Married Woman (25 page)

‘You should see the stuff they publish against India and Hindus in Pakistan. Why don’t you protest against that?’

‘I do protest. I happen to think that any religion that incites violence is bad, ours, theirs, everybody’s. Listen to this:

She watched as Hemant reached out and turned the Ramjanambhoomi Nyas pamphlet over in his hands. She liked his hands. They were so square, so competent, they smelled nice, they felt nice on her. His palms were soft and pink, his nails always short and clean. Why was it like this
between them? She sidled next to him, and put her hands under his kurta, rubbing his soft stomach. ‘I do so wish they hadn’t planned it around New Year’s. I hate to leave you alone, but darling what to do?’ Plaintive, appealing, emphatic.

Hemant grunted. ‘Say no, what else is there to do?’

‘But I have committed, it’ll look bad.’

‘They don’t own you.’

‘Just for two days. I’ll be back so soon, you won’t realise I have gone‚’ said Astha trying to be playful.

‘I won’t be here.’

‘Why?’

‘I have to go away.’

‘But you never said.’

‘I only knew of this today.’

She did not believe him. How would she leave the children? She would have to move them upstairs, and that too after her dignified statement of taking them with her. He was doing this to punish her.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Bombay. To see a dealer. It’s important.’

Astha did not ask how and why, and nor did Hemant elaborate. ‘What about the children?’ she asked a little forlornly. They had never been without both parents before, without her really, Hemant was frequently away.

‘That’s your responsibility‚’ he replied. ‘I have work to do, a factory to run, I can’t be both mother and father.’

She would have to be conciliatory with Mummy, she would have to sit down and explain why she was going instead of getting angry, she would have to tell the children she was leaving them with their grandmother, and hope the grandmother would not bad mouth her while she was away. She might as well have spared herself the worry of what Hemant was going to do, he was going to manage just fine.

That night she couldn’t sleep. Her mind refused to rest, roaming restlessly among the things that made up her life, her home,
children, husband, painting, the Sampradayakta Mukti Manch. Was it too much for a woman to handle; was her mother-in-law right? But why? Her children were well taken care of, she had trustworthy servants, she had someone who cooked better than she, she had left her teaching. And yet she was chained.

Her thoughts grew darker and darker. Restlessly she tossed to and fro, looking for a position that would force her mind to imitate her closed eyes, and free her into sleep. Hemant snored next to her, and his impenetrability irritated her further.

Next morning, tired and bewildered, she got up, looked at her husband, who appeared fresh and lovely. He glanced at her, and she smiled, her lips stretched across her face, cracking her skull, but still her lips would stretch, and her eyes would look up at him.

Hemant left for Bombay, departing one day before she did, destroying the fantasy she had had that he might drop her at the station, and they could part tenderly with many expressions of I will miss you, hurry back, phone me when you reach.

‘You are also leaving?’ Himanshu asked, round eyes.

‘Yes darling, only for two days.’

‘But why?’

‘I have some work.’

But this explanation did not resonate the way the father’s did, and both mother and son felt a little unconvinced.

Next night, the train to Ayodhya from Old Delhi at 9.30 p.m. Both children insisted on accompanying her to the station. Mala was taken to escort them back. They left the house at 8.00 and at 8.30 were caught in a religious procession starting from a gurudwara.

Mother, son and daughter watched the green dial of the dashboard clock tick the minutes away as they waited and waited. For the first time Astha felt the impatience Hemant did in traffic, but there was nothing she could do, blaming the
government did not come so easily to her, nobody to blame in fact, but God above who had made them Indians in an overcrowded land.

People darted in and out of the traffic, bumping against rickshaws, cars, buses, weaving in and out all over the road. From time to time cars, scooters and scooter-rickshaws inched forwards squeezing themselves wherever they could, but they could not squeeze themselves as small as people did.

‘Will Mama miss the train?’ asked Himanshu interestedly.

‘Don’t be stupid‚’ said Anuradha.

Astha clenched her fists. ‘I think I can see the traffic lights now‚’ she said after the car had crawled along for twenty minutes.

It was five to nine. There were the traffic lights visible at last, the end of the intersection was almost in sight, it was the last major light before the station.

Finally they reached. Station. Parking lot. Platform. They might as well have saved themselves all that anxious clockwatching. The train was one hour late. They hung around the platform, surrounded by standing, sitting, squatting, lying, waiting people. There was hardly any room to move. By the year 2010 standing room only in India. Make way, make way, squeeze in more, that year is lurking around the corner.

‘How long do we have to wait for that stupid train?’ complained Anuradha, while Himanshu clung to her. Astha felt his body through her sari, felt his arms around her waist, his hand resting on the bit of bare back between her sari and her blouse.

‘Do you want an orange?’ she asked.

He nodded. Astha reached into her sling bag and started peeling one.

‘I also want‚’ said Anuradha indignantly. Astha handed her half.

Announcement. The train was delayed another hour. The people on the platform stirred, rippled, and then settled down to waiting again.

‘Go home‚’ said Astha, ‘Mala take them home. It is getting very late.’

‘No, I’m not going, I’m waiting with you‚’ wailed Himanshu.

‘We will wait, it’s all right‚’ said Anuradha gruffly. She demanded some money to buy
Stardust,
and settling herself on her mother’s suitcase, began to read. Himanshu picked his nose, and looked vacantly at the train tracks beyond his feet.

At last the whistle, the clang, the arrival. The platform woke, and a huge beast sprang into motion. It pushed, it shoved, it jostled. Sharp cornered boxes and heavy suitcases were lugged onto the heads of coolies while the parcels and bags slung from its arms jut, poke, obstruct, protrude, and threaten with injury. Astha clutched Himanshu with one hand and dragged Anuradha along with the other, trying to keep up with the coolie looking for her compartment.

There was her name and berth number, pasted outside a second class AC coach. More squeeze and push till they reached the berth.

Finally. The coolie was paid, and Mala and the children sat around in a listless sort of way, listening to more announcements of delayed trains, before they all agreed that the family had seen Astha off and now they could go home.

‘Bye darlings, bye dearest ones‚’ she said, ‘I’ll be back before you know it, and I will phone, all right. Be good, don’t give Dadi any trouble.’

The children jumped off and led by Mala fought their way out of the crowd.

Eventually, three hours after it was supposed to, the departure whistle blew, and the train gave a little jerk.

Astha sank back into solitude. She laid out the pillow and sheets that an attendant had thrown at her, and settled down for the night, rocking with the quickening rhythm of the train, not yet wanting to close her eyes and go to sleep.

Next morning, and the U.P. landscape through the purple film plastered over the train windows. The land on either side was flat and dry, with patches of green fields. Uttar Pradesh,
home to eighty million people, many of them leading poor, illiterate, and harsh lives, but ready to leave their fields, villages, and towns to converge upon the Babri Masjid, to protect their faith and motherland, something that would not have occurred to them before.

Faizabad, Ayodhya’s twin city, 11 a.m. The Sampradayakta Mukti Manch had made arrangements for the women to stay at a guest house they frequently used. Astha got into a rickshaw and gave the address.

‘Have you come to do Ram darshan at the masjid?’ asked the rickshaw wallah, as Astha put her feet on her bag to prevent it from falling on the road.

‘Yes‚’ she answered cautiously.

The rickshaw wallah nodded, it was the expected answer, Astha could see.

The guest house was a large white washed bungalow set away from the road, in what used to be the Faizabad Civil Lines. A middle-aged lady came out to greet her.

‘Astha Vadera? The others from your organisation are out. They will be back soon.’

She was taken to a high-ceilinged, dark drawing room and served tea. The lady launched smoothly into a brief history of her life, she owned the house, she didn’t really need the money, running a guest house was a time pass, one must be active, her son and daughter were in America, she didn’t want to burden their lives. See, here they are, gesturing at pictures in ornate silver and wooden frames on the massive Burma teak sideboard.

A house, thought Astha, if my mother had a house, she too could have done something like this, instead of going to Rishikesh and losing herself in an ashram.

The widow got up, adjusting her sari palla around her head. ‘Your room is upstairs. Come.’

The uncovered staircase was next to the outer wall, and led up to five small rooms in a row. There was a verandah
running the length, a nice view of the garden, in one corner were the bathrooms, in another, a bit of terrace to sit on.

‘Food to be ordered two hours in advance‚’ said the widow, unlocking the door of a small room, one little window, red floor, one bed, chair, table and cupboard.

As Astha sat there, eleven forty-five in the morning, the sense of adventure she had experienced in the train fell away. The room was neat, clean, without character and totally remote from everything that made up her days. She felt strange and dislocated. What would her children be doing? She missed them, she hoped Anuradha wasn’t fighting too much with Himanshu, she hoped that their grandmother wasn’t feeding them too much rubbish, but it didn’t matter, it was just two days, she hoped they weren’t watching too much TV, but then that didn’t matter either, it was just two days.

Tonight will be better, she thought, trying to argue away her depression, tonight at the function she would be where the action was, she would make her speech, feel the purpose of her visit more.

A little later, when Astha washed and went down she discovered that in the widow’s estimation there were seven thousand temples in Ayodhya.

‘Seven thousand? Are you absolutely sure?’ she demanded incredulously.

The widow looked at her sternly. ‘It’s Ram’s birthplace. There is a need for so many. When there is a festival like Ram Navmi, lakhs of pilgrims visit. Many temples double as dharmsalas. They charge one rupee to ten, and the pilgrims sleep wherever they can.’

‘So many temples. And they want one more.’ The figures startled her into being naïve, she knew the agitation had nothing to do with numbers.

‘Of course‚’ said the widow. ‘Ram was born right on the exact spot where the Babri Masjid is. You can even see from the pillars inside that there was a temple there. Eight pillars
with Hindu carvings, mango leaves, goddesses, apsaras, kalash in black stone. Where did they come from? They built the mosque around them to mock us.’

‘Mock us?’

The widow glanced at her pityingly, and spelt it out. To remind us that they have the power to destroy our temples.’

‘I don’t think it’s quite like that‚’ began Astha when the widow interrupted. ‘Even now, Muslims living here really have their allegiance somewhere else. You will see during cricket matches they want Pakistan to win, this is not their soil.’

Astha knew it was useless to protest. Opinions like this, based on preconceptions, did not change. What did it take, a lifetime? A whole new history? What?

The widow seemed nice, even educated, she would not condone violence, no. Hers would be the gentle voice declaring ‘they’ were all the same, and these were words that would have a longer reach than any missile thrown.

Was it like this in Pakistan, Astha wondered. Did Muslims look upon Hindus with suspicion? Ah, but where were the Hindus in Pakistan? All dead or gone, leaving scars that rankled even now.

Reshana came, ‘Have you been waiting long?’ and didn’t wait for an answer. ‘They are escorting a fresh lot of bricks into Ayodhya, bricks wrapped in saffron, silk, cotton, with tikka on them, stamped with the name of Ram, as though they were an object of worship, bricks to build the temple, high hysteria around the whole thing. We have been trying to make sure our function tonight is well attended, but—’ her voice trailed off, a little hopeless.

Astha understood. As an artist the visual and symbolic appeal of saffron clad bricks would be far stronger than any appeals to reason and history. Still one had to do what one had to do.