by Manil Suri
Biji glared after him. “It’s my house as well,” she shouted again, once he had slammed shut his office door.
PAJI MADE HIS PITCH to me the next morning. He started with the guilt-based approach. “You’ve seen what’s happening to your mother. Going on her crazy protests, adopting those rascals as her own. Day by day she becomes more unhinged. And who can really blame her? When she has nobody to talk to, when her real grandchildren live hundreds of miles away. She should be hearing the word ‘Nani’ from Ace’s mouth, not from those delinquents. I keep asking myself—what could we have done for Meera to insist on living alone so far away?
The carrot part of the campaign came next. “You’ve grown accustomed to the sea, that’s fine, but we have the Jamuna here, and the Ganges isn’t so far away. I’ll get Ace into Model school—St. Xavier’s in Bombay can’t compare. I’m not going to push too much, because in the past you’ve punished me for speaking my mind. But a whole floor to yourself at home, a job whenever you ask—tell me, what else is there to say?”
When I didn’t answer, Paji lunged into the final stage, to remind me he also carried a stick. “Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what would happen to you if the checks from me stopped. If I fell ill, or suffered financially, or some other disaster occurred. I shudder to think how you would manage, how you would even find money for food.” He made an attempt to visibly shudder, but it came out looking like a shrug.
“To tell you the truth, with Bombay prices so high, it isn’t a bad time to sell the flat. It’s quite an extravagance for me, you do realize—to run this household in Darya Ganj and pay for yours as well. Besides, I have to be fair to Roopa and Sharmila—there’s a limit to what one daughter should expect. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying anything for right this minute, that I’m stopping the checks.”
“Actually, it’s fine if you do, Paji. I found out about Dev’s insurance policy—the company sent us a copy by mistake. One lakh and twenty thousand rupees, I think the notice said. If I invest the money, the interest should more than cover your check.”
I had meant to be cautious, to not fling the policy in his face. Now that I had given in to the temptation, I savored the surprise around his mouth, the series of astonished blinks. He opened his mouth as if to contest what I had said, then closed it.
He found his voice soon enough. “It’s been so long, Meera, but I really did mean to inform you about it. Your Paji’s getting old—to have forgotten something like this. Except you don’t really need it, you know—that’s what I’m trying to say. If you come live with us, you won’t have expenses anyway.”
“I can think about it, Paji. Once the policy has been processed.”
He made one last attempt as I left his office. “Why don’t you let me hold it in reserve until Ace turns eighteen? I can even invest it for him if you like, make sure the money doesn’t get frittered away.”
BY THE TIME WE drove to the station on the last day of our trip, Paji had fully recovered from my discovery of the insurance policy. “Believe me, Meera—I’m glad that you have your independence now. You’re all set financially, so no one can tell you where to stay. But you know as well as I do that there’s no argument left for you to continue living in Bombay.”
Biji, I could see, was trying hard not to cry—for once, she was in complete agreement with my father. “You’ve been away for far too long, Meera, and I don’t know how many years remain for your parents. It’s cruel of you to deprive us like this.”
There was more campaigning at Nizamuddin station, where Arya managed to have the train make an unscheduled stop through Babuji’s railway contacts. Even Mataji made it to the platform—as I hugged her, I could feel the individual bones leading up to the hump in her spine. “Go home, pack a bag, and come right back,” she said. Arya raised you on his shoulders one last time, then swung you back onto the steps of the train. “Your Bombay adventure is over,” Hema called out as the doors were closing. “It’s time to return to the people who care.”
As you played in the train with the other children in the compartment, I recalled the images I used to have of the Frontier Mail. Its engine thundering across the country, smoke billowing from its stack, the sound of its whistle—a call to freedom, to liberation—rallying through the air. I wondered when the rail line had first been laid—wasn’t it in the previous century, under the British? I imagined laborers toiling under the sun to make the connection—digging the beds in the ground, filling them with rocks, laying down the slats, welding the rails in place. The line progressing from one center of the country to the other, mile by mile, village by village. The yellow mustard fields of the north, the desert millets grown in Rajasthan, the trading cities of Gujarat, the plateaus and the plains. How had they bridged the mighty rivers of the Tapti and the Narmada? How had they blasted through mountains that had been impassable for centuries? How many people had lost an arm or a limb, perished while trying to ford a river or dig a tunnel through a hill?
And what if they had never succeeded? The two cities never linked—no easy train connection for people to effect such momentous change? Or if the cities had ended up in two different countries—Bombay falling to Pakistan, say? I wouldn’t be facing the dilemma now on where to live. In fact, there might never have been a bustling film metropolis by the ocean to lure Dev from Delhi in the first place.
Sometime during the night, I awoke as we went over a bridge. The rumble of wheels passing over the suspended rails reverberated from the chasm below. The engine sounded a single whistle, mournful and desolate, as if its promise of a new life had been defeated. You looked so vulnerable, so trusting, asleep in the berth next to me, bands of light cycling over your upturned face.
The next morning, the dusty, monsoon-deprived landscape dogging us all the way was gone, replaced by fields, green and wet, dotted with palm trees. Pockets of sea winked at us from the distance, as women standing on the shores of lagoons cast giant fishing nets through the air. One by one, the suburbs of Bombay started appearing, their names flashing by on wooden blocks of yellow and black. Jogeshwari, where Dev took his singing lessons, Bandra, where we’d gone to see Nawab Mohammed, Mahim, with its familiar smell of sulfur and low tide, Dadar, where Dev’s guruji had lived. The buildings grew taller, the streets more crowded, the masticating cows and buffaloes gave way to buses and lorries and taxis. I watched the excitement build in your face, as you pressed against the bars of the windows as if trying to break free.
Suddenly Paji’s offer seemed further away—wasn’t it his control that I had spent my life trying to escape? And Arya—how long would it be before he used you to make a move on me—surely someone like him could not be trusted to change? It was true that you had seemed happier in Delhi, but taking a weeklong vacation was very different from living somewhere. Given that you had managed to perform well in school even with the trauma you had undergone, wouldn’t uprooting you be risky at this stage?
A more troubling thought surfaced—how, if we moved in with Paji, would I keep him from taking over your life as well? His designs had already been plain on this visit—the way he tried to sabotage your daily temple trips with Biji, the toys he dangled as inducements to make you comply with his wishes. On Sunday, you had been teary and uncommunicative all day. I finally learnt that Paji had caught you praying in your room that morning, and unleashed one of his punishing silences—the kind I still remembered so vividly from my own childhood. “I know it’s not even been a year, but have you thought about switching your name back to Sawhney?” he asked me that same evening. “That way, you could also change Ace’s last name.”
I knew I could never betray Dev in this way. Whatever our differences, Dev had always been a good father to you—I would not endanger this link, which Paji wanted to obliterate. As the last few stations before Bombay Central passed by, I began to feel a growing loyalty, an incipient tenderness towards Dev. I thought of how eager he had been to come to this city, what endless fascination the sea had held for
him. Wouldn’t this be where he would have liked you to grow up? To walk the streets he loved, to visit the temples at which he prayed, to take advantage of every opportunity he might have missed?
The train started slowing. The engine hissed and puffed into the terminus, its confidence restored, its whistle full of promise and cheer again. Even before we halted, the coolies came bursting in, swooping bedrolls off racks, fighting each other to carry bags. I looked through the window at the platform outside—Bombay, the black and yellow signs proclaimed.
chapter twenty-seven
THE FIRST NIGHTMARE CAME IN SEPTEMBER. I AWOKE TO FIND YOU flailing your arms beside me, calling to your daddy. I warmed you a glass of milk and let you snuggle up tightly to me. When that didn’t put you to sleep, we played Ludo, followed by snakes and ladders, until you finally dozed off at three.
The next week, the nightmare recurred; four nights later, it came back again. You were so exhausted in the morning that I kept you home from school that day.
Although I never quite determined what you saw, a guilty suspicion began to grow within me. The words to which I gave wing on the day Dev died had flapped around in my mind like bats every since. Had they found a way to burrow deep into your head as well, to hibernate? Could they be haunting your dreams now, having, for some reason, been stirred awake?
I still remembered my charges. That Dev was the father of another child, one that had been in my belly but perished inside. Had I gone so far as to accuse him of murdering your sibling? With all the emotion and turmoil of that moment, could it have been something you had understood, retained?
Each time I thought about those odious utterances, my face colored with shame. Dread seeped into my stomach whenever you seemed pensive. It would be foolish to remind you of what I had said, to try and jiggle the dream out of your subconscious. All I could do was squeeze you to myself in bed, let the nightmares run their course. Which they did eventually, though the cure did not come easy.
It started with a single pimple at the center of your forehead, something so insignificant that I took it to be the bite from an insect. By that night, when your fever hovered around a hundred, the boils had spread all over your face. I went to the fourth floor and brought down Dr. Kagalwalla. “They’re chicken pox—like mosquito bites, but bigger—from chickens,” he teased. “Have you been bothering the chickens again? Don’t worry, they’ll go away—there’s nothing to do but wait.”
Mrs. Dugal suggested washing you with neem leaf water—you moaned weakly as I dabbed at the pustules. Oozing and angry, they covered every inch of your body—the roof of your mouth, the soles of your feet—even, incredibly, the tip of your shamey. “When did the chickens bite me?” you asked. “If they come when I’m sleeping, will you chase them away?” I assured you the boils had nothing to do with chickens, just the toxins in your body being cleansed. All the evil humors that had built up in the past unlucky year being drained.
A week later, I felt a pimple above my lip while applying cold cream to my face. It couldn’t be, I thought to myself—hadn’t Roopa given me chicken pox when I was eight? By the next morning, I found myself covered as well—I could barely swallow, or walk, or urinate. Dr. Kagalwalla reappeared, summoned by Zaida this time, to assure me that I couldn’t pass it back to you again.
All that day, I screened my face from you, trying my best to keep you away. I imagined you horrified by my appearance, recoiling at my blisters—I didn’t want you to carry around the image of a mother with an ugly face. Perhaps I could arrange for you to spend the night with Zaida—would her husband mind if you slept over for a few days? I lay by myself in the darkened bedroom, my mind feverish, my body aflame.
The door opened and you walked in, holding the Ludo board. “Do you want to play a game?”
“Mummy’s not feeling well,” I said, relieved that the room was dark enough to hide the unsightliness of my face. “She needs to rest.”
You clambered onto the bed. “I could bring you my snails to look at then,” you offered, pulling up as I vainly tried to shrink away. You peered with great interest at my boils. “Did the chickens come and give you bites as well? Don’t worry, mine went away.” You straddled the edge of my pillow and sat there cross-legged. “You can put your head in my lap.”
It had been your favorite position—lying in my lap—whether you were having your temperature taken, or being told a story, or having custard spooned into your mouth. I hesitated, feeling awkward at the idea of playing along. “Wait, I have to get something,” you said, and bounced off the bed. In a moment you were back, your legs refolded, your hands lifting my head, and with a grunt of effort, arranging it to rest between your thighs. Before I could protest, you popped a thermometer into my mouth. “Remember, you have to keep it under your tongue.” Then you attempted to take my pulse. You pressed your fingers into the flesh of my palm, looked at the wall clock, and nodded to yourself. “It’s very good,” you declared, and pronounced my temperature to be excellent as well. The thermometer read a hundred and one degrees when I checked it for myself.
In the days that followed I felt an agony that contorted my mind and exuded from my pores. And yet, I recognized it as an opportunity to forge a bond with you that might never come again. How many times would I get to relive an experience that so closely duplicated one you had just gone through? The heat under my skin, the swellings on my tongue, the soreness of every inch. Each morning, I imagined your body where mine was now, awakening to an identical map of pain.
You took over the role of the mother completely. Cradling my fevered head in your bird-sized lap, bringing me bits of bread spread clumsily with jam. One evening, you even got Zaida to boil you some water with neem leaves. You laid a towel on the bed and carefully sponged my face and my neck. I watched your face hover over me in concentration, lost myself in the soothing sensation. You wanted to continue all over me like I had, but I stopped your hand as it neared my chest.
For weeks afterwards, once my fever had gone, we pointed at each other’s speckled faces and laughed. Mrs. Dugal announced she would finally send Pinky over one evening. “Now that you’re fine, it’ll be safe for her to see Ashvin again. She did have chicken pox when she was two, but why take a chance, I thought to myself.”
Just before Pinky was due, I highlighted both your face and mine with red lipstick dots. The minute she entered the flat, we sprang at her. She screamed, and tried to escape, but we slammed the door shut behind. We chased her around the drawing room, until she finally realized it was only lipstick we were afflicted with. She seemed fascinated by the dots—“Could you make me up too?” she asked.
So we gave Pinky chicken pox as well, then went to drop her off at her mother’s. When Mrs. Dugal opened the door, she shrieked so loudly that even Zaida heard it one floor below.
PINKY, AT TEN, HAD moved past her mother’s efforts to feminize her, and entered a tomboy phase in her life. She insisted on having her hair cut short so that ribbons could no longer be braided in it. She stopped skipping ropes and lopped the heads off her dolls—her interest turned to cricket and kites. She played house with you again, but this time she made you the wife.
I would pass by the two of you sitting under the table next to the staircase, and see you serving her dainty pieces of bread. Sometimes she toted her plastic school case as if returning from work, while you cooked inside. She gave you play money, with which you tried to buy jam from our fridge; she pretended to drink, so that afterwards, the two of you could have a fight. One day, she slapped you for speaking back to her—you ran crying back to our flat, saying you would no longer play her game.
But you didn’t give up on Pinky completely—you went up to the terrace together to fly kites. I always made sure that someone was present as a chaperone—I didn’t trust Pinky, with the heft she had acquired, not to fling you off the parapet. In time, she became quite an expert at cutting other people’s strings—going aggressively after any other kite that dared enter her domain. Mrs.
Dugal, who had shown nothing but distress at Pinky’s tomboy status, now started gushing about her daughter’s prowess at aerial warfare. She cleared an entire wall in their flat to hang as trophies the remains of downed kites that landed on the terrace.
By the time she was twelve, Pinky had pulled together her very own gang of children from the neighboring buildings. Complaints poured in about their delinquent escapades—guavas lifted from vendors’ carts, windows broken while trying to knock mangoes from trees, and once, all the steps in the adjoining building, from the ground to the second floor, covered with cooking oil. (Much to the children’s disappointment, nobody slipped—the coating was more sticky than slick.)
Thankfully, you stayed at the periphery of this pack, limiting your participation to the occasional street cricket match. Meanwhile, your teachers kept reminding me that you remained too aloof. I tried a few times to intervene when I brought you lunch. “Why don’t you ask Sunil to play hide-and-seek with Ashvin?” I suggested to the mother of a classmate one day. Before she could respond, you turned red with embarrassment and ran away.
In truth, you didn’t strike me as unhappy. I never let you be too alone—you could always depend on my company when needed. I taught you rummy and pairs and all the other card games I knew, and even played cricket with you in the corridor between the flats. On some nights, we cleared everything off the dining table to have a Ping-Pong match.
Still, there remained periods when you withdrew, when you became silent and disengaged. Unable to concentrate on anything, you moved food listlessly around your plate. I wondered then if you thought of your father, what these broodings were that you could not share. I wanted to be close enough to you to X-ray the innermost thoughts in your brain.