A Life Less Ordinary (3 page)

Halfway through the story my cousin said, “It's getting late. Let's go to sleep now—we'll hear the rest of the story tomorrow.” I asked if she would remember the story so far, and she said yes. Then both of us went off to sleep. We woke late in the morning to a scolding from Aunt, who told us off for oversleeping, and warned us to sleep on time that night and not to spend our time chatting. But that night, no sooner had Aunt left us than my cousin said, “Okay, now tell me the rest of the story, but make sure you whisper so she does not get to know that we are awake.” I asked her if she remembered where we had left off, that the jackal was about to take the farmer's stick in exchange for his spade? “Yes, yes,” she replied. “Now get on with the rest.” So I said, “All right, so listen…”

By the time I got to the end of the story, I was quite sleepy and I nodded off. Sometime later, I awoke and I don't know why, but at that moment, a memory powerfully came back to me of the ten-paise coin my mother had pressed into my palm the day she had left home. One day my aunt took that coin from me and threw it away. After that, I searched high and low for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I was just thinking about this and wondering what my aunt had done to the only thing my mother had left me to remember her by when I was startled to hear a slight noise. I looked to see what it was and found that my cousin was talking in whispers with someone outside the room. Then it seemed as if she went somewhere. After a while she came back and quietly lay down next to me. I looked toward the window to see how late it was when I saw a boy standing there. He shone his torch into our room, and I quickly closed my eyes lest he should see.

After that, I couldn't get to sleep at all. In the morning, I wondered if I should tell Aunt what had happened during the night, but then I felt scared. I thought,
What if she says something to me instead? What would I do?
After a lot of thought, I decided to stay silent. But I was dying to tell someone: that secret kept flapping around inside me! In the end, when I just couldn't keep it in any longer, I told the whole story to two sisters, Sandhya and Ratna, who lived next door to my aunt. They advised me not to speak of this to anyone. “She's your aunt's daughter,” they said, “and she will not say anything to her, but she may just turn around and accuse you of something. You'd better be careful. She knows you have no one to speak up for you and take your side.”

After what happened that night, I felt very depressed and I increasingly felt the need to go away, at least for a short while. When I told my aunt this, she asked me where I wanted to go. I said, “Maybe to my sister's home? Just for a couple of days?”

“But what if your Baba comes to pick you up when you're not here? What will I say to him?”

“What's the problem? He can just as easily collect me from his elder daughter's home, can't he?”

So then she asked her son to take me to my sister's house.

When I arrived and my Didi saw me, she began to cry. She kept saying that she had no mother, she had no one and none of us cared for her. I realized she was not happy in her marriage, but I put that thought out of my head and took her little baby into my arms. Didi told the child, “Look, this is your aunt.” We had heard that Didi had had a little boy, but Baba had not gone to see her after the child's birth and he had not allowed us to do so, either. “If Ma had been around, she would have dropped everything and come to see me and her grandchild,” she said.

Didi and I were talking when her husband came back. He gave a shout of joy when he saw me. “Oh, Sister-in-law! I thought you had forgotten all about us!” His voice brought the rest of the household out, and in no time at all we were laughing and crying and talking all at once.

I spent a whole month with my Didi and the time passed very well. Didi's brother-in-law would take me out every evening to show me something or the other. Didi kept asking me why I went out every day. “If Baba hears about this, he will not be happy.” But no one paid any heed to what she said. Her brother-in-law laughed and joked and teased me all the time. He used to spend a lot of time with me. In fact, he would keep talking to me and following me even when I was going off to sleep with his mother. Sometimes I would get quite fed up with him and he would reduce me to tears. But whenever that happened my Didi was always kind to me, and she would call me to her. Didi was round and plump—a bit like my father—and there were times when my cousins would tease her, call her “elephant” and try to make her
angry. But even her brother-in-law had to stop teasing me when she told him off.

The days passed pleasantly in laughter and jokes with Didi's husband and her brother-in-law. I spent my time with her child, bathing him, talking to Didi about Ma and all our memories of old times spent in our home. Before I knew it, nearly a month had passed, and one day I heard that Baba, my new Ma, and my brother had come, and they were staying with my aunt. They'd come to have a bit of a break but also to fetch me. Didi sent a message that they must come to her home, that she considered our new Ma like our real mother so Baba should not hesitate to bring her with him. Two or three days after this message was sent, Baba brought everyone with him and came to Didi's home. Her husband and everyone at their home were extremely hospitable and they made them welcome. Of course many people whispered things about our new Ma, but the others decided there was no point in paying attention to such things and they just ignored them.

 

AFTER A WHILE AT DIDI'S PLACE, BABA TOOK ME BACK TO
Aunt's house. Everyone was sorry to see me go—I'd been feeling sad ever since I had heard that he was coming to take us away, but there were tears even in Baba's eyes as we left. As she came out of the house, Didi was also crying, and she kept saying that whatever had to happen with her had already happened, but now her sister should not suffer the same fate.

When we got to Aunt's house, I heard that her daughter was to get married in some eight or ten days. This was the same girl to whom I had recounted the tale of the jackal and the farmer and then she had run out to meet the boy I'd seen at the window. I was
happy to hear that she was to get married, but I was also a bit upset to hear that Baba had not taken enough time off from his workplace to be able to stay for the wedding, and that he also wanted to take me back with him—in fact, he'd come all the way to fetch me. My aunt realized what I was thinking and said to Baba, “If it's not possible for you to stay on, at least leave this poor motherless girl with me here.” But Baba had made up his mind and refused to budge. Frustrated, my aunt suggested that at least he should meet my elder uncle before he left. Just when it seemed Baba might relent, our new mother interrupted and said they could not afford to delay. Having said that, they turned and left me and my brother in the room and went away.

Aunt was angry with Baba, and no sooner had he and my stepmother stepped out than she began to tell us all sorts of tales about him: things that we had not heard before and would not, even in our wildest imaginings, have thought. But they did not seem to be things said in anger. She told us that Baba had always been plump and round; that even as a child, he used to eat a lot, and because of this everyone called him Nadu Gopal, although his real name was Upendranath. He had not studied much but he had managed to get a good job. And this he got in the strangest way. One day he was working in the courtyard outside his home when an army van passed by. The people inside saw this healthy, well-built man and they called out to him and asked him to get into the van. Soon after that, people heard that he had joined the army. When my uncle heard this he was downcast: he felt he had lost his right arm, and did not know how he would manage. In those days everyone was afraid of army jobs because they were said to turn good men into rogues and this is why my grandmother was so angry when my father, his father, and one of their friends turned up at her house to see the woman who was to become our
mother. But then, if it had not been fated that our mother, Ganga, would marry Upendranath, our father, how would it have happened?

Baba liked Ganga the moment he saw her. One day he turned up alone at her house to see her. He learned that she had gone to the village pond to bathe. When he managed to find the pond, he found that Ganga had finished her bath and was on her way back. She got really nervous when she saw him and quickly hid herself somewhere—she'd heard that military men were very violent and that they beat up women. Anyway, he did not manage to meet her that time, nor on several successive visits. Ganga's mother would get very irritated at his persistence. “This fellow just will not leave my daughter alone. He's determined to take her away,” she said. And of course she was right.

Very soon things began moving, an auspicious time was fixed, and the marriage took place. Upendranath spent two or three months with his bride and then returned to his job. He wrote to his wife once a month, and he came home when my Didi was born. When he arrived, my grandmother put the child in his arms, saying: “She looks just like you.” Baba started to laugh, at which my mother made a face and said sourly, “Look at the way he's laughing! He's so happy that he's got a daughter, and he's come running all this way. He's finally remembered that he has a home and a wife.” My grandmother tried to tell Ma to be quiet: “He's come home after such a long time,” she said, “and instead of making him welcome, all you can think of is reproaching him!”

But Baba said, “No, Ma, you be quiet. Let her say what she wants to.”

“And why should I not speak?” retorted my mother. “This is the first time he's come back since we got married. If his job was so precious to him, why did he get married in the first place?” At this, everyone—my grandmother, my uncle, and everyone—burst out
laughing. Baba was smiling and soon Ma also broke into a smile. My aunt teased Baba: “Brother, you'd better go and console your wife!”

Aunt would have told us more stories, but just then Baba came back. I think he had been getting our things together. He told my aunt that we would all go to our elder uncle's house and then carry on home from there. We then said good-bye to her and left.