A Sister's Promise (3 page)

There have been other changes. The arsonists who caused my da’s death have been expelled and barred from studying engineering, even though their parents, who must be very high up in the influential chain—the ones funding all the politicians—tried hard to avoid this happening, and lobbied to have them moved to a different college in the city. I still feel they’ve escaped lightly. I think they should have served a sentence, or been cautioned at the very least. Ma says their punishment is having to live with the unavoidable fact that their actions took Da’s life.

Bhoomihalli now sports two borewells (although they are not nearly enough, especially now that we are suffering a drought—I have been campaigning for more), a medical store and a doctor, who visits once a week, driving up self-importantly each Monday in his car. Every villager has now added an additional prayer to their daily list: ‘Please God, if I or any member of my family has to fall ill, let us do so on a Monday.’

So, most of the concerns I raised in that fateful letter conjured out of bone-crunching grief have been addressed. The power cuts are still just as frequent, but we cannot have everything I suppose.

There was one other unexpected and yet very welcome outcome in the aftermath of the letter. What with all the interest in the village, Ma’s fledgling catering business took off, and people came from far and wide to sample ‘Sharda’s melt-in-the-mouth delicacies’ as Ma’s wonderful culinary concoctions came to be known.

Also, the college finally accepted some responsibility and offered remuneration for inadvertently causing Da’s untimely death. Ma didn’t want to take it, but I pressed her to, pointing out that, with all the orders flooding in, she needed to think of proper premises instead of running her trade from our small cottage.

‘We could buy that abandoned plot near the hill, Ma, convert one of the sheds there into a factory, hire the village women to help,’ I urged.

Now, Ma’s business (called Sharda’s Kitchen), is flourishing. She employs most of the village in her factory: all the women and the men who are too old or infirm to work in the fields. She now supplies many of the big distributors in Bangalore and even to a few in Mumbai!

If Da is looking down on us, and I want to believe he is, he would be pleased. We are providing for the villagers like he used to, distributing most of the profit from Ma’s business amongst people who need it more than us.

Da would have been so proud of me, I know. That letter changed me.

Since then, I have become the spokesperson for our village. I campaign about the lack of proper healthcare and education facilities in the villages and ask for more to be done for the desperately poor; I organise food drives and vaccination clinics, clothing banks and refuge centres for girls and women who are victims of rape and domestic abuse.

I am their representative because I have the ear of the newspapers—I can write a mean letter you see, one that will have the ministers sitting up and taking action, as they don’t want to slip in public estimation.

I have been getting missives from people voicing their concerns, asking for help, and there has been the odd threatening letter amongst all the pleas. The first time I got one, written in bold, red letters, screaming the words, ‘If you don’t stop right now, we will hurt you,’ I dropped the paper as if it had bitten me.

Ma had looked up then, her gentle, loving gaze scrutinising me.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘I-I…’ I held the offending sheet out to her.

Her face went pale, but that was the only visible sign of inner turmoil. Otherwise, she was as composed as ever. She ripped the letter into minuscule shreds and put her arms around me. ‘There will always be people who’ll be against you, no matter what you do, Kushi. And there will be more letters like this one. You must ignore them and do what
you
think is right. The people who pen such notes,’ a contemptuous glance at the flecks of paper that lifted in the tamarind-scented breeze fanning through the open front door, ‘are cowards, resorting to empty threats because they do not have the courage to do what you are doing.’ Ma paused. She cupped my face between her palms and looked into my eyes. ‘One thing, Kushi. I know you feel deeply about what you do. But remember to take the girls’ feelings into account. Put yourself in their shoes. Don’t project what you think is best for them onto them. They need to make their own minds up. I know it frustrates you when some of them don’t want to change. It’s a long process, sweetie.’

‘Oh Ma, yes, I know.’

Since then, there have been a few more vitriolic letters, scarlet ink voicing similar threats, but they haven’t had the same effect as that first one. I get the odd look thrown at me sometimes, men frowning and spitting, hecklers at my rallies: husbands angry about their newly vocal wives, mother-in-laws of women who are no longer acquiescent puppets, even mothers whose daughters are refusing to marry the men they have chosen for them.

I do get scared but have learned not to show my fear. I have taken Ma’s advice, celebrated my successes and learnt to ignore the threats and the jeerers, treating them as a consequence of my job, brushing them away as nothing peskier than the whine of a persistent mosquito.

I am here now to help Asha, imprisoned amidst new saris and old fears, beading sweat, and looming decisions. Asha, a slight waif of a girl, squished between her mother on one side and her mother-in-law-to-be on the other, an opening and closing parenthesis crowding a comma. A waterfall of saris in various shades, cascade in front of her nose as her mother and mother-in-law-to-be hold up one after the other for her approval.

Asha’s parents have four girls of whom Asha is the oldest. The man she is betrothed to, against her will, (not that she had a say in the matter, nobody asked for her opinion), is a divorcee, thirty to her seventeen with a young child that needs looking after. But he lives in a house, not a hut like Asha’s parents and he is refusing dowry, which to Asha’s parents, with four girls to marry off, is a godsend.

Asha wants to study at the Engineering College, get a job, and not get married this early. She’s tried telling her parents, but they will not entertain what they call ‘her whimsical fancies’, and so she’s asked me to intervene on her behalf.

Something flits back and forth in my line of vision. I look up, and realise it is Asha, waving to me, her eyes huge and afraid. I smile reassuringly at her, use the back of my arm to wipe my face of the sweat that has collected, take a deep breath and enter the shop.

The sari shop is like entering an opulent, iridescent world, so different from the one outside with its pungent reek of fish and drains and spices, blood from the butcher’s shop and rotting garbage. It smells of shiny smooth fabric, the promise of new clothes and something else, something exotic. Rows and rows of saris in all the hues of the rainbow shimmer and glisten in racks behind the counter and tumble from the table in front of Asha.

‘Welcome, ma’am, what can I do for you?’ the proprietor asks me in a voice as slippery as melted butter.

‘Sorry, I am with her,’ I say, pointing towards Asha and he retreats, his face falling in a dismay he does nothing to hide.

‘Hi Asha,’ I say cheerily as I approach the trio.

Asha’s mother and mother-in-law turn in unison and scrutinize me suspiciously. Asha flashes a cautious smile, fear dappling her face, and shadows shivering in her eyes. The women’s gaze is questioning and I get straight to the point.

‘Have you asked your daughter if this is what she wants?’ I say, fixing my gaze on Asha’s mother.

Huffing, the mother-in-law to be—or not, if I have anything to do with it—stands up abruptly, dislodging a pile of saris, which the shop assistant rescues just in time.

‘Who are you to interfere in personal business? We are offering Asha a great proposal. My son has a good job. She will be well looked after and we do not even want dowry!’ Her bulbous eyes jiggle furiously in their sockets with every vehement word she utters.

I keep my eyes on Asha’s mother whose gaze wavers between her daughter and me.

‘You know of course that Asha is the brightest girl in her class. She will get a place in the Engineering College here easily.’

‘Engineering!’ the soon-not-to-be mother-in-law gasps.

‘Once she finishes her degree, Asha will get a good job and she’ll be independent,’ I say, looking only at Asha’s mother, ‘Isn’t that what you want for your daughter? Or do you want her to be tied to a man almost twice her age, looking after another woman’s child, when she is barely an adult herself?’

As I say this, I thank God that I have been brought up in an educated household, that my mother would not dream of forcing me to marry anyone against my will, old-fashioned through she might be in some ways.

The soon-not-to-be mother-in-law unleashes her ire on Asha’s mother.

‘Why are you entertaining this nonsense? Everything has been decided. We are offering your daughter the world. If you break off this match, she will get a bad reputation. It will not help if she does what this mad girl here is suggesting. Who will marry Asha if she goes to a college where she is the only girl in the class? And how will you get your other girls married if your eldest amasses an unsavoury reputation bringing disgrace upon your whole family?’

Asha’s mother’s gaze falters. I know I have to do something and fast.

‘Asha will
not
be the only girl in class. I don’t know why everyone seems to think engineering is a boys’ profession when the computer engineering course in Dhoompur College, which is what Asha wants to do, boasts more girls than boys.’

Asha’s mother is watching me intently now, interest piqued. I make the most of it.

‘And Asha will get a good job at the end of it, she will support herself and she will find someone to marry, an engineer like her, who’ll see past this nonsense about reputation. She’ll have a life you’ve never dreamed of, the fulfilling sort of life that I bet,’ and here I cross a line I know, and go a bit too far, ‘you haven’t had. Do you want her to have a future that mirrors yours? A future where she will slog day and night for little return and no thanks? She can be so much more! Times are changing now. Okay, let’s say you won’t be able to marry off your other daughters. What’s so wrong with that? We can live without men, you know. Give your girls an education instead. Let them stand on their own two feet.’

When I see the hope blooming in Asha’s mother’s eyes, nudging away the doubt, I know Asha and I have won. I insulted Asha’s mother, yes, but I spoke the truth. Like most women in the village, she has endured a life she did not pick, a life that was chosen for her, a life she has sometimes resented, and she would rather not have her children subjected to the same life, especially if there is another way out.

With my insistence that Asha will get a job, and be independent, she realises that what Asha told her and her husband was not a fanciful whim but the truth. There
is
another way and she will take it, and persuade her husband.

Asha’s mother looks apologetically at the not-to-be mother-in-law. She wrings her hands as she says, ‘I am sorry.’

The woman storms off, yelling, ‘You will be,’ slamming the door so forcefully behind her, that the whole shop shakes and the proprietor rushes out from behind the counter, his face pale as watered-down milk, and spends the next few minutes checking the hinges and the latch to make sure everything works.

I wink at Asha.

Asha’s mother squeezes her daughter’s hand. ‘You have to study hard and bag that engineering seat now,’ Asha’s mother says, ‘while I work on convincing your da. I have a battle on my hands you know.’ But she is smiling fondly at her daughter.

Asha’s face glows like the sky at sunrise bestowing the golden assurance of another beautiful day.

‘I will, Ma,’ she says, and, to me, ‘Thank you.’

I leave the shop and squash the proprietor, who is standing behind the door inspecting the hinges, against the wall. I ignore his heated ‘Lo!’ My heart is replete with the thrill of a job well done.

Outside, I blink as my eyes adjust to the relentless yellow glare, thinking of what I will tell Ma. As I do so, I realise that the normal sounds of the street have been masked by a roar and the mad revving of a vehicle, rare even here in Dhoompur. Almost immediately, I become aware of shouts, screaming, horrified yelling.

‘Arre,’ I hear. ‘What is that vehicle doing?’

I scarcely have time to register the car that is coming too fast up the road, raising a squall of tawny grit, and scattering peddlers and pedestrians like fish through a hole in the net, when I catch my name stumbling from agitated lips, and then breaking into myriad fragments.

‘Kuuuushiiii . . .’ I hear. ‘Get away from there.’ Asha’s voice, barely recognisable—shrill with panic.

I step backwards, tripping over the doorstep of the sari shop. The car swerves and comes right at me. I stare, unable to believe what I am seeing.

And then there is cacophony: high-pitched wails, screeches and cries, wide-ranging octaves encompassing human panic, a splintering and a shattering.

The gasping fuzzy taste of shock, the acrid smell of rust, the sensation of being pricked and punctured in myriad places at once, a burst of red; something flutters and then settles; scarlet words on a fuzzy beige background blaze before my blurring eyes.

RAJ

REALM OF SHADOWS AND SMOKE SCREENS

LONDON, UK

Raj lights a cigarette, leaning against the bin and taking a deep drag, and with the release of each intoxicating lungful of smoke, feels the stresses of the day leave him: told off by Mr Grey for not bringing in his maths book, detention for talking during Geography, detention for arriving late to Mrs McCray’s class, and a fight with his mum this morning.

His mum—‘I am late for work,’ she had called, her face a grim mask of intense displeasure mingled with frustration, ‘Are you coming or not?’

He had made her wait for a good ten minutes, watching from his bedroom window as she stormed up and down the drive, looking at her watch and tutting impatiently.