Tell A Thousand Lies (27 page)

The Home for
Destitute Women

I
n the Home for Destitute Women, our alarm each morning was a screeching
ayah
. “Get up, you lazy, immoral girls. Look at the shameless creatures, sleeping in like some rich ladies of leisure. It is almost dawn.”

After bathing in freezing water, we lined up for prayers.
Please God, don’t let anyone take my baby away. My husband and my grandmother have been snatched from me. And my best friend. Let me keep my baby, at least.
My prayers didn’t vary.

If you tell lies, daughters will be born to you
, Lakshmi
garu
always said, proud she was the mother of sons. Did that mean Ammamma, with four daughters, was a liar? I, myself, had told enough lies to have a busload of girls. I felt sharp panic. What if I had a daughter, too?

I remembered Ammamma saying it was important for expectant mothers to eat nutritious food, but I didn’t have much of a choice here. Most days breakfast was watery tea, and rubbery
upma
. Meals were as unappetising. What I did try to do was keep my tension under control. That much I could do for my baby. All the girls were expected to do chores. At the suggestion of my new friend Geeta, I signed up for yard sweeping. It got us out of the dormitory and away, giving us the chance to talk privately.

Vocational training was from 8:00 in the morning until 11:00 – this was to prepare us for ‘decent’ ways of making a living once we were let loose in the world. Our options were basket weaving or sewing. I chose sewing because it seemed more respectable, somehow. I would practice my skills and make clothes for my baby before it came. Later, it would help me make a living for the two of us.

I couldn’t imagine they’d actually take my baby away. After all, I was a married woman; it wasn’t as if I’d shamed my family with immoral behaviour or anything. I forced myself to be positive because the alternative was too terrifying.

><

Geeta and I sat in the yard one evening, sewing with the other girls, when an
ayah
came up with another lady. “Pay attention. This is Dr. Janaki. She will be joining our team of doctors.”

Dr. Janaki was tall and graceful, with a head full of silver hair. With half-moon glasses balanced on her beak nose, she seemed terribly scary-looking.

“She doesn’t look mean or wicked,” Geeta whispered. “Looks intelligent, too. Wonder what trouble she got herself in.”

Dr. Janaki immediately set about making changes, the first of which were mandatory educational classes. The girls cribbed and complained about having to learn, but she paid no attention. At 12
^th
class pass, I was the most educated of the lot, so she appointed me her assistant. I helped her prepare lessons for the girls. I would soon realize that you couldn’t always judge people by their looks. Dr. Janaki was one of the warmest people I’d met. She took charge of me by monitoring what I ate, how much I exercised, what my emotional state was. On her recommendation, another of the chores I signed up for was weeding.

“Won’t that hurt the baby?” I asked.

“Have you ever wondered why women labourers who work in the fields have such easy deliveries?”

I shook my head.

“Because they sit on their haunches to work. This helps stretch the muscles that are used in delivery.”

“I thought pregnant women needed a lot of rest.” I needed pampering and cosseting, not doctor-
ing
.

“You are pregnant, not sick,” she said. “The more active you are, the easier your delivery will be.”

I must have looked doubtful because she put a gentle hand on my head. “I’ve delivered more babies than I can count, Child.”

So had Ammamma. Without any doctor’s interference, too.

“You’re just going to have to trust me,” Dr. Janaki said.

I’d trusted Kondal Rao, too, the rat.

><

Dr. Janaki started taking me on her daily rounds. After the examination was over, we’d walk around the campus.

I pestered her about what I could expect during the course of the pregnancy, but she was very patient with me. Between the two women, Geeta and Dr. Janaki, I managed to hang on to my sanity, barely.

Nights were the worst. The darkness brought with it tears. I found that once I started, I couldn’t stop; the pain was beyond anything I could have imagined. Each bout of crying only scraped the wound afresh. I was aware that I wasn’t the only one who gave into tears once the lights were out. But each morning the girls were careful not to look at each other. I did not know what drove the other girls, but I lived in terror of discovery; if Srikar managed to track me down, his grandfather would kill our baby.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” my new friend Geeta asked one day, eerily repeating what my
Madhuban
Apartments friend, Geeta, had said.

I smiled slightly.

“So how did you get pregnant?”

I felt my smile go wobbly.

“Okay, I’ll tell you my story. I was raped by my cousin,” Geeta said matter-of-factly. “Then he complained to his mother, my aunt, that I had provoked him into losing control. My mother didn’t bother to find out the truth. When my cousin’s father made the arrangements to have me sent away, she just went along with it. Anything to protect family honour, you know,” she said with bitterness. “And, oh, by the way, my cousin is now married to a girl from a respectable family.”

I touched her arm, hoping to convey to her my distress on her behalf.

Geeta cleared her throat. “So what is your story?”

I hesitated.

“I promise not to tell anyone.”

“My husband’s grandfather left me here,” I said, voice thin.

Geeta looked shocked. “You are married! Did your husband harass you?”

“Oh no! He is the most wonderful husband a girl could have.”

“Then what is the problem?”

The truth wasn’t an option. “Dowry demands from in-laws.”

Geeta nodded knowingly.

><

For all its restrictions, the campus of “Fumble House” had a certain rustic charm. The abundance of mango trees, guava trees, even a majestic banyan, soothed my soul, though the banyan sometimes made me feel lonely; it brought back memories of that other banyan – the one in the village square across from my grandmother’s house, under which Chinni and I had spent pleasurable hours eyeing boys while pretending to be engaged in embroidering and sewing. I felt a pang at the thought of my former best friend. Where ever she was, I prayed the Lord of the Seven Hills was treating her well. As for Ammamma, I could only hope her long standing friendship with Kondal Rao’s wife would protect her.

One corner of the Home was devoted to a chicken coop. Hens roamed the campus, squawking in search of food, sometimes pecking at unprotected toes. Next to the coop were rows of vegetables tended to by the inmates. Though the vegetables were supposed to be for use of the girls, more often than not, the best ones found their way to the Warden’s table, the rest being distributed amongst the staff.

I was sitting across from the coop, watching the baby chicks chase each other, pondering the unfairness of life in general, my baby’s fate in particular, when Dr. Janaki found me.

“You look troubled,” she said, settling on the bench next to me.

I rubbed a hand over my stomach, trying to settle the baby’s kicking. “I want to keep my baby,” I burst out, startling myself. “I can’t bear the thought of someone else raising my child. Isn’t there some way I can keep him?” Tears started to course down. Before that wretched Kondal Rao entered my life, I had never cried; now I seemed to be making up for lost time.

Dr. Janaki sighed. “I wish I could help you. But this place runs on foreign ‘donations.’ Though it is illegal, they have found it quite lucrative to sell babies to foreigners through unofficial channels. Most probably someone has already been lined up for yours.”

Dr. Janaki spent a lot of time with us girls, helping us exercise, listening to our problems, buying us fruits and biscuits with her own money. That such a good person as she would willingly work for monsters such as these seemed inconceivable. “Why do you work for these fiends?” I burst out.

She drew in a sharp breath. “Things aren’t always what they seem. I feel in my own way I am providing emotional support to these girls, support which they’d otherwise not get.”

“And this is the only way you found to do this?”

“I could walk away, get a job in a big hospital. I’m well qualified, you know. But how would it help these poor girls?”

I snorted.

She closed her eyes for a brief second. When she opened them, she seemed to have come to some kind of decision. She gently took my hand. “Pullamma, look at me.”

I swiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“I have something very important to discuss with you.”

“How do I know you’re not working for Kondal Rao?”

She gasped like I had stabbed her in the heart. “I would rather die than work for that despicable man.”

I dropped my gaze.

“I need your trust. Will you give it to me?”

 
I nodded.

“Have you ever thought about continuing with your studies?”

“My
hus
–” I stopped. “Someone I knew used to tell me I should study further.”

“I have more reasons to hate Kondal Rao than you can imagine,” she said softly. “If you want to talk, I am here.”

Her gentleness was my undoing. The whole story – my childhood, Chinni’s distancing, the Goddess drama, Srikar – tumbled out.

Dr. Janaki put her arm around me and pulled me close, listening, sniffing, not saying anything. When I was finished, she said, “I am so sorry, Pullamma. I am so very sorry you had to go through all of this. Now wipe your tears. We have to talk.” She wiped her own.

Once I had myself under control, Dr. Janaki said, “If this information gets in the wrong hands, it could be very dangerous.” She looked frightened.

I nodded.

“Can I trust you?”

“I trusted you.”

She took a deep breath. “I’m Srikar’s mother.”

“What?” I jumped to my feet, causing the chickens to squawk loudly and scatter. I looked at her in shock. “
My
Srikar?”

“Sit down,” she whispered furiously. “Do you want to draw attention to us?”

I sat down, but my chest continued to thrum painfully.

“I took up this job only for your sake.”

“How did you know who I was?”

Dr. Janaki kept her head bent. “Headmaster
garu
in
Mallepalli
. He and I were neighbours in my village. He was a few years older than I. Though he took the job in
Mallepalli
, he’s always kept track of me because our parents were friends and neighbours. He knows how badly my father-in-law treated me, how he took my only child away. He’s been like an older brother, always trying to help, always keeping me informed about the developments in my son’s life.”

“But when he brought Srikar to my grandmother’s house, he told us that you’d abandoned Srikar when he was two, that no one knew where you where.”

“To protect me. No one knows of my connection to him.”

“So you found me through him?”

She nodded. “He told me about Srikar’s marriage to you, about the circumstances.”

“And what do you feel about that?”

“The marriage?”

I nodded.

“I’m proud of my son.” Her voice caught. “I’m proud that he is a man of principles. I’m proud that my father-in-law wasn’t able to corrupt him.”

“And what do you think of me?” My voice was small.

“I think you’re a lovely young girl. A little lacking in self-confidence, but lovely all the same. Someone I’d be proud to claim as my daughter-in-law.”

“What about the colour of my skin?”