I forced myself to glance at her. Lipika's sad eyes looked pleadingly into mine. Her lip quivered Tears dripped on to her cheek but I was lost under an avalanche of disappointment and rejection. I could not respond. She pulled and pulled at me until I sank into a crouch beside her. Wet blobs sprang from my eyes. A torrent of sobbing shook me. With my free hand I covered my face and collapsed under the weight of my humiliation. The dignity that Sharmila had shown me to be so important slid away. My shield had gone. Lipika handcuffed her small arms around my neck to prevent us from melting away from each other in our distress. Of course, she still needed me but I had nothing left to give her. I lifted my head a moment to take a breath. Something caught my attention for just a second. Much simpler to ignore it, but Lipika had seen it too.
"Mummy, look!" Her face was all tears and excitement.
Someone called to me, Supriya, I think. I had forgotten her. I wanted her to go away. Maybe she would, if I satisfied her by responding. I could not hear what she said, but with an effort, I turned my head enough to follow where she pointed. Anil, Madhu, and Semanti were running towards us, weaving their way through passers-by and trailing the kite high above them. That yellow diamond, which bumped uselessly around, reminded me of myself. I swallowed hard and noisily. I nodded about to turn away when I saw Dinesh. He came hobbling towards me. Tarun jolted from side to side atop his shoulders, grasping handfuls of Dinesh's hair. Dinesh's huge anxious eyes swamped his face as he raced his awkward way forward. On reaching me he let Tarun slide away.
He began softly, "Manasa, why are you crying here all alone?" Anger edged into his tone as he pressed me for an answer. "Why have they left you here, like this, in the street?"
I looked coldly into his eyes, through a watery curtain of tears, and tightened my mouth against him.
"You're upset. Come and sit inside. Lipika, help mummy get up." He turned away, "Supriya make cha for us all."
My fury had ebbed away in my weeping. I let them take me inside.
"Where is mother?" He asked impatiently.
"With Kajal and Sanjay. They have gone back to the village. It is not too late for you to take the bus with them."
Silence. Dinesh must be working out how he could leave me without appearing to be the many-headed serpent he had turned out to be. Let him go then, but instead of leaving, he sat down. Supriya brought the cha and sat with us. Lipika threw herself across my lap anchoring me to my stall. Gently Supriya persuaded her and the other children to go outside with her to fly the kite. She knew Dinesh and I must be alone. When they'd gone I turned to Dinesh to see what he would say.
"It's true I am Sanjay's father but I'm also your husband. I'm still here because I want to stay with you."
"You must go. I cannot give you sons or even a daughter. Kajal can do that."
He gave me a hard look. "You have your daughter by Kajal's husband now she has a son by your husband."
I gasped. She had told him. I searched his face for what more he might not say but that I must know.
"You were not exclusive to me in the brothel and I tried to be understanding. I never demanded your faithfulness to me. That would have been impossible but why do you imagine I stayed away from you there? Some things were beyond my endurance. You did what you did. I have done what I have done." His voice grew husky. He added quietly "We've survived, haven't we? I wish it hadn't happened and I'm sorry but I can't change it."
"You are right." I snapped. "And we are equal as you wished us to be."
"You wished it too. Now we have to do our best to live it. I love you and I love my son, and I care for Kajal. I must, she's the mother of my son. And you will continue to care for Lipika, as you must."
Those words, so true, cut me to shreds. The relief of understanding was both good and bad. Had I been unaware of the pain I had expected him to bear, for my sake? He had not complained and I had not allowed myself to worry about him. There had been too much on my mind to consider his troubles then.
"Thank you for telling me so honestly." I mumbled. I straightened my back and took a small indignant sip from my cup.
He came and knelt beside me and took my hand. "I want you to be my wife. I want to stay with you always. Being equal hasn't been as easy as I'd expected it to be but I will never care for anyone else the way I do for you, Manasa Please don't turn away from me."
"Wait, you are making this far too simple." I pulled my hand away but he remained kneeling beside me. "You forget that Lipika was born before I knew you. Her father had promised to ask for me in marriage. He told me we were engaged and I believed him. I should have married before Kajal."
In a strange tone that I did not recognise, Dinesh asked, "What went wrong?"
"My father. It would have been cheaper for him to marry off the youngest daughter first. My extra work in the mill contributed to Kajal's dowry. My father was not a kind man. He treated each of us as an object of duty, something to twist or bend to whatever suited him best."
Softly Dinesh asked, "And you cared for this suitor who promised to marry you?"
I slumped forward resting my hands uselessly on the table in front of me. "At first, very much, dangerously and then it ended. All alone I gave birth to Lipika and ran away. He refused to marry Kajal, as father had arranged, so that ended badly too. I wish I could forget my father but bad things always lie in wait to remind me, always, always."
Dinesh pulled his stool close and sat down. We both drank our cha slowly, thoughtfully.
"Kajal didn't tell me all this. I didn't understand fully until now."
"That was her choice."
"We are so alike, Manasa. When you left me to return to Calcutta, after all we'd been through, it was just like my family banishing me from home again because you have become my home."
"But you agreed to it. I had to try to help Sharmila and her sons and it was for our sakes too that I went."
"But I could have gone. I told you I didn't want you to leave. You didn't listen to me. You risked everything to return to Calcutta for Sharmila but it took a catastrophe for you to leave Calcutta with me."
I paused to think. It was then that I began to understand how Kajal had been so lost, for it reflected exactly how I now felt. She and I were rafts tossed in the same storm, and the sheer loneliness and disbelief had sent identical shivers through us both. It had created a tidal wave that had swept us through chaos, and left us exhausted.
All those old feelings of loss and rebuff I once suffered from my father rushed back at me. Kajal had become the mother of my husband's child, a male child. The shock that followed drew those lonely rafts into a swirling current that drove us round and round each other, dizzily fixed on a central point that bound us in ever smaller circles. The only thing possible was for her to go; that was the only resolution that had any chance for either of us to find peace.
"Oh God! Oh God! Don't remind me about all of that."
"Manasa, what I've done was wrong. I know I was wrong. What shall I do?"
"There are never any answers, only struggles. I wish I could be a child again and not think or struggle like this any more. It is too much. I can't any more."
Dinesh pushed the cups aside and held my hands in his. "I wish the same. Children never make any difficulties like this. They forget their naughtiness so easily and just begin again, always smiling."
"We are not children, Dinesh. I cannot do that now."
"But you haven't been open and honest any more than I. That isn't the way to be equal."
"And measuring deed for deed is not enough without kindness."
"What shall we do then? I want always only you, Manasa, as my wife. Being kind to you will be easy. I'm sorry. I've done a terrible thing. If you choose, I shall not see my son nor Kajal again." He let out a long slow sigh and looked down at his feet, as if he had no hope of any reply from me.
"I always thought a happy marriage was simply one that was kind. It's so much harder than I realised." suppressing a yawn I stood up. "When
I have slept and I am rested shall we talk again? If there is a way to be together we must be clearer, and there must be more thought about how all the others will fit into our life too. I can't say more than that until I'm ready."
Dinesh raised his head inch by inch, as if he did not dare disturb any good will that had attached itself to him. He looked at me, and smiled a very careful sad smile, "thank you, Manasa."
THE END
(Approximately 86,000 words)
Copyright © 2011 Catherine Kirby
Sari Caste Page 26