The Green Room & Devi Collection

by Nag Mani

  “Shame on you, driver sahib,” retorted the old man. “Our guest is walking all through the village. Carrying her bags. You should rather let your tempo sink to the bottom of the river!”

  The driver was in a dilemma. He again looked at Manoj, who just stared across the river and settled his belt. A motorcycle appeared making its way down the muddy slope from the brick-path on the other side. It stopped before the bridge and the man in the pillion got down. And at that instant, the driver made up his mind: it was better to risk his life than let her, his guest, walk all the way to the village. He asked them to cross the bridge on foot, carrying as much luggage as they could. Aditi slung two bags over her shoulders and lifted a suitcase – and the old man shouted again, “Oye, you boy! Girl there! Stop meddling with the waters, you pigs and mules and useless creatures, and carry these bags to that side!”

  The children didn’t waste a second. It was as if they had been called for a treat. Like in a competition, they raced towards Aditi and snatched every luggage she was carrying. The ones who reached a second later, got to unburden Manoj and the slowest ones lifted the boxes and ran across the bridge, carrying the luggage in a variety of comical positions. The rider of the motorcycle, who by now had come quite some way down the bridge, got down and let them pass. Aditi smiled at the old man, who folded his hands in return, and carefully made her way across the treacherous bridge. Manoj was behind her. Once the motorcycle had crossed, the auto-rickshaw driver started the engine, and muttering prayers to some deity, followed them. The old man watched them cross the bridge. Then, he returned to keeping an eye on his goats and cows.

  Aditi bumped her head twice on the iron frame of the auto. The brick-road gently curved away from the river. The village began to unfold before her. The first house had a very big garden with wooden fencing through which grew wild cacti. She saw bright green leaves of onions sprouting in a line. Another plot with tiny green tomatoes hanging from their shrubs. Flowery leaves of cauliflower with the white vegetable just beginning to appear in the centre. The road smoothened out as they reached the main market. The bank was to her right. The building was old and unmaintained. A rusting signboard of “State Bank of India” was pinned above the ledge of a window. In front of the bank was a wide clearing, shadowed by the foliage of the trees that grew around; and in one corner was a wicker shade from which emanated a rapid puff-puff sound accompanied with black smoke. From that shade, came out a black wire that ended at a single bulb hanging on a bamboo pole. In the clearing, beside the road, was a gumti, a small cubicle built with wooden planks and placed on four poles. A man sat inside the cubicle with a wet red cloth spread over a bundle of paan, or beetle leaves, his face hidden behind colourful packets gutka and mouth-fresheners hanging from above. In front of the gumti, a small band of men sipped tea or chewed on paan or chatted around a wooden plank placed over two columns of bricks stained with crimson spit. They all stopped whatever they were doing to look inside the auto-rickshaw. Aditi held her head high and let their gazes judge her.

  The market was centred on a crossroad. The road ahead degraded into a narrow mud path that ran between shops and huts and disappeared into the dense mango trees behind. The plantation became denser as it crawled to the right, away from the market, towards the river. On the left, it ran parallel to the road, obscured by the irregular outline of the market.

  The driver turned left. As the market thinned out into lone shops and patches of grounds littered with whatever the absent hawker sold, Aditi had a clear view of the forest for the first time. The road was built on a higher ground. The ground fell six feet into a wasteland torn with bushes and shrubs, in which stuck articles indicating the presence of human establishment. The mango trees stood silently at a distance. The trunks were gnarled and matured and were quite far apart, but the foliage was thick. They spread and mingled with each other, letting no sunlight reach the ground.

  The auto-rickshaw turned right, and after a few hundred metres, right again. Huts and houses sprouted from the ground in random fashion, various smell of cooking wafting out. Children ran out to the see the new visitor. Women peeked from windows. Cows mowed and buffaloes swished their tails. A white goat hopped onto the road and then swiftly ran back.

  It was late afternoon, hot and humid, when Aditi stepped out of the rickshaw and looked at her new house. Its yellow walls were stained and greyed. A big patch of cement had fallen off above the main door. A skinny cream-coloured dog with big white patches was resting on the front veranda. He sat up the moment the auto-rickshaw stopped and watched the driver unload the luggage. She stayed outside as the men carried the luggage in. A cornfield was resting across a narrow mud path in front of her house. There were two windows – one opened into the veranda and the other overlooked the field. On her right, where the path branched off the main brick-road, was a three-storey building with brightly coloured doors and windows that had been unskilfully erected amidst cow-sheds, huts and tin-roofed houses. She turned back and saw the forest in the backdrop of her house. For no reason, its presence darkened her spirit. It seemed ever so close…

  Someone was watching her… by the window of the bedroom! The one that faced the cornfield. It was slightly apart. Aditi saw a figure standing there, shrouded in secrecy by the darkness in the room. For a moment she thought it could be just anything… maybe a piece of cloth hanging by the window…

  But then, it turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE NEIGHBOURS

  “Excuse me, Miss!”

  “Yes?”

  “Miss?”

  “Yes?”

  “Miss, this boy is saying he wants to marry me!”

  The class had started laughing as This-Boy looked at Miss in terror. Miss had slapped him and made him stand on his chair holding his ears. This memory had dwindled over the years, but was the only one Aditi had of her U.K.G. But what she remembered clearly was the letter This-Boy had written to her years later. She had secretly kept it with her all along. It was only after her marriage, when the page had yellowed and its folds begun to tear, that she tore it and gulped the pieces down with water.

  “I have to leave,” This-Boy wrote in his beautiful writing. “It was not your fault. It’s just that… ours was not meant to be. But I will meet you… someday… when you have become a district magistrate… travelling with a flashing beacon on your car… a VIP… I might be married by then, maybe even a father! But I will come. Don’t forget me, my Sonjuhi!

  P.S. – Take care of our rose.”

  Aditi hadn’t cried after she had read the letter. Instead, she had emptied her anger on utensils while cooking dinner that night. And it was the sound of utensils being indignantly handled that woke her up. She didn’t remember when she had dozed off, but it was certainly after five in the morning. She watched her husband run around in a towel loosely wrapped around his waist, his tummy protruding, water dripping everywhere he went. As usual he was late, and even though it was her first day in the new house and she was tired from the journey, he expected her to be up before him and cook his breakfast and ready his things so that he could reach his office in time. But his dear missus was fast asleep and he even had to cook his own breakfast! She had neglected her sacred duty of feeding her husband.

  May gods shower their wrath on such women!

  The fragrance of incense-sticks and burnt rice wafted around the house. Aditi lay in bed for ten more minutes after her husband shouted that he was leaving and banged the door shut. Though he usually went to the bank on foot, today he kick-started his Rajdoot and drove off in a hurry. Then the restlessness began to grow. There was endless cleaning to be done. The corners of her room were infested with spiders and dead or dying insects trapped in their web. The white ceiling had turned grey with moisture and age and black spots of mould thrived here and there. The bed-sheet had turned dark and shiny where her husband slept – dark due to deposition of dirt from his body, shiny with all the slipping and wriggling. She wasn’t goin
g to clean it, she had decided the moment she saw it. It couldn’t be cleaned. She would just throw it away. But the worst of her anxiety came from the need to check out the kitchen. The smell of burnt rice was tingling in her nostrils.

  After dismissing the figure that had moved in the bedroom the previous day for a mere trick of shadows, she had taken one daring step into the house, and had at once felt suffocated. She was welcomed by a dark, humid hall. She hadn’t taken another step forward until Manoj had opened the door to the backyard and allowed light and fresh air to fill the space. There was a cot in one of the corners heaped with what seemed to be dirty clothes. Manoj had left his motorcycle in the hall before leaving for Purnia. She first went to check the bedroom through the door to her immediate left. An old iron cupboard, with a dusty mirror on one of its doors, sat in front of the entrance. In a triangular niche on the wall to her right were framed photos of gods and goddesses perpetually giving their blessing to anyone who would look. On her left was a table with more clothes and a heap of files and magazines. A double bed with crumbled bed-sheet and two pillows occupied the centre of the room. There were the two windows, both on the far side – one opening out in the veranda while the other provided a square view of the cornfield.

  A kitchen and a small bathroom with nothing but a bucket and a mug occupied the small rectangular extension of the hall next to the bedroom. The kitchen itself was a narrow dingy room extending into the backyard. She stood at the entrance, her heart pounding. Cheap utensils lay scattered on the floor, dirty and stained with extensive use and careless washing. The yellow walls were dirty and bare. Across the room was a window that opened into the backyard. Before the window was the kitchen-counter with a kerosene stove and a few plates.

  She then went to the backyard and, though she knew her fate before coming here, her heart sank in when she actually saw them – the shabby toilet on the left corner across the yard and the hand-pump next to it, both built on raised cemented platforms. Carrying buckets of water from the hand-pump to the bathroom inside every time she needed a bath was one thing, but she had no intention of using that toilet with its moss-covered bricks, tin shed and wooden framed tin door. The backyard itself was all dry, bare mud with a young guava tree rising from behind the hand-pump. High walls enclosed it on three sides. A narrow veranda ran along the length of the house till the kitchen. Two crooked rows of bricks had been laid out between the veranda steps and the hand-pump platform, indicating that the backyard flooded in rain.

  It was the outhouse that interested her. As Manoj had said, there it was, in the right corner, away from the activities of the house, its door and window tight shut. An old lock hung on its door. She had planned to break it open and look around. But that was not the time.

  The first night had been just turning and twisting, her body making itself comfortable in the new environment. A rusting fan hung from the ceiling, still and useless, smiling down at her misery. The bank did give ceiling fans to its employees, but she couldn’t blame it for not providing electricity. She had brought along a hand-held fan made of palm leaf. It had provided relief till her hands tired, and she was then left to the mercy of the night. Manoj was snoring peacefully beside her. She lay on the bed, a kerosene lamp burning low on the desk and another in the hall outside. The village was asleep. Dogs barked randomly over the perpetual sounds of humming insects and buzzing mosquitoes. Tiny water droplets fell outside somewhere, maybe it had started to drizzle, the sound tuned to arouse drowsiness; yet her eyes were wide open. She tried counting backwards, counting her breaths, doing everything to keep her mind from the discomfort. The clock went tick-tock… tick-tock… tick-tock…

  Her eyes had been closed when she heard the clinks of bangles. Rustle of clothes. Tinkering of anklets. Maybe a whisper. She thought that it was dawn and that village women were up and busy with their daily routine. She cursed herself for not being able to catch a proper sleep, for she had loads of work in store for the day.

  Then someone began to hum.

  She couldn’t understand the words but the tune inflicted in her deep emotions. Flashes of her childhood. Her favourite frock. Her collection of mud toys, a lion with yellow body and orange mane and a chipped ear. Her perfect world when she was young and happy.

  She felt a presence standing beside the bed, looking down at her, and opened her eyes immediately.

  No one.

  Her eyes darted to the clock.

  2:40.

  It wasn’t morning yet! She tried to listen for the sounds of the bangles when her eyes fell on the door. It was slightly ajar. She could see faint light seeping in from the hall.

  A shadow moved across the door on the other side.

  Someone was in the hall! There had been definitely movements; but they were so subtle, they could be ignored as a trick of shadows, or a game of breeze.

  It was only when she heard the mows of cows while they were being milked and the general din of early morning that she had finally fallen asleep.

  Standing in the kitchen now, she examined the burnt rice clung inside the cooker. She filled it with water and kept it aside. She looked at the mess in the hall. All the boxes and bags needed to be unpacked and their contents systematically placed. But before that, the house needed thorough cleaning. She untied and kept the rose stems in a shallow drain that flowed down from the hand-pump platform to a clogged opening in the boundary wall. She decided to begin with cleaning the backyard. After a quick breakfast, she had just picked up a broom and tucked her aanchal into her waist when she heard a knock on the door.

  It was a woman, slightly older than Aditi but shorter and healthier, her hair long and shiny. “Namaste Madam!” She smiled from ear to ear. She was fair, but her skin was blemished and coarse. Three girls stood in a line behind her, in order of their descending heights, hands behind their backs, eyes shining with curiosity.

  “Namaste!” Aditi replied, her voice unsure.

  “I am Laila. I heard you came here with Sir yesterday. Very good, Madam, very good! Your father is from Bhagalpur? I too have a relative there. He works in the state roadways. My sister’s husband’s cousin… But he doesn’t like his job. These young men. They are never happy. Want to just sit and eat. He wants to buy a taxi… like my husband…”

  Aditi nodded, her hands still on the door.

  “Did you have any trouble coming here? Monsoon is coming. Better be this side of the river than that. That bridge won’t hold. I heard Guddu crossed the bridge on his tempo to get you to this side… You see, Madam, we villagers might not know how to hold a pen like you do, but we know how to treat our guests. We know our culture. You father was a doctor?”

  “No. Worked in a clinic…”

  “Ah! A compounder! These compounders, Madam! They are as good as doctors. What does a doctor know? All books and pens and ego! Rubbish! It’s the compounders who do the real work, the doctors’ work. You should become a doctor, Madam. Thick money, I will tell you. These nurses here, they earn like men.” Her eyes went to the door. Aditi was still holding it, unintentionally blocking her way in. She immediately dropped her hands. “My husband works in the bank,” Laila seemed to have sensed the question Aditi was trying hard not to ask. “Razzak, Madam, Razzak. I live right there…” She pointed to her right. Aditi bent forward to look at the weird three-storey building where the mud path branched away from the main brick-road. Some of the colourful windows were open now, and tiny faces peeped through them.

  “Oh, Razzak,” Aditi let out a nervous laugh, “my husband talks a lot about him. That is your house, good, good… He didn’t tell me…”

  “Oh, Madam, Sir is a busy man. And a good man. See, what all he has done for us. Our taxi business was all done for when my husband started working in the bank. Sir suggested that we buy our own vehicles on loan and then hire drivers to work for us. He even passed our loan. And look at us now! He is always telling us about new government schemes. He is a very good man, Madam. But always busy. I hardly see him in h
ere. Always in the bank. But you are not alone Madam. I am right here. If you need anything just shout out for me, or call my girls. Yes, my girls… here,” she stepped aside. “This is Zeenat.” She pointed at the tallest girls. She was around fourteen, tall for her age, frail and, like her mother, extremely fair. “Zeba.” The next girl was slightly shorter and younger. She was pretty with big sparkling eyes and a beautiful smile. “And Zoya.” The youngest girl was around nine. She too had the eyes of her elder sisters and, unlike others, had inherited the high cheekbones of her mother. She had her lips pressed tightly, her cheeks puffed, trying not to laugh at something only she found funny.

  “Hello, Zoya,” Aditi bent down to greet her. And as she did, Zoya turned around and burst into laughter. Zeenat nudged her, her hands still behind her back, looking straight at her mother, clearly showing that she played no part in whatever was happening.

  “Zoya!” Laila glared at her. “Silly girl. Stupid girl. Oh Madam, ignore her.”

  “She is a sweet little girl! Oh, come in, come in. I have been holding you at the door all along.”

  “Ya Allah! Have mercy on us! Look at this place! Madam, where do you keep the broom? I have brought my girls here. They will have it all sorted out.”

  “What? No… no…”

  “Oh, there it is – in the backyard,” pointed out Zeenat.

  “Then what are you waiting for, girl, for Madam to teach you how to sweep?”

  Before Aditi could understand what was happening, let alone protest, Zeenat was out in the backyard, sweeping away all the dust and leaves and twigs and hurling the bricks to a side.

  “No, let it be!” Aditi ran behind her the moment she got hold of the situation.