VI. Living Things #3
I did not know what I was expecting, but Ganesh did not live in a normal house; one like mine―a single story home on a moderately sized plot of land, with a terrace, or with Portions, or with iron rods jutting out of exposed pillars, with a front porch or a garden, a rusting gate affixed to compound walls continually aged by rainwater.
But no. Ganesh, despite what he told me about being tribal, being sold, rescued, raised by people who weren’t his parents―he lived in a mansion: a real, historic-looking mansion.
It was one of the old houses that belonged to the landlords who’d originally settled the neighborhood.
I’d passed it before, but I thought it was a government building of some sort.
It wasn’t square in shape, or like a group of rectangles stuck together.
The building was circular. With pillars supporting the domed roof.
Ganesh lived here? The boy who didn’t quite know how old he was?
With the green tattoo? Who didn’t even go to school? It made no sense.
The house was built on such high ground that the driveway rose at a precipitously steep incline, wrapping around the house and disappearing into the back.
There were no steps leading up to the carved front door, instead there were boulders.
Real, Deccan boulders each the width of my entire body; not cut down or polished or shaped or anything―they simply were laid there at the feet of the house.
Suddenly, I did not want to go inside. But Ganesh was standing behind me so I climbed up the boulder-steps, rang the doorbell.
I gaped at the doors. They weren’t like normal doors, they looked like they’d been taken from a museum and affixed to this neighborhood house.
It occurred to me that they might have been salvaged from a manor house in the countryside.
Is this what Ganesh walked in and out of every day? I couldn’t understand it.
Ganesh’s brother―his parents’ son, as Ganesh referred to him―answered the door. He was plump, with round babyish cheeks and thick eyelashes. He was wearing cricket whites.
Up until then, judging by Ganesh’s manner of talking, I’d assumed his brother was older.
“Hello,” I said, touching the boy’s head.
He jerked his head away and ran his hands through his hair.
“How are you?” I said. “I’m Arjun, your brother’s friend.”
He took one look at me and went back inside without saying anything. Ganesh touched my shoulder as if I’d done something I wasn’t supposed to do.
I took my shoes off and left them by the door.
Inside, all the windows were closed. The furniture was old and musty-smelling.
I sat on the sofa, put my feet on the coffee table, but judging by Ganesh’s expression I took my feet off.
Ganesh sat in the cane easy chair opposite mine.
“I thought he’d be at his cricket practice by now,” Ganesh muttered.
“Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked you to come. ”
I shrugged. “Your parents aren’t home?”
“Not on Sundays,” he said.
“Shall we go to your room?” I said. I was feeling awkward, sitting in the living room on the old fashioned furniture. “Do you have any video games?”
He muttered, “I’m not allowed to bring anyone into the house. But my parents ignore it, when they aren’t home. They know I do that. But―” He gestured towards the other room where I could hear Ganesh’s brother playing on his Game Boy. Sonic, judging by the music. “He won’t allow it.”
I laughed. It was so funny. Cute. That little boy? He looked younger than Priya. But Ganesh didn’t laugh, he was serious.
“But you can stay here,” he said earnestly. “You don’t have to go home.”
Ganesh seemed like a different person. Not even remotely like the person who jumped in Gita Miss’ water tank and yelled Hey!
This is terrific! He didn’t look directly at me, or anywhere else in the room.
He looked at his feet, but even that in a disconnected way.
His shoulders assumed a somewhat hunched pose.
In the semi-darkness of the room, it was possible that someone entered the room and their eyes did not spot Ganesh at all. He had turned invisible.
I stood up, went to the glass showcase that lined the entirety of the back wall.
I could barely make out the objects behind the glass.
Copper figures, crystal bowls, old brass snuffboxes.
I tried to slide the glass open, it rattled but didn’t budge.
There was a tiny steel lock; the kind that is fixed to the place where the two sliding panes met.
I could have been considerate, made up an excuse and left.
Saved Ganesh from embarrassment. But I was selfish, I didn’t want to go home so I stayed.
We didn’t speak, so the only sound was from the Game Boy in the next room for almost an hour.
Then the driver rang the doorbell. Ganesh’s brother came to the door with his kit bag, not looking our way.
He didn’t turn off the Game Boy, so we could hear the eow-eow-eow noise when Sonic the Hedgehog got mauled.
Opening the door, he thrust the kit bag at the driver and left without turning back to look at us.
Finally, when we heard the sound of cars wheels fade from the driveway, Ganesh stood up and beckoned me.
We crept into the next room. Though room was an understatement because there was a gigantic, curved stairway right in the middle of it.
And a strange round basin made of gray stone beside the bottommost stair.
I walked towards it, it had a spout at the center; I gathered that it was an electric water fountain.
“Do you want a chocolate?” Ganesh said.
I followed him to the kitchen. The fridge had three doors; two side by side, and one at the bottom. Ganesh opened the fridge and took out a gold-colored cardboard box. “He won’t miss the dark ones,” Ganesh said. I took the one Ganesh pointed out. The chocolate was so bitter I almost spat it out.
The Sonic music was annoying. “Should we turn it off?” I said.
“He leaves it like that on purpose. He’ll know that I touched it.”
The chocolate was awful, and I didn’t like how eating it made me feel like I’d stolen something.
Even when I took what belonged to Priya―without telling her―I didn’t have this burning-sickening feeling in my stomach.
It wasn’t just the stealing-feeling. I didn’t like seeing Ganesh for who he really was: this person who lived in the middle of this enormous mansion pretending invisibility.
But I was overcome by curiosity to see more of this house, and seeing that Ganesh, for a change, was at pains to make a good impression on me, I stayed.
I remembered the way he’d touched all my things in my room.
I asked to see his room so we went upstairs.
The ceiling was made up with panels done in plasterwork.
I thought the curved staircase beautiful, the way the banister gleamed, the cold marble underfoot.
His room had a view of the land behind the house, the small cottage whose construction Ganesh was overseeing this summer.
I sat on the window ledge and glanced around surreptitiously.
A bed, closet on the far wall. His room did not have a desk.
“When is your brother coming back from practice?” I asked.
“He’s not my brother.”
I looked at him in surprise. Though he’d always referred to his parents and his brother in an oblique manner, he’d never denied it outright.
“He’s my nephew,” Ganesh said. “But I’m not supposed to tell anyone that.”
It was amusing even, the idea of Ganesh being the little, kit-toting boy’s uncle.
Ganesh gestured at me to follow him and we went back to the landing. Wait here, he said. He went towards the room opposite. Clearly he was doing something he’d done before, but even so it was scary. The house was so big, how can one be sure it was empty?
There was a small bureau in the hallway, Ganesh stopped to open it, rummaged a bit underneath some papers and drew out a key. He glanced around as if by habit, and unlocked the room.
While he was in the room, I waited restlessly. After a little while he came out. He was a holding something in his hand. He unfolded a sheet of card paper, took out a photograph from the center and handed it to me.
The ‘old man’ who adopted Ganesh from the orphanage in Adilabad was laughing in profile, a small boy in his lap.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, looking at the photograph.
Ganesh was easily identifiable. I glanced up at him and looked at the photo again.
He came to stand beside me, I glanced at him again.
The same tightly curled hair, the eyes were the same, only larger, almost too big for his little face.
“What is that?” I said.
He was still holding the card paper the photo was wrapped in, but I realized it was a school report card.
I’d just about managed to see his name and the numerals IV on the cover before he closed it up.
I would’ve liked to look inside, what section he was in, what marks he got on his subjects, what comments his teachers gave him, how tall he was in class IV.
But Ganesh was using the report card like wrapping paper, to store an old photograph.
Back in his room, he told me that the ‘old man’ was very fond of him; that room? It used to be his before he died. Though Ganesh only had a handful of memories of him, like family photographs, few and far between what went on day to day. “He wrote me this house,” Ganesh said.
“He wrote you this house?” I repeated.
“In his will. This house is in my name.”
It took me a moment to absorb this information.
“But why aren’t you in school,” I asked.
Ganesh looked irritated, as if he’d confided something wonderous, and instead of admiring him I was finding fault.