A Sister's Promise (24 page)

KUSHI

STAR SPECKLED DOME

Wow, Ma,
I think, putting down her letter, and feeling, for the first time since I woke up in this strange bed bolstered by its armour of machines, something other than bone-weary sluggishness and the dejection and frustration that engulfs me when I realise where I am.

This girl who stands up to the landlord and breaks off her betrothal to his son before he can, she is the woman I know. The woman I love and am proud of. The woman I can see in myself.

Lights have come on in the ward, coating everything in a mellow turmeric glow. I wish Ma was back. I have so many questions I need to ask her. But I suppose trying to organise funds for my ongoing dialysis is not a simple matter of signing cheques . . .

I wonder if the landlord and Gopi have paid for what they did. Where are they are now? Would Ma know? Perhaps I could do something to expose them . . .

Ha! And how will you go about doing that when you are lying broken in a hospital bed?

A burst of air smelling of evening comes through the window. I imagine I am brushing my teeth beneath the jackfruit tree outside our cottage just before bed, and watching the shadows exchange confidences with the star speckled dome of sky, while the neighbourhood dogs howl in the darkened fields, and the paddy undulates in the fragrant dusk in soft, swishing waves, like a hand parting hair.

Then I blink and I am back in the present, in this edifice of discomfort and anguish, of wrecked organs and untold maladies.

When Ma returns from the bank, I want to ask her how she could have let that cowardly man Gopi have such power over their entire family, enough to tear it apart. How could he, a mere boy, have come between Ma and Puja, sisters, bound by blood, and who were once so close?

An orderly pushes what was once a silver trolley, but is now marred by a rash of rust creeping up the sides and eating the steel away; its rattle and swoop along the corridor momentarily punctures the drugged silence of the ward.

If Ma’s betrothal to Gopi was off, why didn’t she and her parents bring Puja back home?

Did something else happen to prevent their reunion, and to push them even further apart?

I pick up the next letter.

SHARDA—CHASM

A RIBBON OF GOSSIP

Dearest Ma,

Those weeks after our visit to the landlord, I lose myself in my studies. I work extra hard. That way, I do not have to see what is happening to our family. I do not have to breathe in the silences that shout out Puja’s absence—an absence that is an aggrieved throbbing presence.

The cracked walls of our hut absorb our heartache, our falling to pieces, as they have absorbed the smoke from our cooking, the smells of spices, our laughter and our tears, our triumphs and our failures, our collective dreams and aspirations, the ordinary passage of our ordinary lives through the years until the extraordinary happened and Puja was wiped out of the family equation.

‘Now that Sharda’s engagement is called off, bring Puja back,’ you plead, Ma. ‘We can move to a different village, start over.’

But Da is unshakeable. ‘Don’t you see what Puja has done? Who will marry Sharda now that the landlord has blighted our name all over the village and beyond? Don’t speak about Puja again. She is dead to me.’

The most words he has uttered since Puja left.

In a rare burst of strength, the strength Puja has in spades, you stand up to your husband, Ma.

You, so traditional, so fond of saying, much to Puja’s disgust: ‘When you get married, your husband is God. Always obey him and do as he asks. Then you will all be happy and your family will be blessed.’

You don’t see Da as God now. You tuck your sari pallu into your waist and declare, ‘I will go and see her.’

Da looks up at you, and something flares in his defeated face. ‘She has brought disgrace upon us . . . ’

‘No,’ you snap, Ma. ‘
You
have. By hitting her. Sending her away. Bringing the whole village into our business.’

‘Stop it. Just stop.’ Da covers his ears with his hands and rocks on his haunches. ‘You are not seeing her and that is that.’ He pauses and then, ‘I have been speaking to Nilamma . . . ’

Both you and I, Ma, look at him agog.

The mellow summer’s evening, the sky a medley of garnets and golds, dark pinks and deep blues, tastes orange, of that afternoon’s breathless heat maturing into the placid tones of sundown, spiced with the velvet violet of the night to come.

‘Puja is fine. She has settled in well. Bringing her back . . . the landlord will not allow it for one. As it is, he is making life difficult for us, spreading slander, turning our friends against . . . ’

‘Then let’s move to a different village with Puja, find grooms for both of our girls,’ you say.

‘What about Sharda’s degree? And where will I get work? Who will employ me?’

You go to Da, Ma, and fall at his feet. ‘Please. I want my daughter back.’

I am still angry with Puja, terribly angry, but I miss her.

And I am tired of missing her. Tired of seeing you and Da suffering, the reflection in your injured eyes of what could have been. Tired of flailing in the dregs of the mire left behind after her departure.

I am tired of tamping down the guilt I feel in the dead of night when I wake, my heart strumming with fear at the nightmare I’ve had in which I break our family apart with one rash whisper in a well-chosen ear—and find that it is all true.

‘I will think about it,’ Da says gruffly. ‘But until then, I forbid you to see Puja, talk to her. It will only make things worse.’

You nod, Ma, hope and cautious joy budding on your face.

And then, the landlord visits.

We spy the motorbike, parked by the road beside the fields, on our way back from the ration shop, Ma, as we lug rice and lentils and oil, inhaling the dust-infused air flavoured with our sweat and exertion.

Drained, we exchange a look threaded through with tentacles of fear.

Now what?

I look at the bike, gleaming as new, and I hear the matrons’ words, strung on a ribbon of gossip, laced with intrigue and bedecked with rumour, falling from their paan-glazed predator-like jaws, not caring whom they hurt, or how: ‘Puja was hugging him tight as they conjured up a sandstorm on that motorbike of his.’

I set down the bags I am carrying, look around and pick up the biggest cow pat I can find and I smear it all over the bike.

‘What are you? . . .’ you begin and then you are smirking, Ma.

And we are laughing together and somehow the laughter turns into sobs and we hold each other as we cry for what was and what can never be and what is lost, and we breathe in the smell of cow dung and choke on the taste of our tears.

Then we wipe our eyes and walk down the path through the fields to the hut where the landlord is waiting, pacing up and down, wearing the courtyard thin. His face is dark as a nightmare at being made to wait, which, I suppose he hasn’t had to do much of in his privileged life.

I lead the way, walking at a leisurely pace, refusing to rush to pacify the landlord.

There is no sign of Gopi. The landlord has come alone, on Gopi’s bike.

Later, I understand that he is making a point, showing us that his son’s treasured possession, like everyone and everything else in the village, is his if he decides he wants it.

I glance at the landlord’s pristine cream mundu and imagine the patches of cow dung adhering to it as he straddles the bike for the ride home. And that allows me to get through the next few minutes and the torturous exchange with him.

‘To what do we owe this honour?’ I ask.

I do not invite the landlord inside. Sweat splotches his bald head and beads his face; his clothes cling to him damply.

My voice is calm, even a little amused. ‘Have you come to apologise?’

His thunderous face suffuses with red. ‘Where is your da?’ He snaps.

‘Why?’ I query, my voice cold as the stream at dawn.

‘Tell him to keep his whoring daughter in check. Does he know what she is up to?’

I do not let the shock I am feeling, the latent hurt that gushes like floodwater overflowing the riverbank, show. My voice is as unruffled as the dry bed of a drought-ravaged lake. ‘Why should he know what she’s up to? He has disowned her.’

‘Doesn’t your father understand that the duty of a man unfortunate enough to be cursed only with daughters, is to keep them in check? He might have sent her away from home; he might have banished her to another village; but will she stop? She had the gall to come to me and ask for my son’s hand in marriage! Gopi confessed that she tricked him into sleeping with her, the shameless whore.’

I see you clutch at your heart and sway on your feet Ma.

The scab forming over the wound of Puja’s betrayal reopens, and blood fizzes out, red and painful.

How could you do this, Puja, bring this added ignominy upon us? Why?

‘Thank you, I will let Da know.’ I don’t know how I manage to speak but I do, my voice steady.

‘You tell your Da to keep tabs on her, although it is far too late now for the brazen slut. I don’t want her whoring body anywhere near my son. I cannot believe I even considered linking myself to your disreputable family.’ A pause, then, ‘And I will not stand for any of you mosquitoes pestering me any longer, you understand? You are not welcome to stay here anymore.’

‘This is not your village to order us around.’

He grins slimily. ‘You will find out that it is.’

‘Sleeping with him! How could she? Giving away her honour, and ours, like a basket of mangoes. Discrediting us even more if possible, stranding us in a quagmire of ignominy,’ Da laments, repeatedly hitting his head. ‘I will have no more mention of Puja. She is dead to us.’

And this time, Ma, you are too broken to protest.

RAJ

A STONE IN A BAG OF RICE

Raj looks at his mother, this woman he is finally getting to know—this woman with her gaunt face and her sore eyes with their kohl of wine-coloured rims, the makeup of tears. This woman who tells him the story of a girl he never knew, but in a voice he has known from when he lay snug in her womb. The story of a girl who was loved and adored, then shunned and betrayed by the people whom she had cared for the most, discarded by her family as easily as the pith from an orange, wiped away like a dirt stain from a window.

This woman who was let down so completely by the man she loved so completely. No wonder she is afraid to love. No wonder she keeps herself at a remove from everything and everyone. No wonder she has created a buffer around her heart.

It pains him immensely that the wonderful, feisty, brave girl he never got a chance to meet, has become this cold woman who shies away from emotion because of what was done to her.

‘Mum, the reason you work so hard, the reason you are so focused . . . is it because Gopi chose money over you?’

She closes her eyes as if she is shutting out the image of Gopi denouncing her. ‘I wanted to prove them both wrong, Gopi and the landlord,’ she says softly.

Now that he has been afforded a window into the girl his mother was, it hurts Raj to see everything she has lost: her bubbly, infectious personality, her lust for life, stolen from her by the weak people she had the misfortune to love, the pathetic people who did not accept her affection for the gift it was, instead throwing it away as casually as a stone in a bag of rice, the affection
he
has been denied because of what
they
did.

Raj is furious with his mum’s parents, her sister, Gopi. Why did her family denounce her so easily? Why didn’t they talk to her, give her a chance to explain? Why didn’t Gopi stand up for her? Why did she love such a wretched man?

Raj wants to shake Gopi until he sees sense, to wound him like he wounded his mother.

He wants to rewrite history.

The screen in front of him, with its little aeroplane swooping down on the south coast of India blurs. The tannoy booms: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. We will shortly be landing at Bengaluru International Airport . . .’