Rakesh looked down at me before shrugging my hands off him: ‘You are promised to Amitabh, now, Banno... It is not in my hands…you belong to another.’
As a young girl, full of the idea of true love and stories I had seen and performed in on stage, I had never imagined I’d have had such a loveless marriage formalized in a quick, no-frills, government office registration – one that felt like a protest; an agreement entered into sans the emotion of romantic promises. Minus the ties of age-old tradition. The buoyant cheering of loved ones. I had not even worn the customary nine-yard sari. Amitabh had no family. Or friends, in particular.
‘Next witness,’ the wiry registrar had cried in a peculiar nasal voice, cleaning his right ear with a matchstick, pushing a thick, hardbound ledger towards us.
The sarkari daftar where we tied the knot and were officially pronounced man and wife was dimly lit and dirty. Oversized white fans, their elongated blades laden with dust and grime, emitted a creaking noise. The stairway leading up was wet with spat-out paan juice.
We signed our names in silence.
I bowed my head as Amitabh placed a slim gold mangalsutra around my neck. His breath falling over my back. It was a gift from my mother. There were no fragrant garlands exchanged. No sweets fried in desi ghee forcibly stuffed inside our mouths. No photographs of that day. I touched his feet shortly afterwards, feeling nothing.
No happy wedding memories, to look back on…Because that’s what Amitabh believed in. Convincing my parents that a no-fuss, low-cost, civil ceremony was appropriate for the occasion. That it would suffice. That it was right.
On our way back, Dada Saheb praised him for his principles. ‘Sensible,’ was the word he used, I think.
In the first few months of our marriage I took refuge in a sullen silence. I hadn’t uttered a single word to Amitabh for a fortnight after my father announced our impending marriage before the whole troupe. I searched only for Rakesh in my mind, desperate to blame everyone else for the way things had panned out for us. Knowing in my heart that Rakesh had hurt me just as deeply by giving up on me without a fight. I shuddered every time I recalled how he had remained withdrawn on purpose.
Had he wanted to hurt me back or was he as trapped a victim of circumstance as I was? Torn equally between duty and desire? The night we had made love, slowly faded into a distant, disturbing memory, that only returned in painful, slow waves to haunt my mind. To keep me lying awake, night after night.
After marriage, my days were all the same. Colourless. There had been nothing special or different about June 10, 2002, either.
The day Amitabh died.
In the morning, I had walked to the sabzi mandi, at a stone’s throw from the house, taking longer than usual to return, holding a heavy bag of vegetables in each hand. I usually did the monthly groceries by the first of every new month. But that particular month I had been a little strapped for cash. I stood in the kitchen preparing the same breakfast we ate daily, before the part-timer arrived. I usually ate my breakfast alone in the dining room whereas Amitabh was sent his on a steel tray to his room. The nurse helped him with his meal. Drinking my second cup of tea, I finished the accounts – a ledger of sorts that I maintained. Muttering the numbers to myself, tilting my neck, as lines of sweat trickled down the side of my ears. I barely noticed when Amitabh told me he was going out. He had a bag with him, which he wanted me to keep for him, but I was halfway through my accounts and didn’t pay him much attention.
It was a sweltering June day. I glanced outside at the garden for a few seconds, taking a deep breath. The air felt heavy with showers, and yet there was not a drop of rain. Just before noon, I decided to indulge in a long, leisurely bath, shuddering as the cool water stored in an aluminium balti, zigzagged sluggishly over my stomach. My fingers lingered over the crooked line of uneven stitches from my C-section. My heart beating faster, as it still did, at the thought of my dead child.
I draped a rough cotton towel around my shoulders, leaving my wet hair loose, letting it dry, instead of instantly plaiting it up, and made my way into a secluded part of our garden, slowly peeling an orange, the afternoon sun caressing my lower back.
As I dried my undergarments on the clothesline, I heard the sound of the landline ringing persistently. It was my mother, in all probability. She always rang at the same time. So, I didn’t rush in to receive her call. The last thing I needed was another showdown or sermon.
Talking to my mother always had a deep negative effect on me; she had always plotted behind my back; wanting to make me that which I wasn’t. She claimed to have my interests at heart, since I was a child, but her views had always clashed with mine. Stubborn and perennially focused on social niceties, she had never really allowed me a separate point of view. Always judging me harshly…my mistakes, my marriage, Maya…The pompous way she loved declaring that she was born with a black tongue; making it sound like a power more than an ill-omen. How was it a good thing to be able to predict failure? Sadness? Betrayal? Barrenness?
And yet, she had kept her black tongue in check when my father had married me off to Amitabh.
The phone rang again as I remembered a previous visit my mother had made, soon after my daughter died.
‘I have a question?’ My mother had said.
‘Let me fix you lunch first. It’s past two.’
‘How do you do this, Sarla?’
‘Do what? Fix lunch for my mother? It’s simple…see here, here I am getting up and walking towards the kitchen, where Meena-tai is adding the finishing touches to the dal. She’s very good, actually, Meena-tai.’
‘I wasn’t talking about your servant, Sarla. I’m talking about that other girl, in that room upstairs, the one next to the terrace? I’ve seen her; that chit of a girl who has been walking around your home, for the past few months, since Amitabh was away in Paris…the way you refuse to let her go…telling everyone she has no home of her own…I always find her preening in front of a mirror, mumbling to herself, as if she were possessed. Is she your surrogate daughter now? A fix for your lack of company? I mean, have you even asked Amitabh if he is okay with her staying? Actually, it’s this thing you do, this pattern you have cultivated over time, Sarla. Even with that girl, have you ever thought she might be a substitute for the daughter you lost? A sakha. Someone to protect, and lean on?’
‘Oh, so this is about her, then? The real reason you’ve came to visit. I was thinking what brought you to Pune, to us, again? What brought you back ever since you left after Maya’s death?’
‘I came here to warn you, Sarla, about how you are making a huge mistake. There’s a difference between an old servant woman and a young, nubile girl on the threshold of womanhood. You shouldn’t trust her blindly. Why can’t she rent a place of her own and move out? I mean…God knows with what intention she came to meet Amitabh, in the first place? Wake up. Before it’s too late. Trust me, I am your mother. I have seen the world.’
‘What are you so worried about?’
‘I don’t want to say it. My father and yours, used to often say I have a black tongue. It’s just that I have your best interests at heart…’
‘You said the same thing to me after you found Rakesh and me together one night, when I broke down in your arms, confessing to you about how much I loved him, even swearing on Ganpati Bappa. You assured me that you would try your best to convince Dada Saheb that he was my choice. Instead, in front of him, you said I could never be happy with a man like RK, a non-Maharashtrian, that one could never trust Punjabis; that he lacked Amitabh’s loyalty, and talent…I can never forgive you that betrayal.’
Then I had snapped at her: ‘Now why don’t you just come to the point? It used to be your strong point once.’
‘Fine…I will say it to your face: I am sure this young thing will eventually sleep with your husband, seduce Amitabh and wreck your marriage. Amitabh is a man, Sarla, and he’s bound to get attracted towards her physically, being years younger and nubile…and, by not sensin
g this danger beforehand, by continuing to be so naive and not focusing on filling the lacuna in your lives, after little Maya, you are making a colossal error in judgment...’
‘Meena-tai, please can you make another hot roti for my mother? The dal is delicious. Another helping?’ I was deliberately trying to shut her up.
‘No, thanks Sarla, I’m not hungry anymore.’
‘But…you’ve hardly touched your food.’
‘Does it matter, if I have? I mean, here I am, going on and on about the dangers lurking around your own house…and you’re not even listening! This is the last time I’m going to say it, in any case. You are on the verge of losing the little that you have. Your marriage...Amitabh…your reputation…this…all this…for a chit of a girl. Shameless tramp…actress my foot! Just another common city whore.’
‘Get out of my home, Mother. Just leave me. Leave us, alone.’
A hailstorm had been predicted for June 10. A storm that had never quite come with the ferocity it should have. I had finally pushed open the heavy wooden door with both hands, and answered the phone.
‘Mrs. Sarla Kulasheshtra…I am afraid there is some bad news,’ the man on the other line had said, after I had answered.
Today, August 17, was Amitabh’s birthday. I hadn’t entertained too many visitors in the months that had followed the immediate frenzy after his death, wanting to make sense of all the noise. The allegations about his illness. His character. His motive in boarding a train to Mumbai. His being away from the public eye, after Malegaon. The way they dragged him and his politics into the dirt. Every discussion about his greatness as a theatre stalwart inevitably turned into a robust television debate or an opinionated obituary.
I turned on the radio. The song playing was an old favourite: ‘Abhi na jao chhodh kar, ke dil abhi bhara nahi…In my mind, I imagined Rakesh singing the song to me the way he did, tipping his beret, copying Dev Anand’s signature move. How I used to laugh when he did that.
An old ache rose and fell. I asked myself if it was fair to blame Rakesh or Amitabh for the way my life had panned out? Hadn’t I failed, as well? Citing all the same excuses. The way I didn’t have the common courage to reveal the truth to my own father.
I had never been able to forgive Amitabh; to trust him, blindly. I had judged him a long while ago. For not protesting our marriage, as he rightfully should have. For hurting me so fiercely when our little child died. For his affair with the girl I had taken in as my own. Amitabh and I had lived under the same roof, but I only knew of his work through media reports. I had never sought to read his writing or watch his plays; I had always been too proud to.
I had never really comprehended, nor quite cared for, Amitabh’s deep-seated angst; his seething need to rebel against any kind of establishment or systemic exploitation. The months he spent locked up. Writing ferociously. Or far away from home: meeting starving farmers or wasted whores, living in mud huts and bathing in murky rivers. Desperate to change the way Marathi theatre would be remembered. I never bothered fighting to secure my place in his world, either. Never pleased Amitabh in a way he may have wanted.
Perhaps, it was to teach him a lesson that I played the ‘dutiful’ wife. I made it a point to ask him what he wanted served for his meals, and yet left the food on the table, covered with stainless steel plates, the rotis, almost always, turned cold, hard. I decorated our home in Pune as impersonally as I could. Everything was clean, but barren. Taking a perverse pleasure in doing everything a homemaker is expected to, but remaining deliberately detached.
I never confronted Amitabh openly about why he accepted my hand in marriage, or thought I needed to talk him out of his decision to take on controversial projects, not protesting either, when he finally broke away from conventional theatre to street theatre; feeling nothing, not even resenting Amitabh his final betrayal.
I always watched, aloof, from a distance, as Amitabh plunged headlong into directing. Committing his life to a form of savage warfare. Becoming Dada Saheb, in a strange way, all over again.
I had never questioned why Amitabh read the books, he read, all day, on some days? Why he had trouble letting go of things. Or felt compelled to try his hand at everything he saw, at once, from miming to martial arts. Being both reckless and reticent. Why he loved walking barefoot, even at the height of summers? Or never trimmed his hair after a point? Or why he slept with a frayed Gita underneath his pillow? Or never explicitly asked for children, or sex?
A woman is never taught what she should expect from her marriage. I had never missed Amitabh, in a way I should have: a dull ache that only comes from wanting a man, needing him, inside you, so bad. I never protested the times Amitabh left on another one of his jaunts; preferring the anonymity his absence afforded.
I had not even read his memoir, Blindside. I remember how excited he’d been when the first copies came in about two years ago. He had managed to get a small publishing house to put out his work, but they had to withdraw the book when Amol Rawat threatened to sue them, as the court case was still sub-judice. I had never read the book because I was not ready to hear his point of view; I was not ready to forgive him.
But today it was his birthday, August 17, and Amitabh had been dead two months. That day, I had finally decided to sort out his cupboard. Amitabh’s old clothes still hung inside. I took a deep breath, inhaling his distant scent. That’s the first time I missed him physically. The day I acknowledged that I had gradually gotten accustomed to his vague presence; staring at his shapeless black kurtas I fought the same numbing hollowness I had battled with during his sudden, prolonged absences…the new causes he was always eager to espouse.
There was a fierce streak of lightning as I walked downstairs, my breath suddenly rushed. Staring out at the empty hall, I ran outside, barefoot, leaving the front door wide open. The grass underneath my soles, slightly damp. To the small outhouse that had doubled as Amitabh’s study.
I had not touched anything in that room since that day. Everything was the way Amitabh had left it. His books. His papers. His study table stacked high with direction notes and set-illustrations etched in pencil. His medicine pouch lay on one side. As did the heavy oxygen cylinder that stood next to his slippers. I hadn’t felt a pressing urge to settle his things. Besides, there was always something else. Calls. Letters. Doorbells. Flowers. Journalists. Students. Media.
It was like Amitabh still lived here.
Banished. Yet still breathing.
I pushed one of the windows open, feeling short of breath all of a sudden. Much like the way I had while making my way to Kamala Nehru Hospital, in a shared auto, after being called in to identify a corpse.
I ran my finger down his bookshelf and stopped on a thin volume with a black spine: Blindside: A Life in Theatre. I pulled out the dusty book and held it close to my heart. I had never bothered to read Amitabh’s autobiography when it had first appeared in print. The first author copy that Amitabh had left on my bedside.
When I opened the book I saw that it had been dedicated to me and to the memory of Maya.
The air, rain-soaked, felt strangely intimate.
ACT TWO
Blindside
MARIE BOURDAINE
BLINDSIDE
Talent is a traitor.
This is something you really know and understand if you have spent your formative years in a moving circus.
Where you see people perform the same old bag of tricks, every night – till the day the trapeze artist, grown immune to the deft strength of his own body, misses the swinging bar; till the day the lion-tamer is mauled by his favourite lion; till the day the circus clown realizes his jokes are on him…
Nothing changes, till the day it changes finally, and forever. The faces, the faeces, the fights, the flings, the fire-eaters, the funny parts…the same tricks to impress the same kind of audience.
No one is really expected to excel in a circus or earn recognition outside its narrow boundaries. What’s important is that the crow
d claps; that the tickets sell.
The performers are not given any special treatment, either, treated as just another species of performing animal.
Everyone comes in with a set role, a routine, a standard remuneration.
No one bargains in a circus.
No one expects brilliance or creative genius, either.
Those who shine more than the others, leave, chasing bigger dreams.
My earliest memory of my life in Ganesh Circus, is of the makeshift tents where I slept on the bare ground in a large group of people, our limbs entangled in the cramped space, dipped in dry mud, flies swarming over our heads. Fighting for space, our stomachs flat, famished. The air reeking of animal shit.
As a matter of fact, the animals were treated better than us. Fed more generously. Given an occasional second helping, bathed every fortnight in the peak of summer, their bowls always filled to the brim with cold water. They even had coats for winter.
And yet, there was one thing the animals had in common with us. They never slept much either. At night, the sound of their shuffling feet, their deep grunts and lengthy howls rang in our ears. Together we twitched in our disturbed sleep, a slumber from which all dreams had given way to nocturnal terrors.
These disturbed nights providing a sense of continuity, even as towns formed and melted. Crooked train lines disappearing behind tall tree tops. The trapezes dismantled; the sight of slow-moving caravans as we crossed yet another dusty milestone.
The only person I liked in that motley crowd of small talents and stunted people was Manju Bhabhi, the voluptuous wife of our circus manager, Prateik Master. She had no children of her own. She was always dressed in gaudy Georgette sarees, her pallu neatly folded, lengthwise, flopped from her shoulder down to her protruding belly button.
Cut Page 8