Perhaps they were right. Thus does your past come back to confront you, thus does it claim you. It’s a fool’s game trying to escape. But if I cannot escape my past, how will my children ever be free of me? I thought I had snapped the thread when I walked out, I thought there was nothing left to connect us, but ....
Yes, what about my children?
No second chances: I can hear the words still and they sound to me like a knell. You are right, lawyer woman, Aru’s wise counsellor, there are no second chances.
The moment Sumi enters the room, she thinks it looks different. It’s still as bare as it was when she saw it the last time, but there is a sense of movement, of activity about it. Is it because of the notebooks spread out on the table, all of them open, as if Gopal has been reading them at a stretch?
‘Are you writing something?’
‘Me? No. This is a novel Shankar is thinking of publishing. He wants my opinion.’
‘Shankar? I didn’t know he’s a publisher.’
‘He isn’t. He wants to be one. That has been his dream for years.’
A slight shadow falls over his face, as if an unwelcome thought is passing through his mind. He pushes the books away and turns to face her. Now that she can see his face, she notices a change there too. He seems—chastened? No, that’s not it, she rejects the word. Subdued, perhaps; yes, subdued, but to a definite purpose.
‘Do you know it’s a year since you moved in here?’
It’s strange. She could have said—it’s a year since you left home. Or, since you left us. But she doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, it’s a year since you moved in here. As if this, his coming here, is a fact that has nothing to do with her life, with their life together, which he had brought to such an abrupt end.
‘Yes, I’ve thought of that.’
‘Living with Amma, I’ve begun to see it differently. A year, I mean. For her, it’s not just a chunk that gets cut off and then it’s over. No, it’s all mixed up with the seasons and festivals and flowers and fruits. It’s a cycle. Nothing is over, things keep coming back over and over again, they’re all connected. Ganapati and the rains, Dussehara and marigolds, Diwali and the wintry feeling, Tulsi lagna and the tamarinds ....’
‘I know. A resurgence for everything but us humans.’
‘Oh, but that’s not true!’
She is about to say this to him, to tell him about Seema’s growing up and the sudden disturbance in the rhythm of her own cycle, presaging perhaps the end of it, coming at the same time. But she changes her mind, she does not speak of it. Not because she thinks he has forfeited the right to any information about her daughters, but because she knows that such facts are no longer relevant to his life.
And so she changes the subject and speaks of Surekha. Has she met Gopal? Did Aru bring her to him? Did she, the lawyer, give him any inkling of what she was advising Aru to do? And does he know Aru is now working with Surekha? Temporarily, she says, until college begins and only because Surekha’s typist has taken leave; but still, she’s there almost all day listening to her, ‘as if she’s a—she’s an oracle.’
Gopal laughs, but Sumi goes on, her face serious and concerned. She tells Gopal that she wants him to know that she has no role in this scheme, this plan, to take Gopal to court. She disapproves of it entirely, she takes no part in any of it.
‘Surekha told me she’s advising Aru against doing anything. She’s told Aru it’s futile to go to court.’
‘Then why was she here? Why did she want to meet you?’
‘For Aru’s sake. To placate her, perhaps. Maybe to satisfy herself about something. I don’t know, but believe me, Sumi, Aru is in good hands. Believe me,’ and Gopal’s earnestness surprises even himself, ‘Surekha is a good woman.’
‘If you say so.’ Sumi seems doubtful. ‘It’s not that I doubt her motives, I know she wouldn’t egg Aru on just to have a case; after all, she knows Aru can’t pay her, she knows we have no money. But I don’t think she’s good for Aru at this time. Making what has happened in our family part of the war between men and women—no, I don’t like that. The truth is, Gopal, I want Aru to go on with her life. I’m selfish and lazy, I want life to be easy and comfortable. And I want my child’s life to be that way too. I want her to enjoy the good things in life, I want her to taste life, I want her to relish it and not spit it out because she finds it bitter.’
‘I think Surekha is good for Aru. Neither you nor I can do anything for her now, she won’t take anything from us. But if Aru is influenced by this woman, it won’t harm her. On the contrary, I think it will help her.’
‘Baba is like you; he’s pleased by her association with Surekha. He thinks Aru may take to the law, that she may become a lawyer, I mean.’
‘She might.’
Sumi is too intent on her own purpose to realize that they are conversing like a couple, a husband and wife talking about their daughter. It is Gopal who thinks of it, and he also realizes that there’s a difference. This is not how it was when we were together; this is how it would have been after a few years. It’s as if, he thinks, we’ve lost a whole section of our lives, we’ve jumped over time and reached a much later stage of our life together.
Sumi’s distress over Aru is only part of what has brought her here. She goes on now to say what she has really come here for. She is here to finish what Gopal began that night when he spoke to her as she watched the circus and the clown on TV.
‘Do you remember, Gopal—I’m sure you do, though we have never spoken of it after that day—what you said to me the night I came to your room, the night we decided to get married? You said that at any time if either of us wanted to be free, the other would let go. We are not going to be tied together, you said. No handcuffs, you said. And I agreed. I was only eighteen then and you were twenty-six. Do you remember it, Gopal?’
His face tells her he does, though he says nothing.
‘But it meant nothing to me then. How can you think of separating, of wanting to be apart, when you are eighteen and in love? If I thought about it at all, I thought we would always be together. I thought of separation for the first time before Seema’s birth, when I was sure I was going to die. I never once thought of you dying and leaving me alone. Funny, isn’t it, men most often die first, but I never thought of it.
“Then you began to move away from me. I knew exactly when it happened. And I knew I could not stop you, I could do nothing. When you left, I knew I would not question you, I would just let you go. None of them, not even our daughters, specially our daughters, could understand me. Sometimes I think if they had left me alone, if I had been by myself, with nothing expected of me, I could have coped with it better.
‘But that did not happen. And I had to go back home with my daughters, I had to live with my parents, I had to see what had happened to my mother. I was frightened. It seemed like something being repeated—my mother then, me now. And my daughters? But now I know my life is not like my mother’s. Our life, yours and mine, was complete.’
Our life was complete.
She’s setting me free, she’s giving it to me, what I wanted so much, the dream which I had locked into myself for so many years, the dream of being totally free.
And suddenly, the girl he had married comes into his mind: Sumi, sleeping in the bus, her head on his shoulder, oblivious to the crowd about them. It seems to him that he is sharing the memory of that girl, that night, with this woman who stands before him, that he is speaking aloud, though the words are only in his mind.
‘When we reached our destination, I woke you up and you got off obediently and staggered after me like a sleepy child. We got to the guest house where we were to spend our honeymoon and there was no food for us—it was too late, they said, the cook had gone back home. So we ate what we had with us and then I bathed but you went off to sleep almost immediately. It was a deep and easy sleep; I watched you for a long time while you slept and thought about you and wondered. You were wearing a dark-coloured nig
htdress, I can remember that, and in the darkness I could see nothing but your face; there was no more to you than a disembodied face. When I woke up in the morning, you were not in bed, but I knew where you would be. I got out of the room, went down the steps and there was the river. You were in it as I had expected, floating, as if you were weightless. And so silent that a bird perched on a rock close by seemed serenely undisturbed by your presence. You saw me and smiled, a smile of radiant happiness, you raised your arm to greet me and as it flopped back into the water, the bird took fright at the sound and flew away. I can still remember the flap of its wings.
‘I joined you in the river, you swam half-way to meet me. You were wearing your nightdress and it was clinging to you above the waist, but below, in the water, it billowed and ballooned about your body so that I could touch your bare flesh, I could feel it respond to my touch. I touched your face with my hands, with my lips and it was like touching a flower wet with dew. I put a finger to your face and tasted a drop and yes, it tasted like dew. We came out of the water then, we went to our room and it was there, with the sound of the river in our ears still, that we came together for the first time. And I knew then that it was for this, this losing yourself in another human being, that men give up their dreams of freedom. And women, too? Did you have your dreams of freedom as well? I never asked you, your body blocked out everything else about you for me ....’
Gopal comes out of his thoughts, be becomes aware that the space between them in the room is filled with desire, his desire, that his body, after all these many months, is awake. Why now, why here? He is angry with himself, his very struggle against it making it difficult for him to subdue his body. He gives up and begins listening to Sumi and slowly desire ebbs away from him. There has been something terminal about it, the last flare before the flame dies out. And it leaves him, when it is over, grey and spent.
Sumi notices it. ‘What is it, Gopal? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
Relieved, she goes on with what she’s been saying.
‘I’m getting a job, Gopal, I think I’m going to get it. I went for the interview and it seems I have a good chance. It’s in Devgiri.’
There is a sparkle to Sumi, she is speaking with her old vivacity.
‘The residential school?’
‘Yes. And Seema can be with me, she can join the school, we can be together. I want the job so much, Gopal, I want it so much for Seema and me.’
‘I’m glad for you. I’m very glad.’
His tone, in spite of the emphatic words, is flat and dull. Sumi can no longer ignore the fact that Gopal, in spite of his disclaimer, is not all right. She realizes, too, that there is nothing she can do for him, not now, anyway. Saying, ‘I must go,’ she gets up and prepares to leave.
‘Must you?’
‘Yes, it’s late. Baba will be worrying ....’
Suddenly she stops. She remembers saying the same sentence when, as a girl, she had stealthily visited Gopal in his room. She can see from the look on Gopal’s face that he is thinking of it too, that they are, after a very long while, sharing a memory. They stare at each other in silence for a moment. Gopal is the first to begin laughing and she joins in.
It is on this note of laughter that they part. They will not meet again.
NOBODY KNOWS WITH whom the idea of celebrating Aru’s eighteenth birthday began. It seems most likely that it was Charu who first thought of it, Charu, who is both restive and uneasy in the idle period between her examinations and the announcement of her results. Kalyani and Sumi, for their own differing reasons, welcome the thought which finally evolves into something that has not been done in the family for years: a ‘proper happy birthday’ as Charu calls it, ‘with balloons, cake, streamers and all.’ The awareness that they are on the brink of change, very imminent for both Sumi and Charu, adds a poignance to the occasion, but there is no sense of melancholy. When Aru thinks of the day later, it will come back to her as an insubstantial cloud of happiness, disembodied voices and laughter. It is only her conversation with Kalyani, in the morning, that she will remember with crystal clarity. Thinking of it, even years later, she will feel again the pricking in her palm where Kalyani pressed the earrings; when she looks into her palm, she will almost expect to see the tiny, angry red marks after all the years.
‘This is for you,’ Kalyani says, holding out a red box, the kind jewellers use to put pieces of jewellery in. She opens the box and Aru sees a pair of diamond earrings, their brilliance flashing out at her as if trying to escape after years of confinement.
‘They were my mother’s. They’re for you now.’
‘For me, Amma? Why?’
‘It’s your birthday, silly girl, that’s why.’
‘I know, but these—they’re diamonds.’
‘And what did you think I was giving you? Glass pieces? You’re the eldest grandchild, aren’t you?’
‘But I’m not the only one!’
‘Charu will have mine. And Seema ....’
‘That’s not what I meant. What will I do with them, anyway?’
‘Wear them. Put them away. Keep them for your children. Sell them. Make something else out of them. Do what you want. They’re yours now.’
‘I couldn’t—sell them or break them up, I mean. And just imagine me wearing them!’
‘My mother wore them every day. My grandfather got them made for her when she got married, but she was too young, they were too large for her. She started wearing them later, when she was—yes, even then she must have been younger than what you are.’
Aru, who has been listening intently, asks the question again.
‘But why me, Amma?’
This time Kalyani understands her. ‘I think—I hope—my mother would have been proud of you. I was a great disappointment to her. Not only because I was a girl, but because—because—oh, maybe because I was none of those things she would have liked her daughter to be. I was not beautiful, not smart ....’
‘Was that so important to her?’
‘Why not? She was that way herself. I feel very sad sometimes to think that I gave her no joy at all. But Aru, I’m not giving these to you only for her sake, it’s for mine too. For so many years I thought I had nothing, I was so unfortunate that I could get no pleasure even from my own children. My mother didn’t care for my children, either. Daughters again, she said. And when you were born, a daughter, I wondered how she could have been so blind. Now when I look at you, my three granddaughters, especially at you, I think—I’m luckier than my mother. She’s the unlucky one who didn’t know how to enjoy her children and grandchildren. And so ...’ She plucks the earrings from their velvet bed with a kind of frantic haste, as if afraid Aru will escape her, and presses them into Aru’s palm. ‘Take them,’ she says and closes her hand so tightly on Aru’s fist that the sharp edges of the earrings cut into her palms. ‘Take them, child.’
Kalyani has now reverted to Marathi, for her the language of tenderness, calling her ‘child’ as she had done when they were babies.
‘All right, Amma.’ Aru’s grave acceptance carries an understanding of what Kalyani is doing. ‘But you’ve got to take them back right now.’
‘Wear them, Aru.’
‘Not today. And I can’t keep them in my table drawer, can I? Keep them for me.’
Aru seems to have put away her prickliness for the time being. They are all surprised by the good humour with which she endures, not just Kalyani’s and Goda’s fussing, but all the greetings and gifts, even Hrishi’s jokes. It seems to Sumi that Aru is no longer holding a moral scale against which she had appeared to be measuring everyone, including herself.
Nevertheless, her composure fails her when she enters the room she has been barred from since morning. Charu and Hrishi have roped in Shyam and Shweta and between them they have transformed the dining room.
‘Balloons! I’m not a five-year-old, Charu.’
‘Come on, Aru, I’d love someone to do this on my
birthday, and I’m not five.’
‘Sure, Hrishi?’
‘Got you there. Good for you, Aru.’
‘How old are you, Hrishi uncle? When is your happy birthday?’
‘Don’t call me un-kal, man.’
‘And not “happy birthday”, Shyam. It’s just birthday.’
‘Sumi, why didn’t we have all this fuss for our birthdays at home? I’d like to have my birthdays celebrated this way from now on. Take note, everyone.’
‘Noted.’
‘Thank you, Charu, Seema, Hrishi. And yes, Shyam and Shweta. Thank you for this show. I’m touched.’
‘There’s only one thing missing, sorry, I mean one person who will be missing.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Rohit. What’s the use of balloons, candles and presents without him, eh, Aru?’
‘How funny!’
‘I’m serious. We’d invited him, but he’s out of town. He was heartbroken that he would miss your birthday.’
Ramesh is the last to arrive. Gopal is right, Ramesh is his father’s son; he has taken on himself the responsibilities of this family. He will never forget an occasion, he will be with them at every crisis, for every celebration. Now, setting aside his usual gravity, he enters into the spirit of a birthday party and takes on the role of entertainer, surprising and enchanting his sons who have never seen him perform these tricks.
‘If ever your patients desert you, Ramesh, you can earn a living with these cards and coins acts.’
‘We doctors don’t let our patients get away from us so easily. Remember that, Charu.’
‘Oh, please! Don’t, don’t say things like that! I feel—I don’t know, so superstitious and I’ve got butterflies in my tummy and I’m sure I’ve done badly and won’t get admission anywhere. And what will I do then?’
A Matter of Time Page 22