A Matter of Time

by Shashi Deshpande

  ‘Tuberoses?’

  ‘No, Amma, they’re bigger, gladioli-size, but more delicate ....’

  ‘Saugandhika?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. One of the girls gave me the flowers—I liked them, so she got me these bulbs today. Let’s see what comes up.’

  ‘If it is Saugandhika, we’ll have to wait till Shravan.’

  ‘That’s eight months—well, that’s not very long to wait.’ Eight months—not very long to wait? Kalyani thinks of the twelve-year-old Sumi who had been so captivated by the Tillanna—its perfect heart-stopping rhythm, the exquisite, almost mathematical perfection of its poses—that she had joined a dance class right away. And left it within a week.

  ‘They say I have to wait years before I can dance the Tillanna,’ she had said.

  And now she says—‘eight months is not a very long time to wait.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s some other flower and we’ll see it earlier,’ Kalyani says with some vague idea of being comforting.

  Sumi, smoothing the earth, patting it flat, thinks, yes, who knows what will come up? And as she is washing her hands at the tap, the story of the Princess and the tree that grew in her backyard comes into her mind.

  Now, who was it who had told her the story? It couldn’t possibly have been Kalyani, she had never been a teller of stories—not then. But if Sumi can’t remember the storyteller, she can remember the story very distinctly. Suddenly the characters seem to come out of her childhood into the present, bringing their story with them.

  The king. His much-loved only daughter who ate rice and curds every day. And the tree that grew in the backyard where she washed her hands after each meal. The child growing up into a beautiful princess (naturally—could a princess be anything but beautiful?) And her declaration that she would marry the man who could identify the tree. All the suitors failing, except one. And that one the palace gardener’s son who had seen her washing her hands at the spot every day. It’s a ‘Rice and Curds’ tree, he said. And so won the princess’s hand.

  Goda—suddenly Sumi remembers it was Goda who had told them this story. Only Goda-mavshi could choose a story with such a prosaic undertone to a romance. Yes, she’d have no problems yoking the romantic to the mundane. (Sumi remembers protesting, ‘But, Goda-mavshi, there can’t be such a tree!’ And Goda’s stern rejoinder, ‘Why not? How do we know?’ Yes, she was right. How do we know, how can we ever know that a thing does not exist?)

  Perhaps, Goda-mavshi’s simple purpose had been to overcome Sumi’s dislike of rice and curds. But, and Sumi smiles to herself, there are so many more morals in it, some just right for today. There’s the importance given to a tree, to the identification of it, there’s the dismissal of the aristocracy, the triumph of the common working man ....

  And yes, it occurs to Sumi, there’s more to it then this. To think of it, why did the princess insist on such a queer condition? Had she fallen in love with the gardener’s son and—Sumi feels a quickening excitement at the thought—plotted the whole thing, knowing this was the only way she could get him? She knew her father, she must have been sure this was the only way to trick him into giving her what she wanted. Yes, she must have been a clever young woman, indeed. And, perhaps, a passionate one? Had she watched the gardener’s son at work, noticed his muscles gleaming in the sun and decided she would have him for her husband?

  A clever young woman, anyway, who used a man’s own weapons against him. The stratagem would never have worked with a woman; no woman would fall into the trap of honouring one’s word, of giving a blank post-dated cheque. Would Kausalya have sent her son Rama into exile because some time, long ago, she had promised a man she would give him any boon he asked for? What a dangerous weapon such a promise was! Things change with time, people change, circumstances change; nothing is constant. And therefore, you can never make a promise for the future. (And yet, if you cannot expect constancy, on what do you base human relationships?) No, Kausalya would never have made such a promise; and even if she had, she would have refused to honour it. Was honour worth all the tragedy that followed?

  These ideas and the story of the gardener’s son come together in Sumi’s mind when she hears one of the teachers in her school speak of wanting a play for the interschool play competition.

  And so ‘The Gardener’s Son’, which Sumi writes out in two nights. An ordinary fairy-tale with the Princess’s subversive tactics woven into it. The teacher in charge of dramatics, desperately looking for a play, grabs it and the very next day they choose a cast and start rehearsing the play.

  Working with the girls, rehearsing them, Sumi finds herself filled with exhilaration. It’s not just that she’s broken through the barriers the girls had put up against her, a new teacher: it’s the girls’ laughter as they read out the lines, the fact that they have caught on to what Sumi has made of the fairy-tale, the fact that she, yes, she has done this.

  ‘What do you think happens afterwards, Miss?’ one of the girls asks. And Sumi thinks of it on her way back home. Yes, what happens when the gardener’s son gets power and becomes the King? He shuts his wife out of that power, of course; that’s inevitable. But will she be able to find a weapon against him as she did against her father? A weapon that will not destroy herself as well?

  It’s a good thing fairy-tales end where they do. Wisdom lies in knowing where to stop. Sanskrit drama is right: there should be no tragedy. If we are to construct a world, why not shape one with the hopelessness left out, why not end with the hope of happiness, the promise of realization? Bhavabhuti reneged against the rules in his Uttararamacharita, he looked beyond the safe family portrait of Rama, Lakshmana and Sita, with Hanuman kneeling at their feet, and look what a tragedy he conjured up! And then, unable to bear the burden of it, he made a U-turn and came back to a commonplace, saccharine, utterly incredible happy ending. No, better to leave things alone, end with the word ‘Shubham’. ‘All’s well’. And so, I will leave the Princess and the gardener’s son to enjoy the fruits of their plot, I will not go beyond that.

  Reaching home, Sumi is putting her vehicle away when Aru comes out to her with a swiftness that reveals she has been waiting for the sound of her mother’s moped. Sumi feels a throb of anxiety at the sight of Aru’s face.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘We were rehearsing ... What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s Seema.’ Sumi’s heart skips a beat. ‘She’s not well. She’s just started her periods.’

  ‘Oh, is that all? For a moment, you scared me.’

  Yet when she sees Seema in bed, lying on her side, her skirt rucked up showing the back of her thighs, she looks so childish, so vulnerable, that for the first time Sumi feels the burden of mothering girls.

  ‘Seema?’ She opens her eyes and looks blankly at her mother. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No, I’m sick, I have a pain, I’m feeling dirty, I stink, I hate it.’

  ‘It happens to everyone.’

  ‘So?’ Sumi has nothing to say to that. ‘And it will go on and on until I’m old.’

  ‘Seema, it’s not so bad.’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  I can’t reach her. How did I cope with Aru and Charu? Was it easier because Gopal was with me? But Gopal was no use, he was just angry and embarrassed, he felt uneasy with the girls for a while ....

  ‘Seema, you’re not sick. This is growing up.’

  There’s a stubborn silence.

  ‘I don’t want to grow up,’ she says finally. ‘And they say I can have a baby.’

  ‘They? Who said that?’ No reply. ‘That’s not true. You’re just being—prepared. But you can’t have a baby unless you want it.’

  What am I saying? Seema herself was born when I didn’t want a baby. And it’s no use, anyway. Seema curls herself into a ball and goes into a fit of crying.

  ‘Seema, listen to me ....’

  ‘Go away, I want to sleep, I want to be alone.’

  The tone is not a child’s, it’s an ad
ult’s and Sumi goes away. Seema has a right to cope with things in her own way.

  A little later, however, Sumi sees Seema sitting up, drinking a cup of Bournvita Kalyani has got her, listening with childlike interest to Kalyani’s stories of how it was in their days.

  ‘We had to sit out three whole days, we couldn’t touch anything. My father didn’t believe in it, it’s nonsense, he used to say, it’s not dirty, it’s natural. But my mother wanted us to observe the staying-apart ritual. And so, on those three days we sat apart, Goda and I, all day, but the moment father came home, we behaved as if we’d done everything as usual. We couldn’t sit on the sofas, of course, and we didn’t eat with the others. Poor man, my father never guessed. Such a clever man, but ....’

  Surely, if he was such a clever man, he did guess, Sumi thinks sourly. And then she’s ashamed of herself. I shouldn’t mind that Amma could do what I couldn’t. Yet the soreness remains and later she says to Kalyani, ‘Now, don’t you encourage Seema to imagine herself ill and stay away from school.’

  But to everyone’s surprise Seema goes to school the next day and, except for a slight awkwardness in her movements, seems to have gone back to her usual self. Yet there is a change. In the evening she tells Sumi, ‘I want to see Papa.’ That she has some purpose in her mind is quite clear. She is also sure about what she wants: Sumi is to take her—she firmly rejects Aru’s offer to do so—and once there, she is to leave her alone with Gopal.

  Sumi is standing in the yard of Shankar’s house when Shankar drives in.

  ‘Madam!’ He’s astonished to see her. ‘Why are you here? Is Sir not in?’

  She explains about Seema.

  ‘Come in, then, Madam.’

  He is so distressed by her standing outside that she agrees.

  ‘Manju,’ he calls out to his wife. ‘Take Madam inside, will you?’

  It is obvious from the plates and glasses strewn all over the house that there has been a festive meal that morning. The house is still redolent with festive cooking smells.

  Manju leads her to a vigorous-looking woman. ‘This is my mother-in-law,’ she says. And to her, ‘Amma, this is Gopal sir’s wife.’

  Under the old woman’s directions, Manju gets Sumi a heaped plate. When Sumi demurs, the old woman argues, she insists Sumi eat everything, but Manju quietly takes the plate away and gets Sumi a glass of coffee. The coffee is good, hot, frothing and sweet and drinking it, Sumi feels her fatigue draining away from her. While the old woman talks to Sumi, probes, rather, she watches Manju moving about, takes in the grace of her movements, the sense of repression that she gives. She neither sits down, nor does she speak to Sumi, leaving the role of hostess entirely to her mother-in-law. Only when Sumi gets up to go does Manju come to her, with the ritual plate of kumkum, paan-supari and coconut in her hands.

  ‘When are you going back to your husband?’ the old woman asks abruptly. ‘You should be with him. Look at his state! It’s all right to stay with your parents for a while, but that’s not your home. When my daughters come home, I don’t let them stay long. Go back to your husband, he’s a good man. If you’ve done wrong, he’ll forgive you. And if he has—women shouldn’t have any pride.’

  ‘Please don’t mind my mother-in-law,’ Manju waits until they are out of the room before speaking. ‘Old people think they can say what they want, they can hurt your feelings, it doesn’t matter.’

  Manju’s tone is so bitter that Sumi comes out of her own thoughts, the insistent drumbeat of ‘how-dare-she, how-dare-she’ and sees the distress on Manju’s face, the misty sheen of incipient tears in her eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says.

  ‘And please don’t let my husband know what his mother said. He respects you and Gopal sir so much ....’

  ‘It’s all right, Manju.’

  Outside the house, in the open air, she feels a little better, released from the fearful anger and pain. On an impulse she puts her hand on the younger woman’s arm.

  ‘I won’t tell your husband, I promise. And don’t feel bad for me.’

  However, Shankar himself picks up the thread of his mother’s talk. ‘Madam, have you seen how Sir looks? He’s lost so much weight, I’m worried about him ....’

  ‘Shankar,’ and Sumi speaks in English, ‘I can’t do anything for Gopal. He’s going his way and I have to go mine.’

  The utter weariness of her tone silences Shankar and they stand without speaking until they see Gopal and Seema descending the stairs. Seema is ahead and Sumi notices that she’s given up wearing her little girl’s socks and shoes, that she’s wearing heeled sandals instead. Her legs look shapely and dainty, the legs of a young girl, not a child’s. Has she been crying? Sumi can’t see her face in the fading light, only the way they come down, Gopal and she, as if unaware of each other, giving the sense of a great distance between them.

  On the way home, in the rickshaw, only an arm’s length away from other vehicles, Sumi has a sense of the city converging on her. The noise and the tumult fill her ears and instinctively she moves closer to Seema to assuage her panic. But Seema, staring straight ahead, seems as much a stranger as the rickshaw driver, oblivious to everything but the moment when the lights will change and he can move on. And suddenly Sumi’s anger turns from the old woman to Gopal. He had no right to do this to me, to let the world into our relationship. And what did he say to Seema? What did she ask him? Why doesn’t she tell me anything, why doesn’t she talk to me? How do I reach her?

  ROHIT IS NOW a regular visitor. Unaware of the past, wholly disinterested in early animosities, confident of his future, Rohit is enchanted by this family he has stumbled upon, especially by the eldest girl, with a stately name that fits her like a glove. Rohit is no romantic, he is a practical young man with his feet firmly planted on the ground; but to see Aru in that house brings to his mind the magic of fairy-tales, of kings, queens, princesses and enchanted castles. He makes no attempt to conceal his interest in her; it’s there, right out in the open for all to see. Walking in now on the three sisters who are looking at some pictures, exclaiming and laughing over them, his eyes linger on Aru as she collects the pictures and puts them away. Aru is conscious of his look, as her heightened colour and the slight stiffness of self-consciousness reveal. She is mortified by her own reaction and when Rohit asks her, ‘Can you give me a lift?’ she is brusque and rude.

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Gone for servicing.’

  ‘I’m not going your way.’

  ‘Drop me at the Circle. I’ll get a rickshaw from there.’

  ‘All right, come on, then.’

  It’s a grudging concession but Rohit settles himself composedly on the pillion as if he hasn’t noticed it.

  ‘Did you say something?’ she suddenly turns around and asks him just as she gets ready to start the vehicle.

  ‘Me? No. You must have heard the beating of my heart.’

  He’s perfectly serious, there’s not even the glimmer of a smile in his eyes.

  ‘Is that supposed to be “ha ha funny” as Charu says?’

  ‘No, I’m serious.’

  His face is still grave. Aru gives him a puzzled look and turns away. Rohit is careful not to touch her, he sits erect like a soldier on parade, arms folded across his chest, keeping his balance perfectly, even when they bump over the uneven stones outside the gate.

  Kalyani who has been watching them, gives a small sigh when they move out and turning round to go back into the house, sees Charu behind her.

  ‘What happened to the boy from the States, Amma?’ Charu innocently asks. Kalyani flips her palm downwards in a contemptuous gesture as if to say ‘Who cares?’ and Charu laughs.

  The truth is, as Aru has already noticed, old skeletons are harmless. Their bones have crumbled into fine dust and you can sift through it without fear or distaste. It’s the newer skeletons you have to be wary of, they’re the ones you’ve got to keep securely locked in cupboards, be careful that they never
get out and show you their deathly grins.

  ‘Why did you tell Rohit about Gopal?’ Kalyani questions Sumi.

  ‘That we don’t live together? You think he doesn’t know it? Amma, everyone knows it by now. What purpose would a lie serve?’

  ‘He’ll tell his mother about it. They’ll all know. Rohit will never come back.’

  ‘Does it matter if he doesn’t? Why are you so bothered, Amma, about the opinion of people we’ve had nothing to do with for years?’

  But to Kalyani’s astonishment and delight, not only does Rohit come again, he brings his mother with him when he does. Kalyani is in a flutter. It is an event for her. She talks too much, gestures too extravagantly, springs up and walks about, forgetting what it was she had got up for.

  ‘I should have known. I got the coconuts plucked today and it always happens this way—the day we do it, one of the family comes home. Remember, Goda, the last time we took down the coconuts, it was your sister-in-law who dropped in?’

  ‘And the time before that, it was Chitra’s mother ....’

  While they speak, Kalyani and Goda are wordlessly exchanging their impressions of their visitor. Lalita, who has what looks like an impregnable self-assurance, seems a most unlikely mother for the sober, quiet, Rohit. In her rich silk, ornate jewellery and vivid eye make-up, she is too elaborately dressed for such a visit. But the loudness is not vulgar; rather, it has the over-emphasis of the actress or dancer, the likeness to an artiste heightened by her total control over her physical self.

  It turns out that she is, in fact, an artiste. She is a veena player, she expects them to have heard of her—‘I’ve played on the radio, even once on TV’—though the fact that they have not, makes no dent in her self-confidence; she takes it in her stride. Her curiosity about this family is the only chink in her armour. It is obvious that she has heard about them, much before Rohit renewed contact, and the subtle air of condescension, the hint of patronage she shows Kalyani, which Kalyani fortunately misses, reveals that they have been regarded as ‘those poor things’, unfortunates who need to be pitied.