Day 171 - Upside Down- Chapter 19 - (2111 words)

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UPSIDE DOWN, BACK TO FRONT

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 19

Before

“So what did you think?” Manisha looked at Ivan expectantly. He figured this was some kind of test, but he did not know exactly what it was.
“Well it was long?”
“Yes, they all are, the good ones anyway.”
“I liked the main guy. He was very good.”
“Which one?”
“The Father, the one with the beard. The singing and dancing, I don’t know – it’s not really my thing, but you know it doesn’t bother me if you are into that kind of stuff. I can always get on with whatever while you watch your movies. I want you to be happy, to have the chance to do what you want. I don’t have to … uh … you know …”
Manisha looked at him again, slowly examining him.
This had been her parents favorite movie, and in it they had seen a blueprint for life. It’s not really that they were that shallow, it was more that when htye had seen it they saw what they wanted their daughter and son to see in their lives. That was back in 2001, they year that they had died. Manisha was in her early teens and long came this movie, this film that somehow encapsulated all the values and goals that they wanted for their children. So they made her watch it, again and again. She was young and she enjoyed the dancing and the singing and the handsome lead actors.
But it was the father that her parents drilled her on. The duty, the care the stern attention to caring and providing the right thing for his children. Even in his stubborness and inflexilbility they saw a nobility and majesty that set this man apart. It carried the family to success and was an aspirational goal for his children and the men and woman that were around him.
The father, the man, the leader and provider.
Manisha knew it was fiction. A fantsay and stylised version of reality that in itself was never real. She also knew that her parents knew this too. She knew inside that if they had lived longer there would have been more lessons, more examples and more movies even that played to the ideals just as well, if not better.
But they did not live. They died a few months after the movie was released on VCR cassette and that original, now unplayable tape was the link she had to her parents principles.
If they had still been alive she thought that by now she would have rebelled and reviled against that dominant philosophy.
They were not alive, and there was no one to fight. She grew up fast and looked out for her little brother the same way that Amitabh looked out for his family. She did not bend or break and she always knew better. That was the man, the kind of head of a family she wanted.
She did not see that she had become that herself. It was still an external force to her, one she desired and sought.
Ivan saw something of a kinship in the older man in the movie. He knew better and did better. Yes he made mistakes, but no one ever knew him as anything but the strong and capable man. The father, the leader. Everyone obeyed, even when they didn’t like it.
Respect, pride and power.
“He was like my father. When I was young, before my mother ruined it all.”
Manisha did not expect that and sat stunned, saying nothing.
“I would be happy if I were even a quarter as good as that man. Of course it’s just a movie.” Ivan shrugged the thought away, he had seen a kindred spirit yes. A fictional one, the real world as nothing like that he knew. If he had that kind of money, that kind of power and that kind of respect. If he had them. He certainly wanted them. He wanted that look in her eyes, the way that Nandini had looked at yash. Manisha had dropped careless nuggets of trivia when she had seen his patience for the musical numbers waning, that the head actors, the parents, were married in real life. He saw past the fiction, to the reality that she looked at Amitabh they way he wanted Manisha to look at him.
She was looking at him now with new eyes, and he felt a connection back to that sensation of respect he picked up on from the film. He leaned towards her, deliberatley accentuating his height over hers and kissed firmly but without force.
He felt he body melt into it and her eyes, which had been tracking his facial exprressions, his body language and looking for anything, closed slowly and stayed closed until well after the kiss had ended.
She opened them again slowly as if waking up for the first time.
Day 18

After

Neither said anything for a long while, Sam was sitting forward his hands clasped, Manisha sitting sideways her knees and feet pointing towards the door.
Manisha breaks the silence.
“I can’t stay here. There’s too much here.”
Sam still says nothing but his hands clasp tighter.
“Do you have anything to say to me?”
“Like what? Do you want me to say something?”
Manisha sighed, she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to talk her out of it or if she wanted to talk her brother into coming along. This thing with James, it was complicating matters.
“What do you think about me leaving? Do you think I should? Do you want me to go?”
Sam paused a long time after opening his mouth to speak, but closed it again in silence, unsure himself.
“Jesus Sam say something.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know, maybe back to India, you know to the grandparents house in Mumbai, they’re quite well off. Mum always said we could always go back there if things were bad here. You met them at the funeral do you remember? You were still quite young?”
“I remember them.” He wasn’t that young, but his memories of the funeral were still very vivid regardless.
People he didn’t know wanted to talk to him, ask him how he was feeling and hug him. It was very confrontational and far from the intended comforting the fellow grievers thought they were imparting. At first he had answered their questions, truthfully because he was confused and didn’t quite understand. He knew what death was of course, but the connection to reality that both of his parents were dead. That was a hard thing to accept, to understand. Everytime he made mention of wanting to see them again, whether it be a wish or a passing desire to think them aloive but elsewhere, he was confronted again.
It took him years to process the funeral in his mind, and he did it alone. The one thing he learned from the death of his parents was to understand how people lie. When he shared the primitive feelings of fear and isolation he had, he was given either a dose of comforting lies with gentle embraces or hard truths with gentle embraces. When people had a hard time dealing with something it always came with physical contact for some reason. They told the “sleeping forever” lie with a hug and a kiss, and usually tears. They told the “death means no longer alive and you’ll never see them again” truth with the exact same acoutrements.
There were so many tears that almost everyone he spoke to cried when he did.
So he stopped talking to people.
He still had said words of course and answered questions, but he stopped touching people and when people touched him he hardened up. It was like hugging a rock in his mind, he had become as stone. He had been a mirror reflecting what people asked or wanted, but now he was merely surface and things skidded off of him with no effect.
People stopped crying near him and were worried about his state of mind at first but the more they tried to say there was something wrong with him? The more Manisha pushed back and drew a cricle around his behaviour.
He had retreated to his keep, but she had dug the moat around and filled it with cold deatchment that only she had the bridge over.
Now she was leaving.
He didn’t need her anymore, had not for years but he had always assumed that she had needed to look after him, that he had filled that need in her that their parents had created. She was the barrier to the outside, and being that was more fulfilling than being in touch with whatever he was feeling.
Symbiosis.
Now she was going.
“India? It’s a long way, is it best to bring up your son there?”
“I have a name for him, I’ve been talking with our grandparents a lot. They started calling when the trial started and news got back to them. They were very concerned for you. They insisted on talking to you and making sure you were good.”
Sam looked at the floor.
“I told them not to worry about you, that you were fine. “
“Thank you.”
“Well they would have just gone on and on until, well this was easier.”
“I never say thank you to you enough.” He had decided in his mind.
“If you hadn’t been there to protect me when I was young?” She should go, start again.
“When I was a boy, when I needed you, you were there. You were like them then, you still are.” She should refocus on her son, whatever name they had chosen. She did not need to be encumbered by the past, a past he had brought on her. A past with a dead husband she didn’t really know and would not be happy to find out about.
“Your son…?”
“Manprasad. It means gentle and calm in mind, apparently.” Manisha felt him letting go, her decision to leave and start anew was like a child leaving home. His letting go was taking that first step out of the home, even though it was her departing.
“Manprasad, that’s a good name. Manprasad needs you to be his mother, it’s time for me to be on my own. Time for me to stand tall and be me.” He warcked his brain for a line from that movie she was obsessed with but he could only recall the songs right now, so that hastily delivered line would have to do.
Manisha nodded, she felt all sorts of things welling inside of her, pride and fear, hope and despair. They all meant very little. She felt so very small, standing on the edge of a cliff, the wind whistled about her and her world view suddenly zoomed out and she felt the distance between her brother and herself that would soon be a gulf of time and space.
“You will come visit?”
“Of course I will.”
“We’ll send money, for you to come.”
“There’s no need. I’ll send money to you.”
“Sure you will, whatever Sam.”
Manisha rolled her eyes and patted her thighs, she needed to check the baby, the monitor had been silent this whole time.
“I’m very good at saving you know. Who knows I might even win the lotto.”
“Haha? My little brother gambling? You’re not the type.” She scoffed a little noise to accompany her words.
“There are things about me you don’t know, Manisha.” Though he knew that she didn’t believe that for a second. It laid the groundwork, she would get her share, Ivan’s share.
She could never know how or why, but she had to have it. James and he agreed like they almost always did.
“When will you go?”
“When the case is over, I want to see it through and see James out of prison.”
“Sam?”
“Yes sis?”
“when you come to India to see Manprasad and your sister?” Manisha paused, unsure she was going to finish the sentence or not. She started to cry just thinking about asking, but she could not, not ask. It was too much. She may owe the man her life, but proximity was not something she could stand.
Sam understood, and patted her hands on top of her thighs.
“I will come alone.”
He hugged her with a gentle embrace.