by Manil Suri
Was it wrong of me to begrudge Dev this idyllic existence? Churlish to nurture the resentment in my breast? It wasn’t jealousy, I told myself—I just worried like any mother would, about all the time you spent together day after day. What if your father’s influence proved harmful? What if you ended up like him? Your only ambition to sleep ten hours each day and make it to Auntie’s for your drink?
I tried to compensate whenever I could. Each time Dev started his ritual of soda and ice, I lured you to the kitchen to have hot puris fried in oil. I took over from Dev whenever he toweled you dry, or combed your hair, or pared your nails. I insisted on taking you to school some mornings, despite Dev’s assurances that he didn’t mind. When he folded sheets of papers into boats, I taught you how to construct more elaborately folded planes. I bribed you with Fruitee bars, and bought you icy cola drinks—the more I tried, though, the more you attached yourself to him.
And then came the day I realized what I was up against. It started with you frisking around on the bed with your father while I tried to put up the curtains leading to the living room. Dev had come up with the brilliant idea of taking them down the night before to wrap them around you and Daddy as saris. Suddenly the two of you began wrestling—first on the bed, then on the floor. “I’m Superman,” Dev said. “I’m King Kong,” you countered, trying to catch your father in a scissor hold. Dev always took care to use only a fraction of his strength when he tumbled with you—today, he allowed you to wrap your legs around him and pin him down. I’m not sure what happened next, but your body came crashing into the chair on which I stood, knocking it out from under me and dumping me on the floor. The rod bent in the middle, the curtain ripped in two, and a few of its rings clattered across the room.
“What kind of hooliganism is this?” I cried out. “Do you think this is a wrestling pit?”
Neither you nor Dev responded—you stared silently at each other. I threw the piece of torn curtain at your father in anger and struck the ground with my fist. “Answer me,” I shouted. “Is this how one behaves at home?”
To my amazement, the two of you, still looking at each other, started giggling. Dev picked up the curtain fragment and swished it at you, and you fell over backwards in laughter. He wrapped it over his head as he had yesterday, pretending it was the edge of a sari. He got to his feet and started dancing, the curtain rings sounding against his forehead like the chimes of a tambourine. You sprang up from the floor, clapped your hands in elation, then began to dance as well. “My love has got me a sari from Bikaneer,” Dev sang, tearing off a piece of the cloth for you and draping it over your head.
I stood there, overcome by the unreality of the situation. The fun you and Dev seemed to be having—what should I do—join in as well? Then I remembered the ruined rod, the destroyed curtain, the mocking of my words. I strode to where you were dancing and ripped the fragment off your head.
It had the desired effect. You clutched at your bare head, shocked. Dev stopped his song in mid-sentence.
“This is all very well,” I said, managing to strike an even tone. “But there’s only dal in the house, and Ashvin’s school fees are due. You’re wrong if you think wrestling and dancing makes you a good enough father. Why don’t you get a job, instead of spending your life being a fool?”
I watched with satisfaction as Dev’s face crumpled. He turned to face the wall, the curtain still dangling ridiculously from his head. The rings jingled a little as he took several deep breaths. When he turned around again, I saw he had managed to make his eyes wet.
“What sad and sensitive tears. I’m sure they’ll impress Ashvin. Perhaps you should save them in a vial and pull them out each time he asks why you’re still unemployed.”
Dev staggered out of the room. You looked at me, wide-eyed. “I’m sorry,” I said, as I held out my hand. “Mummy and Daddy might fight, but we still love you.” Instead of coming to me, you retreated, turning around and running through the door, as if I might try to harm you.
For a while, I just stood there silently, still holding the cloth from your head. Then I righted the upturned chair and ferreted out the curtain rings that had rolled under the bed. At the door to the other room, I stopped, immobilized by what I saw. Dev sat on the sofa, his eyes closed, his neck craned like an expectant pet. You knelt in his lap, holding his face in your palms, leaning up to kiss the tears off his shaggy dog head.
PERHAPS IF I HAD BEEN NOBLER, perhaps if I had been less wronged, I could have been more generous, reacted with equanimity. But understand, Ashvin, your father was also my husband, the man who had robbed me of my firstborn, the man who was preparing to again usurp my claim. You were the sum total of my life’s accomplishments, the reason for my existence—there could be no question of giving in. Never before had I seen you framed so clearly as through that doorway—you were the prize in a contest I had to win.
You must realize I didn’t want to be cruel, that evening, or in the days and nights that followed. I was preoccupied, strategizing, wondering how I would fight to retain what was mine. I knew you sensed my remoteness—the way you whimpered, the way you followed me around to engage me, the way you clung to me in apology. It was not you but your father, remember, towards whom my disaffection was directed.
The bamboo house vision, where I could gradually realign your affections, was, I decided, too fraught with risk. Instead, I began to imagine a future without Dev. I confided this idea to Zaida to gauge her reaction. “Perhaps I’ll run away with Ashvin, bring him up in a small unknown town somewhere. I’ll start working again, not mention it even to Paji—we’ll subsist on what I can make.”
To my surprise, she was aghast. “He’s lost his job—how can you think of abandoning him at a time like this? Just think of how selfish it would look, just think of what people would say.” I tried to argue that Dev had never been a good provider, that he lacked drive, that I could no longer bear his drinking—an activity that surely expressed his dissatisfaction with me, his disappointment in life. But Zaida only scoffed at this. “Did you see the ganga yesterday, with her bruised eye and her split lip? At least your Dev mellows when he’s drunk, it’s not like alcohol is a fuel that propels his fist. And look at Mrs. Dugal, sitting there unperturbed as her husband downs peg after peg. He tends to drool when he’s drunk, so she carries a handkerchief in her purse to dab off the spit. Your Dev might be out of work and have his bad habits, but he’s still a good father, you have to admit.”
I saw what she meant. People were hardened by husbands who beat, who broke skin and bones and teeth. They would mock my pampered complaints, laugh that my disappointment could hardly compare. Perhaps I’d have had a better shot if Dev occasionally slapped me around, punched out a tooth, darkened an eye. At least then I could point to my bruises as I left, giving the world a reason why.
I never did get anywhere with my plan. Zaida pointed out a flaw that made it unworkable. A married woman could hardly expect to survive in a small town away from her husband, she said. “They’d rip you for sport, come after you like wolves.”
Dev must have sensed something amiss, because he tried to squeeze out sympathy by putting his wretchedness on display. He started inexpertly frying his egg himself now every morning, gazing at me with sad, jobless eyes each time the yolk spilled out and hardened against the pan. He stopped listening to the radio or taking naps during the day, spending silent hours on the sofa staring worriedly at the calendar instead. He wore the darkest shirts he owned, with pants that were charcoal black, to show me how solemn he felt. One day, I even found the newspaper had Positions Available ads circled in red—he never followed up on them, though, as far as I could tell. He hugged you often and spent time playing with you as visibly as possible, in a misguided attempt to appeal to my motherly instincts.
You understood the dangers better than your father. You wriggled out from his demonstrative romps each time you sensed they might trigger my remoteness again. Whenever a fight broke out, you hid in the bathroom
until the shouting subsided, to avoid being pressured into taking sides. You learnt to divide your affection so scrupulously you could have been in training to be a diplomat. Sometimes I felt guilty when I saw your growing cautiousness—your antics always guarded, your laughter no longer carefree. But I was unable to shake off my anxieties, unable to rescue you from having to tiptoe around my needs.
One afternoon, I came back from my shopping to find neither you nor Dev in the flat. On the landing, Pinky was skipping rope, one of the many new girlish pursuits Mrs. Dugal had nudged her towards. “Uncle’s teaching him to fly a kite on the terrace,” she said, her healthy cheeks jiggling as she skipped. “Another useless boys’ activity.” She rolled her eyes as I went up the steps.
How long was it (five and a half years already?) since those blackout nights on the terrace? When I waltzed around with you in the moonlight, your mouth at my breast? Now, as I gazed across the same expanse, you seemed so grown, the kite string grasped with such determination in your hand. “Pull!” your father shouted, launching the kite—paper rustled, slender ribs flexed through the air. Just when it looked like the kite was going to enjoy a graceful ascent, the nose did an about-turn and dove back towards earth. “Let out more string!” Dev yelled, but you were too mesmerized by the spectacle of the plunge to react. The kite hit the terrace and lay there like an injured bird, a triangle of paper protruding like a broken wing.
Surely I could teach you to control the string better than that. Our servant Kesar had secretly introduced us to this male pursuit at Darya Ganj. I remembered the afternoon Roopa had engaged my kite in a duel, and much to her shock, I had severed her string. How surprised you would be to discover that your mother had some proficiency in this activity as well.
“Mummy’s going to teach you today,” I announced the next afternoon, as you gathered up your kites and reel. “You might not believe it, but in her heyday, she used to be quite the ace.”
My heart lurched as your face fell. “But I always go with Daddy. He was going to show me the trick of how to fly the kite in a circle through the air.”
“Daddy’s a little tired today,” Dev said. “Mummy can show you as well.” He looked at me hopefully, glad for the opportunity to be of help.
On the terrace, we knotted the string to the kite, and I ran back to you once it was aloft. As I helped you tug and reel out, your reserve began to dissolve. The kite ascended into the sky, soaring past the tallest buildings, rising even higher than the sun, it seemed. When it was barely a patch against the clouds, the riffle of its paper no longer audible, you squinted at it through narrowed eyes. “It’s so high,” you whispered, as if suddenly realizing how distant was the other end of the line that sprang from your hand.
“Don’t worry, sweetie. You’ve seen aeroplanes in the sky, haven’t you? Those fly even higher than that. One day, you’ll see for yourself—we’ll go up there in an aeroplane together, travel to some new and wonderful place. Wouldn’t you like that?”
You stared at the kite, your brow furrowing. Then you turned around. “Won’t Daddy get lonely all by himself?”
I felt my cheeks flush. I tried to keep my voice singsong, carefree. “We’ll take him along, of course. I wasn’t going to leave him behind.”
You examined my face, perhaps to decide if I could be trusted. Just when I thought your next question would slice like a scalpel to expose my innermost intentions, your expression relaxed. “Where will we go?” you asked.
FOR A WHILE AFTER THAT, I still managed to cling to my fantasy of the two of us running away together from Dev. But you wiped out even these lingering traces on the night before your sixth birthday, when I asked what present you would like. “I wish you would kiss Daddy,” you replied. The earnestness of your expression could not hide the tide of insecurity shored up behind.
Guilt rose inside me. What kind of mother had I become to keep putting you through this? I pressed your face to mine.
The next day, we stood on either side of you, Dev and I, and helped you guide the knife through the cake. After you blew the candles out, I gave your father a peck as you had requested. “Nothing’s going to happen,” I told you, squeezing you in my arms to make you feel safe. “Mummy and Daddy are fine, so you can stop worrying your little six-year-old head.”
But I was not fine. My resentment against Dev had not abated, it bided its time inside. I felt increasingly in the grip of your unborn sibling from fifteen years ago, his phantom presence come to haunt me. He did not manifest himself in my nightmares, creating grisly images of the room above the plumbing shop, or visions of blood and gore. Rather, he infiltrated more subtly, more insidiously, sending questions bubbling up through my consciousness each time I saw Dev at play with you. How could your father hug and kiss and wrestle with you so breezily, without the slightest inkling of guilt? Why should someone be allowed to enjoy such affection from you after snuffing out the life of your twin? I tried to calm myself with arguments—hadn’t Dev been contrite, wasn’t I culpable as well? But your twin always had the perfect counter to my reasonableness. What if you ended up loving your father more than your mother—where would be the justice in this?
In June, you started first standard at St. Xavier’s. We had managed to get admission for you through one of Paji’s contacts. The fees were three times what we’d paid for pre-first, and now there were uniforms and books to buy as well. I had to ask Paji for a supplement to the monthly check he had been sending ever since Dev had quit. “There are some very promising leads Dev’s found,” I wrote. “He’s bound to have a job again any day now.”
In response, Paji cut out a newspaper article, which spoke about how the prime minister’s “Green Revolution” had proved to be a success. “This begging-bowl image of us that Indira’s putting an end to—let’s hope you’ll soon be able to match her example as well.”
By now, Dev seemed completely at ease with his unemployed status—settling in for the long haul, it appeared. One night, he even asked me if I thought we should have another child. “Munna seems so alone sometimes, I feel we’re depriving him. Just think when both of us are dead and gone, he’d still have someone to call family if we gave him a sibling.”
I stared at him, stunned. “We can’t even afford to buy Ashvin a second pair of shoes—how do you think we can afford another child?”
“There’s always God to provide. Besides, don’t you think your parents would be overjoyed if we gave them another grandson?”
It took me a moment to figure out Dev’s meaning—a second child would make Paji amenable to sending more money. “Maybe one of them could be an engineer—an astronaut, even—the other, a physician. He’d like that, wouldn’t he, your father?—his grandson the doctor he never could become?”
I turned around, pretending I hadn’t heard Dev’s words. Tell him, the voice within me urged. Tell him that we would have already been two, Ashvin and I. If he hadn’t… I concentrated on the edge of my pillow and willed myself to be silent.
“And of course if it were a girl, there would be nothing like it. She would be our little princess—we’d all dote on her—Munna, you, and I.”
chapter twenty-four
THE WAR THAT RIPPED THROUGH OUR EXISTENCE ORIGINATED AT THE border with East Pakistan, hundreds of miles away from where we lived. I had been reading about the events there for months—the elections where the East Pakistanis voted against years of exploitation, the brutality with which West Pakistan repressed the resulting rebellion, the millions of Bengali Muslim refugees who streamed into India as a result. How could I have ever imagined that something so distant could cause us such irrevocable change?
It took a while for the conflict to reach us. As the atrocities against the East Bengalis by their countrymen mounted, the calls for Indira to march in became increasingly shrill. “She’s getting the world to accept us as liberators, not aggressors, so that America can’t come after us in Pakistan’s defense,” Paji explained. He claimed the trouble had been building
even longer, ever since the Partition. “Yet another sign of British genius, to lump together such far-flung regions with not even a common language, only because both were Muslim. Now will people realize just how worthless religion is?”
In the beginning of December, the Pakistanis blundered in with a preemptive attack against India. It was just the excuse Indira had been awaiting. “There is no option but to fight,” she declared.
1962, 1965, and now 1971—preparing for wartime felt so familiar, it could have been a way to mark the passage of years. I had saved the panels of blackout paper from ’65—I took them out from under the birthday decorations and put them up. The previous routines started up again—offices closing at 4 p.m., night shows cancelled at movie theaters, sugar and kerosene disappearing overnight from grocers’ shelves. Police advised pedestrians to wear white shirts so as not to be run over by public buses in the dark. “Only confirmed drinkers make it to speakeasies,” the newspaper reported, a caption worthy of a photo of Auntie’s place.
By the second night, the rumor mill was grinding in earnest—Pakistani agents swarming undetected all over Bombay, reports of enemy planes sighted (as usual) at Madh Island. Mrs. Dugal muttered again about suspicious goings-on in the building, but quieted down when I reminded her that this time our East Pakistan allies were also Muslim.
Although the war went on for two weeks, for all practical purposes, it ended for me on the fourth day. The fall of Dacca, the liberation of Bangladesh, the drama of Nixon deploying the Seventh Fleet against India—all these could have occurred in a different era, on a different continent. The only memory that somehow lingers hazily from that week’s newspapers is a picture of a Soviet spaceship landing on Mars.