He nods.
She swallows and says, her eyes shimmering. ‘That evening when you were ill in hospital and you asked me to stay . . . ’
He closes his eyes, tries to push away the stab of hurt caused by the memory.
‘I did.’
‘What?’ He opens his eyes, and stares at her.
‘I was pacing outside. In the corridor. I just . . . I could not bear to sit next to you and watch you suffer. I was terrified I’d lose you too. I wanted to crush you to me and not let go. I wanted to sob, rail against God and fate, question why it was you, my innocent boy who had to hurt . . . ’ A shaky breath, then, ‘If I had stayed beside you, I would have gone to pieces, and scared you into being more ill than you already were. And so, I pretended to leave. I went to pieces in the corridor instead. And I kept vigil. I prayed all that night even though I had denounced God the day Kushi was born. I watched that little boy in the bed next to yours being wheeled away and thanked God that it wasn’t you, and then felt guilty about it.’ A shudder, ‘It was me who sent that nurse to you when I saw you sitting up in bed and rocking. And in the morning, when the nurse informed me that your temperature had eased a tiny bit, I was able to give myself a pep talk, comb my hair, spray perfume, paste a smile on my face and come to you . . .’
‘Oh mum…’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
He nods. There is an obstruction flooding his throat, tasting of the sea. ‘Come on then.’ And he gives her his arm and leads her into the hospital that houses his newly discovered sister.
KUSHI
THE MAKEUP OF FABRICATIONS
She’s here, the woman who taught me right from wrong, who expounded the importance of truth, the necessity of being honest with oneself, the woman whom I had believed in and trusted, whose every word I took at face value, without question, this woman whom I have loved more than anyone else in the world.
She looks at me with the fear spattered, worry infected gaze of a liar who has been found out, a guilty criminal in the dock.
‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me? All my life I have championed the truth, fought for it and all the while I’ve been living a lie . . .’ Despite myself, my voice wavers. It breaks, as vulnerable as the flimsy foundations upon which our life together has been built.
After all, how can any relationship that has been constructed upon a lie thrive, stay secure and strong? Won’t it tremble with every malicious waft of gossip, the whisper of scandal, the insinuation of the truth?
Having the secrets she’s been hiding all her life out in the open and shrinking from the spotlight of honesty and directness, seems to have rendered her mute, her face naked without its makeup of fabrications.
Tears glint silver in her eyes like droplets of steam hugging the rim of a dhal saucepan, one travels down her nose and shimmers on her cheek.
She holds out her hand and flexes her fingers, one by one, a plea, a beckoning; her mouth opening and closing like a drowning man gasping for air and finding only water.
I do not want her pleas. I want answers.
I want her to look me in the eye, want to see, finally, the truth laid bare, denuded of its armour of deceits.
‘When you held me, and urged me to stay true to myself, weren’t you aware of the irony, the hypocrisy? How could you ask me to be true to myself when you weren’t?’ Each aggrieved word drops like flint from my mouth.
‘I tried to tell you, several times. But my tongue refused to push the words out of my mouth; and my throat would dry up.’ Her voice wavers. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. You are so against bias and unfairness of any kind, so vehemently opposed to deceit that I dreaded what knowing the truth would do to you.’
‘Ha!’ I taste bile, bitter as facts stripped of the sugar coating of palatable falsehoods. ‘I trusted you, looked up to you. And you . . . you kept this huge part of my life from me . . . ’
‘It just . . . it was never the right time,’ she whispers. ‘I would look at your beautiful face, at your eyes glowing with zeal, at your impassioned appetite for life, at your belief in a righteous, black and white world and I . . . I did not want to be the one who burst your bubble, the one who pointed out the palette of grey interspersed between the black and white of your idealistic world. Your Da and I . . .’
‘Don’t bring Da into it. Not that he is my Da anyway. That has been taken from me as well, the certainty that he . . .’ I cannot speak any more, my words trapped by a lump, a brine-inflated sponge that is obstructing my throat.
She blanches, her face pale as milky skin skimming the surface of much brewed tea. ‘I wish I could absorb all your hurt, your anger, your pain, so you could emerge unscathed from this, Kushi.’ Her voice is plaited with grief and regret.
‘You should have thought of that before, not now, when it is too late . . .’ The lump disintegrates into messy sobs that tear through my body and it feels as if all the bits of me that aren’t already broken are breaking now.
The whole ward is silent for once and everyone is staring at us. The ailing, at the other end of the ward nearest the toilets, crane their necks and limp closer, their illness forgotten for a brief while.
I might heal physically if my mother’s—my mother’s—kidney is a match, but will I ever feel whole again? How will I come out of this in one piece? How will I reconcile what I have learnt with what I have believed all my life?
And unreasonable though it is, I want this woman, whose eyes glimmer like raindrops clinging to leaves, to hold me, to tide me through this, to soothe my pain, as she has done a million times before.
No-one else will do.
She tries to reach for me, but I shudder and she slumps back, defeated.
‘Kushi,’ she whispers, ‘Kushi,’ as if my name is a magic key that will make everything better. ‘My darling . . .’
I cannot bear her endearments, cannot stand to watch her struggle with her emotions. I want her comfort, for her to say, ‘It will be okay, it will get better.’
But how? How can any of this get better? How will I rid myself of this throbbing in my chest, this feeling of being let down by her colossal betrayal?
When my da succumbed to fire, (I cannot help thinking of him as Da), there were clear cut villains to direct my anger against, but what do you do when the person you love the most is also the one who has wronged you?
The truth is a splinter in my eye, making everything blurred. I want to remove the splinter. I want everything to go back to the way it was before.
There have been too many sacrifices, too much hurt. Ma’s letters, her words, have afforded a glimpse inside her head. I think I understand. I do. And yet, I feel wounded too. Because the people I believed to be my parents did not trust me enough to tell me my story, the truth about my past.
If I were to find one word to describe what I am feeling, it would be ‘confused’.
I want Ma to take me in my arms, chase away the confusion. I ache for the comfort of the platitudes she will utter, every word of which I have always believed, unquestioning, until now. I thought that her arms were the truest things I would ever encounter, where I would always be safe. She was my temple, the solid rigidity of her a constant in the wavering world that stole my da in a blink. In the depths of our grief for Da, she decreed that things would get better and they did. And then . . . . and then she gave me her letters to her mother and they changed not only my world, but the way I see her. And that is what I am finding the hardest. She is not the constant I took her to be. I have been ensconced in a fleeting mirage, a house of cards that has toppled with one flick of a careless hand.
Before she returned from the bank, I had reached an understanding, I had thought I had come to terms with this new-found knowledge. But the moment I saw her, the instant her face loomed before me, worry warring with fear, all the hurt and befuddlement I was feeling found an outlet. I lashed out, overcome by rage at her lies.
I am grateful to her for taking me on, loving me unconditionally, in the midst of
grieving for her parents and suffering the abuse directed at a single mother. And I am grateful to Da. Da who was brave enough to marry a ‘fallen’ woman, to take on another man’s child, and to tolerate the judgement of the village. But I resent being lied to, being made a fool of.
Ma and Da never gave any indication that I was not theirs, both of them loving me so completely, making me the centre of their world, allowing me the freedom to be the person I wanted to be; which is why this revelation has come as such a shock.
And Puja . . .? I have so many questions for her, the most pressing being why she gave me away. I think I understand . . . I think I do. I have helped enough young girls burdened by circumstance, undone by fate not to . . .
My head is spinning; my body tied to this bed. Why was I so enamoured with truth? Knowing the truth should not feel like this. I am blindsided by it, and I am reeling from the weight of it, crushed—worse than when that car hit me.
I want to go back to a past where Ma was mine, unmarred by this knowledge that she’s a liar, that she has been lying to me all these years.
I cannot trust her, not anymore. And that hurts. I feel I cannot trust anyone after those closest to me have proved to be capable of such deceit.
I want to run from this angst-charged room, down the claustrophobic corridors of the hospital and out through the door, to breathe lungfuls of the golden air tasting of jackfruit, and fragranced with the incense and entreaties that drift from the shrine by the hospital entrance.
It hurts to open my mouth. It takes effort to form the words I want to say. ‘Leave,’ I whisper. ‘Please, just go. I need to be alone for a bit.’
She stands, and extends a trembling hand towards me. I ignore it.
Her expression: mottled pain as deep and as wide as the Mangalore quarry, and remorse, the sparkling blue of spilled oil on a tarred road, and a plea for understanding, the desolate brown of drought.
I look away from the nakedness of her gaze. ‘I need some time to myself.’
My voice is clipped, and harsh. But I am too tired, too worn out by everything that has happened to me to be kind. I want to close my eyes and escape myself, even for a brief while, to seek solace in the soothing nothingness of sleep, if it will come.
‘I will be in the corridor just outside this room,’ she says. ‘I love you, Kushi.’
She turns away, a stooped figure bearing the weight of her falsehoods on her shoulders. I breathe her in, the rounded back and the defeated air of the woman I have known as my mother; the woman I have admired immensely and loved so much; the woman who has loved me and looked after me and brought me up, who has made me the person I am now . . .
Who am I?
I no longer know. I am lost, confused, sinking.
I am dying.
SHARDA—NOW
A SHADOW OF A MEMORY
Dearest Ma,
I am doing what I always do in moments of deep distress: I talk to you. I usually do so via the medium of paper, but I do not have the strength to write just now, so instead I will talk to you in my head.
You who have been dead for the exact time Kushi has been alive, you who are but the shadow of a memory now, you whose face I cannot recall clearly, but a glimpse of which I see in Kushi’s smile, in a certain expression she has, in that scowl that pushes her eyebrows together when she is trying to hold a thought.
Does it make me insane, I wonder, this talking to you in my head? I am mad, I suppose. Mad with worry. Mad with grief. Mad with hefting the burden of all the wrong choices I have made, and the wrong paths I have followed in this blind dash that is life.
I so wish I could cook now, Ma. Knead dough for chapathis. Marinate brinjal in a tangy sauce. Deep-fry seasoned, gramflour-coated plantain. Grind masala for fish curry.
I feel so inadequate, my whole being on tenterhooks, as I wait: for Puja’s visit, for Kushi to heal, from both the physical injuries inflicted on her by those cruel men and the internal ones I have inflicted on her soul by keeping the truth from her.
My hands feel useless, they should be chopping, stirring, frying—anything except staring at the walls of this disease-ridden hospital corridor, that close in on my desperation, my dread. My head is steeped in regret, marinated in what ifs, and pickled in scenarios—all the ways I could have protected Kushi, all the ways I could have told her the truth of her parentage.
Ma, I cannot stand any longer all these anxiety-swollen, excoriating thoughts populating my brain. I am going to cook instead. If I can talk to a person who only lives on in my head, I can cook in there too, what do you say?
So, I’ll prepare the marinade for the spicy squid that you loved so much, Ma. Look, I am adding two teaspoons of chilli powder, a teaspoon of cumin powder and one of coriander powder, a teaspoon of turmeric and one heaped tablespoon of vinegar.
Now I blend in all the spices until the combination becomes a lustrous golden red. I add salt to taste and then add the squid, carefully picked by Da and me from the rejects from the boats which arrived at dawn. I balance the squirming jellylike squid in my hand, helping you pull out the inky black bits from inside. We add it to the marinade and watch the creamy squid turn the pinkish tangerine of a summer sky at sunset.
Somehow I started in the present and have travelled back into the past, Ma, and although I usually love these fantasies where you and Da are home and safe, just now I cannot concentrate.
My mind is enmeshed in the ward next door, where on the fourth bed on the right, my daughter lies, traumatized by what she has learned. It keeps dragging back to Kushi, who also loves squid prepared just that way; Kushi who, when she was little used to hold the fried squid with both hands and stuff it into her mouth. Once she inadvertently rubbed the spicy juices in her eyes. How she scrunched up her face and howled then! I gently washed her eyes with cold water, until she was able to open them again.
‘Do you think I’ll be able to see again, Ma?’ she asked looking right at me, eyes swollen and adorned with tears.
‘Tell me what you see, Kushi,’ I said holding up two fingers and just as she said ‘two’, I changed them to three. And we laughed together, her hurt forgotten, the half-eaten squid lying neglected on her plate.
Kushi, my girl, so open with her emotions, Ma, so loving, always declaring her wholehearted affection for me.
‘You are my role model, Ma,’ she would say often and I’d smile although my heart was aching, burdened by the weight of all I was keeping from her.
And now she knows.
And I wait here in the corridor next to her ward. I wait for my heartbroken daughter to heal—and even though I know it is too much to ask after what I have done, I hope that I will not find Kushi’s bright eyes, burning with the zeal to set right the injustices of the world, dulled by the injustice done to her by the woman she trusted, for long.
I hope that her shoulders, always so bouncy with enthusiasm, are not now forever weighted down by my dishonesty and duplicity.
I pray that my sister’s—her mother’s—kidney will heal my daughter. The girl I brought up as my own, thinking love was enough.
I dream that she will forgive me.
And I wait.
PUJA—NOW
THE SEPIA TASTE OF NOSTALGIA
At the shrine at the entrance to the hospital, Puja folds her hands and prays. She pleads with a God she forsook the day her parents died, the day she also gave birth to and gave up her daughter, for her daughter’s life.
Please God. I gave her up once. Please don’t make me go through it again. Save her. Take me.
* * *
All around her is noise: honks and shouts, barks and moos, the trundle of buses and the rattle of auto rickshaws, the laughter of women, and the chatter of children in a language she hadn’t realised just how much she missed until she heard it again. The smell of spices and dust, incense and heat, festering garbage and desperation. The taste of grit and ripening fruit, of sunshine and sweat. India. Home.
‘Kushi Shankar is in the dial
ysis ward which is just down through that door there and left along the corridor,’ says the harassed receptionist, who is swamped by the maelstrom of people lobbing queries at her from all sides.
Kushi Shankar. The wispy haired baby she’s longed for, for nearly eighteen years. Her daughter, and yet, not hers.
Her son, whom she has failed just as much, if not more than her daughter, squeezes her hand and she is grateful for this. She who has shied away from physical contact for as long as her daughter has been alive.
‘Remember, Mum,’ he says, ‘you’re doing them a favour.’
‘Sharda did me a favour by raising Kushi, Raj. I am only doing my duty. She is my child. I gave her up because I did not want to lose her, and I am losing her anyway.’
‘You’re not,’ Raj says, her wayward son who, in the course of this journey has become a man, a wise one at that. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘If she asks me why I gave her up, what do I tell her?’ She breathes in the universal smell of hospitals and shudders
‘You tell her the truth. That you thought you were doing the best by her. At the time you believed it, even though it may not have been the right decision. Be honest, Mum, like you’ve been with me. It’ll be okay.’
‘Son, you’ve turned out so well despite my neglect,’ she says softly, giving in at last to the urge of her heart, the yearning she has been clamping down for so long that it has become second nature, and clasping her son’s face. The ice that her heart has been encased in for almost twenty years, which started to melt when Raj patted her hand hesitantly in the plane and held her when she cried just now, thaws fully at this contact. ‘You are just like your father, thank goodness. Loving and giving.’
‘I am just like you,’ her son replies. ‘Loving and giving.’
A Sister's Promise Page 26
