“So. Assuming he receives authorization for you to enter your Juniorate, Anu, I will say to you what my Mother Superior said to me so long ago: If you have some glorified notion of what it means to be a nun, this is not the place for you. You have probably read novels or seen films with singing nuns, beautiful nuns, magical nuns. None of these give you the slightest idea of what it means to be a nun. You will be tested.”
A boulder rises off Anu’s heart. Imaculata is no longer probing but instructing.
“After five years,” says Imaculata, “you can take your final vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. I emphasize obedience—which I do recall was your one failing as a student.”
“Yes, Sister.”
They all demand obedience—first Mumma, then Vikas and his family—let the Catholic Church do so as well. How difficult can it be to follow the teachings of Christ, the rules of the Church? She has a mind and a will, she tells herself. Both are her own again.
“In fact, let me show you something.” Imaculata rises and turns to a cabinet behind her. She retrieves a large cardboard box. She beckons, and Anu peers in. Imaculata peels back tissues to reveal a starchy black mass of fabric.
“My old habit,” she says, taking it up and holding it before her. It falls like a burqa, almost to her toes. “I entered the convent just before Vatican II. I wore this for two years. Today, I cannot imagine myself wearing it. But I keep it to remind myself of the nuns I’ve known who wore it willingly and with pride.”
“Yes, Sister.”
“You are asking to enter a stream in progress. It flows where it will, changes direction in its own time. You will be required to adjust.”
“I’m an adjustable woman, Sister.”
DAMINI
THE EMBASSY-MAN’S WIFE HAS BEGUN TO PACK. EVERY afternoon this week a white van—like the ones Madam G. sent to kidnap men for vasectomies during the Emergency—backs up to the gate just as it begins to rain. And every afternoon Khansama has splashed across the lawn carrying cardboard boxes back and forth, emptying the downstairs a room at a time. He could advise them to order the van in the mornings to avoid the rain, but then he might get a lower tip.
Mem-saab receives a note from the lady-lawyer; she reads it aloud to Damini, the way she reads the newspaper or a magazine. Aman has requested the court to restrain her from renting the downstairs “until a family understanding has been arrived at.” The judge has granted his request.
“What will I live on?”
“You are a rich woman, Mem-saab. You have money at Punjab National Bank.”
“But that is stridhan—just mine on paper, for my lifetime. I use only a little for my needs, Amma.”
Like Damini, Mem-saab was taught widows hold their husband’s wealth in trust for their sons, that a woman’s bhagya dictates if men be kind. But this is Kalyug, and in this eon of greed her men have forgotten their duty to be kind to their mother.
“Mem-saab, your husband would not want you to live in poverty. Poverty is for women like me—we are accustomed to it. Besides …” and here Damini performs a joker’s mock pout like Amitabh Bachhan in the movies, “if you become poor I’ll become even poorer. If you get Dipreyshun, I will get even more Dipreyshun.”
Mem-saab manages a smile, and says, “Don’t worry, Amma. It is my duty to look after you.” In Punjabi, the language her mother spoke, and Damini’s too, her words sound sweeter, more intimate.
Damini brings her palms together and raises them high to her forehead. She calls on all her gods to bless Mem-saab. She mouths the song “Dum Maro Dum,” lip-syncing to invisible music like the actress Zeenat Aman, then prances across the room tossing her dupatta back and forth like Helen the Vamp. In total silence, she enacts slapstick from the movie Johnny Mera Naam, then whirls and simpers like Rekha in Umrao Jaan. In gestures that have no high and low, no he or she, Damini can reach Mem-saab’s blood memories.
If only Mem-saab could hear all the voices she has inside her. Damini can even mimic Mem-saab’s tone, which bounces up and downhill because she cannot hear it. Sometimes she even uses that voice to give herself orders.
A laugh—finally!—Mem-saab laughed a real laugh.
Damini turns on all the lights and lamps in the room, to remind Mem-saab: though she cannot hear, she can still see.
This is my role in the movie of her life.
August 1994
A KRISHNA-BLUE NIGHT SHARES HIS SKY WITH THE MOON. Damini wraps them away behind curtains; the deaf must banish all light to find sleep. She turns off the TV and its news of flag-hoisting ceremonies, speeches, marches and rallies for Independence Day.
August heat coils round Mem-saab’s bed. Both the air conditioner and the fan are stilled by another municipal power cut, the third in the three days since the restraining order. Still Mem-saab complains she is cold—so cold. Damini brings her sleeping pills and shawls and then blankets, but she can find no rest, no peace.
Mem-saab cries that a train is roaring through her head. Damini flicks a flashlight on and points it at her own lips to tell her that is impossible. It’s good that Mem-saab cannot hear Aman or Kiran’s party laughter or the tumult in her candlelit drawing-room.
At dawn, Damini brings a glass of warm water with lemon juice and honey, as she did for Mem-saab’s sons when they had fevers.
Mem-saab asks for more pills. Damini brings the light blue tin with its picture of Durga Devi, the eight-armed many-weaponed goddess astride a lion. “Are you sure you should … ?” she mouths, knitting her brows and raising them.
Mem-saab turns her head away and closes her eyes till Damini gives in.
Mem-saab tears at the plastic wrapping of the pills, trying to find the kernel. She holds them in her palm, examining the red, pink and white granules in the capsule-skin as though trying to fathom their power. She lifts one to her mouth, sets it delicately within the fold of her lower lip.
She turns to Damini and asks for water, and Damini offers the silver glass. She watches the kernel pass Mem-saab’s throat, then another and another. Mem-saab’s head is tilted upwards, eyes closed as if in prayer. Damini has never seen her taking so many pills, but then she has never been so sick.
When the pills are gone, Damini waits a moment with her.
Mem-saab hands the silver glass back and drops the capsule wrappings in Damini’s upturned hands. Silver foil and plastic with English writing on the back. Letters that sit squat, round and comfortable, unlike Gurmukhi and Devanagari letters, which hang like kameezes fluttering on a clothesline.
Mem-saab lies back and closes her eyes.
“Shall I bring oil for your massage, Mem-saab?”
“Not today, Amma. Stay with me.”
I am getting too old for such sleepless nights.
Damini takes her place on her foot-carpet. She takes Mem-saab’s soft hand in her calloused ones and begins to rub gently. “I am with you, Mem-saab, Amma is here. I am with you, na. I am here. Amma is here.” She recites the Sukhmani prayer in ancient Punjabi, then enters the suspended time of the Bhagvad Gita, reciting in Sanskrit …
A dying fragrance from the kitchen recalls the turmeric Damini rubbed on her Leela’s arms before she entrusted her daughter to Chunilal. Damini has two grandchildren, but at this moment, she cannot recall their faces. Sleep-summoned images dance across her inner eye: Suresh’s long lashes—or were those Timcu’s? Sardar-saab’s haughty gaze, Aman’s eyes downcast before it. Fragments of soft chapati fall from Aman’s hands and shrivel before Damini can reach them. Her tongue seems afire with hot chilies. If she does speak, in which language of the few she can speak, will anyone listen to her?
People’s voices in her ears. Aman, shouting, “Damini-amma, tell her she has made a mistake …” Kiran shrieking: “You fool!” because I cannot read English. The lady-lawyer: “Be strong. I will try to help you.” Loveleen’s voice: “Daddy says you are nobody …” Khansama: “You too are becoming deaf …”
I am becoming deaf, too.
Th
ere is silence. Inert silence—a constant silence she thought only Mem-saab had ever known.
Damini stops massaging. Mem-saab’s arm droops, heavy over the curve of the bed. She puts her hands to her ears. She shakes her head. She hears no sound. There is no sound.
No breath, no sound.
Peels of Mem-saab’s pills scatter from Damini’s lap as she rises.
She is weeping. She must not weep. Krishna, Ganesh, Durga Devi, Vaheguru, Guru Tegh Bahadur … someone … a poor woman begs you, give me strength. How could she have let her spirit wander in dream? How could she have let Mem-saab be alone as she went to her next life?
Damini brings Mem-saab’s kajal pencils and draws her eyebrows, dark above her closed eyes. She brings colour for her cheeks and lipstick to make her lips hibiscus-red. She takes Mem-saab’s hair in her hands, hair the colour of spent fire-coals, and she braids it for her though she is a widow.
When she is beautiful, Damini covers her face.
“Begin your journey, Mem-saab,” she says aloud, in case Mem-saab’s spirit, waiting for cremation in the plane of prêt-lok with all the other spirits, has gained the power to hear.
But even if Damini had been awake, even if Aman were the best son in the world and at his mother’s side, you are alone when Yama the green-skinned god comes for you.
Damini washes her hands, using water sparingly from Mem-saab’s bathroom, till she remembers Mem-saab doesn’t need water anymore. And Mem-saab no longer needs a pair of ears.
DAMINI
SIX DAYS AFTER MEM-SAAB’S PASSING, MORNING IS ripening from a mango-blush sky. Across the market, the narrow caverns of shop stalls are still closed, their rippling silver garage doors padlocked to the ground. Only a flower-seller plies his cart, offering marigold and rose garlands for Lord Ganesh. But Damini doesn’t even glance at the temple as she alights from Mem-saab’s car.
Lord Ganesh is deafer than Mem-saab ever was, and today she refuses to spend a single rupee on a god like him—or Shiv, or Krishna, or Vishnu. Sky gods have forgotten ordinary people like Damini, these days. They don’t deserve bowing or praises or invoking them with mantras. But what can you expect? It’s many centuries since they were human.
Still—first they took her kind, hardworking Piara Singh when she was only twenty and left her a widow, and now they have taken away her almost-sister, her mistress for the past thirty years. And how can Damini know if Amanjit and Kiran drove Mem-saab to take those pills, or if she made a mistake and took too many, or if she wanted to take them?
Zahir Sheikh lifts her canvas bedroll and khaki shoulder bag from the trunk and carries them to a row of scooter-rickshaws parked beneath a mango tree.
Like Khansama, Mem-saab’s driver is staying to serve Aman, as if he were an inherited chair or table—how can either do any different? They have children to support and Aman needs their skills.
“Khuda Hafiz,” he says, in his courtly Muslim way.
Damini makes a quick namaste and they exchange polite wishes to meet again if it be written in their bhagyas. A promise to phone if ever she is in need. And someone she has known almost ten years vanishes.
Damini sits down on her bedroll for a moment, the mango tree at her back. Deep breaths will keep her tears within. Sometimes a woman needs to be accompanied just a little further.
She would have liked to accompany Mem-saab a little farther, at least to the cremation ground. All Damini could do was wash Mem-saab one last time, and massage her with sandalwood paste and turmeric.
Mothers, daughters, sisters, daughters-in-law, friends—all these are useless at the hour of cremation. Only sons can light a funeral pyre, and lead a parent’s soul to the path of the sun, that path of the gods on the way to brahman.
The Bhagvad Gita says, “For death is certain to one who is born; to one who is dead, birth is certain; therefore, thou shalt not grieve for what is unavoidable.” But how can she not grieve?
Damini visited Lakshmi Devi, serene in her temple, and tried to send her wishes with Mem-saab. But those wishes didn’t know where they were going. When Damini tried to see Mem-saab’s cremation chamber with her soul’s eye, all she saw was a place like abroad, where shadow people exist in darkness while she moves in sunlight, and where even the names of the gods are forgotten.
If only Timcu hadn’t told her Mem-saab’s cremation was nothing like the ones in movies, or her husband Piara Singh’s so many years ago. Nowadays in Delhi and other cities, he explained, it’s done with electricity. A father is put in a box and his eldest son presses a button and the flowers of his ashes come out in a few hours. A mother is put in a box and her youngest son presses a button and the flowers of her ashes come out in a few hours. And the person who has no sons—he or she must find a brother, an uncle, a nephew, some man to help or their souls will always wander without rest. So, he said, Mem-saab was lucky Aman had moved to Delhi to look after her.
Timcu had arrived the day after the cremation, without his gora wife or Mem-saab’s Canadian grandchildren. India is too hot, crowded and dirty for them, he said. He was staying a week, but brought enough baggage for months and moved into the Embassy-man’s vacated residence. All he did was loud talk-talk in English with Aman. “Sell the house … pay me my share … sell it … pay me my share.” How could Damini interrupt their haggling to ask whether the goddess of fire received your soul more kindly if your son pressed a button or if he applied a flaming torch to your pyre?
Surprisingly, Kiran raised no objection when a few hours before the body was taken away for cremation, Damini lit cotton wicks in shell-shaped clay diyas and placed them all around Mem-saab, as if she were celebrating Diwali. Maybe Kiran also remembered how much Mem-saab loved light.
Maybe Kiran was celebrating because Mem-saab’s lawsuit died alongside Mem-saab.
And on the fifth day, after the final prayers were said and all the mourners were gone, it was Kiran who gave Damini her last pay and a bonus for her years of service—far more than Damini expected. And she also gave her the smooth steel kara Mem-saab always wore on her right wrist, a beige everyday shawl, a thick brown shawl, a grey cotton salwar-kameez and a white one that Mem-saab had worn to bed a few times. Kiran ordered Khansama to help Damini pack her bedroll and shoulder bag, and asked the driver to take Damini as far as the market.
The question of her staying on did not arise—it was the Dettol, it was the broken brassieres. It was the brown triangle Damini burned on the front of Kiran’s best silk kameez the night Mem-saab’s atman began its journey again. It could be her age; Kiran didn’t want to be responsible if she got sick.
Or maybe it was that Damini had noticed the black and grey photo of an unfamiliar man tucked in Kirin’s dresser drawer and asked Kiran who in her family had cut his hair and did not wear a turban?
Or it was that Damini can only understand English, not speak it. Or that Kiran doesn’t want a maidservant who can understand any English. Or maybe it was that Kiran does whatever Amanjit wants done, that’s all.
Sardar-saab would never have let Damini leave without asking where she was going, or how she would live, or whether she had a man to escort her while travelling. He would have provided her with a pension or a gift of saleable jewellery for her years of service. He would have told her to bring Suresh before him and formally entrusted Damini into the care of her son. He would know it was his duty to look after all women from his village, and found her another job.
Damini should have asked Aman if she could stay on. Maybe Damini could have asked Kiran to find her another position with a saab-type family like this one. But why should she have to ask for what Kiran should have offered?
Always too proud. Too much ego, her father always said. Even at this age, she could end up selling her body in a brothel somewhere.
Never!
But everything in the last few days is happening so suddenly, Damini keeps having to stop and breathe. She must stop turning to Mem-saab and repeating what everyone says. Mem-saab isn’t here.
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Of course, she has with great confidence told Kiran that Suresh will look after her, but a scream of panic is rising inside her as if she were a child just arrived in the world. She called the factory number twice, and left messages, but maybe the woman with the air-conditioned voice never told Suresh.
A rain-soaked branch brushes her shoulder, a black insect dangles and wriggles a few inches from her cheek. A caterpillar is sprouting from its armoured cocoon, splitting its skin. It too has no choice but to change.
Damini should be thinking of her future, not the past. Her bhagya is good—she survived when no one wanted her, and has never had to sell this body. She isn’t like Mem-saab. She isn’t like her own mother. Both had Dipreyshun. Damini doesn’t get Dipreyshun. She is accustomed to work, has a sound heart, and is still young. When she was younger, she was never so afraid of change.
But what is my role now, and in the movie of whose life?
If Mem-saab were here, Damini would tell her that neither Timcu nor Amanjit embraced her when she took her leave. If they had, Damini would have given them her blessing in memory of their original goodness, and because Mem-saab was no longer there to do so. But they know exactly what she thinks of them. And what she thinks doesn’t matter. Their forefathers well-nigh owned her husband’s family. They are saab-log, she is not.
Yet Loveleen had surprised her—she came running to Damini, wrapped her arms around her waist, and said a tearful goodbye.
Mem-saab’s spirit came through her grandchild at that moment.
The scuffed black shoulder bag beside Damini contains three saris and two salwar-kameezes along with those Kiran gave her. And a sequined dupatta Mem-saab gave her in celebration of Timcu’s wedding, the violet-blue phulkari shawl Mem-saab gave her in celebration of Aman’s wedding, her plastic painted gods, a water bottle, a cloth-wrapped bundle with a stack of stuffed parathas, and a tiffin-box of mutton curry cooked by Khansama.
The Selector of Souls Page 13