Plastic Emotions by Shiromi Pinto

Author:Shiromi Pinto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Influx Press

The architect does not write. He does not come to Ceylon.

Tea estates fall away from her as the train creeps up into the Kandy hills. The air is heavy with moisture, but Minnette is happy to be away from Colombo and the stultifying atmosphere of the Brohier flat. Laki and Siri have said little to one another since April. Siri’s newly articulated nationalism has opened a fault line that has been thickening with each passing week. Minnette has tried to remain neutral, but Siri’s opinions shock and repel her, so much so that she finds herself questioning her friendship with him. She wonders whether it was ever really genuine when so much of what he believed remained hidden from her for so long. She asks herself whether this is the same Siri she has known and respected for the past several years. Then she remembers his solid presence that night at Reggie and Sheila’s, when Minnette had been drunk and inexplicably upset about Desmond. Siri had sat there, while she leaned against his shoulder, and he had spoken to her in that whispering rhythmic way, spinning out a riddle that made her forget her hurt.

Minnette thinks of her mother. Fear butterflies up her throat. Amma is ill again, worse than before. Minnette has left her sketches of the arts centre on her desk in Colombo. She has had to leave the Edward Lane build as it is. She thinks with irritation of the last time she was called out to Kandy, how angry she had felt when it had appeared that Amma was perfectly healthy. She hopes that it will be the same case this time. It would be a relief to see her sitting upright with colour in her cheeks. But Minnette knows this is not the case. Her mother has cancer. She will not recover.

Minnette stays at Nell Cottage for three weeks. Each afternoon, she sits by her mother, watching the monsoon fall thickly outside. A clamminess hangs in the air, intrudes into the most secret recesses of their bones. Papa brings them tea. He arrives and departs as silently as a nun. His expression is always cheerful, even if there are no accompanying words. Amma often watches him with a bemused frown. She looks at Minnette and shakes her head.

Minnette is irritated by her father’s silence. She finds his gormless smile unsettling, and his insistence on waiting on Amma trying. ‘Why can’t he just leave these things to Jaya?’ she asks her mother one day, after he has served the customary tea and biscuits. Amma holds up her palm abruptly. ‘Don’t,’ she says, and the two of them return to the scene outside the house: the steady shower, falling with sibilant force against the trees, the roof, the lawn.

——————

When Laki’s letter arrives, Minnette is already longing to return to Colombo. In it, he begs her to come back for the Roberts Cup in August. This is the show, Minnette, he writes, telling her it’s her chance to be seen in her best frock on the Havelock Racecourse.

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