Free The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai

marrying at seventeen or anything like that. My daughter is a modern woman.”
    Sitting on the verandah listening, my mother felt strangely deflated.
    A few days later, my grandmother took her daughter to lunch at the Grand Oriental Hotel’s Imperial Room, which overlooked the harbour. She invited Sunil Maama, too, because she felt it was unseemly for women to dine out alone; also, she really did not have anything to say to her daughter. During the meal, she spoke only to Sunil Maama, but gave sidelong glances at my mother, saying, “How wonderful it is for young women these days, nah, Sunil? All the advantages. Why, you can become a doctor or a lawyer now. Who knows? One day a woman might rule the country.”
    Later, when they were alone in the car going home, my grandmother, face averted, slid a royal-blue velvet box across the seat to my mother. It contained a Ceylon Stones jewellery set—a matching necklace, earrings, bracelet, ring and brooch.
    When my mother thanked her hesitantly, my grandmother declared with relief, “Ah, you like it? Well done, duva, well done.” She reached out, hesitated for a moment, then patted my mother’s hand. “Take out the necklace. Try it on.”
    My mother drew out the necklace and rested the cold stones against her clavicles.

    My mother’s success at school had wrapped itself around her shoulders like a gossamer shawl. She had loved her classes, loved the validation from teachers and schoolmates. She had felt a happy lightness, studying in the library after school, the sun slanting in through the window, mynahs chirping outside, a breeze coming to her, smelling of salt from the distant murmuring sea. Then there had been the week before the exams when she, along with other girls hand-picked to succeed and bring prestige to the school, were kept back for afternoon tutoring in the staff room. This was a hallowed place, forbidden to students, and my mother had felt grown up to be invited in. The teachers had treated the girls like equals, with a relaxed merriness. My mother enjoyed how they had turned girlish recalling their own school days, teasing each other and the girls, divulging their college nicknames, letting their hair out of rigid buns to lie in coils about their shoulders. A peon had been sent to get treats such as mango or pineapple achcharu, freshly fried vadais or mutton kotthu roti from the nearby Muslim restaurant. As they sat around spooning the food into their mouths, the girls, grown bold, would ask the teachers about their lives and marvel at who these women had been before they came to work here, at who they were outside the institution. The teachers had painted an irresistible picture of university life, seducing the girls into trying even harder.
    My mother had scored distinctions in the sciences, but also in the arts and humanities. She had not made up her mind which path she wished to pursue for the Higher School Certificate. My grandmother, however, soon decided on sciences in preparation for medical school. She informed my mother of this decision matter-of-factly. Opposition was useless.
    One afternoon, on a day when my mother usually had tennis practice, the family car arrived early at her school and the driver told her she was wanted at home. She came back to find four men lined up in chairs on the verandah, faces twitching with nervousness, my grandmother standing over them, beaming among the sniffles, frayed cuffs, shrunken trouser legs and oil-soaked hair. The tutors were to prepare her daughter for distinctions in physics, chemistry, zoology and botany.
    My mother enjoyed her extracurricular activities and excelled in sports, drama and debating. Now, however, she was expected to come home right after school and spend each afternoon and early evening in the gloomy study, fan swirling the dusty air above while she tried to pay attention to the droningof these tutors. She felt suffocated by their odour of sweat mixed with chalk; it was the odour of quiet