A People's History of Heaven

by Mathangi Subramanian

  When she sees Deepa with us, Sushila Miss’s eyes go round and her knees go crooked. She glides across the compound, her face twitching.

  “So glad you came, darling,” she says to Deepa. Her voice sounds like fluttering eyelashes. “Come. Let me find you a seat.”

  “She doesn’t need a seat, miss,” Rukshana says. “She’s dancing with us.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Sushila Miss laughs nervously. “She doesn’t know the steps.”

  “Of course she does,” Joy says. “She’s come to practice, hasn’t she?”

  “But—”

  “Tell us, miss,” Padma says. “Where should we line up?”

  When she can’t get past us, Sushila Miss turns to Janaki Ma’am. Like that’s going to work.

  Janaki Ma’am is sitting with the Member of the Legislative Assembly, whose gold-embroidered sari costs more than the entire budget of the dance itself. When she fidgets her feet out of her strappy high-heeled shoes, we can see that even her toenails are painted gold.

  The MLA has pots and pots and pots of money to her name. Some pots are legal. Some are not. Those illegal pots? She has to get rid of them somewhere. Might as well be our school.

  When the MLA sees Deepa, she touches Janaki Ma’am’s shoulder with her manicured fingers.

  “A blind girl in the dance?” the MLA asks. “How lovely. What generous people you government-school teachers are.”

  “It’s our job, isn’t it?” Janaki Ma’am says. Even though she is not a teacher. Even though she runs a school, which is a completely different thing. A much harder thing.

  So when Sushila Miss creeps over, Janaki Ma’am brushes her off before she can even speak. “Inclusion, Sushila,” Janaki Ma’am says. “It’s what you’re paid to do.”

  “But, ma’am—”

  “No buts. That girl wants to dance, so you let her dance. Make it work.”

  A week before Neelamma Aunty was due, Banu’s ajji took her to the private hospital. The doctor was busy, the nurse told them, but she could help.

  “How far along are you?” the nurse asked.

  “Far along?” Neelamma Aunty asked.

  “How long have you been carrying?” the nurse said. A little bit mean. Like she was reminding them who was in charge.

  “Eight months,” Neelamma Aunty said. Firmly. “Almost nine. Nine next week.”

  “How nice,” the nurse said, full of false cheer. She put her hands on Neelamma Aunty’s belly without asking her. As though she knew what was happening outside the womb, Deepa kicked the nurse’s hand. “So what are you doing here, then?”

  “I want to deliver here,” Neelamma Aunty said. “Why else do you think I came?”

  “There’s a scheme, no?” Banu’s ajji said, before Neelamma Aunty had time to get mad. Before she had time to change her mind.

  “You want the scheme?”

  “If it’s possible.”

  “Of course it’s possible,” the nurse said, opening a squeaky drawer. She ruffled through a pile of papers and pulled out a form the pale blue color of Bangalore skies. Started writing neatly in each of the blank boxes. Banu’s ajji answered even though Neelamma Aunty was right there.

  “Name?”

  “Neelamma,” Banu’s ajji said.

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Address?”

  “House number—”

  “What is it, exactly?” Neelamma Aunty asked. “This scheme?”

  “You know, you look ready to deliver,” the nurse said. “I think we could do it for you tomorrow. Deepavali. An auspicious day.”

  “What is the scheme?” Neelamma Aunty repeated.

  “You get four thousand rupees,” the nurse said.

  “That much?” Banu’s ajji was suspicious now. “For what?”

  But Neelamma Aunty’s doubts fell away. She and her husband could do so much with four thousand rupees. Put in a new roof. Pay off the house. Put it toward buying an auto-rickshaw, so they wouldn’t have to rent anymore.

  Besides, the hospital was full of screams. Not mothers’ screams: babies’ screams.

  Neelamma Aunty needed the money. The hospital needed to deliver babies. This scheme felt like her first stroke of luck in a long, long time.

  “You say you can deliver my baby tomorrow?” Neelamma Aunty asked.

  “No, no, hold on,” Banu’s ajji said. “No one just gives away four thousand rupees. What do you people take in exchange?”

  “You and your baby will both be safe,” the nurse said. It wasn’t an answer to Banu’s ajji’s question. But it was exactly what Neelamma Aunty wanted to hear.

  “Where do I sign?” Neelamma Aunty asked.

  Forty-eight hours later, Neelamma Aunty woke up with a terrible pain throbbing through the part of her body where her baby had been. She clutched Banu’s ajji’s right hand. Banu’s ajji’s left hand—arm, really—was clutching Deepa.

  “Darling,” Banu’s ajji said softly. “There’s something you should know.”

  “First, my baby,” Neelamma Aunty said. “Give me my baby.”

  The second she held Deepa, whole and healthy and unapologetically loud, her body fell away from her. All she could feel was her daughter’s weight, her will. The fact that she was breathing and kicking and fighting. That she was alive.

  “A survivor,” she whispered in Deepa’s ear. “Just like your mother.”

  When Neelamma Aunty tried to sit up and nurse, her body shattered into sharp, aching shards that pierced her back, her side. Her womb.

  “Kanna,” Banu’s ajji says gently. “I need to tell you what they’ve done to you.”

  “Did they give me the money?” She gasped.

  “Yes,” Banu’s ajji said, hesitating. “Yes, that they’ve done.”

  “And they’ve given me the baby? And a birth certificate? Did you tell them her name is Deepa?” Later, Neelamma Aunty was proudest of this part of the story. From the beginning, she thought of Deepa as someone with a long life. An educated life. Someone who would need papers in her name.

  “Yes,” Banu’s ajji said, swallowing. “They’ve given you all this. But they’ve taken something too.”

  Before Banu’s ajji could explain, the nurse told them to leave.

  “She’s awake, is it? Good. The bed is needed for the next person.”

  “But I don’t know if I can walk,” Neelamma Aunty said, wincing.

  “You can,” the nurse said, propping Neelamma Aunty up so quickly that she gasped. “You’re strong, you people. You’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “You people?” Neelamma Aunty tried to say. But the pain was so intense that it squeezed her throat closed. It was only when Neelamma Aunty was limping home, leaning against Banu’s ajji, that she learned that she didn’t undergo just one surgery, but two. The first was a C-section to deliver Deepa. The second was a sterilization.

  With expenses deducted, she received 2,332 rupees.

  Since our school is hosting the competition this year, we are the first to dance. Sushila Miss sends up prayers to every god and goddess in heaven and Heaven and all the other worlds too, just for good measure. Fixes her features like Kajol. Her hips like Madhuri. Gives a speech about using the new “sound system” that was “gifted by” the MLA. Throws out terms like generosity and community. English words Janaki Ma’am has told her to use.

  Then she presses the button on the shiny silver stereo, and the music starts. We all move in perfect unison—all except for Deepa, who shimmies and shakes her way through a choreography all her own.

  It’s not that she’s bad—her movements are more graceful than ours, her neck more swan-like, her hips more seductive. It’s just that she is doing what she wants to do. She won’t fall in line. Can’t, actually, because she doesn’t know how.

  Then, things really get bad. And it’s not even Deepa’s fault.

  The stereo that has been so reliable for so many practices wheezes and squeaks. The music screeches and slides, sq
uawks and stutters. Grinds to a halt.

  Well, not completely to a halt. That would’ve been manageable. Instead, it gets stuck on one phrase that repeats over and over and over, like a prayer chanted by a deranged god-man.

  Sushila Miss frantically beats the side of the stereo. Blinks back tears and swallows, curses in all the languages she knows. Shakes the thing and hits the top with the heel of her hand. Like the stereo is a student, the tape deck the raw knuckles of a pair of naughty hands.

  One more thwack, and it goes silent. We go silent. And still.

  All of us except for Deepa.

  One morning a few months after Deepa was born, a health worker gathered whichever of our mothers were home and made them form a circle around the broken sofa in front of Selvi Aunty’s house. Our mothers wouldn’t have come except they heard the worker was passing out free samples of something or other.

  “What’s this?” Neelamma Aunty had asked, taking a bottle and turning it in her hand. The brown glass felt chilly and smooth.

  “Oil. It’s useful for many things. Baby massage, for one,” the health worker said. Even though her voice was young, she had the face of an older woman, brown and pockmarked as a peanut shell. “You take the oil and work it into their limbs. Slowly, slowly, like this.” The health worker took Neelamma Aunty’s arm and squeezed up and down, her hands rough, fleshy, and cozy. Warmth flooded Neelamma Aunty’s limbs. Still, she shrugged the touch off, careful to keep her eyes away from our mothers.

  “After that, leave the child out in the sun. They get vitamins that way. Good for the bones,” the worker said. Then she wagged her finger at our mothers and said, “Boys and girls. Both need it.”

  When the health worker left for her next stop, Neelamma Aunty looked at the bottle and muttered, “Useless, these people.”

  “Exactly,” Selvi Aunty said. “Like we don’t know about this oil. Or massages.”

  Neelamma Aunty looked up.

  “She’s from the next slum over, you know? The new one that’s just come up,” Fatima Aunty said. None of our mothers knew which slum, exactly, but Fatima Aunty’s meaning was clear: the health worker was newly arrived, poor, and probably from a village. In other words, she was less than us.

  “Coming over here acting like she’s telling us things our mothers never told us,” Fatima Aunty said. “Or like we haven’t raised our brothers and sisters.”

  “Or our daughters and sons. Or their daughters and sons,” Banu’s ajji said. She cackled, her laugh clotted with the ashes of too many funerals.

  “Remember when she came last week with the eggs?” Selvi Aunty said, rolling her eyes. “Like we don’t know the age to stop our milk and start giving them food.”

  “These people come and talk to us like we don’t know anything,” Fatima Aunty said, laughing. “Waste of bloody time. When they start telling us something new, then I’ll listen.”

  Of course, Fatima Aunty didn’t know that in a few years, her husband would leave her, and she’d become a health worker too, telling women the obvious, handing out free rations. But that’s another story.

  Neelamma Aunty listened to our mothers talk. She didn’t disagree with them. But she also didn’t admit that she didn’t know. She never had a mother to teach her about oil or eggs or milk or sunlight. She never had brothers or sisters to diaper and feed and push off to school. She only knew what the health worker told her, and even then she gauged what to do and not to do more from our mothers’ facial expressions than from the actual information she received.

  As Deepa slept, Neelamma Aunty replayed the scene in her mind, her fingers pushing piecework under the Singer’s murmuring needle. What age did they say about solid food? When was it all right to start eggs? Deepa was seven months old, and she was already giving her mashed up rice and dal. Was it too early? Or too late?

  A tiny mewling interrupted her. Looking up, she saw Deepa crawling slowly and clumsily across the few feet of dirt separating her from Neelamma Aunty. She felt her way along with her hands, whining quietly.

  “Oh, darling,” Neelamma Aunty exclaimed. “You’re crawling!”

  When she heard her mother’s voice, Deepa’s face stretched into a tiny smile.

  Neelamma Aunty felt then the crushing weight of this child’s need for her, and her alone. Neelamma Aunty, who, her whole life, had fended for herself and no one else. Who had trusted no one, loved no one, relied on no one. Who had known no one and allowed no one to know her.

  This child, though. This tangle of brown limbs, loose curls. This jumble of babbles and cries. Neelamma Aunty knew her. Knew her in a way she knew her own flesh, her own heart. Knew when she was hungry or tired, curious or frightened, joyous or pained.

  Neelamma Aunty had always thought of motherhood like marriage: a set of duties and obligations, a series of defined tasks. But clutching Deepa to her chest, she realized it was something more. Something she would have to learn. Not the way she had learned tailoring to bring in money but the way she had learned to raise herself.

  For days, she waited for the gravity of her epiphany to weigh her down. But all she felt was lightness.

  For the rest of us, music is something that comes out of phones and stereos and auto-rickshaw speakers. Out of mouths and throats and pirated CDs and ringtones.

  But for Deepa, the girl who listens her way through life, every sound is precious. The world is a symphony that keeps her out of the paths of goats and scooters, vendors and grandparents, traffic and rain. Bangalore speaks to her boldly, precisely. Urgently.

  So when the rest of us stop dancing, Deepa keeps listening. Keeps hearing. Keeps moving.

  “Kaaa, kaaa, kaaa,” she sings with the crows, spreading her arms like they are black-feathered wings.

  “Haaa, haaa, haaa,” she sings with the motorcycles honking and revving on the main road.

  “Tamaataaaar, thakaleee, tomatoooo,” she croons along with the vegetable vendors pushing their carts through the alleys and lanes. Swerves her hips. Rattles her anklets. Bends her elbows just so.

  We notice Deepa’s performance before the grown-ups do. We push her into her own front row and whisper, “Sing louder. Go slower. We’ll follow you.”

  Deepa, light of our lives, girl of the shadows, stands in front and leads us all, face bright as a burning candle. She isn’t beautiful, exactly. But she is sure. Happy.

  Early on, we girls learn that life owes us nothing, that womanhood is a spectrum of nuisances, heartbreaks, and tragedies. When Deepa sings and dances, though? It’s like she’s got her feet on the string between sadnesses. Like she can stop time with the force of her joy.

  When the MLA notices the local newspaper photographer pointing his lens at her, she puts her hand to her mouth and sighs. Expertly coaxes one or two crocodile tears out of her almost-green eyes. Dabs them with the golden corner of her sari.

  “So beautiful,” she whispers, but loudly enough for the press to hear.

  Perhaps even Deepa hears. Probably she does. But she doesn’t let on. She just keeps singing and keeps dancing. To the moo of the cow sorting through the garbage piled along the school’s compound walls. To the yelps of the dogs pestering the cow. To the cry of a baby passing by the gate. To the bronze ring of temple bells, the silvery echo of the mosque’s azaan. To the shuffling of the audience who have never seen a blind girl dance.

  We copy her moves. But mostly, we try to listen. Try to hear what she hears. For a minute, we live in a world that squawks and honks and sighs only to keep us safe. For a minute, our city becomes something new. Something raucous, but kind. Something a little bit beautiful.

  The day after Deepa was born, the world smelled burnt. Gangs of boys burst leftover firecrackers on street corners. The air was dense with reminders that another year had passed. That nothing and everything had changed.

  Neelamma Aunty knew she was supposed to feel something. Rage, sadness, frustration. But all she felt was an overwhelming love for this life that is her daughter’s. That is also
hers. A feeling that whizzed and popped louder than any unspent cracker or undone holiday.

  The day she came home with their daughter, Neelamma Aunty told her husband that they would never have another child. A few months after that, a health worker shone a flashlight in Deepa’s motionless pupils and told them their daughter was legally blind.

  After the worker left, Deepa’s father took Deepa into his arms and stared directly into her eyes. Neelamma Aunty watched him surreptitiously, all the while pouring dosa batter onto the pan.

  Her husband might stay another week, she figured, another month. But certainly not another year. Not with a wife who has given him a blind daughter, a dead son. A wife whose womb was now unable to sustain any more life. Sustain male life.

  Figures turned in Neelamma Aunty’s mind. She’d completed a sewing course. She had clients and a sewing machine. She could handle the rent on her own. As for a dowry, she wasn’t sure they’d be able to get Deepa married. Perhaps she could send her to one of those new vocational places for blind people, the ones that advertised in the paper. Deepa could learn how to make handicrafts. Clay lamps, beaded jewelry, that sort of thing.

  The dough sizzled and fried. Absently, Neelamma Aunty flipped the crispy-edged dosas onto a steel plate, her mind whirring. When Deepa’s father placed his hand on her shoulder, she jolted.

  “Come,” he said, still cradling Deepa. She was chubby back then, her cheeks round and fat as idlis. “See what I did today.”

  “The dosas will get cold,” Neelamma Aunty said.

  “Five minutes,” he said. “That’s all I need.”

  Neelamma Aunty followed him to the empty patch where he parked his auto for the night. Land that, in a few months, would be the space where Joy’s parents put up tin walls, a tarp roof. He stopped in front of the fender and looked at her expectantly.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  At first she didn’t understand. Searched the rickshaw’s canary yellow back, the glass window lined with the “Jai Hanuman” sticker. Until she saw a slogan painted in English above the bumper. The paint smelled fresh and new.