The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Anu unbuttons the top button of her sari blouse. Comprehension and dismay chase across Sharad Uncle’s face at the sight of the purpling stains on her skin. “Look, both of you, look.” Anu’s voice feels thick and strange. “Is it not enough? When will it be enough?”

  Aunty embraces her, holding her fiercely. “That bastard! I’ll take a stick and beat his brains out. And to think he comes from such a good family—who can believe it!”

  Sharad Uncle wipes his sleeve across his forehead; Purnima offers him a box of face tissue.

  “So this is why you’re talking about divorce and convents-shon-vents? Come, button up, Anu. I’ll talk to Vikas—I’ll tell him you’re a good girl. I’ll tell him he shouldn’t get so angry with you again.”

  “Sharad …”

  “We all fight and make up—koi baat nahin! Come, I’ll persuade him to take you back.”

  Purnima withdraws the box of tissue just as Sharad Uncle is reaching for one. “You can’t send her back to that man.”

  “He’s not ‘that man’—he’s her husband. He is Lalit Kohli’s son, not some uneducated hooligan off the street.” He resorts to his sleeve again.

  “Sharad, I’m telling you—” his wife warns.

  “Softy ice cream, you are. That boy is brilliant. BRILL-iant! Topped his class, could have gone abroad for higher studies like others but he stayed in the motherland. He’s grown his father’s company to five times its size with only a few crores of rupees from our bank. And he donates to Hindu schools and ashrams, doesn’t let them go begging to foreign agencies. You women—a man makes one mistake …”

  “It’s not the first time …” says Anu, touching her scarred cheek.

  Sharad Uncle sits down at the other end of the bed. “An accident is a different kind of mistake,” he says. “Didn’t he apologize?”

  “Yes, he did.” She doesn’t add, As he did for the night Chetna was conceived. Both times, he had taken back his apology, insisting later that it was her fault.

  “Then? What else do you need?”

  “Each mistake is a different kind, ji, but his are too-too many.” Purnima-aunty leans forward, takes her roll-pillow from behind her and propels it across the bed like a missile.

  Sharad Uncle catches it deftly and secures it behind his back.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she says to Anu.

  “I did,” says Anu.

  Purnima opens her mouth, thinks better of it. She tries again, “These things … well, they don’t …”

  “Don’t happen to people like us? Shouldn’t happen to an educated woman?”

  Purnima’s eyes fill. She dabs them with her dupatta. Anu offers her the box of tissues, and hugs her. “Okay, okay.” Purnima blows her nose loudly. “I must have been blind or didn’t want it to be true. What can I do now?”

  “I’m not staying with Vikas.” Anu’s voice is firm and quiet. “I can’t meet his standards. After my accident his mother suggested I leave so he could take another wife. Someone with no scars.”

  “Huh, as if Pammy Kohli’s surgery has made her any prettier!”

  “She wants Vikas to have a wife who can produce a son.”

  “Only natural.” says Sharad Uncle. “How can you have a business named ‘Kohli and Daughters’?”

  “How? You make a sign that says ‘Kohli and Daughters,’ and you hang it on the front door of the business, that’s how!” says Purnima.

  Sharad Uncle turns to Anu as if struck by a new idea. “Have another child. Pregnancy will cure you of these … these hysterical wishes.”

  “Even if I wanted one,” says Anu, “or wanted Vikas to ever touch me again, there’s no guarantee it would be a boy.”

  For a moment, Sharad Uncle holds his head in his hands. Then he looks up. “There is, there is—nowadays you can check with what is it … amnio-something?”

  “That’s old. You mean ultrasound,” his wife says.

  Anu shakes her head. “Ultrasound should be used to prevent disease or cure it. The sex of a child is not a disease. I wouldn’t abort a girl or boy even if I did know.”

  “No one is saying to abort a boy.”

  “I know.” She holds her uncle’s gaze till she feels him release the idea.

  “Anu—Vikas’s family—are not small people, you know …” Purnima says.

  “If I don’t ask for money,” says Anu, “the Kohlis won’t care where I am.”

  But Vikas? He only wants things when they’re beyond his reach.

  I am not a thing.

  “You may not want money from them for yourself, sweetheart,” says Purnima. “But there is Chetna to think about.”

  “Each nun is paid for her work. I will save for Chetna’s marriage. I’ll get her married myself.”

  “On a nun’s salary? Don’t be so foolish, Anu. And also think—Vikas Kohli’s daughter should live as well as her father,” says Purnima.

  “Well Chetna can’t, if Vikas doesn’t want her.”

  “Don’t worry, my Rano and Jatin will spoil her completely,” says Purnima.

  “Ladies, ladies!” says Sharad Uncle. “We don’t know yet if Vikas wants Chetna or not. You can’t just decide where his daughter will go. All this is not right—bilkul not right. Not right at all. Purnima—milao the phone! Your father must be told what you’re up to, Anu.”

  “He knows—I wrote to him and Mumma.”

  “Achcha. Good-good-good. Let’s see what he says. ‘Personal decision’—ha! You’ve been reading too many English novels, watching too many foreign movies. You make your personal decisions when all of us are dead and gone, my dear. Not before.”

  Purnima makes the call to Anu’s parents, using her new cordless.

  “Good that Chetna is with Rano,” says her husband, pacing the room, hands behind his back, “if this is the kind of example Anu is setting.”

  Anu says, “Uncle, please don’t talk about me as if I’m not here.”

  Purnima puts her hand over the mouthpiece and hisses at her husband: “And what about Vikas? What kind of example is he setting, you please tell me?”

  He opens his mouth to retort, but Purnima is now talking to Dadu’s manservant. She taps her foot, waiting for Dadu to come to the phone.

  Deepak Lal, round-shouldered from daily hunching over government files. Living in a government bungalow in Allahabad and dealing with hot-potato issues. Nomadic as all civil servants, saving to build his dream house after retirement. His worried expression must be even more pronounced today.

  Purnima remembers the speakerphone, presses the orange button. She asks her brother-in-law if he received Anu’s letter.

  “Yes,” he says. Which is all he can say before Mumma takes the phone. Purnima-aunty listens to her sister with a “haan-haan” or “yes-yes” and a leftward tilt of her chin. Sharad Uncle folds his arms across his chest and closes his eyes as he listens. Mumma soon forgets she’s on speakerphone.

  “You’re the one to blame, Deepak,” she says to Dadu in cutting tones. “You gave your daughter these ideas. Don’t think you can blame this one on me.” The cook in the kitchen must be able to hear her. “And you, Anu—you’re just going to abandon your daughter for your own convenience? Just send her to her aunty? What kind of mother are you?”

  And Anu can’t say, “Maybe a bit like you, Mumma.” Because she doesn’t want to hurt her Purnima-aunty by implying her care was worth any less than a real mother’s.

  Mumma is soon reminding everyone of the butter chicken and mutton curries served at Anu’s wedding, the expense of the Ashoka Hotel even with Dadu’s government discount, and how she’d haggled with bootleggers for each bottle of Johnny Walker, both Black and Blue Label. Then Mumma is quoting the price of Anu’s gold-crusted red salwar-kameez. “How will it look?” she keeps saying, “How will it look?”

  Dadu interjects at last. “Sharad,” he says, “We thought we chose well, but I see from Anu’s letter that our choices were not auspicious. She writes, ‘I am not living with him
in that house; I am dying.’ I don’t want her to feel that way.”

  His middle finger will be jabbing at the black-rimmed glasses that are always sliding down his nose.

  “I would have preferred she didn’t want a divorce—separation is better for both. I know people who have been separated for years. I know one couple who live in different cities rather than get a divorce. Too much stigma, na?

  “We can ask for an amicable settlement, but I think Vikas will not agree. What we must negotiate is for him to pay for Chetna’s education and wedding. But let Anu go ahead.”

  “I have to bear the shame,” says Mumma’s waterlogged voice. “Because you’ve made your father look so bad. I hope you realize what you’ve accomplished, Anu.”

  Sharad Uncle leans close to the microphone as if to shield Anu from her mother’s voice. “Rano and Jatin will have to adopt Chetna legally so she can go to school in Canada.”

  Dadu says, “The school term in Canada begins in September—we have time. Governments require paperwork; paperwork can be done. And if at any time Rano wants to send her to us, Chetna can always live with us too—every home in this family is her home. The problem will be the same as for Anu and Bobby—no good English-medium schooling available here. English is still only taught in private schools, and they’re only in larger cities. So it is best for the child if Rano keeps her in Canada and she studies in English. Come what may, she must learn in English.”

  “And what do you think about this nun-business?” says Sharad. He draws himself up and away from the speaker as if readying for a flood of invective.

  “It may be better than trying to live alone and bear what people say,” says Dadu. “When the padri saved Anu’s life, I promised she would worship Lord Christ, who had spared me from losing a second child. And he said Anu must have been saved because she was special. I don’t know what did he mean—because how can we all be equal and special at the same time for his god?—but maybe Anu can do some good deeds with the Christians. I certainly have no objection.”

  “Oh, Dadu, thank you!” Anu sounds juvenile to her own ears, but she hopes her voice truly conveys heartfelt gratitude.

  “This is not some industrial project getting a no-objection certificate from your office.” says Mumma. “Father and daughter both think they can just do what they want, no consultation, no discussion. Typical, typical! My family would never allow such dis-res-pect.”

  A corner of Purnima’s mouth rises.

  Mumma’s sister never brags about her ancestry—Purnima has enough accomplishments of her own. Whereas Mumma—! The wound of her only son’s untimely death has given her a license to say whatever she wants, to anyone in the family. Dadu’s no-objection certificate will cost him several months, if not years of rebukes and reprimands—but his solidarity is so comforting. Mumma is still scolding when Sharad Uncle sets the receiver back in its cradle.

  Mid-July 1994

  DAMINI

  AT THE COURT HEARING, DAMINI PLACES A CUSHION behind Mem-saab and takes a seat near her, keeping her distance so everyone will know Mem-saab to be born high on the ladder of karma.

  Mem-saab’s lady-lawyer is wearing a black robe that covers the swirl of her sherbet-pink sari. Two other lady-lawyers standing in the side aisles are wearing white saris. They look too young to be widows, so their saris could be a uniform. Mem-saab’s lady-lawyer’s voice, in English, is shrill and indignant.

  The judge is called Milord, just like in Hindi movies, but the people in his court are not as respectfully absorbed in the proceedings the way actors are in those movies. He listens more attentively to Aman’s lawyer, a ponderous man with spectacles and plenty of uniformed peons to bring him notes and files, than he does to Mem-saab’s.

  Milord should give his English talk with Hindi subtitles.

  She counts eighteen fans humming on long slender stems, flowers twirled between unseen fingers, cooling the crowd in the high-ceilinged room. Mem-saab is waiting for Aman to come to her, put his arms around her, say he really will look after her, say he and Kiran will be kind … but Aman’s jungle-green turban never turns toward her.

  No one can churn butter from soured milk.

  Afterwards, the lady-lawyer comes to Mem-saab and takes her hands.

  “The judge has decreed there will be a Stay Order. Status quo,” she says in English.

  Mem-saab looks at Damini but these words are too difficult for Damini to translate and relay. Mem-saab turns back to the lady-lawyer and offers her a notepad and pencil so the lady-lawyer can write them down. Then she reads the English writing and draws her eyebrows together. The lady-lawyer writes some more. Mem-saab repeats the words aloud, in Hindi. “He cannot build the rooms but I cannot tell him to go back to Bombay?”

  The lady-lawyer nods. “His lawyer said he has no place to live in Bombay. Mr. Amanjit Singh said you gave him part of your house as a gift to entice him to Delhi to look after you.”

  Mem-saab puts the notepad away in her purse. She shakes her head slowly. She does not have enough breath today to discuss Aman’s lies.

  “What has been gained for Mem-saab?” Damini asks.

  “Time,” says the lady-lawyer, who holds out her hands. Mem-saab grips them to pull herself up from her chair. Damini follows them outside.

  Thunder bursts and grinds as if the universe were reconstructing itself. Sheets of rain are pouring over the High Court. The pavement hisses and steams. Street children are already running and splashing in puddles.

  Rain, deliciously cool on her hot cheeks, her neck. Across her shoulders, her dupatta feels warm and wet. Mem-saab’s is getting wet too, but there’s a lift in her gait as Damini guides her to the car.

  Rain is a blessing. Divine essence, nectar of the gods.

  And Aman will have to find himself a taxi. In the rain.

  VIKAS

  A WELCOME BLAST OF CHILL AIR ENVELOPS VIKAS KOHLI as he enters The Claridges’ coffee shop. He’s early because it doesn’t look nice to be late for a meeting with elders, particularly one that includes his father. The white kurta-pyjama he’s wearing was starch-scented and crisp when he left home, but has wilted in fifteen minutes of monsoon mugginess. He dangles a khaki envelope from the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

  Only a few half-naked foreigners. Tourists who can only afford this four-star hotel.

  Anu won’t be coming. Women don’t face the music for all the trouble they cause. Her father will show instead, and her uncle, the banker who was matchmaker for this marriage.

  Dad better get here soon. Dad always sorts things out.

  The head waiter doesn’t leap to greet him. Still Vikas’s air of command soon results in the requisite obsequiousness and a table at the centre of the room. He starts toward it, then recalls his reasons for choosing this old hotel instead of his club. A word to the head waiter, and he switches to a corner.

  Seated, he opens the envelope and reads the divorce papers again. “Mental and physical cruelty …” He is wounded anew by the accusation.

  He called Anu at the travel agency right after he got the papers. “I apologized, didn’t I? Sent you flowers, didn’t I? This is the thanks I get for working day and night for your every need? What have you ever ever ever had to complain about?” Silence. He hates her silences almost as much as her burd-burd. She hasn’t been home since. Her clothes are missing. So damn underhand.

  In the coffee shop, he crosses one ankle over his knee, and leans back.

  When he first met her, he had been attracted to her kindness and gentleness. Such a good listener. The day of the Showing at the Gymkhana, her little foot with its white platform heels swinging so close to his shin. How she teased with a toss of her head, smoothing her long black curls behind those pale ears. He still remembers her cleavage as she leaned toward him, the shy flirty-flirty glances from her huge eyes. The way her red lips promised all the delights of the Kama Sutra. What had he wanted that was so unusual? A son. Sex whenever. Doesn’t every husband? Unless he’s
some hen-pecked runt who’s married above his caste, doesn’t every real man?

  He examines a scuff on his shoe. The sweeper isn’t polishing properly at all since Anupam left. He picks a speck from his sleeve.

  Oh, he didn’t let Anu make a fool of him. He got over her maidenly objections. Calmly, firmly, saying please at first, and when that didn’t work, without please. It was time; she had to be broken. How was he to know she’d fight with fist and knee and insults and pleading or that her bleeding wouldn’t stop for three days? It was awful, but it had to be done. And it made him feel larger—powerful—wonderful.

  For a while. He did know that what he did to her was unforgiveable. But any woman except Anu eventually would have forgiven him. She just isn’t as sweet, kind, generous or smart as he thought.

  If not for the accident with the roadster, he’d have a son by now … but ever since Anupam wrecked his car, the sight of her rouses a current of irritation. A sensation that amplifies in his veins like a drug, then explodes. Gives him a greater high than hitting a ball with a mallet.

  And a very bad feeling afterwards.

  Less and less bad, though, as Chetna gets older and there’s still no son.

  At first he thought it was the accident. Some women’s wombs are so bloody delicate. But now he knows it was the pills—sneaky little bitch.

  The parents always said he could educate his wife, correct her thinking. Mistaken. As they have been about many decisions in his life. Still, if he wants to be recognized on sight, or ushered everywhere when he name-drops his father’s name, if he wants to live in Lutyens’s New Delhi, if he wants a well-tended life full of servants, if he wants to inherit a mansion worth more than three hundred crore rupees, the parents are always right.

  “Dharma,” he mutters through clenched teeth, a son’s role being so demanding. “Hé Ram!”

  His lawyer says he has options. Anupam, on the other hand … well, she’s about to find out who’s smarter. And here’s Dad, at the door of the coffee shop.