Someone Else's Garden

by Dipika Rai

  A young, slim Mrs D’Souza stares into Mamta’s eyes, her frame delicate against a background of white. Mamta has heard of it: snow that lives in mountains. The young Mrs D’Souza has on one of those woolly hats with a pom-pom. A man’s arm is draped across her shoulders like a shawl. Mamta feels her own shoulders tingle with the sensation of the photo man’s touch. She crosses her arms over her breasts, hugging her shoulders and swaying, for a flickering second she allows herself to luxuriate in fantasy. Oh, Sahibji, how can it be that a man holds a woman and stands still enough for someone to take their picture? Then she thinks of her own photo, left in Gopalpur in the warm dip of her stepdaughter’s bed. Why did I leave her behind?

  Mrs D’Souza emerges from her room changed into a skirt, not unlike a short petticoat, it is a little less astonishing to Mamta than this morning’s outfit. She is as perfumed as a whole basket of temple jasmine, more to drown out her new sweeper’s smell than for any love of dressing up. There is something in the new sweeper’s face that brings conversation to her mistress’s lips.

  Dragging her buttons closed over her undulating flesh she says, ‘Kufri, that was in Kufri, before Cynthia came. My husband, handsome no? It was so cold I tell you, my nose nearly fell off. The photo is badly faded now. I’ve lost the negative, otherwise I would make another one.’ Fully dressed, Mrs D’Souza realises that she might be hindering her new servant with talk. ‘Get on with your work. Look at me, chatting with you as if we both had nothing better to do with our time. Go on, get on with it,’ she says, laying the photo on the table face down. Mamta’s silent connection with the sepia players is broken.

  She bites down on the panic that threatens to seize her soul. All this space, in her eyes already spotless, must be cleaned, swept and then mopped, all these duties . . . all reasons for mistakes. She already knows that her life belongs in the hands of the plump Mrs D’Souza and her hairy dog. She would never find a place in a slum. If they ever got to know about her, then it would be over, they would take her straight to the police, or worse, back to her village, where the only thing waiting for her is death.

  Mrs D’Souza lights a flame in a glass cup. It is the first familiar sight of the day. She follows her new mistress’s motion from under her lids. Mrs D’Souza’s plump hands thin with memory. The hands extend into wrists, supporting a single bangle, going round and round in front of another altar. Mistress becomes mother. A tide of memories breaks painfully against the rock that has become her heart. She looks to the floor, ceding her recollection to reality. How could she explain running away to her mother, her relatives, her village? She knows she will be judged harshly for jumping on that bus. Under-the-banyan-tree village rules are clear: she belongs with her husband, forever. She might have run away, but her courage frightens her. Oh, Devi, help me. Mrs D’Souza’s flame is still, unwavering. It floats above the cooking oil like a miniature shining boat. She sees her mistress place it on the little ledge above the dining table, at the feet of a picture of the lady holding a baby. Oh, Devi, help me. The lady with the crown and the sleepy closed eyes of a saint has her head tilted towards her. Both mother and baby have halos round their heads. Mamta swallows; so this is Mrs D’Souza’s Devi.

  Mamta can’t understand the English words that flow from Mrs D’Souza’s painted lips as smooth as summer air. Her mistress chants with her eyes closed, but every now and then one flickers open to see what her new sweeper is up to. ‘What are you staring at? Let me say my prayers in peace. Go finish the floors,’ she says, seamlessly moving from English to a lazy kind of Hindi.

  In time, Mamta will learn all about Jesus, his mother and the angels, and she will come to love the Madonna almost as much as Mrs D’Souza. Her mistress waddles off into the recesses of her dimly lit two-bedroom flat, leaving the living room and her altar to Mamta’s scrutiny.

  She scrubs harder. The smell of phenol makes her gag. As a sign of eagerness she started her new job with washing the floors with the chemical. She doesn’t know this smell, they never had any of these bottled things in the village. The floors shine through. The terrazzo shows its shapes to her. She stares into the marble chips, into her own private kaleidoscope, it changes obligingly with the angle of her sight. What a beautiful house. If you could see me now, working in this grand house, how proud you would be of me. Look where I have come. She touches the scar on the side of her body to remind herself not to become too complacent.

  She moves from the floors to the toilets. All familiarity ends at the bathroom door. First of all, there is no smell to greet her. The commodes glare at her. She looks at them, not quite sure what to do, then reaches behind the toilet and pulls out the bushy plastic cleaner to brush the sparkling white ceramic. Accidentally her hand releases a tiny platinum handle to one side. Water rushes into the toilet. She is mortified. She has broken the tank. So much water gushing out needlessly. Should she tell Mrs D’Souza? Leave it. Do you want to lose your job? She goes back quietly to work.

  Now get to the dog’s dish. Baby’s dish lives behind the kitchen door. For years it has prevented the door from opening fully, but Mrs D’Souza is a stickler for habit and will not have it any other way. She almost sacked two sweepers because they insisted on putting Baby’s dish to one side of the door. But with this one she need not fear, Mamta will never think to disturb the dish’s position.

  Steel pots reflect a distorted, fatter version of Mamta’s face. So many pots, all for one family! The spices, powdered to a fine miasma, rest in rows of bottles with tightly closed lids, standing tallest to the shortest like a line of diligent school children. Mamta can make out the chillies, but not the others in myriad brown hues. The quantity of food is overwhelming. With so much food, Mrs D’Souza could feed a village. She wants to ask how many people live in the house, but is afraid to talk, and even more afraid to question.

  Behind the open door above the dog’s dish are shelves filled with every variety of dry good possible. Mamta might never learn all their names: papadums, crisp as a winter morning in plastic wrappers sealed with a candle flame for freshness; white rice sans gravel; lentils of every colour; indeterminate mixtures smelling of cardamom and chillies enough to make the eye water; a square hunk of white wrapped in brown paper which looks vaguely like the round sweet buns that Lala Ram’s wife made for her children. Shelf after shelf of food. Her sight bumps into the stove. Lifted high off the ground on a marble counter, its rings stare fiercely into her face like unfriendly monster eyes. Mrs D’Souza’s kitchen doesn’t force you to cling to the ground, it lifts you up and sets you free.

  She drops to the floor with reverence before the stove.

  ‘Don’t give Baby any bread, it makes her sick.’

  ‘Bread?’

  ‘Yes, that bread –’ Mrs D’Souza points to the square hunk wrapped in brown paper. ‘Don’t give her any.’

  ‘Yes, memsahib.’

  The kitchen is a cornucopia, all the bounty that Lakshmi could possibly bestow on anyone surely resides here. Mamta looks hard for the pitchers of water, the single most important item in her own kitchen space. But she doesn’t see any. Almost as if intending to put her mind at rest, Mrs D’Souza waltzes in, pirouettes and washes her hands in the kitchen sink.

  ‘I, I . . . I thought that was a . . .’

  ‘Don’t you dare wash your hands in this sink. It’s meant for the dishes only and clean people. I don’t want the muck of the floors and bathroom dragged into my kitchen. You wash hands at the floor tap in Cynthia’s bathroom.’

  ‘Yes, memsahib.’ Much the same way, Mrs D’Souza waltzes out.

  The ants have got to the dog food first. They get to it every day because Mrs D’Souza puts much more in the dog dish than her precious pup can possibly eat. Mamta eyes the kernels of rice still fluffy from the night before. The minced meat scattered evenly through the rice speaks to Mrs D’Souza’s attention to detail. Mamta picks up the dish. The movement disturbs the ants. They immediately retreat to the outer edges of the dish. She brings th
e dish close to the rubbish bin and opens its plastic lid. From the contents within, she can easily piece together the daily life of the D’Souza family. The dog’s food slides down the edge of the dish. A spoonful falls in the bin before Mamta catches the cascading rice and mince in her fist. For her, waste is not an option, it is a lesson learned in childhood, tattooed into her brain by impermeable hunger, never before in her life has she ever thrown out food, good, bad or rotten. Food always has another incarnation. It can always be given to one more hungry. Her mother once ate cow’s hooves to survive a drought. She brings her fist to her mouth.

  Now the smell of phenol is inside her. She wipes her lips with the back of her hand. She looks around. She can hear Mrs D’Souza pottering in her room somewhere, loud enough to say she is engaged. Quickly, illicitly, lovingly, Mamta opens the shining brass tap in the forbidden sink. A trickle of water emerges like a gift from God. A trickle of clean delicious water, she has the urge to taste it. She must hurry, the trickle is tinkling now, announcing its presence. She quickly wrings her hands under it, then anoints herself with three wet fingers horizontally on her forehead, more precious than any blessing she ever got out of temple.

  It is her first time with a tap.

  Then she hears another sound of big water gushing. She knows this sound. Mrs D’Souza emerges from the bathroom. ‘Mind you don’t flush the toilet. Sometimes they cut off the water earlier than expected and then the tanks are empty. I always go in the evening. I will do the flushing. You just scrub the commodes. Okay?’

  Mamta nods silently. No flushing the toilets.

  ‘Now take Baby for her walk.’

  She almost asks Where? A debilitating fear grabs her feet. Where would she go in this city? She only arrived this morning. ‘Her chain is behind the kitchen door. Stay away from Venus building, Baby hates that black dog that hangs about at the entrance. Last time he nearly bit her leg off. Poor Baby. She had to have stitches.’

  She tries to hook the chain on Baby’s collar. It might as well have been a fish in her hands, the number of times it falls to the floor. At last Mrs D’Souza can’t stand the fuss any longer.

  ‘Stop that!’ Mamta drops the chain, it clatters to the floor in an aggressively loud musical movement. Mrs D’Souza secures her dog and sends both Mamta and Baby out into the leering city.

  The dog and its escort walk side by side, the dog the far more confident of the two.

  She is lucky her first work day happens to be on the weekend, otherwise she would have experienced rush-hour human traffic, enough to lift her off her feet. To her village eyes it seems that the whole of Begumpet is on the streets, rushing, clashing, all going somewhere. But where is this somewhere? When will she have a direction? She is an island, in a swirling eddy. She puts on a smile for all those strangers. No one replies. Very quickly she will learn that she is invisible. She reeks of diffidence and has a long and awkward journey to make before becoming a city dweller.

  The village has taught her not to look at the men, but the women are fair game. Their open hair and city clothes force her to wrap her sari more tightly around herself. A woman and man walk hand in hand. Hand in hand! How? Where does such courage come from that enables them to walk like that? She has seen same-sex hands linked in friendship or camaraderie, but never hands of opposite sexes. The clasped hands make a mockery of her marriage, her beatings and her sacrifice.

  Then Baby tugs at her chain. She runs after the dog. Right turn, left turn. Don’t run on to the road, she pleads. Right turn, left turn . . . She looks for landmarks. Her mind is completely focused in purpose. She must be able to find her way home. She is terrified of getting lost, she is terrified of being found. Lost, found, lost, found . . . The faces change, they leer at her, all the men become her husband, all the women Lata Bai. She can hear her mother’s words: ‘Rules, you will understand them when you have been married as long as I have.’ She is Sharma’s wife, shit-smeared and raped. Baby runs. Stop, Baby.

  She steps on the dog’s chain and quickly snags it between her toes with the deftness of one who has walked barefoot all her life. Chain in hand, she looks around her at last. She sees nothing familiar. A panic as forceful as dry retching seizes her. She still has that written address tied in her pallav. She can always ask someone. But how do you stop someone in a city? She looks for a friendly face to stop, all the while letting Baby drag her where she will. Unknown to Mamta, Baby does know her way home. She is her strongest ally, her friend, her guide.

  Mamta must recognise every stone and make friends with every tree along her path. She must become one with the humanity that doesn’t smile back, anonymous, and confident in her anonymity. Baby squats to defecate. Immediately the stream of people, marching with purpose, parts precisely to avoid the dog’s excrement. The indignity of the street creeps past automatic feet.

  The end of the first day is a time to remember and forget many things. Mamta’s new mistress may have made her work, but it is nothing compared with what she did in the village. She still has her reserve of energy, and it is stoked and hot. Kalu finds her under the stairs all a-jitter.

  ‘Hey, which is my side? You said I could sleep here, right? Right?’ He is only one person, the overwhelming humanity of the day has made her competent against a single enemy. She is ready to fight for the promise he’d made that morning. She trusts no one and nothing.

  ‘Yes, it’s okay.’

  ‘You said so yourself, you can sleep under the stairwell with me . . .’

  ‘Oho, get a hold of your tongue. I know what I said. So where are your things?’

  ‘Don’t have any,’ she says, quickly grabbing a spot under the stairs.

  Kalu looks at his companion. Much too old for anyone to confuse her for one of his love interests, he thinks. ‘So how was it today?’

  ‘She has such a beautiful house, but the dog scares me.’

  ‘Get used to Baby, otherwise she will give you the runaround. Don’t let Mrs D’Souza ever catch you hitting Baby, okay.’

  ‘So tell me, why did you help me out?’ The question has been on her mind all day.

  He shrugs. ‘Maybe because my life is so good,’ he laughs. ‘I don’t know. Maybe because you reminded me of someone. Maybe because . . .’ Kalu may find all the reasons in the world to answer Mamta’s question, but his answers will be bland. There is only one reason for such spontaneous action that holds the power to change the destiny of another human being – and that is soul-recognition, acknowledging that bond which connects us to all things worldly and unworldly. At such times we feel more than an exact empathy. We don’t just fully understand the other, but somehow we know the other. Such instances aren’t rare, they occur daily, but like lightning they are gone before they have a chance to be recorded or recognised as miracles.

  Still jittery, her hand rushes immediately to hide her birthmark.

  ‘No, I don’t think that was it. It was something else. I know what it was, it was the way you laughed.’

  ‘I can do it again,’ she says and laughs. Her laughter surprises her. Her belligerence, the stance she’s been holding on to like a life-giving breath leaves her. Without the aggression she is infinitely tired, but she won’t give up this chance to talk, her first real human connection. ‘Where do those cows go?’

  ‘Their owners let them roam free until they start producing milk. They are sacred cows. Sometimes I snag one, and drag it around the colony. You should see what people are willing to feed sacred cows. Chapattis, jaggery, even barfi. Sometimes I manage to pluck a little out of its mouth for myself. Dragging a lucky cow behind you on a rope is better than begging in person.’

  ‘In my village all the cows have rich owners. You milk someone else’s cow and you could get your hand chopped off. My younger brother used to do cow-duty for the Big House . . .’ She looks up; Himalaya House, true to its name, towers like a mountain over her head. She laughs again. ‘Here everything is big except the moon! The houses, the roads, the lights; even the people
are big. Lucky fat city girls will never have a hard time getting married. Why, in the village fat like that would get you a string of proposals.’

  ‘No one in my family has the lucky fat,’ Kalu says wryly.

  ‘Did you come from the village also?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I was born here.’

  ‘So you know all the ways of the city then.’ She regards him from beneath her eyebrows. Kalu looks into Mamta’s eyes. She looks away, but the path is open for further conversation.

  ‘I suppose you could say that, but it doesn’t help me much. I am still a sweeper, and I’ll remain under this stairwell till I die.’ He spits a squat, compact, city-dweller’s gob on the floor next to him.

  ‘Any family?’ Villagers always ask that question.

  ‘Yes, nine brothers and eleven sisters, because my amma wasn’t one of those who buried her girl babies alive in the ditches by the slum.’

  Nine brothers and eleven sisters. I have seven in my family, and one could be in this very city. She doesn’t presume that Kalu will be the least bit interested in her story. ‘Don’t you miss them?’

  ‘What’s to miss? I was the lucky one who got away. We fought over everything all the time. My father beat my mother. He beat her to death. He used to send us begging.’

  ‘Boys aren’t much good when it comes to begging,’ she says, thinking of the girls at the lights.

  ‘No, we aren’t. But the gangs fix that.’

  ‘Gangs?’