by Manil Suri
After the Indian Express exposé was forgotten, with Jacqueline Susann back on the street, I learnt that Mr. Hansi had diversified into book pirating himself, at his reincarnated outfit in the faraway suburb of Bhayander. Just as Paji was looking for another job for me, your school offered to hire me as a teacher for their new program of nursery classes. The hours were about the same as yours, which meant we could ride together on the public bus. Even more appealing, I would face no more leers—the only male teachers were Jesuit fathers.
Perhaps all my motherly instincts had been expended in bringing you up, because I found other people’s children a lot less endearing than my own. One of the tots got into the habit of flinging his notebooks at the board—another had an accident in his pants like clockwork every day after lunch. I especially hated accompanying them downstairs to the playground—the way they swarmed around me like a shoal of tadpoles, bumping into my legs, pulling at my hand, using my sari to wipe their sticky palms. A coworker suggested I ask to be transferred to a class with older children, but for that one needed qualifications I didn’t possess.
Still, I kept at it until the term ended in April. I managed to procure a key to the terrace above the statue of St. Xavier’s, and that’s where we began to go for lunch. We sat on the shaded part of the parapet, looking over the top of the mango tree, the shrieks of the children playing in the compound below barely reaching us. You enjoyed my parathas the most—peeling them apart and finishing all the potato filling first, then rolling up each half and eating it dipped in ketchup.
I never gave back the key to the terrace. Long after I quit my nursery school job, we continued to sneak up on the days I brought you lunch. Sometimes, after a rain shower, we sighted rainbows over Metro Cinema, shimmering in the sun as they rose and plunged. The city sparkled before us, the air itself smelling as if it had been scrubbed.
Finally, one day, our lunches on the terrace ended. We carried our parathas to the top, and found a new lock in which my key no longer worked.
BY THAT SUMMER, the student violence from Gujarat and Bihar had swept over the whole country. I read about riots almost every day in the newspaper—sometimes sparked by high prices, sometimes unemployment, sometimes corruption (the news on TV carefully omitted all such reports). For the first time that I could recall, a strong and charismatic leader had emerged from the opposition—Jayprakash Narayan, or JP as the former freedom fighter was called. “Total revolution,” he declared, a struggle which would not end until Indira was removed from power. He managed to form a coalition that outlandishly combined both Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists. Paji fired off enraged letters, complaining how Biji had outdone herself in ruining his reputation by participating in the JP protests. No denial by Biji came in the mail—she didn’t seem to have time to dictate her letters to Sharmila anymore.
We went to Delhi earlier than usual, because of rumors of another railway strike. The city was baking when we arrived—several people had already died in the heat wave sweeping the north. The Loo wind seemed to have set its rudder to blow in from the Thar Desert precisely to the center of Delhi every day, its blasts wilting tree leaves as they hung from their branches, withering any patch of exposed skin. In the afternoons, normally bustling areas looked as if a curfew was in place—people emerged only in the morning, before the strong gusts started, or after the sun had set.
Despite this, Arya chose 4 p.m. at the Coffee House in the middle of Connaught Place to meet. He sprang the invitation on me one day in Nizamuddin, claiming he wanted to discuss something important. “Their cold coffee, you might still remember, is the best in the city.” Perhaps I felt the bond of our correspondence obligated me. There could be no harm in meeting at such a public place, I thought, and agreed.
By the time I found myself pushing open the door of the Coffee House, I dreaded what would transpire inside. The orchestration of letters over the years, the subtly endearing messages they contained—surely they pointed to only one motive. The air-conditioning made me feel a little better, as did the sight of the dark-cushioned chairs inside, the walls covered with the soothing coffee-colored drapes. Paji used to bring us here for special occasions—I recalled the square-tipped dessert spoons, the tall ice-cream-topped drinks.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” said a man, walking up to me. It was Arya, clad in a suit and tie. My first reaction, which I managed to stifle, was to laugh. This person, who I had seen so often in loincloth and undershirt, who was most at home covered in mud from a wrestling pit, was attempting to make a good impression on me by becoming westernized (that too, in this heat). His tie was all wrong, his coat too tight and poorly stitched, and yet he managed to pull it off better than I would have expected. It was the gray temples with the clipped gray mustache, the rimless glasses he had begun to wear, which gave him a distinguished air. I half expected him to pull my chair back for me, but he led me to the table and gestured at it, then sat down before I did. “Their cold coffee is very good,” he reminded me again.
It was indeed very good, served with a generous scoop of ice cream floating in the frothy liquid. I tried to concentrate on what Arya was saying—for some reason, he wanted to give me an overview of the HRM. “People say we’re against Muslims because we protest their special rights, or against Christians because we speak out when they convert villagers through bribes. But we’re not against any group or sect—we’re Hindus after all—a religion that’s always believed in coexistence, never conversion. You must understand this—we’re here to help people, not hurt them—protecting the rights of other Hindus, that’s the only goal we have.”
He went on to enumerate the offices he had opened for the organization—it seemed like he had been to almost every state in the country. “After Sandhya died, I accepted any assignment that would take me away from here, take me away from her memory. I stayed in huts in Assam, ate what the tribals ate in Nagaland, traveled standing up in third class unreserved all the way from Nagpur to Bhopal. I carried an extra pair of laces in my pocket, because with all the walking I did, I was worried the ones in my shoes would break.” He told me he lost count of all the stomach ailments he suffered—for weeks, he was delirious with malaria in Bihar. “It’s taken more than a decade, but now I finally feel the network is in place. And some of the offices I’ve managed to open have left even the people at our headquarters amazed. Seven in West Bengal alone—can you believe it, the Communist state? It just shows that even Communists can get fed up when they keep having their jobs stolen by Muslims from Bangladesh.
“The point is that I’m back now. As long as I was traveling so much, it was impossible to even conceive of a future for myself. But now—now, the time has come to stop running away. To let the wheel of my life stop spinning so I can ease into my place in the world again.”
I watched his hands as he spoke. They were thick hands, but their coarseness seemed curiously restrained, as if smoothed out by a manicure. Were these the same hands that had hit Sandhya hard enough to bruise her face? Could they have somehow reformed themselves, shed their brutality as easily as dirt being cleaned out from under their fingernails?
Perhaps Arya read what I was thinking, because he started to speak of Sandhya. “It’s been twelve years now that she passed away. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t wonder if I could have done anything to stop what happened. I console myself that perhaps her need to provide me with a son was too great. Even when she was alive, I felt she sometimes wanted me to do the things I did, that it was the only way she could live with her guilt. Not that it’s any excuse, or that I’m not ashamed.”
Arya stared at the ice cream melting into his coffee, his expression clouded—with repentance or self-pity, I couldn’t tell. Then he looked up at me. “I asked you here to show you something. Something I’ve been carrying around for a long time.” He took out a folded-up piece of lined paper, the type one tore out of a notebook, and handed it to me. “Over the years, I thought several times of talking to someone about it—
showing it to Mataji or Hema. But I was never ready—I knew what they’d try to force me into, I knew what they’d say. Of course, when Dev died, I thought of sharing it with you. It took all my self-control to wait until today.”
I could see the impressions in the paper from the pencil strokes on the other side, the writing arranged carefully between the faint blue printed lines. I felt uneasy unfolding the sheet—if Arya had concealed this for so many years, there would surely be something unpleasant waiting inside. To my surprise, the sentences confronting me were scrawled out in the uneven hand of a child.
“You do recognize it, don’t you?” Arya asked, but I shook my head. “Look carefully at the handwriting.” I scanned over the lines—the letters were so raggedly formed that it was hard to understand the words. Then my name jumped out from the text, and I stopped. “It’s Sandhya,” Arya said, something I realized the instant before he uttered the words.
“She left it under my pillow—I found it the day after she died. I remember how anxiously she was trying to learn to write from Hema—it must have taken her forever to form those lines.”
He took the paper gingerly from my fingers, as if it might crumble if not handled carefully enough. “See how she’s erased the first line? She never called me by name, so she must have had a difficult time deciding how to address me—she left it blank, finally. Isn’t it amazing—to be married to someone for all those years and never once hear your name in their voice?”
He handed the paper back to me. “She’d have wanted you to read it. I have it memorized, anyway—I’m going away now. I want to meet Devi Ma and ask her why she didn’t answer my prayers. Look how much care she took—it might be hard to read, but the grammar, the spelling, are both perfect.
“Please forgive me for all the years I’ve disappointed you. Please forgive me for any mistakes I’ve made. After I’ve gone, please marry again. I know there are many sons still waiting in your future. This time, marry someone like Meera who’s more educated than myself. It will make you happier.” Arya stopped, and looked away. “Every time I read that line, I feel so ashamed. She must have known, mustn’t she? Caught my stares in your direction, seen all along what I thought I hid.”
I read the last sentences of the letter myself. I pray your life gets filled with as much happiness as you have filled mine with. I will always worship you as my god. She had not signed her name at the end.
“There’s not so much else to add,” Arya said, still not looking at me.
“I’ve already told you I’m no longer the person you knew from before. Loss has a way of mellowing you, making you more mature. What Sandhya would’ve wanted—what you can read her wishing in the last thoughts in your hand, is, as you must guess, what I want as well. You know I already think of Ashvin as my own son. That will never change, whether or not you decide to complete my world.
“I’m not proud of the side I’ve shown you in the past. I know I will never meet anyone as refined, as beautiful, as cultivated as you. The only way I can prove that I’ve changed is if you give me a chance.”
I could certainly not claim that his proposal took me unawares. Still, I was stunned by how easily the obliqueness of the letters had been stripped off in a few plain sentences. “I’m not sure what to say,” I managed to respond.
Perhaps Arya read the apprehension in my face, because he leaned towards me over the table—so far that the straw from his glass brushed against his jacket pocket without him noticing. “You don’t even have to move to Delhi. I can start working for the Bombay branch of the HRM. Ashvin could continue going to his school, and you could keep the friends you’ve made. I’d have to find some way to look after Mataji and Babuji, but it wouldn’t be so hard with Hema living a half mile away.”
He sat back in his chair and began toying with his glass, looking at me carefully, as if trying to decide if he could trust me with a secret. “I don’t know if you’ve been keeping track of what JP has been doing for the country these days. It’s just a matter of time, you know, before he forces Indira to quit. When that happens, the HRM is going to be in the forefront—we’re one of the few groups, he knows, who’s supported him since the beginning. All the years the government has tried to keep us down—the pot is going to finally burst from the pressure under that lid. I warn all the new recruits to be prepared for changes in this country that no one can even imagine. All this corruption you see now, this kowtowing, this favoritism—the HRM is going to simply wipe all of it away. I could tell you more about the plans we have, but perhaps it’s bad luck to talk at this premature stage.” I was glad to have him to go on, glad for the chance to hide my distress, to bring a noncommittal expression to my face.
“The point I’m trying to make is simply this. On at least this one issue, I can clear away any misgivings you might have about me. God willing, my best days are just around the corner. It wouldn’t be such a bad time to link your star to mine.” He said this not boastfully, but with sincerity. The suit kept the scent of his body contained as he sat there—the air was heady with coffee and nothing else.
Could I really have been serious when I told him I would think about it, or was it just a way to be polite? Did I really keep flashing back to the earnestness on his face as I rode the motor rickshaw back to Darya Ganj, or was it just the heat playing tricks? “There’s nobody else in the world I’d rather leave him to,” I heard Sandhya say. She held out her arms lovingly for me, inviting me to press my head against her breast again.
The next time I met Arya in Nizamuddin, he was again as proper and reserved as before. He was no longer attired in a coat, though, and his hair didn’t seem as perfectly trimmed.
BY THE TIME I got on the train to Bombay, the intensity of Arya’s proposal had subsided in my mind. It was one thing to find his letters pleasant reading, quite another to entrust my fate into his hands. Marriage, as I had found out, was all about physical responsibilities. This was not going to be some platonic union or meeting of minds.
For years, a part of me had waited for the day that Dev would make love to me in a way that left me fulfilled. The longer this hope remained unrealized, the more the actual need within me had faded. After Dev died, I had wondered if the physical side of me might, in some glorious renaissance, flower again. Perhaps I would run into the boy who followed me in college and actually carry out my reverie of spending the night with him.
I revisited all the fantasies I’d had about the boy over the years, and tried to imagine their consummation. The heat flowing once again through my lower self, like it had so long ago in my life. The craving magically returning, so that the two of us could be united in its embrace through the night. I was only in my thirties, Hema had reminded me (and Arya barely forty, she had lied). There were many more years of sexual activity ahead of me, according to the Femina issue on women’s sexuality Sharmila had mailed.
But the renaissance hadn’t come. The yearnings of my body remained dormant, only in an abstract sense did they seem still alive. I wondered if it could be true, what Femina was claiming about female gratification, or a myth cooked up in the reporter’s overheated mind. And not just Femina, but all the references that cropped up with increasing boldness in books and songs and films. The way Sharmila kept rhapsodizing about Munshi, the way Hema made sly references to Gopal. Even Zaida shocked me with her fantasies one afternoon when she talked about the neighborhood boy she had loved.
Surely all this enthusiasm about sex must be exaggerated. There was little I could remember to recommend it from my experiences with Dev. Even were I to feel moved enough by such considerations and seek a husband again, I would hardly expect Dev’s brother to be the best candidate. I tried to imagine Arya’s mouth on my lips, his hands on my breasts, his body on top of mine, and shivered.
There was also a nagging question about Sandhya’s note—why had it been unsigned? I remembered all the letters I received from Nizamuddin on the corners of which she had laboriously scrawled out her name. If this was to be
her last communication, wouldn’t she have wanted to do the same? Could Arya have written the note himself, to push me towards accepting him? Could he have omitted the signature, realizing I might recognize it as fake? In the end, I decided he probably hadn’t, but the last bit of doubt remained.
It hardly mattered, though—once I was back in the flat with you, I realized how little need I had for someone else. I always avoided characterizing our existence as a happy one for fear of having our luck turn, of attracting the evil eye. But with each day of contentment that went by, it became harder not to admit it. I decided to write Arya a nice letter declining his proposal. I told him that with all the loss his parents had been through, it was important he stay with them now. I complimented him on his gentlemanly behavior towards me ever since Dev had died. “Wherever she is, the kindness you extended to Ashvin and me must have filled Sandhya’s heart with joy. I can never stop thinking of you as her husband, as the one she truly loved. As Dev’s brother, and hence my own. And of course, you will always be Ashvin’s Yara uncle to me.” The result was quite satisfying, I decided—reading it, he could not possibly be offended. Nor could he be left with any hope that it would be fruitful to pursue me further. I mailed it just in time—a few days later, on the twenty-sixth of June, 1975, to be exact, the whole country came to a standstill.
chapter thirty-one
MRS. HUSSAIN KNOCKED ON THE DOOR AT 8 A.M. “COME QUICK. IT’S your Paji on the phone. A trunk call from Delhi.” Then, seeing my alarm, she added, “Don’t be worried—he probably just wants to talk about the Emergency that Indira Gandhi’s declared.”
She elaborated as we hurried up the stairs. “It’s on radio and in all the newspapers. JP and the rest of the opposition—Indira Gandhi’s rounded them all up and thrown them in jail. She did it last night, after her own cabinet ministers were all sound asleep. Plus, she’s suspended freedom of speech—not just that, but right to property, everything. All the news is being censored—the Indian Express left its editorial page blank in protest.”
