“I no longer have a religion.”
“You can’t not have a religion,” says Shalini. “Every Indian has to have one. And separate laws for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Thanks to the British and dear old Mahatma Gandhi.”
“It doesn’t matter what religion I or you profess, there will be pain, violence and loss if there is nuclear war,” says Anu. This brings a great guffaw from the gathering, as if she has said something quaint.
Anu falls quiet, sidles away. Maybe they can’t imagine the suffering if they survive a nuclear blast and shockwave. Haven’t they heard of Hiroshima? Any nurses who survive will have to care for people dying lingering and painful deaths from failing immune systems, radiation sickness, internal bleeding, pulmonary edema, organ decay, cancers, birth defects … these future events are densely contained in the birth-moment of the bomb.
She approaches a group of shapeless women, sitting in the corner, arms folded under their shawls. They are the kind she and Rano used to call the Orange Juice Brigade because that’s all they ever drank. A few of them remember her, and expect her to be as they knew her, or to have become like Mumma. She calls them aunty, sits down, discusses the Star TV shows they watch, and dutifully exclaims over their jewellery. It’s restful, the only comfortable place at the party. As she exchanges small talk, her mind also moves to the call she just had with Rano.
Rano had news—she is finally pregnant. How Rano cried, Anu cried. How Rano laughed, Anu laughed. “It’s a designer baby! The egg donor’s IQ was 160, so she’ll be intelligent.” Yes, it’s a girl, so Rano won’t have to worry about tying a turban on a boy. There were many embryos to choose from. “Chetna is responsible—she brought us luck!”
Words failed Anu, but because it was Rano, the word outrageous didn’t come to mind. But she should have said selecting one soul over another is unjust even if you let technology be your selector, even if you choose a girl. She should have said that if a missing—or present—Y chromosome is now a disability, some could decide that having one blue and one brown eye like Father Pashan is imperfect, or being born under the sign of Gemini is grounds for embryo selection. A few decades hence, physically different but reasonably able people like Mohan will simply not exist. People like Bobby, too. Everything is in the vedas, even eugenics—utilitarian arguments for violence have been around longer than Mein Kampf.
But she didn’t object—couldn’t—in the face of Rano’s happiness. And Rano had also said that yes, Anu should come and visit for a few months, or as long as she wants. And that it was up to Chetna if she wants to return to India for awhile or forever—she’s old enough to make up her own mind.
Anu had faltered, then. She should have said she wanted Chetna back, right then. But she still has no job and cannot afford to go to Canada or send Chetna a ticket. When you leave your ex-husband Christ, he doesn’t have to pay you maintenance—he’s out of this world. Her savings amount to nothing. And she won’t ask Mumma or Sharad Uncle to lend her money.
Now, sitting with the older women at the party, Anu has a moment of clarity.
The Bomb could end all New Delhi’s neverending cocktail parties any minute.
She never belonged among socialites, and never will. And she will not let Chetna become remotely like any of these women who can’t see bangles they’re not wearing, as Damini would say. Anu yearns to be with Chetna. She must know her. She was the one who named Chetna. Vikas didn’t. Names change what they describe—for better or worse. She must begin with that being she created, reclaim her daughter, support her, stand behind her, bring her back from Canada, induct her into the Women’s Survival Society, give her whatever she can.
Anu will help Chetna become someone who lives her life from the inside out.
Do it now, do it now, do it now.
Now, before it is too late …
ANU
THE MORNING AFTER THE NEVER-ENDING COCKTAIL party, Anu takes a betel-spit splattered staircase to the basement level behind the Ritz Cinema in Connaught Place. The stamp dealer sits cross-legged on a red carpet in his shop. A precarious pyramid of shelves loaded with stamp albums looms behind him. As a shortcut to trust, she introduces herself as she has not in many years, as the daughter of Deepak Lal.
“You’ve come at a very good time,” he says. “Very auspicious release this very day, from the Postal Service. I show you, I show you …” He opens a velveteen box to display first day covers for the latest stamp. Swami Rudransh’s baby face with its rupee-sized bindi grins up at Anu.
She declines. The stamp dealer looks slightly offended, but offers her Coke.
Anu cups her palms about the chilled bottle as he verifies the health of any relatives and remote relatives he can associate with her. By compliments and inquiries, he tries to place her. Only then does he hunch over the stamps in Anu’s mother-of-pearl inlaid box. He remembers the stamps better than he remembers Dadu. His tweezers hold them over the square of the light table before him, then up to the naked light bulb, one by one.
The rarest three: the one with the Indian flag was the first issued after Independence in 1947; the one with the emblem of the Ashoka lions; and the ten-rupee stamp issued on the first anniversary of Independence, to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi after he was shot.
Dadu said, If you are ever compelled to sell or trade them, be sure it is for something vital.
“Independence stamps,” says the dealer. “Why you wish to sell?”
“For my daughter’s independence.”
“Huh!” He names a price.
Anu shakes her head and doubles it.
“If I had so much money to pay for three stamps, why would I be sitting in a shop like this?”
“So no one thinks you need to pay taxes,” says Anu.
He smirks as if she has read him. He draws one of the stamps toward him on the light table. Then the second, then the third. The tip of his tongue passes over his lip. “I must show them to another expert …”
Anu gently sweeps the stamps back into the box. She writes on a scrap of paper. “Send the money to this address by five p.m.” she says. “Or I will show them to another dealer.” And she rises, shouldering her bag.
Back on the radial road out of Connaught Place, shapes of taxis look solid and safe—but too expensive. Anu takes a scooter-rickshaw home instead of the bus.
Delhi is full of shadows, as if asuras dance everywhere. Vikas’s demon eyes follow her all the way. She must stop feeling as if she will meet him—it’s impossible in a city of fourteen million.
In her room at Sharad Uncle’s she throws herself on the bed and allows herself ten minutes of tears and a mental lashing that would have made her mother proud:
Why don’t you ever accept what you’re given? Always, always holding out for better things. Always expecting the impossible. Now maybe you’ve lost your chance to bring Chetna home.
But that evening, a cycle-courier rings the bell at Sharad Uncle’s gate. He passes a thick brown envelope through the bars with Anu’s name on it.
June 1998
ANU
SHARAD UNCLE HAS SHOWN HIS NEW LIBERALISM BY allowing Anu to go to Toronto. He’s even driving her to the airport, using two handkerchiefs as pads on his steering wheel. “Tell Rano we are thinking of emigrating to Canada,” he says, wiping his forehead with one of them.
“To live with her?” says Anu.
“Oh no, no—no need to trouble Rano,” says Sharad Uncle. “We have our three sons—all in Canada.”
“I can babysit my grandchildren, save them the cost of daycare,” says Purnima-aunty in ultra-practical tones. “Rano has her work, her house, her responsibilities.”
Rano will soon have a baby girl who will need babysitting as well. With all her talk of equality, Purnima doesn’t believe in living with a daughter, even if her daughter and son-in-law would willingly have them visit.
“But you have servants to look after you here, you have a house, and investments. Why do you need to go to Canada?”
“Our sons should have an opportunity to do their dharma,” says Sharad Uncle. “And now we’re the right age, we can get Canadian social insurance. It won’t cost them anything more—not to worry. Why should strangers benefit from the taxes they’ve paid all these years? Nowadays you go for a few months or years, come back.” He beams as if the world’s problems have been solved by better transport and digital communication. He pulls up at the fringe of the crowd of passengers, families, workers and porters outside the international terminal. “Anu, you have your ticket?”
“Yes, uncle.” She has a deeply discounted ticket, courtesy of her old boss Mr. Gurinder Singh at Adventure Travel.
Sharad Uncle hugs her as if she is only going to Bombay—oops, Mumbai. But Purnima-aunty holds her tightly and murmurs into her ear, “Email us, call us. Call your mother also—she will miss you even if she doesn’t say so. Now you go, my littlest baby, and bring your baby home. Be happy—ja!”
Sharad Uncle prepays a porter to see her through the door, helps with her baggage all the way up to Security. On the other side, Anu strolls the Duty Free. Feeling daring, even reckless, she buys an eau du toilette for herself, opens it, even sprays some on. For Rano and Jatin, she buys a coffee-table book with photos of India. For Chetna, she is carrying her jewellery and the rest of Dadu’s stamp collection in her carry-on. She also has a new edition of the Panchatantra, several Amar Chitra Katha comics, and two children’s books by Ruskin Bond in her suitcase.
Boarding, she notices the flight attendants are not wearing saris or salwar-kameezes, but skirts and blouses—even as Christians try so hard to Indianize for survival in India. The TVs light up as soon as the doors are closed for take-off. “Within a decade,” says the American-accented newscaster, “there will be a home kit that will offer a private non-fail way for a pregnant woman to test if she is having a boy or a girl. At ten weeks, when the fetus is still an early embryo.” The assumed inevitability of the march of technology is in her voice.
Sleepless in her window seat, Anu sips from a bottle of Bisleri water.
Why should Chetna trust you? So what if you gave birth to her—what have you done since?
Her skin tightens beneath the air draft from the nozzle above her. Her head rolls to her shoulder.
And Sister Imaculata is flying beside her on the wing, black-booted feet dangling below her white skirt. She’s just beyond the double oval of the plane window, bearing mauve hydrangeas in outstretched hands.
A rush of euphoria pours into Anu’s tiredness. She will learn about Halloween. She will see chestnuts roasted on an open fire. She will taste pancakes with maple syrup, and shop with Chetna at Little India on Gerrard Street.
The plane lands and Anu walks down corridor after corridor, collects her bag from the carousel and loads it on a trolley-cart. A woman wearing a uniform blazer over a sari collects her customs form. Anu pushes her cart through the automatic doors.
A throng of eyes. Raised placards. Maybe Rano hasn’t come.
But one face stands out in the crowd, a sparrow face like Mumma in old pictures. A little girl is jumping up and down and calling. Anu drops her baggage, and begins to run.
Chetna, oh my Chetna.
EPILOGUE
Non nobis solum
Not for ourselves alone.
Motto of the Order of Everlasting Hope
Gurkot
January 2005
DAMINI
MIDWAY THROUGH A JANUARY MORNING, CLOUDS SAIL between the crests of the far hills. Damini locks the storage sheds, takes up her umbrella, and turns to descend the stone stairs when Chunilal’s purple-green truck comes to a stop beside her. Kamna descends the ladder from its cab.
“So you’ve come,” says Damini. “Your mother waits for you two each day as if you were the moon who will break her fast.”
“But you haven’t missed us at all.” Kamna teases, embracing Damini. “I just made a delivery to the Big House,” she says. “Amanjit-ji is building a greenhouse to grow medicinal plants.”
“He’ll sell them to foreigners.” Damini jabs her umbrella into the ground.
Kamna adjusts her dupatta and kameez and shakes her wrists, displaying her tinkly rainbow of bangles. “Look!” she says. “Steel, like your kara.”
“You be unbreakable too,” says Damini. “Mem-saab said women and men wear it to remind us we are the keepers of birth and rebirth.”
Mohan comes around the truck and embraces her. He rattles off the towns they have passed through. “Barog, Solan, Dharampur, Kandaghat, Shogi, Shimla, Jalawaaz …”
“Very good, very good,” says Damini, turning again to the stairs.
“Wait! Look who I brought,” says Kamna. “All the way from Delhi.”
A woman in a blue-green printed salwar-kameez with a matching dupatta across her shoulders comes around the truck. When she takes off her sunglasses, Damini recognizes Sister Anu. “Vah!” she says, and folds her hands. But the former Jesus-sister embraces her.
Mohan lies down on the ground, sticks out his tongue and catches a few drifting snowflakes. “You said I could eat snow like ice cream,” he says to Kamna.
“Maybe next January,” says Damini. “There’s not even a centimetre this year. Come, come, Sister-ji. We are indeed honoured.”
They descend the stairs and find Leela in the cow’s room. She almost overturns the milk bucket in delight. Greetings and exclamations take flight on the crisp mountain air. Kamna has brought new combat boots for Damini, and a yellow and red printed salwar-ka-meez with a matching dupatta for Leela. Anu has brought a Nokia cellphone as a gift to both of them.
“So you can call your sisters or call me in Delhi,” she tells Damini. “Kamna can show you how to use it.”
“I know how,” says Damini. “I’ve seen Kiran-ji using hers. But I’ll only fill up ten rupees at a time.”
Chai will warm everyone. Mohan brings a plastic chair for Anu, then helps Leela carry a large pot of water to the cookroom. Kamna and Damini sit cross-legged on Damini’s speaking platform, facing Anu.
“It’s good that Kamna brought you,” Damini says to Anu, “I hope you corrected her driving. I worry about her all the time. A young girl—late at night. Driving on the Grand Trunk Road, brushing against death at every turn. At least she has a brother beside her.” But as she says it, she knows the mere presence of a man may not be enough when a policeman’s open palm thrusts through the cab window.
Anu says, “We cannot protect everyone we love, Damini.”
“Is your daughter still in Canada?”
“No, Chetna lives with me in Delhi.”
“It’s not too hot, crowded and dirty for her?”
“No. And she enjoyed riding to Shimla in the truck.”
“She speaks Hindi only slowly,” says Kamna. “But she was telling me on the way that she learns better in English and still misses many things from Canada. And her boyfriend.”
“Haw! A boyfriend?” says Damini.
“And girlfriends,” Sister Anu says quickly. “And she misses peanut butter sandwiches, Nanaimo bars and blueberry pie.”
“Those are to eat?” Damini asks.
Sister Anu nods.
“I told her I’m sure her boyfriend’s donuts will come to India soon,” says Kamna. “Nowadays everything from outside is coming in—Mr. Timmy’s will too.”
“But you didn’t bring her to meet me,” Damini accuses.
“We stopped at St. Anne’s in Shimla,” Anu says. “Not for long, because my old teacher, Sister Imaculata, has gone back to her country, and many nuns I knew have been transferred. I wanted to see you and the new private clinic and Sister Bethany at the school here. Chetna wanted to stay and play basketball with some girls at St. Anne’s, so I came with Kamna.”
“So young but deciding if she wants to go, where she wants to go—it’s good?” says Damini.
“It’s very good,” says Kamna. She gazes past Damini at the distant grandeur of the peaks. “Chetna liked riding in m
y truck, and she was so kind to Mohan. She was telling me they have Muck-dun-alds in Canada, too. And Bata. And all the way I kept thinking to myself, ‘I still wish I also had a little sister.’ ”
Damini’s throat closes in remembrance and loss; she takes a deep breath. “It’s not easy to lose a sister, or a granddaughter.”
“Or a daughter,” Anu says, as Leela rejoins them. She points down the valley splashed with asphodels, “What are those?”
“Temples,” says Leela. “Farmers are competing to build shrines to Anamika Devi. See, all of them have a view of the snow peaks. So much effort have they spent that they would protest in marches and in court if Amanjit-ji were to demolish a single one. Not one would allow his ancestral land to fall into the hands of any man who has not pledged respect to the goddess.”
“India is shining here today,” Kamna rubs her palms together, then thrusts her fists beneath her armpits. “But I’m surprised Amanjit-ji is here in January.”
“He goes back and forth to Delhi every few weeks for his legal matters,” says Damini. “One case with Timcu-ji, and one in which he’s suing your Suresh Uncle’s boss for the damage to the chapel, the gurdwara and the Guru Granth Sahib. But at every hearing Lord Golunath denies Aman-ji any favours.”
When Anu asks, Damini tells her that yes, people still come to her with questions for Anamika, and when they do, she wraps herself in Mem-saab’s violet phulkari shawl and repeats her mantra till she falls into trance. Then the many voices within her rebound on the hills, echoes turn to pictures, and Damini describes the unseen that she sees. “If a daughter is coming to a home, Anamika Devi tells that truth. If a boy is coming, Anamika Devi foretells that too, just like an ultra-soon machine. I don’t know how this is. But before every puch-session, before any questions of boy or girl can be asked, I say the women should first tell their stories. Men have to be still and listen at this time.”
The Selector of Souls Page 49