The Green Room & Devi Collection

by Nag Mani

  The story ended with a meow from the cat. Having waited long enough, it yawned and stretched, then jumped down the roof and walked slowly along the wall, eyeing them with contempt. Bhagvati went back to the kitchen and busied herself. Aditi remained seated on the steps as the winds grew stronger and dark clouds encroached the skies. She sat there until rain started battering the yard, spraying the hem of her sari with mud and dirt.

  CHAPTER 11

  IN THE NAME OF LOVE

  Zeenat, the eldest sister, didn’t come for tuitions for four days. When Aditi asked her sisters, they just smiled and giggled and told her she was off to school. Aditi was curious about her sudden interest in school even when it had been raining continuously for a day and a half. But all she gleaned was that their teacher had suddenly started calling them. Bhagvati sat on the cot every day, leaving all her work to watch the girls study. One day, when Zeenat did come, she was in her uniform, her hair neatly tied back. Wearing a deep kohl. A bit of powder on her neck. Looking pretty.

  “Since when have you started wearing that kajal?” Aditi asked as they took their respective seats.

  This innocent question was received with an unexpected reaction. Zeba gasped and glanced at Bhagvati. Zeenat was wide eyed, alert. “Please don’t tell Ammi!” she blurted out.

  “Tell her what? You haven’t been going to school? Is it?”

  “No, not that. Please don’t tell her about the kajal!”

  “Why? What is it with your kajal?”

  “You see,” Zoya tried to give an explanation, “Ammi says that it isn’t good for girls to use kajal, or powder, or lipstick. And she will beat us if we did. But she herself does it all the time. Like with the books. She herself did not study, but slaps me when I say I don’t want to come here.” She bit her tongue. “No. I want to come here. But I don’t want to come here to study. Because I don’t want to study. I want to play with those chickens.” She took a quick breath and added, “Yes, we have our own chickens back at home, but they bite me when I go near them. They chase after me. See.” She lifted her ankle to show an invisible mark.

  “You girls and your secrets!” Aditi sighed. “But why didn’t you come yesterday? And don’t tell me you went to school. It was raining like mad hell!”

  “No, I went to school!” Zeenat replied promptly. “You can ask Ammi.”

  Aditi didn’t probe further. It couldn’t have been unusual for the school to take sudden interest in attendance. But when she looked up, she found Zeenat giving an intimidating look to Zoya. “Okay now! You! Zeba! Will you tell me what is going on?”

  “I?” Zeba was startled. “I don’t know anything.” A quick glance at Zeenat and she hung her head.

  “You won’t? But Zoya will! Won’t you, my girl?”

  “She bought the kajal from the money she stole from my Baba’s pockets! I saw her! And she gave me a marble and told me not to tell Ammi.”

  “I did not steal it,” mumbled Zeenat and leaned over her book, pretending to do her work.

  Bhagvati was smiling feebly to herself. Whatever mischief the girls were up to, she had a role in it, or at least knew about it. Aditi knew very well the girls confided in Bhagvati, for wasn’t she the all-knowing grandmother with exotic stories up her sleeves!

  A week rolled by, Aditi became more and more curious as to when Bhagvati would leave. Not that Aditi wanted her to leave, for the house was much livelier with her around. And she couldn’t bring herself to ask her what exactly she was there for. She didn’t bother asking Manoj, for she was still not speaking to him, while he continued to go about his daily routine, ignoring altogether the stiff silence that hung in his house. He came home, did his prayers, ate his food, tried to talk, but gave up easily when he received no reply, and then went to sleep. He often had long conversations with Bhagvati in the backyard at nights. Their interactions the rest of the day were limited to Bhagvati asking questions about his daily requirements, his food most of the time, and Manoj giving curt replies.

  Aditi had earlier guessed that the elderly woman had come to ask for some financial help, but had that been the case, she wouldn’t have stayed that long. Bhagvati showed a lot more care and affection when dealing with Aditi. Somewhere, deep down her consciousness, she must have felt that her sudden appearance had turned the life of a happily married woman upside down.

  Aditi couldn’t help but ask one day when she found Bhagvati putting some of her clothes in her briefcase. “Manoj finally helped with what you came for?”

  “What can I say, my son?” Bhagvati looked up and gave a painful smile, baring her stained teeth, her long, wrinkled fingers entwined. “I know that you have been waiting for me to leave…”

  “It’s not…”

  “…and I understand. It was my fault to turn up one day, uninvited. I thought I could ask Manoj for help. I thought why wouldn’t he? He is my boy, after all. But he has his own family to take care of. Please be patient with me, son. I too have a family. My daughter, Payal. I wouldn’t have been bothering you had it not been for her.”

  Aditi sat down next to Bhagvati and took her hands in her own. For reasons unknown, Bhagvati suddenly began to appear as a motherly figure to her. She was doing all this for her daughter. Aditi felt ashamed for treating her the way she did, not giving her the hospitality any guest would have expected. “You are not bothering anyone here. And you will not leave until Manoj gives you what you want. In fact, tell me. I will talk to him.”

  “I wouldn’t have been in this situation if Lakshmi were… But you, you are far more wonderful than I heard them say. I asked Manoj to help me with my daughter’s marriage. I thought he is all this big bank manager. He wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for my husband. What could hurt him to spare something for us?”

  Aditi’s expression changed. “Hadn’t been for your husband?”

  “You don’t know about it? But then, you couldn’t have. This world has its own plans. It was my husband who paid for his college. His college, and far more in the name of college. We fulfilled all his demands and his brother’s as well. We basically ran his family. We were ourselves not rich, let me tell you that. My husband was an auto-rickshaw driver. But we let it be, for the sake of Lakshmi. That one day she would be married to some high-shot officer babu. Life had already consumed us; there was nothing more for us. But she was still young. We did it for her.”

  Aditi inhaled as the information sunk in. Whatever luxury came with her husband’s job was the fruit of the sacrifices the woman sitting in front of her had made. His own goddamn family hadn’t even bothered to graduate him. But what pinched her was the fate of the woman – she had sown the seed, looked after the plant, but leave alone the fruit, even its shade was not hers to enjoy.

  Bhagvati’s eyes began to sparkle. “We did everything for her. Whatever was hers by right, we gave it to him and his family. We shaped his life so that she could live happily with him. But he never accepted her. He considered her too illiterate to be the wife of an officer. That is how life mocks us! We took away her education and gave it to him, and…” Tears began to roll down her cheeks. “When she died, we thought it was Manoj. We went to his village with our men and police. We were sure it was he who had done it, that he had pushed her off the stairs. Maybe we had been impulsive. There was an investigation, but the police could not find any foul-play. It had been an accident after all.” She wiped her face with her aanchal and tried to smile, a sad smile. “That wasn’t the end of our misery. When the investigation was going on, my husband had an accident. Something happened to his back, that something cord you say. He was paralysed. Couldn’t drive any more. Whatever we had saved for our younger daughter went into his treatment. They said he would recover. And he did. But he is a drunkard now. Drinks night and day on the money I borrow from my relatives. Should have left him to die on his bed when I had the chance. Married my daughter with the money I had and drowned myself in the Ganga.”

  “Now don’t say that! Your daughter…”
r />   “I went to him, you know!” Bhagvati cut her off, her voice trembling now. “When the investigation was over, I begged him to marry Payal. It’s not like she is not beautiful. She is. Our family was broken into pieces. Her future lay dark before me. And there is that politician who stands for elections every time and god knows whatever he does to win. He had his eyes on her. It was one chance to put the pieces back together. My only mistake was that I had doubted Manoj. But I begged him to forgive me for going to the police, you know. His father pushed me out in the street and I knelt before him. Ask the villagers if you don’t believe me. But his father wouldn’t budge.”

  Aditi felt a lump in her throat. She could visualise the scene. A woman begging forgiveness while the villagers crowded around and watched. Aditi could almost feel her plight – but it wasn’t hers to feel. She might think that she could feel it, but the truth was that she could only imagine how it felt.

  “When they wouldn’t listen to me, I sent my relatives. Manoj said he couldn’t just marry when his wife had died only so recently. He seemed right then. He promised to come to us when he was ready. But then he was only pushing us back, for we waited for years for him to come. We wrote to him. Most of the times he didn’t reply, and sometimes when he did, he said he needed more time. We didn’t look for anyone else for our daughter. And there could have been no one better than him. So we waited, waited for him to come to us. But the only thing that came from his house was the news of his wedding.”

  Aditi stroked her arms gently. “You were willing to marry Payal in the same house in which Lakshmi died?”

  “I thought he was family. I thought he was my boy. We had looked after him as if he was our own son.”

  “And he isn’t helping you even now?”

  “He is. Now. But it will take time. One of his loans will expire in a week and then he will apply for another.”

  “That is one week. Why are you packing your bags today?”

  “But haven’t I been a headache here? I have a sister in Deepnagar. I will go to her. And it would only seem rude if I didn’t.”

  “Then you must go to her… but not today.” Aditi stood up and smiled. “Today, I am going to make some good strong tea, call Laila and the three of us are going to have some chit-chat. And I am going to ask her about all that sudden interest in school. Zeenat seems very distracted recently. It’s school, alright, but I have a feeling that something is not straight.”

  “You can tell her mother.” Bhagvati finally wiped her face clean with her aanchal and took a deep breath. Relaxed. “But she has been going to school like she said. That is not the problem.”

  “Then?”

  “It’s a boy. It’s always a boy.”

  *

  When Aditi asked Manoj about the loan he was planning to take and pass on the amount to Bhagvati, he just grumbled with irritation. It was a cool, moist night. She had let Bachcha inside the hall. He had curled around in a corner on the floor, pretending to sleep, and then jumped onto the cot while the married couple carried out their strained talks in the bedroom. Bhagvati had gone to visit her sister in the morning. Since she had carried only one bag and left her other luggage behind, Aditi assumed she would be returning in a couple of days and that was a sort of relief to her. She had wanted the day for herself, so she had given the girls some assignment in the afternoon and told them to be off.

  “How much is she asking for?” Aditi spoke to Manoj for the first time in almost two weeks, sniffing slightly with a cold. The window was open and stars were sparkling with all the excellence they could muster. There was no moon.

  It was the night of Amavasya.

  “Is there any limit to that? Whatever it will be will not be enough,” he mumbled to himself, his hands behind his head on a pillow, staring at the stationary fan. For some reason or the other, Arvind had not brought a charged battery and the power had run out. They were lying in the light of a lamp, doing nothing but watching shadows flicker on the wall.

  Aditi wanted to press on, but a sudden gust of irritation exploded from her core. He didn’t even care to explain his business with Bhagvati, and there he was, still giving disguised replies. She wanted to fight with him, let out her anger. She wanted to ask about the loan that was about to expire. When he had taken that loan, and what he had done with the money. There were more questions she needed to ask. The haunting memories of her past came back to life. She could no longer bear the presence of the man. With unnecessary force, she leapt out of the bed and went to the hall. Bachcha jumped off the cot the moment he saw her. She was enraged. “You,” she growled, “on bed?”

  There was a thick wooden plank that could be fixed to the door to provide extra strength. She hurled it at the dog. Bachcha crouched low on the floor, his ears flat and tails between his legs. It struck squarely on his head. The night was torn with the yelling of the dog. She removed her slipper and began beating him. Blows after blows, while he whimpered and wriggled. When that was not enough, she lifted him and smashed him on a wall. He fell at some uncanny angle. Limping and whimpering, he rushed to the door, furiously looking for a way out. She unlatched it, kicked him out into the night and banged it shut. Then she returned to the cot and sat there, erect, till her breaths had calmed down.

  She closed her eyes and tried to count backwards.

  109.

  108.

  107…

  She heard footsteps on the roof.

  Soft. Slow. Indistinct. Yet present.

  Bangles jingled lightly with each step.

  She hurried back to the bedroom.

  Someone was roaming under the eternal night sky and amid dark shapes that slept under it, humming a song of a mother calling for her daughter wedded in a faraway land.

  *

  Bhagvati returned two days later and she had an extra luggage – a big, colourful plastic bag filled with homemade pickles and drinks and jams and jellies. Aditi was teaching the three girls – three, for Zeenat did not go to school that day – when Bhagvati knocked at the door, beaming and gasping, her forearms covered in colourful bangles. Zeba and Zoya jumped from their seats to greet her. Bachcha stood behind on the veranda, wagging his tail. Aditi had called for him the next morning of that unfortunate night and he had come with all the speed his unfit legs could muster. It had taken only one pat on his head to heal his trust, though it took days for his leg to do so.

  “This is one bottle of delicious mango pickles,” Bhagvati was pulling out the contents of her bag as everyone hovered around her. “And this, chilly pickle. These are handmade incense sticks. Rose. Chameli. Mogra. My sister has a full business running out there. And this,” she was holding a bottle of dried and crumbled rose petals and tulsi leaves floating in a thick serum, “is a home-made drink my grandmother used to make. Only that I added a bit of tulsi leaves. And this is…”

  “What exactly is it?” Aditi asked.

  “Oh! This is our people’s substitute to your Rooh Afza in cities. Put some petals and sugar in a bottle and leave it out in the sun to dry for a couple of days. Wait! I’ll make a drink for all of us. And this lemon pickle here,” she said lifting a jar of peeled, brownish lemons, “have you ever had it with water? I will bring you lemon drinks as well. Good for digestion. And Zeenat, you didn’t to school today?”

  “No,” Zeenat blushed.

  “And you are still wearing that kajal?”

  “No. I just…” she tried to say something in defence, but there was nothing she could think of.

  “I told you,” Bhagvati said going to the kitchen, “that kajal is addictive. Wait till your mother finds out! Girls as young as you shouldn’t wear kajal.”

  Aditi knew this was the chance. “Zeba, my backyard is all dirty again. Now that we are taking a break, can you just give a quick sweep around. You know, just a few strokes here and there…”

  Zeba stood up, and so did Zeenat.

  “No! You stay. You haven’t completed the assignment I gave you the day before. Why?”


  “I was in school…”

  “School? But that doesn’t get you away with it. You sit back and complete it. Zoya can help her if she wants…” She hadn’t even completed her sentence when Zoya sprang to her feet and ran out into the backyard. Zeba lingered for some time, hoping to be with her elder sister in the time of trouble, but left when Zeenat opened her book and started working on the problems.

  “What is his name?” Aditi asked a moment later.

  “What?” Zeenat looked up, colours draining down her cheeks. “Who? Whose name?”

  “This school friend of yours.”

  There was a quick glance towards the kitchen. Then she lowered her gaze and continued with her work. “I have many friends in school.”

  Aditi studied her for some time. Her fair skin. Her pretty face trying not to express the nervousness within. Her hair tied tightly with a worn-out elastic band. She was intelligent, Aditi thought. With proper education and a bit of support she could have done something with her life. And that was what Aditi had planned for her. But then came along this unknown boy with whatever he had in his mind. And what did he have in mind? What do all young boys have in their minds?

  “You know Zeenat, you are ruining your…” Aditi couldn’t say ‘career’, so she pondered and ended with, “…life. It is not safe. He will make your laugh with his pranks and silly jokes. He will make you feel important with his words. But you never know what he has in mind. You are young, Zeenat. You don’t know what you are doing.”

  Aditi thought Zeenat would pretend ignorance. But her face hardened. And after a moment, she blurted out, “He is not like others. He is different.”