1/2/2024 0 Comments Amazing grace emulsion![]() There are no other mourners on this windy day in her Auckland garden. I forgive you. She folds the marigold wreath inside, carefully covering the hole with more soil. Nisha cups soil to her lips, whispers words of blessing in Tamil, throws dirt over AJ’s invisible body. “You can’t possibly know that that idiot is dead, Nisha! Until we have proof, I’m not wasting my energy.” When she tells him she is going to have a burial ceremony without confirmed news of AJ’s death, Sam shouts at her. You don’t know what you don’t know, Nisha wants to say to him. He’s an engineer who dwells inside the solidity of tar-seal, the gravity of mortar, the fissile tension and compression across a bridge’s span. Her husband Sam doesn’t believe in what he calls “bat-shit nonsense”. Of course they do they wouldn’t allow her and AJ to leave without them. Ferment the ground rice batter for three days, get the hopper pan sizzling, serve with hot hot sambol, no man will be able to resist your palappum. They follow her to New Zealand. We know a nice Tamil boy from the up-country station, ask your Appa to make a proposal before you become an old crone. Death has had no impediment on their constant catty comments: You are looking too fat, Nisha, time to cut down. Nisha’s great grandmother and great-great-grandmother, her shimmering ghostly companions since childhood, are as real to her as the living. She comes from a line of people who embrace uncertainty, the spirit world, the existence of knowledge beyond touch, taste, sight or sound. Thousands of couplings, some volitional, some forced, across the still heat of centuries. Dig deeper for descriptions more resonant with meaning: merchant, poet, warrior, peasant. Nisha is Tamil yet Tamil or Sinhala are just superficial distinctions to her. She comes from a line of fire, this much she knows. ![]() She does not cry, yet her skin prickles with the sense that someone is watching her, keeping time with her, but when she turns around, she sees no one. Instead, she imagines him whole, perfect, hands clasped as if in prayer. She refuses to think that AJ’s body might be in hundreds of pieces, somewhere in the north-east of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. ![]() And now her son is dead, his mother’s prayers spent. AJ wasn’t religious, but since he left three years ago to fight his war of liberation, Nisha finds herself turning towards holy things for comfort. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. A rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’, one of Nisha’s favourite hymns, plays on her iPod. Psalm 23, written out by Nisha on a sheet of paper pressed with petals. A garland of marigolds sewn together, the flowers bought earlier from the Cornwall Park Superette on Great South Road. A pot of ghee, a spoonful of raw honey, sandalwood oil. ![]() This ceremony, instead, is a commingling of the Christian traditions practiced by Nisha’s husband Sam, and the ancient Hindu rites of her own ancestors. When Nisha performs the burial ceremony for AJ, her 26-year-old son, she has to imagine his body lowering into the earth. Auckland doctor and chicken mother Himali McInnes’ short story Kilinochchi beat out over 6,000 entries to be come the regional winner (Pacific) in the prestigious Commonwealth Short Story Prize. ![]()
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