Married Woman (14 page)

‘What has gotten into you I don’t understand. I will tell your mother to give the whole thing to you, you will handle it yourself. She should have consulted you first, before she handed anything to me. In fact why didn’t she ask you to look for a buyer and get a lawyer to check the sale deeds? You have been missing out on so many things that life is not worth living, isn’t that so?’

Astha sat stunned. What kind of fool had she been to expect Hemant to understand? She had a good life, but it was good because nothing was questioned. This boat could not be rocked. She should paint that on a canvas and put it up on the wall, and stare at it day and night, so that its message burnt its way through her brain into her heart. This boat cannot be rocked.

Besides if the boat could not be rocked, what need did she have of money, or knowledge of investments? Hands that
had grasped money, and felt it pass through their fingers were the ones capable of rocking boats. Hers were not.

The next morning, quickly she got her children ready and sent them off to school, quickly she had her tea, packed her breakfast to eat later, jamming an omelette between two slices of fridge cold bread and dripping violent red chilli sauce over the insides. Quickly, quickly she did all this, smiling, smiling all the while, so that no distress was palpable.

It was only in the staff room in school that Astha could be alone with her thoughts.

‘Why so silent?’ they asked? ‘Are you ill?’

Astha shook her head. She looked at her colleagues, women she met every day, women whom she liked, whose lives ran smoothly, women who had no shadows between their husbands and themselves, whose husbands were ‘him’ and ‘he‚’ and whose in-laws were ‘they’. Whom among them could she tell that she had not been able to sleep? What reason could she give that they would not think self-indulgent?

‘I’m fine‚’ she repeated, and opened the usual stack of brown-paper covered notebooks that laced each day’s work.

It was early in the year 1987, that the principal of Astha’s school invited The Street Theatre Group to hold a workshop on their premises. The workshop would be held in the break between the final exams in March and the opening of the new school year in April.

The staff were not pleased.

As usual the Principal wants to attract attention to herself.

Just because she is interested in theatre, we are forced to be interested too.

They’ll want staff volunteers, wait and see.

We have to correct exam scripts, prepare report cards, see to the merit lists, file an account of each child’s progress in the school records – where is the time to do all this extra-curricular activity?

A gloomy silence descended. The Principal was not known to respect the convenience of her teachers.

Astha wondered whether she would be asked, she did not relish working in the holidays while her children were at home. She was very fond of Mrs Dubey but sometimes she felt that their special relationship caused her to be exploited. She had done enough for the school, the Principal should look elsewhere, she decided, readying herself for a tussle.

In which she lost.

‘You need someone with more experience if an outsider is coming‚’ she tried objecting.

‘With Aijaz you don’t need experience‚’ said the Principal. ‘For him any place is a stage, any person an actor. He has performed at factory gates, outside offices, at bus stops, in front of shops. He has dramatised issues like unemployment,
atrocities against women and urban poverty. Indeed he is the voice of the underprivileged. That is his genius.’

He can take his genius elsewhere, thought Astha, why is he bringing it here.

‘He is my brother’s friend and is coming here on my personal request‚’ went on the Principal, somewhat coyly. ‘This is a great opportunity.’

‘It’s my children’s holidays.’ The woman-to-woman approach.

‘Bring them, they will benefit. Aijaz is a wizard. He is actually a history lecturer, but his knowledge of drama is immense. Besides writing his own plays and songs, he has adapted Brecht, Shakespeare, and Greek tragedy into Hindi. People grumble about the lack of activity in the school, but when it comes to giving our students exposure they come up with all kinds of objections. Where is the school spirit?’

Astha had no option but to agree.

Hemant was not pleased. He timed his trips to be free for his children’s holidays.

‘Why can’t you stay at home? And why drag the children into this?’

‘I had no choice‚’ said Astha. ‘Anyway it will be good for the children to see schools not as elite as theirs. Anu was actually asking when were we taking her to Disneyland. All her school friends have been, she says. I don’t believe her. Disneyland! Imagine!’

‘Nothing wrong with wanting to go to Disneyland‚’ said Hemant.

‘At this age! Why, I haven’t been abroad yet.’

‘We are not talking about you. If parents can afford to show their children the world, why not?’ said Hemant. ‘This is the eighties. We are not deprived Indians any longer.’

Astha felt there was something morally wrong with getting things without struggling for them, but she knew this view irritated Hemant. He was making more money at his
age than their combined fathers at their retirement, and he didn’t seem to have any intention of letting his children struggle. She turned the conversation to the topic at hand.

‘Apparently Aijaz Akhtar Khan, the founder of The Street Theatre Group is very well known. He teaches history, and during the holidays he performs in slums, factories, streets, villages and small towns.’

‘What’s the point of that?’

‘Create empathy, generate social awareness by having workshops that involve workers and students, bridge the class divide‚’ said Astha glibly, replicating that morning’s exchange with her Principal.

‘Culture-vultures‚’ snorted Hemant, ‘why don’t they do something real about the class divide, like creating jobs?’

‘Not everybody can be a factory owner.’

Himanshu was delighted. His face broke into a slow and gleaming smile that went straight to his mother’s heart. He was always wanting to come to his mother’s school instead of his own.

Anuradha registered her brother’s pleasure and loudly protested against the injustice being done to her.

‘Why should I spend my holidays going to your school?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t I go enough to my own?’

‘I can’t leave you here alone the whole morning. It’s not classes, it’s a drama workshop. You’ll be doing fun things.’

‘I don’t want to do fun things. Besides Papa said he was going to spend fewer hours at the factory and take us out.’

‘Well let him actually make the programme and then we will see‚’ said Astha with some irritation.

‘I won’t‚’ said Anuradha her eyes flashing, getting ready for a confrontation that would continue till collapse or victory. ‘You can’t make me. I’ll spend my holidays with Dadi upstairs.’

Himanshu looked on piously, while Anuradha waited for the next round. ‘Please beta‚’ said Astha, ‘your Dadi then complains to me that she gets tired. You have so much energy
she doesn’t really know how to keep up with you. Come for a few days, if you don’t like it you needn’t continue. Promise.’

Once it was established that Anuradha was doing her mother a favour, it was easier to take her.

At first Astha did not pay much attention to Aijaz. He seemed quite capable of managing thirty-two children without her. He sat them in a circle on the stage. Do you know why people sit in a circle – so that there is no hierarchy – all of us have something to offer from backstage to front – what is the theatre about – communication – what kind? – drama – older than the written word – what did they think was the subject of drama – where did they find it …

How pedantic, thought Astha, is he giving the history of drama, are they going to do an exam, or is he going to get on with the workshop, which is why we are all here in the first place, I’m sure all the children are bored. And her mind wandered, till it came back ten minutes later to Aijaz explaining that the way man lived in society was politics and this affected everybody, literate, illiterate, powerful, powerless, poor, rich. He read out sections of the newspaper and asked how they would translate what was happening into drama for people who couldn’t read? For example what would they do with the Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi controversy?

The spot where Ram was born thousands of years ago some say is the exact spot where a masjid stands today. Is this fact or faith? If it is faith, is it sacrosanct? Are there ways in which faith can be motivated and played upon by political forces …

His voice faded, and Astha’s mind turned to the religion consumed at home on one of her husband’s TVs. Ever since the Ramayan was serialised, viewing it had become a ritual, insisted upon by the grandparents, strongly supported by Hemant.

And so, every Sunday morning, the family gathered upstairs before a ClearVision TV, twenty-inch screen, manufactured by the son of the house, and watched the story of the Ramayan. Week after week they agreed, this was the golden age of India, this is our noble heritage, now thoroughly debased, when justice flourished, when Hindus had pride, when a king showed responsibility towards his people, when duty, honour, devotion, truth and loyalty had a place in Ram Rajya. And today the birthplace of this king, our Lord, is occupied by a mosque, the shame of it, dismissing as nonsense the protest that it was not possible to really place the exact spot of a man’s birthplace so many thousands of years ago.

Suddenly Astha saw the long arm of history twisted and refracted, till it popped out of a TV box, took them to Ayodhya and planted them on Ram Kot in front of the Babri Masjid.

She was sitting at the back of the stage, her arms around her knees, thinking all this, when she looked up and saw Aijaz looking at her. Uncertainly she smiled. ‘What do you think, Astha?’ he asked.

How had he found out her name? And from being indifferent to Aijaz, the single use of her name, created a pleasure in what she, unused to the ways of men outside marriage, saw as interest rather than a communication strategy.

‘Do you think you can write the script?’ he went on.

‘Um‚’ Astha hesitated, ‘I don’t know anything about the Babri Masjid.’

Aijaz leaned towards her and said, ‘Just a working script. Your daughter has volunteered your name. She says you write.’

‘I am not really a writer, just a few poems‚’ said Astha surprised, her eyes on her daughter’s back, with the hair curling down the white shirt.

Aijaz was used to persuading people. ‘Just a simple working script which we can improvise on, Astha.’

He was focusing on her. She blushed.

Himanshu frowned. Was his mother being forced to do something unpleasant, but no, she was agreeing, she was
participating in extra-curricular activities, doing the bit that wasn’t necessary, volunteering despite her uncertainty about her capacities, because everything was worth trying.

Aijaz smiled, showing his even pearly teeth. Why does he smile like that, he knows he is charming, thought the newly appointed writer of scripts.

Going back in the scooter, Astha thought of the India International Centre, where her parents-in-law were members, and the library that only she was interested enough to use. There was bound to be something on the Babri Masjid there. As if reading her thoughts, Himanshu piped up, ‘I’ll help you, Mama.’

Anuradha snorted. ‘You? You are so stupid. What can you do? Do you even know what the Babri Masjid is? Do you know where it is?’

Himanshu turned around and hit Anuradha in the stomach. Anuradha hit him back twice as hard, then once on the back for good measure. Astha slapped Anuradha’s hand. Anuradha glared at her mother. Himanshu began to cry. Just then the scooter took a wrong turn inside the colony, and in the middle of shouting at her children, Astha had to break off and redirect the scooter wallah through the maze of Vasant Vihar. He insisted on charging ten rupees more, and that was the end of their first morning at the theatre workshop.

Later Astha had a talk with Anuradha. ‘We are going to be together for fifteen days,’ she said. ‘And in that time I forbid you to call your brother stupid.’

Anuradha looked cunning. ‘And after that?’

‘Even after that. You can’t go on calling someone stupid. It hurts their feelings.’

‘But he is.’

‘Even if he is.’

Anuradha looked victorious. ‘See, you also think so.’

Astha stared at her daughter, ‘Anu, what’s the matter with you? Four years younger, what comparison can there be?’

‘You are always taking his side.’

Why was it, thought Astha wearily, that love always had to be balanced by its opposite? She had a secret tenderness for Himanshu that her daughter targeted unerringly, battering her mother, shouting out her dislike, making even the love and hate in the world. She looked at Anuradha’s contorted face, and angry eyes, and cajoled, ‘I need help in writing a script. Himanshu can’t help me.’

Anuradha looked wary. ‘Don’t try and flatter me‚’ she said.

‘You mean what I’m saying is not true?’

For a moment Anuradha was out-manoeuvred.

‘So, it’ll have to be you‚’ continued Astha.

‘When do we start?’

‘This evening. We’ll go to the library and get some facts first.’

‘And leave Himanshu behind.’

‘Absolutely. I’ll send him upstairs.’

That evening Astha and Anuradha made for the library. As Anuradha looked at magazines, Astha quickly browsed through the books in the history section. There seemed to be no end of fuss around this mosque. Had there been a temple on this site, claimed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram? Had Babur ordered this temple destroyed? Had he compounded the arrogance of conquest by building a mosque bearing his name using materials from the temple? Zealous historians, pursuing evidence and rationality had gone into its structure, pillars, stones, inscriptions, had investigated Babur’s diary, his religious and building habits, had cited examples of British divisive policies, but nothing had been able to quiet the controversy.

Astha stared at the picture of the Babri Masjid. What was it about this monument that had created so much bloodshed and fighting over two centuries? It was not even remarkable, squat and three domed, surrounded by trees. How could she effectively present its history, long and tortured, in a manner that was simple without distorting?

Over the weekend as she read through books and photo-copies she had made in the library, she thought that controversies need places, disputes need sites, not the other way around, and the Babri Masjid was one of them. Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi. The amount of blood, hate, and passion for ownership these words evoked bathed each stone with a corrosive mixture, slashing through the surface so that it was no longer an old mosque. It was a temple, a birthplace, a monument to past glory, anything but a disused nesting place for bats. Despite all this it had endured for over four hundred years.