Fiction: Coconut Trees

By: Swathi Rao

In a small town in southern India, in the coastal state of Kerala, where the banana fritters were delicious and the heat was scorching, Prema was a high school teacher. The small town had a school of around five hundred students, of whom Prema taught chemistry to one hundred.

She was forty-five, a wife to a much older man, a mother to a twenty-year-old son, and a daughter-in-law who took care of her husband's old mother. She was a quiet but strict teacher who rarely gave her students grace marks or extensions for classwork.

Life was the same every day. She woke up early, made breakfast and lunch, cleaned the house, gave her mother-in-law her medicines and ensured the old lady was occupied watching the soap operas on television, and then went to school. She came back home, cooked dinner, checked on her mother-in-law, and graded papers or prepared exam questions. Her son was away in the big city pursuing his degree, so she had some breathing room from her motherly duties. Her husband was a government official who came back home by 6 p.m. and spent the rest of his day watching the news or meeting his childhood friends at one of their houses.

“Can you check when this movie is releasing? I want to watch it in the theatre,” her mother-in-law asked her during dinner.

“You can barely go for walks and you want to go to the theatre," Prema responded.

“You just have to take me by rickshaw and then I can make it happen. I will not watch this movie on TV.”

“Well, you can take yourself, then, because I'm not taking you,” Prema told her.

“You are not that busy. I see you on your phone all the time once you’re back from school,” her mother-in-law said with conviction.

“I keep an eye on my students’ social media accounts, their parents have let them go wild,” Prema replied.

“You are up to no good,” said her mother-in-law, ending the conversation with a smirk.

She had grown tired of being a caretaker over the years. The rigid routine she had to follow to keep up with motherhood, teaching, marriage, and caring for an older woman with deteriorating health had made her develop this disciplinarian personality. If she became laid back it was reflected in her teaching and her mother-in-law falling sick.

Despite the monotonous life she led, Prema had a secret. A secret that could cause her neighbors to start spinning the wheels of gossip. She was part of a gardening group on Facebook where she met Joy. He was a middle-aged man from the North East. He stayed in Shillong; he was a tour guide and an avid gardener. He was also a father to two daughters. His wife and he had separated several years ago. This was her secret, her close companionship with a stranger online.

Her son had introduced her to the gardening group when she struggled with growing certain vegetables in their backyard. They would grow to a certain level and then stop. It started with group conversations and then became private messages between her and Joy. He was the reason her avocados were bearing fruit and her spinach was blossoming.

It had been two years of talking online every day after their duties were done to their families. It was her favorite time of day. They would discuss what they did at work, the status of their gardens, and life in general. Joy would send her beautiful images of the Eastern valleys, waterfalls, and treks he would go on as a tour guide, and Prema would share serene images of Kerala's backwaters and beaches.

She dressed in her brightest saree and went to the temple near the river and video-called Joy when she sat near the water so that they could enjoy a view. They commented on the local fishermen, the changes they’d made to their cooking of late, and how they wanted to get away from their responsibilities for a short while.

Why was it wrong for her to want a companion to share her thoughts with? She chose to share her life with her husband, whom she had a duty toward, but did they have anything in common other than their son? Their last conversation was about the electricity bill. Prema’s marriage was neither extraordinary nor terrible. Her husband liked to give his opinion on anything and everything; he was an outspoken person. He was also very specific about his meals. He was a good father to their son and, he felt, a good husband as well. Their relationship was their son, his mother’s issues, and fish curry. So why had Prema and Joy never met in person? Prema had no excuse to give her family as to why she would want to go to Shillong. Their idea of taking a vacation was going to Munnar just a few hours away, or visiting some temple in Tamil Nadu. She had no family or friends in the North East to use as a reason to visit. Joy had the same reasoning from his side.

So they decided to remain online companions. Their conversations and interaction over text and calls were just about enough. Sometimes in life you choose to make things uncomplicated, and they had chosen this path.

Did they ever get caught? They knew how to keep it discreet. They’d had a few close calls, with a suspicious child or spouse wondering who it was they talked to so often, but it never resulted in them being revealed. They remained each other's invisible companions in crime. Until one day, the calls and messages stopped. And Prema had nobody to talk to. She wanted to tell someone about a student stealing some of the lab equipment, whom she had caught and reprimanded. She wanted to talk about the pumpkins that were growing wild in her garden. She wanted to talk about how much she disliked the latest Mohanlal movie. But there was no Joy. He was her only friend, or lover, or whatever you wanted to call it.

She tried to use her limited stalking skills to find out what had happened to him, but there was nothing she could do with a number now listed as invalid. The days were busy but lonely, and she always wondered if she had said something, or if Joy was physically harmed or worse. Many times she wished she could ask someone for help, but she couldn't trust anyone with such a big secret. So she suffered in silence, nursing the hurt that followed.

“Your belly is looking bigger than last month,” Prema told her husband.

“Bigger?! It looks the same. You are noticing my belly more than necessary,” he responded.

“Well, if something that big is in front of my face I can't help but notice it,” she said, making a face at him.

“I thought you bought me a red saree for Meenu’s wedding. This is such a drab color!” yelled her mother-in-law from the other room.

“You don't need to wear red. You are eighty, not fifty, it’s not an old person's color,” Prema answered sarcastically.

“You can’t tell me what color to wear! I want a red saree. I am telling my son about this,” her mother-in-law seethed.

“You can try. I already paid for this one,” Prema struck back.

It was cruel to take it out on her husband and mother-in-law, but she couldn’t control it. She was angry and she had to direct it somewhere. They seemed to think it was her natural behavior anyway.

The years flew by, and Prema learned with much difficulty to let go. Her mother-in-law passed, and her son was working at an IT firm in Pune. She was close to her retirement from school, and her husband had already retired. They took comfort in each other’s company now that they were all they had left. They learnt to talk about things other than their son and fish curry. They even played a game of chess every week and traveled to visit their son. He occasionally helped out with her vegetable garden until he killed the chillies and she asked him to stop helping.

One year, for their wedding anniversary, her son wanted to give them a trip to a place of their choice. “We’re too old to be going on trips,” his father told him.

“Everyone’s parents are going for trips outside India. I am asking you to just go to Kashmir.”

“Kashmir is too far and too cold, I am not going to cold places.”

“I would like to go to the North East. I hear it’s beautiful, and it’s not a cold place,” suggested Prema.

“Fine. You get good tea in Assam, so I am okay,” her husband told the both of them.

Their journey started at the Kaziranga national park in Assam and moved on to the root bridges of Meghalaya. Their last day was in Shillong, and the city was crowded, with long traffic jams. “We came to get away, and this place is no getaway!” her husband complained.

It was when he was taking his long afternoon nap that Prema decided to get away. She took a taxi into the Upper Nongrim Hills to the address she had saved many years ago. Joy had always spoken about how his house overlooked the hills and that he enjoyed waking up to the view every morning. She found a small pale yellow house and went up to the highest floor of the old building, where she found Sangma written on a nameplate. She was afraid to ring the doorbell and hear bad news, if Joy was dead or hurt. Still, she had to know.

An older woman opened the door. “Can I meet Joy Sangma?” she asked her. She was half expecting her to say that this was the wrong address, but the woman nodded. Prema introduced herself as part of one of Joy's tours in the past and said she wanted to hire him for another tour. She deduced that the older woman was his wife based on how suspicious she seemed when she asked questions.

Prema was asked to wait outside. She anxiously looked at her watch. Her husband would wake up in an hour. Then she looked up.

Joy had hardly aged at all. He had some grey hair at his temples and a few wrinkles, but otherwise he looked much younger than his age. He even wore the same style of clothes as in his photos from years ago: a pastel shirt with jeans and a neck scarf.

They stood looking at each other for an uncomfortable and awkward few seconds. “You always looked nice in yellow,” he said. More silence. “Are you here because you’re angry?”

“I’m here for closure,” she responded.

“That will take some time,” he told her in a quiet, sad voice.

“She caught you didn't she? Your wife.”

“We were separated, but it was better for our children that we get back together.” He sighed. “I did not lie about the separation.”

“Can I ask why you never told me the reason you ended it?” Prema asked, ignoring his previous statement.

“I was ashamed that my secret had been found out. Everyone in my family…I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how you would react. It was best to end it without saying anything further.”

Instead of a long explanation and an even longer conversation, Prema decided to leave. Her taxi was waiting. “Goodbye, Joy, I regret pining for you over the years. I imagined this moment so differently in my head. I never once forgot you. I thought about you every day.”

“I just didn’t want to continue,” he told her, his voice filled with guilt. She walked away.

The next day, on the flight home, Prema’s husband was snoring in the seat next to hers. It was a night flight and the lights were off, all the passengers in deep slumber. She allowed the tears to roll down from her eyes, the years’ worth of hurt and anger toward herself and Joy to finally be released. She let herself cry until her body stopped feeling heavy. It was done; the truth had set her free. Nobody knew what had happened and nobody needed to know. It was her secret and it would remain that way. She was going home a changed woman.

***

Swathi Rao (she/her) is an author living in Germany and hailing from Bangalore in India. She is a Sales and Marketing professional who has been pursuing her passion for poetry and short stories since the age of twelve. Most of her stories revolve around people’s everyday lives and ordinary circumstances. Her goal is to leave the reader thinking.