A Sister's Promise

by Renita D'Silva

  ‘I love you too,’ she whispers.

  Then there is only Gopi and this moment, theirs and only theirs. They lose themselves in each other as shadows creep up the sides of the house, the mosquito net enclosing the entwined bodies of two young lovers not meant to be together.

  Afterwards, they are aware of dogs barking, the grumble of a vehicle driving up and coming to a shuddering stop. The thud of doors opening and shutting, the slap of shoes on granite floors, the scurrying of servants. An authoritative male voice calling, ‘Gopi?’

  The timid knock of a servant on the door and then a hesitant voice, ‘Gopi, sir, dinner is ready.’

  Gopi turns to Puja and holds her close one more time.

  ‘Let’s talk to your father, persuade him that we are meant for each other.’ Puja urges, her voice coated with desperation. Now that the reality of what she has done is sinking in, she wants the security of the landlord’s approval.

  ‘Now?’ Gopi’s features, soft in the murky light, are swamped with love.

  ‘Yes.’

  He nods, his eyes gleaming glossy gold with determination. ‘Da must not know you were here with me or he’ll never agree to us marrying. Go back the way you came. I’ll make sure no-one sees you and I’ll come out when you knock, and we’ll speak with him together,’ he mouths into her ear, his resolute voice, unwavering in its conviction, instilling her with the confidence necessary to face the ordeal to come.

  Puja walks back the way she came, hugging the dark walls of the mammoth house, the plan being that she slips out the gate under cover of shadows and then waits to be let in, pretending she has just arrived.

  The dogs start their hullaballoo. As before, nobody takes any notice.

  Manu the security guard is still missing from his post and Puja boldly walks past the gates and up the drive in plain sight. She knocks on the front door, her heart drumming furiously in the constricted confines of her chest.

  ‘They are eating.’ The servant who opens the door is unwilling to let her in.

  Where are you, Gopi? You promised you would answer the door.

  ‘I need to speak to the landlord and his son. They’re expecting me,’ she insists and is allowed unenthusiastic entry and made to wait just inside the front door.

  There is no bench to sit on, and Puja shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot for fifteen minutes when the landlord emerges, wearing a colossal frown and scrutinising Puja with knife-point sharp eyes. Gopi follows close behind and walks over to stand beside her. Gopi’s presence next to her goes a long way to easing her nerves.

  We can do this, Gopi. Together, we’ll convince him.

  This is like being in court, she thinks. It is as if she and Gopi are about to appeal for their lives. She feels judged by the landlord’s truculent presence, radiating animosity and ill will.

  Puja wants to hold Gopi’s hand, take comfort from his touch, but she knows that would be going a bit too far, that it would sabotage their cause.

  ‘How dare you interrupt our dinner, miss?’ the landlord booms, his words clipped, voice tough as granite. ‘And why on earth are you standing next to her, Gopi?’

  Go on, Gopi, tell him. Tell him how much you care for me. Put into words for him the love you showed me just now, the love I feel pulsing through my body, flowing in my veins.

  Gopi rocks on his feet. He seems to have lost his voice, this man who is capable of such tenderness, this man who doesn’t deserve this bully of a father.

  ‘I thought I told you not to see her anymore, Gopi. And you . . .’ The landlord’s eyes are the concentrated slits of a predator stalking its prey. ‘Have you no shame? Why are you here?’

  A flood of fury swamps Puja, taking her over, reigning strong over the welter of emotions she has been floundering in since her father took a stick to her body. How dare this man lecture her about shame? How dare he use the same words her father did as he was slashing her back open? What right does he have?

  ‘I am here,’ her voice ringing high and clear and fearless, reverberating off the walls of this cavern of a room, so Gopi looks up from the perusal of his sandals, ‘because your son and I love each other.’

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ The landlord is smirking now, a widening of his mouth, his eyes hard and cold, like a reptile showing its fangs, like a tiger in the moment before it pounces.

  Gopi, help me out, please.

  But Gopi seems to be shrinking where he is standing, fear emanating from his every pore, infecting her with its contagious intensity.

  Why are you so afraid of your father, Gopi? He is, but a man, just like you.

  In the presence of his father, Gopi diminishes, like a car pushed off the road by a domineering lorry.

  What happened to your resolve to speak to him, Gopi? Your decision to tell him that you’ve had enough of him running your life, to inform him of your love for me, your intention of marrying me?

  And just as she thinks this, her heart sinking, Gopi surprises her by looking right at her, his eyes shining.

  ‘Da,’ he calls to his father.

  The landlord turns to his son, his voice dangerously low as he says, ‘You want to say something Gopi?’

  Gopi falters, looks at her, once, a panicked glance in which she sees a motherless little boy and not the man she loves and then he looks down, his shoulders crumpling, his short spurt of courage vanished.

  He’s not going to help me out. I’m on my own.

  She recalls the scene of his betrothal to Sharda, and how he refused to meet her gaze. She should have known then. She should have stayed away from him, and let things be.

  I have loved a weak man.

  The air in the room is suddenly too heavy to inhale, and her lungs feel strangled.

  ‘Gopi and I want to marry each other.’ She says, her heart hammering like a frenzied woodpecker. Gopi should be saying this, not her. Gopi, whom she can still smell on her, taste on her lips, feel in the slipperiness between her thighs. She cannot look at the landlord, does not want to see the triumph in his eyes.

  Where is my courage?

  It has slid to the place where Gopi’s head rests, as far down his chest as it can possibly go. He seems to be willing himself to disappear, this man she loves.

  I knew you were scared of your father, but I never took you for a coward before now, Gopi. I always thought you would stand up for me, for our love, when it mattered. But a coward is what you are.

  Why hadn’t she seen it before? When he did not break off his betrothal to Sharda even though he did not love her; meekly going along with his father’s decision on his behalf? Why has it taken this long for the scales to fall from her eyes, now, when it is far too late?

  The landlord throws back his head and laughs, thundering guffaws that reverberate horribly around the empty, vast room.

  Gopi flinches—a puppet, lurching at the end of strings being jerked by the landlord.

  Puja does not let the tears pricking her eyes to fall as she stands there, with the evidence of what she has done staining her churidar bottoms.

  Did you really love me, Gopi, or was it all just a craven act of one-upmanship on your father and his blasted plans on your behalf?

  The landlord laughs for a long time. Then he says, ‘I remember you saying something similar the day your parents and I sealed Sharda’s betrothal to my boy.’

  He leans closer and she can smell his rank breath, feel the hot fumes of it on her face. She wills herself not to recoil.

  ‘Let me tell you something, girl. Do you know why I chose Sharda? Because she is hardworking, she is educated; she is going to be a doctor. What are your prospects? I heard that you failed your pre-university exam. Is that why you’ve set your sights on Gopi, the only son of a wealthy landlord?’

  ‘I am not interested in money. I love Gopi.’

  ‘Ha,’ sneers the landlord, rubbing his palms together.

  ‘Gopi?’ she tries again.

  He might be a miserable coward, but earlier they were boun
d by the closest bond possible between two human beings, so surely he can come through for her, just this once.

  And surprisingly, he does.

  ‘I want to marry Puja.’ His voice wavers, breaking on her name.

  The landlord chuckles mirthlessly. ‘If you do so, I will disown you. And then we’ll see how you manage, with not a penny between the two of you. She has failed her pre-university exams; you have not completed your degree. Will you work in the fields? What will you do?’

  Gopi’s head sinks once more into the apron of his chest. Puja has an urge to shake him until the words she wants him to say fall out of his throat like cashews from the tree. Does he not remember the avowals of love they made just a few minutes ago? How they sealed the promises they made each other?

  ‘Gopi, we’ll manage somehow. Money is not important. We love each other, we’ll find a way.’

  But he will not look at her. He will not acknowledge her.

  She may not be interested in money, Puja realises, suddenly seeing Gopi clearly, now the blinding scales of love have been forced from her naïve eyes, but Gopi is. He cannot survive without the cushion wealth provides. He does not love her unconditionally like she does him, perhaps never has. He has toyed with her to spite his father and now that his father is threatening to disown him, like she has been disowned, he is abandoning her to her fate, letting her go, as easily as a fisherman releasing a fish too small and insignificant for his needs back into the water.

  ‘What if someone more beautiful comes along?’ she’d asked him once, in the early stages of their relationship. ‘What if someone richer comes along?’ is what she should have asked.

  The closed, stale air in the room, reeking of betrayal, is overwhelming.

  ‘Love!’ The landlord scoffs. ‘I have heard you’ve “loved” most of the boys in town. Free and easy with your favours, aren’t you? Do you know, I chose Sharda, most of all, because she is a good girl. Unlike you.’ His contemptuous gaze sweeps over Puja again, marking her as dirty, unworthy.

  An all-consuming rage blessedly chases away Puja’s misery.

  Damned if I will bend to your dominance like your son is doing.

  ‘How dare you speak to me this way! You have no right.’

  The landlord comes so close that she can feel his sour spittle dotting her face as he bites out his words. ‘I have had enough of members of your family coming here and creating scenes. First your sister and now you.’

  Sharda was here? When? Why?

  ‘And don’t you dare tell me, in my own house, what rights I have or do not have. You do not have the right to be here, whore. You think I will let a girl with loose morals like you come anywhere near my son? Get out, at once and don’t come back.’ His voice lashes out like a whip.

  She stands her ground. ‘If I am a whore then your son is a pimp.’

  The landlord raises his hand. Puja does not quail or move away.

  And finally, too late, Gopi finds his voice. ‘Da, No.’

  ‘Hit me, go on. And here I was wondering where Gopi got his spinelessness from. Like father like son. Weaklings, the both of you, turning on defenceless girls.’

  The landlord’s face is contorted into a purple grimace, his hand still raised.

  ‘Goodbye, Gopi. I’m better off without you.’ Puja turns and walks away, holding her head high as she walks out of the gate, and when she turns the corner, she runs, along the narrow path where shadows dance on snoozing fields and the black reflections of waving trees tickled by the evening breeze ripple on the glittering water of the stream, where crickets sing and snakes slither and hiss among the murky foliage, and frogs squat in the damp undergrowth.

  The night air carries the perfume of jasmine and the promise of rain; it smacks of intrigue as it whispers to the dozy blades of grass, waking them up and making them jig.

  Puja runs, tasting salt and snot. Her churidar flaps around her legs, and the stinging between her thighs reminds her of what she has done, and of what cannot be undone.

  KUSHI

  STAR SPECKLED DOME

  Wow, Ma, I think, putting down her letter, and feeling, for the first time since I woke up in this strange bed bolstered by its armour of machines, something other than bone-weary sluggishness and the dejection and frustration that engulfs me when I realise where I am.

  This girl who stands up to the landlord and breaks off her betrothal to his son before he can, she is the woman I know. The woman I love and am proud of. The woman I can see in myself.

  Lights have come on in the ward, coating everything in a mellow turmeric glow. I wish Ma was back. I have so many questions I need to ask her. But I suppose trying to organise funds for my ongoing dialysis is not a simple matter of signing cheques . . .

  I wonder if the landlord and Gopi have paid for what they did. Where are they are now? Would Ma know? Perhaps I could do something to expose them . . .

  Ha! And how will you go about doing that when you are lying broken in a hospital bed?

  A burst of air smelling of evening comes through the window. I imagine I am brushing my teeth beneath the jackfruit tree outside our cottage just before bed, and watching the shadows exchange confidences with the star speckled dome of sky, while the neighbourhood dogs howl in the darkened fields, and the paddy undulates in the fragrant dusk in soft, swishing waves, like a hand parting hair.

  Then I blink and I am back in the present, in this edifice of discomfort and anguish, of wrecked organs and untold maladies.

  When Ma returns from the bank, I want to ask her how she could have let that cowardly man Gopi have such power over their entire family, enough to tear it apart. How could he, a mere boy, have come between Ma and Puja, sisters, bound by blood, and who were once so close?

  An orderly pushes what was once a silver trolley, but is now marred by a rash of rust creeping up the sides and eating the steel away; its rattle and swoop along the corridor momentarily punctures the drugged silence of the ward.

  If Ma’s betrothal to Gopi was off, why didn’t she and her parents bring Puja back home?

  Did something else happen to prevent their reunion, and to push them even further apart?

  I pick up the next letter.

  SHARDA—CHASM

  A RIBBON OF GOSSIP

  Dearest Ma,

  Those weeks after our visit to the landlord, I lose myself in my studies. I work extra hard. That way, I do not have to see what is happening to our family. I do not have to breathe in the silences that shout out Puja’s absence—an absence that is an aggrieved throbbing presence.

  The cracked walls of our hut absorb our heartache, our falling to pieces, as they have absorbed the smoke from our cooking, the smells of spices, our laughter and our tears, our triumphs and our failures, our collective dreams and aspirations, the ordinary passage of our ordinary lives through the years until the extraordinary happened and Puja was wiped out of the family equation.

  ‘Now that Sharda’s engagement is called off, bring Puja back,’ you plead, Ma. ‘We can move to a different village, start over.’

  But Da is unshakeable. ‘Don’t you see what Puja has done? Who will marry Sharda now that the landlord has blighted our name all over the village and beyond? Don’t speak about Puja again. She is dead to me.’

  The most words he has uttered since Puja left.

  In a rare burst of strength, the strength Puja has in spades, you stand up to your husband, Ma.

  You, so traditional, so fond of saying, much to Puja’s disgust: ‘When you get married, your husband is God. Always obey him and do as he asks. Then you will all be happy and your family will be blessed.’

  You don’t see Da as God now. You tuck your sari pallu into your waist and declare, ‘I will go and see her.’

  Da looks up at you, and something flares in his defeated face. ‘She has brought disgrace upon us . . . ’

  ‘No,’ you snap, Ma. ‘You have. By hitting her. Sending her away. Bringing the whole village into our business.’


  ‘Stop it. Just stop.’ Da covers his ears with his hands and rocks on his haunches. ‘You are not seeing her and that is that.’ He pauses and then, ‘I have been speaking to Nilamma . . . ’

  Both you and I, Ma, look at him agog.

  The mellow summer’s evening, the sky a medley of garnets and golds, dark pinks and deep blues, tastes orange, of that afternoon’s breathless heat maturing into the placid tones of sundown, spiced with the velvet violet of the night to come.

  ‘Puja is fine. She has settled in well. Bringing her back . . . the landlord will not allow it for one. As it is, he is making life difficult for us, spreading slander, turning our friends against . . . ’

  ‘Then let’s move to a different village with Puja, find grooms for both of our girls,’ you say.

  ‘What about Sharda’s degree? And where will I get work? Who will employ me?’

  You go to Da, Ma, and fall at his feet. ‘Please. I want my daughter back.’

  I am still angry with Puja, terribly angry, but I miss her.

  And I am tired of missing her. Tired of seeing you and Da suffering, the reflection in your injured eyes of what could have been. Tired of flailing in the dregs of the mire left behind after her departure.

  I am tired of tamping down the guilt I feel in the dead of night when I wake, my heart strumming with fear at the nightmare I’ve had in which I break our family apart with one rash whisper in a well-chosen ear—and find that it is all true.

  ‘I will think about it,’ Da says gruffly. ‘But until then, I forbid you to see Puja, talk to her. It will only make things worse.’

  You nod, Ma, hope and cautious joy budding on your face.

  And then, the landlord visits.

  We spy the motorbike, parked by the road beside the fields, on our way back from the ration shop, Ma, as we lug rice and lentils and oil, inhaling the dust-infused air flavoured with our sweat and exertion.

  Drained, we exchange a look threaded through with tentacles of fear.