Free Mistress by Anita Nair

secret, but if there is a sin involved, I want you to know that I will bear the burden as much as you. Shall we pray?’
    Obediently, Sethu went down on his knees. He was glad that the doctor wasn’t too angry with him. And hadn’t sent back what he had risked his life for.
    Next day, the doctor had news for him. ‘The Franciscan Sisters will be here tomorrow. They will bring a team of doctors and supplies. We can go back. Once things have settled down, we need to make another visit. This time to Arabipatnam. That will be quite an
experience for you. The first time I went there, I thought I had entered another land. The people, the houses, the alleys, everything is straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights . Very strange! It is like a little kingdom with its own rules. For instance, all strange men are expected to leave the town by sunset. But they trust me completely and so I am allowed to spend the night there.’
    Sethu smiled. It pleased him that they had moved onto another plane in their relationship. The doctor trusted him enough to take him to Arabipatnam. Sethu had heard a great deal about Arabipatnam from the kondai sisters. It was a place where no stranger was welcomed. Where the alleyways were shrouded in mystery and peopled by descendants of men who rode both horses and the seas.

Haasyam
    W atch carefully. This isn’t what you think it is. This is glee—what is there to it, you think? Laughter is laughter. Convulsive movements of the facial muscles, a crinkling of the eyes, mouth splaying open like a whore’s thighs …Stop there.
    Watch me. This is what you do. Raise your eyebrows slightly, high at the bridge of your nose and low at the farther corners. Keep the eyelids slightly closed and the lips drawn down on each side. Indent the upper lip muscles. This is haasyam.
    Pay attention to the mouth. It isn’t merely an orifice to devour and spit and make sounds. It is the mouth that sets the seal on the intensity of the haasyam. Let your breath move from your throat to your nose. The pressure is the degree of haasyam.
    Now look at this. This is mirth. You see it in the mischief that rides in with the December winds. From the plains of Tamil Nadu, they creep in through the pass at Palakkad, only to emerge on this side with a new name: thiruvadhira kaatu. Winds that come in readiness for the festival of thiruvadhira, when gigantic swings adorn the trees. Winds that come prepared to swing maidens and their dreams.
    But first the wind crackles through the trees; the leaves have to them a certain brittleness, foretelling the intensity of the summer months. It strips branches, nudges the undergrowth, turns dried leaves, raises tiny puffs of dust from the front yard that is yet to be swept. Palm and coconut fronds snap; cabbage butterflies hover at knee level as though they know that if caught in the cross winds, the wind will toss them this way and that. All this is mirth, too.
    Unlike the rattle of mirth is the quiet smile. Think of the peppercorns drying in the sun and tamarind pods ripening on trees, the mango blossoms that speckle the branches, the cashew blossoms weighing down the trees and the jack fruits growing quietly large.
    Then there is derision. You will see this when, later in the day,
the wind lifts from the hillside with renewed vigour and moves the heat. Dispersing it with a sure hand, showing a plain disregard for all and everything.
    Which brings us to contempt—to look down upon. To condemn. And there is one other form of contempt. For that I suggest you seek the coconut palm fronds. Look, there it is, the olanjali. The Indian tree pie. Do you see its tail feathers? Now listen to the whickering sound it makes. Ki-ki-ki …Isn’t that the sound of contempt?
    It is the custom of birds to perch. Not this one. It has scant regard for custom. Instead, look at the bird’s nonchalance as it skates and slides to the tip of the palm frond and dangles from it.
    So you see, haasyam can be that as