The Selector of Souls (41 page)

And I pray I don’t have to use the knife
.

“Oh, how she cares—she prays for me! What happens to you women? There’s my mother, stuck on Swami Rudransh and here’s you, a Jesus-lover.” He drums his fingers on the table and looks at his watch.

If she kills Vikas, it will undo all the prayer and healing she has accomplished over the last year and a half. “Isn’t that a photo of Swami Rudransh that you’re wearing around your neck?”

“You like it? We’ve sold thousands, lakhs—maybe crores by now! And not only to our friends in RSS but every saffron organization. Swami Rudransh doesn’t have to name Muslims, Christians or Sikhs, you just know who he means is the enemy of all Hindus. He gives the same discourse in every city but you feel as if you’re hearing him for the first time … This is the Übermensch, Anu! A ruddy marketing phenomenon, yar—a godman brand like Shirdi or Sai Baba. We’ll use his photo on incense boxes and khat-meeth bags. He’ll have his own brand of tea,
Rudransh-Tips
, his own airline,
Rudransh Viman
, his own product line of Ayurvedic diet foods. With his account, I no longer have to sell print ads or make commercials for government and international agencies. Anu, we’re no longer overpainting movie billboards by hand, we’re doing desktop publishing! Now all I need is a few artists to rejig ads from abroad, hacks to write worshipful ad copy, and translators to translate it into eighteen or twenty languages. Give the swami credit for a few Jesus-type miracles, like producing ashes as his blessings—although I don’t
know why these godmen can’t conjure up something more useful …”

If she kills Vikas, Jesus will return from his past lives on Judgement Day and judge her to be just like her ex-husband. And then she’ll burn in hell with Vikas. Then what use will be all her prayers or this Work? Any hope of linking to the warm bright light ever again will be gone.

He is cradling his teacup in both hands, leaning back, legs apart, as if he owns the place. He’s talking about working very hard, too. “The only mystical force I acknowledge is the market. So if it leaves the world littered with unsuccessful chumps, is it my fault? I didn’t cause other people’s poverty or the castes they were born into. I’m sorry for them, but they have their karma to begin with and their bhagya to continue.”

“Vikas, do you even know what you feel?”

“Who cares how I feel? Image, yar, image is everything. Look like you’re having fun, and everyone will think you are. Act like a media mogul’s wife and … but you know. That role is your dharma, and dharma the role. I never wanted to run Dad’s business, but I do. And you are no help to me here, no help at all.”

Can Anu be beginning to feel sorry for Vikas?

Everyone has his suffering
.

He straightens in his chair, and she braces for a mood shift.

“Look, you people in the religion business are all alike.” His tone has turned fatherly, explaining. “Zero investment required, zero risk taken, zero experience required, zero inventory to carry, no taxes to pay. And if the client isn’t satisfied, it’s not your problem, but the client’s own fault. You can make any claim you want—all are unverifiable. All of you believe your own ad copy.”

Sister Anu glances out of the window, but Bethany does not take shape from the fog. “Everything in the world is not ad copy and money, Vikas.”

“Ah, there you’re wrong. Ads are a universal language, darling, un-i-ver-sal! All about fear and desire. Without desire, nothing fucking
happens—don’t you see? We create maya. Illusion for any brand. Hinduism, Christianity and Coke are strong brands, and we make them stronger. You religious types can try to stamp out desire, but people like me make new ones every day.”

He stands, strolls over to
The
5
Minute Clinical Consult
and opens it. “And money is also a universal language—most women understand money for sex. Why don’t you?”

She smooths the table mat, feeling the long hard shape beneath it. She keeps her voice calm. “I wasn’t your mistress, Vikas, I was your wife.”

“Same thing.” He rifles through the pages of the tome. “Room and board and a secure old age in exchange for exclusive access.”

“That is not the same thing!”

“Well, it’s close.” He flips the cover, the book thuds shut. “I’d often like to run away to the Himalayas, too. So why don’t I? Because I’m like a horse in the traces, just doing my dharma. I’ve never even taken a vacation. As for the fuckwits here—they’re not my blood! I don’t owe them a goddamn rupee. I have enough relatives and employees and employees’ families to look after.”

“Vikas, it’s not right to give people in the villages leftovers after the needs of people in the cities are satisfied … we each need to give, and soon.”

He returns to the dining table, places his chair next to hers and leans toward her. She won’t let herself back away. He whispers in her ear, “Next you’ll start talking about their rights, like the pinkos on CNN.”

“Well, yes. We all have fundamental rights, not only you. Check the constitution. All you want is for people to have duties, preferably to you.”

“That’s because democracy isn’t half as much fun as feudalism, darling. Feudalism works for me. The British left us our institutions, all set up to rape the common man. Don’t you see? All we have to do is use them.” She goes stiff as he puts his arm around her
shoulders. “Come with me, and I’ll make it all work for you. Don’t you feel
my
need? My parents and your daughter are suffering, and you’re just heartless.”

Amusement at last bubbles up in Sister Anu, penetrating her fear. “I doubt you or your parents are suffering, Vikas.” She shifts beneath the weight of his arm. “And
our
daughter Chetna is better off with Rano than with either of us.” She rises, as if it’s the most natural act in the world to leave the circle of his mallet arm. “Let me show you the wonderful things we’ve done here. You’ll feel how these hick town people are connected to you, to the larger world.”

“Still a tour guide, aren’t you? No thanks.”

She faces him. He’s sitting. This is better. “Then why did you come?”

“I came to find out how could you leave me? Why do you hate me so? I gave you so much. I gave you anything you asked for. An air-conditioned house, gold and diamond jewellery, saris, priceless shawls. Without me, would you have met people in the top families in Delhi? We are invited to three events a night, sometimes four …”

He is wearing a little-boy look, a piteous look that once pulled at her heartstrings.

Beware
.

“Vikas, tour Gurkot with me. You’ll see that the bigger your roti gets, the less there is for people in these villages. The injustice is ongoing.”

He looks as pleased as if she had presented him a polo trophy. “
Ongoing
. You’re beginning to get it. That’s how the world is, baby!” He jumps up, crosses the room, steps over the door jamb to stand on the flagstone terrace. He declaims to the snow peaks, “We’re in the top two percent of the world! We own half the world’s wealth.” He bounds back inside and he’s beside her at the table, too close for comfort but not close enough for the knife to do lasting damage. She sits down, preparing to thrust upwards. “We make ourselves rich, but as your Jesus said, ‘You always have the poor with you …’ He’s so comforting, na? That’s just the way it is.”

“Oh stop your self-justifications, Vikas! You’re just a professional consumer—”

“People like me make the world go round, baby.” His forefinger makes a circular motion. “Why judge me so harshly when every guy in America consumes twenty-five times as much? Aren’t
they
professional consumers?” He sits down again.

Keep him talking
.

“Because you’re here. In India. You proclaim you love India, yet you see the poverty and pain of poor Indians every day. What use is it to love India if you hate Indians?”

“Hate them? Your heart is bleeding all over me. Without me, hundreds of hacks, artists and musicians would go hungry. But you? You’re making them dependent. Very bad idea.”

“Since when did other Indians become ‘them,’ Vikas?” Sister Anu says though she shouldn’t, she mustn’t.

“Oh, my Anupam. You’d want me to give everything I have to the poor. Even Swami Rudransh doesn’t ask that.” He reaches down, grasps his ankle and rests it on his opposite knee.

“Yes, I know. He tells you you deserve your good fortune, instead of how blessed and lucky you are.”

“He understands that if I gave away every paisa to the poor, I couldn’t generate more wealth. But,” he scratches his head, in exaggerated perplexity, “I don’t understand why you expect the people you should be serving, your own family members, to stand in line behind strangers.”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it—what you think I ought to be doing, and what I think I ought to do.”

“So you gave up—me! And you’ve neglected your child to come to this godforsaken little town and eat dirt with the backward castes.”

“Chetna is well taken care of. If you’re so worried about her, why don’t you look after her?”

The heat of his anger swirls in the narrow room.

“I’m the ogre? I’m the one you love to hate. But I’m a very caring person—I gave blood once! I can’t say what sappy Americans say, ‘It makes me feel good to help others.’ I say what any decent Hindu would say, ‘It’s my dharma.’ Either way, it’s bloody self-interest. So, right now it’s not in my interests, okay? Got that?” He bangs his mug to the table and rises. “But what I don’t understand is
you
. Look at you, without even a nose ring or a single bangle, as if your husband can’t afford to clothe you.”

“There’s no audience to please here, Vikas. I don’t live in Delhi’s mirror world.”

“But are you really a woman who acts against her own self-interest in this deliberate, planned way? You must have a secret reason.”

“No secret reason, Vikas.”

Oh please Bethany, come home
.

He comes around the table, blocking her exit. She jumps up, her chair crashes behind her.

“Oh, Anu, come with me. No one will notice you ever left.”

“No, thank you.” She backs away.

“It’s the priest. Admit it, you’re sleeping with him.”

“No, I’m not! I have taken a vow of celibacy—do you understand?” He will hear her spiking terror, taste it, smell it.

“What celibacy? We’re not divorced yet, darling. I’m your husband.”

“You have no authority over me,” she says evenly, then lunges for the tray.

A sweep of his arm; the tray slides just out of her reach, the knife clatters to the floor, spins away into a corner. For a moment, both look at the gleaming knife in disbelief.

Vikas hisses, “You little viper. You’ve mistaken all my kindness for weakness.”

He moves toward her. Anu begins to scream.

D
AMINI’S HEAD BOBS TO THE THUNK-THUNK OF HER
umbrella, as she walks the road to Bread of Healing Clinic, her gaze on her boots. Her heart feels like a live coal in her breast. By day, she locks up her demons and attempts to restore herself while helping Leela, nursing Chunilal, working with Sister Anu in the clinic, and serving at table in the Big House. But by night, asuras emerge, spewing self-hatred as soon as she lies down to sleep, filling her dreams.

Kuri-mar
, say the demons. Girl-killer.

She must think of the task at hand, so as not to think of her paap, or how angry she is at Chunilal. She must think of what she will say to Sister Anu instead of seeing those brown eyes, twinkling like fireflies.

She will say, Sister-ji, my grandson is almost fourteen. He doesn’t look very smart, but he listens to everything. We call him a pair of ears—he gets that from me. He can repeat what we tell him. Which is very good if you want to send him downhill to summon me or Goldina. She will say, Sister-ji, Mohan can’t write anything but his name, but he can whistle if there is danger. And when you hear him play the flute you will say Lord Krishna has taken birth again.

No, not that last one
.

She’ll say, He can lift heavy weights for you, but we don’t want him to do women’s work—no cooking, no washing clothes or dishes. He likes to guard his mother, his sister—we will tell him you are another sister to him. You see, when other children see he can never be like them, they laugh at him. He doesn’t want to go to school anymore.

A truck passes, going downhill, then the minibus, grinding uphill. May Kamna be in that minibus, coming home. The girl’s run away again. She’s afraid of Chunilal, afraid of all of them, because she knows what happened to her sister. But if anyone finds out that this girl’s family can’t account for her, sometimes for two or three days at a time, she’ll be unmarriageable. If Damini had ever done such a
thing her father would have beaten her till blood ran, but Leela says she can’t beat Kamna, she isn’t a man. And Chunilal is too weak.

Leaves obscure Damini’s view of the peaks but with just a few metres of walking and around another bend, there they are, merging into a clear blue sky. Stopping a moment at the stone parapet that edges the road, Damini sees women on terraces far below—some planting and others carrying bricks. Three more cottages are taking shape, clinging to the hillsides where farmer’s homes once stood.

Should she ask for fifty rupees a month for Mohan? If so, the sister-ji will say twenty-five. Then maybe Mohan will get thirty-five or forty.

Bargaining for pay is bijness; I am not good at bijness
.

But someone must do it—Chunilal’s appetite has not responded to triphala or chavanprash, his muscles remain weak despite Damini’s mustard-oil massage and pomegranate tea. From dawn to midnight, Leela is in the jungle picking up firewood, milking the cows, heating water, and working the terrace fields. Damini does the cooking and manages the house. “A woman also needs a wife,” she told Leela, and was rewarded with a tiny smile.

It will be all right. Kamna will be home by the time Damini returns. She’ll be reclining on a gunny sack with Mohan as usual, a map spread between them, her bangles tinkling as she points out cities and towns. Damini will tell her, A good daughter needs to forget much more than she remembers.