The Selector of Souls (66 page)

Sharad Uncle hugs her as if she is only going to Bombay—
oops
, Mumbai. But Purnima-aunty holds her tightly and murmurs into her ear, “Email us, call us. Call your mother also—she will miss you even if she doesn’t say so. Now you go, my littlest baby, and bring your baby home. Be happy—ja!”

Sharad Uncle prepays a porter to see her through the door, helps with her baggage all the way up to Security. On the other side, Anu strolls the Duty Free. Feeling daring, even reckless, she buys an eau du toilette for herself, opens it, even sprays some on. For Rano and Jatin, she buys a coffee-table book with photos of India. For Chetna, she is carrying her jewellery and the rest of Dadu’s stamp collection in her carry-on. She also has a new edition of the
Panchatantra
, several Amar Chitra Katha comics, and two children’s books by Ruskin Bond in her suitcase.

Boarding, she notices the flight attendants are not wearing saris or salwar-kameezes, but skirts and blouses—even as Christians try so hard to Indianize for survival in India. The TVs light up as soon as the doors are closed for take-off. “Within a decade,” says the American-accented newscaster, “there will be a home kit that will offer a private non-fail way for a pregnant woman to test if she is having a boy or a girl. At ten weeks, when the fetus is still an early embryo.” The assumed inevitability of the march of technology is in her voice.

Sleepless in her window seat, Anu sips from a bottle of Bisleri water.

Why should Chetna trust you? So what if you gave birth to her—what have you done since?

Her skin tightens beneath the air draft from the nozzle above her. Her head rolls to her shoulder.

And Sister Imaculata is flying beside her on the wing, black-booted feet dangling below her white skirt. She’s just beyond the double oval of the plane window, bearing mauve hydrangeas in outstretched hands.

A rush of euphoria pours into Anu’s tiredness. She will learn about Halloween. She will see chestnuts roasted on an open fire. She will taste pancakes with maple syrup, and shop with Chetna at Little India on Gerrard Street.

The plane lands and Anu walks down corridor after corridor, collects her bag from the carousel and loads it on a trolley-cart. A woman wearing a uniform blazer over a sari collects her customs form. Anu pushes her cart through the automatic doors.

A throng of eyes. Raised placards. Maybe Rano hasn’t come.

But one face stands out in the crowd, a sparrow face like Mumma in old pictures. A little girl is jumping up and down and calling. Anu drops her baggage, and begins to run.

Chetna, oh my Chetna
.

Non nobis solum
Not for ourselves alone.

Motto of the Order of Everlasting Hope

M
IDWAY THROUGH A
J
ANUARY MORNING, CLOUDS SAIL
between the crests of the far hills. Damini locks the storage sheds, takes up her umbrella, and turns to descend the stone stairs when Chunilal’s purple-green truck comes to a stop beside her. Kamna descends the ladder from its cab.

“So you’ve come,” says Damini. “Your mother waits for you two each day as if you were the moon who will break her fast.”

“But
you
haven’t missed us at all.” Kamna teases, embracing Damini. “I just made a delivery to the Big House,” she says. “Amanjit-ji is building a greenhouse to grow medicinal plants.”

“He’ll sell them to foreigners.” Damini jabs her umbrella into the ground.

Kamna adjusts her dupatta and kameez and shakes her wrists, displaying her tinkly rainbow of bangles. “Look!” she says. “Steel, like your kara.”

“You be unbreakable too,” says Damini. “Mem-saab said women
and
men wear it to remind us we are the keepers of birth and rebirth.”

Mohan comes around the truck and embraces her. He rattles off the towns they have passed through. “Barog, Solan, Dharampur, Kandaghat, Shogi, Shimla, Jalawaaz …”

“Very good, very good,” says Damini, turning again to the stairs.

“Wait! Look who I brought,” says Kamna. “All the way from Delhi.”

A woman in a blue-green printed salwar-kameez with a matching dupatta across her shoulders comes around the truck. When she takes off her sunglasses, Damini recognizes Sister Anu.
“Vah!”
she says, and folds her hands. But the former Jesus-sister embraces her.

Mohan lies down on the ground, sticks out his tongue and catches a few drifting snowflakes. “You said I could eat snow like ice cream,” he says to Kamna.

“Maybe next January,” says Damini. “There’s not even a centimetre this year. Come, come, Sister-ji. We are indeed honoured.”

They descend the stairs and find Leela in the cow’s room. She almost overturns the milk bucket in delight. Greetings and exclamations take flight on the crisp mountain air. Kamna has brought new combat boots for Damini, and a yellow and red printed salwar-ka-meez with a matching dupatta for Leela. Anu has brought a Nokia cellphone as a gift to both of them.

“So you can call your sisters or call me in Delhi,” she tells Damini. “Kamna can show you how to use it.”

“I know how,” says Damini. “I’ve seen Kiran-ji using hers. But I’ll only fill up ten rupees at a time.”

Chai will warm everyone. Mohan brings a plastic chair for Anu, then helps Leela carry a large pot of water to the cookroom. Kamna and Damini sit cross-legged on Damini’s speaking platform, facing Anu.

“It’s good that Kamna brought you,” Damini says to Anu, “I hope you corrected her driving. I worry about her all the time. A young girl—late at night. Driving on the Grand Trunk Road, brushing against death at every turn. At least she has a brother beside her.” But as she says it, she knows the mere presence of a man may not be enough when a policeman’s open palm thrusts through the cab window.

Anu says, “We cannot protect everyone we love, Damini.”

“Is your daughter still in Canada?”

“No, Chetna lives with me in Delhi.”

“It’s not too hot, crowded and dirty for her?”

“No. And she enjoyed riding to Shimla in the truck.”

“She speaks Hindi only slowly,” says Kamna. “But she was telling me on the way that she learns better in English and still misses many things from Canada. And her boyfriend.”

“
Haw!
A boyfriend?” says Damini.

“And girlfriends,” Sister Anu says quickly. “And she misses peanut butter sandwiches, Nanaimo bars and blueberry pie.”

“Those are to eat?” Damini asks.

Sister Anu nods.

“I told her I’m sure her boyfriend’s donuts will come to India soon,” says Kamna. “Nowadays everything from outside is coming in—Mr. Timmy’s will too.”

“But you didn’t bring her to meet me,” Damini accuses.

“We stopped at St. Anne’s in Shimla,” Anu says. “Not for long, because my old teacher, Sister Imaculata, has gone back to her country, and many nuns I knew have been transferred. I wanted to see you and the new private clinic and Sister Bethany at the school here. Chetna wanted to stay and play basketball with some girls at St. Anne’s, so I came with Kamna.”

“So young but deciding if she wants to go, where she wants to go—it’s good?” says Damini.

“It’s very good,” says Kamna. She gazes past Damini at the distant grandeur of the peaks. “Chetna liked riding in my truck, and she was so kind to Mohan. She was telling me they have Muck-dun-alds in Canada, too. And Bata. And all the way I kept thinking to myself, ‘I still wish I also had a little sister.’ ”

Damini’s throat closes in remembrance and loss; she takes a deep breath. “It’s not easy to lose a sister, or a granddaughter.”

“Or a daughter,” Anu says, as Leela rejoins them. She points down the valley splashed with asphodels, “What are those?”

“Temples,” says Leela. “Farmers are competing to build shrines to Anamika Devi. See, all of them have a view of the snow peaks. So much effort have they spent that they would protest in marches and
in court if Amanjit-ji were to demolish a single one. Not one would allow his ancestral land to fall into the hands of any man who has not pledged respect to the goddess.”

“India is shining here today,” Kamna rubs her palms together, then thrusts her fists beneath her armpits. “But I’m surprised Amanjit-ji is here in January.”

“He goes back and forth to Delhi every few weeks for his legal matters,” says Damini. “One case with Timcu-ji, and one in which he’s suing your Suresh Uncle’s boss for the damage to the chapel, the gurdwara and the
Guru Granth Sahib
. But at every hearing Lord Golunath denies Aman-ji any favours.”

When Anu asks, Damini tells her that yes, people still come to her with questions for Anamika, and when they do, she wraps herself in Mem-saab’s violet phulkari shawl and repeats her mantra till she falls into trance. Then the many voices within her rebound on the hills, echoes turn to pictures, and Damini describes the unseen that she sees. “If a daughter is coming to a home, Anamika Devi tells that truth. If a boy is coming, Anamika Devi foretells that too, just like an ultra-soon machine. I don’t know how this is. But before every puch-session, before any questions of boy or girl can be asked, I say the women should first tell their stories. Men have to be still and listen at this time.”

“What does that do?” says Kamna.

“Men unlearn that thing they learned to call women’s stories—‘complaining.’ ” says Damini.

“And maybe they learn how it feels to be a woman,” says Leela.

“I don’t know if they can,” says Damini. “Even some women can’t feel what poor women feel.” She’s remembering Kiran as she speaks.

“Do the women speak truly in front of men?” asks Anu.

“Once they begin, women soon forget others are listening, and speak from their hearts. And as we listen, all of us compare. And one woman’s story is nothing like another’s—not even her mother’s, her sister’s, her daughter’s or her grandmother’s. When the telling is
over, Leela comes forward. She helps me allow only women to ask questions of the goddess. And do you know, their telling then shapes the questions they ask! But sometimes Leela still has to teach those who can speak but not ask, how to ask Why and Why Not.”

“What do the men say?” asks Anu.

“Oh, they grumble! They say, ‘We ask the questions.’ ”

Leela adds, “Then I say, ‘Anamika Devi says we women must question, even if questions are disrespectful. Maybe there are no answers, maybe even she can’t find the answers, but we have to start from questions.’ ”

“Do the men agree?” says Anu.

“Oh no,” says Leela. “They say questions are dangerous, that questions challenge what is and change what will be. They say questions deprive the world of mystery. We say, ‘Yes, but each question invokes respect for Lord Golunath even as we worship Anamika Devi.’ ”

“Leela tells them many forms of questioning. How to ask, what to ask and when,” says Damini.

“The men must be worried you’ll misguide the women,” says Kamna.

“The women’s questions are their guides,” says Damini. “Not I or Leela. And men can ask their questions through the women.”

“But Anamika Devi won’t answer bijness questions,” says Leela.

“Like?” says Kamna.

“Like, ‘How much will the boy’s side ask to take this girl?’ ” says Damini.

Anu shakes her head. “We need new words to talk with men, maybe even a new language.”

“You may be right,” says Damini. “We need new words even to talk to daughters and sons. Anamika Devi can bring about reality, but she can’t answer every question I have. Once I asked her why Lord Ram or Jesus Christ needed a birthplace, and she said this is a question only a man can answer. I asked, ‘Why is
koi
always a man? Why can’t someone also be a woman?’ This, she said, was a question for Lord Golunath.”

Damini teaches women who can speak but not act how to disrupt their own lives with questions. To women who can only do as they are told, she explains how to go on strike by refraining from doing, and gives words to use when any master expects them to work without pay.

And because she is a pair of ears, Damini also hears what supplicating women need to say to men. Don’t want to get married to the boy your father has chosen? Damini hears the request beneath your question, and asks Anamika Devi to tell your father so. Want to study and never get married? Damini hears and asks Anamika Devi to tell your father for you. Want your husband to use a topi when he comes to you at night? Damini hears you and asks Anamika Devi to tell your husband so.

“Women can have strange desires,” says Kamna.

“Yes, sometimes women come who want and need no children, not even one son. Or women pray to Anamika Devi for a daughter. Anamika Devi can even tell a father or husband such desires.”

“Can you speak for all women? Any woman?” says Anu.

“No. Only those with whom my spirit bonds. The Sikh scriptures say, in ancient Punjabi,
dhol dharm daya ka poot
. ‘Responsibilities rise not from birth, but from compassion.’ If I find compassion, I will think not only of my duty, but of the effects of my actions on others.”

“And what if you can’t?” says Anu.

Damini wags her head ruefully. “If my compassion fails, angry demons come. Usually, I can discharge them before they harm anyone—but sometimes, yes, they find speech.”

Leela gets up, “The water must be boiling over!”

“Will girls be allowed to have sisters in Gurkot?” says Kamna, when her mother has left.

“I think so, yes,” says Damini, “When a little sister is coming, Anamika Devi asks for an oath, deep sworn in her presence, that the girl will be named at birth, but not before.”

“Not before?” says Anu.

“No. Before birth, she says a woman is two-in-one and must be asked what she wants and if a cleaning is her wish, she should be cleaned.”

If Anu does not agree, at least her silence agrees that no rule adequately addresses every woman’s story. Leela returns with a trayful of steaming glasses and a bowl of sweet jaggery.

“But after the child is born,” says Damini, “I say devotees should remember that the goddess wants no others to remain unnamed like herself.”