Someone Else's Garden (48 page)

‘What are you talking about?’ ‘You know nothing! Because you bore the cruelty, the beatings, you expect her to do the same. It is your arrogance that keeps you from accepting her. By rejecting her you think you can pay him back for all the things he did to you. You want to crush him . . . for his freedom and your bondage . . . for his power and your weakness . . . for his apathy and your anxiety . . . for his voice and your silence. The only way you know how is to tolerate without accepting. You judge everyone through your life, confusing it with fate. If you give up this fate business, what will you do with yourself? Isn’t that what you are thinking? You are thinking: then my life will have no meaning. All this, after I helped you push that man into the river. How dare you judge her? The only thing dependable in her life has been that goddamned birthmark. Go to her, Lata Bai, while there is still time. It is beyond time for fairytales and nursery rhymes, beyond time for childish toys. Now is the time to give her something tangible – your approval.’

Lata Bai looks desperately round her, but there is nowhere to escape. She grips her ears, and falls to the floor. A piece of her daughter’s flesh, was she to die like an animal then? ‘It is a terrible curse to live in a time and place where you don’t have any dreams for your children. I couldn’t even give her a respectable birth . . .’ For the first time, Lata Bai acknowledges to another that Mamta could be illegitimate. ‘She was always someone else’s garden. I served weevils on her wedding. Oh, Kamla, what have I done?’

‘Nothing yet, my sister, nothing is ruined yet. Come, let’s go.’ She takes her friend’s hand, forgiving her just as quickly as she had censured her only moments ago.

Once they leave the hut behind, things are back to normal. ‘Shall we stop by the bank to get ourselves a loan? They won’t say no if you tell them you are Mamta’s mother. She’s a good risk. Brought more than five thousand rupees with her from the city, said she’d saved it through the Post Office Deposit Plan. That Lokend of hers opened the account for her at the bank. So what do you say? A loan first?’

Lata Bai can’t share in her friend’s joke, in her laughter rising, unexpected, unwanted. She gulps down her guilt. ‘This is no time for jokes, Kamla, let’s get to the bandit wives as soon as possible. I have wasted enough time on foolishness.’

Then and there, Lata Bai resolves never to look back over her shoulder at her old life again.

Mamta sends Manno to greet his grandmother, she has to, to spare Lata Bai the humiliation of a formal reconciliation. The toddler, newly walking, wandering like a blind thing, finally blunders into his grandmother’s arms as she moves from side to side like a goalie waiting to grab the ball, suddenly agile for her age.

The little creature, innocent as fluffed cotton, used to having a hundred hands help him up, isn’t shy of strangers and grabs her dirt-encrusted sari.

She clings to the tiny body as if he is the only branch in a flood. The past recedes. ‘My boy,’ she whispers, visibly shrinking into herself like cheesecloth left to dry in the sun, ‘my poor boy, with no grandma to look after you. But now I am here. I am here, you see –’ she offers her arms as proof ‘– I am here.’

‘Amma.’

It is a whispered meeting between mother and daughter but with all the energy of a dam holding back a deluge.

‘Amma!’ The man holds out his arms. Though his hair is shock white, Lata Bai knows who he is. There is no precedence for an intercaste union in her life. She is afraid of the man who is approaching her swiftly. How did her daughter muster the courage for a relationship with him? A zamindar’s son, no less. Suddenly she is afraid to cross the caste and status sea. He does it for her and touches her feet. It isn’t the zamindar’s son’s hands she feels on her toes, but her son-in-law’s. ‘Amma, come. I’m so glad you’ve come home at last,’ he says.

Mamta is still struggling with the whys, streaming towards her like bats at sunset: Why did she reject her, why didn’t she see her, why did she put the whole village before her?

‘Aren’t you glad, Manno, that your grandma has come to live with us?’ she says, giving her son’s name away as accidentally as possible. She has learned a lot from her husband.

Thankfully at last, there is nowhere for Lata Bai to go.

‘How are you?’ the mother makes it a point to ask her daughter each day.

‘I am well, Amma,’ replies Mamta, still on the defensive, unforgiving. But more often there are days when she watches her son and mother come closer out of the corner of her eye. She smiles, her mother’s presence has brought her more satisfaction, something she mistakes for peace, than all Lokend’s scripture could.

‘Here you are. You two, talking mother–daughter things,’ says Kamla, still the lubricant between them. ‘Not disturbing, am I?’ Her eyebrows dance above the bridge of her nose. Both Mamta and Lata Bai know the signs of Kamla’s face well.

‘Is everything all right?’ they ask together. The daughter uses the exact same intonation as her mother, feeling immediately betrayed.

‘No, nothing is all right. We have to move,’ says Kamla without preamble.

‘Oho, Kamla, stop scaring the girls, will you,’ Lokend shouts from the edge of the garden. ‘I said we’d find some place to go.’ Her husband’s face has changed considerably from living in constant pain. His side never did heal properly.

‘How is it possible?’

‘Temporary lease, Amma –’ from the day she arrived, he has referred to Lata Bai as Amma ‘– a temporary lease, and we’ve been here four years already.’

‘Yes, four years to the day. My husband would have been out tomorrow,’ says Daku Manmohan’s widow, starting to crumble, a sandcastle succumbing to rain. Her son looks on with detachment.

‘Come, come, my daughter, what’s past is past.’ Lata Bai places her arms round the collapsing woman. Mamta feels a twinge of envy.

‘Yes, what’s past is past,’ says Mamta, dragging her mother’s conscience over the gravel of guilt.

‘We must look for a new place quickly.’ Kamla was always the practical one.

‘Where?’ ‘Where?’ All the women face Lokend, asking him to solve the problem.

‘My place.’ It is hardly a whisper. ‘My place?’ Another whisper. ‘How about my land?’

‘Arey, Lata Bai, your land. That dry, hard, dust pit, filled with snakes and demons? That bitter piece of land that only gave you tears. That foolish piece of land that never gave you any pleasure. Yes, why not? Why not that scraggy piece of land not fit to grow one vegetable? It will be perfect for us. Just perfect,’ says Kamla without sarcasm. ‘Why
not
your land? What a wonderful idea.’

‘Thank you, Kamla. Thank you,’ Lata Bai says to her friend for her second chance.

‘Your land, that’s a wonderful idea. We could buy the adjacent plot and then we’d really have something,’ says Lokend, always dreaming big dreams.

Mamta is the only one not convinced. Where was her mother when she needed her? Why is she becoming their saviour now?

‘Let the past be the past, meri jaan.’ He pulls her back to the past, her bedside vigil, lifting her far above all those present, forcing her to acknowledge the greatness in others’ actions and therefore in herself. ‘Mamta and I will personally look at the land tomorrow. After all, no one knows it better than her.’

Things change when you look at them differently. That’s what Mamta finds when she goes back to her mother’s abandoned hut.

It is standing untouched, shunned even by the poorest of the poor who can find no use in its crumbling mud walls, rusting tin door and shredded roof.

They walk up to her former home. It looks unbelievably small to her.

‘I lived here!’ It is surprising how soon human beings get used to a higher standard of living and that too in such a conclusive way that their older, harsher life seems like a dream. However unreal, Mamta doesn’t know it but she walked away with something very tangible from her harsh dream, an energy that is impossible to switch off. Her past has made her into one of those who will forever strive to improve their lot, someone who will always believe in the sacredness of the struggle.

She turns to face him. That’s the part he likes best, to look into her eyes and sometimes discipline a stray strand of hair. His affection will always take her by surprise. ‘Well, this is my home. I mean, was my home.’ Lokend puts his arm around her, trying to protect her from her own emotions. She doesn’t want to think about the future, she doesn’t dare think about the past.

He sits in the shade of the Babul to give her a moment. She walks inside. Disturbed from its long sleep, the rusty door releases a metallic screech. The sound sends her on her journey as avidly as a gunshot might the most seasoned sprinter.

‘That’s where he used to tie me when I did something bad, ate too much, laughed too much, didn’t bring in enough hay. I’m glad he’s dead and I’m glad she’s with us. I can say this to you.’

He holds her confessions safe. ‘He gave me to that man, right there in front of this hut. Amma pushed me out of this door . . .’ She laughs bitterly at her memory game. ‘It’s good that we’ve come back here, so there is no chance to forget. Not just for me, but for all women like me. There were so many of us, at least twenty by our well alone.’

‘I want to give you every chance to forget, Mamta, to live again, unfettered.’

‘I’ll never forget, that would be a sin. Look at what Devi gave me –’ she reaches for him ‘– you. What did I ever do in my life to deserve you? How many didn’t get someone like you? We can all be saved only by a Lokend of our very own.’

He says nothing. Someone else might have been embarrassed by such absolute admiration, but not Lokend. He only feels the bedrock of sincerity in her being, and her pain.

Her husband is the child of a legendary love. Perhaps he carried its intensity in his veins like a genetic seed, which sprouted when nourished in exactly the right way by the perfect person. Intercaste unions are dangerous and illicit in places like Gopalpur. It is always up to the man to wrench his mate to a higher rung where she is to sit until she is accepted by his family, his peers and finally society. There was no such wrenching in Mamta’s and Lokend’s case. They simply came together, mingled into a single stream and flowed on, leaving an eddy of confused, bent and broken rules behind them. It had to be black magic. Plain and marked Mamta must have enticed Lokend with everything in her power to capture his heart. Her punishment for such impudence would have been the purifying ritual of gang rape. Luckily there were no such reprisals against her in Gopalpur. Here they are protected by those who will gladly give their lives for Lokend. They will survive, and in time, their love too will become legendary because it was conceived against such incredible odds.

He loves her from the deepest part of his being. She brings meaning to his life.

Mamta of the birthmark, born to love and be loved.

She walks into the hut again. The door does nothing this time, disabled on its broken hinges. She wraps her sari pallav round her hands and pulls at it. The mirror is the first thing to fall off the back of the door. The mirror, still cracked from side to side. She picks it up and blows on its surface. There is no sound from the outside, even the birds are quiet. She can see her face, sliced exactly as before. She cleans the mirror with her sari and sets it just outside the hut.

She pulls at the door again leaning all the way back. Almost falling, she staggers away with the piece of tin in her hands. It is a weapon, a bludgeon of wrath, a club of anger. She smashes it against the walls, pokes at the ceiling with it, tearing down the last walls of her childhood.

She bashes on. Today she will be satisfied. The clay walls have all but crumbled, providing little resistance to her perseverance. By the time Lokend comes to look inside, she has demolished two walls, and kicked the hearth stones out of sight to lie on their blackened sides, denying any responsibility towards the fire that sustained her family for years.

‘I got you this,’ he says, handing her a good stick shaped like a horse. Of course it is just a trick of her imagination, the frolicking of her mind that sees this stick in another time, but in the same place. ‘Let’s mark out our new home.’

Hours later they have their home marked out, a square, built round a courtyard with five rooms to one side and an outside veranda. The latrines are off to one end, and there is the place for the well, their own.

‘What will we call it?’ ‘Let’s leave that to your mother.’

The women gather at Lata Bai’s farm. It is a special time for them, coming together to create something in exactly the image they would like. Never has such abundance of possibility been available to them.

‘Mahila Sangat! That’ll be its new name.’

‘It’s a good name,’ they agree, ‘Mahila Sangat: the place for women. It’s about time we had our own place.’

The building goes up in a babble of banging and hoisting, and lots of laughter. Lata Bai’s field, crowded with bricks and cement, drainpipes and electric cables, usurps the lives, loves and hopes of each of those who will call it home. It is a glorious time, filled with joy and kinship. Nothing can break that rejoicing collective spirit that grows, first filling the field, then the patch between the river and the growing building, continuing to extend all the way out to other fields on either side, spreading across Gopalpur to encompass the Red Ruins, the Big House, the hills beyond, and finally the whole world.

Many new faces join them in their labour: Lala Ram provides free tea, Lucky Sister sends bags of cement, Ragini a truck of bricks, and then there is the most surprising contribution of all: doors and windows from Nirmala Devi, who never forgot Lokend, her former political opponent. Each one has a job, and they follow the rules set out by the building contractor as only women who have had to obey someone or other each day of their lives can, to the finest detail.

The building is nothing short of a miracle, erected by unskilled hands on a hostile terrain. But to them, their hands are strong, and the land yielding, a willing accomplice. Help seems to arrive at the very moment they need it. Rajiv from the
Times of India
brings architects from the city. They are twins fresh out of Architecture College who attack the project with gusto, hoping to leave behind a permanent reminder of their mastery. They are assisted by Gope and mute Kanno, who have joined the bandit wives just to be close to Lokend Bhai their saviour.