The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  On second thought, not the Punjabi bride doll. Toss her away.

  At noon, she phones for a cab herself, but allows the cook to help her load the suitcase into it. “I’ll be home tonight,” is all she says. She doesn’t volunteer and he doesn’t ask where she is going—Vikas haranguing him for complicity would be far harsher than for ignorance. She hopes he won’t tell Vikas she has taken a suitcase, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to keep it secret. Besides, security guards watching from pillboxes in the street could tell Vikas. Any neighbour might tell as well.

  Pray.

  She works the second half of the day at the travel agency, suitcase under her desk, starting to her feet every time a customer walks in. Her boss, Mr. Gurinder Singh, recognizes the trauma of domestic terrorism when he sees it—this tubby Sikh man survived the anti-Sikh riots by cutting his waist-length hair and shaving his beard. He has a permanent limp from breaking his leg jumping from a balcony, but managed to escape being doused in kerosene and set on fire by the mobs. Noting her suitcase, he presses his handkerchief and a hundred-rupee note into her hand. “Talk to your family, find a place to stay,” he says, “I’ll send the suitcase wherever you want.” Then he shoos her into the baking streets.

  Where to stay? Anu lived with her parents during her three years in college when Dadu was posted in New Delhi. Three years of alternating dread and an almost painful desire to please. At the time, if her mother, Indu Lal, loved cheese soufflé or hated karelas, Anu was loyal enough to do the same. At the time, if Indu Lal felt an instant of sadness, Anu’s eyeliner could run.

  Back then, Mumma’s wounds, her hungers, her personal gods were also Anu’s. Mumma could read Anu’s mind and diary, and to disallow her was ungrateful disloyalty. What Mumma valued was the only value that excited; Mumma pities those who don’t see that. Always the teacher, report card in hand. A report card that reads for every area of life, “Could do Better.”

  Did she regret marrying down? Anu had been prepared to climb the caste ladder and raise the family’s profile. At Anu’s wedding, Mrs. Lal wore a cyclamen lehnga with a gold border, twice as expensive as her daughter’s salwar-kameez. Several guests mistook her for the bride, Mumma still likes to recall.

  The thought conjures up Mumma’s voice, “So? I wanted you to have the respect I lost by marrying your father. Your father acts like a marriage gets arranged by magic, but it doesn’t. I had to arrange it. Did I get any thanks? No. And you liked him immediately, so it is all your fault.”

  She had liked Vikas. The first few days, she’d liked everything from his lop-sided grin to his affectionate-sounding insults to—Lord, forgive her—his jokes. Every one of them, she later realized, at someone else’s expense. She had loved his long fingers and the arrogant grace of his movements. Twenty-year-old Anu had wanted never to make Mumma’s mistake, marrying for love. She wanted what arranged marriages promise: the soothing story to be lived, never worrying that your husband will choose someone else, or that you’ll be shunned by either family. Many other lives might have been Anu’s but for Mumma’s choice of husband for her.

  Dadu …

  Had Dadu been posted to the national level of government in New Delhi instead of state level, maybe Mumma and he would have encountered more families like Vikas’s. Maybe they wouldn’t have been so easily impressed. Love, promises—swept away like ants before a sweeper’s broom.

  Living with Mumma again, flattering Mumma, competing with Mumma again in every area of life—that’s unthinkable. Watching Dadu pander to Mumma in incessant guilt for his slightly lower caste and want of patrimony, apologizing for his too-honest use of his position so that Mumma has to give private tuition in English. Mumma couldn’t wait for Anu to be married so that Dadu could centre his attention completely on her. She can’t live with Mumma again, she just can’t.

  But for Chetna’s sake?

  She cannot subject Chetna to Mumma’s pretentiousness, or her Victorian ideas about young women’s reputations. Chetna shouldn’t make the same mistakes. Chetna needs to grow, to develop separately from Mumma and Anu. If Chetna lives with Mumma, the only language she’ll ever know is English. And if Anu and Chetna were to live with Mumma, Anu’s mothering, cooking, weight, attire and makeup will be constantly critiqued and found wanting.

  Anu can return to her aunt and uncle’s home. But how can she impose again, and this time along with her daughter? She buys a newspaper from a street urchin who looks far worse off than she. The ads for furnished rooms will move her forward.

  Inquiring about a fanless room on the baking top floor of a home in the Karolbagh area, she is told, “The room is rented.”

  “A single woman trying to rent a room can only be a call girl or a madam,” a prospective landlady informs her, squinting at Anu’s sari-clad breasts as if they were offensive.

  The next landlord’s stomach pops over his lungi. Desperate, Anu manages to give the impression that her husband is out of town on business, and returning soon. The landlord flings his arms skyward and gives her a smile like the laughing Buddha. “Please bring your husband or father,” he says, “so we can talk properly.” Then he quotes a rent equivalent to two months’ salary from Adventure Travel.

  So many people, so few houses and apartments. She knew rents were high—but this high? With so many searching for living space, anyone with a few square metres of India is a lord. No wonder two or three generations live together, put up with each other.

  She can’t. But if she can’t look after herself, how will she look after Chetna?

  Anu’s head pounds. She runs to catch a bus and go “home.”

  “Anupam,” Vikas says from the head of the table that night, “can’t find one good thing to say about Swami-ji. All she can talk about is foreign philosophers, foreign books, foreign music. No pride in Indian culture, none at all.”

  “Convent schooling,” says Lalit Kohli from the other end of the table. He glares over his glasses at his son’s wife. Can he really not see Anu’s black eye and bruises?

  “You chose me as Vikas’s bride because I was convent educated,” she mutters.

  Burd-burd—that’s what Vikas calls her muttering. The first time he ever raised his hand against her was because of burd-burd. They were leaving the premiere of a new Bollywood film, along with the collected glitterati of New Delhi, so many of them his school friends. Vikas said the theatre should have played the march “Vande Mataram” with the lights on so people could see if Muslims were singing in praise of the slayer-goddess Durga Devi. Under her breath, she said, “That’s just a song, not the national anthem. And you can’t tell a Hindu from a Muslim man by sight. And if you saw a Muslim woman singing, you’d say she wasn’t singing loud enough, or that she didn’t feel the words.” Vikas’s backhand hit her so hard across her chest, she fell to the carpet. People backed away and stared blankly. Vikas said to them, “She has fainting spells.” And to her, “Get up. Smile.” But even after that, Anu still does burd-burd. Right now, Vikas is pretending not to hear it.

  Mr. Kohli, too. He continues chewing his mutton-do-piaza as if she has not spoken. He takes a chapati from the container proffered by the manservant.

  “Swami-ji has taken his dinner in private and is leaving by the morning train,” Vikas is saying to his mother. “He’s offended … He’ll get someone else to package him and it’s all Anupam’s fault …”

  “Vikkoo,” his mother replies in a high tinkly voice like Lata Mangeshkar. “Anupam doesn’t understand the business. It takes practice.” Her eyes sidle to a gilt-framed mirror, and she examines her taut skin and symmetrical features. She lifts a languid fingertip; the manservant refills her glass of Cabernet.

  “Everything is my fault?” says Anu.

  “Sport, Anupam, your sport—that’s what Vikas needs.” Mr. Kohli means her unstinting support of Vikas’s objectives, not Vikas’s of hers. “Don’t think Vikas is some ordinary man,” says he, staring owlishly at her. “I spent years apologizing to the West for bei
ng from a poor nation, for India’s so-called backwardness. But Vikas—his very name means progress!” Lalit Kohli’s forefinger traces the rim of his glass, lifts and wags at Anu. “Anupam, do less ‘me-me’ and more thinking of the en-tire femily.”

  “Family, Dad,” says Vikas.

  “Don’t you correct your elders.” Mr Kohli swivels back to Anu. “And you, Anupam, you be more adjustable.”

  “You can see that your son hits me, but you’re saying I should be more adjustable?”

  “How many years will it take before you learn how to please him?”

  “Come, we’ll go shopping. I’ll buy you some makeup, a few new saris,” Pammy Kohli says, as if she’s talking to Chetna. “I have a lovely pendant for you. It glitters just like your eyes.”

  If Anu hadn’t visited the lawyer that very day, she would have given way to an urge to scream and scream. She, Anu, who volunteered for national social service instead of the Cadet Corps in college, who vowed to live a life of service, is being placated with jewellery. She should have become a nun when Sister Imaculata offered the chance in school. Then her parents couldn’t have married her to Vikas and this wouldn’t be happening.

  In the master bedroom, Vikas takes her in his arms, takes her chin between thumb and forefinger and apologizes. He tells her he had to shout at her to please his parents—he didn’t really mean the things he said, he was only trying to explain why the swami had not graced them with his presence for dinner. He releases her chin.

  Lord Jesus and Lord Ram, give me strength.

  She does not run but walks to the bathroom, with as much dignity as she can muster. She collects her toilet articles. She walks to Chetna’s room. Slowly. Puts them down. He has not followed. She returns to the master bedroom to collect a salwar-kameez. Don’t look, don’t look at him.

  One sideways glance. He’s lying across the bed, head propped on one hand, paging through Hindu Society Under Siege. He looks up, a wounded expression in his murky eyes. “Oh, she’s sulking!” he says. “I know you can’t resist me, darling—you’ll be back soon.”

  A valid assumption—she has returned before. For Chetna’s sake.

  Vikas sniffs as if at the scent of her fear. He puts his book down and reaches for the phone. Anu dodges, in case the receiver sails through the air. Vikas laughs and waves it at her before thumbing it.

  In Chetna’s room next door, she locks herself in. A locked door and her rosary have often helped her make the best of things. She lies down fully clothed, Chetna’s cricket bat at her side.

  She prays with as much faith as Father Pashan, but in a Hindu way.

  Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy names …

  Dadu brought Father Pashan to her bedside two years ago, after her accident. The doctors had said she was dying, and Purnima-aunty and Sharad Uncle had come to Holy Family Hospital to say their last farewells. Mumma was trickling Ganges-water over Anu’s bandages. Her father invited Father Pashan to say the rosary. Restore her to us, Dadu said, and you can baptize her.

  Between Hail Marys, Father Pashan would comb through his hair with his fingers. And after many repetitions, she was no longer looking up at him doing that, but felt herself floating, looking down at a priest praying at the bedside of a woman. She remembers feeling enormous, skinless. And wondering how she could ever squeeze herself back into her tiny body. The next moment, her consciousness felt linked to an unearthly power. She was moving towards a bright warm light in the distance. But the priest’s voice and the refrain of the rosary penetrated her consciousness, tearing her from the lure of that mysterious light that offered comfort and loss in the same instant. To this day, she would give anything to reunite with the light—whether Christ, Shiv or Krishna.

  Then came the weight of gravity as never before, and her huge gasping whispers, “Chetna! Chetna.” Later, another image—the six-year-old screaming at her first glimpse of her mother’s unban-daged face.

  Anu’s thumb passes the bead for the Lord’s Prayer and she begins ten Hail Marys.

  Vikas is still on the phone. Probably to an old school chum or a relative. That do-it-as-a-personal-favour-to-me tone, the because-you-love-me tone that gets everything done. Nothing much happens in New Delhi offices, he always says—negotiations and bargains take place after 8 p.m., at parties and over the phone.

  Such persuasiveness must be balanced in his next call, to some poor fellow who can’t tell the boss not to call this late. Vikas is losing control, letting himself go … There are those who manage others and those who are managed, he always says.

  Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee …

  As long as his shouting continues, it’s safe to fall asleep, and she is so tired …

  Blessed art thou amongst women …

  Remember how blessed, how very very blessed.

  The next morning, knocking penetrates a dream—Vikas is spread-eagled on a white sheet, a stream of red oozing from a slit in his kurta-clad chest. Anu is leaning over him, a long curved knife in hand. He will now beg for mercy.

  And she, a caring, kind person, does not care.

  The knocking continues. She gets up, opens the door. The cook stands before her with a bouquet of narcissi and carnations.

  “From Vikkoo-saab,” he says with a tiny bow.

  DAMINI

  MEM-SAAB IS LYING ON HER BED. GETTING DRESSED seems to have exhausted her. “It’s the heat,” Damini tells her. “And your air conditioner is a little old and tired, too.”

  Amanjit shouts from the drawing-room. Damini crinkles one eye shut and presses the other to the peephole in Mem-saab’s bedroom door. He is waving a sheaf of papers.

  “This is the thanks I get for giving up my business in Bombay, for moving my family to Delhi to live with you. How could three people live in Sardar-saab’s old room? If you didn’t want me to build, you should have told me so.”

  Damini turns the door lock so carefully it doesn’t even click.

  “I’ll never try to help you again, Mama. You just wait and see. I’m going to have to defend this case and you’ll be the one to be sorry.”

  “Khansama,” Damini calls. “Mem-saab will take breakfast in her room.”

  A weight tests the door. Then Aman says, “Damini-amma, tell her she has made a mistake, bringing this kind of money-hungry woman into our private business.” He means the lady-lawyer.

  Damini turns from the peephole and mouths his words for Mem-saab, without sound.

  Mem-saab turns her head away, seeking refuge in deafness.

  Sometimes I think the old custom of burning surplus women on their husbands’ funeral pyres spared widows like us from the dangers of living unprotected.

  Mem-saab is breathing fast and hard again. Time is not on her side of the locked bedroom door.

  ANU

  WHEN ADVENTURE TRAVELS CLOSES FOR LUNCH AT 2 P.M., Anu wakes Rano in Toronto with a collect call.

  Rano doesn’t sound surprised to hear Anu’s marriage is about to be blown to pieces like a seed head before a puff of wind. With so many divorces in Canada, maybe she’s accustomed to it. “Do you have a plan?” she asks. “In Canada, there are agencies that spirit you away to a safe house, change your name and give you a whole new life.”

  “I don’t think we have safe houses,” says Anu.

  “Shall I tell Chetna?”

  “After the divorce petition is served. Rano, listen …” Anu can barely get the words out, “The lawyer doesn’t know how long this could take. Maybe even five to seven years, maybe ten. Can you keep her for me?”

  Silence prickles up and down the line.

  “Are you serious?” Rano says slowly. “Don’t joke with me on this one, Anu.”

  Anu wishes she could see her face.

  “I’ll keep her as long as you want—always if you want—you know that.” She realizes that Rano is crying.

  Anu is crying. It feels as if they have been headed to this moment all their lives.

  “What about Jat
in?”

  “He’ll be thrilled. Chetna looks enough like us. And she’s not a boy, so we won’t have to wrestle with the question of wearing or not wearing a turban in Canada. I put off having a child for years—though you know how much I wanted one—because I had nightmares that I’d have a boy. And Jatin and I would discuss and discuss—would we keep his hair long, or cut it and break my in-laws’ hearts? If we kept the boy’s hair long, how would Hindu me learn to tie a turban on a little Sikh boy? Which god or goddess do you think would help me? And if we cut one inch of the little boy’s hair, I can tell you my in-laws would forgive Jatin, but never forgive me. So I’ve been terrified even as I’m stimulating my ovaries with a diet of hormones and paying out of our savings for treatments that only give us a seventy-five percent chance of conception! Don’t you worry, Jatin will feel as I do, that we have been offered a gift.”

  A metric tonne seems to lift from Anu’s heart—every woman should have a cousin like Rano.

  “Don’t let her forget her Hindi or Punjabi.”

  “I promise she’ll speak both just as if she lived in India,” says Rano. “But Jatin’ll expect her to become a Sikh and attend the gurdwara with us—that’s not a problem, is it?”

  “No, no—light comes from many sources,” says Anu. “It might be a problem for Vikas, though.”

  “If so, he can always ask for his daughter—then she’ll have two fathers, and two mothers, like you.”

  If I had never had Chetna, I wouldn’t be losing her now. If Chetna had never been born, she wouldn’t be faced with losing her mother. What a selfish mistake I made by not having an abortion.

  And just as quickly as this thought passes through her mind, Anu is ashamed of it.

  What a selfish mistake it would have been to have an abortion.

  She hangs up, feeling a strange blend of elation and depression. She is doing the best she can for Chetna—she believes this from the core of her being. But the rest of the day, she feels like a bag of broken glass, and finds herself weeping at the slightest frustration.