A Sister's Promise (20 page)

‘No,’ her ma shouts, ‘That’s enough. What are you doing?’

Ma grabs Da’s hand, and tries to stop him, but Da hits Puja with his other hand, repeatedly. She hears a strangled wail, a panicked scream, tastes rust and salt, and realises that it is she who is howling.

The world has gone mad, has tilted on its axis. Puja throws her bag on the ground and cowers under the assault of her beloved Da’s hands, the barrage of his words yelled stuttering and gasping, in an unrecognisable voice, so it sounds as if he is crying, and hurting as much as he is hurting her. ‘How could you do this? Bring this disgrace upon us? Steal your sister’s husband-to-be from right under our noses? Have you no shame?’

The taste of distress and resentment, fury and incredulity
—
pink tinged brine. Blazing, garnet-hued agony. The dog’s howls indistinguishable from the humans’.

Her back is on fire. The stick breaks. Her father collapses.

Her ma tends to her wounds to the accompaniment of salty sobs. She applies Tiger Balm, with its peppermint and eucalyptus aroma of a thousand fevered dreams, of hot milk mixed with barley and bitter pills.

Sharda hunches in the corner, her head in the cushion of her lap.

Her father looks at his hands, the hands that used to lift Puja in the air, twirl her around and around, the hands in whose embrace she always felt safe, the hands that have flogged her, relentlessly, tearing her fragile skin, and breaking her heart.

‘You are not my daughter.’

Words she never thought to hear, uttered in a voice that is as familiar as her own name, a voice that used to whisper endearments: ‘My princess, my delight, my pride and joy.’

‘No,’ her mother screams.

Sharda buries her face in her hands, shuddering sobs racking her body.

Puja is numb. Bewildered. Uncomprehending.

Her da, who has just disowned her, examines his hands as if he cannot recognise them—those hands that have wrought such damage. But the words that come out of his mouth are the ones that destroy, that rupture the fabric of her life.

‘You will stay with your aunt Nilamma in the village across the river. You will not see that boy again. And you will not see us.’

KUSHI

A FLOURISHING GROWL

I set down Ma’s letter feeling chilled and warmed in equal measure.

Chilled because of what happened, and what Puja—whom I was beginning to like, based on the picture of her I have gleaned from these letters—did to my Ma. Stealing her beau, a boy Ma had loved from afar for so long, a boy whom Ma was so thrilled to be marrying.

I am warmed because Ma says I healed her at the beginning of the letter, that it was I who taught her to love again.

‘You bring out the best in me,’ she says to me often.

I want her here with me. I want to talk to her about what I am learning about her past. I wonder what is happening at the bank. Has she managed to procure the loan needed to see me through this? I really hope she doesn’t have to sell the factory. I wouldn’t be able to bear it . . .

The bald sister in the bed next to mine is asleep. The grey-haired one sits on the chair, dozing.

The letter I was reading flutters down beside me, onto the bed sheet, and I notice something I missed. A little note tagged onto the end, penned in the margin. Different ink. Her handwriting is slightly different too, more rounded, much as it is now.

I run my hands over Ma’s words and picture her carrying these letters everywhere, tucked into her sari blouse, re-reading them and adding follow-ups from the safe distance of a future that is thick with retrospection, but bereft of her sister.

The bald woman moans. The grey-haired one reaches across and cups her cheek. ‘Shush,’ she whispers imparting solace, and easing her unwell sister back into sleep.

I always thought we would grow old together, Puja and I,
Ma writes in the addendum to her letter.
If there is one thing I sincerely wish I could undo, it would be going to Da, and embellishing the matrons’ account with titbits fuelled by my rage, and my jealousy. I honestly didn’t realise, at the time, what my angry tale would unleash.

It broke us.

And nothing was ever the same again.

Lost in Ma’s words, it is a while before I am aware of a rustle and bustle, a flourishing growl like a swarm of insects converging. I look up, blink, and look again. Up and down the ward, the ailing and their relatives are doing the same.

A throng of villagers, every single one of whom I recognise, hone in on my bed.

I blink back my tears, touched beyond words by my unexpected visitors. They have waited until their chores have finished, and endured a meandering journey on the local bus to make their way here, I know. The trip would have taken them the best part of an hour, and cost them money they can ill afford. When they get back, they will need to cook and feed their families, heat up the water for the family’s wash, scour the dishes, feed their dogs and only then get to bed, to be up at the crack of dawn as usual on the morrow for another long day in the fields or working as servants as the case might be.

They place a basket of fruit beside my bed: the ripest bananas, juiciest mangoes, watermelon and guavas. I am overcome by their generosity, and the thought that has gone into this gift. I know that this is fruit they could have sold for profit; it is the best of their meagre crop.

‘We weren’t sure if you could eat proper food, else we would have got rice and chicken curry with boondi laddoo for afters; we know it is your favourite meal . . . ’

‘Thank you,’ I say through the lump in my throat.

They are out of place in this medicine-suffused room as they crowd the space around my bed. What do they see as they look down at me? Me, whom they used to look up to, whose every word they would act upon. Me, their leader, used to being independent, in charge, always on the go, and now reduced to this . . . this invalid whose body has let her down.

They used to admire me. Do they pity me now?

I understand now what Ma used to say to me about putting myself in others’ shoes. This experience has made me vulnerable. I hate having to depend on others for the smallest thing. Now I know why some of the girls who came to me for help wouldn’t listen to me. It is hard to have everything taken from you, including your own sense of self. It is frustrating to have someone else dictate what is best for you.

I am awash with shame. I do not want the villagers’ pity. Anything but that . . .

And fast on the heels of shame comes the rage, a welcome fiery blast, towards the people who did this to me.

‘Kushi,’ my visitors mouth my name as if it is a dedication, a celestial gift.

Not pity, no. Thank God. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it. And I realise from their benevolent gazes, that despite the fact that my kidneys have failed me, despite the fact I am horizontal and incapacitated, they still admire me. In the villagers’ eyes, I can do no wrong.

And just like that, I discover again the confidence I thought I had lost along with kidney function. If I can cajole the Chief Minister of Karnataka into doing my bidding, surely I can persuade Puja to donate a kidney to save her niece’s life?

‘I am going to get better,’ I assure them. ‘And then I am going to go after the people who did this to me.’ I mean it too.

Their eyes widen in veneration. ‘Kushi, you are amazing. Anyone else in your position would be bemoaning their fate. Not you. You are an inspiration.’

I smile, for the first time since I woke up in this strange, anxiety-ridden, malady- soaked bed.

‘The police are pretty sure that the people in that car were goondas hired by one of the parents of the boys who were expelled because of your letter. Now they only have to find who . . .’ they say.

I can give my inflamed fury no outlet except to grip the sides of the bed as hard as I possibly can.

Once again, the villagers come to my rescue.

‘Everyone in the village is asking after you. They send their love. If this hospital wasn’t so far away, they would all be here, keeping vigil.’

‘I know,’ I manage to whisper on the back of a wave of gratitude.

‘Everyone is praying for your well-being. The temple is flooded with people offering prayers for your recovery. And the Catholic Church in Dhoompur even dedicated a mass for you. It seems the church has never seen so many worshippers even at Christmas; the parish priest was amazed!’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘We’ll let you rest. If there is anything you need, you let your Ma know, and we’ll get it to you, okay?’ They squeeze my hand and then they are gone.

I am loved,
I think.
I am going to get better,
I think.
I need to, I have to.

And for the first time I believe I will.

SHARDA—FISSURE

THE SQUELCHIEST OF SEATS

Dearest Ma,

Puja was sunshine and moonbeam, star sparkle and fairy dust. She was the glue that held our family together. She danced into our life, dispersing laughter, bestowing love and robbing it, nonchalantly, from me.

And now she is gone.

The weeks that follow are some of the worst of my life.

Da won’t look at me. He won’t look at anyone. He is a mere shell, going through the motions, existing but not living. He does not talk, will not eat.

When he returns from the market, he sits on the stoop and stares into the distance, as if the horizon contains all the answers to what he is looking for. He doesn’t swat at the circling flies, or the whining mosquitoes. He ignores the dog who comes up to lick his face. He doesn’t move until the dark drape of night takes the fields hostage.

You cook Ma, frenziedly, all of Puja’s favourites, even though we can’t afford it, as if by the very act of cooking for her you will bring her back to us again. You cook, using up all the ‘good’ ingredients—the garam masala that Janakiamma gave you when her son visited from Bangalore, the raisins from Muthamma, a thank you for helping her when her child was gravely ill—that you have been saving for celebrations.

You cook and none of us can bear to eat. For we take one bite and taste loss. Everything, even the kheer you have made with watered down milk and nutmeg and jaggery—just the way Puja likes it—is salty, flavoured with your sorrow, seasoned with your yearning for the daughter you have lost.

Once, when we were younger, in the days when Puja used to follow me everywhere, she and I crouched under the stippled awning of coconut trees at the very edge of Suggappa’s field, to take shelter from the sudden shower that had ambushed us.

‘You are my favourite person in the world, Sharda. I love you to the sky and back,’ she said, as we breathed in the sweet scent of ripe paddy and moist earth, cut off from the world by the curtain of rain that enveloped the bower that shielded us, making the ears of paddy dance and swish. Every once in a while, the wind splattered warm, perfumed drops onto our wet bodies and the soggy mud shifted to accommodate us, making the squelchiest of seats.

‘I love you too, and am so lucky to have you for a sister,’ I replied.

She’d run into the rain then, opened her arms wide and pirouetted, a magenta ballerina glimpsed through the screen of a glittery, auburn tinged monsoon.

I looped my arm through hers and we ran home to you, Ma, our feet flying in unison, our laughter echoing above the patter and rumble of the rain.

I alternate between hating her and missing her, between wanting to hold her close breathing in her honey and milk scent and never wanting to see her traitorous face again.

‘Who gave you the right,’ I want to ask her, ‘to steal him from me?’

‘You have always had everything, looks, love, charm,’ I want to say. ‘Whereas I . . . I have had to work for every single thing. Why do you think I studied so hard? To get Ma and Da’s approval, the approval you had with just the flash of a smile, the gift of a hug. I don’t have the face, the figure or the allure you have. I do not attract love like you do. Ma and Da knew this, that is why they arranged for me to marry someone who might learn to love me. Gopi was
mine
. He was given to me by Ma and Da, he was their gift to me, their act of love for me. You had no right to take him from me.’