Someone Else's Garden (49 page)

Brick by brick, the building rises, brick by brick the women have their hopes returned to them.

And their new home is finished two months before the lease on their old one expires.

The whitewash is the always the best part of building. Almost as much goes on the women’s clothes as does on the new walls. When it’s over, lime-burnt palms are painted with henna and the swings are erected in the Babul.

‘I knew there was a reason I didn’t let your father cut down that tree. To see this before I died . . .’ Lata Bai’s eyes are streaming with unabashed tears. Mamta knows just how much her mother needs her now. She moves a step closer, but cannot fold her in her arms.

The women take turns on the swings. Their pallavs fly upwards in the draught to cradle the sun. Coloured patches of light move amongst them like long-lost friends, and many eyes that have witnessed much too much tragedy for tears experience the joy of weeping for the first time.

The procession makes the journey in all modes of transport – in trucks, on cycles, in bullock carts, on foot – to begin life at the Mahila Sangat, the place for women.

It is a triumph of survival.

Lokend cuts the ribbon. It is an affectation that all those who have visited the city insist upon. The others are simply awed by the ceremony. The Gopalpur band plays the same songs it does at every marriage, and the hijras dance together with the definite sexes.

‘Come,’ Mamta pulls Lokend and Manno into the fray. Gope beats the goatskin drum, faster and faster, a smile carved into his face. Lokend rushes up to Lata Bai and brings her into the circle. It is a perfect day, where each element taken individually may have flowered to its precise potential. He leaves mother and daughter dancing and hugging. This is the real miracle. This change in Mamta and every other woman who has laid even one brick of the building. The act of building has allowed her to cross many barriers, including making a tentative peace with her mother.

For Lata Bai, Mahila Sangat is more than just their collective dream, it is the concrete realisation of her spirit, her atonement for rejecting Mamta, her karmic absolution. Her belief in Devi, the female energy that she felt obliged to pray to for the sake of tradition, for the sake of history, for the sake of that’s-the-only-way-she-knew-to-live is at last alive for itself, without the life-support of the times.

Mamta looks in the mirror. She sees faint wrinkles just like her mother’s appearing at the corners of her eyes. She finds herself twisting her hair back on her hand and knotting it tight at the base of her neck without pins. It is the same style her mother carries.

She’s starting to admit that she may be more like her mother than she knows.

Chapter 19

T
HE FLAT ROOFS OF
M
AHILA
S
ANGAT
gaze into the distance, attracting many life-weary travellers to its doors. There is a constant ring of women round the building, some who have walked for miles to find shelter here.

Mahila Sangat has changed the fate of so many that Lata Bai knows it is time to do the same for her daughter. She will use every power she can muster to discover the fate of Mamta’s husband, and it will be through a curious, crookedly linked chain that she will find the exact location of the place her daughter moved to after her marriage.

The first name that came to mind was Lucky Sister’s, the most worldly, connected person in her family.

It hasn’t been easy coming to Lucky Sister for help. She’s taken a tonga to her brothel.

Lucky Sister greets her from the top of the stairs with a mixture of ecstatic surprise and gratitude. Lata Bai has never come to meet her at the brothel before. It has always been the other way round, with her making a clandestine trip to Lata Bai’s farm or sending her a gift through one of her customers.

‘You came,’ she says, clasping her hands to her heart. Lata Bai can’t believe that the plump woman with the dimpled hands, bright red hennaed hair and nose ring that dangles halfway down her chin is really her sister.

‘Come, Lata, come. Arey-oh, Revti, we have a guest. Arey-oh, Revti, my younger sister is here.’

A young novice brings a bowl of warm water with floating rose petals into her employer’s graceful presence. She coaxes Lata Bai’s ungainly feet towards the bowl. Lata Bai stretches her toes into the water, concentrating on not tipping its contents on to the tufted carpet, as soft as winter cat fur. The foot-washing complete, the novice hands her a precisely rolled cold towel, signalling to her to wipe her face and hands with it. Lata Bai uses it with trepidation, unwilling to spoil its white wholeness with her facial grime.

‘I came to ask . . .’

Lucky Sister places three scented fingers across her lips as soon as she starts talking, offering her a plate of evenly sliced fruit, sweet-meats and nuts.

‘Later, after you have eaten. All crises can be put off till one has eaten,’ she says, stilling her younger sister’s mounting outburst. Lucky Sister hasn’t come to terms with the prostitution business, giving up all hope of joining the respectable masses, for nothing. She’s earned the right to be well-fed and satisfied.

Though the huge meal and Lucky Sister’s display of largesse leave Lata Bai at a grave disadvantage, she eventually musters the strength to ask her question. ‘It’s Mamta. Well, not really Mamta. It’s her husband. The one she married. Do you have news of him?’

Lucky Sister offers Lata Bai a sweet betel-leaf wrapped in edible silver foil. ‘In the old days these paans were wrapped in gold foil. The sweepers would collect the rich shit for all the gold in it.’ Lucky Sister giggles like a little girl, showing two gold canines.

All Lata Bai has brought with her is her respectability. In front of that flood of food and her sister’s grateful pleasure, it seems like a very meagre gift. She swallows. ‘I didn’t ask for his address. They were married and then they left.’ She can still recall the sense of relief she felt at having got Mamta, Mamta of the birthmark, married.

‘She’s the one with the birthmark, no? I liked her best of all your children. I know she’s living with that man now,’ she says, leaning into Lata Bai slyly. ‘I’ve heard. It’s quite the news. It would be. In your village what else is there to talk about anyway?’ She suddenly straightens up and declares loudly into the room, ‘Hypocrites! How many of them use my facility? But let a girl live in peace, n . . . o that’s just too much.’

Lata Bai looks at her toes. ‘I should’ve asked about the family, their ancestors, their village. I knew nothing of him. Nothing. And yet I let her go. And go to what? A hell . . .’ She checks herself, unsure of whether she should give her successful, recently perfumed sister more ammunition to judge her. ‘I need news of him now.’

‘I find it odd how families are willing to lose complete touch with their daughters once they get married to become productive gardens for someone else.’

‘Yes, her father used to say that feeding her was like watering someone else’s garden.’ She drops her defences,
judge me if you will.
‘It’s all my fault. I should never have let it happen. I was weak. Give me news, my sister. Please, I beg you.’

‘It’s not your fault.’ Lucky Sister has become partial to phil osophy, and in her position, she is apt to share it. ‘It’s the world, Lata, it’s the world. It extracts its price, weight for weight.’

Lata Bai’s impatience boils over. ‘Do you have news? I must know where to find him.’

‘As a matter of fact, I do know where to find him. Her bastard husband used to love the gambling tents and one particular prostitute. He thought they’d get married one day, he thought he’d make a respectable creature out of her – probably his one and only noble thought – she didn’t want it, but she strung him along all the same. She was one of mine, well trained. So she drummed him like a tabla, and got many gifts from him, with which she repaid her loan to me. That’s how I got these back,’ Lucky Sister holds out the pair of gold earrings Lata Bai had given Mamta before her wedding. ‘So of course I got to know the whole story. She was so proud, said he had no backbone, she could make him dance! I told her to treat him extra badly and to make him tremble, but I didn’t tell her he was married to my niece. He lives in Barigaon on the farm next to the milkman’s, the one who has thirty cows. You’ll find news of him there. Here, take these –’ She presses the earrings and the remaining betel-leaves, all damp and silvery, into her sister’s reluctant hands. Lata Bai leaves more indebted than ever.

Lucky Sister sends Revti with Lata Bai to the bus stand with enough money for the to and fro journeys. The widow in white draws no attention, but a barrage of catcalls greets the prostitute, who wiggles her hips at prospective customers. Lata Bai hides her head in her pallav, distancing herself from the silent transactions of the prostitute, and gets on the bus unaided.

This time only mother and daughter make their way to the Red Ruins. Neither wants to dwell on that other journey they made to the ruins the day of her first marriage. Mamta declined the ceremonial henna, and her mother understood it was because she wanted to keep the wedding simple.

They leave at sunrise. The women are already out, putting their washing on trees. In her time, the women would have been just returning home from the well. But not any more. Now they use the newly installed tube wells, dotted round the terrain, minutes walk from their homes, constantly gushing water, seven in all. The new wells, dug because of Lokend, her son-in-law, her grandson’s father. She should have been proud, instead . . . ‘Mamta, I am so sorry.’

‘Ssh,’ says the daughter, embarrassed by her mother’s confession even more than by her apology. ‘Amma, don’t . . .’ She looks at the older woman and feels a pang of guilt.
All this time I had a mother, while . . .
She has to know. ‘Tell me . . .’ she must ask about that one thing that has been a stone on her heart for years ‘. . . tell me, was there any news of a girl?’

‘A girl?’

‘When you went to my old house . . .’ She shudders at the word house; more like my dungeon, she thinks. ‘You know, when you went to find him, and . . . found him dead –’ She is startled by the word, dead. She repeats: ‘– dead, when you found him dead, did you get news of a girl? She would be almost as old as Sneha by now.’

‘I didn’t have to go to your old home. There was a woman who knew all about you, just four fields from the bus stop.’

‘By the big mango tree?’

‘Yes, that’s the one.’

‘That would be Geeta, I sometimes met her at the well.’ ‘Said he became very ill and died and then his land got taken over by his creditors.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Oh yes, she did say something about a girl. She ran away too. I wish I had gone to find him sooner. You didn’t have to wait this long to get married after all. Oh, how fate torments us!’ She cracks her knuckles against her temples and runs them along Mamta’s aura. ‘Live long, my daughter, live long and well.’

She ran away too . . . To what? Where could she be now?
Mamta is with her stepdaughter, and it is a while before she notices that the Red Ruins have changed. There are holes appearing in them where the stones have been stolen for the new road.

It is perhaps for the loss of the girl, or for leaving her behind, or just that she has come far enough to be concerned with preserving her personal heritage that the holes in the Red Ruins affect her deeply. ‘Oh no, not the Red Ruins. Not our ruins.’

‘Yes, that’s the price of progress. You have to pay one way or the other, but on balance I think it is a good thing. I’ll take the holes any day if that means a new road.’

Mamta doesn’t have the energy to challenge her mother’s practicality. Why did she leave her stepdaughter behind? She changes the subject, but the pathos of the ruins resounds in her words. ‘Amma, see, there are hardly any offerings here now.’ Her voice seems to be coming from a lost place, from inside a cave.
Why did I leave her behind?

‘Now the girls make their offerings at the place where your man jailed Daku Manmohan. People will make gods of anything and anyone. That tells you just what state this country is in,’ Lata Bai drones on, as confident as an untrained voice in a singalong.

Perhaps that’s why my man is dying. Because I left her behind. He has taken my karma on to his own head. A life paid with a life. It is my turn to be lonely now, just as she must have been all these years.
Mamta’s heart is shuddering, suddenly she has to squat.

‘Are you all right?’ Lata Bai attributes it to nerves. The mother smiles, she finds Mamta’s nervousness like a shy new bride very endearing.

The marriage ceremony is just that, a ceremony; conducted to paralyse wagging tongues. No one was invited, but they’ve all turned up. This time Lata Bai has more to offer them than weevils: Asmara Didi’s famous samosas and Kamla’s halwa. Nirmala Devi personally dances for them and blesses the couple from her position as the region’s model mayor and leading eunuch. Her clan dances with her, and all those present remark on how graceful and refined their moves seem. Rajiv of the
Times of India
jokingly says he’ll put their pictures in the paper, which has Lokend embarrassed and Mamta excited.

This is Gopalpur’s first widow remarriage. Mamta’s marriage will change things in the village just slightly. For a while widows won’t have to shave their heads quite so close. After a while, the people of Gopalpur will realise how different their traditions are from neigh-bouring villages, and they will say it is because a great love was born here.

Chapter 20

T
ODAY SHE IS DRESSING TO MEET
her mother at the Mahila Sangat. Now the journey takes only forty minutes and costs six rupees.

Lokend has organised the motor rickshaw. She can see the smoke curling out of the plastic window. Satya, the driver, is smoking a bidi. He was the first one to get a motor rickshaw. They all said he was making a mistake; after all, where was there to go to in Gopalpur? But no, he could see the future quite clearly, and he’d got his loan and his rickshaw, and for six months all of Gopalpur’s travel business.