A Sister's Promise

by Renita D'Silva

  PUJA—FISSURE

  THE LOWER LIP OF THE SKY

  Puja stands on the rock flanking the beach, listening to the sea hum to the undulating rhythm of the tides. She watches the waves play hide and seek with the sand, mesmerised by the hypnotic way they rise and fall, rise and fall.

  She thinks of her father, and his face when he hit her, each fiery stroke branding the virgin skin of her back with the weeping blot of the dishonour she had supposedly wrought upon them; his spittle-flecked, defeat-saturated, loss-smothered words, each one a block of wood stoking the funeral pyre of their relationship: ‘You are not my daughter.’ Five words that spelled goodbye to the father whose entire being used to soften when she was around. The father who used to say she was his happiness, his reason for living, his world. The father who had indulged her and cosseted her and loved her. Loved. Past tense.

  The glimmering expanse of creamy turquoise is beguiling. She pictures herself jumping off the rock. She imagines the canoodling, froth capped waves depositing warm smooches as they welcome her into their salty depths.

  She thinks of her last glimpse of her mother before she was forced to leave the house she has called home, the family she is no longer a part of. Her ma broken, her body oozing pain, her eyes raining. Ma had clung to Puja, not letting go, had fallen at Da’s feet, begging and pleading. The entire village had gathered to watch, of course, crowding the fields, pushing the grazing cows aside. The crows perched in the coconut trees scattered in alarm at this unprecedented susurration upsetting the placid calm.

  Her father had refused to look at Puja, had pretended he was deaf and blind to his wife’s agony, her heartrending entreaties.

  And Sharda . . .

  Sharda had huddled against the mango tree, using it to support her weight, her body having given up on the task. Sharda, who had hefted Puja on her hip when but a child herself, until Puja became too heavy to carry, informing all and sundry, pride dripping from her voice, ‘My sister.’ Sharda, eyes dripping, face crushed, trying to disappear into herself.

  Puja had walked away from the house where she has always been so adored; the hut that had been home all her life, now smelling of hurt and reeling from grief, rank with shame and trembling under the assault of words that couldn’t be unsaid and actions that couldn’t be revoked, haunted by the phantom of what used to be, and dogged by the taunting memory of the happiness and contentment that had until recently graced its walls.

  She had not cried. Not shed a tear.

  All she had felt was anger. Fierce red and burning as the welts on her back, it had pushed away the guilt and the hurt, and ignited a glorious fiery rebellion. What sort of justice was this, where she was not given a chance to explain, to so much as speak? How could her father claim to love her when he went from assuming the best of her to the worst, refusing to indulge the grey areas in between, the faults and indiscretions that rendered her human?

  When her father took a stick to her back, when her mother and sister went along with it, her family crushed her heart like a cardamom pod being subjected to the ministrations of the pestle.

  All her life she has yearned to escape the confines of the village, its narrow-mindedness and prejudice. And she has been justified.

  Why does Sharda get to marry Gopi when she, Puja, loves him? What is the sense in that?

  When Puja is with Gopi, she feels complete. And if she feels this way about him, how can she stand to see him married to her sister? Her sister, who does not know what it is to be in love, who only knows how to study and cook. Her sister, who doesn’t know how to live. For to love like Puja does, with her entire being on fire, her heart aching for Gopi, is to live.

  Is it fair, on Sharda, or on Gopi, to be married when their hearts, their whole beings are not consumed by the other? Sharda doesn’t know Gopi like Puja does. She doesn’t know that he has a row of bumpy stitches on his left leg from a dog bite when he was five, that he scraped his knees so much as a child that they are riddled with scars, that he is afraid of heights, that he gets a headache if he drinks ice cold water.

  Sharda doesn’t know that Gopi got his first bike when he was fourteen, by teaching himself to ride a friend’s bike and showing his father what he could do. She doesn’t know that his father only bought him the bike and subsequent ones on the premise that Gopi would give him a ride whenever he wanted one.

  Sharda doesn’t know that Gopi hates raw onions and that he cannot drink tea after four in the evening because if he does then he will be unable to sleep that night. She doesn’t know that he always saves half his laddoo for Puja, and that he adores jalebis. She doesn’t know that he hates dhal but loves curd rice, that he misses his mother who died when he was three and that he cries when he watches Hindi movies.

  Sharda doesn’t know that Gopi is a romantic at heart; that Ek Duje Ke Liye is his favourite movie and he has watched it 54 times, ten of those times with Puja. She doesn’t know that he is extremely ticklish, especially if you tickle him at the waist. She doesn’t know that when he laughs his eyes scrunch up into slits and lines radiate from them all the way up to his hairline.

  Sharda doesn’t know that behind Gopi’s cocky exterior hides a scared, insecure little boy who wants everybody to love him. She doesn’t know that Gopi’s most embarrassing moment ever was when he giggled in fear when his friend Dinu was being whipped by the teacher and Dinu has never forgiven him for it. She doesn’t know that he hates getting sand in his shoes, that he loves Rasna mango juice but doesn’t like eating mangoes. She doesn’t know that he has five moles on his face and that when he is asleep his eyelashes fan his cheeks like unicorn tails.

  ‘You will not see that boy again,’ her father had intoned, ‘And you will not see us.’

  Distress now chases away the wrath, the magnificent surge of ire that had possessed her briefly, making her feel, for a few wild moments, fiercely, vibrantly alive. A shard of agony threatens to rip her soul apart. Her back is on fire from remembered hurt.

  Puja looks to the point where the lower lip of the sky meets the upper lip of the sea, sealing all the universe’s unfathomable secrets, everything contained in that vast promise, and she wants to walk towards it.

  She envisages the hug of watery arms, velvet sand surging under her feet, the saline taste of oblivion.

  Hot spicy breath on her neck, the smell of motor oil and lemon.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he whispers.

  She feels him lowering himself beside her on the rock, the brine-infused sea air shifting to accommodate him, and wrapping them both in its tangy embrace.

  He leans close and then his arm is around her, and she rests her head on his shoulder, taking comfort from the one thing in her world that hasn’t changed, feeling as if she has come home.

  Crabs scuttle into shingly holes; men argue; women laugh; infants cry. The air smells of onion and chilli from the bhel puri vendor across from them, mixed with the tang of fish, the taste of moist sand.

  How can she give Gopi up, the one constant in her life, the fabric of which has ripped apart, exposing truths she’d rather not have known?

  ‘Shush, it’s all right,’ he says, and she realises she is crying, the tears she has refused to give in to now find their way out, and huge sobs rack her body.

  Gulls squabble. Spices sizzle and curries simmer in the huts by the beach. A man whistles while he urinates right into the sea.

  She longs for the days before, when all was right in her world: sitting pillion on his bike, her arms around him, her plaits dancing around her head. A carefree past where she would rest her head on his solid back and taste the air, smacking of fruit and spices and innocence as it whooshed past, loud in her ears, and then dance home to her family, to her studious sister, harassed mother and indulgent father.

  ‘I am so angry with him,’ she says when she can speak. She will not call her father Da again. She will call him nothing at all. If he has disowned her, she will damn well disown him too. ‘He is paying the
aunt to have me stay, probably using the money he was hoarding for my dowry.’

  Gopi does not say anything, letting her speak and for this, she is enormously grateful. He understands her. He is the only one who does.

  The sky is a kaleidoscope of colour where it converges with the sea. Children screech as they jump in the white and aquamarine breakers, their faces open in expressions of pure delight, their watchful mothers trying to hold them back. Ice-cream vendors and peanut sellers circulate, and in the distance a man hawks tali bonda—palm fruit—for three rupees an eye. A group of churidar-clad girls giggle into their shawls. The frisky sea breeze is infused with the flavour of impending dusk, salty with a garlicky tang.

  ‘It’s not too bad with my aunt,’ she sniffs. ‘Nilamma is old and going blind and glad of the company. He must have asked her to keep strict tabs on me, because I have to account for my every movement.’ She cannot help the bitterness veneering her voice the smudged grey of charcoal cinders.

  ‘Where does she think you are now?’ His face glows red from the light of the fuchsia sky.

  ‘At the shops. I told her we had run out of oil and lentils.’ She manages a watery smile. ‘Let’s run away,’ she says.

  ‘We need money for that, Puja,’ he says softly, his hand gently stroking her hair which is in a mess, knotted by the wind rising from the sea. ‘My da holds the purse strings and he’s ordered me not to see you anymore.’ His voice is gritty with frustration.

  And yet you are here. You’ve defied him to be here with me.

  ‘How did he find out about us . . .’ she begins, but of course she knows. All those villagers gathered to watch the drama being played out at their hut.

  Nothing is sacred in the village, she thinks, least of all love.

  ‘I am not betrothed to Sharda anymore. Da broke it off when he found out. I have to accompany him to work every day. It will be harder for us to meet from now on. I managed to get away today because he had an emergency at one of his . . . ’

  ‘You are no longer promised to Sharda?’ Puja thinks of her sister, the way she had glowed when Puja stumbled upon her betrothal and feels a pang.

  But as his words sink in, she is aware of a weight lifting: the burden of guilt and shame she has been lugging around since she found out about Sharda’s betrothal.

  She smiles up at Gopi, relief flooding her body. Nothing is sorted, everything up in the air. She has lost her family, and yet, there is now a sliver of hope. Gopi is not lost to her.

  ‘I love you, Gopi,’ she whispers.

  He looks at her, that gaze that tells her everything she needs to know, that looks inside her, into the very depths of who she is. ‘I love you too.’

  Then he bends down and, while the sun sets and the breeze fondles and the sea gushes and the sky performs, he kisses her. And it is more beautiful than she ever imagined. It is better than her wildest fantasies.

  ‘Arre what are they doing? Chi! Shame on you!’

  Somewhere in the corner of her brain, Puja registers the outraged shouts, the scandalized whispers but mostly, she is lost to the world, lost to everything except this man doing to her what she has imagined a hundred thousand times.

  ‘Don’t you have a reputation to uphold?’ someone shouts and someone else wolf whistles.

  Men point; mothers cover their children’s faces, but the curious kids peek from between their mothers’ fingers: ardent eyes, innocent gazes.

  Gopi gives Puja his hand, pulling her up to stand.

  ‘Let’s get away from here,’ he says and they walk away to a chorus of wolf whistles and jeers.

  ‘Is your Da at home?’ Puja asks when they are nearing his house, which is right by the beach.

  ‘I don’t know if he’s back yet. Why?’

  ‘Let’s speak to him, Gopi. If I am with you, and we speak to him together, if he sees how much we love each other, perhaps that will sway him. After all, he was willing to have Sharda for a daughter-in-law, why not me?’ She is convincing herself as much as Gopi.

  She does not allow the sudden vision of her father’s face to overthrow her conviction, his hands raining blows on her even as he sobbed: How could you do this, bring this disgrace upon us?

  Gopi’s eyes widen at her suggestion but as they meet her gaze, resolve settles in them, like the sandy grey of wet cement solidifying into concrete. ‘Yes. You’re right, Puja. I’ve had enough of him running my life for me. I’ll speak to him, tell him it is you I care for and you I want to marry. Come.’ He swings open the gates to his mansion.

  Her heart soaring like a bird released from the confines of its cage testing the limits of its freedom, Puja falls into step beside him.

  A mob of dogs howl as they near the house, but they are tied to their post, so they can’t get at Puja.

  ‘He’s not home yet,’ Gopi says of his father. ‘His car is not here. But now that you are, I’ll show you my room.’

  It is the moment of reckoning. She could go back, having safeguarded the shred of reputation she has left. But since when has she cared for her reputation? And the worst has happened, she has been disowned, what more could possibly go wrong?

  ‘We’ll go round the back so the servants don’t see.’ Gopi says.

  Have you no shame? Her father’s voice echoes in her ears as she treads softly along the side of the house behind Gopi, holding on to the wall for support.

  The dogs are howling fit to rouse the neighbourhood, but the servants do not come outside to check.

  ‘They are probably in the kitchen having a feast,’ Gopi whispers. ‘Celebrating the fact that my father is away for longer than usual. The dogs bark for the smallest thing anyway, frogs jumping in the garden, a snake slithering past, so no one pays any heed to them. And usually Manu the security guard alerts them to visitors but he must have gone to have his dinner, or perhaps he is in the kitchen with them, making hay while my father’s away.’

  He turns to her, his face shining in the dim evening light. How she loves him, his beloved profile conjured so many times in the dark of night to soothe her back into sleep.

  ‘And the kitchen is at the opposite side of the house to my room. Nobody will know you are here.’

  Puja experiences a thrill when he says this, and sees it mirrored in his eyes, in the way they narrow, in the way his breath comes in gasps of desire.

  I am not doing anything wrong, she tells herself, her mind frantically rationalising, keeping the guilt and the haranguing voice of her conscience speaking to her in her father’s broken voice at bay. I love this man and we are going to get married, be together, as soon as we have spoken to the landlord.

  Puja clings to the side of the house, musing what a change this mansion that goes on and on makes from the hut she has called home until recently, with its tiny kitchen and the one room where they all used to eat and sleep.

  Do they miss me? She wonders, gagging on a strident spasm of pain.

  Gopi turns the corner and Puja bumps her head against an open window shutter.

  ‘Ah, this is it,’ Gopi says.

  Puja peeps past the shutter into the room, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. A space twice the size of the living/dining/bedroom of the hut Puja has been forced out of. A whirring ceiling fan; a table, a chair, a wardrobe; a voluminous mosquito net draped around a monstrous bed that could sleep four people easily.

  Gopi is up ahead and Puja quickens her stride until he comes to an abrupt stop in front of a door and she bumps into him, another thrill pulsing through her.

  ‘The back door. It is left unlocked during the day,’ he whispers, opening it softly and, once they are safely inside, turning around and gathering her in his arms.

  Puja can hear his heart beating wildly in his chest. She has only ever rested her head against his back before, while sitting behind him on the bike, never his chest. She breathes in his scent of sweat and lemon and motor oil, familiar, reassuring. His strong body, muscles rippling, encloses her in the warm cocoon of hi
s embrace. She feels heat rise within her.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  But at this moment, this man’s arms are exactly where she wants to be. This man’s arms that feel like home, all the more precious now that she is homeless.

  After a bit, Gopi gently untangles her and, holding her hand, leads her to his room. He closes the door and standing with his back to it, looks at her, his eyes hungry, alight with want.

  You should not be here, alone in a man’s room in the dark. Sharda’s voice.

  Why is she here?

  Sharda, you haven’t loved like I have, loved so much that you forget everything else, throw caution to the wind. What is this big thing that I am doing wrong? Puja queries her sister’s spectral voice. Is being with the man you love so bad? Isn’t it the most natural thing in the world?

  Not this man. He belonged to me until you came between us, Sharda says in Puja’s head but Puja pushes away her conscience that is daring to masquerade as her sister, thinking, No. I did not come between anybody. I was there first. He loves me, not you. Me.

  And the very next moment she forgets everything but the man whose mouth is on her hair, her eyes, her nose, her lips. She is all feeling, no thoughts, no pesky conscience raising hell in her family’s voices. He gathers her closer to him, and his hand chafes against the healing wounds on her back. She flinches.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he whispers. Concern pigments his voice the soft cream of clouds hugging the coral rim of twilight sky.

  He turns her around and lifts her churidar top and vest. She lets him, even as she feels the vest tear at the scabs. She hears his dazed intake of breath, a shocked lament, feels his lips tenderly graze each crisscrossing wound, as if by doing so he is trying desperately to right the wrongs done to her, to restore her body, her family, her life back to her. Then he kisses her forehead, a caress so tender that she feels tears collect at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I love you Puja.’ He says and his voice is the ache of night awaiting the tender light of morning. It is the first drop of rain after months of drought. It is a promise and a covenant. It is possession after the devastation of loss. It is the truth.