Someone Else's Garden (24 page)

‘Did we hit something?’ ‘Hai hai . . .’ ‘Stop!’ ‘Don’t stop’ ‘Go!’ ‘Go!’ ‘Go!’ ‘Stop’ ‘Go on.’ The bus is a mess of tangled opinions. It stops with a shudder.

The shouting switches off with the engine. The driver jumps down from the door, eager to get it over with. It’s the victim’s fault, he knows. He has a bus full of witnesses who’ll testify in his favour. Mamta looks up, arms outstretched.

‘Mad, are you? Want me to run you over like a stray dog? This is no way to stop a public bus,’ he shouts into the night, shading his eyes against the headlights with his hand.

‘Take me. Please, please, take . . . me . . . take me . . .’ she sobs, lying prone in the dust, ‘I am here,’ she calls to the driver, afraid that he might not see her in the frugal light.

‘Get in before I change my mind. These people just come out of the village and think they’ll get a ride on any old bus going to the city. They all want to go to the city. What’s there in the city? Mad, all of them. Mad, all of you. Totally mad.’ His words are blustering, but in fact he’s relieved she’s still alive. A death would have meant a hot night spent here on this wretched stretch of road where they would have had to wait hours to get word to the police.

She’s cheated death yet again. Twice now! An uncontrollable giggle rises up her throat threatening to explode. A bus, she’s on a bus. A bus to the city.
Oh, Prem, buses do exist and they run exactly where you imagine them to. Thank you, my brother. Thank you, Devi. Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho.

‘You have money?’

She nods. He isn’t convinced.

‘I’ll not hesitate to throw you out.’

She hands him a note.

‘A hundred,’ he says, admiration mixed with mistrust.

If there is one thing Mamta has learned to do it is read eyes. Before he can say another word, she plucks the note out of his hands and gives him another, hoping it is the right one. It’s a smaller one.

The man pockets it.

‘Where to?’

‘How far does this bus go?’

‘Begumpet.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, what?’

‘All right.’

‘All right what? All right Begumpet, or all right Ranakpur, Sonpur, Seeta Gaon, Rajunagar . . .’ the conductor reels off names of towns en route from memory.

An irritated voice shouts, ‘Give her the bloody ticket. We are all trying to sleep. She’s from the village. None of them has heard of the city. You know that.’

‘Begumpet then,’ she says.

Her ticket sits tight and secure in her hand.

Now that the danger’s past and the other passengers see what it brought in their midst, a pitiful thing like Mamta, they quickly fall back to sleep. Some with their heads thrown back and their mouths gaping to the ceiling, others with their children stuffed in laps.

Mamta is lucky to have been nearly run over by this particular public bus. Babu, the driver, is an ex-army officer who had to take early retirement because of an injury. He follows the All India Bus Permit Rules, and will take as many passengers as can sit on the seats and thirty-one standees only. No one sits on the luggage carrier overhead. His sister’s son had fallen from one such luggage carrier and died on the spot.

The blue nightlight glows eerily, illuminating the faces of her companions in fits and starts. For the most part, the other passengers are just conical shapes, covered in their blankets more against wind rushing in from the windows than for privacy. Like most villagers who live in hot places, they think stirred-up air of any kind a health hazard.

The only one awake is the conductor, the man who sold her the ticket. He lounges on the bus stairs, perfectly comfortable to be standing, bouncing violently, holding on to the rail loosely with two fingers of his right hand.

He looks into the night, taking in each flashy new milestone along the road. He knows they aren’t actually milestones, but kilometre stones, as the whole country has moved into the metric system. But he’ll stick to miles, as it isn’t easy to explain to his passengers that the distance in miles or kilometres between any two places is the same.

‘No vomiting, you hear,’ he shouts over the engine, ‘want to vomit, stick your head out of the window.’

Vomiting. Window. Why would she vomit? And there isn’t a window next to her. The lack of a window sends her into a new kind of panic. Her breath comes in short bursts and suddenly she has a pain in her chest.

‘Forget it, he says that to everyone. I haven’t seen anyone vomit in years.’ The fat woman rolls over and goes to sleep after discharging this important and untrue piece of information. For the rest of the night, she burps and lets off noxious fumes in Mamta’s direction – the remnants of her lunch.

In the morning Mamta will see the yellow streaks all along the outer side of the bus, proof of the perilous nature of the journey. But for now she is content just to be. Enough time has passed for the real threat of rape and shit-smearing to give way to sadness.

Unexpectedly, the tears start running down her face. She has no control over them. Embarrassed, she hides herself in her pallav. The conductor has seen many tears. He can almost time them. Half an hour into the journey, and the girls start crying. He never asks why or looks into their faces when they do. None of his business, he thinks; why get wrapped up in other people’s affairs? Conducting is what he does. He is one of those rare few who enjoys his travelling job, and passes the time by acknowledging each landmark along the way, a friend revisited.

The driver Babu, on the other hand, is distressed by the tears. In the rear-view mirror he can see Mamta’s face bent into her arms, shoulders shaking. There are some types of sadness that become real only when shared. There are others that are elusively niggling, like a hair in the mouth. And then there are still others that feed on themselves and engorge. The woman’s sadness puzzles him. What kind of sadness is it? He would like to know Mamta’s story, but he keeps his eyes on the road, attentive, adjusting the mirror so he doesn’t have to look on her grief.

Lokend’s kindness may have fortified Mamta’s will, but it has left her tender and completely at destiny’s mercy. Her sadness isn’t so much for herself, but for the choice she made. The imprint of the memory box with its faded goddess raids her every thought. She deserves karmic retribution. She should have tried harder for her stepdaughter. She should have chosen another night. How could she leave her behind? Now hers is the only body that can be offered up for butchery. When everything else failed, Lokend was there for her, a wall behind her back. Why couldn’t she have been a wall behind her stepdaughter’s back? The one person who loved and depended on her, how could she have left her behind?

It would have been better if I’d died of starvation, because star-v ation is what I deserve. Now she might die of starvation or something worse. My daughter, doomed, because I left her behind. Left her behind to die.
A groan escapes her lips.

Her neighbour, drifting in and out of the uneasy sleep of fat people, misreads her whimper.

‘Water? This is a good bus, ask the conductor if you want water.’ ‘Cold drink, cold drink . . .’ the sharp tinging of a bottle-opener run up and down glass bottles closes the door on her past.

She is realising something new: she can eat or sleep without asking someone else’s permission. She is the one who will decide how much of the money that is scratching between her breasts should be spent on what. She pokes the wad with her finger, jamming it further down her cleavage.

‘Chai, chai . . .’

‘How much?’ The fat lady is awake and ravenous. ‘These people are highway robbers. That’s why they work along the highways.’ She giggles at her own joke. ‘I never buy anything from them, but I ask the price anyway. Who knows, one day, the price will be fair and I might decide to buy from them.’ The fat lady is travelling alone. She is a Sikhanni, as fierce as any man from her clan. Sikh women have an equal place in society as their men, so much so that boys and girls are given identical first names. This particular woman’s name is Paramjit Kaur – Paramjit, supreme conqueror – a grandiosely militant title, typical of a Sikh name.

Paramjit Kaur has finagled a holiday for herself at her sister’s. Her two children are grown and running the house for their father, a surprisingly effete man. Her success at home has made her magnanimous. She will do whatever she can for her fellow passengers. Even such a sorry one as Mamta.

‘How long do we stop at these places?’ Mamta is scared of stopping. Motion is her safety. Stopping means she has to make herself disappear again, like one of the sleeping people, under her sari. The only reason she has chosen to reveal herself this time is because of Paramjit Kaur’s conversation.

‘Can be minutes, can be hours. It’s all up to the driver. I have been on this bus three times before. Once it took me one night to get to Begumpet, once two days. Who can tell? Don’t worry, they sell food too. Get the puri bhaji. It sells fast, so it’s unlikely to be rotten, and they also give you water to drink.’

The bus comes suddenly awake for the puri bhaji. ‘Two . . .’ ‘Three in the back . . .’ ‘What about me? I’ve asked you three times for one . . .’

Orders fly. She looks from face to face, from voice to voice, from order to order and then softly says, ‘One here.’ No one hears her or listens.

‘One here,’ she says, lifting a shy arm above her head. No one notices.

Packets of puri bhaji dash past her up and down, from hand to hand, but not one for her. The smell is making her faint with hunger. The back of her mouth is already swimming in the spit of anticipation.

‘Arey-oh, puri bhajiwala. Got cotton in your ears, have you? Send one to the back right now for this woman,’ Paramjit Kaur’s voice booms like cannon shot over the heads of the other passengers. Mamta’s shoulders hunch up to her ears, cringing at the attention the fat woman might attract. But she need not worry. Paramjit Kaur, the supreme conqueror, has won again. Her words find their mark. Miraculously, a packet of food appears in Mamta’s hand.

‘What are you saving it for? Eat while it’s hot!’ Her saviour prods her with a finger.

‘Eat? But . . . but the others . . . they might . . . they might . . . What about the others?’ she whispers, meaning the men on the bus.

‘What about the others? You just eat up. He’s going to want his money soon. It’s unbelievable how he keeps track of all his customers. Never misses a payment. The water comes with your change. Arey, eat, I said. You village girls, such scaredy types,’ she says. ‘Let my man try and say something to me, just let him try. Why I can fire a gun better than my husband even. We are kshatriyas, all fighting types, men, women, all. You must not be a scaredy type, otherwise you will be chomped up like a rabbit.’

There is always one on every bus, the free-advice-giver.

Mamta opens the dried leaves. The smell of fried potatoes nesting in a flower of more than six perfectly round golden brown puris is almost overwhelming.
Surely it can’t be all for me?
She breaks off a piece of the flat bread, wraps it around the potatoes, and stuffs it, bite after bite into her mouth. Almost at the end of her meal, she stops. ‘Thank you, Devi,’ she whispers, ‘forgive me.’
Forgive me.
The pickle is hiding in the last morsel. The acid of raw mango sends fresh juices flowing into her mouth. She sees no one else lick the leaves and against her better judgement she doesn’t lick the wrapping either, but makes sure there is nothing sticking to it, cleaning it with her thumb before tossing it out of the window like the others. ‘We are not like you,’ she says with regret to the free-advice-giver.

‘I can see that from your clothes.’ Paramjit Kaur is wearing a salwarkurta splattered with pretty yellow flowers and a matching scarf looped round her neck. Mamta squirms in her sari, the indistinct colour of filth; she can’t even remember what colour it once was.

The puri bhaji seller enters the bus to collect his money. No one asks the price, they all seem to know how much to pay. As he comes closer to Mamta she squints to see how much the others are paying. She can’t tell, some pay in coins while others in notes.

‘Don’t you have small money?’ he asks her neighbour who hands him a blue note.

Bewildered, Mamta holds her cupped hands above her head. Paramjit Kaur tugs at her pallav, pinching the tiniest piece of dirty cloth between her fingers, pulling her arms down. ‘Never beg, you hear me, never beg. The worst thing you can do is beg. If you are hungry, go to the Gurdwara. They give out free food from twelve to three. I have eaten there so many times myself. My husband is so embarrassed,’ she giggles. ‘He says Gurdwara lunches are for the poor, but you should just taste that food, my . . . what food . . . So where are you going?’

‘Money?’ The puri bhaji seller saves her from giving herself away.

Mamta decides to take a chance and places the note she received in change from the conductor in the food seller’s palm.

He returns a coin to her. She looks at it. A small 50 shines up at her. The coins she knows well. That’s all her husband spent on her since her marriage: 25 paisa for this, 50 paisa for that, one rupee for the other. Her husband. Her stomach starts to boil again.
He must be mad. He must be thrashing her. Forgive me.
The tears start up in her throat again. She swallows them.

‘So, you will never find a Sikh begging. Oho, what’s wrong with you? Be brave, my girl. Be brave. All change is opportunity, all journeys discoveries . . .’ Paramjit Kaur passes out unsolicited philosophical tips in exactly the same tone she might use to discharge advice on the best way to remove stains from white clothes.

Water splashes into Mamta’s palm that still bears the coin. She cups her hands and drinks. As the first wayward drop finds its way to her mouth she realises it is fresh. She isn’t crying any more.

She gets off even before she is fully awake. ‘Side, move!’ A hand pushes her into the grime of the Begumpet Bus Terminal. It has taken her twenty-six hours to escape to this small city, almost exactly in the centre of India.

Mamta stands, it doesn’t occur to her to dust her clothes.