And then, suddenly, as soon as they turn the bend, she can see the rocks, elephants sleeping with their heads buried in the ground. Huge black-grey stones, speckled and warm. Five of them, all roughly the same size, two together, the rest spread out. Like the African herd from her geography textbook, without the heads and the tusks. Two children, about her age, play on one elephant’s back.
She lets go of Grandfather’s finger, the earth rushes to meet her as she runs, clambers atop one of the rocks.
‘Careful, watch your step, look to your right, you can see the temple.’
She looks at the spire built more than three hundred years ago, she can see the big bunch of red ribbons tied around its top, like a red knot on a doll’s head. One ribbon tied by each pilgrim for each wish fulfilled.
‘Wish,’ says Grandfather, ‘stand on the rock, look at the spire, close your eyes and wish. Don’t say it aloud, just whisper it to yourself so that no one can hear.’
What will she wish for? The red bicycle she saw in the shop window in the central market, the one with a reflecting lamp, handlebars with bright red leather strips and a blue basket in front. ‘Where will you ride a bicycle in Calcutta?’ Father had said, and she had understood.
But she wishes anyway, for the red bicycle she saw in the shop window.
As she turns to climb down, she slips and falls down the rock, her head strikes the rock, her feet drag along the elephant’s back, she screams, crashes against the tap, the cold water gurgles over her grazed knee.
Grandfather is there, his black shawl hovering over her like a protective blanket, shutting off the sun from her eyes as he bends down, picks her up. She’s conscious but she can’t open her eyes, the pain like a flame hissing all over her body, she clutches at Grandfather’s shirt, she can smell the starch and her blood, warm across her face, entering her nose, her lips.
Two hours later, she wakes up to the smell of Dettol and incense sticks in a tiny room with Grandfather by her side, holding her hand, Mother at her feet, her eyes closed, her lips moving in prayer.
‘Don’t worry, you will be all right tomorrow,’ Mother says, ‘they have stitched your knee up, no bones broken but let’s wait for the X-ray so that we know for sure.’
And as she is saying all this, Grandfather motions to someone standing outside the door and in comes the bicycle with the reflecting lamp, the handlebars with red leather strips and the blue basket in front.
‘Your wish,’ says Grandfather, and although it hurts, although the white bandage around her head is so tight she can hardly move her eyes, she smiles.
Mother stops praying and the boy who’s wheeled the bicycle in begins to jump up and down as if the bicycle were his, begins to ring its bell until the doctor’s attendant comes running in and tells them there are other patients too and that this is a hospital, not a market.
Through the gown, she feels her right knee, the stitch marks are still there; so is the scar on her forehead, just above her eyes, half-covered by her eyebrows. He had asked her about it the first night they lay together in bed, naked. She felt his heart, his chin on her head, his huge hands running through her hair.
‘Let’s get the scar on the forehead removed,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look nice. Why don’t you paint your eyebrows thicker so that it can’t be seen?’
She did not reply. ‘I am just joking,’ he said.
She couldn’t sleep, got up for a glass of water, saw the leftovers lying uncovered. Cockroaches darted across the dining table, one floated in the vinegar of the salad, the rice had gone hard. She covered the rice, emptied the vinegar into the sink and returned to bed but she couldn’t sleep.
She watched his bare haunches, his arms, his broad shoulders, the rise and fall of his chest. She kept staring at the fan, trying to count the blades on her first night, the beginning of a lifetime in a two-room flat where the sky squeezes itself into narrow lanes to keep the buildings from touching each other.
That night she dreamt of pregnant women, young and old, their white gowns billowing in the night, dancing in the sky. They hold hands like the skydivers she has seen on TV, they spread their legs and in a sudden gust of wind they give birth. Babies rain, some snap their umbilical cords and break free, others dangle from their mothers’ wombs, swaying in the wind. She sees her brother, he’s standing in the veranda, waving at her, she looks away, she can see in the sky a blue bedspread flying, she feels the bile rise in her throat, two arms rise up from within her stomach and clutch at her heart.
‘Wake up, Didi,’ says the nurse.
At first, through the haze of her drowsiness, she doesn’t hear. ‘Wake up,’ the nurse repeats, this time her hand on her shoulder.
‘Yes.’ That’s all she can say as she sees the nurse’s face hovering over hers: the grey streaks in her hair, the red plastic earrings, the mole below her lower lip.
‘Aren’t you hungry? I came in twice before but you didn’t wake up.’
The nurse steps back from the bed, walks backwards to stand almost in the centre of the room, half-covering the window.
To her left is the dinner trolley, two steel plates covered with aluminium foil; the door is slightly ajar, light from the hallway enters the room in a narrow white rectangle.
‘What time is it?’ she asks, her head still hurts, the taste of unfinished sleep in her mouth.
‘It’s around midnight. I have set your watch right,’ she says placing the dinner plate on the bedside table.
Then she walks up to the door as if to leave but she doesn’t; she closes the door and stands there. ‘I’m not leaving the room until you finish dinner.’
The foil is hot, her fingers recoil, the nurse walks over and peels it off the rim of the plate.
She feels uncomfortable, a stranger watching her eat, her gown slipping off her shoulders. And yet she doesn’t want the nurse to go; she stabs at the rice with the spoon. Dinner over, the nurse begins clearing the table.
‘I have to hurry,’ she says, ‘I have already overstayed by two hours. And the last bus leaves at twelve thirty.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Barasat, Didi. It takes more than an hour to reach there. At this time, there’s no traffic: it will take no more than forty, forty-five minutes.’
‘Doesn’t your husband complain?’
‘What husband? I left him long ago.’
For a moment, she feels uncomfortable: at the unexpected, personal turn the conversation has taken. She feels awkward trying to look for another subject but the nurse doesn’t seem to mind as she wipes the table, crumples the aluminium foil, dumps it into the plate, leaves it outside in the hallway.
She returns and helps her with the blanket, adjusts the pillows.
And then, all of a sudden, the nurse removes one of the safety pins that straddle across her bangles and gently fixes the straps of her gown. It’s a gesture without any apparent effort and although she knows that the nurse, in all likelihood, is doing her job, the touch of her hands and the way she clasps the pin over the excess fabric makes her feel somewhat safe.
‘Now it won’t slip off,’ she says closing the door behind her. ‘Sleep well, Didi. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
She can hear her footsteps echo in the hallway, the sound of the trolley being wheeled back to the kitchen or wherever it came from.
And like the darkness in her room which flows out of the window and merges with the darkness of the city, she can feel, for the first time since her miscarriage, long before you ever came, that she is not alone.
MURDER MYSTERY
‘That’s the hospital, over there,’ he points out.
He points to a strip of white, far away, over her head and her shoulders, across the trees, the clusters of houses, to the left of the plume of grey smoke rising in the sky from some roof, to the right of the white marble dome of the Victoria Memorial.
‘That’s the hospital where you were stuck for two weeks,’ he says. ‘And that’s Park Street, can’t you see the
lights?’
Yes, she can, but tonight is his night to show and hers to see and she doesn’t want to spoil anything.
Two days to go for 14 April, the Bengali New Year, it’s time for the nor’westers, they are standing on the terrace of the new flat they’ve moved in to and she can feel the wind, the end of her sari clap gently against her leg.
She looks around, at the two huge black water tanks, a piece of wire strung across the TV antennae. There’s a clothes clip dangling on the wire but there are no clothes to dry. In one corner, she can see a broken white ceramic toilet bowl, stained, its cover surprisingly shining, black. As if it were new.
They never come up to the terrace although the landlord was sweet the first day they moved in, one week ago, after her miscarriage. His mother and father had said, ‘Why don’t you people spend some time together, we will come later.’
‘You can use the terrace whenever you want. During March and April, it’s very nice there,’ the landlord had said. ‘Colder than your house, you should take a scarf if it’s too late.’
‘It’s a bit dirty but you are young people,’ the landlord’s wife had said. ‘You can do it up, put some flower pots, get the mess cleaned up. We are too old.’
She had smiled at the landlord’s wife as she pressed her hand into hers, looked at her husband as he read the rent papers. She could see the veins in his hand as he signed his name.
‘Come here, this way,’ he says and she follows him, like a child, looking at his white striped shirt and grey trousers, which she ironed twice this morning since he said the crease didn’t fall in a straight line, she can see the peak of his white socks, the lights on Park Street, the big white one is the Continental Hotel where they change the mannequins every week.
The line of small red ones, the twinkling lights, must be the Chinese restaurant where they have a picture of a huge dragon on the wall, the menu painted on its tongue. She can see the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, its huge lighted globe spinning round and round in circles, Africa is facing her now.
His hands are on the railing and he’s looking in the distance, his shirt stretched tight across his back, marking his shoulder blades. He yawns once and rubs his eyes, she knows he will now ask her for a drink.
‘Will you get me a drink from downstairs?’ he says and she says yes, goes down the steps, she can feel her hands rub against the wall, it’s much warmer here, she enters the house, it’s dark, she switches the lights on and then she walks into the kitchen.
She picks out two ice cubes from the deep freeze, puts them into a steel glass, she can see her name engraved on it.
She remembers the old man who came every afternoon into the neighbourhood, stopped for a while to look at the pigeons in the oil mill, and then shouted something she then couldn’t make out.
One day Mother called him upstairs, gave him her small steel glass. ‘The little girl wants her name on her glass,’ he said and still smiling, he patted her on the head.
She watched him take a little hammer out of a small leather bag and a steel pen. He then sat down on the floor, spread his legs and held her little glass between his two feet, his toe leaving giant smudges on the rim. But she didn’t mind as he hammered the steel pen, dot after dot, and she saw her name appear on the steel, letter by letter. The job done, he wiped the glass against his trousers. ‘Go get two rupees from your mother,’ he said.
She pours the drink into the glass, she can hear the crackle as it hits the ice. She walks up the stairs again, this time looking at her shadow riding up the wall, the cold makes her shiver. It will be better now, she thinks as she reaches the terrace landing, his mother is not here, fewer clothes have to be ironed.
When she steps onto the terrace, he’s standing near the edge now pointing to a red-brick building, she can see only its top floor and that too just a part of the top floor, a long corridor, lit by one tube light, with several doors, all locked. It reminds her of books, in line on library shelves. The tubelight flickers.
‘Can you see that red building?’ he says, taking the drink and then, sipping it, he makes a noise. ‘That’s my school,’ he says.
‘It’s very difficult to get admissions there now. I went there last week and met the Principal,’ he says, still looking at the red building. ‘I am a former student so they treated me as a special case. I told them I wanted my child admitted there.’
His drink is almost over, he passes her the glass and she holds it not knowing whether she can go now. She turns back to head for the stairs, she can feel the cold of the steel in her hands, one ice cube is still there, unmelted.
‘Where do you think you are going?’ he says. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said, that’s where I wanted to send my child. And now what do I tell the Principal?’
She smiles at him, she can feel the wind in her sari again. She looks over his shoulder, away from the school he’s pointing to, to another terrace of another house down the street. She can see a woman hanging clothes out to dry, she hears them flap, so late in the night it’s surprising, a child looks at the woman and then plays with what looks, from this distance, like a red cricket ball.
‘Get me another drink,’ he says. ‘That’s the least you can do.’
‘Yes,’ she says and she turns.
How should we end this story? We could have her go down to get him the second drink, hear the crackle as it hits the ice in the steel glass, climb the stairs again and listen to him talk about the school, the child she couldn’t give him.
Or we could end it like this:
She returns with the drink, he doesn’t even hear her footsteps, he’s looking out, far away, at the lights on Park Street and she walks closer towards him, the glass in her hand. She bends down, puts the glass on the terrace, she will need both hands, his back is turned, the first drink must have blunted his senses since he can’t hear or feel that she is only two feet away.
Suddenly there is a scream which no one will hear, a body, dressed in a white shirt and grey trousers, white socks and black shoes, falls into the lane which not many people use since it’s more like a dumping ground, choked with garbage from the buildings nearby.
Dry garbage, the kind which doesn’t begin to smell and, therefore, need not be cleared in a hurry: old newspapers, scraps of iron and broken furniture. So no one hears the body fall except for a cat which scurries away in fright.
After a while, even the cat returns, the blood congeals around the head, nothing moves as the night grows heavier and floods the lane with darkness washing away whatever chance there is for a stranger to discover the body.
A little later, a red handkerchief, folded neatly, falls from the terrace and halfway down a bit of it opens out, continues to fall, veering just a few inches from its path because of a light wind.
It comes to rest on the body, on his leg, inches above the knee and my sister walks down, free at last. There’s a taxi waiting and she tells the driver to take her to what was once her home, in the neighbourhood where the pigeons lie sleeping in their cage.
GIRL TALK
‘You should have seen their faces,’ she says.
‘What about their faces?’ I ask.
She begins to laugh.
It’s an April afternoon, so hot that it’s not yet four, and from the balcony I have already seen two people whose slippers stuck to the tar on the street making them trip.
The nor’westers are late. The rain must have lost its way in the hills, deliberately, she says. The winds must have got bored stiff travelling the same route, the same sky, the same sea, year after year, and that’s why this time they have decided to take a break.
We have closed the windows, she has wet two towels, draped one on each of the curtains. The ceiling fan is on, we have also set up a table fan which keeps moving from right to left, from left to right.
‘Why do you need two fans?’ I ask.
‘Water evaporates, you idiot,’ she says. ‘It makes the room cool.’
She laughs, sh
e laughs so hard that her eyes close, I can see her chest rise and fall, she throws back her head, I can see her neck, her hair, her teeth. The laugh crinkles her face, makes her cheeks almost touch her eyes. If I shut off the sound, it would seem she’s crying, because I can even see the water collecting in her eyes.
I have never seen her laugh like this before, she now bends over, from the waist, holding on to the armrests of the cane chair, her hair falling over her face, I can see her eyes again, through the black strands, closed.
‘You should have seen their faces,’ she says.
‘Stop laughing and tell me the story,’ I say, mock angry, mock irritated.
And she purses her lips, makes a face, gets up from the chair and says she needs to take a break. She walks out of the room.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask.
She doesn’t answer, just flings the drapes aside. I can hear her cough in the next room.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask, a bit worried at the sudden silence of her laughter.
And at that moment, she walks in. ‘I have wiped the laugh off my face,’ she says and she smiles. ‘Now I can tell you the story.’
‘How did you do that?’ I ask.
‘I remembered,’ she says. ‘But first, let me tell you what I told them.’ And she begins.
* * *
There are four of us at the office. One, Two, Three, and myself, all pregnant, and every day, from Monday to Saturday, at one thirty in the afternoon, we sit down in the lunch room, at the same table, unpack our steel tiffin boxes, have lunch, and tell stories of our mothers-in-law. All of us, except me. I keep quiet. Because I have no problems with my mother-in-law. They want to know the secret but I evade the question.
One says her mother-in-law sleeps until 10 a.m. while she has to get up at five in the morning, do the dishes from the previous night, boil the water, make tea, knead the flour, make chapattis for her husband’s tiffin, his father’s breakfast, then serve bed tea, take her bath, wash her husband’s dirty socks, iron his office clothes, supervise the maid as she sweeps and scrubs the floors, ensure that the scrubwater has a few drops of Dettol, then dress up, run downstairs so that she can get the chartered bus to the office. And the moment One enters home at around 5.30 p.m., it starts again: cooking dinner, washing up, serving the food, wiping the dining table while the mother-in-law watches TV, father-in-law belches trying to read the day’s newspaper, husband is asleep or with friends from office at some club, drunk, while she throws up at night, the baby moving inside. It better be a son, says One’s mother-in-law.
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