The Selector of Souls (13 page)

Purnima-aunty doesn’t look convinced.

“Better than suicide, better than murdering Vikas and being sent to prison,” says Anu. “Better than begging Mumma or you to take me in.”

Purnima waves this away as hyperbole. “You can always stay with me—us—we’re your second parents.”

“Yes you are. But you’ve done so much.”

“Why not volunteer in a women’s organization. Non-governmental, if you don’t like government ones—every new NGO in Delhi needs English-speaking volunteers to write project reports, apply for funding or translate interviews into English. I can find you one—I can find you ten.”

“No, I promised … well, let’s just say something is calling me to do this. It doesn’t matter if I am pulled to do this or have been pushed—I’m going to do this. I need to do this.”

“Have you watched
The Sound of Music
?”

“Not recently.”

“Rent it. Julie Andrews is too thin, but she has a voice like The Nightingale.” She means Lata Mangeshkar to whom all singers are compared. “Does Vikas know?”

“Not yet.” The thought makes her breathing come shallow and quick. “I’ll be untraceable before the divorce notification is served. And the rest is none of his business.”

Anu dips into a quilted cloth bag in her handbag and removes three kundan necklaces, several gold bangles, a nine-jewel necklace, a pair of ornate gold anklets, a pair of gold jhumka earrings. They glitter at her fingertips. “Dadu and Mumma gave me these at my wedding,” she says.

“That’s all?” says Purnima.

“Mumma married for love. Your parents didn’t give her these—Dadu did. And Mumma didn’t buy more for me, because Vikas’s father didn’t ask for dowry.’ ”

“Huh! You’re not supposed to
believe
the boy’s side when they say such things. But to me, it seemed Vikas was really in love with you.”

“He was probably like me,” Anu said, “wanting to fall in love to please our parents.” She could add what Vikas told Anu the first week they were married, that an alliance with a government servant’s family would assure Kohlisons Media a limitless future, but she doesn’t. Anu’s father failed to bring Kohlisons Media the expected government contracts, or nudge a single multinational towards them. Vikas mentioned this often, as if Dadu was the only honest government servant he had ever met.

“Please, take these to the jeweller, sell them and send the money to Rano for my Chetna.”

“Nothing doing!” Purnima’s hands are up, palms outward. “That’s family jewellery, not
yours
. I’ll keep it for Chetna’s dowry and we’ll have to buy her more. Can’t let the same thing happen to her, na?”

The silhouette of a tall stooped man in a white pyjama-kurta
appears at the screen door—it’s Sharad Uncle, clearing his throat and removing his sandals in the courtyard outside.

“Come in, come in,” says Purnima.

Veins on Sharad Talwar’s forehead stand out. “So here you are. Purnima told me you’re considering … divorce?” He makes the word sound like a synonym for a career in prostitution.

“Not considering, Uncle, I’ve decided.”

“Decided? When did you talk to your parents?”

“Uncle, I’m twenty-nine. I have decided what I need to do.”

“Who are you to decide? Have you ever made choices for yourself before now?”

His normally mild voice has risen.

“No, Uncle, no.” She cannot bear more shouting. Why can’t she just make a decision? Why does she have to defend it? Why does it have to be a family decision?

“And not only divorce. What’s all this other nonsense? You have been tricked by that padri! Can he and his convent look after you in some way your family cannot?”

“I don’t want to be taken care of. I want to contribute.”

“You have a child—you have contributed,” says Sharad Uncle. “Rano can look after Chetna. She’ll be happy to do it. She will be her second mother. But you—you’re still my responsibility. I can’t allow you to enter any convent-shonvent. Your parents will say …”

Anu interjects, “Uncle, you don’t need to allow or disallow, it’s a personal decision.”

She doesn’t want to be rude. Sharad Uncle was always anxious to do his duty and more. He opened bank accounts for Anu and Bobby at his bank, saying, “Remember the power of compound interest.” There he deposited the cheques Dadu sent every few months for their care, though he could have cashed them as Dadu intended. Anu owes him so much, but …

“
Hein
? I’m your uncle and you’re a Hindu. I know what those Christians do. Brainwash you and feed you beef, first thing!”

“Where are they going to find beef in India?” says Anu, trying to deflect his ire with a laugh.

“From old cows,” says Purnima. “Muslims slaughter them, tan their hides. But I’m not really worried about beef. Rano eats it in Canada, I’m sure, even if she doesn’t tell me. Our three sons probably eat it too. I don’t know how they can eat the flesh of an animal whose milk they drink, or why they don’t think: oh, all three hundred and thirty three million gods are in my stomach at the same time and I might explode from eating so much power. No, my problem is different. Anu, I’m sorry to say this nun-shun business seems like a cult. Maybe two thousand years from now, people will call swamis like Osho, Baba Ramdev and Swami Rudransh ‘son of god’—how do we know? But today they are cult leaders, like Lord Jesus Christ was when he began his magic show. They’re not for educated people like us. They’re for the gullible.”

“I’m gullible,” says Anu. “I married Vikas, remember?”

“Oh, you had nothing to do with that—we married you to him. We all thought two science graduates would have something in common.” Purnima rolls from one buttock to the other, draws up one knee and clasps her arms around it. “Lord Jesus may be calling you but you are going to answer to the Catholic Church—that’s no different from being in an ashram with one of these swami-types.”

“So should I go to an ashram? I’d have to prove my devotion with years and donations before I could learn anything. Only the deserving are taught by those gurus—that’s the brahmanical way. I need a more egalitarian community.”

“Okay, okay,” says Purnima. “Don’t go to an ashram. But mark my words, I went to convent schools too, and I don’t think you’ll find the Church any less authoritarian than our guru system.”

“I have freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship.” Anu alludes to the words of the Indian constitution. “I can convert three times a day if I want. Aunty, I just want to be with people who have principles.”

Silence. Purnima seems to be considering this. “You said you’ll be untraceable. Will becoming a nun make you untraceable?”

“I hope so,” says Anu.

“Find some work the Kohlis wouldn’t dream you would do. You aren’t dark enough to be a maid. Too bad you can’t go back to school at any age, as Rano did in Canada—my sister always wanted a doctor in the family.”

“Mumma wanted Bobby to be a doctor, not me.”

“Become a nurse then. Some are quite fair.”

“Go home,” Sharad Uncle growls. “Your dharma is to be with your husband.” He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t see. He doesn’t want to see.

Anu rises to her feet and lets her sari slide from her left shoulder.

Sharad Uncle’s eyes widen—he holds up his hand, palm outward.
“Arrey! Arrey!”
He looks around, either to flee from her immodesty or to verify no other man is looking.

Anu unbuttons the top button of her sari blouse. Comprehension and dismay chase across Sharad Uncle’s face at the sight of the purpling stains on her skin. “Look, both of you, look.” Anu’s voice feels thick and strange. “Is it not enough? When will it be enough?”

Aunty embraces her, holding her fiercely. “That bastard! I’ll take a stick and beat his brains out. And to think he comes from such a good family—who can believe it!”

Sharad Uncle wipes his sleeve across his forehead; Purnima offers him a box of face tissue.

“So this is why you’re talking about divorce and convents-shon-vents? Come, button up, Anu. I’ll talk to Vikas—I’ll tell him you’re a good girl. I’ll tell him he shouldn’t get so angry with you again.”

“Sharad …”

“We all fight and make up—koi baat nahin! Come, I’ll persuade him to take you back.”

Purnima withdraws the box of tissue just as Sharad Uncle is reaching for one. “You can’t send her back to that man.”

“He’s not ‘that man’—he’s her husband. He is Lalit Kohli’s son, not some uneducated hooligan off the street.” He resorts to his sleeve again.

“Sharad, I’m telling you—” his wife warns.

“Softy ice cream, you are. That boy is brilliant. BRILL-iant! Topped his class, could have gone abroad for higher studies like others but he stayed in the motherland. He’s grown his father’s company to five times its size with only a few crores of rupees from our bank. And he donates to Hindu schools and ashrams, doesn’t let them go begging to foreign agencies. You women—a man makes one mistake …”

“It’s
not
the first time …” says Anu, touching her scarred cheek.

Sharad Uncle sits down at the other end of the bed. “An accident is a different kind of mistake,” he says. “Didn’t he apologize?”

“Yes, he did.” She doesn’t add,
As he did for the night Chetna was conceived
. Both times, he had taken back his apology, insisting later that it was her fault.

“Then? What else do you need?”

“Each mistake is a different kind, ji, but his are too-too many.” Purnima-aunty leans forward, takes her roll-pillow from behind her and propels it across the bed like a missile.

Sharad Uncle catches it deftly and secures it behind his back.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she says to Anu.

“I did,” says Anu.

Purnima opens her mouth, thinks better of it. She tries again, “These things … well, they don’t …”

“Don’t happen to people like us? Shouldn’t happen to an educated woman?”

Purnima’s eyes fill. She dabs them with her dupatta. Anu offers her the box of tissues, and hugs her. “Okay, okay.” Purnima blows her nose loudly. “I must have been blind or didn’t want it to be true. What can I do now?”

“I’m not staying with Vikas.” Anu’s voice is firm and quiet. “I can’t meet his standards. After my accident his mother suggested I leave so he could take another wife. Someone with no scars.”

“Huh, as if Pammy Kohli’s surgery has made her any prettier!”

“She wants Vikas to have a wife who can produce a son.”

“Only natural.” says Sharad Uncle. “How can you have a business named ‘Kohli and Daughters’?”

“How? You make a sign that says ‘Kohli and Daughters,’ and you hang it on the front door of the business, that’s how!” says Purnima.

Sharad Uncle turns to Anu as if struck by a new idea. “Have another child. Pregnancy will cure you of these … these hysterical wishes.”

“Even if I wanted one,” says Anu, “or wanted Vikas to ever touch me again, there’s no guarantee it would be a boy.”

For a moment, Sharad Uncle holds his head in his hands. Then he looks up. “There is, there is—nowadays you can check with what is it … amnio-something?”

“That’s old. You mean ultrasound,” his wife says.

Anu shakes her head. “Ultrasound should be used to prevent disease or cure it. The sex of a child is not a disease. I wouldn’t abort a girl or boy even if I did know.”

“No one is saying to abort a boy.”

“I know.” She holds her uncle’s gaze till she feels him release the idea.

“Anu—Vikas’s family—are not small people, you know …” Purnima says.

“If I don’t ask for money,” says Anu, “the Kohlis won’t care where I am.”

But Vikas? He only wants things when they’re beyond his reach
.

I am not a thing
.

“You may not want money from them for yourself, sweetheart,” says Purnima. “But there is Chetna to think about.”

“Each nun is paid for her work. I will save for Chetna’s marriage. I’ll get her married myself.”

“On a nun’s salary? Don’t be so foolish, Anu. And also think—Vikas Kohli’s daughter should live as well as her father,” says Purnima.

“Well Chetna can’t, if Vikas doesn’t want her.”

“Don’t worry, my Rano and Jatin will spoil her completely,” says Purnima.

“Ladies, ladies!” says Sharad Uncle. “We don’t know yet if Vikas wants Chetna or not. You can’t just decide where his daughter will go. All this is not right—bilkul not right. Not right at all. Purnima—milao the phone! Your father must be told what you’re up to, Anu.”

“He knows—I wrote to him and Mumma.”

“Achcha. Good-good-good. Let’s see what he says. ‘Personal decision’—ha! You’ve been reading too many English novels, watching too many foreign movies. You make your personal decisions when all of us are dead and gone, my dear. Not before.”

Purnima makes the call to Anu’s parents, using her new cordless.

“Good that Chetna is with Rano,” says her husband, pacing the room, hands behind his back, “if this is the kind of example Anu is setting.”

Anu says, “Uncle, please don’t talk about me as if I’m not here.”

Purnima puts her hand over the mouthpiece and hisses at her husband: “And what about Vikas? What kind of example is
he
setting, you please tell me?”