by Anita Nair
Smriti smiled. Then gritting her teeth and refusing Rishi’s offer of his arm, she hobbled down the steps to the waiting autorickshaw.
‘What are you doing here?’ the woman asked Smriti in surprise.
Smriti looked up from the book she was reading. For a moment, she stared into the woman’s eyes, unable to remember where they had met. Then it came to her, that little encounter on the roadside by the halted bus.
‘I hurt my foot. I have to see the doctor. I may need to take a shot; I may even need stitches!’ Smriti spoke with a little embarrassed laugh punctuating her words.
‘Where is your friend?’ the woman asked, her eyes darting around the crowded reception area.
‘He should be here somewhere,’ Smriti said. Then, wanting to steer the conversation away, she asked, ‘And you? What are you doing here?’
The woman’s eyes dropped. ‘I’ve come with my daughter. She is having a scan. I was just going to the scan room when I saw you here.’
‘But don’t you live elsewhere? That’s what you said.’
The woman didn’t answer her. Instead, she said, ‘I have to go. Look after yourself. Don’t wet your hair for a day or two. You mustn’t catch a fever.’
Smriti watched Rishi go to the enquiry counter and demand to see Vasantha Sister.
‘It’s her day off,’ someone finally said, wanting to be rid of him.
‘I can’t understand this crowd,’ Rishi said, dropping into an empty chair across from her.
‘It’s the only nursing home in the vicinity,’ Smriti said.
‘So many pregnant women!’ Rishi said, slouching deeper into his chair.
As if to still any further need for talk, he took out his mobile phone and began playing a game on it.
Smriti watched him for a few minutes. She was thirsty. She would have liked a drink. A fruit juice, perhaps. A tall glass of orange juice with ice cubes in it. She felt a great pang of homesickness. In all these months, she had never known such a yearning for home. For cool white sheets on the bed and the familiarity of loved possessions. The fraying patch on the carpet in the living room and the creak of the bedroom window when the breeze rocked it. To smell the coffee Papa Jak brewed every morning. To swing on the glider on the porch with just a little thrust of her foot. Nina’s perfume. Shruti’s high-pitched squeals of excitement. So many things to miss. Her eyes filled up. The house she grew up in had been sold and what furniture Nina didn’t want was given away. Where was home now? With Papa Jak? Or with Nina and Shruti? Or was it the apartment Rishi lived in? Her life quivered with fragility, with impending loss.
Smriti opened the page and pretended to read while watching Rishi. This was a man she no longer recognized. He seemed distant and cold. What was wrong?
Four stitches, two shots and a prescription of antibiotics later, a weary Smriti emerged from the casualty room. ‘I’ll get the medicines and find an auto to take us back. You better sit here until then. It’s bloody hot outside,’ Rishi said, leading her back into the reception area.
The woman from the bus sat hunched in one of the chairs. Smriti hobbled over to sit by her side.
‘Is everything all right with your daughter?’ she asked.
The woman looked at her blankly for a moment. Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’ Smriti frowned.
‘The foetus is all right. But it is a girl!’
Smriti sucked in her breath. ‘How can you say that? What’s wrong if it is a girl?’
‘She already has two daughters, she doesn’t need this third one. But she is four months gone. I wish we had come earlier but this scan doctor comes only once a month. An abortion now would be dangerous. But she doesn’t want one more daughter either. Her husband is already furious with her. I don’t know what she’s going to do.’
‘How does she know it’s a girl?’ Smriti touched her elbow.
‘The scan doctor told her.’
‘But the doctor is not allowed to reveal the sex of the unborn child. It’s illegal!’ Smriti’s voice rose.
‘They do it here. Why do you think we came here? The scan doctor is not from this town. They bring him from somewhere else, and he tells us if we ask him,’ the woman whispered. ‘Look around you,’ she added. ‘All these pregnant women, they come from various parts of the district. Do you think there are no hospitals where they live? It’s because of the scan doctor. And then, if you want it, they’ll do the abortion here as well!’
‘But it’s wrong.’ Smriti wanted to cry. ‘How can you hold the sex of the foetus against it?’
‘Tell that to the men. Tell that to the women who bore those men!’ The woman’s harshness startled Smriti. This wasn’t the exuberant woman from the bus, her laughter loud, her merriment infectious.
‘But do you believe that too?’ Smriti asked quietly.
‘What I believe is of no consequence. It is what my daughter wants to do. Do you know what a burden a girl child is? My daughter already has two. Her marriage is at stake here. If she delivers yet another girl child, her husband might even leave her. He has already threatened her.
‘I have to go now. She is with the lady doctor. I needed a moment to myself. She will ask me what she has to do and I will have to have an answer for her.’
Smriti watched the woman walk down the corridor to the consulting rooms, her feet dragging with defeat, her head bent in thought.
It was lunch time when they got back to the lodge. They went to a little restaurant nearby, where Rishi watched Smriti pick at her food. She was in a pensive mood and made little conversation. And all Rishi could think was, she has begun to sense how I feel. That explains the awkwardness.
Another thought slithered in on its heel: had she gone off him? Rishi realized that it would be the best thing to happen, but he didn’t like it.
‘Don’t you like it?’ he demanded, irked by the way she was pushing a ball of rice from one end of the plate to the other.
‘I am not hungry,’ Smriti said, pushing the plate away. ‘I need to rest.’
The room was warm even with the fan on. They lay side by side with their eyes shut. Rishi felt the heat close in on him. Smriti, it seemed, had fallen asleep. He gazed at the ceiling, thinking of what he was going to tell her that evening.
When he woke up, it was almost six. And Smriti was gone.
He sat up. His eyes scanned the room. Her bag was still there. Where could she have gone?
Rishi decided to look for her downstairs. Perhaps she would be at the front desk, chatting to the clerk. But it was the taciturn elderly man, and Rishi didn’t dare ask him if he knew where Smriti was. He didn’t look like he would volunteer any information even if he knew.
Rishi rubbed the stubble on his chin. He should shave and shower. But the thought of going back to that dingy room depressed him. He would go for a walk instead, he decided, leaving the key with the clerk.
When the white Maruti Omni slowed down on the lonely stretch of road, Rishi braced himself for what was to come. They would offer him a girl, he was sure. He was surprised to see two well-dressed men emerge from the white van. The older man in a white dhoti and a white half-sleeved shirt, and the young man in trousers and a checked shirt.
‘You are new here,’ the older of the men said. It was a statement rather than a query.
Rishi blinked in surprise. Who were they? And why were they appraising him in this manner?
‘Why?’ he asked in his most hostile voice, speaking in Tamil. ‘Why do you need to know? Who are you?’
The men looked at each other. Then the older man spoke again in his low raspy voice: ‘You are new here. You know nothing of our ways. I suggest you go back. We don’t want to cause any trouble. But neither will we allow you to stir up any trouble for us.’ He was polite, though his words were loaded with menace.
‘What trouble?’ Rishi stuttered. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
The young man stepped forw
ard. ‘Your slut, she was at the nursing home this evening. Poking her nose into things that don’t concern her. Go home. Go wherever you want. But get out of here.’
The older man raised his hand to halt the young man’s belligerence. The gold of his watch glinted in the late evening light and Rishi saw the flash of fire on his index finger. A diamond ring. Who were these men?
The older man patted Rishi on his shoulder. An affectionate, avuncular pat. ‘He understands. Don’t you? They will leave!’
Rishi watched the men get into the white van and speed back the way they had come. He felt his heart hammer in his chest. His mouth was dry. He had never been as afraid as he was now. What had Smriti done?
‘How could you be so stupid?’ he shouted when she opened the door.
‘What? For opening the door?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘No, you stupid fool. For poking your nose into things that don’t concern you.’ Rishi found himself using the words the young man had used. ‘What were you doing at the nursing home?’
‘Stop shouting at me, Rishi. You don’t know what’s happening there,’ Smriti said, walking away.
He followed her into the balcony. ‘Listen to me, Smriti, you don’t realize what you are doing.’
‘What do you think it’s all about?’ she asked quietly.
‘I don’t know. And I don’t care.’ Rishi slammed his fist against the door. It swung precariously.
‘I can’t be like you,’ Smriti said. ‘I can’t see and pretend that I haven’t seen.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Rishi asked, his voice rising in disbelief.
‘They have a mobile scan unit and they tell the pregnant woman the sex of the foetus. But there’s more going on. I am going to find out what’s happening there. What they are doing is not just illegal, it’s wrong. And somebody has to stop it!’ The righteous indignation on her face filled him with dread.
‘These are dangerous people. This isn’t America and you are not Erin Brockovich… You can make a fuss about what’s happening once you are out of here. But it isn’t safe to stay on!’ Rishi tugged at her elbow frantically.
‘What’s the point of making a report? It will be hushed up even before it is taken up. All I have now is hearsay. If I stay here a few days more, I will have the proof I need. A woman I met has promised to send me to someone who will talk to me, tell me everything.’ Smriti paused. Her eyes were thoughtful when she spoke next. ‘You don’t have to get involved. You can leave if you want to!’
‘So you left.’ It is Jak who breaks the silence between them.
Rishi leans forward, his palms clasped between his thighs, his head bent low in thought. In penitence? In remorse? Jak wonders.
‘I know you have already made up your mind that I am a heartless bastard. But I couldn’t even bother to pretend any more. That’s how removed I felt,’ Rishi says with no trace of emotion on his face.
Then he falls silent.
Until Jak speaks. ‘Go on Rishi, what happened then?’
It is hard for Jak to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘She gave you the opening you needed, didn’t she?’
Rishi shakes his head. ‘I didn’t leave. Not then! I couldn’t just leave like that. I knew she had got into something that was way beyond her!’
Jak sinks his head into his hands. He says aloud, ‘How could she not get involved? That’s how she is! She is tenacious.’ Then he stiffens and corrects himself: ‘Is? Was?’
He gets up abruptly and adds, ‘She was never good at giving up on things – or people. And she was a great one for causes…’
X
‘Causes demand martyrs. Is that what you are planning to be? A martyr? They will hurt you for sure.’ Rishi Soman spoke gently at first.
The night skies were clear. A moon hung low in the horizon. The sea breeze blew, strong and laden with salt. They could hear the boom of the waves. They sat in the room, the two of them, locked in a hostile silence.
‘So leave then. You don’t have to risk anything. You can walk away,’ Smriti tossed at him.
‘No, I can’t leave,’ Rishi snapped at her. ‘How can I? You don’t know what these men are like. Smriti, they are dangerous, and I really do mean that!’
Smriti continued to play with the fringe on her blouse. Tassels swung from the hem. She said, ‘You were planning to leave, weren’t you? It’s over. I know it. Everything about you wants to flee from me – no, don’t deny it. So why don’t you go?’
Rishi licked his lips. He could taste the sea on them. ‘I would, if I didn’t feel responsible. I brought you here. I have to take you away from here. And when I go back, I am moving to Mumbai.’
‘Would you have asked me to move with you?’ she asked softly.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s over. Or it will be as soon as I take you away from here.’
Smriti sat up straight. ‘You, or anybody else can’t force me to leave till I have got what I want.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Proof, Rishi. I need proof to file my complaint. I need proof to take to the newspapers. No one is going to be able to refute the truth then. Not even your dangerous men.’
He didn’t know what to say to her or how to persuade her. Neither could he leave her there, knowing that she was putting herself in danger. So he decided to stay.
They sat there in that room in the sleazy lodge, unable to bridge the silence. In the end, it was Rishi who spoke. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What does it mean to you?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But at least I’ll know why you are risking our lives.’
She told him of the mother and daughter on the bus. Of meeting the woman again in the nursing home. Of discovering the existence of a visiting scan doctor who sat in a room with a board outside that read ‘Sex of the child will not be revealed here!’ Of hints and signs for an extra fee – of an abortion arranged if the scan revealed a girl child.
‘But what do you think you can do? There is nothing more complex or vicious than small-town politics. And these people know that you’ve been asking too many questions.’ Rishi’s horrified whisper slashed through the air.
‘I thought I would go with her everywhere she went. At least they wouldn’t attack her if she was with me. I thought if I seemed interested enough in helping her, she would listen to what I had to suggest.
‘I had friends in the media. I would rope them in. We could make a noise. That would alert the authorities. I would make those calls in front of her, so that she knew I was serious about helping her.
‘By next evening, I hoped we would be on the bus that would take us to Madurai.’ Rishi recounts the sequence of events as if he has relived them in his head again and again.
He trailed Smriti all morning. At the nursing home, they were turned away. ‘You can’t deny us entry.’ Smriti tried to push past the watchman furiously.
‘Yes, we can.’ An elderly man had emerged from an inner room. ‘For one, you are not in need of any medical help. Secondly, this is a private nursing home and finally, I decide who is permitted to enter and who isn’t. Please leave.’
When he spotted Rishi, his brow furrowed further. In that same equable voice he had employed to halt Smriti in her tracks, he said, ‘So you decided to do things your way. You didn’t think what we said was important enough.’
‘Was that your dangerous man? That mild looking schoolteacher? ’ Smriti turned to Rishi furiously as they walked down the alley to the main road. ‘I was imagining a brawny mustachioed thug in a string vest and a lungi.’
Rishi wiped the sweat off his brow. ‘The problem is, you watch too many Tamil movies. You think villains come bearing the hallmarks of villainy. That mild schoolteacher may think nothing of slitting your throat or mine. Didn’t you hear the menace in his voice?’ Rishi felt an icy finger run down his spine. ‘Smriti, I am telling you he is dangerous, this place is dangerous!’
‘Okay, I admit there is a
certain hostility. But not enough to warrant our running away with our tails tucked in. Let’s sit here awhile,’ she said, turning into a little tea shop with benches strewn outside.
‘The video cam on my phone is on. I am going to record the number of pregnant women going in. The radiologist will be here till noon and then he’ll be gone. Look…’
An autorickshaw halted at the mouth of the alley. A pregnant woman and a man emerged from it. A few minutes later, two women, one pregnant, walked into the alley.
They sat there for about two hours, drinking countless cups of tea and recording the arrival of pregnant women. Twenty-two in the course of three hours.
Back in the room, Smriti played her footage for him. ‘Do you see my point now? Do you think the scan is to check the well-being of the baby in the womb? All they want to know is if it’s a boy or a girl. How else could he attend to so many patients in so brief a time?’
Rishi nodded. He didn’t know what to say. He seldom thought too hard about anything. All he had wanted in life was a break in the movies. To be a make-believe hero. So he went to the gym and took dancing lessons. He had begun kick boxing and attended acting classes. He just wanted to be convincing as a hero. Someone who could woo the pretty girl, fight the villains, safeguard justice and uphold righteousness. But that was in the make-believe world. He left it to others more eminent than him to fight the evils of the real world.
‘We should get out of here this evening,’ Rishi said again.
‘I have to meet a woman. Chinnathayi. Her daughter died at the nursing home after an abortion and she may still have some of the papers and reports with her. I have her address. I’ll go there after lunch. I’ll probably need a couple of hours. When I get back, we can leave,’ she said in reply.