The Selector of Souls (42 page)

Now Damini has passed the minibus stop. The driveway and wrought-iron gate set in the perimeter wall of the church compound are in sight. Further uphill, the green fence of Sardar-ji’s old home begins.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
.

Was that a scream that floated downhill? Damini stops.

There’s another. Spiralling this time, like a cheel taking wing and soaring. It comes from the cottage tucked against the hillside. The nuns’ cottage.

A third scream sends Damini scrambling down the driveway to the cottage.

The screen door is open. Clothes, books, papers strewn everywhere.

A young man has Sister Anu pinned against a wall by her throat. A saab, from his pants and shirt. Sister Anu’s hands are scrabbling at his knuckles, her black curls unbound, whipping left and right. She’s trying to kick and keep her balance at once.

At the sight of Damini, he shouts, “Ja, buddi!”

Damini is not old enough to be called a buddi.

“Ghar ki baat hai.”

Choking a woman is not a family matter. Damini advances. “Enough!” she says, bringing her umbrella down across the man’s shoulders.

He grunts, lashes out. She hardly feels the blow across her chest. She hits again, and again, though her heart is banging like a nagara drum. “Enough! Stop!”

The man’s hands drop, and Sister Anu falls like a washerman’s bundle. The Jesus-sister clasps her throat, coughs and gasps for air. Her attacker rounds on Damini. “Didn’t I say, ‘Ghar ki baat hai’?”

Damini backs away, holding her umbrella before her like a sword. “And I said, ‘Enough.’ Even if it is your family matter.”

The man swears at her in English, then Punjabi, just like Aman. He grabs her umbrella right out of her hand and tosses it aside. Now he’s so close she can hear the thud of his heart, smell his saab-perfume.

Sister Anu struggles up. “Vikas, don’t you touch her,” she rasps from swollen lips.

“Sir, I warn you, ji … this house, this place … it belongs to very powerful people,” Damini gasps out. “You better not …” His hands are pincers on Damini’s shoulders and he’s shaking her, shaking her. Her brain spins in her skull. Vision blurs. Red strands of hair whip about her face. Her kicking feet are rising off the floor. The man’s eyes bore into Damini’s.

“Don’t you tell me what to do, monkey-breath! I’ll kill you and fling you down the hillside.”

She would knee the saab in the groin, but that would enrage him further, and one cannot know all consequences.

Sister Anu hisses through her teeth in English, “Vikas, kill me or her and you’ll pay—you’re no VIP here.”

“So?” he says in English. “It’ll just take more money.”

His thumbs dig into Damini’s bones. Sister Anu is tugging at him, screaming, “Vikas, you’ll go to prison. Leave her!”

Vikas flicks the Jesus-sister away like a mosquito. “It’ll look like an accident.” His thumbs are boring through Damini’s shoulders.

“No!” Sister Anu stoops, picks up Damini’s umbrella.

And then she runs away! Runs right through the open screen door—leaving Damini still in the man’s grasp.

Anger floods in and Damini kicks harder. Her boot makes a satisfying crack against Vikas’s shins, but his vice grip doesn’t budge. A huge hand punches her stomach, smacks her against a very hard wall. She slides down and feels herself crumple to the floor. “Beta, don’t do this,” she gasps, calling him son. But he’s still grabbing at her. She rolls away, scrabbling hands reaching, searching. She touches, then grasps something long. A knife flashes into view, scaring her even more.

Vikas rears away. “Kuthi! Pagal aurat!”

Damini hates being called names like that. She slashes the air with the knife, keeping him at bay.

“Vikas! Your car!” Sister Anu shouts from outside.

Any second, Vikas will knock the knife from her hand. He glances at it, glances at the open door. Then he plunges through it.

Damini scrambles up and runs after him, knife in hand.

Outside on the gravelled drive, Sister Anu stands beside the orange car, her hair a halo of coiled springs. She’s wielding Damini’s blue and white umbrella like a cricket bat. It’s poised over the windshield. “I’ll smash it, Vikas,” she shouts.

Smashing car windows will stop this man?

“Achcha, achcha, Anu.” The young man is slowly raising his hands, like a villain at the end of a Hindi movie. “No need to get hysterical.”

“Get in the car,” says Sister Anu in English, her voice like steel.

The young man wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m getting in, see, I’m getting in. Have your romance with this bloody village.”

Before Damini’s astonished eyes, he meekly opens the orange door and gets in. Sister Anu comes around to the driver’s side, umbrella grasped at shoulder level.

“Wait’ll I tell my lawyer,” he growls at her. “Your conversion is no longer secret. Grounds for speedy divorce, baby. All it will take is one petition to the courts.”

Sister Anu feints, as if to bring the umbrella down. The man laughs. High-pitched, like a hungry hyena. “Thanks for the tea, darling. I’ll be back. You never know when.”

“Come again and I’ll not only smash your windows but slash your tires as well.”

The tinted-black pane rises. The orange car backs up the dirt driveway to the road, and turns at the top. It fades into the fog, but Damini’s head is still spinning and her heart racing. She hands Sister Anu the knife and stands beside her, gulping air.

Sister Anu returns the umbrella; a rib is hanging loose, but it’s otherwise intact.

“Are you all right?” says Sister Anu.

Damini nods, still breathless. Her arms tingle, losing their numbness. The sister leads her into the house. She points to a chair, but Damini drops to a low stool. Sister Anu brings a shawl and puts it around her shoulders. She rubs them, until Damini pulls away in embarrassment.

“Is he a movie star?” says Damini. “I have seen him, or maybe his photo.”

“That was my husband,” says Sister Anu. “I left him.”

“You have courage!” Damini says. “I would have been too afraid to try, even if he beat me sometimes. A saab with a car like that is a very big man. He probably has cooks and drivers and ammas. How could you leave him and come here?” She massages her own shoulders.

“Staying with a man like him for my own comfort or my child’s well-being would have been nothing but atm-bandhan,” says Sister Anu stoutly.

Damini’s brow puckers. Everyone has some form of voluntary servitude. She does, looking after Chunilal, afraid that if he tells her to leave his home …

“But Sister-ji, you’re from a saab family, a rich woman like my Mem-saab.”

Sister Anu shakes her head, and her hair spills over her shoulders like a canopy. “I had many things,” she says. “I just couldn’t
do
anything without permission or criticism.”

“But you had a home, food, money, clothes …”

Sister Anu pulls another low stool forward and sits beside Damini. “Those are nothing, Damini, if you can no longer respect yourself.”

Damini’s demons screech agreement; she cracks her knuckles to master them.

“A few beatings were so bad, I thought he’d kill me. I was afraid every day, all the time for nine years. I lay awake so many nights, afraid. That is no way to live.”

“You said we should ask each woman her story, before treating her,” Damini says. “But you are so healthy, I never asked yours.”

“Everyone has a story, Damini. I have one, and yours began the moment you were born. Even Vikas has one.”

Damini tilts her head. “Achcha? Are you all right now?”

“I don’t know,” says Sister Anu. “I don’t know anything. I’m such a fool.” She sinks down on the divan and covers her face with her hands.

“See: women cannot live alone.”

“I am not alone. Sister Bethany is here.”

“I mean, with no men.”

“I know what you mean.” Sister Anu squares her shoulders.

“Must be that your father gave you too-too much independence, too-too much freedom. That’s why you never adjusted to marriage. It is his fault—you should go back to your parents.”

“How much should I have to adjust?” Sister Anu doesn’t sound serene or patient right now. “My father has passed away, and I can’t go back to my mother like a schoolgirl. I’m here, and I need to do my job.”

“Tell Aman-ji what happened here today,” suggests Damini, in consoling tones. Then, “No—he’s not like his father. Sardar-saab would have hunted your husband down and recited what the Sikh Gurus said, that kings are born from women, and without woman, there would be no one at all. Then he would have dragged your husband back here to touch your feet. But Aman won’t do anything. Tell your padri.” She rises, moves behind the younger woman, gathers the curls spread across Anu’s back and begins rebraiding.

“I can’t.” Sister Anu swallows. “I—I haven’t told Father Pashan or Sister Imaculata that my divorce is still not final. My lawyer is still working on it.”

“Hello-ji! Will becoming unmarried again make your life better? A widow’s life is not easy, and a divorced woman’s life must be as difficult.”

“Yes it will. I’ll tell Father as soon as Mrs. Nadkarni says it’s final. But meanwhile, I can’t tell him Vikas came here. He’ll worry.

“Achcha, then I won’t tell the padri either.”

“I have to tell Bethany, of course, in case Vikas comes again. But …”

“You both need a sekurti guard.” Damini comes before Sister Anu, sweeps her own hair back, knots it into a bun.

Sister Anu laughs shakily. “I think I should have you for a security guard,” she says. “Thank god you came.”

“Often I hear even what the gods don’t,” says Damini. “I will send my grandson. Mohan’s almost a police officer—he will be very
good. He has a Diana airgun; he can shoot. He can at least shoot those tires. He doesn’t need much—please pay him forty rupees a month—achcha?”

Sister Anu nods and rubs her neck.

W
ILDFLOWERS
. T
REES
V
IKAS CANNOT NAME
. R
OWS OF
blue-misted ranges alternating with lowland valleys. Every layer of forest has living beings in it, beings who don’t know whose son he is, his name, the name of his school or college, or that his home in the Lutyens area of New Delhi is worth crores and crores of rupees. Wilderness outside, a jungle of confusion within. He’s driving too fast.

The silly bitch thought she was going to kill him! Bluffing—she’d never dare. Still, it’s good thing no one saw him beat that retreat. No one of any consequence. Made him feel five years old again.

That Anu! Still an atom bomb of a woman, even with no makeup or jewellery. Fire in her eyes. Always challenging him. But how can he desire a Christian? He can’t. He won’t.

He hasn’t eaten since early morning and it’s evening now. Anupam wouldn’t give him even a pakora with that horrid soapy tea. Still he must not eat too much before taking the winding road back to Shimla and the lemon-grass-scented comfort of Cecil Hotel. He pulls over at a row of shops near Jalawaaz, enters the only chai-stall there is, and plunks down on a wood-slat bench.

He asks and ignores the chai-wallah’s recommendation of mint parathas and kali-daal, curtly requesting mooli parathas instead. This will take longer—the chai-wallah has to send a boy to pull some
radishes from his field. Vikas nurses a Lion lager and a growing hunger, as he waits in dwindling light.

The chai-wallah’s eyes are too slanted—must be a spy for the Chinese. No moustache or beard; girlie-faced as an American. Shopkeepers always remain shopkeepers. And their sons become shopkeepers too. Whereas Vikas …

Where is the priest profiled in the article? Maybe he should stop at the sub-district magistrate’s office in Jalawaaz. He can say he’s on vacation, looking for land to buy. No, he’s too angry for that, and they’ll be closed by now.

The scent of mint draws his attention to a round-faced man with a beard like a close-trimmed hedge sitting at the next table. The medallion around the man’s neck flashes a photo of a man with a rupee-sized red bindi, then settles. Vikas’s hand rises involuntarily to his own.

A Kohlisons Media product has made it all the way here—well, of course.

“Bahut sundar car, sir,” says the round-faced man, as the parathas are served. “Very beautiful car.” The translation informs Vikas the man can speak English. Very little, judging from his accent.

“Yes,” says Vikas. His radish-paratha arrives and he tears off a wedge and dips it in daal. Almost as good as his cook’s—but not quite. The mint parathas might have been better.

“HIM9236—a Himachal state license—you are coming from Shimla, is it?”

“No, from Delhi.” The license plate was for the car rally.

“New Delhi? I lived many years in New Delhi,” says his interviewer, obviously delighted by the coincidence. He touches his medallion. “And I am devotee, like you.”

“Haan—yes.” Vikas wouldn’t call himself a devotee, exactly. Not like his mother.

“I used to listen to Swami-ji’s lectures every day, every day in Delhi.” The round-faced man abandons the formality of English for Hindi.

“Buy his CDs,” says Vikas, unable to resist an opportunity to sell. “VVIPs are listening to Swami-ji now. BJP politicians, RSS and VHP members, Bajrang Dal.”

“Ah—BJP, RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal.” The man raises his chai-glass to the Hindutva family of nationalist organizations.

Vikas follows suit. The saffron organizations are his bread and butter.

“Jai Bharat-Mata!” says the man, hailing the goddess of the motherland, invented by nationalists during the freedom struggle. Vikas gives himself a mental pat on the back for effective advertising, flashes a raffish grin, and introduces himself. The man follows suit. His name is Suresh Singh Chauhan, a fellow kshatriya.

Suresh points to the newspaper cutting beside Vikas. “You are reading?”

“About the Christian church.” Vikas points vaguely uphill. “Came here to see it with my own eyes.”

“It’s for sweepers. Though they call themselves Christians.” He winks a long-lashed eye.

Turns out Suresh is a teacher in Jalawaaz. With connections. By the time Vikas has finished two orders of parathas and availed himself of a fingerbowl, he and Suresh are the best of friends. Suresh is, Vikas tells him, the hope of all Hindus everywhere. He assures Suresh he will recommend him for a job as local campaign manager for the BJP. And maybe he will pull strings in New Delhi so Suresh can return there eventually. But meanwhile, there is a side job—no qualifications required, only love of the motherland.