Diddi

by Ira Pande

  ‘What a lucky man you are, brother,’ Shivsagar’s inseparable mate, Badri, used to say. ‘Still a few years for you to retire and here you are, like a tiger who has polished off a kill and is now sitting on a boulder, licking his satisfied chops. Look at me! The light of my life earns four thousand, I’m told, but do you think he ever sends me a penny? I hear he is off abroad now. Says he’ll return one day but take it from me, brother, an arrow and a son who goes abroad never return!’

  Badri was not wrong. Shivsagar’s elder son, Akhil, had been gone for seven years this summer—and did he return? He came once but how could he stay in a village now, after all the comforts he was accustomed to? They say that there they even have a gadget for sweeping the floors! He spent some time with one brother, some with another, some at his wife’s parents’—with all those who lived in cities. What had his father’s mud-plastered village home to attract him there?

  ‘See this, Babuji?’ he’d shown him a gadget. ‘This is an electric shaver. I’d show you how it works but there is no electricity in your village.’ Shivsagar nearly said, ‘Do you remember the time when all of you were taken to the village barber who was instructed to cut the hair so short that you would not have to come there for another month? And the barber’s fee? An anna and a half!’

  He’d brought a wristwatch for his father, along with a few bars of soap and some blades. For his mother there was a huge shapeless pullover that could have covered three women like her. Those gifts were still lying unwrapped in a tin trunk. He’d come for a day, and alone. The children had been left abroad— ‘It’s too expensive to buy tickets for everyone, Amma,’ he explained to his mother. ‘Let me earn a little more, and I’ll bring them.’

  They were still waiting for that day. Shivsagar sighed as he remembered ominous signs he’d noticed in their first-born in his childhood. Every morning, Shivsagar would make the boys write compositions to improve their language and vocabulary. Akhil would slyly cheat from his brothers and produce his work triumphantly. When someone called Justice Mishra came with a proposal for Akhil offering his daughter’s hand, Shivsagar thought he was dreaming. Poor Shivsagar trembled with fear at the thought of welcoming a daughter-in-law whose father was a judge of the high court. He never realized then that it wasn’t his humble home that had attracted the big man’s notice but the brilliant son he had produced. So where was the question of the judge’s daughter staying with her parents-in-law? She unrolled a magic carpet and both the son and his wife flew far away to another land.

  Amit was the second son. Shivsagar had pawned Parvati’s gold and jewellery to scrape together the fees for Amit when he qualified for the IIT. The day Amit passed out of the IIT, Justice Mishra swooped like an eagle and before Shivsagar had realized it, he snatched his second son away as well. Gita and Rita, the two Mishra sisters, had decided long ago that they would live abroad and that is where they were now, with Shivsagar’s sons. The third son qualified for the civil services and Shivsagar’s ears were deafened by the clamour of the dowry that was offered. Lakhs of money, a flat, a car and god knows what. Before Shivsagar could even consider the mountain of letters before him, his son settled the issue for him. He had been allotted the Tamil Nadu cadre and his first posting was in a remote subdivision. Jaundice struck him within a few days and he refused to inform his parents of his illness. Perhaps if he had warned them, he would have been saved. He admitted himself into the local hospital and fell in love with the Malayali nurse who looked after him. Shivsagar almost died of shock when he received a telegram that informed him of his son’s marriage to an unknown girl from Kerala.

  ‘You are dead for me,’ Shivsagar wrote back. ‘I forbid you to attend our cremation. Don’t ever show me your face again.’ He marched furiously to the postbox to mail the letter himself, his nostrils pinched with anger. Then he spat at the box and marched home. That was when he turned to Parvati for comfort—he no longer had the energy to bear his woes alone.

  She saw him tearing the offending telegram and, taking in her husband’s furious face, asked anxiously, ‘What does it say? Is all well? No bad news I hope?’

  ‘Yes,’ he yelled back. ‘It is terrible news. Amit is dead!’

  ‘Hé Ram, Hé Ram,’ said Parvati and fainted dead away, exactly as a leech melts when you sprinkle salt on it. ‘Parvati! Parvati!’ he called out as he bent over her motionless body. Her pupils had retreated into her eyelids when he lifted them and her face was bloodless. Shivsagar panicked—Parvati’s body was stone cold. O God, had she died of heart failure? If she left him at this age, who would take care of him? All his life he had kicked her away as if she was a mangy dog but faced with the prospect of a lonely life without her soothing presence, he lost his head completely. Not that his contrition did not have a touch of selfishness, for he knew that if he lost her no one would even throw a chapatti at him. Not one of his five sons was worth leaning on, except perhaps Chutke. He picked her up and put her inert body on the bed, rubbed her hands and feet vigorously but Parvati did not stir.

  When nothing seemed to work, he ran to his friend Badri’s house to fetch him. Badri had never been able to forgive his stone-hearted friend for humiliating his wife, yet the two had remained friends from school onwards, despite their different opinions on everything. Shivsagar would never swear or curse, not even in anger. Badri, on the other hand, began and ended each sentence with colourful abuses. He carried no burden on his shoulders—his only son had abandoned him and his wife had died many years ago. Badri ate and lived as he pleased—he drank, smoked and ate meat with no guilt. He accompanied Shivsagar every Tuesday to the local Hanuman temple but scrupulously avoided going in. ‘Fat and free,’ he was fond of saying, ‘I live as I please.’ For seventy years this was his mantra— he cared neither about the past nor worried about his future. After he broke off with his son, he never kept in touch with him and lived on his small pension. If he ever needed help, he went to his friend, Shibu.

  ‘What’s happened? Tell me the truth, bastard,’ Badri said when he saw Shivsagar and ran to his house with him. Shivsagar fell on his wife’s inert body and began to sob like a child. ‘Forgive me, Parvati,’ he cried. ‘I have really tortured you. I am a butcher, Parvati, a butcher,’ he sobbed. Badri watched his taciturn friend for a while and then said briskly, ‘A butcher you may have been, idiot, but what is past is past. Here, help me lift her body to the floor. Go fetch some Gangajal and some kush.’ The two heaved Parvati’s body to the floor and then, to Badri’s utter surprise, Shivsagar fell on his wife’s body and began to kiss it madly— her bloodless lips, her temples, hair, forehead and feet.

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ Badri asked him. ‘You will hurt her spirit if you go on like this!’ and shook his friend’s shoulder. ‘Sit here quietly while I go and inform the others. We’ll have to take her to the ghat soon and it’s going to pour any minute from the look of those clouds outside.’ Then he glanced at Parvati’s body one last time and said wonderingly, ‘Look! Look! She is breathing! Hai Ram, we were going to commit a hideous crime just now, Shibu! In fact, I was just wondering how a satilakshmi like her could have died on such an inauspicious day— today is Amavasya, the moonless night. Look, Shibu, just keep this between us, all right? Don’t ever breathe a word of this to anyone, not even to your wife, understand? She will never forgive us. I’ll quickly go home and fetch some malti-basant my father left me and we’ll give it to her with some hot milk. Bappa used to say, Badri, even a corpse on his pyre will rise if you put a few drops of my malti-basant in his mouth!’

  They gave her the magic potion and sat vigil over her all night. Shivsagar did not even bat an eyelid and, slowly, Parvati’s breathing became stronger and more regular. Badri turned to his friend and slapped his back. ‘Go, salé, make some strong tea for us. The cold has frozen my ribs, I swear. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to bhabhi now,’ he added as he saw Shivsagar hesitate.

  Shivsagar had never even boiled water in his life, let alone made tea. His hands
fumbled as he boiled the water and then went hunting for the tea—god knows where Parvati kept it! He burned his fingers as he poured it into two glasses and his eyes filled up with tears of self-pity. How helpless he was without Parvati, he realized. If she had died today, what would have happened to him? Parvati’s eyes were still closed when he returned with the tea but her breathing had improved.

  ‘Wait, you son of a bitch, I’ll tell your wife everything when she comes round. I’ll tell her what you did to her when we placed her on the floor!’ Badri said naughtily and noisily slurped his tea.

  ‘What did I do?’ Shivsagar asked haughtily but his hollow cheeks had a suspicious pink tinge.

  ‘Oh ho, so you don’t know what you did, is it?’ Badri went on, enjoying his friend’s discomfiture. ‘Aji, if I hadn’t been here, I can tell you that you would have given the pootonwali a sixth son tonight!’

  And thus the night that had begun so tragically ended with both the friends laughing at themselves as they remembered the past. They had several more rounds of tea, and slowly Shivsagar unbent his spine to relax.

  ‘I’ll be off now,’ Badri said finally. ‘Don’t worry, Shibu, your wife has come back from the dead. Now, make up for all your past cruelty and spend your old age undoing the lapses of your youth. Make your old woman lie on a bed of flowers from now on and beg her to forgive you for the past.’ And this is exactly what Shivsagar did from that day on. He made up for every hurt, every cruelty he had ever inflicted on Parvati. She had suddenly aged and was now so frail that she could not even move about without aid. Shivsagar helped her sit up in bed, lovingly sponged her face and then hovered around while she bathed. Then, he would feed her porridge made by him and ask her to forgive him with every morsel he fed her.

  ‘You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you, Parvati? If you don’t then I know that even god won’t,’ he said to her.

  Parvati watched him with her limpid eyes from the bed. Was this really her husband speaking or was this a dream? If this is a dream, then please god, she prayed, may I remain here in this bed forever listening to him. Her emotional exile from his life had ended, she thought in wonder, and now her every wish was his command. ‘I went mad with anger that day, Parvati,’ Shivsagar went on. ‘Even in my wildest dreams I had never imagined that my own son would bring such shame to our family. Do you know his wife is a Christian girl? His friend wrote and informed me of this wonderful fact!’

  ‘Why do you take it to heart?’ she replied in her soft, serene way. ‘This must have been His will. Our son must have done something terrible in his last birth.’

  Shivsagar looked at his wife in astonishment—there was no regret, no anger in that fathomless gaze. What gave her this extraordinary serenity? Parvati’s only regret now was that she was confined to bed and no longer capable of looking after her husband. It pained her to see him struggle to knead the dough and roll the chapattis for their meal. Let me die, she prayed, with my head in his lap and please protect him from any further pain the boys may inflict.

  The next month, however, brought more bad news and their fourth son, a doctor, flew the coop. She had always known that doctors prefer to marry their own kind, but could he not have found a wife within their own community? He could have told his father, couldn’t he? To make matters worse, they heard that his father-in-law was languishing in jail on some murder charge. Thank god, the two went off abroad soon after they were married. Now all that was left was Chutke. This time, thought Shivsagar grimly, I’ll not be caught napping. His son was in the Academy in Mussoorie, undergoing training after clearing the civil services exam. Badri had already warned him: ‘Just remember, brother, that Mussoorie is like a huge auction, like the cattle fair at Sonepur. Either the girls there themselves entice these young boys or their parents do it. And then, Chutke is the least worldly-wise of your sons. Remember that the frightened swimmer drowns easily. Take my advice, find him a girl of your choice and clinch the matter right away. They can get married after his training is over.’

  Shivsagar followed this sage advice but, once more, fate cheated him. Sometimes, he thought ruefully, if you make sure that you have bought the best pitcher for your home, you discover there is a leak that you missed. This is what happened with Chutke. Chutke had always been the most timid of his sons. Brilliant, yes, but terrified of his father. If he ever came back with 99 marks out of 100 in his maths paper and Shivsagar roared, ‘Why didn’t you get 100 marks, Chutke?’ the poor boy lost his voice in terror. This time, too, when he told Chutke sternly, ‘I have found a match for you and you will get married this Baisakh,’ Chutke said nothing. He didn’t even ask, ‘Who is she? Is she educated or will she walk around like Amma hidden behind a veil?’ Shivsagar thought he had found the perfect girl for his son. She was fair, pretty, slender as a reed and educated in a convent. Badri’s brother-in-law played the matchmaker and found out that her father was a high-ranking police officer who had taken premature retirement but still a man of a stately presence. On Shivsagar’s request, he had hired a house in the neighbouring town and Shivsagar went there for the wedding. He felt he could not ask his new daughter-in-law’s posh family to come to his humble village house. Deliberately, he did not invite the two sons he had disowned but even the two he invited failed to turn up. One wrote that he was unwell and the other said his wife was ill. ‘I know what this illness is, Parvati,’ he sighed. ‘If they had come, I would have felt ten feet taller before Chutke’s new family.’

  Chutke’s wife came once to the village and then never again. God knows how long ago that was—so long ago that now Chutke even had a touch of grey at his temples. He’d sent a photo of the family—his slender wife was now as round as a drum, yet Chutke wrote how she was forever ill. Every third year, like an exotic rose bush, she went for a trimming course, or a surgery. Her gall bladder, appendix and her uterus had meant three surgeries. Shivsagar Mishra had been only once to see his son’s house. Chutke had just become a Collector.

  ‘Didn’t Amma come with you, Babuji?’ his daughter-in-law asked him sweetly. Shivsagar felt if he listened to her honeyed voice for too long, his blood sugar would rise.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why? Is she unwell?’

  ‘It’s just that I thought the old woman still goes around with her face veiled. She may not fit into your kind of life.’

  Shivsagar knew how to aim his barbs. He did not say, ‘Did you invite her? All you said was, Babuji, please come once to see my new home. What about the woman who kept you in her womb for nine months, son? Did she not merit a similar invitation?’ But he did not say all this. He knew his bullet had reached its target as he watched his son flush. Chutke was cut to the quick—of course, Babuji was right. How could he have forgotten his simple, loving mother! Time was when he butted the others away like an antler for the privilege of snuggling into her soft belly. There were just two people who still terrified the Collector—his father and his wife. Suppose his hot-tempered wife had insulted his mother? He dreaded to think of the furore his father would create.

  Chutke’s son, Anand, was studying in an English-medium school and his daughter in a convent. Shivsagar was most dissatisfied with what he made of their education. All he ever saw his grandson read were comics, with his mouth working round a gob of chewing gum.

  ‘Arre, why do you have to chew cud all the time like some buffalo, huh?’ he asked his grandson one day. The boy did not even look up from the comic that he was reading. Shivsagar sat at the breakfast table with Chutke and his wife, his temper slowly rising to boiling point as the boy repeatedly ignored his father’s pleas to join them. Chutke was familiar with his father’s anger and hoped he would not get up and slap the boy. But that is exactly what Shivsagar did. He gave a sound cuff to his grandson. How was he to understand that what he thought was a deliberate deafness is the hallmark of a new generation of children. If they have a comic in their hands, you can go blue in the face before you get even a grunt in response. Chutke was a veteran of several cuffs
from his father and never dared to question his authority. Not so his son.

  ‘How dare you!’ he yelled back. ‘Who do you think you are to slap me?’

  Faced with this brazen response, something snapped inside him and Shivsagar turned into the headmaster of a school who ruthlessly tanned disobedient students. ‘I’ll tell you who I am!’ he said grimly, and started raining blows on the child. Chutke’s wife pushed her chair and ran to snatch her son away from the hail of blows. She buried the child into her breast and turned to face him. ‘You are an animal,’ she spat at Shivsagar, ‘we do not beat our children in this house!’ Chutke sat with his head bowed, unable to say anything in defence of his wife or his father.

  ‘I see that,’ Shivsagar said with a sharp look at his son. ‘This is probably why you have a son like him. This boy is in the seventh class but can’t solve even a simple sum in arithmetic. He knows neither English nor Hindi. As for science, the less I say about that, the better. Tells me his father has given him a calculator so he doesn’t need to learn his tables! One day, when it’s too late to go back, you’ll realize that all these things have rusted his brain. Shame on you,’ he went on, ‘that you have not taught him the elementary niceties of talking respectfully to his elders and politely to the servants. Yesterday, when your orderly reached his school late to fetch him do you know what he said to him?’

  ‘What did I say?’ interrupted the brat rudely, advancing like a spitting cat from under his mother’s protective shield. Shivsagar felt if he could, the child would scratch his eyes out.

  ‘I can’t even bring my tongue to utter what you said,’ he told the child. ‘And when I offered to teach your pup,’ he spat at his son, still sitting motionless at the breakfast table, ‘your wife did not like it. I heard what she said to you in the veranda that evening, Chutke,’ he went on, ‘perhaps the poor thing did not see that I was reading the paper near the window and could hear every word.’