A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

  ‘You don’t know what you’re doing to your children, Gopal. I know how it can be, believe me, it’s terrible. Once Sumi said to someone, “My father is a lawyer” and I was surprised. Do we have different fathers then, I had wondered? I knew nothing at all about him, see? Except that I was scared of him and that our family life was—it was different, not like other people’s. I never brought any of my friends home. What if they asked me about my father? What if they asked me—why does he ring a bell? Why doesn’t he talk to you and your mother? And when the girls spoke of their parents, even of their quarrels, I felt like a leper. Don’t do this to your girls, Gopal. And Sumi’s just forty, she has a long way to go.’

  ‘She says she’s getting a job.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Premi flashes at him. ‘It’s not money that she needs, it’s a normal family life.’

  ‘A normal family life?’

  Premi responds to the questioning tone with acerbity. ‘You know what I mean. She needs you, she needs a husband.’

  ‘And for a long time I haven’t been that to her.’

  Premi looks at him open-mouthed and then understanding, flushes, the colour flaming in her cheeks, her ears.

  ‘For quite some time I had a strange feeling about Sumi. It’s like when you think you recognize someone, you tap them on the shoulder and when they turn around you see it’s no one you know.’

  ‘But you loved her—you did, didn’t you?’ She is pleading with him.

  ‘That seems irrelevant now, it’s not the point at all.’

  ‘Irrelevant? My God, irrelevant!’

  ‘Why are you so angry, Premi?’

  Perspicacious as usual, Gopal has divined the anger behind her grief. It’s true that she’s angry—and not only with Gopal, but with Sumi as well. At their carelessness in throwing away what they had, uncaring, it seems to her, of the value of what they have discarded.

  ‘Don’t take this so hard, Premi. Things will work out somehow. I said it to Amma, too. I mean it.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. I go to bed with this burden of Sumi’s life, I wake up with it. You can’t do this, Gopal. And why? For no reason, for nothing at all. Why, Gopal? Why?’

  ‘Premi, don’t. I don’t like to see you crying. And you have your own life.’

  ‘But you’re part of it, Sumi, you and the girls—oh God, how can I not think of them, of you?’

  ‘Please, Premi.’

  She tries to control herself and in a while does. They sit in silence for a few moments. When she speaks again, she is calmer, her tone more businesslike.

  ‘Do you know Aru wrote to Anil asking him for legal advice?’

  Gopal sits staring into his palm as if he hadn’t heard her.

  ‘Aru has to go her own way,’ he says at last. ‘I can’t do anything about it.’

  When they get up to go, she seems drained of all energy. Her body droops as if she can’t bear the weight of it. He puts an arm around her, holding her close, giving her support until she straightens herself. It is, she remembers later, an almost wholly impersonal clasp.

  ‘We’re a cursed family, Gopal. I’m frightened for our children.’

  ‘They’ll be all right, you’ve got to believe that.’

  The irony of this advice, coming so soon after what he has told her about himself, escapes her. But Gopal smiles at himself.

  The conspiracy of silence that has been spun about Gopal’s name is now, to Premi’s relief, pierced by Aru who says, ‘Let’s go for a loaf, Premi-mavshi.’

  It’s obvious she wants to talk to Premi by herself—Nikhil has gone to spend the day with Jai and Deep—and that she has planned it. She leads the way to a restaurant, but once inside, she suddenly hesitates and asks, ‘Is this okay?’ With a touch of endearing naiveté she adds, ‘I always wanted to come here. You don’t mind? It’s a bit expensive ....’

  Premi smiles at Aru’s anxious face. ‘It’s fine. It won’t make me bankrupt.’

  ‘The rich aunt—sorry, Premi-mavshi, you hate us saying that, don’t you? But I don’t like anyone spending too much money. We don’t have to eat much.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Aru. Have what you want.’

  But neither of them wants to eat and they settle for a coffee for Premi and an ice-cream for Aru.

  ‘You met Papa, didn’t you? What did he say?’

  ‘The same things he said to all of you, I guess. Some things that make sense, a lot that don’t. I’m wondering whether I asked him the right questions. Maybe, if I had, I’d have got the right answers.’

  ‘Now you’re talking like Papa, Premi-mavshi,’ Aru retorts crossly. ‘That’s absolute rubbish. What right questions? There’s only one—why has he done this? Actually, to tell you the truth, I’m no longer interested in his answer. What difference does it make to us, anyway? I only want him to realize he can’t get away scot-free. He shouldn’t be able to do this and just walk away. Did Anilkaka show you my letter?’ she asks abruptly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he says it’s no use going to the law?’

  ‘No, he says it’s more sensible not to. It won’t help.’

  ‘But, Premi-mavshi, I want to make a point. I don’t understand Sumi, I truly don’t.’ She looks directly at Premi and Premi realizes she is in dead earnest. ‘I’ve been thinking about marriage a great deal, Premi-mavshi. What’s there in it? I mean, look at Amma and now Sumi ... What do you get out of it?’

  ‘There’s Nikhil.’

  The reply is spontaneous, Premi has spoken without thinking. The next moment she flushes like a girl caught out in an admission she hadn’t intended to make. But Aru, intent on some thought of her own, scarcely notices her aunt’s confusion.

  ‘And look at Goda-ajji and Bhauji-kaka—they’re always scrapping. At their age and after so many years of marriage! And she’s constantly complaining about him to Amma.’

  In this, Aru is less than fair to Goda’s marriage. She has missed out—how can she not, at her age?—the interplay of feelings that spell out that marriage.

  ‘But tell me, Premi-mavshi, I never thought about this until we came to live with them—what really happened between Baba and Amma? Do you know?’

  ‘Hasn’t Sumi told you?’

  ‘She said something vague about their having lost a child. It made no sense to me. Why should losing a child make them this way? Do you know what happened?’ she asks again.

  Premi does. So does Sumi, though her knowledge is less complete than Premi’s. Strangely, they have never spoken of it between themselves. It was part of their lives, as was the situation between their parents, the oddity of which they began to realize as they grew up. As children, they accepted it; children accept everything as long as it can be absorbed into a routine. Even the small neglects and cruelties, once familiar, become less painful.

  And so their ideas, as vague as Aru’s are now, were never spoken of, never discussed, never questioned. Where was the need? To Premi, the shame of it had mattered more than the knowing of what really happened. She could not, she could never speak of it to anyone.

  But Sumi had mentioned it to Gopal. Once. By this she had committed herself to him, to an intimacy that neither of them could ignore. (Gopal can still remember the day, the moment: Sumi flitting about his room, restless, touching things, finally sitting on the windowsill, gathering herself into an absolute stillness, saying, ‘we had a brother’.)

  And then, after her marriage, Sumi turned her back on the shadow in the family; but Premi, who had so much more desperately wanted to escape, walked right back into the family secret, the family history, with her marriage. For it was Anil’s grandfather with whom Shripati had been working, it was Anil’s family that had sheltered Kalyani until her father came and took her away. And it was Anil’s mother who told Premi the whole story.

  Premi had never revealed it to anyone until now, but the hunger for information she sees in Aru’s eyes, the feeling that it is necessary for Aru to know what
happened between Kalyani and Shripati to make sense of their situation, loosens Premi’s tongue. Her coffee gets cold as she talks, Aru’s ice-cream congeals into a mud-coloured mess. Premi has an odd feeling of reliving the day, of bringing something out of the recesses of her memory, so clearly can she visualize the scene: Kalyani, the baby on her lap, luggage piled about her, a little girl playing about and a boy ... the boy ....

  No, it can’t be a memory, how can it be? She was only a baby then, she was the baby on Kalyani’s lap. It’s a picture she has created for herself through the years since she heard the story, a picture so vivid that each time she goes to the railway station she thinks she can point out the exact spot where it happened.

  ‘Amma was coming home to Bangalore for the holidays when it happened. It happened at V.T. station—she lost him there.’

  ‘Lost?’ Aru repeats the word. ‘Lost? You mean, really lost? Not dead?’

  ‘No, not dead, not then at least.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Baba had gone to check the reservations, leaving Amma with—with the children. When he returned, the boy wasn’t there.’ Aru waits for more. It comes grudgingly. ‘He was never found.’

  ‘And then?’

  Premi is silent, she shrugs as if to say, ‘what more can there be?’ But Aru, her body leaning forward, her face tense, insists on a reply. Premi forces herself to go on.

  ‘This happened in the afternoon. At night someone came to Anil’s house—you know Baba worked with his grandfather—asking them to go to the station. Amma must have given them the address. She was still there, sitting on the platform, her luggage and children about her, waiting for Baba.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘They didn’t see him for nearly two months. He was searching, he went about the city like a madman, they found this out later, searching the streets, railway platforms, beaches, even hospitals and mortuaries. He never found him.’

  Again she stops. This time Aru has nothing to say. Premi goes on. ‘They—Anil’s grandfather—sent word to Amma’s father. He went to Bombay and brought her back here. Baba has not spoken to her since the day it happened.’

  ‘He ...’ Aru hesitates, ‘was he older than Sumi?’

  ‘The boy? He was a year younger than Sumi. I believe he was the same age as Goda-mavshi’s Satish, they were born within a week of each other.’

  ‘So how old was he when it happened?’

  ‘Four. Sumi was five and I ....’

  ‘Four? But surely—I mean, he could have spoken ....’

  ‘No, he couldn’t have done anything. He was mentally retarded. I believe he was—he used to be quite violent. He was very well grown physically, Amma found it hard to manage him.’ And now Premi seems to be speaking to herself. ‘He will be nearly forty now—if he’s alive. Each time I see a beggar, I think—maybe that’s my brother. There’s an idiot near the Siddhi Vinayak temple. I’ve stopped going there now, because whenever I see him, I think—that’s him ....’

  ‘Don’t, Premi-mavshi, don’t!’

  Aru pushes her plate violently away and leaning her elbows on the table, covers her face with both her hands. The melodramatic gesture, so uncharacteristic of Aru, disturbs Premi. She puts her hand on Aru’s arm and gently asks, ‘Aru?’

  Premi can see the effort with which Aru recovers. ‘I’m all right.’

  They hold hands for a moment. Aru lets go and returns to her questions.

  ‘Didn’t Amma explain what happened? What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘The baby was crying—that was the only thing she said.’ Premi can remember her mother-in-law telling her that. The baby was crying. Was that her explanation? Her justification? Did she blame me for what happened? And was that the reason for the hand pressed painfully on my mouth, for all those painful nudges, the sharp nips and hard slaps that were so much a part of my childhood, so that even now my body seems fearful, shrinking from imaginary acts of violence?

  ‘No, Amma said nothing at all.’

  ‘Premi-mavshi, do you think she did it deliberately? I mean, he was hard to manage—you said that, didn’t you? Do you think she let him wander away and said nothing?’

  Premi’s reply is so prompt it is obvious she has often asked herself the same question.

  ‘I don’t think so, Aru. How could she? No mother could possibly do such a thing. It was an accident.’

  ‘But he was retarded ....’

  ‘Specially because he was retarded. You don’t understand. I know, I’ve seen mothers with retarded children—they’re so vulnerable, the mothers are so protective ... No, it’s impossible. And Aru, don’t think too much about this. It’s the past, it’s over now.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Late that night, Charu, on her way to the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee, finds the light on in the hall. She goes in to switch it off and sees Aru on the sofa, apparently sleeping. Yet the moment Charu gets near her, she opens her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter? Can’t sleep?’

  Aru sits up then and tells Charu the story. And ends with the same question she had asked Premi. ‘Do you think she did it deliberately?’

  Charu is shocked into an instant ‘No! How can you even think of such a thing?’

  ‘Baba obviously thought she did. If not, why did he ...’ she searches for the exact word, ‘cut himself so completely away from her? Thirty years? No, more than that. Imagine not speaking to your own wife for over thirty years.’

  ‘But Aru, he was her son.’

  ‘A retarded child she couldn’t cope with. Think of all the things she could have done, but didn’t: she could have yelled out, she could have asked someone for help, she could have sent Sumi after him ....’

  ‘But Aru,’ Charu repeats lamely, ‘he was her son.’ And more confidently, You know how she loves children, babies specially.’ Yes, they’ve seen her with babies, with Ratna’s sister’s baby, chirruping to it, lifting it high, bringing it down and putting her face gently against the baby’s delighted one.

  ‘Yes, she loves babies. But you know babies are different.’

  Aru is unable to explain more clearly what she means: that babies are Nature’s trap, the fly-paper to catch women and pin them down to the nurturing role Nature needs them to take on for her purposes.

  ‘And if she didn’t do it, why didn’t she explain, why didn’t she defend herself?’

  It’s the injustice of it that Aru minds, Kalyani’s silence that she finds inexplicable.

  ‘She must have been scared. You know how Baba is, even I find myself tongue-tied sometimes.’

  To Aru that is no excuse. It’s important to her that you speak out, state the truth, that you stand up and defend yourself, that you refuse to be misjudged. Aru is at the moment reading Erica Jong and the words ‘to name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary’ have filled her mind, keep resounding in it.

  The sisters argue about it. They do not know it is a futile exercise, that they are trying to reach a conclusion, some conclusion, without knowing the history of the relationship between Shripati and Kalyani. They know nothing of the reason for the marriage, of Shripati’s reluctance, of Manorama’s appeal to Shripati’s sense of gratitude, of the cruelty that made Kalyani accept a feared uncle as a husband. They have no idea of the hopelessness that lay within the relationship, that doomed it from the start.

  ‘She should have stood up for herself.’

  ‘How?’ Charu asks matter-of-factly.

  Aru is unable to elaborate, but she is sure that the strategies can be found, they should be found. And then suddenly her belligerence gives way to despair.

  ‘When I was a child, I used to think that as you grow older, you become wiser, more sensible, that you can cope with things better because you know so much more. But look at all of them ...’ her voices rises, ‘what a muddle, God in Heaven, what a muddle! What’s the point going on if that’s all we can do, go on muddling forever? It se
ems pointless. I’m not sure I want to go on.’

  ‘Hey, you can’t give up. What will I do then?’

  Charu’s tone is light, but Aru can see fear in her eyes. She smiles at her.

  ‘You? You’ll go on and do all the things you want to do—become a doctor, boss your patients and staff, make money, get married—to Hrishi?’

  ‘Help! That silly kid.’

  ‘Well, whoever. And you’ll have two kids, boss them about, put the fear of God into them—and into your husband, of course ....’

  Aru goes to bed smiling, but in a while she begins to think about Kalyani again, about her silence and will she ever break it? (She will, later, much later, and it is to Aru that she will speak. But even then she will not be able to bring herself to speak of that act of public desertion, of those long hours on the station platform with her children, surrounded by curious strangers, as if that is a memory so painfully blotted out that to bring it back to life would be as painful as the process of childbirth.)

  And then Aru’s thoughts go on to her grandfather, of what he did to Kalyani, what he is still doing to her. She tries to stoke her anger against him, but it is impossible. She can’t think of the cruel husband Shripati, only of her grandfather alone in his room, of the way he looks up when she enters, of his pleasure in her company. She thinks of all his little arrangements in his room, which seem so pathetic to her, of how his fingers tremble when he folds his clothes and smooths them down. And anger ebbs away, leaving her flooded by pity instead. She turns to her father then and this is much easier; the flame of anger burns bright and steady in her.

  This ambivalence in Aru soon becomes apparent to Sumi; the signals she sends out now are totally confused. Aru seems to have lost her earlier single-mindedness and in a way, Sumi is relieved by this. She has been disturbed by the thought that Aru has begun to see her mother as a victim, that, in fact, she has begun to see a victim in every woman, a betrayer in every man. I don’t want her to live, to start her life, with that kind of a generalization. It’s unwholesome, Sumi thinks.

  Sumi is an uneasy witness to Aru’s intense reaction to Premi’s story about one of her patients, the pregnant wife of an AIDS patient, who, aware of his condition, married the girl so that he would have someone to look after him later. Aru’s horror and pity find an echo in Sumi, who also sees in the story something else—new dimensions of betrayal and cruelty in the woman-man relationship. She does not speak of this aloud though, and she wishes Premi hadn’t related the story in Aru’s presence, not at this time anyway.