by Meira Chand
‘“Oven”?’ Mrs Hathiramani queried. ‘The only word for “oven” is “oven”. I am an ignorant woman, only one word I know for each thing. I do not confuse myself with many words for one thing. Such confusions are made only by educated people. They make themselves sick and angry from such confusions. An oven is an oven,’ Mrs Hathiramani said.
‘I know it is an oven,’ Mr Hathiramani roared, slamming down his diary and rising threateningly from the bed.
‘So, why are you needing other words, then?’ Mrs Hathiramani demanded. ‘You are only heating up your brains unnecessarily. Leave off this useless work. Now is the time for food.’ She led the way to the table.
The smell of the savoury fish rose up like comfort to Mr Hathiramani. Mrs Hathiramani was a vegetarian, but sometimes cooked the fish her husband liked occasionally to eat besides their normal diet. Over the years she too had grown to enjoy a piece of fish, and allowed herself this non-vegetarian indulgence from time to time. ‘Fish is not meat,’ she always said in justification. ‘Fish is vegetarian.’
Mr Hathiramani sat down and found he was starving. ‘“Furnace”. “Brazier”.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘“Baking pot”.’
‘You are only driving yourself mad,’ muttered his wife, digging her fingers into her portion of the fish. ‘One day your brains will burst.’
The lift began to clank in the shaft and soon appeared, descending slowly before the Hathiramanis’ open front door. From inside Rani Murjani and Sham Pumnani looked defiantly up Mr Hathiramani’s hallway. He glanced at them coldly and then at his watch.
‘One twenty-four.’ He got up from the table, sucking clean his fishy fingers, and went to his diary. ‘Rani Murjani. Sham Pumnani,’ he listed under Departures. ‘Five sightings in lift. Two detections on terrace in one week. Movements and motives suspicious,’ he wrote under Comments, and returned to his fish.
Kiln. Incinerator, Mr Hathiramani wondered silently. ‘They are meeting on the terrace,’ he said aloud to his wife. ‘In one week twice already, according to Gopal.’
‘He is after her money,’ Mrs Hathiramani said, removing a fish bone from her mouth.
‘Why should he interest her?’ asked Mr Hathiramani.
‘His talk is clever. His trousers are tight. He has lived in Foreign. Nowadays, modern girls look only for such things.’ Mrs Hathiramani spat out another fishbone.
‘“Oven”,’ declared Mr Hathiramani at last, with a defeated sigh.
9
‘Lies. All lies,’ shrieked Mrs Samtani.
‘But I do not know,’ sobbed Lakshmi. ‘They told me it was all settled.’ She cowered against the kitchen wall. Mrs Samtani leaned forward, her face dark.
‘Your family has tricked us,’ she hissed. ‘They have given less dowry than promised.’
‘They are not rich. My father is sick. You knew these things before the wedding.’ Lakshmi looked up angrily. ‘Why now are you asking for more?’ She had returned from a brief honeymoon in Bangalore well over a month before.
‘How dare you speak to me like this?’ screamed Mrs Samtani. ‘We have been sent a devil.’
‘You saw me, you chose me for Hari. You are twisting things round. You are a devil,’ Lakshmi shouted with sudden spirit.
Mrs Samtani tottered, vibrating with rage. ‘I will kill you,’ Her knot of hair was crooked and hung unravelling from the side of her head. Sweat stood in beads on her brow.
‘You can do nothing to me,’ Lakshmi replied. ‘You do not want Hari to like me. You are jealous,’ she ended in sudden inspiration. Mrs Samtani lunged forward, her nails, vermilion and chipped, closing with force upon Lakshmi.
‘With the dowry money we were to extend our business. From the beginning you planned to trick us.’ Mrs Samtani shook Lakshmi by the shoulders.
Lakshmi was pinned against the wall and could not raise her arms; only her legs were free. She kicked out, knocking Mrs Samtani backwards. She looked up to see her mother-in-law lunging towards her again, an iron ladle in her hand. She felt the pain of the blow upon her skull, and then nothing more.
‘Get up.’ The voice seemed far away. Lakshmi opened her eyes. There was a sour taste on her tongue. Mrs Samtani stood over her, hands upon her hips. ‘Wipe up your mess.’ She pointed to the vomit on the floor.
Lakshmi’s head spun, she felt she might vomit again. Her back and shoulders hurt as if Mrs Samtani had brought the ladle down upon her again and again. It lay now in a corner, beneath the sink, as if tossed away in fury.
‘Get up,’ repeated Mrs Samtani. ‘So many offers were made for our Hari; what luck had us choose you? In previous births you must have done good deeds, to come into this house.’ Lakshmi shrank back into a corner.
‘Several times in these past weeks you have vomited like this. Are you with child?’ Mrs Samtani probed coldly, standing back. Lakshmi looked at her steadily.
‘And what if I am?’ she replied, although she was not yet sure.
‘Don’t think a child will make your position here safe. Nothing will keep you in this house, unless your family settle in full.’ Mrs Samtani pushed her face close to Lakshmi, her eyes bloodshot.
‘Go to your brother tomorrow. Tell him we are still waiting for the rest of what was promised,’ Mrs Samtani ordered. Lakshmi turned away.
The few weeks of her married life already stretched endlessly behind her. The wedding had not been luxurious. Mrs Samtani had expressed immediate disapproval that the reception was held neither in a club nor a hotel, but in the yard before the temple where the wedding had taken place, under a few limp strands of bunting. But there had been a band with red and white uniforms braided with gold, and brass instruments that gleamed in the sun. The caterers had squatted in a corner of the yard, frying savouries in great cauldrons of oil. Everything had been fresh, even if the smell of cooking had spread amongst the guests, and the paper plates sagged at the first touch of grease and gravy. There had not been enough cold drinks to go round, and by the time supplies arrived most of the guests had departed. Mrs Samtani had made a terrible scene about the dearth of drinks, and the lack of more than two types of sweetmeats or three kinds of curry. She had sobbed uncontrollably inside the temple, amidst the debris of the wedding. Rekha had spent much time with her there, and eventually persuaded her to rejoin the guests outside. Sham had taken no notice of this outburst. Lakshmi had had as good a wedding as any of her sisters. He doubted the Samtanis themselves could afford a reception in the most meagre hotel, and he knew they belonged to no club. He felt satisfied he had done his best, as Lakshmi and Hari left for a honeymoon in Bangalore.
*
All day Lakshmi was listless. Her head ached and the bruises darkened. At night Hari was insistent she tell him what was wrong. In the beginning he was full of sympathy. He wiped her tears with the sheet.
‘Maybe you’re not trying hard enough to please her?’ He chucked her chin in a playful way. Their room was illuminated in spasmodic bursts of green and red from the neon sign, beyond the window, of a new vegetarian restaurant. In one light Hari’s features appeared sickly, in another flushed and full; two people who continuously slid in and out of the same face. And in either light it struck her suddenly that his soft loose lips, not his damaged eye, were the dominant part of his face. The smile she had thought good-natured was no more than weak defence; behind it lay inertia and unconcern. She turned her back to him suddenly in shock at this discovery.
He shook her shoulder, his fingers hard. ‘What is this? Sulking now?’ There was a new tone in his voice. She turned to protest, but the tears welled up, betraying her.
‘Everything I do is wrong for her. Nothing is right.’
‘Try harder then,’ he repeated.
‘What more can I do? If only you would speak on my behalf, she might be different,’ Lakshmi pleaded.
He studied her silently for a moment, the green light held his face. ‘If you please her, you will please me. If you cannot make her happy, how can I speak for you
? The fault must be yours. They have not taught you properly in your father’s house.’ She drew back in fear. In his mouth she heard his mother’s words, and knew then that they had talked to him against her.
‘All day I work like a servant and still nothing pleases her.’ Lakshmi began to sob. ‘I’m frightened. Today she could not control herself and beat me. Look.’ She turned to reveal the bruising on her shoulders.
‘If you make her so angry, then what can I do?’ Hari said sulkily, after some hesitation.
‘You do not care that she beats me?’ Lakshmi asked, Hari shrugged.
‘You will say nothing if she does it again?’ she questioned. Hari turned away.
‘You are too proud,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘What is your family that here you refuse to do any work, and want only to be treated like a Maharani? They have not even yet settled in full for you.’
‘Oh,’ she gasped.
‘Yes,’ he continued. ‘You should be ashamed to speak against my mother. The fault is yours.’
‘I would do everything happily, if she showed me love,’ Lakshmi sobbed.
‘More tears.’ Hari lay back exasperated. ‘They say all trouble in a house begins with the women. Now I see how true that is.’
Upon them the light flowed red, then green, in desolate washes of colour. She remembered again that first night with him; the half-known facts, the anticipation, the strange throbbing of her heart. A double bed had replaced the single one in Hari’s bedroom, and space had been made for her battered metal trunk of belongings. For their first night a trellised canopy of jasmine was strung from poles above the bed. The thick, cloying scent of the flowers had infused each strange, dark, sleepless hour. In the morning Mrs Samtani had appeared early in their room, and blatantly inspected the sheets. Even now, the scent of jasmine conjured up to her that painful crossing, from the old life to the new. She had not liked what Hari did to her. The whole thing had been so shameful, the reality a shock. None of the women before the wedding, behind coyness and suggestive giggles, had told her it would be like it was. The light in their eyes had implied a furtive, yielding, inarticulate pleasure. Instead she was repelled, left bruised and oozing and ripped open. The violence alone had terrified her. Above her Hari became an unknown creature, frenzied and sweating and callous. And yet afterwards, excessively kind and tender. She had been willing to endure his needs passively, for the tenderness afterwards received. She concluded that this was the reward all women settled for, and the child they received in the end.
‘I am sure my brother has paid,’ she spoke quickly now to Hari, suddenly confused. Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, perhaps Sham really had still to pay more. ‘If there is anything left he will pay. My family are people of their word.’
‘Since when was your thief-brother a man of his word? How quiet you kept that, until after we were married. Imagine my parents’ shock when they discovered. They do not know how to face people. How do you expect my mother to feel? How do you think I feel, with a thief as a brother-in-law?’
She had not thought about these things, did not guess that while she enjoyed a brief happiness, such undercurrents were gathering force. Hari’s words seemed by their weight to tear a great hole deep within her. The tears dried in her eyes. If he withdrew that one arc of tenderness, in which each night she rested, replenished however imperfectly, she did not know what she would do.
‘Your family have deceived us,’ Hari continued. ‘By not settling, your brother is only proving you are all thieves.’ Lakshmi clapped a hand over her mouth in horror, but Hari sat up and pulled it away, taking her chin between his fingers, turning her face towards him with force.
‘You have brought nothing with you from your father’s house. You have not even proper clothes or jewellery to wear. People are asking in what village we found you. Your family has deceived us. How do you think we feel?’
‘They will settle. You will see, soon they will settle in full for me. My brother needs time, that’s all. And he is not really a thief,’ she whispered and touched Hari’s arm in distress.
‘Don’t complain any more to me. The fault is with you, and your family,’ he said.
She lay mute beside him. Later he turned and took her roughly, and when he had finished with her, turned his back again.
Through the night the waves of neon colour washed over her. She dreamed she had drowned and lay at the bottom of the sea, and strange ferns of red and green waved on the rocks about her, moved by the current as plants high above, under the sun, were moved by the swell of the wind. The feeling of aloneness consumed her. There was nowhere now to run to. A new and unpredictable terror filled her with the morning light.
*
‘But only one month ago you returned from your honeymoon. There, in Bangalore, how did he behave with you?’ Rekha asked. Sun speared the window, spilling a sharp angle of light into the room. Outside pigeons moaned and stalked about upon a drainpipe.
‘He was kind to me,’ Lakshmi whispered. ‘There, we were alone.’ She sat on the floor beside her mother, before a tray of fresh coriander, pulling leaves off the limp stems. The perfume bruised her fingers with its sweet smell.
‘And did he prove himself a man?’ Chachi demanded before Rekha could stop her. She sat cross-legged on a string bed above them. Lakshmi blushed and looked down at her hands. Chachi repeated her question.
‘Why must you ask her such things?’ Rekha demanded, angry at the old woman’s insistence. Lakshmi blushed deeper, tearing the soft leaves free with quick movements.
‘Yes. He proved himself,’ she answered, without looking up.
‘Then let us hope you are already with child,’ Chachi decided through tight lips. ‘Then they can do nothing to you. Any indication yet? Still you are regular?’
‘Leave her alone.’ Rekha raised her voice. Behind the screen Kishin groaned. Rekha quickly went to him. She returned to squat down with a knife and board to chop the coriander for a chutney.
‘She has been married as yet not even two months,’ she rebuked Chachi and then turned to Lakshmi. ‘But you like him, daughter, don’t you? You have not changed your opinion of him?’
‘Of course I like him,’ Lakshmi answered, tears filling her eyes. ‘When we were alone together, in Bangalore on our honeymoon, he was very nice to me. But here, in Bombay, he is different. Before his parents, he cannot speak. Whatever his mother says he will do. That is not wrong, a son should listen to his mother. But when she abuses me then I wish he would, just once, speak to her for me.’ She began to sob. Rekha massaged Lakshmi’s back to calm her own growing distress.
‘From the beginning I was against the whole thing, on account of the mother-in-law. When I first saw her I told you she was a devil. Now, see, my words are coming true.’ Chachi chewed her lips. ‘In such a situation it is wrong to arrange too fast.’
‘You yourself agreed we should finish things quickly, so as not to lose the chance for Lakshmi,’ Rekha admonished. Chachi shrugged.
‘It was your wish. Once it is decided, what purpose is served in waiting? But you will remember, only I could see the devil in the woman.’ Her shrunken brown nut of a face was filled with grim satisfaction.
‘But now it is done,’ Rekha replied. ‘Now we must advise Lakshmi well.’
‘She must get herself quickly with child. A son,’ Chachi announced.
‘That is in God’s hands. What should she do now?’ Rekha responded.
‘Please the devil,’ Chachi shrugged. ‘What other choice is there?’
‘But I have tried.’ Lakshmi sobbed harder. ‘Nothing I do seems to please her. She calls me stupid, and shouts, and then …’
‘Then what?’ demanded Rekha. Lakshmi controlled her sobs and shook her head. ‘You must tell us,’ insisted Rekha.
‘Sometimes then … I fear she will beat me.’ Lakshmi hesitated, deciding not to tell the entire truth and burden them with additional worry.
Rekha gave a hiss of fear. Chachi repositi
oned herself upon the string bed with an angry grunt.
‘This is too much,’ gasped Rekha.
‘Have we not suffered as much in our time?’ Chachi asked. ‘That is the lot of a daughter-in-law.’
‘I was never beaten. And in these modern times, and in such a family?’ Rekha said.
‘Time changes nothing, and what family?’ Chachi snorted, settling her scarf about her shoulders, pulling it down to cover the slack heap of sagging breast. ‘So much big talk there was to get our Lakshmi, and in the end what do they own? Only upper half of one small house in Mahim, shared downstairs with Samtani’s elder brother, and belonging to neither for they are only sitting tenants. And car also belonging to the brother, and so old it is hardly ever moving, and needing always one new part or another. They have cheated us. Only after the wedding have we learned these things. You were in such a hurry.’
‘Still, I believe the match was good,’ Rekha insisted. ‘Hari is a nice boy. His business is good. And a sitting tenant is like owning the house; forever it will be theirs.’ She spoke cheerfully, for she did not want Lakshmi to guess her own disappointment at the revelations Chachi spoke of. She had not slept well for weeks from worry about Lakshmi, whose face was pinched and yellow now. Rekha picked up the knife and began chopping again. The cut leaves oozed and sent up a powerful scent. Lakshmi continued adding leaves to the pile, she hung her head low over her work.
‘Nothing will please her until what was promised is paid in full,’ Lakshmi whispered. Neither Rekha nor Chachi replied. They sat in silence under this new weight.
‘But Sham has paid,’ Rekha answered at last. ‘The matter is finished.’
Lakshmi shook her head. ‘They say now the amount he paid was only a first instalment. They are still waiting for the rest.’ Lakshmi drew a sharp breath, her eyes glassy with tears again.
‘That is a lie,’ Rekha gasped. ‘They accepted our offer. Sham was clear he could pay no more. It was understood.’
‘Why should we pay more when they have cheated us, spoken lies to us, made out they were such big people?’ Chachi shouted. ‘They wanted our Lakshmi, she is a beautiful girl. For such a defective boy they were lucky to get such a girl.’