Shueli's Star

Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai 
Previous Chapters 

                                                             PART TWO
                                                             
                                                              KAVIPURAM 
 
                                                             EDINBURGH
 
 
 
                          “Not this troublous
                           Wringing of hands, this dark
                            Ceiling without a star.”
 
                                        Sylvia Plath: Winter Trees


Chapter Twenty One
Frozen in Time 
​
The ship from Bombay, drifts by white sands all the way down the West Coast, to Cochin. It will take them to Kavipuram, where Paul has accepted a job in a Hospital.
Shueli and  Gita, Paul’s cousin, who is accompanying her for a short holiday, can hardly bear to tear themselves away from the incredible beauty of the  white coastline. So they stay on the upper deck all night. It is like a dream, being frozen in time, with no yesterday and no tomorrow. Only the virginal white sands. At night they have a clear expanse of skies, studded with stars and moon. The sea-breeze is soothing, almost soporific. The sun rises in a blaze of glory, lighting up the skies over the remote coastal town of Kavipuram, so that it looks unearthly. They have to get into a small boat, to get right up to the Bunder or jetty. Paul is waiting there for them.  “The luggage will follow. I’ve taken a house in Falneer” he tells them. “Fal Neer means pure water. It’s not very modern, I must tell you, though it’s large. In fact, we’ll have to get the water drawn from the well. There’s only one bathroom. No sink in the kitchen. Just a tap.”
                                                               
Another World, and a Hint of Scandal
 
Only seven years ago, another sea, another coastline, another arrival. They had arrived in Edinburgh, after an overnight journey by coach.  Edinburgh , with its dark castle on a hill, with the grass sloping down longingly all the way to Prince’s Street. Shueli had found the  buildings depressingly dark and dingy at first. But when the sun came out, a day later, she glimpsed the city’s hidden and subtle beauty. They had, at first, found shelter in a modest little boarding house by the sea, in Portobello, the only place they could find – or afford!  Cruel winds from across the Northern Sea blustered through the little seaside resort. They were thankful to huddle before a roaring fire in the Lounge in the evenings.  One of the new friends they made,  Fergus, a gentle, sensitive sort of person, listened with interest as they told him they were newly married, and had to find reasonable accommodation soon, as Paul had to start studying for his exam. They produced their wedding picture, in tones of black and white, taken in one of  the New Delhi studios, with innocent naivete. Paul was gazing adoringly at Shueli, he in his white wedding achkan, she in her silver brocade Banaras cotton sari., with a string of jasmine in her chignon, looking down, very modest and pensive. It was a moment, frozen in time. Shueli remembered all those portraits in the Tiruvella house. How hard she and Gaya had tried to decipher those stony faces, masks to face the world. All the pain and joy of real life hidden beneath. Would they, too, freeze into stone like that? Couples, whom fate and accident had bound together in an unnatural oneness. After studying the portrait carefully, Fergus said: “That’s a rare quality you see here. You don’t see that kind of  expression any more..”  They didn’t understand what he meant, exactly, but were flattered by the rather obscure remark. The next few days, they froze as they walked along the cold and windy promenade, and went flat hunting in Edinburgh. After a couple of days of exhausting search, and one or two costly mistakes, they found a bed-sitter, which was a converted attic, but  overlooked the Meadows, and had charm. Shueli had filled cabin trunks with some of the  wedding gifts they’d received, and thought “it could be made to look really lovely, with this here, and that there.” By a strange coincidence, they had come to England on a Polish liner, and now their first landlords turned out to be Polish, the Hoffmanskys, who were all sweetness and light – at first. “Ve like very much, India. Ve give you our room.”  They invited Shueli and Paul for supper, soon after they moved in. Mrs. Hoffmansky produced a fragrant roast. Shueli and Paul, who had got rather desperately hungry and put off by the thin slices of flavourless meat, and over boiled  veg. regularly served up at the Portobello Guest House, remarked on the delicious difference. “Ze secret is in ze garlic” said Mrs.H., her round face wreathed in a smile of pleasure. Later, she initiated Shueli into the secret, - making a small cleft in the marinaded meat, and sticking in a clove or two of garlic and roughly ground pepper. “Ah! Ze Eenglish. They do not know ze art of cooking. Eenglish food – it has not the proper flavours.”
Mr. Hoffmansky had been in the Polish Army during the Second World War.  “I tell you, ze Ghermans were much better than the Russians. Oh my God! Ze Russians were peasants, just peasants. Zey were drinking water out of ze flush toilet, and tearing up meat wiz zeir hands.”  This was quite a revelation for Shueli and Paul, who knew neither any Poles, or any Russians or Germans. Shueli had always been powerfully moved by stories of Jewish people fleeing from their cruel persecutors, the Nazis. Suddenly, from far away India, they found themselves confronted by an unfamiliar Europe, still reeling from the aftermath of a brutal war. They savoured this new world with excitement.
  The Hoffmanskys were very friendly and pleasant, until they discovered that Shueli had a small radio, and a toaster, which fused one day. “Vhy you not tell me you are using electrical gadgets? Please to tell Paul you vill pay two and six per week extra for using those!” They had been told, also, that they could have hot baths only three times a week! Which made both of them miserable. Shueli would creep into the bathroom with her mug, with which she could have some kind of wash or Indian style pouring bath. “I’ll die if I can’t have a bath every day” she told Paul. What on earth would Graany think of them bathing only a few times a week? Shueli remembered cleanliness fanatic, Graany, saying they were ‘dirty children’ because they never had oil baths, and scrubbing them ferociously with ’inja.’ Which was turmeric wrapped in a piece of coconut fibre!
The attic bedsitter of the Hoffmanskys was quite a charming room. Shueli, who had a gift with making even a small room attractive and unusual, worked wonders with it, using odds and ends of the wedding presents stored in two huge cabin trunks. It really was exciting to have a home of one’s own. But she was nervous of exploring the busy, unfamiliar streets below, which gave her a terrible feeling of isolation. She felt confined by domesticity, which she wasn’t really used to at all. She missed her University life, so full of friends and activity. She didn’t know a thing about cooking. Luckily, Paul prided himself on his culinary skills, acquired while he was in charge of the Mess at his last Medical College… “Don’t worry, Shu. Just watch me for a few days, and you’ll learn!” He had the most elaborate ways of dealing with the most common problems of cooking. Noodles, or rice, were strained by tying up the pan, and hanging it upside down! Once, he even tossed spaghetti on his tennis racquet. Shueli was rather scared of turning on the gas cooker, so she suffered even having to fry an egg. A week later, when they had their first quarrel over something quite trivial, Paul announced that he wouldn’t do the cooking any more. “And you’d better do the shopping too. I have classes in the afternoon.”
 Shueli was very nervous going down the strange street alone, keeping an eye on the traffic, and finding a good grocery store. “What’ll it be then? A nice bit o’ bacon, some cheese, how about this Cheddar? - - and will six eggs do you fine?” Shueli ended up serving rather burned eggs, with the bacon. In the cabin trunk, she found an old cookery book of her mother’s, and pored over it, while Paul ate grimly, and maintained a stony silence through the evening. “A couple of my friends – both medical students, just married, from Pakistan, - I’ve asked them for a meal tomorrow” said Paul, nonchalantly. Shueli was in a dither, but determined she’d see it through. With some of the spices, mixes, packets of Basmati rice, and paapads that Ammy had sent, she slaved all day, and produced an elaborate meal, when Paul came in with Aslam and Jamila, from Lahore.
“Delicious! Delicious!” they murmured, delighted by the savoury South Indian taste, demolishing every scrap of food on the table, leaving Shueli with piles of washing-up. The three of them, meanwhile,  sat talking about the coming exams, and about Bones. She yawned with boredom, and wished they had some friends with more exciting interests than exams and Bones! Summer days in Edinburgh, were a delight. Long, sunny days, and evenings full of light even up to a very reluctant midnight.  Cobbled streets, and the horse-drawn milk van would clip-clop through their dreams at early dawn. Feet walking across the cobbled, silent squares,  or the sound of a piano from a hidden room, gave Shueli the aching feeling of being alone, waiting for something or someone. One Sunday, they took a packed lunch for a picnic on The Meadows. High summer, the smell of fresh, green grass, and the small, white daisies wildly springing from the grass. All around them sat young couples, demonstrating their love in various ways. “What sweet freedom!” thought Shueli. She had not ever, so far, faced up to her actual feelings in relation to Paul. “The whole world, everyone around me, seems to be in love. How fortunate to be able to make your life with the one you love”   A deep sadness engulfed her, as she experienced the sense of being shut out for ever from that world in which love ruled. She, only 21, yet not free. What beauty to discover someone else, unique in your own eyes, just right for you and you for him, that thrill would never be hers! She felt old, weighed down, bored. Gaya and Ammy, who received long, detailed letters from her, all about her  house-keeping and other small adventures, noticed that the letters were often rather blotchy. “Has Shu been crying over these letters?” Gaya wondered, and they were rather disturbed by the thought. But, as some of the joint letters were full of hilarious descriptions, they tried to tell themselves it was just the usual growing pains of any marriage. “We got a box at the Festival production of Romeo and Juliet. Ballet. Too, too beautiful. Western ballet is so ethereal – you feel the soul is dancing. Sad, the famous Danish dancer playing the lead, slipped and fell. I wore my silver wedding sari. Everyone stared at me as if I were a Princess! No one here dresses up like that. I certainly won’t do it again.”
Another time, she told them about their visit to the Cosmopolitan Club. “Very smoky, and in a basement. It was exciting to hear Hugh Macdiarmid speak about poetry. He said ‘I’ve nothing against the English. I just don’t like their language, their customs, or their manners!’”
She didn’t tell them about a Student Dance she and Paul had gone to. She had sat there, stiff and petrified, and Paul’s attempts to get her to dance, had all failed. Just then, a tall African student had come and asked her to dance. Worried about offending him, she had got up to dance. He, being a wonderful dancer, made her feel she was floating on air. But when she got back to her place, she found Paul in a sulk, which lasted quite a while. Her explanation that she hadn’t wanted to hurt her African partner’s feelings, did not help!
  There was trouble brewing with the Hoffmanskys. Gone were the cozy sessions. They’d even brought in another tenant, who was supposed to share the bathroom and kitchenette, which  were on the landing. Shueli didn’t like this at all. And then, one day, they forgot to take their door key, and the Hoffmanskys had to let them in, not concealing their distinct displeasure. Just a week later, they got back home, and Paul couldn’t find his door key in his pocket “Sshh! Help me to get the ladder out of the shed.” They managed to get the ladder against the attic window. Shueli tried to hold it firmly from below, while Paul climbed valiantly up. He had nearly reached the window, when the Hoffmanskys suddenly emerged onto the lawn below. Mr. H. was spluttering angrily, gesticulating wildly, while Mrs. H. was making little screaming sounds.
“Vat you are doing? You are climbing in like burglars. You are causing a scandale in ze community…”   Paul, suspended on the ladder, looked uncertainly down.  Shueli wished she could just disappear. A week later, they received a written notice to quit the apartment. They weren’t too sorry, as relations had become rather strained. But where on earth would they go to at such short notice, that too, trailing cabin trunks full of unnecessary glory behind them?

Anna Sujatha Mathai grew up in St. Stephen's College Delhi, where her father was Head of the English Department. It was an idyllic childhood, reading wonderful books, hearing poetry, seeing plays. She and her sister spent many sunny days exploring The Ridge, unimaginable now! Sujatha started writing Short Stories and Essays for The TREASURE CHEST, an All-India Children's Magazine edited by an American Editor, and translated into many Indian languages. At 14 she was chosen by Treasure Chest to be their youngest Special Correspondent! 
 What she loved most was the Theatre. She was selected, at age 14,  by the Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen's College, to be Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Later, doing her B.A.{Honours} in English Literature at Miranda College, she won the College Drama Prize, and later, the Best Actress Award of the University of Delhi.
  Getting married at age 20, to a young surgeon, changed her life completely. In Edinburgh, she joined the University for a Post Graduate Course in Social Studies. She worked in that field for several years, in York, Sheffield, London. Leaving it all behind, coming back to small-town India, was traumatic for her. She used to write on scraps of paper, and throw them away. Her sister, in Bangalore, sent her a cutting in which American professor, Howard McCord of the Univ. of Seattle asked for poems by "avant-garde young Indian poets" for his Anthology. Her sister wrote "At the most, you'll lose a few stamps!" Prof McCord's warm response to her poems, made her start taking her writing more seriously! Her first poems were published in P. Lal's MODERN INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH. She continued to write, and, later, moving to Bangalore her dream of theatre was somewhat realised. She had roles in plays by Shaeffer, Ibsen, Sartre, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Lorca and others. She was a co-founder,with friend Snehalata Reddy, of THE ABHINAYA POETRY/THEATRE GROUP.
Her poems have been published in The Commonwealth Journal; Indian Literature; The Little Magazine; The Times of India; Dialogue India; Chelsea (New York); The London Magazine; The Poetry Review (London), Two Plus Two (Switzerland.), Contemporary Asian Poetry Ed. Agnes Lam, Hong Kong/Singapore: Post-Independence Poetry in English ed. by Arundhathi Subramaniam She was among 4 poets "show-cased" on the 50th Anniversary of the Sahitya Akademi. She was an Associate Editor of the prestigious Literary Journal, Two Plus Two,based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has 5 collections of Poetry in English, and her poems have been translated into several Indian and European languages.
She now lives in Delhi. ​​​​​​

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