A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

  Emptiness, I realized then, is always waiting for us. The nightmare we most dread, of waking up among total strangers, is one we can never escape. And so it’s a lie, it means nothing, it’s just deceiving ourselves when we say we are not alone. It is the desperation of a drowning person that makes us cling to other humans. All human ties are only a masquerade. Some day, some time, the pretence fails us and we have to face the truth. Like Sudha did. And I.

  I had a glimpse of it, not when my parents died, for Sudha was there then, she was the link that ensured the continuity of my life, and soon after, there was P.K. as well. It happened to me when I saw Sudha’s school certificate and knew that we did not share a father. That was a betrayal that cut away at the foundations of my life. Sudha never realized what this did to me. She had always known it, she said, she had not told me because—well, because my parents never had. And, she said, the truth was that she had almost forgotten that my father was not hers. He was our father, she never felt any other way.

  She could not understand my reaction, she refused to accept my decision to go away, she refused to believe I meant what I was saying. When I told her I was going, she had the same stricken look on her face I had seen on her wedding day, when, bored, tired of sitting on the uncomfortable wooden folding chairs, I had walked out of the hall. She had come running out, frantic, looking garish and unlike her usual self in her wedding finery. And then she saw me, standing against a car, doodling in the dust on its surface and her face changed. But this time I was no longer a bored, confused child of eight, there was nothing I could do to wipe that look off her face.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she wanted to know, she had to know, and because I had to tell her something I told her I wanted to go back to Shivpur, the place my parents had come away from to escape the scandal that followed their marriage.

  I had to go there after that, trapped into it by my own words, by Sudha’s insistence on accompanying me. It was she who made a crusade of finding the house our parents had lived in. It was not easy, she had forgotten everything—she was only six when they left—and the few landmarks she remembered had disappeared. But she would not give up. In the evening when we came back to the seedy hotel we were staying in, she was irritable, exhausted, but the next morning she was ready to start the search all over again.

  It was on the third day—I think—that she said, ‘There it is.’ Doubtfully. Then more confidently, Yes, that’s it.’ We stared at the house. I was disinterested and Sudha listless; it meant nothing to either of us. We went back to the hotel, flat and dull and sat in silence. And then I said it, what I should have told her much earlier if I had not been too much of a coward: ‘I’m not going back to Bombay with you, I’m staying on here, I’m joining college here.’

  She came out of her apathy in an instant and began questioning me: What was it? Was it something she had said? It couldn’t be P.K., he was so good he would never hurt me, no, not even unknowingly. It had to be her. But I knew her, didn’t I, she was quick-tempered, she admitted it, but surely I knew how little it meant?

  From guilt I went on to annoyance and we began to quarrel, quarrels that went on and invariably ended in her desperate sobbing. I was frightened by her state, I had never seen my sister this way, not even after our parents died. I sent P.K. a telegram. He came at once with Ramesh and took charge of things immediately.

  He persuaded Sudha, who had eaten almost nothing for two days, to eat and as a preliminary went to the market and got some lemons. A practical man, he bought a squeezer too, and I can remember him squeezing the juice, as earnest as any Gandhian disciple preparing for the end of Bapu’s fast, while Sudha sat on the bed, legs folded under her, indifferent to everything, even the mess P.K. was making. But she drank the juice, I was astonished to see how greedily she drank it. (Later, when Viju was born, I realized she was pregnant then, which explained some of her behaviour, though not all of it.) By evening he had persuaded Sudha to let me have my way, made her agree to go back without me.

  I was frantic for them to go and leave me alone, I saw them off with joy. I can still remember the crowds and noise on the station, the sound of running feet on the platform, the last-minute desperate cries of passengers, the raucous call of the vendors—chai garam, chai chai. Then the train left and I was alone. There was nothing left but the smooth gleaming rails. And a sudden hush, as if the train had taken away all the people, all the noise with itself.

  I did not go back to the hotel that night, I did not want to be there, not even for a night, in the room that seemed to be redolent with Sudha’s distress and grief. I spent the night there, on the station, on a stone platform built around a tree, watching in a dreamlike state the sleeping bundles on the floor and benches, hearing, once or twice, a child wake up and cry. Once, waking out of a doze I saw a train move out of the station in total silence, as if it was a ghost train. I got up and walked about until the first light brightened the sky, making the station lights look sickly and dim. I went then to the room P.K. had arranged for me to live in until the hostels opened. Unwashed, sleepless, I must have looked a sight, for I can remember even now my landlady’s suspicious stare. But she let me in and I went to a tap in the backyard, filled a bucket with water and poured it over myself. And I felt released. Free.

  Years later, I saw a Dutch painting. I knew nothing about paintings then; that it was a Dutch painting, that it was by Vermeer—I learnt these things later. But I was fascinated, I can remember that, by the way the painter had captured a slice of time so that I was witnessing what he had seen, a bit of life in that narrow lane in a foreign land.

  So I thought then. Now I know it was not just Time that the painter had captured; I was his captive too, caught inside that picture, seeing what the painter wanted me to see.

  Only the creator is free, only the creator can be free because he is out of it all. I did not know this then. I know it now.

  ARU GOES HOME encompassed by a sense of humiliation. It is not merely the fact that she broke down before Gopal when she had determined to be in full control of herself; it is the recalling of how she had imagined it would be that mortifies her. She had been almost certain that Gopal would take her into his confidence, that the special relationship there had been between them still existed and he would reveal his feelings to her as he had not done to anyone else. She had seen herself reasoning with him, persuading him to change his mind, and then, coming back to announce that they could all go back home.

  Home? What home?

  She puts her scooter away, has a wash and changes without anyone noticing her, for which she is grateful. She does not want to talk to anyone about what has happened. She is glad she has not spoken to any of them about her visit, not even to Charu.

  Charu senses something, nevertheless. Covertly she watches her sister getting ready for bed, the pillow set straight, the blanket unfolded, spread carefully in a wrinkle-free smoothness with a fold at the top, her slippers placed on the floor, side by side ....

  ‘What are you staring at me for?’

  Charu flushes guiltily, begins to say something, changes her mind and asks, ‘Going to bed so early?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Charu does not react to the challenge in that single-word reply.

  As Aru lies down, settling her head on the pillow, and pulls her blanket over herself, they hear Sumi call out, ‘Aru.’

  Aru closes her eyes as if shutting out the sound.

  ‘A R U?’

  ‘Damn!’ She sits up with an angry jerk.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Charu offers.

  She returns to find her sister in the same position, the ‘damn’ expression intact on her face.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Nothing, really. Just some vague thing—you know how she is.’ Charu yawns loudly, showing her tongue quivering in the cavern of her open mouth. ‘God, I wish I could go to sleep and wake up late tomorrow morning. Oh well ....’

  She has picked up her book and, with a weary sigh, is goi
ng back to her page when she is startled by Aru’s voice.

  ‘Why do you call her “she”?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you call Sumi “she”?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Can’t you say Sumi, or Ma, or anything else ... why do you say “she”?’

  ‘Hey, cool it, Aru, what’s with you?’

  ‘Just because Papa has left her, it doesn’t give you the right to be rude to her, it doesn’t mean she’s worthless ....’

  ‘Have you gone crazy?’

  ‘You ... think you can insult her ....’

  ‘Shut up, Aru, just shut up, will you!’

  Charu, too astonished even to be angry, sees that her sister is in a cold fury, she doesn’t seem to be able to stop.

  ‘You’re showing your contempt for her when you say “she”. Why,’ and the question is propelled out of her with the force of a bullet, ‘why do you call her “she”, tell me that.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, I don’t want to talk to you when you’re in this—this—this state.’

  There is silence after that. Charu, tapping her teeth with her pencil, picks up her book and turns her back resolutely on her sister. But the page is a blur, she can’t read a word. It is a relief when Aru speaks in a more normal tone.

  ‘Well, say it, go on, say it.’

  Charu looks at her. Aru’s body no longer has the tense look of a tightly wound spring.

  ‘You saw Papa today, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s no use, it’s no use talking to him, I could have told you that. Listen to me, Aru, let’s not get involved in their hassles, let’s get on with our lives. All these things are not important.’

  ‘Not important? Charu, you—you frighten me. They are our parents, it’s our home and you say these things are not important!’

  ‘They’re important if you let them be. I won’t. They can’t mess up my life. I’m going on with what I want to do.’

  ‘Five and a half years of medical college before you can start earning—where’s the money to come from?’

  ‘I’ve asked Premi-mavshi. Or rather, she asked me if she could help and of course I said yes. I’m not proud. As long as I can complete my studies, I don’t care where the money comes from. I’m not like you and Ma. Make a note of that, I said Ma—not “she”.’

  Charu is grinning, her usual impish grin, but Aru does not respond. She is silent.

  ‘You all right, Aru?’ Charu asks hesitantly when the silence stretches between them.

  ‘Fine. You go back to work. You’re right, you just go on with your life, don’t bother with all these things.’

  Charu does not notice the emphasis on the ‘you’. She is too relieved to have her sister back to her usual self. It seems as if they have returned to the normal level of their intimacy, but the sisters are conscious nevertheless, of a wedge-shaped shadow that has come between them.

  Sumi has become aware of this, too. She sees that despite the girls having resumed, on the surface at least, the normal course of their lives, something has changed. They have withdrawn into themselves, each pursuing her own activity, interacting minimally with each other. Even the occasional bickering—over Charu’s untidiness, Aru’s obsessive orderliness, Seema’s dependence—has ceased.

  The three girls have changed in themselves, too. Aru’s reserve has turned into a secretiveness. She goes out a great deal, more than she did before, and it is obvious that this has nothing to do with college or her studies. In fact, she has resigned from the Student’s Council, something she had taken very seriously until now. Charu has become wholly single-minded and dogged, the intensity of her pursuit of a seat in a medical college frightening. Nothing else seems to exist for her, apart from her college, her evening classes and her books when she is at home. And though Seema, belying Sumi’s fears, looks the most untouched, she keeps aloof from her mother and sisters, following Kalyani about, even holding her sari-end, as if she is reverting to that early infancy she can’t possibly remember. It makes Sumi uneasy.

  There’s something else, too. Sumi has an odd feeling that the house is accepting them, like it did Kalyani and her daughters all those years back, making them part of itself. Sumi sees her daughters unconsciously, unknowingly, lowering their voices to the exact decibel required to keep them from being heard by their grandfather upstairs. And she thinks: I don’t want my daughters to live with a hand clasped over their mouths, like Premi and I had to. And I don’t want my daughters to live in a house where—where—but she can’t pinpoint this until Hrishi spells it out for her.

  Hrishi, who is in the same class as Charu, is now a daily visitor, picking her up for their special evening class and dropping her home after it. It is when Charu makes one of her usual jokes against him that Hrishi retorts, ‘You know what you are? You’re a clown. A female clown,’ he adds.

  ‘Why female clown?’

  ‘Clowns are always males, silly.’

  The girls begin to laugh at that, laughter that becomes uncontrollable at the dawning look of realization on Hrishi’s face. Unnerved finally by their laughter—even Seema has joined in—he says, ‘Tchah!’ flapping his hands as if driving away a smell. ‘Too many females here. It’s like a zenana.’

  And to Sumi, Hrishi’s words echo something Gopal had said once—reluctantly, and only in response to her urging, her goading, rather—in explanation of his increasing silences, his withdrawal from them.

  ‘It’s not easy to be the only male in a family of females. You feel so—so—’ he had hesitated and then in a rare, uncharacteristic gesture, propelled his fist into his other palm, as if breaking through something, ‘you feel so shut out.’

  They’re right, Sumi thinks now, both Gopal and Hrishi, there’s something wrong about a house with only females—or males. It’s too lopsided, not balanced enough. There’s already a change in our behaviour; there’s a carelessness that lies, like a thin overlay of dust, over our lives. And ease, too, there’s too much of it. There’s none of the tension that’s necessary to make us feel alive, to give us the excitement of living.

  What Sumi likes even less is that Aru is becoming conscious of the situation in the house, of the queer relationship between her grandparents. Sumi has never spoken to her daughters about this, but now, living in the house, in the midst of it, there is no getting away from it. Things have changed since Sumi’s childhood, Shripati is not the same to his granddaughters as he was to his own daughters, yet the oppression of his unseen self cannot but make itself felt. In this atmosphere, how can any of them, Aru especially, forget what Gopal has done, Sumi thinks.

  But Aru has no intention of forgetting, no intention of letting Sumi forget, either.

  ‘I think you should see a lawyer,’ she says to her mother.

  ‘You mean because of Gopal? Devi’s been saying that to me, too, she wants me to meet Murthy’s cousin who’s a lawyer. But I don’t see the point of it.’

  ‘The point? The point is you’ve got to do something.’

  ‘What? Get a divorce? I’m not interested.’

  ‘But he owes you, he owes all of us, yes, you especially, he owes you—’ lamely, ‘something. He can’t get away like this! He has to give us maintenance.’

  Sumi laughs, she seems genuinely amused. ‘Gopal has outsmarted the law. He’s given us all that he had. And he has nothing now, not even a proper job. I don’t think he’s getting more than a bare subsistence from Shankar’s press—so Ramesh tells me. So what can the law make him do?’

  ‘Sumi, you’re making it too easy for him, you’re letting him get away with it. He’s getting off scot-free. It’s not right, he must be made to realize what he’s done ....’

  ‘How? By punishing him? Do you want to punish him, Aru? I don’t. I’m not interested. I just want to get on with my life.’ She puts an arm around Aru’s shoulder. ‘Let him go, Aru, just let him go. This is not good for you.’

  But the feel of Aru’s body, rigid
and unyielding, tells Sumi that Aru will not let go.

  ‘Let him go? As if he’s a—a mere acquaintance or somebody with whom we’ve had a small misunderstanding? He’s our father, Ma, he’s your husband. How can you dismiss it so lightly? I don’t understand you at all.’

  But Sumi understands what Aru is doing: she’s trying to reclaim, not her father, but a situation of which he was a part. I know she can never get it back, but she has to learn it herself. I can’t do anything more.

  Aru goes back to Gopal. He’s in the press this time, working, he seems unsurprised to see her.

  ‘This is a rush order, we’ve got to complete it today. It’ll take me some time to be free.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  When he comes to his room nearly an hour later, she is waiting for him. Shankar, following closely on his heels, is taken aback when he sees her. He looks awkwardly at the glass of coffee he is holding.

  ‘Please, sir, you take this, I’ll get another glass right away.’

  ‘No, Shankar, I don’t want any coffee. Aru, you ....?’

  Though she recognises his unspoken desire that she should refuse it, too, Aru takes the glass from Shankar. Gopal emphatically refuses one for himself and Shankar goes away leaving them alone.

  ‘Have some?’ Aru holds out her glass.

  Gopal smiles, shakes his head. Aru does not respond to the smile. She intends never to lose sight of the fact that he is an adversary. Accepting the coffee from Shankar was a blow struck at Gopal, and now, offering him some is also an act of hostility, not of friendship. Gopal recognises this.