by Kapur, Manju
*
The house at Lepel Griffin Road was crammed with people. Suraj Prakash was laid out on the floor of the drawing-room, his body covered with a white sheet, his face turning blue and dark as the hours passed and the mourners thickened about. There were Kasturi’s two brothers and their families from Sultanpur, her sister and brother-in-law from Pherozabad, other aunts, uncles, and cousins, Taiji’s family, everybody from the Samaj, and half the merchants and traders from the bazaar. Lala Diwan Chand sat, shrivelled and crumpled into deep old age, next to his daughter-in-law. As each new mourner appeared, a fresh burst of sobs ensued. Like waves, the sound of grief ebbed and flowed through the night.
Towards this crowd Virmati made her hesitant way. Like other close relatives, she was dressed completely in white, her dupatta covering her head. She took off her chappals slowly and deliberately on the steps of the veranda, beyond the jumbled mass of footwear. Those whose connection to Suraj Prakash had not been very intimate, and who were looking around, could see her from the edge of the room. She was very conscious of their curious gaze, and in reaction her own face stiffened.
She remained on the periphery, leaning sideways against the wall avoiding everybody’s eyes. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her crumpled face was half-hidden by the dupatta pressed against her quivering mouth. The vague idea she had of approaching her mother was given up when she saw how surrounded she was by her other children and her sons-in-law. They formed a protective ring around her with their arms, their hugs and caresses.
Kasturi sat next to her dead husband, almost as still, head bent, eyes closed. Her tikka was smudged across her forehead, her thick green khaddar sari crumpled. Her children were sadly aware that by tomorrow, their mother’s red and green would be replaced by a white that would be hers till death.
All night the family watched over the body. The father of the corpse seemed insensible, the wife quiescent and unreachable. The relatives came to embrace their passive bodies in a steadfast stream.
To them: You must be brave for the wife/father’s sake. Sad, terrible, everything is God’s will, who knows the future, we are in God’s hands, you do not see such men nowadays, he was a saint, a pillar of his family, community, strength, prayers …
Among themselves: What a shock for the old man. Poor thing, her life is over. How young he was. Only fifty. How did it happen? Nobody knows. He was all alone. There was firing at the procession, and tear gas. Baoji always looked pale and tired. After what his daughter did he was never the same. All last year, so silent and listless. Everybody could notice. It killed him. Definitely killed him.
The talk expanded to include the procession: This would never have happened if the Sarkar had allowed the procession to go on. It was a peaceful procession. They should not have stopped it.
It is only us they bother and harass. To the Muslims they turn a blind eye.
No. In fact the Muslims can assault us in broad daylight with no consequences. Look at Haripur.
Bap re. Attacking gurudwaras, looting and murder.
At Peshawar they sacrificed cows at Bakri-Id.
Chee-chee! The authorities turn a blind eye, of course.
This used to be our golden land. Sonar Punjab.
The Angrez support Jinnah. What can our Unionist Government do?
They say there will be an inquiry.
*
The next morning was the cremation. The Professor arrived in time to join the corteège. He was dressed in a freshly starched dhoti and kurta, with a white woollen waistcoat and a long white shawl flung around him. On his feet were white woollen socks. Virmati looked at him in astonishment. She had not known he possessed so many articles in white wool.
Harish made his way to various family members, pressed their hands and offered his condolences. Virmati, who had hovered like a pariah on the outskirts of her family circle the whole night, was amazed to see these condolences being received in the same polite manner in which they had been proffered. He was being accepted, what about her? How she longed to break down and weep in the midst of the circle that surrounded her mother. She wanted to be in its warm inclusiveness as well.
At the cremation ground, there was a silence as the last rites were performed over the body. The eldest son circled it thrice with a mutka of water which he spilled as he went along. The corpse was then shifted to the pyre, and heavy logs were crisscrossed on top. Straw was stuffed in between, ghee poured on top and all around. Kailash circled the pyre before lighting it with a flame at the end of a long bundle of straw. As the body burned, the family members silently kept adding ghee and samagri, the havan process that Kasturi had performed almost every morning of her life. When the last outsider had left, Virmati approached her mother.
‘Mati,’ she said in a low voice.
Her mother turned and looked past her.
Virmati, choked with sorrow, gazed at her mother mutely, misery and pleading in her eyes. Trembling, she tried to touch her.
Kasturi shook the hand off. ‘Why are you here?’ she managed, her eyes red and swollen. ‘Because of you he died. Otherwise is this the age to go?’
Virmati turned an even more ghastly shade of pale. What was her mother saying?
‘Bas, bas, Mati,’ sniffed Gunvati, trying to calm her mother down.
Kasturi, convulsed with grief, turned on her. ‘Would your Pitaji have gone if he didn’t have to live with the disgrace his daughter caused him?’ She covered her eyes with her sari and shook her head from side to side.
At the anguish in Kasturi’s tone, Gunvati and Indumati closed in around her and gestured Virmati to leave.
*
The next day, Lala Diwan Chand expired. Since his son’s death, he had been in a state of shock so severe it seemed to deprive him of all his faculties. After the funeral he lay down and never got up. At this news Virmati felt a hardening around her heart that she thought nothing could remove. Her father had died without forgiving her, and now her grandfather too. Not one of her family cared for how she felt. It was clear that they did not want to see her, or have anything to do with her.
She didn’t attend any of the rituals that marked her grandfather’s passing away. Harish thought it was his duty to go, as the eldest son-in-law, and he made a brief appearance at the Lepel Griffin house without his wife. He thought Virmati’s refusal to accompany him very odd, but she was adamant.
‘People will comment.’
Virmati smiled her new tight smile. ‘Let them,’ she said.
Harish did not try to persuade her. Since the deaths she had hardly spoken to him. Both Ganga and Kishori Devi had tried to be nice to her, but her frozen look remained unchanged. Anyone who came to sympathize, she refused to see. The family thought nobody should be allowed to grieve by themselves. It was unnatural, but they could not force her to accept condolences. It was almost as though she had gone mad. Forgotten who she was, who she was married to, and all her obligations.
*
After the pugri was tied on Kailashnath, and the pollution of her father’s death wiped away by religious ceremonies, the Professor made love to Virmati every night. It was the only way of getting close, though the ardour was missing.
The morning Virmati retched in the angan was a happy day for him. She was pregnant, he was sure. Their union had borne fruit within her womb, and now she must be true to her nature and turn her attention to him and the child.
Out in the angan, crouched next to the pump, Virmati was staring at her vomit. She moved the handle slowly, and watched the water wash the sluggish, stinking mass down the small hole in the wall, into the open drain next to the house. As she watched she felt sick of her body, which as usual asserted itself when she was most unprepared. Now it had taken whatever small shred of privacy she had left. The whole household could hear her. The whole household could put two and two together.
‘What is the matter with Mummy?’ Giridhar was asking his mother. ‘Is she sick?’
‘Nothing that concerns us, beta
,’ was Ganga’s reply.
‘Why is she throwing up then?’
‘Women do that, silly,’ said Chhotti. ‘Even Bhabhiji did this when she was having you.’
‘No she didn’t.’
‘Yes she did.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, Bhabhi, didn’t you?’ Chhotti turned to appeal to her mother.
‘Don’t trouble me,’ retorted Ganga sharply, a look of fear crossing her face.
‘Yes, you did. I remember. Now Mummy is doing it.’ Chhotti giggled as she said this. ‘What fun!’
‘Bhabhi, look at what Chhotti is saying,’ whined Giridhar.
Ganga slapped her daughter and shouted, ‘Let me see how you laugh when some woman’s baby comes and takes your father away from you.’
Chhotti stared at her mother, tears coming into her eyes.
Giri started to cry, ‘I don’t want a baby, I don’t want a baby.’
‘Don’t be upset,’ said Ganga silkily. ‘What can you or I do? Now your new mother is going to provide you with lots of brothers and sisters and you must be very good and share everything with them.’
By this time Giridhar’s cries had reached a crescendo, and Harish looked testily from his room to silence them.
*
Virmati’s morning throwing-up at the pump continued. The children stared at her from the veranda with bland faces. Virmati felt they almost made it a point to be there. Her sharp ears could hear them talking about gandi mummy.
Kishori Devi meanwhile changed. Without saying anything, she substituted Virmati’s morning cup of tea with a glass of hot milk, with either almonds or honey added to it. Then, almost every day there was a milk sweet with the evening meal, kheer, rubri, rasgulla, shrikhand, rasmalai – things that Kishori Devi especially made. There was even talk of keeping a cow.
*
‘Beta,’ said Kishori Devi to her son. ‘Bahu should sleep with us.’
Harish looked wary. ‘Why, Amma?’ he asked.
‘In her condition it is best,’ said Kishori Devi enigmatically. ‘I will move her pillow, sheets and quilt onto my bed.’
‘Your bed?’
‘Virmati is not some kind of maharani who needs a separate bed all to herself.’
Men were supposed to understand sexual taboos, but Harish had been in England so long that she elaborated for his benefit, ‘For the health of the child.’
‘But Amma, I do not see the need,’ said Harish lamely.
Kishori Devi replied sternly. ‘The shashtras say that a woman carrying a child must be governed by pure thoughts, loose clothes, sweet cooling liquids, milk …’
‘It is still too early, Amma.’
‘No, it is not. Her thoughts should be pure all the time. The effect will be seen in the child, the flesh and blood of your father.’
Harish was defenceless before these oblique references.
‘I will recite the Gita to him every night,’ went on his mother. ‘By the time he is born his sanskars will be very good.’
‘Amma, this might come as a shock to her.’
‘Let her learn our family ways as soon as possible. No sacrifice is too great for the coming child,’ stated Kishori Devi mournfully.
‘But Amma –’
‘With Ganga it was the same. I cannot make distinctions between my daughters-in-law.’
‘No, no … of course not,’ said Harish looking confused. What was his mother talking about? He had no idea of how Ganga’s last pregnancy had been spent, of how many Sanskrit slokas his mother had recited to the unborn foetus, on which bed she had spent her nights, what she ate, what she drank, what she thought.
‘So that is settled,’ said Kishori Devi, getting up, muttering ‘Hai Ram, Hai Ram,’ and groaning with every limb she straightened. She made towards the kitchen, her hand pressed to her back, as her son stood and watched, aware of her in a way he had never been before.
Virmati was appalled. Her mother-in-law had barely spoken to her in all the months she had been in Moti Cottage, and now she wanted to sleep with her. Her flesh prickled at the thought. Was she such a personless carrier of her husband’s seed?
‘How can you expect me to do such a thing?’ she whispered bitterly in the low tone she now almost automatically used when they were in their room together.
‘It is her concern for your baby,’ pleaded Harish.
‘What about me? How do you think I am going to feel about the whole thing? Did you say anything about that?’ demanded Virmati.
‘I thought you would be pleased, her showing such concern, reciting the Gita to you every night, when she is tired. She is old, you know.’
Virmati’s face assumed a pinched look, the lips thinned and straightened, the eyes glassed over as though they could not see. Even her cheeks seemed to fold inwards.
‘This shows great progress on Amma’s part,’ went on Harish. ‘She is struggling to reconcile herself to reality. With our child, you will be accepted in no time.’
*
That night Virmati lay stiffly next to her mother-in-law. The old lady sang some slokas in a low undertone. From time to time her voice would rise, and she would snake a claw-like hand onto Virmati’s abdomen to make rotating motions on it. The first time this happened, Virmati almost jumped out of her skin with surprise and horror. After that she lay rigidly, the slokas grating on her ear, tensely apprehensive of the moment that hand would touch her again. Cramps started to shoot across her back and belly. After Kishori Devi had croaked herself to sleep, Virmati lay on her back, her hands folded over a still flat stomach. She tried not to breathe too deeply. Her mother-in-law smelt of age, of sickly, heavy coconut oil, of foul, sweet breath. Resignedly, Virmati got up to vomit and then crept back to the dressing-room.
Every night for the next few weeks, Virmati would hear slokas in Kishori Devi’s bed, and then vomit her way back into her own. With an aching abdomen, and a lingering sour taste in her mouth, she would try and sleep. In the day she looked wan and hollow-eyed.
‘Soon this vomiting period will be over,’ said Kishori Devi to her son. ‘Then she will not have to get up in the night.’
‘I hope so, Amma.’
‘My poor boy,’ said Kishori Devi looking at him with pity. ‘Don’t worry. First pregnancies are like this. And with boys it is even more difficult.’
‘How do you know it is a boy?’
‘She has the signs. I can just see it in her face and movements, the shape of her belly, the things she craves.’
Harish was not aware of Virmati’s craving anything. ‘What does she want?’ he asked.
‘Sweet, cold things,’ said Kishori Devi categorically.
‘I’m not so sure she actually wants …’
‘That is what women should be given in the first three months,’ interrupted his mother. ‘Then Shashtika rice with curd in the fourth month, with milk in the fifth, with ghee in the sixth. Even her enemas should be of milk and ghee.’
‘I don’t think Virmati needs an enema.’
‘We shall see. The body should be clean and pure at all times. Sons cannot be born just like that.’
I will have a girl to spite her, thought Virmati.
*
It’s a girl, thought Ganga. She can’t keep away from sour things, though Amma refuses to see that. It wasn’t like that when I had Giridhar. God will make sure it is a girl. And, from once a week, she started fasting twice a week, for the long and prosperous life of her husband.
*
Virmati had completed three months of pregnancy when she woke in the middle of the night convulsed with cramps. Thick, dark red, rubbery clots dotted the inside of her salwar. Bent double with agony, she managed to get up, fold some old cloth into a long, thick pad and tie it around herself with a string. In no time at all she could feel the blood soaking through. Alarmed, she lay down, clenching her thighs together, hoping that if she was very careful and did not move, the cramps would go away. Perspiration dripped onto the sheet from the side of he
r face. Through the spasms ran incoherent thought – they mustn’t know – mustn’t come to know.
Virmati’s moans woke Harish, whom prolonged abstinence had made restless.
‘What is it, darling?’ he asked tenderly. He put his hand on her face and felt the perspiration.
‘You can’t be hot,’ he exclaimed as his fingers travelled swiftly over her, down to her salwar, and inserted themselves between her legs.
Inert and exhausted, Virmati let him do what he liked.
Harish’s hand encountered a wet and soggy mass. He quickly withdrew it and put on the light to see blood everywhere. He looked at his wife. Why hadn’t she said anything? He turned her towards him. Even through the pain he could see the inflexible, resolute expression on her face.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
Virmati said nothing. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyelids as Harish went to call his mother.
‘Hai Ram!’ exclaimed Kishori Devi when she saw Virmati. By now the blood had begun to soak the sheets. ‘Why has she let it go so far? Beta, call the doctor. Hurry, nothing should happen to the baby.’
Ganga stood in the doorway and watched.
The doctor came, gave Virmati an injection, pronounced the baby lost, and made sure the miscarriage was completed in the hospital in sterile conditions. Released the next day, Virmati came staggering home to a durrie spread on the string bed. The mattresses had all been removed by her thoughtful mother-in-law, who assured her son that Virmati would not be able to bear the sight of bedding that had been so polluted by vaginal bleeding.
‘I will rip open the mattress, wash the cotton and the cover, get it beaten, stuffed, and stitched again.’
Harish stared mournfully at her.
‘So soon after her father. Some women are weak by nature.’
*
Virmati became better, but not less dull. One abortion and one miscarriage. She was young, she told herself, years stretched out before her. Years of penetration, years of her insides churning with pregnant beginnings.