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Kamala Das

Till death do us part

Changing residence is much like entering a new incarnation. The sights have changed. Even the sounds are different.

I have ultimately moved into an apartment of my own. As I rely on a wheelchair for my mobility, I have arranged only a few bits of functional furniture in my rooms. They are kept near the walls in order to let me ambulate myself freely without the risk of collisions.

On the two antique dressers, I have installed marble which compliments my bronzes. My bronzes bear the patina of ages that cannot be polished away. I also have one antique Chinese tapestry, woven on one of the narrow looms that vanished from China when communism came to settle there.

Another possession that gives me pride is a bubbly and unclear, green lachrymatory bottle that is of Greek origin. It was unearthed from the backyard of my ancestral house in Malabar. Once I set the bottle on the dining table in Bombay to show off a peerless white rose. The guests were the archaeologist, Theodore Bergman, and Frau Bergman. Bergman exclaimed excitedly seeing the vase, "It's an original lachrymatory bottle!"

The rim was shaped like an eye. Greeks used it to store the tears of the widow in order to bury it with the corpse. They used to trade with Malabar, using the natural harbours of Cochin and Kodungalloor, which was then called Muzuris. Carthage had trade links with Malabar. For purposes of trade, the Phoenicians taught their script to the Malayali sailors and traders. Later, this rounded script evolved into Vattezhuthu, seen so often on palmyra manuscripts.

It was after the departure of the plumbers and the carpenters that I learnt from a neighbour that the Greater Cochin Development Authority was planning to do some waste-recycling only 12 yards away from our gate. Waste was to be collected from the city, carted here in lorries before being treated with bacteria for transformation into compost.

However sophisticated and hi-tech the process was to be, the carting of a smelly substance would draw flies and mosquitoes, making us prey to gastroentiritis, cerebral malaria and encephalitis. When I spoke to the GCDA chairman, he sounded arrogant as most chairman are in this part of India when they converse with people who have no official designation.

I have lived in 19 rented flats since I got married. Now, old and in constant pain, I have come to live in this apartment gifted to me by my son. The government authorities ought to be ashamed of themselves for the ill-treatment they are going to mete out to an ageing writer. I shall squirm with embarrassment each time I declare that my residence faces a garbage dump.

From the tiny balcony facing the road, I watch the labourers dig a trench for the installation of the recycling shed. They are scrawny men who seldom speak. When they pause to catch their breath, they exchange pleasantries in Tamil.

There is a vacant lot beyond the place where digging is going on. It is fringed with coconut palms, the sky is white without even a smudge of blue. This is the scene I shall witness till the day of my death.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier