A Breath of Fresh Air

by Amulya Malladi

  But I knew I had to get married even though I didn’t want to. I wanted to play the field a little more, as I told my father. His advice was simple: get married and still play the field. But I didn’t want to play the field with a wife waiting at home in bed for me. I didn’t want a wife waiting at home in bed for me at all.

  However, I knew that if I didn’t get married, things would get ugly for me. The EME Corps was a small place and word traveled fast.

  When Divya Auntie introduced me to Anju, she was as green as I thought she would be and as smitten as I hoped she wouldn’t be. She seemed to be in awe of everything army. After our marriage, she had been excited when she first saw me in uniform and she had been excited when we got an orderly to do things at home. The only time she was unexcited was in bed. I didn’t like having sex with her and thankfully she didn’t want to have sex with me. I didn’t know what to do with her. She was like an appendage that had grown out of my life, and I couldn’t adjust to her. Our first night had been a disaster because I really had not wanted to be there to consummate a marriage I didn’t want. I didn’t want to indulge in foreplay. I was being forced into marriage and I hated Anju for being the one I had to marry. It was not Anju’s fault; I would have hated any woman in her place.

  Once in Bhopal, it took me less than a week to realize that my beautiful wife could charm the pants off anyone. I introduced her to Colonel Shukla, my new commanding officer in Bhopal, and he was impressed with her. He nudged and winked and told me that I had a wonderful and beautiful wife. A good wife was an asset in the army. She could be the perfect hostess and she could kiss ass and say the right things and upset no one. I couldn’t have asked for more. As long as she kept my commanding officer’s wife charmed, there was little chance my yearly work reports would be less than stellar. So, I learned to live with her, even though I didn’t enjoy it.

  I was selfish then—and maybe I haven’t changed much— but now I could see who I was. That was hard to do when I was twenty-five. I was a good army officer with the perfect official record and there was no shortage of women for me.

  We came to Bhopal in mid-May, just a week after the wedding. We’d had a honeymoon of sorts in Goa, but neither of us had much fun. I treated her badly, for the first month at least. But she persevered and tried to please me, which enraged me even more. But things started to change after the first month. I got used to her. When I came home, she was there with a beaming smile and a cup of tea. She always had the best meals ready whenever I felt like one and she made an absolutely stunning hostess. I invited other officers over and showed the hell off with the wife I didn’t want.

  I was young and stupid. If I had known any better, I would have treated her like a princess and taken care of her as if she were precious.

  Anju had been a delight I had failed to notice. And now she was lost to me. She was married to another man, who, according to Indu, seemed to keep her happy.

  I was suddenly obsessed with seeing her with her husband and seeing her . . . didn’t she say she had a son? Yes, she had. She had a child. A child with another man.

  Indu and I had two children. A daughter and a son. My life with Indu was perfect on paper. We were prosperous, had a son and a daughter, and I was going to be leftenant general someday soon.

  Until I saw Anju again, I had convinced myself that she left me because she hadn’t wanted to make the marriage work. Now that I had seen her, the guilt was back. I knew that I hadn’t let the marriage even begin. In my mind she had gone from being a safety net for my embarrassing affair with Mrs. Chaudhary, to an impediment, and finally to a nonentity.

  ELEVEN

  ANJALI

  Sandeep continued to be evasive about Prakash and I finally gave up. I wanted to tell him why Prakash’s wife, Indu, affected me. I corrected myself instantly—she was Prakash’s Indu. To me she was Indira.

  After Prakash and I divorced, I started clearly spelling out my “correct” name to people. Everyone started calling me Anjali; no one shortened it to Anju. Some had tried and I had fought against it. I’d argue that my parents had given me a perfectly reasonable name, that it didn’t need to be shortened. People backed away after that, wondering if I was some sort of a nut who was hung up on names.

  I took Amar for his weekly check-up on Thursdays because my classes ended early that day. The school administration cut me slack because they knew about Amar. They didn’t mind if I left early on some days or had to take an extra sick day because Amar was not feeling well. I didn’t take advantage of it, just in case someone would object and the small perks I did have would be snatched away. Worse, I could lose my job, and my job helped pay Amar’s medical bills.

  Amar squirmed in the auto rickshaw and I tried to make him more comfortable. “Why are the roads always so bumpy?” he complained. “Does no one ever fix them?”

  I gave him a wry look. “What do you think?”

  “Right.” He nodded, and we laughed together.

  He could laugh, I thought, as my heart split apart. He could still laugh, while most grown-ups would have given up.

  “Do I still have to take those shots?” he asked, as he did every week when we went to the doctor, and I nodded.

  “Can I just take the pills in the morning and not take the shots?” he asked. “The shots make me sick.”

  “I know,” I said, and patted his hand. “But we need to find out if they work.”

  Amar was on a strict regimen of corticosteroid pills every day. A month ago his doctor suggested that we try some new corticosteroid shots and see if there would be a difference.

  “Sometimes . . . ,” he looked out of the auto instead of at me, “I wish it would all end. I mean, you and Daddy spend so much money—”

  “Money is not something you should think about,” I interrupted him sternly. “You are my precious baby and nothing bad is ever going to happen to you. So don’t worry about anything and concentrate on getting better. Okay?”

  He smiled shakily. “Something bad has already happened to me, Mummy. I am getting more and more tired and . . .”

  I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want him to give up. Not now, when he had beaten the odds for twelve years.

  “You just worry about getting better.” My voice was shaky. I never cried in front of him. It was our rule. Sandeep and I wanted to smile when we were with Amar. There would be no fighting, no yelling, and no screaming in front of our son. He would see the world around him as a happy place, not a devastating one.

  Amar patted my hand to comfort me and I choked on tears. This was not living—this was the purest kind of hell. My sick baby had to comfort me.

  Amar’s doctor repeated what Amar had said earlier. Amar was getting weaker and his lungs were not getting any better.

  “The inflammation is not going down and the scar tissue is spreading in his lungs,” Doctor Anand Raman said. “I wish I could say something else. But considering how things were, Amar is very lucky.”

  Lucky?

  “You are lucky to be alive, Anjali,” he said, when he saw the anger in my eyes.

  We’d had this discussion several times. I would always vent that no one had bothered to tell me that the Bhopal gas tragedy had left its mark on my womb. I wish someone had told me that having a child would be dangerous to the child, that any child I had would be affected by that fateful night in Bhopal when so many lost their lives and so many were left wounded forever.

  Amar got his shots and I shelled out over six hundred rupees for his medication for the week and the doctor’s visit. All his pills went into a red wooden box that sat on his bedside table. On the box, Amar had himself painted the words Amar’s Medicine . He had painted the box five years ago, when he was seven, right after his heart surgery, which we had hoped would cure him. He had told me, “When I stop using the box, I will still keep it.” Then, he had had hope that someday the box would be empty and he would be a normal child. Now, five years later as his condition deteriorated, he seemed to be changin
g his mind about life and death.

  Komal was sitting in front of the television when Amar and I got home. She looked up at us but didn’t say anything, and I wondered once again why she hated me so much. Our relationship from the beginning had been tenuous, now it was worse. Familiarity was breeding contempt, just as the old cliché promised.

  Amar sat down on the sofa next to Komal, tired after being out and tired from the shots that kept him breathing.

  “We are having Gopi and Sarita for dinner,” I told Komal. She nodded without looking at me.

  Gopi and Sarita were coming with their two children, Ajay and Shalini. Two healthy, adorable children. They were our closest friends, had been with us through the worst and the best of times, yet I was envious of their children. They went to school and didn’t get tired after walking for five minutes.

  As I headed for the kitchen, Komal made a sound, something in between a curse and a prayer.

  I sighed. “Can you come into the kitchen with me, Komal?”

  Once in the kitchen, I decided to stop beating around the bush. “What have I done now?” I asked flatly.

  Komal looked away, not saying anything.

  “Oh come on, if you don’t tell me, how am I supposed to know?” I insisted.

  She sniffled and I thought it was a mistake to have asked her at all. The woman was being melodramatic, while I had to cook for guests.

  “Today is his . . . death anniversary,” she said, and sniffled some more. “No one has done anything. I wanted to go to the temple, but Sandeep is not here to take me and I can’t walk to the temple, my knee is bothering me again.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked. It was an important day for her. I had other problems to deal with and couldn’t keep track of the days someone died on.

  “You should know. My own brother doesn’t remember. I have no family.” She started sobbing.

  I patted her shoulder awkwardly, unsure of how to comfort her. I couldn’t imagine life without Sandeep—and suddenly I felt a pang of guilt for treating Komal the way I did. She was a widow, a pariah in society. She was going to live like this for the rest of her life. Nothing was going to change. She was forever going to be a burden to someone.

  In some ways she was in the same position I was in when I divorced Prakash, though my situation had been worse. Society forgave widows for their husbands’ deaths, but they didn’t forgive women like me, who let their husbands go on purpose.

  My parents had gone berserk and so had Prakash. No one could believe I was divorcing him. Prakash had even refused to give me a divorce and had relented only when I told him I would start naming names of women he had been with to make a case for divorce on the basis of adultery. After that, he hadn’t protested much and I had gotten what I wanted, freedom from my husband.

  Komal, on the other hand, had not wanted to be free of her husband. She had not wanted him to be run over by a city bus. She was alone in the world. She didn’t have children, her husband was dead, and she was stuck with us.

  “Would you like to go to the temple now?” I asked patiently. “Sandeep should be home soon and he can take you.”

  Komal looked at me with something like surprise in her eyes. I didn’t like seeing that. Did I really come across as some bitch who wouldn’t let her widowed sister-in-law go to a temple on her husband’s death anniversary? I didn’t even tell her what to do or what not to do. Her life was hers, but I knew she couldn’t understand that she was free to do what she wanted. How could she? She had listened to her father, then her husband, and now she felt she needed to listen to Sandeep because he paid the bills. I felt sorry for her, but I knew she wouldn’t have it any other way. Komal was raised, just the way I was, to obey the men in her life.

  “He is here? In Ooty?” Sarita squealed.

  I made a hissing sound to silence her. “Yes, and he had the nerve to come to school to talk to me.”

  We were in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on our dinner. Sandeep and Gopi were on the veranda with Komal, and Amar was playing with Sarita’s children.

  Sarita’s oldest, Ajay, was Amar’s age and Shalini was a couple of years younger. Ajay and Shalini understood that Amar was sick and came by whenever they could to keep the “sick boy” company. I was glad they did, but it felt like charity, nevertheless.

  “I also met his wife,” I told Sarita. It was a pleasure to gossip with someone. I was, after all, a woman and I had to talk about what was going on in my life. Sandeep knew all of it, so there was no point in telling him.

  “What was she like?”

  “Pretty, pretty.”

  “Not prettier than you,” Sarita claimed, and I laughed.

  “I don’t want him, Sarita,” I told her, as I sprinkled chopped coriander on the dum aloo.

  “I know, but you know what I am trying to say,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, and sighed. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “How was the doctor’s appointment? Any improvement?” Sarita asked.

  I shook my head. “No, the lung inflammation is not getting any better and his heart is the same. To make it worse, the scar tissue has started to spread in his lungs.”

  “If only the heart operation had worked. He is such a smart boy,” Sarita said.

  Tears filled my eyes. “Yes, and today he said that sometimes he wanted it all to be over. The corticosteroids shot makes him sick and . . . there is nothing I can do to make it better.”

  “Ice cream,” Sarita said firmly. “Children always feel better if you give them ice cream. I have some pista kulfi at home; Gopi will get it right away.”

  I tried to stop her, but what was the point? Sarita never listened to anyone.

  The kulfi did help. Amar was grinning from ear to ear as he ate the homemade pistachio ice cream, despite the cold weather.

  After dinner, Gopi dropped off his kids and put them to bed and came right back. The four of us did that often. We sat and talked late into the night. Komal stayed with us for a while and then usually left.

  And it was like the old times again. The four of us, together, alone.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about this,” Gopi began, and I was on alert. “But you should join this class action lawsuit against Union Carbide.”

  “And then what?” I questioned.

  “You might get a good settlement.”

  “And then?”

  Gopi exhaled loudly. “And then . . . you will have money, which will help Amar . . .”

  “You think lack of money has stopped us in any way?” I demanded, and Sandeep put a restraining hand over my shoulder.

  “I can sue Union Carbide, but I can’t get my baby to walk and be normal,” I said, trying not to yell at Gopi. “No amount of money is going to change that.”

  Sarita was on her husband’s side on this one. “But the money will help. You could stay at home with Amar.”

  “I don’t want their money,” I said harshly. “What happened, happened. Things happen. I am not going to get into a court trial that could last for god knows how many years, while my son is struggling to live.”

  Gopi looked thoughtful. “I just thought it might be worth your while. It will make the finances real smooth. A group of people are suing Union Carbide again, but this time it is in the United States . . . so chances are better.”

  Sandeep shook his head. “It’s been over a decade and people are still trying to sue instead of getting on with their lives.”

  “Oh, you know what I heard? Remember Bhaskar?” Sarita changed the topic as she always did when discussions went awry. “He was a professor in the English Lit department.” We all nodded as memory slithered in. “Well, he wrote a movie screenplay that Kamal Hassan bought for . . . lots of money.”

  The evening drifted away, as we wandered from the topic of the Bhopal gas tragedy to movies to the current political climate to Pakistan.

  As we talked about Pakistan, the border dispute, and the Indian army, Sarita too
k the opportunity to open up the discussion to include an army officer, Prakash.

  “Have you met him?” Sarita asked Sandeep.

  “Whom?” Gopi questioned.

  “Prakash?” Sandeep asked.

  “No. Why?”

  I closed my eyes. Damn Sarita, couldn’t she for once keep her mouth shut?

  “Her ex-husband showed up at her school,” Sarita told Gopi, and I winced. “To apologize! Sometimes I think you should’ve bludgeoned him to death. He is the reason for all this. That man . . .”

  “Can we not talk about this?” I implored, and Sarita glared at me.

  “Why not? Is it taboo?” she demanded.

  “No,” Sandeep said gently. “It just makes Anjali uncomfortable.”

  And it did. God, how it did!

  I couldn’t sleep that night. Sarita and Gopi hated Prakash and they didn’t even know him. Sandeep maintained his indifference, and I didn’t know how to feel about the man I had once been married to. The man I had lived with for almost a year.

  It was so many years ago, yet I seemed to be caught in some time warp where Prakash existed. It was like history repeating itself. Prakash was here again, and once again I wasn’t sure what I felt for him.

  TWELVE

  ANJALI

  I discovered early on in my first marriage that being an army officer’s wife was not just fun and games. It was sometimes very boring and sometimes very stressful. It would have been worthwhile if Prakash behaved more like a normal man instead of a homicidal bull caught in a trap.

  I knew how he felt about being married. I had found out on our dismal honeymoon. He had told me that he liked me, but he was not sure marrying me had been such a good idea. I was shocked. This was not what I was supposed to hear on my honeymoon. My army officer husband was not the loving, caring man I had thought he would be. So just like in the Hindi movies where the wife has to work at gaining her husband’s love, I started working at it.

  It was the small things. The cardamom chai in the evening when he came back from work, the delicious breakfasts, and the perfect parties—I did everything I could. And finally I think he stopped disliking the idea of marriage. I was an asset and for a while I convinced myself that he even loved me. But in an arranged marriage where love is not important—it is actually a guarantee. The husband will love the wife in some shape or form and the wife will love her husband because he provides for her.