The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  “Up to you, Miss Lal.”

  To Anu’s ears “Miss Lal” sounds strange—as if she is an unmarried girl again.

  Back in her room, Anu stuffs the clippings back into the envelope and the envelope back in her suitcase. She unpacks a kaftan, takes off her clothes, and stands on the dhurrie beside her bed, clad only in her white bra and panties.

  On her wedding night she had wanted her husband to see her like this, just as she was, and hold her close. Wanted him to feel her shakti, know it could create and nurture more than children.

  Stupid, stupid Anu. Expecting the impossible.

  Outside the casement window, the mountains shrug their shoulders and allow pashmina-soft snow to sift into their valleys. A plaster statue of the Madonna in a blue sari gazes from an alcove as Anu slips on her kaftan. The Blessed Virgin looks so compassionate. She too was a wife only under the law. She too knew what it is to be a mother. Was her choosing to bear Jesus a true choice? Especially if she had no alternatives? “Magnificat anima mea, Dominum …” says her song in the Bible. Whether pregnant by miracle or rape, she must have been terrified of what people would say. Did she ever consider an abortion? There were ways, even in her day.

  Anu unpacks a small photo album, touches Chetna’s cheek with her finger and lets her mind leap overseas. Does Chetna feel abandoned and alone, or as grateful as Anu was to live with Purnima-aunty rather than Mumma?

  Anu places her few saris and salwar-kameezes in the dresser drawer. Then her sheet music, a book of Liszt études, and Contemporary Solo Piano Hymns for Praise and Worship.

  She will play the piano again, and hear chant. Repetition, quiet repetition of prayer will open the connection between her heart and the bright warm light.

  But how can she sing without Bobby playing his guitar?

  Little brother who tried so hard to be a man. Bobby would be twenty-six if he were alive now. And if he were, Mumma might not be as wounded and Dadu wouldn’t be buried in his work. Anu would be tying a rakhi-bracelet on Bobby tomorrow, and feeding him milk-sweets and he’d be renewing his promise to protect her.

  Think Christian: he’s not coming back. He’s with Lord Jesus. Wherever that is.

  Anu lies down on the thin mattress, and draws a blanket over her, turns to face the rosary on her nightstand. Her spine shifts and lengthens to match the rope-weave of the bed.

  Strange not to hear Vikas stomping, raging or shouting on the phone. He can’t chastise her for cutting his sandwiches lengthwise instead of obliquely, or for stacking his books horizontally instead of standing up, or for not smiling warmly enough at one of his clients. He and his mirror world are left behind.

  It’s strange not to feel faintly fear-sick and ready to run to the bathroom to lock herself in. She hears herself exhale in the darkness. And then truly hears the silence. She listens to her heartbeat, a half-remembered language. Her skin feels as exposed as if she were sleeping nude. For the first time since her menses began, her body doesn’t belong to her family, Vikas, or Chetna. It belongs to her, and she sleeps.

  In the morning, Bethany enters with new clothes for Anu, a solid white salwar and kameez, white dupatta to drape over her shoulders, and a white sweater. White for the purity and virginity of Catholic novitiates, rather than white for the mourning of Hindu widows. And a second salwar and kameez—steel grey with a white dupatta, and black sweater.

  When you become Christian, you are no longer supposed to practice caste. Which means that when there’s no water from the municipality, you have to fill a bucket of water yourself, and pour it down the flush. No sweeper will come and do that. Bethany also shows Anu how to clean the toilet.

  If Bethany can, Anu can. Even if it makes her feel as if a film of dirt has settled over her.

  “Mass in twenty minutes,” Bethany says. “Then breakfast, then an hour of Delectio Divina.”

  It’s Lectio Divina, but Delectio sounds delightful.

  Anu watches from the window as her companion sister exits the nun’s quarters downstairs and walks across the flagstones to the chapel. Does Bethany miss anyone as deeply as Anu misses Chetna?

  Her daughter is safe, a mother cannot ask for more. Even if Anu were with Chetna, she still could not protect Chetna from every hardship and all pain, just as she couldn’t protect Bobby.

  When you’re Christian, you die and it’s over forever and no one like Vikas can find you again in a future life. When you’re Christian, there’s a day of judgement when Vikas will have to answer for his sins: hurting her, hurting Chetna. When you’re Christian, you don’t have to be his judge. Or executioner.

  Ungainly flat sandals. Anu slips them on. She glances around, instinctively searching for a mirror.

  No mirror. Here she will never glimpse her scar, except by accident.

  Away from the mad scramble of Delhi, all that is relevant is the abiding silence, the wind piercing her body to find her soul.

  Anu buttons up her sweater, runs a comb through her long black hair and braids it. She will work with the poor, help others. She will be impelled by her own spirit, her own intelligence—and guided by the Lord. She has warmth, food, safety, a spectacular vista around each corner, and Vikas is left far behind.

  Her stomach growls. Off to mass, and pray you don’t faint in church.

  On the road to Gurkot village

  DAMINI

  DAMINI TAKES A WINDOW SEAT ON THE EARLY BUS TO Jalawaaz.

  Five hours jolting through the hills yesterday. The bus had lurched left, then right on hairpin bends as it crested one mountain and circled down into a valley. It turned and turned along the low rock walls edging the road, until its motion and the body-smell of every passenger crept within Damini, and her head was spinning in fumes. Once the monsoon downpour had passed, the bus driver halted several times for swollen streams and waterfalls spilling across the road. In some sections, he slowed where avalanches pinched the road to one lane. By dusk when the bus had climbed out of the heat, it was vomit-streaked and caked with dust and exhaust and Damini had learned the words to all the film songs endlessly repeating. She spent the night recovering at Choba Shimla gurdwara just past the cool breezes and red roofs of Shimla. Another five hours today, but at least the morning breeze flowing through the bus is cool, almost chilly.

  The thunder thighs of a Punjabi woman in a parrot-green and purple salwar-kameez settle into place beside her. Damini quells an urge to pull the slender ringlets dangling by the woman’s pinked cheeks.

  The bus comes to a halt before two massive iron gates set in concrete pillars. A man with a cloth bag of books at his hip alights and sets off on a level paved road. That driveway is built for people with cars and drivers—Vee-Eye-Pees and saab-log. Indistinct sounds of children playing rise from a cluster of English-style peaked roofs. A bell peals from the Christians’ temple, Damini counts nine.

  “My two cousin-brothers are in the army, and their daughters study in this convent,” her seatmate points with a maroon-nailed finger. She’s bursting to tell anyone, everyone—almost bursting her kameez as well.

  This must be where the Jesus-sisters were going. Suresh’s swami-ji says British people tried to make all the Hindus into Christians, so brave Hindus fought them and drove them from the country. Which is not the story of non-violent struggle she heard from her father, who actually lived through 1947, but maybe Suresh’s swami-ji knows better. She must ask her father next time he appears.

  “Did your cousin-nieces have to become Christians?” she asks.

  “No!” says the Punjabi woman. “Both girls are absolutely BRILLiant.” She stares ahead in pouty silence as if Damini had maligned her bloodline.

  The bus waits for a bleating herd of gaddi goats to wander across the road, then starts up again. Last time Damini made this trip, she sat with Mem-saab in the back seat of a well-sprung car. They had stopped for a picnic by a waterfall.

  Damini has saved the orange the Indian nun gave her, and peels it with renewed gratitude. Its texture satisfi
es, even if sweetness eludes her.

  She still has her bundle of parathas and the mutton curry for Leela and her family—thanks to eating in the dining hall of the gurdwara. She would become a Sikh again, just for the comfort of knowing a gurdwara will never turn her away from food or shelter. Last night, she sat cross-legged before a steel tray and glass while a beardless boy in a black turban, wearing a bomber jacket over his kurta and pyjama served her from the same bucket as everyone else. He offered her rotis from the same stack as other Sikhs. She reached out her glass, Mem-saab’s steel kara gleaming on her wrist alongside her own, and he poured her water from the same jug with which he served every devotee sitting in line.

  She has two rotis from the gurdwara kitchen wrapped in a handkerchief and would like to share, but her seatmate is lighter-skinned, wearing clothes and shoes that would soil if she did a moment of manual labour. The Punjabi woman has her own tiffin, anyway; when she opens it, the scent of garlic pickle rises into the morning breeze.

  Was it only yesterday that she left Mem-saab’s house in New Delhi? Khansama, Zahir Sheikh, Aman, Kiran, Loveleen, Timcu and his wife already seem to belong to another woman’s life. But they don’t, really. Going to Leela makes it inevitable that she will encounter Aman and Kiran again, whenever they come to their summer home, Sardar-saab and Mem-saab’s Big House in Gurkot.

  Don’t think of that.

  Steeper now, the road narrows to half its width and a single lane. Vehicles travelling downhill pull onto the gravel shoulder, squeezing close to the grey stone embankments as the bus climbs past. Traffic signs at crossroads become fewer—few hill-people need or read signs.

  The bus cannot travel too fast downhill, nor too slow as it climbs. Yet, four hours later, when Damini arrives in the river-valley town of Jalawaaz, the minibus to Gurkot has departed—whoever scheduled it didn’t care if anyone on the only bus from Shimla might need a ride beyond. No one is at its wooden ticket counter. And when she marches off and finds the ticket seller sipping chai on the veranda of his home, she is informed that she can try again tomorrow in case the gods of the state bus service decide there will be a minibus. But unless more powerful gods intervene, no minibuses are scheduled till tomorrow.

  Jalawaaz town nestles on the banks of the Meethi Darya, river of sweetness, surrounded by the shadow-shapes of mountains, too low for her to catch a glimpse of the dazzling snow peaks. At the entrance to the village, where the bus has stopped, a staircase rises to the carved stone gateway of a temple to Lord Ram and his consort, Sita Mata. Past this temple, a single paved road runs between two lines of shops, long narrow cells with proprietor’s living quarters on second storeys, looking grimier and more fragile than five years ago. At the far end is a truck stop where Kateru peaches, Red June and Raspippin apples, and logs of deodar set off on journeys to the plains. Beyond the truck stop, Damini can just see the silver-green shine of rice terraces along the riverbank.

  She lifts her bedroll onto her head, and swings her bag over her shoulder. She walks past the movie hall—Piara Singh took her to that wooden shed for her first movie, Mughal-e-Azam, and sang the songs for her all the way home. She remembers the Muslim actress, Madhubala—her hair was so black, her face was so pale. Piara Singh loved watching Damini imitate Madhubala’s graceful gestures.

  Here’s the post office, where she came to sign a ledger every month after Piara Singh died, proving she was still alive and eligible for a widow’s pension from the government electricity department. She will return without baggage in a few days and fill out forms to request the government to redirect her pension to Jalawaaz again.

  She passes the general store, owned by the head of the village council, elected just as his father was before him, and as his son will be after him. Here you show your ration card to buy flour, rice and sugar at government prices; she must return in a few days to have her ration card address changed as well. She remembers Piara Singh putting a ten paise coin on the pine counter in the general store, so many years ago, to give her a taste of her first Orange Bar from the Kwality ice cream freezer.

  Several men are hunkered down watching a tele-serial outside the electrical shop. She passes the TVS and video players, hotplates and hot water heaters—villagers must now want hot baths just like Vee-Eye-Pees in the cities. But the shop also sells bukharis, the wide steel bowls you fill with hot coals, because old-style things, like people, never truly die.

  The fruit seller calls from behind his small pyramids of guavas, lychees, mangoes and chickoo from the plains. He points out Elberta and Floridasun varieties in his peach basket and offers her crimson apples from the higher ranges. Damini greets him but only samples a lychee-nut.

  She passes the sub-district magistrate’s office and then the low grey perimeter wall of the police station. A few sweeper-women squat before the police station veranda—probably asking for news of their men.

  In Jalawaaz, the shopkeepers, policemen, teachers and students filing into the cement-grey secondary school building, the chance arrivals at the post office, the sweeperwomen, are all connected to each other by blood, marriage or loans. But Damini doesn’t have family members here, and doesn’t want to spend the night at Jalawaaz ashram when she is only fifty kilometres from Gurkot.

  Fifty kilometres can be a long distance in the hills. Maybe her henna-orange hair will win enough respect for her age for her to thumb a ride in a passing jeep. Maybe someone will know Chunilal at the Jalawaaz diesel station, maybe he’ll be there and can arrange a motorcycle ride … Her neck is straining beneath her bedroll—only a few metres more to the diesel station. She picks her way around a pool of black oil to the nearest Tata truck—gold-nosed with a bed of pale blue. A pile of stones substitutes for a missing wheel.

  “Ay, hero … !” she yells at a long-bearded flabby trucker sporting sunglasses and a reflector-yellow turban, over his idling engine and the clunk and thunk of logs loading. Then she yells her question, and the trucker points to a purple-cabbed green truck parked at the end of the row. That’s Ustaad Chunilal’s truck, he says, calling him teacher. But he hasn’t seen Chunilal.

  “How long, ji?” she asks. Chunilal used to say it felt as if his heart had stopped whenever his truck was idle. Yet he shudders at suggestions that he should become a company-man, saying he’d lose his side income. He takes passengers like young Nepali women and their so-called aunts south to Bombay, and carries monks on their way north to higher and higher planes.

  The flabby man removes his sunglasses to consider. “Three, four, maybe six months—who knows? His Second Driver and helper have found themselves a new Ustaad from whom they can learn.”

  “Gone to his village, ji,” says a tempo-driver with face as pinched as the nose of his three-wheeler truck. He wipes the windshield with an oily rag. “Manager-saab was asking for him.”

  He means Aman-ji’s manager, a pitiless prune of a man, who lives far better than he should on a caretaker’s income. Damini can’t imagine him asking about Chunilal’s health.

  “Chunilal sent his son to get his pay—the son said Chunilal is sick.”

  “Sick—all this time?” she says. “Is he in Gurkot?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Taking this load to the sawmill,” the tempo-driver gestures at the back where two stringy-looking men are loading logs onto the flatbed. “In an hour or two,” he says, looking up at the gathering clouds.

  “I’ll come with you?” She hopes she doesn’t sound too desperate.

  She can tell he doesn’t want to say no, maybe out of respect for her age. He should remember his grandmother, mother and sisters. Maybe he’ll take her for free?

  But the tempo-man is rubbing finger and thumb together, looking reproachful.

  She can’t claim a discount for being almost-family. She doesn’t have anything he would want as barter. “But you’ll take the new road around the mountain to the sawmill,” she says. “Then I’ll have to cross the river a
gain and walk up the north face to Gurkot. It’s too steep with my luggage …”

  “I’ll take you on the old road as far as the bhoot-sarak.” He means the ghost-trail that crosses the river. “Then you can climb to Gurkot,” he suggests, going back to wiping.

  “I don’t know the spirits on that path anymore,” says Damini, “What if they are disagreeable?”

  “Sometimes it happens,” he says.

  “And if it gets late, I may have to stop and sleep along the way. Can you please arrange a porter? Someone you know—not just anyone. An older man who will know the spirits.”

  “My cousin-uncle is there, ji,” says the tempo-man. “He will carry your luggage, no problem.”

  He names a price, and Damini offers half. They compromise at three-quarters.

  A drop plops to her shoulder, then another and soon the mountain road acquires the silken polish of rain. In a few minutes, a bead veil sweeps across the diesel station, obscuring the bright colours of the trucks. The trip will have to wait.

  Damini dines on a leaf-plate of chaat in the fume-filled air of a chai-stall. Afterwards, she takes a shawl from her shoulder bag and wraps it around her. She curls her fingers around a steaming glass of chai. Sitting on her bedroll, she listens to Lata singing on the radio and watches white mist shift and swirl between ridges and descend upon the valley town.

  Thunder rolls as if a gigantic game of marbles were in progress above her—that’s Lord Indra trying to overcome Vrita, the asura of drought. That demon hoards the waters for himself each year. Damini is here, she breathes to Lord Indra—Lightning is here; use me.

  A serrated flash follows as if invoked by her name. Maybe her prayer brought a moment of good karma.