While he waited for the cook to serve their dinner, Karnik sensed Neela’s discerning eyes studying him. How much had she guessed?
He made a silent resolution. He would perform no more abortions. Never again.
Chapter 4
The early morning gloom was so thick Isha could almost feel it around her shoulders, like a mantle, too heavy to be removed and tossed aside. The Tilak household was still in deep mourning. It was five weeks since Nikhil’s death. And yet it felt like it had happened yesterday.
To add to her anguish, the more she analyzed Nikhil’s bizarre death, the more she was convinced he had been murdered for a reason. She didn’t know for sure what it was or who was behind it. However, after some speculation, she had drawn a few conclusions. Nothing concrete, though—just some theories based on a gut feeling.
Nikhil had been a friendly individual, well liked and respected by most . . . unless, one of his employees had a grudge against him? Or it could be a competitor. But if that were the case, Nikhil would have mentioned something to her. Every night, as they lay in bed together, they used to share the day’s experiences with each other. He used to talk to her about the business, tell her details of his day at work.
Shaking off the grim thoughts temporarily, Isha tried to focus on what she was doing: urging Priya to eat her breakfast. Nikhil used to apply some fatherly discipline to make sure the finicky Priya ate.
Ayee emerged from the devghar— altar room—after finishing her pooja. Her elaborate worship. The night she’d received the shattering news about Nikhil, she’d promptly fainted. The doc-THE
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tor had been summoned and she’d recovered from the fainting spell, but afterward she was never the same. She’d suffered an emotional breakdown and taken to her bed for more than three weeks. She had lost some weight from the trauma, too. And what little humor she had possessed before the episode was gone.
Now, although she was gradually beginning to ease back into her social pattern and dress elegantly like she used to, she walked around in a surly mood, with a perpetual line between her eyebrows.
Ayee wore a turquoise print cotton sari this morning. Her hair was neatly coiled into her usual bun. There was plenty of gray in her hair, much more than most women her age. But she covered it with hair color. With the sudden weight loss, her face looked drawn, her blouse hung loose in the sleeves and waist-line, and the excess skin jiggled around her upper arms whenever she moved them.
As Ayee entered the dining room, Isha could smell the laven-der-scented talcum powder the older woman liked to wear.
Seeing Priya in Isha’s lap, sniffling, with her face buried in her mother’s shoulder, Ayee frowned. “Why is she crying again?”
“The usual morning blues,” replied Isha, hoping Priya would cease the fussing and get on with her breakfast. Ayee seemed particularly cantankerous this morning. It didn’t bode well.
“Such a crybaby.” Ayee shook her head. “Every morning and night it is the same story. She does nothing but cry.”
“She’s crying for Nikhil, Ayee. She misses him.” He was the one who dropped her off at school before he went to work.
Poor Priya couldn’t understand why her father wasn’t around anymore. The palpable misery around her didn’t help matters, either.
“She’s not the only one. We all miss him,” Ayee said, her lower lip trembling, the tears already glistening in her eyes.
Isha nodded, keeping her own emotions tightly reined in. If she broke down, Priya’s sniveling would only get worse. Nikhil’s presence was still very much there. Everywhere. It would always remain with them.
32 Shobhan Bantwal
Ayee blinked and looked at the wall clock. “Priya has to go to school soon, no? Why is she wasting time?”
“I’m trying to get her to eat her breakfast so I can get her ready for school,” Isha assured her mother-in-law. Couldn’t the woman see that Priya was only five years old and needed a little extra comforting at the moment? Had she forgotten that the child was usually very sunny by nature? Labeling her a crybaby was so unfair!
“What she needs is strictness, not more coddling.” Ayee threw an exasperated look at Priya’s pajama-clad back.
With a resigned sigh Isha said, “Time to finish your breakfast, sweetie. I bet all your friends are dressed and ready for school. You don’t want to be late, do you?”
A sob erupted from Priya. “I don’t . . . want . . . to go . . . to school.” She refused to remove her face from Isha’s shoulder. “I want Papa.”
Stifling her own desire to burst into tears, Isha patted Priya’s head. “I told you Papa is in heaven. Dev-bappa needs him more than we do,” she whispered in her ear, using the child’s term for God, or Holy Father. “But I’ll take you to school. Maybe we can go for ice cream after school.”
Instead of making things better, Isha realized she’d made them worse. Priya threw a full-blown tantrum, her ears turning red. “I don’t want ice cream! I want my Papa!”
Ayee accepted the cup of tea poured for her by one of the servants and let out a long-suffering sigh. After taking a sip she gazed out the window at the interminable rain, making her ag-gravation very clear to Isha. Her mother-in-law had her own passive-aggressive ways of making her feelings known.
Realizing that sternness was the only way to deal with the child, Isha held her by the shoulders and forced her to make eye contact. “Priya, I told you Papa can’t be here. I want you to finish your egg and toast and then change into your uniform. I want this crying to stop! Now!”
Priya’s full mouth started to quiver and large tear drops started to tumble down her cheeks once again, breaking Isha’s heart. “I don’t . . . want . . . breakfast.”
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Tears gathered in Isha’s eyes, too, which she hastily dabbed with a handkerchief. Was this bone-deep grief ever going to go away? She wanted to gather her little girl close to her heart and cry with her. Maybe they could help wash away each other’s misery. But there were practical matters to consider, for example, her father-in-law.
As if on cue, his heavy footsteps sounded nearby. From the corner of her eye she saw him stride in, dressed in charcoal pants and a tan shirt. His thick silver hair, slick with hair dressing, was combed back from his wide forehead.
He pulled out the chair at the head of the table and accepted the steaming cup of tea one of the servants brought to him. He liked it superhot and sweetened with precisely one teaspoon of sugar. Then he reached for the customary newspaper Ayee left for him in the exact same spot each morning—at his right elbow.
When he heard Priya’s sobs, he adjusted his glasses and glared at her over the rim. “Why are you crying, Priya?”
The little girl continued to sniffle and ignored her grandfather.
“I asked you why you are crying.” His voice rose a bit, plant-ing the first germ of fear in Isha’s mind. Baba’s temper was quick to flare, and it was notorious. Since Nikhil’s death, Baba had been forced to come out of semiretirement and take over the running of the business. Between the loss of his only son and the responsibility of the store, Baba’s temper fits had escalated in frequency and intensity.
When Priya continued to ignore him, his gaze settled on Isha.
“What is her problem? Should she not be ready for school by now?”
Before Isha could answer him, Ayee chimed in. “Every day it is the same thing. Priya does nothing but cry. You don’t see Milind and Arvind crying like that. Girls are always fusspots.
Soon there will be another girl to add to our headaches.”
“Priya’s only a child, Ayee,” argued Isha. “And she misses her Papa.” But she knew her attempts at defending Priya were weak at best.
Ayee rolled her beautiful eyes and gave another dramatic 34 Shobhan Bantwal
sigh. “If you had not insisted on ignoring our request to have an abortion, Nikhil would still b
e here. I was telling you for weeks that the unborn child is showing all the signs of bad luck.”
Her own temper stirring, Isha looked up at her mother-in-law. “Nikhil and I never thought of our child and your grandchild as a bad omen. A child is a blessing, Ayee, never a curse.”
Ayee put down her cup with a flourish. “The astrologer warned me that the child was conceived on a bad day. But who is going to listen to me in this house? The baby is not even here yet, and already she has caused such tragedy for us. What will she do after she is born?”
“Ayee, please . . . Let’s not blame an unborn child for what fate decreed. Nikhil would be very upset if he could hear that.”
Isha cast an uneasy glance at Baba. He was reading the news headlines and nibbling on his buttered toast. “As you know, Nikhil was against abortion. In fact, he was very upset when he found out that Dr. Karnik performs gender-based abortions in the first place.”
Baba slapped his newspaper on the table. The teacups on the table rattled. “Dr. Karnik is a good man and a good doctor! He only does what is right for certain people.”
As rebellion began to stir in her gut, Isha couldn’t help retorting, “But deliberately aborting fetuses just because they’re female is wrong. Morally and legally wrong!”
Baba’s imperious eyebrows shot up. “What is wrong in letting people decide if they want a girl or boy, huh?”
“What’s next? Genetically engineered, identical, perfect little boys populating the entire world?” she rejoined, her voice drip-ping with bitter cynicism. “Where are they going to find perfect little girls to keep them happy?”
Baba ignored her caustic comment. “Has China not made it possible for people to have only one child, and if they want a boy, they can have a boy?”
“And look what’s happened in China, Baba. They have such a shortage of girls that men are forced to marry their cousins.
Many of their men are either doomed to remain single or resort to some dreadful measures to acquire a wife.”
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“India has not come to that point, and never will,” said Ayee, joining in the argument. “We have more girls than we know what to do with. Look at our own family—already one girl and another on the way. What sins did we commit in our previous lives that we are punished with girls?”
“Girls these days achieve just as much as boys, if not more,”
argued Isha. “They’re assets, not burdens.” She was sorely tempted to say something like, Ayee, what are you if not a female? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? And didn’t you give birth to a girl many years ago? I suppose that makes you worthless, too, just like me?
But she curbed her tongue, because talking back to one’s in-laws was certainly not allowed in her family. Also, realizing that Priya had stopped fussing and was curiously observing the adults arguing, Isha took the opportunity to push the toast in front of her. “Eat.” Besides, she didn’t want an impressionable five-year-old to be exposed to her in-laws’ contemptuous and outdated views about girls.
“Just because they get educated and hold jobs doesn’t mean they are not a burden to their families,” growled Baba, clearly in a fighting mood and itching to prolong the dispute. “In the end, after all that money parents spend on girls, they have to get married, and then their earnings go towards the husband and his family.”
Isha didn’t want to continue the pointless debate. She had things to do, like getting her child to school. “I don’t agree with that philosophy, Baba. You and Ayee can believe what you want.”
“What!” Baba rose from his chair, the veins in his neck visibly bulging, the color rising in his face. “How dare you talk to me like that! Just because your husband is no longer here, you think you can say whatever your long tongue wants to say?”
Regretting her outburst, Isha swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Baba. It must be the strain of the last few weeks.” Perhaps sens-ing her mother’s fear, Priya burst into noisy tears once again.
Isha realized that with her desire to argue she had inadvertently made a bad situation worse. Why hadn’t she just shut up 36 Shobhan Bantwal
and let the old folks hang on to their arcane beliefs? “Priya, if you don’t want to eat, fine. Let’s go upstairs and get dressed.”
She put Priya on her feet and rose from her chair.
“I don’t want to go to school.” Priya rubbed her swollen eyes with her knuckles.
“You will go to school!” growled Baba.
“I won’t! ” Priya retorted. Unfortunately she’d picked the worst day to be bratty.
“I will not tolerate disobedience and disrespect to elders in my house.” Already incensed with Isha, Baba pushed his chair back with a screech and came around the table toward them.
Before Isha could do or say anything, he grabbed Priya by the arm and whacked her bottom.
Shocked by the unexpected assault, the child let out a high-pitched scream. And for that she got whacked a couple more times, and harder, too.
Isha stared in disbelief. Priya had been reprimanded, punished in other ways, and yelled at, but never dealt with physically. A moment later, regaining her equilibrium, Isha stepped forward, her breath coming out in gasps. “Baba, stop it!
Please!”
When he stopped and let go of Priya, the child ran into her arms, the sobbing now literally choking the breath out of her.
Her skin felt hot to the touch and looked red. And Priya’s tiny buttocks were probably even redder from the thorough beating they’d taken through the thin fabric of her pajamas.
Rage began to fire up inside her. How dare he! How dare the old man strike a helpless child!
The cook and her helper had both come out of the kitchen, their eyes wide with curiosity and fear. Sundari, Priya’s elderly nursemaid, stood in a corner, looking petrified.
All Isha could do was hold Priya close and soothe her for a minute, all the while trying to keep her own mounting wrath in check. “Shh, baby . . . shh.” Then she turned to her father-in-law, who still looked livid. “I can’t believe you struck a child for something as minor as refusing to go to school.”
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“Missing school is not a minor matter!”
“Is this the way you dealt with Nikhil and Sheila if they did the same thing in their childhood?” Shaking with fury, Isha turned her gaze on her mother-in-law, who seemed to be taking it all in as if she were watching a scene in a movie. “How can you sit there and let Baba beat up your granddaughter? This is your son’s child, can’t you see?”
“She seems to need more discipline than any other child I know,” said Ayee, looking nonchalant as she chewed on the last of her breakfast. “God knows you and Nikhil never tried to teach her to be a good girl. Someone has to.”
The bitter truth struck Isha in that instant. These people de-spised her and her child. Now that Nikhil was gone, they resented them even more, especially because in their warped minds they were convinced that Isha’s unborn daughter was responsible for Nikhil’s death. They were hurting from losing their beloved son and needed someone to blame for their pain.
Isha and the innocent babe in her womb were convenient scape-goats and therefore by association Priya was also to blame.
Why hadn’t Isha seen that earlier? Maybe losing Nikhil had made her deaf and blind to everything else around her.
But now her eyes were wide open to the truth.
The elder Tilaks were misguided individuals and she and Priya had no place in their home. Things were never going to get better for them, either. Matter of fact, they were only going to get worse. How long was she going to sit around and watch her daughter getting abused?
If Priya was subjected to this, how much was the new baby going to suffer, the one they’d labeled a bad omen and a curse?
They probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill her in their smug, self-righteous way and justify i
t in some fashion.
No wonder they condoned Karnik’s decadent practices.
The urgent and potent need she felt to get out of that house didn’t really surprise Isha. It had been building up gradually over a period of several weeks.
Right after being told about the results of the sonogram, Ayee 38 Shobhan Bantwal
had started sharing little tidbits of gossip. “Did you know Mrs. Datar’s daughter had an abortion? Good thing, too, since it would have been a third girl.”
When Nikhil and Isha had reacted with outrage, Baba had merely added his chauvinistic opinion. “When modern technology has made it possible to pick and choose the sex of one’s progeny, is it not stupidity to ignore it?”
“It is stupidity to interfere with nature, Baba,” Nikhil had countered. “You and Ayee are religious, God-fearing Brahmins.
How can you even think such things when you have a fancy pooja room and you pray twice a day and celebrate all the religious festivals with such devotion? In fact, I’m tempted to report that idiot Dr. Karnik to the police.”
His father had sternly warned Nikhil against any such action.
“Don’t get involved in Dr. Karnik’s affairs. He is a good person and a loyal customer, and he is only doing what his patients ask him to do.”
“Even if it is highly illegal?” Nikhil had looked at his father in total disbelief. “Baba, do you know there is a law against even revealing the sex of an unborn child? Do you have any idea how many female children in this country are cruelly destroyed either as fetuses or newborns?”
“Bogus statistics cooked up by feminist groups!” was Baba’s disdainful response. “What Karnik does with his medical practice is none of our business. You stay out of it, you hear?” It was a clear warning.
Nikhil had never again mentioned reporting against Karnik, and of course Isha had immediately switched doctors after that disturbing ultrasound appointment. But every day after that point the debate over abortion had insinuated itself into the conversation in the Tilak home, until it had come to a head when Ayee and Baba had come right out and ordered Nikhil and Isha to schedule an abortion.
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