A Sister's Promise (34 page)

I thought I could rely on Ma. She was my constant. My knowledge of her, the one rigid certainty in this lopsided world.

I remember the time my classmate Sonia told me how she had seen Guru’s wife drowning the kittens from her cat’s litter in a gunny bag, and described at length their pitiful mews as they sank in the lake.

‘But my ma told me that they were all given away,’ I’d insisted, ‘and my ma doesn’t lie.’

‘I saw them,’ Sonia said. ‘Guru’s wife put them in a gunny bag, tied it with a string and then threw it in the lake. I heard their mewling.’

‘Ma doesn’t lie,’ I’d yelled then. ‘My ma
doesn’t
lie. You must have seen some other kittens,’ my voice breaking, barely shy of a whisper.

‘You don’t lie, Ma,’ I murmur now, realising, even as I say so that what I had held all my life to be the truth—my mother’s honesty—is a lie. My world, already askew, has now upended.

I root around for anger. I find none. Just numbness, shock, and . . . understanding.

Everything suddenly makes sense: why she never told me about Puja; why she kept her past hidden, why she lied. My beloved mother who taught me to value honesty, to be a stickler for truth.

It is like looking through a microscope. I did that once when Da—Da? But what else can I call him?—brought me to the science museum here in Palmipur. At first, I could not make out anything at all through the lens. Then, Da adjusted the focus and I could see, so clearly, all the intricate patterns gracing the humble skin of an onion.

I was amazed, stupefied. For once, I was tongue-tied.

Da teased me about it all the way back.

‘You witnessed one miracle and I another,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you to the museum again just to experience the phenomenon of you not talking for more than a minute.’

You should look at me now, Da. I am rendered speechless, completely mute, by a few squiggly words penned onto ageing paper.

I feel as if I am enclosed in a weird balloon that encompasses this mind-numbing knowledge that has tilted my world, toppled it, and it seems as if the moaning and groaning of patients, the scurrying and tending, soothing and ministering of nurses is happening outside, in the ordinary world which hasn’t been warped by this comprehension, this befuddling awareness.

I imagine walking away from here, putting one foot in front of the other, my stride lengthening until I am running, stumbling out of the hospital, with its overpowering smells of medicine and illness and death, and out into the crisp, precipitation-laden coolness of a summer’s night.

I want to open my mouth and inhale huge gulps of ordinary air that tastes of dew-seasoned jasmine buds, as if the very act of doing so will take me into before, when I was healthy and whole, when all I was concerned with were my studies and my causes, when I was not scared and defeated and hooked to machines, when I was not awaiting a kidney from . . . from my mother.

RAJ

A GOD WITH AN ELEPHANT HEAD

The taxi driver jumps out, leaving the engine running, and lifting his hand, he slaps the boot hard.

Raj’s mum flinches as if it is she who has been hit.

Raj looks at her, this woman he has lived with all his life and never knew. This woman who has been hiding a whole other life so carefully under that accomplished, brittle veneer. This woman who had suffered ostracism and endured disgrace, lost her parents and given birth by the time she was only slightly older than he is now. This woman who has been through the wringer and emerged, perhaps not whole, but emerged nonetheless and managed to survive by sheer dint of will.

His mother.

The driver hits the boot of the car again.

‘What’re you doing?’ Raj asks.

The driver grins, yellow, toothless, as, with another hefty thump, the boot yawns open.

‘Third time lucky, always,’ he says as he hefts their suitcase from the boot.

Ellie,
Raj thinks,
I wish you could see this.

Raj’s mum turns and looks at the hospital building, taking in the shrine at the entrance, a god with an elephant head, bedecked with garlands and exuding the scent of sandalwood and incense. The next minute she’s standing in front of the shrine, her eyes closed, hands folded in supplication and lips moving earnestly in prayer.

‘Mum,’ Raj nudges after a bit. ‘You’ve got to pay the driver.’

‘Oh,’ his mother rummages in her bag and takes out some notes. ‘Keep the change,’ she tells the driver.

The taxi driver’s eyes light up as he counts the notes and pockets them. Thanking Puja profusely and, flashing another yellow grin, he drives away in a blizzard of dust, giving a grateful wave and an ear-splitting honk on the horn—the only part of his unsteady jalopy that properly works.

Although dusk has already painted the sky the colour of ripe grapes, the heat is unrelenting, moist, and clings to Raj’s skin, leaching into his very soul.

Hawkers compete with each other in yelling the benefits of their offerings, a last-ditch attempt to sell their wares before they pack up for the day. Specks of grime swirl in the spiced air.

Fisherwomen walk past, nattering busily while simultaneously chewing what looks like spittle-flecked red gloop. Their hips swaying with natural grace, they heft their almost empty baskets on their heads; fish scales glint where they have stuck to skin and cloth.

Men mill around beside a small lean-to, sipping sunset coloured tea from minuscule tumblers, and biting into orange coated snacks that the vendor serves straight from the spluttering oil of a giant frying pan.

‘What did you do with the baby?’ Raj asks. The question that has been building on his lips, sitting on his tongue, is finally out. ‘Mum?’

A bus trundles up to the bus stop opposite and wheezes to a rickety stop, sounding like an arthritic old man.

A pall falls across his mum’s face, like clouds hijacking the sun.‘I loved her so much. I ached to hold her. But I didn’t so much as touch her. I did not want to blot her with my imperfect love.’

‘Her.’

‘Yes. I asked Sharda to name her Kushi, in the letter I left with her. I hoped the name would be the herald of good things to come for her. It was so hard to stay away. But I did. I did not so much as call to find out how she was doing. I had left her with Sharda because I’d thought I was doing the best by her. But sometimes I worried that I had limited her life by leaving her behind. I wanted to know if she too yearned to escape the village, if she too was bound by the constraints I had been. I wanted to know if she was happy, if her life had lived up to the name I had given her. I wanted to watch her grow. I wanted to hold her close and not let go.’ A quivering breath escapes her. ‘I did nothing. I didn’t dare keep in touch. I did not want to selfishly uproot her life, the life I had bequeathed her by giving her away, just because I yearned for her. I’d made my decision. I stuck to it. But it’s eaten away at me, I realise now. Talking to you, telling you the story of my past, it’s opened my eyes. That decision, it affected me, changed me and by extension, it affected you too, Raj. It’s reduced me to this person who couldn’t love. This shell.’

‘Kushi is
your
daughter?’

‘She is.’

‘That’s why you are here. That’s why you couldn’t say no to your sister.’

He gets it now. Finally he understands why his mother dropped everything to come here. He’d thought it was because of her sister, had surmised Sharda had some sort of hold on his mother.

But it was Kushi all along. His mother’s first born child. Her
daughter.
His sister.

‘You’ll give her your kidney.’ It is not a question.

‘I’d give her my heart if that’s what was needed to save her.’ Her eyes glitter like frost ornamenting a winter’s night, ‘I’d do the same for you.’

And somehow, despite all that’s gone before, despite their rocky past, he knows she would too.

He does.

PUJA—AFTER

HOW TO BEGIN AGAIN

With some of the money from the sale of the bangles, Puja buys a bus ticket to Mumbai.

In the bus, the old woman sitting next to her asks, ‘Where in Mumbai are you staying, child?’

The word ‘child’ conjures up wispy hair, wiggling limbs, a comma shaped bundle held out to her by the wise woman: ‘Your child needs you. Here.’

Puja closes her eyes, and tries to will the image away. When she opens them, the old woman is waiting patiently for an answer. Her benevolent eyes seem to peer into Puja’s soul.

Through the window, fields and coconut trees smothered in the charcoal tipped shroud of impending night rush past, dizzy silhouettes swaying, taking her towards a future she cannot fathom, and a life she doesn’t want.

‘I plan to stay in a hostel somewhere, initially, until I find a job.’ She manages.

‘It’s a big city, child. You need to have a plan,’ the woman’s voice is gentle. She picks up her bag, rummages through it, takes a pen and, tearing a page out of a small green address book, copies something out onto it. ‘Here, this is the number for the Ursuline Nuns’ convent in Dadar. They take on girls as paying guests.’

‘Thank you,’ Puja says, her eyes stinging.

The woman lays a gnarled hand on Puja’s. ‘Take care, child. It’s an immense world out there. I will pray for you. Your name is . . .?’

‘Puja.’

The woman smiles, her face creasing in a kindly blessing. ‘Meaning prayer. There you go.’

Kushi,
Puja thinks, as the bus careers through the night towards a city she doesn’t know, where she hopes she can lose herself.
Meaning happiness. I hope you are happy. I hope you find the comfort I cannot give you in my sister’s arms.

Gopi, look, I am running away, escaping like we always planned —although I feel imprisoned, not free. Have you escaped? Are you free?

Mumbai is chaotic, teeming with people and vehicles, stray animals and hawkers’ carts, swarming buildings and overflowing sewers. It is blue with noise and exhaust, clogged with grime and traffic, rent with honks and howls. It reeks of festering rubbish and sizzling spices. It deadens her thoughts. It is balm to her mind, an ointment to her shattered soul.

She dials the number the old woman gave her from a pay phone in the overrun bus station. She takes the overcrowded metro to Dadar, squashed in a seething bubble of people, swimming in their sweat. She breathes in their weary, work-scented thoughts, glad of a respite from her own.

She lodges in the crowded guesthouse for girls run by the Ursuline nuns in the convent in Dadar. Her roommate procures her a job as a receptionist in a multinational company two metro stops away.

Puja keeps her head down and answers the phones. She does not let visions of a wispy haired, rubbery-limbed baby intrude.

Men pay her attention. She ignores them. She has had enough of men. But one of them is persistent. The other girls at the office urge her to go for him. He is one of the top guys in the company, they say, a good catch.

He promises Puja the world. She does not go out with him.

He proposes marriage, says he will make an honest woman of her.

‘We will move to England,’ he says.

And that gives her pause. If she moves far enough away, then maybe she can outrun the memories, the visions of her child that dig at her at night, the persistent squalling whimpers invading her exhausted reveries.

How to Begin Again:

Run away to a different country, shedding your past like a snake shedding its skin.

Hide the stomach that gives evidence of what it housed not that long ago.

Wipe the slate clean of old crimes and concentrate on a new future.

Do not allow your feelings to take you over again. Keep yourself at a remove from messy emotions, sentimental entanglements, at all times.