A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

Author:Anuk Arudpragasam [Arudpragasam, Anuk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

7

It was strange to think of the two years Rani and Appamma had spent together in the latter’s small room, the unlikely confluence of paths that had brought them together, one of them ostensibly the caretaker and the other ostensibly the charge, even though each was unwell in their own way, even though a remedy was being sought in the arrangement for both of them. Krishan had worried initially that Rani’s trauma might actually be worsened by moving from her village to the south of the country, where she had neither friends nor relatives and could speak hardly a word of the majority language, but both he and his mother had sensed an improvement in her condition soon after her arrival, and even the doctor had said as much when she returned to Vavuniya for a checkup after two months in Colombo. Being in a different environment had helped her get some distance from her traumas, and having a job to do, however undemanding it was, gave her purpose and direction, prevented her from spending her days lying about as she had while living with her daughter. The fact she was earning more than her daughter and son-in-law too had an important effect, gave her new standing in her family, since far from being a burden she’d now become an essential source of financial support, lending money sometimes to her daughter, sometimes to other relatives who needed help too. She bought presents for her two granddaughters whenever she went back to her village to visit, dresses, hair clips, chocolates, whatever she could afford that took her fancy, and whenever she spoke on the phone with her daughter the two of them would grab the phone from their mother, demand to know when their grandmother would next be visiting. Talking about her granddaughters, Krishan noticed, one of whom was five and the other seven, both apparently very talkative, very intelligent, and very stubborn, was one of the few things that caused Rani’s face to visibly brighten. The fact she took up so much space in their minds was obviously a source of much joy to her, and it had occurred to him more than once that Rani was trying in some way to substitute her two lost sons with her two granddaughters, though perhaps the pleasure she took in her granddaughters was just the ordinary joy that anyone who’d come in contact with so much death took in the vitality of the young. The nightmares continued, of course, as did the bad days, days when Rani hardly spoke a word, burdened by a weight none of them could see, but for the most part this aspect of her condition seemed controlled, held within manageable bounds that allowed her to live with relative normalcy. It was only well into her stay in Colombo, after a year had passed and she’d become fully integrated into the household, inseparable from its routines and rhythms, that Rani’s trauma once more seemed to surpass these bounds, making its presence felt again in her mood and energy.

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