"This is bad. Nothing is growing here. Did amma give up gardening too?" she looked around and spied a small lantana with clusters of tiny yellow flowers.
It'll have to do for the time being.
She plucked a bunch and ran back.
"See . . . flower. Yellow flower. Go on, say it. . ." she ordered but Amrita wouldn't open her mouth.
"Let's start again. From the beginning."
There was only one table and chair in their room. As the teacher, Maya sat on the chair and made Amrita sit on the floor.
"No squatting, as if you are sitting on a commode. Sit cross-legged," she said but Amrita's knees would not lie down.
"You are so fat. This will not do. You must exercise. I'll show you what we do in the PT period. Get up. Stand straight, arms down the sides. Look ahead. Watch me closely."
Maya demonstrated the first exercise of physical training she learnt in school of stretching the hands to the front, up, side and down to the count of four. Her arms moved smartly in staccato movements, swift and sure, but Amrita's flopped like a bunch of tired leaves. When she bent to touch her toes, she almost fell on her face. Her clumsiness might irritate her sister but she herself was enjoying every moment of it. It was as if she had forgotten how her sister used to beat her. This girl was a playmate, someone she had never had before. Maya, however, meant business, even though it was clear that Amrita would take a very long time to reach anywhere near her own level of competence.
"I'm not the best student but Amrita, you're worse than me! My God, we have a lot to do," she said.
At the age of 12, she was still fired by exuberant optimism and did not think of questioning her ability to teach her sister anything at all. She took every little sign of progress as a great achievement and was eager to experiment some more. Only once did she hesitate, at the outset, when Amrita couldn't move her arms and legs in co-ordination. It was not for want of trying for she flung her arms around all the time, suppressing her laughter whenever Maya looked at her. Other lessons were much easier though boringly repetitive. Yet, she persisted, till Amrita learnt how to bathe and dress herself, comb her hair, fold clothes, make the beds and do several other sundry tasks. It was a roller-coaster ride that took several years. When Amrita learnt something quickly, Maya's mood would swing up. When the progress was not so good, she got angry, irritated or despondent. Those were the times when flashes of her old temper surfaced but they lacked the fury of the past. Even a rap on the knuckles made Amrita turn to her work, but Maya did not like the heaviness she felt when her sister looked at her with fear in her eyes.
To reduce physical distance between them she joined Amrita on the floor. They lay on their stomachs while she pointed out the pictures in a book or sat cross-legged and wrote with the book on the lap. Amrita could now sit on the floor for longer periods. She had lost some weight, her movements were better but the most important development as far as Maya was concerned was that her sister now understood everything that she told her. She was still reluctant to speak and when she did, only Maya could understand her slurred words.
One day she asked Amrita to fetch a pencil from the table. Proudly she watched her sister's prompt obedience and froze. On the back of Amrita's skirt was a big dark patch.
"Ammu . . . wait. Come here. Turn around," she said getting up and inspecting the back of her sister's skirt. She looked at the mat. There was a mark there too, though much smaller than the one on the skirt. Maya touched it lightly. Her fingertips showed red. Blood?
"Did you get hurt? When? Where? Show me," she ordered.
Her hands had turned cold and she was suddenly very afraid. She made her sister lift her skirt. There was no sign of injury on the back of the thighs but the seat of her panties was stained.
"Is it paining? Did you sit on any sharp thing? No? Then where is the blood coming from? I can't see any wound. What do we do now? Should I call Revabehn? How will she help? Maybe it's nothing serious. Change your panties and dress and lie down. The bleeding may stop by itself. No more class today."
She helped Amrita change her clothes.
"Lie down. Don't get up whatever happens. I have to go to school. I'll come back in the evening. Revabehn will come in with your food. If you lie down quietly she may not suspect anything, okay?"
She found it difficult to concentrate on what the teachers said. The classes seemed to go on forever. Finally the peon rang the bell to announce the welcome end of the long school day and Maya rushed home.
Her sister was as cheerful as when she had left her in the morning though she had changed her dress yet again. Maya tried to find out what had happened in her absence but her sister continued to smile without saying anything. She went downstairs and peeped into the kitchen. Kamala was busy cooking. Raghu would return in a couple of hours and he didn't like to be kept waiting for his dinner. In any case, ever since she returned after her grandmother's death, Maya had reduced talking to her mother to the absolute minimum. Even then, she debated whether she should ask her about Amrita, when Revabehn came along. Maya caught her by the hand and led her to their room.
"Is Ammu very ill? Is she going to die?" she asked. "Don't laugh. Tell me."
"Nothing to worry about," said the maid trying to hide her amusement. "All girls go through this. This is what makes them women. You will get it too some day and then it will soon be time to get you married and packed off. You will have kids, they will grow, the process will go on."
"What about you? You also get it?"
"I'm too old. It stopped long ago."
"So, it will stop some time."
"Yes, when you're old, when your children are grown up, then it'll stop."
"But why does it begin in the first place?"
"I told you, to make women out of girls."
"What about boys? What happens to make them men?"
"I don't know. Enough of this chatter. Go and study."
"But what does one do when it starts?" Maya persisted. She wanted to be better prepared than her sister.
"There's no need to worry about it now. I'll tell you at the right time or your mother will."
"Amma? What will she tell me? She sent me away because she's not fond of me. When I was younger I thought she preferred Amrita to me and that's why she spent all the time with her. Now I know she doesn't care for her either. Why else would she neglect her like this?"
"What are you talking about? Which mother will hate her child?"
"I knew you'll be on her side. That's why I didn't tell you anything all these days. It doesn't matter. I don't need her help with my sister."
"If you don't need your mother, you won't need me either.
"Don't say that, Revabehn," said Maya. "I can't manage without you. At least you look after her while I'm at school."
Amrita could now say and write the alphabet without too many mistakes. She could read a few simple words and count up to 30. Her favourite activity, however, was drawing. She could fill page after page with stick figures but she was so scared of her sister that she laboriously wrote out the alphabet in capital and small letters, the few words that she had learnt and solved simple problems in arithmetic – all before Maya returned from school.
Anyone would have laughed to see how this grown up girl wrote. Her tongue peeped out and she held the pencil with the tip of all five fingers. She scratched her head to recall the sequence of the letters or muttered the numbers while adding and subtracting but there was no one to see her except the maid who came up occasionally to check on her. Revabehn did not laugh, she only sat with the girl and admired her literacy. She could not write her name herself but she was no fool. No one could cheat her off 10 paise. She could mentally total the price of even 25 items and give Kamala an accurate account.
"What will I do after learning how to read and write?" she replied, when Maya offered to teach her. "Your mother will not be happy to see me with a book. Don't waste time on me, girl. I'm a gone case."
Age, however, did not stop Rev
abehn from praising Amrita's big letters that sloped down the page unless they were caught in small boxes.
"How well you have written, my bitiya rani! Your sister is going to be very proud of you when she returns from school. This old woman wouldn't have been able to do half as well in double the time you've taken."
Amrita flushed with happiness and brought out her drawing book The more abstract the drawing, the greater the clarity with which Revabehn seemed to see the details.
"Is this a. . . let me see. . . a temple? Ah! I know. It's a house. Look at the windows, the door. How clever! Did you draw this yourself or did your sister help you? How can you draw so beautifully? I'm sure even she can't draw as well."
Amrita beamed in pleasure and lifted her skirt to hide her face in its folds.
"Maya will get angry," warned Revabehn and the girl dropped it immediately.
Lapses like these were becoming considerably less frequent and often the maid couldn't believe that this was the same girl who had once given her so much trouble. Neither could she believe that it was Maya who had effected the change, the girl who had given her even greater trouble.
It was Maya's last year in school. A good six months before her final exam she stopped teaching Amrita in order to concentrate on her books. Seeing her nervous and irritable, her sister retired to her corner. She could not understand the change but instinct made her stay away. Maya walked up and down the room trying to memorise important dates in history or formulae in science. The more she tried to remember the less they stuck to the mind. When it was time to enter the examination hall, she couldn't remember a single detail that she had slaved over. She answered the papers mechanically one after the other and then began the wait for the exam results to be announced. She didn't know which agony was worse, the tension during or after the exam. That wait too came to an end at last and she was relieved to find that she had passed with marks that surprised her. If she couldn't study what she wanted, then she was going to spend all her time with her sister, she decided.
"What can I teach her next, Revabehn?" she asked, when the maid visited them. Age and ill-health had finally caught up with her and Revabehn had quit working in their house a few months ago. She dropped by out of habit to see the girls and to gossip with Kamala.
"What can this old woman tell you? I've grown too old to even remember my name."
"Grow! Yes, I'll teach her gardening. What do you say?"
"Teach her whatever you want."
"Don't be so indifferent. After all, this concerns your favourite girl. Say that you like me more than my sister," she challenged.
"Ask me which eye I like, right or left?" Revabehn countered.
"Even though you refuse to say it I always knew you liked her more. I remember only too well that you never had a harsh word for her, it was always reserved for me."
"Listen to you talking like this, to me, the one who taught you how to speak and look at my other child, still so innocent, not like you," the old woman shook her head in mock resignation.
"Now that you've conceded that I have grown, listen to me for a change. Go and see a doctor. You don't look very good," said Maya.
"What will the doctor say? Give up tambacu, eat better food, take more rest. When I know what they're going to say why should I go and pay them my hard earned money?"
"Maybe they'll say something different. Who knows?" Maya argued.
"If at all they do say something different it will be 'your time is up, old woman, pack up.' I won't be sorry either. It's best to leave when I can still walk without anybody's support."
Revabehn had been prophetic. Two months later she was diagnosed as having terminal oral cancer and within a week she died.
***
17
heir little garden helped Maya cope with Revabehn's death.
She did not tell Amrita about the maid's demise nor did the girl ever enquire.
Will she remember me if I leave some day?
Maya looked at her sister and wondered. Amrita had a bright red Hibiscus flower tucked behind each ear and was holding a big bunch in her hand. Even as she watched, the girl brought it close to her face and inhaled, making specks of yellow pollen stick all over her face. Maya sighed and went up to her.
"You do like gardening, don't you?" she asked, rubbing Amrita's nose and looking around.
The once barren and dry front yard bore a profusion of flowering plants, while a kitchen garden flourished at the back of the house. At first Maya had planted at random and they shot up everywhere clashing colours of leaf and flower. She learnt from this and designed the kitchen garden well, marking out plots for different varieties of seasonal vegetable. That, she soon realised was the easier task, the more difficult one was to work according to her plan.
The soil was hard and dry and the sharp point of the pickaxe did not make a dent. She persisted and managed to nudge small clods that Amrita could break up further. Sweat dripped down her earlobe and along the jaw. From the edge of the chin, it slid down the neck between the breasts and settled at the waist where the knot of the salwar would not permit it to go any further. Even then the cloth stuck to her legs and made it difficult to walk. Amrita's condition was worse. Her nails chipped and she tanned quickly under the sun. Her tongue seemed to hang out even more than usual but she did not complain.
After working for a couple of hours Maya stopped to assess their progress. At first glance it looked as if they hadn't done anything at all. In spite of all that hard work she had dug up no more than a little patch of ground and Amrita was still breaking the clods sedulously. She was looking carefully at each lump in her hand, poking it with a finger and picking out even small stones. Maya laughed to see her sister looking like a roasting crab clinging to the ground under the burning sun. Neither girl was about to give up too easily. Finally, it was Maya who called a halt. She leaned on the pickaxe and looked at her sister still at work.
"Ammu," she called. "Let's do this early in the morning or late in the evening when the sun is not so hot. At this rate we'll get dehydrated. Stop for now, we'll continue later."
They resumed their work that evening. It was still exhausting but much easier to tackle in the dying hours of the day. Moreover, Maya had left the water running and the soil had become dark. The water had managed to do what her pickaxe couldn't – seep in and loosen the soil. With hard strokes, she quickly turned it over and, within a week, had broken the entire backyard into a neat formation of little plots each segregated by a small mud border.
The seedlings in the nursery were growing very well. Maya taught her sister how to pull out each one gently with a little ball of soil clinging to the roots and how to replant it in their patch.
"Each seedling must be planted at a certain distance from each other. Only then will they grow big and healthy so don't put them very close together. Some varieties will need support. Strew the carrot and radish seeds along the ridges. Cover them with soil. It'll be easier to take them out of the little mounds than digging them from the ground."
"It's very important to water the plants every day. Like we need to drink water, plants need it to make their food. Sprinkle some on the leaves to wash out the dust."
"Ash is good for plants. If you scatter ash around the base and on the leaves, the little black insects will stay away."
"This is the compost pit. We will put dry leaves, flowers and other waste into it. Not tin or glass. They will not change. Leaves and vegetables will rot and make good manure for the plants."
To all these instructions, Amrita nodded as if she understood everything but Maya had to tell her over and over till she learnt to do it on her own. Then they worked in tandem like a pair of trained bullocks in a field. During the mild winter, they could work at any time of the day though the sun could still burn the skin if they stayed out for too long. Nights set in sooner, giving them less time to work. Winter is also the season for the more exotic vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage and peas and Maya took great delight in
growing them. Ironically, when their garden was lush with the produce, the market was flooded with the same vegetables at ridiculously low prices. At times she wondered if the effort was worth it but more than the physical work or the resultant tomatoes, lady's finger and. other vegetables, gardening was teaching Amrita a great deal, more than Maya had ever expected.
Amrita showed a deeper interest in gardening than she did in drawing or writing. It was as if she had discovered a vocation. She loved to water the vegetable patches, walk in the slush, squelch mud between her toes and poke around for earthworms. She could spend hours inspecting every individual plant, its flowers and fruits and carefully select those that were ready for plucking. Maya was inclined to dig roughly and at times cut through the potatoes and onions in her haste, but not her sister. Within a year they had a well-tended kitchen garden that ensured a steady supply of fresh vegetables for Kamala's kitchen.
It was Amrita's 23rd birthday. She did not know it but Maya did and wanted to give her sister a gift.
"I don't have any money, what do I get you? I was a fool! I should have done some course like tailoring. I would have been able to buy you something. Now look, I don't have even a coin. I don't want to ask appa. He'll ask a hundred questions. How can I earn quickly? I can't take a basket of vegetables to sell in the market, can I?"
Amrita did not hear her. She was engrossed in the yellow flowers of the lady's finger and plucking the vegetable carefully. She held the pointed tip between her fingers and cut the stem with a sharp knife like her sister had shown her. Experience had taught her that the fine hairs of the plant could hurt her fingers but she liked to pluck them more than she did the profusion of cluster beans. She also liked the brinjals with their violet flowers, smaller than those of the lady's finger but just as beautiful. They dropped off giving way to little green buds that grew into rich purple balls and hung here and there among the big green leaves.
Maya had taught her to look at the brinjals carefully for the smallest black spot that meant a worm was working its way inside. Amrita liked worms too but not inside the vegetable or on the leaves. She loved to turn a big stone over and see the thin white worms wriggle for cover from sunlight and the fat brown earthworms below the clods. Now that the planting was over, she didn't get to see many earthworms so she poked around with a small stick which sometimes broke off without yielding a single worm. She then found another stick and poked some more. She could do it when her sister was not watching, or like now, when she was busy with her thoughts.
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