Excerpt 2

Arjun

Over the past year, my life has become a dead-end routine. A deck of cards dealt out the same way to the same people at the same times each day. Wake up, give Amma a kiss, nod up at bro when he slinks out to school, avoid Appa like the plague as he scowls behind the living room door. Tick tock, clockwork, passing the hours till I go to sleep and the whole thing begins again.

I feel like I’m sinking in a world that only drives forward.

I’m an East Ham boy, born and raised. We’ve lived here in our flat my whole life. Two bedrooms, a cosy 21 years of eighth floor views over the basketball court fenced in green, flowers swaying on Mrs Chaudhury’s balcony just below us as the coconut wind of fresh roti sweeps up the walls, the chatter of youngers splitting off into their crews as they hit the main road, their school just a few streets away. I grew up on this block. Won’t go so far as to call it my kingdom like some mans. Yeah, some parts of these ends could be better – it truly irks me seeing some wasteman shop owners fly-tipping on High Street North for example – but this has never been a place I want to leave or escape. 

Things have changed, I mean really changed, across the past two decades. Its only flashes really, but I remember when I was five, holding Amma’s hand as we popped down to Asda, then Seelans for the week’s shopping. My God, the food. The food we’d pick up was mad. Fresh imports from India and Sri Lanka, greens that weren’t soggy but would crackle between your teeth, dragonfruits as tart as a kiwi but sweet as a pear. I could never get enough of the mangosteens when they came over. I still can’t now. They’re these hard purple pool balls with soft, spongy leaves. When you slice them open, the seeds are covered in the juiciest white flesh. Imagine Rubicon you could chew, vitamin-packed juice, a better start to the day than a morning shower. Had such an impact on me that their arrival became a fixture, an annual high watermark that I looked forward to year after year. 

Even back then though, having demolished the latest batch of fruity heaven, it was hard not to notice that it was only people who looked like me would buy this stuff. Take a couple of sliced ones to school and the white kids with their apples and Petit Filous would pree you with serious side-eye, like you were about to start a bushtucker trial or suttin’. Then again, as I’ve grown older, it’s really only been people who look like me who have come to live here. It’s something you don’t really think about because it happens so slowly. Like, what’s another Aunty or Uncle amongst the others you already know, another proud shop front stamped with Krishnan, Nagulendram or Sivanathan, adding their own splash of colour to an already rainbow street? But when you got to travel to the far points of London, even to places like Wimbledon, you see the difference. You realise that as you enter a sea of white, it’s your community, where you’d see a different shade of brown, hear a different turn of tongue every day on the Underground, that is the odd one out. 

It’s weird, minorities slowly becoming majorities. People take it personally. Take Mr Ball. I see the man most days, early 60s, full head of white hair, suit and tie that makes him look a whole foot taller. Sometimes I’d nod to him when I picked up milk for our neighbours, help him reach something on a high shelf, and he’d nod back, we’d smile and go on with our days. What I never expected was for man to turn up in a local newspaper after the referendum and say, “These Muslims, these Tamils, these Bangladeshis, they just don’t want to be part of our traditions anymore.” I’d overheard him saying something about his family in Essex once, how much he loved ‘the company’, but I never thought it was that deep. Even today, I still see him here in East Ham, still asking me to get stuff off the top shelf. I have to resist the urge to tower over him, say, “Thought you didn’t like things the way they were?”

It’s my day off, I tell myself. Man’s got Cardiology to revise this eve and man’s ventricles are better used to pump blood to my brain, not my tightening cheeks. I’ve spent most of it doing chores around the flat, that 2014 Nines track banging in my ears as strong today as it was when I found it the day before. It’s not yet reached that sinking moment when I realise I’ve overplayed it. The images it conjures, the dancers popping in the shadows, are still as vivid as ever. The pleasant distraction makes the hoovering, taking dirty clothes downstairs to the communal laundrette and ejecting anything red (stains are mad embarrassing, especially when it’s Appa and his vests) that much less dead.

The same principle applies to the locals. We’ve got quite the mix near our flat. Though Estate nearby is mostly council-housed, freshly moved in and that, bare families came to our block when Thatcher put the places up for sale. Lots, like us, have been here years, settled down, given rise to the next generation. 

Having hit the shops, my phone’s timer goes. I pop to the flat three doors down, carrier bags in hand. Anwar Nabeel, one my tutees, opens up. He’s a big kid, 13 but about 5’10” already, huge hands but soft voice. Leaping over his dad’s prayer mat, he takes me to the living room desk where he’s set up and we sit.

  “Arjun, you look like you got decked this morning,” he says. Fuck, I must look that vacant. I give him a light shove to disguise it.

  ‘If you ain’t done your simultaneous equations, that’ll be your fate too man. Go on, show me progress.”

  As a medic, word gets round that you’re good with Maths, Biology and Chemistry, the bulwarks of a stable career. A lot of the kids prefer a one-to-one approach, something they just don’t get in a thirty-plus classroom. They also take it better from someone they’ve known a long time. Anwar’s been in a state since his Mum had her car accident a month back. Kept forgetting his books and getting detentions, which only made his grades worse. But he’s committed, this boy. After the doctors discharged her home a few days back, he really knuckled down. Talking through the theory of inverse operations, he listens, scribbles notes. Seeing his face light up at the end, when I grade him 18/20 for his day’s work - a whole 8 up from last week - is an elegant proof of his improvement.

  Just before I leave, his dad comes out from the bedroom where he’s attending his wife. He’s a wizened guy with a grey moustache, shirt and jumper. Normally we just say hi, he gives me the money for my session and I leave, but with everything that’s happened that would just be rude. I say I’ve bought him his wife’s favourite snacks, presenting them out from my bags. 

  “Thank you beta, you really don’t have to do this,” he says. Anwar shuffles up behind.

  “Look Uncle,” I say, looking at them both, “a promise is a promise. You said you needed to help her get around, I’m just helping the process. And Anwar’s really picked up this week. Tell him to be good for next, yeah?”

  The kid fist-bumps me and I take my leave.

  “God bless you,” says Uncle Nabeel.

I’ve been doing this stuff around our block for years. Amma’s influence, her many kind repetitions rubbing off on me. “We’re lucky to have the life we lead, but not everyone shares the same. Make sure they get the chance.” It’s pretty cool. Opening doors instead of staying behind your own means access to perspectives you’d have never imagined. That never gets old. I think about what she’d say to me once she gets home as Uncle Nabeel closes the door. It’s been a tough week for her, but even telling her about simple, everyday things usually gets a smile going. 

It’s just a shame then that even the Nabeels’ happy faces aren’t doing the trick for me. I’m still hung up on Mr Ball’s – a stubborn reminder of everything else that’s been bothering me these past few months.

It’s nice at least, walking into a clean flat and slipping off the creps. It’s always been a bit of a mare with our ceilings as low as they are but ducking down beneath the frames is very normal for me. I’ll deal with the cervical spine problems when I’m 50. Appa’s sound asleep, making the most of his latest period of sick leave, small mercy. Washing my hands and face, noting my cheeks need a trim before I go to sleep, I sit down on my bed, lower bunk, having gingerly avoided my brother’s tangled mess of clothes and empty Amazon boxes and rifle through the day’s messages, send off a few emails, look at a draft to my head of year that I really want to send but hold off from. The echoes of cars on the main road are the only thing that breaks the silence. Perfect time to work.

Sunlight fades from to light golden orange, then disappears altogether. Hours fly. Get me in the zone and I won’t leave. It’s just getting in the zone that’s the problem. Between chores and tutoring and going in and out of Uni, it’s hard to find a balance. Having looked through the cases I saw on the wards, written the best of them up, I actually manage to get through most of my revision checklist and make my flashcards. Normally I’ve been stuck in the small hours, trying and failing to get through everything. It’s so peak getting pimped by the Consultants about the mechanism of random drugs and your sleep-deprived head can’t pull through for you. But if not a good day, today has been productive. Once the ticklist is done, for the first time in a while, for the first time in a while, I feel like I can breathe easy.

I text Amma. She’s headed to the Community Centre, back by 7. 

Can you bring some mutton rolls back please? I text her. There’s a place nearby which fries them just right. She’ll probably say I’ll get fat with the amount I get through in a month, but I’ve been good. I hope she’ll get them anyway. Nuttin’ better to follow up a good sesh with the books than by the sweetest damn meat money can buy. Perhaps that’ll be my third positive after all.

Then I hear the door.

Nirujan bursts through, headphones blaring with one of his new drill beats, shutting the door with a clang.

   “Ay bruv, what’s good?” he yells. Since his balls dropped, his voice bells like a megaphone. He struts into the room like a sixteen-year-old king, chucks his bag on his top bunk, doesn’t change his clothes as he whomping willows onto his chair and whips out his phone. I don’t say anything. I just raise my arms in absolute defeat. This yute just won’t learn. As I hear the dragon stirring in the living room, his grey-bearded Tamil rising like a fire, I know that my chances of having a good evening have, for the third time this week and the umpteenth time in forever, been snuffed the fuck out. 

The worst part is, it’ll be the same tomorrow.

*

It wasn’t always like this. At least, that’s what it feels like. In truth, our family’s dynamic probably always teetered on the brink of the daily chaos I see now, but I think it’s right to say that – all those years ago – Nirujan and I were too young to understand the nuance that lay behind our parents’ iron smiles.

I remember when Nirujan was 7 and I was 13, we used to climb to the top of the block in the early Spring, sit down where all the fans were, risen squares whirring above hard concrete, nuttin’ but sky above. 

  “Annan,” he’d tell me, our word for big brother, his eyes widening in realisation, “it’s like a rainforest out there.”

  I rub my hands together in the slight chill of the early morning, a flock of pigeons pumping their wings as they leap from the ledge. Nirujan has always been more Amma than I. He’s a fair bit shorter than me, stocky, round head but powerful chin that he raises to give him a few inches. One of his first and most persistent habits.

  “What, they making you watch Attenborough in class or suttin’,” I ask, laughing to myself. Nirujan ain’t fazed, not one bit.

  “Yeah, I mean like, look at us. Look at the way the little buildings are like the canopy. You can hardly see below them Annan. All the people in their flats, all that life in the understory. It’s all hidden away.”

  Aight, he’s put some thought into this, I say to myself, let him roll with it.

 “But then you’ve got us right?” he says, puffing out his chest, pointing all around. “Tower block after tower block after tower block, reaching for the sky. We’re the emergent trees, Annan. Think about it. Tallest things around, looking out over everything, the first things the Sun touches and the closest things to the stars. I never really put two and two together but…d’you know how sick that is man?”

  I knew the kid had some sort of poetic sensibility from a young age. Hearing Amma crow how his first words came months earlier than mine, watching how he’d run through educational CDs we’d kept for our first computer and wow teachers with his findings at parents’ evenings, I had a feeling that he might make moves with it one day. I think this was the first time I’d ever really felt what he said though. This was the first time I’d linked it to my own self, felt proud at how I, we, related to the world. 

  “That really does sound sick, nice one.”

  “Also, you know what lives up these trees? Fucking giant eagles bruv, kings of the forest. Imagine, Lord of the Rings style man, flying down from tallest tower to catch things, for real…”

  “Thambi,” I said – little brother - “what did I tell you about swears, it’s a bad habit! One day you’re gonna say that in front of Amma and she’s gonna smack you one. Is that what you want?”

  “Annan, I’m just sayin’…”

  “I know you’re just sayin’, but do you also want to be smacked?”

  I remember how he looked at me, his eyes deep brown, filled with a genuine innocence, but with brows tight at the edges, hard, like I was scrubbing a piece of him away. Over the years, threads would unstitch between us as the differences in our core personalities grew out with puberty. It came as no surprise that with his ability to express himself, Nirujan was popular in school. He knew wagwan with basically everyone because he had it so easy with people, but that quickly flipped a switch for him. With popularity came power, and with power came the desire to dominate, no matter what age they were. The reverence of his teachers turned into revulsion, disappointment at how he was so disruptive, ‘disturbed and disturbing’. His grades…well, the less said about them the better. Man basically scraped his GCSEs and since he couldn’t get into the local sixth form college, he’s stuck with a growing mass of old people who hate him in his secondary school. It’s the dictionary definition of a positive feedback loop, once set off, things just keep getting worse and worse and worse.

  It doesn’t help that his dissent coincided with Appa’s own deterioration…and the 2008 crash. Appa is a very proud man. He’s only a little shorter than I am, still over six foot despite touching sixty, and legend has it he was even taller than me when he was younger. He and Amma met soon after they immigrated here, part of the cascade of Tamils that fled Sri Lanka in the 80s and 90s. Apparently they’d only lived a few streets apart from each other in Jaffna, but it took an eight-thousand-mile flight for them to meet, a union borne of phone calls and, for Appa at least, desperation. He was a lawyer back in Sri Lanka, a powerful man with political connections, but here…the 80s were not kind to him. He’s had to work in restaurants ever since, but after the Recession, it seemed that which job he wanted, management, service, anything, would go under or cut him not long after he turned up. Took years to find someone who would want to take a long-term punt on him, Uncle Ramesh from Bangalore, an Indian on Barking Road, but by then, for me, for Amma, for Thambi, it was too late.

  “I don’t care how things were for you man,” Nirujan shouts. “You’re old, you don’t know how things work in the real world anymore!”

  Mouth frothing at the entrance to our room, Appa stands with one hand clinging the doorknob, his waves of hair a mess on his head, his eyes rheumy and frantic.

  “Don’t know? I provide for you, you ungrateful little naye. Without me going out into the streets, you won’t even have what little fucking future you see fit to waste on your pathetic pursuits!”

  Nirujan kisses his teeth and waves away the oft-repeated concern. 

  “Don’t you dare make that noise at me,” Appa snarls, yellow canines bared. “You have no pride for what I worked for, what you are.”

  I’ve been sat there with my head tilted down, off-centre from the space that’s gaping between the two of them. It’s easier this way, easier to escape. They’ve been going at it for the past half an hour, from the slit of our kitchen through the hallway, and finally through our room. The noise eats at me. It’s been a daily drain, the same repeated threats thrown like Molotov cocktails, the same words intended to cut, to maim. Staying silent at least keeps things separate, keeps them separate from me. Now however, with his latest insult, Appa has crossed a line.

  “Ay, Appa, come on, please…” I start to say, but his feral gaze turns and blasts at me like a turret.

  “Boy, sit down. You’ve wasted your chance to fix this swine.”

  “He’s a little shit, we both know that. But the way you’re acting, you’re just making things worse.”

  He laughs, a high, sickening laugh, closing his ears with his palms as he’s done more and more often, as if he’s trying to keep a ghost from escaping. I back away.

  “By wanting my sons to be good men? Men after an example. You have no respect, either of you. You’re both lost.”

  Amma, like a bolt of lightning, sweeps in through the doorway.

  “For God’s sake, I could hear you all from halfway down in the lift!”

 Appa notices the open door, the sudden change in temperature, the leak between private and public now free to the London air. He backs away from us as if a stranger is outside, silencing himself. Amma meanwhile strides through the flat, back straight, pottu proud against her forehead. Sometimes I wonder why she bothers with it. She and Appa have lived separate lives under this same box roof for years, but like the uncles and aunties that hang like royalty from our hallway walls, she has never been one to give up on an honourable tradition.

  “Rajan, stop all this and pick that cushion up off the floor,” she scolds Appa, peeking round into his sleeping quarters in the living room. “I didn’t raise you, but no doubt your own mother did not raise you to be a pig.”

  Appa holds his head like he’s been hit with a hammer, but he’s too tired to protest. He still has three more sick days before he’s back to work on Monday, that probably now weighs on his mind. I look on as he slinks back into the battered living room, the skirting boards dusted after weeks without being cleaned, the walls a pallid lime. He throws the cushion on the sofa and shuts the door behind him.

  I take a deep breath and hold my own head. Nirujan doesn’t even bother to look up at me, or Amma for that matter.

  “You’re not going out this week,” she says to him, her lined forehead like the weathered boss of a battering ram. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you enough, there’s no need for this ugly behaviour.”

  “Amma, come on,” he protests, “I’ve got…” 

  “I don’t care what you’ve got. You’ll stay right there if you know what’s good for you. Don’t make me drop you to school.”

  For once, it’s my turn to laugh. Nirujan literally shivers at the thought of being seen as a seventeen-year-old, man past driving age, being chauffeured by his dear old mother. He will do many things, this boy, but he will never in his life sidestep Amma. It’s an unspoken rule, a constant in every Tamil household from here to the Homeland. He takes off his tie, chucks his dirty clothes in a laundry bag and mooches off to the shower in total silence.

  Amma washes her hands and sits down at our little metal dinner table, taking out dishes and forks from their respective drawers and setting them out. She moves slowly, slower than she has done in a while. I move in and help.

  “Sorry Amma,” I say, “it’s the same thing as always…As soon as Thambi comes in…”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” she says, gesturing to the mutton rolls I can feel beneath their foil. “It’s not worth repeating.

  She looks at me and smiles, saying she brought sauce with them too. Since Appa started getting more unwell, Amma’s had to shoulder more of the burden, more of the bills. I, and to a lesser extent Nirujan, go out and get the food for her to at least cook a few batches for the week, and she’s getting some of this week’s biriyani out right now. Reheated on the stove, she serves it with some leftover green lentil paarappu onto our plates. I add on, somewhat limply, a roll to each.

  “How was work?” I ask.

  “Same old,” she says. Social work doesn’t pay well, no matter how good at the job you are. Even if she has the patience of a saint, not even they have an infinite supply of goodwill to go around. “Had some referrals from hospital to run through, nothing out of the ordinary. You know that doesn’t get me up in the morning though, mahan.”

  “I know.”

  My mind wanders to the grey hairs peeking through Amma’s otherwise dense sea of black. She’s always asking me to take some of them out when we have a quiet moment, spare some change for hair dye. She’s a lot younger than Appa, twelve-year gap. Though she does have some lines on her forehead and cheeks, she’s relatively thin and active, young enough to pass for late thirties. She’s keen to keep things that way.

  “Work at the Community Centre is picking up a bit though,” she says. “Got quite a lot of new paperwork to look through. Once you’re done studying, you should come visit, see some of the new attendees.”

  Her phone is always ringing with these issues. Even now, I can hear it buzz from a flurry of new messages. It’s been like this for years. Ever since Uncle Anton Balachandran set up the Centre, hiring out a room a few days a week to help his dad acclimatise to the country, she’s established a name for herself as his equal. Under her watch, and with her ability to translate flawlessly between English and Tamil, the Centre’s goals have expanded to deal with all kinds of issues, from benefit payments to domestic violence to immigration. Amma was always that kind of person. She silences Nirujan and Appa with the same gravity that makes people so sure of her capability. She’s the icon I could never hope to become.

  “I’ll tell Nirujan too after he comes out of the bathroom,” I say. Without pause, she puts her head down to try and reply to those messages.

  “You know your brother isn’t interested in all that,” she replies. “I don’t know why you try.”

  She looks up as she presses send, laughs through her nose and smiles a little. I notice the grey hairs again, unable to return her smile. 

  “Anyway,” she says, “enough talk, eat! And don’t worry about your father, I’ll deal with him in the morning.”

  Though usually we wouldn’t eat in our rooms on pain of death, I take two plates to our room and one to the living room, knocking on the door. Deepam TV runs a static blur the background as Appa silently takes the food and disappears back into his chair. As insistent as Amma is for us to eat, I realise I feel less hungry. In the post-fight cooldown, you’re always hit with a lag, an acid bubble of nausea that lingers for an hour or two, perhaps till the morning. They’re lasting longer each time, acid mixing with poisonous words, ongoing reminders of that murky ideal – ‘who I should be’ – and how I’ve failed so miserably to be that person.

   I pick at my food, musty dryness of microwave-rice in my nose, waiting for Nirujan to come out of the shower. When he does, he gulps down his portion and washes our plates after we’re done, minus Appa’s of course. He doesn’t return Amma’s casual conversation from outside the room, but he’s more relaxed now, shoulders back, his cheeks returning to their usual roundness.

  “Don’t speak to Appa for a few days, yeah,” I say after we’re done, the distant horn beeps of the night shift taking over outside. “He’ll calm down by himself, by then, he’ll be back on shift and out of sight.”

  Nirujan sighs. That resistance is still there at the edges of his eyes, but there’s a softness now welling up, something I can still work with.

  “Someone’s got to say something though,” he says. “It’s peak bruv, don’t know how long I can stay here with him like this, get me?”

  “Course I do. Think I haven’t thought the same?”

  We share a silent moment. Though he’ll always be Thambi to me, Nirujan doesn’t call me Annan anymore. Barely even Anna, the sideman truncated version. Nowadays I’m bruv, or fuckface, or pussyo, one of the three depending on his mood. 

 “You know this ain’t Appa’s life,” I say. “He’s like this every time we fight. This is a life, but not his, not the one he wanted, not the way he sees it.”

  “Yeah? Well, if he’s so unsatisfied, he can be less of a cunt about the way I live mine then can’t he?”

  “You could at least make Amma’s life easier if you compromised a bit. She’s the one who really deals with him.”

  “Whatever man.”

  I want to say something more, but I can’t muster the strength to argue further. Nirujan himself doesn’t either. He just shakes his head and carries on with whatever he’s doing. The pattern repeats.

  We sit in silence for a while. I let Nirujan have a turn on the main desk sat square and squat opposite the bunk, beneath a frayed old poster of Spider-Man. We’ve had it since the Tobey Maguire films. I remember tearing one of the edges when we first got it, the slightest nick just at the very top. It’s gotten a bit bigger with the poster’s age, it’s what 14 years young now, the picture having faded after repeated exposure to the sun. I still like it though. Nirujan always talks about doing away with it – says 2004 Spidey is a moany bitch compared to his newest iteration in the Avengers – but I always say no. I remember that day, times when all of us could go to the Boleyn Cinema with all the other kids in the block, stuff our faces with popcorn but go silent during the big action scenes. Our parents, bless, trying to sit through Doc Ock and Spidey merking each other while bro and I pretended to shoot webs at the screen…

  “It’s so unrealistic,” Appa said afterwards, probably wondering how he’d let us burn such a big hole in his wallet. Amma would nod wholeheartedly. 

  “You children should stay away from such frivolous violence. I thought it would be like the cartoons.”

  Then I’d say, “At least it’s not one of your boring love movies! Ew!”

  Nirujan, being tiny at the time, probably picked his nose or suttin’, but either way, he came out of that showing smiling like a don. We all did. We all did…

  Later, after I shower, Nirujan is still typing away, doing some of his schoolwork for once. Amma has gone to sleep, the double bed her uncontested domain. Appa’s been snoring for hours. In silence, facing apart, we find some way to occupy ourselves, the hours ticking by, midnight, quarter past one.

  Deep into the early hours, I get the strangest texts. I look at Nirujan, scratching his arms, getting tired. I’ve been thinking about sharing the news with him for some time, but I’ve held off, wondering if there’d ever be a right time. Now, I can no longer hold my tongue.

“Listen Thambi. You have no idea who I ran into in Uni.”

  He turns and kisses his teeth, a mischief of a smile starting to dance on his tired cheeks. These conversations usually go one way.

 “If she’s as butters as that last girl, bun her.”

  But this time, I don’t laugh at his brusque assumption.

  “It ain’t like that,” I say, “for real.”

  I turn and show him a picture of the phantom with a hair flower, now haunting my life in real-time. Once Nirujan sees who she is, that cheeky smile soon disappears.

  “Oh.”

  Oh indeed.