‘Ah, you’ve heard then.’ He pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘My wife . . . she died of complications from a fever caused by a mosquito bite. Two days was all it took. She was well on Monday, gone by Thursday. And I . . .’ His eyes shine wetly, ‘For a while I sank into depression. Not eating. Not talking. Barely managing to survive. And then one of my students came here, a little boy who said he missed me, and that nobody else could teach quite like I did.’ He rubs his forehead, takes a breath. ‘I dragged myself back to work. And among those children, their innocence and their enthusiasm, I found myself again. A version of myself in any case.’ He sighs deeply. ‘My wife . . . she adored children, dreamed of having a houseful someday . . . Anyhow, on my way home from school, one evening, I noticed the emaciated children of the slums begging for food . . . And here I was with my cottage and money and food I didn’t want to eat. And so, I started giving it away, to help those kids.’
He smiles, a gentle, sad smile that makes me ache.
‘People say I am good. Pshaw. Stuff and nonsense. The fact is, I am selfish. I do it for myself. It gets me through the days, and gives me a reason for living.’ He nods at me. ‘Now, I’ve never been this honest with anyone in the first few moments of meeting with them. You’re a great listener Sharda. I hope you’ll be just as good a housekeeper, if you decide to take the job, that is?’ He smiles and this time the sadness is confined to the corners of his eyes.
I go with my instincts and nod, hoping I am not making a terrible mistake. ‘The villagers won’t be happy,’ I say.
We’ll make a right pair won’t we? You the saint and me the sinner, in their eyes.
‘Not that my housekeeper is any of their business but I know what you mean.’ He rubs his hands together. ‘We’ll convince them otherwise. I like a good challenge.’
Kushi stirs, whimpers.
‘Come and see the house and then you can decide,’ he says, ushering me to the door.
He fumbles with the key, and then we are inside, in the foyer smelling of neglect and knowledge, books everywhere, the damp, delightful scent of books.
I breathe in deep. I picture days after my work is done, sitting down and reading, Kushi playing beside me, working my way down all these haphazard piles, my idea of heaven. I lean against the doorjamb, lightheaded suddenly. Is it really this easy? I feel tears sting my eyes. Why now, I think, when everything for once, is working my way.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘Well,’ he says and I see that beneath his beard he is blushing. I have embarrassed him. ‘You can cook, can’t you? I didn’t think to ask.’
And I smile through my tears and then I am laughing and Kushi looks up at me and then her lips lift upwards and I say, ‘Look, she is smiling! Her first smile!’ and I am awed.
I am blessed.
A procession of villagers comes to my employer’s house. They call him ‘Sir’ and make it their duty to tell him their version of my story: a malign, shameless vamp, who takes advantage of honest men.
Sir nods and tells them that he knows and then he invites them in and asks them to partake of the food I have cooked and they leave singing my praises, saying they have never tasted anything like it.
Bit by bit, I am accepted into the reluctant folds of the village. My name is not uttered in the same breath as ‘slut’. Instead I am the woman whose fingers work magic, the fabulous cook who works for Sir, isn’t he lucky? And in time, with the inevitable fading of collective memory, I become Kushi’s parent, the mother of the amiable child who smiles adorably at everyone.
On my first day at the job, I tell my employer my story, the whole, unabridged truth.
‘I’d heard of you,’ he says. ‘Everybody around here has heard of the local girl who got first rank in PUC. I understood from the papers that you were going to study medicine.’ And then, after a pause, his kind eyes earnest, ‘Would you like to continue with your medical degree? I could loan you the money.’
Tears flood my eyes at his generosity. ‘I . . .’ I fiddle with my sari pallu.
‘I mean it,’ he says and I look up. ‘You’re so talented. It’s a loan you know, you can pay me back in time . . . ’
‘Thank you so much, Sir,’ I rub my eyes with the pallu of my sari. ‘But I’ll say no for now.’
‘Think about it,’ he says. ‘I think you’d make an excellent doctor.’
But I know it is not going to happen, Ma. That ship has passed. Kushi is now my life. I’ll concentrate on bringing her up, making her into the woman I wasn’t, the woman Puja tried so hard to be: modern and fearless and unbound by tradition, unafraid to take on the world.
Kushi grows a little every day. She’s recently started to crawl and she roams the house on all fours, a delightful, delighted little thing, always laughing, extremely sociable, charming all and sundry, so much like her mother.
The stain of my arrival in this village, the stink of scandal has been chased away by the fragrance of my cooking. This is my calling, I realise. Cooking has always made me happy; it is when I feel closest to you. Seeing others savour and enjoy what I have prepared gives me great joy.
Also, I am beginning to have feelings for Sir. Or I should say Naresh, as that’s what he’s asked me to call him.
‘I call you Sharda, so please call me Naresh,’ he’s said, flashing his earnest smile at me.
I respect Naresh and admire him. He is a man who has tasted sorrow, survived loss, a man who cares, a man who reads, a man with principles, a man I am growing to love.
When Kushi is almost a year old, Nilamma passes away, quietly in her sleep, having never quite recovered from the smoke inhalation.
One evening, a month or so after the cremation, as I am cooking potato bondas for Naresh’s tea, he asks me to marry him.
‘I love you, Sharda,’ he says. ‘You’re the strongest and most intelligent woman I know. I admire you more than anyone I’ve ever met. You take what life throws at you and make the best of it. You have this elastic and unparalleled capacity to love. You’re fiercely loyal and so perfectly wonderful . . . ’
‘I’m not,’ I say, tears streaming down my cheeks and dripping onto my sari blouse. ‘I . . . I’m not worthy of your love . . . I’ve made so many mistakes. My sister . . . I . . . ’
‘You’re only human,’ he says softly. ‘I’d have done the same.’
‘I doubt . . .’
But before I can get another word out, he comes and puts his arms around me and then he lifts my face and kisses me on the mouth.
Kushi toddles up to us while I am still breathless with wonder, and savouring that wonderful kiss that tasted of heaven. It is the flavour I aim for every time I cook and never get quite right; the taste of love, of being loved.
Kushi squats on her bottom and lifts her arms. She looks right at Naresh. ‘Da,’ she says, ‘Dada.’
And Naresh raises an eyebrow at me and says, ‘Well, she’s made up her mind, at least, and much faster than you too.’
I laugh and I’m crying and he hoists Kushi up and he puts his arms around me, gathering us both in his embrace.
Kushi looks at Naresh and says, ‘Da,’ and she looks at me and says, ‘Ma.’
She touches my eyes and puts her hand to her mouth before either of us can say anything, and her face scrunches up in a look of pure disgust. She opens her mouth, sticks her tongue out and blows raspberries to get rid of the tang of salt.
Both Naresh and I burst out laughing, and her mouth, puckered up to cry, relaxes, and she smiles, brings her palms together and claps, a trick she’s recently learned.
And I look at the three of us grouped in Naresh’s strong arms in the warm kitchen aromatic with hot oil and roasted spices and think, We’re a family.
I will not dwell on what will happen if Puja decides to come back and claim Kushi. I will live in the present, with this man who loves me and this girl who has claimed Naresh and me for her own and who lives up to her name and fills our lives with such
kushi, untold happiness.
KUSHI
THE HUMBLE SKIN OF AN ONION
When I read the bit where Ma finds a baby under the mango tree, I am intrigued. Where is this child?
I find out soon enough.
I set down the letters very carefully. They waver and dance before my eyes. The cracked ceiling sways and then rights itself. A lizard hugs the wall. It flicks its tongue at me.
Bile threatens, sluggish, bitter. Nausea heaves; my stomach cringes from the truth it is finding so hard to swallow, from the earthy scent of betrayal and the musty odour of exposed secrets.
I try and fail to reconcile the familiar contours of Ma’s beloved face, conjured up by my stunned mind, with this new knowledge that is burning a hole inside me, the words that I’ve just read, that are percolating through my brain like stones sinking to the bottom of a jar of water.
How can you look like the woman I’ve known and loved when you’ve revealed yourself to be someone completely different?
I thought I could rely on Ma. She was my constant. My knowledge of her, the one rigid certainty in this lopsided world.
I remember the time my classmate Sonia told me how she had seen Guru’s wife drowning the kittens from her cat’s litter in a gunny bag, and described at length their pitiful mews as they sank in the lake.
‘But my ma told me that they were all given away,’ I’d insisted, ‘and my ma doesn’t lie.’
‘I saw them,’ Sonia said. ‘Guru’s wife put them in a gunny bag, tied it with a string and then threw it in the lake. I heard their mewling.’
‘Ma doesn’t lie,’ I’d yelled then. ‘My ma doesn’t lie. You must have seen some other kittens,’ my voice breaking, barely shy of a whisper.
‘You don’t lie, Ma,’ I murmur now, realising, even as I say so that what I had held all my life to be the truth—my mother’s honesty—is a lie. My world, already askew, has now upended.
I root around for anger. I find none. Just numbness, shock, and . . . understanding.
Everything suddenly makes sense: why she never told me about Puja; why she kept her past hidden, why she lied. My beloved mother who taught me to value honesty, to be a stickler for truth.
It is like looking through a microscope. I did that once when Da—Da? But what else can I call him?—brought me to the science museum here in Palmipur. At first, I could not make out anything at all through the lens. Then, Da adjusted the focus and I could see, so clearly, all the intricate patterns gracing the humble skin of an onion.
I was amazed, stupefied. For once, I was tongue-tied.
Da teased me about it all the way back.
‘You witnessed one miracle and I another,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you to the museum again just to experience the phenomenon of you not talking for more than a minute.’
You should look at me now, Da. I am rendered speechless, completely mute, by a few squiggly words penned onto ageing paper.
I feel as if I am enclosed in a weird balloon that encompasses this mind-numbing knowledge that has tilted my world, toppled it, and it seems as if the moaning and groaning of patients, the scurrying and tending, soothing and ministering of nurses is happening outside, in the ordinary world which hasn’t been warped by this comprehension, this befuddling awareness.
I imagine walking away from here, putting one foot in front of the other, my stride lengthening until I am running, stumbling out of the hospital, with its overpowering smells of medicine and illness and death, and out into the crisp, precipitation-laden coolness of a summer’s night.
I want to open my mouth and inhale huge gulps of ordinary air that tastes of dew-seasoned jasmine buds, as if the very act of doing so will take me into before, when I was healthy and whole, when all I was concerned with were my studies and my causes, when I was not scared and defeated and hooked to machines, when I was not awaiting a kidney from . . . from my mother.
RAJ
A GOD WITH AN ELEPHANT HEAD
The taxi driver jumps out, leaving the engine running, and lifting his hand, he slaps the boot hard.
Raj’s mum flinches as if it is she who has been hit.
Raj looks at her, this woman he has lived with all his life and never knew. This woman who has been hiding a whole other life so carefully under that accomplished, brittle veneer. This woman who had suffered ostracism and endured disgrace, lost her parents and given birth by the time she was only slightly older than he is now. This woman who has been through the wringer and emerged, perhaps not whole, but emerged nonetheless and managed to survive by sheer dint of will.
His mother.
The driver hits the boot of the car again.
‘What’re you doing?’ Raj asks.
The driver grins, yellow, toothless, as, with another hefty thump, the boot yawns open.
‘Third time lucky, always,’ he says as he hefts their suitcase from the boot.
Ellie, Raj thinks, I wish you could see this.
Raj’s mum turns and looks at the hospital building, taking in the shrine at the entrance, a god with an elephant head, bedecked with garlands and exuding the scent of sandalwood and incense. The next minute she’s standing in front of the shrine, her eyes closed, hands folded in supplication and lips moving earnestly in prayer.
‘Mum,’ Raj nudges after a bit. ‘You’ve got to pay the driver.’
‘Oh,’ his mother rummages in her bag and takes out some notes. ‘Keep the change,’ she tells the driver.
The taxi driver’s eyes light up as he counts the notes and pockets them. Thanking Puja profusely and, flashing another yellow grin, he drives away in a blizzard of dust, giving a grateful wave and an ear-splitting honk on the horn—the only part of his unsteady jalopy that properly works.
Although dusk has already painted the sky the colour of ripe grapes, the heat is unrelenting, moist, and clings to Raj’s skin, leaching into his very soul.
Hawkers compete with each other in yelling the benefits of their offerings, a last-ditch attempt to sell their wares before they pack up for the day. Specks of grime swirl in the spiced air.
Fisherwomen walk past, nattering busily while simultaneously chewing what looks like spittle-flecked red gloop. Their hips swaying with natural grace, they heft their almost empty baskets on their heads; fish scales glint where they have stuck to skin and cloth.
Men mill around beside a small lean-to, sipping sunset coloured tea from minuscule tumblers, and biting into orange coated snacks that the vendor serves straight from the spluttering oil of a giant frying pan.
‘What did you do with the baby?’ Raj asks. The question that has been building on his lips, sitting on his tongue, is finally out. ‘Mum?’
A bus trundles up to the bus stop opposite and wheezes to a rickety stop, sounding like an arthritic old man.
A pall falls across his mum’s face, like clouds hijacking the sun.‘I loved her so much. I ached to hold her. But I didn’t so much as touch her. I did not want to blot her with my imperfect love.’
‘Her.’
‘Yes. I asked Sharda to name her Kushi, in the letter I left with her. I hoped the name would be the herald of good things to come for her. It was so hard to stay away. But I did. I did not so much as call to find out how she was doing. I had left her with Sharda because I’d thought I was doing the best by her. But sometimes I worried that I had limited her life by leaving her behind. I wanted to know if she too yearned to escape the village, if she too was bound by the constraints I had been. I wanted to know if she was happy, if her life had lived up to the name I had given her. I wanted to watch her grow. I wanted to hold her close and not let go.’ A quivering breath escapes her. ‘I did nothing. I didn’t dare keep in touch. I did not want to selfishly uproot her life, the life I had bequeathed her by giving her away, just because I yearned for her. I’d made my decision. I stuck to it. But it’s eaten away at me, I realise now. Talking to you, telling you the story of my past, it’s opened my eyes. That decision, it affected me, changed me and by exte
nsion, it affected you too, Raj. It’s reduced me to this person who couldn’t love. This shell.’
‘Kushi is your daughter?’
‘She is.’
‘That’s why you are here. That’s why you couldn’t say no to your sister.’
He gets it now. Finally he understands why his mother dropped everything to come here. He’d thought it was because of her sister, had surmised Sharda had some sort of hold on his mother.
But it was Kushi all along. His mother’s first born child. Her daughter. His sister.
‘You’ll give her your kidney.’ It is not a question.
‘I’d give her my heart if that’s what was needed to save her.’ Her eyes glitter like frost ornamenting a winter’s night, ‘I’d do the same for you.’
And somehow, despite all that’s gone before, despite their rocky past, he knows she would too.
He does.
PUJA—AFTER
HOW TO BEGIN AGAIN
With some of the money from the sale of the bangles, Puja buys a bus ticket to Mumbai.
In the bus, the old woman sitting next to her asks, ‘Where in Mumbai are you staying, child?’
The word ‘child’ conjures up wispy hair, wiggling limbs, a comma shaped bundle held out to her by the wise woman: ‘Your child needs you. Here.’
Puja closes her eyes, and tries to will the image away. When she opens them, the old woman is waiting patiently for an answer. Her benevolent eyes seem to peer into Puja’s soul.
Through the window, fields and coconut trees smothered in the charcoal tipped shroud of impending night rush past, dizzy silhouettes swaying, taking her towards a future she cannot fathom, and a life she doesn’t want.
‘I plan to stay in a hostel somewhere, initially, until I find a job.’ She manages.
‘It’s a big city, child. You need to have a plan,’ the woman’s voice is gentle. She picks up her bag, rummages through it, takes a pen and, tearing a page out of a small green address book, copies something out onto it. ‘Here, this is the number for the Ursuline Nuns’ convent in Dadar. They take on girls as paying guests.’
A Sister's Promise Page 24