The Age of Shiva (13 page)

T
HERE WAS ONLY ONE NIGHT IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED—A MONTH AND
a half ago, just before Karva Chauth. It was during the week when Sandhya had been in her bridal bloom, the headiness of her scent making her irresistible to Arya. Dev and I had waited each evening for the light to go out in the bedroom, but that night, the delay was interminably long. For the first time, as we bid his parents and Hema a strained good night, I noticed the anger in his face beneath the surface. Perhaps it was this anger that made him throw aside his cover to squeeze in next to me under my sheet. He did not pull back when he usually did, but continued even when the rustling of our bedclothes grew alarmingly obvious. There was a cough as a warning from the other side of the room, but still, Dev pressed defiantly on. I gripped onto the sheet to keep us covered and sunk my head back into my pillow to blot out our sounds. Dev did not stop until he climaxed inside me, the one concession he made being not to cry out aloud.

When he first heard about our baby, Dev tried to show everyone that he was overjoyed. But at night, he still kept his distance, pulling his talai away from mine and keeping his back turned to me. It took some days for this to mend, for the wave of excitement in the house to lift him up in its swell, for his shirts to display some of their color again. One evening, he came home from work with a pair of baby socks and a tiny toy bell, another time he presented me with a new mother's diary and record book. Even when he placed his head on my belly and claimed to hear the baby singing inside, I sensed that his happiness was exaggerated. “Will it be a boy or a girl?” he said, without really trying to guess the answer. “What name will we pick?” he asked, but did not share in my laughter when I told him the names (all after favorite film stars) Hema had come up with so far. Sometimes, I found him sitting alone in the darkened living room after work, staring wistfully at the silent radiogram.

Mataji was more exuberant in her reaction—breaking coconuts in the temple in gratitude, performing ceremonies over me to ward off the evil eye, showering me with gifts of sweets and trinkets and toys. She started feeding me almonds crushed in milk every morning, and had a vat of mutton soup boiled for extra protein. Ten kilos of cotton were delivered to the house on her orders one Tuesday. Mataji sat on a charpoy in the courtyard and supervised the mattress maker herself to make sure he stuffed it all into the new talai he was sewing to better support my back. Every few days, she went to the market and returned with fresh pods of tamarind, their insides tart and sticky. “It's the one craving that was the same during each of my pregnancies—keep it by your bed in case you need some in the middle of the night.”

Hema had already claimed the prerogative of naming the child. “I'm really good at it,” she announced, pulling out her old dolls and reciting their names for me. “This one's Sweetie, and that one Dolly. The blue one I named Babloo, although without the head you can no longer tell it's a boy.” She started parading around the house self-importantly in a sari, as befitted her approaching aunthood. Every afternoon, she crept into the bedroom and quietly nibbled off segments from the tamarind Mataji had left for me.

As I feared, Sandhya did not take the news well. She was in the kitchen when Mataji took me over to tell her, and looked up from her cooking shocked, as if she had been slapped. For the next day she didn't talk to any of us, but went around with her eyes rimmed red, the pain raw on her face. She seemed withdrawn for a long time after that—nodding whenever Mataji or I asked how she was, and quickly walking away so that she didn't have to speak. The writing slate remained untouched, and she no longer kept me company while I dried my hair.

Then one day I came upon her sitting in front of the shrine of holy pictures near the fridge. “For eight years I've been keeping every fast there is. At first all I could feel was jealousy, and anger at how I'd been betrayed.” Sandhya turned around to look at me, and I noticed the flowers in her hand, the fresh mark of ash she'd applied to her forehead. Jasmine-scented smoke wisped up from a stick of incense, burning in front of several small pictures of incarnations of Devi arranged in a thali.

“I don't know if this will make any difference, since it hasn't for me. But for whatever it's worth, today I'm fasting for a son for my didi.”

THE NEWS HAD ONE
more profound effect—overnight, it put an end to Arya's advances. It wasn't just the reconciliation with Dev that did it, which Arya must have deduced from the sight of our talais nestling against each other again every night (one being twice the height of the other now, with all the cotton in mine). The fact that I was now with child made me exalted, inviolable—to prey on me would be to meddle with the forces of birth and creation, and this could invite unknown consequences. One evening, Arya came home carrying a paper bag which he placed respectfully in front of me. “Apricots,” he said. “For the baby. For my nephew. Or niece.” When I looked at him, there was no hint of the leer that I had become so used to seeing on his face—his expression now was serious, even contrite. I thanked him for the present, and he withdrew, satisfied. Even though I loved apricots, and knew they were quite expensive, I gave them to the ganga the next morning, much to her delight.

THE WEEKS WENT BY,
and I waited impatiently for the baby to start showing. My fantasy was to promenade my swollen stomach around Nizamuddin, and have people compliment me on it. Every day I worried if my pregnancy was following the correct timetable—I looked in the mirror and wondered how to encourage the baby along. I still had no morning sickness, still hadn't craved the tamarind as Mataji had promised. My breasts hurt every night, and I was severely constipated, but other than that, I felt fine.

Mataji massaged my scalp with mustard oil every morning in the December sunlight. She brought me Ayurvedic powders and tonics and kept strict tally of what I ate—making sure that the heating foods like eggplant and mutton were balanced with enough cooling ones like yogurt and cucumber. More importantly, she was the arbitrator, the filter, for the streams of advice that came my way. “Eat bananas and milk and other white foods to ensure the baby is fair-skinned.” “Sleep with a copper bracelet around your right wrist if you want it to be intelligent.” “Rub your private area with fenugreek paste every day to ensure an easy delivery.” “Eat lots of garlic, it will strengthen the baby's stomach.” “Whatever you do, don't touch garlic or papaya—there's nothing more dangerous for a fetus.” Hema, especially, like a bird foraging for bits of food and flying them to her nest, kept up a daily supply of suggestions gathered from her friends (although much to her disappointment, not one of her tidbits met with Mataji's approval). Even the ganga, perhaps to show her appreciation for the apricots, felt compelled to contribute by telling me what breast-milk-enhancing foods I could start eating to ensure a good supply.

For the first time since I had left Darya Ganj in a doli, I felt I could allow myself to relax—even, perhaps, be happy. The future seemed to be finally arranging itself in auspicious patterns, there was an optimistic tang to the air. The sun could shine in Nizamuddin as well, I now believed, the clouds drift away overhead, the sky become as clear. Dev's household might not have been what I had imagined for my life, but I had succeeded in the fight for my niche there. I had passed the test of Karva Chauth, and yet shown Dev he couldn't take me for granted. I had won over Mataji and Sandhya and Hema and even managed to single-handedly arrest Arya's advances. It was true I didn't agree with every opinion or custom of my in-laws, but with the arrival of the baby, I could slowly try asserting my own views more. My stature would rise, my position become more secure, especially if I gave birth to a boy. I found myself wishing for a son as I daydreamed on my talai, and had to shake the thought out of my head. This was exactly the mind-set Paji abhorred, one he had tried so hard to make sure we never embraced.

I had not seen or spoken to him since he walked out on Karva Chauth. My calls to Darya Ganj had petered out, since Biji used the excuse of my pregnancy to drop in several times a week unannounced. “Most fathers would be ecstatic at becoming grandfathers,” she told me. “But who can try to figure out your Paji? He was upset when he heard about Roopa's pregnancy, and positively enraged when I told him about yours.”

Although Paji's disapproval bothered me, it was Dev's lack of enthusiasm that was the real damper on my happiness. He dropped all attempts at pretending to be jubilant, and instead became subdued, even morose. Frayed old shirts in somber tones alternated with bright bursts of pattern—he didn't seem to care any longer what he wore. At night now, it was I who did the comforting, Dev who needed to be held. I was bewildered at first that he wasn't rejoicing the way I was, then hurt, then angry, then concerned. He was the father, after all—what effect would it have on the baby if he was so withdrawn? I kept asking him if there was something he wanted to talk about, and he kept answering that there was nothing wrong. “It's Paji's Bombay offer, I know,” I finally confronted him with one night. “Isn't that what you're still in mourning about?”

“No,” he said, after reflecting for a long time, which I knew signified that he really meant yes. “I just need a while to adjust. I'm not becoming a singer, you know—instead, I'm becoming a father. I should be happy that my clerking job at Hindustan Petroleum is so secure.”

Looking back, I should have simply taken him at his word and left it at that. Perhaps all he needed was time alone to make the transition, as he said. But the glow of the baby inside me, the coddling from Mataji, the way everything seemed to be working out in my favor—all this filled me with a sense of good fortune that I wanted to share. I felt Dev and I had been playing a game of wills that I had won. Wasn't it my duty, as victor, to lift him out of his misery? It wouldn't just be magnanimity on my part—there was also the troubling issue of guilt. Hadn't I been the one to ruin the opportunity presented by Paji—what if Dev never became a singer due to me? At the very least I should try to make his Bombay dream come true—we could leave sometime after I had the baby. Giving up Mataji and Biji's help with the infant would be a sacrifice, but a small one in exchange for harmony. Besides, an even more unsettling question loomed in the background if I didn't make the attempt: what if Dev somehow held the baby responsible, instead of only blaming me?

That's when I made the fateful decision. I went to see Paji.

MATAJI SUMMONED A TAXI
from the station to take me to my family's home in Darya Ganj. She had been unwilling to let me go by myself, but relented when I invented a Sawhney tradition requiring me to make the first trip back alone. “Are you sure you don't want me to accompany you?” she asked one final time, and I assured her I'd be fine. “Don't try to take some roundabout route,” she warned the taxi driver. “We've been living in Delhi since before you were born.”

I kept the window open, even though the wind blowing in was cutting and cold. Near the Old Fort, the familiar winter smell of pine nuts being roasted in cauldrons of sand was so strong that I almost had the driver stop so that I could buy some. There was a traffic jam as usual near Golcha cinema, and bullock carts being loaded with blocks of ice in the market lane. As I watched, a woman poured water over two boys sitting soaped-up on the sidewalk.

All through the ride, I kept rehearsing what I would say to Paji. I would apologize for my disobedience on Karva Chauth, of course, blaming it on the fasting that had made me too light-headed to think straight. “You were right, Paji,” I would tell him, “I have to get away from their influence at once if I want to retain control of my life.” Or perhaps, “If I want to live with a semblance of the principles you have taught me,” is how I would put it. And now, it was even more crucial—not just a question of me, but also my child (“
Your
grandchild”). He had already seen how religious they all were, how orthodox—perhaps I would also let slip that Arya worked for the HRM. Did Paji really want to see his own flesh and blood being raised in that atmosphere? Could he stand the thought of his grandson bending down every morning to touch the feet of his elders? Scraping his forehead before priests at temples? Parading around with a lathi and doing push-ups every dawn as an HRM cadet?

Paji seemed to be in a jovial mood, which I recognized as a particularly dangerous sign. “I've sent your mother away,” he said, leading me into his library. “Thought we could chat more freely this way.” Even though it was the middle of December, the library air conditioner was still on. He shut the door behind me and circled around to sit down at his desk. I remained standing, my hands and face numb—either with cold or with dread, I couldn't be sure.

“Please,” Paji said. “Tell me what's on your mind.” He leaned back in his chair with an affable expression, as if having entrusted himself to my capable hands, he was confident of being regaled. As I blurted out the speech I had rehearsed, he nodded bemusedly a few times, even chuckling softly when I mentioned Arya was an employee of the HRM.

“I have some good news too,” Paji said, after I had finished. I stood there, shivering, waiting to hear the verdict on whether he would help. “Did you know that what your sister's cultivating in
her
belly down in Visakhapatnam turns out to be twins? I should have bought a box of sweets, of laddoos, shouldn't I have—all this news to celebrate. Perhaps you can get in the game, too—have triplets, what do you say?” He gestured around the confines of the room. “A whole litter of grandchildren, like puppies running around—just think of how thrilled your Biji would be then.”