The Fake Plant

“I can say that after mother this plant was the closest thing to me. I kissed it every morning when I woke up.”

Jagjit Singh writes about a fake plant, a real mother, artifice and anger in this short story where truth is often blurred to blunt its cruel edge. This story was selected a finalist at Soup’s ‘Fake’ short story contest.

Illustration by Sumedha Sah for Soup

On my 8th birthday, mother gifted me a fake plant. White round vase filled with black sand and colourful stones, a thick bush of green leaves atop. It was made of plastic or maybe some other material. Mother said it was a fake and I trusted her. She never lied to me and all that was fake was made of plastic in those days. Back then days were simpler. But it looked very real and more beautiful than her darling balcony plants. She said the real ones demand a lot of love and care and heartache and wither away just too soon. The colour, the fragrance, the soul, all of it fades away and dies. Fakes last forever.

Then she hugged me tight. I didn’t like hugs, they suffocated me and though she knew it and was always, always very careful, that day she was careless. Dad said I was claustrophobic, and I fell in love with the word instantly. It is still the longest word I can spell. When I checked later, I understood I was more than just claustrophobic. I expected a longer and more complex term for how I felt but was disappointed. Dad said the internet was fake and only confuses people, Sony said I was special and lip-kissed me. Mother said some feelings cannot be explained and it’s better we don’t name them, and then in her customary outbursts yelled: “Look, what we have done to the feelings we’ve named!” Mother made a lot of sense when I asked her questions but most of the time she was just too much.

She tightened her arms around me. I wanted to scream but instead closed my eyes and started counting one to ten like she had taught me. She released me before I reached ten and asked if I was counting. I said yes and she started to cry and kissed my hands. I was growing anxious. “All that wishes to live suffers, ask for nothing, my son, and never trust words.” She sounded very sad on that particular occasion. I was used to her shouting and arguing with dad all the time but she was weirdly emotional and quiet that day, and that, to be honest, scared me a lot. I took the fake plant inside, placed it on my study desk and slept. 

In the dream that followed the plant grew into a huge tree inside my room. It looked marvellous. Out of the window, an army of insects crawled in and raided the tree with full might. I sprang to action and closed the window. While I was dusting away the insects and crushing them under my feet, mother came and stood near the door smiling. “See, they have infested the roots.” She pointed out. “But it’s a fake tree, a fake tree, don’t you understand!” I screamed.

I woke up in Sony’s room who was my neighbour and senior in school. I could hear a lot of noise and crying from outside but she told me everything was fine and that I should go back to sleep. I enquired about the uproar but she smiled and said it wasn’t anything that concerned me. I didn’t like to get involved in things that didn’t concern me but it was not easy, you know, to sleep. My heart was beating fast.

However, I dozed off eventually. The tree had all been eaten up by the insects and mother was sitting at its foot wailing like crazy. When she noticed me she leapt over, raised me by my shoulders and started screaming. All I remember was- “where had you gone, you little monster, it’s because of you the tree died. You killed it, you little monster. You killed it!”

Is this what people called nightmare? When you can’t make sense of the horrible things happening to you? Sony approved that it was a nightmare. Can nightmares pass from the dream-world into the waking-world? She said no, it can never happen. Then why did horrible things happen to me all the time without any sense ever?

Maybe I was a kid and not smart enough to be able to explain things, mother had trained me to get detached from things I couldn’t understand. And there were so many such things in life. “It’s easy,” she explained. “Don’t think about them. Like you switch-off or change channels on television.” But the implementation was quite different, I had to act strong, all the time, and sometimes, I later learnt, life can snatch the remote and lock you up in a room with the same channel on television for days and nights. You cannot always ignore the unpleasant. I think it has ways of reaching you anyhow.

Sony told me to sleep in her room that night and her father made me hot chocolate and pancakes for dinner. I always liked her room, her family and her company. It was kind and friendly. We were not friends, but I think we understood and trusted each other well. I could watch television as long as I wanted, she assured me. We shared the bed at night and it was warm and comfortable and Sony smelled like chocolate pancakes. She told me that my mother was not well and dad had taken her to the hospital and that it would be a few days before she returned back and that I could stay with her till then.

I thought maybe it was better she got proper treatment this time. But dad was alone and I felt guilty that I was not with him. I told Sony my dilemma and decided to go back home in the morning. She kissed me sweetly on my lips and we slept.

The insects hadn’t left anything in the house and it smelled of burnt clothes or plastic, something very unpleasant. I went from one vacant room to another calling mother. Through the dream I was crying and running and searching for her.

The news of mother’s suicide changed everything. We moved to a new house, dad became very talkative and brought home a puppy I didn’t like much, teachers stopped scolding me, kids at school turned nastier and joked about me being the cracked and twisted son of a crazy mother. Dad said people in general are stupid and selfish and the best way to deal with them is to ignore them.  Though I agreed with him, it was not possible to ignore them all the time. The advice was not practical. Like I mentioned, you cannot always ignore the unpleasant, it has ways of getting you. 

Last year, someone locked the door of the washroom in school when I was taking a leak. For hours I was inside, and I fainted, lying in a pool of urine before they found me. I knew who did this but couldn’t prove it. Dad told me to ignore the incident and be more vigilant in future. It was another piece of impractical advice.

At night mother came to my room and gave me a solid practical advice. The next day I filled a plastic bottle with my urine and poured it over Nida’s head. The principle threatened to rusticate me but nothing of that sort happened. It was a great experience and taught me that that which cannot be ignored must be acted upon. The other lesson was people are basically cowards and attack the weak. I was weak but not a coward.

It was different and much better when mother was alive. After her death, I became very alone in my head. I had to imagine all the time how mother would advise me when a situation arose and I failed almost all the time. Like when Joseph tied a plastic rope round my belt and dragged me around the school playground. I got bad scratches on my knees and elbows and the shorts was torn at the most embarrassing spot. When I tried to be brave with him he pushed me to the ground, kicked me in the stomach many times and pulled down my shorts. I thought it was better to die. I didn’t mean it, of course. I just liked the idea of being at a different place.

The whole experience was very painful. The next day when we were walking in rows for the morning assembly, I pushed Joseph down the stairs. I tried to kick him in the stomach also but teachers intervened. This time the principal did rusticate me. I think mother would have given a different solution for sure.    

Dad was very angry and for few days did not speak to me. Since the puppy died prematurely he had brought a kitten and had grown very fond of her. I did not have any special affection for the kitten. I had read somewhere that lonely people keep cats and even though I felt very lonely I did not want to make it that obvious. The kitten was better than the puppy for sure- did not make noise and kept to itself. 

I did not speak to Sony since mother’s suicide. She broke my trust by lying about the suicide. Why do people lie? I think it’s unfair to keep people in dark and then say you care for them. I think we only care for ourselves and lie because we cannot deal with what truth can reveal. It was easier for Sony to put me back in my house than to see me reacting to mothers’ suicide. Friends don’t leave friends. If I had a friend in the world I would never lie to or leave him or her. No matter what! Mother was right: you cannot trust words. Well, you cannot trust people either or maybe that’s what she had meant.

The fake plant in the new house had better sunlight, water and air. It was growing radiant, was few inches longer, the leaves had thickened and white flowers had sprung into life. On the bedside table at night, it glowed brighter than the all the streetlights and the full moon put together. I am no poet to praise it any more. I can say that after mother this plant was the closest thing to me. I kissed it every morning when I woke up.

Dad said I shouldn’t play with the plant all the time. I was not. I was not playing. I was taking care of it. You know how one cares about someone they love?  It needed water five times a day, in the mornings it enjoyed sitting and soaking up the sun in the kitchen, it needed protection from the silly kitten all day long, it did not like talking or being touched by people (except of course, by me), it had a short temper and could get offended very easily, before evening it had to be kept back on its spot near my bed or it won’t sleep the whole night.

I had ample time. There was no school to attend and a tutor came in the evening to teach me. After few months, I noticed she started spending more time with dad than with me. Sometimes, she stayed for dinner and few times I saw her early in the morning as well. The maid said she was going to be my “new-mother”. I always suspected that the maid was quite stupid but never knew first-hand the depth of her stupidity. Can there ever be a “new-mother”? Is it even a word? Was there ever an old mother that now I can have a new mother? We can definitely have a new maid but that’s none of my business. She cooks what I like; only if she could keep quiet her stupidity won’t bother me.  

It was good for dad that he had someone to speak to. His attachment with the kitten had me worried for days. The tutor, on the other hand, stopped teaching me altogether, and started spending lots of time at home (sometimes days), and in fact had turned cold or angry or something I couldn’t really figure out. In her presence I did not feel comfortable. She wouldn’t even look at me. And when she was around, dad also wouldn’t talk to me. I felt invisible or kind of unnecessary and unwanted. The experience was more painful than what Joseph made me feel on the school playground.

One night, when I was sleeping I heard or dreamed a murmur from a distance like two or more people talking or quarrelling. It was like a lot of voices put together in a pot and hammered from above, but at a closer distance. Then I felt there was someone in the room and it was really frightening. I tried desperately but failed to open my eyes. I had difficulty breathing as if someone had placed a heavy stone on my chest. It felt like I was dying even though I had no experience of dying. I gave it all I had and finally opened my eyes. The kitten was sitting on my chest and the plant lay on the floor crushed and crumbled and trampled upon. The sight was horrible!

I pushed the kitten down and ran towards dad’s room screaming. It was bolted from inside and I banged and banged until the door opened. The tutor was also in the room. I kept screaming at the top of my voice and held dad’s hand between my teeth. The tutor said that was enough and began packing her stuff. Dad kept pleading. She did not stop and walked straight out of the house. I couldn’t stop screaming.

Dad turned around and slapped me hard four or five times and started cursing me “you moron, you fucking monster, who the fuck do you think you are. It’s because of you she died- just because of you, you little monster, you killed her.” He continued but I had fainted.

The medicines made me very drowsy and I was worried about the plant all the time. When I saw Sony holding my hands, weeping, I asked her about the plant. She said it’s there, it’s there. I said don’t lie to me this time, it’s not fair. She wasn’t. She had managed to put the plant together somehow.

Few days later, I was not sure after how long, I got out of my room in the afternoon when no one was around. The plant was placed near the kitchen sink and it looked awful. It was sad like mother and had bruised badly. Just too terrible and awful. It was bleeding and crying. I wanted to scream but had no power left. I took the plant back to my room and thought I would cry with it like friends cry for each other, but no tears came. The plant looked so fake and plasticky. I did not feel anything for the fake plant. I had killed it. It was my responsibility to protect it and I had failed. I was so angry and wanted to die with it.

From the kitchen I heard a “meow-meow.” The kitten was sitting peacefully in the sunlight. I lifted it up in my arms and tears began dropping like heavy raindrops and just could not stop. It was all foggy and confused and I thought I was going to faint again. I dropped the kitten in the bucket filled with water, closed the lid and fell flat with my chest down on the bucket.

Mother stood near the kitchen door smiling, “See, they have infested the roots.”

I wanted to hug her but couldn’t. I was claustrophobic.

“Was it fake?” I mumbled.  

Jagjit is a writer, an aspiring Proustian, who believes words will make sense of all that's been lost and shattered.