The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  IN THE MORNING, you had a fever. “It’s probably the cut, all infected,” I raged. “God knows from where you hunted down that barber. Are you satisfied now, or do you have some other family ceremony you would like to inflict?”

  Dev said nothing. He got a fistful of salt from the kitchen and passed it around your body in a circle. “To draw out the evil eye, in case someone’s put a curse.” In the afternoon, just as I prepared to let my hysteria burst forth, the fever abruptly subsided. “See?” Dev said. “It wasn’t an infection after all.”

  You did not smile or laugh even though your temperature was back to normal. Every morning, when you saw yourself in the mirror, you began to cry. You turned to me with the tears wet on your cheeks and only quieted down after I had captured them all with my mouth.

  I did not forgive Dev. Even with the cut on your head almost healed, I kept asking for the Listerine to make him feel guilty. On the third day, I asked if he would mind sleeping on the sofa. “I’d like to keep Ashvin next to me until he’s fully recovered. We can sleep outside the kitchen, though—I don’t want to force you out of the bed.”

  “Why not put Munna in the middle so that we can all fit in?” We’d always had two single beds pushed together, so there would certainly be enough room to follow Dev’s suggestion.

  “He’s become so sensitive after what’s been done to him. It’s not just your snoring that would keep him awake but also your alcoholic breath.”

  I could tell I scored a hit by the way he blinked back the hurt. He left the bedroom without complaint that night, pretending to be unaware of my intention to punish him. The next morning, though, he told me I was exaggerating the seriousness of things. “Munna’s a lot more resilient than you think. It’s you who’s making him depressed.” To prove his point, he asked me to watch as you laughed and played with him on the sofa. The minute I entered, your forehead wrinkled up and a troubled expression came over your face.

  “See?” Dev said. “Besides, if you look, you’ll notice his hair is already reemerging.” I didn’t give him the satisfaction, but turned away in silence.

  That evening, I checked your scalp for myself. It was true what Dev said—I could see the follicles dotting your head. I ran a silk dupatta over it, and a chuckle burbled up from your throat when it caught. I scraped my fingers over the nubs and this made you laugh. Even more, you liked the feel of the tufts on your palms—you kept brushing your hands over your scalp as if sweeping things off.

  In the days to come, the hair slowly lengthened and covered the egginess of your head. It grew out straight, however, the curls forever gone.

  chapter twenty-one

  EVEN AFTER YOU HAD GROWN A FULL HEAD OF HAIR AGAIN, AND SEEMED to have completely forgotten the mundan, Dev came into the bedroom only when necessary—to change his clothes, to get his pillow, to kiss you good night. He kept this up for months—too proud to say anything, waiting for me to retract what I had said. On some nights, as I lay on the sheets unable to sleep, I heard him singing softly to himself and almost called him back. But then I saw your closed eyes, your untroubled face, and decided not to subject you to your father’s Listerine breath.

  One day, as you stood in the yellow plastic bucket in the bathroom grasping the rim, you started calling for your daddy. “Dada, Dada,” you repeated.

  “Daddy has gone to work,” I said, and emptied the red bucket over you. We were playing the bucket game, which had become the only way to lure you to your bath—you simply abhorred soap. “He can’t stay at home like I do, to wash you.” I started switching you between the buckets and pouring the water back and forth over you until it was all gone. Sometimes there was enough pressure for the shower to work, and you did a dance under the spray. But today nothing emerged.

  “Dada,” you said again, as I drained the residue from the soap dish into a mug of water and churned up some bubbles. I pulled back your foreskin and swished your shamey through the mug. Usually this made you laugh, but today, you seemed to have just one thought in your head. “Dada,” you insisted, stamping your foot in the water for emphasis.

  “Fine. Daddy can come and help on Sunday.” I kissed your navel, and swished your shamey again, and this time you burst into giggles.

  Sunday came, and you were all excited as Dev and I each held an arm and emptied mugs of water over your head. You jumped clumsily up and down in the bucket, splashing us all. I carefully maintained my stiffness towards Dev, though he looked so happy to be with us that I felt a twinge of guilt. You shook your body like a dog, your shamey swinging wildly from side to side—water sprayed our hair, our faces, our clothes, the wall behind.

  Dev was about to dump more water on you when you suddenly yelled and raised your arms. The mug in his hand went flying into the air, then plopped down like a cap on his head. He looked so funny with the water spilling down his face that you began to roar. Even I joined in, which prompted Dev to take the mug from his head, fill it again and carefully overturn it on me instead. I gasped as the cascade streamed over my forehead, as the water soaked through my blouse and made it stick to my skin. Indignation rose inside me, raring and lucid, even as my vision blurred.

  But then I noticed you laughing so hard that you had collapsed back into the bucket. Peeking out from underneath the uncertainty on Dev’s face, I detected a playfulness I had not glimpsed for years. The same mischief I had seen so often on your own face—the crinkling of your eyes (like now), the pouting of the lips. I stood there, turning from your roguish expression to his, and felt my anger fade.

  You were still laughing, so we lifted up the other bucket and emptied it over you, then sealed you between the two buckets, like in a red and yellow egg. When we cracked open the egg an instant later, you burst out with arms raised and teeth bared.

  Afterwards, we held a towel over the bed and swung you hammock-style in it. Dev had taken off his shirt and undershirt, which were both wet, and I was clad only in a blouse and petticoat. I raised my end of the towel and sent you rolling to Dev, and then he raised his side, sending you seesawing back.

  Finally, we played the powder game. Dev puffed you all over with talcum, then stood you up and rubbed it in. I aimed some puffs between your buttocks and you rolled your rump around in the air. You noticed talcum on Dev’s chest, so we powdered Daddy as well, and massaged it in. Then it was Mummy’s turn, and Dev shook the container all over me. I closed my eyes and felt your tiny palms and your father’s fingers skim across my face, my throat, the neckline of my blouse.

  When I opened my eyes, Dev, his skin smooth and white, had his face right next to mine. He kissed my lips and I tasted the talcum on his mouth, felt his fingers slide under my blouse. He kissed me again, longer this time, and I had to break away to remove your hand, which had followed your father’s and was rummaging around under the cloth next to it. You looked up at me questioningly, and I could read the claim furrowed into your face.

  I bent and kissed you as well. You reached up with your arms to surround my neck, then pressed your face into my bosom. “Mummy,” you said, and I could tell that you were going to insist on being fed.

  I unhooked my blouse and extracted an arm from a sleeve. Dev looked away, his gaze straying to the door. “Stay,” I told him, suddenly bold, even though I almost never fed you in front of your father. “You’ll be amazed at how efficient he’s become.”

  You fit into your favorite position across my lap and raised your mouth for its practiced swallows. You looked up at me, I looked across the room at Dev. You pulled my head back toward you. “Look at me,” you seemed to say.

  Dev walked to me and stroked my hair. I felt a slow burn at exposing myself this way—embarrassment or exhilaration, I couldn’t tell. There was nothing more natural, I told myself—the three of us anointed by the same powder, joined together in the same ritual. Your unclothed body, Dev’s bare chest, and my naked breast.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Dev said, and tiptoed out of the room.

  THAT
NIGHT, THOUGH, Dev returned, to end his exile from our bed. He picked you up from next to me, kissed your forehead, then carefully placed you in the half bed that had replaced your cot. “I thought you might have room for me,” he whispered.

  I saw he had taken off his shirt—the moonlight powdered the tips of his shoulder blades now. I reached out a hand to him and he kissed my fingers, then my wrist, then my elbow, following the curve of my arm to the bed. For a moment, we lay next to each other, staring at the ceiling as if trying to remember the next step. Then Dev propped himself up on both hands and bent over to kiss my mouth.

  His breath was strong with Listerine, as I knew it would be. I tried to scrape this deceit away from his tongue, to taste the truth underneath. Perhaps that was the key to opening up—experiencing what he did, understanding what he felt. He pulled back his mouth and buried his face in my neck, then fumbled to remove my nightdress. I felt the cloth drawn back from my chest, his hands scooped out a breast. He rolled the tip in his mouth, then crossed his body over mine. His tongue felt strong and restless; his lips, firmer than yours, encompassed more of my flesh.

  He tired quickly of my bosom. I heard him unbuckle his belt, felt him slide the pants down his legs. I tried to loosen my garments but his weight pressed the cloth to my skin. He raised my nightdress above my waist and it bunched against my stomach. He felt his way up my thigh with his hardness, then probed against my pubic bone. Finally, he caught the cleft he was looking for. “Meera,” he murmured, and pressed himself in.

  I remembered to take a deep breath to soften his entry. His weight pushed and receded against my chest as he retracted himself, then squeezed back in. His body, at an angle to mine, made his penetration more painful than usual. I didn’t want to stop him, in case he lost his rhythm and had to give up, defeated. I tried to align myself to ease his thrusts but he held me too firmly in place.

  As his speed increased, I heard the rustling of hair against skin. A sound as inexorable as the call of an approaching train engine, as the drumbeat of incipient rain. I braced myself for the final thrusts, against muscles locking in pain. I remembered not to look at his face when it happened—the pupil-less whites, the shuddering eyelids. Instead, I concentrated on the faraway thought that somehow, some part of this experience must be satisfying. I reeled this thought in, to crystallize it into awareness, into memory, as I felt him pull out and spurt softly onto me.

  About a year and a half after we moved to Bombay, emboldened by my college-going worldliness, perhaps, I managed to quell my embarrassment long enough to ask Dev how it felt for him. He turned deep red, and didn’t say anything, just nodded. About a week later, he mumbled the same question to me. I had all sorts of things I wanted to tell him, unuttered thoughts that I had fantasized about disclosing ever since the days at Nizamuddin. If he could start slower, if he could not press so hard, if he could caress me down there even after he had pulled out. But going to college had not quelled the awkwardness—this was still a new and frightening language in which I had no fluency. Panic reined in my breath and my windpipe started to close, suffocating the words in my throat. All I did was flush even more intensely than he had, and press my face into his chest so that he would not see the crimson. He must have interpreted this move as approval, because we never spoke of it again.

  The discomfort no longer bothered me so much—like an affliction one finally accepts will be permanent, I didn’t have to worry about curing it anymore. Now, it relieved me just to have the act performed to completion. It was not as if I enjoyed it as such, but still, there was the sense of accomplishment. Of contractual duties duly performed, of a long-standing enterprise regularly maintained.

  Our transaction that night helped put the bitterness behind us, but also marked the beginning of a shift. We engaged in the act less and less frequently. Sometimes, it was the thought of waking you up that made us abandon the undertaking. On other occasions, the blame was harder to pinpoint.

  Dev kissed me on the lips and I detected the staleness of alcohol seeping out from under his mouthwash. Perhaps I also detected gratitude. He got up and went into the bathroom. I felt around to locate the wetness he had left behind, then used an edge of my petticoat to wipe it up. I rinsed the edge off and squeezed it dry before going to sleep. No matter how much I wrung it, though, some dampness always remained.

  IN THE CONTEST between the guruji’s predictions and my expectation, I won handily—the mundan had absolutely no effect on Dev’s playback attempts. Instead of giving up, however, Dev became even more obsessed with his rituals. Once he moved back into the bedroom, he emptied the top shelf of the cupboard and converted it into a miniature pantheon. In the center he installed his large picture of Lakshmi, with offerings of old ash-covered King George VI rupee coins at her feet. Next to it he placed the saffron-clad bust of Sai Baba brought back from the overnight pilgrimage to Shirdi. Around these, he arranged a baby Krishna painting from the 1962 calendar, a newspaper photo of Gandhiji, and even K. L. Saigal in a suit, looking young and dapper in his silver frame. From the roof of the shelf, he dangled an idol of Hanuman on a string, so that the monkey god seemed to swoop mid flight through the air.

  All the clothes on the other shelves started smelling of incense smoke, the bedroom reeking as well, and the tilaks Dev marked on his head grew more and more alarming. Your excitement on Wednesdays, when he allowed you to lead the pooja, disturbed me even more.

  Past the sweet lime and coconut offerings in the corner, under his canopy of dried flowers, sat the idol you liked the most—your beloved Ganesh. You waved the incense over his elephant head so many times that Dev had to guide your hand away to propitiate the other gods as well. You always pulled the incense back to wave it some more over the mouse at Ganesh’s feet. “Mickey Mouse,” you called it, and only stopped waving when some of the fruit for the other deities had been offered to the mouse as well.

  I imagined Paji hovering somewhere, engineering the twinges of dismay I felt every time I saw you lean into the cupboard with the incense. “It’s not so bad, religion,” Dev said. “There’s a lot of peace in it—you should try it someday.” Despite my resolve to remain disapproving, I felt myself pulled in. I allowed Dev to sprinkle the sugar crystals he consecrated on Thursdays onto my tongue again, the ones I had stopped accepting as a protest against your mundan. Each time you clamored to be taken to the temple, I accompanied you to Mahalakshmi, buying flowers for you to toss at the idols and lifting you up so you could ring the bells. I found myself relating the same mythological tales to you that I had grown up hearing from Biji. Kali crushed her husband Shiva under her feet again, Ravana appeared as a deer to tempt Sita, Krishna slew his uncle with a flying discus once more, Brahma blew out the universe in a single breath.

  Your favorite tale came from Dev, not me—the story about how Ganesh got his elephant head. You clamored to enact it whenever your father was at home at bath time—it even replaced the bucket game. I pretended to be Parvati, the one about to bathe. “Little light of my life, Ganesh. Stand outside and keep guard—make sure nobody disturbs your mother while she washes herself.”

  You beat your chest ferociously. “I promise not to let anybody pass.”

  Then Dev, playing Shiva, lumbered in, demanding to be allowed through. “How dare you prevent me from seeing my wife? I don’t care if she’s your mother, get out of my way.”

  But you did not budge, and the fight between Parvati’s son and her husband commenced. Dev tickled your sides and made sounds of “Dishoom, dishoom,” as he pretended to strike you. You tried to pull him down, latching onto his leg and sometimes biting it. Finally, it came time for your favorite part—the beheading. Dev took you in his lap, and as you gurgled and guffawed, sawed your head off with the flat of his palm. You rolled around on the ground to simulate the head tumbling away. That was my cue to emerge from my bath. “What have you done to my son?” I screamed at Dev. “Don’t come back until you have found a head to make him whole again.”


  You got off the ground and trumpeted like an elephant, and Dev put his hand to his ear. “There in the forest, what kind of animal could it be that I hear? Perhaps I can cut off its head and attach it to the boy.” As Dev closed on you, you trumpeted even louder, your body all aquiver in anticipation at the prospect of being decapitated again.

  At some point, Dev fashioned a pair of elephant ears from wire and cloth—he soaped you up and dunked you in the bucket a few times before crowning you with this contraption. “Ganesh had better be clean, or this brand-new head I’ve cut off from the elephant won’t be able to stick.” The bath was forgotten the instant you wore those ears—you ran through the house, whooping and trumpeting all day.

  chapter twenty-two

  AN ENTIRE MENAGERIE OF DISNEY CHARACTERS POPULATED THE DUGALS’ coloring book in addition to Mickey Mouse (each one duly slashed through by Pinky in violent streaks of crayon). You learned to call them by their names—Minnie and Huey, Bambi and Daisy. You made barking sounds when you came across Pluto, and asked if Dumbo (with his own mouse Timothy, no less!) was the flying version of Ganesh. Goofy’s protruding teeth were so frightening that you turned the page quickly so as not to see his face.

  We found a potty at Crawford Market with a portrait of Donald Duck on the backrest. You liked it so much that you sat on it for what seemed hours—perhaps that’s what made you so constipated from the start. Sometimes you balanced on the footrests, standing unsteadily and scrunching your face in exertion, but it didn’t help. You made a quacking sound with each success. “What has Donald Duck done?” I asked, and together, we both said, “Laid an egg.”