Leela's Book

by Alice Albinia

  The month before Bharati left for England, Vyasa advertised the post of librarian for his extensive private book collection. The library on the roof needed pruning and ordering and setting to rights, and, moreover, as head of the faculty, it behoved him to give in to this indulgence. Countless college girls applied, and one afternoon, Vyasa’s assistant at the university sent him home with a huge pile of CVs; all he had to do now was select a shortlist for interview. But as he walked up the front steps to his house, and the young maid came to the door with a glass of water, Vyasa found that there was somebody waiting for him, sitting bolt upright on a chair in the drawing room, a blue folder perched on her knee.

  She explained that she was applying for the post of librarian, and as she handed over the folder with her CV inside it, and rattled off her personal details and modest accomplishments, one detail caught his attention. Her father was Shiva Prasad, member of a right-wing think tank; Hari Sharma was her uncle; she was Leela Bose’s niece. And so, instead of choosing the St Stephen’s alumna with a string of As, Vyasa hired the B.Sc. (Hons.) Home Science graduate called Sunita Sharma.

  His librarian was a pleasant, competent girl, and when she deliberately befriended Ash, a shy boy, Vyasa didn’t exactly encourage the union – but nor did he discourage it. He observed, from a position of comfortable proximity, their coming together, despite their very different social milieux, and he smiled to himself – when Ash came and told him – that they wished to be married. For what this meant, in a secretive, roundabout way, was that Leela was coming back into the family.

  The wedding date was set, and Hariprasad Sharma, Vyasa heard, was flying over from New York to attend the nuptials. Then the Lalita poem appeared in the papers, and as soon as Vyasa read it, he knew the journalist was right. How could he have been so blind? It was obvious: the verses that Meera had recited so often at Delhi parties, and which, after her death, Vyasa had conveniently attributed to her alone, had been written with Leela. She had recited them as a lament for the sister she had lost. And twenty years later, Leela had decided to publish this missing poem – the very one he had been careful to keep out of The Lalita Series because it cast him in an unflattering light. But why? As a warning. But a warning of what?

  Vyasa cast the newspapers aside and got to his feet. It was not in Leela’s interest to generate any scandalous talk about their past – she was a married woman. So maybe she had published the verse as a plea for recognition. And if so, then surely she would be open to a constructive dialogue on the issues that concerned them both. He could consult her on the extent of her authorship – he might even suggest a collaborative project – they could bring out a new volume of poems with a short biography of both poets and an introduction by Vyasa, their most formative teacher.

  As he strode back and forth across his terrace, the idea – as good ideas do – blossomed in Vyasa’s head. By the end of half an hour he was firmly convinced that it was a good idea – an excellent idea – and one, moreover, that he would take some pleasure in executing. It would require a little work, to expand on some of the more briefly explored ideas; but it would not take much time. Vyasa was used to this kind of project by now, and the writing would come with great felicity. He did not want the work to be too long. A little gem of a book: nothing pompous or verbose. Something pithy and to the point. A comment on modern India. An exploration of its diverse poetic traditions.

  Sitting down in the sunshine, Vyasa felt pleased with himself all over again. His essays about writing in the Vedic tradition had proved controversial; there had been protests and speeches and letters to the papers. But it was like a flock of noisy starlings or myna birds, this reaction: it acted as a chorus to his more powerful solo voice. Nothing was frothier than these temporary expressions of emotive modern politics, and their recurring obsession with religion. Vyasa felt sure that his work would last longer than the current government, which had almost exhausted its store of goodwill due to its near constant harping on mythological Hindu figures, none of which – the populace of India would gradually come to realise – had any control at all over grain prices at harvest, or the rate that moneylenders charged in the market, or the distance that their children had to walk to the nearest functioning school.

  And with the Delhi opening of the Living Sanskrit Akademi, Vyasa was about to enter a new epoch in his career. He had wielded all his academic force, all his powerful connections, to persuade the Archaeological Survey of India to let him use the old fort – Indraprastha itself – as the location for his lecture. He would open the proceedings with a brief speech, and following this introduction – a shortened version of the lecture he had given in New York – some of India’s finest intellects would speak to the audience. Vyasa, who was pleased by how assiduously he nurtured new scholars, had encouraged his committee to fund both a young researcher from Calcutta and another from London to come to Delhi and give papers too. The Akademi’s key remit was to promote a vibrant and engaged study of this ancient language and its literature. Nobody could accuse Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi of not making a significant contribution to the national and global commons, to the cultural and intellectual life of India.

  But all these achievements would seem hollow until Leela Sharma added her voice to the general chorus. Why couldn’t she get over her petty pride and become part of his life again? What was stopping her now? All the other women he had loved remained close to him; they were the most privileged, happy, lucky women in Delhi – in India – in the world, and they knew it. Only here were they granted unrestricted access to his marvellous brain. Only here were they given amazing intellectual insights, coupled with radical exposure to popular culture. He was liked, and praised, not just in Delhi and Bombay but in London and New York. Paris hadn’t passed him by, Berlin radiated on his consciousness, Sydney and Melbourne had felt his mark. All this could be Leela’s.

  And as he picked up the tray of coffee to take it downstairs, Vyasa couldn’t help indulging the vision of her in his arms as he made love to her that one time – so gently and sensitively – nor avoid recalling the unforgettable look of disdain on her face when it was over.

  chapter 6

  Raziya Begum, Humayun’s mother, screamed and shook the messenger – one of her dead husband’s brothers’ sons – by the shoulders. ‘Who? Who is he said to have raped?’

  ‘The girl Aisha, daughter of Tabasum.’

  She raised her arm, and the nephew cowered. After she let him go, he ran home through the streets of the basti and told his father and uncles that Auntie Raziya was mad with grief.

  Raziya had her wits about her, however. Her first action was the practical one of going to visit the Professor, who knew the family well, in addition to having employed Humayun the night before to drive them to his son’s wedding. He would provide a good reference with the police, as well as an alibi.

  The Professor wasn’t at home when she arrived – the whole family had left for the wedding lunch off Lodhi Road – and Raziya was forced to talk to the family cook, a chubby, opinionated Hindu man, originally from Sindh, whom she disliked. ‘The Professor’s son was married yesterday,’ the cook said provokingly, as if Raziya didn’t know the family business. ‘We haven’t seen your son since he drove them home from the wedding and then went out to look for the maid, this young girl Aisha.’

  ‘Aisha works here?’ Raziya clenched her fists behind her back.

  ‘You didn’t know? Your own son Humayun came and asked on her behalf.’

  Raziya’s knuckles turned white. The cook opened the door wider. ‘You can step in and wait. Make yourself some tea, you know where everything is kept.’

  Raziya followed the cook into the hallway of the house where she had spent so many years of her life, raising these two children, and raising her own son, and looked around her. Everything was exactly the same as before. The house, so carefully arranged by the Professor, with its paintings and photographs, its thick, richly coloured carpets and elegant objects, even smelt the same
.

  There was a photograph on the stairs that she recognised, of the Professor’s wife. Raziya was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking at it when the Professor arrived home. He seemed preoccupied. ‘Whatever you have to say must wait until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’m too busy now.’

  ‘But, sir,’ she protested.

  ‘Enough,’ he said, raising his hand to stop her. ‘Please come back tomorrow.’ And before she could say anything further, he walked away upstairs.

  Standing outside in the street, her head bowed again with the horror of her son’s predicament, Raziya felt helpless. She looked up at the house. She would have to come back again tomorrow and wait to see him at the house. She would wait every day if necessary. And eventually he would help her – he had to – in return for the care she had lavished on his motherless children. That was only fair.

  Raziya’s arrival in the Chaturvedi household twenty-two years ago had coincided with a difficult period in the Professor’s life. His young wife had just given birth to the twins, but she found the feeding painful, and Raziya, who herself was trying to conceive, felt scornful of this woman, this half-mother, this creature who couldn’t even cook her family dinner, who barely spoke to the ayah or cast an eye over her son and daughter. It was her husband, Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi, who represented the only link between the parents and their offspring.

  Raziya and the twins spent long hours alone together. Once, during a spring afternoon, when Raziya was out walking them in their pram, a woman approached. Raziya stopped still and felt the chill of the winter sun making the hair on her arms stand up in fear. She recognised the woman from a photograph the Professor used to have hanging on the wall of his top-floor library. In the picture, a pair of young students were staring boldly at the camera. Every time Raziya dusted the picture she would stare back in wonderment at the brash smiling confidence of Meera, and the extraordinary beauty of the young woman who sat just behind her. One day, after the Professor had been arguing with his wife, Meera threw the photograph to the ground and the glass smashed and scattered its brilliance all the way down the stairs. Raziya had been sent to sweep up the tiny shards. But though she collected the glass together, the print, the black-and-white photograph, this she had hidden under a pile of papers on the Professor’s table. It was her first act of defiance against her mistress.

  When she saw the beautiful woman from the photograph in the flesh, then, she sat down on the bench and looked at her curiously. The woman came quite close and held her breath. Bharati and Ash were asleep, their dark eyelashes fluttering slightly. ‘Which one is the daughter?’ the woman said, and Raziya pointed her out. ‘That one.’

  ‘May I hold her?’ the woman said.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Raziya said.

  ‘Is she a peaceful baby?’

  ‘Very peaceful.’

  ‘What is she called?’

  And after a pause, Raziya told her: ‘Bharati.’

  ‘Bharati.’ The woman turned the word on her tongue. Then she sat down on the bench and slipped something into Raziya’s hand. It was a bangle. A thick, gold bangle. ‘I will sit here with you until she wakes up.’

  They sat together in silence, watching Bharati. The sun sank lower in the sky, and the park filled up with young boys and girls. Raziya said eventually, ‘I’ll have to take them back to the house. They might catch a chill.’ She leant over the pram, lifted up the sleeping Bharati, and placed her gently in the woman’s arms. The baby stirred slightly but didn’t wake. When Raziya took her back again, barely a minute later, the woman gave a little sob. Bharati, still sleeping peacefully, had curled her fingers around the woman’s finger.

  They walked together with the pram over to the entrance of the park. ‘I would like to see them once more,’ the woman said. ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’

  And Raziya answered without any hesitation: ‘We’ll be here tomorrow morning at ten.’

  ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ the woman said.

  As a reward for this second meeting, Raziya received some gold earrings and a necklace. The woman lay on the grass with the babies on the rug beside her, and although they had only just begun to smile, and neither of them had laughed yet, the woman seemed tirelessly to examine Bharati’s face, to watch her waking eyes register the leaves and shadow; and it was she, the woman, who laughed out loud when the baby’s little face smiled.

  As for Raziya, she told nobody about the gold, not her timid husband, nor his brothers’ wives, nor even her sisters on the times they came to visit from the village. She hid the jewellery at the bottom of her trunk and said nothing – but the knowledge was like a warmth within her. It gave her a sensation she had known neither in her childhood nor in her marriage. It was not just the hard fact of the gold itself. It was as if the strange pretty woman had handed her a chance for independence.

  For months, the way in which she was to take this chance remained opaque. Then, one evening, when her mistress was dressing for a party, Raziya entered the room to find her angrily pulling off an embroidered shirt. ‘The cut is wrong,’ Meera said, standing before her, naked but for a skirt and bra. She held out the shirt and dropped it to the ground. ‘Can you fix it?’

  Raziya nodded. Her father had been a tailor; she had grown up hearing the whirr of his sewing machine. He made his money from the dull, straightforward clothes that men liked to wear, the simple long shirts and baggy cotton trousers with their endearingly limited range of variation. But he also made clothes for his daughters, and although Raziya had never been encouraged to think that she might practise this profession – of course not – she had learnt it de facto. She had learnt how to sew and cut and hem. She had been taught about the fall of certain fabrics. She knew, above all, how to achieve with her needle and scissors the things that made women happy.

  And so, as she sat on the veranda in the afternoons, the twins asleep in the room behind her, one of her mistress’s silk blouses in her hands, she began to imagine a small shop in the basti, designs from catalogues pinned to the walls, an array of coloured threads, the satisfying snip of her tailoring scissors. As a first, tentative step, she sold the thick gold earrings dotted with jewels that the woman had given her, and bought a sewing machine. After that, she began to take in the odd bit of sewing for neighbours. Over the next few years, she continued to dream of this shop and the life it might entail.

  Then, by the time the twins turned three, Raziya got pregnant at last. Remembering the morning at the tomb, she named her boy Humayun. Her husband, cautious at the best of times, agreed that it was a nice name, though unusual; her mother-in-law openly disapproved, complaining that people would think her grandson was a Shiah; but Raziya was adamant. She wanted her son to remind her of how she had acquired ambition, and how, one day, she would secure him a life different from her own.

  Perhaps nothing further would have happened if her husband, sickly as he was, had not contracted dengue fever and died. Raziya was now a widow, with a weaker position in her in-laws’ home than before. She knew that if her business was to thrive, she had to move out. She could never achieve financial independence if she stayed: her brothers-in-law would circumscribe the hours she worked; her sisters-in-law would interfere and say disparaging things to her clients; all of them would want to take a cut.

  There was a building she had seen on the Lodhi Road side of the basti. The cheap top-floor rooms were for sale; the commercial property at the bottom was being put out on rent. The living space that went with the shop was crucial. So Raziya went to see the Professor and told him what she needed. Humayun was only four years old – she was a widow, with a tiny son, he couldn’t very easily refuse her. She showed him the work she was doing; she explained about the commercial opportunity she, as a female Muslim tailor, offered in this neighbourhood. She would continue to come in part time, for a year or so, to take care of his children. But soon they wouldn’t need an ayah. They were already busy with school – their grandmother was living with them; and by
the time her shop was established, Raziya calculated, she would have looked after the twins for long enough.

  What the Professor suggested pleased her: he would buy the shop and the residence outright from the owner, she would buy it back from him in monthly instalments. By the time the property was entirely hers, she would have paid him three per cent more than the original selling price, in line with inflation.

  And that was what happened. He had papers drawn up, which she signed; she took her son and moved to their new home; and throughout the years that followed, there would come moments when she would look up – at her workers, at the rail of ladies’ suits, at the measurement book where the statistics of every woman she sewed for were recorded – take a deep breath and go slowly upstairs to her bedroom, to unlock the trunk and unfold the cloth bundle with its thick gold bangle and long Hindu necklace, and remind herself of how it had happened.

  Even though many years had passed, Raziya had remembered the woman immediately when she passed by the shop after closing time – still the same wavy black hair, the same erect bearing, above all the same impossibly elongated eyes. But things were different now – Raziya was a businesswoman, not a servant – and she refused to speak to the woman about the gold, even though she hadn’t sold it. She had kept the thick bangle and the chain with its pendant. The bangle would be good for a daughter-in-law; the pendant, with its lacquerwork butterflies and peacocks, would probably have to be sold. But the woman’s peremptory tone annoyed Raziya; she wanted nothing further to do with her.