The Forbidden Daughter (26 page)

Isha slumped in the chair. “You’re right. Losing a child has to be the most devastating thing in the world.” If something happened to either Priya or Diya, would she ever be the same again?

A minute later there was a loud knock on the door. The moment Sundari opened it the three children rushed in, excited and flushed, all of them talking at once about their grandmother, and cutting each other off.

After several minutes Isha managed to get the story straight.

It was a highly dramatized version of what Sheila had told her, with various colorful details thrown in.

It took Sundari and Isha a while to get the children to wind down and sit at the table to eat dinner. All through the meal they kept recalling details about the incident, making Isha realize that they were affected deeply by what had happened. The excitement seemed to linger.

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Sometime later, Isha called Harish to thank him for his role in the evening’s events. “I don’t even know how to begin to thank you,” she said to him.

“Don’t be silly,” he scolded. “You can save the praise for Priya. Instead of panicking she listened for a heartbeat and then made sure her grandmother was made comfortable. All I did was guide her along. For a child her age, she did brilliantly, with no sign of fear or hesitation.”

“We’re still very grateful for your help, Harish.”

“By the way, I called the hospital a little while ago and got a status report on your mother-in-law. She’s stable at the moment.

I know her cardiologist quite well. He’s the best there is, so she’s in excellent hands.”

“But I’m still worried about her. Can you tell me in simple terms what’s wrong with her?”

He did, as clearly as always, easing Isha’s concerns to some extent. “Tell Priya I’m proud of her,” he added.

She smiled at that. “I will.”

Around ten o’clock, Sheila called again. “Ayee’s condition is much better . . . more stable, but Kumar and I plan to stay with Baba for a while,” she explained. “Can you keep the children for the night?”

“Of course. What are the doctors going to do for Ayee?”

asked Isha.

“At the moment, they can’t do much. If she remains stable, within a week they want to perform bypass surgery. They feel the stents are proving to be only a temporary measure at this time.”

“I hope everything goes off okay.” Isha still couldn’t get over the fact that her thoughts about Ayee genuinely bordered on sympathetic. How could that be when she still resented the older woman so much?

Milind and Arvind had never spent a night at Isha’s flat, so the children were treating it like a pajama party. They wanted to stay up and chat, play games. Combined with the earlier excitement, it was hard to get them to go to bed.

It was quite late by the time the boys settled into bed in the THE

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second bedroom, with Sundari sleeping on the floor. Isha put Priya in her own bed in the master bedroom.

Finally, when the lights were shut off and Priya snuggled against her in the dark, Isha said to the little girl, “I’m proud of you, pumpkin. I hear you took good care of your grandmother.”

“Doctor-kaka told me to what to do and I did exactly like he told me. He said I was very brave.”

Isha smiled in the dark. “He said to tell you he’s proud of you, too. You may have saved Ayee’s life, you know.” She stroked the head lying beside hers on the pillow. “Now, get some sleep.”

“Can we go to the hospital to visit Ayee?” Priya asked.

“We’ll see. They may not allow her any visitors in the intensive care unit.” Isha didn’t know how else she could curb Priya’s desire to visit her grandmother. She couldn’t very well tell her she was unwelcome. The child had all but forgotten the way she’d been mistreated by her grandmother. Besides, children were so forgiving—such an enviable trait.

A few minutes later, Priya was fast asleep, her breath warm on Isha’s neck. There were no whispers coming from the room next door, either, which meant Milind and Arvind were asleep, too. Sundari’s gentle snoring was unmistakable.

Lying awake for a long time, Isha wondered about her motherin-law’s future. Would Ayee recover from this latest setback?

What if she didn’t? Baba would be a lonely old man, living by himself in that big house with no one but the servants to keep him company.

But then, if he had no granddaughters to comfort him in his old age, it was his own fault.

Chapter 23

Taken aback, Sheila stared at her mother. Had those words come out of Ayee’s mouth? Ayee lay in her hospital bed, dressed in a soft blue dressing gown. Her hair dye had faded and all that silver hair seemed to blend into the white of her pillow-case.

She had seemed to age by some ten years in the weeks immediately following Niku’s death. Now she looked like the lifeblood had been sucked out of her. It was frightening.

How long would she survive at the rate she was deteriorating?

The walls of the private room were a dull shade of brown.

The place smelled, not awful, but it had a typical clinical odor that Sheila disliked. It reminded her of being in the hospital after the two Caesarian sections she’d had when she’d given birth to Milind and Arvind. It brought back memories of waking up in a room just like this, with a burning pain in her midsection.

She forced her attention back to Ayee. Sheila hadn’t imagined the words after all, because her mother repeated the question,

“If it weren’t for Priya, I would have been dead,
nah?
”

Sheila nodded. “Priya had enough presence of mind to call her pediatrician and he in turn called the ambulance. You made it to the hospital with mere minutes to spare—literally.”

Ayee had undergone open-heart surgery three days ago. Afterward, for the first couple of days she had been groggy and inco-herent from the drugs. But now she was conscious and alert, THE

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talking a little. Despite the lingering pain, the doctor had pronounced the surgery a success. She would be going home soon.

A full-time nurse had been lined up to stay at the house and take care of Ayee for the next couple of weeks.

The convalescence would be long and Ayee would have to make a complete lifestyle change. No more sweet-as-syrup tea with loads of thick milk, no more deep-fried
pakodas
—vegetable fritters—dipped in ketchup at the ladies’ afternoon meets, and no more late-night mahjong and bridge parties. She would have to start exercising a little, too, something she’d never done before.

Ayee winced. “It was very brave of Priya,” she said, breaking her gaze away from Sheila’s, clearly ashamed of admitting it.

“For a six-year-old child, it was incredibly brave—and thoughtful, considering how you and Baba treated her.” Sheila noticed the flush that came over her mother’s face, and wondered if perhaps this kind of emotional talk was suitable for a woman in her condition. Notwithstanding the doctor’s optimistic pronouncement, she still looked ill.

Ayee closed her eyes and lay in that state for several minutes, making Sheila think she was resting. But then she opened her eyes and stared at Sheila, the hazel gaze so much clearer and more focused than it was only hours ago. “I want to see Priya.”

“Why?”

Ayee let out a soft breath. Her breathing was still shallow. “I want to thank her.”

In spite of her mother’s weakened condition, Sheila’s temper sparked. “You haven’t seen her in over a year. Why now?”

A ghost of a smile appeared over the older woman’s face, making the dry, chapped lips look like they were fashioned out of parchment paper. “I might die. I don’t want to go without talking to her.”

Instead of replying, Sheila rose from the bedside chair and went to stand by the window. Her temper continued to simmer.

Priya and Diya had been treated like lepers by her parents and now that her mother had made it to the other side and back, she suddenly wanted to atone for her sins.

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A moment ago Sheila had thought it was genuine regret that had prompted her mother’s request, but then Ayee had said something about not wanting to die before talking to Priya. So Ayee wanted absolution before she could face her God. Never mind about Priya and what she’d done to save her callous grandmother’s life.

She turned around to face Ayee once again. “So this is all about you, not about her.”

“I want to tell her I’m sorry.” Ayee’s eyelids were drooping.

“A little late for that, isn’t it?” Sheila shot back. “You had six years to show her your affection and you never gave her any.

You never once held her or bought her a present. You didn’t even stop Baba from spanking her. And yet the child did everything she could to save you.”

“I know.” Shutting her eyes, Ayee seemed to meditate on the thought. “It was stupid of me . . . thoughtless.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “It was wrong.”

“Ah, so you recognize that you and Baba were mean and petty toward your own grandchildren.”

“Yes. I want to apologize before it is too late.” Ayee’s voice had shrunk to a whisper, indicating that she was rapidly getting tired. The tears were trickling down her temples and soaking into the white pillow, making wet circles on either side of her head.

As Sheila watched her mother cry, her heart began to constrict. And her temper vanished. Ayee rarely cried—or rather, that used to be the case before Niku’s death.

After Niku’s passing her mother had wept and wept, making Sheila aware for the first time in her life exactly how much Niku had meant to Ayee. She’d always known it, of course, but witnessing her relatively detached mother fall apart emotionally in mere seconds, crumble to pieces, had brought home the stark reality of it.

It was as if producing a son was the only reason Ayee had been put into this world. So when he was gone, there was nothing left for her to live for. Sheila had wondered several times since Niku’s death if Ayee would have reacted the same way if it THE

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was she who’d died and not her brother. She knew the answer: After a brief period of mourning, Ayee would have moved on.

Sheila was only a daughter, a product of her and Baba’s marriage, but not the light of her parents’ lives.

The knowledge hurt like hell. But she had to live with it.

She started pacing the length of the room. What was she going to do about this latest development? Should she ask Isha if Priya could visit her grandmother? Isha was likely to balk at the idea. And who could blame her?

But on the other hand, Ayee was in genuine pain, scared that she might die and would never have a chance to apologize to her granddaughter, never be able to make up for a lifetime of mistakes.

Sheila had heard about near-death experiences and how they changed a person completely. Ayee was turning into living proof of that phenomenon. Sheila had never dreamt that her mother, with her obstinate streak, would regret mistreating her granddaughter.

She went back to sit in the chair. “I’ll have to ask Isha about it.” She gave Ayee a candid look. “She has every right to turn down your request. You know that.”

Her mother nodded.

“I’ll try my best, Ayee, but I can’t promise.” She thought of something else. “You know you have another granddaughter, don’t you? Her name is Diya.”

Another brief nod.

“Diya is just as beautiful as Priya, maybe even more so. She’s a happy, friendly baby . . . delightful. Kumar and I would have loved to have a baby girl like her.”

Ayee sniffled. “I know.”

“Both the girls have taken after Niku. They have your eyes, Ayee—the exact shade, too.” She shook her head sadly at her mother. “You don’t know what you’ve missed by keeping them out of your life. By rejecting them you’ve rebuffed Niku’s spirit.”

“I want to see Diya also,” her mother murmured.

One of Sheila’s eyebrows flew up. “Are you sure? Don’t for-194
Shobhan Bantwal

get you never wanted that child to be born in the first place. You called her a curse.”

“Another mistake.” A minute later Ayee seemed to be asleep, her breathing becoming more regular and the lines of strain in her brow easing out.

Sheila watched her mother sleep the uneasy sleep of a woman who’d made a lot of mistakes in her life. Once again she felt a twinge of anguish. Getting caught between a mother she loved deeply and a sister-in-law and her children who were equally dear was exhausting. And painful.

With a sigh Sheila dabbed the moisture around Ayee’s eyes with a handkerchief. “If you really mean it, I’ll try my best,” she whispered. “Who knows? This may be the best thing that’s happened to our family. Good things can come out of bad ones sometimes.”

As she tiptoed out of her mother’s room she noticed her father walking down the corridor toward her, his long, purposeful strides unmistakable. He looked tired and his clothes were un-characteristically disheveled. Even his hair was a little longer than his usual neat, conservative style. He obviously hadn’t visited his barber in several weeks.

Baba hadn’t reacted well to Ayee’s breakdown in health. He hadn’t looked this weary since the days immediately following Niku’s death. Between going back to managing the business full time and worrying over his wife, his life was more stressful than ever.

“She’s sleeping,” Sheila warned him as he came to a stop in front of her.

“Is she still in a lot of pain?” he asked, inclining his head toward the partly closed door.

“She’s much better today than the last couple of days. By the way, she talked quite a bit.”

“About what?” Baba gave her a suspicious look.

Better to tell him the truth, concluded Sheila, before he heard it from Ayee and yelled at her. Ayee couldn’t handle his kind of temper tantrums at the moment. “She wants to see the children.”

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“But Milind and Arvind already visited her this afternoon, didn’t they?”

She glanced at him for an instant, then looked away. “She wants to see Niku’s children.”

“Oh, that!” Baba’s cheeks turned a dull red. “She mentioned that to me last night.”