Before We Visit the Goddess

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  “It’s a deal,” she said, holding out her hand. He put his own in it and was startled by her firm, urbane grip.

  “Although you probably won’t stay with me long enough for that,” she added.

  He smiled, continuing his charade. “You might be surprised.” But the handshake distracted him. Where did a Bengali woman dressed in widow-white learn to shake hands like that? It was a mystery worth deciphering.

  They walked together to the bus stop. She had dropped her stiff manner and was telling him her hopes about the store. She was going to name it after her mother, who had died two years ago.

  “She was the most talented sweet-maker I’ve known, and the hardest worker. She never had a day’s rest in her life. Never received the appreciation she deserved.”

  With a pang he thought of his own mother. She had scrimped for years so that he could have a decent education. “Baba,” she told him sometimes, “you are my jewel.”

  “Just wait, Ma,” he would reply. “Once I get a job, I’ll take care of everything you need.”

  “She died when I was in Assam,” Sabitri was saying. “I couldn’t even be at her deathbed, I was so tangled in my own troubles then. But through Durga Sweets I’ll make her into a household name in Kolkata. You’ll help me, won’t you? Oh, here comes number seventy-five. That’s my bus.”

  The bus approached them, wobbly and belching exhaust, bloated with passengers. Bipin Bihari hailed it. He positioned himself behind Sabitri, blocking off the others who were trying to board, ignoring their angry comments so she could climb on without being shoved around.

  He had not noticed that the sky had grown black. It began to rain, fat drops darkening his blue shirt.

  “Take my umbrella,” Sabitri shouted from the bus window, and though he said no, she lobbed it at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

  He unfurled it, gripping the curved handle which she must have touched a hundred times. It was a lady’s umbrella, too small for him. The rain fell earnestly. His new leather interview shoes, which had cost more than he could afford, grew waterlogged. He tried to feel concern but was unsuccessful. Tomorrow. What an amazing word. He could smell, on the rain, the odor of kadam flowers, a little like molasses, a little (in his imagination) like the recesses of a woman’s body. He maneuvered past puddles toward the little flat he shared with his parents and two sisters, whistling a tune from a recent movie. “Gaata Rahe Mera Dil, Tu Hi Meri Manzil.” You, My Destination. Magnanimously, he imagined befriending the stiff little girl in the photo, taking her, perhaps, to the zoo. Sabitri would like that.

  He had no idea of the troubles waiting for him on the other side of tomorrow, the acrid clashes with his parents, who were bewildered by his refusal to accept the better job offer, who grew convinced that the widow had cast a black magic spell on him. At the end of a particularly vicious argument, he moved to a hostel. They would not take his phone calls after that. His letters, with checks folded inside, were returned unopened. But how could he abandon Sabitri? Oh, the jagged tear when love pulls you in opposite directions. He would not be invited to his sisters’ modest weddings. He would find out about his mother’s death from a distant relative.

  But for now he whistled jauntily through the downpour. Soaked through, his pants flapped muddily around his shins. His heart arced up in the dark chamber of his chest like some wild sea creature. This, this was happiness: the lightning carving its signature into the belly of a cloud; the little birds in the kadam tree, scattering yellow pollen as they fluffed their feathers; the tender curve of Sabitri’s arm as she tossed him the umbrella. When he reached home, he decided, he would ask his mother to fry him a plate of crisp onion pakoras.

  Beggars Can’t be Choosers: 1973

  When Bela arrived in the United States at the age of nineteen, carrying papers that falsely claimed she was a tourist, Sanjay was the only person she knew in the whole country. He wasn’t her husband yet; the plan was for them to marry as soon as she got here. She was crazy about him—how else to account for this desperate thing she had done? But perhaps she didn’t trust him all the way, because when the airplane landed in San Francisco, her palms were slick with sweat. Where would she turn if he wasn’t out in the lobby waiting for her? But there he stood, on the other side of the frosted double doors, thinner than she remembered, his scruffy student beard replaced by a trim, responsible-looking mustache—grown, he later told her, so that Americans would take him seriously. He looked as worried as she felt. It struck her that he, too, had had his doubts. Would she really give up, for his sake, everything she was familiar with? Drop out of college? Cut herself off from her mother—a wound never to be totally healed, because that’s the kind of woman her mother was?

  Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more. But on that day the lurching made her forget the cart with her suitcase on it and run through the crowd to Sanjay. She threw her arms around him the way she never could have done in Kolkata and kissed him on the mouth. No one catcalled. No one harassed them or took umbrage or even noticed, except for an old man who offered them a pensive smile.

  When she had enough breath to speak again, Bela said to Sanjay, “I think I’m going to be happy in America.”

  And he, smiling, said, “I know you will.”

  But Bela had been wrong. Someone else had noticed them kissing, and once she surfaced, she noticed him, too. He was taller than Sanjay and more muscular; his mustache, though similar to Sanjay’s (so similar that later she would wonder if Sanjay had copied him), was aggressively luxurious. Next to him, Sanjay appeared young and inexperienced, not much more than a boy. Bela had never thought of Sanjay in that way. In Kolkata, he’d been the student leader of an important political party, someone people respected and even feared. His new American avatar made her uncomfortable.

  The man had been watching their reunion with a mildly sardonic expression. Now he said, “Shonu, go get the cart before someone steals that suitcase.”

  Sanjay’s smile grew embarrassed and he nodded sheepishly. “Yes, Bishu-da.”

  And suddenly Bela knew who he was: Bishwanath Bhaduri, Sanjay’s childhood friend in Kolkata, his next-door neighbor and mentor; his—and thus, her—savior. Her face burned because the first thing he had seen her do was behave in such a wild way.

  Bishu loaded the bag into the trunk of his car.

  “This is really light,” he said. Bela flushed, not sure if the comment was compliment or reproof. She’d had to pack in a rush; it had been hard to find a time when both her mother and Rekha the maid were out of the house. She had thrown in a few salwar kameezes and saris, a couple of sweaters, and her dance costume, though she would probably never get a chance to wear it. At the last moment, with the taxi already honking for her downstairs, she’d snatched up—guiltily, because it wasn’t really hers—the family photo album from the almirah in the living room. Now she wished she had thought to pick up gifts—a couple of packets, at the very least, of the hot dalmoot mix that Sanjay loved.

  Bela climbed into the back. The men had offered her the front passenger seat, but she was still mortified. She wrapped the end of her sari around her shoulders. She hadn’t thought it would be this cold in California. At the airport, she had been too flustered to take note of her surroundings; now she longed to see what America looked like. But they were speeding along a dark freeway and there wasn’t much to observe except arched light-posts that loomed up suddenly, looking like they belonged on the set of a science fiction movie, and disappeared just as fast. The men spoke about work, Bishu telling Sanjay that he tended to trust people too easily. Bela tried hard to stay awake, but jet lag had her in its leaden grasp. The conversation up front had turned to Be
ngal politics, something about police encounters. The men’s tones grew truculent. She tried to shut them out and thought she heard, far away, her mother calling.

  By now Sabitri would have received the goodbye note Bela had entrusted to Bishu’s friend in Kolkata, the one who helped her get her passport and ticket. Sabitri would be very angry. Bela had been afraid of what she might do—to herself as much as to Bishu’s friend. She had instructed the friend to deliver the note to Durga Sweets so that her mother would be forced to control herself in front of her employees. Give it to Bipin Babu, the manager, Bela had said, and then leave right away. Bipin Bihari, who had been at Durga Sweets ever since it opened, was her mother’s confidant, the closest thing she had to a friend. In her youth, Bela had been jealous of how much more time Sabitri spent with Bipin Babu than with her, and had curtly refused his tentative overtures of friendship—an outing to Magnolia’s for ice cream, a visit to the circus. But now she was thankful for his presence. A stable sort, he would know how to defuse the situation.

  Bela pictured Sabitri’s face as she opened the note. She would have drawn herself up to her full height—Sabitri was a tall woman—and pursed her lips to keep them from trembling. She would have resisted the impulse to crush the note and throw it on the rubbish heap outside the store. She would have put it away inside the scuffed brown purse she had carried ever since Bela could remember and gone back to work, discussing catering orders with Bipin Babu in her calm voice, or giving suggestions to her customers. Cauliflower singaras go well with rasogollahs. Or, With malpua you should order dal puris and potato curry, they taste excellent together.

  But what would she have done once she reached home? Would she cry? Bela didn’t think so. In all her life, she had never seen Sabitri in tears, not even when her brother Harsha had died of dengue fever at the age of two. After the cremation, when Bela and Sabitri had returned to the house—her father had died a few months earlier, gone all of a sudden in that horrible fire accident—Sabitri had gone into the children’s bedroom and lain on Harsha’s bed, which was too small, so that her legs dangled down, and stared at the ceiling. When Bela tried to comfort her, she did not seem to hear, and finally Ayah had come in and taken Bela away. But tonight in America as sleep pulled her under, an image came to Bela, she didn’t know from where. It would return over the next few years even though she told herself that she made it up: Sabitri slumped on the floor of the cramped living room of their Kolkata flat, her head pressed against the armrest of the fawn velvet chair that had been Bela’s favorite (Bela had curled up in it just two days ago), weeping until the fabric turned dark with her sorrow.

  Three years of married life, but even now when she heard Sanjay’s key rattling at their apartment door, a shiver of pleasure went through Bela, no matter how tired she was. Usually that was very tired, because of the long hours she put in at Tiny Treasures Child Care. She hated the job—the endless diaper-changing and vomit-cleaning, the colicky babies that screamed like banshees as soon as you put them down in their cribs—but it was the only place that would hire a woman like herself, untrained, inexperienced, at the bottom of the food chain. Then came the household chores. Cart the groceries back from Lucky’s, three blocks away. Lug the laundry down to the washing machine on the ground floor. Lug it up again. Sweep and mop the pocked linoleum floor that refused to look clean no matter what she did. And finally the cooking, which always took too much time because Bela was a perfectionist—like her mother, though she hated to admit it. She disdained American food and took pride in preparing, from scratch, spicy fish curry or potatoes seasoned with panch phoron and whole red chilies.

  Sanjay was tired, too, when he got home. After he came to America, he worked a minimum-wage job all day and went to school at night. Since he didn’t have a degree from India, he had to start over. This time he studied computers. Only recently had he found a job as a programmer. At first Bela had been elated by this coup, but she soon realized that it was a less-than-ideal situation. The economy was shaky; the company was threatening to downsize. Sanjay had to work whichever shift they gave him; also, he worked overtime whenever he could because they needed to save money. Sometimes it seemed to Bela that they hardly saw each other. Still, he had a little routine for when he came home. He would set down his bag at the door, drop his jacket, and launch into one of his favorite movie songs, something from his college days like “Yeh Shaam Mastani” or “Pal Bhar Ke Liye.” He’d open his arms wide and Bela would sashay into them. Even as she laughed at the silliness of it, she silently thanked whichever unlikely power had brought—and kept—them together.

  They had met in college. She was brand-new; it was his final year. She was a shy arts student; he was studying chemistry. More importantly, he was the charismatic leader of the student branch of the powerful Communist Party, CPI (M). She fell in love with him as she stood in the back of a crowd the first week of classes listening to him speak, overcome by his incendiary rhetoric, the fluent way he quoted revolutionary poetry. Priyo ful khelibar din noi adya. / Dhangsher mukhomukhi amra. She repeated the words to herself with reverent delight. Dear one, today there is no time for flower-play. / Together, today, we face catastrophe. She stood there after everyone else had left, still mesmerized by the words, until he came down from the platform and asked her what her name was.

  “But what made you fall in love with me?” she would ask later. “I was so ordinary.”

  “It was the wonder in your eyes. It made me believe I was capable of great things. And in any case, you weren’t ordinary. Don’t you remember, you’d just danced in the college’s annual talent show and won first prize?”

  When she told her mother about Sanjay, they fought more bitterly over him than they ever had—and they’d had their share of fights. Still, Bela brought Sanjay over, hoping Sabitri would be won over by his confident charm. She wasn’t.

  “For you, this romance with Bela is just a college fling—like your fling with politics,” she told Sanjay. “Pretty soon you’ll settle down in what you now deride as a ‘bourgeois’ job—with a nice little wife chosen by your parents. And my Bela will be left with a broken heart and a ruined reputation.”

  Sanjay had walked out of their flat, slamming the door. It had taken Bela an entire day of apologizing and pleading before he would speak to her again. But he never forgave Sabitri for the things she had said, especially her comment about his parents. After Bela learned more about his childhood, she would understand why.

  When Bela told her mother that she loved Sanjay, Sabitri insisted that she was too young to know her mind. “You’ll regret it all your life if you tie yourself down to someone so quickly,” she said. When Bela informed her that Sanjay had asked her to marry him as soon as he graduated and got a job—which wouldn’t be too difficult because chemists were in demand—Sabitri pleaded with her, “First finish your studies. That’s the only thing you should be thinking of now. Do you want to be dependent on someone else for every expense? Every decision? Believe me, I know how that feels.” When Bela proved stubborn, Sabitri pointed out that the CPI (M) had many enemies. Sanjay was playing with fire. One misstep and he would get in trouble, maybe even get killed. Did she want to get embroiled with someone like that?

  Bela retorted that Sabitri was being paranoid. And as for being dependent on Sanjay, it didn’t matter, because she loved him.

  “Love!” Sabitri gave a short, mirthless laugh. And then, “Since you refuse to listen to reason, I’m going to insist that you stop seeing him.”

  “You’ve bullied me all my life, but this time I won’t let you.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Sabitri said. She paid the night watchman of their building extra to accompany Bela to college and back.

  “Wait outside her classroom,” she told him. “Make sure Didimoni doesn’t speak to any men.”

  “I’ll hate you forever,” Bela said.

  “Only until you have your own teenage daughter,” Sabitri said.

  She did not kno
w that love had made Bela ingenious, that during lunch break she would slip away to the library stacks, where Sanjay waited for her.

  Overnight, as though the universe were in collusion with Sabitri, the political climate in Kolkata darkened. A little-known militant group, the Naxals, rocketed to prominence. There were escalations, bombs, clashes with the police, slashed-up bodies of young men. The CPI (M) was blamed for much of the violence. The United Front coalition government collapsed. Colleges were shut down, exams postponed indefinitely. In the midst of all this, Sanjay disappeared. Was he injured? Was he dead? He did not contact Bela, who grew frantic.

  One must give Sabitri credit: she did her best to console her daughter, and she did not say that she had been right. She sent people to the police station and to Sanjay’s neighborhood to try and find out what had happened. For a while, she even hired a private detective. But nothing came of it.

  One afternoon, Bela sat desultorily on the fawn chair in their living room. She hadn’t been out of the house in a week. Where would she go, even if she could have summoned the requisite energy, now that the college had been closed up? She was alone at home, Sabitri having gone to Durga Sweets because, no matter how tense the situation, Bengalis had to have their desserts. She had invited Bela to accompany her. But though Bela liked visiting the shop, which always smelled of chocolate sandesh, on this day she’d shaken her head, too depressed to speak. She hadn’t bathed since yesterday; she hadn’t changed her sari; she had picked at her breakfast without eating anything. When the phone rang, she almost didn’t pick it up.

  But thank God that, at the last moment, she had changed her mind. Because it was Sanjay on the line. As she sobbed with relief and resentment, he whispered apologies for his long silence. His life was in danger. He’d had to go underground. The police were looking for him, as were certain members of the Naxal party. They were watching his house—probably hers, too. Her phone might be tapped. That’s why he hadn’t dared to get in touch until now. He was leaving for America—he was at the airport gate already, and thus out of reach of his enemies. He would board the plane in a few minutes. Yes, he was leaving without a degree. What choice did he have? He was just thankful that he could escape with his life!