The Lilac House by Anita Nair

ornaments. ‘Bye,’ Meera says. But the girl has already put her earphones back on.
    The steel walls of the lift reflect distorted images. And that is how Meera sees herself.
    Meera, with her hair pulled back and dressed in her daughter’s clothes. Meera, who at forty-four hopes she will pass for an aging thirty-five. Meera, desperate Meera, desperately seeking employment in a world that has little use for corporate wives of even an exemplary kind.
    Meera pulls away her hairband, yet another of Nayantara’s castaways, and lets her hair swing free. Her head hurts. Meera, the masquerader. The abandoned wife pretending to be protectress.
     
    Hera had never dwelt on it too much. For Zeus had always been there to rush forth to her rescue. And so in the battle between the giants and the Olympians, when Porphyrion placed his enormous hands round her neck and began strangling her, Hera’s last thought wasn’t: I am dying. Instead, it was the harried but secure wife’s anger that made her wriggle: ‘Where is Zeus when I need him?’
    Hera couldn’t even consider the possibility that Zeus wouldn’t rush to rescue her.
    Giri has always been there. All these years Meera had Giri to lean on. Only now, Giri is gone.
    All these years Meera never knew what it was to be stripped of dignity. She feels as if she is laying herself bare for the entire world
to see and speculate about. Her hands splay across her chest and pubis. She feels naked and vulnerable.
    She cowers as the lift door opens.

    I
    T hrough the open doors of the lift, Vinnie sees a woman huddled against its steel side. A woman with her head bent and her shoulders shaking. Is she giggling into her phone?
    An eyebrow arches by itself. What do these women chatter about all day?
    Then the woman raises her head to look at her and Vinnie thinks she has never seen anyone look as depleted by anguish. Or as naked.
    Vinnie has a split second to choose. To ignore the woman in tears or get involved. She doesn’t know why, but she finds herself touching the woman on her shoulder and saying, ‘Come. Let’s get a coffee. Whatever it is, you will feel better then.’
    The woman stares at her through her tears. Then she goes with her.
    ‘I am sorry, I am sorry,’ she keeps whispering, trying to dry her eyes.
     
    Across the road is a Café Coffee Day. Vinnie doesn’t like going to these places much. They are teenage haunts. For children on whom tall drinks of fattening chocolate and milk don’t show. ‘A lot can happen over a cup of coffee,’ Arun had grinned at her. They had met there one evening and Vinnie saw how his eyes flicked over the girls, pausing at the smooth, unlined midriffs only a twenty-year-old can possess. And how the young girls feasted on him. ‘They must wonder at us,’ she said.
    ‘Let them,’ he drawled. ‘What is it to us?’

    Nothing to you, perhaps, but I feel like a fool. A middle-aged fool, Vinnie had ached to snap.
     
    It hasn’t been an easy morning for Vinnie either. Arun wants a loan.
    Vinnie has been unable to stop the voices in her head and heart. The voices have alternated between raucous heckling and blandishments, trying to out voice each other.
    ‘Give it to him,’ one of the voices said.
    ‘If you give in now, you are doomed,’ another said.
    Give it to him, the voice in Vinnie’s heart whispered. Give it to him and he’ll give unto you all that you desire, it simpered.
    Lady, there’s a name for people like you who need to buy desire, the other voice in Vinnie’s head curled its mouth.
    Vinnie patted the coil of hair that sat atop her head. A crown that allowed her to disseminate businesswoman efficiency with the raising of an eyebrow and a curl of the lip. It was the cornice atop a façade of control. Don’t mess with me, it warned the world of employees, shop girls and all minions who contributed to making the earth a better place for Vinnie.
    ‘I don’t like it when you do this to your hair,’ Arun had said a few