The Space Between Us
Read The Space Between Us Online
Authors: Thrity Umrigar
space
between
us
THRITY UMRIGAR
For the real Bhima
and the millions like her
PROLOGUE
The thin woman in the green sari stood on the…
1
Although it is dawn, inside Bhima’s heart it is dusk.
2
Sera Dubash glances at the basket of onions hanging near…
3
Bhima is in the kitchen, washing the dishes from last…
4
They are sitting in the dining room, sipping tea, Sera…
5
As Sera waits for the elevator, she wonders if it…
6
Shyam, the pockmark-faced neighbor who lives on the other side…
7
It is Saturday morning and Bhima is late again. Despite…
8
Riding next to Viraf in his air-conditioned car, Bhima smiles.
9
Sera wakes up with a groan. She peers at the…
10
At least she is not picking them up at the…
11
Dr. Mehta is a tall, stooped man with droopy, sad eyes…
12
Two months have gone by, Bhima thinks, and still the…
13
The telegram that came from Delhi said only Pooja and…
14
Sera! Dinu! Welcome, welcome, welcome into our humble home,” Aban…
15
Four years into her marriage, Sera had woken up one…
16
The salty sea air smells good, and the ocean tickles…
17
Gopal came home after ten days in the hospital, and…
18
Bhima entered the dark slum and wondered where the past…
19
As she stops at the baniya to pick up some…
20
Bhelpuri.
21
Bhima spins around. Her face lights up with genuine pleasure…
22
Maya was in Banubai’s kitchen making tea for the old…
23
Bhima had never known that hate could have such a…
24
It has been a long day, and the house is…
25
It is dusk when Bhima emerges from the apartment building.
T
he thin woman in the green sari stood on the slippery rocks and gazed at the dark waters around her. The warm wind loosened strands of her scanty hair, pulling them out of her bun. Behind her, the sounds of the city were muted, shushed into silence by the steady lapping of the water around her bare feet. Other than the crabs that she heard and felt scuttling around the rocks, she was all alone here—alone with the murmuring sea and the distant moon, stretched thin as a smile in the nighttime sky. Even her hands were empty, now that she had unclenched them and released her helium-filled cargo, watching until the last of the balloons had been swallowed up by the darkness of the Bombay night. Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with its meat scooped out.
Balancing gingerly on the rocks, feeling the rising water tonguing her feet, the woman raised her face to the inky sky for an answer. Behind her was the lost city and a life that at this very moment felt fictitious and unreal. Ahead of her was the barely visible seam where the sea met the sky. She could scramble over these rocks, climb over the cement wall, and reenter the world; partake again of the mad, throbbing, erratic pulse of the city. Or she could walk into the waiting sea, let it seduce her, overwhelm her with its intimate whisperings.
She looked to the sky again, searching for an answer. But the only thing she could hear was the habitual beating of her own dutiful heart…
A
lthough it is dawn, inside Bhima’s heart it is dusk.
Rolling onto her left side on the thin cotton mattress on the floor, she sits up abruptly, as she does every morning. She lifts one bony hand over her head in a yawn and a stretch, and a strong, mildewy smell wafts from her armpit and assails her nostrils. For an idle moment she sits at the edge of the mattress with her callused feet flat on the mud floor, her knees bent, and her head resting on her folded arms. In that time she is almost at rest, her mind thankfully blank and empty of the trials that await her today and the next day and the next…To prolong this state of mindless grace, she reaches absently for the tin of chewing tobacco that she keeps by her bedside. She pushes a wad into her mouth, so that it protrudes out of her fleshless face like a cricket ball.
Bhima’s idyll is short-lived. In the faint, delicate light of a new day, she makes out Maya’s silhouette as she stirs on the mattress on the far left side of their hut. The girl is mumbling in her sleep, making soft, whimpering sounds, and despite herself, Bhima feels her heart soften and dissolve, the way it used to when she breast-fed Maya’s mother, Pooja, all those years ago. Propelled by Maya’s puppylike sounds, Bhima gets up with a grunt from the mattress and makes her way to where her granddaughter lies asleep. But in the second that it takes to cross the small hut, something shifts in Bhima’s heart, so that the milky, maternal feeling from a moment
ago is replaced by that hard, merciless feeling of rage that has lived within her since several weeks ago. She stands towering over the sleeping girl, who is now snoring softly, blissfully unaware of the pinpoint anger in her grandmother’s eyes as she stares at the slight swell of Maya’s belly.
One swift kick, Bhima says to herself, one swift kick to the belly, followed by another and another, and it will all be over. Look at her sleeping there, like a shameless whore, as if she has not a care in the world. As if she has not turned my life upside down. Bhima’s right foot twitches with anticipation; the muscles in her calf tense as she lifts her foot a few inches off the ground. It would be so easy. And compared to what some other grandmother might do to Maya—a quick shove down an open well, a kerosene can and a match, a sale to a brothel—this would be so humane. This way, Maya would live, would continue going to college and choose a life different from what Bhima had always known. That was how it was supposed to be, how it had been, until this dumb cow of a girl, this girl with the big heart and, now, a big belly, went and got herself pregnant.
Maya lets out a sudden loud snort, and Bhima’s poised foot drops to the floor. She crouches down next to the sleeping girl to shake her by the shoulders and wake her up. When Maya was still going to college, Bhima allowed her to sleep in as late as possible, made gaajar halwa for her every Sunday, gave her the biggest portions of dinner every night. If Serabai ever gave Bhima a treat—a Cadbury’s chocolate, say, or that white candy with pistachios that came from Iran—she’d save it to bring it home for Maya, though, truth to tell, Serabai usually gave her a portion for Maya anyway. But ever since Bhima has learned of her granddaughter’s shame, she has been waking the girl up early. For the last several Sundays there has been no gaajar halwa, and Maya has not asked for her favorite dessert. Earlier this week, Bhima even ordered the girl to stand in
line to fill their two pots at the communal tap. Maya had protested at that, her hand unconsciously rubbing her belly, but Bhima had looked away and said the people in the basti would soon enough find out about her dishonor anyway, so why hide it?
Maya rolls over in her sleep, so that her face is inches away from where Bhima is squatting. Her young, fat hand finds Bhima’s thin, crumpled one, and she nestles against it, holding it between her chin and her chest. A single strand of drool falls on Bhima’s captive hand. The older woman feels herself soften. Maya has been like this from the time she was a baby—needy, affectionate, trusting. Despite all the sorrow she has experienced in her young life, Maya has not lost her softness and innocence. With her other free hand, Bhima strokes the girl’s lush, silky hair, so different from her own scanty hair.
The sound of a transistor radio playing faintly invades the room, and Bhima swears under her breath. Usually, by the time Jaiprakash turns his radio on, she is already in line at the water tap. That means she is late this morning. Serabai will be livid. This stupid, lazy girl has delayed her. Bhima pulls her hand brusquely away from Maya, not caring whether the movement wakes her up. But the girl sleeps on. Bhima jumps to her feet, and as she does, her left hip lets out a loud pop. She stands still for a moment, waiting for the wave of pain that follows the pop, but today is a good day. No pain.
Bhima picks up the two copper pots and opens the front door. She bends so that she can exit from the low door and then shuts it behind her. She does not want the lewd young men who live in the slum to leer at her sleeping granddaughter as they pass by. One of them is probably the father of the baby…She shakes her head to clear the dark, snakelike thoughts that invade it.
Bhima’s bowels move and she clucks her tongue. Now she’ll have to make her way to the communal bathroom before she goes to the tap, and the line will be even longer. Usually, she tries to
control her bowels until she gets to Serabai’s house, with its real toilets. Still, it’s early enough that the conditions shouldn’t be too bad. A few hours later and there will hardly be room to walk between the tidy piles of shit that the residents of the slum leave on the mud floor of the communal toilet. After all these years, the flies and the stink still make Bhima’s stomach turn. The slum residents have taken to paying the Harijan woman who lives at the far end of the slum colony to collect their piles each night. Bhima sees her sometimes, crouching on the floor as she sweeps the pancakes of shit with her broom into a wicker basket that’s lined with newspaper. Occasionally, their eyes meet, and Bhima makes it a point to smile at her. Unlike most of the residents of the slums, Bhima does not consider herself superior to the poor woman.
Bhima finishes her business and makes her way to the tap. She groans as she sees the long line, winding its way past the black, disheveled-looking huts with their patched tin roofs. The morning light makes the squalor of the slum colony even more noticeable. The open drains with their dank, pungent smell, the dark rows of slanting hutments, the gaunt, openmouthed men who lounge around in drunken stupors—all of it looks worse in the clear light of the new day. Despite herself, Bhima’s mind goes back to the old days when she lived with her husband, Gopal, and their two children in a chawl, where water gurgled through the tap in her kitchen and they shared the toilet with only two other families.
Bhima is about to join the end of the water tap line when Bibi spots her. “Ae, Bhima mausi,” she says. “Come over here, na. For you only I’ve been holding a reservation here.”
Bhima smiles in gratitude. Bibi is a fat, asthmatic woman who moved into the slum two years ago and immediately adopted Bhima as her older aunt. Whereas Bhima is silent and reserved, Bibi is loud and flashy. Nobody can stay angry at Bibi for too long—her
willingness to help, her good-natured ribbing of old and young, have made her one of the slum colony’s most popular residents.
Now Bhima makes her way to where Bibi is standing. “Here,” Bibi says, taking one of Bhima’s pots from her, despite the fact that she’s carrying two of her own. “Get in here.”
The man behind them feels compelled to protest. “Ho, Bibi, this is not the Deccan Express, where you have reservations for a first-class bogey,” he grumbles. “Nobody is allowed to jump the queue like this.”
Bhima feels her face flush, but Bibi holds out a restraining hand and whirls around to face her detractor. “Wah, wah,” she says loudly. “Mr. Deccan Express here is worried about people jumping the line. But in one-two hours straight, while Bhima mausi is hard at work, he’ll be headed for the local bootlegger’s joint. And if there’s a shortage of liquor today, God forbid, let’s see then whether he jumps the line or not.” The crowd around them snickers.
The man shuffles his feet. “Okay, now, Bibi, no need for personal attacks,” he mumbles.
Bibi’s voice gets even louder. “Arre, bhaisahib, who’s attacking you personally? All I’m saying is, you are obviously a man of leisure, a man of great personal wealth. If you wish to spend your days at the bootlegger’s shop, that’s your concern. But poor Bhima here, she doesn’t have a fine husband like you to support her. We all know how well you support your wife. So anyway, Bhima mausi has to go to work on time. And I didn’t think a gentleman like you would mind if she filled her pots before you did.”
The crowd is whooping with delight now. “Ae, Bibi, you are too much, yaar. Tops, just tops,” a young layabout says.
“Who needs nuclear weapons?” someone else says. “I tell you, yaar, they should just unleash Bibi in Kashmir. The snows will melt from the fire in her tongue.”
“Wait, wait, I have it,” says Mohan, the seventeen-year-old who lives in the hut diagonally across from Bibi’s. “A perfect song for the occasion. Here it is:
“Forget the atom bomb, India said
Our new weapon leaves Pakistan dead
Just like she did Mr. Deccan Express
Bibi will leave you an utter mess.”
Another man, whom Bhima doesn’t know, slaps Mohan on the back. “Arre, ustad, you are too much. Our slum’s own court poet. With your movie star looks, you should be writing and singing your own songs. Imagine, the physique of a Sanjay Dutt and the voice of a Mohammad Rafi. On Filmfare awards night, there would be no other winners, I tell you.”
Despite herself, Bhima smiles. “Okay, you altoo-faltoos,” Bibi says with a grin. “Leave us alone now.”
By the time Bhima reaches her hut, Maya is up and has tea brewing on the Primus stove. As the girl adds the mint leaves to the boiling water, Bhima’s stomach growls. The two stand outside their hut and quickly brush their teeth. Maya uses a toothbrush, but Bhima simply takes the tooth powder on her index finger and rubs vigorously on her remaining teeth. They spit into the open drain that rolls past their home. Quickly, efficiently, Bhima dips a plastic cup into one of the copper pots and washes herself through her clothes. Her face burns as she notices the man in the opposite hut staring at her as she puts a hand under her blouse to wash her armpits. Shameless badmaash, she mutters to herself. Acting as if he has no mother or sister.
When Bhima reenters the hut, Maya pours the tea into two glasses. They sit on their haunches, facing each other, blowing on the hot tea and dipping a loaf of bread into the brew. “Good tea,” Bhima says. It is the first she has spoken to Maya this morning. Then, as if the girl’s look of gratitude is too much for her to bear, she adds, “Seems like at least something I’ve taught you has stayed with you.”
Maya flinches, and the guarded, wary look returns to her face. Noticing the look makes Bhima feel repentant but strangely satisfied. She is gripped by the need to draw more blood.
“So what will you do all day today?”
Maya shrugs.
The shrug infuriates Bhima. “Oh, that’s right, memsahib is no longer going to college, I forgot,” she says, addressing the walls. “No, now she will just sit around like a queen all day, feeding herself and her—her bastard baby, while her poor grandmother slaves in someone’s home. All so that she can feed the demon that’s growing in her granddaughter’s belly.”
If it’s blood she wanted, she has it. Maya moans as she pulls herself up from the floor and moves to the farthest corner of the small room. She leans lightly on the tin wall, her hands around her belly, and sobs to herself.
Bhima wants to take the sobbing girl to her bosom, to hold and caress her the way she used to when Maya was a child, to forgive her and to ask for her forgiveness. But she can’t. If it were just anger that she was feeling, she could’ve scaled that wall and reached out to her grandchild. But the anger is only the beginning of it. Behind the anger is fear, fear as endless and vast and gray as the Arabian Sea, fear for this stupid, innocent, pregnant girl who stands sobbing before her, and for this unborn baby who will come into the world to a mother who is a child herself and to a grandmother
who is old and tired to her very bones, a grandmother who is tired of loss, of loving and losing, who cannot bear the thought of one more loss and of one more person to love.
So she stares numbly at the weeping girl, willing her heart not to take in the arrows of her sobbing. “Even tears are a luxury,” she says, but she is unsure if she’s spoken out loud or to herself. “I envy you your tears.”
When she next speaks, she does so consciously. “If you feel well enough, stop by Serabai’s house later. She keeps asking about you.”
But even through her tears, Maya shakes her head no. “I told you, Ma-ma,” she says. “I don’t leave the house all day while you are gone.”
Bhima gives up. “Okay, then, sit at home while your old grandmother works all day,” she says, as she rises to her feet. “Fatten your baby with my blood.”
“Ma-ma, please,” Maya sobs, placing her hands over her ears, the way she used to when she was little.
Bhima pulls the door shut behind her. She wants to slam it but controls herself. No need for anyone in the basti to know their family problems. They will know about the disgrace Maya has brought upon herself soon enough, and then they will attack her like vultures. No point in hastening that day.
As she begins her walk toward Serabai’s house, a cool morning breeze leans into Bhima, and she shivers against it. She can tell from the angle of the sun that she’s late. Serabai will be anxious to know what transpired yesterday. She picks up her pace.
