Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  The men allowed themselves to be persuaded. For a while they let their women venture out, until one man caught his mate looking at another man’s wife. Thus came the second rule: ‘No man may look at a woman unless she is his wife, sister, mother or daughter. If a woman comes in his path, he must turn his back on her and let her pass.’

  But what male eye can impose such curbs on itself? Not to gaze at the delicate patterns of henna on a palm, or feel a certain heat when an upraised arm contours a breast? Not to raise your eyes to trail the tinkle of an anklet bell nor feel the need to caress the curve of buttocks swinging this way and that under the confines of a skirt?

  The leader, on his next trip to Arabipatnam, laughed himself silly. ‘You are becoming as moronic as these kafirs. In the beginning you were just blacksmiths, but now you are merchants. How do you expect to be successful traders when you are as blinkered as pack horses?’

  ‘What do we do then?’

  ‘Build alleyways for the women to use, connecting a side door or a kitchen door. The men will use the main entrances and the streets. The women will keep to the alleys. That way, they have their freedom and you yours. And what is this about “No strangers allowed here”? Won’t you allow my sons to come here after my time? To this town that I founded?’

  ‘Besides,’ the leader continued, ‘this is a growing community. We will need more and more supplies. Food, clothes, shoes. How are we going to get these if no strangers are allowed in here?’

  The men looked at one another in dismay. They hadn’t thought of this eventuality.

  ‘Rules are necessary. I agree we must segregate and protect what is our own. But I suggest we amend this one to “No strangers allowed beyond the Juma during the day and none may stay the night.” You can then choose who you invite into your home,’ the leader said, listing the rules on a piece of parchment.

  The rule was amended and the alleyways for women made. Two feet wide and paved with stone, these alleyways snaked through the town, connecting kitchen smells and bruised hearts.

  It was here, hemmed in by the alleys, that Saadiya, good girl, descendant of those ancient Kahirs and daughter of the leader of Arabipatnam, waited.

  Would he arrive on a stallion, like the prince in the stories Vaapa told her? Or would he sail in with a cargo of rubies, blue sapphires and emeralds, like the incomparable Malik?

  He would come, that much she knew.

  And so he did. On a bicycle.

  Early in the evening, the water carts entered the high gates of Arabipatnam. Behind them came the two men, the doctor leading the way.

  ‘Wait here,’ he told Seth, leaning his bicycle against a wall. ‘I will tell them we have arrived.’

  Sethu watched Dr Samuel walk towards a small mosque. He looked around him curiously.

  Shops lined the road, and in the shops and on the road were many people, all dressed in white. Even the little boys playing a game on one side of the road wore white and on their heads were skullcaps of white lace. When a jhutka went past, the pony, he saw, was adorned with white plumes. Sethu felt a smile tug at his lips. It was as if by entering the gates of Arabipatnam he had entered a storybook, where all was strange and echoed mystery. He felt a frisson of excitement and on the heels of it he realized that there wasn’t a single female in sight—child, girl or woman.

  Where were all the women?

  Saadiya stared at the square of blue above her head. Twenty feet by thirty feet. That was the measure of her sky, the peripheries of her life. She touched the grey walls of the terrace roof. Even if she stood on her toes, she couldn’t look over the wall. It stood a solid six feet and two inches high, making sure she would never see what was not meant for her eyes, ensuring that she was not visible to anyone. Saadiya felt what was by now a familiar sense of despair. Would she, like her sisters and every other woman born here, live and die hidden by these walls? Was there never to be a way out from here?

  She raised her eyes to the blue skies again. In Vaapa’s recounting of history, he spoke of the Marakars—the navigators who had sailed the blue seas and found their way here. ‘It is their blood that runs in our veins. Do you understand that? We are of pure Arab stock …not like these local “tulkans” who are Hindu converts. We are the descendants of the Prophet himself and it is our duty to safeguard the bloodline,’ he said again and again.

  Saadiya wanted to cry, ‘But Vaapa, don’t you see, if it is their blood that runs in our veins, then it is inevitable, the way I feel. There is a singing in my head that says, there is so much to see, so much to do, so much to know. It isn’t fair that you men get to go wherever you want, see and do whatever you like, and I am expected to be content with this patch of blue and this maze of alleys.’

  But Saadiya would never speak her thoughts. She was too much in awe of her father, her venerable Vaapa Haji Najib Masood Ahmed, one of the six chiefs of the town and its most respected man. How could she tell him what was right and wrong?

  Besides, Vaapa had been lenient enough with her. Her three elder sisters had been married off when they were thirteen. But here she was, fifteen and unmarried, and she even had a tutor who taught her Arabic. Vaapa was waiting for Akbar Shah’s second son to return from Hong Kong to fix her nikaah.

  Saadiya knew that the house next to theirs had already been bought and the deed made in her name. The workers had been brought in to make the repairs and when her groom arrived, she would be decked in her jewellery and wed to a man she had never seen. Her life would go on as it always had. Even the alley she used would be the same. The only change would be that she would exchange her patch of blue for a smaller one. Her new house wasn’t as big as her father’s.

  Saadiya thought of her father, and his stories. Vaapa was a raconteur. When he told a story, you listened, and you felt yourself become part of the story. His stories were always of men who sought distant lands, of travellers and their wondrous discoveries. Saadiya had her own favourite, second only to the story of the ten thousand horses.

  ‘There is a land far, far away, where it’s mostly night and seldom day. The cold would chill the marrow in the bones and turn even your hair into razor-sharp blades. That was how cold it was. All day, a stiff breeze laden with more ice than salt blew in from the sea and the people shivered in their homes. Since the sun never shone, there was no way of growing enough crops to feed everyone through the year. The people lived off the sea mostly. The men sailed their boats and went deep into the sea and when they returned they brought home enormous catches, enough to feed the entire village for many days. But some days the catch wasn’t so good, or the weather would be stormy and no one would dare sail into the sea. So what could they do then?

  ‘The boats were made of wood, and do you know what they did? They elongated the keel. Now, when they discovered that they had a bigger catch than usual, instead of throwing the extra fish back into the sea, they added an extra plank to the side of the boat and raised its height. They could carry a larger number of fish then. They called it the Plank of Avidity.’

  Saadiya loved that phrase. It represented all that she felt was true of life. Life demands of us that we have a Plank of Avidity. How can we have more if we don’t raise our expectations? How can we be content with just what we have and know? Even Vaapa, who was a teller of stories, was content with sailing the seas of imagination. But that wasn’t real. Reality was to be able to see, to touch, to hear, to feel, to sense, to know, to experience.

  Saadiya stared at her feet. Two days ago, in her sister Nadira’s home, she had seen a book. It was Nadira’s husband’s, acquired on his latest trip to Singapore. Saadiya couldn’t read the words, but there were pictures in it. Of places, blue seas and green hills. Of roads that ran endlessly and gardens that had no walls. Saadiya couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. They gave her yearning a greater edge, a sharper definition.

  Now she felt a great desire to look at the pictures again. She closed the terrace door and went into her room. The doors had several latches
and the windows were barred. Every night Zuleika, their servant, slept with her in this room. Before leaving the house, Saadiya locked the doors and closed the windows. In Arabipatnam, no one took chances.

  She pulled her burkha on. Its black swirls hid all of her, except her eyes.

  ‘I am going to Nadira’s,’ she told her grandmother and tip-toed out.

  Late in the afternoon, the alley that led from her door to Nadira’s was quiet. All the women were indoors. No man came this way; they were not allowed to. Saadiya looked around. There was no one. She took away the black fold of the cloth that covered her face and flung it on to her shoulder. Then she walked towards Nadira’s house. The door was shut. Saadiya thought of the book behind the door and decided to wait. Nadira would be back soon, she thought. And as Saadiya stood there, she felt a rogue desire pull at her feet. If she walked down this alley and turned left, she would reach a common alley. The broader common alley in turn led to the road.

  I’ll go only as far as the common alley, she told herself. I’ll rush back before anyone sees me. Men were allowed in the common alley and Vaapa would be furious if he knew that she had gone there all by herself.

  Saadiya hurried down the alley and turned left. She peered into the common alley, which was deserted as well.

  Where was everyone? What if she walked a few steps, just a few steps, peered at the road and rushed back? No one would know and she would be able to still that vagrant voice within her.

  So Saadiya, whose freedom until then had encompassed just twenty feet by thirty feet, stepped into the common alley. Her heart beat fast and she felt her mouth go dry, but she couldn’t turn back now. She walked on till she reached the road. Then she looked around her and gasped.

  Life. Life in so many colours and shapes. Life that breathed and walked. Life that chewed and spat. Life that screamed and shouted. Life that mumbled and tumbled, hissed and crawled. Life that waited. Life that would never be hers.

  Saadiya ran her tongue over her suddenly dry lips and looked skyward to feel the sea breeze on her uplifted face. The breeze caressed her cheeks, sending a clat of pleasure down her spine. Slowly she lowered her face and as she did so, her eyes encountered those of a young man’s. He stood there leaning against a wall, flanked by two bicycles, staring at her with as much shock as she had felt at her first glimpse of the road.

  Saadiya tugged at the cloth that covered her face. With horror she realized that her face was uncovered and visible to the world—and to the young man whose eyes lapped at the contours of its nudity. Saadiya felt shame drown her. With a muffled cry, she pulled the veil across her face and stumbled backwards.

  She turned to run back to the narrow confines of the women’s alley, and saw Zuleika enter the common alley. Zuleika stood there haggling with a chicken seller. When the man spotted her black-clad figure, he turned towards the wall so that she might pass.

  Zuleika peered at the black-clad figure.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked, walking towards her.

  She asked again, ‘Nadira, is that you? I thought Saadiya was with you?’

  Saadiya stopped. There was no fleeing from Zuleika. There was no use, she knew. A glimmer of the sky, a lungful of life, a breath of escape …that was all she had dreamt of in this life. And now hope had turned its face to the wall, dangling the weight of carcasses in its hands.

  A single act of trespass. Saadiya uncovering her face, Sethu looking at it. That was the extent of their trespass. No one else knew of this violation of ancient codes, and yet it was enough.

  If Saadiya had veiled her face, Sethu would never have looked. And Sethu, if he had known that it was expected of him, would have turned his face to the wall when Saadiya appeared before him, with her naked face and hungry eyes. But when Sethu saw the flush of shame colour Saadiya’s features, he felt something kindle within him. A flame that lit itself from the blazing shame and warmed his insides. And Saadiya, who ought to have vested her hero with the face of Akbar Shah’s second son, now had a face, a form to fill her vacant hours and fugitive dreams.

  Karunam

  Who amongst us does not know this emotion? Why, I don’t even need to tell you what it is, when my eyebrows slant down at the ends, my eyes crinkle at the corners and my mouth droops. My breath moves from the cavity of the chest to the base of the spine. Do you see how my belly sinks and my shoulders droop?

  Karunam. All of us have known sorrow some time or the other. Let me tell you a little story. A woman went to the Buddha, asking him to bring back to life her son who had just died. The Buddha said that if she could go to a house where death had not visited even once, and bring back a handful of mustard, he would bring her son back to life. So the woman set forth. She went to every home in her village. In one house, the mother had died, in another, an uncle. One family had lost a grandfather, another a baby. There wasn’t a home that hadn’t known death. Then the Buddha told her, we must accept death as part of our existence. There cannot be a life free of death. So it is with karunam.

  It is everywhere. It is in the month of July, the month of karkitakam, when the relief of having got past the summer is over and the sky stretches a dull grey, like ashes flung over the face of the sun. The ground is wet and squelchy. The eaves drip, and so do the leaves. A relentless drip-drip. Clothes never dry, moss grows everywhere. Cupboards reek of damp and wetness prevails.

  You can sense it when you shake a tender coconut and hold it to your ear. It is there in the lapping of coconut water as it slops this way and that between the curves of soft inner flesh …the fluid ways of sorrow.

  You can hear it in the song of the karinkuyil as the notes soar into the skies. Why does the koel sing so sadly, you might ask. What sorrow could the sluttish, slovenly cuckoo who lays her eggs in the crow’s nest and absolves herself of all responsibility have? Capriciousness comes naturally to this creature which, even as a child, gathers the yet to be hatched eggs and crow-babies on to her back and tosses them out of the nest. Perhaps remorse is what the koel’s song throbs with as it sits alone on the branch of a tree and ponders. A remorse for all that has been. For that, too, is karunam. Remorse.

  Radha

  Chris wears a grim look. I find him on the veranda, listening to a tape. I hear Uncle’s voice. This chapter of Uncle’s story has taken more than a week in its narration.

  Uncle refused to meet Chris during the day. ‘The light bleaches my imagination,’ he said. ‘I cannot think then; come when the sun is down.’

  So it was in the early evening that Chris and I went to Uncle. Shyam disapproved. He showed his disapproval in many ways, but did not voice it. I wondered why. Usually he is very eloquent, especially when it comes to something he does not like. But this time he merely lets me know it. Every evening for a week now, he has been coming home before me. He calls me on the mobile and each time he has a different reason. ‘So what time are you coming home? I am hungry.’ ‘Rani Oppol is bored.’ ‘Will you be coming in the next half hour? The SP and his wife have said they will drop in.’ ‘Isn’t it over yet?’ ‘Rani Oppol was saying it isn’t right for you to spend so much time in the Sahiv’s company …’

  And when I return, he’s usually sitting in the living room with his mouth set and a drink at his side. He pretends not to see me and I say nothing, either. Two can play at this game. He may be daddy, but I refuse to be the trembling, penitent child.

  Lately, though, I have been wondering about this game that Shyam is playing. It is as if he is waiting. But waiting for what? I try to put it out of my mind. I am learning to block Shyam and his moods from my thoughts.

  Chris had asked me if I could transcribe Uncle’s voice. ‘I don’t understand his accent too well, particularly when he uses Indian words. Would you? I could pay you by the page or hour …whatever you prefer,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said, and smiled. ‘But I am very slow. I haven’t keyed in anything for a long time now. Once in a while, I help Uncle send emails and sometimes I write to a frie
nd …and you don’t have to pay me.’

  Chris was unsure. ‘But you can’t do it for nothing.’

  ‘I am doing it for Uncle,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he would like a copy of his story. I know that I would.’

  That settled it. I began work, but kept it a secret.

  Shyam would be furious if he knew. ‘How dare he?’ he would fume. ‘Are you his secretary or what? If you are so keen to do secretarial work, why don’t you do it for me?’

  If he ever finds out, I have my answer ready. ‘I don’t want Uncle’s words misinterpreted. Is that a crime?’ I would ask. Shyam would not mind as much if he thought that I considered it an ordeal.

  I discovered that I was enjoying the work. Some mornings, as I typed, I wondered if I could become a medical transcriptionist. There were courses that would teach me what I needed to know and I had heard that in some instances you were allowed to work from home …Shyam wouldn’t be able to object to that. I felt the need to resume work consume me more than ever. When I had finished with these tapes, I would start inquiries in that direction, I told myself.

  Every evening Uncle would talk into the tape recorder for a little while. Ever so often he would pause to chew his betel leaves. When it was almost dark, he would stop. ‘This will do for now,’ he would say. ‘It’s Malini’s feeding time.’

  Uncle talked about Malini as if she were a baby. But it was futile to try and force him. He would resist by clamming up. Malini would hop on her perch and whistle and shriek. She was always happy to see us leave. But she had at least stopped calling Chris names. She even let him scratch her head. ‘She must like you,’ Uncle said with a note of surprise. Malini usually pecked a piece of flesh out of anyone’s hand if they dared try and make even the slightest overture towards her.

  Shyam had had his finger quite badly injured once and as we drove to the hospital, he had held his finger aloft and murmured, ‘Like master, like bird …’