The Age of Shiva (20 page)

“But you shouldn't worry, Beti, he's a good boy, your Dev, not some modern-day Devdas. I think he must go there for the chance to sing, that's all it probably is.”

Devdas. Could that be whom Dev was trying to emulate? The lovelorn alcoholic who was Saigal's most famous characterization, the role people said he was born to play? Dev certainly had the drinking down pat. Roopa could be his Paru, his unattainable love, and Banu could be the courtesan Chandramukhi, in whose lap Dev already seemed to be drowning his sorrows. And I? There didn't seem to be a part left for me to play.

“Why don't you just return home?” Auntie said. “I'll tell Dev tomorrow that you were here. It'll all be fine, just you see, your auntie will take care of it. You know you're like a daughter to me.” I fought the urge to push away her hand as she stroked my hair.

That night, after he had returned, I crept up to Dev asleep on the couch, determined to uncover evidence of his transgressions. He still wore the clothes in which he had left for work—I sniffed them for attar, but all I could detect was a faint curry smell. There were no seductively long hairs that showed up against the white of his shirt, no incriminating petals of motiya or broken ankle bells in his pockets. In fact, he looked childlike as he slept through my search—as innocent as a slumbering Devdas, I thought to myself.

I never did act on my resolve to confront Dev at Banu's place. I was too apprehensive of bringing the matter to a head by barging in. The scene I had imagined—what were the ways in which it could climax? Would Dev be contrite, ashamed, or would he humiliate me in front of everyone, order me to return home by myself? And what if he and Banu weren't just dancing, but hidden behind another beaded curtain, locked in each other's embrace?

Perhaps Auntie kept her promise to tell Dev I knew where he went, perhaps she didn't. For a long time, there was no change in his nightly absences. It was only when I was forced to take a fortnight off from work due to too much accumulated leave that Dev began returning earlier—still swaying and tottering, but at a more decent hour. At the end of my fortnight, I sent a note to Mr. Hansi saying I wanted to use up the rest of my vacation time as well. When the final week was up, Dev had still not reverted to his earlier behavior. I understood then the bargain he wanted to strike for staying away from Banu—I resigned from my job.

FOR THE FEW DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
, I felt aglow at my decision. Dev became very attentive, coming home straight from work, taking me to a play at the Tejpal one evening, and the next, to the Soviet Expo at Cross Maidan. As an added bonus, Paji was beside himself with fury at my “self-destructiveness”—I waited eagerly for his letters to savor his gnashing. I didn't miss my job too much—translating the same facts repeatedly had become quite monotonous. The reigns of the Mauryas and the Guptas, the waves of Gangetic invaders—the problem with history was it never changed. Even worse were the technical volumes Mr. Hansi asked me to render—treatises on industrial growth since Independence, mind-numbing tomes on the rise in the use of fertilizers.

I was staggering home one morning, triumphant over the giant sack of onions I had haggled down to twelve annas, when a familiar white Mercedes drew up beside me. “My, so many onions,” Freddy said, wrinkling her nose. “Looks like you need a ride—come in and sit beside me.” The sack was heavy enough that I found myself accepting. “Only you, dear, not the onions—the driver will put those in the dickey.”

Freddy was dressed immaculately in purple—right down to her fingernail polish and the scarf still tied dashingly around her neck. Since I had last seen her, the prosperity informing her features had acquired a patina of smugness—curiously, it suited her well. “I'll have our cook send you the recipe for a soup that the French make out of onions—I didn't know you were so infatuated with them.”

Freddy insisted on taking me to lunch at Kwality's. With my onions held hostage in her trunk, she bombarded me with her post-B.A. accomplishments for an hour. The newspaper column she was writing, the speakers' bureau she organized for the Rotary club, the gallery show in which she had been invited to participate (“even though painting's just something I dabble in”). She had even formed her own theater company. “You remember Pesi and Keki and Judy from college—they're all so fond of acting—you must come and see us.”

It was good that she kept talking about herself, since I dreaded the prospect of having to reciprocate. “But enough about me—what have you been doing with
your
life?” she finally asked as the bill came.

THAT EVENING, DEV
dragged me to the Soviet Expo for one last visit before it closed. Clumps of people stood enthralled around the tractors and mechanical hoes, as if waiting for the machines to spring to life and start plowing the exhibition ground itself. There were gleaming models of MiG fighter jets suspended in a glass case, with a giant cloth backdrop showing Nehru and Khrushchev in a celebratory embrace. A woman sat at a desk in a stall, vending subscriptions to
Soviet Life
and
Soviet Woman
—twelve issues for a rupee, twenty-four for one-fifty.

Dev hurried me past everything—as always, it was the Ferris wheel that interested him. The sign claimed it was Russian-made, though it looked like the usual giant wheel, with yellow canopies attached to spruce up the cars a bit. Dev helped me into the seat and secured the safety bar over our laps. We rose into the air in spurts, stopping each time for the loading of the next chair.

“Look, you can see Marine Drive from here. And the Gateway, and the Taj Hotel.” Dev swiveled around to point, and our seat tilted back dizzyingly in the air.

I followed the line of his arm, but the sights barely registered. What
had
I been doing with my life? I had mumbled something to put Freddy off, but her question still roiled in my mind. Why had I cut myself off from my job, from getting a taste of what independence meant? Why hadn't I taken college more seriously, established my own circle of friends? Why, for that matter, didn't I have my own newspaper column or theater company like Freddy had? I watched a trio of seagulls fly towards the sea, their white bodies receding into the dark. All my energy for the past few years had gone into resenting Paji or pleasing Dev. In the face of Dev's misbehavior, of his bullying, why had I let him get away with it?

Suddenly I no longer wanted to ride the Ferris wheel. I wanted to follow the seagulls and glide into the life I had not chosen. But the bar across my waist was locked in place, and the wheel had begun to descend, picking up speed. Dev squeezed my forearm and said something, but his words were lost before they reached me. The flags adorning the tractors came up to greet us, sickles and hammers waved in the breeze. I caught a flash of the attendant, his face a blur, his hand on the lever that controlled our speed.

What if he forgot to ease off on the lever? Perhaps there was still a chance to be free. I imagined us spinning faster and faster, so fast that the wheel broke loose from its mooring. Bulbs exploding, canopies crumpling, riders trying to hang on, as we began to roll across the grounds. The juggernaut flattening tents and tractors and cars alike as it barreled down the road to Flora Fountain. Its swath extending all the way to the dockyards, where it splashed with a final bounce into the sea.

But I remained where I was, unharmed and safe, but also undelivered to the liberating waters of the sea. The lights of Bombay kept swinging in their arc, approaching and receding under me. I lost track of the cycles—five, ten, fifteen—they seemed to stretch on to eternity. And through it all, as we whirled together through the air, Dev's fingers retained their claim on me.

“Wasn't that wonderful?” Dev said as we began to slow down. “Let's ride it again, shall we?”

F
OUR YEARS AFTER WE MOVED TO BOMBAY, HEMA'S WEDDING FINALLY
took us back to Delhi. I had tried, for quite some time, to get Dev to accompany me there, but he was always averse to it. “What will I tell them, with what face will I greet them, when I have yet to make the slightest mark to my name? Like a dog all beaten, returning with its tail between its legs, that's what people will say.” Eventually I decided to go alone to see Biji, and twice requested Babuji to get a ticket from his railway quota. But perhaps Dev's unsociability was catching, or perhaps I was simply not ready to face Paji again. I made it all the way to the station platform one time, but changed my mind before the train left.

It was surprising how the distance between the two cities proved so much more insurmountable than an overnight railway journey. Despite all of Hema's letters threatening her arrival in Bombay on the next train, she, too, had never managed to visit. Sensing Dev's reluctance regarding family reunions, Mataji declared trains unfit for travel by a young unaccompanied woman. Besides, there was the task of finding a groom, which first had to be completed. Once the marriage was set, Hema started making all sorts of plans to come down with her mother before the ceremony—to shop where Bombay brides did, and visit all the shrines around the city for special blessings to ensure her firstborn was a son. The trip did not materialize.

Sharmila actually did visit once on a college trip with her classmates, though she didn't stay with us, and only spent a few hours in my company. Roopa's letters from Visakhapatnam (when not vaunting the adorable perfection of her offspring, a boy and a girl) occasionally mentioned that her husband would be transferred next to Bombay. Much to my relief, they landed in Madras instead, a posting still sufficiently far away.

The only person who came quite regularly to Bombay was Arya. He made a trip or two every year, first to establish a Bombay division of the HRM, and then to oversee it. On one of his visits, he even showed up at Wilson College, helping one of the vernacular groups set up a booth on Activity Day for recruiting students into the HRM. He always stayed with us on his visits. I tried to linger away from home when he was around, but it was impossible to completely escape him. Every morning when I came into the kitchen to boil the milk, it was as if I was back in the bedroom in Nizamuddin, stalked by his hungry look, and the smell of overripe fruit. The only reason to look forward to his coming was the hope that he would bring Sandhya along one day.

Although the intensity with which I missed everyone else eased over time, my longing for Sandhya only grew deeper. Perhaps it was because the only news I received about her were the occasional scraps Hema deemed important enough to send. Even though the words Sandhya scrawled out at the end of Hema's letters had, over the months and years, begun to clump together into the awkward sentence, it was hardly enough. On the one occasion that we had arranged to speak with Dev's family over the phone, she had been too overcome with emotion to say more than hello.

At my urging, Dev always asked his brother to bring Bhabhiji along the next time. But I knew these efforts were in vain. Arya would never want his wife around—she would just be in the way of what he still hoped to attain.

THE DAY WE ARRIVED
for the wedding, Hema wasn't there to greet us at the station. “She's been practicing being mature the last few days,” Mataji explained. “Like a married person should be, she says. You'll see.”

Sure enough, when Mataji ushered us into the bedroom, Hema sat demurely on the bed, being measured for a new set of salwar kameez suits. She looked up with the barest of smiles, as if this was all she could muster, given the gravity of her situation. “Bhaiyyaji, Bhabhiji,” she addressed us formally, “It is my hope that you had a comfortable journey.”

Watching her walk was truly unsettling. She carried herself like someone with a very long neck, her body held in a stiff line and inclined slightly back, her feet apparently never leaving the ground. The effect was that of a statue being wheeled around at a stately tilt—one of a goddess or queen, perhaps. Mataji suggested she show us the thermos and cutlery set that would be part of her dowry. “It's this way,” Hema said, leading us to the kitchen, as if we were guests unfamiliar with the layout of the house.

It had taken the four years since we'd left to find a groom for Hema. Babuji had rejected several suitors during the dowry negotiation stage. “When did everyone become so greedy?” he lamented to us. “Isn't it enough anymore to be from a respectable home?” He took a sip of his whiskey and shook his head. “If only I'd agreed when she was still eighteen—we could have escaped with half of what we're now paying.”

Although the first ceremony was only the next evening, bushels of lightbulbs had already converted the lane outside the house into a glittering fairyland. Or rather, a movie set, what with loudspeakers tied to lampposts broadcasting film music to the whole colony. “It's going to be even grander than your wedding,” Babuji boasted to me. “The most lavish Nizamuddin's ever seen.” Gopal, the groom, was one of Arya's friends from the HRM, and the wedding enclosure was being set up on the same field where all the organization's events were held. “What's nice about having the ceremony so close to the house is that nobody in the entire colony can miss it. We'll parade the horse through each of the streets, and invite everyone to join the procession behind the band. Arya's going to have the HRM tent put up, under which the brahmins will cook food for five hundred guests.”

“I'm glad your mother dragged me there,” Paji said to me during the music ceremony the next night. “It's so touching to see how my money is coming in handy to spare no expense.”

Hema maintained her regal reserve through all the events. She barely spoke to any of her friends, displaying an ostentatious seriousness through all their jokes. “What happened to the rich old husband you wanted, the one who would buy you a car and a phone?” Pushpa teased, and Hema stared her down with an unsmiling look. Even Mataji, when she tried to get her to dance to the tune of a popular wedding song, was primly refused.

Thankfully, Sandhya found a way to get Hema down from her roost on the night before the wedding. She sneaked into Mataji's cupboard and emerged wearing a resplendent gold earring and necklace set, the same one Mataji had lent Sandhya on special occasions like Karva Chauth, but had now pledged as part of Hema's dowry. “How does it look?” Sandhya asked, turning around to model it for the assembled women. “Mataji said to wear it tomorrow—it'll go well with my red wedding sari, don't you think?”

Hema's reserve didn't stand a chance. She shrieked, unfolding herself out of her cross-legged pose and lunging at Sandhya in one fluid move. “Don't you like it?” Sandhya asked, running into the courtyard, with Hema bounding after her. Sandhya was able to take off the necklace just before Hema cornered her and toss it to Pushpa, who waved it in the air to get Hema racing, before relaying it on to Ranjana. Even Mataji got into the game, catching the necklace from one friend and lobbing it to another, while her daughter ran around screaming, trying to retrieve it.

By the time Hema finally caught up with the missing piece of her dowry, she was much too agitated to resume putting on her airs. She tried sulking for a bit, but then realized the inconsistency this presented with her earlier stance of poised indifference. She seemed confused at what to attempt next, when Sandhya sat down beside her and lovingly threaded the gold earrings through her earlobes. “There's nobody else on whom these could look better than my sister,” Sandhya said, and Hema burst into tears.

After that, everything made Hema cry—the songs played, the sight of her wedding garments for the next day, the stray whistle of a train rumbling by, even the last mound of rice cooked by Sandhya, clinging to its tray. Watching Hema bravely choke down her dinner, Pushpa started sobbing quietly into her food as well, then Sandhya and Mataji and all of Hema's friends. Only my eyes, as always, remained ungraciously dry.

That evening Mataji cleared Arya and Dev out of the bedroom, telling them that the women would be sleeping together for Hema's last night in the house. Sandhya pushed the charpoys to one side and we lined the floor with talais and sheets to create a giant bed. By now, Hema had stopped crying—instead, her eyes were round and wide with a dawning dread. She clung to each one of us for minutes on end, as if trying to get her fill of our presence, as if storing up our hugs to last her into the weeks and months and years of her marriage ahead. “How will I live by myself?” she said.

“It's not even a half mile away—I'll come see you as soon as I can,” Mataji replied.

“And Sandhya didi?”

“I'll bring her along.”

“And Meera didi will come from Bombay?”

“Yes, yes, whatever you say. Don't worry so much. You're going to like it there.” Mataji laid Hema's head in her lap and stroked her hair.

“Remember your favorite story, the one of the princess who got married and never wanted to return home again?”

“No. You never told me stories when I was little—you only made that effort for Arya and Dev bhaiyya.”

“Silly girl, of course I did. But I'll tell it again.”

So Mataji related the story while Sandhya and I reclined next to Hema. It was a long tale, filled with brave deeds and princely suitors, a ravishing princess who bathed in the Ganges and a secret kingdom in the Himalayas. Hema's eyelids fluttered drowsily just as the princess was being transported to the mountains in a magic doli. “I've always wanted to ride a doli….” she said, before falling asleep.

Mataji rolled Hema onto the farthermost talai. “Right from birth, she could always fall unconscious in a second. I hope she manages to stay awake longer tomorrow, on her wedding night.” She sighed. “I suppose it's late, I suppose we should turn off the light.” She stared at Hema, making no move towards the light switch. “All those years that she's been here—I can't believe this is the last night. That this old woman is sleeping with her little girl next to her for one final time.” She lay down beside Hema and stroked her hair, then arranged herself so that her arm was cradling Hema's head. Sandhya waited for Mataji to pull a sheet over the two of them before turning off the light.

I stayed awake, listening for the sounds of trains, but there were none. The moon shone through the window to create its familiar pattern on the far wall. The same enigmatic shadow that had intrigued me on so many nights before—was that a house that the dark shape surrounded by the moonlight represented, or simply a box? Or maybe it was an automobile?

Today, I decided, it was a doli. The same doli that had brought me here on my wedding night, the very one borrowed by the groom's family to transport Hema tomorrow. I imagined her clambering into its dark interior, enveloped by the smell of wood and sweat that I could still summon to my nostrils. Would it lead her to a life different from my own?

“Are you awake?” Sandhya whispered next to me.

“Yes.” I turned to face her.

“I can't sleep either. It's so hard to imagine she'll be gone tomorrow. She was not even eight when Arya first brought me here as a bride.” Sandhya stopped, her face rippled by the shadows, her expression unreadable in the darkness. A wisp of light fell across her nose. “But I suppose that's how it has to be. One by one everyone leaves.” I reached through the silence and took her hand in my own.

“Do you know, when you left, it took me months to be able to sleep again? Even when I did fall sleep, I would awaken in the middle of the night and stare at the blank space on the floor where you used to lie. I had become used to being reassured by your sleeping face—seeing it would make me doze off again. But now that you were gone, I started tossing and turning for the rest of the night. What I finally learnt was to imagine you asleep in your bed in Bombay. The bulbs from the movie theater you wrote about blinking on and off over your face, the sounds of the Bombay traffic rising up to your ears. I would hold my breath, certain that the light or the noise was going to wake you up. Only when I saw you remaining fast asleep through it all would I start to relax again.

“You know what my fantasy used to be? That you and I would get pregnant together. That our firstborns would both be sons, that we would bring them up like brothers, like twins. That by some amazing coincidence, they would even have their birthdays on the same date. Can you imagine what that would have been like—your son and mine—with the love of two mothers to shower them, not one?”

I pressed Sandhya's fingers and felt her thumb graze my skin in response. “When I first heard you were expecting, I was quite dismayed,” she said. “I thought it was just jealousy, but it was really because my fantasy hadn't come true. I hadn't conceived like you. I suppose I had been wishing it so much that I had come to expect it. Forgetting that it was in my fate to never be so fortunate.”

“Don't say that. It'll still happen, you'll see.”

“No it won't. In fact, I sometimes wonder if what happened to you was because of me. Whether it was my inauspicious shadow that passed over your womb, whether it was—”

I covered Sandhya's mouth with my hand. She took my fingers away and kissed their tips. “Anyway,” she said. “You're safe from my bad luck now, I'm glad you went away. It's good that Hema is leaving too. Sometimes I think I should go away as well—go to Benares, beg for a living, become a sanyasin. But then I think of Arya, how that wouldn't help him. I would want him to marry someone more fertile, more fortunate, but I don't think he'd be able to, knowing I was somewhere, still alive.”