Creative Writing

Short Story: The scissors of affection

D.P.L.W. Silva

When Saman's father suddenly died he was only six. He did not understand what death was. But had a vague feeling that death meant going away never to return. This saddened him very much. It was a sadness yet unknown to him.

After the funeral he was left alone in the empty house with mother. The destitution merged his sadness with a lingering loneliness. It permeated his little world like a thick fog. It was everywhere, in the garden, in the sky above, inside the house, in fact everywhere he set his eyes upon.

In this bereaved situation mother remained discreetly composed. Though she herself was deeply distressed she concealed it for fear of upsetting her little boy. For days she cuddled him on her lap affectionately, told stories and chanted Kavi (verses) to cheer him.

Since he was three he slept with his father in his bright, spacious room. Now he was compelled to move to mother's room. He did not like her room. It was a sombre place, the corners of which were festooned with cobwebs where abominable spiders waited in silent ambush.

What he hated most was her old canopied bed in which he was to sleep from now on. But with mother beside, he soon got used to the bed. Often when sleep refused to come and he tossed and turned, mother ran her long fingers through his hair. He pressed his face into her soft, warm bosom and soon fell dead asleep.

In the mornings she was different. She got up early, nudged him and yelled, "Get up; its time to school". Lazily he opened his sleep-heavy eyes and saw mother standing in front of the mirror combing her dishevelled hair. Before she fired again he hesitantly slipped out of bed.

Everyday after school she inspected his hands to see if his finger nails were clean. Since he was three his nails had been an obsession with her. Particularly on Saturdays she hauled the reluctant boy on to her lap and carefully cut his nails.

The origin of this annoying practice had been a fear psychosis she had developed after hearing a story of a child's death from worms caused by unclean hands and nails. Ever since then his own nails had become her daily nightmare and persistent attention.

She used a small pair of scissors specifically for the purpose. It was a very sharp instrument like those used by surgeons. Unless carefully used, it could cause injuries. It did happen sometimes and he had cried a lot. He, therefore, hated nail cutting.

So great was his hatred that at times he thought of throwing the wretched contraption into the well. If not for the fear he had for his mother he nearly did it once.

After use she washed and wiped it with a clean piece of cloth. Then placed it in a leather pouch and hid it in some secret place in her old almirah. Even her gold jewellery did not receive so much security. It gave one the impression that his life depended on the scissors.

Mother loved him almost insanely. This made her needlessly ever protective and alert. Though these attributes were a salutary deterrent to his dangerous mischief he regarded it all as a hindrance and a nuisance.

One day when he was playing in the garden a magpie fell from a tree like an over-ripe fruit. He took the weightless bird in his hand sadly. Its head dropped to a side, its eyes closed and its colour had lost its lustre. The bird was dead. When he was examining it curiously his mother rushed in.

She was terrified. 'Throw it away you stupid boy. We do not know what disease it carries; run and wash your hands with soap and water," she exploded. Mother's screwed up face reflected fear and revulsion. He instantly obeyed.

Not until he was fifteen did she allow him to occupy father's room. The room remained locked since father's death. Now after nine years, he a handsome lad stood in the centre of the room and surveyed it from a grown-up's perspective. Somethings in it like the old wall clock, now out of order, the wall hangings, a calender of year 1929, all covered with dust and wooly cobwebs, he felt were anachronistic and should go.

He opened the large front window letting in the glory of the morning and admired, as if for the first time, the beautiful garden which father had imaginatively laid out. From now on the room would be his quiet retreat, he decided. The sense of being free, a place of his own and the exuberance of awakening youth made him ecstatic.

Mother's dominance, however, remained as it was. Very often she would furtively part the door curtain and peep to see what he was doing. It was embarrassing indeed. Her many pleasant and unpleasant eccentricities were quite familiar to him. This was one of the unpleasant ones. He calmly tolerated it. She also continued to inspect his nails and insisted on cutting them. These attempts he tactfully avoided.

Saman finished his studies and found employment in the State sector. He was a man now, an important man and mother was proud of him. She was also less domineering and more agreeable. However, by force of habit she continued to glance at his hands furtively.

In his twenty-seventh year mother arranged a marriage for him. The girl was a pretty, unsophisticated schoolteacher from a village about fifteen miles away from Colombo. Her parents offered him the gift of a house as dowry.

They liked each other at first sight. Soon afterwards they were married. It was mother's wish that they live separately after marriage and it was honoured.

Forsaking her was hard for him. But he could not avoid it. Mother was not prepared to share her love for him with a strange woman. If they stayed with her friction would be inevitable and would certainly make life miserable for all.

Let the woman take him away and disappear, she told herself bitterly. She was a fiercely independent lady and did not mind being left alone. Solitude for her was happiness. Saman was a devoted and loving son. He consecrated his heart and mind for her welfare. He dutifully visited her as often as he possibly could and looked after her needs. But strangely she did not appreciate his generosity.

There were no plaudits, no thanks. She never visited him after his departure, not even to see his first born and the second, two years later. "Her attitude is very ungrandmotherly", remarked his wife in disgust.

Mother was an enigma. One Sunday morning when Saman was at home something he never expected happened. He saw mother at the gate. She was dressed in white and despite her eighty years she looked hale and hearty.

In one hand was her inseparable handbag and in the other, the familiar Pan Malla (a bag woven with reeds) crammed with things. This certainly was incredible. How did this great change occur? It was very unlike mother, he thought as he hurried to welcome her.

"Come in mother," he said relieving her of the heavy 'Malla'. "So you have come. I am delighted. I have been expecting you for sixteen years mother," he continued and shouted, "Children, your Aththamma has come". Hearing him his wife and children converged on their Aththamma from various points of the house and conducted her as if she were some dignitary.

Seated in the spacious drawing room they chatted happily over biscuits and tea. It was a day of reminiscences.

"Now that you have come, you stay with me. You are too old to live alone", cautioned Saman. Mother cast her eyes down. For the first time in her life a sense of defeat knocked her out.

A long silence followed. Everyone anxiously waited for her answer. Then gathering herself, she to everyone's surprise digressed. "Let us all go to the Temple in the evening", she said smiling.

That settled, they had lunch. Then saying she needed to nap went to the bedroom. At about 3 p.m. while mother was still asleep Saman went out to buy things for dinner. He had hardly gone a few yards when he heard his wife calling him. He stopped.

She was walking towards him in haste. In her face was an agitated look. Had the children been up to some mischief, he guessed. "Saman, mother is dead", she said sadly.

He was stunned. They eyed each other in speechless disbelief. Then walked back home.

Yes, mother was dead. She lay in bed, her eyes half closed. A faint shadow of a smile stood frozen in the corners of her lips.

In her hand she was clutching a small package wrapped in brown paper. Saman gently wrested it out of her hand. He unwrapped it curiously. It was the leather pouch with the scissors.

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Profile of a Scribe

Mocking Bird magic

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville Alabama, a city of about 7,000 people in Monroe County, USA. She is the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Harper Lee attended Huntingdon College 1944-45, studied law at the University of Alabama 1945-49, and studied one year at Oxford University.

In the 1950s she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC in New York City. In order to concentrate on writing, Harper Lee gave up her position with the airline and moved into a cold-water apartment with makeshift furniture.

Her father’s sudden illness forced her to divide her time between New York and Monroeville, a practice she has continued. In 1957 Harper Lee submitted the manuscript of her novel to the J. B. Lippincott Company.

She was told that her novel consisted of a series of short stories strung together, and she was urged to rewrite it. For the next two and a half years she reworked the manuscript with the help of her editor, Tay Hohoff, and in 1960 To Kill a Mocking Birb was published, her only published book. In 1961 she had two articles published: “Love - In Other Words” in Vogue, and “Christmas To Me” in McCall’s.

“Christmas To Me” is the story of Harper Lee receiving the gift of a year’s time for writing from friends. “When Children Discover America” was published in McCall’s in 1965.

V. Gangadhar

When I was asked to teach Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird to students at an Ahmedabad college, I did not know I would fall in love with the book. So did my students.

I invited my Principal, P.G. Mavlankar, professor of political science, to talk to the students on the history of racial tension in the U.S., one of the book’s main themes. He too fell in love with Harper Lee’s first and only novel.

I gave the books as birthday gifts to children who finished it at one sitting and went on rereading it.

Bestseller

Lee, a native of Alabama, published the book when she was 34. As the book climbed on the bestseller lists for months and bagged the Pulitzer Prize for the best work of fiction in 1961, she observed that Maycomb town was similar to Alabama.

It was unbelievable that a novel so ‘American’ in nature had such an appeal in the distant city of Ahmedabad. It was this universal appeal that fetched it eternal glory and led to the conferring of America’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Honour, on author Harper Lee.

What exactly was this universal appeal? The antics of the three children - Scout, Jem and Dill - appealed to young readers. Mature readers were fascinated by Scout and Jem’s relationship with their father, lawyer Atticus Finch and the underlying racial tensions of Maycomb town.

The American South, as presented in the book was a hotbed of racial hatred and intolerance. A poor, physically deformed black man Tom Robinson is framed for rape when he turned down advances by a white woman.

Found guilty by a racist jury, he tries to flee and is shot down by the local police. American history is full of such instances where innocent blacks were killed and lynched on the most frivolous counts.

Lee did not hide any of these prejudices in the book. The racists were a group of unpleasant characters and the blacks could expect no justice or mercy from the local cops or courts. Yet, if the novel was not all gloomy tragedy, it was because of the character of Atticus Finch who emerged as one of the greatest creations of modern American fiction.

Atticus lived in a racist and sexist society but was not corrupted by it. He accepts the brief to defend the black man because the judge gave it to him. Never a fire-breathing reformer, Atticus was free of any prejudices and wanted changes in Maycomb society to come from within.

He is described as the same man in the court room as on public streets. One character in the book succinctly sums up his character, “There are some men in the world who were born to do unpleasant jobs for us. Atticus is one of them.”

No stereotypes

I was a young father when I first read To Kill A Mocking Bird and I wanted to be a father like Atticus, who had to bring up two children on his own. The black maid, Calpurnia, was a big help.

He treated both Scout and Jem like intelligent adults but was quick to punish them for bad behaviour. Atticus followed no stereotype and allowed Scout to continue as a tomboy provided she followed the basic rules.

On their part, they romped about fascinated by the happenings at the mysterious Radley House, particularly the wraith-like figure of Arthur (‘Boo’) Radley, an object of gossip in the village. Atticus, even allowing for the inborn curiosity of the children, did not want them to intrude into the privacy of the special world of Boo.

The novel had a moral too, as brought out by the title. In a town where guns and hunting were common, it was unethical to shoot and kill the innocent Mocking Bird. Why? “The mocking bird makes music for us to enjoy.

They don’t do anything but sing their hearts out to us and that’s why it is a sin to kill them. “This is a plea for the innocent and the harmless and in the book they are personified as Boo Radley and the unfortunate Tom Robinson. The allegory is quite clear.

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Separation

Aiyathurai Santhan

All the seniors argued that in wedding houses decorations should not be made with tender coconut leaves. “That’s stupid,” thought Thiru and made sure that greenish coconut leaves were tied around. He desired to show the people here the not so familiar in Yaalpanam (Jaffna) ‘thorana’ (suspended festoons) made out of greenish coconut leaves.

The’ thorana’ is like a pinnacle embracing the entrance of the wedding house and it would be a showpiece of talent exhibited by his colleagues in the southern Sri Lanka.

They had purposely taken three days leave to attend Thiru’s wedding. He wanted to make use of his wedding to show the people here the decorating capabilities of his friends.

Several photos were taken beginning with ‘pon urukuthal’ (melting the sovereigns for the golden ‘thali’) and the tying of ‘thali’ (marriage badge tied round the neck of the wife by the husband) at the temple and the return of the married couple home.

How majestic Thiru looks in the photos! Joy that the face could not hold- so broad. Even Kamala was the same.

The friends who came down from Colombo looked after the ‘Pandals”. Thiru’s brother captured in his camera all the details. Those pictures too are in this compilation from spinning the ‘thoranas’ and tying the paper flowers.

Silva, his wife and the children were appreciating with excitement the album of photographs.

Thiru had to explain to them what the photographs showed - the rites, rituals, and the significance of a Hindu Tamil wedding. Even though Silva did know something about the traditional Hindu wedding, these were new to his wife.

When Thiru came on transfer after leading seven or eight years of life in Colombo, he met Silva in the new office. Since he saw the innate characteristics of his friends in Silva too, it led to the new friendship. When they were invited for lunch this afternoon, showing the album was one part of the reception.

Not only while decorating but also in various rituals and ceremonies in the bridegroom’s house - like the eagerness shown by Mrs. Silva - with the same excitement his friends were standing in the pictures - standing behind the bridegroom nudging others and showing themselves above the shoulders of the groom.

A desire arose within Thiru to point out the pictures to Silva that “they are all my Sinhala friends” so that Silva may be surprised, felt happy and would show more respect to him.

The next moment he felt deeply the truth that how stupid it would be to call his friends “Sinhala Friends”.

There shouldn’t be anything to feel proud or being particular by referring like this. It is this that is strange - living in a small country without such mutual relationships.

While being in such an environment and even specifying that could unnecessarily be felt as separateness.

“This shouldn’t be.” Thiru showed a picture in which the friends were constructing a ‘thorana’. Then Silva remarked, “it must be your friends who are decorating”, Thiru felt happy. He said “Yes”. This story appeared in “Mallikai” (a Tamil literary monthly) in 1974.

Ayathurai Santhan is a leading writer of fiction, poetry and prose both in Tamil and English. He is a winner of several awards for his writing.

Translated by K.S. Sivakumaran