A Sister's Promise

by Renita D'Silva

  Now what?

  I look at the bike, gleaming as new, and I hear the matrons’ words, strung on a ribbon of gossip, laced with intrigue and bedecked with rumour, falling from their paan-glazed predator-like jaws, not caring whom they hurt, or how: ‘Puja was hugging him tight as they conjured up a sandstorm on that motorbike of his.’

  I set down the bags I am carrying, look around and pick up the biggest cow pat I can find and I smear it all over the bike.

  ‘What are you? . . .’ you begin and then you are smirking, Ma.

  And we are laughing together and somehow the laughter turns into sobs and we hold each other as we cry for what was and what can never be and what is lost, and we breathe in the smell of cow dung and choke on the taste of our tears.

  Then we wipe our eyes and walk down the path through the fields to the hut where the landlord is waiting, pacing up and down, wearing the courtyard thin. His face is dark as a nightmare at being made to wait, which, I suppose he hasn’t had to do much of in his privileged life.

  I lead the way, walking at a leisurely pace, refusing to rush to pacify the landlord.

  There is no sign of Gopi. The landlord has come alone, on Gopi’s bike.

  Later, I understand that he is making a point, showing us that his son’s treasured possession, like everyone and everything else in the village, is his if he decides he wants it.

  I glance at the landlord’s pristine cream mundu and imagine the patches of cow dung adhering to it as he straddles the bike for the ride home. And that allows me to get through the next few minutes and the torturous exchange with him.

  ‘To what do we owe this honour?’ I ask.

  I do not invite the landlord inside. Sweat splotches his bald head and beads his face; his clothes cling to him damply.

  My voice is calm, even a little amused. ‘Have you come to apologise?’

  His thunderous face suffuses with red. ‘Where is your da?’ He snaps.

  ‘Why?’ I query, my voice cold as the stream at dawn.

  ‘Tell him to keep his whoring daughter in check. Does he know what she is up to?’

  I do not let the shock I am feeling, the latent hurt that gushes like floodwater overflowing the riverbank, show. My voice is as unruffled as the dry bed of a drought-ravaged lake. ‘Why should he know what she’s up to? He has disowned her.’

  ‘Doesn’t your father understand that the duty of a man unfortunate enough to be cursed only with daughters, is to keep them in check? He might have sent her away from home; he might have banished her to another village; but will she stop? She had the gall to come to me and ask for my son’s hand in marriage! Gopi confessed that she tricked him into sleeping with her, the shameless whore.’

  I see you clutch at your heart and sway on your feet Ma.

  The scab forming over the wound of Puja’s betrayal reopens, and blood fizzes out, red and painful.

  How could you do this, Puja, bring this added ignominy upon us? Why?

  ‘Thank you, I will let Da know.’ I don’t know how I manage to speak but I do, my voice steady.

  ‘You tell your Da to keep tabs on her, although it is far too late now for the brazen slut. I don’t want her whoring body anywhere near my son. I cannot believe I even considered linking myself to your disreputable family.’ A pause, then, ‘And I will not stand for any of you mosquitoes pestering me any longer, you understand? You are not welcome to stay here anymore.’

  ‘This is not your village to order us around.’

  He grins slimily. ‘You will find out that it is.’

  ‘Sleeping with him! How could she? Giving away her honour, and ours, like a basket of mangoes. Discrediting us even more if possible, stranding us in a quagmire of ignominy,’ Da laments, repeatedly hitting his head. ‘I will have no more mention of Puja. She is dead to us.’

  And this time, Ma, you are too broken to protest.

  RAJ

  A STONE IN A BAG OF RICE

  Raj looks at his mother, this woman he is finally getting to know—this woman with her gaunt face and her sore eyes with their kohl of wine-coloured rims, the makeup of tears. This woman who tells him the story of a girl he never knew, but in a voice he has known from when he lay snug in her womb. The story of a girl who was loved and adored, then shunned and betrayed by the people whom she had cared for the most, discarded by her family as easily as the pith from an orange, wiped away like a dirt stain from a window.

  This woman who was let down so completely by the man she loved so completely. No wonder she is afraid to love. No wonder she keeps herself at a remove from everything and everyone. No wonder she has created a buffer around her heart.

  It pains him immensely that the wonderful, feisty, brave girl he never got a chance to meet, has become this cold woman who shies away from emotion because of what was done to her.

  ‘Mum, the reason you work so hard, the reason you are so focused . . . is it because Gopi chose money over you?’

  She closes her eyes as if she is shutting out the image of Gopi denouncing her. ‘I wanted to prove them both wrong, Gopi and the landlord,’ she says softly.

  Now that he has been afforded a window into the girl his mother was, it hurts Raj to see everything she has lost: her bubbly, infectious personality, her lust for life, stolen from her by the weak people she had the misfortune to love, the pathetic people who did not accept her affection for the gift it was, instead throwing it away as casually as a stone in a bag of rice, the affection he has been denied because of what they did.

  Raj is furious with his mum’s parents, her sister, Gopi. Why did her family denounce her so easily? Why didn’t they talk to her, give her a chance to explain? Why didn’t Gopi stand up for her? Why did she love such a wretched man?

  Raj wants to shake Gopi until he sees sense, to wound him like he wounded his mother.

  He wants to rewrite history.

  The screen in front of him, with its little aeroplane swooping down on the south coast of India blurs. The tannoy booms: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. We will shortly be landing at Bengaluru International Airport . . .’

  His mother’s hands grip the sides of her seat as the captain announces the temperature in Bengaluru and wishes them a pleasant stay; her knuckles stand out in relief.

  Raj reaches across and lays his palm on hers, voluntarily, for the first time since he was a little boy and learned not to touch her. And for the first time that he can recall, she lets him.

  Tears fall down the slope of her cheeks, creating more beige tracks in her ruined makeup.

  ‘There are so many ways of giving,’ she says softly, awkwardly patting his hand. ‘And this is the most important one. Thank you.’

  He smiles and she smiles shakily back at him.

  ‘What were you thinking just then, when you looked so serious?’ she asks.

  ‘That I would have given anything to have been there that day when you stood up to the landlord,’ Raj says. ‘I would have put my hands around Gopi’s neck and squeezed until he came through for you.’

  His mother emits a wet chuckle, and her grip on the seat relaxes.

  And Raj is surprised by the urge to put his arms around his mother and shield her from the capricious world she battled alone when not much older than him, an impulse to protect her from her past.

  ‘I was also thinking that it was very brave, what you did, standing up to the landlord. Bet no-one had ever dared go against him before. He sounds horrific. I think you were amazing,’ he says.

  She smiles, properly this time and her face flowers into beauty, smoothing the etched lines of apprehension at touching down on Indian soil after almost two decades.

  PUJA—CHASM

  BILLOWING SEAWEED

  She dreams that she is flying, Gopi beside her, adrenalin soaring, breathing in the excitement spiced air and revelling in the freedom.

  She dreams that she is sitting on the hill above Dhoompur with Gopi making plans to run away. She dreams that they are
at the beach, at their favourite hideout among the dunes, throwing pebbles into the sea and spinning fantasies that are out of their grasp, making plans, separately, in the privacy of their heads, for a future together, two figures silhouetted against the setting sun.

  She dreams that she is sitting on a rock by the road opposite the gates to his mansion, her back to the sea, the swoop and dive of the waves lulling her tap-dancing heart to a gentler rhythm. After a bit, the gates open and a jeep drives out; she sees the stiff profile of the landlord outlined within and beside him, that of Gopi, who sits by the window on Puja’s side of the road.

  Look at me, Puja prays and for one minute, one heart stopping minute, Gopi’s gaze lands on hers. As recognition dawns, he startles and looks away. And then he is gone.

  Puja follows the jeep on foot for a while until it is lost in a haze of dust and sand that smacks at her eyes, rousing tears. She walks back to the gates and peers inside, taking advantage of the security guard’s absence—he is in his shack behind the gates, eating boiled rice and pickle from a tiffin box.

  She sees the dogs straining at their leads and beside them, lying neglected by the front door, Gopi’s motorbike, the very one that was always so polished that you could see your reflection in it from any angle, now sporting a fine red sheen of dust.

  Puja jerks awake, her heart pounding with loss and, turning on the mat to hold her Ma, realises the space next to her is empty. Her aunt snores in the corner by the hearth. Puja has jumped from one nightmare right into another, one in which she is all alone.

  She wakes each morning, her stomach queasy. She thinks it’s because of the vivid dreams she’s been having, in which she’s back at home in the bosom of her family, snuggled between her sister and her mother while her father snores on the bench above. Loved.

  She dreams that her father is beaming at her, saying, ‘My precious jewel, my darling girl.’

  She dreams that it is her marriage being arranged with Gopi and it is Sharda who is uncomprehending, devastated.

  She yearns for her sister’s smile, her mother’s arms, her father’s absolution. She hears nothing from them. It is as if she doesn’t exist, as if, as far as her family is concerned, she is dead.

  She is sick, repeatedly, trying to disgorge this knowledge. But the biliousness persists.

  She stops eating, hoping that will put an end to the tantrums her stomach insists on having, but it is no use. She keeps telling herself it will get better.

  It doesn’t.

  One day, Puja realises that she cannot tie her churidar bottoms, that they’re too tight. She has hardly been eating, how can she be gaining weight? But her stomach has definitely grown, and her waist has become thicker.

  And it is then that she has an inkling. It is then, that she counts back to the last time she had her period.

  She has always entertained the hope that one day she will return to the hut she still calls home in her head, beg for mercy and be welcomed into the forgiving arms of her family.

  Now she knows she can never go back.

  That evening, she waits until her aunt is fast asleep before slipping out of the hut. She sprints down the hill and across the bridge, the river glowing in the soft starlight, and past her old village, resisting the urge to walk across the fields to the hut that was home, to watch her loved ones sleep.

  Are they dreaming about her as she dreams about them? Or is she banned even from their slumbering reveries?

  Puja runs up the hillock in the hissing darkness. She is out of breath by the time she reaches the mansion beside the sea where Gopi lives and scales the wall of the landlord’s compound, scraping her knees and bruising her shins on the mossy bricks. The dogs howl blue murder and a sleepy voice yells from the servants’ quarters beside the kitchen for them to shush. They strain at their leads, wanting to get at Puja.

  She ignores them, walking along the side of the house, as she had done once before with Gopi holding her hand. She steps gently, softly, the darkness a comforting cloak, and recalls the way she had felt that day when Gopi had held her, the desire that his kiss had ignited in her, the happiness of knowing he loved her.

  Her feet stumble over the pebbles; her heart pounds, and the sickly green taste of guilt floods her mouth.

  A new being is growing inside her that has no right to be there.

  What has she done?

  Night jasmine, roasted cinnamon, dog slobber and settling dust scent the air. Her scraped knees stinging, she holds on to the wall until her head bumps against the window frame of Gopi’s room. He always leaves the windows open at night, she knows. She knows so much about him, everything except what is going on in his head, his heart.

  Puja stands on tiptoe and peeps inside, squinting to adjust her eyes to the fuzzy dark interior, the only light the red blinking of a mosquito coil. The giant mosquito net that had been their cover that fateful night now shrouds the prone figure of her one-time lover.

  How can you lie there so peacefully, she thinks, while I am in such turmoil?

  She is blindsided by a sudden scarlet spasm of fury. She picks up a pebble, shiny and smooth and hurls it through the bars of the window. It glances off the net and falls to the floor. She lobs another and then a third.

  With a twitch and a shudder, Gopi lurches upright on the bed. Puja can just make his shape out through the net. Then he shoves the net aside and strides to the window.

  He is wearing just a vest and shorts and despite herself, seeing his naked shoulders rippling, his beloved face close up, Puja feels her broken heart flooding with all the love she still nurtures for him, and, against all odds, hope. Perhaps when she tells him her news he will find his lost courage, his dormant chivalry and declare, ‘I’ll marry you Puja and to hell with my da.’

  After all, isn’t that why she is here?

  Looking at him now, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, she is convinced that he must love her too, just as much as she loves him; that he loves her still, however much she has doubted it over the past few weeks. He just needs an injection of daring to stand up to his father and perhaps news of this baby will provide him with it.

  His face at the window. His eyes squint and then narrow as he recognises her.

  ‘Gopi,’ she says his name; a prayer, a plea.

  ‘Puja! What are you doing here?’ His voice a panicked hiss. No love in it.

  His head slumps against the windowsill; his voice, when he finds it, is strung with pain. ‘Please leave, Puja. This is not a good idea. Leave and don’t come back. If he finds out . . .’

  ‘Do you love me?’ she queries even though it isn’t the question she has come to ask. It slips past the armour safeguarding her heart, the shield of her lips.

  ‘Oh Puja,’ his voice is soft, immersed in ache. ‘Please. Leave. This is madness. You don’t know what he’d do to you if he found you here.’ Terror chases the softness from his voice.

  Puja used to think, when they sat at their spot on the beach and watched the froth-licked waves flirting with the sand, that he was formulating plans in his head for their future together as she was. She used to think he loved her, completely, wholeheartedly, the way she loved him.

  ‘I am pregnant,’ she says and his head snaps up. He stares at her, fear writ large on his face. ‘It’s yours of course.’

  ‘I cannot do anything. He will never let us marry. Go. I am sorry. Please just go.’ His voice frenzied with panic, and his eyes bloodshot. His hands wave at her as if she is an irritating fly buzzing about his face.

  Puja wants to close her eyes and shut out his words, pretend he never said them. She wants to rewind this exchange and start over.

  She’d come here prepared to forget his cowardice that day in front of the landlord, after he’d made love to her, told her he loved her. But this spineless weakling is the true Gopi, and the boy she’s loved so much for so long—the boy she imagined would wholeheartedly accept her and her baby, who would be part of their cosy trio, a new family to assuage the loss of
her old one—is just an illusion conjured up by her besotted heart.

  How can everything she ever assumed about this man be so wrong? How can he not understand the import of what she is saying? How can he dismiss this new life they have created together, shrugging her words off as callously as a shirt that no longer fits? Doesn’t he feel anything, anything at all?

  And yet, despite the fresh hurt seeping into every pore of her being and threatening to tear her apart, she tries again. She tries just one more time.

  ‘Has it not occurred to you that you are not your father’s puppet? That you have a will of your own? I am telling you about your child, for God’s sake. Can’t you stand up for yourself, for your child for once?’ she snaps, and then her bravado deserts her and she is unable to stop the tears, hating herself for them, for this situation, for her pleading. ‘Please Gopi, the baby is yours. What will I do? What on earth will I do?’

  Despite evidence to the contrary from that fateful day when he had made love to her and then left her to deal with the landlord’s wrath by herself, she had still hoped Gopi would stand by her. She had hoped his love for her would triumph over his fear of his father. She had hoped the cowardly side to him she had seen that day had been a one-off, and that now she had explained the situation, he would take charge.

  She had hoped . . .

  ‘I can’t do anything,’ He is crying too. ‘I can’t Puja. He would kill us both if he found out. Please Puja, just go. I am sorry.’

  And with that, Gopi, the boy she has loved so much for so long, the only boy she has ever loved, shuts the window in her face, shutting her out of his life for ever.

  And she imagines him settling under the mosquito net and going back to sleep, while she cautiously walks around the house, scrambles over the wall to another howling serenade from the dogs, runs down the hillock, past the snoozing village, over the bridge, and up the hill to the hut that will never be home, where she lies down on the mat opposite her snoring aunt, his baby nestling sheltered and oblivious inside her belly.