A Sister's Promise (14 page)

She laughs—a splash of vibrant colour on an arid landscape.

He doesn’t think he has ever heard her laugh in this carefree way. It is as if, by reminiscing about her childhood, something coiled tight inside her has sprung loose. It makes her look younger, he thinks. And yet, even in this softer version of his mother, he cannot see the girl she once was. She
must
be in there somewhere.

‘I can’t equate that girl you are telling me about with you, Mum,’ he muses.

‘I know,’ she sighs. ‘I can’t either.’

‘How could you have changed so much?’ Raj asks, not really expecting an answer, thinking his mother will ignore him or change the topic as she always does when faced with difficult questions, or things she doesn’t want to talk about.

‘Life. It squeezes you, wrings you out, until you don’t know if you are facing forward or backward, until you don’t recognise yourself.’ Her voice is melancholy, a haunting melody. Her laughter gone.

Raj cannot recall the last time his mother had merited one of his queries with such an honest answer. He is surprised by the pang of sympathy he feels for her.

What happened to you?
He thinks.
What happened to the girl you once were?

The air hostess pushes her trolley down the aisle, offering drinks.

Raj takes a gulp of Coca Cola. His headphones have slipped off his ears and disappeared somewhere in the space around his seat but he couldn’t care less. He is properly curious now, absorbed in his mother’s story. He wants to know more about the girl she is telling him about; he wants to see if he can find something of her in the woman beside him, and to discover if that feisty child has left a small imprint of herself behind.

‘You were close to your sister,’ he says and she flinches, her face flooding with pain. ‘She was such an important part of your life. Why didn’t you speak of her before now, tell me about her?’

You haven’t told me much of anything, up until now. I am surprised you are opening up so much to me today.

‘I . . . I couldn’t.’ Distress dyes his mother’s voice the inky black of old regrets and heartache.

‘You haven’t spoken to her, or been in touch with her, for years, have you? Before that phone call, I mean?’

‘I haven’t been in touch, no.’ She says softly.

‘Something major must have occurred to drive you two apart. What happened?’

His mother rubs at her eyes. ‘I . . . I don’t know if I . . . ’

‘Oh mum, come on!’ He cannot help the anger. He jabs his Coca Cola onto the tray, not caring when some of it spills, a fizzy brown blob against the dull grey of the tray.

His mother flinches again.

He digs around in the pocket of the seat in front of him looking for his headphones. He bends down, groping about by his legs, almost upending the tray and spilling more of his Coca Cola.

Typical of her. Just when he was getting interested too. He’s had enough. At least his music doesn’t stop and start at anyone’s whim but his own. Where on earth are his headphones?

‘You can’t start telling me and then decide not to. God, you are dragging me halfway across . . . ’

‘It’s hard for me, Raj, to revisit it all.’ She bites down on her lower lip, hard.

He’s sure it will split and start to bleed in a minute. Good.

‘Then why are we going to India if not to revisit it all? Surely you owe me an explanation as to why you are taking me there, against my will, if I may . . . ’

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Yes. You are right. I owe you.’

He is so surprised by her capitulation, her admitting that he’s right, that he bumps his head on the tray and spills the rest of the Coca Cola. He swabs ineffectually at the spreading mess with the measly napkin provided with the drink while his mother takes another deep breath and settles into her seat.

‘I had skipped school . . . ’ she begins and Raj gives up trying to clean up the gloopy spill with the disintegrating serviette and sits back to listen to his mother’s story, her voice painting a picture of an audacious, devil-may-care girl, who she claims was her once upon a time . . .

PUJA—CHILDHOOD

GREEN-TIPPED LULLABIES

Extract from school report for Puja Ramesh, Ninth Standard, Age 15

Puja has done marginally better this year but her poor marks show that she still has a long way to go. Puja is a bright girl who needs to concentrate more in class. She is easily distracted and daydreams through her lessons, her mind clearly somewhere else. That said, Puja is a natural leader and is loved and looked-up-to by everyone.

Puja has skipped school and is spending an illicit, luxuriously lazy afternoon by the lake, with the soft musical lick and splash of gentle waves communing with the reeds rocking her to sleep. The bluish emerald expanse is dotted with heart shaped leaves and water lilies, white with yellow middles, are perched like offerings on top.

Eyes closed, she leans back against the banyan tree, its perfumed branches whispering tender green-tipped lullabies as the soft breeze fans her face. A frog croaks hoarsely nearby, and she pictures it squatting on a lily pad, fat and slimy green, its bulbous eyes on the lookout for flies. A dog barks somewhere close and chickens squawk in uproar, sounding very much like the indignant fisherwomen squabbling with haggling customers at the market. Cooking smells drift up to her: roasted cinnamon and caramelising sugar. She thinks that Janakiamma, whose hut adjoins the lake, must be making kheer to celebrate her son’s appointment as a taxi driver in Bangalore.

Puja imagines a mouthful of kheer, biting into syrup soaked raisins and ghee-coated cashews, the nutty sweetness exploding in her mouth. Her stomach rumbles.

When was the last time Ma made kheer? She can’t remember. She hates being poor, she decides, uprooting a handful of the weeds beside her. A coconut tree branch tumbles to the ground with a crash in Janakiamma’s orchard, she assumes. She drags her eyes open and turns to check. Yes, she is right.

The water in the lake undulates as the frog jumps in. She idly picks up a stone from beside her and throws it in, wishing she could make it skim. Dappled shadows play hide and seek with the sun.

She closes her eyes once more, giving in to the exquisite pull of sleep.

Thud, clunk, thump! A burst of noise explodes the languorous afternoon, a thunderous sound that careers closer and closer to Puja. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut, trying to still her pounding heart.

The hurtling sound stops directly in front of her. Someone pants, in noisy gasps, right next to her.

‘Hey, this is
my
secret place. What are you doing here?’ A man’s voice. Gruff and croaky as the frog, and curiously familiar. ‘Skipped school, have you? Why am I not surprised?’ Laughter threads through the croakiness.

Puja opens her eyes and takes in grazed toes, endless legs, and a long, well-built torso culminating in a face she knows.

‘You!’

‘Stealing chappals from unsuspecting devotees; cutting school. Are you a Catholic? These sins could send you straight on the blazing path to hell, unless you confess of course . . .’ His muscles ripple as he puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head, setting his floppy hair dancing.

‘Are you a spy for the village matrons?’ she snaps, enormously angry with him for disturbing her peaceful, indolent afternoon.

He throws back his head and laughs. ‘I had forgotten how funny you are.’

She is still thinking up a suitable retort when he bends, rolls up his trousers and wades into the lake.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she calls as she watches his legs disappear. ‘It’s deep in there. Can you swim?’

He turns and squints at her. ‘No,’ he grins. The water laps at his waist.

He takes a couple more steps, treading water backwards while looking at her, and then he slips, arms flailing. His grin freezes, mutating into bafflement and then, for a brief second, fright, before his body disappears underwater.

‘No!’ she yells, rubbing at her eyes, unable to believe what she is seeing. Puja can’t swim either. What to do?

The air is yellow with fear. It tastes of horror, inky black.

Oh dear God, what will she do? She closes her eyes and starts to pray.
Please God, please.

‘Boo!’

Puja jumps. He is standing before her, dripping water from head to toe, and smelling slimy, of pond weed and algae.

‘You lied!’ she screeches. ‘You . . .’

She lifts her hand to hit him, but he brings a wet hand from behind his back and holds out a posy of sopping water lilies.

‘For you, ma’am,’ he executes a mock bow, spraying droplets everywhere.

She laughs then, and accepts the water lilies, while her galloping heart slows to a canter. She lightly smacks his moist palm. ‘Thank you. Did you come here by bike?’

He nods in the direction of the road and she sees the bike gleaming beside a peepal tree.

‘I will only agree to a ride once you are completely dry,’ she says, and he throws back his head and laughs.

The next day when she comes out of school, he is waiting for her.

‘Fancy a ride?’

‘Why, thank you,’ Puja says.

As they zoom away, her arms around him, she rejoices in the heady sensation of freedom from the constraints of the village, and the narrow minded people.

‘Why me?’ she asks him.

‘You make me laugh,’ he says simply.

‘You know, this hanging out with you is not good for my reputation.’

‘Do you care?’

‘Not really. My reputation feels like a noose around my neck.’

She can feel his laugh start at the base of his stomach and rumble out of his throat.

He takes her to a Chinese restaurant in Palmipur, and plies her with delicacies: gobi manchurian, chilli chicken, chocolate milkshake.

Afterwards, he says, as if still answering her earlier question. ‘You are amusing. You are unpredictable. You are different from all the other girls and more beautiful than any of them.’

She takes a big slurp of milkshake. ‘Ha! I’m just another one of your conquests. But I don’t mind as long as you buy me one of these every day.’

He smiles, but then he looks at her, suddenly serious. ‘You bring much needed laughter into my life, Puja. My ma died when I was three. My da is a tyrant. He expects me to do everything
he
wants, never asking what
I
want . . .’ his voice bitter. ‘I just want to relax, enjoy myself.’

‘And ruin me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘As long as I have fun in the process.’

He reaches across the table and takes her hand in his.

If this was the village, thinks Puja, everyone would be craning their necks, rumours already spreading to Dhoompur and beyond, her reputation tainted beyond repair. Here, a couple of people look askance at them but there is no danger of this tryst being reported back to her parents because nobody knows her, or her parents.

Puja imagines Sister Seema’s reaction to their joined hands, and recalls her hectoring voice, ‘And forget touching boys, even entertaining lustful thoughts about them is a sin.’ She giggles.

‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the village. I’m not bad looking myself. We make a great couple.’ His eyes glimmer like embers from a dying fire.

‘Is that all? What if someone more beautiful comes along?’

‘We get on, Puja. We are similar inside, tired of the village and its pointless restrictions, too good for it.’

‘That we are.’

‘Let’s seal our friendship with some milkshake,’ he says. ‘If there is any left that is . . .’ he tilts the glass, ‘I can’t believe it! You’ve finished yours
and
mine.’

She laughs. ‘Serves you right.’

And so it begins.