Someone Else's Garden (6 page)

Her heart beats in her mouth. The next thing, her ears go deaf to her body’s sounds. She looks around. Her eyes see nothing. She remembers nothing. Not the daal or the weevils that caused all this. Her whole life can be summed up in weevils. The clouds move lazily overhead. The mustard says shrk, shrk. What should she do? She can hear everything clearly. Serve the weevils. That’s what. Grind them into a paste with the daal and serve the weevils. Weevils on her daughter’s wedding.

It is the good time of year, after the visiting dust vanishes into its permanent home somewhere in the mountains. Luckily, this time the storm didn’t take their roof, so the girls don’t have to gather too many reeds from the riverbank, and there’s little work in the fields. Mamta is still with Shanti, masking the holes in her coverlet with dainty embroidered peacocks, and popping pumpkin seeds into her mouth that her mother has slyly hidden for her fittingly behind the picture of the all-giving goddess Lakshmi. Mamta really should be checking the mustard leaf by leaf for aphids. They can destroy the whole crop in a matter of weeks.

‘I’m watching you,’ says Seeta Ram from the door. Her father has returned unexpectedly. ‘What are you doing at home? Get out there to work. And take that . . . that baby with you,’ he smacks her on the back of her head, a safe place for hidden bruising. ‘I’m watching you, just you remember that. I can still send you to the Red Bazaar if that husband of yours doesn’t turn up.’

Seeta Ram had always disliked his eldest daughter with something bordering on revulsion. The revulsion turned to hatred the night Mamta tried to beat him off her mother crying, ‘Don’t touch her, don’t you kill her . . .’ That was when he cut her rations down to a single meal a day of nothing but a dry chapatti.

Mamta looks at her father, blaming him for her whole life.
I am glad I’m leaving you, and I won’t have to meet you again
. What Mamta sees is a dictatorial, loveless, cruel man. What she doesn’t see is that Seeta Ram is a man without choices, a typical Gopalpur inhabitant, shaped by the destiny of the village. A powerless, brooding man, who has never hankered after things he didn’t deserve. No alternatives ever appeared on his horizon, or in his impermanent world of grass reeds and mud. His world is governed by the force of Gopalpur’s dusty winds and monsoon rains, and the amount of money he owes the Big House, a force he considers on par with an act of God.

She quickly drops Shanti in her tiny hammock and rushes outside.

She swishes through the mustard. Its flowers are high, they leave little pollen dabs all across her clothes like dainty block prints. The mustard says, shrk, shrk, dropping little yellow flowers at her feet. A butterfly snags in her billowing pallav. She removes the creature as gently as she can; still, the wings come off, leaving her holding the wriggling body that looks so much like a worm. For some reason, the death of the butterfly gives her a lump in her throat, and she has to blink hard to keep the tears from running down her face. She looks into the wind, dreaming of her husband-to-be. She judges the intensity of the storm, dallying a little longer, dancing uncharacteristically, her skirt tickling her ankles. Her younger sister Sneha, a little distance away, does her job much more diligently, lifting each leaf carefully. The bride-to-be feels a pang of guilt for work-abandoned moments.

Very secretly she harbours tremulous dreams of marrying someone who loves her. But what does she know of love? Can there be such a thing between a man and a woman? She has only heard of the legend of Singh Sahib and Bibiji, but to her it is more a myth. In her experience men are so far above women that she can’t conceive of a man showing anything more than kindness, bordering on pity, for his wife. Yes, for her kindness is love. Above all, she wants a kind husband.

‘I bet he has a quiff like Guru Dutt in
Pyaasa
!’

‘Guru Dutt, Didi, really?’ She can always count on Sneha’s unquestioning gullibility.

‘Yes, just like him . . .’ No one in the village has seen a film, but Lala Ram, the owner of Saraswati Stores, put up his favourite movie poster over thirty years ago as a community service. After that, the antique poster became the standard for good looks in Gopalpur. With his brooding cowlick towering over his sideburns, his streaky moustache, and his soft-focus sentimentality, Guru Dutt has sidled into every female heart upon teary jerks of breath.

‘Hai, Didi, how lucky. With such a handsome husband you can really tell that Ramu off when he teases you.’

‘Mamta! Sneha!’ warns Lata Bai. ‘You leave those boys from across the river alone, you never know what they might do.’

‘Amma, that Ramu comes over each day to my dung patch to take the sweet out of my sugar. He says my husband won’t be like Guru Dutt at all.’ Mamta squeezes her eyes closed, she’s not a child but Ramu’s words have the power to hurt her – ‘
Look at you, black as dirty oil. Do you think your mother could have got you married to a Guru Dutt?’ – Damn that motherfucker.
Each day she runs to the river, makes a pool with her hands, fills it with water and searches it for her reflection. Ramu is right, she is black as dirty oil, but not dirty enough to hide her wretched birthmark.

‘You mustn’t listen, Mamta,’ says Lata Bai feebly, unwilling to waste time on simple lessons which she thinks her daughter should have learned a long time ago.

But Mamta can’t let go. Just yesterday Ramu’s friends tried to teach her a thing or two. Prem wanted to defend her, but she’d said, ‘They want me, let them talk to me.’ No one talked to Mamta. She could pitch a stone from a catapult better than any of them, and when she hitched up the skirt of her ghaghra and ran, there was no catching up. ‘Motherfuckers,’ she laughed, and tossed curses over her shoulders, ‘Catch me if you can.’ When they couldn’t, they’d started taunting her:

Marked Mamta’s getting married,
Marked Mamta’s getting married,
To an old, old man,
He’ll come on an old horse to get her,
He’ll give her an old sari to wear,
They’ll jiggery all night together,
They’ll jiggery all night together.

Marked Mamta’s getting married,
Marked Mamta’s getting married,
To an old, old man,
He’ll beat her black and blue,
Her belly will be swollen in no time,
They’ll jiggery that night too,
They’ll jiggery that night too.

She catches herself humming the ditty, feeling betrayed. ‘He tried to tease me again today, but I chucked a stone at his head. Oh, what fun that was! How he ran!’ says Mamta, putting her arms around her mother’s neck.

Lata Bai undoes her daughter’s arms saying, ‘Careful he doesn’t catch you one day, Mamta.’

‘Huh, what if he does? He can do nothing to me now. I will belong to someone else soon. My husband will protect me.’

‘Don’t start with the dreams. Marriage can be anything. Pray you have a good husband.’

‘You mean a good husband, just like Bapu?’ Mamta says sarcastically. ‘Amma, I don’t know why . . . why you bother with him.’ Her boldness takes her by surprise.

‘You watch out. That kind of talk will get you a beating from your husband.’

‘A beating from my husband . . . I don’t think so. We will be in love as much as . . . as our own zamindar Singh Sahib and Bibiji.’

‘Mamta!’ Lata Bai cups her daughter’s mouth violently with her hand. It is such a bad omen to say something so lofty about your future husband so close to your wedding date.

‘What a love that was,’ says Mamta with a sparkle in her eyes. Singh Sahib’s great love for his wife Bibiji is legendary. He is Gopalpur’s own home-grown Romeo. Gopalpur loves all of them – Romeo–Juliet, Laila–Majnu, Hir–Ranja . . . and of course Singh Sahib–Bibiji . . . all star-crossed, desperate couples dying for love. Love stories form the substratum of Gopalpur’s daydreams. A man like Singh Sahib who is willing to love in the glorious tradition of daydreams is naturally a legend. Secretly all Gopalpur’s men aspire to Singh Sahib’s love-standard, and some even think they love their women with the same honourable hopelessness, but they don’t. Their passion is nothing but a tremor in their collective imagination, a swindle by their egos.

‘Love stories will get you nowhere,’ says her mother.

‘Yes, hai, what if he
is
old and beats you?’ Sneha verbalises her sister’s worst fears. Sneha’s unquestioning gullibility isn’t the only thing Mamta can count on.

Once again the ditty takes hold of her . . .

Marked Mamta’s getting married,
Marked Mamta’s getting married,
To an old, old man,
He’ll come on an old horse to get her,
He’ll give her an old sari to wear,
They’ll jiggery all night together,
They’ll jiggery all night together.

Marked Mamta’s getting married,
Marked Mamta’s getting married,
To an old, old man,
He’ll beat her black and blue,
Her belly will be swollen in no time,
They’ll jiggery that night too,
They’ll jiggery that night too.

‘Amma, that Ramu said Bapu would sell me to the bandits if no one turns up to marry me,’ says Sneha. The taunting has left her nervous too.

‘Well, you can just tell him that there won’t be any bandits left by next planting season. Singh Sahib’s youngest son is bringing them all in and locking them in jail,’ says Mamta. ‘Amma, tell us again about the bandits,’ she says, moving away from the sordid world of taunting boys.

‘Yes, Amma, tell us, what did the bandits do?’

‘Where do these questions come from? All the time stories, stories, as if you girls have no work to do . . . as if
I
have no work to do. We can’t fritter our lives away on stories,’ says Lata Bai.

‘C’mon, Amma, tell us about Daku Manmohan,’ says Mamta. She knows she has to plead but a little for her mother to capitulate. It was Lata Bai who gave her a taste for stories in the first place. Bending the boundaries of time and place, she would weave together threads as separate as Kashmiri silk and Bengali cotton into one gargantuan tale of bravery, epic love and histrionic honour, leaping into the arena of myth with alacrity from a very lofty height.

‘Yes, come on, Amma, Mamta Didi will be leaving soon. There will be no one to beg you for stories after she goes,’ says Sneha, pulling a face.

Lata Bai smiles. Her children are still children. She suckles Shanti. ‘Stories, stories, that’s all you care for,’ she says mock-angry. ‘What about the cooking? What about the washing? What about the weeding and tying the vines back against the walls? What about the spices? The well water? Kneading the clay for a new pot; collecting the resin and the wild mangoes. So who will do all that then? Your father?’ The children look at her, their cheeks chubby with smiles. Of course she isn’t serious, they know that.

‘Come on, Amma . . .’

‘Okay, okay. But only for five minutes. What a time that was . . .’ Lata Bai’s eyes glass over. The children come closer to her, not to miss a word. They’ve heard this story many times before, but it is always slightly different, always exciting. ‘The surprise of the bandit raid was more traumatic than the bloodiness of it.

‘I remember it was evening. Earthy clouds heralded their arrival minutes before the rhythmic hoofbeats. They looked magnificent with their turban tails flowing behind them and their oiled moustaches gleaming in the sun . . .’ The romanticism of the gang’s appearance was shattered all too soon. Not one bandit had to dismount from his horse. Gopalpur simply capitulated, offered herself up spread-eagled, naked, defenceless, to the plunderer for his taking. All night the moans of the dead and dying glided through the fields. It wasn’t a night for heroism. People hid in the hay, in ditches and in sugarcane fields. In the morning they walked out to greet a pitiless sun that showed up the destruction in its unaccountable manifestations.

‘Of course they spared the landlords, the Singh family ensconced in the Big House. Some said the Big House paid the bandits to stay away . . .’

‘But Prem says that isn’t true. He says Singh Sahib is a man of honour, and his honour wouldn’t have allowed it. He says Singh Sahib hates his son because of this surrender and if he wasn’t so sick, Singh Sahib would gladly hunt down Daku Manmohan . . . right this minute,’ interjects Mamta, filling in for her absent favourite brother.

‘Maybe, maybe. But what do we know of Singh Sahib, the zamindar of Gopalpur living in his Big House, out of our sight? We only know how much he charges for his loans and that damned son of his, Ram Singh, is like a vulture, usurping lands left, right and centre, just like Daku Manmohan. One son adds to the bandit numbers, while the other tries to cull them . . .

‘Those damned gangs. They came sweeping in from the direction of the dusty Gopalpur wind where the famines were so awful that it was said that people had begun to eat cow meat and sometimes even human flesh. At first, they took whatever their horses could carry, mostly sacks of wheat and washing left to dry unguarded on clothes lines. But we weren’t under any illusions. We knew that once the bandits attacked, they returned.

‘Each night, we had to find a different place to sleep. Under the ridge, by the riverbank, or hidden in the roots of the banyan trees . . .’ (never at the Red Ruins or the dry well, that’s where the bandits raped the girls) ‘. . . in the mornings we dragged ourselves back to our huts. As the gangs became stronger, they became bolder, and started looting everything . . . including children. That’s when my brother went missing. Others lost family too. Shyam Lal lost a son and Moti a son and a daughter. Nutan Bai thought the bandits had taken her daughter Kanno, but she found her hiding in a haystack, her leg poked through with the point of one of their knives.’

‘Even now, after all this time, Kanno doesn’t speak. We used to think her tongue was cut off, but she stuck it out at me just last week. I wonder why she doesn’t speak.’ Sneha is most concerned for the fate of dumb Kanno.