Sacred Waters

by Meira Chand

  9

  SINGAPORE, 1939–1941

  The next day Sita’s lessons started. Shiva came home from school with a slate and chalk, and excitement throbbed through her as she watched him write the Hindi consonants on a large new notepad.

  Ka – Kha, Ga – Gha, Ta – Tha, Ja – Jha, Da – Dha…

  Then, picking up the slate, he pressed the chalk against it, and copying from the notepad, quickly drew a graceful character before giving the chalk to Sita. Each time she tried, the chalk-stick broke and crumbled into her lap. Soon a cloudy dust covered her fingers and clothes.

  ‘Don’t press so hard. Relax.’

  Shiva placed his hand upon her own and gently guided her. She was aware of his arm around her, his breath on her neck, the grip of his fingers. Eventually, she managed to form a meandering shape and waited for his praise.

  The following day after Shiva left for school, and once her domestic chores were done, Sita took up the slate and the chalk, full of suppressed excitement, but found she was unable to remember what sound each character made, or in what order each stroke must be drawn. Soon, her hand was cramped from gripping the chalk, her clenched jaw ached with tension and she was ready to cry with frustration. When he returned that evening Shiva looked at the squat and ugly shapes on the slate and paper, and laughed.

  ‘You will learn, soon it will be easy.’ He spoke gently, patting her arm.

  Before he left for the school each morning he gave her work to show him by night. Her practice must be done in chalk on the slate, and then a fair draft was to be written in pencil in a lined exercise book. She wanted his praise more than anything and, hurrying through her chores, devoted most of the day to her learning. Slowly, the symbols became recognisable and she began to form them more easily. She imagined each character as a dancer, the stem of the body erect, arms akimbo or flung out at odd angles, legs bent or curled or pointed straight. Slowly, if she thought of them like this, the dancers assembled each day before her in familiar poses. As time went by, she also began to recognise words in Shiva’s newspapers and books, and was filled with the pleasure of achievement. Slowly, she began to read. It was as if holes had been punched in a thick curtain, revealing the light beyond. Somehow, she had passed through an invisible membrane into another world.

  At night now Shiva liked to light a cigarette and talk as he smoked. Stretched out beside her on their sleeping mats he inhaled lazily on his cigarette, occasionally flicking the ash into an old condensed milk tin beside him. From outside, the scent of the town drifted to them, of excrement and spices and night flowers, and the rotting odours of the blood-filled drains around the nearby slaughterhouse. Sometimes, the smell of the sea blew over to them, and the odour of drying sardines. She sensed that before she came into his life he had been lonely in this room and that now, even though she lay silently beside him and did not always comprehend the things he confided, it was enough that she was there. The sight of his tall slim frame, his firm lips and deep-set eyes filled her with gratitude; he had returned her to life.

  The things he described as they lay together each night opened a window onto new worlds for Sita. It was just like the long ago comfort of lying beside grandmother on the string bed, listening to her tales of the gods. She especially liked it when Shiva spoke about Mahatma Gandhi. Because of Dr. Sen’s close proximity to the Mahatma and the things she had recounted of her life with him, it was as if they spoke about a mutual friend. Sita was happy to listen any number of times to Shiva’s account of the Salt March, the famous protest march in which Dr. Sen had also participated. She listened, enthralled by the vistas opening before her as she journeyed through the story.

  ‘Gandhiji set out from Ahmedabad for Dandi on the coast with seventy-nine volunteers. At Dandi the Mahatma intended to gather salt on the beach and relieve the terrible burden of the salt tax that was breaking the backs of the poor. As they walked, people from the villages along the way ran to join the procession, until it became two miles long. At last, after a march of twenty-four days, the Mahatma reached the sea and bent to pick up a lump of salt from the beach, and all those with him did the same.’ Shiva lifted the cigarette to his lips, inhaling contemplatively. The sweet scent of tobacco surrounded them.

  ‘The following week a storm of revolt swept across India. The word salt had acquired magic power. Everyone began gathering natural salt, picketing liquor shops, burning foreign cloth, acting in civil disobedience against the government in any non-violent way they could. Many were arrested and imprisoned, many also were killed.’

  Sita’s eyes focused upon her husband with such concentration that everything else seemed to vanish in the dark room but the smouldering tip of his cigarette, igniting fiercely each time he inhaled.

  ‘I deeply respect Gandhiji, but his non-violent ways can never get the British out of India. They laugh and call him a half-naked fakir; they have no fear of him. The only man the British fear is Subhas Chandra Bose.’

  ‘Who is this Bose?’ she whispered, struggling to understand.

  ‘He too, like Gandhiji, is working for India’s freedom, but in a different way. Gandhiji wants no violence. If the British wish to kill us then we must lie down before them and allow them to do this, he says. In contrast, Subhas Babu says violence can only be fought with violence. Blood must be shed for us to gain our freedom.’ Shiva raised himself on an elbow and looked down at his wife.

  ‘I came under Subhas Babu’s spell as a young man. I went to hear him speak, and was immediately enthralled. He is a man to follow to the ends of the earth; that is his magic.’ Shiva’s voice had a faraway note.

  ‘And then?’ Sita asked, looking up into her husband’s face, knowing he was opening a secret part of himself to her, that something important but wordless was being exchanged between them.

  His body was warm against her, the dense perfume of his tobacco unlocked in her head and she reached out to touch his warm flesh, breathing in the male odour of him.

  Pushing a strand of hair off her brow, he had to admit to himself that her rapt attention pleased him. He was getting used to her presence in his life, the hot tea she had ready when he returned from school, the meals she prepared for him. She was like soft clay, unformed and his to mould in whatever way he chose.

  ‘And then?’ Sita shook his arm gently.

  ‘In India I was a teacher, but secretly, like so many young men, I belonged to a group fighting for Home Rule. Like Subhas Babu, we believed blood must be shed for freedom; it could not be gained by peaceful means, as Gandhiji advocates. We learned to make bombs and shoot guns. We learned how to blow up Englishmen.’

  ‘And then?’ she whispered again, trying to comprehend the things he was telling her, shocked at this revelation of his violent past.

  ‘Englishmen were killed by the bombs we made, and the police started hunting for me. Along with many others, my picture was pasted on the walls of railway stations, marketplaces and telegraph poles. The police caught some from my group, who gave them my name.’

  As she listened to her husband, Sita remembered again the first time she had seen an Englishman. It had been the mango season, the fruit hanging in golden orbs from the trees, its perfume pervading the village, filling the night. A few small mangoes were piled on the counter of their father’s shop, and he gave one each to her and to Dev. There was also the treat of a biscuit with a sticky jam centre, and they sat in front of the shop to eat this feast. The juice of this particular mango was tastier than its stringy flesh, and Dev showed her how to rub the fruit between her palms until the flesh was soft. Then, they made a hole in the top of the fruit and sucked out the sweet liquid.

  Suddenly, she recalled, the earth had begun to vibrate and on the horizon a cloud of dust appeared. Sita looked up at her father but he showed no panic, calmly continuing to weigh out gram, sliding it into cones of newspaper. A gritty wind now blew about them and a drumming pulsated in their ears. Within the ochre cloud of dust bearing down upon them a figure could be
seen astride a horse, crop raised high, berating the animal. Sita glimpsed cheeks the colour of fire, bleached straw for hair and eyes glassy as rain. She flattened herself against the shop as the whirlwind passed. At last the thud of hooves grew fainter, and the whipped up dust settled upon them in a powdery layer.

  ‘That was the angrezi tax Collector Sahib,” her father announced, staring grimly after the horseman and the accompanying entourage of carts that trailed behind him at a slower pace.

  ‘Once, in a village that could not pay its taxes, he hung a man who protested, and left him strung from a tree for days. The rotting flesh could be smelled from a mile away.’

  Hearing such tales, Sita had always imagined the Collector Sahib to be a man of darkness. Yet, the figure that had just blown by on the back of the wind appeared, by an absence of colour, to have the attribute of ghosts. Heart pounding, Sita turned to her brother. The mangoes they held were now covered in grit, the sticky jam biscuit had fallen to the ground and was already black with ants.

  The sound of Shiva’s voice returned her abruptly to the present and she leaned towards him, filled with awe at his bravery in opposing people like the Collector Sahib, who hung men from trees so easily.

  ‘My parents died when I was small and my uncle and aunt brought me up. When I became a wanted man, my uncle got me onto a ship coming to Singapore. He was a supporter of the Ramakrishna Mission in India, and because of him the Mission in Singapore gave me a job in their school here. They asked me no questions.’ Shiva lay back on the pillow.

  ‘Your parents…tell me about them,’ Sita whispered.

  She had not dared to ask about his parents before, but now she wanted to know everything about him. She turned on her side to face him, placing a hand upon his arm, feeling the solidity of his flesh under her fingers, feeling her own audacity.

  ‘They were killed, shot.’

  She drew a quick breath, unable to hide her shock. Shiva was silent, and in the dark she watched the glowing end of his cigarette and understood, from the flare of intensity, that he drew upon it with hard emotion.

  ‘They were killed at Jallianwala Bagh.’ The words left him in a rush, the cigarette glowing fiercely as he exhaled.

  ‘What is this Jallianwala Bagh?’ she whispered.

  ‘It is a place where terrible things happened. It is a garden where hundreds of unarmed people, peacefully attending the festival of Baisakhi, were deliberately fired upon by the British army. My parents were amongst the dead; more than a thousand died. They were visiting friends in Amritsar, and were taken to see the garden. They need not have been there at all,’ Shiva replied, his voice low and harsh. He pulled again on his cigarette, and Sita watched the tip ignite then fade then ignite angrily again.

  The intensity in his voice frightened her, but as she listened to her husband’s impassioned voice, the rightness of the Indian struggle swelled within her just as she knew it swelled within Shiva, and the blood pulsed wildly through her.

  ‘If I have to die to avenge my parents’ death, I will do so.’ Shiva’s voice was savage.

  ‘Like me, Subhas Babu also escaped from India and from the British, who had placed him under house arrest. He fled in disguise to Germany, where he is living now. He is meeting Hitler there, to ask for his help to free India from British rule. Hitler is a powerful man,’ Shiva added.

  The smell of tobacco filled her nose. She was not listening so attentively now. Instead, her mind was full of the story of his parents’ death, the violence that had broken his life. Beneath the talk of guns and bombs, she sensed he was a gentle man whose life had been cruelly shaped, aligning him to his destiny. Sleep was heavy upon her, and she battled to keep awake, hearing his voice now at a distance.

  ‘In Europe a great war has already begun and Germany will win it. Japan is also advancing through China. These countries are our friends; they will help India get its freedom,’ Shiva assured her, stubbing out his cigarette.

  The night enclosed them, and outside the rasp of crickets and the crash of thunder gave way suddenly to the steady pelt of rain.

  All the while, as her mind grew and changed, so too did her body. She suspected that now a child was growing within her. Each day she placed her hands over her belly and thought of the beating heart that might be within her, struggling to live. In Shiva’s shaving mirror she viewed her face for change, but could find none. Her mind was full of the memory of her mother’s permanently swollen shape, but looking down at her own body, nothing was detectable. She had not yet told Shiva, and could not understand why she stubbornly held back news that she knew would delight him. Nothing had ever belonged so wholly to her before as this secret, and she wished to share it with no one as yet, not even her husband. The changes in her body and its cycle had not alerted her immediately to what was happening; the knowledge had come to her unexpectedly, through Old Usha at the Ramakrishna Mission School.

  Five orphaned boys of five or six years old had recently come under the care of the Mission, but had yet to be integrated with other orphans into the mission’s boys’ school. Shiva suggested that as only basic reading and writing was needed to prepare them for class, Sita might pass on her own recent learning to the boys, and the school had agreed. She was to start the next day.

  The five urchins waited for her, sitting on a mat in a small bare room, each with a slate before him. Scrubbed and clothed by the mission, heads shaved to rid them of lice, the boys were bright eyed and curious. Sita settled on the chair behind the desk, a box of coloured chalks before her, uncertain of what to do, or how to start. The children observed her silently, a band of bright eyed mice. Then suddenly they were jumping about her, pushing against each other and shouting.

  ‘Can we have yellow chalk?’

  ‘Can we draw a cat?’

  ‘Can we draw a pig?’

  She wanted to laugh, but instead ordered them to sit down. Turning to the blackboard balanced on a rickety easel behind her, she began to draw some of the characters she now knew so well. Behind her the boys chattered excitedly, testing the chalk on the slates. As they tried to copy the script, they were immediately entangled in the same difficulties from which Sita had so recently struggled free. She knew just how to help them.

  ‘Make a picture in your mind. Think of the characters as dancers, like this, like that.’ She flung out a leg then an arm, balancing on one foot, and the children laughed.

  Throughout the lesson Sita was aware of Old Usha, a squat, ebony-skinned woman in charge of the children, who crouched in a corner of the room, staring fixedly at Sita from small eyes in a deeply pouched face. Her worn, russet coloured sari melted into her dark skin so that she appeared as if carved from mahogany. She had been with the school for longer than anyone could remember and worked in a general fetching and carrying capacity. It was said she had strange powers, and knew the art of black magic and prophecy. Everyone called her Old Usha, although she was no more than middle aged.

  Finally, the hour of tuition was up. The boys shouted boisterous goodbyes to Sita and ran towards the door. Usha waddled after them but paused, turning back to Sita before she left the room.

  ‘Already you are two months, three months?’ She stood squarely before Sita, her eyes travelling down her body.

  Sita started, staring into Usha’s deeply bagged eyes, shock running through her. It was true, she knew it now; the woman had seen what she could not yet openly acknowledge.

  ‘You must eat salty food to get a boy, no oranges and also no yogurt. Later, come to me, I will tell you if it is a boy or a girl.’ A large inky wart lodged in the crevice of a nostril, but her smile was kindly and it lit up her face.

  A boy. Usha knew she must concentrate on making a boy. She must eat the right foods, say the right prayers, she must focus all her thoughts on creating a boy, denying room within her to a girl. Was this, she wondered suddenly, what her mother had done, willing male life into each pregnancy. She saw the river beside the village again, smelled its muddy odour as
it voraciously swallowed each female offering, and knew the same fear her mother had felt each time she was filled with a child, the fear that she carried a girl.

  Her parents had been married as children. Her father had been seven years old, and her mother five, and she had gone to her parents-in-law’s house after her first bleed. From the time she was physically able to, her mother had produced a child at regular intervals. The gap of a few years between Sita and Dev was because no intervening sibling had ever lived for long. Sita remembered several small brothers who ran briefly through the house before they died of one infection or another. She could not clearly recall a single one of these brothers; they all seemed to merge into one. Yet, even after all these years, she still saw the tiny, squashed face of her sister in those brief moments she had glimpsed her.

  Now, on the day Usha confirmed what Sita already knew, an older knowledge floated up within her, unasked. Her mother had killed her sister. And, if she had murdered that girl-child, how many more had she felt forced to silence at birth, Sita now wondered, holding the child down beneath the water until she was still, freeing her from the hate loaded against her because she was a girl. Her mother had known that a girl was always better off dead.

  Within days of realising that she carried a child, the war Shiva spoke about in faraway Europe edged its way nearer towards Singapore. The Japanese were advancing through South East Asia, territories falling to them like a row of dominoes. Japanese reconnaissance planes flew continually overhead, the red rising sun visible on their fuselage before they vanished into the clouds.

  Each evening Shiva listened to the radio, to broadcasts from All India Radio, Radio Saigon, Radio Tokyo and the BBC, whatever he could tune into. The room was filled with the crackle of static and the voice of the news announcer, sometimes loud and clear, sometimes fading into the ether from which it had emerged.