Ode to Broken Things by Dipika Mukherjee

always waving in the air to catch the teacher’s attention. “You always were into the limelight thing.”
    “Limelight? Moi ?” He grinned. “Nah, London’s great, but Malaysia’s home, eh? Despite the fact that our government would prefer us to migrate.”
    She smiled at him, “And you get prejudice everywhere in the world…”
    “Except in our lovely country, it’s bloody enshrined in the constitution; no avenues for redress, sorry. And my family has been there for what, five generations? Maybe longer, if you take a closer look at my grandfather’s photographs.”
    Abhik reached out to tickle Lucy, Greg’s dog, curled up in a resplendent sheen on the sofa. “And you know what really gets me? We are the post-1969 generation. We don’t care about the ‘69 riots because they didn’t happen to us . But, with all the Bumi nonsense, we’re all like – she’s Indian, he’s Chinese, she’s Malay. But there are so many Chindians and the Malchins? The all-mixed-ups, huh?”
    “You mean mongrel breeds like me? Stop whining about the same things, OK? We should just accept that here we are, two screwed-up people who will never belong anywhere.”
    “The globally promiscuous,” Abhik articulated with relish. “Belonging in many places and in none. Cheer up, B, you seem to be doing all right.” He inclined his head to the door that Greg had walked through.
    “He’s okay, I guess.”
    “Well, I’m glad that you are so exuberant about him, Bondhu!” Abhik leapt to his feet and knelt at Agni’s, startling her by grabbing her hands. “ But if he ever/ Breaks your heart/ Before the next …” Abhik warbled, off-key.
    Agni had only heard him sing onstage in Pujobari before, Alo Amar Alo or some other equally vapid choir tune indestructible under the assault of childish trilling. Even he heard the plaintive tone before she shook her hands free and clamped them on his mouth, begging him to stop caterwauling.
    Abhik bit the hand over his mouth with a gentle, moist tug.

Sixteen
    For Jay, the hotel room felt unbearably cramped after the spaciousness of Agni’s home. The curtains were cheerfully batik- inspired, but the view they framed of the bumper-to-bumper traffic inching towards Cheras and Petaling Jaya was depressing. Jay yanked the curtains shut, shrinking the room even more. He yawned loudly.
    He fell on the bed on his back, focusing on the green arrow on the ceiling. Kiblat , it declared , pointing the faithful towards Mecca. If only life came with such clear directional signs.
    He felt himself spiralling into a deep tired sleep, thoughts pinging into his mind from all directions, uncontrolled. Agnibina! What a ridiculous, fanciful name! Did Shanti want her child to set the world on fire and name her accordingly?
    Agni was still an enigma. He wondered what to tell her: How much? When? Would it be better to make her trust him, slowly, so that the end was sweeter?
    She clearly believed that her mother was a fairy-child. He too had listened to the tale, so many years ago; yes, wide-eyed, sitting in front of those dragons and phoenixes darting through the rosewood, his legs jiggling on the floor impatiently.
    Jay’s tired eyes closed of their own accord as he heard Shapna’s voice in his ear, narrating that fabled story, merging into his dreams.
    How do people deal with the loss of a child, surely the most terrible grief on earth?
    When I lost my firstborn, a son, I couldn’t see it as a celebration of cosmic renewal: Just as a body sheds its clothes, so the soul sheds its body to take on a new one… The soul is timeless, infinite. What use was such Vedic wisdom in the face of such intolerable grief?
    I think I lost my mind. I knew what I had to do, and I did it every day. I set the table for the child and fed his portrait the food and, with every morsel, I reiterated my grief. My home became a museum as his gaze peered out from every wall, a macabre wallpaper that covered every bit of space. I sang to