Married Woman (21 page)

Slowly they fell on the bed, kissing all the while, when Aijaz, entwined around her, turned into Reshana.

Reshana?

She woke. It was early morning, the sky was lightening, she could hear the birds beginning outside. Deeply unsettled, she turned to Hemant, opened his pyjamas, gave him an erection and climbed on top.

He forgave her sins of the evening before by responding.

The disturbance lingered with Astha all next day, the vividness and strong emotions of her dream demanding some kind of recognition. Hesitantly she started making sketches. Two women faced each other in a scooter, their noses covered because of the pollution, only the eyes visible. The scooter wallah was a dark Sardarji with a striking red turban. Perched next to him was a young man, taking a ride. Around the edges of the canvas, traffic, buildings, road, but in the centre the scooter with its passengers bent towards each other, the devouring eyes, the Sardarji and the young man.

‘How’s it going?’ Reshana phoned to ask.

‘Fine‚’ said Astha briefly, not wanting to engage with Reshana when her head was full of other things. She would think about the Manch canvas when she had finished this one.

Now that Astha was devoting practically all her afternoons to painting she found it difficult to work inside the house. There were too many interruptions, the servant, the children, the phone, the kitchen, her own restless mind. Besides which she
was continually observed by whoever happened to be around, watched intently as she made preliminary sketches, prepared canvas, squeezed paint, mixed and applied colour, cleaned brushes. She could not say go away, that was rude as well as selfishly withholding of herself.

The canvases also meant that when they entertained guests, certain conversational sequences were invariably set in motion – who paints, my wife, oh really, very good hobby for a woman, my daughter also paints very nicely, or my sister, or wife’s sister – you name it, there was always somebody who knew somebody who painted. Each time this happened Astha was forced to make her work the subject of idle gossip, a thing she hated doing.

She mentioned this to Hemant one weekend. They were in the bedroom lying off a heavy lunch eaten upstairs.

‘I need more space.’

Hemant drew her close. ‘The whole house is yours, Az.’

‘I was thinking of something more specific. You know, a place to work in peace, spread my stuff about.’

She knew it sounded presumptuous and unfamily-like to want space that was hers and hers alone. Hemant clearly thought so too, as he said, ‘You don’t need more, you have all you can use here.’

‘Not quite. I get in everybody’s way.’

‘Many women would die to have the space you do. We could never afford anything like this now. If only your father had done the same—’

‘Maybe I could have the other room on the barsati?’ Astha interrupted in a rush, a room so uncomfortable, distant, remote, and undesirable that she could ask with equanimity, and hopefully be given without hesitation.

‘What?’

‘Nobody is using it.’

‘But it belongs to Sangeeta, she may feel insecure. You know how touchy she already is.’

A wave of anger hit Astha, Sangeeta sitting in Meerut was to be given greater consideration than herself.

‘I will vacate it whenever necessary, besides the servants are already there, and presumably she tolerates that.’

‘But darling, it has no electrical connections, how can you use it?’

‘I’ll get it wired, all we have to do is extend the connection from the servants’ room.’

‘It’ll kill you, with your headaches, that’s for sure.’

‘Please, please, please.’

Hemant looked distinctly annoyed. His wife on the roof, next to the servants’ quarters, painting.

‘What is wrong with working down here? I let you work – I don’t stop you – I say nothing about the smell, about the canvases all over.’

‘The smell, the canvases, the inconvenience are exactly why. Please, darling.’

Hemant talked to his parents. They did not agree. Sangeeta would be very sensitive to a family member encroaching on her territory, servants were different.

Astha vowed bitterly to earn enough money to rent her own studio one day. In the meantime if there was no area available to her, she would try and make do with the wide ranges inside her head. Constantly reminded of the space nobody thought enough of her to give, she became very bad tempered during interruptions. Finally she steeled herself, she shut the door, and if disturbed too often locked it. In this way a certain uneasy privacy was granted her.

After
Women
Travelling,
Astha’s imagination increasingly worked in pictures. For the Manch painting she decided to experiment with an issue she felt strongly about. She would deal with the Rath Yatra, with the journey a Leader was making across the Hindu heartland in the name of unifying the nation. Like the religious leaders of old, he drove a chariot, identical to Arjun’s in the serialised
Mahabharat,
familiar
to millions of viewers. That the chariot was really a DCM Toyota was a necessary concession to the 10,000 kilometres to be done in thirty-six days. His journey was to start from Somnath, one of the first places to be destroyed by Muslim mauraders (Mahmud of Ghazni) in 1025, and end in Ayodhya, where Lord Ram was born, the hallowed spot that needed to be reappropriated to assuage the feelings of 700 million Hindus. It was also a journey to political prominence.

To portray this Astha chose a large canvas, four by six, and again drew inspiration from Rajasthani miniatures. On one end was a temple, on the other was the Babri Masjid, on its little hill. Between the two the leader travelled, in a rath, flanked by holy men, wearing saffron, carrying trishuls, some old, some young, their beards flowing over their chests. Besides the rath on motorbikes were younger men, with goggles and helmets, whose clothes she painted saffron as well, to suggest militant religion. She sketched scenes of violence, arson and stabbing that occurred in towns on the way, people fighting, people dying; she showed young men slashing their bodies, and offering a tilak of blood to the Leader; she showed young men offering even more blood in a vessel; she showed the arrest of the Leader as he approached Ayodhya.

The day Astha finished her Manch canvas, called simply
Yatra,
she took a deep breath and stared at it for a long time. This was good, she felt it was. The Manch had promised her half the money for the painting, she wondered how much that would be.

This time Reshana priced Astha’s painting at 20,000 rupees. ‘It’s very strong. A bit bloody, but the scale is so small it is not offensive. And it certainly adds to the colour.’

‘Thanks‚’ said Astha, feeling warm and glowy.

‘I had no idea you were doing the yatra. A controversial issue will be noticed in the reviews.’

Astha saw respect on her face, which pleased her, but unfortunately it also made her remember her dream. Desire for Hemant darted through her, the safe, solid, stable, secure thing in her life.

‘Come back tomorrow and see where we have put it‚’ continued Reshana, and Astha returned from the exhibition hall with an empty feeling in her chest. The canvas she had worked on and thought about all these months was gone.

Again Reshana proved right. Astha’s painting was mentioned in the reviews, one paper even printed a photograph of it, and it was sold before the end of the exhibition.

Hemant said, ‘Congratulations, you must be really pleased, I am happy for you‚’ as though they had met at a party, instead of sharing the same bed for years.

Astha said, equally politely, ‘Thank you, Hemant.’ She put out of her mind an idle romance, that he would be the one to buy it, give it pride of place in house or office, and tell everyone that this was an example of his wife’s work. She knew this was impossible, and that people who expect the impossible are setting themselves up for misery, and Astha would rather die than be such a pathetic woman.

Instead she hugged the vision of herself as a woman who had sold two paintings in one year, sum total thirty thousand rupees, of which ten thousand was hers. She felt rich and powerful, so what if this feeling only lasted a moment.

One day she would get so famous that Hemant would feel obliged to display something she had done, and somebody, friend? banker? associate? would see it and, impressed, would ask to meet her. Unlike Hemant, he would find her fascinating. Would he want to have an affair with her? What would he be like in bed? Here Astha firmly drew a line across the remaining part of her fantasy, it exceeded anything remotely credible.

Summer holidays. Everything that was touched or breathed was dust laden. The heat was its usual, intense and unbearable.

There was no question of Astha painting, her children were all over the place, she was busy with things to occupy them, summer workshops, the transportation involved, and the impending visit of Sangeeta with her children.

‘Will you show Sangeeta Bua your paintings, Ma?’ asked Anuradha.

‘Right now I have nothing to show.’

‘You have the picture of it from the newspaper, and the mention in the review.’

‘Let it be, babu, she might think I am showing off.’

‘ So? Shefali is always boasting about all the things she has.’

‘Poor thing. Sweetie, there is a lot of trouble in Shefali’s house, her parents fight, and maybe she talks like that because she is insecure. Let’s not say anything about my paintings it might make Sangeeta Bua feel bad.’

‘You mean jealous.’

That was what Astha meant, but this was the child’s aunt they were talking about. ‘Painting is not everybody’s cup of tea‚’ she temporised.

Through the summer, and the trials with Sangeeta, Sangeeta’s children, Shefali and Samir, and her own children, her painting remained with her, at the back of her mind. She yearned for the moments when her hand, her eye, her brain fused into one, and her daily life was blocked out. She had experienced this increasingly with the second and third canvas, and she was impatient to experience it again.

Meanwhile the six of them shopped, went to the zoo, went to films, went to restaurants, went to Appu Ghar, went to the science museum, went to the crafts museum, went swimming. For a week the nine of them went to Nainital, where Hemant rented a cottage. Here they boated, roamed around the lake, took long walks, had pony rides, and Astha was wife, mother, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law.

Hemant was happy with her. He found this easier when his relatives were there, and Astha spending so much time with them. When their anniversary came, he bought her a ring, an emerald surrounded by tiny diamonds. The quality was excellent, and the ring looked well on her hand.

‘Brings out your colour‚’ said Hemant turning the hand around in his own, smiling at her.

‘Such a husband‚’ murmured her mother-in-law in the background. Sangeeta looked on registering each gesture.

There was no need for Astha to say anything.

The summer over, Sangeeta and her children departed, school about to start. Astha stood on the verandah overlooking her tiny garden, thinking her forced exile from paint, turpentine and linseed oil was at last over. She looked at the scene in front of her, wondering how she could catch even a fraction of it on canvas. The sky was heavy with dark clouds, the air had a grey yellow quality to it that made the grass and trees more luminous, the red flowers of the gulmohar tree more vivid, the waxy white flowers of the champa tree more arresting against their large dark green leaves. There was so much moisture in the air, that as the breeze blew, it brushed her face with dampness.

Mughal miniatures were full of monsoon scenes, lovers on the roof, the man’s hand fondling the woman’s breast, while the woman leans heavily against him, a grey sky above with white birds flying in a V-formation against the clouds. How about a monsoon urban scene, children splashing in puddles, kites flying, jamun, bhutta and phalsa sellers squatting in front of their baskets on pavements, and on the roof, a solitary woman looking towards the heavy darkness above. Melancholy filled her. After the deadness of summer, the monsoon was a time of awakening and desire, but what was one to do with one’s longing?

She wished she could share her feelings with someone, but with only Hemant to fall back upon it was certain that her
loneliness was secured. Still he was all she had, and she made an attempt when he came home and settled down to his drink.

‘It was really pretty today.’

‘I suppose. I didn’t have time to notice.’

‘That’s why I am telling you. I want to share it.’ But already the tone was edgy, and Hemant responded promptly.

‘Yes, it’s nice when you have time to admire nature.’

The offensive implications were clear. Astha forced a sketchy smile to her lips, then turned to study the label on the whisky bottle. More than this she could not lie.

‘I have a surprise for you‚’ he said.

She was grateful, ‘Oh, really? What?’