Damini watches, thinking. A child in the womb is unnamed flesh, and the vedas say all destruction is disappearance. Not every seed takes root, not every one that falls becomes an oak or pine. Everything is important—soil, water, wind, incline. A seed is only potential seeking the heat of a womb.
If the form is destroyed before breath, the girl’s life cannot happen. The decision to return being to non-being, return a child to brahman, should belong only to the woman who harbours a child in her womb. No government, doctor, nurse, midwife or grandmother should be a selector of souls.
Vijayanthi is saying she’s sure the new ultrasoon clinic in Jalawaaz will give Damini a commission for each woman referred. A commission that will help her pay Chunilal two hundred rupees a month so no one can say she took from her daughter’s home.
On her way home, the mountains look less forbidding to Damini. The sky has turned as turquoise as yearning; the trees are tensely green and waiting. Inside her, a nub of feeling rises to a prayer of gratitude: she will never need to do what she did again.
The ultra-soon is the answer.
Shimla
December 1994
ANU
SISTER ANU FOLLOWS THE LONG STRIDE OF A RAGGED man with a large knife tied to his walking stick like a bayonet. It’s the tenth anniversary of Bobby’s death and she needs to see the spot where he died. Her guide is the man who carried her wounded brother on his back uphill to the car and accompanied Bobby all the way to Snowdon Hospital. He leads her downhill from the Cart Road on a pocked byway that ends where a footpath begins, swivelling at intervals to assure her in lilting Himachali Hindi that the spot she seeks is just ahead. Sister Anu keeps her eyes on the footpath, determinedly ignoring the ravine beside her that plunges through December sunshine into darkness.
One more curve and the footpath opens onto a long grassy clearing flanked by ancient pines. A canopy of branches floats above Sister Anu like lances ready to thrust or parry. Monkeys chatter and screech at their approach. The guide bows to them as incarnations of Lord Hanuman, then raises his stick and feints. They scamper away.
Details—telegrams from memory.
We sent Bobby here. All of us—Dadu, Mumma, Sharad Uncle, Purnima-aunty and I. It was a month after Madam G.’s assassination and her party’s anti-Sikh killing spree and Dadu had came to Delhi to help the Home Minister shoo away questions from Sikh widows asking why the army wasn’t called in to stop the carnage. Bobby was fifteen. We all thought a hiking trip in the hills with four other boys in the winter would knock the sissy out of him. His friends would do what we couldn’t, make him a man.
What friends! One boy invited Bobby to his home for a party and forgot to send his car for him, so after two hours of watching Bobby wait by the gate, I flagged a scootie and escorted him there. But he was so mortified to be late, he couldn’t go in. So I brought him home. The other three had been invited to Bobby’s fourteenth birthday party—they wouldn’t have forgotten to attend if Dadu was a raja or an industrialist. Yet Bobby wanted to go to Shimla with these boys.
Beyond the clearing, the ground falls away sharply again. The guide leads her to a group of huge boulders. “Isko Angrez log kehlate theh Council Rock,” he says. The English called this Council Rock.
Wasp-waisted women with ruffled parasols must have come here, and ordered their uniformed khidmatgars to spread blankets and Irish linen for a picnic. Those white-gloved manservants would have laid gilt-edged china and sterling place settings under these looming pines, and darted around pouring whisky from cut-glass decanters for portly men with handlebar moustaches.
Instead, Bobby and his friends went hunting chukar partridge. Friends with guns.
One friend’s gun went off on this very day in 1984—how did it just go off, she asks the guide.
“No, Miss-saab. I didn’t lead them here. They themselves came here. But I helped them take the wounded boy to hospital. That’s how I came to know there were guns.”
Did a gun threaten the one boy in the group who wasn’t man enough?
Where was Bobby standing, where was the friend standing? What might Bobby have said, what did that friend make him say? The police didn’t ask any such questions.
Because after wounding Bobby, his “friend” didn’t call an ambulance. Bobby’s friend called his father, who paid off the Himachal State police and made arrangements for Bobby to be taken to Snowdon Hospital. Only then did anyone call Dadu.
Bobby’s friend’s father said his son didn’t mean any harm—remember, he was Bobby’s friend. Dadu and Mumma should not press charges, he told Dadu—there was nothing to be gained. Besides, if they did, he would fight them in court for the next twenty-five years before he would let his son pay for a careless mistake. Bobby, he told them, couldn’t have felt anything. Just one minute he was here, the next minute he was in a coma, and a week after that in the next life. “So why ruin a young boy’s life? Can you imagine a young boy of fifteen, a boy from a good background sentenced to jail along with darkie low caste criminals—just for an accident? What good would that do?”
Eventually, Dadu and Mumma were persuaded to go along. Dadu told the world Bobby and his friends went hiking in Shimla. That Bobby fell down the hillside and was killed. No mention of a shot, no mention of a gun.
It wouldn’t have done Dadu’s career any good if he’d reported his son’s murder. And since a murdered brother would have been a liability for Anu’s prospects of marriage, Mumma told Anu she too must say it was an ‘accident.’ For so many years, Anu has not been able to speak of it, even think of it. Yet Bobby is why she has asked to study nursing, Bobby is why she is doing her nurse’s training on the coma ward at Snowdon. But his death is also the lie that comes between her and Mumma.
Now a similar lie must be told to the world about Dadu so Mumma can save face. They all must say that his death, too, was an accident, which happened during an inspection tour of his district. Because if it wasn’t an accident, than what was Deepak Lal doing eating onion pakoras and egg karhi on the veranda of a widow’s home? Just the two of them (and her servants). Mumma said, “Everyone knows how loose and immoral widows are.”
Notified of her father’s death by her lawyer ten days ago, Anu returned to the plains for a week. Mumma said everyone in that small town must have seen Dadu on the veranda with the widow. “Accident is a better word,” she said. “More heroic.”
Her sparrow face was suddenly worn and large-eyed. The corners of her mouth drooped. Grey gleamed at the roots of her hair, and two creases were beginning in her neck. “How could he be unfaithful to me?” she kept saying, as if Dadu could have been unfaithful to any other woman.
Anu dealt with the details because Mumma, who maintained English ways and spoke and taught only English in every city and town of India, could no longer speak enough Hindi to deal with them. And Anu insisted on performing Dadu’s last rites.
She must have called every pandit within a radius of a hundred kilometres—none would agree to allow a daughter to be present. But then she found one who said it was just for a daughter to perform last rites. He said the gods would countenance a woman’s performance of last rites, even if society will not—provided every man and woman in the family swore never to tell a soul his name. Thanks to that pandit, Anu sent her father to his next life as her brother would have, going to the crematorium, pressing a switch to reduce Dadu’s body to ashes.
As she had when Bobby died, Mumma took her handkerchief and swollen eyes to the darkened drawing-room to sit beside Dadu’s garlanded photograph. And just as when Bobby died, a legion of mourners entered the room, and each communed with her in silent grief. Old friends, former students, even acquaintances entered Mumma’s silence in a way Anu could not—some without exchanging more than a deep namaste and murmured greetings.
“Selling off half that plot way outside New Delhi, the plot we bought for retirement. No consideration for his wife. And what’s left? One little acre. In a market town on the way to Jaipur, noth
ing but the old Maruti car plant in sight. Gurgaon! Of all places, Gurgaon!” Mumma raged to Anu. Had she forgotten Dadu sold off land to pay for Anu’s surgery, or did she need Anu to feel guilty? “He could have built a house before he died, at least. Only thinking of himself. That was your father.”
Mumma was left a son-less widow, and once bereavement befell her, no one else’s bereavement could compare. Beside her mother’s suffering, Anu’s need to mourn her father had seemed selfish. But that need has led her here on Bobby’s death anniversary.
Sister Anu pays the guide. He stomps back up the trail; his long staff is soon out of sight.
Christ, where were you? Lamb of god who taketh away the sins of the world, why didn’t you take away Dadu and Mumma’s paaps, as well? Why only Christian sins?
Could you not find it in you to love Mumma as well as me? She’s not easy to love, I know, but does she deserve her suffering? Did Dadu?
Sister Anu allows herself ten minutes of tears—any more and she’ll unravel.
Mumma’s elder brother did not come, nor did his wife. Anu told herself Mumma’s brother and his wife would come as soon as they learned of Dadu’s passing. Surely they would come. But punishing Indu Lal for marrying ‘out’ was more important than brotherly love. Purnima-aunty said, “He didn’t come when Bobby died and your mumma didn’t invite him for your wedding. Why do you expect him to be here?”
Sharad Uncle explained, “Your uncle is a fine man, completely unattached to the outcome of his actions. He’s just doing his dharma.”
Anu said, “He doesn’t care what effect his actions have on Mumma? What a cruel brother, what an unfeeling uncle.”
Purnima consoled, “Your Sharad Uncle is here, I’m here. We represent your uncle and all of Mumma’s family by our presence.”
Anu said, “No, you can’t. You only represent yourself. But you are the epitome of kindness.”
Sitting on Council Rock, she draws her knees to her chest. Red monkeys chatter and swing through the branches above her. The moon rises, plump and white-faced as the goras who once ruled India. The sun slips away between the pines. Moon-shadows grow large and dense.
The government will allow her mother six months before she must leave the bungalow allotted to her late husband. After that, she says she plans to build an English language school on what remains of the plot of land. “No more moving every few years, no more private tuitions,” she vows. “You wait, I’ll give your convent schools some competition. I’ll open an English Academy. I’ll offer training in manners, personality development and life coaching.”
Mumma would refuse a single rupee from Anu, even if Anu had crores to offer, because Anu is a daughter. Dadu’s life was one long apology to his wife for his lower birth, but he never took one paisa from Mumma’s family or let them tell him how to live. And he wanted Bobby and Anu to define themselves, too. Bobby never stood a chance. Is Anu moving toward self-definition? Perhaps only by learning who or what she doesn’t want to be.
The stars are ancient silver rupees strewn across the sky. Take one away, does the universe implode? No, it goes on, oblivious.
People we lose are still in our neural networks. I still want to talk to Bobby and Dadu, smell them, laugh and chat with them.
Where did their life force go? Can it return?
How long will it be till Jesus returns? Jesus resurrected Lazarus … Why was that resurrection, and not reincarnation? Oh, because Lazarus got back his same body, fixed up.
Sister Anu prays for forgiveness for the dreams that still trouble her in which Vikas is wounded by her hand. For fantasies in which he is publicly shamed or stoned.
Blood courses through her ears in the silence. She crosses her arms and rubs, becoming aware of cold limbs. Alive, while Bobby and Dadu are not.
All that survives is the love they gave me.
The cold drives her to her feet, and follows her as she climbs to the Cart Road and the waiting convent jeep. Because of Bobby and Dadu, she cannot—will not—relinquish faith in reincarnation. No god would be so unkind as to make her wait till Judgement Day to see her brother and father again. Though she might suffer the burning flames of hell, and it may mean that she will encounter Vikas again in another life, she will have faith in reincarnation. No matter what Church doctrine says.
Gurkot
ANU
PEOPLE FROM JALAWAAZ, GURKOT AND HAMLETS AROUND are gathered beneath the red-gold fabric of a shamiana. It’s Inauguration Day for the chapel, St. Anne’s School, and Bread of Healing Clinic. Some sit cross-legged, wrapped in shawls and blankets, on the dhurries Sister Anu and Sister Bethany have spread before a platform. On the platform, a table draped in white stands before five white plastic chairs. A chrome microphone, rented from the electrical shop in Jalawaaz, inclines its oval head beside the table. The snow peaks, blue-white in December splendour, embrace the festivities.
Sister Anu leads the guests of honour, along with Sister Imaculata and Father Pashan, on a tour of the clinic, past the doctor’s office, the nurses’ station, the lab room and tiny dispensary. Mr. Amanjit Singh zips up his North Face ski jacket, warms his hands before the bukhari in the women’s ward and declares, “Women’s health, children’s education—there can be no development without it.” At this, the sub-district magistrate of Jalawaaz, a South Indian brahmin of about thirty-five who is new to the hills but well-equipped by his training in the Indian Administrative Service, smiles a Chiclet smile. “My last posting was Kerala,” he says, “Verrry dev-lupped. Women’s literacy there: almost ninety percent.”
Mrs. Kiran Singh says, “Very nice, Sister,” when they tour the women’s ward. Large sunglasses ride the bridge of her diamond-studded nose and mask her eyes. Sister Anu can’t see much of her face, but hasn’t seen a woman wearing so much makeup or such ornate gold and diamond earrings since she left New Delhi. Kiran-ji seems so supremely confident and detached, or maybe so studiously bored, that to her own ears Sister Anu’s enthusiasm and hope seem positively gushing.
In the men’s ward, the weary-looking superintendent of police looks with longing at the red-blanketed beds. At least Father Pashan and Sister Imaculata seem impressed by Sister Anu’s attention to detail and her explanations.
Sister Anu leads the dignitaries outside, down a path to the chapel. Everyone stops to remove shoes at the door. The superintendent of police takes a scarf from the bin outside to cover his head in respect, and so does the SDM. Kiran draws her dupatta up over her head. Turbaned Amanjit Singh doesn’t need a scarf. Father Pashan points out the marble confessional and introduces Samuel, the loving restorer of its carved surface. Samuel gazes at the ground as Father Pashan complements him for recarving cemetery headstones and clearing the colonial-era graves. The priest offers to show Amanjit Singh Samuel’s handiwork in the graveyard, but Amanjit shudders. “Let’s not spoil such an auspicious day.”
Exiting the chapel, the dignitaries climb the platform, and sit down. The lambardar of the village and the head of the village council come forward to greet the chief guest and benefactor, Mr. Amanjit Singh, then everyone else. Milk from Gurkot cows is served in aluminium tumblers.
Sister Anu helps Sister Bethany sling a long red ribbon between the pillars on the clinic veranda, then takes a chair behind the children’s area, to survey the platform and the now-milling crowd. Glancing over her shoulder, she can see that better dressed men and women have claimed all the seats on benches on the clinic veranda. A few dalit and tribal men and women squat at Dr. Gupta’s office door. Inside, the doctor is already stalking disease by palpating spleens, bellies, livers and kidneys, and listening to lungs. The new x-ray machine is installed, but no one has yet broken a bone, twisted or sprained an ankle, or dislocated a shoulder. They will—Dr. Gupta says ortho is the most important speciality in a hill practice.
After the SDM and the superintendent of police have made their speeches, Father Pashan comes to the podium. He says in Anglo-accented Hindi, “I see the Holy Spirit shining in yo
ur eyes.” His voice booms across the clearing. “You are probably wondering, ‘Why are these city people here, why have we begun this clinic?’ Because we feel the body is god’s way of being in the world. And shareer,” he says of the body, “is how we manifest ourselves in the world, how we express our souls. And just as Christ used his body to bring god’s message to everyone, we too can use our bodies in the same way. Your body is the centre of your choices, decisions, actions. It becomes conscious by the Word, just as Jesus incarnated the Word. So we honour our bodies.”
Sister Anu crosses her ankles and sits with her hands clasped in her lap. People are listening with rapt attention, no one more so than Imaculata. The SDM’s little son has fallen asleep in Bethany’s arms. Surveying the crowd, it strikes her that an old woman with henna-red hair looks familiar. She’s sitting with a striped umbrella resting across her knees, her feet encased in boots beneath her sari—ah, Anu recalls, she met her at the railway station.
“And today as we consecrate this clinic to god, let us ask what is sickness? Is it a shameful thing or a calamity? No. It is a precious experience. Those who are sick have so much to teach those of us who are well.” His blue-black gaze sweeps across his audience. “Illness is a symptom of larger problems, and it may be our one way to ask for help from others.”
Sister Anu had driven to the chai-stall earlier in the day to call her mother. She mentioned her nursing course and the clinic opening, but Mumma did not want to know what Anu is learning about healing, or the miraculous complexity of muscle, skin, rib and bone. Mumma can only think of her daughter working with filth, fluids and decay. “I could understand your trying to be a doctor,” she said. “I was academically inclined enough, but my father didn’t want me to live unchaperoned at a medical school. Bobby was going to be a doctor. But a nurse? Your father’s blood has eventually shown through. He’s left me a widow and my daughter is choosing to do sweepers’ work. For this we educated you?”
The Selector of Souls Page 26
