‘No, I don’t think that’s what’s happened. He was very clear and very calm when he spoke to me, he was ...’ Suddenly she shivers. ‘I’m feeling cold.’
‘Shall I get you a shawl?’
‘No, let’s go in.’
‘What are you going to do, Sumi?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know anything, not as yet. Premi wanted me to go to Bombay with her, but I can’t think of anything, not as yet. I need time, Ramesh, give me some time.’
Lying in the semi-darkness, listening to the patter of raindrops on the mango leaves, each sound distinct, framed in the surrounding silence, Sumi is tantalized by a sense of deja vu. I have been in this room before, I have woken up here, just this way, watching the morning light slowly fill the room, relieved to see the menacing shadow in the corner become a cupboard. It’s a child’s fear that comes back to me. Did I ever sleep in this room as a child? This is my grandfather’s room, the room where he lived and died. Perhaps that’s why Kalyani didn’t want me to move in here. But she didn’t say that.
‘Why do you want to be alone?’ she had asked.
Not to lose sight of my loneliness, not to let the empty sound of it be muffled by the voices of other humans during the day, by the sounds of their breathing and rustlings in the night. It takes time to get used to sharing your life with another person, now I have to get used to being alone.
Of course, Sumi had not said any of this to her mother. She has to smile at the thought of it. And the truth is that it is not loneliness that is her enemy right now, it is a sense of alienation. The sight of Premi flanked by her daughters, the hostility on Aru’s face as she said ‘I rang her up’, had made Sumi feel suddenly vulnerable.
The three of them ranged against me. Am I the enemy? Do my daughters blame me for what Gopal has done? Do they think it is my fault? Why can’t I talk to them, tell them what I feel, how it was? Why can’t I open my heart to them?
Sa-hriday—Gopal and she had argued about the meaning of the word once. Smiling at her attempt to find an English equivalent, Gopal had said, ‘There’s no word in English that can fit the concept. English is a practical language, it has no words for the impossible. Sa-hriday in the sense of oneness is an impossible concept.’
Then, abruptly, he had pulled her close to himself and said, ‘Listen, can you hear? It’s two hearts beating. They can never beat in such unison that there’s only one sound. Hear that?’
It was these unexpected quirks in Gopal that had at first fascinated Sumi. Not for long, though; she had soon ceased to find them amusing or interesting. Nevertheless, she knows now that they were hints, telling her that it was always there in Gopal, the potential to walk out on her and their children.
Unlike her daughters, Sumi has no fears of his death; on the contrary, there is a certainty of his being alive, of his steadily pursuing his own purposes. While the others are trying to find reasons for what he has done, she knows that the reason lies inside him, the reason is him.
Sumi remembers, now, the night she had gone to his room, knowing that only this way could she break out of her father’s authority. But Gopal, to her consternation, had closed himself against her. ‘Go back, Sumi,’ he had said, almost coldly. Only her stubbornness and the thought that she could not possibly return to the room she shared with Premi, had kept her there, alone in the room, that whole long night, while Gopal sat out in the tiny, open veranda. Until morning, when he had come in and put his arms about her, as if folding her into himself, into his life. And she had heard his heart beating.
Two hearts, two sounds. Gopal is right. Sa-hriday—there is no such thing, there can be no such thing.
‘Is he all right with you?’ Sudha had asked anxiously when they had gone to visit her and P.K. after their marriage.
‘All right? Do you mean, does he scold me and beat me? No, he doesn’t.’
I was only eighteen then, I could joke about it. But Gopal’s sister did not laugh. She knew him, yes, she did, much better than I did. Or still do.
‘Destiny is just us.’
Gopal’s words come back to Sumi when, clearing up the large cupboard to make room for her things, she comes across the photographs. Deep inside, as if someone has thrust them as far back as possible. Two photographs in an envelope brittle with age. The photographs too, brown with the years, the edges frayed, the corners splitting, the backs slightly gummy to her fingers as if they had been stuck into an album some time earlier.
There are two girls in one picture: Kalyani and Goda, of course, she recognizes them, Kalyani’s arm protectively around Goda’s shoulder. Kalyani, about fourteen or fifteen perhaps, is already wearing a sari, the sari on her child’s body having the effect of a masquerade. A child wearing her mother’s sari for fun. But Kalyani’s face is anxious, the slight suggestion of a squint accentuated, as it always is, by her distress or anxiety.
Goda provides a contrast both in looks and expression. (It’s so hard to remember that Kalyani and Goda are not sisters but the children of a brother and sister, that the lack of resemblance between them invariably comes as a surprise.) Goda, pleasingly plump, is smiling at the camera, obedient perhaps, to the photographer’s command. She is wearing a ‘half-sari’, as the diaphanous veil on her shoulders shows. This, along with her large eyes, her chubby face and the flowers in her hair, gives her the look of a heroine of a South Indian movie of the fifties. She seems docile and agreeable, and though only a child, already good wife-material. It is clear from the picture that she will make some man a good wife, whereas Kalyani ....
It is the other picture that startles Sumi. A classic post-wedding picture, bride and groom formally posed against a dark background, the bride sitting in a chair, the groom by her, a tall table with paper flowers in a vase placed on the other side for symmetry. The bride is wearing a heavy silk, the sari much too heavy for her scrawny girlishness. Her left arm, exposed by the sari’s being held up by a brooch, is childishly thin and the weight of the heavy chain and necklaces she is wearing seems to make her neck droop. She is looking not at the camera, but at someone standing by the photographer, the uncertain look of a child seeking approval—am I doing it right? The man on the other hand is stern, his eyes hooded, arms folded across his chest in the usual ‘manly pose’ demanded by the photographers for such pictures. But the sternness here is not a pose, it is real. And the way he is standing, he gives the impression of being by himself, wholly unaware of the girl sitting by him. His wife.
Husband and wife. Bride and groom. Kalyani and Shripati, my parents. To see them together, even in a picture, gives me an odd, uneasy feeling. It seems wrong somehow, unnatural, even slightly obscene.
‘Destiny is just us.’
Yes, their future is here, it can be seen in this picture, clearly, what is to happen to them, to their marriage. We don’t always need astrologers, palmists or horoscopes to give us a glimpse of our future lives. They lie within us.
Sumi, who has heard Kalyani say ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ for everything, from the milk boiling over to a sudden death, has never been able to take the word seriously. It was something innocuous, a domestic pet, a cat that lay snoozing in your home. Harmless, though there was always the chance that you could trip over it, fall and hurt yourself. But Gopal’s use of the word ‘destiny’ gives it a different colour. A deeper tinge.
‘Destiny is just us, and therefore inescapable, because we can never escape ourselves. Certain actions are inevitable because we are what we are. In a sense, we walk on chalked lines drawn by our own selves.’
Chalked lines? What a strange way of talking about what the living of life is all about, she had thought then. For her, it was a magician’s bag, full of odds and ends. Put your hand in and you never know what you might get hold of: a rabbit, a bird, a string of silk scarves, a chain of ten-rupee notes. Chance, yes, haphazard, yes, that too, but nothing predetermined.
But, she thinks now, I forgot one thing. A magician is an entertainer, and therefore he can’
t take the chance of ugly, frightening things coming out of his bag. He has to guard against that hazard. So perhaps Gopal’s theory fits better after all. Destiny is just us.
And yet, if Gopal’s life is shaped by his being what he is, what about us, the girls and me? We are here because of his actions: how does this fit in?
But I have no desire really to pursue these thoughts. Unlike Aru, I know that getting answers to questions will not provide me with any solution. The ‘why’ that all of them are pursuing leaves me cold. I know that they find it impossible to believe that I have not asked him anything. The truth is, I could not have spoken to him that night—no, it was impossible. But even if it had been possible, if I had asked him ‘why’, would I have got an answer I could have made sense of?
‘I could no longer stand in a position of authority before my students.’
This was his explanation for resigning his job! Just like Gopal, I had thought, both irritated and annoyed, to give such an impossibly metaphysical reason for resigning a job. If I’d asked him, ‘why are you leaving me?’, I’d have got just such an answer and what would I do with that?
And yet, she thinks, if I meet Gopal I will ask him one question, just one, the question no one has thought of. What is it, Gopal, I will ask him, that makes a man in this age of acquisition and possession walk out on his family and all that he owns? Because, and I remember this so clearly, it was you who said that we are shaped by the age we live in, by the society we are part of. How then can you, in this age, a part of this society, turn your back on everything in your life? Will you be able to give me an answer to this?
It is now over a month since Gopal left home and Sumi knows one decision has to be taken, and immediately.
‘Vacate the house? You must be joking!’
Aru is incredulous. As long as the house is theirs, they still have a home and the hope that Gopal will return, that they will be able to resume their lives. To give up the house, as Sumi is saying they have to do, is to pronounce the death sentence of that hope. Aru wants to say something that will stop her mother from taking the step, but she has no arguments that can contend against the reality of money; she knows herself that they cannot afford to pay the rent for that house any longer.
But Sumi’s hurry to have done with this has more to it than these financial considerations. With Gopal’s going, it was as if the swift-flowing stream of her being had grown thick and viscous—her movements, her thoughts, her very pulse and heartbeats seemed to have slowed down. It had worried her family, but it has been a necessary physical reaction to her emotional state, as if this slowing down was essential for her survival. Now, like a stunned bird coming back to life, there is a frenzy of movement, a tremendous flurry of activity, a frenetic shaking of feathers. Sumi cannot be still.
On the day they are to move, she is impatient to be gone, to set to work. She frets while Kalyani delays them for breakfast, she paces up and down waiting for Seema to make up her mind about accompanying them, so restless that Kalyani says, ‘you go on, if Seema wants to go, I’ll ask Hrishi or Devi to take her.’
The house, even in this short time of being unoccupied, smells musty. There is a thick film of dust on the floor, on which their footprints show clear and distinct at first. For a moment, as they stand and take it in, what they have to do seems impossible, their silence becomes a cry of despair: we can’t do it. But Sumi allows them no time for melancholy or nostalgia, she sets to work almost immediately and the girls follow. With remarkable swiftness they begin to sort out things, so that when Devaki and Hrishi come to offer their help, old newspapers, bottles and tins have already been set out in the yard.
Watching Sumi and her daughters united in the camaraderie of wordless, rhythmic work, they realize their help is not needed. Hrishi, after some mumbled words to his mother goes away, but Devaki stands about like a visitor in a hospital, watching the doctors and nurses working with both skill and efficiency, knowing she can do nothing, yet unable to go away. She finds the silence in which they work, chilling. No questions are asked, nor is there any sharing of memories; baby clothes and old nursery books are disposed of in the same way as an old wick stove or a pan with its base worn out. Only once there is a slight hiatus when Charu, looking at their old chess-board, hesitantly asks, ‘Shall we take this with us?’
Sumi has been ruthless; anything that is of no possible use is discarded. But now, seeing her daughter’s face, she says, ‘Why not?’ And Charu smiles, as if Sumi’s response, as well as retaining the chess-board, has lifted some of the oppression off her.
Devaki gets them lunch a little later, from the restaurant round the corner.
‘Why are you eating this, Devi?’ Sumi asks, as if noticing her for the first time. ‘Cold idlis and watery chutney—this isn’t for you. And what about your work? You go on, we’ll manage.’
By evening, most of it is done. It has been a swift dismemberment. The furniture stands, stark and skeletal in the empty rooms, while bundles, trunks and cartons have been stacked in the front hall, ready to be carried out in the morning. When the door of the steel almirah is banged shut, the clang resounds with a hollow boom through the house and Aru’s heart throbs in a panic-filled response, as if she has received an ominous message: it’s over, it’s over.
The girls fall asleep on the bare mattresses on the floor, exhausted, but Sumi has reached the stage of extreme fatigue in which it seems impossible that she can ever sleep. She feels charged with a kind of energy that makes her think she could go on working all night; her hands itch to pull the mattresses from under the girls, to roll them up and pile them on the stuff in the hall. If the truck was here, she thinks, I would have carried out everything and loaded it myself. But there is nothing left for her to do, and lying down on the sagging sofa, eyes closed, she tries to sleep.
For the first time, the thought comes to her: this is my last night in our house, Gopal’s and mine. Sumi has never had the passionate attachment to her home that she has seen in other women, in Devaki and Premi. But now, in the silence of the night, listening to the infinitely pathetic crying of the new-born next door, the house rushes forward to claim her with memories. She has a strange sense of seeing all of them, even her own self, moving about the house, as if they have come together for one last time, reenacting scenes from the past for her benefit.
Gopal, coming out of the bathroom, vigorously towelling his head, shaking the water out of his hair, singing ‘Do naina’ ....
Aru, pinning down a cockroach with a piece of paper, and then, with an agonised face, stamping wildly on it. And Charu, looking on, screaming with laughter.
Gopal saying ‘Shaabash’ to Seema and Seema’s pleased smile ... Aru and Charu playing chess, and Charu’s comically astonished look as Aru triumphantly knocks Charu’s King off the board.
Though it is nearly dawn before she falls asleep, she is up before the girls. Seeing her mother’s face, hollow-eyed, hair dishevelled, Aru feels a pang; this is how she will look when she is old. But when Sumi comes out of the bathroom after her bath, smoothing down the pleats of her sari, she looks so reassuringly normal that Aru has a sudden lift of spirits. Perhaps things will work out, maybe we will be able to go on, even if we can’t go back.
When Shripati comes with Seema, Aru’s light-heartedness reaches out to her sisters and the three of them flit about the house calling out to one another, to their mother, exclaiming over things, laughing. The brief flare of gaiety evaporates with the arrival of the truck and in a moment the house is full of the loaders’ footsteps and their voices. A few neighbours come out to watch the operation. The grandmother next door balances the child she is carrying on the wall and stares at the proceedings with unblinking interest. Her curiosity finally makes her get hold of Sumi, and Aru, seeing them together, wonders what Sumi is telling her. The truth, she thinks, knowing Sumi as she does.
As for Aru herself, she avoids people’s eyes. To see their belongings in the open hurts her, they look so pathetic and
vulnerable; the stares of the neighbours seem like a violation. Aru’s uneasiness extends to the landlord who joins them now. Surely there’s an air of familiarity about him that wasn’t there before? And why does he look at Sumi that way? Her hackles rise and she doggedly follows them while Sumi, cool and matter-of-fact, takes him round the house on an inventory.
‘Oh good,’ Sumi says when Devaki and Chitra join them. ‘That’s two cars, which means we can take everything away at once. And is Hrishi coming?’
‘Not much for a family of five, is it?’ she asks no one in particular when the truck is finally loaded. ‘It’s a good thing neither Gopal nor I were acquirers.’
Finally, the house is empty and everyone stands about awkwardly, unable to break away, as if waiting for something. And again it is Sumi who, businesslike, says, ‘Let’s go. What are we waiting for?’
It is like a caravan when they set off, Hrishi leading the truck on his motorbike, the two cars following and Aru on her moped trailing behind them. When she gets home, Aru does something that astonishes all of them, something that Charu is never to forget. One moment she is stepping over the threshold, parcels in hand, and the next moment she keels over. For an instant no one realizes what has happened, they imagine she has stumbled and fallen. When she continues to lie there in a heap, they rush to her.
‘Aru, what’s happened?’
‘Get some water.’
‘Aru, Aru ....’
‘I think she’s coming out of it.’
Aru sits up, water streaming down her face, her dazed look turning to shame as she realizes what has happened.
‘She hasn’t had any breakfast, I’m sure that’s it.’
‘And nothing last night, either.’
‘Sumi, how could you?’
‘Oh, God, don’t fuss, everyone. I’m all right, I’m perfectly all right.’
‘Kalyani-mavshi, get her some coffee—with lots of sugar.’
But Kalyani, standing in the doorway, looks petrified, she doesn’t move, she scarcely hears Devaki. It is Charu who gets the coffee, Devaki who sets out the breakfast for everyone, while Kalyani, silent and still, watches them eat.
A Matter of Time Page 3