Custody (3 page)

When Arjun was almost eight, Shagun found she was pregnant again. On a dearly paid holiday cruise around the islands of Hawaii, accompanied by parents (the treat of a lifetime), they fought and made up with hurried sex while Arjun was playing in the bathtub. Thus the conception.

Shagun was distraught. There might have been empty spaces in her life, but this was not how she chose to fill them.

‘Why weren’t you more careful?’

‘Is this my fault?’

‘You were supposed to get a vasectomy, but of course you did nothing. Too busy all the time.’

‘A lot of people have two children. What’s the big deal? We have the money, you can have all the help you want.’

‘It’s not that. I’ll be thirty, Arjun is just becoming independent, I don’t want to start all over again. Always tied to a child, is that what you want?’

He stared at her, deeply offended. He was the most committed father he knew, on holidays and weekends devoting himself to his son, giving his wife the break she needed. Another child could only be a blessing, and maybe he would get the daughter he longed for.

He was leaving the next evening for Bareilly, by the time he came back things would have settled down. One precaution he did take, though. Before he left he phoned his mother-in-law: please look after her, she is in a delicate condition, still somewhat upset, and I am worried.

Whatever the stratagems, whether Shagun’s mother’s delight, whether Arjun’s steady demand for a brother, whether the life within made its own claims, Shagun did carry the baby to term, and gave birth to a daughter in June 1996.

Right from the beginning it was clear that Baby Roohi was a carbon copy of her father.

All mine, Raman joked, can’t mistake her for anybody else’s.

At least don’t draw attention to her looks, snapped Shagun, when she had heard him once too often.

Raman looked at his wife in surprise. This is not how you talk of your child, no matter who she takes after. ‘You’ll see, she will blossom into a beauty – not like you, but a beauty all the same.’

‘And how can you tell that?’

The father picked up the baby, now seven months old, and held her in his arms. He looked at the tiny features that held every promise of plainness. Like his own. But he was a man, this little thing would have more need of a pretty face, or life might treat her unkindly.

‘If we treat her as beautiful she will think she is beautiful, and people will judge her by the way she judges herself. So I don’t want to ever hear her called plain again.’

In Shagun’s experience beauty did not work like that, but the little child was her daughter and Raman took her silence for assent.

IV

Indraprastha Extension, located in East Delhi across the river Jamuna, was an area furrowed with housing societies, and the poorer colonies devoted to servicing them. Tiny shops and roadside vendors intruded slyly into the chaotic traffic as rickshaws, cyclists, cars, scooters, pushcarts, buses and pedestrians jostled for space on the crowded roads. Also known as Patparganj, here lay the hope of many of the salaried middle classes to own a home of their own.

Swarg Nivas was one of the largest housing societies in the area. Planned in blocks of six, the three A blocks in front had the larger flats, while the B blocks behind were smaller and cheaper. Three fenced-in gardens, lined with benches, divided the two sections. At the corner in the front was a small grocery store, the society offices and a little temple.

Here lived the brothers Kaushik, Raman’s father and uncle, in flats that attested to the uncle’s business acumen. He was a lawyer, and it was through one of his clients in the eighties that he had heard about the Swarg Nivas Cooperative Housing Society while still a dream on paper.

Knowing that you can’t go wrong with real estate, Som Nath Kaushik made down payments on two flats. One in A block for himself, one in B block for his younger brother, Shiv Nath, who as an engineer in the PWD had to operate under the constraints of a government salary and honesty.

Each of the brothers had one son, with seven years between them. In Nandan’s time things were not quite so competitive; with a minimum of study, he managed to qualify for law college. Once he got his LLB, he started sharing his father’s office in the evenings, while working from slightly larger premises in the Tees Hazari grounds during the day.

He agreed to marry the first girl his parents showed him. Rohini was a niece of his mother’s sister’s husband, home-loving, pleasant features, medium height, nice smile. When she produced twins, Aditya and Abhilasha, the family was joyfully complete, and her charms further enhanced.

Raman meanwhile excelled in studies from an early age. His mother grew ambitious for him, as without any coaxing, he stood first year after year. He will be an engineer, she decided, only in a better position than his father, who all his life has had his talents wasted. In class XI she put him into a local coaching group, and for the next two years Raman attended school in the morning, coaching in the afternoon, then did the homework of both. When he cleared the entrance exam for IIT, his father insisted that it was all due to his elder brother’s blessings, making an imaginative leap his wife didn’t even begin to understand.

She didn’t think there was any need to be quite so grateful, even though she was privy to the sums the older brother lent the younger. But she hated feeling this obliged.

When you are older, she told her son, you will earn more than all of them put together. They think because they have helped us with this flat we have yet to see, they have done something great.

Raman heard her without attention. He was still a student and for him the future was limited to the next exam.

Raman spent the next five years in IIT swotting. Then another two years of even greater toil in IIM, Ahmedabad, to finally land a job at IndiaThinkTank with a six-figure annual salary. His long hours, and the distances he had to travel, made it convenient for him to live with other corporate trainees in a flat near his office.

When he celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday, his parents decided it was time he marry.

I will ask Bhabhi to look for a bride, said Mr Kaushik, she has done such a good job with Rohini. Fits in perfectly. Such lovely children too.

But the mother wanted somebody with a little more class. Raman had a corporate job, the wife would need to look after his interests socially. While not disagreeing with her husband she quickly spread the word far and wide. Among its recipients was a cousin twice removed, living in Alaknanda.

Ami knew a neighbour’s daughter, third-year college. The mother, a widow, vetted Raman’s credentials, scrutinised his photograph and then allowed the young people to meet.

It took exactly a minute for Raman to fall in love. Two months of courtship followed before Shagun consented to marry him. His parents were then formally introduced to the girl.

How stunningly beautiful she is, realised a frightened Mrs Kaushik, can such a woman really be a homemaker?

She voiced her apprehensions to her son, knowing it was too late, cursing the modern need to love before marriage.

‘Uff Ma, she is still in college – what do you want? That she spend all her time in the kitchen?’

‘Even after you marry, I do not see this woman in the kitchen.’

Neither did Raman, but he did not care. If he could have her in his bed, what did the kitchen matter?

Mrs Kaushik could see there was no point saying anything to her son – he had a slack-jawed moronic look when it came to any discussion of his future after marriage.

Shagun herself had romantic visions of the two of them running their house on their own. Raman hadn’t lived with his parents since he started work, it was too far, too inconvenient. Why should those reasons still not apply?

Whereas Mrs Kaushik had always considered her son’s living arrangements temporary. As an only child she expected that his marriage would at last augment their tiny family. Knowing this, Mr Kaushik made an attempt to bring the boy closer.

‘Nandan has put down a deposit for a flat in the building, he and his parents will be across the hall from each other once the apartments are finished,’ he told Raman. ‘You can do the same.’

‘How many years ago were you promised this thing?’

‘Such a big project – delays will take place. Now they are saying 1990. Latest.’

‘That’s three years away – ridiculous. If the corporate sector did things like this, nobody would get anywhere.’

‘That’s not the point. If nothing else it is a sound investment. People are already selling the 3-lakh flats for
6,
but still you can afford it. You will be eligible for a good loan. When the new bridge is built it won’t even take long to reach work.’

‘I am not sure I see us in Swarg Nivas, Papa,’ said Raman slowly. ‘It is very far from Shagun’s mother, and you know she is all alone.’

‘Arre, she can always come to visit. Then she will be close to all of us. Once you have your flat there, you will be both independent and nearby.’

‘If I rent a bigger house, we can stay together in South Delhi,’ said Raman, valiantly trying to do his duty.

This possibility seduced his father for a moment, but only a moment. A pretty daughter-in-law, the son dancing attendance on her, an angry disappointed mother, such a situation would lead to daily tension. Perhaps it was better to change his expectations of their joint family life right now. Not every couple were Rohini and Nandan, so willing to adjust.

‘Beta, your uncle has helped me so much with this flat, thinking we will all be together. How much we have planned and dreamt. Once Swarg Nivas is ready we should live there,’ he said slowly. ‘But perhaps you are right. It is not good to start your marriage caught between wife and mother. All we want is your happiness.’

Raman looked at the slight man before him, his heavy glasses, his thin grey hair. It was quite apparent he had altered his own ideas to accommodate the conflicting interests of those he loved. He bent to touch his father’s feet. ‘May we always have your blessings, Papa, that is all we want.’

Mrs Kaushik was devastated when it became clear that her separation from her son was to be permanent.

‘Why won’t they come to Swarg Nivas? What about my grandchildren?’ she wailed.

‘When they come, we will see,’ said her husband sternly. ‘In the mean time you will have plenty to occupy you with Rohini’s children.’

A niece-in-law’s children could never be like her own, though she was not allowed to think so, her husband expecting a saintliness of which she was not capable. To her grief after all these years he always seemed to be engaging with some quite other person.

Forced into being a spectator of her son’s life, Mrs Kaushik had to make a virtue of necessity. Soon everybody knew how they did not believe in hanging around their child’s neck, though actually that was all she had ever wanted to do.

Raman insisted on a weekly visit to his parents. Shagun was always careful to demonstrate daughter-in-law devotion. From time to time she complained to her husband, ‘Your mother hates me,’ but this was only because she wanted him to see how magnanimous she was. Raman did not respond to her comments. He knew his mother expected respect, deference and love from her daughter-in-law plus an undisputed supremacy in her little grandson’s heart, all of which she was never going to get.

In 1991, the Swarg Nivas Co-operative Housing Society complex was finally ready. Nandan had a flat of his own across from his parents. The elder Kaushiks put a grille across the passage, black granite tiles on the walls and floor of their section of the corridor and hung a small chandelier with dangling crystal pendants in the middle. The door between their two flats was kept open all day long. The children dashed from room to room; Rohini declared she thought she was living in a palace, her new home was so grand, leading her mother-in-law to quickly circle her head with a green chilli and put it in the fire to counter the effect of the evil eye.

The happy togetherness in her brother-in-law’s family showed Raman’s mother how much she was missing and she took this knowledge badly, blaming her daughter-in-law for the loneliness she felt.

V

Mrs Sabharwal, Shagun’s mother, got along excellently with Raman. For twelve years he had been more son than son-in-law. Shagun sometimes said you two are like lovebirds, making the mother uncomfortable at her daughter’s understanding of the tenderness between them.

After all these years she still remembered the instinctive sense of relief that came upon her when she first saw him. Ami had already declared Raman steady, sober, an excellent wage earner, Punjabi and twenty-seven. In appearance he was good-looking, complexion wheatish, a lovely open smile, handsome white teeth, medium height with just the tiniest paunch and a head of thinning hair. She hoped Shagun was not going to fuss about that. Sensitive from the start, he had put her at ease, voluntarily supplying all the information a mother might need, carrying out his own interview as it were.

IIT – Delhi, IIM – Ahmedabad, graduated in ’84, been recruited on campus for this job with IndiaThinkTank, India’s number-one advertising agency, 5 lakhs had been the starting salary, the annual bonus handsome. He was responsible for ensuring customers remained satisfied, converting even the uncertain into the firm’s loyal clients. As Raman talked, Mrs Sabharwal’s understanding skipped away from his words and made straight for his heart. Clearly he was a sincere company worker, hard-working, ambitious, obviously talented. The man radiated dependability.

The more she got to know Raman, the more secure she felt. He was punctual to the minute, coming over with fruit, chocolate, biscuits, cake, cheeses, just small things, he claimed, but she knew how much time and effort they must have cost, especially since he preferred foreign brands. When he took Shagun to see a film he always bought a ticket for her as well, to assure her that she was not losing a daughter, but gaining a son. His words were backed by actions that shone in her imagination as large as he had intended.

Once the couple were engaged, Raman became even more indispensable. ‘Now you have me,’ he told Mrs Sabharwal, as he took care of her bills, as he dealt with recalcitrant plumbers and electricians, as he replaced her carpenter with a better one, as he helped with the wedding arrangements, talked to the caterer, talked to the pandit, beat the prices down. Everything he did was an indication of the great joys to come once he was properly part of the family.