Water: A Novel (Bapsi Sidwha)

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  All at once the girl opened huge eyes, and in the lamplight they appeared clear and luminous with understanding, as if the child had grasped the complexity and paradox of her mother’s emotions. Bhagya stroked her daughter’s cheeks. She whispered, “Go to sleep, my little mouse.” The girl’s heavy lids slowly sheathed her eyes and, as if the taut skin of her eyelids were insufficient to cover them, left milky crescents beneath her eyelashes. Flesh of my flesh, the beautiful fruit of my womb: her gaze lingered on her daughter’s face.

  Bhagya sat up, suddenly filled with a guilty sense of foreboding; a mother’s unbridled love would surely attract nazar to her child. Bhagya snapped her fingers thrice in quick succession to ward off the evil eye. She drew her sari over her bowed head and, folding her hands, prayed to Shashthi, the goddess of children, to watch over her sleeping daughter.

  BHAGYA HAD RECITED HER morning prayers by the time the boys left for school. As she watered the holy basil bushes, Somnath, in white dhoti and shirt, armed with his basket of sacred texts and the caste-marks on his forehead, came looking for her.

  “Accha, I’m going,” he said by way of farewell.

  Bhagya covered her head. “Bring plantain. If you can, some fish for the children.”

  Somnath nodded confidently. “I’m owed quite a bit.”

  “Our neighbour said a holy man has come from far away. His name is Gandhi. Get his picture if you can for my prayer nook.”

  “Yes, people are talking about him; they call him bapu Gandhi,” Somnath said. “He wants us to weave our own cloth—the English sarkar thinks he is a troublemaker—but I hear he is a good man. He says all religions are true. He wants people to unite in their struggle against the English’s raj. I’ll look for his picture in the bazaar.” And then Somnath set off for far-flung houses to collect the meagre tithes that were his due as a Brahmin.

  Chuyia helped her mother pick up her brothers’ soiled clothes for the wash and rolled up the bedding. She went to the back of the house to lay out the feed and fill the water bucket for the cow and its wobbly-legged calf. When she returned, she found her mother reclining by the window and chanting from the Mahabharata. Bhagya often did this before preparing her midday meal. Chuyia promptly covered her head with her sari and snuggled up to her mother, intent on listening to the passionate stories of the gods and goddesses. Bhagya arranged her sari to accommodate Chuyia and began to read out from the tattered copy of the Mahabharata.

  A covey of parrots, the sudden whir from their wings startling them, streaked greenly past their window on the way to the neighbour’s orchard. Chuyia didn’t mind sharing the fruit with the parrots: in any case, they would forage among the higher branches she couldn’t reach.

  After the sacred text had been put away, Chuyia followed her mother into the kitchen. She prattled away about the doings of the deities as Bhagya, sitting on the palm leaf mat on the floor, sliced onions and prepared the spinach. Bhagya answered her questions distractedly. Chuyia watched her mother rinse the spinach. “Why don’t you cook fish? I’m tired of spinach,” she said. “Radha’s ma cooks fish every day.”

  “If your father brings it, I’ll cook it,” she said. “You’ll get as much fish as you want at your husband’s house.”

  Chuyia slipped her sari off her little shoulder and spread it between her hands. “I want this much!”

  Her daughter’s chest was flat and her small nipples dimpled inwards. Bhagya had an urge to hold her. She cleaned her fingers and reaching forward, swung the child to her lap. “Don’t worry; he’ll fill your lap with mangoes and almond taffy,” she said. “But will you share it with him,” she teased, “or will you gobble it all up yourself?”

  Chuyia, dazzled by the unsustainable images of abundance her mother conjured up, nodded shyly and buried her face in Bhagya’s soft bosom.

  Bhagya got up when the mustard oil in the karahi began to smoke. She dropped a pinch of salt and turmeric into the oil and stirred the onions into it.

  “Let me do that,” Chuyia said.

  “No, you’ll burn yourself.”

  “But I want to help you cook,” Chuyia importuned. “I want to help you.”

  To keep her daughter away from the wok, Bhagya gave her a steel platter half-filled with lentils. “Here; remove the grit and small stones from the daal if you must help.”

  But this didn’t conform with Chuyia’s idea of cooking. After a short while, she announced, “Amma, I’ve cleaned the daal,” and put the steel platter aside.

  Bhagya looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. “Either you put your heart into what you’re doing, or you don’t do it at all.”

  “Then don’t tell me to clean daal. I can’t put my heart into lentils!”

  “Hai, what a rude girl you’ve become,” said Bhagya, taken aback. Not for the first time she thought, the child is old for her years. “If you talk back to your mother-in-law like this, she will shame me for not bringing you up properly,” she said aloud, dramatically smacking her head to convey the humiliation that lay in store for her.

  “I’ll tell her, ‘Don’t shame my mother,’” said Chuyia heartlessly. She climbed on a stool and reached for the clay pot of mishti-doi that Bhagya had made with rich milk from their cow, which had just calved. “It’s empty,” she wailed.

  “There was only a little left. Your brothers must have eaten it.”

  “Amma, I want mishti-doi. Please make some, please, please,” whined Chuyia.

  Bhagya flung an arm out and thwacked Chuyia, catching her on her thigh. “Go play outside before I lose my temper and thrash you.”

  Chuyia stepped out of her mother’s reach and, holding her hands behind her back, obdurately shook her head. “There is no one to play with.”

  Bhagya made a small cone with a scrap of paper and got up to fill it with roasted gram. “Here, feed your dolls this,” she said, pushing Chuyia out the door.

  Chuyia called Tun-tun, but he wasn’t around. Munching on the roasted chickpeas, Chuyia crossed their yard to the thatched hut. A tangle of mossy branches weighed down the roof, and the small yard in front was overgrown with weeds. Chuyia pried open the door that hung crookedly from its hinges. It was dark inside the hut, and the cooler air held the sweet odours of damp earth and vegetation that had taken root in the earth floor.

  Chuyia dragged the doll’s house, a rough plywood crate the size of two shoeboxes, to the centre of the room and, in the light that came from a sagging slit of skylight, examined its contents. She picked up the chipped clay dolls, the faded outlines of their stiff, glazed arms barely discernable against their torsos, and wiped them with her sari. She talked to her dolls as she tipped the contents of her toy box and lined up the miniature cooking utensils in front of a brick, which served as a make-believe stove. “You must be hungry; I’ll cook you turnips,” she told the dolls, pulling out some spongy weeds growing through the cracks of the floor. She squished them and collected the pulp in a tiny karahi. She added the few remaining chickpeas from the paper cone to the mess and stirred it with a minuscule ladle.

  Chuyia force-fed her dolls with the food she had prepared and, when the green slime stained their faces, scolded them for being dirty. She used the same words and tone of voice Bhagya used, except she kept her voice hushed, lest someone should intrude on her imagined world and break the spell of make-believe she had conjured up.

  Tun-tun’s shrill little barks returned her to reality and filled her heart with love. Although he sounded less puppyish now, his voice still broke at the higher octaves. Abandoning her dolls Chuyia went outside to greet the now-brawny little fellow. Before long, they both wandered off into the jungle.

  Tun-tun kept within calling distance as Chuyia foraged for wild berries and leechees. After a while, she lay down on a bed of yellow leaves fallen from a thorn tree, and Tun-tun, placing his forelegs on her chest, pinned her down and gazed at her for all the world like a conquering lion. He licked her face. Chuyia pushed him away, and, after chasing a squirrel up a t
ree, he settled down beside her to keep watch.

  High above, the thorn tree was in blossom, and the fragrance from its flowers mingled with the other wind-borne scents of the forest. A tailor bird was stitching its nest in the fork of a dried branch, and, at a small distance from her, a pair of canaries sat swinging on creepers that hung down from a jackfruit tree. Birds hopped among the branches of trees, making the leaves tremble and filling the forest with birdsong. The squirrels played hide-and-seek around tree trunks. Closer to the ground, her ears picked up the rustle of fecund vegetation and of unseen insects inhabiting it. All of Chuyia’s senses became steeped in the forest’s wild beauty—her pulse slowed to match its deep green rhythm, and her heart was at peace.

  Chapter Two

  A flurry of activity overtook their household. Huge colanders of rice and lentils simmered on wood fires in the backyard. Small boxes filled with sweet laddoos, and smeared with turmeric and red kum-kum to mark the auspicious nature of the occasion, were sent to neighbours. Marquees were set up, palm leaf mats spread on the ground, and the guests were served food on washed banana leaves.

  Mohan and Prasad were packed off to a neighbour’s house. Chuyia slept with Bhagya.

  The day before the wedding, women gathered around the sweet tulsi bushes in their yard to sing songs. Chuyia was excited by all the activity centred on her, but some of the more doleful songs about the bride’s sorrow at leaving her parents’ house made her anxious. “I don’t want to leave you and baba,” she cried, clinging to Bhagya’s sari. “I don’t want to leave Mohan bhaiya and Prasad bhaiya or Tun-tun. I will have no one to play with,” she said, weeping bitterly.

  This behaviour was not only expected of her, it was considered commendable.

  Some of the women, remembering their own weddings, shed copious tears, saying, “Hai, poor little thing. It is never easy to leave your parents’ house. She has no idea of the troubles that lie ahead for her.”

  Hearing them, Chuyia howled louder and clung closer to her mother. When this had gone on for some time and the women were suitably impressed, Bhagya took her hysterical and bewildered daughter to one side. Wiping her tears, she said, “Don’t worry. You won’t go to your husband’s house for a long, long time. You can play with your brothers all you want until then.”

  “Can I take my brothers with me?” Chuyia asked.

  Bhagya smiled. “No, you can’t take them.”

  “Can I take Tun-tun?”

  Bhagya pretended to mull over the question. “Okay. We will give him to you as part of your dowry,” she said. “We will also give you the cow so that you will have plenty of milk and mishti-doi in your husband’s house.”

  THE DAY OF THE WEDDING BEGAN early for the bride with the Haldi Uptan ritual. Chuyia’s aunt rubbed the turmeric paste all over her niece’s firm little body. Chuyia looked down at her body askance. “I don’t want to turn yellow,” she cried, trying to wiggle out of her aunt’s grasp. “My friends will laugh at me. Wash it off!”

  “You won’t turn yellow. You’ll turn golden, and your husband will be dazzled by your beauty.”

  “I don’t want a husband!” Chuyia said petulantly. “I don’t want to get married.”

  “Marriage and death are not in our hands. They are in Bhagwan’s hands,” her aunt said firmly. Then she laughed. “Don’t worry; the uptan has magical properties that will make you love your husband.” She looked at the naked, asexual little creature standing disconsolately in front of her, and her expression softened. “You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you? You will in a few years—when our mouse is ready to go to her husband’s house.” And before Chuyia could speak, she added, “You will understand a lot of things then—so shush now.”

  After the beauty treatment, seven married women—relatives and favoured neighbours—in turn squeezed Chuyia’s supple hands in theirs to push tight red-and-green glass marriage bangles onto her wrists. Chuyia bore the ordeal happily and shook her arms to show off the jingling bangles to her envious friends. The seven women represented the seven forms of God, one for each day of the week. Since their village was situated on the Bengal–Bihar border, the rituals represented a mixture of Hindu customs from both provinces.

  Chuyia was shown the presents the groom had sent her—jewellery, which included a gold mangal-sutra necklace, and several saris for her to change into on the wedding day. Elaborate makeup was applied to her face, with small white dots over the eyebrows, and her hair was decorated with flowers and stuck with the ornaments she asked for: sun, moon, stars made of tinsel. A gold chain was placed along the part in her hair and another around her neck.

  The wedding took place in the village temple. Preparations were underway to feed the guests, and the entire village would receive a helping of sweet rice and milk kheer served in shallow earthenware dishes. Since the presence of menstruating women would defile the wedding and pollute the temple, food would be left for them at their doors.

  Children ran around shouting and playing in the large compound, but the main attraction was the temple elephant and its year-old baby. They watched, enchanted, as the pujari fed the wrinkle-hided little elephant bananas. Later on, they would get to ride in the howda already strapped on to the big elephant’s back.

  As the bride, borne in a palanquin, and the groom in elaborate head-gear (both preceded by ragged village bands) made their separate way to the wedding hall, the women from villages in Bengal ululated to draw attention to the wedding ceremony itself; a conch was blown to complement the “oolu-oolu,” in keeping with the tradition.

  An admiring murmur rose among the onlookers, and Bhagya turned her head to gaze upon her son-in-law as he entered the temple. Hira Lal carried his forty-four years lightly, and he appeared to support the decorated cake-like headgear—rising almost a foot above his head—with ease. He looked at least a decade younger than Somnath. “Not bad-looking,” Somnath had said. With the deep cleft in his chin and the glow of health suffusing his features, yes, Hira Lal was not bad-looking.

  Only Brahmins were allowed inside the temple. Since the temple hall had no walls—just the tall pillars that supported the roof—everyone could see the wedding ceremony as it took place. The guests nodded their heads and made approving sounds as Somnath presented Hira Lal with a gold ring, a new dhoti and a handsome new umbrella. It was a ritual they were familiar with and enjoyed.

  Bhagya thought of her sons and wondered, would she be able to give them the quantity of milk and fat and fish that had nourished Hira Lal’s trim body? And even as she mutely appealed to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, to bless her household, her misgivings concerning her daughter’s betrothed quieted. The goddess had favoured her, but she had been too thick-headed to recognize it; it was plain to see that the connection with Hira Lal’s family would benefit her household.

  Chuyia was made to sit in front of Agni, the sacred fire. The sari, pulled over her face, narrowed her vision like blinders.

  Bhagya could barely recognize her daughter; seated next to the groom, she looked like a diminutive doll. Hira Lal sat cross-legged within the graceful folds of his white dhoti, the sacred thread prominent across his bare chest. A corner of Chuyia’s sari was tied to a long stole wrapped around Hira Lal’s neck and shoulders, and they were made to stand. With Agni, the Holy Fire as witness, the groom and his bride walked seven times around a pattern on the floor. Bhagya hid her smile in her sari; Hira Lal appeared linked to the ambulatory little bundle in red silk as to a pet. The purohit reverentially fed Agni with rarified butter and frankincense and, chanting mantras to invoke the blessings of the gods, solemnized the marriage.

  Hira Lal’s eldest sister brought the traditional Sindoor Daan on a tray. The groom applied the red sindoor to the parting in the bride’s hair and to her forehead. As a Hindu woman, the bride would wear this symbol from the time of the Sindoor Daan until her death. Of all the ceremonial gifts, the kanya daan, or bride-gift, is considered to be the holiest. Just as the giver can no longer lay cl
aim to an object that has once been donated, the parents of a traditional Hindu bride have no rights over their daughter once she has been gifted to the bridegroom. The groom then offered his bride a new sari with which to cover her head, and with this act the couple was considered officially married.

  Chapter Three

  As the demand for her husband’s service grew, Bhagya expended a small fortune on joss sticks and sandalwood and spent more time praying to the pantheon of gods and goddesses ensconced between her cupboards. Twice a day, drenched in gratitude, she prostrated herself before the Goddess Lakshmi and, weaving jasmine garlands from the bushes in her compound, hung them around the goddess’s neck.

  “Once the goddess decides to give, she is not stingy,” Somnath declared between mouthfuls of a fiery fish curry mixed with rice, as Bhagya fanned him with a palm leaf. “She tears asunder the sky to let wealth pour through in a multitude of forms.”

  Bhagya nodded in agreement, as she spooned more rice into Somnath’s plate and poured more curry into the hole he made in the rice with his fingers. She had just told him that their cow had calved and, because of the improved quality of its feed, was giving richer after-birth milk than ever before.