S
mriti didn’t want pity. She wanted him to love her. To be as they once were. So when he suggested they see a doctor, she disdained the offer to show him how upset she was with him.
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t fuss!’
But he wouldn’t accept that. ‘The cut probably needs stitches. Don’t be idiotic! You need a tetanus shot and perhaps antibiotics. Look, I am already stressed out. Don’t add to it by being stubborn and sulking,’ he snapped.
Smriti looked at him for a long moment. ‘Fine,’ she said.
The nursing home was by the bus stand, the man at the reception said. He could call them an autorickshaw, he offered. Rishi looked at him in surprise. He was younger and much more friendly than the older man at the desk last night. The older man had watched Rishi help a bleeding Smriti up the steps of the lodge without a flicker of emotion. He hadn’t even bothered to ask, ‘What happened?’
In the dim light of the hallway, Rishi had felt a great rage surge up in him at the man’s apathy.
But the young man, as if to compensate, plied them with questions while they waited for the auto to arrive. ‘If I had been here, I would have asked you to stay away from the beach at night. It’s not safe at all. The fishermen drink and once they are drunk, they won’t stop at anything. It’s fortunate that you didn’t meet any of them,’ he said.
‘What’s your name?’ Rishi asked.
‘Arul Raj. Why?’ His eyes quickened with interest.
‘I am surprised at finding someone like you here,’ Rishi said. Arul Raj shrugged. ‘I’ve been promised a job in Singapore. The moment the appointment letter arrives, I’ll be out of here. There is nothing for me here, sir. Nothing. I hate this town.’
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked abruptly. ‘This is not a tourist town. There is nothing… so how did you end up here?’
Rishi shrugged. It was Smriti who answered, ‘I am part of a theatre group that’s touring Tamilnadu.’
‘How long will the auto take?’ Rishi demanded, suddenly impatient.
Arul Raj, irked by Rishi’s imperious tone, reverted to being the polite stranger. ‘Soon,’ he said, opening the register.
When Rishi went to stand by the gate, Smriti as if to make amends asked, ‘Is it a good nursing home?’
‘It is the only one we have. My sisters had their babies there.’ Arul Raj allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation again. ‘There is a government hospital at the Taluk headquarters but that’s ten kilometres away. So those who can afford it go to the Meenakshi Nursing Home.’
‘Who’s Meenakshi? The chief doctor?’
‘No, the chief doctor is actually a man. Dr Srinivasan. I think Meenakshi is his daughter. In fact, he owns this lodge too. And I think just about everything in this town!’
Rishi appeared. ‘How much will the auto man charge?’ he asked Arul Raj.
The young man’s eyes hardened. Then he saw Smriti wince as she placed her foot on the ground. ‘He’ll ask for fifty or sixty, seeing that you are out-of-towners. But you shouldn’t pay more than thirty.’ Turning to Smriti, he said in a voice softened by sympathy, ‘Do ask for Vasantha Sister. She is my neighbour. Please tell her that I sent you to her. She’ll help you.’
Smriti smiled. Then gritting her teeth and refusing Rishi’s offer of his arm, she hobbled down the steps to the waiting autorickshaw.
‘What are you doing here?’ the woman asked Smriti in surprise.
Smriti looked up from the book she was reading. For a moment, she stared into the woman’s eyes, unable to remember where they
had met. Then it came to her, that little encounter on the roadside by the halted bus.
‘I hurt my foot. I have to see the doctor. I may need to take a shot; I may even need stitches!’ Smriti spoke with a little embarrassed laugh punctuating her words.
‘Where is your friend?’ the woman asked, her eyes darting around the crowded reception area.
‘He should be here somewhere,’ Smriti said. Then, wanting to steer the conversation away, she asked, ‘And you? What are you doing here?’
The woman’s eyes dropped. ‘I’ve come with my daughter. She is having a scan. I was just going to the scan room when I saw you here.’
‘But don’t you live elsewhere? That’s what you said.’
The woman didn’t answer her. Instead, she said, ‘I have to go. Look after yourself. Don’t wet your hair for a day or two. You mustn’t catch a fever.’
Smriti watched Rishi go to the enquiry counter and demand to see Vasantha Sister.
‘It’s her day off,’ someone finally said, wanting to be rid of him.
‘I can’t understand this crowd,’ Rishi said, dropping into an empty chair across from her.
‘It’s the only nursing home in the vicinity,’ Smriti said.
‘So many pregnant women!’ Rishi said, slouching deeper into his chair.
As if to still any further need for talk, he took out his mobile phone and began playing a game on it.
Smriti watched him for a few minutes. She was thirsty. She would have liked a drink. A fruit juice, perhaps. A tall glass of orange juice with ice cubes in it. She felt a great pang of homesickness. In all these months, she had never known such a yearning for home. For cool white sheets on the bed and the familiarity of loved possessions. The fraying patch on the carpet in the living room and the creak of the
bedroom window when the breeze rocked it. To smell the coffee Papa Jak brewed every morning. To swing on the glider on the porch with just a little thrust of her foot. Nina’s perfume. Shruti’s high-pitched squeals of excitement. So many things to miss. Her eyes filled up. The house she grew up in had been sold and what furniture Nina didn’t want was given away. Where was home now? With Papa Jak? Or with Nina and Shruti? Or was it the apartment Rishi lived in? Her life quivered with fragility, with impending loss.
Smriti opened the page and pretended to read while watching Rishi. This was a man she no longer recognized. He seemed distant and cold. What was wrong?
Four stitches, two shots and a prescription of antibiotics later, a weary Smriti emerged from the casualty room. ‘I’ll get the medicines and find an auto to take us back. You better sit here until then. It’s bloody hot outside,’ Rishi said, leading her back into the reception area.
The woman from the bus sat hunched in one of the chairs. Smriti hobbled over to sit by her side.
‘Is everything all right with your daughter?’ she asked.
The woman looked at her blankly for a moment. Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’ Smriti frowned.
‘The foetus is all right. But it is a girl!’
Smriti sucked in her breath. ‘How can you say that? What’s wrong if it is a girl?’
‘She already has two daughters, she doesn’t need this third one. But she is four months gone. I wish we had come earlier but this scan doctor comes only once a month. An abortion now would be dangerous. But she doesn’t want one more daughter either. Her husband is already furious with her. I don’t know what she’s going to do.’
‘How does she know it’s a girl?’ Smriti touched her elbow.
‘The scan doctor told her.’
‘But the doctor is not allowed to reveal the sex of the unborn child. It’s illegal!’ Smriti’s voice rose.
‘They do it here. Why do you think we came here? The scan doctor is not from this town. They bring him from somewhere else, and he tells us if we ask him,’ the woman whispered. ‘Look around you,’ she added. ‘All these pregnant women, they come from various parts of the district. Do you think there are no hospitals where they live? It’s because of the scan doctor. And then, if you want it, they’ll do the abortion here as well!’
‘But it’s wrong.’ Smriti wanted to cry. ‘How can you hold the sex of the foetus against it?’
‘Tell that to the men. Tell that to the women who bore those men!’ The woman’s harshness startled Smriti. This wasn’t the exuberant woman from the bus, her laughter loud, her merriment infectious.
‘But do you believe that too?’ Smriti asked quietly.
‘What I believe is of no consequence. It is what my daughter wants to do. Do you know what a burden a girl child is? My daughter already has two. Her marriage is at stake here. If she delivers yet another girl child, her husband might even leave her. He has already threatened her.
‘I have to go now. She is with the lady doctor. I needed a moment to myself. She will ask me what she has to do and I will have to have an answer for her.’
Smriti watched the woman walk down the corridor to the consulting rooms, her feet dragging with defeat, her head bent in thought.
It was lunch time when they got back to the lodge. They went to a little restaurant nearby, where Rishi watched Smriti pick at her food. She was in a pensive mood and made little conversation. And all Rishi could think was, she has begun to sense how I feel. That explains the awkwardness.
Another thought slithered in on its heel: had she gone off him?
Rishi realized that it would be the best thing to happen, but he didn’t like it.
‘Don’t you like it?’ he demanded, irked by the way she was pushing a ball of rice from one end of the plate to the other.
‘I am not hungry,’ Smriti said, pushing the plate away. ‘I need to rest.’
The room was warm even with the fan on. They lay side by side with their eyes shut. Rishi felt the heat close in on him. Smriti, it seemed, had fallen asleep. He gazed at the ceiling, thinking of what he was going to tell her that evening.
When he woke up, it was almost six. And Smriti was gone.
He sat up. His eyes scanned the room. Her bag was still there. Where could she have gone?
Rishi decided to look for her downstairs. Perhaps she would be at the front desk, chatting to the clerk. But it was the taciturn elderly man, and Rishi didn’t dare ask him if he knew where Smriti was. He didn’t look like he would volunteer any information even if he knew.
Rishi rubbed the stubble on his chin. He should shave and shower. But the thought of going back to that dingy room depressed him. He would go for a walk instead, he decided, leaving the key with the clerk.
When the white Maruti Omni slowed down on the lonely stretch of road, Rishi braced himself for what was to come. They would offer him a girl, he was sure. He was surprised to see two well-dressed men emerge from the white van. The older man in a white dhoti and a white half-sleeved shirt, and the young man in trousers and a checked shirt.
‘You are new here,’ the older of the men said. It was a statement rather than a query.
Rishi blinked in surprise. Who were they? And why were they appraising him in this manner?
‘Why?’ he asked in his most hostile voice, speaking in Tamil. ‘Why do you need to know? Who are you?’
The men looked at each other. Then the older man spoke again in his low raspy voice: ‘You are new here. You know nothing of our ways. I suggest you go back. We don’t want to cause any trouble. But neither will we allow you to stir up any trouble for us.’ He was polite, though his words were loaded with menace.
‘What trouble?’ Rishi stuttered. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
The young man stepped forward. ‘Your slut, she was at the nursing home this evening. Poking her nose into things that don’t concern her. Go home. Go wherever you want. But get out of here.’
The older man raised his hand to halt the young man’s belligerence. The gold of his watch glinted in the late evening light and Rishi saw the flash of fire on his index finger. A diamond ring. Who were these men?
The older man patted Rishi on his shoulder. An affectionate, avuncular pat. ‘He understands. Don’t you? They will leave!’
Rishi watched the men get into the white van and speed back the way they had come. He felt his heart hammer in his chest. His mouth was dry. He had never been as afraid as he was now. What had Smriti done?
‘How could you be so stupid?’ he shouted when she opened the door.
‘What? For opening the door?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘No, you stupid fool. For poking your nose into things that don’t concern you.’ Rishi found himself using the words the young man had used. ‘What were you doing at the nursing home?’
‘Stop shouting at me, Rishi. You don’t know what’s happening there,’ Smriti said, walking away.
He followed her into the balcony. ‘Listen to me, Smriti, you don’t realize what you are doing.’
‘What do you think it’s all about?’ she asked quietly.
‘I don’t know. And I don’t care.’ Rishi slammed his fist against the door. It swung precariously.
‘I can’t be like you,’ Smriti said. ‘I can’t see and pretend that I haven’t seen.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Rishi asked, his voice rising in disbelief.