Devi

by Nag Mani

  He got down, all beaming and cheerful, and folded his hands, his massive body towering over hers. His eyes were yellowish and bloodshot. “See, Madam. What I got you? This battera,” he pointed at his cycle, “is going to make your home all bright and beautiful. Let me take it inside. Plug it, and fan is on. Will keep our heads cool too!” He laughed at his own joke, then bit his lips and began unloading the battery.

  Aditi threw a glance at the backyard. Manoj was bathing by the hand pump. All these days he hadn’t bothered to buy an inverter for her. One fight out in the open, and here was Arvind carrying a battery and an inverter to her veranda.

  “It’s called a battery, Arvind,” she said politely, as he stopped to catch his breath, “not a battera.”

  “No Madam. Batteries are those small ones you use in cars. This is more big. More powerful. This is called battera.”

  Aditi didn’t want to debate. “But how long will it last? Just one battery? And what when it is discharged?”

  “Don’t worry about that Madam. There is another battera charging in bank. I will bring that here when this one is all but dead and take this to bank.” He gave her a mischievous grin and dragged the battery inside. Turned out the house already had a connection for an inverter next to the bedroom door. All he had to do was connect the terminals of the battery to the inverter, put the plug in the socket and switched it on. A dim bulb sprang to life in the kitchen. The fan in her bedroom began to churn slowly, the motor inside groaning with age and rust. Aditi could not believe how happy a light bulb and a moving fan could make her.

  “That is all done then!” said Arvind. He too was enjoying the sudden transformation the inverter had brought upon the house. “Now all you need is few bright bulbs and you are as if living in city. Get TV, Madam, good TV and powerful antenna and you wouldn’t want to leave this village.” With that he folded his arms again, and before Aditi could come out of her trance and offer him a glass of water, he was on his cycle and out of sight. It was only the TRING-TRING of his cycle that told her that he was gone.

  “I know I am no one to say, but I don’t think that Sir should allow Arvind to come to your house. I mean it was all right when he used to live alone, but now... with you here...” Laila was saying.

  “He seems a decent man to me!”

  “Ah! No Madam! When you pluck a rose, you should not be unwary of the thorns. He seems a nice man. But I have been here long enough to catch these rumours. He is sick, Madam. He has that disease… I am telling you.”

  “What disease?”

  “That which you get from women in the market. It spreads Madam, I don’t know why they even allow him in the bank. And he is all but shut about it. Doesn’t tell anyone.”

  “AIDS? But how do you know?” Even as Aditi asked the question, she could somehow relate the yellow eyes and the sickly appearance Arvind always carried about himself.

  “Nothing can hold a secret Madam. It always finds a way out. He claimed he used to love his wife. But what about his life before that? All women and alcohol. Always visiting those cheap brothels in Nepal. Then his wife got sick when she became pregnant. He used to continually go to Purnia for her treatment. They stayed there for days and nights. And who knows what he did there, in that place called Harda, while his wife fought for her life in a hospital.”

  Harda. Aditi wasn’t married when she had been passing through the small town in Purnia. It was some time in the evening. The sky was clear and pale red. Her bus was crawling through a congested road when she saw a house with a small cemented campus and shoulder-high boundary wall. Two girls, probably in their late teens, were hopping and skipping in between grids of crooked lines in the courtyard. It was their dress that caught Aditi’s attention. One of them was in a red sleeveless dress, all shiny and scaly and cheap, ending way above her knees. Matching lipstick, deep and thick. The other one wore a kurti – just a kurti. The money that should have been invested in buying a lower was spent on lots of bangles, cheap make-up and layers of powder, which was trickling down her neck and hairline along with her sweat.

  Further ahead, it was in the market that she saw more of them. In one glance it could have been overlooked as a vegetable market, with meat suppliers on both ends. Sheds with a variety of fresh vegetables. Coops with white chicken. Separate coops for the colourful ones. Skinned and glistening goats hanging upside down, their heads and entrails neatly removed. Shops made of wooden planks adorned with toffees and tobacco and betel leaves. Ironsmiths sat in between four poles with their goods hanging from chains. A hut with a man frying jalebi. Tea stalls with a variety of biscuits and breads stored un-hygienically in glass jars. Behind them was another row of shops. Undergarments. Sacks of cotton. Wholesale rice and pulses. More undergarments.

  It was in the middle row of the shops that one could spot them. Amidst shouts and honking and the busy activities of the market, they stood silently by a shop or under an electric pole and watched the road with blank faces. Some sat alone on bamboo seats in front of the tea stalls. There were a few shops scattered randomly in the market that didn’t display any goods – small rooms with their doors shut and no windows. She couldn’t understand how those women could wear such type of clothes. She had seen those dresses in movies, all right, but what she saw in the market was definitely not fashion. It was only when she had married and shifted to Purnia that she found out that Harda was a red-light area.

  Aditi wanted to believe that Arvind was a good man. Even if he had AIDS, if that was even true, it could have been due to various other reasons. But as great men say, all it takes is an idea to change the course of the world, she herself being just a feeble woman. She began to doubt the intentions of his courtesies. “Where is she now?”

  “She died Madam. In Purnia while giving birth to his daughter… while he was panting in some dingy room in Harda. And what a joke it is Madam, that he spent his lifetime with whores and he himself was given a daughter to raise. Gods have their own ways of mocking at us. There, you see Madam, there,” Laila turned around and pointed towards a blurry settlement far up north, in between the river and the forest. “That is where he lives. Not a good community it is. Bad people. Full of dark magic! Oh look, Madam! We just talk and talk and talk and my clothes have blown all over the roof!” She laughed as she tied back her dupatta and bent to pick up the nearest curtain. Her sudden movement made a crow, that had been sitting peacefully on an antenna until then, caw and fly away. “Now, why don’t you come downstairs and have a strong cup of tea!”

  Aditi gave one last glance at the forest swaying in the wind which had now begun to gather strength. Her eyes fell on a distant mango tree that rose above the canopy. She squinted and leaned forward to have a better look. But then the clouds rumbled and pattered down thick drops of rain. She hurriedly picked up a few clothes and ran indoors after Laila.

  *

  Manoj’s birthday was on the 4th of July. Of course, it meant nothing to Aditi – that was what she wanted to believe – but it at least gave her a reason to celebrate and be happy in a life that rarely gave such reasons. She had pretended that she did not remember it, that she simply did not care. But long ago, when she was young and still naïve, she had cried and cursed her stars that she was being married to a man ten years older than her. She hadn’t done it openly, for her mother might have taunted her for being a snob, but looked up at the stars on lonely nights and shed her tears for them to see. She spoke to them and they listened to her. It was during one of those starry nights when a cold breeze whispered to her that everyone was responsible for their own happiness. She could crib and cry about her marriage or make the best out of it. It was in that moment that she decided she would be nice. She would be a wife that everyone envied. After the marriage ceremony, she had cried all the way to Naugachia in a decorated and garlanded jeep. Manoj never once tried to console her. He sat beside her, quiet and erect. She did manage to get a hold on herself the following day. And at night after the reception, when she was all dre
ssed beautifully in a bride’s dress and Manoj sat next to her on the marriage bed looking up at the ceiling, she tried to break the awkward silence by asking him about his birthday. That was one step towards coming closer in the relationship. She had memorised the date by heart.

  And in times to come, she found out that forgetting was far more difficult than memorising.

  Manoj had left the house in a greater hurry than usual. The government had passed some scheme for farmers and there were more applications than the bank could handle and little time. He had to leave with a quick breakfast and a feeble smile from his wife. Aditi watched him walk to the main road and turn left towards the bank. A celebratory mood swung in after he left. Now that he was gone, she fed the chickens who had grown fatter and heavier. She even put out a bowl of milk atop the boundary wall for the grey cat. She tidied up the bed and swept the house. Then, she baked a cake. She was planning to visit the bank during lunch hours. She went out and told a kid loitering around to tell Laila not to send her daughters that day. She locked the house and took a few steps towards the main road. It was then that the idea struck her.

  For days and days, she had watched Manoj leave for the bank, following the main road that curved around the extension of the plantation. Why couldn’t he just go through it? She retreated her steps, stood before the tree line and watched the undergrowth silently for some time. Then, she inhaled deeply and started walking. There were various reasons to do so. The one she told herself was that the food was getting cold and soggy. Why walk for almost a kilometre when she could cut across half the distance?

  But Laila’s comments about the educated was still resonating in her ears. Aditi wanted to prove herself the difference between the educated, who have the ability to question, and the non-educated, who excel in acceptation.

  Treading on dry leaves and branches, she made her way through the gnarled trunks of the mango trees, never losing sight of the rooftops on her right. The trees ran into oblivion on her left. The air was hot and humid. She began to sweat. Aditi noticed patches of a broad mud-path, with embedded pieces of bricks here and there, peeping through the layers of dried and rotting leaves. She should have turned back when the first branch snapped and fell somewhere on her left. But the sunlight seeping through the leaves above and the general din and chatter of human lives coming from the village put her at ease. After all, she wasn’t walking through an actual forest – it was just a stretch of mango trees planted at ample distances. In fact, it was even difficult to get lost. She just had to continue walking straight, southward, and emerge near the market; and there was no fence or anything that could hinder her path.

  Carrying a jute bag with a tiffin box and rolled chapattis wrapped in aluminium foil, she hummed a tune to herself. The branched off in every direction, forming grids, and continued straight towards the market. She suddenly realized what she was humming and stopped immediately, for it was the same tune she had heard on sleepless nights in her bedroom. And just as she was pondering over it, she was taken back to the time she had first heard it.

  It was in Naugachia. One evening, she was lying on her bed, staring at the still fan above when she heard a group of women sing. It was a common practice for old women to sit together and tell tales of their lives and sings songs that only existed in memories. But this one was different. Its tune was all that was needed to melt her heart. From the patches of the verses she could hear in her room, she interpreted that the song was about a mother missing her daughter. How she raised her. How she loved her, knowing all along that one day she would have to leave, and like her mother, serve the ego and pride of her husband. And eventually, her daughter, a flower, was plucked off and married to the prince of a distant land. He came with a thousand horses riding behind him and took her away. The mother now roams the empty corridors of her house and asks the eastern winds of the news of her daughter and prays to the stars for her well-being.

  Tears had begun to roll from the sides of her eyes as Aditi was taken back to her childhood. Her playing in the rain with her sisters, the innocent time when an elder sister was dearer than vanity. Her going to the market, holding the little finger of her mother. Her wriggling in between the warm bodies of her parents on cold winter nights. Her stealing carrots from a farm that was on the other side of a canal and the black, ugly face of the farmer in red shirt chasing her with a sickle in his hand. Her going to school… and it all ended with the memory of This-Boy – his girl-like face, his wavy hair, his captivating smile.

  She rose from her bed to kill the restlessness that had begun to creep into her soul and went outside. She was in the front porch when the song ended. She still remembered the last verse – in spite of the hardships the mother faced to raise her daughter and their ill-written fate, she prays to the gods that she is blessed with a daughter again. And Aditi also remembered what she saw. First, she had thought that something terrible had happened in her neighbourhood. A ringing silence hung in the air. Women and girls stood like statues at their doors, on the streets, on the roofs, all looking in the direction from where the song had been emanating, their glittering eyes focused way beyond the horizon, their thoughts way back in time. Nothing happened for a few moments. Everything was still and quiet. Even the air was stiff. The white cow next door wasn’t blinking. Then one woman on the street wiped her eyes. Then someone coughed. And slowly, everyone melted back into their houses. But the song lingered.

  The houses had vanished behind the foliage when Aditi looked up. The path had disappeared under leaves and undergrowth. But she did not need it for guidance. From the view she had from Laila’s rooftop, she knew she had to keep walking straight. But all she saw ahead were more trees, their foliage denser and darker. She began to wonder if the path she had been following gently curved inwards and that she had actually failed to notice it. Yet her instincts told her that she had been going southward all along. She looked back, but couldn’t see the houses she had seen earlier. Only a bright edge of the plantation. It could only mean that she was quite deep into the orchard and market couldn’t have been far. She had taken only a few steps ahead when she saw the path again… only this time it was going away to her left. Another branch ran ahead, in the direction she thought the market was in, but it was narrower and barely visible through the leaves. The path going left was broader and cleaner, a sure sign that it was trodden more often. Also, the foliage above was less dense. Rays of sunshine fell on patches of grass struggling to reach out. Aditi would have been convinced to turn left had it not been for the view she had from the roof. But the signs… it was as if the forest was telling her to take the left path.

  A branch above began to sway, even though there was no breeze. Aditi clutched her jute bag and peered intently. Then a wind suddenly rose from the path ahead, carrying with it dead leaves, and ended at her feet. Panic overtook her thoughts. She knew she was lost. She could run and run forever and never see the sun again. She thought of the dacoits that lived in the trees. Their ghosts that were probably looking down at her. She wanted to run back. Drop the jute bag and run for her life…

  Footsteps.

  She heard crunching of leaves. Snapping of twigs. It came from the road ahead.

  Someone was approaching.

  She made a dash for the nearest tree and hid behind the trunk.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Aditi held her breath.

  It started again, slowly this time, more cautiously. Then came a booming voice, “Madam!”

  Aditi flinched and nearly lost her balance. She stepped out to see Arvind glaring at her, bewildered. “Madam! What are you doing here?”

  She sighed with relief. Calmed herself. Settled her sari. “I was going to the bank…”

  “Here? Through this forest?”

  “Yes. That main road is so long. I was trying to cut some distance.”

  “Oh Madam! You gave me heart attack!” he clutched his chest. “Come. I will take you to bank,” he bit his lips and turned around. “I was li
ke, what hell is hiding behind tree! I thought…” Arvind continued, chuckling to himself. “You mustn’t come through here Madam. Not safe.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Aditi asked mockingly, giving one last glance at the left road as she passed. It had suddenly become barely visible, as if the leaves had rearranged themselves to cover the path.

  “Oh! Me? You know my house? Right on other side of village. I come through here if I don’t have my cycle. I know my way around here, Madam. And I know ways of this forest.”

  Aditi remained silent. The last sentence struck her sharp. Ways of this forest… Laila’s words echoed in her mind, that Arvind’s community was known for dark arts. With him wandering around the forest, it was no wonder the village thought so.

  “Tell one of Razzak’s brothers if you want to come here Madam. That tiny brat, Salman. Does nothing but sits on cot all day. Or tell children to run along and fetch you tempo.” The foliage above began to thin and almost at once they emerged out of bushes on the periphery of the forest and behind a line of shops and houses. People watched them curiously as they walked up a narrow path and came out in the market.

  The crowd at the bank’s gates parted to give her way. Manoj was seated on his straight-back wooden chair. His face lit up when she entered the room. He rose from his seat and so did the customers seated in front of him. “Arvind,” Mr Sharma, the clerk who was months away from retirement, took out some cash, “why don’t you get some jalebi for Madam. And samosa. And what would you like, Madam? Tea? Lassi?”