Oh Lord Ganapathy, please make her stop.
You take a step forward and then you are surrounded. You are a black cloud, angry, buzzing.
No! What’s happening? Oh, dear Lord, what the hell’s happening?
Someone screams. Loud. Spiked with pain. Then a flurry of sounds. People talking all at once, tones frantic. Bobby cowering and whining. You are a black dot running up and down the fields. Rohan’s face frozen in shock. Sumitranna sprinting after you.
Did I cause this somehow, Lord, by asking you to make Ma stop?
And suddenly, there you are again, in your best blue sari. Except it is not you but an effigy of you, a ballooning, bruise-red effigy. You are standing and then you are swaying, in Jalajakka’s arms, on the ground, sweating profusely, the mud around you staining orange.
Please, Lord, make her okay. Please. I do not want this. I did not mean for this to happen.
‘Someone get a rickshaw,’ Jalajakka yells, voice wobbly, straining at the edges. ‘We need to take her to the hospital.’
And that is how my betrothal to Rohan is sealed, in your sweat and my guilt-infested tears, as you are rushed, bloating rapidly, in Rohan’s parents’ hired car to the hospital.
Ma, this is helping me so much, this writing down of everything that’s happened. I am jotting it as much for me as for you, I can see that now. And, yes, it does not take away all that hurt, those arguments, that history between us. But when I read out loud to you, some of the anger melts away and there is an acceptance in its stead.
Yes, it happened, but we have moved on. Now, I want you to be there when my baby comes. I want you to know this. I hope it is not too late.
Love,
Devi
Chapter 12
Shilpa
Fish Fry
Fish fry:
Ingredients:
Fresh fish of your choice (this recipe works for two large fish).
Bafat powder—Two tbsp.
Chilli powder—Two tbsp.
Turmeric powder—One tsp.
Ginger paste—One tsp.
Garlic paste—One tsp.
Vinegar—Three tbsp.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Coconut oil for frying.
Method:
1) Clean, gut and scale the fish.
2) Make slits in the flesh, rub with salt and set aside.
3) Meanwhile, mix all the ingredients to make a paste.
4) Rub this onto the body of the fish, so that both sides are nicely coated. Leave to marinate for at least an hour. Keep a close eye on the fish, shooing away any cats—yours or your neighbours’—who might try to get at it.
5) Pour coconut oil in the frying pan so as to lightly cover the base and when hot, add the fish. Once the fish is cooked on one side, turn it over with a spatula, taking care not to split the fish. Once both sides have fried to perfection, serve with fat red rice and fish curry (recipe to follow).
Note: Some people coat the marinated fish in rava just before frying—it gives the fried fish a nice crunch. Not me. I prefer mine spicy and unsullied by rava.
* * *
Dear Diary,
It’s been a long time. So much has happened; I don’t know where to start.
I will begin, as I do, with the recipe. I asked Manoj to get me the freshest pomfrets all the way from Udupi, risking Shali the fisherwoman’s sulks (‘What’s wrong with my fish, tell me?’) and fried them the way I have described in the recipe. I kept one for Manoj and none for me even though my mouth watered at the smell, at the crispy golden sight of the perfectly fried fish wrapped in banana leaves to give to the madwoman along with vangi bhath and mutton curry, even though mutton costs the earth and some more these days. I would have cooked the moon in a delicious curry and given that to her if it was possible, believe me.
‘Who is this madwoman?’ you may ask, dear Diary.
She appeared under the peepal tree one day as if, instead of adventitious roots, the peepal tree had sprouted a real live, ranting, raving madwoman. I asked Shali, who squats by the bus stop next to the tree hawking supposedly fresh fish caught that morning, discreetly, where the madwoman had come from. ‘God only knows; she was there when I arrived,’ Shali said, her whisper loud as the horns of those screeching buses that race past Sompur, displacing an avalanche of dust in their wake. If the madwoman heard—and how could she not? —she didn’t give any indication.
‘Why are you giving food you cannot afford to a madwoman?’ you might query, dear Diary.
Ah, well, since you asked…
Six years it’s been since my wedding, since I came here as a not-so-young bride. I wanted a husband and a house. I got both. I wanted children. I didn’t get that. I didn’t.
My parents passed away, one after the other, imploring me, even on their deathbeds, for a grandchild. I did not get to revel in the joyous sight of my children cavorting on their knees.
Jalaja got pregnant, went to her village for her delivery, came back with a strapping boy. I cooked for Sumitranna while she was away like I had done when I first came here, when he was still unmarried. That long ago time I used to have a spring to my step. Not anymore. I did not have the four kids I had always wanted; all I had instead were a string of miscarriages. And time was running out. At this rate, I would be lucky if I had one child. When Jalaja came back, little boy in tow, I seriously considered snatching him and running away. But where would I go? How would I look after him without the shelter of the roof Manoj had provided over my head and the food he put on the table?
It has been torture watching Jalaja with her child, watching him totter after her, she the centre of his little universe. How I want that! He loves me, I am like his second mother, but of course Jalaja is the one who takes him to her breast. She is the one he will always turn to first when he needs something.
Jalaja knows how much it hurts me to watch her with her child. After all, she is the one who has nursed me back to health after each miscarriage.
So many miscarriages, my babies seeping from me as easily as the tears that track my face in earmarked grooves. Tongues are wagging nonstop. Whispers follow me wherever I go, some loud, others not so, every single one intended to be heard: ‘There goes the cursed woman, the barren one. Pretty as a picture but what’s the use? Womb is not welcoming. Must have done something in her past life.’ I have learned to walk with my head held high, however hard it wants to droop, to pretend not to hear what is being said, even as every word assaults me, rapes me and leaves me gagging. ‘Just goes to show that one shouldn’t always fall for a sweet face,’ they say. ‘Poor Manoj,’ they sigh. ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’ Jalaja, that slip of a girl who was afraid of her own shadow when she first came here, comes to my rescue. ‘Shut up,’ she yells at the malingerers, ‘or I will tie your tongues in knots.’ ‘Poor Sumitranna,’ they say, ‘to have to wake up next to that shrew every morning.’ ‘Thank merciful God I don’t have to wake up next to you,’ she retorts.
This is not the kind of attention I yearned for, growing up.
I prayed, cajoled and bargained with Lord Ganapathy. ‘For Manoj’s sake, Lord. He’s a good man, one of your biggest devotees,’ I entreated. ‘Just one child, Lord. Just the one.’ I performed countless pujas and penances. I fasted on Fridays and feast days. I circumnavigated every temple I visited on my knees and have the scabs to show for it, praying prostrate at each shrine I passed.
I got pregnant. Hope flared, reflected in Manoj’s eyes, in the way he insisted I rest, in the way he hired a girl he could ill afford to help me out so I wouldn’t have to exert myself. ‘Rest,’ he said. ‘Rest,’ the matrons of the village advised. And I did, for the most part. Then, ten weeks into my pregnancy, the familiar, excruciating pain in my stomach as I bent to pick up the mangoes which Nagappa’s son had climbed the tree and shaken free; lying under the mango tree, looking up at the honeyed sunlight filtering in through the canopy of leaves, tinting them gold, the air smelling sharp and tangy, with a hint of ru
st, an undercurrent of pain; Jalaja, fanning me with the pallu of her sari as yet another baby trickled out of me in agonising bursts.
Manoj took me to see a doctor in Manipal, even though we could ill afford the cost. The doctor did a million tests and in the end he called us both in. One look at his eyes was all it took. My tears were already collecting under my chin, soaking my sari blouse when he told Manoj what I already knew.
And then one sun-dappled afternoon, as I trudged back home after buying fresh mackerel for that evening’s supper, I locked eyes with the madwoman who’d set up camp under the peepal tree. And everything changed.
It was a sweltering hot day. The earth smelled yellow and overcooked like leftover conjee boiling in a pot. I shifted the basket from my left hip to my right. The fish was starting to smell in the heat, even though Shali had generously given me some of the ice it had been packed in, which was now melting and dripping onto my sari. Across the road a little girl skipped along barefoot, humming to herself, her churidar bottoms torn, hair escaping the plaits tied up securely with red ribbons in bows behind her ears. The bus pulled up, the girl’s mother got in and both she and the conductor started yelling at the girl to hurry. The girl took her time, skipping and singing, head down, lost in her own world. The mother slapped her forehead with her palm, bemoaning her fate for all to hear, ‘Oh Shiva, what am I going to do with this one?’
I turned and found the madwoman, who was strangely quiet, no histrionics, no wildly shaking head, staring directly at me. ‘You want one, don’t you?’ I thought I heard her say, in a gravelly voice so unlike the high-pitched keening she usually indulged in. ‘Huh?’ was all I could manage once I got over the shock of seeing the woman actually making conversation. ‘Your hostile womb will let you carry one pregnancy to term, if you so wish,’ the woman said clearly, still holding my gaze, ‘Only one.’ I noticed that her eyes were a curious colour—the same shade of steel grey as the bushy clouds of hair obscuring her face—even as the import of what she was saying sank slowly in. ‘But…’ she continued and I leaned forward, the better to catch every word, ‘you will be stealing from fate. It will cost you dearly.’ The madwoman’s clear gaze bored into me—the smoky grey of a stormy sky, of ashes in the hearth, of monsoon clouds pregnant with the promise of rain. ‘Are you prepared to pay the price?’
A baby… I did not hesitate. ‘Yes.’
‘Go to Manil and pray to Lord Ganapathy.’ And before I could say anything more, she resumed shaking her head and muttering to herself, the activities that had earned her the sobriquet of madwoman.
And so Manoj and I donned our best clothes, packed neer dosa, upma, vadai, coconut chutney and dry fish chutney in two three- tier tiffin boxes and endured the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Manil, via four buses and a bullock cart. We joined the long line of people snaking to get a glimpse of Lord Ganapathy, eating our lunch while we waited.
The river gurgled on one side and the sea roared on the other, crashing against the rocks. Temple bells sang and bhajans roared from the loudspeakers of vans of those people rich enough to have arrived in them rather than the bullock carts; as the temple was at the confluence of river and sea, there was no proper road leading to it, hence no bus service. Bullocks were washed by their owners before they made the journey back to the bus stop and they mooed gently in protest as the cold water splashed their haunches, as their owners rhythmically rubbed sudsy sponges on their muddy hide and shooed away the crows which persisted on using their broad grey backs as landing pads. The cloying heady scent of rose agarbatti mingled with the salty, musty smell of sea.
Devotees who had finished puja and darshan bathed in the sea, the men in dripping white dhotis, wearing beatific expressions beneath red slashes of vermillion. The women, their pallus flapping like multi-hued kites, lifted their saris above their ankles as they bravely waded into waist high water, their eyes closing as it enveloped them in an intimate caress. Children danced among bubbly waves while simultaneously trying to stuff cricket-ball-sized prasadam laddoos into too small mouths. A few brave souls tried to jump between the rocks dotting the water —black beacons mapping a frothy, azure landscape. They missed and fell into the sea with a squelch and a scream, to the accompaniment of laughter. Squawking seagulls descended fearlessly, snatching scraps of prasadam from the children’s hands and the children screeched and flapped brackish water everywhere in protest.
Hawkers walked past selling Lord Ganesh figurines which they claimed had been blessed by the high priest. Little carts on wheels dotted the indistinct path between river and sea, the better to zoom away when the weather turned, a storm threatened or the sea, on a whim, decided to claim the strip of land for its own. The carts did busy business: one sold puri bhajis, dosas, goli baje and all things fried. Another declared ‘Chineese food, Verry Testy, Gobi Manchuri,’ in bold red letters on a white cloth banner which strained in the wind, not taking kindly to being tethered to the cart. A couple of the letters had bled into the white—the sign must have been put up without the words having properly dried first. It looked like a poster displaying a ghoulish horror movie—almost as bloody as the gloopy mixture which the vendor was stirring with relish on a huge wok right under the sign with the longest ladle I had ever seen.
A feisty breeze wafted rich, spicy smells from the carts right up to us queuing shuffling devotees. I wearily shifted my weight from one aching foot to the other and wondered if setting out on a pilgrimage on the behest of a madwoman made me just as mad and then quickly quelled the thought in case Lord Ganapathy decided to punish me for my disbelief.
That night, after the myriad pujas, after I had done a circuit of the temple on my knees, praying as I went, after we had partaken of the rasam, sambar, curd rice, jalebi and payasam—the prasadam meal provided by the temple for all the devotees—after we had washed in the sea and marvelled at the multi-hued sunset, we slept in the long narrow room provided by the temple for the devotees who didn’t have the resources to hire vans and had come by public transport. There were no bullock carts available after six in the evening and for most of the people who had spent the day queuing for a darshan with Lord Ganesh, no means of returning home that day. And so we queued up again, and were pointed to the corner of a room, stuffed to bursting with people, the two of us pressed up against the wall, using my spare sari as a mattress. And, surrounded by snores on all sides as people slept after a busy day of prayers, as children mumbled in their sleep and somewhere close by someone assaulted by a nightmare screamed and across the room a woman giggled, as saris rustled and dhotis swished and mosquitoes feasted, Manoj pulled me on top of him and entered me urgently. And in that prayer-infused room redolent of musky sweat and salty sea, the air pregnant with the dreams of a thousand devotees, with Lord Ganesh keeping watch and the sea gurgling outside, the child the madwoman had prophesied was conceived.
Six weeks later, I went to the madwoman with the food I had prepared: mutton curry, fish fry and vangi bhath. ‘Thank you,’ I said, placing the food in front of the woman. The madwoman ignored me, muttering steadily to herself, but as I turned to go, she grabbed my hand, startling me. ‘This pregnancy,’ she said, her grey eyes never leaving mine, ‘will cost you. Dearly.’ I nodded, one hand guarding my stomach, awed, afraid. ‘Protect the precious cargo within. It is your duty as a mother.’ My hand on my stomach tightened. ‘Even if you have to give up one you hold dear.’ This was said in a whisper. What did she mean? Oh, Lord Ganapathy, what on earth did she mean?
Dear Diary, my hand aches as I read back on what I have written but I do not want to stop. I want to record every single detail, lest I forget. I did what the madwoman said and I am pregnant. My baby thrives inside of me. I know I will carry this pregnancy to term, I am sure of it. But for this privilege I will pay, I will lose something. That is what the madwoman has predicted. I am worried what form the cost will take, of course I am. But mostly I am happy. Manoj is always watching, asking me to rest, worried about the possibility of miscarriage.
I am not. I am going to have this child, this much I know. And I will do anything for him, anything at all. I have waited for him for so long, have endured so much. So many lost babies. So much pain.
I had a dream growing up and it is about to be fulfilled. The madwoman—I will call her wise woman from now on—said I have to protect this child at all costs. I will. Fiercely. With my life.
What did I do before the wise woman came into my life? How did I manage? I think she turned up just to help me, guide me in the right direction. She can predict my destiny, see into my future. What a gift! I revere her.
Chapter 13
Nisha
Wood Polish and Beeswax
She finds the document in her mother’s section of the study, in the sturdy wardrobe the orange-red colour of autumn that has always been there, in the third drawer from the bottom. It is locked, but she finds the key in the fob that hangs off the peg by the front door. So easy. But then her mother had known she would never think to look. Nisha was not that kind of person: snoopy, suspicious.
The smell of wood polish and beeswax takes her back to the memory of hiding here once, under the table. She had performed abysmally in her exams, and she knew the school had sent the report, she had seen the slim envelope waiting to be opened when she came home. She had sat under the table, her thighs wet and slippery with sweat, the air heavy with anticipation, tasting of fear. She had heard her mother calling and she had not replied. She heard her gentle footfall disappear up the stairs, heard the soft swish as the door to her room was opened, heard her mother make her way down again, heard the study door open. She had wet herself, she couldn’t help it. Her mother’s eyes, peering under the table, meeting her own. Holding out her hand to help her up. Fear reeked of urine, tasted of humiliation, looked like a wet orange patch on beige carpet. ‘I am disappointed in you,’ her mother had said, quietly, her gaze unwavering. ‘We both are—your dad and I. You could do so much better.’ Her mother had handed her bleach and carpet cleaner to scrub the area where she had wet herself. The chemical, sickly sweet smell of artificial flowers not quite masking the faint tang of ammonia is what she associates to this day with nausea, fear at the pit of her stomach, her mother’s disappointment.
The Forgotten Daughter Page 12
