Once Upon a Curfew

by Srishti Chaudhary

  ‘I am sorry for you, madame,’ Natty said to her quietly. When Indu didn’t reply, he added, ‘You should eat a banana. Bananas cheer you up.’

  She smiled at his kindness and then asked him if he knew a place where she could sit in silence for some time. He suggested that she could spend some time at the gurudwara down the road, and offered to drive her there.

  The hum of the bhajan was background noise for Indu, and she smiled back at the karsevaks who smiled at her. She took off her heels outside and covered her head with her dupatta. The marble floor felt cool at this time of the day, so she sat on the rugs at the back, leaning against the wall, and stared ahead at the canopy where they sat fanning the granth sahib.

  Her mind was a whirl and she thought of Amita to distract herself. She wondered if Amita and Govind would ever properly reconcile. Why was any marriage set up at all if it did not guarantee at least some possibility of happiness? Practically, it should be possible to make any marriage work as long as both were willing to adjust to their circumstances.

  But she couldn’t help but think that there had to be something more to a marriage, some love and understanding deep enough to have brought them together, to make them want to spend a life together, more than being told that this was the way of the world.

  Her thoughts went back again to Rajat and Rana. She did not know Rajat and who he was as a person. There was absolutely no guarantee their life would be a happy one; she wondered what the preconditions for happiness were. Surely, some common passions, the affinity that your body has some with people which it simply doesn’t with others, a genetic inclination that you can’t control. A particular kind of humour that one might specifically prefer, more so than that of other people.

  And so what about Rana, then? No fool would deny that they worked well together, that they clicked, but the fact remained that they did not have space for each other in their lives. Thinking of Rana tired her, so she shut her eyes, leaning her head against the wall.

  Some time went by before she woke up, but she couldn’t say how much. They were still singing a bhajan, and on the other side, there was a short queue of those who waited for their blessing. She got up and walked out the other way, taking the halwa they gave her in her palms.

  When she reached the flat, she let Rana take the keys and rode home with Natty, and by the time they reached home, resolved not to let herself think of things that would remain just flights of fancy. She promised herself she wouldn’t be carried away by despair and let herself feel wretched. She told Amita this too, finally finding courage to talk about what was on her mind. Her sister said she was proud of her. When she asked her why, Amita shook her head at her and smiled. ‘You found it in yourself to listen to your heart and acknowledge your feelings. I was never able to do that.’

  As the days stretched longer and May came upon them, a mania gripped the country—a mania that said that the tide of politics had turned the other way, that what had been around for years was now slated for a downfall. Young men roamed the roads shrieking slogans like, ‘Indira hatao, garibi hatao, JP ji ko aagey laao’. Her father remained busy with the party, often away with Shashi uncle and Govind bhai, sometimes sucking in even her mother into the vortex, as Amita spent more time at home and at the library with Indu. The opinion became increasingly divided as there was counter-sloganeering—‘Hawa nahi yeh aandhi hai, desh ki Indira Gandhi hai.’

  Indu could see that it took its toll on her father. He ate little, grunted in response to questions, and refused to read the newspapers. Indu knew she must talk to him about it, but he wasn’t exactly at his friendly best.

  ‘But what is going on? Why this hue and cry suddenly?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘It’s because of a case that was filed some time ago, for not following some silly rule or something, and it’s starting to get serious.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Her candidature might be revoked; she might have to step down.’

  ‘What?’ Indu asked. ‘But then what will happen?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, madame,’ Natty replied, yawning, having just walked in. ‘This one on top or that one, life will remain exactly the same for us. I will still be driving this Ambassador while you make me sing Rajesh Khanna songs.’

  ‘You mean you will still be driving this Ambassador while you make me listen to you sing Rajesh Khanna songs?’

  * * *

  The upcoming court case became a sore topic at the library soon as opinion became increasingly polarized there as well. Runjhun led what Indu called a crusade against Indira Gandhi, constantly counting the injustices that her government had meted out to the citizens of India, insisting that if the Prime Minister wasn’t asked to step down, it would spell doom for the country.

  It became even more contentious when Rana told her that Fawad had a run-in with some Congress workers and got hurt. He had apparently asked them some offensive questions at a press conference, and didn’t back off when some party people threatened to roughen him up.

  ‘But what happened?’ she asked him.

  ‘They apparently targeted him and some of the people with him. I don’t know much yet, he is resting at home. I’ll ask him more when I go back.’

  ‘I want to see him too,’ Indu told him. ‘If you want, we can go to your house in the evening with Natty.’

  She was glad to see that Fawad was smiling as usual when he saw her, but she could tell he had been badly injured. His forehead bore an ugly bump and so did his chin, with a gash along his cheek. He wore a cast on his shoulder, leaning against the back of the bed. His hair was a mess, but he smiled widely when he saw Rana, Indu and Runjhun. Indu told Rana she would help him cook dinner. Fawad joked that he should get hurt more often so they could get the girls to cook for them.

  ‘The good life, eh?’ he said, winking to Rana before Runjhun admonished him.

  ‘Where are the vegetables?’ Indu asked Rana, looking for the refrigerator.

  ‘We don’t have a fridge,’ Rana said, handing her the bag on the table. ‘We buy fresh vegetables every morning.’

  She began chopping onions, hearing the faint murmurs between Runjhun and Fawad, and put the rice to boil as Rana cooked vegetables in the pan.

  When they sat down to eat, Fawad told them he had gone to a press conference on the Prime Minister’s electoral malpractice case.

  ‘Was she there?’ Indu asked.

  Fawad snorted. ‘Of course not. Her lawyers were there.’

  From the corner of her eyes, Indu saw Rana give her quick glance.

  ‘Well, what did you ask that ticked them off so much?’

  ‘Same old,’ he said grinning, which made him wince, but he continued anyway. ‘What was the government’s explanation for the considerable downward plunge of the growth rate. If the injustices committed during last year’s railway strikes were going to be answered for. Why they were unable to regulate the rising prices of essential commodities and rate of unemployment. Oh, and also if the Prime Minister already had an alternative profession in mind once her Lok Sabha seat was revoked.’

  ‘God, Fawad,’ Rana said, shaking his head, ‘do you not fear for your life even a little? What will happen to your future wife and three kids—two boys and one girl?’

  Fawad began laughing and, though Indu found nothing amusing about it, she refrained from commenting.

  He went on, telling them how a bunch of Congress workers had cornered him on the street afterwards, telling him to mind his tongue. ‘When I refused, well, things got a little heated. I kind of challenged them, said that they couldn’t do anything because they’d be going out of power soon, hurled a few swear words, and here we are.’

  ‘Well, have you learnt your lesson, then?’ Indu asked.

  ‘And which lesson would that be?’ Runjhun asked hotly.

  ‘To keep his mouth shut when needed.’

  ‘I’d rather teach that lesson than learn it, to be honest,’ he said.

  Nobody said anyth
ing, but she could feel the weight of the blame being directed towards her, at least from Runjhun. Indu wasn’t responsible for all the actions of this party, which had hundreds of thousands of workers under its umbrella, just like the Prime Minister wasn’t responsible for all the injustices that took place in the country. She felt outraged on Fawad’s behalf as well, but could do little about it.

  She had seen the irritation on Rana’s face every time she vocalized her support for Indira Gandhi, and so she made it a point to tell him that she felt sorry for Fawad and that what had happened was wrong.

  * * *

  A few days later, when Rana noticed Esha studying on the floor, he told her to go and sit with everyone else. Esha refused and started crying when Rana insisted, which left him completely confused.

  ‘She feels embarrassed about sitting with everyone at the table,’ Indu said to him softly.

  ‘So you’re going to just let her do her work on the floor?’ he asked her, his face indignant.

  ‘It’s not about the floor, it’s about where she is comfortable. It will be too much for her to sit at the table.’

  ‘It will be too much if we make it seem too much. If we treat it normally, as it should be, then everyone will get used to it.’

  She tried to tell him to be patient, but he didn’t relent. ‘A girl told me once that the first dissent to oppression always arises from a place of privilege. Well, let this be the place of privilege that gives birth to dissent, then.’

  And so Indu explained to Esha that it would be better for her posture and concentration to study at the table. Scared at first, she agreed after some coaxing. Indu set her seat at the corner of the long table, but everybody stared at her all the same when she sat down.

  Two women at the table, who had recently signed up, asked Indu pointedly if anybody could be a part of this library. Indu forced a smile and told them it was free and open to all women. Yet, that wasn’t what was assumed, for anybody who could afford to spend their time in the library, or could afford to dedicate herself to study, was already coming from a place where money wasn’t the biggest problem.

  Esha’s hunched figure, poring over the books in her chair, with her darkened, rough feet folded under her, struggling to write out letters that she had only recently learnt, did not invite their sympathy. They had come to treat the place as, Indu realized with dismay, an elite club of sorts to discuss intellectual ideas. When Esha sat on the chair, she would make herself look as little as possible, and rarely looked up. Sangeeta too did not know how to deal with the situation, but gradually, they all got used to it. One day, Mrs Leela said to Rana before leaving, ‘It’s good you treat your servants with such respect, even at the cost of your own respect.’

  Rana made a brutally unkind face at her, but she had turned her back on him by then and had left. ‘Can you believe her?’ he had asked Indu, and she wanted to tell him that she could, because everyone typically had the same reaction, but didn’t say anything.

  The other problem was that Esha didn’t seem to be making much progress, which greatly worried Indu, but didn’t seem to bother Rana that much. ‘What, you thought she’d study for two months and emerge a genius? She needs training, practice, focus—things she hasn’t had all her life.’

  ‘I know,’ she told Rana, ‘but girls always face a deadline. If she doesn’t perform soon enough or well enough, her mother will go back on her decision and assume she doesn’t need education, that she’d be better cleaning a house or married.’ Rana told her to take it easy and wait, that it would all work out and pay off. Already, her mother was giving Indu reports of trouble between Sunita and Esha at home, and Indu made up her mind to talk to Sunita about it.

  Outside, a wave of agitation rippled through the city as the date of the verdict of Indira Gandhi’s case drew nearer. Every day, they read reports of how crowds flocked to greet her, ‘infants suckling at their mother’s breasts, the elderly stumbling through rocky paths, and men finishing their work early’ to stand in the sun that shone more harshly every day. But the streets told a different story, where popular opinion seemed to be turning against the government. Wild stories began cropping up of how Indira Gandhi had black magicians advising her, that she had learnt some occult art that enabled her to be at multiple places at the same time, that she had signed pacts with the United States of America, selling a part of India to them so they could use it against the Soviets, in exchange for winning the case.

  Her father spoke little, not allowed to discuss anything besides what was necessary, but dropped ominous hints that things were going to change soon, and Indu wondered what that meant. But she noticed he no longer spoke of Shashi uncle with the same camaraderie, that there were now differences in the management, and that they all waited for the judgment. Everything depended on June 12.

  When it arrived, nothing seemed real. Her father had sent word that they should not expect him home anytime soon, and they had just been able to catch a glimpse of him on the television, a part of the Prime Minister’s motorcade. The Prime Minister had lost the case and would be stripped of her membership to the general assembly, and would subsequently have to step down. Indu could not accept that a woman she had been named after and looked up to all her life had been publicly declared a defaulter. It seemed as if the chants against her grew louder each day.

  It was as if winds of change blew in Indu’s life as well. Indu noticed Runjhun’s absence after a few days, especially when she would have had the chance to gloat about the results of the court case against Indira Gandhi. Despite herself, Indu asked Rana about it.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, she moved away.’

  ‘What?!’ Indu sputtered, her heart bubbling with hope, although she tried not to show it. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, she kind of got this opportunity in Bombay, at the Blitz—’

  ‘What’s the Blitz?’

  ‘It’s a kind of, well, magazine, and they were opening up a film offshoot of it, Cine Blitz or something.’

  ‘What? She’ll get to meet Rajesh Khanna?’ Indu asked, a streak of jealousy rising in her again.

  ‘Sooner or later, I’d say,’ he replied.

  ‘And you think you won’t go there?’

  ‘Not for some time, no.’

  ‘But sooner or later?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘so we decided it best to end it. But there was also but there was also another problem.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘You. You’re in the way.’

  Indu’s heart skipped a beat, but she finally managed to sputter, ‘Me? I’m in the way? You’re in the way! Ever since I’ve met you, you’ve always been in my way!’

  He didn’t speak for some time, just shook his head, sighing as if he shouldered all the problems in the world. Indu asked him after a while, ‘Did you love her?’

  He paused before answering, ‘I think I could have. If it weren’t for certain things, mainly you, I could have loved her. But every time I saw you acting stupid whenever she was with me, it felt like I wasn’t being true to her, because I could see that you do have feelings for me, and it reminded me that I do as well.’

  ‘I wasn’t acting stupid,’ Indu said lamely, and Rana laughed.

  ‘When will it be, then? Your wedding?’ he asked her.

  She looked at him silently before answering, ‘I don’t know. Sometime next year, I suppose.’

  ‘Am I invited?’

  She saw that he was grinning. ‘I’ll have to think about it. You’ll anyway be in Bombay, living your fancy life . . .’

  He laughed, looking towards the sky. ‘I can’t wait. I want to live in one of those high-rises or at least by the sea. One day, eh?’

  She stared at him for a while longer. ‘I envy you a bit, you know.’

  ‘I mean, obviously. But why exactly are you saying that?’

  ‘Because you can live freely.’

  ‘So can you.’

  Indu shook her head, and he glared at her,
saying, ‘Yes, you can. You have everything you could possibly need in life, and you’re smart.’

  ‘Yet, my circumstances don’t permit it as yours do,’ she said.

  ‘I always thought of you as someone who was more than what her circumstances might make her.’

  There was that warmth in his eyes that Indu had grown accustomed to, and which Indu believed, despite everything, was reserved just for her. It made her sad that she couldn’t have it.

  ‘I agreed to marry Rajat quite willingly, without any qualms, even looked forward to it. It made sense to me; I mean, I had to be married anyway, and he is someone I had met a few times, heard that he was doing well. But then . . . I met you.’

  She couldn’t look at him for a while and felt his stare upon her. When she finally saw his face, his expression was inscrutable. They stood like that for a while. He was about to say something when Kittu interrupted, asking Indu if she looked good in pink, that her mother had suggested it for her engagement.

  13

  Indu lay on her bed watching the fan rotate on the ceiling. Two of her kurtas hung on hooks by the side of her cupboard, the curtains were drawn across the window, and a bunch of fresh flowers sat in a vase next to her dresser. The card on the flowers read ‘Love, Rajat’, and she knew he had asked his parents to send them to her in his stead, probably to fill the gap that had appeared as their conversation had waned.

  The house had been absolutely still for some minutes, since she had heard her mother’s footsteps going to the kitchen. She lay in the silence, her sister sleeping next to her. Before Amita went off to sleep, Indu had told her, ‘I am proud of you,’ in a rush of affection and honest love. She wished that her sister had never married Govind bhai and instead found someone she genuinely cared for.

  Amita was talking about moving back in with Govind. Indu had known it would happen. There was no way out except to try and make it work. Just a few days ago, Amita had completely broken down in front of her, and Indu had attributed it to her exam results, which would come out any day now. But it was so much more than just the results. A bad relationship, her sister had said, is something that you always carry with yourself. ‘You go to bed thinking about it, you wake up with it—it’s always on your mind.’