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Diwali in Muzaffarnagar

Page 11

by Tanuj Solanki


  ‘Disgusting,’ Taruna hissed.

  ‘Don’t say that. That’s how old age is. That’s how our old age will be, and I hope you and your brother can at least help us sit on the pot.’

  ‘You know I won’t say the word when you or Papa are old.’

  Her mother said nothing to that. When the coriander was clean and cut, Taruna walked into her parents’ bedroom, where her father was doing something on his laptop. He hadn’t cleaned himself well, and parts of his ears and neck still had dark-green colour on them. It looked ugly.

  ‘You haven’t washed well,’ Taruna said.

  ‘It will go in a couple of days,’ he replied.

  ‘Sometimes it can take longer. Just looks bad.’

  ‘Hmm …’

  ‘Why don’t you keep an attendant?’ she asked him after a pause. ‘Ravi can’t be burdened with caring for him.’

  ‘Your brother is not burdened with caring for him.’

  ‘Why don’t you hire an attendant for your burden, then? For mother’s?’

  ‘It costs money,’ her father said. ‘We will hire an attendant when we can’t do without one.’

  Taruna sat down on the bed, by her father’s stretched legs. She placed a hand on his knees. Her mother and Ravi came in too, and sat next to Taruna’s father.

  ‘Ravi doesn’t have to sleep in that room,’ Taruna said. ‘He can sleep in my room, with me and Ankush.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ her father said. ‘What would Ankush think?’

  ‘He knows. He will understand.’

  ‘I don’t mind sleeping in the other room,’ Ravi assured Taruna. ‘And it’s just for a night anyway. I usually sleep in your room these days.’

  ‘Knows what?’ Taruna’s father asked her. ‘What does Ankush know?’

  ‘He knows what that man did to me,’ said Taruna.

  ‘Are you stupid?’ her mother was scandalized. ‘Why did you have to tell him that?’

  ‘Why not? I’d told him months before marriage.’

  ‘He’s a nice man, Ankush,’ her father sighed. ‘But such things do no good.’

  ‘Oh come on, you two,’ Ravi stepped in. ‘It’s alright if she told him. It’s good, even. He’s her husband and she can tell him what she wants.’

  Their parents shut up. Taruna whispered a thank you to Ravi.

  At lunch, Ankush and Taruna sat side by side. There was cordial passing of bowls and chapattis. Taruna’s father received a call from her aunt, who informed him that Avantika’s cell phone had ‘finally stopped working’. Everyone laughed at that.

  Amidst the laughter, Taruna’s father said loudly, ‘So good to have my kids home.’ He said it for no apparent reason.

  Ankush noted his own inclusion in ‘kids’. He couldn’t help but think of his late father, who had died in a road accident. He had been fit all through his life. In comparison to Ankush’s father, his father-in-law could be called portly, and that too would be underplaying the extent of his girth.

  ‘Job-shob is going well, beta?’ Taruna’s mother suddenly asked Ankush.

  ‘Yes, Mummy, it’s going well,’ he answered. He was conscious of using the words Mummy and Papa for Taruna’s parents. So was she – they’d talked about it; and the awkward necessity of it was ridiculous to both.

  ‘Any chances of shifting to Delhi?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not immediately,’ he replied. ‘I should get a promotion this year. It will be easier to find a job after that.’

  Taruna’s father then cleared his throat and said, ‘It’s better for everyone if you shift here, beta. Your mother lives not far from here, and Taruna can be closer to us too.’

  ‘We’re still only a two-hour flight away,’ Ankush shrugged.

  ‘Papa, even if Ankush moves here, he is likely to get a job only in Gurgaon,’ said Ravi. ‘They are still going to be two hours away from us, considering the traffic.’

  ‘But it’s still better for me if we move,’ Taruna joined in. ‘My office is in Gurgaon.’

  Ankush gave a quizzical look to Taruna, as if to say, We have talked about this. Taruna looked back, But it’s true.

  ‘You like the sabzi?’ Taruna’s mother asked Ankush. ‘Lo, take more.’

  ‘But in Delhi you will definitely have better food,’ Ravi added smilingly. ‘Taruna’s cooking is not the best in the world.’

  ‘For your information, we cook together,’ Taruna answered. ‘And when you get married, you should cook with your wife, too.’

  ‘So, when are you getting married?’ Ankush then asked Ravi.

  ‘Me? Oh, not any time soon!’ came the reply.

  The conversation continued in the same general direction for a while, with Taruna’s parents asking Ankush to ‘find someone suitable’ for Ravi. Taruna too wanted to join in this hilarity, but she could also see the fakeness of it – a lightness that her family was assuming for Ankush’s viewing. They wanted to be the gregarious happy family in front of him. Her parents were keeping up appearances, like they had always felt compelled to do. After this lunch, one of them would have to go up and feed that man his khichdi or porridge or whatever it was that he took at this time of the day. It disgusted her that that demon was behind a door right in front of her eyes; that he was breathing, snoring, farting, hanging on to life with the nourishments that her immediate family, her most loved ones, felt obliged to offer him.

  ‘What about his food?’ she asked the table.

  ‘What?’ her mother exclaimed.

  ‘I asked – what about his food. When does he eat? What does he eat?’

  ‘I will take the food to him after we are done,’ her father responded. ‘There is no need to bother Ankush with all this.’

  ‘Papa, you know that he knows,’ Taruna said, looking at her father with slanting eyes.

  Taruna’s father looked down to the table, unable to find the right words in his shame. Taruna caught Ankush looking at her with wide eyes, as if terribly surprised. Her brother had a stern expression on his face, while her mother seemed to have been further tired by the situation.

  ‘Why is the truth such an inconvenience?’ Taruna spoke, louder this time.

  ‘Are you done with your little test?’ Taruna’s mother said to her in exasperation.

  ‘What can we do?’ her father said, addressing Ankush. ‘We don’t respect him, but we can’t let him die on the street. We have to live in a society, right? What would anyone do?’

  Ankush didn’t say anything, mixing his well-mixed daal and chawal.

  ‘There are nursing homes,’ Taruna said. ‘Dying homes. The poor also die.’

  ‘Look, beta,’ her father continued to address Ankush, ‘you should try to explain the situation to Taruna. How can we not support him? That would be wrong. He is my—’

  ‘Wrong?’ Taruna shouted. ‘That will be wrong? And what he did was not wrong?’

  ‘Yes it was, beta, it was,’ her mother rose, reached out to Taruna and hugged her. A tear ran down Taruna’s face, but she wasn’t crying. She was angry.

  Ankush didn’t know if it was proper for him to speak right now. And what could he have said? He understood his wife’s anger; but he somehow felt that her father’s voice was the more reasonable one. Why couldn’t Taruna just let it be for now?

  ‘It’s a matter of a few weeks,’ Ravi spoke then. ‘He will die soon. Then it’s all over.’

  ‘I hope he dies today,’ Taruna said.

  ‘Don’t speak like that, beta,’ her mother said. ‘Don’t speak like that. It’s festival time. No one should die today, not even a bad man.’

  This seemed to calm Taruna. But the mood on the dining table had changed irrevocably. When Taruna’s mother offered ice cream, her father grunted a no and went to their bedroom. ‘I must have some ice cream,’ Ankush said to lighten the mood, and stood up to fetch it from inside the refrigerator.

  He was rattled by Taruna’s last utterance, wishing an immediate death to her grandfather. He’d never imagined her as someone
capable of throwing a death wish like that. When he returned to the table, he felt that he had to call out this aberration in his wife’s behaviour. He served her the ice cream and, taking back his position, gently said, ‘Why don’t you just let it be?’

  Taruna glared back at Ankush, slammed her spoon on the table, and walked away towards her room. Ankush looked to the other two people on the table.

  Taruna’s mother sighed, ‘We’re all good people here.’ Then she put a spoon of ice cream in her mouth in the most tired way there could be. ‘But how difficult it is to be good. How difficult.’

  Taruna lay on her bed, dejected at hearing her husband utter the same words that she’d heard from her loved ones for most of her life. During their honeymoon, when Ankush had cried for her, she had understood him as an exception, someone who would staunchly stand by her side, always. She had hoped that he would not suggest a truce, like all the others.

  Let it be. How could others ask her to let it be when they couldn’t conceive what she had gone through?

  Taruna considered it lucky that the abuse was exposed early. Her mother had happened to ask her if any adult had touched her down there, and Taruna, in her childish innocence, had detailed all that had been happening. Theirs was a joint family then, kept together by a business concern that the Bastard ran. There was one income source for all, and the man had total control. The revelation had led to a fight among the family members, with the Bastard claiming that his sons would starve if they left the house. Her father took the big step of moving his wife and children to a rented apartment. He had to find his feet anew, which took time. Taruna remembered how they had had to restrict their expenditures for a couple of years after leaving the joint household. To some extent, she had felt responsible, even culpable, for all that. In her childhood, there had been times when she had felt that it would have been better to say nothing to her mother, to let it be.

  Ankush entered the room and lay down next to her on the bed. ‘I didn’t know you could be such a drama,’ he said after a few seconds. They were both staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I won’t let it be,’ Taruna said. ‘I have never let it be.’

  ‘Why did you tell your parents that I knew?’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ Taruna shifted to her side, now facing Ankush, ‘how difficult it is for me to see my loved ones pretend, right in front of my eyes? How difficult it is when everything is shown to be perfect, all theek thaak?’

  ‘Everything is theek thaak, my love,’ Ankush said. ‘I love you and you love me, and we got married two months back.’

  ‘So am I the only sore spot?’ Taruna asked.

  Ankush turned towards her and hugged her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I said it because I thought it would be better for you.’

  ‘I know, but …’

  They kissed each other on the lips.

  ‘You understand that it is also difficult for me, right?’ Ankush asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What am I to do with the weight of this knowledge? The man who raped you sleeps ten metres away from where I just kissed you. Your parents are providing for him. Your brother helps him do potty. You won’t, rightly, let it be. What is to be done?’

  ‘Nothing, I guess,’ Taruna sighed. ‘I’ve asked myself the same question.’

  ‘Maybe I should kill him.’

  ‘You know, earlier today, when you came out of the bathroom … I stepped out of our room for water. I went to the kitchen, and when I came out I saw him in the living room. I mean I didn’t see him see him, I just saw his back and his legs. He was on a wheelchair, turned away from me, looking at the TV in the living room. My brother was behind him, apparently moving him around. I froze. Is he still curious about what’s on TV, I wondered. Does he still want to live? It made me shudder.’

  Ankush held her tighter. He wanted to force her out of this bleakness. But then, wasn’t she just powerless before the spectre of her grandfather? He kissed her again, soft and long this time. But he did so while feeling miserable himself, stuck to the aftermath of an event that had happened a full two decades back. They didn’t say anything to each other for a while, and in the silence, they both fell asleep.

  They were woken up in the evening by Taruna’s cousins, who had come over for some fun with Ankush jiju. Ravi also joined them, and soon it was decided that they will all play Ludo to pass the time before dinner. The game lightened Ankush’s and Taruna’s moods. During the game, the conversation turned to how much fun everyone had had during the wedding. ‘The photographers had it really tough,’ Akanksha said, ‘everyone was pulling them over to this side and that.’

  ‘Have they given the album yet?’ Taruna asked.

  ‘Tayaji must know,’ Akanksha answered, referring to Taruna’s father, who had commissioned the photographers. ‘Till last week they hadn’t. That I know.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Taruna said, rolling the dice. ‘How can they be so late?’

  ‘Yes, that’s strange,’ said Ankush. ‘The photographer on our side gave the album in ten days flat. We will be seeing it in Muzaffarnagar.’

  ‘Your photographer was here, jiju?’ Avantika asked Ankush.

  ‘No, he covered events on our side,’ he answered.

  It was Taruna’s turn again. She found it improper that Ankush had referred to some events prior to the wedding as events on our side. Was the wedding itself not an event on their side? She rolled the dice, thinking whether she should say what was on her mind. Then she did: ‘Probably your photographer could give it earlier because he was just a plain guy, not doing artistic stuff. Ours is an expensive wedding photographer. That sort of thing takes time, no?’

  ‘I’m sure, yeah,’ Ankush said, taking the dice from Taruna’s hand. He didn’t know how much his mother had paid the local photographer in Muzaffarnagar, but he knew it wasn’t much. The photographers at the wedding were paid by Taruna’s father, and he remembered how they had conducted their business far more professionally. What Taruna had just said was the truth, but it still made him uncomfortable. Had Taruna just accused him and his mother of being cheap? Should they have offered to share the photography expenses in the wedding? He didn’t know the answers, and he believed he couldn’t have possibly thought of these questions before the wedding. And now the deed was done. He felt guilty for not being world-weary enough to catch such a mistake while it was being made. And he felt angry at Taruna, for bringing it up only now.

  The game ended soon after, with Ankush and Taruna both losing by a margin, largely because they found themselves in a pattern in which they cancelled each other’s progress. ‘Your album isn’t here, but we have other albums in the house,’ Avantika said. ‘You want to check out some old albums, jiju?’ she asked Ankush. ‘Sure,’ he answered, and they all walked out of the room. In the living room, Taruna’s parents were having tea. ‘So how are you guys enjoying?’ Taruna’s father asked. ‘We are going to show the old albums to jiju,’ Akanksha answered. ‘Good idea, good idea,’ he mused.

  A stash of old albums was taken out from a cabinet inside Taruna’s parents’ bedroom. The first one that they took out had photographs from Ravi’s sixth birthday. Taruna’s cousin turned the pages excitedly, telling Ankush who was who. Ankush responded with customary surprise while noticing the difference in appearance many people in Taruna’s family had suffered over the years. It was fun to begin with.

  Once in every seven–eight pictures, there appeared a figure that neither Akanksha nor Avantika would pause at. Ankush understood that it was him, the Bastard. He had a round body, a lot of face fat, and it seemed that there was always paan drool on his lips. But the fact that the cousins also glided over those photos, that they never paused to explain who that man was – it was disconcerting. It provided for the possibility that the whole family lived under the shadow of a single truth, and was still struggling to confront it. Taruna betrayed no emotion, but Ankush felt helpless nevertheless. He calculated: the photos were from Ra
vi’s sixth birthday, so it must follow that Taruna was close to nine at the time. The incidents had already happened. He then paused at the next photograph in which Taruna appeared, looking closely at the child’s face. There was much of the future Taruna in that little child; he could see that in the facial features. But he couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was a robbed child he was looking at. It made him sad, and when he looked up at Taruna, he carried the sadness in his gaze. Taruna saw him looking at her. She pursed her lips, said, ‘Some of the pictures in this album should be thrown away.’

  Ankush nodded slowly. Why hadn’t her parents already done that? Why such lethargy, considering the convulsions this man had caused their household?

  ‘I will take care of that,’ Ravi said and kept the albums back.

  They came out of the bedroom and saw that Taruna’s mother had prepared tea for all. She called Ravi to the kitchen to take a thermos of hot water to the room where the man was.

  Sitting in the living room and sipping his tea, Ankush realized that he could not now forget the face he had seen. He knew that an older version of that face was inside the other room – grimacing, wilting, edging towards death.

  ‘We should check the photographs we brought, too?’ Taruna said to him.

  ‘Which photographs?’

  ‘The ones Amit gave us.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘They are from the wedding?’ Akanksha asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cool, let’s see them.’

  After finishing their tea, they went back to Taruna’s room and unpacked two of the three large photo frames diligently. The glass was cracked on both.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Taruna. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘We took care in the train,’ Ankush said.

  ‘All the shit has to happen together,’ Taruna said.

  ‘It’s only a frame, guys,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ll get it fixed. Let’s find a spot for these.’

  ‘We will use this room only, na,’ one of the cousins said. ‘It’s your room, didi.’

  Taruna moved her hand over the third one, which was still unpacked. ‘This one seems alright,’ she said.

 

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