Diwali in Muzaffarnagar

by Tanuj Solanki

  Standing in the dim light of the room – fixed to a spot, breathing silently – Ankush also saw just how this difficulty of hate must be a problem for others in Taruna’s family as well.

  He stood in the room for a good five minutes. A part of him also wanted to discard the softness creeping inside him – softness for the old man, for the situation, for the family. The whole thing had been bogging him down for days now. The old man’s death would relieve all the burdens, that much was clear. And perhaps, it seemed to Ankush, all it needed was some doing.

  There was a chair next to the bed, close to where Ankush was standing. There were two cushions on that chair. Ankush considered smothering the old man with one of the cushions and ending the whole story then and there. It wouldn’t make him a criminal, he told himself. This man had raped his wife when she was only a child; and now his wife wanted this man dead. Everyone wanted this man dead.

  Ankush picked up a cushion carefully and pressed its fluff with his thumbs. He brought it closer to the man’s face. It could be done. He could do it. But in the movies, the victims always thrashed about violently. Even the insensate ones thrashed about when denied respiration. It would require strength, Ankush guessed, and even then it was likely that Ravi would wake up and stop him. Realizing this, his tense muscles relaxed. The sweat on his forehead cooled. He put the pillow back and saw that his body was shaking, as if withdrawing from a fugue that the mind had forced it to enter. The best option was to go back to his wife. Tomorrow they would go to Muzaffarnagar and the situation here would be behind them. The man would die soon. It would all pass.

  He turned and moved out of the room, taking care to close the door completely, for he knew that Taruna would wake up before him and that seeing the door ajar would upset her. He lay down next to her and kissed her lightly on the forehead. I would have killed the Bastard had Ravi not been in the room – with this thought, he tried to push himself to sleep.

  Soon, he started dreaming again, and the dream now showed him as both the detective and the murderer. It was so confounding that when he finally woke up five hours later, his initial confusion was that his middle-of-the-night adventure had only been a dream.

  The morning came to life quickly. Ankush had woken up with a headache and his mother-in-law gave him a lemon tea to help ease it. Taruna had black coffee. There was a quick breakfast that followed, where nothing more substantial than ‘good morning’ and ‘how was your sleep’ was said. Then the couple got ready for their journey to Muzaffarnagar.

  A week back, Ankush had asked Taruna’s father to arrange an outstation cab for the journey. He wanted them to travel in comfort, at their own schedule. There was no online service providing outstation cabs in Delhi at that time – none, at least, that he had not found to be overpriced. Taruna’s father had booked a cab for them, and Ankush assumed that the rates were going be reasonable.

  Just as they were about to leave, Taruna’s father provided a little twist: ‘When you reach Muzaffarnagar, Ankush, don’t bother with paying the cab driver.’

  ‘Why, Papa?’ Ankush asked. ‘We never talked about that.’

  ‘He’s a nice Punjabi kid, the driver. And he knows me well. I can settle payments with him later.’

  Taruna saw this as another example of that self-harming impulse that plagued her father. It was an expense he could do well without. ‘No, Papa,’ she told him. ‘We will manage, it’s no problem at all.’

  ‘There is no point spoiling him, beta,’ said her father. ‘He might charge you a silly rate.’

  This told Ankush that his father-in-law hadn’t discussed the rates with the cab service. ‘You can help us set the rate downstairs, Papa,’ he said. ‘But I insist that I’ll pay. It will become a bad habit if I take your offer now.’

  It happened so. Taruna’s father came downstairs to see them off. The rate he settled with the driver was only marginally better than the lowest one that Ankush had discovered online. Totally not worth the drama, Ankush thought.

  It was a Tata Indigo. They piled their two bags in the boot and placed the photo frame carefully on the front seat. Then they sat on the rear seat and were on their way.

  When they had crossed Dwarka, Ankush said, ‘I now realize how adamant your father can be while trying to be generous.’

  ‘You didn’t discuss the rates with him on the phone?’

  ‘No, I thought there was no need to state that explicitly.’

  ‘That’s why he assumed that you wanted him to pay.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He’s like that,’ Taruna said. ‘He was like that at the wedding too. Arranged transport for many of the guests. He paid for a cab to go to Jammu and return to Delhi, just because some relatives had been too lazy to buy train tickets.’

  ‘Wow,’ Ankush said. ‘We didn’t pay for any of our relatives’ transport.’

  ‘Maybe the groom’s side isn’t expected to,’ Taruna said.

  ‘Is the bride’s side expected to? For their own relatives?’

  Taruna didn’t answer and they didn’t talk for a while then. She wondered if Ankush remembered the stuff he had said last night. If she didn’t have something to ask of Ankush, she would have argued about all that now. Nevertheless, it bubbled inside her, and the restraint she put on herself made her irritable. She identified with those pathetic housewives who have to ask their husbands for money, and who are condemned to be calculative of the potential responses that could come their way.

  The mid-morning sun strengthened and came in through her window. The rays made Taruna’s skin sting a little. She wondered, for the first time, if it would have been better not to tell Ankush about her abuse. Asking him to loan some money to her father so that the Bastard could be cared for – that wouldn’t have been difficult in itself. But now, since Ankush knew, it was like asking a husband to pay for his wife’s rapist.

  Taruna had swallowed this cruel irony last night. She had her reasons: she loved her family, cared for her brother’s future. But why should Ankush be concerned?

  It was Ankush who broke the silence after a while, when they were crossing Ghaziabad. The road was narrower and bumpier now that they had entered Uttar Pradesh. ‘I think I said some silly things to you last night. I don’t remember exactly. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Taruna replied, instinctively. Ankush held her left hand and squeezed it. It was then that she recalled that it was not okay. Her restraints began to loosen in her mind.

  ‘I must say your brother is a very straightforward guy,’ Ankush said.

  ‘It was about the honeymoon,’ Taruna said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last night. You were talking about our possible honeymoon to Iceland.’

  ‘Oh yes, your cousins had pulled my leg quite a bit.’

  ‘Not that. You were talking about how you thought my father should have paid for it.’

  Ankush just sighed in response. They grew silent again and looked out their side-windows. The grip of their hands had loosened. There was not much to see, though – some derelict shops and the ageing residential complexes behind them, covered in dusty air.

  In Muradnagar, Ankush’s mother called him. ‘It was a great Holi, yes … Yes, we are on our way … It’s two-and-a-half hours from here … We will stop midway for lunch, so yes, add another half hour … See you, Ma.’

  ‘How is she?’ Taruna asked after Ankush cut the phone.

  ‘Excited to see us.’

  ‘Look, Ankush, there is something we need to discuss.’

  ‘I don’t think we should discuss what I said last night. I was drunk.’

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘My father needs money. Can you give him a loan of three lakh rupees? Four, if you can spare that much. He will return it over the course of a year.’

  Ankush shook his head, a look of disbelief in his eyes. Taruna found his reaction artificial.

  ‘So that’s why he was talking about my savings last night?
’ Ankush asked.

  ‘Why are you trying so hard to look scandalized?’

  Ankush’s jaw stiffened. Then he spoke in a low, menacing voice: ‘You think I don’t know what he needs the money for? It’s for the Bastard, isn’t it? That child raper? And why I’m having difficulty in looking scandalized? Because I’m confused. Because I can’t fathom how you’ve lost all your sense of right and wrong.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to pay for the Bastard. I’m asking you to lend some money to my father. He needs it.’

  ‘It’s the same thing, Taruna, the same thing.’

  ‘So say no, it’s okay,’ Taruna said, her face twisted in anger.

  Ankush exhaled through his mouth and looked outside his window. They were crossing Modipuram now. ‘So that’s what you discussed with them last night?’ he said. When Taruna didn’t answer, he assumed that the conversation was over, and convinced himself that Taruna was saying what she was because the stay at her parents’ house had been strenuous for her. He allowed his mind to drift, and it went on its own inexplicable path.

  After a while, he spoke about something altogether unrelated. ‘Do you know you can boil live frogs in a vessel and they won’t jump out of it?’

  ‘What?’ Taruna asked.

  ‘Frogs, I’m talking about frogs. If you put them in cold water in a saucer and place it on a flame, the frogs won’t jump out till they are boiled alive.’

  ‘I don’t know why you have to talk of this now.’

  ‘Frogs can change their body temperature. So, as the water heats up, they keep adapting to the change in temperature by cooling off. They spend their energy on this cooling off. The water continues to heat up, of course, and the frogs continue to spend more and more energy. Eventually, when the water starts boiling, and the frogs have no more energy left, they start to, well, they start to feel the heat.’

  ‘Why did you think of this?’

  ‘Just because. My mind was just rambling.’

  ‘Why did you think of this now?’ Taruna’s voice had an urgency to it.

  ‘It means nothing, my love.’

  ‘Am I a frog in boiling water?’

  ‘Pfft.’

  ‘Don’t give me your smartness now, Ankush. What did you want to say? Is my father a frog in boiling water?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t mean that.’

  A longer silence reigned in the car this time, broken eventually after an hour by the driver. They were close to Meerut, and the driver suggested that they have lunch.

  The Indigo turned into a place called Midway Motel. There were two air-conditioned buses parked in the large open space in front of the main food court. The buses had come from Dehradun and were headed towards Delhi. The drivers had made a lunch stop here for the passengers. Between the parking lot and the main food court was a separate shed for the drivers, where meals were served for hundred rupees. Ankush gave their driver the money.

  Inside the food court, Ankush and Taruna sat at a corner table and soon got two plain dosas.

  ‘We’ve let the situation get to us,’ Ankush said to Taruna as he took a bite. ‘We should stop fighting.’

  ‘You say really nasty things sometimes, Ankush.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to pay for that man,’ Ankush said. Then, after a pause: ‘I almost killed him last night, you know?’

  Taruna looked at him, perplexed.

  ‘I went to the other room when everyone was sleeping,’ Ankush continued. ‘I thought I should choke him with a cushion. Then I got scared that Ravi would wake up. I swear, I was close to doing it.’

  ‘Should have tried it,’ Taruna said coldly. ‘I don’t think Ravi would have stopped you.’

  To Ankush, Taruna’s even tone suggested that she did not believe him. He had thought that mentioning the incident from last night would make her see how he hated the Bastard as much as she did. He had hoped that their fight would end; that Taruna would see his side of things, especially his love for her. But she gave him no credence, and this made him angry. ‘I won’t pay for him,’ he reiterated.

  ‘Just for the record, Ankush, you were not asked to pay for him. You were asked to lend money to my father.’

  ‘Which he intends to use for cleaning the old man’s buttocks.’

  Hearing this, Taruna’s mind approached the logic that had lain in her head for a long time. Earlier, out of a need to believe in Ankush, she had refused it even to herself. But in this moment, she couldn’t hold back. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Ankush,’ she said, ‘that this might be money that you owe my father?’

  ‘That’s silly,’ Ankush said, looking at her with wide eyes.

  ‘It’s true that my father overspent in the wedding. But a significant portion was spent on the baraat’s reception.’

  ‘I know the line that you are going to take. I have thought …’

  ‘Would you call a baraat size of 250 a conservative number? In a city like Delhi?’

  ‘Hey …’

  ‘Did you or your mother ever – and I mean, ever – offer to contribute anything to the expenses that my father bore? Which he bore so that your guests would feel that they had come to a grand wedding?’

  ‘Taruna, I have thought of this. Trust me, had your father asked me, I would have contributed.’

  ‘But why didn’t it occur to you to offer it by yourself?’

  ‘Because …’ Ankush spread his arms in protest. ‘Because that’s convention. Because that’s how it works, normally.’

  ‘You are so comfortable with convention, right? My father is also following convention in providing for his own father.’

  ‘But,’ Ankush said, his voice sibilant, ‘but we know what the Bastard did to you.’

  ‘You sure that’s not an excuse, Ankush? Because somehow I don’t believe you. You felt that my father should have paid for the honeymoon. You didn’t offer to pay for the wedding expenses. Now you’re just refusing to lend money to him. There is a pattern. You sure you’re not just a money-minded dude who mixes convention and convenience?’

  ‘Bravo,’ Ankush said loudly. ‘What. A. Family! What a fucking, complicated family!’

  People from other tables looked at theirs.

  ‘You can say no, Ankush, and you have said no,’ Taruna hissed. ‘But don’t try to prove how outrageous it is for me to ask you to help my father. I decide what is right and wrong here.’

  ‘Oh really! And why are you the special one?’

  ‘Because I am the one who was raped. And, please, don’t try to clarify the situation to me. It can’t be clearer to you than it is to me.’

  ‘So you’ve forgiven him?’

  ‘No, Ankush. And you know you’re just asking that to further the argument.’

  ‘Let me tell you something in plain terms,’ Ankush said. ‘It’s not only you who decides what is right and wrong. Because you’ve made other people suffer with you. You’ve made your parents suffer for years. You’ve made me suffer. You know how dysfunctional you’ve been the whole week? And tell me if I haven’t been my nicest. I tried my best to cheer you up while you kept reliving the shit that happened to you some twenty years back. You know what, I don’t even trust you to stop thinking of him after he dies.’

  Taruna sighed, looking down at the table. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. ‘Let’s not talk about this. It’s alright, I don’t blame you for refusing the money.’

  But Ankush wasn’t ready to take the invitation to let things pass. ‘It’s a scar. And you’ve grown up with it. But there are so many children in the world, you know, who have sexual experiences.’

  ‘Are you really saying this? What are you saying?’

  ‘That most people get better.’

  The suggestion that she hadn’t tried enough: Taruna had heard this all her life. ‘Sometimes I think I don’t know you, Ankush. You’ve no idea about sexual abuse but you theorize about it. Pass your wisdom about. You know what you sound like? Some kind
of know-it-all dude who just sits around and explains things!’

  A black rage clouded Ankush’s eyes. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to hurt Taruna. ‘Everyone has a childhood story, Taruna,’ he said, ‘yours just had an old man in it.’

  ‘What?’ Taruna gasped. Her eyes seemed to turn into stone. ‘What did you just fucking say?’

  ‘When I was fourteen, I fucked my neighbour. She was ten.’

  Taruna clenched her jaws.

  ‘And, you know, I still think of that sometimes and masturbate.’

  She tried to slap him, but he managed to avoid it, catching her hand. ‘Now what does that make me? A child raper?’ he said.

  ‘You …’ Taruna got up from her seat. There were tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ankush asked.

  She picked up the tissue paper from the table and wiped her eyes. ‘To the toilet,’ she said. ‘Can I go to the toilet?’

  Ankush let go of her hand, and watched her run towards the far corner of the food court. In the next two or three minutes, his rage subsided and he saw immediately how stupid he had just been. He had lied, just to be nasty; and he had been nastier than he had ever been. He saw that he didn’t care about the money, that he would transfer the money to Taruna’s father’s account that afternoon itself. He didn’t even care if he ever got it back. He pulled his hair in frustration, realizing that all he wanted now was to hold Taruna in his arms. He dialled her mobile number, but she cut the call. Then he called her again, after a couple of minutes. This time, the phone was switched off. He got up from the table and moved towards the toilets. He stood outside the ladies’ toilet for a good ten minutes, but his wife didn’t come out. He then noticed a passageway next to the toilet, and that it led outside the building. Perhaps Taruna had gone out for a walk. He decided to wait for another five minutes outside the ladies’ toilet, but didn’t have the patience. He hurriedly walked out of the passage, out in the open, and found himself out next to a bush. The highway was right in front of him. To his right was the front of the Midway Hotel, and he could see their driver standing beside the Indigo.