Fish in a Dwindling Lake by C S Lakshmi

Author:C S Lakshmi [Ambai]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184756173
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Kailasam

The moment she began to watch a ghost serial on the TV, Kailasam began to judder violently. Accompanied by a loud sound that went ‘diku-diku-dak diku-diku-dak’. Annoyed, she stood up, put on a pair of rubber chappals, went up to Kailasam and touched it. Stroked it. Kailasam showed no signs of subsiding. In the serial, the ghost pushed open the lid of its coffin, sat up and stared. The actor must have fancied himself as another Christopher Lee. The ghost glared. It was bald; its eyes gave out a yellow light. Kailasam shuddered incessantly. She put her arms around it and hugged it. ‘Kailasam, Kailasam,’ she said in a gentle voice. Kailasam only juddered the more, as if in a religious frenzy. She laid her cheek against it. ‘Enough now, Kailasam’, she said, ‘pull yourself together.’ It began to wind down, its ‘dak dak’ sounding more and more slowly. She gave it a fond pat and went back to her chair, continuing to watch her serial. The ugly ghost was wandering about now, looking for young girls, whose blood it wanted to suck.

She watched the serial without much interest. Why couldn’t the ghost have been a bit younger? What sort of ghost was this, with a bald pate and paunch? Only female ghosts tended to be young and pretty, dressed in thin cotton saris, their undergarments showing through; they walked delicately, anklets tinkling; they even sang songs.

Kailasam had fallen silent. Kailasam was her refrigerator, bought in 1985. In the early years, there were no problems with it. At that time, it had no name either. But in the past ten years, the freezer compartment began to get iced up as if the Himalayan mountains had planted themselves inside it. She had never travelled to those parts. Yet in Mumbai, in the third storey of a building, which looked as if it were falling down, her refrigerator seemed to fill with ice peaks reminiscent of the holy places of pilgrimage which lay all along the Himalayas. Sometimes a single piece of ice, tightly frozen, stood upright at its centre, exactly like a Siva lingam. However many times the defrost button was pressed, it simply would not melt. Sometimes it had to be broken down and removed. But even after it was thrown into the sink, it would take a long time to melt. A lingam which refused to melt. After that the name ‘Kailasam’ was conferred ceremoniously on the refrigerator.

All their household goods had been given names. The cactus plant given to her by Dhananjayan was Dhanush. The creeper with tiny flat leaves was Megha.

The plant that mistook itself for a tree and had shot up so high—it was the first thing she set eyes on when she woke up—was Usha. The plant that was attempting to grow awkwardly, with crooked branches, was Vakkiran. Jayan teased her one day, ‘Why have you given men’s names only to the plants with thorns or awkward shapes?’

This giving of names wasn’t entirely at random, it struck her.

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