The Sari Shop (17 page)

Days became longer, and tempers grew shorter. People longed for the rain to come, but there wasn’t a cloud in the blazing, clear sky. Water evaporated from the drains, leaving behind a sludge that stank. The few ponds at the outskirts of Amritsar dried up too, and lethargic buffaloes sunk deeper into the squelchy mud in the ponds, only their eyes showing as the cool mud slithered over their hot, black bodies.

The roads became dusty, and the faces of cyclists and pedestrians took on a permanently weary look. There were frequent power cuts every day. All over Amritsar people grew tired and cross, or sluggish and resigned. Mothers snapped at noisy children, mothers-in-law fought with young daughters-in-law, junior workers in shops, offices and factories got yelled at by their superiors all over the city.

Quiet families slept on dark, still terraces at night during power cuts, their shared memories swirling overhead in the
hot air along with the swarms of mosquitoes. Old women sat on charpais, fanning themselves with jute fans and murmuring prayers with rosaries held in perspiring, wrinkled hands. An air of oppression hung over the whole city. Even the wealthy – and there were many in Amritsar – were driven to a frenzy by the brief forays they made out of air-conditioned houses and cars into the hot, dry, baking world outside.

In the afternoons only unhappy, perspiring vendors with ice cream carts, rickshaw pullers slumbering in their rickshaws in the shade of trees and panting stray dogs with their long tongues hanging out could be seen on the deserted roads that smelt of hot tar.

*

Chander’s house had a tin sheet for a roof, and it became as hot as fire after the May sun had beat down on it even for an hour. The sun turned the little house into an airless furnace. It was here that Chander’ wife sat one hot morning, her thin body soaked in sweat.

Her name was Kamla, even though everyone in Sevak Sari House always referred to her as just ‘Chander’s wife’. Once Kamla was a child, with a straggly plait of hair hanging down behind her neck, a thin body and big, inquisitive eyes. She lived in a small house in Jandiala, a tiny, nondescript town, little more than a village, about twenty kilometres from Amritsar, with her mother, father and a brother. Her brother was older than her, he was thirteen when she was only eight. Her father worked in a small factory – a factory that manufactured a local brand of washing powder called Chamki Washing Powder.

After her father left for his factory, and her brother went to the tailor’s shop where he worked as an apprentice, Kamla’s mother went to work in people’s houses, to cook and clean
for them. Sometimes Kamla went with her and helped her a bit.

At the age of eight, Kamla owned only two frocks. Both the frocks were old ones outgrown by the children of her mother’s employers. One was a red and blue check, with pockets in the skirt and the other was a bedraggled pink, with some torn white lace at the collar and at the hem.

Kamla was supposed to do all her chores on her own, though her mother washed Kamla’s brother’s clothes, made tea for him and cleaned up after him. But she told Kamla that girls must learn all household work, and the sooner they started, the better it was for them. So, in serious imitation of her mother, once a week, the eight-year-old Kamla would squat near the tap and scrub both her frocks, rinse them, wring them dry till they were almost knotted up, and then would hang them out in the sun to dry. She personally liked the red and blue check better, even though the lace of the pink one always made her feel grand, like all those girls who lived in big houses and went out in cars and bought those chocolates in purple wrappers. Still, she did like the red and blue check better. It had pockets you could put things into, it looked newer than the pink one, and it looked much, much brighter and more cheerful. Kamla wore both frocks strictly by turns – one day the pink, the next day the red and blue check.

It was on the day of the red and blue check that Kamla’s mother died. Kamla was alone at home with her mother. It was evening, and they were preparing to cook dinner.

Kamla had just learnt to peel potatoes. She was sitting on the floor peeling them with a blunt knife, because her mother still didn’t trust her with the sharp one, and talking to her mother at the top of her voice. Kamla’s mother had climbed up on a stool to get a jar of pickle from the top of a cupboard.

‘And then, Ma, Ganga said Mina always cheated. She said the stone was at the edge of the chalk line, but Mina moved
it with her foot. But, Ma, I
saw
her. She didn’t. Do you think
Ganga
could be lying? I don’t think so. Ganga never lies, but maybe she was mistaken. She is always so sure of herself. Ma, I think…’

Her mother stood on tiptoe on the stool, trying to reach the jar. She kept nodding, Kamla kept chattering on, without bothering to wait for her mother’s replies.

‘Ganga’s sister, who got married, came back and gave her a silver bangle, Ma. A
real
silver bangle. It is so pretty, it has got tiny ghungroos on it, they tinkle when she moves. And Ganga keeps moving her arm about
on purpose
while talking, just to show off to us…’

Then Kamla’s mother finally managed to get her fingers around the jar. She grasped it gingerly and pulled it towards her, saying, ‘Here it is. Now, I think, for dinner, along with the potatoes and chillies, we can…’

Here, she tottered on the stool, her face a little startled, her eyebrows raised, still clutching the glass jar tightly. Then she suddenly slipped, the stool fell over on its side with a thud, there was a loud crack, and Kamla’s mother fell silent. A pool of blood formed slowly under her head. The glass jar of pickles had broken too. A film of mustard oil began to spread towards the blood. The two mingled. Pieces of pickled lime and carrots were strewn around in the blood-oil puddle like pebbles. Kamla sat there quietly, her mouth slightly open, frozen, staring at her mother, with a half-peeled potato in her left hand, the blunt knife in the right and curly potato peels on the floor.

Her brother found her sitting there in the same position when he came home two hours later. He took in the sight, the shock making the bile rise in his throat. He took the knife out of her hand, and sent her to call their aunt, his father’s sister, who lived close by.

At first Kamla wouldn’t move, then, with his voice choking
with tears, her brother gave her a gentle shove, ‘Go, Kamla, go. Go and fetch Bua. Tell her what has happened. She will come here. Then I’ll go to the factory and fetch Pitaji.’

Kamla went by the familiar route to her Bua’s place almost in a daze. After she got there, she kept repeating that the pickle jar broke. Finally, she started crying. Bua shook her shoulders and asked her what had happened. ‘The pickle jar fell down,’ Kamla repeated, ‘and Ma with it.’

Bua came back to Kamla’s place with her. The next few days passed in a daze for Kamla. Her father and brother seemed distant, busy making arrangements for the cremation and the puja. Meanwhile Bua was very busy too, seeing to the meals and beds of the relatives who had come to mourn. Kamla had to help her all day, cutting vegetables and folding bedclothes while her eyes and heart ached every moment. Her Bua told her, ‘Now, after your mother, you’ll have to look after the house. You’ll have to take care of your father and brother, okay? Behave like a big girl now.’

Kamla nodded.

She began to go to work in place of her mother. Like Kamla’s mother, Bua also earned a living by cooking and cleaning at big houses. Now she took Kamla under her wing and took her to the places she herself worked in. Kamla was quick to learn – she was nimble while sweeping the floors, she reached with the broom under beds, almost lying down on the floor to reach the far off corners, she cleaned behind sofas and under carpets. She cleaned kitchen shelves well, rubbing at oil and gravy stains with wet rags till they disappeared. She cleaned out kitchen sinks, carefully removing bits of food crumbs and salad leaves that blocked the jali over the sink drain. She chopped onions, ginger and tomatoes and left them in neat piles, covered with steel plates, for the housewife to use when she cooked lunch. Her employers were pleased with her and soon she began to bring in a hundred rupees a month.
She also did all the cooking single-handedly for her own household.

She continued to alternate her two frocks strictly, till she outgrew them and graduated to wearing salwaar kameez.

When she turned fourteen, her brother married, and his wife, anxious to secure her position in the house, took over the kitchen, relegating Kamla to the status of an assistant.

Bhabhi decided now what was to be cooked, she kept an eye over the provisions and cooked things her own way. Kamla went back to chopping, cutting, cleaning and doing the odd jobs that Bhabhi asked her to do.

*

At sixteen, when she married Chander, Kamla had been a pretty girl with lively eyes, cheerful most of the time, but given to occasional strange sulks that her family never understood. She had moods when she wouldn’t talk to anybody. Then she’d just hum to herself or embroider flowers on plain leftover poplin that her brother sometimes got from the factory of ready-made garments that employed him as cutter and tailor. When she was in one of these moods, she wouldn’t answer any questions, not even with a nod or a gesture. It annoyed her family very much, but it was pretty harmless, so they let it pass most of the time, putting it down to the instability of adolescent girls. She’d be all right after she got married, they reasoned.

Kamla could cook very well by now, and went to three different houses to work, cooking daals and vegetables, boiling rice and cleaning utensils efficiently every day.

Now she earned four hundred rupees a month. Apart from this, she got cast-off clothes occasionally, one meal a day at the big house painted white and one cup of tea at the pretty
house with magenta bougainvillea climbing its gate. From each of the houses she would also get an extra twenty rupees every Diwali, and a few sweets. Sometimes she’d even bring home a couple of left-over chapatis with two pieces of oily dark-green mango pickle wrapped in them.

One day when she was sweeping the floor of one of the big houses, Kamla spotted a pretty red glass bead on the floor. It shone and had two holes at its opposite ends to string a thread through. Kamla’s right hand that held the broom went still. With her left hand she picked up the bead, still squatting. She held it up to the sunlight streaming in from the window. It glinted. Kamla smiled.

Her employer, a good-natured woman who spent most of her time watching the films played on the local cable channel, looked up from the television and asked her, ‘Ay, Kamla, what are you smiling about?’

‘This bead, Bibiji, it is very beautiful. Too beautiful.’

The woman smiled. ‘Oh, that? That is just a cheap thing. My daughter bought a boxful of them to make necklaces for her dolls. She has finished now. The silly things she does. Never studies. I don’t know what will become of her. These days even to get married you need a BA degree.’ Then, coming back to the bead, she asked Kamla. ‘The rest of them are still lying around. They’ll just clutter up the place for years now. Do you want to take them home with you?’

Kamla nodded. The woman got up slowly, went to a cupboard and brought back a cardboard box. She gave it to Kamla.

Kamla opened the box. A mass of luminous red beads filled the box, their glass surfaces smooth and shiny.

‘Thank you, Bibiji,’ Kamla said happily, clasping the box to her chest, her eyes shining.

‘Happy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then mind you scrub the clothes well today. The white shirt wasn’t cleaned well yesterday.’

‘That was a turmeric stain, Bibiji. They never go out, no matter how hard you scrub.’

*

That evening, Kamla was stringing the red beads together with a needle and thread when her father returned home from the soap factory. Usually he came back tired and quiet and rarely spoke to anyone till his daughter or his daughter-in-law had made him a cup of tea. But today he put down the three-storied steel tiffin box that Kamla packed for him every day, and called the whole family together. Her brother had just got back a few minutes before. He came to his father anxiously, hoping it was no financial crisis, followed by his wife who was now cradling a baby in her arms. Kamla sat where she was, with the needle, thread and the beads still in her lap. Then Kamla’s father told his assembled family that today he had fixed up Kamla’s marriage with the son of a man who worked with him. Kamla’s brother smiled, her Bhabhi came and hugged her and everyone looked happy. Kamla smiled indifferently. She had been expecting this to happen any day now. It didn’t affect her one way or the other. Every girl was brought up to know that marriage had to happen one day, and Kamla was quite prepared for it.

Then her father and brother began to discuss the arrangements for the wedding while Kamla and her Bhabhi retreated to the kitchen to make tea. Kamla was silent, as it was only proper to be silent, and her Bhabhi gushed on about many things that Kamla barely listened to.

Later, when everyone had settled in for the night, she went back to stringing the glass beads in the light of the
bulb. Marriage happened to everyone, red beads rarely came one’s way.

However, the storm broke a week before her marriage, when she found out that the man who was soon to be her husband, the man she had never seen and wasn’t particularly interested in, lived and worked in Amritsar. She’d have to move there.

Kamla dissolved into tears the moment she heard this. She wept and told her father she wouldn’t marry. Her Bhabhi tried to console her, but Kamla pushed her Bhabhi’s comforting arms away. Her father told her gently that she shouldn’t say such things. Everything had been finalized and she should just make up her mind to be a good wife.

Kamla calmed down; she knew he was right, but she continued to worry. She had assumed that Chander, for she had heard that was his name, lived in Jandiala too. She had never been outside Jandiala, and the prospect of living away from her family, all on her own, in a strange new city, was frightening. She had had very little contact with the outside world. Except for the people she worked for, the only people she knew were her family and the relatives who visited them. Her father had been careful to isolate her from the evils of the big world. He had always been afraid that in the absence of a mother, Kamla might run wild or pick up bad ways.