The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  But there was no direction to look except forward, through the window with the grille whose shadows left cross marks on my face. All that was visible was the pole extending over the shoulder of the short and sturdy bearer, a tassel swinging from its end as he strode away from my parents’ house.

  And then I was being loaded onto the platform of the truck. Eager eyes were peering through the window, trying to see the fabulous creature behind the grille. Children’s fingers poked in to try and touch my face. I listed against the sides as the doli was pushed and rocked into place. The clinking of bracelets and the chatter of female voices surrounded me as the rest of the party climbed in. I heard the drop-down back of the truck being raised and slammed into place. Then, with the stars above still shining down invisibly on me, the truck began the journey to Nizamuddin.

  chapter five

  THE ELECTRICITY WAS OUT ON DEV’S STREET. “IT’S GONE FOR THE NIGHT,” Hema announced cheerfully. “We’re one of the first ones they cut when the city runs out of power.” She held a lit match under a candle to soften its base, then stuck it upright on the arm of a chair. “We’re just a government colony, after all, not like the wealthy area where your father has his house.”

  I sat perched on a charpoy in the only bedroom in the flat, the long gunghat of my sari draped over my face like a veil. It was difficult to maintain the pose Dev’s mother had taught me—the sagging of the charpoy ropes kept threatening to topple me. But the position felt as centering as a yoga asana—by concentrating on keeping steady on the bed, I was able to take my mind off the despair closing in on me.

  “You can speak now, you know, even take your gunghat off. All the guests have gone. Though you’ll have to show your face sooner or later—all those people who’ve been saying it’s your sister who’s the prettier one.” Hema held up a candle near my head, filling the inside of my gunghat with light and trying to peer through. “Besides, you must be dying under there—not being used to having the fans all off. Tell me, is it true—Dev bhaiyya said you had an air conditioner at your house?”

  We had two, one in the drawing room, and one in Paji’s library, but I remained silent.

  “Well, you at least had lots of servants, didn’t you? Dev bhaiyya said your father made a lot of money as a publisher. Not that we don’t have servants, mind you. Well, maybe not a servant exactly, but we do have a ganga—she comes in to clean the pots. No cook, though. Don’t worry, we won’t make you work. Not while you’re a new bahu, anyway. When Sandhya didi was a new bahu, just married to Arya bhaiyya, she didn’t have to step into our kitchen even once for the first month. Now Mataji makes her do all the cooking, of course—though between you and me, her rice clumps so much the ganga could do it better. I suppose we shouldn’t expect you to be good either, being a rich man’s girl and everything. I’ve already told my parents. When I get married, it’s going to be to the wealthiest man they can find. Marry for comfort, that’s what I want, not for love like you. Tell me though, is it true what you two did in the tomb? They were quite outraged, the Muslims, they’re saying you defiled the grave. Even the stationmaster, Mr. Ahmed, said it was an insult to one of their Muslim saints.”

  I kept my gaze focused at my feet, willing my body to be absolutely still. Sweat trickled down my face and neck under the gunghat, but I didn’t draw it back or take it off.

  “You can tell me, I promise not to repeat it to anyone. Pushpa down the street says that you both were naked.” Hema giggled. “Were you really? Babuji was called into Mr. Ahmed’s office, you know. Given quite a firing.”

  “Hema, stop bothering the bahu,” Dev’s mother called out from the other room. “You’ve lit the candles, now come out here.”

  Hema dropped her voice to a whisper. “Even Arya bhaiyya was upset. He said Babuji should never have agreed to the marriage. He called you”—again, Hema giggled—“a tramp. He said your sister was trying to mesmerize his brother, was doing magic on him, and casting tantric spells. And when that didn’t work, the family set you instead upon poor Dev bhaiyya.” Hema’s eyes widened. “Do you really know magic? Will you teach me your tricks?”

  “Hema,” my mother-in-law called again. “Stop that Dehradun Express tongue of yours and come right out.”

  “Coming, Mataji. But it was Dev bhaiyya who stood up for you. He was so kind, so brave. He said he felt pity for you—that it was his duty to marry you—if he didn’t, your reputation was so ruined that nobody else would. He’s always been the softhearted one—lets everyone take advantage of him. Anyway, we’ll talk more tomorrow. Tonight this room is yours. Arya bhaiyya and Sandhya didi are sleeping with us in the other room, even though he’s the elder brother. It’s going to be tight. Plus all that rich wedding food must have given Didi gas again, and on top of that, she snores.”

  Hema fluffed up a pillow and laid it at my feet. “You have such pretty toes. But I guess that’s what new brides are supposed to have, at least in the beginning. I’m sure my bhaiyya will be very impressed.” She skipped to the door. “Enjoy this special night of yours.”

  I kept waiting on the bed after Hema left. At some point, I took the gunghat off, but the claustrophobia from the doli was not dispelled. Beyond the glow of the candle, the walls strained and tilted against the darkness, as if raring to come up and immure me. Pieces of furniture rose ponderously from the corners, their silhouettes radiating unspoken hostility. The moon seemed to have fallen victim to the blackout as well—only darkness filtered in through the bars of the window.

  Perhaps I actually dozed off in my asana. The blast of a locomotive whistle jolted me awake. A train was thundering by on the tracks outside, so close that I expected a bogey to come crashing through the wall. Rectangles of light blazed through the room from its windows, like a series of camera flashes, lighting up a cupboard, a dressing table, picture frames, and, standing in his wedding garments just inside the doorway, Dev.

  “Sorry it took so long,” he said, as he tried closing the door. Strings of marigolds hung up for the wedding kept getting in the way. “They wouldn’t let me leave.” He scrunched the door shut over the marigolds, launching a flurry of petals into the air. “I hope Hema didn’t fill your head with too many of her tales. Don’t listen to anything she says.”

  I lowered my eyes and remained silent. Wasn’t that the way a new bahu was supposed to behave? What choice did I have now anyway, except to try and ignore what Hema said? Perhaps I should slip the gunghat back over my head to look more bride-like, to be more traditional by covering the parting of my hair.

  “What a long day,” Dev said, and began unwinding the silk band tied in a turban around his head. More petals, pink and red this time from the wedding ceremony, fell to the floor from its brocaded folds. He unbuttoned his tunic and pulled it off as well. “Are you as exhausted as I am?”

  I nodded my head without looking up. How strange that as a bride I was expected not to meet eyes with Dev. To not call him by name. Wasn’t it just yesterday that we had eaten pineapple at Chandni Chowk, that I had been making jokes to his face? How little time I had spent with him since then. And now he was my husband, the man to whom I had been wed. My link to this house, this family, the trains clattering outside, the reason I sat perched on this bed. My head swam. How could my games have led to such enormous change?

  “Aren’t you going to take off your sari?” Dev asked, sitting beside me and running his fingers down its hem. He picked up a corner of the sari and playfully uncovered my blouse.

  There was something cheering about his proximity, surprisingly, something reassuring about being finally alone with him. I allowed my gaze to rise to the level of his chin. His neck was the color of honey in the candlelight, there were no forgotten streaks of makeup tonight. The cotton of his undershirt cut swaths of white over his shoulders. I felt an urge to run my hand under the material, feel my fingertips separate cloth from skin. For a moment, we were back in the tomb of Salim Fazl. Anthers nodding provocatively in the dark corners of the r
oom, corollas unfurling to form giant flowers.

  Then Dev kissed me. It took me a few seconds to recognize the sugary odor of alcohol in his mouth. When I was seven, there had been a period when Paji staggered home late every night, when he always seemed to have that same odor on his breath. I stiffened and shifted towards the lower edge of the bed.

  “Vijay uncle brought along a bottle of whiskey. It was only a sip—I had to, for politeness’ sake.” I sat in silence, remembering Biji’s anger towards Paji, her recriminations and threats. Dev tried to touch my shoulder, but I eased it out of the way.

  “Tell me, have you ever slept on a charpoy before?” he asked after a moment of silence. I shook my head sullenly. They were only good enough for servants where I came from, I felt like retorting. “Let me show you something then.” I looked in bewilderment out of the corner of my eye as Dev started bobbing up and down on the bed.

  “Arya bhaiyya and I used to do this in the charpoy we shared when we were small. Sometimes we’d set Hema in the center and try to launch her into the air.” He began bouncing more vigorously, and I wondered how drunk he was. “It’s better without the mattress, though—here, let me take it out.”

  Dev pulled out the mattress from under us and threw it on the floor. The wooden frame creaked in protest as he pitched himself against the bare ropes. “We’d sometimes stand up and use it as a trampoline, but that never worked. I don’t know how many beatings we got from Babuji for breaking the ropes.”

  It was such an incongruous sight that despite myself, I began to laugh. My husband, the bouncing groom. Could I have married a boy at heart? Surely life shouldn’t be too awful with someone as playful as that. Dev started laughing as well. “You can do it too, you know, from the other end.”

  He cheered in encouragement as I joined in. Was this what marriage was about, bouncing together on the bed? “Press down each time I go up,” he instructed, and I felt our rebounds increase in strength. With each surge, something else got dislodged and fell away from my thoughts—Hema, the doli, the whiskey, the marriage ceremony. I started feeling buoyant and carefree, as if I was back with Sharmila on the seesaws we used to ride in Rawalpindi at the midsummer fair.

  Then I missed my cue and descended when I should have risen. The motion sent me toppling into Dev’s arms. I was still laughing when I realized he had pulled me free of my blouse. My breasts spilled out against his chest, and he raised me up to take the left one in his mouth.

  It was a shock to look down and see my flesh encircled by his lips. My body had never been handled with such a casual sense of ownership before. I tried to lean backwards to pull myself out, but Dev was holding me too tight. I felt him suck my nipple, felt his tongue lap clumsily over my skin. Then he let go to grab the other breast and taste that as well.

  “Meera,” Dev said, and I was careful not to let the dismay rise to my face. “How long I’ve wanted…”

  He began pulling out the sari from around my waist, throwing it to the ground in great handfuls, like wrapping paper torn off a wedding present. He lay me flat on the charpoy and worked my petticoat off. His hardness pressed against me in several spots, like a finger testing the ripeness of a fruit. Then he entered me.

  That day in the tomb, the day the warmth had sprung up and risen from between my legs, I had become aware of another sensation. A deep-rooted craving, a hidden emptiness, that had opened up in the same part of my body. Now, the thought that first flashed through my mind was that this emptiness was going to be filled. That this nameless yearning would be appeased, that waves of satiation would radiate everywhere else.

  What spread through me, however, the instant I felt Dev inside, was not satiation but pain. Pain so unexpected, pain so vivid, that I squeezed his shoulders and arched my pelvis away to be free of it.

  Perhaps Dev mistook this reaction for pleasure, because he licked his tongue across my neck. “Meera,” he whispered, and rose until he was almost out, then plunged back deeper in. I tried once again to shrink away, but the ropes beneath me prevented my escape. “Meera,” Dev gasped, as he thrashed over me again and again. The charpoy began bucking to a new rhythm as its ropes cut into my skin.

  Afterwards, he flopped onto the charpoy next to mine. “You’re so wonderful,” he said. “I can hardly believe you’re mine. You look like your sister in so many ways, and yet you seem so much simpler inside.” He kissed me on the forehead and blew the candle out.

  I stared at the night hanging outside the window. There was still no moon in sight. I felt the sting of rope burns on my back and remembered my mattress still lay on the floor somewhere. Did I have the energy to drag it back myself or should I ask Dev for help?

  He lay quite still next to me, his face turned towards the ceiling. “Don’t you wonder what she’s doing right now?” he murmured. “Roopa. Whether she’ll be happy with the life she’s chosen or think she’s made a mistake?” He remained on his back for some moments, then turned over on his side.

  I AWOKE BATHED IN LIGHT, and thought for an instant it was day, that I had survived the night. But then I saw the naked bulb in the ceiling shining in my face—the electricity had come back on at some point. Dev lay sprawled out on his stomach next to me, his mouth resting open on his hand, as though preparing to bite a knuckle in his sleep. A table fan whirred from a stool in the corner, twisting its head methodically from side to side like someone performing a neck exercise. Through the window, a railway station had materialized in the distance, its empty platforms glowing with a ghostly fluorescence.

  There was a dark spot of blood on the petticoat I had put back on. My cheeks burned with embarrassment when I saw it. What if Dev had noticed it as well? I remembered the first time it had happened. “Pay attention, because I’ll only show you once,” I heard Biji say as she tore off a piece from an old pajama and led me to the toilet. Why tonight, when it wasn’t the right time of the month?

  I got up to clean myself. Wrapping the sheet like a shawl over my blouse, I crept through the darkened room next to ours. Hema was snoring on a mattress near the outer door, but I was able to open it enough to just squeeze by. There was still no moon, but enough illumination from the street now for the dirt ground within the courtyard walls to gleam a peculiar yellow. An extra charpoy rested stacked against a wall, next to a hand-cranked pump, and the wooden post where Hema said they had once kept a cow tethered.

  The toilet was built in one corner, a short cement stall raised three steps above the ground. An old cockroach, its wings bedraggled, shuffled into a crack next to the footrests when I turned on the light. Under a tap in the wall stood an empty tin of cooking oil, its top cut open so it could serve as a mug. A faint smell of phenol hovered in the air, trying vainly to conceal the underlying reek of waste.

  I squatted and washed myself, then my petticoat, as best I could. There was less blood than I thought—could it have been an injury received during the sexual act? I opened the door and stepped into the fresh air. Was this something recurrent one had to endure?

  Standing at the bottom of the steps, his undershirt gleaming in the night, was Dev. I looked at him in surprise. “I just went to…” I began to say, then stopped. The shadows on his face were thicker, the pattern of muscle more pronounced. The shoulders sprouted tufts of hair.

  Arya stared at the sheet that barely covered my blouse, at the wetness that blossomed down my petticoat. He took a step towards me, his jaw set in a line, his eyes devoid of expression. For an instant, as I squeezed past with my sheet gathered tightly around, I thought he was going to reach out and grab my arm. But he stayed where he was, not stepping aside to make my passage easier, but not making a move to impede me, either.

  My heart beating, I returned to the bedroom and turned off the light. I thought I heard the sound of the gate to the street being opened and closed. I kept listening for Arya’s footsteps in the adjoining room, but he didn’t return. I arranged my petticoat loosely over my legs so that the fan could blow on it. When I awoke again,
to the receding call of a train, the dampness was gone.

  FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS both my dowry and I were on display.

  Early the first morning, Hema burst into the room, saying that the handcart pushers from the factory had arrived with the refrigerator Paji had sent. After several absurd attempts to push it through the tiny kitchen opening, Arya had the men set it down in the living room instead. Mataji lit incense to welcome it, as she would a new member of the household, Babuji broke a coconut at its feet, and Arya marked a red holy mark with vermilion on its forehead.

  Dev’s family had asked for a Kelvinator fridge, but Paji had refused to pay for a foreign brand, saying it would be an Indian-made Godrej and nothing else. Ardeshir Godrej had become famous by finding a way to make soap out of vegetable oil instead of the animal tallow so offensive to many Hindus. His brother had expanded the company rapidly after Independence, branching to talcums and toiletries, large steel cupboards, and very recently, appliances. The fridge Paji had managed to procure was a prototype, not even available for general sale as yet. “I hope they had the sense to get at least the important parts from England,” Babuji remarked, as he peered skeptically into the freezer.

  Hema went up and down the block, announcing to everyone that the fridge (the first one in the colony) had finally been delivered. Somewhat spitefully, she even told the stationmaster’s family next door that henceforth, they would be able to ask for ice at any time they wanted. At one point, fifteen neighbors (mostly children) were milling around in the living room, gawking at Hema playing with the compartments and trays and knobs. The crowd lost interest somewhat when they found out that the ice cubes Hema had promised might not be ready for several hours. One of them tried to climb the shelves to get at the freezer, at which point Babuji used an umbrella to swat them away.