The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  She is not surprised Anamika’s voice came through her—the mantra called her. But how did Mem-saab’s voice and others she did not recognize come through her? And why? Is this what the goddess meant so long ago when she came in dream? “What comes through you changes you. What comes through you, creates you.” How can she know if she has changed? The one who opens the gateway may not remain the same being as the one who has gazed through it.

  “You really don’t remember, or you were just saying that for Aman-ji?” says Leela.

  “I was there,” Damini says, searching for human language to describe what happened. “But I could only watch and wonder who was speaking. I had good bhagya that their ears opened.”

  “Yes, but were they hearing?” says Leela.

  Damini sighs. “Whether it means we will treat our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters and granddaughters as if the goddess can come through her anytime, I don’t know. Even if those who don’t believe Anamika Devi spoke, would hesitate to disobey. Lord Golunath witnessed everything Anamika-ji showed us, and he is the god on the hill, the god men worship for justice. Lord Golunath said we should bring the goddess from her cave.” That thought falls like a raindrop onto water, and an idea ripples through her. “But for that, we must make her a body.”

  “She already has her pot,” says Leela. “And that,” she nods at the pink poster which has found its way to a corner at the far end of the cookroom, “can be her image. I can put it in our shrine with all the other gods tomorrow. Or I can make her a special temple for her pot and this poster outside on the terrace. Why does she need a body as well?” She reaches for a potato from a sack beside her and begins to peel.

  “A carving will tell her how we are now, and what she is for us,” says Damini.

  “She can see how we are,” says Leela. “She knows what she is for us.” She looks at Sister Anu for support. “A carving is expensive. I sold the chickens a few days ago, and soon we may have to sell a cow.”

  “Maybe,” Sister Anu says in soothing tones, “she has no form. Maybe she’s just energy.” Jade-coloured peas spring from their shells into the aluminium bowl in her lap.

  “Oh no,” says Damini. “If all her forms disappear, she’ll be as dead as the spirits. Then who will name and protect us—you saw the world she showed us, the world that is to come if all women’s shakti disappears.”

  “She is everywhere,” Leela says, “but her jee must be in that poster. Because she doesn’t look like me at all—she’s laughing.”

  “Then I hope one day you’ll be like her,” says Damini. “But Anamika Devi is not only for us, she’s also for men. And men will not see us as we are if they only worship the poster picture. Look how they worship Rekha and Madhuri Dixit in filums, but not the women beside them. It’s not only men today—Lord Ram preferred to worship a clod of earth instead of Sita Mata. This is the problem: men have to be told everything and then shown it again. I say Anamika must have a carving.”

  Kamna places a pea against her middle finger, draws the finger back and lets fly as if playing marbles. “We should tell Samuel what we want and he’ll carve it,” she says.

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Sister Anu says. “He certainly needs the money.”

  “No money,” says Damini. “We’ll pay in potatoes, and in peaches next spring. Samuel may do it, or he may not. Anamika Devi did not help him when he suffered, and neither did his Jesus-god. We must ask gently. I’ll tell him that if we make no difference between sons and daughters, men and women, Anamika Devi can bring Lord Golunath’s ener-jee into the world.”

  Leela bites her lip. A firefly dances into the room, and circles her at shoulder level. “Real justice?” she says.

  Damini nods. The promise will be almost too daunting to speak, and the sweeper could take it far beyond her meaning. He might think all those ordained low can have bhagya like the twice-born.

  But if there can one day be justice for girls, there can also be justice for Samuel and Goldina.

  “Father Pashan would tell us to work for justice,” Sister Anu says fervently. “He too would say we must make no difference between high and low.”

  Damini looks out at the ridges of the mountains, at the clouds folded between.

  There are differences. Sister Anu has lost her clinic but already her employer has another job for her in Shimla. And she has a living husband—what kind of husband is just her bhagya—who may still take her in. Women like her from the city—Hindu, educated, speaking English—always have somewhere to go.

  Shimla

  November 1996

  ANU

  A MARIGOLD MAKES A BRIGHT ORANGE SPLASH ACROSS the putty base of Imaculata’s computer monitor—placed by the convent’s computer technician to propitiate the unseen. He must have exorcised the latest viruses and replenished the daily offering of backup disks, too. The computer file structures are much like the Church’s hierarchies, and its inner mechanisms seem governed by a much faster version of Canon Law. Sister Anu opens Netscape and touch-types as if playing a piano.

  I refuse to excuse Hindu Nationalists as Sister Imaculata does, simply labelling them evil. Individuals did these crimes, not satan. Each man made his own decision to join in the violence or not. Oh dear! I should believe in satan but instead I have come to believe we each harbour evil within us, and feed it our self-interest and fear.

  The Jesuits will be sending a new priest for the parish, but till then Imaculata is leading prayer meetings. She is encouraging people to sing hymns in Hindi and has allowed the harmonium to be brought in—Indianizing the service. Many more are coming to the chapel.

  Thank you for the photographs from Halloween. It was strange to see Chetna dressed in a habit. Tell her nuns in our order don’t wear those in India! You looked very beautiful in your wedding sari and jewellery, and Jatin in that brocade uchkan-jacket.

  I am learning to grow hydrangeas for Sister Imaculata, playing the piano on Sundays in the chapel and teaching Human Biology to privileged young girls. Even girls of our class and caste know so little about their own bodies! I admit they remind me of Chetna, and that is its own joy and pain.

  Dr. Gupta has accepted a position at a private clinic in New Delhi. Amanjit-ji’s elder brother came from Canada and built it around the time Amanjit-ji built the Gurkot clinic, just to rile his brother, and now he’s hired Dr. Gupta just to rile Amanjit-ji more. The two brothers are still in court, fighting over their mother’s mansion. Kiran tells me the case will drag on for at least thirty years. But Dr. Gupta says it will probably finish in twenty because daughters will not have the stomach to fight in court and bribe where needed. I feel sure Kiran will teach Loveleen and her baby sister Angad to prove him wrong. And maybe one will marry a man who can continue the court battle.

  No stamps required—email is making stamps obsolete. Rare stamps in Dadu’s collection are turning even more rare. Sister Anu points the cursor at SEND, and clicks her mouse-button, staccato.

  December 1996

  ANU

  AFTER EVENING PRAYERS AND DINNER, SISTER IMACULATA draws a Tibetan shawl over her knees and pulls her rocking chair close to the fire in the nuns’ recreation room. Sister Anu leaves the others gathered around a game of dominoes and takes a chair beside her. The scent of pine from the red and green tinselled tree in the corner mingles with the deodar wood burning in the grate.

  “Are you all right, Sister?” Sister Anu had read the bishop’s letter when it fell from Imaculata’s hands a week ago: he said he endorsed her prayer meetings and applauded her service and zeal during the temporary absence of a priest but reminded her that no nun should lead a congregation to believe that transubstantiation had indeed happened by her hand. “The wafer and wine do not become the body and blood of Christ by the hand of anyone but an ordained priest.” In effect, he says Imaculata has committed fraud, and this led “inevitably” to excommunication. Sister Imaculata is barred from receiving the sacraments and participating in worship, but can continue as l
ay principal of the convent.

  “I haven’t lived in India all these years,” Imaculata replies, “without learning worse things can happen.” Her chair creaks with grim regularity.

  “But it’s truly unfair, Sister!”

  Church tradition is a stream in progress, just as Sister Imaculata said to Anu only two years ago. It changes direction in its own time. But …

  “The bishop holds the Church and its reputation above the individual,” says Imaculata. “It’s our fault—we turned our Pope and his priests into gods.”

  “How can they justify it to themselves?”

  “Jesus,” says Sister Imaculata, “never said only men can be priests. There aren’t even any women chancellors in the dioceses—it’s mostly men listening to men. We’ve let them believe they’re infallible.”

  “I have organized a petition to the bishop on your behalf,” says Sister Anu. “Sister Clare is the only nun who refused to sign it.”

  “Yes, and all this week she has taken her meals at another table,” says Imaculata. “The others are disobeying the bishop, I think, since they’re not shunning me. They were at my prayer meetings. They know I didn’t, I would never …”

  She falls silent.

  “Is it true about your visa?” says Sister Anu. The news flew through the convent today: the Indian government, pressured by the anti-missionary rhetoric of the RSS and its Hindutva organizations, has refused Sister Imaculata’s application for extension of her Indian visa. And since VIPs with enough clout to override the refusal have discharged Sister Imaculata from their tribe, sympathy is now all the Shimla congregation can offer.

  “ ’Tis so, yes. I must learn to live in Ireland again. That will be strange after all these years here. I was looking forward to meeting my old colleagues in one of our nun’s retirement homes someday. But I can’t now.”

  “Oh dear Sister … I wish … I mean, I want … How will you live?”

  “I thought of renting from one of my brothers. He had a modest two-up, two-down before Ireland became the Celtic Tiger. But it’s now valued at more than a million pounds, and he values himself accordingly. I wrote to one of my nieces to see if I could stay in her bed-sit, and she replied today by email. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘and please could you teach me all about Hinduism?’ I don’t know anything about Hinduism. What can I teach her? So – I’ll have to see.”

  Will what Anu is going to do add to Sister Imaculata’s troubles—or help? “May I read you a letter?”

  Imaculata nods. Sister Anu clears her throat, clears it again. In a low, even tone, she reads a letter asking permission to leave before taking her final vows.

  In solidarity with Imaculata, she is refusing to serve VIPs’ and VVIPs’ children any longer, refusing to pontificate about social justice from within the luxury of the convent. But this is not in her letter. If it were, the sister would simply tell her to go and work with Mother Teresa.

  And the lines on the page do not say that if the divine appeared to the ojha and Damini, Sister Anu’s service and prayer have been irrelevant. They do not say that the bright warm light she saw only a few years ago now seems unattainable, though she has sometimes experienced flashes of connection when she plays the piano. They do not say Sister Anu has been unable to give up her belief in reincarnation and worse, she among all the nuns cannot believe Christ is the only god, the only way.

  The lines on the page do not say she must also be the one nun in this order who cannot, does not, believe in heaven and hell because she has seen the hells men make on earth. They do not say she believes that dogs, cats, crows and rats have souls because she knows at least one man, maybe two, who will surely be reborn as animals. And the lines on the page make it no longer necessary to confess her lie or acknowledge she is still married to a man who will be reborn as an ant.

  But she knows Imaculata will feel all of this in her voice, her disobedient voice. And when Anu is finished, the older woman is silent a long time. Then she says, “You want permission to leave. Have you prayed about this?”

  “Yes, sister.” Sister Anu prayed as Amanjit Singh registered a criminal case against Suresh and other rioters. But witnesses are fast disappearing, the SDM has been mysteriously transferred and after only one hearing, one of the judges as well. And between prayers, Sister Anu found herself railing at god.

  If you care so much about Christians, to the exclusion of all others, why couldn’t you divert a .22 Diana airgun bullet one centimetre to keep your loyal servant alive?

  Imaculata and other people of the cloth seem to remember Father Pashan as a soldier who fell in the line of duty. His name is rarely mentioned and prayer has done nothing to bring him back.

  Sister Imaculata’s anger surges at Anu. “And even after prayer and meditation, you want to send this letter to other provincials and Mother General?”

  “Yes, sister.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you were a very adjustable woman?”

  “Yes, I did, Sister. But how much should we have to adjust? Can’t the Church do some adjustment as well? Look how they are treating you after all your years of service.”

  Imaculata bites her lip as if holding back a flood. “Don’t you be making me your excuse for leaving, Sister. God will provide for me.” In a moment, she says, “I had such high hopes of you, Anupam. I thought, ‘A young Indian nun. If only we can keep her.’ Silly of me, I know, because I always knew you had that little problem: disobedience. Still, I hoped you would grow into my role and take care of our sisters.”

  “I’ve been a failure as a woman, a wife, a mother and now a nun,” says Sister Anu.

  “I wouldn’t say that. You have made progress.”

  “I’ve disappointed you.”

  “In some ways—not all,” Imaculata says. “So many are attracted by the security we offer—well, used to offer. I just thought you were different.”

  “I was attracted by security too,” says Sister Anu.

  A snort of derision. “Shafiq Sheikh said you risked your life trying to save people in the clinic.”

  Sister Anu gazes into the smouldering fire. “So did he.”

  “You miss Father Pashan—is that it?”

  “Yes.” Living without men also distorts the world.

  “Did you have feelings for him?”

  “Not that way,” says Sister Anu, meeting Imaculata’s eye. “He made me realize it’s possible for a man and woman to be friends. I admired him. I thought everyone would admire all the work we were doing, what he was trying to accomplish.”

  “ ’Tis a shame, my girl.” Sister Imaculata sighs. “I regret I never told him how much I admired him. I would have loved to have a wake for him, to celebrate his life, you know. But right now, a wake could be considered a foreign ritual.” Her hand covers a tremor in her lips for a moment. Anu’s throat constricts in sympathy.

  Imaculata fixes her gaze on the gold ring on her left hand, masters herself. “We’ll never know what those Hindu men thought they were accomplishing, or for whom. But reconsider, Sister. Surely you’re needed once the clinic in Gurkot reopens?”

  “I’m no longer the right person for it,” says Sister Anu. “I fear I will recommend birth control pills to women like Goldina. I now feel abortion should be available to women who need it because of rape or any other reason. I think a woman must own her own body all the way to the moment a child takes its first breath and gains consciousness at birth. And I believe Damini’s daughter, Leela, should have been able to get an early abortion even though I could not have brought myself to have one.”

  “You certainly have been brainwashed by family planning propagandists.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. I never want to refuse care to a patient, even one who may have AIDS.”

  “Not to worry. You’ve just disqualified yourself from a job with us.”

  Anu pushes a lock of hair away from her eyes. “Sister Bethany is also an Indian nun—did you consider her as your successor?”

  “She
doesn’t have leadership ability,” says Sister Imaculata.

  “Bethany? Bethany doesn’t have leadership qualities?” Anu says.

  She waits.

  “I see I’ve learned Indian ways too well,” says Imaculata.

  Sister Anu says quickly, to rescue the older woman from embarrassment, “I asked the project leader of the NGO taking over the clinic how he would fund his work. He said, ‘With the x-ray machine.’ He said, ‘People in Canada and the USA will send their x-rays by email and our doctor will interpret them and send them back the next day.’ And he says they have a training programme for young hill women to become nurses and midwives.” Maybe that will persuade Amanjit-ji to keep the free clinic going for a few years.

  “But do you really believe dalits, tribals and other backward caste people don’t need us?”

  Sister Anu shakes her head. “There’s always more we can do, more we should do. They need the support of touchables of all religions. They need people of conscience worldwide to come together against caste, as people did against slavery and apartheid.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “We should care as much for the treatment of their bodies and rights, as we do for their souls.”

  “I admire your passion, Sister.” Sister Imaculata says. “Tell me, did we bring any souls to Jesus?”

  “Father Pashan said belief is personal. He just wanted to alleviate suffering and set a good example. But it’s progress that some women have begun to speak about domestic violence, and sexually transmitted diseases. That we vaccinated children, discussed sex and menstrual problems. Damini is starting a Women’s Survival Society—members have to promise before the goddess not to kill, beat, sell or neglect baby girls, girls and women.”

  “The goddess, is it? Can’t even keep the first commandment—no god but god. All that work …” Imaculata digs in her toes, her rocker creaks back. “Well, do as the good Lord tells you.” Her tone consigns Sister Anu to the devil. “It is not for me to question his ways.”