Chapter 33 #2
Kavitha’s words come back to her: She and her aunt are so similar, both unable to move past their own sorrow.
Grief is a type of myopia, a way of seeing the world in negatives, the empty spaces sharp and clear, the full ones blurry and overlooked.
Simran couldn’t see how much she hurt the people around her because it felt like her wound was the biggest. It was so large, it swallowed her whole.
And the same thing had happened with Veena perima.
But it had repercussions. It made her grief unbearable. The insomnia, the dreams, the weight of it all nearly crushing her. Did her aunt go through that too?
“When you came back for Geeta’s kalyaanam, I thought, challo, we’ll have Simi in our house for a few weeks. It’ll be so good. Maybe if she and Kamal reconnect, she’ll stay this time,” her aunt continues. “I thought if you married Kamal, then you would forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” Simran asks.
Her aunt lowers her face to stare at the ground, a sheaf of hair hiding her expression as she says, in the smallest voice Simran’s ever heard her speak in, “Forgive me for selling your parents’ house to his family.”
Her aunt is asking for forgiveness but it’s Simran who is filled with shame.
It’s clear that Veena perima was torn apart by having to sell the house and Simran only made it worse by not giving her permission years ago and not giving her absolution in the time since.
“Perima. There’s nothing to forgive. I’m sorry for not answering your calls.
You did it for Peripa; his health is more important than any house. ”
“I thought, if you married Kamal, it would come back to our family,” she says, raising her head. Simran can’t help but marvel at her aunt’s reasoning. She really is a next-level strategist.
“House or not, I was never going to marry Kamal and I wouldn’t have stayed if I had,” Simran tells her.
“I left because I was so sad here all the time. I understand now why you never talked about Amma or Appa, but it hurt me so much. All I wanted was to talk about them, to miss them out loud, to miss them with someone. But you never did and it made me feel like you wanted to erase that they ever existed. I felt like a burden, something you had to take care of for your dead sister and her husband.”
“You don’t understand it, Simi,” Veena perima says, shaking her head.
“You’d just lost your parents and then you had to move to New Jersey?
How was that fair to you? I should have stayed back in Chennai with you, let you live there, but how could I, with Geeta and Kavi here?
Everything I was doing was wrong. I know it wasn’t how your mother would have raised you, but it’s the way I knew how to raise a child.
So I forced myself not to think about it.
You find ways to set your world right again, even when everything is upside-down.
And you keep at it. Eventually, you’re just doing whatever you have to do to get to the next thing. ”
Simran is quiet. “Perima, what about their belongings? Have those been given away?”
“No!” her aunt replies, alarmed. “Of course not, I would never do that without you. We had the boxes shipped to us—your parents’ things are in the garage. Once I’d told you about the house, I was going to ask you to go through them with me.”
There it is again—another thing Simran thought she lost, all because she stayed away. They had both trapped themselves in the same cycle of avoidance; it’s just that she’d chosen distance and her aunt had chosen silence.
“Do you know how you got your name?” Veena perima says, all of a sudden.
“No.”
“When your mom met your dad, she knew immediately that she wanted to marry him. They hardly were together—dating, as you kids might call it—for a few months before they got engaged. Vidya married first, even though I was the older daughter. I remember—” Her aunt laughs ruefully.
“It’s such a small thing but there was a family heirloom, a watch, that had been passed on to the first husband to join the family for generations.
It went to your Appa and I was jealous. But then, after their wedding, they asked me to come live with them since our parents were gone.
Those were some of the happiest times of my life.
All the ways I wasn’t close with my sister, I was close with your father. ”
“You and Appa were friends?” Simran asks, surprised. She has vague memories of her father being fond of her aunt, but she never knew they were close.
“Your dad was like the brother I always wanted, always teasing me. He called me Chinnah even though I was older than him and I called him Jija Saheb.” A watery laugh escapes Simran at hearing that her father called her aunt “Little” and she called him “Mister Brother-in-Law.” “I used to resent that your mother got everything I wanted—a husband, a baby—before I did. But that time living with your mom and dad felt like I had a family again, for the first time since your patti and thatha had passed.”
Simran has never thought about how Veena perima must have felt—must still feel—first with her own mother dying when she was a teenager, and then her father a few years before Simran had been born.
Then her sister had died too, all before she was forty-five.
Her aunt lost her whole family, the one who raised and shaped her.
Just like Simran.
“Your mom was close to giving birth,” Veena perima continues.
“You were a big baby from the start, so tall already.” She laughs, holding her arms out, miming how round her mother must have been.
“There was a great discussion over what to name you. Your father’s family had so many suggestions.
But one day, we were sitting in the verandah of the Chennai house, just me and your Appa.
I asked him if I could give you your name.
And without hesitation, he said he would be honored to have his child named by her second mother.
” Veena perima pulls out a handkerchief with embroidered scalloped edges and roughly swabs at the tears sliding down Simran’s face till she takes the cloth from her aunt.
“I told him I wanted to name you Simran, even though it wasn’t a Tamil name. Do you know what ‘Simran’ means?”
She’d looked it up a few years ago and then slammed her laptop shut, feeling like it was a cruel joke. But now she understands. “It means to remember.”
“That’s what you were to me, to your Amma.
You were our way to remember our parents.
The first child, the first new member after we’d lost so much of our family.
Your poor mother had terrible health—they call it postpartum depression now but back then, there was no name for it.
So while she recovered, I would feed you and put you to sleep.
I helped raise you from when you were born until I got married and moved to New Jersey; it broke my heart to leave you, to leave India and your parents. It was all I’d ever known.
“And then, when I became pregnant, your dad called me up and said I had to let him name the baby. He chose Kavitha—I’d never considered that name before.
Ashok and I didn’t know yet if the baby was a boy or a girl, but once your dad said Kavitha, I knew we’d have a girl and that would be her name.
That’s how much I trusted him.” She wears something too sad to be called a smile.
“So every time I say her name, I feel like I’m saying hello to Rangan.
Like he, and your Amma, are still a part of us, every day. ”
Simran’s lips wobble with the effort to hold her tears in. “I miss them so much.”
Veena perima stands and pulls her across the island. She takes the handkerchief from Simran’s hands and this time gently dabs at her cheeks. Her eyes are shiny with tears. “I do too, chellum. I do too.”
And then Simran lets the dam within her break and she weeps, leaning down onto her aunt’s shoulder, the awkward angle unnoticed. She feels her aunt’s tears seep into her hair. In that moment, like they have been for so much of their lives, they are the same: the ones who are left behind.
“You don’t have to marry Kamal,” Veena perima says when their tears have subsided and they’ve pulled apart. “It’s not what you want and I am not your mother to tell you whether I approve.”
This is Veena perima trying to change, just like Kavitha said.
It’s not perfect and it’s not easy, but she’s giving it so much.
Simran wants to meet her where she is. “You’re the closest thing I have to a mother.
You’re my second mother,” Simran says, echoing her father.
“I don’t need your approval. But I want it. ”
“I know when you think of our relationship, you think of the times since you moved here, where all we did was fight. But when I see you, I remember so many more years than that. There was a time you wouldn’t eat unless I fed you.
” Veena perima blinks rapidly, like she’s turning an idea over in her head.
“So let’s throw away this approval nonsense.
You will not ask for my approval and I will not give it.
I will not wait for some sign showing me you are okay and I did a good job with you.
We will be a family and that is enough.”
Simran swallows. Tears hang off her chin like stalactites. “Yes. Let’s do that.”
“Then let me ask you for one thing,” Veena says earnestly. “Aa, Simran. Aa. Come back home. Stay close by so I can tell you stories about your parents and you can tell me about your life in Chennai with them. We have not done a lot of remembering, but we still can.”
Her aunt’s request thunders through her. To come back here would mean to leave Toronto, her life, her friends. Leo. “Perima, I can’t do that.”
“I thought as much. I’ve been hinting—” Simran snorts and her aunt smiles slyly. “Achcha achcha, I’ve been saying it. But I know that would be hard for you. It’s okay. There will always be a place for you here, no matter where you go, no matter how long you stay away. This is your home too.”
Maybe there can be closeness without immediate proximity. But a small part of Simran is sad to have to leave once more, just as things between them are mending.
They’re quiet for a moment and then her aunt’s voice is back to its declarative, confident tone as she resumes bustling around the kitchen, putting the cake in a container and emptying the dishwasher.
“But I expect you to come home for the baby’s celebrations.
And your parents’ birthdays. We’ll remember them on good days, not just their death anniversary.
And then you’ll have to come back for Tamil New Year, Diwali, Ganesh Chathurti—for all the holidays, okay?
Leo must tell his family he has to spend these times with us. ”
“His family doesn’t celebrate the same holidays as we do,” Simran says. “So we’ll always come home to Iyer House for the celebrations.”
Veena perima stops her ministrations and her chin tilts, perked to this new notion.
Simran tamps down a smile. She can tell her aunt hadn’t thought of this upside to being with someone who isn’t Indian.
“Leo is too tall, but challo, what can you do about that? At least he’s handsome.
Your children will be very good-looking. ”
It’s not an arms-wide-open approval of Leo—but what had her aunt just said? They didn’t need that now. They only had to be a family and that, Simran thinks, is finally what they feel like.