Monsoon Memories (35 page)

‘Do you blame me?’ Shirin had stared at her coffee, looking at the dark drown dregs and seeing something else.

‘Blame you? Why? Shonu, I blame myself. Every single day. Did he do that to you to get his own back at me? Why didn’t I notice his absence at work and leave for home earlier? If only I had got home earlier, I could have stopped it, stopped you having to go through...’

‘Did you believe what he said?’ She still couldn’t look at him.

‘What? All that nonsense about you wanting it?’ He reached out and touched her face gently. She cringed. His hand dropped away. And on his face comprehension dawned. ‘Is that why you cannot bear to be touched by me—because you think that somehow it is your fault?’

‘That’s what the counsellor says,’ she’d whispered. The counsellor. Thick brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Cloudy glasses, square frames, kind eyes.
‘You think what happened was punishment for wanting him so badly. You are afraid to touch him, to be touched by him, in case something bad will happen again. And, you think it’s just punishment for your crime: Not being able to touch the man you love, staying away from the daughter you love, being exiled from the home you love.’

‘Look at me,’ he’d urged.

He’d made sure she was looking right at him. ‘No. I didn’t believe anything he said, Shonu. Not for a minute.’

And that was enough. Now there was only one question left. One she had wanted to ask since their wedding night.

This time she looked straight at him. ‘Didn’t you want me?’

‘Oh, Shonu...’ Tears glistened in his eyes. ‘How could you think that? Have you been thinking it all along? Did
you
believe what Prem said?’

She shook her head, entranced by his tears.

‘I didn’t ever explain to you why I was waiting, did I? I thought you knew. More fool me.’ The tears trembled on Vinod’s eyelashes and started down cheeks stubbly from a night’s growth of beard. ‘I wanted you so badly, Shonu. I desired you so much. Couldn’t you tell?’

Again, she shook her head.

‘Why do you think I held you so gingerly, so far away from me? I wanted to crush you, to devour you. And when you emitted those little moans, it took all my strength not to...’ He paused, took a deep breath and looked at her, oh so tenderly. ‘I wanted our first time to be right. I didn’t want you to remember it as having sex with this man you had been contracted to marry. I wanted
you
to
make love
with
me
.’ A pause that came out a sob. ‘And he ruined it. My brother ruined it...’

The tears had created two silvery tracks on his cheeks now. Vinod cleared his throat, looked straight at her. ‘He took away a lot, Shonu, but not everything. Not our future. We’ve still got that.’

Shirin reached across and, with her finger, caught one of Vinod’s tears in her hand. It was the first time since
it
had happened that she had touched him of her own accord.

‘We do,’ she agreed.

* * *

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. In a few minutes, we will be landing at Bangalore International Airport. The local time is 5:30 a.m. and the temperature is a pleasant twenty degrees. Thank you for flying Air India. Hope to see you again soon.’

Shirin looked out the window. The plane was taxiing on land, past squat buildings that looked like they had mushroomed out of dry red mud. It was all so familiar, as if she had never been away. The plane taxied to a stop in front of a building declaring, in bold letters, ‘Bangalore International Airport’. The beautiful Kannada script with its curvy voluptuous letters winked at her from billboards everywhere. She stood on unsteady legs to retrieve her cabin baggage, her vision blurred by a film of tears.

Home. Jacinta desperately ill and asking for
her
, for Shirin. Jacinta’s face the last time she saw her eleven years ago. That nightmare evening. Her mother-in-law’s screams. The ambulance arriving, the stretcher carrying Prem past the growing crowd of spectators munching paan and spinning yarns. Her father-in-law walking beside the stretcher, a broken man. Vinod carrying her out of the kitchen with a gentleness she didn’t deserve, undressing her for the first time—oh, the irony of it— bathing the blood off her so tenderly, crying the whole time. She, dry-eyed, hounded by Prem’s empty gaze. Lying in a foetal position, staring at the walls. Prem’s eyes staring back. Dawn arriving, blush-pink, like the merest hint of blood sprouting from under bruised skin. And with it, Jacinta. Her mother’s familiar, beloved voice: ‘Where is she?’ Shirin’s heart rising: hope, an ache.
Please hold me, Ma. Please make all this go away.
The bed creaking. Her mother’s smell enveloping her, caressing her. Her mother’s hand on her arm, kiss on her cheek.
Hold me, Ma. Don’t let me go. Take me away, far away. I want to go home. To coconut trees whispering in the breeze, conversing with crows. To power cuts, patholis wrapped in banana leaves, mosquitoes humming in twilight skies. To air so heavy it sighs as it waits for the monsoons. To rain drumming on tiles and ricocheting off roofs. To Boroline and the shelter of Madhu’s arms. Take me home.
Jacinta’s voice, weighed down with sorrow: ‘What have you done, Shirin? Tell me, is it true?’ Vinod’s voice breaking on a sob: ‘She was raped.’ Jacinta, insistent, ‘Tell me, Shirin, did you do what they say?’ Vinod: ‘They are not telling you the whole story. None of this is her fault. It’s mine. I should have protected her...’ Vinod crying. Jacinta, dry-eyed, waiting for Shirin’s reply. Prem’s eyes mocking. Shirin nodding imperceptibly.
Yes, Ma, I’m guilty as charged.
Jacinta’s face. So many emotions. Pain, anger, fear, hurt and, worst of all, shame. ‘How could you, Shirin? How could you do this? After everything... You have disgraced me and brought disgrace to our entire family. You are dead to me from now on. Dead.’

The heat hit her first, heavy and humid after the air-conditioned comfort of the airport. And then the noise. There were people everywhere: relatives waiting for their loved ones; bored-looking taxi drivers in their khaki uniforms and sailor hats holding plaques while chewing paan. A host of hawkers descended on her, urging her to take a taxi, to hire a coolie for her luggage. Cars honked constantly, all of them in a hurry, causing a traffic jam which a lone harassed policeman tried to direct. Drivers shouted abuse and insults at each other and at the policeman, half their bodies hanging out of the car window, one hand on the horn. It was absolute chaos and it calmed Shirin like a drug as she made her way to the domestic airport, ignoring the hawkers who continued to follow her and beg for her custom.

The domestic airport was not quite as busy this early in the morning. She couldn’t believe she was here, on Indian soil, making her way to Taipur again for the first time since she had left for Bangalore two days before her wedding, a lifetime ago.

Tired-looking cleaning women wearing saris with pallus tucked into their waists mopped the floors and cleaned the toilets. Shopkeepers yawned as they opened their little kiosks selling outrageously overpriced goods. Smells of filter coffee permeated the morning air.

The airport started filling up slowly. A family comprised of parents, kids and grandparents took up the whole bench of seats opposite Shirin and beside her. The grandmother took off her flip-flops and sat cross-legged and barefoot in her chair. Then she set about patiently unknotting the end of her pallu, while talking non-stop to the other women and nagging her husband at the same time. He ignored her and fell asleep with his mouth open and started snoring, little purrs at first which gradually increased in volume.

‘See,’ the grandmother said with a shake of her head. ‘This is what I have to put up with!’

The children who were running around in circles, their sneakers gliding smoothly on the polished mosaic floor of the airport, screeched to a halt when they saw their grandad, pointing to his open mouth and giggling while they conferred busily together.

Children.
Reena. Mewling like a kitten, pressing into her…

Those dark days after... Staying in a rented flat near Vinod’s office while he set about finding a buyer for his business, looked for a job in England. ‘You’ll like it there, Shonu. There are green fields, open spaces. Just like Taipur.’
She’d flinched then. Taipur. A longing. An ache. No longer home. For Shirin, those days were a trance, an unending nightmare. She healed physically. The bruises faded. Her colour returned. But she couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as if it held all the answers. She was haunted by eyes. Prem’s empty eyes. Jacinta’s filled with shame. Her mother-in-law’s full of bottomless pain... In the end, despite her continued refusals, Vinod took her to a doctor. After the examination, the doctor called them in. ‘Congratulations,’ she beamed. ‘You are going to be parents.’

Shirin blinked, came back to the present.

‘Aha. No mischief, children. I know just what you are planning...’ the grandmother in the seat next to her was saying to the children, wagging a finger at them. They ran away.

There was a thunderstorm the night she went into labour. Rain at her wedding, rain at the birth of her child. A clap of thunder, a mewling wail, the doctor holding up a wriggling blood-soaked bundle, ‘Congratulations, you have a healthy little girl—seven pounds three ounces.’ She had looked at the blood dotting squirming brown flesh and screamed and screamed, while the Eyes laughed. They had to sedate her.

A fly buzzed near her ear. Shirin swatted at it. The knot the grandmother had been fiddling with opened, revealing a treasure trove of paan, which she distributed among the other women. They all started munching busily together. The kids ran up to the mother with cries of, ‘We’re hungry.’

She couldn’t produce milk. It just wouldn’t come. She was dry as the River Varuna during the drought. Her baby cried and cried, the wails reminding her of another mother’s wails the night she stabbed her son. And she had run away, run from her baby. Barefoot, through the scalding streets of Bangalore.
Running.
Bare feet flying on blistering tarmac.
Horns blaring. The damning screech of brakes. Chaos. Waking up in hospital groggy, haunted. My baby. Where’s my baby?

The mother opened one of the bags and took out a stainless-steel tiffin carrier. She fished around in another bag and extracted some banana leaves. She opened the tiffin carrier and took out idlis from one compartment, chutney from the other and distributed these to each child on a banana-leaf plate.

‘She’s fine,’ Vinod had said. ‘I hired a wet nurse. You rest.’ ‘She doesn’t deserve me, Vinod,’ Shirin had replied. ‘I cannot look after her.’ ‘I will,’ Vinod had said. ‘How will you look after both her and me?’ ‘I will,’ Vinod had reiterated, in the same solemn tone he had used for his wedding vows. Softly, she had voiced her greatest fear: ‘Vinod, she’s a constant reminder. I am afraid I will… I will hurt her like I did Prem…’ His eyes, stalking her. ‘You love her, Shirin.’ ‘I do, and that is why… she is better off without me.’ And, the thing she most dreaded: ‘I do not want her to look at me and read in my eyes the truth about her conception.’

She had called Deepak that night. It was raining when he and Preeti came to collect Reena, the clouds doing her weeping for her.

The family next to her started packing away their belongings. The grandfather was shaken awake, the children’s hair combed. Shirin swiped at her eyes and stood, realising with a pang that her flight had been called.

* * *

As the little plane circled the skies above Mangalore, preparing to land in Bajpe Airport, Shirin pressed her nose against the glass window and looked down at the beloved landscape of her homeland. Rectangles of mud-red fields winked up at her. Rivers snaked in the valleys between hills, the perky blue water twinkling in the sunlight. As the plane swooped further down, she had her first glimpse of coconut trees, their palms fluttering in the light breeze as if they were graciously waving hello, and she was aware of hot tears sweeping down her cheeks, even as she smiled.

When she came out of Bajpe Airport, the heat hit her in a humid wave, engulfing her in a sweaty embrace. She hailed a taxi at random from the huge group of people who had lunged at her offering to carry her luggage, to drive fastest, to be the cheapest fare. As she waited for the taxi to pull up, she breathed in the sight and smell of home—the green hills in the distance; the long blades of grass wilting in the sun; the air smelling of rain-soaked mud with an undertone of something spicy; the little black-and-yellow auto rickshaws with the drivers hanging out of their seats; the tiny cottages with uneven cement walls and red-brick roofs.

‘So, who are you visiting in Taipur?’ the taxi driver wanted to know.

Shirin looked out of the window at the achingly familiar landscape, one she had visited in a thousand dreams. She wished the driver would leave her alone. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to reply without breaking down in front of this stranger.

She cleared her throat. ‘My mother,’ she said in what she hoped was a firm voice that discouraged further conversation.

She didn’t want to close her eyes and pretend to be asleep. Then she would miss out on this, her first glimpse of her hometown after eleven long years.

‘Hope she wasn’t affected by the riots.’

Shirin stopped looking out of the window and focused on the driver.

‘What riots?’

‘You don’t know about the riots in Taipur?’

‘Riots, in Taipur?’ Shirin repeated foolishly, unable to believe what the driver was saying.

‘Hindus and Muslims have been fighting each other. I heard they burnt the parish hall of the Mother Mary of Miracles Church when the Christians tried to make peace. Mahatma Gandhi would be appalled at the state of India now. The politicians say it is peaceful. Where is the peace? Everywhere there is unrest, violence...’

They passed a little thatched hut selling snacks, framed by coconut trees. Clusters of tiny yellow bananas hung in the entrance. A stack of tender coconuts sat neatly in an upside-down V formation at the front of the shop tempting people to get a respite from the heat by drinking their honey-sweet water and eating their juicy flesh. She realised with a wrench that the little blue-green soda bottles with marble stoppers had been replaced by bottles of 7UP and Fanta.