by Dipika Rai
Prem and Sneha are waiting at the office.
The boy is wearing pitiful socks that roll wilfully below his ankles, the elastic no longer strong enough to grip his flesh, with a pair of sandals. His hip bones boldly declare themselves through his trousers, which sit uncomfortably on his waist held up by a large safety pin. For the first time, his four-metre dhoti put away, it is easy to see how bony he really is. These accoutrements of city life, given to him by Mrs Sahai, define his standing. His sister has received no newold clothes.
‘How was it? What was the hijra like? Was she strange? How will she give a speech in public? In Gopalpur we would have beaten her off the platform with a stick. I can gather stones, if you like. One stone from me will be enough of a lead,’ Prem says in a rush before dribbling into silence in the assertive presence of Mrs Sahai.
‘No. She is a good person. I wish she was on our side. Forget about the election, the speech. Let us do something constructive. How will we contact your elder sister?’ asks Lokend.
Sneha releases her head from under her pallav. She has been hiding since she came to Begumpet. Mrs Sahai squeezes past her. The village girl breathes in to make way for Importance.
‘I hope Mamta Didi comes to the rally,’ Prem answers.
‘And Sneha? What about Sneha, if she doesn’t come?’ Mrs Sahai points out the foolishness of their hasty pilgrimage.
The boy shrugs. The future has no meaning for him. Sneha’s eyes are dry, she looks from man to boy, searching for some sign of certainty. She finds none. Her mother cried to see her go. Why did she come here? How could her mother think her life would be better here in Begumpet? Life here is a flurry, like the leaves tousled by the Gopalpur wind. Where on earth in this crazy place of people would she find her sister? The Red Bazaar would have been better. Her father will surely kill her if she goes back home.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll find her. We’ll think of something.’ She reminds him of another girl, shivering and vulnerable. Lokend speaks Sneha in her own dialect. Even her brother has abandoned this mode of communication in favour of sophisticated city Hindi. Her insides are knotted so tightly that she hasn’t passed a motion in two days. The bathroom frightens her. What should she do with the commode, and the chain, and the mug, and the tap? Slogans that she cannot read rant at her from the walls. She is sure they are instructions for other novices, but not for her, they belong only to those who can decipher them. She is tempted to ask Prem what they mean, but she does not see him as her brother any more. He has left her behind. She must seem very small to him, trouser-wearing, I-can-read-and-write Prem.
Prem is thinking his own thoughts. He cannot waste time on Sneha. It is better that she comes to grips with the city sooner rather than later. His worth is still a tenuous commodity, he has to prove it every day to the Party cronies. No one cares that he risked his life to carry messages between the bandits and Lokend Bhai, no one cares that Daku Manmohan treated him like a son. Here he is a guileless villager filled with an eagerness to please. He hasn’t time to think of Mamta or Sneha.
‘Oho, stop wasting time,’ says Mrs Sahai. ‘We need to go over the speeches once again.’ She pulls Lokend into a huddle with twenty of her cronies. Some have eyed Sneha and found her wanting. They won’t look at her again, and if they do, they won’t see her for all the looking they’ve done. Prem brings the men tea. They haven’t that sense of formality that one reserves just for equals with him. He may not be one of them, but it is clear to the group that their leader depends on this village boy, so they tolerate him, exaggerating their compliments. Some try to sound sincere, and others, just the opposite.
That night, lying down on the floor between the olive-green steel tables, Sneha can hardly remember her elder sister Mamta.
* * *
‘Didi, you will come tomorrow, won’t you?’ Mamta has rushed all the way to the dispensary to remind her friend of the rally. Eyebrows shrugs, her standard response to most things.
‘Which party are you supporting?’
‘I am with Lokend Bhai.’
‘Yes, but which Party?’
‘Party?’
‘Look at you, so eager to go to a rally, but you don’t even know what your precious Lokend Bhai stands for. Oh, to have such faith in a person must be a wonderful thing.’
You have been helping people for so long that you have lost your humanity. ‘You have been helping people too long . . .’ Mamta says out loud. Her judgement cannot be underestimated, it is not a simple thing that just jumped into her mind. It is a culmination of her newfound self.
‘Yes, you could say that.’
‘Your charity has made you . . .’
Eyebrows doesn’t let Mamta finish, she pounces on her words as quickly as a cat on its prey. ‘You must understand, Mamta, I don’t believe in charity. Yes, it may come as a surprise to you, but really I don’t believe in charity at all. Too many people don’t, won’t or can’t distinguish between charity and giving people an opportunity. I simply create opportunities for people so they can help themselves. Giving charity is cutting their feet from under them.’
Mamta has come to this dispensary precisely twenty-four times to give Eyebrows her fifty for the Post Office Saving Deposit Plan. She has shared countless cups of tea, pouring half of it into a saucer for Eyebrows, retaining the cup for herself. No one else would have simply accepted a saucer of tea from Mamta (let alone insisted on it), this thought used to make her hand tremble as she poured, at first spilling more on to the floor than into the saucer. The saucer was always Eyebrows’, its wide surface offering up the tea for hasty cooling gave her a sense of security, she knew if need be she could get back to work, swallowing the dregs at a moment’s notice. So many shared cups of tea and yet I know nothing of you.
‘So why do you do this work? I mean . . . I mean is it the money? Can’t be for the money, Didi. Kalu says that if you become a private doctor there is a lot of money in it, but working in a free dispensary . . . Why?’ Suddenly Mamta needs to know.
‘My destiny maybe. Maybe because it was in the stars.’ Eyebrows shakes her head. ‘Look at me, talking about stars. I don’t believe in that bunkum.’
‘It’s not bunkum. The heavenly bodies do govern our lives. What else is there? Our female cycles are synchronised with the phases of the moon. Do you think that is a coincidence? Or that we stay pregnant for exactly nine moons, what do you say to that? The whole world is guided by some star, some planet, some sun. You know there are these people called the Nadiwallas, who can tell your past and future just by looking at your left thumbprint. They came once to Gopalpur, so Bapu brought them home. He showed them his own thumbprint, but not ours. He didn’t think we’d amount to anything. They foretold his future and saw his past, I tell you, absolutely everything. His mother’s name, his father’s names, everything. They said something bad about Bapu’s father and said that Bapu would have to atone for his sins. They said Bapu had married a woman with two names, one starting with La and the other with Ba. My mother’s name is Lata Bai. They said Bapu would be blessed with seven children. Now tell me, how could they have known that? Only I was born at that time. They said he had a daughter with a mark, that’s me, but that her mark would disappear when she became older. I hope so, Didi, I hope so.’
‘Oh, for every one of your stories I could tell you a hundred. But does that make them true? I came here because my father survived lightning. Yes, don’t look at me like that, it’s true. My bapu got stuck to an electric pole in the monsoon time, you know when the streets get so flooded and you can’t see the open manholes. Every monsoon one or two people disappear down those same manholes, probably swept into the blessed Ganga washing their sins in the river with their dying breaths and achieving nirvana if nothing else.’ Mamta reaches a horrified hand almost to Eyebrows’ mouth to stop her blaspheming, but stops short, suddenly remembering the difference in their status.
‘Anyway, no one dared to free Bapu because they knew the minute they stepped
in the water the electricity would grab them too. Right then, as he was shaking on the pole, eyes bulging and arching into backbend, lightning struck. Instead of finishing off poor bapu, the lightning knocked down a workman’s ladder from on top of the electric pole which fell so hard on his arms that it broke his grip on the cable. My bapu was thrown free of the pole and the water.’ There is mirth in her eyes. ‘I’m told the people in my village now routinely leave ladders on top of electric poles. After all, who is to say which one of them will need saving next!
‘I was a very small girl then, but I can clearly remember how he looked when he got home. His hair was spiky like an angry cat’s tail, he was shaky, and had two black patches on his palms.
‘When he touched my amma, she jumped away from him, screaming, The current has caught me, the current has caught me. After that, she wouldn’t let him come near her. But four days later she realised that her backache had disappeared, and she said it was because of bapu’s shock treatment. So he started giving shock treatments to people to cure them of all kinds of aches and pains. He received such joy from helping people that he wanted me to do the same. My mother would have been happy to keep me ignorant on the farm, but not my father. I am what I am because of him.’
Mamta’s eyes glisten and blink, she looks to her clasped hands and then around her. The dispensary is empty. Eyebrows has put up the Closed sign on the door, not that it stops the worst cases. The smell of disinfectant is fresh and clean. It is the first time that Mamta has seen the countertop folded upon itself, simultaneously sandwiching a roll of cotton wool and creating a strait between the erstwhile separate spaces of pharmacy and waiting room.
‘And that’s that. It was a miracle, all right, that brought me here, but now I have an ordinary life.’ She holds out her hands. ‘Oh, you are disappointed. Disappointed because I say I have an ordinary life. What is an ordinary life worth, you ask? In our own ways, we all have ordinary lives.’
‘Not me, Didi. I don’t have an ordinary life. It is because of someone . . . someone very special that I have this life. Come with me, just this once, come with me. You’ll see for yourself.’ Her pleading costs her. She cannot plead as an equal, it sounds like begging.
‘If you didn’t so hate the male race, I would say you were in love with this Lokend Bhai of yours.’
Now Mamta laughs loudly; her mirth, released from bondage, is a blithe young thing. ‘Love that saint?’ She shakes her head from side to side. It is not a no, but an acknowledgement of absurdity.
‘Well, think of it. It’s always Lokend Bhai this and Lokend Bhai that. Lokend Bhai gave me sweets on my wedding . . .’
She says the word wedding as if sharing a secret bordering on a lie. That much Mamta has told her, but nothing of the scar, nothing of her stepdaughter, nothing of her husband – who Eyebrows thinks is a fabricated character, an invention that brought her friend from the village to the city.
‘I don’t think I can ever love anyone. I don’t think it is in me,’ Mamta half-lies to protect herself from her own emotion. If you don’t climb high, you never have to fall; if you don’t have anything, you never have to lose.
‘Everyone can love if they put their mind to it. It is a skill,’ says Eyebrows, secure in the knowledge that she has no intention of putting her words to the test.
Mamta is so tempted to let this woman, who, over the past two years has become closer than family, see her scar and tell her of that precious night when Lokend protected her. Instead she presses her lips tightly together, unable to pass her tongue between them, afraid to let runaway words tumble from her mouth.
‘All right, I’ll come. By the way, it’s the Congress Party, of the flag and palm symbol. Your man Lokend Bhai is standing for the Congress Party, though you are right to ignore the Party. In this case it might be better to put your trust in a man rather than an organisation.’
‘Your man Lokend Bhai’ – she likes the strength of those words, or is it the weakness? ‘He is bringing my sister Sneha,’ she says, changing the subject. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to jinx her coming by talking about it.’
‘What superstition. You people only ever say something unflattering by way of a compliment.’
‘Remember when Sadhana said how nice your sari was, and you spilt daal on it straightaway. Remember? Remember?’ She is bullying, she wants to win a fight on some level. Any level.
‘Come, come now,’ Eyebrows says, cajoling. She is very fond of Mamta, but it will never be in her nature to show it. ‘Come on, let’s go or we will be late.’
Lata Bai’s hut is empty of purpose, of industry. She coughs into her pallav. Her husband lies on the straw mattress, occupying it all. She has taken to the floor. She hardly goes to the well to draw water. With just the two of them, once in four days is enough. That’s enough cooking too, especially with Mamta’s money orders halted. She turns her thoughts away from her runaway daughter.
She can hear him shift and moan, trying to get comfortable in a body that’s badly let him down. Who is this man? A collection of aspirations, dreams, emotions; a representation of something so familiar that all meaning’s lost in the comprehension. He must have felt the same breath of winter wind, slowly turning summer away in gentle parts of nights. He must have rejoiced in someone’s touch, felt a rush through his frame sometime in their youth. He must have cried for at least one other person, perhaps in secret. But what did he stand for?
She is glad he is dying. This is her retribution for what he did. She has waited for this day from the time he beat her into a huddle on the floor.
With his body, his beliefs are also dying. His corn-husk skin covers bent bones that connect awkwardly, he stands half-erect like a praying mantis on its hind legs. Now each time she coughs, he winces, hoping she won’t die and leave him to his dusty, brittle body. She has that over him. Her coughs make him shudder. At last her actions evoke responses from him. But so what?
No one comes to their hut. They are not shunned, simply forgotten. His will be a flaccid death, a slow release of energy, like the dying sigh of a doused fire left to smoke, collapsing into itself without control.
Except for her cough, she too is softly silent. In this place, she mistakes the wind as weeping for her lost past when in fact all it seeks is a new pitch. Nevertheless, there are times when she doesn’t truly believe she has been wronged. Whenever she met her life, it showed her a different face: a daughter, a sister, a bride, a wife, a mother, a friend. Life tolerates no excuses, it only recognises finality, an exact computation. And in her life of fixed paths she has dreamed up many final reckonings. But reality is not an intuition, it isn’t a thought or even a fruition of the past, it is a wilful creature aimless in its wandering. Acceptance is the only defence, the only sanctuary left to her.
‘Lata, Lata.’ His voice still has a modicum of bullying force. He will be heard, it is his birthright. ‘Lata, Lata.’ Bloody woman.
She looks at the body, calling to her, head thrown back, lips open, producing a sound she carries in her pores. How many times . . . and yet today she sees it as something new. She almost wishes she hadn’t given her best green sari to Sneha to take to the city, she thinks she would have liked to have worn it. She stays staring from outside the hut, head held up like a burden, her gaze loose but not locked.
‘Lata, Lata,’ he calls again. ‘Lata . . .’ he is about to start with the words, but she doesn’t let him. She walks away, taking her cough with her. Later, when he is asleep, she will leave food for him within reach. She will not allow a shadow of discomfort to befall him, except the withdrawal of herself, her spirit, her presence.
Each time he wakes, he recognises the bitterness that has seized his heart. At first it was for her, but with her gone, his bitterness has turned on himself. Not as an apology for his actions, nor regret or disappointment, but more because he doesn’t understand why she has stopped talking; and why, when he needs her most does she choose to find a lone place somewhere where she
can hear his voice but not listen.
The breath slips out of him, each time with a softer ‘Lata’.
She has an illicit urge to look in the cracked mirror. Will she even recognise herself? All this time she has lived for others. Suddenly she wants to be something, someone. Someone not so much wife and mother. A daughter, a sister, a bride, a wife, a mother, a friend and now a widow.
She carefully wipes the sindhoor out of her middle parting, wetting the pointed end of her pallav in spit for the final erasure. She meticulously takes off her lone bangle, and slides off her toe ring. She will never have use for the trappings of marriage again. Not in this lifetime. Lata Bai believes in the next life as firmly as she does in this one. That’s why she is not surprised by the gentleness of her husband’s death. Of course he’d deserved worse, but who is to say what lies ahead. ‘Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho.’
She should be singing a prayer for her husband’s soul to ride on. But she cannot. She looks at the twigs in her earlobes. The left was pierced crooked. That is how it always is, one ear is pierced perfectly, and then, for the other, the head anticipating pain, moves. A crooked, jagged hole. It will bleed if she wrenches the twig from it. Her gaze slips to the reflection of her eyes. Still clear. Still alert.
Very little of her face is familiar. Before Mamta was married she would look at the photo to remember what she used to look like, but with the photo gone, she has nothing but the mirror to tell her things.
‘Lata Bai, Lata Bai. Are you there? Arey-oh, Lata Bai.’ The widow Kamla arrives, bringing sound and life with her. Should she reply? Should she dive under the blanket with her husband and pretend that she’s dead too? Should she cover the corpse with a reed mat and pretend it is grain?