The Story Hour

by Thrity Umrigar

  Lakshmi felt slow, dim-witted, could feel the gears of her brain creaking and grinding to a halt. The girl who had flown in order to rescue a small boy from drowning in a well, the girl who had won a prize for reciting a poem, the young woman who had looked an elephant in the eye and seen the source of his pain, the woman whom the richest man in the village treated like a favored niece—that Lakshmi had disappeared, had been chased out by the man appearing like a nightmare earlier today. This Lakshmi, who sat mute as the two people she loved most dearly in the world talked over each other, couldn’t figure out whose side to take, who had the better argument. Her heart ached for her baby sister, whom she had never been able to deny anything until now. But pitted against their father’s claim, Shilpa’s mewing, her declaration of her love for Dilip, felt childish. Dada was right—ignorant of his daughter’s involvement with Dilip, he had given his word that he would take the other man’s offer of marriage seriously. His reputation, his name, was at stake. Even if they could ignore that, it was impossible to ignore the compelling financial argument. Nothing changed the fact that a marriage proposal without dowry was the kind of blessing for which most families would give thanks forever. Blinded by his desire for Shilpa, the man had made this preposterous offer. Blinded by her love for Dilip, Shilpa was rejecting it without considering it.

  There was yet another side. Her side. Was it her fault that she was born without much of the natural beauty that Shilpa possessed? That she was born to a poor father who couldn’t afford two dowries? That her parents were cursed with no male offspring, which meant they had no way to offset the cost of marrying two daughters? Just finding out that Roshan had made inquiries about her had opened up a whole new vista. If Shilpa were to say yes, and if Roshan could look past the stigma of having her younger sister marrying first, there would be money for her to marry.

  “No,” she said to herself, but the startled expressions on the other two faces told her she’d said it out loud. No. She would not put her desires ahead of her sister’s. She was tin; Shilpa was gold. Shilpa was born beautiful; she was born ordinary. It had always been so, and she had never resented or challenged this hierarchy. She was happy to be the mule so that Shilpa could be the racehorse. She had dropped out of school, taken care of their mother, worked like a man beside her father in the fields, ingratiated herself into Menon sahib’s life, all so Shilpa could finish school, not be burdened with the care of their mother, not have to toil in the fields. Even though she was only five years older, she felt as if she had given birth to Shilpa, felt that parental obligation to bear any burden, put up with any humiliation to ease Shilpa’s way. And it had worked. It had worked. Shilpa was one of the few women in their village who had finished high school. She now had a good secretarial job in town and was also taking a computer science class. She was in love with a kind, cheerful fellow with dancing eyes. Her hands were soft and unbroken, a constant source of pride to Lakshmi.

  “No,” she said out loud. “Dada, Shilpa already find someone to marry. Dilip is a good boy. She will be happy with him. Give her your blessings.”

  “And what about you, beti?”

  She managed a laugh. “What about me? I stay here, Dada. Same as always. Who going to take care of you in old age if I also leaf?”

  Dada looked at her with his wise gray eyes as he pulled on his mustache. “You not give enough yet to this family, Lakshmi?” he said quietly. “You still wanting to give more?” He shook his head with a disgusted look. “Best student in the whole school, you were. That you give up to take care of your poor mother. It kill me, but nothing to do. Then you do the man’s work in my fields so that this little one can go to school. Still I say nothing. Now your back is becoming crooked from bending over accounting books for a man who call you his niece but won’t let you enter his house since his fat wife do puja to purify it after he force you to eat there.” Dada’s eyes were red. “Enough. No more sacrifice. I will not allow it.” He turned to face his younger daughter. “Munni. It your turn. Your Didi has given enough. I’s a poor man. I don’t have luxury of let you make the love marriage. This is a good proposal. If your horoscope match, I getting you married in two weeks.”

  “Dada, no,” Shilpa and Lakshmi said simultaneously, but Dada turned his head sharply away.

  “Enough,” he said. “No more talking. I’s your father. It my job to think about both my children. This is my decision.”

  “But Dada,” Shilpa said.

  Finally, their father raised his voice. “Munni, stop. Stop. Now go, both of you. I needs to rest. Tomorrow is busy day.”

  As they walked out of the room, Shilpa turned toward Lakshmi. “This is your fault,” she hissed.

  “But—”

  “I’m telling you right now, Didi. I will kill myself before I marries anyone but Dilip.”

  “Shilpa. Don’t speak rubbish.”

  “You see. You just see.”

  “Think of Dada. Think of—”

  Shilpa turned on her. “Why?” she said. There was a wildness in her voice that Lakshmi had never heard before. “Why I think of Dada? You saw how little he think of me.”

  “He just wanting us to be happy . . .”

  “Liar. He wanting you to be happy. He make sacrifice out of me to make sure you happy and settle in life.”

  Lakshmi looked away to hide the horror and sadness on her face. This was the first real fight she’d ever had with Shilpa. Please don’t let their horoscopes match, she thought. Or let Dada find out that Adit Patil is a drunkard. Or that he doesn’t come from a respectable family. Please. This is our only chance.

  The reports on Adit were good. No smoking. No excessive drinking. Sent money from Am’rica each month for family support. Older sister was respectably married but still looked after their elderly father. And the horoscopes matched.

  The gifts began to arrive as soon as the wedding day was fixed. The wedding would be held in the groom’s village, about fifteen kilometers from their own. They could invite some of their guests, of course, but since the groom was paying all expenses, please to kindly keep the numbers down—and oh, because of the groom’s tight schedule, they would skip the usual pre-wedding rituals, like the mendi ceremony.

  First came the red and gold sari that Shilpa was to wear on her wedding day. Then a plainer green sari for the elder sister and a white kurta-pajama set for Dada. Next, Adit’s sister dropped off a set of two gold bangles, a gold necklace, and gold earrings to be worn on the wedding day. Oh, and what size shoes did the new bride wear? No, no, they would provide the shoes. Her younger brother was a businessman in Am’rica, he could afford a pair of wedding shoes. Along with the shoes arrived three pairs of shalwar-kameez suits and two pairs of Kolhapuri slippers. Oh, and a bottle of perfume that he had carried all the way from Am’rica. It was said that all of Am’rica smelled as sweet as this perfume.

  My brother, he has more money than sense, the sister giggled during one of her visits. He’s too generous for his own good. As if to prove her point, one week before the wedding, there arrived another gift: two lean, muscular goats, meant to be slaughtered and fed to those residents of the village who would not be invited to the wedding. Everybody knew what the gift meant: One goat would’ve been enough to feed the village, a generous enough gesture. Two was extravagance—a way of showing that this was not some ordinary marriage, and the groom was not some ordinary man from the village, like, say, a farmer’s son or a cobbler or a schoolteacher. Or an ordinary car mechanic. This groom was a successful businessman from Am’rica. Even Menon sahib was impressed by the gesture. Went around shaking his head in disbelief the rest of the day. The second goat was sheer carelessness, which itself was a luxury only the rich could afford. It was a way of saying, Kill the second one also, or keep it as a pet for milk, it’s up to you, makes no difference to us. That shrug of the shoulder which only the rich can afford.

  With each gift, Shilpa got more subdued, as if cowering under the weight of the gold, vanishing under the spr
ead of the red and gold sari, rendered mute by the scarlet blood that would soon flow in the dark fields after the Muslim butcher had expertly slit the goats’ throats. Her objections to the upcoming nuptials became less vociferous, her insistence that Dada cancel the wedding less adamant. Lakshmi felt relief. The gifts proved how much Adit loved Shilpa. Maybe she was beginning to feel his love also? Shilpa was about to turn twenty-two, and it would be years before she could marry Dilip. Maybe she wanted to escape her older sister’s fate? Despite her regret that her baby sister would be moving so far away, despite her shame that she was not earning enough money to allow Shilpa to marry the man she loved, Lakshmi felt a creeping sense of excitement as the day of the wedding drew near. There was so much to do. She had hired an air-conditioned taxi to drive them to Adit’s village. Jyoti was to come over early that morning to do Shilpa’s hair and to apply the mendi to her hands. Lakshmi herself had stitched the blouse that Shilpa would wear under her sari. She had packed a small suitcase for Shilpa’s overnight honeymoon. In another break with tradition, Adit had insisted that they spend their wedding night not in his father’s house but at a hotel that had sprung up on the outskirts of town. The next day, after taking lunch at her new in-laws’ house, he would drive her back to Dada’s house, where she would stay until her visa arrived.

  Jyoti came to their house the afternoon before the wedding. Lakshmi opened the door and joked, “You’s forgetting the date? Wedding not till tomorrow.”

  The girl smiled. “I knows, Didi. But some of us friends wanting to take Shilpa out. We having surprise for her.”

  Lakshmi nodded approvingly. “Good idea. I go tell her you here.”

  She stood in the doorway, watching as the two younger women walked toward the main road, leaning in to each other, giggling as they whispered to each other. Despite her happiness at seeing Shilpa laugh for the first time in days, Lakshmi felt a twinge of sadness. She once was like this with her school friends, but that was so long ago. Years of responsibility had beaten the carefreeness out of her; lack of contact with those her own age had left her friendless. She had no close friends—the bearer of her whispered hopes and apprehensions happened to be an elephant. Once Shilpa flew to Am’rica, the last link with her own youth would be severed.

  She turned away from the door, surprised at her uncharacteristic envy of Shilpa. And yet so much had been different between them these past two weeks, the lifelong closeness between them evaporating, as Shilpa spent more time with Jyoti and Lakshmi busied herself with wedding preparations.

  It was to be a small wedding by the village’s standards—only seventy guests, including the eight invited by Lakshmi’s family—another of Adit’s gestures toward modernity. But the distribution of goat meat, along with the sweets that Lakshmi had made, had gone a long way toward appeasing the bruised feelings of those not invited.

  She had fed Dada his dinner an hour ago, but Shilpa was not yet home, and Lakshmi felt annoyed. Why didn’t Jyoti say if their surprise included taking Shilpa out for dinner? With a sigh, she served herself some vegetables on Dada’s used plate and took out a chapati from the bread tin. She would’ve preferred not to eat dinner alone on the last day her sister would be in this house as an unmarried woman. On the other hand, how could she begrudge Shilpa time with her friends?

  She looked up, startled, when she heard the knock on the door a half hour later. Why was Shilpa knocking instead of walking in? When she answered, it was Jyoti, her eyes wide, her face drenched in sweat. “Kya hua? Where’s my sister?”

  In reply, Jyoti shoved a piece of paper into her hand. “Note for you, Didi,” she said. “It explain.”

  “What?” she started, but Jyoti was already hurrying down the road, taking the same path that she and Shilpa had languidly walked down a few hours ago. Except this time the girl was almost trotting.

  Lakshmi glanced at the piece of paper, read the first line, and felt her stomach drop with fear. “Wait,” she called after Jyoti, but when the girl didn’t stop, she raced out of the house after her. Within a few seconds, she caught up with the younger woman and spun her around. “What? What is this? This note says . . . You foolish girl, what you done?”

  Jyoti’s eyes shone in the dark. “What I done is helping my best friend marry the man she love. Which none of her family relations do to help her.” She glared accusingly at Lakshmi.

  Lakshmi felt her cheeks flush. “You. What you. Think. That I?”

  “Shilpa say you and your dada sell her body so you can be married next.”

  A wail started from deep within Lakshmi. “No, no, no. This all wrong. I fights Dada. I’s on Shilpa’s side.” She stopped abruptly at the sight of a passing bicycle, and she used that time to pull herself together. “Tell me,” she said urgently. “Where my Shilpa now?”

  “With Dilip.”

  Lakshmi blanched. “Where?” she whispered.

  “They gone away. Hiding somewhere until the wedding canceled.”

  Lakshmi looked up at the night sky, as if expecting it to land on her head. This was the end of them, of Dada, of their family name. A young woman spending the night before her wedding with another man. Word would get out. Strangers from five villages away would hear about this beautiful, impulsive girl who had thrown her life away, who had given them permission to spit in her face, who had gone from being a high school graduate to a prostitute in one heedless moment. This kheti, this unforgiving patch of land out of which her father had coaxed things to grow; this earth that he had battled and loved until he was a bent old man, older than his years; this house that her parents had built out of years of hard labor, their thin limbs the beams that held it up, their blood and sweat mixed into the cement that made up its walls; this family name that they had nurtured and fed like a prized pet, this family name that belonged not to them but to their ancestors, this izzat, this honor, that they valued more than anything else, that compensated for the daily humiliations and trials of their lives—the tense silence with which they waited each harvest season while Menon sahib weighed their produce and decreed how much it was worth; the lecture they had mutely listened to when the local moneylender, who charged thirty percent interest, told them that having a pucca house was an indulgence they couldn’t afford; the terrible fear that grew each day the rains stayed away—this stupid careless girl had trampled upon their family honor, had risked all their lives with one thoughtless gesture. Lakshmi swallowed the bile that rose in her mouth.

  She stood staring at Jyoti, noticed the righteous set of her mouth, and wondered what to say, what words to use to convince the younger woman that what she believed was so right—two young lovers reunited by her, Jyoti—was in fact horribly wrong. That everything depended on finding Shilpa right away, on bringing her to her senses and then bringing her home. For a second she hated Jyoti and, by extension, Shilpa, all these young, stupid, childish girls who liked shiny objects, who believed in love rather than responsibility, whose heads were turned by the Bollywood snake charmers ShahrukhBobbyRanbirImran, who forgot that they were the daughters of farmers and laborers, who lived in their decrepit homes and impoverished villages without noticing the squalor because their dreams were of marbled houses along Juhu Beach in Mumbai. In the second that they stared at each other, Lakshmi felt she was old enough to be Jyoti’s mother, old enough to be her grandmother, felt like the oldest woman in the world. How clearly she could see the fate that awaited Shilpa. Nothing would matter—not her beauty nor her high school diploma—nothing would be enough to protect her against the scorn of their neighbors. And the irony was that eventually Dilip would leave her, for what man would willingly marry a prostitute? Lakshmi could see it so clearly, the arc of her sister’s destiny, that it shocked her that Shilpa hadn’t.

  “Jyoti,” she said, trying to fight off her panic. “You please listen to me. You take me to where they are hiding. I promises you. She will not have to marry Aditji. I am giving you my promise.”

  “You cancel the wedding first.” Jyoti�
�s words were tough, but her voice was shaky, and Lakshmi grabbed on to that shakiness.

  “Does you understand what will happen to Shilpa if someone finds out she alone with Dilip at night? They . . . they spits on her, calls her a . . .” Lakshmi forced herself to say the ugly word and was gratified when she saw Jyoti flinch. “Jyoti. You like my younger sister. You knows how much I loves my Shilpa. You knows what I done for her. If, if anything happen to her, if anybody say something wicked of her, I . . .” The tears fell, hot and furious, dripping down her face. “I will sacrifice anything for Shilpa. Anything. Including my dada’s heart.”

  The two women stared at each other, shocked. Lakshmi opened her mouth to explain, but just then Jyoti reached over and touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Didi. Say no more. I understands. And I will take you to Shilpa.”

  Lakshmi ran back into the house to put on her slippers and to tell Dada she was going out to do some last-minute shopping. The old man started to protest, but she was already out of the house. “Where they are?” she gasped as they walked.

  They were in an apartment in town owned by one of Dilip’s customers who was a long-distance truck driver. When Lakshmi walked in without knocking, they were sitting on the sofa watching television. Dilip sprang to his feet, while Shilpa remained on the couch, her mouth open.

  “Come,” Lakshmi said without preamble, reaching for Shilpa’s thin wrist. “We talk later. First you come home.”

  “I not leaving.” Shilpa held on to the sofa.

  “Not leaving? You wants to spend night here with the man you not even engage to?” Lakshmi pointed to the door. “You know what happen when you walking out of here? The world spit on you. Say you are loose woman. Do you think Dilip’s mother allow her son to marry a loose woman? Think of your future, Shilpa.”

  “I’s thinking of my future, only. That’s why I here. I don’t want to marry that ugly man. His sister shown me his photo.”