Malikka told me when she was wiping oil off my back that I was talking about the human heart in my sleep. They assigned me to be her burden after they put me to sleep for 4.5 days. The maid? The family maid, sure. Why, Dr? Why not? She was the only one who showed up at the hospital. Papa and Amma were still in Calcutta, deep in the world of God’s psychic. And when they came back, they wanted to save their good energy. “Your Appa and Amma say it’s a pollution to mix the good energy with a mental asylum,” Malikka said in her roughest Tamil, to make me understand, you understand? My brothers—may their souls get exactly what they deserve—used to say I wasn’t supposed to have been born a Tamil female with skin like burnt flesh. I should have been produced as a vellakaran, white as a blood-drained face.
I spoke about the mountains of the human heart, Malikka said. I travelled there. Apparently. Who knew I could be such a preacher? A homegrown saint.
Some hearts are heavier than others. Some are skinny, some are fatty, just like people. At the end of the day, we’re all responsible for the shape, size, condition of our own hearts. Take charge. When you don’t, your heart is up for auction. For other people’s molars. Don’t blame them if you don’t know how to weigh your own heart.
I’m a lyrical waxer.
I should post on the media for society more.
I should reveal myself.
Flash the whole universe inside me and explain: I am not a killer. I am a devotee of the human heart.
Malikka is gone. Her performance of care no longer needed. I’m out of the public, inside the private now, and let’s face it, it’s not as if she gave birth to me. We all need someone to pretend our life matters to them. Let them go when their job is done.
The front door is making a noise. Creak. Thump. Footsteps. Thick guttural voices.
I was never really that interested in Malikka’s heart. It smelt too much of jackfruit and desperation.
“Gayathri!”
It’s like the first time I’m hearing it. My name. Like my parents naming me as I’m shooting out of Amma’s body. Gayathri, Gayathri, they must have expected so much from me, from themselves. In the end, they had to accept their mistake through the confirmations of a dark psychic in Calcutta. This child couldn’t give them what they wanted.
“Gaya! You’re in there?” Stamping of feet on these old 1980s floorboards.
Everyone knows why my brothers have come back. Brothers. It sounds good. Brothers.
Hope is part of redemption, is it? Isn’t it? I’m almost sure that’s what it says in all the scriptures.
One brother walks in. The other follows.
“Gaya,” the first one says, “your madness—
Hearts babble, don’t they? Like a river gurgling before the sun comes up, it’s a bit cold like waterfall water, and there’s hope. Murmuring heart is a thing, isn’t it?
What could hearts be murmuring about? All the prizes they were promised?
Redemption is God’s best joke.
“And when you are finally able to accept that you don’t exist alone in this world and that this is a social existence, you might be happier and free.”
Nothing is ever free but the human heart. If you want it, if you want it. Now the grand question is if the heart can actually survive in society if it is free.
But no, brothers, no human heart is made for crowds and I, I am serving humanity.
“You’re spinning out of control, Gayathri. Locking yourself in Appa and Amma’s house without food, water, not answering their calls…8 days…the island is watching you.”
My brothers look like they’ve come fresh from a video game. Their hands are blinking, their hair is flashing. Ping, ping. Buzz, buzz. Where their hearts once were are holes the shape of empty, outer space.
I’m returning humanity to safety. My brothers know this well. They knew it so well they now live as holograms. Or spirits.
“We gave you everything, Gaya, the whole family fed you, clothed you. We even educated you. And what did you do? You rampaged. You rampage. You gave your life away to—
The door slams open. It’s a nurse, and the police. Two beautiful policemen in my room. I must have died to be this blessed.
Everybody walks through my brothers.
The human heart is not a social animal and I’m serving humanity.
“Miss Gayathri,” one policeman says, “we’re here not to harm you, okay? Understand?”
“Take my hand,” the nice nurse says. He has soft, shiny eyes like lovely lychees. I like him. Instantly.
I glare and glare at him.
“We’ve come to help,” he tells me quietly.
In the centre of the lychees is a point of pain so precise I can taste it in on my tongue, on the sides of my cheeks. No guilt, no jackfruit. This is pure, unadulterated melancholy. It tastes of fermentation.
“It’s okay,” he says, “take my hand. I’ve brought something to take away the pain.”
It’s like he’s seeing into his own soul when he’s with me.
“Gaya,” my brothers say, “Do the right thing.”
Finally, my brothers are on my side. That’s what transformation into holograms will do, I suppose.
Eat, eat, Malikka always told me as a child, your Amma wants you to eat. It doesn’t matter if the policemen are watching. The whole island knows what I do for a living. They know my nourishment. My greed for iron, for the failings and injuries of the human heart pulsating inside my mouth.
Come close. And the lovely lychee-eyed nurse comes close. He knows my history. He’s not scared. He wants me to be myself. He’s begging me to choose him.
“It’s okay, Miss Gaya,” the nurse whispers, “I’m going to take the pain away.”
All good deeds need to be repaid.
My hunger lifts. My scalpel is two inches away from my hand, resting peacefully beneath my pillow.
Gorgeous nurse, you beautiful lucky bastard.
My tongue salivates so badly I can build a river. The flavour of fermentation, the taste of this lovely man’s heart, fills me, fills me.
I grab the scalpel. I look into his slimy watery eyes. My hand is firm, full of grace and power. The point of pain in the centre of the lychees melts and melts into the river inside my mouth. I search his eyes again. He is changing. He’s giving me something else. The pain is so faint now I can’t smell anything, not even a little puff of rot.
What am I looking at?
Do the right thing, Gaya.
The eyes are transforming into dark discs. They’re filled with light.
I grip the scalpel. The policemen are not even looking at me, they’re turning the pages of notebooks.
Do the right thing, Gaya.
For the first time in my existence, my brothers feel like my brothers, like what family should be.
The nurse glimpses my beloved scalpel. “Take my hand,” he tells me.
Tears are making my eyes too warm for my liking. The nurse touches my hand. He’s taking it into his. He’s not waiting for me to stab him. He wants me close. He doesn’t mind dying.
What am I looking at?
His eyes are not eyes. They’re spinning balls of dark light. I feel like that time I was seven and I ate a yam ice cream cone on Amma’s lap. “Everything is going to be okay,” the spinning balls of dark light tell me. The scalpel feels good in my hand.
I am in love with the dark light, with the scalpel, with the dark light of the scalpel. Doing the right thing, brothers, comes from the point where contradictions meet. Redemption is a broken dream and all we can do is do the best we can the only way we know how and pray, pray for the best movements of our bodies in five, six, seven, eight blows.
But the nurse’s hand—or light—is too quick. Sometimes, we have to fight to win the battle of the heart.
