The Sari Shop (22 page)

So he mustered up all his courage and sat down on the floor
beside her. Then he spoke to her softly, his voice trembling, ‘What is the matter? Are you feeling ill?’

She continued to stare into space. Ramchand felt awkward, sitting next to a woman he didn’t know. What if Chander came back and saw him? What would he think? But something on Kamla’s face held him and he kept sitting there silently. Minutes passed. There was a waiting silence in the room. The room was getting hotter and Ramchand was completely drenched in sweat. But he still sat there, knowing nothing but that he should not leave, that he was needed here. A dread was building up inside him. He could neither leave, nor stay here. But he held on.

The tomb-like atmosphere in the house gripped Ramchand with its vulture-talons. It seemed far removed from the bustle of the street outside, from the busy city outside. It was an isolated world, where you could feel the air thick with despair, thick with unsaid words and unshed tears. It was like travelling into darkness and reaching the heart of it. Ramchand’s mind went blank. His body went still. He waited.

After a while, she moved slightly, and a bone somewhere in her body creaked.

Ramchand spoke again, surprised at his own courage, ‘You can tell me what is wrong. Maybe I can help you.’ Even while he spoke, he hoped she’d remain silent and corpse-like, so that he could steal away after a while with a clear conscience. But the moment the words were out of his mouth, the woman came to life.

Then she did respond. She slowly turned her neck, without moving her body at all, and looked at him.

Her eyes were like dark, twin tunnels that led nowhere.

Ramchand recoiled from her gaze.

But he couldn’t look away. Something in her face held him there on the spot, squatting silently.

Her dry, parched lips quivered, but no sound came out of
them. He saw that there was dried vomit on her chin. She wore a cheap, purple nylon sari with a pattern of big, white flowers on it. The pallu was slightly askew; Ramchand saw that there were flakes of dried vomit on the blouse too. She had downy hair on her forearms, and there was a long, old scar on the inside of her left elbow.

Then finally, she spoke. From faraway, came her croaking words.

‘Help?’ she said, barely opening her mouth to form the words.

Then he saw that both the corners of her mouth had cuts on them, sharp cuts going outwards from her lips like the ghost of a smile.

Then her dead eyes blazed at him. She drew up her upper lip in a snarl, like an animal. Ramchand watched in horror. And suddenly she did erupt with an angry snarl. ‘
Help
? You want to
help
me?’

Ramchand was frightened. He would have leapt to his feet and run away, except that he couldn’t. He felt he had lost the power to move a single muscle in his body.

The coal-like eyes, the two bottomless pits, rooted him to the spot.

He continued to stare at her in a fearful silence, one palm resting beside him on the floor to support his weight.

She spoke again through clenched teeth. ‘What can you do? Tell me, what can you do?’

Her voice rose to a scream. ‘What can you doooo?’ she wailed.

Ramchand was terrified now. He didn’t know how to handle this. His pulse quickened. Why, oh why, couldn’t he just get up and run? Run away from the woman and the terrible blackness of her eyes. And from the strange, filthy smells that surrounded her.

But he couldn’t. He sat transfixed by her. Her body, her
attitude, the way she slumped against the wall, made her seem like an animal that was within inches of dying.

‘You want to help me? You want to know what they did to me?’ she said, her voice trembling hysterically, her breath reeking of alcohol. ‘Do you know? Do you think they just raped me? And then let me go? Look at this.’ She pointed to her lap.

Ramchand stared at her lap in incomprehension.

Then, horror dawned on him slowly. Horror that he had never imagined he was capable of feeling. He saw that most of the white flowers on the purple sari below her hips were not white. They were rust-red. Stale-bloodstain-red.

Her words, her eyes and the rust-red flowers suddenly clicked into place in Ramchand’s head and he understood. They set him trembling violently.

‘You’d think they’d be satisfied just raping me, wouldn’t you? But the second one… he did this with a lathi… because I kicked him in the stomach.’ At the last words, a trace of satisfaction appeared on her face, and the beginnings of a twisted smile.

Ramchand was terrified. Her words crawled into his ears like worms and embedded themselves in his brain.

The palm of his right hand, the one he was leaning on, felt strained, the wrist hurt, but he couldn’t move. She had stopped that horrible smile mid-way and was sobbing uncontrollably now.

‘With a lathi,’ she repeated. Then she lifted the bottle to her mouth and drank.

And then Ramchand felt the wetness on his palm that still rested on the floor. He didn’t move an inch, he didn’t even move his eyes. Panic. Were those bloodstains on her sari old? Was she still bleeding? He was sitting so close to her. Was there a pool of blood around her that he hadn’t seen? Was it her blood that was wetting his hand? He felt sick with dread.
He was shaking violently now, robbed of any coherent thought or action. He faintly realized that his face was wet, he must have been crying.

Then he slowly looked down at his hand. The fingers were strained, his knuckles looked white. He held up his hand before him.

It was only some rum she had spilled out of the bottle. He examined his hand, both the back and the palm.

Just rum.

No blood.

‘You want to help me?’ she was still screaming.

Ramchand heard himself crying and blubbering loudly now. He managed to get up to his feet and then ran out, as fast as he could in the crowded streets, and didn’t stop running till he reached his little, dingy, safe room.

The same week, Rina Kapoor’s novel was published.

If she had been a plain, unmarried girl from an ordinary family, it wouldn’t really have made much news in Amritsar, a city that had much money but only one real bookshop. But since Rina was recently married, rich, glossy and permed, and wanted to draw the attention of the cream of Amritsar, she did. There was a spectacular launch of the book in New Delhi. There were press conferences and interviews in magazines.

Ravinder Kapoor threw a large party when his daughter came to Amritsar, and invited big industrialists, bureaucrats and even the District Commissioner of Amritsar to the party. Rina invited all her acquaintances from the University, both teachers and students.

At the party all kinds of delicacies prepared by a chef from Delhi were served, along with imported cheese and chocolates. Rina wore a sheer black chiffon sari that glittered with silver sequins. Her husband looked handsome with his erect carriage and his blue blazer, every inch a proud army man.

Everyone remarked on what a striking couple they made!

The next day, young, pretty housewives saw her picture in
Amritsar Newsline
with envy in their hearts.

Rina had first got the germ of an idea for a novel, finally, on the day of her wedding, when she had seen her trembling sari-wala standing by the security guards and had heard him lie about being invited by her to the party. How she had laughed with Tina about it when she had got back! And then she had started thinking about him, curiosity taking hold of her. She had even gone to see him, to speak to him, so that
she could give a real identity to her sudden inspiration. She had started working on the first draft during the honeymoon itself, and had finished the book in five months flat.

The novel was the story of a shop assistant in a sari shop. The protagonist was called Sitaram. He was a funny guy, superstitious, clever and lovable. The other characters in the book were a sadhu who performed miracles, a mad dog and a middle-aged woman who was a kleptomaniac.

There was also a beautiful village girl who Sitaram was in love with. She had almond-shaped, kohl-lined eyes and wore jasmine flowers in her hair. She had a swaying walk and a bewitching smile, and found Sitaram slightly ridiculous but endearing.

Sitaram needed the help of the old sadhu and his magic herbs before he could woo her and win her finally.

It was a well-crafted book, it began and ended well, the chapters flew seamlessly into each other. There was a good streak of humour running through it. It received favourable reviews in the press. Mrs Sachdeva read many of these in newspapers and weeklies. She cut out the best ones and proudly pinned them up on the notice board in the English Literature department. Students crowded around the notice board admiringly.

*

A policeman is a very useful and important public servant,
Ramchand read in the essay book, his heart heavy with pain.
His duty is very hard. Sometimes he is working in the day while sometimes he is on patrol at night. He guards our life and property. He helps in tracing out the culprits and get them booked. A traffic policeman also regulates the traffic in an orderly and smooth fashion.

His day begins with a morning parade in police lines. This enables him to keep physically fit. He puts on a khaki uniform and a red
and blue turban. Mostly, in all the states, the policemen wear almost the same uniform. His shoes are always shining. He possesses a well-built body. He is quite a tall person. He puts on a leather belt around his waist which indicates his number and district. He carries a thick rod called a baton.

Ramchand picked up his dictionary with an effort. His limbs felt heavy, made of lead. He looked up the meaning mechanically.

Baton
: the most likely meaning was
Constable’s truncheon
Truncheon: Short club or cudgel e.g. that carried by policeman
Club: Stick with one thick end as weapon
Cudgel: Short thick stick used as weapon

It just meant a lathi, Ramchand thought tiredly. This time there wasn’t the usual excitement of chasing a word around the squiggly dictionary till he had found the meaning. Just a lathi. Just cold certainty.
He did it with a lathi
, the anguished voice said in his head.

The smell of stale cooking oil and dry vomit came back to him.

A crow cawed outside. Ramchand looked at it. It was perched outside his window. It had very small eyes. Ramchand moved, the crow, with a startled caw, flew off. Ramchand went back to his essay.

His duty is to maintain peace and order in his area. He looks for evil characters like eve-teasers, drunkards, gamblers, pick pockets etc. He patrols his area at night also. He arrests thieves, criminals and locks them up in the police station.

Ramchand could not read any further.

The room was hot and oppressive. The open window did not help.

If he kept the window open, the blinding glare of the summer sun filled the room, making his head ache. The air
from outside brought in fresh heat waves that stung the eyes and seared the lungs. If he kept the windows shut and bolted, the room became close and airless.

The fan whirred slowly. It had a regulator, a round black knob on the cracked switchboard, with five small lines arranged around it, like the rays of the sun that Manoj drew in his drawing book. There were five such lines, marked from one to five neatly in Roman numerals. The regulator however, was old, and had a happy disregard for the five neat markings. It swivelled around freely when touched and had no effect on the speed of the fan. Anarchy reigned in more places than one in Ramchand’s room.

So the fan whirred slowly, in a monotonous rhythm of its own, slowing down even more when the voltage was low.

Ramchand felt an ache spread slowly over his forehead. No, he couldn’t read further. The words just swam around meaninglessly, like irritating little black houseflies, in front of his eyes and inside his mind.

Kamla’s eyes wouldn’t leave him alone. Much as he tried. Nothing made sense. It was just those eyes that haunted all his waking moments and even his dreams. He couldn’t concentrate on anything. When Mahajan had been speaking to him today, all Ramchand could see was a shallow face with a crude, crass, commercial mind, and he listened mutely to Mahajan, unable to take in or understand a single word he was saying. His headache had returned after months.

Two days had elapsed since he had been to Chander’s house, but it seemed like a very, very long time ago. For the past two days, he had just been thinking. Like before. Not intelligible thoughts, but a noise that went on and on in his head, a noise of constantly whirling rotation, like Sudha’s new washing machine.

He looked uncomprehendingly at the
Radiant Essays
he held in his hand, and sat down on the edge of his bed. And thought.
Confused thoughts. Of paan-stained teeth. Of silk saris and gold. Of peacocks that danced. And of white sari flowers that, unnoticed by the world, had turned a rust-red.

With finality, Ramchand got up and closed the book. With an impassive face, and slow, decisive movements, he gathered everything he had bought so enthusiastically a few months back – the
Radiant Essays
,
The Complete Letter Writer
,
Quotations for all Occasions
,
Pocket Science for Children
, the notebooks, the pen, the inkpot.

With a lump in his throat, he put them away in a neat pile on the uppermost shelf in the wall, a shelf he never used. A shelf where he wouldn’t be able to see them.

He decided to get up and wash his bedsheet and his pillow cover. They had begun to look very dirty.

The pillow was depressed in the middle. The pillow cover had coconut hair-oil stains on it, and a few hairs clung to the stains. Ramchand peeled the cover off the pillow. It felt sticky against his fingers. He fluffed the pillow out by pummeling it this way and that with his fists. He whipped the sheet off the bed, its edges wrinkled where it had been tucked neatly under the sides of the mattress.

Soon Ramchand was squatting on the bathroom floor, scrubbing the pillow cover energetically with a bar of blue detergent soap, his whole mind intent on removing the stains. He didn’t want to think of anything else.