| Pritika Rao | January 2025 | Short Story |

Someone was growing weed on the terrace of Apsara Heights. 

Mrs Kamalakshi was the first one to spot it. 

She had walked to the storage room built on the terrace that housed a ladder, old paint tins, gardening equipment, and spare plastic chairs. It was locked, so she walked around it, and there it was, sitting like a housepet, glistening with morning dew, green and innocent as ever—a small flowering pot. 

It was a cool Tuesday morning, for Chennai anyway. The air smelled of mist and the neighbour’s sambrani. They had also put out fresh kolams already; the ornate little colourful patterns were in stark contrast to the grey morning. Mrs Radha, with her mane of curd white hair, was calling out to a crow she fed. ‘Kaa Kaa Kaa,’ she crowed like an infant. Foolishness, Mrs Kamalakshi thought to herself as she retrieved the newspaper wedged between the gate and the wall. She had told the newspaper fellow to leave it on the stoop. But he told her that she mustn’t bend down. Kamalakshi knew that as an old person, you heard these prescriptions from all and sundry. ‘The problem is in my knees, not my back, you fool’, she had told him before. ‘I can bend and pick up the paper just fine’. As an old person, she also got away with these insults. He smiled as if he understood but never listened.

She had gone up to the terrace to catch the sunrise. Her grandmother insisted they do it at least four times a week. Her grandmother was a strong woman even at 82 when her eyesight and hearing were failing her. She performed the Suryanamaskar every morning in her cotton sari until her dying day. Kamalakshi wasn’t as devout. Partly because her mother was so laid-back about these things and had married into a Catholic family. Also, she was never very athletic or flexible. She was only 63 now, but her posture was already poor, and she spent most of her time bent over the stove or curled up on the sofa with a book or a crossword. She had recently retired and had a stack of books waiting to be devoured. Just that thought gave her much excitement at the start of the day. 

She smelled a faint whiff of wet grass, and it stopped her dead in her tracks. It reminded her of the long walks she had taken in Bangalore’s Cubbon Park when she was being courted by her late husband, Mani. Mani was a chemical engineer. She didn’t know what to talk about so she told him that the rotten egg smell that everyone hated wasn’t so bad. He laughed nervously.

‘I love this smell too,’ she continued. ‘This mixture of grass and earth is a little sickeningly sweet. I find those sorts of unusual smells interesting.’

He stopped and stared at her – his greasy hair smelling of Brylcreem. ‘Hahaha. That’s weed,’ he said, sitting on the wet grass in his brown pants and crisp white shirt that was lined like a page in a notebook. ‘Cannabis? Ganja? You know?’ he asked.

‘Where have you smelt this before?’ Kamalakshi didn’t know. Was it at the girls’ hostel? 

‘You’re an interesting one’, he said to her. ‘You’ll keep me on my toes.’

Mani would have found this whole turn of events extremely amusing. He would be rolling in his grave as we speak.

*** 

The residents of Apsara Heights shared many responsibilities but barely any conversation. Living in a small apartment like this, without a lift and security, meant that they had to coordinate many things: What time the motor would be turned on every couple of days to fill the overhead tank which supplied water to all four flats, the annual cleaning of the sump, or chasing the children who tried to steal mangoes from the tree that grew out of the apartment compound. 

They soon gathered on the terrace, the harsh Chennai sun blazing down on them, with the sinful plant in plain sight. They had gathered in a semi-circle around it as if it were a holy pyre or a cornered creature. No one had touched it so far. From the terrace, you could see into other people’s homes, their terraces, and their laundry, including banians and lingerie, in vivid display across wires.

‘Shall we call the police then?’ Mr Gopalan from the first floor asked. His wife was nervously twisting the edge of her dupatta between her fingers.

Kamalakshi interjected firmly. ‘No, no. I don’t want the cops to come,’ her voice was high-pitched. ‘This is a respectable apartment, ok? No need to involve police and all. First let’s see whose it is’. 

‘Whose is it?’ she asked, looking at each person in the eye with a stern expression she used on her students when she wanted them to confess to something. ‘Come on, make it quick.’

When nobody spoke, she decided she had had enough.  

‘You?’ She said, pointing at Sonya. ‘You first call your parents.’ 

‘Me? Why me? I am 24 years old! I can speak for myself. And anyway, they are in Dubai.’

‘Dubai, ah? Then this and all is nothing for you. Tell me, ma. Why would you do such a thing?’

Sonya was the easiest person to accuse, a single girl with no one to stand up for her. Not that she needed it. She inched forward in her chair and set her face in a deep frown, as if she might lunge at Kamalakshi any minute. 

‘Aunty. I don’t do all this. I can’t even keep one money plant alive in my own apartment. As if I have time for all this.’ Only Jayant, Gopalan’s son, laughed at this before everyone else’s nervous glances made him turn his face to the ground in silence. ‘Plus, if I want, I can buy it elsewhere easily; why take all this trouble?’ She settled back into her chair and shook her hand across her chest. ‘So nope, not me.’

Kamalakshi sighed and scanned the room. Shalini and Rahul had moved into the apartment only a few months ago, and Shalini was heavily pregnant. Perhaps the husband is stressed, Kamalakshi thought to herself. Maybe he needs some respite. Needs some rest. Needs some inspiration. 

‘What do you do for work, pa?’ She asked him. 

‘Accountant, aunty. Sorry, ‘Ma’am.’ he muttered nervously. 

His wife shot him a look. ‘He’s a manager at an independent accountancy firm’, she said. ‘And I work with an HR Consultancy firm. We would never do something like this. So…juvenile’, she said, glaring at her husband. ‘And that too with a baby on the way’. She pointed with both hands to her burgeoning stomach – her get-away-from-jail-free card. 

Kamalakshi wondered about the exasperated look she gave her husband – Was that guilt talking? Or disappointment at his bumbling response? Kamalakshi just couldn’t understand married couples, having had so little experience in the arrangement herself. Mani had died in a road accident just 8 months after their wedding. Of course, she was sad. But after months had passed, she felt too much pressure to feel sad. Every comment from everyone she ever knew dripped like oil in a flame of sadness that she had to keep burning for years and years, that eventually, the only person she felt sad for was herself. And for Mani, any love she had had morphed into anger and resentment. Especially because she had told him on the morning of the accident to wear his stupid helmet. Men were so stupid.

She moved on to the next set of candidates, who were actually the prime set of suspects. They occupied the entire first floor of two apartments. In one was Mr. Gopalan and his wife, Savitri or Sashi or something of the sort. Their youngest son lived with them. He was still in college. Kamalakshi knew that because of the loud music, erratic hours he kept and the gait of a lazy jungle animal that only the wildness of youth could give you. His brother and wife occupied the second apartment on that floor. Due to the proximity of the apartment to the other flats, it was inevitable that sounds would carry through the walls, though not right away. New couples were always careful about that – never want to be heard having sex. But when that initial inhibition wore off (as did the sex, evidently), their arguments became public broadcast. 

Just then, Arun, her nephew, arrived. He lived in Kilpauk. Close to the cemetery. ‘Better to be near the dead, than right next to extended family, riiight?’ he joked with tenants of Apsara Heights when they asked why he wasn’t renting an apartment here himself. He only made these sorts of jokes to seem cool. He loved his aunt; after all, she had paid for most of his education. And he secretly pocketed some of the advance money they paid for rent. ‘Just commission,’ he told himself every time guilt whispered in his ear that he was a thief. He had two semicircles of sweat between his chest and his paunch, like two sleeping eyelids. He came on a sputtering scooter, but he was wheezing as if he’d run the entire distance.

‘What took you so long, pa?’ Kamalakshi asked irritatedly, pointing to the pot before she went on to interrogate the Gopalan family. 

In the past, Kamalakshi had one major problem with the Gopalan’s daughter-in-law. She fed all the strays, which led them to sleep on the stairs, right outside Kamalakshi’s gate, and they followed her every time she left the house – to the market, to the book club meeting, to the car, really anywhere. She wasn’t afraid of them necessarily, but she didn’t want them around, having to navigate around them every step she took. As it is, one had to navigate trash and rocks and potholes on this kaccha road. 

‘No feeding them here; it is association orders’, Kamalakshi asserted one evening after dinner when she heard the clinking of vessels outside her door and went out to inspect.

‘No offense, aunty, but you can’t make those rules. Government rules state that I can feed them within my property.’ 

‘But it is my property!’ she asserted.

‘As a renter, it is my property as well. I have a right to feed.’ 

At that moment, one of the dogs paused their feeding and looked up at Kamalakshi, with curd all over its long snout. How many teeth did these creatures have? She wondered as she winced and walked back to her door, and only when she had one foot firmly in the door she screamed boldly, ‘I will evict you if you continue this,’ and slammed the door, ashamed of the volume of her voice and the fact that she had been intimidated by a street dog. A dog in the distance barked at her.

‘Shut up,’ she yelled back.

She noticed that during that night, there was the sound of fighting upstairs. It was oddly satisfying. 

A few days later, Kamalakshi noticed the undeniable smell of urine outside my window. She caught the daughter-in-law from upstairs on her way to work. 

‘Excuse me, the dogs are urinating in my compound.’ she declared loudly, suddenly aware that I sounded like a typical telltale child.

The daughter-in-law laughed as if Kamalakshi was a senile old person asking her to solve a calculus problem. 

‘Streeties are the cleanest animals’, she replied confidently, as she opened the door of (what seemed to be) her office cab. ‘They never urinate or shit in public. They always go to vacant lands and kick sand over their shit. Perhaps it’s the drain pipes. Might want to get that checked.’

Later that week, Kamalakshi led Arun through the narrow passageway to the back of the apartment. ‘This is human urine, Athai,’ he said, crinkling his face as his mouth turned upside down in disgust. They both looked up and saw a trickle of something along the wall – it appeared sticky, and against the blue/grey of the apartment, it seemed slightly green. There were also splashes on the compound wall and the grill. Covering their mouths, they both rushed out to the front gate and looked up. It seemed to have been coming from the first floor. ‘But that is the bedroom window’, Kamalakshi thought to herself, ‘not the bathroom’. 

‘Thu, saniangala.’ Arun said, spitting into the ground. He didn’t cover it up, she noticed. It just stayed there, a congealed mass of white bubbles. Between this spit and urine, topped off with a pot of weed, was Apsara Heights. 

***

Dilip and Kamalakshi have been ‘friendly’ for about three months (the word ‘dating sounded too modern, and it didn’t fit them as a unit). He comes over to stay, but they don’t do much but cuddle and watch television. Dilip has a real estate business and lots of money. He liked to spoil her, and she didn’t mind that. For the first time in years, she enjoyed the companionship of another. He loved to travel. He had a membership at The Presidency Club and liked taking her to the library there, the juice shop, and even to a marriage ceremony of the children of one of the other club members. She liked how it felt to be associated with him, how people treated her in his company,  as opposed to the indecent people of Apsara Heights. Once you are of a certain age, people begin to treat you like you are worthless. Add to that, being a woman and a widow, and your value in society drops significantly.

Over the years, Kamalakshi had learned to channel any passion she had into secretarial efficiency. She made enough savings and investments, did all the household chores, took care of her parents and sister as well as her nephew and had a small but sweet social life with the teachers in the college she worked at and some friends from the local church she visited when she could. Now, having this one person witness to her life, even just for a few hours a week, changed everything from mealtimes to morning routines – it added a whole new flavour to her daily life. It was why she started going to catch a sunrise again after all these years. He showed a genuine interest in her previously mundane existence – very impressed with her collection of old cassette tapes and amateur artwork. She enjoyed using a paintbrush to paint on the insides of empty liquor bottles – scenes of dancing girls, blooming flowers and setting suns. ‘That’s what our generation is missing, you know?’ she had told him once, ‘Hobbies. Like really just doing something for the fun of it. Privately. Never caring if someone saw her doing it or what it potentially says about her as a person. Just because she enjoys it.’

‘You have any?’ she asked him.

‘I used to collect coins,’ he said, smiling wistfully. ‘And stamps.’

‘But people hardly use cash now. Or write letters. Haha. So I stopped collecting these ages ago.’ he concluded.

She nodded, feeling nostalgia emerge like a bridge of understanding between them.

She dusted the house more often, purchased and wore prettier saris, and put on more talcum powder. She made an effort to be less irritable.

It had been two days, and nobody had confessed yet. Kamalakshi was having nightmares about it, that the plant climbed out of its pot and strangled her in her sleep. Or that this was her ex-husband’s ridiculous sense of humor haunting her for taking a lover. She dreamed that he had filled her whole house with pots, their greenery spreading and consuming every surface, so she would always think of their first meeting in Cubbon Park and her embarrassment and him laughing at her. Or that the police landed up at her door and took her away, her neighbours whispering, the street dogs and Radha’s crows all mocking her by cawing and barking at her.

‘One of you has to confess. This is getting out of hand,’ she told the rest of the residents who had gathered in the house. The Gopalan family had brought Kothu roti and gunpowder idli. To Kamalakshi, every little act was a clue, perhaps. Why this sudden supply of food? Why has the daughter-in-law stopped feeding the dogs since then? In not wanting to garner any suspicions, everyone was behaving in a cagey manner.

So much so that Radha asked Kamalakshi what was going on in her apartment because something smelled fishy. If only she knew that she had picked up the right scent.

‘Let’s just throw it away.’ Jayant said casually. ‘Throw it in the car and go to an empty land and get rid of it.’

‘Yeah, what’s the big deal? Hemp is used in all sorts of beauty products.’ Shalini said, caressing her belly, to which the daughter-in-law and Sonya agreed.

‘And protein powders.’

‘And gummies’. ‘And medicine.’ 

‘Yesss’, they all agreed, as if this was the start of a new venture.

‘What if someone sees you throwing it in that land? Then?’

‘Ok, then I’ll throw it in the sea. Anyway, everyone throws everything there – ashes, garlands, and juice packets. Plant is fine – all nature only.’

‘Cha.’ she tut-tutted disapprovingly. ‘This is ILLEGAL, you understand?

‘Come on, aunty. No biggie, I’ll do it for you, no worries.’ Jayant said. 

***

Jayant was not a bad fellow. He just had an awful temper. And when that happened, he became absolutely wild. He’d been that way since he was a child. It didn’t affect anyone, really, not that he could tell, at least. His parents continued doing what they were doing – peeling peas and reading the paper when they were at home. Browsing the shelves at the grocery store. Cooking, pouring tea. His tantrums never got in the way – his parents always carried on, looked the other way, as he noticed every parent did. Once on the train, a child kept running through the aisle and turning off the big power button on his laptop. His parents said nothing until Jayant grabbed his hand and told him off (he actually said he would break his fingers if that happened again). The boy went and sat down in his seat and stared at his shoes quietly until they got off a few stations later. 

No one had attempted to tame Jayant’s anger. Recently, when he got frustrated while gaming (that bloody Mukund or whatever his name was was awful, but nobody kicked him off because he had so many followers on Instagram. Gaming was the place for know-it-alls and influencers.) ‘Da! Just point and shoot!’ ‘Piss off,’ they told him. ‘Not a bad idea’, he thought to himself. So he did. Point and shoot. 

Anyway, the novelty of this also had worn out. Perhaps he could use some of that plant. That night, after a match where he felt incensed and aggrieved, he crept up to the topmost floor. He heard a mixie go off and almost peed his pants. There was muffled arguing. ‘Who does this in the middle of the night?’ ‘I thought you asked for a milkshake’ ‘I asked you to order it from the cafe, not make it now.’ ‘Why can’t you tell me clearly then?’ ‘Why can’t you respect the rules of this apartment? We can’t be thrown out now so close to the baby.’ ‘It’s not my pot!!!’ ‘Yeah, right! In college also, you were a druggie, and you promised you’d change, and I knew it was just a matter of time!’

‘Damn,’ thought Jayant. ‘Before he comes and gets some (he sure does sound like he needs some), I’d better get a little for myself.’ 

He crouched on all fours and crept up, step by step, like a drug-sniffing dog. His hands and feet were covered in a thin film of dust. His senses were piqued, and he felt an odd thrill like a predator creeping up on its kill. His knees moved from the smooth staircase to the corrugated roughness of the terrace floor. He would endure the pain. It would be worth the sweet relief. He crawled around the corner until he was face-to-face with the plant, who was waiting coyly, like a new bride, swaying in the night breeze and illuminated by the seductive moonlight. 

‘Hellο, my sweet’, he whispered.

‘Hello, da!’ said Mrs Kamalakshi as Jayant jumped out of his skin and stood in attention.

‘Yes, Ma’am, sorry, Paati. I, I…’

‘Aunty. I’m not your grandmother. I knew it was you, you little weed-smoking weasel!’ She shook her finger at him angrily.  

‘It’s not me, I swear, I wouldn’t….’ 

‘Call your parents, call them, call!’ she challenged him. 

‘It’s Him, it’s Him’, he yelled as Kamalakshi turned around to see Rahul sheepishly trying to tip-toe away. 

***

That evening, Dilip came over with a bouquet. Kamalakshi was excited to see him, to tell him all about the pot she had discovered this morning. She had begun and paused the TV show they were watching, skipping the intro, just as he liked it. Kamalakshi was excited to have an exciting story to share for once. He was usually the interesting one, with stories from his work, his shipping business, and the club. She still hadn’t figured out whose it was. Both Rahul and Jayant had vehemently denied that they owned the pot and refused to touch it, despite her goading them and threatening to out them to the police. 

‘But you don’t have proof,’ Shalini had argued. ‘And if you call the police, we will all say it’s yours; after all, it’s your apartment.’

So, Kamalakshi had to concede defeat. She didn’t need this reputation. As it is, Radha is nosy and cawing all day long, hoping for a morsel of drama. So, Kamalakshi let them all go, but her suspicions weren’t gone. She hoped that Dilip and she could solve this like one of those detective shows they enjoyed watching.

‘Guess what?’ Kamalakshi asked him as soon as Dilip walked in the door. ‘Come with me.’ Before he took off his shoes at the door, she grabbed his arm and asked him to follow her. They walked past the two floors up to the terrace, past the sound of whistling cookers and muffled televisions. 

When she got to the terrace, her heart was beating fast. He followed closely behind. As she turned the corner around the storeroom, they both exclaimed together, his voice low and satisfied, hers high-pitched and tense.

‘There it is!’

They both looked at each other in surprise. 

‘For a second, I thought someone had stolen it. That’s happened before.’ He wiped his beard, clearly relieved. He took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

‘Wait,’ Kamalakshi said, holding her hands up as if he was accusing her of something. ‘That pot is yours?’ she asked, her jaw feeling so heavy that she thought it might dislocate. 

‘I thought you said you didn’t have any hobbies!’ 

‘Well, this is recreational for me…and for other people,’ he said, letting out a loud guffaw. ‘Come on, I have this at so many apartments across the city. Booming market, I tell you. Filter coffee, irukka?’ he asked, rummaging around the kitchen.

‘Someone could have called the police! I could have been in jail!’

‘Come on, Kamsie, live a little! A little bit of calm never hurt anyone. You know, you could use some of it.’ He said, making a gesture of smoking a joint.

‘You have to leave,’ Kamalakshi said, tears springing to her eyes. 

***

‘The pot is gone’. Kamalakshi declared the next morning to everyone gathered in her apartment. She had served tea and mint sandwiches as if to placate them. 

‘Where?’ Sonya asked, again on the edge of her seat.

‘Why? You want, ah?’ Passive aggression usually warded off unnecessary conversations. ‘It is gone. Let us be grateful and take this as a lesson and a blessing.’

‘But what is the lesson? One day, it is there, and the next day it is gone. What is there to learn from this?’

‘That one of you could have been in jail. Thank God He saved you. Now let’s eat and leave it at that.’

‘This Paati only has smoked it,’ Jayant muttered softly. ‘That’s why total chill, bro.’ Sonya and Shalini, who were sitting on either side of him, giggled softly. 

‘Ey, what are you kusu-pusu-ing?’ she clenched her hand into a fist and shook it at him. ‘First, you stop that upstairs susu-ing.’ He immediately shut up and crossed his arms, slinking into his chair. His parents were confused, looking back and forth between Kamalakshi and Jayant. 

‘Yes, ask him, ask him, can’t see what is going on under your own nose.’ she said, somewhat hysterically and followed it with a threat. ‘I will cut money from the deposit, wait and see.’ 

She felt guilty for it afterwards. After all, she was the oblivious one. But no one needed to know that. At her age, it was better to be seen as crazy rather than timid or vulnerable. At any age, that was better for a woman in this country, she decided.

***

‘What happened to her brother?’ Sonya asked as they left the apartment. ‘He hasn’t been here for a week.’

‘What brother?’ the nephew asked, wiping his face with an already damp handkerchief. 

‘Your dad only, we assumed. The one who keeps coming and taking her out,’ Sonali said, slipping her toes into her chappals. 

‘Aiyo,’ he exclaimed, ‘My dad, ah? My mother will kill him!!! That’s not my dad. That is Athai’s boyfriend.’ ‘Lover,’ he whispered, but he pronounced it as if it were something lewd – ‘Lowwwer’. 

‘What?’ The two women looked stunned. 

‘Shocking, no?’ he said excitedly. ‘Here, I am not able to find one suitable groom for my elder daughter also, but this Athai is one khiladi.’ 

The other men heard none of this and continued walking upstairs to their respective flats as the nephew swiftly mounted his bike, strapped on his helmet and drove off, flashing a gigantic smile and waving his arm animatedly, revealing a large and growing sweat patch. He looked pleased to have delivered such a juicy bit of gossip on his way out. He liked feeling like an ‘insider’ with the tenants while also feeling like the owner. It was the best of both worlds.

‘You don’t think?’ Sonya whispered to Sonali as they also walked upstairs.

‘Oh my god.’ she replied.

_________________________

Pritika is an economist and freelance writer from Bangalore, India. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was a runner-up in the Soup Short Story Contest 2022. In 2018, she won second prize in the Sunday Herald short story competition. Her work has also appeared in Vogue India, Elle India, The Times of India, The Bangalore Review, The SoupThe SwaddleMadras Courier and The Alipore Post among others. She is the editor of Rewrite Mag – a repository of rejected writing. Her writing has recently been featured in ‘A Case of Indian Marvels‘, an anthology by Aleph Book Company and ‘Constellations’, an anthology by The Written Circle. She has also self-published a book of poetry titled ‘Eclipse on Joypiter‘ (2015).

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Display image by Shivansh Singh via Unsplash 

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