by Dipika Rai
‘Can Sneha come downstairs with me? Not long, memsahib, I’ll send her back up in fifteen minutes.’
‘Take your time, take your time. I’m sure you sisters have a lot to catch up on. She’s not the cleaner you were,’ says Mrs D’Souza, ignoring her sweeper’s presence. Sneha looks to her feet.
On the stairwell she says, ‘I work hard, I tell you, Didi, I work hard. I’ve done nothing to disgrace you, and still she says those things.’
‘I know, I know, don’t worry, Memsahib has to have something to complain about. Keeps her young. When I was here she had her fights with her daughter. Now, with Cynthiaji reconciled, I suppose it has to be you.’
‘You must be right. A baby boy, Didi, you are so lucky.’ Sneha holds Manmohan with straight arms at a distance and looks at him.
‘We are planning to go back.’ ‘Go back! Don’t be crazy, Didi. Why are you going back? You aren’t married to him.’ Gopalpur is too fresh in her younger sister’s mind to warrant romanticism. ‘You have such a nice life here. You have the best husband, I mean man, and Prem and I are here. Granted, we don’t meet much, but still.’
‘Oh, Sneha, I can’t tell you what it means to be a mother. I am longing to go back. Gopalpur is calling for me. I want to show Manno to his grandmother. I want Amma to meet Manno’s father. I want her to accept our family. Amma knows nothing about us. She doesn’t even know I have a son. I want Amma to hold my son.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Sneha says with the authority of an older rather than younger sister. ‘You are married to another man. They will never let you stay. They will beat you out of Gopalpur. Even Amma won’t accept you. She will disgrace you. Disgrace that saintly Lokend Bhai of yours. If I were you, I couldn’t bear it. He has given you everything. What’s in Gopalpur?’
‘I can’t explain it, Sneha. Even if I have to fight every person in Gopalpur for my acceptance, I will. I just need to do it.’
Sneha has never seen such confident zeal in her sister’s eyes before. She feels a pinch of envy. It is now that she realises just how much Lokend Bhai has actually given her elder sister.
‘You know Amma told me to go back to my husband in her last letter. But that was then, I didn’t have him then’ – the girls look at Lokend from under the stairs – ‘but when she sees him, all her reasons will leave her, the village will mean nothing. He is something . . . someone . . . he is . . .’ Mamta has no words for her love.
‘I will make her accept me. I will make them all accept me. For him. For us,’ she says, taking Manno out of her sister’s arms. ‘She won’t be able to resist. Have you ever seen a grandmother able to resist her grandchild?’
Sneha has to stop fighting against her sister’s gathering strength. ‘For me, Lokend Bhai has always been a saint,’ she says, nodding towards him. ‘Without him I would be dead.’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ says Mamta, hugging her close. ‘Forget those days. Here, none of that matters. And what about you? Do you have someone?’
‘Hmm. Uhuh.’
‘Who? Come on, who is he?’
‘Kalu.’
‘Kalu? My Kalu? Kalu from under the stairs?’
‘He’s lovely, he takes care of me.’
‘What happened to his Maharashtran then?’
‘Oh, her? She was too high class for him. Thankfully, she broke his heart, that’s why I have him now.’
‘Tell Prem to come and see us,’ says Mamta as she leaves.
‘You know he won’t come. But I’ll tell him anyway.’ Prem is holding down two jobs and apprenticing to be a machinist. With every cell in his body he has become a city boy, lapping at every opportunity that comes his way. He shares a room with another village boy three miles out of town and rides into Begumpet every day on the second-hand bicycle that Lokend managed to arrange for him. His time, each second of it, is accounted for, and he has none to spare for social calls.
In the end, Eyebrows convinces them not to leave for Gopalpur before Manmohan is a year old. She says the city is a better place to be to make sure Manmohan is inoculated right. But each day that Mamta spends in Begumpet her dream to return to Gopalpur becomes stronger. Her heart has already fled Begumpet, and one year later, almost to the day, she packs their bags ready to leave.
The bus to Gopalpur is full and people are dragging their luggage to the roof. They put the soft bedrolls on top of tin trunks like raisins on rice pudding, making a soft seat for themselves.
‘Shouldn’t we go see what they are doing? I mean, is our luggage safe?’ Mamta has never had something of monetary value to protect before.
He waves a hand, what will be will be, he has never been attached to things, and what’s in their luggage anyway? A few clothes, and some gifts for her mother.
She pulls her pallav low over her eyes, opens her blouse and lets Manno suckle all the way out of Begumpet. The city is almost unrecognisable. In the five years she’s been in Begumpet, the slums have spread way beyond the outskirts, past the railway station.
The scenery streaming past, the wind on her face, and the disquiet in her heart opens it up to lost thoughts. Outwardly she is just another nursing mother, but her being is molten with trepidation. It was her decision alone to return, she is making this journey against everyone’s advice. ‘I wish the buckets hadn’t been so expensive. Anyway, I managed to buy Amma some salt and sugar. I wonder if she will know what to do with it,’ she says.
He laughs, delighted by her naïveté. It never occurred to him that powdered salt and sugar could be so precious. In the Big House, they always had sugar cubes, nice neat white ones, for their tea. He looks at her, fully covered from head to toe like a fresh bride, suckling their baby. He leans over to take a look at his son’s face and is overwhelmed with love for his family. ‘I’m glad we’re going back,’ he says.
It is impossible for her to enjoy the journey. Whenever her heart steps out of her chest to dance with the clouds, her mind quickly pulls it back to the real possibilities of village-style reprisals. As a married woman, living with another man is unforgivable. It goes against every rule, every system. She is still her husband’s possession. In Gopalpur she will need Lokend’s protection more than ever. ‘What about my mother, what do you think she will say about us?’ she can’t hold the question any longer.
‘You will be safe with me,’ he replies. That’s all he can offer, guarantee for her safety, but he cannot change anyone’s opinion.
It isn’t enough. She wants approval. Immediately Mamta rationalises, ‘I know Amma. She will not say one word against me.’ Her words are filled with hope, but she knows hope can be a false friend.
‘We will live with Manmohan’s widow, with Asmara Didi.’ Now she has reason to fret about something else. ‘Asmara Didi? Do you think she’ll accept me? She is like a mother to you. We aren’t married. So many mothers-in-law hate their legitimate daughters-in-law, so what chance do I have?’
He laughs. ‘Asmara Didi has been after me my whole life to get a wife, she always said she wanted a grandson. Well, now she has her wish. Do you think she will reject it?’ A wife, wife . . . that word appeases her. ‘Look, I kept this,’ he says, taking out a piece of newspaper from his pocket.
At first she doesn’t know what to make of the shrivelled-up dirty string it protects.
‘It’s Manno’s.’
Of course, her son’s umbilical cord. She is flooded with gratitude. Lokend is not a superstitious man, but he remembered her needs and saved the cord for her, knowing she would want to plant it in the courtyard of the home she chose for her children.
‘Now Gopalpur can truly become our home,’ she says, clutching the cord tightly in her hand.
Chapter 18
LATA BAI HAS BECOME ONE OF those who gamble with destiny to pass the time. If today the wind takes my roof, Jivkant will come home to find my dead body. If a bee enters the house before the dog barks, then there will be a letter at last from Sneha. If there is rain, Ragini will send for me. If I hear the wolv
es tonight, Mamta will come to her senses and return to her husband. If there is an electric light at my door, Mohit will come home. She plays the wind game in the stillest season, the bee game when there is not a flower blooming for miles, the rain game during the drought and the wolf game because she knows the wolves left with the bandits, and as for the electric light, well there will never be one outside her door. And so, Jivkant doesn’t come home to her dead body, there is never a letter from Sneha, or a summons from Ragini and no word of Mamta or Mohit.
Mamta finds her mother dressed in widow-white, her sari old, soiled and rumpled as if she put it on years ago.
She has come to her old hut alone, separated from Manno for the first time. ‘Amma,’ she says with overwhelming normality in her voice.
‘Mamta . . . my daughter . . . Mamta! How did you come back? When did you come back? Your sister, your brother?’
Is her mother angry, disappointed, approving, betrayed? She can’t tell from the tone of her voice. Mamta crushes her mother against her chest without looking into her eyes. It has always been the other way round, with her waiting for Lata Bai to invite her into her arms. But no more. She feels a spike of defiance; she is done with waiting for the world to offer her things. She will create her own destiny. She can feel her mother’s bones through the sari. Her mother’s back is slightly bent, and she has faint lines around her mouth where her gums have started to recede. It is a deeply satisfying embrace, and she relaxes into it with cautious contentment.
‘Amma, we are all all right.’ The smell of her mother is unchanged. The smell makes her a little girl again. This parting has been too long.
‘Shall I bring the water today?’ It is that evening time. The women would be going to the well to fill their pitchers, a stream of psychedelic shapes.
Lata Bai shakes her head. ‘It’s only me, I go once a week.’ She chews on the end of her pallav; she is tempted to lie, but so much time has passed, her wounds are scabbed over. ‘I pushed him into the river,’ she says, taking her daughter by the shoulders. ‘We can both go to the well, if you like.’ Lata Bai looks directly into her daughter’s eyes, offering her the opportunity to announce her presence in Gopalpur.
Suddenly Mamta is unsure. ‘No, the well can wait.’ ‘Let me make you something nice,’ Lata Bai continues to avoid the obvious. She intends to keep the talk simple, frothy with familiar jocularity, just like in the old days.
The two women bend over the fire, her mother blows into its heart, the smoke flies up into Mamta’s face. Lata Bai laughs loudly, Mamta smiles. She looks around, expecting to see her sturdy horse-shaped stick still lying in a corner somewhere.
‘You look well. More meat on your bones. Yet, you look different. What’s happened?’
The question possesses all the stealth of a stalking cat. What’s happened? Everything! Her life has happened. So many words are crowded on the tip of her tongue, in exactly the place where one’s tastebuds for sugar lie. It has been more tha n five years since she’s seen her mother. What can she tell her? Shall she say something about Lokend, about Manno . . . about the city? ‘Amma, look at this, it is salt and this is sugar,’ she says, opening the paper bags. ‘You can’t tell from their colour, can you? So white and . . . and . . . pure.’ She pinches the salt and sugar into the breeze, letting both powders float away like memories.
‘Yes, Saraswati Stores has the same,’ says Lata Bai. Saraswati Stores has the same. Why say that? Mamta is surprised by the strength of her disappointment. It is a bad omen. It is not time to talk about her illegitimate son and her lover now. ‘Your husband came looking for you, but that seems like years ago. Since then, there has been no news of him. You are with him, no?’ asks the mother, determined to hear the explanation from her daughter’s lips. ‘No, of course I know you’re not. So, when is he coming to get you?’
‘Coming to get me? Never! He is never coming to get me! He will never get me.’
‘Well, you will have to go when he comes.’ Not if, but when he comes. The under-the-banyan-tree rules have become instructions for Lata Bai’s life.
‘I’ll never go back to him. Never! What did Bapu call me? “Someone else’s garden” – wasn’t that it? Someone else’s garden.’
‘Oho, what are you so upset about? Girls leave their homes when they get married . . .’ Lata Bai manages to keep the conversation disapproving but soft, negotiable. ‘That’s all he meant,’ she defends her dead husband.
‘Why are you saying these things? I thought you understood. Understood how I hated my life.’
‘Of course I understood. Why you ran away is your own business. But you earned money, so who am I to fault you? Many women leave their husbands to earn in the city, there is no crime in that. But you are back now, and here in Gopalpur you are a married woman, and you must go when he comes looking for you. I don’t say send him news immediately . . .’ she is willing to compromise ‘. . . but you have to understand, news of your arrival in Gopalpur will reach him anyway. And when he comes, you must go. You are his . . .’
‘His property . . . his garden. I know,’ says Mamta bitterly. ‘We aren’t investments, Amma, we are human beings. I’ll not be staying here,’ she adds petulantly. She hasn’t come this far to have to swallow her mother’s condemnation. She has been with people like Lokend and Eyebrows, she cannot go back to the old ways, she cannot now tolerate the smallest suspicion of being anything less than a whole human being in anyone’s eyes. Lokend’s words, Let no one tell you who you must be, hold her close.
‘Where then?’ It is unthinkable to the mother that her daughter might have another place to stay.
‘With the bandit wives.’ Mamta will not tell her mother about Lokend.
‘Go then. Leave me.’ As a mother she must be sometimes soft, sometimes hard, sometimes bitter, and sometimes sweet. ‘One by one you all left me. It was only he who remained, but I pushed him in the river. Cruelty is the most lasting memory. Isn’t that the truth?’
It is a new world that Mamta has walked into. By virtue of being Lokend’s chosen partner, she is accepted by the bandit wives, and yet, she lives in apologetic distress, never arguing, always taking the lead from others whom she thinks have more right to their wretchedness than she ever did. In her eyes, she is on a lower rung than the women whose husbands looted and murdered for their livelihood. Her deference somehow heals the wounded hearts of many bandit wives, left virtual widows because their husbands languish forgotten in jail.
Though she finds her place amongst the embroiderers, it is Asmara Didi who makes her feel truly welcome. Like a fallen flower that brings colour to the bush it lands on, Asmara Didi brings a lot of pink into her life. Lokend was right, Asmara Didi is grateful to her for bringing her son home. In return, the older woman treats Mamta like a new bride.
‘Here, I saved this in the hope that some day he would . . .’ Asmara Didi offers her a crushed rosette of silk bearing a toe ring, the conclusive sign of marriage.
She never had a wedding with Lokend. ‘But . . . but . . . we aren’t . . .’
‘In my eyes you are,’ says Asmara Didi. ‘You are more than a wife to him. You know we never thought he would get married, always living for others, but somehow . . . somehow he feels he can do both with you. That is a miracle. Go on . . . put it on. For my sake.’ She draws Mamta towards her and kisses her on her forehead right above her bindi. Mamta closes her eyes in the shelter of the older woman’s embrace, so authoritative, so charged with motherly love, enough to shut out all the world.
As long as she stays with the bandit wives she is safe, but the village is closed to her. On her first day she tried to buy some provisions at Saraswati Stores only to be chased by village children pelting her with dung at the say-so of Nathu’s daughter. That’s when she heard the word for the first time – Rakhale, mistress! Just like Sharma’s wife, raped and shit-smeared, rakhale! Kept woman!
This is the first time Lokend is taking them to the Big House. In fact it is the first time h
e is meeting Ram Singh since his return. They are going for dinner at Ram Singh’s specific invitation. She has waited long for this.
She has dressed carefully in an elegant grey sari embellished with tiny specks of gold. It belonged to Lokend’s mother, and was given to her by Asmara Didi. ‘Bibiji chose her clothes well. In this sari you will be perfect,’ said the old woman, pinning flowers in her hair.
Mamta has primed Manno with her interpretation of high manners, hoping they will pass muster with the Big House: touch your uncle’s feet and don’t rise till you feel his hand on your head, walk slowly and silently behind the grown-ups, don’t take seconds unless asked at least three times, don’t show the soles of your feet to those sitting opposite you.
Manno is rocking on his toes and heels like a boxer ready to lunge at his uncle’s feet at his mother’s command.
‘Not this rakhale or her bastard.’ Mamta and Manno are stopped at the door by Babulal.
The boy stops rocking.
‘You go. You go in. You should not have to choose,’ she says to Lokend, and it is with a heavy heart that she sees him do her bidding and disappear into the mansion’s cavernous belly.
‘Bapu?’ the boy asks.
‘He’ll be back soon,’ she says, tossing the flowers, one by one, from her hair into the darkness. ‘See that? That’s Dhruv Tara, the constant star. He used to be a boy, a boy just like you –’ wronged too, just like you ‘– the god Vishnu put him in the sky away from jealousy and evil to show all wanderers their way. You are like that star, steadfast and good.’ Perhaps that’s the use of mythology, she thinks, to make sense of all injustice, so that the wronged don’t grow up to become criminals and murderers, but instead become holy beings filled with wisdom, permanent and inspiring. She is in a murderous mood, rakhale, bastard, rakhale . . . shit-smeared and raped . . .