by Meira Chand
Each day when Shiva returned from school, Sita made him tea, silently placing the thick glass tumbler on the floor beside the desk. He rarely looked up to acknowledge her or the food she prepared every evening, and she ate her own meal later when he was busy again at his desk. She took care to keep her head covered, as was proper before a husband, but sometimes caught him staring at her, as if in displeasure, and was filled with anxiety.
When Shiva was out of the room there was little for Sita to do. All their washing was given to a nearby laundry, and an old Tamil woman came to sweep and clean. Each day Sita walked the short distance to the top of the lane, to the stall at the corner to buy Shiva a coconut. Vishwanathan greeted her warmly, and picked out the choicest nut from his daily delivery.
From the window of her new home Sita could see up the road to the back of the Ramakrishna Mission School and the strip of grassland behind it. The school was the centre of her husband’s life and he spoke enthusiastically about it.
‘Hindu monks from India run the school. Swami Bhaswarananda, the principal, has helped me. The mission does many good things, caring for the poor and sick, educating children and taking in orphans. Even the architecture is special, bringing together a little of all religions,’ Shiva told her, pointing out the Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist motifs, as he stood beside her at the window on their first morning as man and wife.
Sometimes, the faint hum of children’s voices drifted to her from the school, and Sita listened to the sound, nostalgia twisting through her at the thought of how, as a child, she had longed to go to the village school like Dev.
She remembered, when her mother was not looking, stealing out of the house, to run along the path Dev walked to school everyday, skirting the village and the muddy pond beside the temple where the buffalo drank. She ran past the great banyan tree, its roots hanging down like an old man’s beard, past the hut of paper and twigs the fingerless leper shared with his hairless dog. She ran on breathless until she neared the school with its whitewashed walls and dark tiled roof. As she approached, the low humming that always emanated from the place grew louder, the rhythmic drone of children’s voices repeating their lessons. The breath throbbed in her chest as she leaned against the hot wall of the schoolhouse, afire with the sun. Stretching up, she peered through the window at the rows of boys sitting cross-legged on the floor. Dev’s brow was furrowed in concentration as he repeated the words written on a blackboard that the teacher tapped with a long thin cane. With her cheek against the burning wall, Sita absorbed the hypnotic chant. It throbbed through her like the buzzing of invisible insects, the magic mantra of rote learning.
Once, she told her father she wanted to go to school. Even now she recalled how the sour male smell of him, of work and sweat, of tobacco and dust and the raw edge of life’s frustration, had closed about her.
‘And who will marry you if you go to school? What in-laws will want an educated girl who will bring her husband an early death?’ He grabbed Sita as she skipped playfully about him, and hit her so hard her lip began to bleed.
Then her mother was there, dragging her into the safety of her arms, curling her body protectively about her, taking the blows for her daughter. Sita felt the dull thuds reverberating through her mother’s body as she pressed against her. Yet, they both knew they were deserving of this anger, because they were women. Sita could see their powerlessness in her mother’s constant pregnancies, the way she hurried back from the well so that water was in the house for her husband before sunrise. She saw it in the commanding stance of men as they thrashed a bullock pulling the plough, as they gossiped in the shade of the trees, drawing on pipes or strong smelling bidis. She saw it in the way her mother shrank back against the wall, preparing to absorb yet another of her husband’s meaningless poundings, the butt of his disappointment that life had not yielded him more.
Now, so many years later, as Sita listened again to the familiar sound of rote chanting coming from the Ramakrishna Mission School, she imagined her husband rapping a blackboard with a long cane, kind but firm with his pupils. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of him when he accompanied a group of young boys to the playground for a game of cricket. Once, a photographer had appeared and the boys gathered about Shiva under the trees, posing for a photograph. Standing behind his pupils, hands on their shoulders, Shiva smiled at the camera.
Some days later he showed Sita the picture, encased now in a thin metal frame. Sita examined the image of her husband, his bright intense eyes and the gleaming ebony hair springing away from his brow with a life of its own, and placed the photo on the shelf, between Shiva’s shaving mug and a small bronze nataraja figurine. Within a metal ring of fire the god Shiva, after whom her husband was named, performed the cosmic dance of life, destroying the old in order to create the world anew, controlling the never-ending cycle of time. Each morning Sita performed a daily devotion before the god, placing a strand of jasmine or a blossom picked from the frangipani tree outside the window, in front of the statuette, and lighting a stick of incense each evening.
From the moment Shiva left for the school each morning, Sita’s day was spent awaiting his return. When he came home Shiva settled immediately at his desk, busying himself with the writing of provocative articles for a local Indian language newspaper on the need for Home Rule in the country. Shiva also wrote pamphlets and flyers of inflammatory rhetoric, for distribution on the street corners of Little India, or at the nearby Indian Youth League where he lectured on India’s history and culture, and the need for freedom from colonial rule. Occasionally, he looked up from his desk to shout, ‘Tea’ or ‘Water!’ and Sita scurried to fulfil his command. As he worked, Sita crouched silently in a corner, sewing or mending, content to watch her husband’s hand flying over the pages as he wrote, listening to the industrious scratch of his pen. It was the same sound she had listened to every day from her hospital bed in Vrindavan, as Dr. Sen filled in medical reports.
On that day in Vrindavan, when she had been admitted to hospital, she had finally awoken and looked up into the face of the plump middle-aged woman in a homespun sari who had examined her earlier at the clinic.
‘Ah! You’re feeling better,’ Dr Sen smiled, her round cheeks lifting, a dark shadowing of hair apparent on her upper lip. Fragments of memory returned to Sita as she struggled to make sense of where she was. The pain of breathing and the fury in Roop’s face at the clinic were the only things she remembered as she looked up at the doctor.
Later, Dr. Sen placed a tray of food before her. Sita inhaled the aromatic smells and stared at the root vegetables she had not seen for months in the ashram, and at the oily pulses and the round sweet ladoo.
‘I cannot eat these things,’ Sita whispered, looking down at the taboo food.
‘You are no longer in the ashram. Eat what you feel like,’ Dr. Sen ordered, standing over Sita until the dishes were empty and she lay back replete.
In the days that followed, Sita ate and slept, listening to the chirping of birds in the trees outside. Dr. Sen had set up a narrow cot for her in a corner of the small office she occupied as Medical Director. Since Sita was a widow, Dr. Sen felt it best to keep her away from the other women in the general wards who, with their usual blind adherence to traditional ways, would inevitably complain about some form of the evil eye and other pollutions being cast upon them by contact with her.
Sita was more than happy to share the doctor’s room. The sun pushed through the dirty window, and an ubiquitous religious calendar, similar to the one in Sita’s old home and her aunt’s house, hung on the wall above her bed. She stared up at the familiar image of the goddess Durga with her benevolent smile, riding upon her tiger, and was filled with new hope. Dr. Sen bustled in and out of the room between her crowded clinics, as did the nurses, mostly Anglo-Indian or lower caste girls who were Christian converts, and who came to take Sita’s pulse and temperature, efficient and firm, but not talkative.
Only the sweeper, a woman of the harijan
caste who cleaned the room, liked to gossip, and through her Sita learned something of Dr. Sen. As an Untouchable, the woman was forbidden to speak or look at those of higher caste, but she felt free to speak to Sita, who, as a widow now belonged to the living dead, and so shared the same status as all outcastes.
‘The lady doctor is unmarried, living with her widowed mother and looking after her, just as a son would do. The lady doctor does more than any man. They say she has lived with Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram, cleaning his spinning wheel, writing his letters while he fasted to get the British out of our country. The Mahatma came to Vrindavan once and upset all the rich men because he stayed with our harijan people. The lady doctor also visits our huts, and cares for our children, asking no money from us.’ The woman gossiped as she moved about on her haunches, swishing a mop of wet newspapers industriously about the floor with a broom of thin twigs.
Dr. Sen spent a few minutes with Sita in the morning when she arrived at the hospital, and in the afternoons sat at a small desk in the room, filling in forms and writing reports. Sita was happy to lie back in bed and stare at the woman, absorbing her powerful profile with its thrusting, well-padded chin and straight rod of a nose. Her sari was draped with practical grace about her short plump form, the pallu pinned up on her shoulder to leave her arms free. A thick roll of oiled hair lay in a heavy bun on her neck, like a coiled muscle waiting to spring. Sita put a hand to her own skull, and felt with surprise the soft sprouting of hair.
While Dr. Sen sat at her desk, people came in and out of the room to ask for direction on various matters. Dr. Sen dispensed orders in a firm voice and Sita noticed that no one queried her command, not even the male doctors and orderlies, who were clearly uncomfortable taking instructions from a woman, but were forced to recognise her authority in a position they thought should be filled by a man.
As Sita watched Dr. Sen busily filling in her reports, she wondered what must it feel like to have the power to read and write? Sometimes, she stared up at the sky, at the movement of clouds, and wondered at the endless space, and all that lay beyond her comprehension. The knowledge Dr. Sen possessed must be like seeing beyond the clouds.
‘When will I go back to the ashram?’ Sita whispered at last, after she had been in the hospital a number of days. She was beginning to feel stronger, and had found the courage to ask Dr. Sen the question that was now constantly on her mind.
‘We will see.’ Dr. Sen took care to reply easily, not looking up from the papers on her desk.
Dr. Sen had also been considering this very question. The black gnome from the ashram came regularly to ask when Sita might be collected, and she feared she could not put off the day much longer. She had spoken to certain people at the municipal level about Sita, but found most men were loath to discuss the matter, feeling in their hearts that things were just as they should be; the child widow was in an ashram as tradition demanded, and indeed where else should she be? Dr. Sen also knew that as a woman, and an unmarried spinster at that, she was seen to have no right to question men of rank about such age-old structures and beliefs.
As Dr. Sen industriously wrote her medical reports, Sita listened to the scratch of her pen until she could bear it no longer and the words spilled out from her.
‘Will you write to Dev for me?’
‘Tell me who is Dev and what you want to write,’ Dr. Sen nodded, looking up from her papers.
Sita felt her heart lurch and reached a hand to her breast, only to realise she was in unfamiliar hospital pyjamas and that the pouch of Dev’s letters was not on her.
‘Your things are here,’ Dr. Sen said, seeing her alarm, opening a cupboard beside the bed and retrieving the worn muslin pouch. Sita grasped it in relief; not only could she not read Dev’s letters, but without the address inscribed upon them he was lost to her forever. She thrust the creased sheets into Dr. Sen’s hand.
‘What shall I write?’ Dr. Sen asked, picking up a fresh sheet of paper, her pen readied above it.
When at last a reply to Sita’s letter came from Dev, his shock at events was palpable and his thanks to Dr. Sen effusive.
‘Respected Madam Doctor, send my sister here to me in Singapore. Ticket money I will borrow from employer or moneylender and transfer to you through some reputable person or bank. I was not knowing any of this; my relatives were not informing me of my sister’s marriage or her husband’s death. Too much pity for my sister.’
Dr. Sen was pleased with this reply. ‘It shows your brother cares for you, and does not have the old-fashioned attitudes that hold this country back. He sounds like a fine young man. Whatever awaits you, you will have a new life, and it will be better than this. Soon Mahatma Gandhi will see that laws are passed to allow young girls like you to remarry. Slowly things will change.’
‘I do not want to remarry,’ Sita said, her voice no more than a whisper.
The next day Dr. Sen opened a large atlas and showed Sita a map, placing a stubby finger on the great coloured landmass of India. Sita stared at the light and dark smudges that were craggy mountain ranges and huge barren plains, and followed Dr. Sen’s finger as she traced a line to the many-pronged mouth of the Ganges, leaking out into the ocean. Dr. Sen pointed to a black dot that she said was the town of Calcutta, from where Sita would set sail for Singapore. Leaving the solid body of India her finger journeyed over the blue emptiness of the ocean, to a distant tongue of land, beneath which rested a miniscule point that she said was the island of Singapore.
‘Very small,’ Sita whispered, appalled at the expanse of ocean between India and the faraway speck at the bottom of the page.
‘Very small,’ Dr. Sen nodded in agreement as they stood looking down at the map.
‘But your brother is there,’ she reminded Sita.
‘My brother is there,’ Sita repeated, happiness flooding through her.
Now, as Sita watched Shiva’s pen moving over the page, these memories were as distant as a past life. Hidden behind the veil of her sari, Sita stared at her husband’s narrow face, the high-ridged nose and firm, well-shaped lips, and felt she discovered him anew. She noticed how he pulled at his ear lobe, knocking the end of the pen against his teeth as he sought to dredge up a word. She noticed the length of his eyelashes, the small hairs sprouting from his nostrils and each ear. His skin had the glow of soft leather, and his hair was always neatly combed. Each night she lay beside him, opening to him, silent and unmoving, accepting the things he did to her. It was only then, in the darkness, when he turned to her for that act of the night that no wife should refuse, that she showed him her face, as his hands explored her body. Passive beneath him, she ran her fingers over the animal softness of his back and breathed in his musky masculine odour, that had become for her the very scent of the night.
Sita also drew strength from the knowledge that both Dr. Sen and Shiva were followers of Mahatma Gandhi. The great man’s name was like a lifeline. She recalled a picture she had seen once of the half-naked Mahatma, bald and wizened, holding a staff in his hand. Dr. Sen had said that any person who believed in the ideals of the Mahatma could not be entirely bad; it was proof of character that they held such high ideals.
As the days unfurled, a routine set in; she became used to the sight and feel of her husband, and to the strange intimacies demanded by her new life as a wife. People sometimes came to their home to talk or seek Shiva’s advice, and Sita served these guests tea and biscuits as he taught her, and listened to her husband’s conversations about politics and the freedom of India.
Sometimes Shiva looked up from his desk to read her something he had just written, his eyes resting upon his wife, waiting for her response, but Sita did not know what to say, how to reply. Her heart beat wildly at such moments of scrutiny and she bowed her head, feeling his displeasure at her silence, hearing him return to his work with an exclamation of impatience, and knew she disappointed him.
One evening he returned with a newspaper and sat down at his desk, reading intently. When
she bent down to place his tea beside him he looked up and gripped her arm.
‘There is news of war in Europe. Our Indian soldiers in the British Army will be required to fight against the Germans. This is not right. They should not fight as part of a foreign army for another people’s cause. Our people should fight for their own country, for India.’ He stared searchingly into her face and she drew back, unable to understand the real meaning of what he said.
Eventually, he released her and she returned to her mending, sewing a button onto his shirt as he sipped his tea, yet uncomfortable because she felt his gaze upon her, and knew he still observed her critically. Finally, he put down the newspaper and turned abruptly to her, his voice rising in exasperation.
‘Have you no voice?’ A muscle clenched in his cheek.
Sita drew back in shock, the needle pricking a finger in her confusion.
‘Say something! Ask me a question, anything,’ he ordered.
Putting down her sewing, she looked up and met his eyes. Her heart fluttered nervously in her throat, but however hard she tried, no words came to her, and she grew desperate. She was sure he would hit her now, just as her father had so frequently hit her mother. Instead, he continued to sit at his desk.
‘Try! Let me hear your voice.’ His tone was more kindly now.
She searched for words that might please him. The image of Dr. Sen came into her mind and then the bald and wizened Mahatma Gandhi. It was because of the great man’s ideals that Shiva had embraced the experiment of marrying her.
‘Are you following the Mahatma?’ she whispered, pushing the words out at last.
‘The Mahatma? My wife has a voice! And asks an intelligent question.’ Shiva slapped his knee, incredulous. He had expected her to ask if he wanted tea or food; instead she spoke extraordinary words.
