“Yes,” Mom said with a patience Kovid could only admire. “We’ll take the car.”
“Why don’t we take the bus?” Dad said. “It’s more comfortable.”
Because you rented the freaking car and driver to get here! Kovid bit down on his inner jaw.
“We hired the car from Lingampally,” Mom said.
“But the luxury bus is more comfortable,” Dad said. “Kovid’s just come off a long flight. He can stretch out.”
“Fine,” Mom said. “We can send the luggage in the car and take the bus.”
“But we’ve already paid for the car. It’ll be a waste of money.”
Mom finally lost her patience. “Do whatever you want. I don’t care one way or the other.”
“I was just asking a simple question.” Dad looked bewildered. “See how she’s always so irritable?”
To the outsider, this statement would seem perfectly reasonable. But Kovid had seen this behaviour over and over: Mom consciously tried to detach because, as she’d told Kovid during that dark time in their lives, suffering came from attachments. But Dad wouldn’t let her. He constantly baited her, trying to keep her off balance, repeating things over and over till she snapped. Having got what he wanted, he toned down and pretended bewilderment at her agitation. Living with Dad was like living with a demanding toddler, one who needed constant attention: the focus had to remain on him at all times; he would not be ignored.
Kovid struggled to reign in his anger. He would not rise to Dad’s bait. He would not upset Mom.
As it was, Mom rarely spoke to Dad anymore. She struggled to retain her sanity in the only way she knew. After forty years with him, speaking had become an effort for her, Kovid knew. He wished he could do something for his mother, anything. But she wouldn’t let him.
20
Jaya
The road into Lingampally began with good intentions: it snaked past the temple, the school, the post office.
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Jaya smiled as the nonsensical English nursery rhyme popped into her head. She navigated past the post office, to where three roads—two local, one highway bypass—collided in a mishmash of shops and tri-directional traffic.
In the midst of this perpetual gridlock, a three-wheeled tempo—carrying a large idol of the god Vinayaka on its open bed—braked to a standstill.
Jaya cursed as she swerved to the edge of the road. Immediately, she bit her tongue in repentance.
With no warning, and at high speed, the tempo began to back up. The destination—the wooden platform of the makeshift pandal, bang in the middle of the large intersection. This was where the village committee, in all its wisdom, had decided to install the idol.
Ahead of her, a large lorry edged closer to the string of shops, trying to inch past. One corner of the steel-utensil shop’s awning caught on its load. The wooden structure came crashing down. The resounding crash momentarily deadened her hearing.
The shopkeeper looked down at the remains, at the lorry crawling past, then back at the destroyed awning. The hefty man vaulted over the counter of his shop with an athleticism Jaya wouldn’t have believed.
He ran to the truck and pulled the driver out.
The truck shuddered to a halt.
The two men fell on the ground.
Onlookers—comprising mostly of men—immediately gathered.
The driver and the shopkeeper started trading punches.
The onlookers egged them on, effectively blocking traffic.
Jaya turned off the ignition in defeat.
At the pandal, the workers seemed to realise that that the tempo’s tailgate was still up, so the driver drove forward. A helper lifted the tailgate down, and the tempo reversed, again at full speed, thankfully stopping barely before it crashed into the pandal. Four men—two in the bed of the tempo, two on the pandal—slowly inched the idol forward and up, in rhythm with the honking traffic, till it was comfortably sitting four feet above ground.
Jaya tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, impatient to be on her way to the college in town, where she taught her weekly class. Once the tempo was out of the way, the traffic would resume its flow around and onward, lanes and discipline not being a prerequisite to driving. The hapless traffic would take the unexpected pandal in its stride, as it did a wedding or funeral procession, strike or protest march. Till then, it waited with barely restrained patience.
Each year, for the Vinakaya Chavithi festivities, localities solicited donations, competing to put up the tallest, the biggest, the most ornate idol of Lord Vinayaka they could find. The eleven-day celebrations of Vinayaka’s birthday would happen right where sweets were bought, and saris sold, amidst medical dispensaries, electrical-supply stalls and kirana shops.
Installation complete, three of the four men hopped into the bed of the tempo. The driver got in the front. The tempo took off without warning, tailgate still open, with one man sliding across the bed till his chin hit against the side. He continued the belly-slide forward, making futile grabs at the tailgate, trying to pull it up and close it, as the tempo got smaller and smaller, before disappearing from view altogether.
Shaking her head, Jaya waited for the traffic to unsnarl itself. If a policeman didn’t show up soon, some frustrated driver would jump out and direct the traffic for himself.
* * *
Back when India was fighting to free itself from British rule, freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had actively encouraged the shifting of Lord Vinayaka’s birth celebrations from the privacy of homes to the publicness of the streets. His intent was to bring together communities across the nation, and it had.
Despite the location the village committee had picked this time, this festival was, by far, Jaya’s favourite, though Deepavali ran a close second. Vinayaka Chavithi combined the religious with the festive, often in ways that should have clashed, but didn’t.
Twice a day, the priest hired for the occasion offered prayers. Residents of the locality signed up to supply homemade sweets for the prasadam that would be blessed by God, then served to his devotees. After the second round of prayers in the evening, the tone would change: residents vied with each other to showcase their skills—belting out songs from one of the three ’woods—Tolly-, Bolly- and Holly-. Children started practising their dance routines, often copied from movies, a month ahead of time. In the years gone by, Ananta had been content to watch her classmates up on stage. This time around, Nina wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Ananta was a backup dancer, hidden in the gaggle of uncoordinated girls, but there, nonetheless. Nina, of course, had the starring role.
Baby steps.
Until three years ago, their community had vied with others in the district, to the point that the idols kept getting bigger, costlier and glitzier. Which was a problem because the idols were made from Plaster of Paris, and painted with toxic chemicals. Immersion of thousands of such idols—big and small, from private homes and public pandals—in the closest water body, marked the end of this annual celebration. At the conclusion of these festivities, water bodies ended up choking in pollutants.
For years, Jaya had appealed to the village heads, asking them to install unpainted, earthen idols in the community. After the local environmental group took up her cause, reminding the public that unpainted clay idols were the true tradition, the village committee had reluctantly agreed to eco-friendly idols, while also encouraging the rest of the village to adopt this practice.
If Jaya could get the mostly uneducated villagers to show concern for the world they would leave behind for their children, perhaps there was hope for the world at large.
Jaya was startled out of her reverie by incessant honking. Traffic was moving again.
21
Jaya
“Namaskaram!”
Jaya straightened up. A man stood in jeans and a t-shirt. Not an uncommon sight in the village, but the cut and quality of his clothing gave him away. And the American-accented Telugu.
Srinivas uncle’s younger son.
Jaya smiled briefly, trying to ignore the sudden cramping in her stomach. Just because she’d had trouble with one brother, didn’t mean she’d have it with the other.
“My mother mentioned that Ananta’s mother runs the computer centre in the village.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “I’m Jaya.”
The man held his hand out to shake hers, then withdrew it, perhaps realising this was rural Telangana, and you didn’t make physical contact with ladies who weren’t directly related to you. He smiled. “I’m Kovid, father to the precocious Nina.”
Jaya’s lips twitched.
“I was hoping to check my email because my parents don’t believe in more than half a GB of data for their smart phones. And,” he added disarmingly, “I’d fix the Wi-Fi at home, but my technical skills are somewhat, let’s say, limited?”
Despite her reservations, Jaya smiled. Kovid seemed like a nice man. So different from his father. And his brother, though Diwakar seemed more guileless than anything else. Kovid seemed more perceptive too, though with American men one could never tell. He was an attractive man in his mid-thirties, 6-foot-tall or so. Shorter than his brother. Not bulked up, but fit. His hair touched the collar of his t-shirt, but it suited him. And when his lips smiled, his eyes smiled, too.
Like his mother.
And quite unlike his father.
“You should get a local phone number, and a better data plan. Especially if you’re staying here for some time.” Jaya pointed at an empty cubicle with a computer. “Meanwhile, you can get started there.” She watched surreptitiously as he inspected the small computer centre. With its faded plastic partitions separating a long table into six segments, this was probably not what he was accustomed to. But he didn’t comment, settling in one of the partitions at the far end. Jaya scribbled down the username and password on a piece of paper and walked over with it.
“Do I swallow it once I’m done?”
“What?” Jaya shook her head before realising he was joking.
“No,” she said faintly, “that’s quite unnecessary.” She had watched enough American movies and television programmes to know their sense of humour was quite unusual.
“My father mentioned that you’re careful about security.”
She was quite certain that wasn’t the language his father had used. “Nothing that involves the swallowing of passwords,” she assured him.
He laughed. “So, how is it that a woman is running a computer centre?” He raised his hands in apology. “Not that I’m doubting your ability. Just that it’s quite unusual in the village, isn’t it?”
Definitely not cut from the same cloth as his father. Or his brother, for that matter. Different bolt of cloth. Perhaps, different fabric too. She nodded, uncomfortably aware of the interest from the other users. Casual chitchat with another man—that too, another of Srinivas uncle’s sons—if she didn’t put an immediate stop to it, the villagers would have her in an immoral affair with him, and hounded out of home and business.
She walked back to her desk and started to type—mostly gibberish—aware that Kovid was waiting for her to expand on her nod. But not wanting to encourage further interaction, she did not look up.
Not getting a response, he started to pound the keyboard at dizzying speeds.
She winced at the abuse the equipment was taking. Everything was maintained and repaired until it wasn’t. But she was also impressed by the fast typing. Her daughter, who was growing up with an iPad, was as comfortable with touch typing as the man whose head towered over the compact cubicle. Jaya, on the other hand, had grown up with rubber dolls with pop-off heads, open-shut eyes, and stiff eyelashes. The best she could do was peck at the keys, though she did manage a decent speed. Shrugging, she went back to scanning her Twitter feed for updates on cybersecurity.
* * *
Jaya walked on the narrow path along the stream, breathing in the solitude. The remoteness was freeing; just the occasional farmer, the odd cow.
You wouldn’t expect to find beauty in hard-scrabble land, but it had character, this land of hers. The unnamed stream tumbled over rocks, flowed around branches trapped within, a sharp contrast to the dryness of the stubby grass, the shrubs, the primitive large black-rock formations. This land of her beloved grandparents was in her blood.
People like Srinivas uncle: she wondered what it was that made them pack up and migrate to far-off lands. Diwakar and Kovid might be culturally American, they might identify as American, but when the American—black or white—saw them, did he see two brown men from India?
She stepped around the large boulder and sat down, leaning her back against it. Every Tuesday, which for some reason was a slow work day, she took an extra-long lunch to head there.
She leaned forward and grabbed a twig, idly twirling it as she watched the water rapidly flow away. Her baby was already ten years old. Soon, she would be ready to begin her own journey as an adult. Then it would be just Jaya and her uncommunicative in-laws. What would she do with herself? She sighed, the loneliness digging in deep.
For years she’d felt guilty about escaping to here. Any time she carved out for herself was time stolen from life’s other obligations—her daughter, her elderly in-laws, her business. Her late grandmother had encouraged Jaya to give herself permission to enjoy this solitude, reminding her that anything that was good for Jaya was good for her daughter.
Her heart ached for her grandparents. While they had lived, they had made a difference in so many lives. So unlike her daughter’s grandparents—both sets. Her in-laws were taciturn people. Her father-in-law brought home milk each morning, prayed, read the newspaper. Her mother-in-law cooked, prayed and cleaned. When Ananta came home, milk and snacks would be ready, but no hugs, no wanting to know how her day had been. Still, they did more than her own parents. She must not forget that.
“Hi.”
Startled, she looked up.
Kovid stood next to the boulder.
She scrambled to her feet.
“I didn’t mean to drive you away.” Kovid looked apologetic. “Back home I often spend time near water, so I decided to check this out.”
“That’s okay,” Jaya said, brushing the back of her sari discreetly. “I should go, anyway.”
“Can we talk for a bit?”
“It’s quite obvious you haven’t grown up in India,” Jaya said dryly. It was obvious he hadn’t talked to his father, either. If someone saw her talking to this man too, word would immediately travel back to her in-laws, to his parents, to her brother, to her neighbours, even to her estranged parents in the city.
She shuddered.
“I know our daughters are friends,” he said. “I was hoping to talk to you about it.”
“You could come home and talk in my in-laws’ presence. It would be more proper.” A part of her was embarrassed, knowing how quaint this must seem to this man. Back in Hyderabad, when she’d worked in IT, it was perfectly acceptable to talk casually with men at work and socially, even discuss daughters.
“I came by once. You weren’t home. I’m not sure I should say this, but I didn’t feel comfortable waiting for you to return.”
Jaya didn’t blame him. She had lived with her in-laws for seventeen years—eleven years more than she had with her husband—and she didn’t feel comfortable, either.
“Ten minutes? Please?”
Had he demanded, she would have walked away. But he was asking respectfully, in his heavily accented Telugu. Against her better judgement, she sat down again, resting her back against the boulder as before.
“I appreciate it.” Kovid settled on the banks, a respectable distance away. “I’m not unaware that it’ll cause you a lot of problems if people were to see us like this.”
Jaya nodded. She was relieved he understood that.
“But I’m torn.”
“How come?”
Kovid leaned forward, resting his chin on his knee. He
stared at the gurgling brook. He seemed troubled. “My wife died seven years ago. My daughter and I managed, sometimes with help, but mostly without. I worked long hours, way more than I liked. I tried to cut down, but still Nina spent more time with the babysitter than with me. I worry that as she gets older, she’ll need something I cannot provide her. She’ll need a mother-figure. The logistical stuff I can manage. It is the emotional stuff that worries me.”
“The guilt of the single parent.”
He gave a short laugh. “Ain’t that the truth,” he said, slipping into English, as he’d been doing every other sentence.
For Jaya, language wasn’t as much a problem as his accent. She had to focus to make sure she didn’t lose nuance.
He was silent for a few moments. He seemed to be struggling with something.
Jaya threw her twig into the stream, watching the current carry it away. She felt a brief, irrational pang of separation; the twig would end up somewhere distant, and she’d never know where.
“I don’t know the right thing to do. I like that Nina’s growing up here, has the love and support of her grandparents, has a good friend right next door. I love that she can walk to school, to the local roadside snack stall, to the park, to friends’ houses, with eyes following her and reporting back on her safety to my parents. I like that she’s settled.”
“But?”
He gave her a quick smile. “I miss her. Besides, I grew up in America. I feel American. I am American. If she grows up here, I fear that she and I will not be able to relate to each other.”
“Can I ask you something?” Jaya asked.
“Sure.”
She paused, trying to get the words right. “I know you identify as American. But does America identify with you?”
Kovid didn’t respond.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in such a position.”
He put a hand on her arm. “Jaya.”
Daughters Inherit Silence Page 8