The Stolen Girl (22 page)

T
hey are arguing again
, their voices loud and harsh, Aarti’s brittle, sounding like it will break any minute, Sudhir’s brash and full of hurt.

Sudhir loves his wife but he cannot get through to her, get past the barrier of her insecurities. Vani catches a glimpse of Sudhir’s face when he watches Aarti sometimes, the perplexed gaze mixed in with hurt. He is trying to work his wife out and failing. He cannot understand her because she hasn’t told him who she is, hasn’t made him party to the traits that define her.

‘I am grateful you are there for her. At least she confides in you,’ Sudhir has said to Vani countless times. ‘Can’t you tell her to ease it a bit, give me a break?’ he has pleaded with Vani, his amber eyes bleeding hurt.

Vani has coaxed Aarti to confide in Sudhir. She has tried telling Aarti, showing her how much Sudhir loves her. She has gently hinted to Aarti to not read too much into his flirting.

But Aarti will not listen. She is eaten up by self-doubt, she allows her paranoia to create scenarios in her head, she does not understand Sudhir’s desire for some time alone. She pushes Sudhir so much that he is pushed away.

The house is a war zone most of the time now, and even though it is big, much bigger than Aarti’s parents’ house, it is not big enough for all that hurt, that angst to dissipate. Whenever another argument starts, Vani escapes, even though she knows Aarti wants her close at hand. She runs down the many stairs and out of the house, into the waiting car. The car is always there, offering security like a comfort blanket, idling by the front door.

‘Fighting again are they?’ Ram, the chauffeur, asks, perusing Vani in the mirror, and she nods, not having the energy to talk, avoiding his naked gaze which always manages to read into the very heart of her.

Ram does not push her. He seems to know, instinctively, when she needs to talk and when she craves the quiet solace of his company. He is the happiest person she has met and also the most content. He is kind and caring; she has observed him doing myriad little favours for all the servants – helping water the gardens so Lalu, the oldest gardener can have a break, taking a thermos of tea out to the watchman by the gate, even chopping onions for the cook that time Sudhir sprung an impromptu party for twenty guests on them and the kitchen was short-staffed.

And Ram has always been absolutely wonderful to her, right from that first day when he picked her up from Aarti’s parents’ house and laughed at her outrage and made her blush by saying she had charmed him. He teases a smile out of her when she is grumpy, offers comfort and companionship when she is down. Even when he is not around, just the thought of him can calm her, cajole her out of a bad mood. He has even started appearing in her dreams, and lately it has been his face easing her into sleep at night instead of her parents’ fading visages. He is occupying her thoughts, her parents receding from the forefront of her mind. Somehow thinking of him instead of her parents does not make her feel guilty – she can picture her parents smiling at this development. She knows that were her parents to meet Ram, they would adore him.

The other servants are distant towards her but not mean. They tolerate Vani because Ram has made no bones about the fact that she is his friend and one of them, even if Aarti, their mistress, favours her.

That first evening in this house, after Ram deposited all the cases in Aarti and Sudhir’s room, he had asked Vani to come down, meet the other servants. She had hesitated, afraid.

‘Come on,’ he had urged. ‘Where’s that fiery girl I just saw?’

But Vani was cowed by the sheer grandeur of these new premises she found herself in and by the prospect of meeting people who resented her. ‘I should unpack, get everything ready for Aarti,’ she had said.

‘You need to eat and the cook here is amazing. Since it’s the last day with just us servants, before the boss and his wife arrive and everything changes, we’re having a celebration. Come on.’

He had lightly put his hand on hers to coax her along and she had felt a thrill run through her at the contact. She was so surprised that she flinched and he had dropped his hand and she had felt strangely bereft.

‘Come, everyone is waiting to hear how Aarti, the new mistress of the house, really is,’ he had said, his eyes twinkling, and she had wondered who this man was and why he had the power to arouse such powerful emotions in her, make her behave so out of character, to yell at him when she first met him and now to render her speechless, to make her want to touch his face, stroke the stubble sprouting there, to apologise for flinching and ask him to touch her again so she could check if that thrill would manifest itself once more, to ask him if he was like this with everyone.

She had gone downstairs with him and she could hear the other servants’ chatter, the laughter and banter echoing down the corridor.

‘Hey, Ram,’ they said, spotting him, ‘come eat.’

The easy bonhomie stopped when she entered, an uncomfortable silence settling in its wake. She was scrutinized by hundreds of eyes – or at least that’s how it felt. She did not know where to look.

And then, Ram had smiled in that way of his. ‘This is Vani,’ he had said, taking her hand again and pulling her forward, and the thrill had started at the tip of her spine and travelled upwards all the way to her heart, flooding it with something she couldn’t name. ‘She is going to fill us in on all the gossip about the new mistress arriving tomorrow, aren’t you?’

He had winked at her then and her heart had jumped, it had responded to the warmth of his hand in hers, his soft gaze shining down at her.

After that, the servants were okay with her. The banter had started up again, softly at first, quickly reaching the pitch it had been before. Ram did not leave her side all evening, making introductions, making her feel welcome.

She sits in the car in the peaceful quiet, in companionable silence with Ram, until she can tune out Aarti and Sudhir’s screams. She sits there until the fight dissolves into tears and Aarti yells for her.

And then, she leaves the haven of the car and Ram’s bolstering presence and enters the chilly silence of the aftermath of the fight. She holds Aarti’s hair while she is being sick, rubs her back after, like she has done a hundred thousand times. She comforts Aarti, she murmurs platitudes, she soothes. And through it all, she thinks of Ram. And it centres her.

‘
H
e’s having an affair
,’ Aarti says, her hand flung across her eyes to block the stubborn chink of light that persists in filtering in despite the drawn curtains. ‘I am sure of it.’ She is sprawled across the bed, the ghagra she is wearing spread out around her like the plumage of a peacock, blues and greens and golds winking and glittering, a colourful mirage festooning white sheets. ‘The only way to win him back, Vani,’ Aarti continues, ‘is to have a baby.’

Vani stops, startled out of what she is doing. She cannot see Aarti with a baby, she just cannot. Perhaps because Aarti is such a child herself, perhaps because she needs so much mothering. How on earth will Aarti bear a child, look after it, when she struggles to look after herself? And then there is the question of her bulimia. Aarti cannot keep a meal down. How will she feed herself as well as another being growing inside her?

Vani does not voice any of these doubts of course. There is a time and place for everything and it is not just now when Aarti is so distressed. Vani resumes sorting through the wardrobe. ‘Have you discussed children with Sudhir sir?’ she asks.

Vani is allowed to call her Aarti, even though she doesn’t. She doesn’t call her anything at all. And Sudhir, of course, is Sudhir sir.

‘We discussed children briefly when we were engaged. He wants to wait a few years. And I wanted to as well. In fact, I didn’t really consider having a baby at all…’

That’s what I thought,
Vani muses in her head.

‘But lately...’ Aarti’s voice tails off. ‘If we had a baby to bind us together…’

You are thinking of bringing a baby into the world for all the wrong reasons,
Vani wants to say.
You do not really want one right now,
she wants to say.
How will you rear a child in that stomach that recoils if anything solid touches it?
she wants to say.
The way to end this stalemate between you and your husband is for you to change, and by change I do not mean physically, by bringing an innocent new soul into the world,
she wants to say. Instead, Vani says nothing at all. Aarti is very agitated. Now is not the time.

‘I am going to stop the pills,’ Aarti says. ‘I will not tell him. When I get pregnant, it will be a lovely surprise.’

Vani cannot help it. ‘What about your being sick?’ she asks and Aarti freezes as if only just contemplating the thought.

‘I will get fat,’ she shudders, recoiling from the thought of her pregnant body. And then her face sets in a grim mask. ‘It has to be done, it has to be endured. I have to give him a baby before one of the other women he’s seeing does and he leaves me. I cannot lose him, Vani, I cannot.’

‘I think you should discuss having children with him, see if he really wants them.’ Vani says. ‘You are not losing him. He wants some time on his own with his friends, that’s all.’

Aarti’s hand comes away from her eyes. She sits up, looks at Vani suspiciously, her eyes narrowing.

‘Why are you taking his side?’ Her hand circles Vani’s wrist hand in a vice-like grip. Her nails bite into Vani’s skin and later Vani knows she will see half-moon craters in the skin, fringed by droplets of dried blood. ‘Have you been conferring with Sudhir behind my back?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Vani says, holding Aarti’s gaze. ‘But he does love you, only you. I know that for a fact.’

Aarti loosens her hold on Vani and lies back down, her hair fanning the pillow, glossy black streaks on white, like crows silhouetted against the bluish white canvas of sky. Tears squeeze out from behind closed lids, glittering drops beading curly eyelashes, like jasmine buds hovering on tender stalks.

‘He’s a catch for all those ambitious starlets trying to climb up the acting ladder, Vani. They’ll do anything to trap him and it is only a matter of time before one of them gets pregnant,’ Aarti says, her voice melancholy as the song of a hermit thrush. ‘There is no recourse. I need to get there first; I need to have a baby. I have to.’

And so it begins.

Aarti’s periods have been very irregular due to her bulimia, but she looks up ovulation charts on the internet and, having worked out the optimum times, seduces her husband. She tries to keep food down, fresh vegetables and fruit, plenty of fish. She tries, but it is an uphill slog. It goes on for a year and in that time she is mellow, there are a lot less fights and Sudhir starts whistling around the house again.

And then, after a year, she comes to Vani. ‘Why am I not getting pregnant?’

‘It takes time,’ Vani says gently.

Aarti is looking so good now that she is keeping some food inside her. Her skin is glowing. She doesn’t have as many mood swings.

‘I am getting fat but not pregnant,’ she says, standing in profile in front of the mirror, pinching the skin that drapes tight over her bones, like a dress made to fit. ‘I will go see a gynaecologist; I need to know what, if anything, I am doing wrong.’

Aarti avoids doctors as much as she avoids fatty food, worried they’ll find out what she’s been doing to her body. To decide to go to a gynaecologist takes a lot of courage and Vani admires her resolve.

And so, they go. Vani waits in the car with Ram while Aarti has her check-up. Vani looks forward to this time alone with Ram, time when she can be completely herself. She has come to depend on him.

When Aarti comes out of the meeting with the doctor, Vani knows instantly that something is very wrong. Aarti’s face is swollen, she has been crying for a while.

Ram opens the door of the car for Aarti and she slides in wearily, like a person thrice her age and flings herself into Vani’s arms. Her sobs rend the car, sounding as though they are being ripped from her body.

‘What’s the matter?’ Vani asks, even though, deep inside, she has an inkling.

‘It’s all my fault.’ Aarti sobs. ‘It’s because of what I have been doing.’

Vani knows where Aarti is going with this. She knows.

‘Side effect of making myself sick,’ Aarti hiccups. ‘It’s rendered me infertile. I c… c… can’t have children…’ she sobs. ‘I can’t.’

Vani guessed that this might be the case. Aarti’s ruthless abuse of her body all these years was bound to take its toll.

Vani prepares to bolster Aarti as she accepts the fact that she cannot have a child. What Vani is not prepared for, what completely and utterly takes her by surprise, is what Aarti does next.

That, she does not anticipate. She does not see it coming.

T
he days
after that fateful visit to the doctor, after hearing his pronouncement, pass in a blur. Babies. All Aarti can see are babies everywhere. Cute babies, chubby babies, and the proud mothers holding them, showing them off. Pregnant women grin at her from magazines, waddle past in shops, their bodies swollen, and for a moment she thinks,
Thank God,
thank God I am spared that
– before the pain starts.
I will never be able to give Sudhir children. I will never be able to keep him.

Barring the love of her parents, that she has long since given up on, this is the only other time in Aarti’s life that she has been denied getting what she wants. And it makes her yearn for a child all the more.

Aarti’s self-doubts, which were slumbering for a while, rear their ugly heads. She looks in the mirror and she sees a fat woman. An ugly woman. A barren woman. The efforts to create the child she cannot produce have rendered her grotesque, she thinks. She is convinced it is only a matter of time before one of Sudhir’s many co-stars falls pregnant with his child and he leaves her for them unless…unless she somehow produces a child,
their
child.

She starts fanatically keeping tab of Sudhir’s movements again. She cannot believe now how she could have stopped watching him, been so lax this past year while she was concentrating on creating a child. She starts calling him at all hours again. The fights come back with a vengeance. Every time they are together there is animosity, yelling. He starts coming home later and later, then stops coming home altogether some nights. She cries herself to sleep. She is losing him. She cannot bear it. And she is certain beyond all doubt that the only way to keep him with her is to give him a baby before one of his mistresses does.

But how?

She doesn’t want to adopt a child. She cannot live with not knowing where the child has come from and she wouldn’t be able to bond with it, she knows. And Sudhir won’t stay with her if the child isn’t his, especially if he has to choose between Aarti and one of the starlets pregnant with
his
child. It has to be his.

There is no way I can cheat my way into having it. Or is there?

The child has to be his. She can’t have a baby. His mistresses can give him babies. These facts go round and round, buzzing like a coven of bees taking up residence inside her head. And then one day she is idly surfing the web unable to focus on anything in particular, her head full of babies when she sees it. A small article. Tucked away amidst many others.
Womb for rent: the sudden rise in surrogacy.
She scrolls down to it. Reads it. Re-reads. And then her head is suddenly filled with ideas, her besieged heart blooming with hope.

Vani stops polishing the mirror. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asks.

‘Sorry, just thinking,’ Aarti replies.

The more she ruminates, the more she is convinced this will work. The two most important people in her life. The two people who love her most – well, in Sudhir’s case, who used to love her the most. Yes, it can work, it will work.

It takes her a week to think it through, to make her decision. A week in which Vani keeps asking her if she is all right, keeps saying, ‘Why are you observing me in that strange way? What’s on your mind?’

A week in which she tries to think of any obstacles and she can see none. Her plan is perfect. It will work. It has to. It will hurt her, of course it will. But this is Vani, the girl she has been inseparable from these past few years, the one with whom she shares a bond, a pact. Vani is like her sister, she is almost an extension of her. Aarti is not threatened by Vani. Vani is…well, Vani belongs to her really. So in a way, it is natural that this should happen. And it will bind the two people she loves the most in the world, the two people who love her, who centre her life, who are her family, more tightly to her than ever.

She decides to broach the plan with Sudhir first. Vani will agree, of course she will. It is Sudhir who needs to be talked round. Sudhir who is the weak link.

Sudhir laughs when she tells him what she wants. ‘Have you gone completely out of your mind, Aarti?’ he asks.

They are lying in bed, having made love after what feels like ages. She cried when he was inside her and he had held her after, kissed each tear away gently and said, ‘I love you, you know. Only you. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you.’

And then she told him, hands fiddling with the sheets, brown on white, not looking at him. ‘I cannot have children.’

‘Is that why you’ve been so…’

The air conditioning came on with an angry burst. She shivered, pulled the sheets tighter around her.

‘Yes.’

He’d considered it for a bit. ‘I don’t mind, you know. I’ve never really thought about kids much. I suppose I’ve always assumed I would have some in the distant future.’ He’d noticed her face crumple, had taken her hands in his. ‘It doesn’t bother me. I’d rather have
you
.’ His eyes soft and shiny like auburn silk shimmering gold in the sun.

She had wept then, knowing he was lying. Knowing that, even if he meant it now, he wouldn’t a few years down the line.

‘We are young,’ he said. ‘There is time. Are you sure the doctor…’

‘Yes,’ she had sniffed. ‘There is no way I can have children.’

‘We can always adopt.’

‘I don’t want just anybody’s child. I want yours, ours.’

And then, when he was still holding her in his arms and looking at her with that indulgent gaze, mellow in the aftermath of making love, she broached her plan. And he laughed.

He sees the hot, stinging hurt welling in her eyes, rushing down her cheeks and stops mid-laugh. ‘You cannot be serious.’

‘I am,’ she manages between sobs, knowing that tears will get him to agree faster than anything else. ‘Why else would I ask you?’

He pulls his arms out from under her, none too gently, stands and starts pacing the room.

She watches him. He is so good looking, even stark naked, especially stark naked. She wonders how many other women have seen him like this. Does he hold them after sex like he holds her? Does he tell them all he loves them?
Stop this,
she chides herself.
Concentrate. This is important.

He paces and she waits, tears drying up, impatience rushing in their stead. It has to work. This plan has to work.

After a bit, he turns and stares at her and it is as if he is seeing inside her, to her very core, for the first time. ‘I have long wondered...’ he says, ‘if perhaps you are a little bit mad.’

She balks. Opens her mouth.

But he is too quick. ‘Now I know for sure. You are. Totally.’ He lifts a finger and, still holding her gaze, turns it round and round in the air in the vicinity of his forehead.

‘How dare you?’ she yells.

‘And yet,’ he says, and his voice is puzzled, ‘I love you. Care for you deeply. You are the only woman I have ever loved.’

He is looking at her again as if he is trying to figure her out and she doesn’t know what to feel, doesn’t know if he means what he is saying or whether he is making fun of her.

‘I think it is because you intrigue me. All the other women, they throw themselves at me. Not you. Your coolness, your reserve – I took that as a challenge. You were a mystery I had to solve. I fell in love with you somewhere along the way.’ He sighs deeply and when he speaks again his voice is the navy blue of grief. ‘And I have solved it now. I have solved you.’

He sits beside her on the bed, the mattress compressing with a sigh. His eyes are soft, a sadness in them so deep, so overwhelming that it hurts Aarti to look and yet, she cannot look away. She is mesmerised. This is the first time she has seen him cry.

‘You don’t love me; you never have.’ The seductive voice she fell in love with oozing pain.

How can he think that? He is the one who is mad, not her.

He reaches out, and with one finger tips her face up. ‘You only love yourself. Your world revolves around you and you expect everyone else to do the same.’

She recoils, pulls away.

His hand drops to his side.

‘Enough,’ she screeches, hands on her ears. ‘Shut up.’

‘Tell that poor girl what you have planned for her. Let’s see what her reaction is,’ he says and is pulling on some clothes and out of the room before she can say anything more.

The poor girl? Why is he calling Vani that? She will be happy to do this for Aarti, won’t she? Aarti could have chosen anybody but she has picked Vani. Vani will be pleased.

And Sudhir will come round. He always does. Didn’t he just say he loves her? Only her. Didn’t he? Where has he gone? Who is he with? She rushes to the bathroom and retches until she feels better.

That evening, she tells Vani. The sun is dipping beyond the window as it sets, the sky a rainbow of pinks and reds and golds. Vani is combing Aarti’s hair, as is their evening ritual, gently teasing away the knots. The air in the room is infused with the fragrance of the warm coconut oil with which Vani has anointed Aarti’s head.

‘Vani,’ Aarti begins. ‘I have to ask you to do something very important for me.’

Vani continues to comb, rhythmically, gently. ‘Yes?’

‘I have never wanted anything more than I want this. Will you do it, for my sake?’

‘What is it?’ Vani asks, her voice gentle.

Outside a dog barks, servants chatter as they finish for the day. Ram the chauffeur’s jaunty voice yells something in Tulu and there is a burst of feminine laughter.

‘Will you have a baby for me?’ Aarti asks.

Vani stops combing. Her eyes meet Aarti’s in the mirror. They are empty, completely blank, like shutters on a window. No hint of expression in them. ‘What?’

‘It is a great honour, what I am asking of you. I have chosen
you
because I trust you completely. I… He is sleeping with other people anyway. So he might as well sleep with you, give me a child. His. You are an extension of me. We are sisters, bound by so much more than blood. And, if we are to think in terms of genes, you are distantly related to me anyway. Him sleeping with you, it doesn’t hurt as much as him sleeping with all those other women. It is like sleeping with me, except of course your womb is not barren. You will be able to conceive, get pregnant, have a child. His child. Mine.’ She stops, realising that Vani has closed her eyes, is shaking her head, her whole body. Her hands are fisted and at her ears, trying to block out Aarti’s words, the comb poking out of her right fist.

‘No,’ she is chanting, ‘No, no, no, no.’

‘Why? It is not that bad, you know. I will pay you handsomely for it. And if you are worried about doing it, well, it isn’t even as painful as they say…’

Vani drops the comb, turns and stares at her, and Aarti is taken aback by the expression in her eyes, the emotion that has hijacked the emptiness of a moment before. Rage, the shimmering scarlet of fresh blood.

‘Don’t you ever, ever, think of anyone but yourself?’ Vani spits out, and while Aarti is still smarting from the venom in her voice, she turns and runs from the room.

Aarti cannot find her voice. Shock has hijacked it, taken it captive. It is not as if Vani has a choice. It is Vani’s duty to serve Aarti, and she will be serving her in the best way possible by giving her a child. How could Vani have the temerity to say what she did to her? How dare she run away?

Fury takes over and then she is shaking, she is yelling, ‘Vani, come back here at once. My hair is unkempt. You haven’t even finished combing it. Come back at once.’

She will come round,
Aarti thinks, when the haze of rage has eased a tiny bit.
She just needs to get used to the idea. It is like that time I asked her to follow Sudhir, spy on him, and she was so shocked she stared at me, speechless, for a few minutes. She’ll come back. I need to give her time.

Aarti waits; her hair half-plaited and messy. She waits for ten minutes, twenty. Nobody comes.

How much time does that girl need? No other servant would dare to behave the way Vani does.

‘Vani!’ Aarti yells. ‘Vani, come back.’

And her shouts, angry at first, become pained. They become choked with tears.