Custody (16 page)

It’s hard to know exactly what is going on between two people, replied the mother, and she began to avoid her neighbour.

Worse things happened.

A process server came.

‘Shagun Kaushik?’

‘What do you want?’ asked Mrs Sabharwal, trying to sound aggressive.

‘Court notice.’

‘Why?’

‘Are you Shagun Kaushik?’

‘I am her mother.’

‘She has to sign for this.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘If I give it to you, my job will go, I am a poor man.’

He could be a poor man, but every statement sounded like a threat. An emissary of the court promising to return tomorrow same time, determined to deliver disaster concealed in the envelope hanging from his limp hand.

No one in the family had ever been involved in a court case. There was something unsavoury about the whole thing, some profound incapacity to lead your life according to prescribed norms.

She had heard of cases lasting ten years, twenty years, property disputes carried on by grandchildren, custody cases only resolved by the child’s reaching eighteen, divorce disputes lasting into old age. Which man would not tire of a woman – no matter how beautiful – who came burdened with legal baggage?

Besides, she could see no place for the children in the new set-up. Suppose there were problems between them and Ashok? What would happen?

Her daughter was not to be cowed into anxiety. Taking the children had been Ashok’s idea, if only to bring Raman to the bargaining table. She had asked nicely for a divorce, been prepared to sacrifice, but the man refused to admit the marriage was over, slammed the phone down on her, what other choice did she have?

The mother could see no good end to any of this. ‘Just tell me what I should do when the server comes tomorrow,’ she said, her voice weighty with unexpressed fears.

A few hours later Shagun phoned back. ‘He says we must accept it.’

‘You have to come, then.’

‘I will be there.’

Well, thought Mrs Sabharwal as she put down the receiver, at least she would get to see her daughter. Those days had gone, along with so much else, when they used to meet at least once a week. Now just phone conversations, hardly anything else.

When Shagun came the next day it was with Roohi. ‘My darling,’ cried the grandmother, rushing to her. ‘I have missed you so, so much. Did you think of me, sweetheart? Did you miss your Naani?’

Roohi hid behind her mother.

‘Mama, please, give her time. She is still confused.’

Mrs Sabharwal thought the little girl far removed from the sweet smiling child she had known. ‘How is school, beta?’ she asked.

‘The teachers say she has become quite withdrawn. I had to tell them what has happened at home – so they can be on their guard in case Raman tries to kidnap her.’

‘What did they say to that?’

‘What would they say? My situation is not so uncommon, you know.’

Mrs Sabharwal did not know but said nothing.

‘Anyway, the child is happier, that is what matters.’

‘Of course.’

They had lunch and waited for the server. ‘I wonder what it is,’ said Mrs Sabharwal, to fill the awkwardness between Shagun and herself.

‘Couldn’t be a plea for divorce,’ said the daughter dryly. ‘Must be custody.’

Mrs Sabharwal looked blank.

‘Mama, I wish everybody were as sweet and simple as you. You think once the marriage is over everything naturally follows? No such luck. Divorce takes a lifetime and if you are not living together where do the children go?’

‘Where?’

‘Exactly. They can only be with one of us at a time. The question is who, how, where and when? All that is custody.’

This information made Mrs Sabharwal so sad she could hardly speak.

‘I’ll be the one to file for divorce,’ continued Shagun. ‘We are working it out with Madz.’

‘Madz?’

‘Ashok’s lawyer friend.’

‘What will you do if he doesn’t divorce you? He may not want to.’

‘Don’t I know that? Punishment is what he is after.’

‘Beta, he must be very upset. You know how much he loves his children.’

Shagun’s face hardened and Mrs Sabharwal understood she must not say things like this.

All afternoon they waited. Shagun started fretting about Arjun coming home from school and not finding her.

‘Surely he is used to that?’

‘Things are different now, Mama. My children need me.’

It was around four thirty, when Shagun was coaxing Roohi to drink her evening glass of milk, that the server finally came. Shagun grabbed the sheaf of papers stamped with judicial insignia, signed, called a taxi and departed, leaving the mother to feel a little slighted, a little ignored, a little unimportant.

In the taxi Shagun flattened the thick wad with unsteady hands.

‘What is that, Mama?’ asked Roohi, taking her thumb out of her mouth.

‘Nothing, beta, let Mama read.’

The thumb went back and Roohi returned her gaze to the city.

Petitioner – Mr Raman Kaushik, Respondent – Mrs Shagun Kaushik – flip, flip to the end, what did he want? If only, only a divorce, but no, his meanness made that impossible, ah, here it was, that for the reasons stated above, the petitioner’s prayer was that the two minor children be restored to their father’s custody.

Back went Shagun to the reasons mentioned above. She had guessed they would be awful, but this awful? One affair changed into licentiousness from the day they married, her own mother turned into a procuress, her uncaring nature in full display as she abandoned her children to co-habit with Ashok Khanna. Exposure to him threatened the minors’ psychological well-being, she herself was an evil moral influence. The paper slid from her lap to the taxi floor.

‘What is it, Mama?’

She could not answer.

The child shook her arm: ‘Mama, Mama, what is it?’

‘It is a little message from your father. He is trying to kill me.’

The grip on her arm tightened.

‘You must never see him, or go to him, even if he calls you. He is a bad, bad man.’

Roohi looked down. The mother gazed at the bits of scalp that showed through the fine hair of her daughter’s bent head. She put an arm around her, ‘Never leave me, darling, never,’ and the child bobbed reassuringly against her shoulder.

Arjun was in the drawing room when they came back.

‘Where were you?’ he demanded. ‘I was waiting for you. Nobody knew where you were.’ His face was tense as he fixed his mother with an accusing stare. A glass of milk was sitting on the table next to him, a thickened layer of malai crusting its surface.

‘Beta, I was at Naani’s house. Some work took longer than I thought.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?’

‘Papa is trying to kill Mama,’ said Roohi.

Her brother looked at her with contempt. ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Roo. You don’t know anything.’

‘Mama said.’

She is going to die, flashed across the son’s mind, while the daughter stared at her mother across the web of her spread-out fingers.

‘Not really,’ said Shagun hastily, ‘what I meant was that he is trying to take you two away and that will kill me. Kill me.’ She drew her children near and stared desolately out of the window over their heads. After a while she asked tenderly, ‘I will get your milk heated, all right, beta?’

‘My stomach is hurting,’ said Arjun.

‘Poor little babu. Would you like a banana instead?’

He shook his head. Shagun sighed. Of course it was the recent disturbances that were causing her son stress. If only Raman could see things rationally, there was no reason why they both couldn’t continue as joint carers of their children. They had been so delighted when she came to get them, throwing themselves on her with hugs and kisses. That scene had replayed itself in her heart many times, even though it had been a little spoiled by Arjun’s assumption that she had come to stay. No, she had to explain, they were all leaving Papa, they would never stop loving him of course but things had changed and living together was out of the question. Some day he would understand. Now would he please be a good boy and help her pack his stuff?

‘My stomach is hurting too,’ said Roohi, picking up her brother’s illness as fast as it takes an idea to travel from one sibling to the other.

‘Copycat.’

‘Beta, be nice to your sister.’

‘She is so stupid.’

‘Arjun! Please! You two must love each other, not fight all the time.’

She pushed them away, the reality of having to deal with thirty-two pages of lies making her suddenly impatient. Arjun stared at her. In his school bag lying on the floor next to his feet was a maths test which he had failed. His father had always sat with him during weekends, guiding him through many practice sums. ‘In this subject the secret of success is practise, practise. Practise so that you will not make a mistake no matter how pressed for time in an exam or how nervous. Don’t forget it’s easy to fall behind, hard to make up.’

Now for the first time in his life he had done badly. Nine on 25. What would his mother say? She hadn’t even remembered that tests were fixed for the first period on Wednesdays. His teacher had asked him to get the test signed. He would forge his mother’s signature and hand it in tomorrow.

Next week was English, he could handle that. But the week after was science, again a subject his father had taught him. He could try asking a friend for help, but till now he was the one his friends turned to. What on earth would they think?

Shagun put away the ghastly court papers, then spent a long time on the pot, expelling the tension from her body. Once done, she stood looking at her face in the mirror. Nobody would have said she was in her early thirties, in certain lights she looked a young girl, and according to Ashok she had the body of one too.

Today, unfortunately, she would have to greet him with news of the case, another thing he would have to deal with. As though he didn’t have enough on his plate already.

These days Ashok Khanna was a beleaguered man, but as he was fond of saying, he was used to fighting fire. Every morning when he opened the newspaper it was to find The Brand being accused of fresh instances of callous capitalist behaviour. An NGO had objected to the fact that it took 2.5 litres to make 1 litre of a drink of no nutritional value. On purely circumstantial evidence they were being linked to depleted groundwater resources and debt-ridden farmers.

Unfortunately nobody waited for allegations to be proved before multinational-bashing took place. The issue was serious enough for head office to extend Ashok’s stay in India.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

That night as Arjun lay in bed, he could hear his mother and Ashok Uncle talking in the next room. At home comfort had flowed from the voices of his parents, here adult conversation seemed more ominous. He wanted his mother. If he pinched Roohi she would cry and that would bring her, but he knew she didn’t like being distracted by her children in the evenings.

What was his father doing now? Should he phone him? No, better not – he might remember about the Wednesday tests, and ask him questions. In his father’s place there was instead this stranger hovering around Shagun. It made Arjun uncomfortable, the man’s fingers running up and down her arm, his hands reaching out to pull her close, the little kisses he dropped on her forehead. She never resisted as she sometimes had with Raman.

Otherwise too his mother was different. For one, she was around much more. He liked that she was waiting to have lunch with him when he came from school, that she was so interested in everything that concerned him. To reward her the previously taciturn Arjun began to tell stories of what his friends had done, how they had competitions as to who could hit the fan with their tiffins, whose ruler could be broken by the other’s ruler, who could harass the teacher the most without getting into trouble. She would laugh, ruffle his hair, tell him he had become a really naughty boy.

But when the man came home, the centre of attention shifted. Then he was treated on par with Roohi, to be fed, put to bed and otherwise ignored. Though he had only been in this house two weeks, he knew the pattern.

Sometimes the mother would say, Guess what Arjun did in school today. And the uncle would say ‘What?’ but his look was directed only at her, as was his smile, and soon she would forget what she had meant to tell him.

When Arjun left the room, his mother’s footsteps did not follow him, as they so often had in the old house. Once as he loudly dragged his feet he heard the man say, Let him be, he is growing up, you have to give him space.

Roohi was not part of these exchanges. The maid who had appeared two days after their own arrival would be feeding her and then she would go to sleep.

A week after the notice was delivered Raman phoned his mother-in-law: ‘Where are my children? I want to talk to them.’

Mrs Sabharwal could hear the anguish in his voice. She knew the pain this caused her was of interest to nobody.

‘Beta, right now they are not here,’ she said carefully.

‘Where are they?’

‘Safe and well, don’t worry.’

‘Make sure they talk to me tomorrow, otherwise I will file a criminal case in addition to the civil. She will be put in jail where she belongs.’

Melancholy triumph invaded the darkness in Raman’s heart. He could picture the anxious Mrs Sabharwal, always so attentive to the children and himself, wondering how things had gone this wrong. Was she trying to make sense of all the lies Shagun must have fed her? She sounded scared; he was glad, now the daughter would have to deal with the consequences.

It was late but Mrs Sabharwal didn’t care. She could feel her dreaded palpitations – avoid stress, her doctor had said, but how was that possible? She didn’t doubt Raman’s threats for a moment. In all these years, she had never known him to say something he did not mean. How separating the children from their father was going to help matters, she didn’t know, but everything Shagun did now was with divorce in mind, and she herself was just beginning to appreciate that this dreaded state was in fact a sundering devoutly to be wished.