by Vikas Khanna
“Noor, I’ve got something for you,” Choti said.
Noor gently tapped her on the head. “You are younger than me, so it is only I who can gift you with something. That’s the tradition,” Noor said, and sat down next to her. She stared at her feet. “Speaking of gifts, I see from the fading blue of your slippers, you are making good use of the gift I gave you, daughter.”
“Of course,” Choti said. “I wear them everywhere; I would even wear them in my sleep, if I could.”
Noor smiled, and Choti smiled back and looked at the palm of her hand she had absent-mindedly overturned. Her palm still showed a faint trace of colored abir. Noor seemed to notice her observing on her, because she quickly turned her palm down and wiped it on the cement and then on the underside of her white saree.
“Traditions are very important aren’t they, Noor?” Choti said smiling sadly. “Tradition keeps everything in line.”
“Yes, daughter, that’s true,” Noor said.
“My friend Anarkali said that you might be almost a hundred and fifty years old. Is that true?”
Noor grinned. “How did your friend get that idea?”
“Well, if Tagore was your grandfather, then—”
Noor laughed so hard it smoothed every wrinkle on her face and for a moment she almost appeared to be the same age as Choti. She could barely control herself, her body shaking, her stomach quivering as if it was the first time she had ever laughed and her body had no idea how to deal with the sensation. It was beautiful to watch.
She seemed happier than anyone who had ever witnessed Choti’s tamasha, and soon she was laughing and jumping around too.
Finally, Noor composed herself and stared and waved her skinny arms at Choti in order to stop her from calling so much attention to them—an old widow in colorless white and a grimy, orphaned street performer in fading blue slippers. How dare they laugh together in public!
“A thousand years old…” Noor laughed on softly as she shook her head. Then she got the hiccups.
“Oh!” Choti said. “Now the younger can help the older. Noor, mother, do what I tell you. Hold the tip of your tongue with your fingertips.”
Noor was still racked with hiccups, but she did what Choti said. Choti’s remedy worked and soon Noor’s hiccups stopped. She sat down in relief. Choti didn’t know whether it was her hiccups or laughter that did the most damage.
“Child, I must have forgotten what laughter even was. It almost broke me,” she said. “And those hiccups.”
Choti caught herself thinking about Anarkali again. She had no idea what had happened to her after the awful episode between her and Raja the previous night. Thinking of Anarkali immediately sobered Choti.
“Child!” Noor said. “We were just having so much fun and now you look so sad again. What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a, uh, memory I had. Want to see what I got you?” I have been hiding the gift I had retrieved from the Nameless House with Pink Walls behind me for the whole time.”
“Choti, I can’t accept anything from you. It’s not right, you are too young to give a thousand-year-old woman anything.”
“Traditions are meant to be broken,” Choti said and pulled Noor’s gift out from behind her hip. “You like it?” she asked.
Noor went mute, but Choti could feel a pressure building up behind her lips and eyes as she stared at the gift to her: a discarded wig, of long, dark, silky, synthetic hair and a clean and lovely wig at that.
“Noor, friend, I went all the way to the Nameless House with Pink Walls, a place I ran away from, to get this for you. Someone who lived with me there who used to dress up like Durga wore it. I think it will look so pretty on you.”
Noor gasped: “Child, you break every rule. I have no words for this.” Noor didn’t even reach out to touch her new head of fake hair, so Choti held it in her lap for her, hoping she would eventually accept it.
“You know that Ram Halwai died,” she told her for no particular reason other than that it happened. Still, Noor said nothing. She just stared at the wig in Choti’s lap, a small tremor riding from one corner of her mouth to the other and back again. “Noor, you got me something pretty for my feet and now I’ve got you something pretty for your head. We are even. If you accept it, I promise that younger will never give older anything ever again, not in a thousand years,” Choti said earnestly.
Noor lifted her gaze to look her in the eyes. When their eyes met, hers seemed to melt, but Choti’s lips held firm, unsmiling. “Noor, please,” she said. “With all the years you’ve spent on earth, you deserve it.”
Noor hesitated, but then gently slipped the wig from Choti’s lap and buried it in her saree.
“Thank you for thinking of me,” she said.
“Noor, what is your favorite color?” Choti asked suddenly, out of the blue.
Noor gasped again. “Color? What do I know about color? I haven’t thought about color for such a long time. I barely know what to say about any favorite ones. My eyes wouldn’t even know the difference between one or the other anymore. It’s been such a long time since my husband died. Before that happened, I think it used to be pink, that deep pink at the bottom of a lotus flower, or the blushing cheek of a newborn child. Maybe that kind of pink, but like I said, I can barely remember,” she said sadly.
At that moment, Choti knew that Noor thought about color more than she let on—but she decided not to press her about it because it might embarrass her and likely get her into some trouble. “Pink, huh?” is all she said. Then she stood up and ran away, leaving Noor to sit alone with her pretty new head of hair.
After Choti left, Noor made her way slowly through the jagged streets back to her ashram with her tulsi water and her wig. On the way, she passed the color-filled wall of hands but didn’t even offer it so much as a glance. When she arrived, she opened the gate, snuck across the courtyard without looking at anyone and hoping no one looked at her. She did not water or circumambulate the tulsi plant. She went straight into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
Noor went to the mirror with the wig Choti had given her, and, with her eyes closed tight, placed it on her head— for a moment she went numb at her own defiance. How dare she! Such sacrilege! Noor shivered and tugged the wig tightly into place and opened her eyes. My God! She was young and beautiful again! It was a perfect fit! How could a poor, inexperienced child like Choti have known the wig would fit her old head so perfectly? thought Noor.
Noor stared at herself in the mirror, almost against her will. The reflection was unrecognizable, but what she saw amazed her so much she almost fainted. But she couldn’t dare faint, otherwise every other white-dressed widow, especially Asha, her roommate, would know what she was up to. Noor took a deep breath and stroked her neck and face and her stylish new head of hair with her fingertips, looking for all the world like the beautiful young married woman she once had been—her cheeks suddenly tinged with her favorite long-forgotten pink—a woman from another era, poised, elegant, coiffed, and cultured.
Noor couldn’t help but beam as bright as an aarti flame at herself in the stained mirror, but when she did her heart beat against her ribs, racking her with guilt, and she tore the wig off to reveal that which she really was, or at least which she was destined by society to be: a luckless, pleasure-deprived, colorless widow.
Noor rolled up the wig, tucked it underneath her saree, and snuck into the ashram’s kitchen to burn it in the woodburning stove, as if she were cremating some lost part of her self.
After three days and nights of searching, Choti could not find Anarkali anywhere. Still deeply disturbed, on the fourth day, she relegated herself to beg alone on Sangam Chowk. The disappearance of first Chintu and now of Anarkali weighed heavily on her thoughts.
Suddenly across the stirring traffic she noticed Ram Halwai’s son fighting with some authorities outside the shop. She had no idea what was going on, but even as she watched, the shop was boarded up, locked, and closed, le
aving Ram Halwai’s son slumped on the ground, only to suddenly stand and leave, his hands still covering his face. Poor Ram Halwai’s son, thought Choti.
Choti had little enthusiasm for collecting rupees that day. It just wasn’t the same without Anarkali. Not for the first time in her life, without her friend around, Choti felt lonely.
The next day Choti went to meet Noor at their usual place on the steps near the ghats. Choti sat down next to her, took out an old, pink-colored nail polish bottle and started applying it to her fingernails. Seeing Choti dabbing such a bright pink color on her fingertips brought the slightest of smiles to Noor’s withered face.
“I had gone to Anarkali’s house to look for her and found this. She loves this shade, she wears it all the time. Wearing it will make me feel closer to her,” Choti explained, spreading out her pink-tipped fingers in front of her face and smiling at them. “Such a lovely color, don’t you think?”
“Child, don’t tempt me with this activity, if anyone sees me, they will kill me,” Noor said, trembling. She let her eyes flutter from one of Choti’s pink nails to the other. “It is such a lovely color. Like the bottom of a lotus petal.”
Choti screwed the bottle of polish closed and frowned. “Noor, I can’t find Anarkali anywhere. I’ve been looking for her for three full days,” Choti said, and dropped her chin onto her hands.
Noor was so entranced by the color blooming at the ends of Choti’s fingers that she didn’t—couldn’t—respond. Instead she reached down under her leg and pulled out her small pink book, then opened it and began to recite aloud some passages of Tagore, taken from his famous poem, “Chitto jetha Bhayashunyo,” “Where the Mind is Without Fear”:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Even the words of Tagore couldn’t distract Choti from her concerns about Anarkali. “Noor, I’m sorry, I want to listen, but I just can’t. You don’t understand. Anarkali has been with me like an older sister for almost three years. If I can’t find her, I swear I will vanish too,” Choti said, folding her arms across her chest and placing her fists crosswise under her armpits.
Noor closed her book. “Child, it’s just a matter of time and Anarkali will appear again,” Noor said. “She’s older than you. She knows the Varanasi streets. I’m sure she is fine and knows how to handle herself. Take a deep breath.”
Choti closed her eyes, leaned her head back and took as deep a breath as her worried little body could let in.
Noor shifted her gaze into the distance, over Ganga’s ever-flowing waters. “You know, Choti, I told you before that as far as I could remember my favorite color was pink. But I’ve changed my opinion. Colors can divide people, especially here in Varanasi. Therefore, I feel that my favorite color must be the ‘last’ color.”
“And what is the ‘last’ color, Noor?” Choti said, picking up her nail polish and brush and dabbing more color on her fingers, and then bending down to add color to her toes.
“The ‘last’ color is the color of ash,” Noor said. “Ash is the color of every soul on its way to Nirvana, the color of every flame after it burns, the color of the oldest wisest eyes. At the end, everyone becomes the same, everyone becomes equal, everyone becomes identical, everyone becomes the color of ash. Nothing can divide this color, and this color divides nothing and no one. For me, the color of ash is the most beautiful color.”
Choti dropped her nail polish brush and bent down to pick it up. The brush left a tiny dab of pink on the concrete steps, like a small pink wound. She looked at Noor. “Well, that may be true, but I still prefer pink. Should I apply polish to your toenails?” Choti said.
Noor rebuffed Choti with a stern wagging of her finger. “Absolutely not! Widows are not allowed to touch color. It’s a sin. I still remember when I was handed this piece of white cloth for the first time,” Noor said, taking up the end of her saree. “I froze as the true meaning of it all sunk in. All my colored clothes were taken away from me and with that went my right to be happy, and as far as I was concerned, went my right to live and breathe.”
Choti’s only assessment of Noor’s stubborn words was a lopsided smile. She poked a brush of wet pink polish on Noor’s big toe. “Noor! Don’t be silly,” Choti said. “Allowing yourself one pink toe won’t make a difference.” Choti began to slather pink across Noor’s yellowed and crusted toenail. Noor narrowed her eyes and became a detached onlooker to Choti’s persistent bad influence. Choti’s enthusiasm for being Noor’s “bad influence”—how could a lovely color be a bad thing?—accelerated her polishing and within a minute, she had covered every toe of Noor’s life-weathered left foot in glowing bright pink polish. The end result resembled a family of exotic birds perched on the stump of a mango tree, a sight Noor couldn’t behold as she had tightly shut her eyes.
“There,” Choti said. “Not the color of ash, but the color of many pretty toes.” She screwed the brush back into the bottle of polish and shook it to stir the liquid up in order to attack the toes of Noor’s right foot.
As she bent to apply pink to Noor’s foot, the oversized boot of a police officer appeared in her frame of vision. Choti’s frightened, open-eyed gaze scaled the boot, the potbelly that overhung the cop’s belt, the cop’s double-chin and past the cop’s greasy mustache, to finally reach the summit of the cop’s stern, unblinking sallow eyes. They were eyes whose dullness Choti recognized, the eyes of one of Inspector Raja’s chamchas, merciless eyes that caused Choti to swallow hard.
The cop stroked his mustache. “Aiii ladki, hey girl, where is Anarkali?” Raja’s goon intoned into Choti’s face.
Choti’s shoulders started to shake and Noor put an arm around her to calm her—she had already pulled her sinfully pink left foot under her white saree, away from the inspector’s eyes.
“I’ve been looking for Anarkali too,” Choti said, gulping in fear. “I have no idea where she is. I don’t suppose you or your boss, Raja, would have any idea, would you?”
The policeman raised his stick. “Shut your mouth, girl!” he shouted this time, sending Choti scrambling off the steps in the direction of Tulsi Ghat, and the chamcha in hot but bumbling pursuit.
Now alone, Noor stared at something on the concrete steps. In the chaos, the bottle of nail polish had tipped over, spilling its pink contents. Run and hide Choti and don’t let them catch you! We will find each other later, Noor wanted to shout, but couldn’t muster the courage, and Choti did not turn back. Instead, she was racing through the Varanasi maze, and soon enough easily escaped Raja’s chamcha. A potbelly always runs out of breath before a ropewalker, she thought, as she arrived, panting, near Tulsi Ghat, still puzzled over what had happened to Anarkali, although Choti surmised that Raja and his chamchas already knew that she knew exactly what had been transpiring in their gym those late nights after she had ostensibly fallen asleep.
Noor reached the ashram, deeply troubled and feeling a little dizzy. As she crossed the courtyard, she lowered her eyes, and when she did, they were sent blinking into shock: her toes displayed traces of the color Choti had applied! Pink painted toes flitting across an austere courtyard of a white widow’s ashram? What was she thinking? Had she gone mad? She couldn’t dare be seen with such bright pink-painted toenails, it was a sin, an unforgivable offence and if the other widows were to find out they would throw Noor out.
Noor quickly lengthened her white saree, tugging at the folds to hide her left foot. T
hat way she could water and circumambulate the tulsi as usual. Then she snuck into the bathroom to wash her toes of any trace of nail polish, scrubbing until her toes hurt. But the nail paint wouldn’t wash off. She scraped at it with her nails and managed to rip off some bits but couldn’t get rid of it all. She lengthened the folds of her saree and scrunched her toes under it and went straight to her room, where she collapsed onto her sheets and wept like a child.
Asha happened to be sitting outside their room on the balcony. Asha was sure to have heard Noor crying, but whether she had just witnessed any of Noor’s other behavior, Noor didn’t know. All she knew was she’d have to be very careful not to let anyone catch a glimpse of her toes.
In the morning, Choti awoke in her sky-nest still wearing her blue slippers. She immediately slid down the boughs of her tree to circle back to where she had fled from the day before, but this time she chose to peek from around a corner so none of Raja’s watchful chamchas would witness her searching for Noor again. The new morning’s search proved easy because Noor was already sitting in the same place, waiting for her like she had never left, and even from a distance, Choti’s hawk eyes could see that the pink polish she had applied to Noor’s toenails, was still peering out from under her saree, as shamefully vibrant as the day before—though she wasn’t wearing the wig Choti had given her.
Choti whistled to get Noor’s attention, then waved the widow over to a more discreet place around a sharp, hidden corner along the ghat’s terrace. Choti knew every hidden corner along the ghats’ fringes, and she could not afford to be seen.
When Noor finally appeared around the corner, she saw Choti splayed out, sitting dejectedly on the ground, flies buzzing around her face and dark patches of purple swirling about her eyes. The poor girl had finally become exhausted, and she was babbling into the air at no one, on the verge of panic. Noor kneeled beside her and placed her old gnarled hand on Choti’s forehead. “Child, what happened to you?” Noor said.
“I am talking to the ghosts,” Choti said. “I am not scared of you, ghosts, I am scared of real people. Ghosts are pure energy, so why would they ever have to wear a mask? And living people wear so many masks, they can’t be trusted to keep the same face on very long. Do I trust the eternal ghosts of the dead, or the changing masks of the living?”