backside wasn t shapely. And her hair was falling strand by strand, like casuarina leaves flying off with every breeze in winter. Which man would fancy such a woman trying to joke? In short, these days, it is terrible for women past a certain age.
They were inside the coffee house by then. He found by himself a place less afflicted by the generator s awful droning.
I have seen you somewhere.
I work at the LIC.
Ah! Good! He smiled.
What do you do?
I m a teacher. What s your illness?
Don t know her tone was a disheartened one.
He smiled. Lucky lady
What s your sickness? she inquired.
Some sort of viral fever. It s almost gone. But I have to get it checked every once in a while.
The waiter came up with two cups of tea. They drank it in silence. It was he who paid the bill. They were silent until they reached the ward. Her number was called first. She hurried in and described to the doctor some of her symptoms. This doctor too wanted blood and urine reports. She came out, and he went in. Glancing at him as if to say goodbye, she felt a certain perturbation spread to her from him. How many are the different sorts of ailments in this world! Some spread through touch, some through glances. Some through the wind and through messages, letters. Hope Dr Sujith Kumar has remedies for all these.
The lab was crowded. As she stood at the rear of the long queue, he hurried in, looking around as if trying to locate someone in haste. She was amused to see that peculiar demeanour. Who would not be amused to see a man who has greyed a bit, lost some hair, and with a face wrinkled with the burden of worldly cares, look around with adolescence peeping out of his eyes? But when she realized that his adolescence was actually seeking her, her face paled and then reddened; then his eyes sought her out, and he rejoiced at finding her. Her heart filled to the brim. For most women, it is like that. When after many years, a woman is sought out by a man s eyes, and when she is sure that they were indeed seeking her and her alone, she will find her heart brimming. That is of course one good t