Someone Else's Garden

by Dipika Rai

  She feels a cramp which pushes her into the ground. Oh, Devi, all this for a girl. The wind urges her forward. It knows its destination, having returned once again just before winter like a diligent relative on a family visit. Where it comes from no one asks, it just appears on the far mountains, rolling down the sides like a conquering horde bringing with it dust. It is said that the dust of Gopalpur can drive people mad. Like darkness, it creeps into everything – every dip, every iron-crease, every eye, under every nail, in stiff broom hair, everything.

  It is now blowing with that familiar abandon that will become a storm in no time. She must get home before the storm breaks. She turns around to face the wind. Then lowers her head as if in obeisance.

  Lata Bai is careful not to crush another’s plants. She employs the sure tread of a peasant, and negotiates the furrows as lightly as her children play hopscotch – up, down, up, down – through the furrows, in between colours, yellows, golds and greens, thinking only of the next step.

  Another cramp. She must get home. She pulls her sari low over her face. Her eyes become one with her bare feet. The gloating storm has no part of her. Her pain has distilled the untidy thoughts in her head into a single mission: keep walking.

  No one sees her approach the hut. She can sense the lacy cracks that are about to spread decoratively on its packed mud walls. She must ask the girls to speed up the dung collection, it won’t be long before they will have to start plastering again. She cannot see the earthenware pots, but she knows they are there, melding with their surroundings. Outside there is no sign of her family, a father and four children, within. The children have been using the rope to skip again. It isn’t coiled in its usual place, but lies discarded by the brambles like a snake’s first skin. There is no smoke rising from her roof. Her daughters aren’t home. She is disappointed and then angry.

  Her breasts are already aching with milk. She puts the mustard plants down and washes with yesterday’s well water before anyone sees her. She’s pleased to see two extra pots, at least the girls remembered to bring the water from the well. Before forty days, she really should be washing away from the house, taking her impurity with her. The dust has started to swirl in manic curtains of grittiness. She enters her hut. The storm keeps pace with her thoughts, raging outside as an equally nervous storm builds inside her body. Home at last she can experience her pain at leisure.

  Another girl.

  Seeta Ram, the father, loves picking his teeth. He loves polished shoes. He hates delayed meals. Today the meal is delayed. With one wife and four children still at home why is the meal delayed?

  ‘Lata, Lata. Food,’ he shouts, sitting cross-legged and placing his turban carefully on the floor beside him. He’s come home early to escape the storm.

  ‘Coming,’ she shouts back, annoyed that her daughters aren’t home.

  Lata Bai claims her bangle from the ashes. For a minute she is frightened that someone else has found it first. But it’s the ash that’s the thief. Reluctant to part with its treasure, it has slipped the bangle a little deeper into the pot.

  She still has difficulty walking. You give me a girl and all this pain too. She looks at the picture of Devi, incarnated as Lakshmi the goddess of wealth, hanging above the fire, her lower lip pouting, her chin crinkling like a piece of paper. The picture swings in the wind. Back and forth, back and forth, ticking her life away. It pleases her to see the edges of the frame already black with soot. Not all pink and gold with all four of your palms leaking money, standing coyly on your pure lotus, are you? What do you know about our lives? She’s angry. She doles out the daal, laying out the chapattis in a fan alongside. She looks at the picture of the goddess again. You’ll get no lamp today. She places a defiant dot of butter on each chapatti. The same butter that Prem has brought home from the Big House wrapped in ficus leaves. She’s dedicated each of her baby girls to the goddess. The boys need no such dedication. Suddenly reluctant to offend the goddess, she offers up a token apology, ‘Sorry,’ she says to Lakshmi, ‘today I need the butter more than you.’

  She puts the tray at his feet. He doesn’t look up at his wife. Her eyes don’t leave the back of his head for one second.

  ‘The talk is that Daku Manmohan is going to surrender.’ What an unusual piece of information to give his wife: talk of bandits is exclusively for the men.

  There are few written words in Gopalpur, and without written words, talk is all important. Thus far, the monsoon rains have had a monopoly on their words, ever present: an extra mouth at dinner, an impartial listener at the gambling tents, a secret bed-fellow at the Red Bazaar, a deep inhaler of the communal hookah . . . But rumours of the bandit chief Daku Manmohan’s surrender have changed all that. It is giving the people of Gopalpur a chance to participate in someone else’s life for the first time. This is a big change.

  ‘Daku Manmohan,’ says Seeta Ram, opening and closing his raised fist, flashing the invisible words in the air. ‘It was always Daku Manmohan . . . Daku Manmohan. That killer! And now they say he’s surrendering.’

  ‘Nathu’s daughter Sunita said that Singh Sahib’s second son, Lokend Bhai, is going to bring him in. I suppose we should be thankful. This will end the raids.’ For as long as they can remember, the bandits have been lodged in the river ravines more solidly than the most stubborn piece of stringy meat in a set of old teeth.

  He is irritated that his wife has heard already and not from him. He still hasn’t looked at her and seen the wincing pain flicker on and off her face as sudden as a streak of lightning. If she’s heard, he’s not going to talk any more. Let her hear everything at the well.

  ‘Let’s call her Shanti,’ sticky with fear, the reluctant words drop slowly from her lips. She has to shout the name over the wind. ‘Shanti!’ Shanti is sleeping silently in her corner, though the wind tries its best to draw her out of her unconscious world.

  Shanti! She has run out of love words. That’s how she wanted to name all her children, with love words. Mamta, soft-comforting-selfless-melting mother’s love. The kind of love that has staying power. The kind of love needed by her daughter, stained above the eye with a virulent birthmark. She had consulted the pundit and he’d produced the letter M for green Mamta. Jivkant, she’d had a difficult time naming him. There were no love words starting with J, and the priest wouldn’t change the letter even though Lata Bai offered him twenty rupees to do so. So she had to settle for Jivkant, beloved of the world, not a true love word, but close enough. After Jivkant there were no more priests. Prem she named all by herself. Prem, kindly love that outlasts all passion, it is the best love between husband and wife. Then came Ragini, love, attachment, an apsara. A beautiful name for her beautiful daughter who fulfilled every dream she’d dreamt up for her. After Ragini it was Sneha, another girl. Sneha, tenderness, mutual attraction, gentle, warm, flowing, congenial love. Ordinary Sneha, to whom it seems as if the entire beauty quota has been appropriated by her elder sister Ragini. And finally, Mohit. Eight-year-old Mohit, falsely destined to be the last of her children. How could she have named Mohit anything else? Mohit, deep love, the kind that makes you want to cling on forever. The kind that drives you mad.

  ‘Fix Mamta’s date for next week. We will be ready then,’ she adds, quickly changing the conversation to one that deals with getting rid of a daughter instead of adding one to their household.

  He is not beguiled. ‘Not another girl,’ he says.

  ‘We must accept what God gives us.’

  You can’t say that Seeta Ram hates talking about God, but it’s somewhere up there with delayed meals. He looks at his wife. ‘Don’t talk to me about God,’ he says. The hut is pummelled by more wind just as thunder takes over their world, proof that the gods immediately recognise irreverence.

  Her children run in giggling and laughing. For them the storm has become a source of fun. Sneha and Mohit will go shower in the rain. No one asks after the baby. A birth of a child is a natural event, like the wind; they will be told the im
portant details – boy or girl – by and by.

  ‘It’s coming down now,’ Mamta shouts, pulling her wet chunni round her head even tighter. Her new modesty is endearing. She is very conscious of her upcoming wedding, and behaves as if her future husband is already in the room.

  ‘Don’t you have any work? Your wedding isn’t for another seven days.’ Her father is angry.

  ‘Mamta, Mohit, go tie down the hay,’ commands Lata Bai. ‘Sneha, watch Shanti.’ The name out of her mouth, the reality of the baby is sealed. They have a little sister. They all know what that means. Another girl. Another burden.

  ‘Your children, they do no work until they are told.’ He accuses her of producing foul offspring.

  This time she drops her eyes . . . You are my husband of over twenty years. I have lived with you more than I have with my own parents. Except two hundred days, we have slept on the same bed every day all these years. Tonight we will sleep apart, and we should remain apart for the next forty days till I am once again pure. But on the twelfth day, you will take me back to your bed. Then you will climb over me that very night. We will pull the cloth over our heads and, healed or not, in pain or not, bleeding or not, you will pour your seed into me.

  For forty days at least she won’t have to worry about another baby. But still, she does worry. She hates the nightly sex in full view of the children. Mostly Mamta gets up and goes outside to look at the sky as Seeta Ram goes up and down over Lata Bai. The boys just giggle. Then it’s over. No other man would think of coupling with his wife during the first forty days, but not Seeta Ram. He’ll roll off, leaving blood stains on the hay, and then she’ll put her aching legs together. That’s how it has been. Every time.

  A baby and then another. That’s where the life is going to pour out of me when I die. From between my legs and not from my nose like other people.

  ‘I will be going to see him for myself. These men are tricky, they say one thing and they do another.’

  ‘Who?’ She’s still with her children, but her husband has returned to the more important matter at hand.

  ‘Daku Manmohan. He’s only doing it because Lokend Bhai has guaranteed his family’s safety. Why the police don’t just kill him, I’ll never know,’ he says, eating, quietly watched by his children. Mohit joins his father, also sitting cross-legged on the floor. Lata Bai calculates the meals precisely. Today she will publicly give Mamta an extra half chapatti. Seeta Ram will say nothing, but only because she is to be married in a few days and leaving for good. Every other day he would say, ‘Let her eat the leftovers. Why water someone else’s garden?’

  ‘I have explained their roles to them. You will remember when the time comes, won’t you?’ Lata Bai asks her children from her corner. She will eat with the girls after Seeta Ram has finished.

  Seeta Ram refuses to be dragged into marriage talk. ‘Daku Manmohan, surrendering. That’s really something! The government is offering him and his gang limited freedom,’ he says, cautiously prodding a sleeping memory of looting and slaughter. ‘Pah! Limited freedom! We all know what that translates to. A jail cell more comfortable than the best hotel, with hot tea on tap, a game of cards with the guards and food cooked by their wives who will be given pukka brick houses,’ he says, spitting on the floor. ‘That murdering motherfucker, how many has he killed? How many has he maimed?’

  ‘None from our family. Thank God. And only because Amma’s brother is in the gang,’ says Mamta, giggling. During the harvest, more than twenty years ago, when the farmers scaled down their rations and looked for new places to hide their precious grain, Lata Bai’s brother disappeared. The whole family searched for his dead body, but not her father. No one knows for sure what happened to the boy, but Lata Bai’s father cut and threshed his wheat with impunity that very day, while other farmers left their crops standing to rot in their fields. Blood money. That’s what Lata Bai suspected it was. Blood money. A boy in exchange for protection. A boy who would one day become a man. ‘Imagine, my uncle in the gang.’ Her almost-wed status has made Mamta bold.

  ‘Mamta!’ Both father and mother censure her in unison. It isn’t a subject to be discussed, as it separates the family from the rest of Gopalpur’s inhabitants.

  ‘Well, it’s true.’

  ‘Mamta, leave things that don’t concern you alone,’ says Lata Bai. To this day she feels guilty that her hut wasn’t burned down with the rest.

  ‘You had better shut her up,’ Seeta Ram adds, slicing his palm through air in a smacking motion.

  Shanti starts to cry. Lata Bai lets her cry. It will be a while before she will pick her up. That’s how she’s trained all her daughters into silence. The boys are picked up at once.

  Mamta brings the baby to her mother. ‘Tch,’ the mother shakes her head at her eldest, and then she says proudly, ‘See, she’ll make a good mother,’ because as far as Lata Bai is concerned daughters are born to be good mothers first, before anything else.

  ‘She’s just playing,’ replies Seeta Ram with remarkable perspicacity. ‘If she didn’t have Shanti, she’d be teasing those boys from across the river. Still, she’d better make a good wife.’ As far as Seeta Ram is concerned, daughters are born to be good wives first, before anything else.

  Mamta will satisfy both her parents and make a good wife and mother. Loving Mamta. Patient Mamta.

  ‘I am going out,’ says Seeta Ram suddenly, unable to stand being in the house with the women any longer.

  ‘In this weather? Where will you go?’

  ‘To hell,’ he says, charging out of the hut. He won’t give her more information than is necessary.

  ‘Take this for the rain –’ She follows him out into the wet darkness, holding a spreading jute bag over his head.

  As soon as Seeta Ram leaves the hut, Mamta starts with her questions. She has been dogging her mother for days, it seems she can never have enough answers. ‘Tell me how it was for you,’ she asks. Her giddiness irritates Lata Bai.

  ‘You should be concentrating on your work: go collect the dung, go finish the washing, go pick the berries, collect the spinach . . . do something useful instead of following me around! You are going to be a wife and mother soon, stop wasting your time.’

  ‘Come on, Amma, I have only a week left, then I’ll be gone and I . . . I might never come back, just like Ragini.’

  ‘Your sister married up. It’s not easy for her to come back.’

  ‘So will I have a pukka house too?’

  ‘Oho, stop dreaming dreams, they will get you nowhere. Now go gather the dung.’ Lata Bai knows all about dreaming dreams. She had her own dreams before she was married to Seeta Ram at eight.

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll do it. Amma, but first tell me, what was it like?’

  Lata Bai looks into Mamta’s eyes ringed with lashes, two bright big moons of excitement. What should I say? It was frightening . . . painful . . . it snatched my childhood from me.

  ‘You got married after the drought, and then . . .’ Mamta starts her mother’s story for her, but she is fishing in muddy waters, there is no bite. Lata Bai looks away, remembering . . .

  ‘What, Amma? Tell me . . .’ Mamta puts her arms around her mother’s waist.

  ‘No more of this hugging baby business,’ says Lata Bai in exactly the same tone her own mother had used on her, unlocking her arms and making distance between them. ‘You are a woman now. Soon you will have your own children to look after, you won’t be able to keep running home to me.’

  ‘My own children? Will they be just like my Ladli dolly?’ Mamta had made Ladli dolly herself when she was seven, with rags and tree cotton, embroidering her eyes, nose, mouth, and covering her head with bright red string hair.

  ‘Oh, grow up, you’ll be sorry if you don’t.’ But in fact it is Lata Bai who is sorry as soon as those words leave her lips. At once she pulls Mamta’s arms round her again and says, ‘Yes, yes, they’ll be just like your Ladli dolly.’

  The thought of children makes Mamta so happy and so
scared. She knows children come only after jiggery. And jiggery hurts like anything. She’s seen dogs do it, cows do it, cats do it, and it looks awful. How will she ever do it?

  ‘Do you like Bapu?’ she asks her mother.

  ‘What sort of a question is that? I am a wife and a mother.’

  ‘No, I mean do you like Bapu like the heroes like the heroines in the films?’

  ‘So when have you seen a film?’

  ‘Oh, Amma, you know what I mean. Do you think he will be as handsome as Guru Dutt?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Lata Bai hasn’t met the prospective groom. The marriage was arranged exclusively by Seeta Ram. I hope he checked on the family. Hai, Mamta, I hope your fate is better than mine.

  ‘Amma, what will I have to do? How did you do it?’ This is the first time Mamta has asked her mother questions about babies and sex.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know, have all of us.’

  Lata Bai sees a disconcerting calm in her daughter’s face, an acceptance that she never had a chance to own as a young bride. ‘Mamta, you’ll get to know all about it by and by.’ That’s what her own mother had said to her, hadn’t she? You’ll get to know all about it by and by. And she was right. She did get to know all about it by and by . . .

  When Lata Bai turned twelve, Seeta Ram came with the tongawala to collect his bride. They rode back to her husband’s house bouncing in a bullock cart all the way. Her father-in-law was so kind to her that first day. He dandled her on his knee all day and gave her sweets to eat. That night her father-in-law got on top of her, opened her legs to the ceiling and brought his fat body all the way inside her, till she thought she would choke on it. She’d screamed with the blood and pain. But only once. Her mother-in-law shouted, ‘Quiet! Do you want to wake the dead?’ from behind the curtain.

  Her eyes were red from sorrow and shame the next day. ‘Sorry,’ her husband said to her, ‘he gets the first taste. That’s our custom.’

  The first taste of a twelve-year-old girl. That was the last time her husband ever said sorry to her.