The Space Between Us (22 page)

A
s she stops at the baniya to pick up some onions for dinner, Bhima wonders whether Maya will want to go to the seaside later this evening. She has grown to enjoy these afterdinner walks with her granddaughter, she realizes. The fresh, salty air, the stretching of her sore, cramped muscles as they walk, the anonymous mingling with thousands of other sea gazers—Bhima has begun to look forward to this. Above all, she likes how their evening walks seem to be restoring Maya to her, how the girl is slowly losing her defensive, cautious manner and returning to the cheerful, energetic girl she was before her pregnancy. Soon, Bhima thinks, she will broach the subject of returning to college. Now that Maya knows about her experience with the duplicitous accountant, surely she will understand even more how life treats those without an education. And although it will be awkward to ask Serabai for help to get the girl enrolled at a new college, for Maya’s sake, she would ask.

Bhima picks up her pace as she reaches the entrance of the slum and begins to walk down the winding alley to her hut. The paper bag that holds the onions is wet from her sweaty grip, and all she needs is for one of her onions to roll into the gutter on her right. She has plans to make spicy potatoes and onions with hot chappatis for dinner.

She flings open the front door, and the first thing she notices is the tall shadow that Maya is casting. The shadow runs up the tin
wall and onto the ceiling, so that Maya appears like a small child below it. The girl is sitting in the corner of the hut, a kerosene lamp beside her. As Bhima’s eyes adjust to the new light, she sees the powder blue paper in Maya’s hand and knows immediately what her granddaughter is reading. She throws a quick glance at her trunk, and sure enough, the lid is open. Maya looks startled, then sheepish, but as a frown begins to form on Bhima’s brow and her eyes narrow, the girl preempts her by speaking first. “I was looking for something else, Ma-ma, I swear. My birth certificate, actually. And when I saw this note, I picked it up and began to read before I knew what it was.”

“What do you need your birth certificate for?” Bhima’s voice is laced with suspicion.

Maya bites her lower lip and shrugs lightly. “I don’t know. I just…I like to look at my birth certificate sometimes. Just to, you know, read my ma’s and baba’s names on it. It…it makes me feel good, I don’t know why. Like I’m not an orphan.”

This girl will not rest until she succeeds in destroying what little is left of my heart, Bhima thinks. She, with her blessed innocence and her killer words that pierce my heart like needles. “Who said you’re an orphan?” Bhima says gruffly. “What, is your grandma dead that you’re an orphan?”

Maya smiles. But then her face grows long and worry lines perch like stray birds on her forehead. “Ma-ma, I never knew about this letter,” she says quietly.

The letter. The letter that had turned her life upside down. The letter that Gopal had shaped like a dagger and plunged into her heart. The letter, with its life-destroying words that Jaiprakash—a fellow slum dweller who, for a small fee, wrote letters for people who couldn’t read or write—had read out loud to her, his small eyes watching her reaction to each word, his professional pride in his craftsmanship, his rhetorical flourishes, overtaking his sympathy
for the woman whose life he was destroying with his words. She had saved the letter for years and years but had heard it read only once. And yet, such was its power that she remembered most of it, heard Jaiprakash’s quietly gloating voice in her dreams.

“Read it,” she now commands Maya. “I want to hear it again. I’ve had it read to me only once before.” Her voice is steady, but its effect on Maya is electric. “Ma-ma, no,” the girl protests. “Why bring up the past unnecessarily?”

Bhima smiles. “Beti, the past is always present,” she says. “No such thing as bringing it up. The past is like the skin on your hand—it was there yesterday and it is here today. It never goes anywhere. Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand this better.”

“But Ma-ma, in English there is a saying: let sleeping dogs lie. No sense in waking up a sleeping dog.”

Bhima considers this. “But what if you’re one of those unfortunates whose dog never sleeps?” she asks. And sensing that she has silenced her granddaughter momentarily, she presses her advantage. “Beti, read me the letter.”

“To the queen-of-my dreams,” Gopal had dictated to Jaiprakash.

Maya is crying silently by the time she finishes reading. But Bhima does not notice. She is remembering the first, fatal reading of the letter years earlier—how Jaiprakash had nervously licked his lips after he looked up from the last line and saw the demonic look on Bhima’s face; how she had cursed him when he informed her that Gopal and the boy had left on the 3:30 train; how she had nervously prowled the colony, waiting for Pooja to get home; how she had spent the night unable to sleep and unable to stay awake and had woken in the morning with a temperature of 104 degrees. And the days that followed—Serabai shaking her head gravely and informing her that, since Gopal was the father, there was nothing Bhima could do to get Amit back against his wishes; Bhima anxiously awaiting a letter or word of Gopal and Amit’s whereabouts; the women in the slum tsk-tsking and averting their glances when they caught sight of Bhima’s mad, haunted face; Jaiprakash avoiding her for weeks and then one day running into her and deflecting blame by spitting out, “It’s your own fault, Bhima devi. Humiliating your husband in public like that. What did you expect? A man has
his pride, you know.” And Bhima had turned away, vanquished by Jaiprakash’s words, knowing he was right.

Bhima shakes her head at her own bad fate. She concentrates to hear what Maya is saying to her. “Ma-ma,” Maya asks carefully. “Did you ever hear from my uncle Amit?”

This girl’s questions are like fingernails that she uses to pick at scabs, Bhima thinks. “Amit has never written,” she says finally, draining the hurt from her words before she allows herself to speak. “But Gopal’s older brother used to write now and then. Said he enjoyed having Amit work beside him on the family farm.”

“If I were Amit uncle, I would’ve run away back to Bombay, sure-for-sure,” Maya says consolingly.

“And left your baba behind all alone? Only wicked children abandon their parents.”

“Perhaps he will return to Bombay one of these days. What would we do, Ma-ma, if Amit uncle were to knock on our door one day?”

What would she do? I would walk on my knees to the most distant temple to offer thanks, Bhima thinks. I would fast for a week to thank the gods. I would distribute pedas to all the children in the slum. I would fly to the moon and bring it back to feed it to my child. I would cut out a piece of my liver in order to see my son once more.

Maya is talking again. “Did Grandpa know about…Did you inform him about my ma and papa?”

Bhima’s mouth is suddenly dry with fear, and she reaches for her tobacco tin. She rolls a wad and stuffs it in her cheek before she speaks. “I couldn’t at the time. Not from Delhi. There was—no time. But after we came back, you and I, I sent a letter telling him what had happened. Serabai wrote it for me.”

“What did he say?” Maya’s voice is breathless.

“His older brother wrote back. They blamed me for not informing Gopal in time. Accused me of keeping him away from his daughter. Said that my Pooja’s soul would not—” Seeing Maya’s
wide-eyed look, Bhima cuts herself off. “Anyway, after this letter, I never heard from them again.”

“Would Grandpa have come to Delhi if he’d known, do you think?” Bhima can hear the fear and hope that are buried in this question.

She closes her eyes and then opens them again, staring directly at her granddaughter. “He would’ve come. If heaven and earth had tried to prevent him, still he would’ve come. He would’ve found a way, I know this. Your grandfather loved your mother, Maya.”

“Then why did he chose Amit and leave her with you?”

Bhima swallows hard before replying. “Because he knew that I needed Pooja more than I needed Amit,” she says softly. “Amit was my son. But Pooja was my firstborn—she was my son and daughter, all in one.”

Suddenly, Maya starts crying. “My ma loved you, too, Ma-ma,” she sobs. “Believe me, don’t believe me, but I remember. Always she used to talk about Bombay and your old house and about you.”

Bhima scoots on the floor toward the sobbing girl and enfolds her in her arms. “Silly child,” she chides. “Why are you crying over long-ago things? All this happened a hundred lifetimes ago.”

“But the past is with us, Ma-ma. You just said so yourself.”

Bhima smacks Maya on the hand. “Too smart you are getting for a girl,” she says. Her face is weary as she eyes the bag of onions on the floor. “I could’ve finished cooking by now if you hadn’t delayed me with your hundred questions.” She sighs.

She thinks for a minute and then gets up. “Come on, go wash your face. We will walk to Chowpatty today and eat snacks for dinner. Too late for me to start cooking at this hour.”

B
helpuri.

It’s 7:45 in the evening, and Dinaz wants bhelpuri for dinner. They have just sat down to the wonderful dinner of khara chicken and mutton cutlets that Bhima had prepared earlier in the day when Dinaz pushes away the plate of cutlets—she pronounces it “cutles,” in the same old-fashioned Parsi way that Banu used to, making Sera fret about the bald power of genetics. “These cutles are making me nauseated,” she says, pushing them away from her. “Take them away from the table, please.”

Viraf makes a face. “I thought the nausea ended with the first trimester,” he says, and both the women know what he has left unspoken: I don’t think I could relive the terrors of the first trimester, when hormones, fatigue, and nausea turned my wife into a madwoman.

Dinaz laughs. “Stop looking so worried, yaar,” she says. “Look at his face, Mummy, all because I don’t want to eat some cutles. I tell you, it’s too bad men can’t have babies—we’d stop India’s overpopulation problem in one day, because none of them would ever get pregnant.”

“Well, you have to eat something, my darling,” Sera says. “The baby needs good nutrition and—”

“You know what I have a craving for?” Dinaz says. “Bhelpuri. At Chowpatty.”

Viraf groans. “Come on, Dinu. I’ve just gotten home from work. I don’t feel like going out again. And that stuff there is so filthy. I think they use toilet water to wash their dishes.”

Dinaz remains unfazed. “At least I’m not craving wall plaster and cockroaches and what all, like other pregnant women do.” She smacks Viraf playfully on the arm. “Gadhera. It’s your fault that I’m walking around fat as a heifer. The least you can do is feed me some bhelpuri.”

“Okay, okay,” Viraf says. “One of the duties of imminent fatherhood, I suppose.”

Sera gazes at the table of food. She had looked forward to this dinner all day. “But what about this whole meal? Bhima will be so disappointed.”

“Ah, screw Bhima,” Viraf says. “In fact, she’ll be glad. Less work for her tomorrow.” He pushes back his chair. “Okay, let’s go. Mummy, go get your shawl or cardigan. It’s a little cold for November this year.”

In the car, Sera sighs. “It’s been so long since I’ve been to Chowpatty. I hear the municipality has cleaned up the area. The last time I was there was just a few days before your daddy passed away. It was so filthy then.”

Dinaz laughs. “Daddy was so funny—he had such silly vhems and dhakheras about personal hygiene. I remember once, he and I had gone to Flora Fountain, and this lout standing on the footpath spat out his paan juice on the street. Daddy was convinced that some of the red juice had landed on my pants, although I couldn’t see a trace of it. I thought he was going to kill the poor fellow with his bare hands. And yet, he thought nothing about eating street food.”

She turns toward Viraf. “When he’d come to my school for a play or a function, he always would stop at this vendor outside the school who made the best pyali. Dad would eat two bowls. You re
member, Mummy? You used to always scold him because he ate it so spicy tears would roll down his cheeks.”

Sera smiles. “He once told me that, when he returned from London, he used to get sick after he ate the bhelpuri at Chowpatty. So he went there every day until his stomach finally adjusted.”

Viraf laughs. “That sounds like Feroz daddy all right. He was a tough guy.”

They are all silent for a minute, each of them remembering Feroz. “Next month will be three years,” Sera says softly. “Can you imagine?”

“No, it doesn’t seem that long,” Dinaz replies. There is another silence in the car. Then Dinaz says, “I didn’t know you and Daddy had gone to Chowpatty a few days before he died.”

“Yes. We had gone to the big fire temple in Fountain. Your Banu granna had had the stroke just a few months earlier, and your daddy was so upset about seeing his mother like that that he made a manta that he would go to the fire temple every day for a month to pray for her full recovery. I used to go with him sometimes. Often, we would go to Paradise for dinner. But this day, we decided to go to Chowpatty. Your daddy was always game for bhelpuri and panipuri. In fact, before our marriage we used to go there all the time.”

Viraf suddenly lets out a guffaw. “What, what?” Dinaz says, and even in the dark of the car, Sera can hear the affectionate smile in her daughter’s voice.

“Nothing,” he says. “I was just remembering the advice your father gave me the first time I was over at your house. It was for your birthday party, remember? There were so many other people there. But somehow he picked up on the fact that I, that we, liked each other. So he pulled me into a corner and said he had something to tell me. Some man-to-man advice, he called it. Basically, he told me that he thought I was a nice Parsi boy with the potential to make his daughter happy. But he said I should be persistent with
you if I didn’t want to lose you to your other suitors. ‘A man should be like a raging bull when he’s chasing a woman’ I think were his exact words. I was so scared, all I could say was ‘Yes, uncle, and no, uncle.’”

Dinaz laughs. “I think Daddy was relieved that you were a Parsi, that’s all. He was always afraid that I was going to bring home a Goanese Christian or a Hindu or, worst of all, a Muslim. Also, he had this strange belief that I would feel sorry for a man who was a cripple or in a wheelchair and marry him out of pity. Can you imagine? I think that’s the main reason he was so opposed to my being a social worker. He was forever telling me, ‘Don’t marry someone because you feel sorry for him.’ And I would assure him that the thought had never crossed my mind.” She pinches Viraf on his thigh. “What I didn’t tell Daddy was that I was waiting for a handsome cutie-pie with film star looks to come along.”

“And instead you married me,” Viraf says, pulling his lips downward. “Good thing Feroz daddy was so focused on keeping you away from physical cripples that he didn’t notice you married a mental cripple, hah?”

“Ovaru, ovaru,” Sera says crossly, clicking her fingers. “What crazy things you children say.”

“Ah, don’t fall for his tricks, Mummy. He’s just looking for his two ladies to tell him how smart and handsome he is.”

Whistling tunelessly, Viraf cruises around for a parking space. Sera smiles to herself, thinking of how different her son-in-law is from her husband. Feroz would’ve been swearing under his breath by now, and looking for a policeman to slip a ten-rupee note to so that he could park illegally. But Viraf is a thanda pani ka matla—an earthenware pot of cold water. “Aha,” he says triumphantly upon spotting a tiny space. “Bet I can squeeze in there.”

“Impossible,” Dinaz says automatically, although both she and Sera know what an excellent driver Viraf is. And when her husband
gets the car into the spot on the first try, Dinaz grunts. “Guess you’ve forgotten that your wife has a belly the size of the Sahara desert. God knows how I’m going to squeeze out of this tiny spot.”

“My, how this place has changed,” Sera exclaims as they approach the beach. “So much cleaner it is looking. I’ve heard they’re punishing people for littering and doing their private business on the beach.”

“Yah, downright unconstitutional, if you ask me.” Viraf grins. “Littering and doing soo-soo in public are a Bombayite’s birthright.”

Sera tries to remember what the beach looked like the last time she was here with Feroz. But she is distracted because all she can bring to mind is how sweet and attentive Feroz had been that night. Taking her to his favorite vendor, he had insisted that she eat the first plate Ramdas had prepared even though she knew he had not eaten all day. After they had each eaten two plates of bhelpuri, he had wanted to get some milk kulfi. “Sweetu, be careful,” Sera had said. “You know it’s bad for your cholesterol.”

“Arre, damn the cholesterol,” he’d said. “It’s been so long since we’ve come to Chowpatty. And you know what I always say—you can spend two hundred rupees getting ice cream at the Taj or some other five-star hotel, but it will never compare to kulfi at Chowpatty. Come on, just for today. I’ve been good with my diet, you know that.”

She had acquiesced, as he’d known she would; when Feroz got that pleading look on his face, she couldn’t refuse him. And since Banu mamma’s stroke, Feroz had changed. It was as if seeing his domineering mother reduced to a vegetative state had made him realize something about the brutal unpredictability of life. Every evening he went to see his mother directly from work, and when he
returned home, he seemed softer and more communicative than ever before.

“So much has happened in the last few years,” he sighed that night after they got home from the beach. In the light of the reading lamp, Sera noticed the lines on Feroz’s face and how the skin on his bald skull creased up when he was worried. Not for the first time, she was aware of thirteen years that separated her from her aging husband. “I feel like I’m still recovering from Pappa’s death, and now we have to see Mamma in this state,” Feroz said. “It’s unbearable to watch her suffering. I tell you, the only good thing that’s happened in recent years is Dinaz’s wedding. If it wasn’t for her and Viraf’s happiness, I don’t know what there would be to live for.”

Sera rose and walked over to the armchair where Feroz was slumped. She sat on its arm and stroked his head. “I was thinking that we should go somewhere for a few days, janu,” she said. “Take a trip, to Goa or something.”

He nodded. “I know. But not yet. Let’s wait till the situation with Mamma gets stabilized. I cannot bear the thought of leaving her like this.” He looked up at Sera, and she was stunned to see the tears in his eyes. So much he loves that woman, she marveled. Does he have any idea how his mother’s interference has ruined the chance of happiness in our own marriage? Does he ever think about that at all?

As if he had read her mind, Feroz continued, “I know you are needing a break, too. I thank you, Sera, for taking such good care of my mother in her hour of need. I know she’s—you’ve—she’s not been the easiest person to deal with. We will go out of Bombay soon, I promise. Maybe even take the children along. Just…not right now.”

But three days later, he was dead and that promise lay in the drawer marked Unkept Promises, along with many others. Along with the unkept promise of her marriage itself. A marriage that had
begun with such high hopes and expectations had fizzled out, like those firecrackers and rockets that Dinaz and her friends used to shoot into the heavens at Diwali time and that fell back to earth with an embarrassed hiss, as if pushed down by an unwelcoming God.

Feroz came home from work early on the day of his death, complaining of a general feeling of uneasiness. “Too much work,” Sera said. “Too much tension you are carrying around, janu. Maybe you should join a yoga class or something, to learn how to calm your mind.”

He smiled weakly. “Maybe.” Then his face fell. “I didn’t even go see Mamma today,” he said as he pulled back the covers and climbed into bed. “She will be so upset.”

Your mother can’t even recognize anyone, she wanted to say. She probably can’t tell one day from the next. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

“Come lie next to me,” he whispered, and for the first time, the thought ran through Sera’s mind that Feroz might really be sick. He had never looked so weak, so vulnerable before.

She struggled against a sudden, irrational panic. “Sweetu,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “What exactly is happening to you? Should I send for the doctor?”

“No. No doctor, please. It’s probably just the flu or something. I don’t know…I can’t exactly explain what I feel. Just like something’s fluttering in my chest. I think it’s tension. I just need to sleep for a few hours.”

Sera went into the kitchen to tell Bhima to make sure she made no noise while Feroz seth slept. “He’s very tired,” she said in response to Bhima’s curious look. “Needs some peace and quiet.”

While Feroz slept, she spent the hours making his favorite Chinese chicken-corn soup. At six o’clock she told Bhima to set the soup bowl on the table. She would go wake Feroz up—he needed to eat; he was probably weak from all the dieting he had been doing.

She tiptoed up to where Feroz was sleeping and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Sweetu,” she whispered. “Wake up. I’ve made some hot-pot soup for you.”

There was no answer. She whispered again, and she was about to shake him when she heard something. What she heard was the lack of sound in the room. Feroz was not breathing. “Feroz,” she cried, her hand going for the light switch. As light flooded the room, it fell on her husband’s still face. His mouth was open, as were his eyes, but even at the peak of her fear and distress, Sera knew that the peace that Feroz had searched for his whole life was finally his.

“Feroz,” she screamed. “No, no, no. Please, Feroz, please. Bhima. Bhima, come here. Oh, my God, no.”

Bhima came running into the room. “Serabai,” she spluttered helplessly. “Arre, Bhagwan. What is this new tragedy that has come to us?”

It was over. Her marriage was over. Just like this, in the blink of an eye, Feroz was gone. Feroz—husband and oppressor; lover and tormentor; victim and victimizer. No man had ever made her happier or more miserable. No man had loved her as passionately; no man had done more to strangle the love she felt for him. Feroz had held the keys to her happiness, but those keys had unlocked the gates of hell. He had been a mercurial man—aggressive, brilliant, violent, jealous, but also loving, generous, and capable of largesse. Perhaps it had been her fault that she had never learned how to handle this man, how to steer through the choppy waters he left in his wake. Could another woman—more worldly, more savvy—have done it differently? Would another woman have treated Banu as a nuisance, an irritation and nothing more?

“Feroz,” she sobbed. “My husband, Feroz. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. Forgive me for being such a poor wife. I was so lost in my own misery that I never stopped to consider yours.”

She must’ve been speaking out loud, because Bhima was standing at her side, lifting her head, brushing back her hair from her hot, teary face. “Come on, Serabai,” Bhima whispered. “This is the time for courage, bai. And nothing for you to seek forgiveness for. Every time the men leave, the women are the ones who ask for forgiveness. You were a good wife, bai. I saw with my own eyes, day in and day out. Now come on, we have to inform our Dinaz.”