A Sister's Promise (4 page)

‘Work is all you care about,’ he had yelled, opening his window and sticking his head out. A gust of air ruffled his hair, requiring it to be gelled into shape again.

She had sighed, and looked up at him. He noticed the violet rings that shadowed her eyes. How very drained she looked. He was surprised by a sharp pang of guilt which was dispelled the very next moment by her words, each one precise, soft, deadly. ‘The same old argument. You never tire of it do you?’

‘No mum, I don’t,’ he’d spat out, gripping onto the windowsill so hard that his knuckles hurt. ‘Because it’s the fucking truth.’

She had blinked but not commented on his language. ‘My work is what gives you all of this,’ a sweep of her hand indicating their detached house, the manicured sweep of lawn beside the drive. She’d glanced at her watch, ‘I’m going. I have a meeting at nine.’ That look again. Disapproval and disappointment as she appraised him. ‘You can walk to school.’

If I disappoint you so much, why did you have me?
he had opened his mouth to ask, but she was inside the car, door shut, probably thinking of work, son already forgotten. Anyhow, he had asked it many times before and had got no reply, only a sigh—another one of her interminable sighs.

Raj closes his eyes, and lets the cigarette work its magic. When he opens them again, Ellie is in his line of sight, under the awning by the bus stop, standing slightly apart from the giggly group of girls she hangs out with. Her sunshine coloured hair spills out of its loose ponytail, and her eyelashes fan downy gold-dusted cheeks. Her strawberry lips pucker as she checks her phone and she frowns.

Raj stubs out his cigarette and lights another one just as Ellie’s bus arrives and she climbs in. He takes another drag, and searches for her, then watches as she swipes her card, as she floats down the bus, as she grabs a seat by the window, as she looks up and across right at him and smiles, those perfect lips executing a perfect bow just for him.

She lifts a palm and places it against the window of the bus and buckles up her fingers just slightly; the charm bracelet she is never without, catches the light and glints gold. He blinks, not daring to breathe, the fresh cigarette burning down to a nub. Her gaze, glossy azure—lake water twinkling in the late afternoon sunshine—locks with his.

‘Hi,’ she mouths.

He looks round swiftly, just to make sure there is nobody beside him or behind him that she could be talking to instead of him. When he turns back, she is smiling at him, those enticing dimples dancing in her velvet cheeks. His lips move upwards of their own accord.

Ellie points a finger at herself, cups her palms together, bending her fingers inward to form a heart, then points to him, a gesture that he is pretty sure means, ‘I heart you’.

He blinks. Did she just say what he thinks she said?

The bus starts with a groan and moves away and he is galvanised into action, running down the pavement, wanting to hold on to Ellie, his eyes never leaving hers until the bus turns the corner and picks up speed, leaving him behind.

Bereft, he bends down, and inhales huge gulps of silvery blue air that tastes of smoke and excitement. His heart strains against the constraints of his rib cage, as it pounds out in pulsing booms:
She likes me. She does. She likes me back.

‘Hey, Raj,’ his friends say, catching up with him, slapping his back, handing him a can of lager. ‘What was all that about? Running away from us, were you?’

He sits with his friends and swigs from the can. All is right with his world at least for a little while. Ellie smiled at him and waved from the bus window. She had held his gaze while he pursued her bus as far as he could. She had said ‘Hi’ and mimed that she liked him, he is convinced she did, pretty sure that he hadn’t just imagined it, even if it felt like she had been following the script of one of the myriad fantasies he conjures up on a daily basis, with her starring in the lead role.

Raj listens to his friends’ banter as the evening glides into night. He lights a cigarette, its red- tipped yellow glow punctuating the gloom, and watches as shadows steal down the walls of the flats opposite, stealthily at first and then boldly taking the whole estate hostage until there are only shadows swirling, grey contrasting with a darker grey, rendering solid objects mere silhouettes.

I wouldn’t mind living in
a realm of shadows and smokescreens,
he muses, his thoughts mellow,
a world with no rules, where
nothing is solid or constant, where nothing is set in stone.

He breathes in the scent and flavour of night: oil and smoke, perfumed breeze spiced with intrigue, fried yellow chips flecked with salt and tangy with vinegar, soft morsels of steaming white fish wrapped in crispy brown battered coats, comfy slippers and bubble baths, hot chocolate and warm duvets promising the sweetest of dreams.

Inside the flats on the other side of the road, children are being tucked into bed, with a story and a cuddle, goodnight kisses and assurances of love, their parents’ soothing voices swelling in their ears, the last thing they hear before sleep gently claims them.

His eyes prickle, suddenly hot. He shakes his head to dispel his momentary despondency and joins in the impromptu sing-song that has started up, woozily mouthing words to songs he had no idea he knew. When his friends suggest beer-can football on the road, he joins in.

They are laughing and singing and drunkenly punting the cans about when one of the residents, a balding man with bushy eyebrows that meet over his nose in a hirsute bridge, opens his window, a spotlight of slanting yellow light briefly dispersing the shadows, and yells at them to, ‘Shut up, people are trying to sleep here. Don’t you have homes to go to?’

After he has closed his window, they go up to his door and pound it a few times, ring his doorbell and rattle the postage slot for good measure, before resuming their game.

Then, just as his team is winning the beer can football, Raj kicks a can right at the car idling up the street, which pulls to a stop in front of them. It bounces off the window and the flashing blue lights dance a tango on the washed out faces of his friends, their lost eyes suddenly sober as two policemen climb out of the car and walk towards him.

Raj bites down on the cigarette he is smoking and tastes paper and tobacco, copper and rust as he accidentally bites down on his lower lip as well and it starts to bleed.

SHARDA

AN ONION TO HOT OIL

BHOOMIHALLI, INDIA

Dearest Ma,

I am cooking samosas for Kushi when howling starts in the fields beyond.

I knead the dough until it is nice and supple in my hands, as soft and yielding as my daughter’s young, butterscotch skin when I shower it with kisses. I roll out the pastry and cut it into rectangles. Then I set to work on the filling, heating the oil, adding mustard seeds and curry leaves, waiting until they pop and sizzle and rend the air with the piquant aroma of frying spices. I add the chopped onions, the shredded ginger and crushed garlic and stir and finally, that knot of uneasiness stamping upon my heart, making it throb like an open wound seems to ease a tiny bit.

‘You are so intuitive, Sharda,’ you used to say, Ma, cupping my face in your knobbly hands, smiling down at me.

All day I have felt the imminence of the past I have kept at bay for so long, its looming shadow pressing down upon my chest, and clutching it in a throttlehold.

Even at the factory, I couldn’t relax, despite the comforting noise and flurry beside and around me, my trusty team boiling and frying, chopping and stirring, washing up and drying, sorting and scooping, packing and labelling, laughing and chattering all the while; smells rising and wafting, spicy and tangy, sweet and sour. An amalgamation. A merging.

Now, the weight pressing on my heart has alleviated slightly but is refusing to disappear entirely. I imagine, as I stir, and the mixture achieves a translucent golden sheen and the wonderful perfume of roasting onions envelops me, that the claws of all the crabs I have sautéed, marinated and fried, are extracting their revenge, and crushing my heart in a pincer grip.

What is this warning that is so potent, threatening to choke the sins of my past out of me?

Don’t dwell on it,
I chide myself and instead think about my factory, the bustling hive of lively activity, a place that originated from just my love of cooking and has grown into this enterprise, thanks to my daughter and, in an oblique way, the huge sacrifice my beloved husband inadvertently had to make.

What would you say if you saw it, Ma?

I often speak to you in my head, Ma, and when I have pen and paper to hand, like now, I write letters to you. Letters that are never posted; a pile that has grown thick over the years, steeped in stark yellow regrets, pickled in brackish self-blame, tinged lilac with guilt.

Remember how you taught me to cook, how we stood side-by-side, you holding my hand and guiding it at the ladle? We cooked with the barest of ingredients, using mud utensils on a charcoal fire, and yet, those dishes are among the tastiest I have ever eaten. All my life I have tried to recreate your dishes, Ma, but they never taste quite the same, as they are not cooked by your hand, and seasoned with all the love you felt for me.

But it looks like I have succeeded, if not in living up to your wonderful standards, exactly, then at least in producing tasty food. My factory has had orders from all over India, Ma, can you believe it? It seems my products fly off the shelves, the customers say my food is authentic, that it tastes exactly like the fare they remember eating while they were growing up. All of this because you taught me to cook, and I took to it like an onion to hot oil, Ma, your analogy that.

I still cannot quite believe it. I wanted to be a doctor, but life had other plans. And after all that pain, that hurt, that loss, here I am. I have had such a wonderful life, Ma, a life I had not expected or dared to hope for after what happened—I am blessed, Ma, I truly am.

Once the onions, ginger and garlic have browned, I add the crushed chillies, the boiled potatoes, the chopped carrots and peas and think of what Kushi will say when she dances in from helping her friend Asha in Dhoompur, bringing with her a gust of air smelling of overripe fruit and tasting of eagerness, and news of the day she’s had bursting from her lips even before she comes through the door.

Kushi lives true to her name—which means happiness, as you know—and brings joy wherever she goes. Kushi, who has been my reason to keep going after we both lost the man we adored: my husband, her Da. She is so full of life, Ma, so passionate about everything, fighting for what she feels strongly about, unlike others who rail against injustice but then sit back and do nothing. She brightens up even the gloomiest day with just the suggestion of a smile. She lights up her surroundings, Ma. She lights up my life.

Kushi is not quite eighteen, and yet, she is the leader of this village. People listen to her. She is not afraid to fight the bigwigs, the politicians and the lawyers. I don’t know where she gets her courage, her fervour from. She makes me proud and terrified in equal measure.

I used to worry when she stayed out late at her rallies, even though I knew there were people looking out for her—you know how traditional I am. But Kushi has taught me so much, she has changed me, softened me, showed me that I have been too rigid, very set in my ways, which is part of the reason why it all went so wrong with us, Ma . . .

I add garam masala and chilli powder, coriander powder and cumin to the fragrant mixture. It is as I squeeze in a pinch of lemon that I feel the grasp on my heart tighten into a vice and at the same time, the howling starts, long and low in the fields, and approaches nearer and nearer. It sounds like all the neighbourhood dogs are converging on our little cottage.

What has happened?

I rush to the doorway and peer out, even as my legs drag me back, knowing somehow that what I will learn will change my world forever. Involuntarily, my mind harks back to that other time—so long ago now and yet so immediate in my mind—to the reek of smoke and charred devastation, to tears burning on stunned flesh. Such ruin, so much loss, caused by the reckless indiscretions of one unruly matchstick.

I think of the recent past and another fire, this one taking my husband, wisps of ash-laden smoke bathing the spice flavoured air, painting it the deep aubergine of shock and panic. I picture the yellowish amber lick of flames, the blue-black of smoke that trail my destiny.

My nostrils are suffused with the smell of burning. I turn around, away from the fields where it looks as if a black, keening cloud is gathering closer to my cosy, much-loved kitchen. I take it in, and sense that nothing will be the same again.

The samosa mixture is singed.

Another omen.

Like the constriction in my chest.

Even as I take the pot of charred mixture off the hearth, my stomach cramps in remembered deprivation. Although it’s been years since I have experienced the spasms of hunger that come from having nothing to eat and no means of obtaining food, I hate wasting even a tiny morsel. The thought of throwing food away when there are people starving makes my stomach twist from evoked malnourishment.

I’ll need to cook something else for Kushi.

Kushi . . .

My tongue is suddenly thick, refusing to do my bidding as I desperately try to inhale a lungful of air. The ladle, escaping my clutch, falls to the floor with a thud.

I can hear them clearly now. The entire village seems to be convening at my doorstep. The ladies are moaning and hitting their heads. The men are more sober than I’ve ever seen them. The dogs dancing around their feet, and the lowing cows ambling behind add to the clamour.

I scan the crowd for a glimpse of my daughter, willing her slender form to come weaving, unscathed, through the press of people and animals, but knowing, deep inside where the premonition of peril is choking the breath out of me, that I won’t find her, knowing this is why the villagers are here.