Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories

by Meghna Pant

  She doesn’t respond.

  I get up angrily. ‘In that case, I think it’s best I leave.’

  ‘Things happen, Katha, no matter how you choose to feel about them.’

  Thakur’s serenity is striking; it’s as if she thinks that emotions—the crux of human life—are irrelevant and wasteful.

  She doesn’t try to stop me as I’m leaving, but I hear her say, ‘Remember, Katha, let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.’

  I stomp out of the tent, sweating.

  Mark almost pounces on me. ‘So, did we get an interview?’

  ~

  The next morning Mark and I head towards the sati site. We leave at first light hoping to somehow run into Samara, only to be intercepted by the largest gathering of people we’ve ever seen. There are young men carrying aged mothers on their backs, old men bent over shaky sticks, proud teenagers twirling moustaches that are wider than their faces. I spot hassled media folk, in their city clothes of jeans and T-shirts. People appear from every direction, like the arils of a pomegranate that has burst open.

  Thick dust rises from the laterite ground, forming a dome and enveloping the crowd in partnership with the early morning fog. There are tannoys placed along the path from which a voice alternately sings prayers and screeches instructions. Cops are strutting around in their tall caps fitted with peacock feathers, using bamboo sticks on widows swathed in white cotton saris, and withering glares for waif-like children.

  Mark leads me closer to the cremation ground, next to the wooden barricades. There’s nothing more to do, so we wait.

  I’m glad for the wait because I can mull over Thakur’s words. In the morning light my meeting with her seems unreal and unlikely. After all, why would I—a stranger to this land—care to save Samara? Yet, Thakur’s words are like a spotlight shining turn by turn on my disarrayed feelings, the choices I’ve made, the relationships I’ve fostered and the life I’ve let happen to me. Has she given me a gift—to absolve myself from my bad decisions? Or has she shown me a curse—where whatever I decide ends a life?

  ~

  It’s well into the afternoon when a pair of bullocks come into the clearing, solemnly carting two priests. The holy men sing a few hymns, clank a few bells and draw circles in the air with lit copper lamps. The crowd chants: Hare Krishna! Krishna! Krishna!

  Now that the site is fumigated by those closest to God, the funeral procession begins. Four young men lug a wooden stretcher on which lies a dead body wrapped in white cloth and covered with roses, jasmine and marigold. The carriers are crooning: ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai!’ Had I not heard this whispered solicitously by my aunt when we’d trudged with my mother’s wilted body to the incinerator? This must be the dead husband.

  The men circle the unlit funeral pyre three times and then place the body on it, with the feet facing southwards. The crowd becomes quiet with the kind of awe and expectancy that only death inspires. The silence comes in time for us to hear the trumpeting of a conch. And then people are pushing and straining against each other: Samara is here!

  Four strong men, wearing cotton loincloths, arrive shouldering a plain wooden palanquin. Somewhere behind its stiff white curtains is Samara. Less than a month ago she was probably sitting in such a palanquin, a new bride on the cusp of her new life, I think sadly. Dancing women in colourful skirts and tops follow this sombre procession. The crowd lets out an audible gasp; women are not allowed to be part of funeral rituals. But, the women dance with such abandonment that soon everyone is cheering for them.

  I watch the bearers place the palanquin near the funeral pyre.

  The husband’s last rites are performed. His corpse is covered with wood, puffed rice, incense and ghee. The chief mourner—who I hear is the husband’s elder brother—circles the pyre thrice, a clay pot on his left shoulder, a log of firewood behind him, and the body to his left. At each turn around the pyre, another man uses a knife to make a slit in the pot, letting water out, symbolizing life leaving the corpse. At the end of three turns, the chief mourner drops the pot. Then, without turning to face the body, he lights the pyre and leaves the cremation grounds. The others follow.

  All eyes now turn to the palanquin.

  Delicate hennaed feet emerge from its wooden frame. And then she rises, like the sun in its most dazzling morning. A heavily embroidered red silk sari, bedecked with glittering jewels, covers her body. Her chocolate skin glows against the hue of the fire and her hair caresses her oval, chinless face. Like me, she has the face of a ferret, but, unlike me, her small beady eyes are lined splendidly with kohl, her flat nose sparkles with a tiny diamond stud and her thin lips quiver in a way that is almost erotic.

  She is a resplendent sight to behold: fragile yet so bold!

  There are no hysterics, no tears, as Samara readies herself for the self-sacrificial rite. With precise movements, she removes the gold jewellery from her ears, neck and hands. The back of her hand swiftly wipes away the red vermilion from her forehead, leaving bloodlike tracks. Her wrists crack rapidly against each other, breaking her red glass bangles.

  Samara walks resolutely to the front of the pyre. She stares for a long time at the flames, as its sparks grow into fingers, join hands and run up the inferno. The crowd holds its collective breath, sound abandoning a thousand tongues to crackle only in those flames.

  Suddenly, the fire hits a pocket of damp wood and hisses. Samara starts, as if she is coming out of a spell, and for the first time she looks away from the fire. Her eyes scan the crowd.

  Are Thakur’s words true: is Samara looking for me?

  Almost immediately Samara’s bloodshot eyes lock fiercely with mine.

  Thakur was right: Samara knows that I am her only saviour!

  What am I supposed to do? I can walk away, but my feet are rooted to the spot. I feel a kinship with Samara. Isn’t this what Thakur had implied: that Samara and I are shadows of each other, leading parallel lives in different existences? Wishing Samara away is like wishing myself away, and since the decision is in my hands, I cannot do it. I have to save her.

  Before anyone has time to react I jump over the barricades and run towards her, shouting, ‘No, Samara! Stop! Don’t do it!’

  A dozen strong hands stop me before I can reach the cremation ground. I struggle and kick, but not once do I take my pleading eyes away from hers.

  Samara looks at me without moving. Her gaze penetrates me. It seems like an eternity.

  And then she blinks; she has found what she is seeking. I watch her body turn around slowly, away from the fire, towards me. She is going to live. No one can force her to perform sati now—not the panchayat, nor the villagers, not her husband’s family or her mother; there are too many people here, tourists, witnesses, and the media with their cameras.

  The hands holding me let go. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in.

  Samara is going to live!

  As that victorious thought unfurls in my mind, a silent sorrow flutters in my stomach. I remember Thakur’s words. Now I can never have my child, the life inside me.

  In Samara’s eyes I see the eyes of my unborn baby slowly close.

  I avert my gaze. A small sigh comes out of me, like my child’s resignation to its fate. Have I made the right decision?

  I look back at Samara to see that she has frozen in her spot. In her eyes is a look that has no definition, as if the world has finally revealed itself to her.

  I lower my eyes. Under the setting sun, I stand at the end of my own short shadow.

  When I look back at Samara, she has the saddest expression I’ve ever seen. I remember that Thakur had told Samara that I could save her, or destroy her.

  Samara unlocks her eyes from mine. A lone tear rolls down her face; I realize that my cheeks are wet too. She turns around, back towards the fire, joins her palms together and, before anyone can react, Samara jumps into the fire.

  I lurch forward.

  But she has already begun to shed her flesh.

&n
bsp; I hear the crowd, which I’d lost track of, cheer and applaud: ‘Jai ho Samara Devi!’

  Thakur’s words echo in my head: Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no! I had said both, and meant neither.

  All of a sudden, there is a powerful kick in my stomach, so strong that it can only come from one fighting for its final breath. I keel over with pain before I realize what’s happening.

  The co-cremation is complete.

  I have failed them all!

  The sun retires wisely for the day. Hearing the call to darkness, ashes rise in the wake of woodsmoke, then fall and unite with the blood beneath my feet.

  DENTED AND PAINTED WOMEN

  Meenu was not surprised when Pramod called her by his wife’s name: Chandralikha. This had happened with many men before. But when he sat her down on the sofa and brought her tea, she didn’t know what to do.

  ‘I …’ she started, when he said, ‘Drink up. It will get cold.’

  She knew better than to argue. Depriving old people of these small rituals was cruel, and she’d seen it done enough times by their children and grandchildren. So she sat on the edge of her seat and willed the tea to go down her throat.

  Meenu could gather how a man would act by the way he set up his furniture. So she looked around at Pramod’s Napean Sea Road apartment. His living room contained a narrow beige sofa set, a frail wooden coffee table, a wilted bamboo palm, and mislaid knick-knacks. What did he do with all his money?

  The room was tidy, but not clean, in a way that indicated interest but not industry. After their wives died, old men often became excellent housekeepers, as if neatness was an heirloom. Pramod was clearly not like that. In fact, below the sofa she was sitting on were rims of brown dust, and she saw empty sockets on the false ceiling. Meenu imagined then that the living room was once a lavish thing, cared for, with chandeliers hanging from its beams and plush velvet sofas one could curl into. She saw Pramod—after Chandralikha’s death—throwing out these things disdainfully, or selling them to the kabaddiwallah, not bargaining, not arguing, in a way that gave the kabaddi-wallah hope that he could one day be rich.

  There were no servants around—an anomaly really—he must like his quiet, the isolation. Or maybe, she thought with a start, he’d expect her to do all the housework. There should be laws for these kinds of things, Meenu pouted angrily to herself.

  So, Pramod would be a frugal man, to the point of foolishness; the sort of man who’d spend his life acquiring wealth and then not care for it.

  He wouldn’t be much of a talker either, contained in his feelings and emotions, sitting for hours without saying a word. He’d probably listen to her blank-faced, as if he didn’t mind whether she was loquacious or silent; his life would not alter in any which way. This also meant that he was slow to anger, not prone to tantrums, quietest when most ruffled; the kind of client that girls in her agency prayed for.

  And his love, if it came, would be like him—not uncertain and dreamy—but complete, with the crisp air of finality.

  She’d have to draw him out, tactfully.

  Meenu set to work.

  She let her pallu fall slightly to reveal her deep cleavage. Men were lattu over her breasts, calling her nipples angoors on narangis or chikoos on watermelons. And through the years Meenu had gained a grudging respect for them, for they almost did her job for her. They were always available, always accessible and always on their best performance. Could she ask for better work tools?

  But Pramod didn’t seem to notice them, sipping his tea obliviously. He’s an ass-man, Meenu realized, a little surprised. In her experience it was usually the younger men who preferred a lady’s posterior, something to do, Meenu guessed, with the songs about big butts and booty poppin’ that their generation grew up on.

  It was time for the next step. Meenu opened her purse and ‘accidentally’ dropped it on the floor. The things she had placed strategically on the top spilled out. A chikoo, a banana, a copy of the Kama Sutra, a pack of Viagra, very red lipstick; suggestive things the agency had dictated in the instruction manual.

  Like most clients on the first meeting, Pramod chivalrously bent down to help her pick up the contents. But he didn’t lift each thing slowly, or study it and smile at her mischievously, his lust piqued. He handed them back to her very seriously, like they were her exam papers.

  Meenu frowned. But what could she do?

  She’d have to make conversation now.

  She asked him how long he’d lived in Mumbai. Or was he born here?

  He smiled at her absent-mindedly, and Meenu knew she’d said the wrong thing. Of course, the smile could also be part of the dementia that she’d been told was eating away his sixty-eight-year-old brain. It was also why Sheeba at her agency, Second Ishq, had rejected his application without a thought. He didn’t suffer from the right kind of disease, like cancer, heart ailment or stroke, that would make him too weak—in case it came to that—to harm the girls. But Pramod had called back; he’d pay double. So Second Ishq sent him their worst employee, Meenu, the only one from the batch of 2007 who hadn’t been able to retire as the sole or at least part inheritor of a client’s properties.

  I’ll show them, Meenu determined. I’ll role-play.

  So she turned to Pramod and said wistfully, ‘Jaan, remember when we came to Mumbai from Surat? What an unforgettable day it was.’

  She knew Pramod’s life story, of course, having carefully studied his case file before starting the job. Born in Surat to a Gujarati businessman and a housewife, Pramod was an only child. After studying till junior college, Pramod had joined his father’s diamond processing company. At twenty-two he’d married his business supplier’s daughter, Chandralikha, because they were both Anavil Brahmins. Within three months of their marriage, his business had collapsed, and fearing that Chandralikha’s manglik had something to do with this, her father brought them both to Mumbai. In this city Pramod prospered, but was never able to father children. Nonetheless, the couple stayed married for forty-three years, before Chandralikha died of bone metastases. He got sick a year after.

  ‘I’m surprised you finally learnt to call it Mumbai, my Chand. I remember how upset you were when your darling Bombay’s name was changed,’ Pramod said. He put his teacup back on the lower right side of the wooden table—his favourite spot Meenu guessed, as it was already plastered with unsightly teacup stains, still dark, still new. Had he recently started spoiling things?

  But did it even matter? Pramod was rich, richer than any of her previous clients, Meenu learnt from his case file. And the doctors had apparently given him just four more months to live, a short enough time to ensure that her secret—which even her agency was unaware of—remained a secret. If she could make him like her, or even lust after her, enough to leave her even a small part of his fortune, she wouldn’t have to work another day in her life.

  So she parroted ‘Hu tane prem karu chu’ in what she thought was near-perfect intonation, and read about the many uses of dandiya sticks.

  If her breasts, her antics or her conversation would not lure Pramod, then surely he wouldn’t be able to resist her cooking. Already, Meenu had learnt to roll khandvi and savour dal dhokli, for the closer men got to death, the more they wanted to relive their childhood.

  ‘I can make you undhiyu,’ she said, his favourite dish according to his file. She said this with a soft curve of her lips, a smile she’d been taught to use in the first few days with a new client. It was supposed to tell a man that she was pleasant without being overbearing. In her job, emotions had to be expressed in careful doses. A bit less, or a tad too much, could ruin the entire set-up.

  Pramod dismissed her suggestion with an exasperated rasp: ‘You never did take to cooking, Chand. And there’s no need to now.’

  Another trick gone to waste, Meenu thought ruefully. This also meant that he was the type of man who’d lost interest in the worldly matter of food. This often happened during illness or recuperation; men developed a sort of repugna
nce for routine indulgences. That’s why they sought to escape, to love again. And that’s how women like her stepped in.

  Still, Meenu was concerned. She peered over at the large kitchen. Like everything else she’d seen, it was painted in dull green, the colour of choice among old people. It was also bare, almost empty, with no microwave or packets of thepla, not even jars filled with ganthiya. It was as if he didn’t eat. What kind of a Gujarati was he?

  Alarm bells rang in Meenu’s head. She patted her stomach gently; this wasn’t the right time for her to be starving. She would get hungry every two hours, and not feeding that desire—she knew from past experience—would end in heart-wrenching loss.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Pramod said, getting up slowly from the sofa.

  Meenu moved towards the front door where her suitcase lay, but he stopped her. ‘You will not be needing anything else,’ he said, knitting his eyebrows.

  This was really not going very well.

  So she followed him obediently to a room she knew she would not sleep in. All old men had extra rooms, where children and guests had stayed in busier times. Now they were empty, haunted like the chambers of their hearts.

  But this room—in such contrast was it to the rest of the house—had clearly belonged to a woman. It was filled with collectibles from decades gone by—maroon silk cushions on a cream divan, jade boxes, a rosewood armchair, and an empty iron cage where a favourite tota must have once sang. Meenu imagined Pramod purging his life of all the things he’d collected with his wife, throwing them out, but then reaching this room and finding that his solace finally had a form, among her favourite things.

  With some effort Pramod drew open a heavy handloom curtain and Meenu saw before her eyes a walk-in closet.

  She gasped.

  There were more clothes in the closet than in the biggest store in her basti. Pashmina, lace, cashmere, saris, lehengas, shawls, ivory, rust, royal blue. It took all of Meenu’s effort not to reach out and stroke each item, one by one. She heard a jingle of keys and turned to see Pramod opening a locker almost as tall as her. Rows upon rows of jewellery—gold, sapphires, rubies and emeralds—revealed themselves, glittering like promised dreams.