Illustration: Manjil Rijal
You walk towards the music. You miss everyone you have ever loved in your life. And regret all the decisions you have thoughtfully made. Music can do that to you sometimes.
Nostalgia has always been the unkind love of your life.
You wonder whether the piano is not tuned. But, as you climb up the wooden stairs step by step, as you draw closer and closer to the melody, you know in your heart that it is bass played as treble. And you feel that the notes are going down and down, from a line to a space, a line to a space in the stave. And you stop. You have come as far as you could. You look at the half-closed mahogany door and the wavering dim light from a rusted revival sconce beyond it. There's still more darkness than light. You sigh and turn around, climbing down step by step, slowly, to the rhythm played upstairs. But you cannot keep up with the fading, uneven tune. As you come out of Mary Magdalene Hall, you walk towards the playground. Somewhere between the deep red carnations and the colourful bougainvillaea terrace, you hear the music stop.
As you step purposefully on, under the tall ancestral mayi tree, still strong, still blooming flowers bright, you feel like a schoolgirl again. You liked stepping on bright yellow blossoms fallen on the ground like generously-buttered popcorn. It made you feel powerful. And as you brush off a few petals and sit on the ground, sending your fingers gently through the gracious, well-bred grass, you hear the music again. This time, from the chapel at the top of the hill.
You look up at the massive mayi tree and close your eyes.
It was somewhere towards the end of the season of yellow mayi flowers and the beginning of the season of the red that Araliya started hiding her head inside her schoolbag, you recall. Her head was always buried in her bag before the general assembly, after every period, during the interval and even after school. You picture Araliya, with her bob cut, red square-framed spectacles and skinny limbs, vigilantly looking around like a teacher during term-end exam supervision.
Since it was the duty of the class prefect to put the date on the blackboard every morning, you were walking by Araliya's desk towards the chalk stand one day when you heard a mobile phone ringing. You were startled. A mobile phone in a convent school was more dangerous than a time bomb. So, you walked back again to make sure; you didn't want to be right. Araliya's seat was empty and the bag was lying on the floor, with a dark blue mobile phone ringing to the melody of "Auld Lang Syne" – or "Our Father Who Art in Heaven", you couldn't exactly say. There was at least half an hour before the first bell, so apart from you only Sewwandi was there in the class – Sewwandi, who was dead to anything beyond her homework on cyclic quadrilaterals. Araliya's head buried in the bag, her restless face, her alarmed eyes – now it all made sense to you. She was carrying a time bomb in her bag.
It was somewhere towards the end of the season of yellow mayi flowers and the beginning of the season of the red that Araliya started hiding her head inside her schoolbag, you recall.
Petrified, you put the date on the blackboard and went to the window. From the fifth floor, you could not see the early blooms of deep red carnations; the colours of the vibrant bougainvillaea terrace outshined them. So, you stared at the overgrown wild grass instead. Your mind was tangled in a web of thoughts throughout the entire first period, and you got the angles in almost all the cyclic quadrilaterals wrong. You were the class prefect. You had taken an oath before Jesus. You just had to tell. Mobile phones always got girls in trouble, the nuns said – like the one who was found pregnant a few months ago. Could Araliya be pregnant too? No, she went to gymnastics practice that morning, so – perhaps not yet, at least. You could save her from getting pregnant and ruining her life. Besides, having a mobile phone before one was eligible was a sin. An even worse sin if she was talking to a boy. Boys are dangerous – boys are never good news, the nuns said. Therefore, after the bell rang for the second period, you went to Sr Genevieve, the hall-in-charge nun, and told her about the mobile phone in Araliya's schoolbag. Within fifteen minutes, Araliya was in Sister Principal's office. Within twenty-four hours, she was suspended.
Araliya was a bad girl – her uniform was always short, and – and, she had a permanently re-bonded fringe which she tried hard to hide with a hundred and one hair clips, you told yourself, staring at the wild grass from a fifth-floor window. Now, she will learn to be a good girl. So, you haven't done anything wrong. In fact, you helped save her. Besides, you only did your duty. That's what any class prefect would have done.
But, Araliya was suspended.
And it was all your fault.
You suddenly find yourself humming the tune of the hymn sung in the chapel as you collect a few pink robarosiya blossoms lying on the ground on the other side of the playground – the way you always did with your friends, to put in each other's long plaits, during a PT period, having faked a headache or menstrual cramps. The convent school was a garden: beautiful, surreal and spellbinding. The sky-high red-brick walls that kept it shut from the secular world kept the girls out of harm's way, although one or two creepers ran over and poured a few purple flowers to the other side, like tea from the unruly spout of a lustrous teapot. The girls, however, were brought up "perfect". Like Angelus, they knew their A, B, Cs and Do, Re, Mis to the dot. They learnt that the gymnasium in the playground was best fit to hold Holy Mass, and that lunch is not lunch unless the box is wrapped in a checked serviette. The mango, jack and kasa trees created a canopy that was only rarely penetrated by sunlight, even during Lent. And when it was Christmas, the cypress trees gleamed with silver paper roses and gold stars sewn with old vestments under the cardboard angels in white robes and yellow halos hung by their necks in every Victorian lamp-post lantern. Though they bore no fruit in the dry, warm Gampaha climate in tropical Sri Lanka, the school had strawberries, nectarines, peaches and apples, also palu renamed golden apples, just so they could take pleasure in saying melodious sentences like, "Did you water the strawberries, my dear?" or, "The golden apples have disappointed me this season." The convent school had flowers blooming every season; unlike the vegetables and tall trees, flowers were important to a convent school; how else could they have brought up the girls? Therefore, the flower plan of the garden was solid and strong. Nothing looked more confident than the flowers. When the yellow mayi flowers stopped blooming, the red started.
Lourdes Araliya Fernando was famous in the school for her sketches. During every term-end exam, she would finish a question paper early to draw a pencil sketch. And it was always a We Can Do It! sketch. Her pencil strokes were bold; she was not scared to draw sharp features and nose rings and lip piercings and undone eyebrows and dark lipstick. Sometimes it was a girl with her hair in two plaits holding a paintbrush, and sometimes a girl doing gymnastics. The one she did of the girl who plays the bass drum in the Senior Western Band went viral. Your favourite sketch was the one of Jasmine, the mathematical genius in the class; you liked that Jasmine's smile was mischievous in that sketch. At one time, there was also a sketch of a woman in a Kandyan sari, and a thella and sun and moon on her head, holding deep red carnations; it was one of the most beautiful sketches she had ever drawn, and the girl actually looked like Araliya, though nobody had the courage to point it out. Every such sketch she signed with an A and pasted on the back of the wooden class door, concealed from view until the door was shut.
But her words deserved a stage. You remember when Araliya was called in front of the class assembly after a morning nature meditation to share the message given to her by nature.
"What did you speak with, Araliya?" asked Sr Mary Agatha, and Araliya gave her a blank look. "Was it a flower or a tree?" she added.
Araliya looked around and said, "Soil, Sister."
"Oh! Interesting," Sr Mary Agatha said with a sarcastic smile. "So what did soil say to you?"
Araliya silently looked up at the sky.
"Yes Araliya, what did soil say to you?" Sr Mary Agatha asked again after a few seconds, this time with a stern voice. "Don't waste time."
"This!" Araliya said, raising her palms as if to say the prayer to "Our Father". When the face of Sr Mary Agatha went blank, she threw her hands in the air and added, "Nothing. The soil said nothing."
A few weeks later, when the class was split into groups and instructed to do plays on parables from the Bible, depicting through stories the lessons taught by each, Araliya's group was given the parable of the mustard seed. The story is about the kingdom of God spreading across the world, like a small mustard seed growing into a huge plant.
You were in Araliya's group. You remember her asking everyone to stay calm, that she would take care of everything. And you all stayed calm, making fake rings from the fallen kasa leaves and trying them on your fingers. When it was time for your group to present, Araliya went to the stage, crawled on the floor, slowly got up and spread her hands and legs in different directions. You knew Sr Genevieve wanted to laugh, but she swallowed her laugh and ran to Araliya to squeeze her right ear.
Araliya had to kneel under the statue of St Therese (the Little Flower of Jesus, not the one from Avila) until the interval and write "A crooked tree will have a crooked shadow" a hundred times in her Catholicism book.
Araliya was a bad girl – her uniform was always short, and – and, she had a permanently re-bonded fringe which she tried hard to hide with a hundred and one hair clips.
You smile as you look up at the mauve sky gazing down with compassion, from wherever possible, through the intimidating branches of the massive mayi tree. Existing is always a struggle. You gather the modest-looking robarosiya into a bunch and tie it with a dried kasa strand you found on the ground. The bunch is very small, but very beautiful. With time, you have realised that beauty or hideousness, or even sadness, is always best seen in small things.
"Blest are you that weep and mourn, For one day you shall laugh," you hear the hymn from the chapel. You laugh, remembering singing this every time the whole class knelt around the bougainvillaea terrace as if to guard it, as punishment for too much noise.
"This class is shouting with various sounds!" Sr Mary Agatha once said, before dragging the whole class out of the hall to be punished.
"Did she say various sounds? Eww, how weird it would be if everyone shouted with the same sound, like aaaaa, mmmm…," Araliya muttered with dramatic hand gestures, and everyone laughed. Be a stand-up comedian, you always told her, and she nodded with a wink every time.
As you get up, you find a petal on your pixie-cut hair and you quickly brush it off. You and flowers don't get along well now. You pull up the ripped jeans, take a deep breath and start walking up the hill with the small bunch of robarosiya flowers in your hand.
You pass Mary Magdalene Hall on the way. The lights turned out, and the huge double door in the entrance locked. Cold and reserved, just as you remember it. You look up at where you're headed, at the chapel on top of the hill that always sings. Twenty years from now, if there's another war and the land is soaked in tears and blood, would it still sing? You know it will. And right next to the chapel, you see the autumn garden, with its baloli being called lantana flowers, and hendirikka, trumpet droplets. Also, the yellow canopy of ehela mal which, according to the nuns, are golden mousse. In a blistering country right around the equator, with a flaming sun overhead, it was indeed a nice feeling to have an autumn garden; also, a winter cottage. And you remember a science period where half of the class hid in this garden to read The Da Vinci Code, which was banned in the school. You took turns reading it page by page; you read after Araliya, you recall.
"I'm not surprised they killed Galileo Galilei," Araliya said on the way back to class, eating a packet of spicy fried snacks called Ayesha Bites.
"I know, right?"
"Shh… don't shout," she said to you, making her eyes wider, pointing to the label, and whispering. "Genevieve bites too."
You always played Mother Mary in the school Christmas plays. And during the sports meet, since you were very bad at sports, you were always in the parade, dressed as St Mary Magdalene, the patron saint of your house. You wonder why they always picked you for such roles. Perhaps it was because of your long thick hair and fair face, which the nuns found so satisfying. And your neatly pleated white uniform that was spotless. Neatness was essential for a girl. And your charming smile, which was pleasant and welcoming, must have added to it. Also, your manners. You always knew the right thing to say during a conversation or an event. You spoke pleasant words. And good English. Not the Sri Lankan kind, but the British. You didn't say "no" at the end of every sentence, but always used the right tag question, always the correct one – "Doesn't she?", "Mustn't they?", "Shan't I?". Among many who did otherwise, they loved you for it. Although sometimes you talked back like an echo in the green drawing room – aka, the needlework room – and you were known for your Anne-of-Green-Gables mouth when it came to the things you were passionate about, the decibel level of which was often compared to that of the big bell near the chapel. You always got away with it because you knew your Duchess Slant and graceful walk. And when it came to hobbies, you were smart; you knew better to pick knitting and making paper roses than swimming or taekwondo. As for the musical instrument of choice, you were sensible enough to pick the piano, not the trumpet or side drum. Therefore, you knew Sr Genevieve, though with eye-rolls of exasperation, always considered you the model convent-educated young lady. Though she often picked on you during prefects' meetings, you knew deep down she was proud of you. You loved her too, though you were not always expressive about it. You wouldn't have made beautiful cards for anyone else on teachers' day like you did for her.
"Well, Sister, having had so many masses for so long, if you still want a man to come and do his little thing which you can jolly well do yourselves, even better, that's just sad."
You wonder what Sr Genevieve would say if she saw you now, in your pixie-cut with purple highlights. She would touch the top of her black veil with both hands and say, "Oh! My sweet mother of Jesus! What have you done to your beautiful long hair?" and use the scapular of her long white robe to wipe the sweat off her forehead. She would give you a disapproving look and shake her head. Then she would need a glass of water, the same way she did once she read the one message on Araliya's mobile phone that day, which said, "I enjoy talking to you." You remember your fingers shivering as you held the mobile phone in your hand, allowing her to read the message. It was from a boy.
"Reminds me of the one who went and got pregnant," said Sr Mary Agatha in a haunting voice as she peeped in from the side, reading the message.
Pregnant. Your fingertips got cold and your skin was as pale as Eucharist bread. You wondered if holding the mobile phone would get you pregnant too – even slightly. So, once you were asked to return to class, you ran to the washrooms and washed your hands twice with Dettol.
As soon as you went back to class, you buried your head in your hands and cried. You cried and cried and cried. Your friends said it was not your fault. Daisy said that Araliya even had a secret Facebook profile, and Olu had noticed that Araliya had her legs shaved that day. And Piyumi had seen her laughing with a boy at the Arpico supermarket the previous Saturday. So Araliya was anyway a bad girl. A very bad girl. But you remembered that when Araliya said it was too cliché for a convent girl to learn the piano and started learning the trombone instead, everyone thought she was an interesting girl; when she told Sr Ingrid, who taught literature, that Henchard did not deserve that ending in The Mayor of Casterbridge, and that she did not agree with Hardy's idea that happiness is only an occasional episode in a general drama of pain, she was a sharp girl; and when she always got all the angles in cyclic quadrilaterals right, she was a smart girl. However, at the end of every conversation she had with Sr Genevieve she was a wicked girl.
"Is God a he or a she?"
"He."
"Wrong, Sister. I think God is a she."
"Don't you dare say something sinful like that."
"How come? You are a woman. Is it a sin being you?"
"Shut up or I'll take you to Sister Principal."
"Have you ever wanted to hold Holy Mass by yourselves without a priest?"
"No!"
"Well, Sister, having had so many masses for so long, if you still want a man to come and do his little thing which you can jolly well do yourselves, even better, that's just sad. And so uninspiring as teachers," Araliya nodded her head in despair.
"You wicked girl! Turning into a feminazi! Come with me, we're going to Sister Principal right now!"
After this argument, you all were asked to stop reading Woolf, Atwood and Das, lest everyone ended up as feminists. Not even Alcott (because of Jo March, you guessed).
As you reach the Lourdes Grotto right next to the chapel, you remember the day you hid behind it and watched Araliya's parents dragging her out of the car and into the convent parlour; her God-fearing parents wanted the Sister Principal to have mercy on Araliya and board her in the convent so that she could learn her lesson – so that she could repent and confess. And learn to be a good girl. You still remember Araliya's eyes full of tears, shooting both hatred and terror left and right, as she glared at the Lourdes Grotto. As she glared at you. That is how you would always remember her eyes. Like crackling fire pressed under a clay pot against its will, struggling to burst into flames and set fire to an entire city, any second.
Sister Principal agreed to transfer her to a convent school in Hatton, same congregation, same standards, but a little bit colder. Lourdes Araliya Fernando was thus forgotten – until Olu, who had gone back to the convent school for admission of her child, uploaded on Facebook a photo taken with Araliya. Araliya – in a long white robe and a black veil. In round-framed spectacles, dull black. The painter, the feminist, the stand-up comedian – a nun.
And it was all your fault.
You pluck a croton leaf and insert it into the flowers. Now it looks like a proper bouquet. The mini version of one that a bride in a Kandyan sari would carry. You take a deep breath and climb the familiar stairs to the chapel one by one. As you reach the topmost stair, you see a painting of Mother Mary, framed in an exquisitely carved wooden vine, signed with an L on the side. Unlike any other painting of her, Mother Mary is holding deep red carnations in this one. You smile, recalling the conversation with a parlour girl that happened an hour ago.
"I need to meet Sr Araliya, can you call her, please?" you asked.
After a stare at your hair and ripped jeans, the parlour girl replied, "You mean Sr Lourdes?"
"I guess."
"She's not inside the convent, so she must be in Mary Magdalene Hall down there," said the parlour girl, pointing down the hill. "She goes there to play the piano every evening," she added.
You stand a few feet outside the main double-door entrance to the small but grand chapel. You see Jesus crucified above the altar. The same way he was decades ago. It always bothered you how calm and collected he was, nailed on a cross. You see Sr Genevieve at the first wooden pew, her hands gathered fervently in prayer and eyes closed with so much faith, just as you remember her. Her jet-black hair turned salt-and-pepper, her wrinkles have mellowed her long stiff face, you think. You wonder what she would say if you tell her you don't believe in God anymore – that you found solace in Vipassana meditation, the same way they have found it in Holy Mass. Would she have understood? You don't think so. She would call you ungrateful because everything you have achieved so far was because of God. Her eyes would tell you how much you have let her down and it would burn your soul to ashes. And then she would look away and want nothing to do with you anymore because, for her, faith is more important than you. You bite your lower lip, look at the flowers in your hand, and step forward to peep in.
You see her, Sr Lourdes, at the last pew in the chapel. Her eyes fixed on the altar and her head tilted to the left. You try to look for Araliya in that hopeful face full of faith, singing praises of God, but it is not easy. In a few seconds, she gets up and starts walking towards the altar and you think her walk has not changed, nor has her confidence. Sr Lourdes kneels and signs In the Name of the Father before she walks up to the altar and stands behind the podium decorated with colourful bougainvillea flowers.
Pregnant. Your fingertips got cold and your skin was as pale as Eucharist bread. You wondered if holding the mobile phone would get you pregnant too – even slightly.
"Your response," Sr Lourdes says. "Lord! Hear our prayer." Her voice – changed, shaped, in a good way – is steadier, with more weight. It is as if she dares the Lord to hear the prayer. And as she reads the first verse of Intentions, you see the look on Sr Genevieve's face. It is the face she had the day you delivered the welcome speech at the Centennial College Feast in front of all the nuns in their congregation. In the third verse, Sr Lourdes remembers women around the world and you wonder whether she is still a feminist. Whether she still wants to hold Holy Mass by herself. Whether she still thinks God is a woman.
Seeing her audacious face as she continues to dare the Lord to hear her prayer, you feel that perhaps she still does. And a deep feeling of pride overwhelms you – it comes in the form of goosebumps and moistens your eyes. You don't take your eyes off her until she finishes the long prayer. And in the end, you feel contentment – the kind of contentment you feel when you know you have passed a subject you are very weak at. And as she climbs down the altar and walks to her pew, you walk out of the chapel. You stand at the painting outside signed with an L, and run your fingers over the deep red carnations with thick petals and sepals painted strong. You leave the small bunch of robarosiya flowers on the carved wooden frame next to them.
As you climb down the wide stairs of the chapel, you hear the melody of the chapel piano from inside. Bass is not cliché when played as treble, you think, as you slide your fingers down the wooden handrail with too many carvings of long-winged angels with halos; it feels soft against your skin.
It is almost dark outside.
You look back at the beautiful scenery for one last time before closing the gate behind you. You feel both cold and warm at the same time. Walking down the hill, you wonder whether your heart still resonates with the girl who loved knitting, the girl who always played Saint. It does not; you don't think it ever will again. But, after everything, the chapel on the top still sings. And the tall ancestral tree still pours out bright yellow blossoms that dance to the tune played up the hill. The golden apples and the trumpet droplets are still playing Victorian fanfares with a drill.
And the deep red carnations still waltz in full swing.
***