The boy’s eyes widen, then gleam with mischief. He lets out a giggle. “What will you give us in return?”
She flushes, hears the sexual innuendo in his voice, and refrains from pointing out that she is old enough to be his grandmother. Instead, she says humbly, “Just my ashirvad, beta. Nothing else I am having.”
This time, he mocks her openly. “Oi, mausi,” he says. “In this day and age, blessings won’t even buy an idli.”
She looks away, feels the desperation rise within her. “I had an accident today,” she says quietly. “I was sick, beta. If I don’t clean up my vomit urgently, I will lose the place where I’m staying. They will kick me out, you understand. Only because you couldn’t spare me a few drops of water.”
The boy stares at her, suddenly serious, then turns helplessly to his brother for advice. The older one, who had been scrubbing the car all this time, comes around now, and peers into her face. He whispers something to his younger brother, then nudges him. The younger one smirks. “We’ll give you the water,” he says. “On one condition. I want to touch that thing.” He points to the growth on Parvati’s throat. “My brother says it will bring us good luck.”
Parvati swallows her humiliation. They are just two young, ignorant boys, she tells herself. Drunken children, with no education, no real job, no hobbies, nothing but time to create mischief. She forces herself to look into his eyes. “If you wish,” she says, and then shuts her own eyes as she feels him rub his fingers, first tentatively, then more firmly round the growth. She only opens them when she hears his triumphant hoot of laughter and hears the other brother say, “You did it, yaar. Saala, no one will believe.”
She has known worse violations before, but she is surprised at how deeply this insult has penetrated. All her adult life she has known that she was worth the price of a cow. Now, she is worth the price of half a bucket of tepid water.
She carries the bucket up the stairs before she realizes she has nothing with which to clean the floor. She looks around helplessly, debating whether to ring Praful’s doorbell, weighing the odds of his wife answering the door, imagining the put-out look she usually gets on her face when Parvati troubles them for some small thing. Not willing to risk the woman’s disdain, she goes to the small cloth bag that holds all her worldly possessions and pulls out the only other sari that she owns. She dips one end of the long garment into the pail and begins to scrub. Her eyes fill with tears of frustration as she does. She knows that she has already foregone a bath today. And now, the sari she will change into tomorrow will smell of vomit, a reminder of the last two years of Rajesh’s life, when she spent her days tending to her sick husband as he lay in bed, staring at her without recognition. It wasn’t the caregiving that Parvati had minded. It was the physicality of the job she had found ironic, the return to the corporeal aspects of human existence from which her marriage had whisked her away. Parvati finishes the last of the task, stuffs the sari into her bag, and hurries down the stairs. The morning sky is a pale blue by the time she returns the bucket to the brothers, who, now that they have won their macabre dare, seem strangely subdued and avert their eyes from her, their earlier fascination settling into the usual aversion that people feel at the sight of her.
* * *
The straps of Parvati’s old leather sandals, hand-me-downs from Praful that are a size too large for her, rub against her ankles, but she barely notices the pain, her feet as leathery as the sandals themselves. As she walks toward the wholesale market to buy her usual wares, her only concern is to get there before the sun begins its daily warfare and to reach her spot at the retail market while the morning is still mellow. There was a time when Parvati loved the feeling of the sun on her face, but that is so long ago that she is unsure if that young woman was her or someone else she dimly remembers.
Nilesh, her supplier, is busy with other customers, and Parvati resigns herself to a long wait. The unwashed sari and the long trudge back to her spot in the market later than usual will be her punishment for her stupidity in dirtying the place where she rests her head. Only animals foul up the place where they sleep, she says to herself with disgust. But then she remembers the suddenness of the vomit, how it erupted out of her mouth like an inopportune word, and she knows there’s nothing she could have done differently. As she waits, Parvati allows herself to wonder what caused that vomit. She had not felt sick after last night’s dinner, nor had she woken up nauseous or in pain during the night. Abruptly, she remembers the new growth on her body, but she squashes the thought. There is no question of going to a doctor. And the free public hospitals are so bad that there’s a rumor in the market that the government runs those to kill poor people rather than to heal them. It is how the government implements its Abolish Poverty campaign, someone had once told her—by getting rid of the poor. No one with any sense or money will step foot in those hospitals, though of course, when they get sick enough or desperate enough, they go. Well, she is neither. Long ago, she had put her life in the hands of God.
Except that she doesn’t believe in God, a secret she shares with no one. All around her are people who proclaim their holiness—Meena Swami goes to the temple each morning, Praful’s wife is a staunch devotee of Sai Baba, and Reshma, the woman who sits next to her at the market, makes a daily offering at the Ganpati shrine that someone has carved into a brick wall. But Meena Swami has never said a kind word to her, Praful’s wife spat angrily that time when the rains kept her customers away and she was unable to pay her nightly rent, and Parvati has seen Reshma remove her chappals and smack the stray dog who was sniffing her vegetables until the creature limped away. And these are minor infractions, compared to what she had witnessed in the Old Place. No, Parvati knows that what people truly worship are not the imaginary Gods who ride on chariots or float in the sky. What people worship is the flesh, as long as it is young and taut and beautiful; and money, in any state or condition. In all her years, this is the only truth that she has learned.
Nilesh makes eye contact with her and then looks pointedly away, smiling at the buyer in front of him. Parvati flushes. She knows she is the poorest of Nilesh’s customers and that the six cauliflowers he lets her have for a pittance is an act of charity. But isn’t it also true that if she didn’t buy the smallest and stalest of his produce, Nilesh would most likely be throwing it away? What would it cost him to ask her, an old woman, to step to the front of the line, gather her meager wares, and be on her way? There is no hisab-kitab with her, no credit, no accounting, just a simple transaction in exchange for a few atrophied vegetables. She feels a sour taste in her mouth, a combination of shame, resentment, and vomit.
As if he’s read her mind, Nilesh sighs dramatically and calls, “Ae, Parvati, come up and take your damn allotment, yaar.” As the crowd shifts, Parvati feels a stab of gratitude. She is about to thank him for this reprieve when Nilesh turns to the other customers and says, “What to do, folks? These days even the poorest of people act like they’re Sonia Gandhi.” The crowd snickers. Parvati wants to protest but thinks better of it. Insults or compliments, taunts or praise, they are just words, no different from the prayers that everybody around her seems to be chanting while they are kicking stray dogs or trying to render old women homeless. That which is real is all that matters, and what’s real is the weight of these six cauliflowers that she must now carry to the marketplace to sell.
“You’re late,” Reshma says in greeting as Parvati unfolds the tablecloth and rolls out her produce. She sniffs her disapproval. “That ignorant oaf stopped by. He was looking for you.”
Parvati turns to her, puzzled. “Who was looking for me?”
“That whatshisname. Rajeev.”
Before Parvati can respond, Reshma turns away and reaches for her bag. She pulls out a small, half-used tube of ointment and tosses it onto Parvati’s tablecloth. “Here,” she says. “He left this for you.” She lets out a cackle. “Some suitor, you are having. Next time, tell him to buy you sweets.” She wrinkles her nos
e, as she detects a whiff of the vomit clinging to the sari in Parvati’s bag. “Or perfume.”
Parvati turns her head, not wanting Reshma to see that her insults have stung. It’s words, she tells herself. And they are not real.
5
The wailing starts low, tunneling its way from the bowels of the earth, and then it climbs, a black kite soaring higher and higher. At first it is indistinguishable from the other, everyday sounds of misery that circle the basti like satellites: crazed-with-worry mothers loudly berating their idle, unemployed sons; the screams of women protecting their last rupee from their violent, hashish-addicted husbands; the high-pitched squeals of dogs being kicked and maimed by bored children; the vile, steady stream of curses muttered by mothers-in-law toward the women their sons have married; the loud demands of slumlords threatening eviction and moneylenders threatening injury. The wailing synchronizes with the groaning of the slum, until its melody finally begins to separate, becoming its own tune. Rattled old women drop the chapatis they’ve just baked onto the mud floor, children stop their play, infants begin to cry in solidarity, even the drunks at the bootlegger’s shop lower the bottles from their lips. Heads turn to find the source of the wailing, all of them bonded in the knowledge that it could be coming from any one of their huts, and alert to the fact that the intensity of this wailing connotes only one of two things—illness or death.
Bhima shuts her door and then she shuts her ears. It is seven-thirty in the evening; she has just gotten home. She is about to start dinner; after cooking for two different families during the day, all she wants is to feed this girl who is studying under the glow of the single lightbulb in their hut, and then go to bed. It is a small wish, and she thinks that she has earned it.
But the wailing gets louder, like an airplane flying closer and closer toward the ground. Maya looks up from her books with worried eyes and Bhima feels a spurt of anger at this inconvenient distraction. Stop your nuisance, she wants to scream, but just then, knitted into the wailing, she hears her own name. Bhima mausi, the voice cries. Help me. Ae, Ram, help me.
Now, she recognizes the voice. It’s her neighbor from the next lane, Bibi, one of the few people in this basti whom Bhima respects. Despite her carefree, devil-may-care persona, Bibi is a hard worker and a devoted mother. Although she is an asthmatic, Bibi works as a maid at a nearby hotel. Her husband, Ram, sells fruit from his own cart. Together, they have built a life whose contours Bhima admires—a neat, well-kept hut with a tiled floor that Ram himself installed last year, a polite, soft-spoken son who goes to school each morning in a clean uniform with polished shoes, a marriage still perfumed by love and respect. Like Bhima, Bibi has not succumbed to the common corruptions and temptations of slum life, has held herself aloof from the gossip and the coarseness and the public displays of dishonorable behavior. But unlike Bhima, Bibi’s wit and good humor make her one of the most popular members of the basti, and their neighbors do not seem to hold her success against her. This only makes Bhima admire her more.
And now Bibi is banging at her door, and Bhima has no choice but to get to her feet and open it. She steps out into the alley and is almost knocked over by Bibi, who collapses into her arms. Helplessly, Bhima looks over Bibi’s shoulder and the sight makes her mouth go dry—the procession of slum dwellers who have followed Bibi are all grim-faced and silent, even the children, who suck their thumbs in apprehension. The formality in their posture, with none of the usual jeering or shoving or horseplaying, can only mean one thing: death. But whose? Even as she struggles to bear the weight of Bibi, Bhima’s mind races—is it a mother or grandmother who has died? A sister living in a village somewhere? Or—Ae, Bhagwan—could something have happened to that little boy of hers, with a face as shiny as those black shoes he wore to school? Bhima shifts a bit in order to ease Bibi off her body. “Beti,” she gasps. “Kya hua? What is it?”
In response, the wailing gets louder, and then Bibi says, “Oh, Bhima mausi, they killed him, they killed him,” and Bhima’s blood runs cold. Who would kill a little schoolboy and why? she wants to scream. She is aware that every mother in this basti has deposited her unrealized hopes into her children because not one woman believes that she will live long enough for her own Age of Darkness to end. It is for their children’s sake that the women put up with the bad tempers of bosses, the humiliations and assaults too numerous to count, the arbitrariness of their hirings and firings, the grind of public transportation designed for a city one-third the size of what Mumbai has become. But the killing of little children is not part of this bargain.
But just as she is about to holler her own protest at the cruelty of Gods intent on punishing the same people over and over again, she spots him—the little boy with his neatly parted hair and teary face, staring at his mother’s back with his dark, solemn eyes. Bhima’s mind whirls—He’s alive, he’s alive, look, Bibi, you stupid woman, you are making a mistake—when Bibi sobs, “Ram, Ram, Ram, how am I to live without you?” and Bhima realizes that the woman is not crying out to the God Ram, but for her husband. “What’s wrong?” she gasps. “What happened to Ram?”
“They killed him,” Bibi wails. “Mausi, they killed him like a dog in the streets.”
Shyam, one of her neighbors, an oily man she has never trusted, steps forward. “It is true,” he says, shaking his head. “Many of the other fruit vendors saw. What the goondas done to him.” He lowers his voice, in deference to the widow. “The body is here, Bhima mausi,” he says, averting his eyes. “Our men carried it home.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Bhima sees Maya standing at the doorway of their hovel, and despite her concern for Bibi, maternal instinct takes over. “Go back inside,” she barks, and then, seeing the stubborn jut of Maya’s lower lip, “Make Bibi a cup of tea.” She turns back to face the crowd gathered in front of her house, unsure of what to do. The sight of Bibi’s little boy crying jolts her into resolution. “Bibi,” she says, taking the sobbing woman by the chin. “Come in. Bring your son and come in.” She opens the door to let the woman and child in before her, but before she can shut it, Shyam has snaked his way in.
Bhima sits on her mattress with Bibi beside her. The younger woman rests her head on Bhima’s shoulder and Bhima feels her heart soften. Pooja used to do this when she was sad, she remembers, as she strokes the grieving woman’s head. “What happened?” she says to Shyam.
Shyam sits on the floor in front of her, as far away from Ram’s widow as he can. When he speaks, his voice is low. “It was those Maharashtra-for-Maharashtrians thugs, mausi,” he says. “They’re going round the city destroying businesses of non-Maharashtrians. Cabdrivers, vendors, anyone who is a migrant from the North, they’re beating up, only.”
Bhima shuts her eyes. Kuttas, she thinks, this city is run over by kuttas, mad dogs who move in packs, searching for blood. Muslims killing Hindus, Hindus killing Sikhs, everybody killing Muslims, and now, this new madness unleashed upon those poor, desperate souls who flock to this city from villages in Bihar and UP, searching for jobs. “Mad dogs,” she spits, opening her eyes. “Junglees. Nothing they are knowing to do but fight, fight, fight.”
Bibi begins to wail again, the sound deafening under the tin roof. “But my Ram was not a fighter, mausi,” she says. “We’re Mumbai people, fullum-full. Tell me, after spending half our lives here, how can we still be outsiders?”
They all jump when Maya speaks, her face half-turned from the Primus stove she’s tending to. “My teacher says in a democracy like India, citizens have a right to live anywhere they want. That right is guaranteed by the Constitution.”
Shyam nods, pretending to understand what she has said. “Correct,” he says. “Guarantee.” He raps on his head with his knuckles. “But in order to understand this, you must have something up here. Hai, na? But these bastards . . .”
Maya places the glass of tea at Bibi’s feet and Bhima urges her to take a few sips. Tea is Bhima’s solution to everything—grief, loss, hunger, or thirst.
She is about to tell Maya to give the little boy a few biscuits when she sees Maya opening the metal tin.
“So what happened?” she asks Shyam again, keeping her voice low.
The man glances nervously at Bibi. “It was a gang, mausi. You know Govind who lives in the next lane? Short fellow, Bengali? He say they came shouting their slogans and destroying all the fruit carts with their lathis, just overturning the carts and beating up anyone who complained. They had a list. They were knowing exact-exact who was Maharashtrian and who were the babus from the North. Govind say he just hide under one of the upside-down carts when the beatings begin. But Ram, he—” He eyes Bibi again. “He fought back. So they kicked and kicked him like a dog. Govind say a policeman was standing right there, laughing. Only when Ram was not moving, the policeman blow his whistle and they run away.”
The wailing has given way to a steady sobbing now, so forlorn that Bhima misses the earlier public keening. She wonders why Bibi has sought her out. Bhima is one of the basti’s least popular residents, considered a snob because of the way she holds Maya and herself aloof from the daily dramas of slum life. She has never entered Bibi’s home; if she has ever known the name of her son, she has forgotten it. Her only association with Bibi is from the line for the water tap each morning, where Bibi will often hold a spot for her, despite the protestations of those behind them. Thinking of that water line, it comes to Bhima now why she’s always liked Bibi—unlike most of the slum dwellers, Bibi doesn’t have a mouth for gossip. She has never once asked her why she has left Serabai’s employ after so many years.
Now, Bhima broaches a delicate subject. “And the body has been brought here?” she asks.
Bibi’s eyes grow cloudy. “They brought him to me, mausi,” she says. “My Ram is resting in our home.”
The Secrets Between Us Page 5
