The Age of Shiva (30 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“You know perfectly well—the one you forced me to drop, the one whose life you traded for this house. Do you want to reveal it to Ashvin or should I be the one?”

“Are you mad? Have you completely lost your senses?”

“Ashvin, listen to me, Mummy has a story to tell you. That man holding you, he's not only your daddy, but also the daddy of another.”

“How can you cling on to such rubbish after all these years?
You
were the one, not me, who—”

“Listen to me, Ashvin, a sister or a brother that was in Mummy's stomach, do you understand? We'll never know what it was, because before it could come out, Daddy had it killed.”

“Shut your stupid mouth,” Dev said, and, still holding you with one hand, grabbed my arm with the other. I screamed as if I had been struck, and tried to get away, losing my balance as Dev let go. I toppled towards the floor, striking my head on a corner of the dining table along the way. For a moment I sat there dazed, feeling around with my hand where my scalp felt sticky. When I looked, there was blood on my fingers.

“Meera?” Dev said, uncertainly. “Are you? I'm sorry—I didn't think…” He remained standing where he was.

I felt more blood seep out from under my hairline and brushed at it with the back of my hand to wipe it away. You started crying, then wriggled to get out of Dev's arms. “It's okay, shhh,” Dev whispered. “Mummy's fine, she just scratched her head—Daddy didn't mean to.”

But you began screaming and flailing, and Dev was forced to set you down. You came running across the floor and buried your head in my chest.

“Daddy didn't mean to,” Dev said again, kneeling down beside us.

“Munna, look at Daddy.” But you kept whimpering against my breast. Dev turned to me, speaking with a different tone. “Are you going to tell him I didn't do it on purpose or are you going to make a big drama out of this? Perhaps you can convince him that I'm trying to murder his mother as well.”

“Just leave him alone, will you? You've done enough as it is.”

“And you, as usual, are completely innocent.” Dev got up. At the door, he tried to get your attention one more time. “Daddy loves you, Munna, you know that, don't you?” In the candlelight, I could just make out the line of his chin, the curve of his lips, the shine of his pupils against the whiteness of his eyes. “Does Munna love Daddy?

“Ashvin?” Dev said quietly, one last time, and I felt you stiffen against me. By the time you turned around, your father had left the flat and closed the door behind him.

WE HEARD THE SOUNDS
even before I had a chance to put something on my wound. They were delicate, like balloons burst underwater, like kernels of corn popping in an adjoining room. “It's outside,” you said, and ran to the balcony. “Mummy, come quick—there are lights floating in the air.”

I stood with you and stared at the festoons high above the buildings. They were neither gun flashes nor bombs, but surely something connected with the war—I had to tell you I didn't know what. They reminded me of pictures of cells under a microscope—each light a nucleus of luminous purple surrounded by a plasma of magenta glow. A string of them shot up, then slowly came apart, drifting through the sky like fireworks that had forgotten to explode. For a while I wondered if these
were
some strange new fireworks—could India already have won the war? Perhaps if I watched long enough, they would bloom in plumes of orange, white, and green, to shower the country below.

Then the guns started. Shadows jumped and the outlines of buildings reverberated in white. The skies lit up as if from sheet lightning flashing through the night. “The Pakistanis, they've come,” you cried out. “They're going to throw bombs on us.” You turned to me, horrified. “Daddy. I didn't stop him. He's outside.”

“Daddy can take care of himself,” I began to reply, as you darted into the bedroom. “Ashvin,” I shouted. “Stop, didn't you hear what I said?” But it was too late. You ran out of the flat, leaving the door open to the corridor outside.

I raced after you. I had to slow down on the staircase, which was dark—I could hear your feet stumbling down the steps ahead. People were milling around on the pavement, pointing to the sky, watching the aerial events as nonchalantly as a shooting star display. “Ashvin!” I cried out as you dashed out on the road to avoid the crowd.

An oncoming Impala almost ran me over as I stepped onto the road myself. I saw your figure ahead, zigzagging between the cars that had heeded the regulation to stop. Every few seconds, you glanced up into the night as if to keep a lookout for bombs. “Daddy will be fine,” I kept calling out, even though I knew you wouldn't look back. “Let's go home—he's probably waiting for us, wondering where we went.”

Another car emerged from the maze of motionless vehicles on the road, blinking its painted-over headlights at me as it careened past. The sound of the antiaircraft guns was almost constant now—their echoes bouncing off the building façades. In the sky, the orbs still hovered, peering down at us like purple eyeballs.

Something flamed down from the sky and crashed ahead in front of my eyes. People scattered, but I charged towards it, mindful only of you. By the time I got there, a knot of onlookers had cautiously advanced to watch. A metal tube, still smoking, lay punched into the road. Someone said one of the purple lights had crashed down from the sky, another claimed it was an unexploded bomb.

Peeping in waist-high between two of the men, I saw your face. Instantly I was upon you, grabbing onto your shirt, your belt, your arms, so you couldn't get away. I tried to lead you homeward, but you caught hold of a lamppost and struggled to break free. “I have to find Daddy, let me go,” you yelled.

There was a whistling sound, and then something smashed behind us. A man lay bloodied on the pavement, a woman sat screaming beside him. An instant later, an even louder sound, almost a shriek, filled the air. As we watched, the cigarette shack at the corner of Lamington Road seemed to burst in two.

Suddenly projectiles were falling all around. While most people ran, some stood rooted to the ground, staring at the orb-dotted heavens, waiting, it seemed, to be struck. I dragged you into a building, and we huddled in the vestibule together with others who had ducked in for refuge. “Ram, Ram,” the building watchman chanted, but his voice was drowned out by the clanging of fire brigade trucks.

There was a window high above the door, through which I could see the outside. The night seemed smokier than before, faraway flashes still flared out of sight. A purple light meandered across the window frame, followed by another. I imagined the heavens flowering in bursts of color, rockets exploding up high. Gandhi appearing beside me in the vestibule to remind me of my destiny, pointing once more at the sky.

Then I heard you crying softly to yourself in the darkness. I lifted you up and pressed my mouth to your cheeks. The clanging and sirens faded into the background as my lips encircled your tears. The sky remained unadorned by fireworks, the vestibule ungraced by Gandhi. It didn't really matter what happened to the world, I thought, my destiny was safe in my arms.

F
IFTY PEOPLE WERE HOSPITALIZED THAT NIGHT, TWENTY OF THEM JUST
from Lamington Road. Many more sustained injuries all over the city. A woman died in Matunga, two boys lost their eyesight watching the spectacle from their balcony, and a man was hit on the terrace of a building in Sewri (“He gave his life defending the country,” a neighbor declared). Several eyewitnesses reported sightings of enemy planes—one had them swooping in from Marine Drive, another swore they almost crashed into the skyscrapers on Malabar Hill, before swerving just in time. These reports all went unsubstantiated. The actual explanation came later—a short circuit triggered off a false alarm which resulted in the deployment of the antiaircraft guns. The mysterious purple lights that lured people out were tracers sent up to scan the skies. What rained down on the spectators to maim and kill them were empty Indian shells, not Pakistani bombs.

Dev was not one of the victims of the falling fragments. He was killed on the bridge leading towards Bombay Central well after the all-clear siren, according to the police officer who came to our door the next morning. Someone had noticed him minutes earlier, singing along the middle of the road, his arms open as if raised in welcome to the stars. “What with the dark shirt he was wearing, and no streetlamps or head-lights, neither he nor the taxi driver must have seen each other,” the officer said. “You should go claim the body today from Nair Hospital. It'll be harder once they send it on to the municipal morgue.”

The officer left, and I stood there, too shocked to close the door. You emerged from your hiding place in the bathroom. “Did the policeman tell you where Daddy went?”

ZAIDA PULLED ME
through the morning. The war had caused a nine-hour delay for trunk calls booked to Delhi, so she sent telegrams instead. She told me to change my orange sari, reminding me gently that it was white for mourning. You sat dry-eyed in her lap in the hospital waiting room while I went to identify Dev. Given the uncertainty of wartime transport, and the fact that the remains were supposed to be cremated within a day, there seemed little point in waiting for anyone to try and make it from Delhi. She arranged for the body to be driven to the crematorium at Marine Lines, and we followed in a taxi.

You had not cried at all since hearing the news. Each time I hugged you and you didn't react, I felt the anguish in my chest. Would you blame me for your father's death?—even worse, would you blame yourself?

You stared at the fence of the Queen's Road park going by, with the sculptures of the tortoise and the hare fable, the fox and the stork. A boy climbed to the top of the metal sputnik, as you had done so many times yourself. I caught a glimpse of him sliding down the pole in the center, heard the laughter of his parents encouraging him on. “Ashvin,” I said, but you kept looking intently out the window, your hands clasped around the edge of the glass.

We passed by the long wall with the crudely painted signs for rat poison and table fans, the absurdly muscled torso of Dara Singh advertising a wrestling match. Behind, I knew, lay the burning ghats. As our taxi crept along, a procession of men with a corpse held aloft proceeded up the pavement next to us. The face was withered, the body shrunken and decked with flowers—people danced and beat drums to celebrate a life lived so long.

When I had seen Dev earlier in the hospital, the sheet had draped peculiarly over his body, as if his chest was slumped in underneath. As we entered the chamber with the raised concrete platform on which he lay, I saw that the shroud and the flowers made him appear uncrushed again. You went running between the chairs and mounted the steps to the dais—for a moment, I thought you were going to throw yourself across the body. But you stood staring at the closed eyes and the cotton peeking out of the nostrils, and made no attempt to touch your father.

“Is this your babuji?” the priest Mrs. Dugal had hired softly asked. With his black-framed glasses and untrimmed beard, he had more the air of a poet than a pundit. “Come, let's have you wash your hands and your feet,” he said, and took you by the arm to the adjoining room. I sat down uncertainly between Zaida and Mrs. Dugal, thinking that I should have kept your socks and your shoes. About a dozen chairs in the rear were occupied by people who looked like they might have wandered into the wrong funeral—I had no idea who they were.

When you returned, I got up to join you on the platform, but the priest motioned for me to stay where I was. “There are some things that have to be done alone in this world,” he said, “and it is to the son that this duty falls.” I sat back and watched anxiously, as if you were about to perform the leading part in a school play.

It was the ghee that made you cry. You followed all the priest's directives capably until then—repeating the mantras after him, sprinkling the body with sesame and dates, replacing the sprig of basil in Dev's mouth each time it fell out. Even the ghee, you managed to squeeze out of its bag as instructed, first over one eye, then the other, then the mouth, and the remainder over the heart. But you began to shake when you stood back to look at the thick white puddles, spilling over from Dev's eyes as if he was crying streams of molten wax. The priest pried the empty bag out of your clenched fingers as you broke into convulsive sobs.

Zaida restrained me from flying up to the stage and sweeping you into my arms. Already the priest was moving you on to the next ritual. He set a shovel on the floor above Dev's head and asked you to sprinkle it with water. Still gasping, you lifted the earthenware pot he gave you and brought it down on the blade.

The pot smashed as it was supposed to, sending pieces clattering across the floor. A few spun over the edge of the platform—one of them struck me lightly on the foot. Your gasps subsided into a steady weeping as the priest's incantations rose to fill the chamber. The only word I recognized from his stream of Sanskrit was “moksha”—I tried to form a picture in my mind of Dev's body liberating his soul.

After dragging the bamboo staff around the body, you sprinkled the red and vermilion powders and completed the last of the prayers. Then you fit your head in the curve between your father's chest and chin and lay there, closing your eyes and pressing against his neck. Sesame seeds stuck to your cheek, the streams of ghee melted into your hair. I had seen you so many times in this position, balancing contently on Dev's chest, as he read to you, sprawled out on the sofa or bed. The priest eased you up and handed you the final offering of a garland.

One by one, the audience members got up to also lay flowers—the Dugals, the Hussains, Zaida, and the two musician friends of Dev she had managed to contact. The people at the back of the room remained seated—an old man, I noticed, had fallen asleep with his mouth open. I stood on the dais, holding a string of marigolds. Should I fall at Dev's feet, weeping and refusing to let go, the way widows in movies behaved? I remembered the stories of wifely devotion that Biji used to relate—Savitri arguing with Yama, Sati immolating herself when her husband Shiva was insulted. How many women had actually followed Sati through the ages?—thrown screaming into the pyre, or love ushering them voluntarily into the flames?

But I was unable to even bring myself to touch Dev. I tried to recall him from the first time we had met, the allure in his smile, the chest hair curling provocatively into a snake. But it was difficult to look past the rivulets of ghee now, the basil in his mouth, the smears of vermilion and red, the sesame dotting his face. It was as if death had transformed him from a living, breathing person into a temple shrine at which offerings were made.

And now the bamboo mat on which Dev lay had been carried into the furnace chamber. The furnace door opened to paint Dev's forehead gold and give the flowers on his chest the same tint. Two attendants heaved at a lever to push the pallet on which Dev's mat had been laid. As I bent forward, the pallet hit the ridge of the furnace opening and came to an abrupt stop. The impact sent Dev sliding on his bamboo mat headfirst onto the slab inside the furnace. He lay there unmoving, his face upturned, his arms by his sides, as if holding his breath in an X-ray machine. Then the furnace door began closing and I heard the whoosh of flame. I bent down lower, to catch one last glimpse of Dev, to see the inside of the womb that had swallowed him. The walls were a brilliant orange, the air was beginning to scintillate, and for an instant, I saw myself inside, reclining in the fire next to him.

WE COLLECTED THE ASHES
the next morning. The attendant who took my receipt referred to them as “flowers.” My first thought was to open the iron box and look inside for some sign to confirm they were Dev's. But I kept the thin white gauze cover on and gave you the box when you asked to carry it.

Mrs. Dugal had declared that one must travel to Nasik or some other holy spot for the final immersion. “You can take Ashvin with you and stop at all the temples to make a pilgrimage of it.” When I pointed out that it was Chowpatty where Dev was fond of immersing his weekly pooja offerings, she laughed. “The water around Bombay is so impure that even fish, before they expire, try to slither away.”

The priest said that water was water, and anything that connected to the ocean was equally holy. “If you think it would have made him happy, then feed a cow an apple or a banana every day for a week afterwards. Otherwise, simply send him to his next life with joy in your heart.”

I suppose I should have waited to hear what rituals Dev's family wanted to have performed. Both Arya and Hema were arriving the next day on the Frontier Mail—the telegram had been delivered before we left. But something within me insisted that the ceremony be more personal, that the two of us immerse the ashes at Chowpatty ourselves.

The Americans had just condemned India at the UN for instigating the war, and there were thousands of people rallying at Chowpatty against them. I had the taxi take us to Nariman Point instead, at the other end of Marine Drive. The first time I had come here was fifteen years ago with Dev, right after we moved to Bombay. I remembered how we had walked past the point where the buildings ended, until we stood at the very edge of the newly reclaimed land. Since then, the reclamation had encroached a lot further into the sea, with several construction sites strewn with trucks and cranes. We walked past the newly completed Air India building, and next to it, the five-star Oberoi hotel still being built.

The day was warm and sunny, the sky untroubled by enemy planes. The bay stretched out on our right, the waves lapping against the shore tastefully, as if in a watercolor. The road ended as abruptly as it had fifteen years ago, the pavement suddenly giving way to a mass of the ubiquitous tetrapods tumbling down to the water. Where was the spot where Dev and I had paused, to listen for the sea thundering below, to imagine the first Portuguese ships sailing in?

“There are so many seagulls here,” you said worriedly. “Will it be safe to empty the box?” We were standing at the base of a set of rocky slabs that led to the water's edge. I had taken the box from you so that you could better keep your balance. Every once in a while a wave bobbed gently over the lowermost step.

“They won't bother us. The important thing is that the water should carry Daddy away.” I bent down with the box. “Here, take the gauze off and let it go.” The wind plucked the covering from your hand the instant you released it.

You hadn't spoken much since the cremation. At night, you had insisted on sleeping on your father's favorite sofa, burying your face in the pillows as if trying to breathe him in. I crept in several times to carry you to the empty space next to me in bed, but you were always awake. Finally, I sat on the sofa myself and spent the night cradling your head. At dawn, you raised your head from my lap, suddenly alert. “You weren't crying like Dugal auntie was. Aren't you sad that Daddy is dead?”

“Of course I am,” I managed to reply. “But sometimes grown-ups get so sad that they can't even cry.”

I tried now to muster the tears that would comfort you, but they did not come. The vow to never cry again, from the day I married Dev, still held me in control. You uncovered the box to reveal the fine gray ash inside. Mixed in were long black filaments of carbon and bone fragments bleached white. All I could think of, even with the streams flowing down your face, was how comfortably the contents filled the contours of the box. To be purified this way, to end up so compact—it was what I would want for myself when I was dead.

The wind picked up and some of the ash blew out. Perhaps it was Dev, trying to pull my attention to him.
Remember the time when I first held your gaze? Think, Meera, think, was I really so bad? Did you wish me to die, is this the way you wanted it to end?
I tried to match the voice to an image in my head. My eyes remained dry, my tears unshed. There was never a time when I had wished this, I could honestly reply.
Think, Meera, think, the life that you led.

I still held the box, but now your hand pulled urgently on my wrist. “Mummy,” you said, and I could see you wanted to immerse the ashes yourself. For an instant, I hesitated—wasn't this the duty of the wife as well? But then I relinquished my claim. You clambered across the rocks, the box pressed to your chest. I saw you close your eyes and fold your palms in prayer. The words were too far away to hear. I knew you wanted your privacy, so I forced myself to look away.