by Alka Joshi
Since Partition, the pedestrian walkways of the old Pink City streets had become narrower, crowded as they were on both sides with tiny, makeshift shops, sometimes with nothing more than an old sari or canvas cloth tenting them. The old bazaar vendors had made room for the Punjabi and Sindhi refugees from West Pakistan to set up stalls that sold everything from spices to bangles. After all, the Jaipuri merchants joked, the Pink City was painted the color of hospitality for a reason.
Malik lived somewhere inside one of the many buildings that made up the Pink City. I had never asked whether he had a sibling, a mother or a father. It was enough that he and I were together ten hours a day and that he hauled my tiffins, flagged down rickshaws and tongas, haggled with suppliers. We shared confidences, of course, like the look of impatience he’d given me today when our last client kept us waiting an hour.
I placed three rupee coins in his palm, after making him promise he would buy real food for his dinner instead of greasy snacks. “You’re a growing boy,” I reminded him, as if he weren’t aware of it.
He grinned and took off like a top, winding his way between shoppers toward the bright lights.
I called out after him, “Chapatti and subji, agreed?”
He turned around, waving his free hand in the air. “And chaat. You can’t expect a growing boy to starve,” he said quickly, and disappeared into the thick crowd.
As I climbed into a waiting rickshaw, I thought about visiting my house—so close to being finished—to check the progress. If I failed to inspect it every other day, the builder, Naraya, was quick to cut corners, which meant I would then have to quarrel with him, insist that he tear things apart and start over (I’d had to do this more than once). But it was late, and I was too tired to bicker. I told the rickshaw-walla to take me to my lodgings.
By the time I locked the gate behind me and hurried across Mrs. Iyengar’s interior courtyard, it was eight o’clock. My stomach rumbled with hunger. I set my empty tiffins next to the waterspout. I would scrub them tonight as soon as Mrs. Iyengar’s servant had finished washing her dishes. I was about to head up the stairs to my rented room when my landlady called to me from an open doorway.
“Good evening, Ji.” I brought my hands together in a namaste.
“Good evening, Mrs. Shastri.”
Mrs. Iyengar wiped her hands on a small towel. Hot mirch threatened to make me sneeze. The Iyengars were from the South, and they liked their food so spicy it burned my throat just to smell it.
A short, squat woman, Mrs. Iyengar gazed up at me. Her eyes were stern. “You had a visitor today.”
No one visited me here except Malik, whom Mrs. Iyengar referred to as “that ruffian.”
Her gold bracelets tinkled as she rubbed dried atta off her fingers. “He asked to wait in your room. But you know I don’t allow that sort of thing here.” She shot a warning glance at me.
In a soothing voice, I assured her, “You did quite right, Mrs. Iyengar. Did he say what he wanted?”
“He asked if you were the lady from Ajar village. I told him I didn’t know.” She searched my face to see if I would add to the sparse details of my past. “He had a big-big scar.” She ran a finger from the corner of her mouth to her chin. “From here to here.” Wagging that same finger at me, she frowned. “Not a sign of good character, in my opinion.”
My heart thumped against my ribs as I reached for her hand—as much to calm myself as to placate her. “Cooking can make the hands so dry, don’t you think? If you’d like, I can rub some geranium oil on them tomorrow.”
A crease formed between her brows, and she looked down at her hands, as if she had never seen them before. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no bother. And the next time your husband reaches for you, he will remember you as his young bride.” I laughed airily, turning to go. Keeping my tone light, I said, “I don’t suppose this visitor said when he’d be back?”
Mrs. Iyengar was busy clearing sticky batter from under her fingernails. “He didn’t say,” she said.
Her servant, who had started cleaning pots in the courtyard, said, “I just saw him across the street when I went to throw the vegetable scraps out for the cows.”
As Mrs. Iyengar scolded her servant for not minding her own business, I made my escape to the second-floor landing and into my room, bolting the door behind me. My heart was beating wildly, and I tried to calm my breathing. Hadn’t I expected Hari to turn up one day? Always, I had kept an eye out for the heavy eyebrows and that awful scar. Then, as the years passed without incident, I fooled myself into thinking my husband would never find me.
How had he tracked me here? In my letters to Maa and Pitaji, begging their forgiveness for my desertion, I had been careful never to reveal my address. Even when I’d sent them money for the train tickets to Jaipur, I had instructed them to ask for Malik at the train station, and he would lead them to me. But so far, Malik had reported that no one had asked for him at the station. Had my parents sent Hari to fetch me back home instead? Did they resent me so much, still? Would they never forgive me?
Without turning on the overhead light, I walked to my window and looked out. There, almost hidden by the mango tree across the street, was the bottom half of a white dhoti, glowing in the darkness. Then the red arc of a beedi. No one loitered in this residential neighborhood this late at night. Mrs. Iyengar’s servant said she’d seen him a few minutes ago. It had to be Hari. I had to think—to figure out a way to meet him away from here.
I heard the soft footfalls of Mrs. Iyengar’s other tenant, Mr. Pandey, on the stairs, and opened my door. He was lost in his own thoughts, and looked up, startled.
“Mrs. Shastri, good evening.” His full lips parted in a slow smile that built up gradually. His eyes drooped at the ends, making him seem kind and patient, a desirable trait for a music master. He kept his hair long; the ends curled neatly around his shoulders. Sometimes I pictured him in bed with his wife, his hair intertwined with hers on the pillows.
“Namaste, Sahib.” I clasped my hands together in greeting, to keep them from trembling. “How goes the teaching?”
“Only as well as the student.” He smiled.
“Sheela Sharma sang beautifully at the women’s gathering for the Gupta wedding. Thanks to you.”
“Nahee-nahee,” he laughed softly, touching his earlobes to ward off jealous spirits. “We have far to go before we turn Sheela into Lata Mangeshkar.” He had been tutoring Sheela Sharma since she was a young girl, and from the little he’d told me, I gathered Sheela’s natural talent had made her arrogant and not a little lazy. Unless she applied herself, it seemed unlikely she would ever equal the musical prowess of the legendary singer—quite the opposite of what I’d told Parvati.
“And Mrs. Pandey’s health?”
“Excellent. Thank you for asking.”
“Mr. Pandey, would you kindly do me a favor?” I was talking so softly he moved closer to hear. I pulled my notebook from inside my petticoat, tore off a page and wrote quickly. I folded the note and held it out to him. He took it, without moving his eyes from mine.
“There’s a man across the road. He’s smoking a beedi. Would you please give this to him? It would not be proper for me to meet him alone...” I let my voice trail off, dropping my eyes and stepping backward.
He cleared his throat. “Of course, of course. Now?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
He held up a hand and wagged his head. “It’s no bother.” He set off down the stairs.
I rushed to my bedroom window. My lights were still off, so I could look outside without being seen. I recognized Mr. Pandey’s white kurtha pyjama. He crossed the street, then hesitated. A few paces to his left, a match flared, and he turned toward it. I let out the breath I’d been holding.
TWO
Wet plaster, cement, stone. My new home smelled of th
ese. Earlier this evening, I had resisted the urge to come here and check the builder’s progress. At ten o’clock at night, when I should have been doing my accounts and preparing for the next day, I stood in my unfinished home waiting for Hari, my hand gripping the knife I used for cutting plants and splitting seeds.
Outside, the light from the streetlamp fell across my beautiful floor, revealing a mosaic of saffron flowers in the round, spiraling boteh leaves and vases with feminine curves. I thought of Hazi and Nasreen and the other courtesans in the city of Agra who had first introduced me to the designs of their native lands—Isfahan, Marrakech, Kabul, Calcutta, Madras, Cairo. In the city of the Taj Mahal, where I worked for three years after leaving Hari and before coming to Jaipur, I decorated the arms, hips and backs of the pleasure women with henna. My patterns became more fanciful with time. I would place a Persian peacock inside a Turkish clamshell, turn an Afghan mountain bird into a Moroccan fan. So when it came time to design the floor of my house, I created a pattern as complex as the henna I had painted on those women’s bodies, delighting in the knowledge that its meaning was known only to me.
The saffron flowers represented sterility. Incapable of producing seed as I had proved incapable of producing children. The Ashoka lion, like the icon of our new Republic, a symbol of my ambition. I wanted more, always, for what my hands could accomplish, what my wits could achieve—more than my parents had thought possible. The fine work beneath my feet required the skill of artisans who worked exclusively for the palace. All financed by the painstaking preparations of my charmed oils, lotions, henna paste and, most importantly, the herb sachets I supplied Samir.
Had Hari come to take all this away from me?
Crunch, crunch. Footsteps on the gravel outside. I slid my thumb gingerly along the sharp edge of the knife.
There was a pause. Then the footsteps continued, stopping at my front door. I stood to one side of that door now, in the dark, taking shallow breaths.
The door opened, and Hari entered the room. He stood illuminated in the streetlight, as if he were onstage. His hair was still thick and wavy, falling into his eyes. His profile, sharp, but his jawline, soft. The high cheekbones made him almost handsome. I watched his eyes circle the room until they came to rest on me.
For a long moment, we regarded one another. His eyes traveled—slowly—from my face, down the length of my fine cotton sari to my silver sandals. I resisted the urge to pull my sari tighter around me.
His mouth opened. He attempted a smile, a shy one. “You’re keeping well.”
Did he mean it? Or would he follow a kind remark with a cutting one, as he used to do?
His shirt was torn under one armpit and spotted with curry stains. His dhoti was covered with dust. Loose flesh gathered under his chin. He was thinner than I remembered. The smell of his sweat and cheap cigarettes filled the space between us.
When I didn’t answer, he walked to the plastered wall, rubbed his palm flat against it. He looked impressed. I flinched; I didn’t want him touching what was mine.
He considered the mosaic on the floor. “Is this...? Who lives here? I thought—don’t you live at the other place? With the South Indians?”
“It’s mine. I built it.” I heard the pride in my own voice.
He frowned and tilted his head, as if trying to understand. We had once lived in a one-room hut, his mother sleeping in the front half with the kitchen utensils, he and I in the back. A curtain between the two areas.
He covered his mouth with his hand and left it there, as if deep in thought. “You built this?”
This was the Hari I knew. The one who never believed me worthy of anything but rooting and minding children.
“I earned it. All of it.” And then, before I could help myself, “More than you ever did.”
A hard light came into his eyes. His mouth twisted. “I...? You deserted me, remember?” He closed his eyes and shook his head quickly, as if to shake off his anger. “I don’t want to get off to a bad start, Lakshmi. What’s done is done, right? I forgive you. We’ll start over.”
At first, looking at his clothes and the ragged state of him, I had been tempted to feel sympathy. How foolish of me! Granted, he had earned his bitterness: a barren wife is a thing of shame. A burden that justifies returning her to her family. At fifteen, I’d been too timid, too naive, to navigate Hari’s rough ways. In the intervening years, I had learned not to be cowed easily. I would make no apologies.
“You forgive me? After the way you treated me?”
He looked confused. “But your sister said...”
“Sister?” What was he talking about? “I don’t have a sister.”
His brows drew together as he turned his head to the door. “Did you lie to me?”
I followed his gaze. A girl, skinny as a neem twig, was standing in the shadows just inside the doorway. How had I not noticed her?
As if in a trance, she walked to the center of the room, her eyes locked on mine. She was half a head shorter than me. Her dark brown hair, dusty and loose, parted on the side and plaited down her back, hung almost to her waist. An orange cotton wrap covered half her ragged petticoat and wound up her back and around her shoulders. She wore a dull blue blouse. No jewelry, no shoes.
She lifted a hand as if to touch my shoulder. “Jiji?” she said.
I was nobody’s older sister! I took a step back. The knife in my hand glinted in the streetlight. She gasped.
Hari stepped between us. He pointed a finger at her. “Answer me!”
The girl jumped and wrapped her arms around her stomach.
I looked at Hari, at the girl, at Hari again. “What’s going on?”
Hari fished a matchbox out of his pocket and tossed it at my feet. “See for yourself.”
Was this a trick? To light a match, I had to set the knife down. I moved slowly, keeping an eye on Hari. His fists clenched and unclenched, but he remained where he was. I struck a match and held it to the girl’s face. Her green-blue eyes, the color of peacock feathers, iridescent, were enormous. Her nose was thin and straight, with a small bump in the middle. She had rosebud lips, round and pink. I lifted the match to her eyes again, which hadn’t blinked once.
Blood pounded in my ears. I shook my head. “How could—? After me, Maa carried two girls, but neither survived her first year.”
Hari seemed confused, too. “She told me she was born the year you left me. She said you knew.”
Maa was pregnant when I left Hari? With another baby girl? And I hadn’t even known? So many thoughts whirled around my brain. The expense of another dowry must have exasperated her! Like many poor women, my mother had felt burdened by girl children. But why hadn’t my parents come with her to Jaipur when I had sent them money to do so? Why hadn’t she come with Hari?
I looked at the girl’s body, using the light of the flame. I saw bruises on her arms. “What’s your name?”
She glanced at Hari before replying. “Radha.”
The match burned my fingers. I dropped it on the floor and struck another. My hands shook. “Where is Maa?” I asked.
Her eyes filled. “She’s gone, Jiji.” Her voice was small.
The words sank in. My legs felt rubbery. “And Pitaji?”
The girl moved her head to let me know my father had died, as well.
Both dead? “When?”
“Pitaji, eight months ago. Our Maa, two months.”
I felt as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. All this time I’d been dreaming of a reunion with my parents, never once considering that I might never see them again. Had my mother and father gone to their pyres shrouded in shame? Surrounded by gossip about the undutiful daughter who had abandoned her husband?
My parents would never know how often I had considered leaving Hari in the two years I was married to him. The only thing that held me back was fear of what my desertion
would do to their reputation—until the day I could no longer endure my husband’s beatings, the wounds that made me bleed, the words that cut me open. The mornings I could barely get up off the floor. And all for what? For the child I couldn’t give him. In the first year of our marriage, his mother, that dear woman, hoped that teas of wild yam and brews of red clover and peppermint would encourage my body to produce a baby. She made tonics from nettle leaves to strengthen my organs. I chewed pumpkin seeds to moisten my women’s parts until the inside of my mouth was covered in blisters.
My mother-in-law tended my body as diligently as I tended her medicinal garden—nurturing the soil, planting seeds, feeding the fragile plants. But all my saas’s patient ministering did not give her son what he craved most. To an Indian man, a son—or daughter—was proof of his virility. It meant he could take his proud and rightful place in the legions of men who would carry the next generation forward. Hari felt—as many men in his position would have—that I had robbed him of that right.
I could have explained it—all of it—to Maa and Pitaji if they had come to Jaipur. They might then have agreed that I was right to leave Hari, to build the shiny new life I had created. But they never came.
I didn’t want to ask him, but I had to know. “And your mother? Is she...still with us?”
Hari swallowed. He looked away.
My eyes teared. His mother, my saas, was also gone? I had loved that gentle woman as much as my own mother. She spent hours showing me how to harvest the flowers from a Flame of the Forest tree to regulate menses, how to grind snakeweed just fine enough to soothe a blister without burning the skin. I had turned her teachings into my life’s work. She was the reason I’d survived. She would never know, now, that I had.