The Age of Shiva

by Manil Suri

  In the coming weeks, Zaida became more hopeful, and even started dancing with you in the afternoons. Though it was legal, many Muslim communities, including her own, strongly discouraged the practice of three-talaq divorce. “He’s just using it as a threat—let’s see the mouse actually say the words to my face. He’s wrong if he thinks I’m going to fall for his bluff and agree to share this house with that whore of his.” She actually sat down face to face with Aneez, the woman in question, at a meeting arranged by her father to try and smooth things out. “A fifty-five-year-old widow, no less. With two grown children, imagine! My own father telling me that I should accommodate her, that I shouldn’t put this to the test.”

  “Don’t listen to them—they’re just trying to break your will,” I responded. “A woman that age who knows she’s not welcome won’t come rushing in.”

  For a few days, it looked like Zaida’s strategy of holding firm was going to work. Then, late one afternoon, she burst in. “Anwar’s given me an ultimatum. Either I agree to all his conditions to make this widow of his welcome, or he’s going to utter the words this Saturday. Right after his bath—he says one has to purify oneself first—he’ll probably go see her afterwards.” She paused to catch her breath. “What he doesn’t know is that I’m going to make it more difficult than that. I want you to come and be a witness—let’s see him open his mouth then.”

  “Of course,” I nodded. “But why just me? Why not summon the rest of the building as well?”

  When Anwar emerged from the bathroom, he was confronted not only by Mrs. Dugal and myself, but also by Mrs. Hamid, Mrs. Kagalwalla, both the Hussains, and even Mrs. Karmali, who rarely ventured out of her flat anymore. I noticed Pinky had slipped in as well and was watching from behind the kitchen door. “What kind of foolishness is this?” Anwar shouted. “This is not some circus, but a private affair.”

  “Why? Are you ashamed? Don’t you want your neighbors to know? If you’re prepared to say them to me, you can say the words in front of them.” Zaida turned towards us. “Look, he’s even taken the bath that’s prescribed. This should only take a minute—do stay for tea afterwards.”

  For a moment we all looked on silently. Then Mrs. Hussain prodded her husband to speak. “I’m sorry, Mr. Azmi,” he said. “We weren’t going to come, but your wife requested us to—she’s like a sister to us. A man your age—perhaps you could give it some more thought?”

  In response, Anwar pushed roughly past Mr. Hussain into the bedroom, and slammed the door. “What’s the matter?” Zaida called out. “Are you going to disappoint all your fans? They’ve come to hear you teach them the word, have you forgotten how it’s pronounced?”

  Zaida’s strategy produced the desired result. Aneez withdrew her acceptance within a week—there was too much gossip in the community, making the prospect of marriage too humiliating. “She sent me a note—on perfumed paper, no less, our Aneez memsahib did. That she’s asked Anwar not to get a talaq—can you imagine the gall? Perhaps she’s expecting me to go pledge my eternal gratitude to her, waiting with a martyr’s look inside her cave.”

  The matter didn’t end there. Anwar was so enraged that he refused to speak to his wife, and would not even look at her when they were in the same room. One afternoon, as Zaida and I were sipping tea, he appeared at my door. His eyes were bloodshot and his kurta pajama stained. “I’ve come to say something to my wife, and I want you to be a witness.” I had no choice but to let him in.

  He spoke to Zaida in chaste Urdu, using the formal honorific to address her. Things had been poisoned between them, he said, due to her selfishness and her unwillingness to obey the law of God as set down in the Koran. She had made a mockery of him and herself in public. Instead of trying to preserve the sacredness of the marriage between them, a marriage which clearly allowed him to take another wife if he desired, she had defiled it to a point where it could not be saved. There was no point any longer in showing pity or consideration to such a she-devil, such a churail—it was time to do what he should have from the start. “Talaq,” he said, the q sharp and reverberant as it cut through the air. “I promise that the remaining two pronouncements will be forthcoming soon, at a time of my choosing.”

  “If you’re man enough, just spit them out now and be done with it,” Zaida responded, but Anwar ignored her. “I’ll divorce you myself, if you don’t,” she called after him as he calmly walked out of my living room.

  For a while, Zaida looked into getting a khula, the kind of divorce that could be initiated by the wife. In addition to the conditions being much more onerous, however, it also meant that the amount of money promised to her as meher in the marriage contract would be lost. “Besides, it’s probably what he’s hoping to provoke me into. If I’m the one to ask for a divorce, then I’m the guilty one. Nobody can point a finger at him, can they then, for going and pursuing his fifty-five-year-old?”

  Her father made it clear that whether it was talaq or khula, he would not accept her back. “Get these extravagant ideas out of your head,” he said. “You’ve already dug yourself into a hole with your obstinacy—think very carefully whether you can afford to continue this behavior.”

  “I’d rather be dead,” Zaida told me, and I tried to think of advice to give, tried to imagine what I might do in her place. I felt terrible at having little more than sympathy to offer after all the difficult periods she had seen me through. I started keeping her with me as long as I could each afternoon, filling her up with the bonbon biscuits she liked so much to cheer her up. When she looked tired, I insisted she lie on the sofa while I massaged her head. You got into the act as well, trying to distract her with solos danced to Beatles records. But our efforts were over-whelmed by the direness of her situation. “I can’t live like this—live under this sword hanging over my head.”

  Except she had few other options left. She was too proud to move in with anyone, declining each time I proposed she share our flat. Her husband knew she didn’t have a penny to her name with which to fend for herself. “You’ve disgraced yourself too much to continue as my wife,” he announced. “What you need is to learn some humility first.” He would take her back, he said, provided she agreed to obey all his demands, like a servant would. Any rebelliousness, and he would not hesitate to utter the two words that separated her from the street. “Think of it as training. A mare who’s become too used to running around, being reminded of the leash for her own good.”

  Anwar started Zaida’s “training” slowly, doing things to irritate her more than anything else. He complained no matter what she presented him for dinner, railing against cauliflower one day and specifically asking for it the next, sending her back into the kitchen to bring him rice if there were chappatis, and chappatis if she had cooked rice. He critiqued her cleaning and washing and ironing like a finicky house mistress—his goal to identify at least three tasks every day for her to do over again. Some of his tactics were impish—setting her bath soap to dissolve under the tap, hiding her glasses so she couldn’t read, secretly drinking up all the milk so that there would be none left for her early morning tea. “If that’s the worst of it,” Zaida told me one afternoon, “then fine, I’ll tolerate it with a smile, until his dander subsides.”

  Unfortunately, she miscalculated—in the face of her equanimity, Anwar just became meaner, more humiliating. He forbade her from visiting any of the neighbors or even chatting with them, like his mother had done when she was alive. Zaida would steal in for a few minutes while he was asleep to tell me what new indignities he had dreamt up. I tried again on these visits to convince her to move in with us. “Not just myself, but think of how overjoyed Ashvin would be,” I said.

  But she again refused. “I can’t give in now. I have to see this to the end.”

  Anwar started haranguing Zaida about money, accusing her of theft if she couldn’t account for every paisa he doled out for groceries. Each time she returned from her shopping, he patted down the clothes she was wearing to check for hi
dden coins and rupees. He dismissed the jamadarni and ordered Zaida to clean the toilet every morning herself—“I can’t afford to have two servants in my employ,” he said. Always a fastidious man, he suddenly started coming back from his walks with his shoes smeared with mud and cow feces—he took them off at the door, where he made her sit and polish them. He let her cook only enough mutton or chicken for himself—when he was done with dinner, he scraped the dregs of the gravy into the remainder of the custard they had for dessert every night, and left that mixed up in a bowl for her to eat.

  It was only the exchange of Eid greetings that gave us a pretext for a proper visit to Zaida in her flat. The Hussains were already there, sipping glasses of almond milk. Zaida was just about to pour you a glass when Anwar complained the milk had too much sugar in it. “Go back to the kitchen and make it again,” he ordered.

  Zaida laughed nervously as if he had just made a joke. “I think the sweetness is just right. I’ll give some to Ashvin—perhaps he can be the one to decide.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I asked you to do?” Anwar said. “Go prepare another batch. Right now.” When Zaida made no move to obey, he raised his hand to strike her in front of us all.

  It happened so fast there was little time to react. One instant, I watched in shock as Anwar’s hand began its downward descent. The next, Zaida’s fingers shot around his wrist to arrest his slap. “It was a divine moment, a revelation,” she said afterwards. “My arm propelled forward by Allah himself. After you all had left—everyone, incidentally, making sure to finish their milk in my support—I told Anwar it might indeed be his right to divorce me or not. But it would be a sin to allow my mistreatment to continue any longer—not only for me, but also for himself.”

  Anwar’s response was to throw his almond milk at her face. It was not too hard to avoid, she told me—a little fell on her dupatta, but most of it splashed harmlessly off the wall. He then hurled the empty glass towards her, which she also managed to dodge. The glass bounced off a lamp and fell intact to the floor—for some reason, the fact that it didn’t break seemed to infuriate him. “Pick it up,” he shouted, stomping his foot on the ground like a child trying to intimidate a pigeon or cat. Zaida stayed where she was. “Pick it up,” he shouted again, “or I’ll speak the words that are waiting to leap off my tongue.”

  “I felt nothing. Perhaps it was God’s presence still inside me that made me so tranquil. I was prepared for any eventuality—I knew that if I stood my ground, He would take care of me no matter what happened. Anwar kept repeating his threat, but the more he reiterated it, the more it became clear to both of us that it was empty, that he wouldn’t be able to bring even one of the two remaining ‘talaqs’ to his lips. By now, I was feeling so strong, so righteous, that I could almost feel the light shining from within me and radiating through my skin—like one of those pictures of Christian angels, or Jesus or Mary with their hearts aflame. Perhaps Anwar saw this glow within me as well, because his words began to falter, his eyes became large and fearful. He emitted an anguished cry—of terror, almost—and went running into the bedroom.”

  For a while, Zaida just sat on one of the chairs and waited. “Had my clothes not been in the bedroom cupboard, I may have packed them and left, though I probably would only have come here, to your flat. I noticed there were ants already beginning to be attracted by the milk on the floor, so I dampened a cloth in the kitchen to wipe up the spill. I examined the glass Anwar had thrown—it had chipped very slightly around the rim. I kept looking at it for a long time after I had rinsed it, unable to decide whether to return it to the cabinet or throw it out. Finally, I set it on the counter, opened the bedroom door, and went in.”

  Anwar was lying absolutely motionless on the bed. “As if he were a patient on an operating table, and I the surgeon to whom he had entrusted his fate. His face was so bloodless that I thought he had suffered a heart attack. I imagined letting him lie there as I watched the life ebb out of him. He gasped, and I drew closer—so close that I could feel his breath on my hand, though I didn’t touch him. I realized he was trying to say something, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. What if he was using the last of his energy to dredge up the words he had been unable to summon earlier? But there must have still been some remnant of the noble presence within me—or perhaps I just felt pity, now that his last moments seemed near. In any case, I found myself smoothing out his forehead, holding his hand, telling him I was there. His eyes opened, and they were surprisingly clear—I drew back, startled by the realization that he was not quite on his deathbed. He started whispering again, and this time I put down my ear next to his lips. ‘Aneez,’ he was saying. ‘I’ll never be able to marry my Aneez, thanks to the churail.’

  “I suppose the presence inside me must have abruptly vanished, because I spat in his face. He made no move to wipe the spittle off, but stopped whispering for a moment. Then he started repeating Aneez’s name once more, over and over again, as if he were chanting a prayer. I watched the dark hole of his mouth open and close, framed by the thick fleshiness of his lips. I spat at him again, repeatedly, striking not his nose or his lips or his cheeks, but the flowing white beard that made him look like a mullah, that he took such fastidious pride in. I spat until I could work up no more spit. He neither winced nor made any attempt to protect himself. Then, even though I could see that he was no longer a tiger but a mouse again—an older and frailer one at that—I slapped him. It was the only way I knew by which I could stay married to him.

  “After that, he was silent and still. When it was time for dinner, I thought about eating all the chicken myself, and serving him a mixture of gravy and custard with crusts of bread soaked in. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Instead, I divided the meat between two plates, though I gave the smaller piece to him. He didn’t touch his plate. I tried to spoon some rice into his mouth, but he turned away. I was never quite sure if he was still lamenting Aneez, or if his need for penance was too great.”

  It took a week for Anwar’s paralysis to end. Zaida came by to visit every day, giving me updates. “He seems to be hungering for further mistreatment, but I don’t feel the need anymore. As long as we both understand each other now, and the bluff of his two hanging words has been forever swept away.” She rehired the jamadarni that very week, then got a ganga to come in as well, to cook the food and clean the floors.

  Two months later, I was surprised to be invited to Zaida’s place again on a Saturday afternoon. Ever since things had been straightened out, Anwar stayed at home that day, listening to the radio or puttering around the flat, and Zaida came over to our place instead. “I sent him out,” she said, as she opened the door. “I couldn’t stand his restlessness.”

  “But where?” I asked.

  “To visit his ‘brother’ in Sewri, where else? It was more than I could bear to watch his long face every week, to follow his pitiful shuffling movements as if he was a hundred years old. If it’s a mouse hole he needs, then fine, let him have it—now that we both know I can be the only wife. I can ensure he’s well-fed and take care of him when he’s sick, but affection is not one of the obligations I’m going to fulfill.”

  Then, before I could ask her any further questions, Zaida showed you the Beatles record her cousin had just lent her. “Come, Ashvin, I’ll put it on so we can twist.”

  chapter twenty-nine

  BARELY HAD ZAIDA’S CRISIS BEEN RESOLVED THAN ROOPA DECIDED TO PAY us a visit, jarring us once more out of our day-to-day tranquillity. “Ravinder’s being posted on a ship for a month and the twins’ college starts again next week. I feel so guilty not having come earlier to be by your side, but this is the first chance I’m really getting to be alone. Tell darling Ashu that his Roo auntie can’t wait to see how he’s grown.” I almost wrote back asking her not to come, but then relented, remembering how fond you had been of her the times you’d met in Delhi.

  At the station, Roopa hugged us both simultaneously to her chest, telling us how shocked she
had been to hear about Dev. There were tears in her eyes, which puzzled me—should I remind her that her condolences were three years too late? I soon understood the real reason behind her visit—she had pledged to make an offering at Sai Baba’s shrine in Shirdi. “I told Sai Baba I’d visit, but he had to give both Dilip and Shobha good marks at the college in exchange.” There was no easy way to get to the remote town from most parts in the country—Bombay was one of the few accessible starting points for the overnight bus trip. She tried to convince the two of us to come along, suggesting we make a proper excursion of it by spending the night there in a hotel room (something she was afraid of doing alone). “If not for yourself, then come for Ashu’s sake—even more so, for Dev’s. Remember, Sai Baba was his favorite saint. It would give such peace to his soul—how he would have cherished you making the pilgrimage for him!”

  “I’m sure you’d be much better at getting Sai Baba to bless his soul than I would,” I replied. “Dev himself might appreciate it more to hear the prayers from your lips.”

  I did offer you the choice of accompanying your Roo auntie. But it was apparent you didn’t want to go—in fact, you were relieved to see her leave. The two days Roopa spent in Bombay had not passed well. You were disappointed to get clothes as a present (two pairs of pants, stitched specially for you, Roopa claimed, but which didn’t fit). You no longer had any interest in having her make up your face—the experiences of being Pinky’s wife had cured you of that phase. The very first evening, you brought in your aquarium to give Roo auntie the chance to feed your snails, and were offended by the look of revulsion on her face. You missed your school bus two mornings in a row because she occupied the bathroom too long. (“Just a minute,” she’d say, and then take ten more.) You didn’t even like being called “Ashu” now, but she laughed it off each time you reminded her of this. “You’re too young, Ashu, to mind about such things. What is it, nine now?—you couldn’t be becoming an adult so quick.” What galled you even more was that at the same time, she declared you too grown-up to sleep between her and me on the bed, banishing you to your half mattress instead.