‘No, don’t!’ My words are so harsh and abrupt that she looks at me in surprise. ‘I don’t care if it’s broken. I don’t want to see it here. I never want to see it again.’
She seems stunned, frightened. ‘What’s wrong with you? What’s happened to you?’
‘Nothing. I’m all right. But I don’t want it. Let it go.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Let it go, let it go,’ I repeat. We are speaking in sibilant, strangled whispers, as if he is here, as if he can hear us. Can he hear us? Can he hear me?
‘I don’t understand you. Let what go? He is my father.’ She is still crouching on the floor, holding the photograph in her two hands.
‘Yes, your father, but what was he to me? The day he died, I let him go. Like this.’ Now I make the gesture I had imagined—cupping my palms together and then separating them. She stares at my hands in fascination. ‘And there was nothing left. Nothing.’
‘But I—I’m his daughter. And yours. Am I nothing? Am I?’ She is panting, her eyes hot and angry.
‘What are you then?’ I ask her. ‘You are just smoke and a bit of ash, like those cigarettes you smoke. Like my married life.’
Pain lays its talons on her face, her eyes are anguished. But I force myself to go on. What have I to lose? Only the child’s love. And I know this cannot destroy that. On the contrary, I have a feeling that she is with me now, giving me strength for the battle, urging me on. My beloved charioteer.
‘He was your father, but what was he of mine? I lived with him for 25 years. I know he didn’t like unstringed beans and hated grit in his rice, I know he liked his tea boiling hot and his bathwater lukewarm. And he hated tears. And so, when your baby brothers died, I wept alone and in secret. I combed my hair before he woke up because he didn’t like to see women with untidy, loosened hair. And I went into the backyard even then because it made him furious to find stray hairs anywhere. And once a year he bought me two saris, always colours I hated; he never asked me what I liked and-I never told him. And at night….’
She is still crouching, her hair falling about her face. She whimpers like a hurt puppy. ‘Don’t,’ she says, ‘don’t tell me, don’t.’ With each negative, she bangs the photograph she still holds in her hands and the glass splinters again and again. Now he is totally exposed to us, but there is no pity in me. It is not the dead who need our compassion, it is the living; not the dead who crave loyalty, but the living.
‘I don’t want to hear,’ she says.
How innocent she is in spite of her age, her education, her marriage and her child, if knowledge can hurt her. It reminds me of the day she had grown up and I had tried to explain. And she had cried out in the same way, ‘Don’t tell me, don’t!’ This is another kind of growing up, when you see your parents as people. ‘At night,’ I go on relentlessly, ‘I scarcely dared to breathe, I was so terrified of disturbing him. And once, when I asked whether I could sleep in another room—I don’t know how I had the courage—he said nothing. But the next day, his mother, your grandmother, told me bluntly about a wife’s duties. I must always be available, she said. So I slept there, afraid to get up for a glass of water, scared even to cough. When he wanted me, he said, “Come here”. And I went. And when he finished, if I didn’t get out of his bed fast enough, he said, “You can go”. And I got out.’
I know these things should not be said to her, his daughter and mine. But I am like a river in the monsoon, nothing can control me now.
‘And one day, when you were here, you and Madhav, I heard you both talking and laughing in your room. And I stood outside and wondered—what could you be talking about? I felt like I did when I looked at a book as a child before I learned to read. Until then, I had hoped that one day he would say he was pleased with me. That day I knew it would never happen. I would always be outside the room, I would never know what went on inside. And that day I envied you, my own daughter. You hear me, Aarti? I envied you. And when he died I felt like Priti does when school is over and the bell rings. You understand, Aarti? You understand what I’m saying?’
Why am I also crying? We look at each other and she is looking at me as if she has never seen me before. Then, with a sudden movement, she springs up and glares at me. I have made her look at me. But what, my heart shrivels at the thought, if she does not like what she sees? And then, moving backwards from me, her eyes still on my face, she goes out of the room. In a moment I hear her running feet. My legs can no longer support me. I collapse in a chair. As I sit there, my mind a blank, I hear the cry, ‘Ajji, I’m home, where are you?’
I sit up and look about me. ‘Ajji’ the voice is peremptory. For a moment I can’t speak. Then I call back, loudly, ‘Here, Priti, I’m here.’
My cry rings through the house like hers had done.
An Antidote to Boredom
‘Do you want more sugar in your coffee?’
‘Sugar? No…no. Maybe a little bit.’
‘Half a spoon?’
I got the sugar, stirred the coffee. And suddenly, standing there, my sari tucked in at my waist, the picture of a solicitous wife serving her husband, I retreated into a wild flight of fancy. What if I came up to the table, I asked him silently, walking on my hands, your coffee balanced on my feet? I concealed a small smile at the vision I had conjured up, knowing fully well that he would do nothing, because he would notice nothing but that he had been served his coffee. No need to conceal my smile, either. For that again was something he would not notice. Whereas he—no nuance of my expression ever escaped him.
‘Why are you smiling?’ he would ask, his tone tender and cajoling. I would hesitate, afraid of sounding ridiculous with my fancies, but he would make me tell him. And when I finished, he would, I knew, laugh aloud, genuinely amused and, relieved and happy, I would laugh too. And this—this shared laughter would become one more link between us; one link less between this man, who sat silently eating, his jaws moving rhythmically, and me, his wife.
I knew what he would do now after eating. He would wash his hands, rinse his mouth and sit down with the newspaper for exactly five minutes, while I moved about restlessly, wishing he would go away so that I could get on with my day’s work. When his five minutes were over, he would pick up his bag and saying ‘See you in the evening,’ would walk out. And in the evening? I knew how it would be.
‘Any letters?’
‘Yes.’ Or perhaps, ‘No.’
‘Rahul home?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s for tea?’
One day, I often told myself, I would reply, ‘Toads and mice for tea today.’ And what would he do then? Give me a startled look? Or his painstaking smile to show that he understood it was a joke? Once I had thought I would fling myself at him and say, ‘I’ve missed you’. But I knew what his reaction to that would be. He would be painfully, horribly embarrassed. Now I no longer thought of saying that. It would no longer be true.
No, I was never lonely now. As I moved about the house doing my chores, I stored up jokes, little bits of my day to tell him, the other. We could talk of anything, nothing was too trivial or too intense for us. There were only two things we never spoke of. We never once mentioned those two little boys, at once the bridge and the chasm between us. Only that one day….
‘You’re thinking of something. You’ve gone away.’
‘No, not really.’
‘You’re thinking of Rahul.’
‘No!’ My negative had been fierce, abruptly torn out of me. No, I never think of Rahul when I’m with you. I push him away to the remotest shelf in my mind. But I could not say this aloud. And yet, it was because of our boys that we had met at all.
‘Do you have to go to see Rahul in school?’ my husband had asked me in irritation.
How explain that the thought of your gentle, sensitive five-year-old all by himself in a crowd of big, rough, hustling, pushing boys tore at you? I couldn’t, I prevaricated instead.
‘You’re making an unnece
ssary fuss. Leave him alone. He’ll settle down fast enough.’
‘I know that. But….’
‘The teachers must be fed up with you mothers.’
But we weren’t all mothers there. He was often there too. A father. Waiting patiently to meet the teacher. Why, I had wondered, did his wife never come? Then one day, we had found our children walking around, their arms round each other’s shoulders. We had smiled, pleased, not really seeing each other. Only our children.
‘I never see his mother,’ I had idly remarked. There was a little pause before he replied, ‘She’s dead.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’
Filled with shame, I had taken Rahul and his new friend to the canteen for ice cream. He had said nothing, had followed us silently, then got me an ice cream with a smile. That had been the beginning.
The beginning? Of what? Nothing, really. Just that we met and talked and laughed. Just that I felt I had to see him. I knew he felt the same. So that, without any words, we found ourselves going to the school twice a week, the same time, the same day, knowing fully well that our children didn’t really need us any more. Yet I would pretend to myself it was Rahul I went to see.
With a kind of guilt and shame at making use of him, I would rush up to him, rumple his hair, stay with him for a while, and then, with a throbbing heart and pulsing excitement, go to the courtyard where I would find him waiting for me under the large clock.
Once Rahul had followed me. I had already dismissed him from my mind, and was walking fast, full of the fear that was always in me that he would not be there. But, of course, he had been there and at the sight of him, smiling at me, I had almost broken into a run. Then, hearing a scuffling sound behind me, I had turned round sharply.
‘Rahul!’ I had gasped. ‘What do you want?’
He had stopped abruptly and giving both of us a curiously adult look, remote and wary, had fled. That day it had all been spoilt for us. We had gone in his car to our usual place, a quiet road where there wasn’t much traffic. I had sat and said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and he had watched me anxious and worried, but said nothing. That was the day, the only day, he had mentioned Rahul’s name to me. And when it was time for us to part, he had suddenly said, ‘It’s bad for you, I know. But don’t think it’s easier for me. The dead clamour for loyalty as much as the living.’
But it was rarely like that between us. Depressing or tragic. No, it was more often joyous, exciting. And the thought of meeting him kept me keyed up to a more intense pitch of living. His frank admiration was as refreshing to me as cold water on a hot day. Until then, nobody had cared what I wore, how I dressed. My husband denied me nothing; but there was not one sari with associations. Not one sari that was special to me because of something we had done together, something he had said to me.
Now… ‘I love you in blue,’ he would say. And the next time I went shopping, I would go looking for a blue. I would drive the salesman mad, for he would have all the shades but the one I wanted. He would press all of them on me, talking glibly the way all salesmen do. The saris would mount up on the counter and my husband’s eyebrows would draw together in an irritated frown. ‘What does it matter what colour it is/ he would exclaim in irritation. But I would be stubborn until I got the colour I wanted, thinking of him saying to me, ‘I love you in blue’.
If only my husband had been more demonstrative of his affection, I often thought…. But what if there is no affection at all, the only things holding us together being habit and a child?
If only my child had been more demanding…. But he had never been that. Always quiet and self-sufficient.
If only that other child of ours had lived….
If only his wife hadn’t died….
If only…. If only….
But I was fooling myself. There was a sweetness in our relationship that made it impossible for me to wish it away. I knew it was the same with him. He even spoke to me of his wife and I loved him for doing it.
‘When she died, I felt it was the end of the world. Other women didn’t exist for me, I never saw them. Until I saw you that day eating ice cream with the children. Sometimes I have a strange feeling she doesn’t mind. But you! I feel bad for you. To carry a load of guilt….’
‘Guilt,’ I had said bitterly. ‘No, there’s no guilt. Why should there be? As long as his world isn’t disturbed, at least obviously, he doesn’t care. Sometimes I feel like shocking him, shaking him out of his lethargy by screaming in his ears…. I have a lover, yes, a lover.’
He had laughed and said, ‘And what would you gain by that?’ And then, seriously, ‘Lover? But that wouldn’t be true, would it?’ No, because we weren’t. What prevented us? At first he had been quiescent, his importunities slight. Now I could feel his need for me strong and pulling. He wanted me. It was a wonderful feeling. I wouldn’t be just a habit with him, a body to be loved once or twice a week, so that lovemaking became just another chore. Dull, like treading a path one had walked many times before. So that at the end I would lie awake, wondering, thinking about those women who did it for money and did they have the same feeling of being cheated, of being defrauded of something that was the right of our womanhood?
No, it would never be like that between us I knew. And yet I hesitated. Tried to ignore the feeling that often came between us. I was no inexperienced girl, but a woman married for twelve years, knowing all there was to be known, aware of passions and desires, though they had passed me by. Knowing fully well that two persons, a man and a woman, could not look at each other the way we did, could not refrain from touching each other the way we did, without something having to happen some time.
But I was content to drift. Events must take their course—I repeated the sentence to myself a thousand, a million times, till it became a meaningless jumble of words. And still I hesitated, because I knew how it would be afterwards. I would never be the same again. I knew I would sit in my own home feeling an interloper, the very fringe of the bedspread on our bed staring me out of countenance, making me feel a criminal. And there was the thought of Rahul too, some awareness in his eyes, a recent withdrawal from me, which made me wonder how much a child could see and understand. The very thought of it made me feel guilty towards Rahul. But I felt no guilt towards my husband, because I would be depriving him of nothing, nothing he wanted. How often had I felt in myself a boundless capacity for loving, for giving. But I had felt in him an incapacity to receive and for that I hated him at times, though I knew I wronged him by that. For he was not a wicked man, not harsh nor cruel. Only unperceptive. And dull. And dullness is to me an unforgivable crime.
Sometimes terrible thoughts plagued me. I wondered whether it was only the demon of discontent which had brought me to such a strange situation, sitting with a strange man in his car, exchanging pleasurable glances with him, hiding my face guiltily at the sight of what seemed a familiar face. And at times there was the even more shaming thought that it could have been any man; if not this, then another. Because this was for me, perhaps, only an antidote to boredom, something I enjoyed because of the excitement it brought into the dull routine of my days, the unchanging pattern of my life.
But when I was with him I never spoke of these things. We never mentioned our own separate worlds. Instead, we built a new one of our own, a third that was ours only, one in which our usual personalities changed, so that we became different beings altogether, at once more interesting, more vital, more sparkling. So that I would come home, humming a little tune, smile at myself in the mirror, wondering that I even looked different. The glow would stay with me till evening. Then the bell would ring. ‘Any letters? Rahul home? What’s for tea?’
And I would feel the sulky furrows coming back to my forehead, the little droop returning to my mouth. A long, dull evening would loom ahead of me, teeming with dull barren silences. And I would think of our life together, and of how we could go on like this for years and years, until we were both old and withered, with even Rahul, the only mea
ning to our relationship, an occasional visitor. I would feel like yawning and yawning. Face-splitting yawns.
I often thought of these silences when we sat in his car and a little silence grew between us. These silences were never barren; they were replete with meaning, making us more at ease with each other.
Strangely enough, we never once spoke of love. This was the other thing we never mentioned. Love—how often they use the word in books and movies, how carelessly people fling the word at one another there. But how wary we are of the word in real life! I had thought I had grasped the thing that was the word in the youthful, fevered excitement of my honeymoon days. But it had proved to be an illusion. And now the word was stored away at home, a skeleton in the cupboard.
But now, the phantom that had eluded me, was beginning to take on features and a face once more. Though I knew it would be a blurred picture, a misty image, until we spent long unhurried hours together, exchanging not only long, passionate kisses, but nibbling, little kisses as well, my hair spread out on the pillow, the warm length of our bodies against each other. Instead we sat in the car, carefully distant, the tension between us growing daily, until some days back, when something snapped in him and he pulled me close. It had amazed me. Kisses—I had thought them the preserve of the young, of people in books and movies. For the rest of us, they were something to be indulged in behind closed doors, a prelude to something else. Now, for the first time, I found that a kiss could contain in itself as much pleasure and excitement as anything between a man and a woman. That whole night I had lain awake, ashamed of my earlier ignorance, my innocence.
The next day I had told him, ‘He’s going to Delhi next week.’
‘Oh!’ He had refrained from saying anything more, careful not to prod or question me, letting me take my own time, my own way of coming to things.
‘And Rahul always spends a day with his grandmother.’
Again an ‘Oh!’
‘What floor is your flat?’ I had asked in a burst at last, careful not to look at him, ashamed of seeing in his face that I had cheapened myself. And then, I had nerved myself and looked up and seen such joy on his face that I had found it hard to bear. Once the fact had been settled between us, we never spoke of it. Just waited quietly for the days to pass. As I moved and worked in my home, kneading the dough, or cutting the vegetables, my mind moved forward, leaped through the intervening time and I thought of the day and how it would be. And whether his boy too had a convenient grandmother and what we would do and what we would say, until I was filled with an impatience for the time, and yet, a fear of it too. And he, my husband, noticed nothing, not my excitement, nor my restlessness, just as my earlier boredom and discontent too had passed him by. For the first time I was glad of his passivity, his blindness, his stolidity. And I was good-humoured and patient with him. Yet, perversely, sometimes I wished he could see, wondering what he would do, whether he would mind at all. And surprisingly, the most humiliating thought was that he would not mind at all.
The Intrusion and Other Stories Page 7