Chapter 13

From Priya Banerjee’s private collection, the poem Aadhya found first, age nineteen, translated from Malayalam:

Unsent

Purple is not a colour. It is the way 

she came toward me 

across a field I have since 

walked a thousand times 

trying to remember exactly 

how the light fell.

I have not remembered.

We had a rock at the edge of the world 

where the grass grew tall enough 

to swallow two girls whole. 

She was never afraid of anything—

except, maybe, once, 

at the end, 

standing in the dirt outside the temple, 

her hands full of rings and small flowers—

she was afraid then. 

I know because she came anyway.

***

After that introduction to Priya, which was so insane it had likely driven Roman to delete all events off her Google calendar and adopt the timeline of a different dimension altogether, I’d gone back to my room. Irritably, for lack of a better word. And, as if Priya had spoken the words into reality, genuinely exhausted. Against all better judgment and every single web article I’d clicked on for helping to get rid of jet lag (they all said do not fall asleep), I laid in bed. Closed my eyes. Bright golden sun washed over me. 

It’s the middle of the day, I thought. I’ll never be able to sleep like this. 

And woke up fourteen hours later. Only the earliest glimmers of the sun peered above the horizon, the rest of the sky stained lavender-silver. Birds chirped from my window sill. 

Despite having every reason to panic, I only yawned. My hair was hopelessly tangled. My clothes, sweat-damp and rumpled. I hadn’t brushed my teeth since yesterday morning. 

But besides the birds, I didn’t hear anything. The clock read 6:36 AM. Most likely, everyone was sleeping, including Roman. I still had a few hours before I had to deal with the consequences of what Priya had said.

You’re in love with her. 

As I brushed my teeth, showered, did my makeup and morning routine, I imagined myself coming up with a better response than open-mouthed shock. 

I’m not in love with her, you crazy old lady. I hate her guts. 

No, that wasn’t true either. 

I’m not in love with her. I barely even know her. She’s just sexy . . . and kind, and smart, and . . . 

That wasn’t good. 

I would be in love with her but I have no idea how she feels about me. 

I finished applying mascara. Onto the cluster lashes. They quavered between my fingers.

I want to be in love with her. 

The lashes fell. I picked them up. Tried again. 

I’m half in love with her. But the other half knows it’s impossible. What do you call that? 

Finally: You’re wrong. You’re just wrong. I can’t be in love with her. That would be . . . that would just be . . . 

“Humiliating,” I muttered out loud. That was the word. What Priya had said, in front of Roman, was humiliating.

If my schoolgirl crush was so obvious to Priya after ten seconds of speaking to me, how much more obvious must it have been to Roman this whole time? Was she trying to find a way to let me down gently? Did she feel secondhand embarrassment for me after I’d been called out like that? Maybe that was why she hadn’t sought me out after the exchange. Never mind the fact that I had been sleeping.

A more dire thought occurred to me. What if she had told Priya to say that to me? What if it was a third-party, mediated way of rejecting me? What if she thought I was being inappropriate and weird and she didn’t want to tell me herself? I started breathing faster. The last of my lashes applied, I stood and paced the room. What if this entire India trip was an elaborate way for Roman to tell me she hated me and thought I was insane and . . . 

I paused. This line of thinking was insane.

“Kaalia. You’re awake.” 

I glanced at my closed door. Then I noticed Aadhya, grinning, through the window. I’d fallen asleep and forgotten to close the curtains. She tapped the glass and gestured for me to come outside. 

After changing out of yesterday’s clothes, showering, and putting on sandals, a flowing skirt, a tiny top, and almost all of my gold jewelry (including the biggest pair of jhumkas I owned), I found myself in Aadhya and Priya Banerjee’s backyard. If it could be called a backyard, in any traditional sense of the word. We were right on the coast of the Arabian sea and the water was luscious—perfect blue-green, swirling against the shore, daintily licking white sand. Arching palm trees overhead cast shadows in the shape of five-petaled flowers with drooping stems. The air smelled sweet, like freshly-pressed juice. This, compared to the smoky, brick-and-concrete, cracked-sidewalk, grey-streets of New York, felt like a dream.

How on earth had Western society convinced us the Global South—beautiful countries, branded third-world—deserved to be inferior? We lived in a cold wasteland for half the year while private companies and billionaires bought land in Asia and South America and turned them into million-dollar revenue sites for Westerners on vacation while robbing local people of living wages and exploiting their natural resources. It was so ironic it made me want to pull my beloved hair out. 

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Aadhya said. She watched me with a smile on her face.

“Do you ever get used to it?” I asked.

“Never. But maybe that’s just my grandmother’s poet blood in me.” 

“Speaking of your grandmother . . .” The words,You’re in love with her. How exhausting, repeated in my head like a nightmarish dream cycle.

“I heard what she said.” 

“You did?” Had Priya told her herself? 

“Dadi is a little . . . what’s that word Americans use . . . blunt. But she means well.” 

“I’m not in love with Roman. She’s wrong.” 

Aadhya took my hand and led me to one of the palm trees with lower-hanging leaves. Behind one, I noticed the dark skin of circular fruits, clustered together, and stared at her. What did this have to do with me saying I’m not in love with Roman? 

“Do you see that fruit there? It’s called munjal. Sometimes ice apple.”

“Are you going to make a metaphor right now about me being in love with Roman and the munjal fruit?” 

Aadhya burst into laughter. “I’m not my grandmother yet. The wise proverb thing is a couple decades away. I was going to ask you to try it.” 

“But . . .” Despite myself, I was smiling.

“You’re not in love with Roman, I heard.” She plucked one of the munjal and began peeling. “Okay. I believe you.” 

“Thank God,” I said. “I’m not. But . . . it’s . . . I don’t seem like I am, do I?”

Aadhya only smiled mysteriously. 

I ground my teeth together. “For someone too young for the wise proverbs thing, you’re sure on the right path.” 

“Moothavar chollum muthu nellikka; aadhyam kaykkum, pinne madhurikkum.” She passed me a piece of fruit, clear and textured like jelly. “The words of elders and mature gooseberries: they will taste sour at first, but sweet later.”

I stared at her open-mouthed.

Aadhya began laughing after a bite of fruit. “Maybe I should do this proverb thing more often. The look on your face.”

“Are you trying to tell me you think your grandmother is right? I thought you believed me!” 

“I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just telling you a wise proverb.” 

“Well, take it back. That’s ahead of your time.”

Aadhya bit another piece of munjal. “Can’t take it back. It’s out in the air.” She breathed deeply. “Smell that?” 

“One more proverb and I’m going to throw this at your face.”

“Fine. I won’t say anything else. What I will say, though, is I don’t think Roman will be sleeping on the couch for very long.” 

“What? What do you mean? Did a spare room open up?”

“No, there won’t be a spare room at all. Now it’s time for breakfast.” She took my hand again and led me inside. The sweet taste of the fruit coated the inside of my mouth, but I couldn’t enjoy it considering what she had implied. Was she not going to give Roman a room on purpose? Was she trying to . . . match-maker us? 

Breakfast was delicious: puttu and kadala curry, a blend of steamed rice flour with coconut and chickpea curry melting into it. I sat beside Roman, though neither of us had said anything to each other except “Good morning.” It had been five minutes. I wondered at which point my overthinking became valid and I could consider this awkward. 

Priya sat across from me, also silent. Even the maids seemed to be grimacing as they brought out more dishes, glancing at each other as if they were going to gossip later. Only Aadhya seemed unaware of the tension in the room.

“Aadhya, what’s your favourite thing to do here?” I decided to ask.

Aadhya looked up, grinning. “I was hoping you would ask. My favourite thing is the local markets. The street food is all fresh and so yummy. And then you walk around by the beach as the sun sets. Those are my favourite days.”

“What kind of street food do you get?” 

“Nanaichathu, always.” She took another bite of chickpea curry. “They’re these fried banana chips. So good. And you have to try thattu dosa too. It’s savoury. Do you like savoury?” 

“I love savoury. Could you maybe show us around?” I looked at Roman from the corner of my eye but she was fixated on her food. Possibly deliberately avoiding eye contact with me. 

“Oh, no.” Aahdya laughed comically loudly, like a supervillain. My eye twitched. “I’ll just point you two in the direction of what’s good. Then you can go explore. It’s more authentic that way.” 

She winked at me. I thanked otherworldly spirits that Roman was not looking up. Priya, similarly, was also staring concentratedly at her food.

I made a face at Aadhya, trying to tell her she was being far too suggestive. My silent pleas fell unanswered. She only smiled serenely and finished the last of her curry.

“We might get lost,” I said after a few minutes. I scrambled to think of reasons why Roman and I shouldn’t be left alone together. “Roman and I don’t speak the language.” 

“Oh, nonsense. Plenty of people speak English because of British colonization. You’ll be fine.” 

“What if someone tries to rob us?” 

“Well, that’s a problem in New York city too, I’d imagine.”

“What if there’s a monsoon and we get caught in the rain?”

“A monsoon is a season, not just one heavy rainstorm. And yes, we are in the monsoon phase of the year. But I doubt there will be a heavy rainstorm today.” 

“If there is?” 

Aadhya shrugged and winked again. “You’ll have to run to shelter.” 

That was undeniably suggestive. I glanced at Roman, who was still looking down at her food, eating suspiciously slowly. I turned to respond to Aadhya, but this time noticed Priya staring at me. I felt like a small animal caught in the snare of a much larger predator. I couldn’t look away.

My eyes still locked on Priya, I asked Aadhya, “But what about the poetry anthology?”

“You’re going to be here for a while. You’ll have plenty of time. Besides, it’s your first full day in Kerala. You should be immersed in the culture before you start with the poetry.” 

“Who said I am going to let you look at my poetry?” Priya snapped. The first words she had spoken all morning.

“Dadi, not now,” Aadhya said. “Please.” 

“No, chellam. I told you I don’t want my poetry published. I told you not to bring them. I don’t want these Americans in my house and I don’t want them reading what I’ve written.” Priya stood from the table. Her voice shook. The dark brown skin on her knuckles had become nearly white from how hard she gripped the filigreed edge of the table.

She spoke in English still, which meant she wanted Roman and I to know exactly what she was saying.

“Dadi, please, calm down. Not in front of our guests.” 

“Our guests are filthy Americans. They are from what they think is the centre of the world. Translating work of the colonized into the colonizer’s language is inherently unethical until colonial structures have been abolished.”

Aadhya looked shocked. “Dadi, I thought you didn’t know English this well? How—” 

Priya levelled her cold, sharp gaze on Roman and me. “Your proximity to power is what gives you the audacity to come here and try putting my work in that white supremacist fan page you call a canon. You try and do things for them. Educate them. It’s not our responsibility to teach whites the value of our history. By trying to put my work in English, you cement the importance of the white literary tradition. Why don’t they learn Malayalam for a change, if they want to read my work so badly?”

Roman stood, but before she had the chance to speak, Priya continued. 

“You think you are one of them. You think you are changing the system from the inside. You are not. Your business might be successful, but you will still always be subhuman in their eyes. If it were not you, it would be someone else. You are just their model minority of the decade. They will replace you like they replace their dogs when they die. When they treat you like a dog, then will you learn?”

Aadhya and I were both sitting, our eyes flicking between Priya’s taut, trembling fury and Roman’s eerily calm expression. 

Roman put her hand on my shoulder. I could feel the slight quiver, the pulse in her fingertips that betrayed her anxiety. But her voice was clear and efficient, like her style of writing. So sharp I nearly winced, for Priya’s sake. 

“I hear your anger, Priya. And I know the white literary establishment has done enormous harm, erasing voices and profiting from our stories while keeping us out. But I don’t translate to serve white readers. I translate because there are Black readers, brown readers, readers who’ve been told they don’t belong in literature, who deserve access to stories in the languages they have. My great-grandmother was forced into America during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. She was denied the right to read at all. My grandmother could barely read English. She definitely couldn’t read Malayalam. My mother didn’t have the time or money to learn another language besides English. I am the first person in my family to not only graduate college but get a PhD and start a publishing press. Should the people in my family have been denied your work entirely?”

Priya and Roman glared at each other.

“You’re right about how they see us,” Roman added. “All of us with brown skin, Black skin, we’re all the same to them. Just one big dark entity that will never be human because we’re not white. They call us minorities because it makes us smaller. But we aren’t the minority globally. White people are. And I’m not trying to show them anything, or make them change their minds. I’m trying to rally other people like us, to make us believe in resistance because we’re strongest when we’re together. They want us to believe it’s hopeless. But their system of power is so fucking fragile it’s going to implode and when it does, I want us to be there, to be ready, and to assemble a way of living that benefits all of us. And only we can do that. Only we can choose how we want to live. That’s what my publishing press is about: finding the weaknesses, the flaws in their system. And decolonizing the imagination. Because they have hurt us physically and emotionally. But if our imaginations remain our own, we can build our own worlds from nothing. Because that’s what they’ve given us—nothing.”

Aadhya stood. “Maybe we should . . .”

“You think I really don’t know I’m still Black to them?” Roman laughed, short and bitter. “That success doesn’t make me white? I live that every single day. But what you’re describing—waiting for them to learn Malayalam, refusing to let our work circulate—that’s not resistance. That’s isolation. And it doesn’t hurt the people you think it hurts.”

I wasn’t sure how Priya would respond. I had no idea how I would respond. My worldview had been rocked and shaken. Priya and Roman both made sense. Though in a way, Roman’s argument leaned towards utopia. The belief we could ever come together when the government and cultural propaganda had divided us so deeply, when so many of us struggled with internalized racism. The fact that she was only one publishing house among hundreds or thousands run by racist white people, and it was such a rare position of privilege. The fact that she could be hopeful like this because she had financial stability and the power to give other people financial stability. For most of us, hope would always be a pipe dream. 

But it was also the whole point. Why else would I be working for Roman, if some tiny piece of myself didn’t believe it could be true, we could make the world better? Why else would we keep writing books and creating media and talking to each other and living our lives? Maybe that hope was stupid. 

Maybe it kept us alive. Especially in a world that was so unabashedly and overwhelmingly awful it wouldn’t be worth it to keep living otherwise. And maybe that meant even just our aliveness—all of it, all of us, our breath itself, the beating of our hearts—was the beginning of the collective resistance Roman had spoken about. 

“I don’t want them in my house anymore,” Priya said coldly to Aadhya, still in English. “Get rid of them. Send them back to America. Now, chellam.”

She pushed the chair back and strode away through the arched opening on the other side of the room. Her saree swished against the floor, her long grey braid swinging over her back. Her jewelry clinked together, noisily, like a jangle of bells, even after she had disappeared from sight. A truly dramatic exit.

Aadhya hurried over to our side of the table. I stood finally, noticing a few maids peering from behind the kitchen door—I couldn’t blame them, I would also be snooping—and Roman’s hand slipped from my shoulder. Aadhya grasped us in a sort of makeshift group hug. 

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said, wide-eyed. “I had no idea she would say that. I had no idea she could even speak that well in English at all. I mean I’ve—other people have tried to speak English to her and she must have been pretending she didn’t know because she didn’t want to speak to them. I should have put it together sooner. And she was especially grumpy this morning. She got a phone call last night that lasted for hours. She wouldn’t tell me who. But I didn’t think . . .”

“Should we leave?” I asked, hushed. 

“No, no,” Aadhya said, squeezing my shoulder. “You are my guests. Let her cool down. It is maybe best that you two go out today after all. Do some exploring. I will talk to her. She’s not normally . . .” Aadhya shook her head. She seemed to be puzzling over it. “I’m so sorry. Truly. I’m sure she didn’t mean that.”

“If she still feels the same after today, we’ll leave,” Roman said grimly. “I don’t want to stay unwelcome. Please don’t protest, Aadhya. I can have us on a plane by tomorrow morning.”

“Just—just let me see, okay? I’m certain she couldn’t have meant it. Whatever happened on that phone call must have stirred her up, but I can’t imagine why. Just . . . don’t make any hasty decisions. Go out. Enjoy your day. I will work my favourite grandchild magic on her.” 

Roman and I glanced at each other once she had turned and hurried after Priya.

“Do you really think . . .”

“I don’t know,” said Roman. “I really don’t. But at this point, it’s more likely than not we’ll end up leaving tomorrow.”

***

Big argument.

Love,
Meera