The Selector of Souls

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  “ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not a selector of souls.’

  “ ‘A man who cannot feed his family has no right to live.’

  “I said, ‘You have love to give, even if you can’t work. My mem-saab was like that—old, but she had so much love and dignity, it didn’t matter that she couldn’t hear, couldn’t work.’

  “ ‘You could have prevented her suffering too,’ Chunilal said. ‘Did you?’

  “ ‘Of course I didn’t!’ I said.

  “ ‘But why not put useless people out of our misery?’ he asked me. ‘My death is coming, anyway. Lord Yama is there in my dreams.’ I said, ‘All of us are dying, day by day, from the very moment of birth. Everyone suffers, not only you. How can I decide that your suffering is sufficient?’

  “He said, ‘I have decided my suffering is sufficient.’

  “I said, ‘You’re talking as if you have Dipreyshun. Even saab-log like Mem-saab and Sister Anu suffer, though they smile and look rich, healthy, beautiful. They complain, they cry just as you’re crying. Maybe Aman-ji suffers. Maybe even Kiran suffers.’ I told him, Sister, I told him this. And I said, ‘Sister Anu says every person has a story. If I kill you, it’ll be like paying for a movie but walking out at intermission.’

  “ ‘Are my wishes no longer important?’ he said. ‘One day every story will end in India and everywhere in the world—think if Americans or Russians set off another Big Big Bumb, the Atom Bumb. I’m just saying to end mine sooner.’

  “ ‘Mohan can’t earn, doesn’t learn, will never understand money or farming. Should I put him out of his misery, too?’ I said. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Mohan’s my son. He will carry on my name after I am gone.’

  “I said, ‘So a useless son is better than no son? Just for a name? What use is a name if a big bumb is going to end all our stories?’

  “ ‘Not a name. My name. If I die, you make sure he gets married,’ he said. He really meant it! He thought I would trick some girl’s family into marrying Mohan! But when a man is sick and dying, you have to listen and not argue …”

  “What did you say then?” says Sister Anu.

  “I didn’t say anything about arranging a marriage for Mohan. I said, ‘I told you when I arrived, Chunilal, you are like a son to me. Even if you are useless and brainless, you have to live for Leela, for Mohan, for Kamna …’ ”

  Sister Anu has become a pair of ears for Damini, listening as night blankets the mountains.

  When the moon takes shape, Damini says, “Do you know if that is the same moon my sisters see?”

  “It’s the same,” says Sister Anu. “Where are your sisters?”

  “Rajasthan. My oldest sister has gone to the next life, the second one became oldest, and she was married into a family in Loharki. My middle sister is now in Bharariya, and the next is married in Mava. The villages are all close to Khetolai, where we grew up. Only I was sent so far away. Sister,” she says, struck with a sudden fear, “what if we are dead and this is the next life?”

  Sister Anu says, “Then we’d have no experience. We’d feel no change and have no stories.”

  Damini clasps her head in her hands to think more deeply. Eventually she says, “I feel cold. And the ground is hard; I have experience. The moon is higher than it was a few hours ago. Kamna, Suresh and Leela were sitting together, but are now sleeping on the ground. And Chunilal’s body is burning away, so there is change.”

  “And we might find ourselves in another place,” says Anu. “Christians call it hell or heaven.”

  “In another place—like Pakistan?” A myriad questions are rising within her. “Which is farther from here, Pakistan or the moon?”

  “The moon.”

  “I can see the moon, but not Pakistan? Still, I know Pakistan is there because Mem-saab escaped it in 1947, and she said that place was born like a bloody twin at midnight with India. Maybe your Christian hell is like Pakistan.”

  “People in Pakistan who escaped from India during Partition might think hell is like India.”

  “Has anyone ever escaped hell to tell you such a place is there?”

  “No, but—”

  “Why don’t people in Pakistan believe in gods like Lord Golunath?”

  “They believe their Prophet is more powerful.”

  “Does Muhammad-ji speak to them?”

  “No, he’s dead, like our Christ—but Shafiq Sheikh tells me how much his life story inspires all Muslims.”

  “I tell you! Nothing ever finishes,” Damini says. “The spirits of the dead are always around, causing trouble, judging the living. Even when we die, it’s not over.”

  “We’re all afraid to die.”

  “Huh! Not I! Next minute I’ll be alive again, and again it begins. You Christians and Muslims who only have one life are afraid to die.”

  “Remember the song, Zindagi aur kuch bhi nahin, teri meri kahani hai?”

  Damini nods, “Wait, don’t tell me—I’ll remember the movie.” In a moment she says, “Shor.”

  “Yes, the song says, Life is nothing more than your story, my story. Muhammad’s body, Christ’s body, Chunilal’s body—all may be gone, but their story remains.”

  The vigil continues till birdsong stirs at dawn. Sister Anu again takes Damini’s hand in her light-skinned one. “Bahut avsos hai,” she says.

  There is great sympathy. How comforting is her presence; Damini is surprised.

  There are worse things than untouchables afraid to touch you, or pandits who refuse to chant at your funeral, or families who do not wish to know you. When Damini, Leela, Suresh, Kamna and Mohan return home at dawn, tired and stiff from their vigil beside Chunilal’s pyre all night, Amanjit Singh’s manager, that pitiless prune of a man, is waiting with a cheque for Rs. 35,000. For Chunilal’s land, he says.

  He waves a paper before their astonished faces. “Sale deed,” he says.

  “What sale deed?” Suresh pushes forward, protectively.

  The manager stops waving the paper and brings it under the lantern light. He does not allow them to touch it.

  Mohan points proudly to his name—signed large and clear, and in English—at the bottom.

  Leela boxes Mohan’s ears till Damini stays her hand. Because Mohan couldn’t know his land is worth ten times that amount. The boy crouches in a corner and hides his face in the circle of his arms. The manager waits as if he’s seen this happen on other farms.

  Suresh says, “I’m head of this family, now.”

  “No, he is not,” says Leela to the manager. “I am still alive, still his elder. And Mohan is Chunilal’s heir. But Mohan should not have signed this deed.”

  Suresh’s eyes flash, his chest puffs out and he draws himself up as if readying to strike someone.

  Damini comes between. She says to the manager, “The land belonged to my husband Piara Singh and was part of Leela’s dowry before it ever belonged to Chunilal. You understand? It was her stridhan. Her brother cannot take it, and her son cannot sign it away.”

  “It was a gift to her husband,” says Suresh. “And since he’s gone, it comes back to our family.”

  The manager shrugs. “Amanjit-ji will build a villa here, not a cottage,” he says, as if everyone should appreciate the honour bestowed upon the land. Leela and her family, he says, have a month in which to move.

  “Move where?” says Leela. “This is my house.”

  The manager says, “Tell them to take the cheque, old amma. No one else will give you so much. Leela could fall or have an accident tomorrow, or Amanjit-ji can build a latrine over your water supply. Then with what face can you come asking for such a large cheque?”

  “Take that cheque back to Aman-ji,” Leela says to the manager, “Let him come and till these terraces himself, if he wants. He can build a cottage for us, or around us, because I am not moving.”

  When the manager has left, Damini says wretchedly, “I have brought you bad luck ever since I came here. A woman spending her old age with a daughter, taking from a d
aughter’s home. I’m sure Kiran-ji made Aman-ji do this, because I refused to do what she wanted.”

  “Why didn’t you do whatever she wanted?” says Suresh. “So what if she wanted you to polish the silver or something?”

  “She wanted me to kill a baby.”

  “Girl?”

  Damini nods slowly, her gaze on her son’s face.

  “Then what?”

  “I said no.”

  “And this is the result.”

  Men have to be told everything. Should she tell Suresh whose child she saved from Kiran’s clutches that night? Damini bites her tongue. Not now.

  “Aman-ji would have done this whether you were here or not,” says Leela. “Kiran-ji may have speeded up his plans. Saab-women are not accustomed to swallowing slowly if they are made to eat thorns.” She turns to Suresh. “Tell me brother, what should I do?” she says, in a tone that mollifies and admires.

  Suresh folds his arms across his chest with barely contained rage. “These Sikhs and Christians—always up to something against Hindus.”

  “Aman-ji is a Sikh,” says Damini. “But why are you blaming Christians as well?”

  “All same. Not-Hindus, that’s why.”

  “Suresh, some Sikhs are good, and so are some Christians.”

  “Threatening Hindus, all having too many babies, taking away land.”

  Mohan looks up from his corner. “Babies. Taking baby to Shimla, put baby in car.”

  Suresh turns, his face lighting up. “What did you say? Say it in Hindi, boy.”

  “Be quiet, Mohan!” says Damini.

  Mohan gets to his feet and shakes his head like a small elephant blundering behind the herd. “Sister said, ‘Taking baby to Shimla. Put him in the car, Mohan.’ ”

  ANU

  SISTER ANU IS IN THE BACK SEAT OF THE CONVENT jeep, returning to Gurkot after a weekend in Shimla, swaying as the road curls and reading a mystifying letter from Chetna about choosing between costumes for Halloween. Rano and Chetna always seem to be choosing and deciding. It sounds exhausting. And Halloween seems dark, pagan and strange in contrast with Gurkot’s blue sky on this crisp clear morning.

  Shafiq Sheikh takes a bend in the road, and slows the jeep.

  Men have joined hands to form a human garland across the road at the incline to Bread of Healing. Several men are dressed in marigold turbans, many sporting vermilion teeka-marks on their foreheads, as if coming from the temple. “Is it a festival?” she asks.

  “No, Sister,” says Shafiq Sheikh. “Dusshera is still two weeks away. Maybe a wedding?”

  “If it were a wedding,” says Father Pashan from the front seat, “people would look more happy and gay.”

  Shafiq Sheikh stops, rolls down his window and sticks his head out. “I see some women,” he says. Wedding processions are usually all-male events.

  A man in a white singlet and grey pants seems to be the leader. Men’s fists are pumping behind him as they shout slogans—death to something.

  The man in the white singlet carries a large photo frame under one arm, and clasps a megaphone in the other. “My brothers and sisters! Christians are converting Hindus to Christianity,” he shouts. “They steal our babies! Sister Anupam was seen taking a baby boy away to Shimla. Ask my nephew, Mohan—he saw her. He saw the baby, he says it was a boy. And then the sister returned from Shimla without him. You know, we all know, that someone’s baby boy is being sold abroad.”

  Men wag their heads, shouting “Han! Han!” as if certain that people abroad value sons as highly as they do.

  The man with the megaphone comes closer, and Sister Anu recognizes Suresh. He yells, “Look at what these Christians want to do to your women.”

  He lays the megaphone down by the roadside, turns the poster around and holds it overhead. He rotates slowly on the ball of one sneakered foot, allowing everyone to see. A pink poster depicts a woman in a sari, sitting on a European-style chair. One bare foot touches the floor, one rests on a footstool. She’s facing a TV, and a couple of pages of a newspaper have fallen on the floor beside her. On a low table beside the woman is a cup, perhaps of tea. The woman’s chin is raised. She’s smiling as if enjoying herself. A book in her hand is titled in Devanagari script. Her sandals lie beside her on the floor.

  Suresh props the pink poster against the hillside. “Christians want all women to become like this,” he shouts.

  The few women in the crowd gaze at the woman in the poster as if she were a Bollywood starlet. The men are suitably shocked.

  Several people in the crowd are former patients, and others must be family members of patients. Enough! Sister Anu opens her door.

  “Sister, come back!” says Father Pashan.

  “Just a minute,” she says. She gets out, faces the crowd. “Sunno! All of you, listen! This is a terrible misunderstanding. Please disperse. No one working at the clinic intends to hurt anyone. All of us are trying to help—you who have been our patients know that. Tell him so,” she says, pointing to their leader.

  Father Pashan comes to stand beside her.

  It occurs to Sister Anu that the people think Father Pashan is American or English. It’s the one blue eye. But he’s Indian as can be! Anu will have to talk to the crowd. Her Hindi doesn’t sound Anglo-Indian like Father Pashan’s.

  Suresh comes forward, a snarl twisting his round face. “You were seen taking a Hindu baby boy to Shimla!” he shouts.

  “No,” says Sister Anu. She stands her ground. “You are mistaken. That baby was not Hindu, he was born to Christians.”

  “No! Don’t you make excuses. You made that baby a Christian so that Christians get more votes.”

  He reaches down and picks up a plastic jerry can leaning against the hillside. “See this? It’s empty. Where did the petrol go?” He sniffs in exaggerated inquiry. “I smell it—can you? I smell it all around your church.”

  The crowd shuffles, sways and swarms with its own energy. Sister Anu hears herself begin to plead—two patients are recuperating in the clinic beside the chapel. She doesn’t mention that the chapel is a historical monument, that the chapel, clinic and school do not belong to the church, but to Amanjit Singh. A man intent on destruction won’t be moved by the hopes, dreams and hard work that created this complex.

  “Bhaiya—” she begins, calling him brother. “Let the patients go. They are innocent.” For innocent, she chooses the word nirdosh, descended from Sanskrit, over the Urdu bekasoor, to placate his Hindu pride. She’s grovelling, but if it saves one life, it will be worth it.

  Father Pashan says, “Don’t do this, son.”

  “Is my name Pashan? No, my name is Suresh Singh Chauhan, descendant of a raja who ruled these hills before there were any Sikhs, before Muslims invaded, before the British Raj. I’m not your son. We don’t want you taking our sons away.”

  “Your quarrel is with me—let Sister Anu bring the patients out, at least.”

  “Are the patients Hindu?” says Suresh. “If they are Hindus, I’m not stopping them. They can come out.”

  All she has to do is think of the women’s names, but Sister Anu says, “We don’t ask what people believe before we treat them. Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians all get the same diseases. Whether the women are Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or Christian, they don’t have enough shakti to walk without help,” she says. “Let me go in with Shafiq Sheikh, we’ll help them to the jeep. We’ll take them to Jalawaaz or Shimla.”

  “Oh no no no,” says Suresh. “They can’t go with any Muslim.”

  A Hindu patient should die inside rather than accept help from a Muslim driver?

  Heads in the crowd are nodding. Voices shout, “No Muslims, no Muslims!” Fists are pumping, “Jai-jai Golunath, jai Ram-ji!” invoking the god of justice, invoking Lord Ram.

  Suddenly, a tousled red head fights to the front of the crowd. “Suresh! What are you doing?”

  Damini! Suresh looks around, then swats his hand a few times as if she’s a buzzing fly.

  “Op
en your ears and listen: I will bring the women out,” Damini shouts. “And they will go in the car with Shafiq Sheikh.”

  “You would let a Muslim …”

  Damini plants her fists on her hips and glares up at Suresh. “Did you know if you were Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Sikh when you were in my koke? No. You came into this world just a human! You didn’t know till your first breath if you were Hindu or Muslim. You didn’t know till I named you, till I began your story. Come and help, Shafiq-ji.”

  The dignified old man doesn’t hesitate. He steps out of the jeep, and moves to Damini’s side.

  Suresh looks as if things are not going as planned. The fists have stopped pumping in the crowd, the sloganeers seem unsure what to yell. “Why should I care for the patients?” he mutters, forgetting the megaphone in his hand. “They’re just women.” His words ripple through the crowd.

  Damini yells, “A woman brought you into the world!” She turns and strides away in her combat boots. “And,” she shouts, over her shoulder, “when you were in her stomach, this woman didn’t ask if you deserved to be born or not.”

  She halts, returns to shout up at Suresh’s chest, “And that child Sister Anu took to Shimla—that was your son.”

  A collective gasp rolls through the crowd.

  “He doesn’t have your name and you’ll never call him Hindu because he came from a Christian woman’s koke, but that Moses is two-in-one: Hindu plus Christian. Han! And if he was in that clinic, would you allow him to come out?”

  A man shouts from the crowd, “Hindu father makes it a Hindu baby.”

  Another shouts, “Christian woman must have been a prostitute.”

  “Mata-ji, so I slept with a prostitute,” Suresh says in a boy-whine.

  “Lie to others, not your mother. You just took what you wanted.” Damini resumes her march uphill.

  Father Pashan and Sister Anu follow her closely.

  “Don’t you go anywhere,” Suresh shouts at Father Pashan. “Understand? Nowhere, unless I say so.”

  The crowd is snaking behind them on the narrow road, men snickering, gawking and gossiping.