Free The Seasons of Trouble by Rohini Mohan Page A

sister’s living room. ‘It’s just that I don’t take this much sugar,’ he said.
    Oh, how good his Tamil was! Seeni , how he said it so sweetly. Unbelievable! If not for his extreme perspiration and red face, Indra would have thought this was a Burgher. The American had even known to take his shoes off before coming into the apartment.
    Except for John, who was going on about Ceylon tea, everyone stared at the American in silence. After waiting eight days for news of her son, Indra could not bring herself to ask the questions she urgently wanted answered. Where had he seen him? How had he found him? What had happened?
    She was hoping he would broach the subject. She asked him where he learnt Tamil.
    ‘I learnt on the job,’ he said. ‘I’m with the ICRC. Do you know it?’
    John looked away. Indra nodded. ‘Red Cross, I know it; you give medicines, no?’
    ‘Yes, but as ICRC, we also work with war-affected people, prisoners, missing persons. You understand?’
    ‘Yes, my son is missing; we filed a police complaint,’ Indra said. ‘But, how did you find us—my number? You called me.’
    ‘Your son gave it to me. What is his name?’
    ‘You know my son, but you don’t know his name?’
    Indra’s sister Rani interrupted with a bottle of Fanta. ‘You’ll have this, no? Since you’re not having tea.’ She poured the neon orange drink into a glass.
    The American said he would start from the beginning. ‘When I went to the Harbour police station a week ago to visit some prisoners we work with, one of them tipped me off about a young man who was quickly hidden in the basement before I got there.’
    ‘What are you saying? The police have him? Why didn’t they tell us?!’
    ‘I don’t know yet—I just met your son. He was handcuffed.’
    Indra’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Is he okay?’
    ‘I don’t know, he only had time to give me your number.’
    John had walked out onto the balcony. Indra sat back in her chair, confused. The American was showing her a form, saying his organisation would keep an eye on her son. If things went well, he would arrange for her to meet him.
    ‘They haven’t followed procedure—they haven’t informed the family when he was arrested, and I don’t think they’ve put him on the records. That’s how they do it.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The TID, Terrorist Investigation Department. So first, we need to go ask them why they took your son.’
    ‘Then he can come home?’ Indra asked.
    The American clicked his pen and looked at the form. ‘Shall we start from the beginning? What is your son’s full name?’

    AFTER THE AMERICAN ’ S visit, John returned to the Nuwara Eliya estate. When he left, he asked Indra if she’d be okay in Colombo’s summer heat. He could’ve said anything else—if she’d be okay dealing with the police alone, if she had enough money, if she’d prefer him to stay—but he had enquired about the weather. Indra told him she did not like wearing her sister Rani’s chiffon skirts, and that when he came next, he should bring her cotton ones.
    Every morning, Indra stood on the balcony of Rani’s seventh-floor apartment in Wellawatte, staring at the top of the road as if at any moment her son might appear. Occasionally she ran through the kind of abuse she would rain on him when he turned up. She made a deal with Lord Pillaiyar that if her son returned unharmed, she would break 101 coconuts at the temple. Every day, she added another hundred.
    Every form she filled in and every document she signed gave her the impression that she was inching closer to her son. But weeks went by. The American would help her, she knew, but she also understood that all he could do was make sure Sarva was not hidden from his family. The wait was tiring, but it seemed obscene to talk or think about anything else.
    They’d all grown so independent, her sons, fashioning lives only loosely connected to hers. They had private jokes, secret friends, well-guarded pursuits of