The Secrets Between Us

by Thrity Umrigar

  And now, Parvati has declared her last wish: that Bhima and Maya get back on the train that had brought them here and travel two more stations. Just two more stations. To Tipubag. To visit her estranged husband and son. This woman, who proudly waved her lack of family entanglements like a flag, was now urging them to make the trip. Bhima feels her skin prickle with anger. What business was it of Parvati’s? Directing her affairs even from the other world. Let her mind her own business. The old woman’s skill was in numbers and figures, and for this, Bhima would always be indebted. But why must she poke her nose in their private affairs? What if Gopal was still angry with her? What if he rejected her a second time? What if—ae Bhagwan!—he was dead and she’d find out that she had continued to wear the red sindoor in the parting of her hair, not knowing she was a widow? What lies had he fed Amit about her throughout the boy’s childhood? Otherwise, what would explain a son not inviting his own mother to his wedding? No. It had taken her years, but she had finally laid the past to rest, lined up all her memories like corpses in a morgue. She would not disturb the past again, letter or no letter.

  “I didn’t realize Tipubag was so nearby,” Maya is saying. “Shall we find out the train schedule?”

  “Chokri,” Bhima says sternly. “Don’t be stupid. We are not going.”

  “Oh, but Ma-ma, we are so close. We may not get this chance again. And once I start college . . .”

  “Bas.” Bhima covers her ears with her palms. “Bas. No more talking. We are not going to let a letter by a dead woman change our plans. You want to go to the village fair tomorrow, na? We will do so. Then, on Monday, we will catch the train home.”

  “I don’t want to go back home.”

  “Arre, wah. You’re supposed to sit for Chitra next week, correct? Who will do this? And I have a business to run, hai na? How long can I trust that Mukesh?”

  “Mukesh will do fine. He’s brilliant.”

  Bhima loses her temper. “Again, you’re talking about Mukesh. I’m warning you, chokri, if I hear his name on your lips another time, I’ll . . .”

  Just then, the wind dies down. In the silence, the music from the radio on the other bank wafts over to them and they hear the song clearly.

  “Mere Sapno Ki Rani,” Kishore Kumar sings. The Queen of My Dreams.

  It was Gopal’s song.

  It was their song.

  Bhima’s shoulders begin to tremble. And then she is crying.

  40

  Bhima looks out of the train window as the years of her life seem to fly past, bringing her to this moment, when against her better judgment she is about to show up uninvited at Gopal’s home. Beside her, Maya seems impervious to the agitation that she feels; how she is bracing herself for rejection, the blank stare, the turning away of the head, the thinning of the lips, the indifference of the shrug.

  Why is she on this train at all? Because of a letter from a meddlesome old woman who had plotted her way out of this dreadful life cycle. Because of Maya’s tearful, incessant entreaties at wanting to meet her grandfather and uncle. But mostly because of the song.

  It is a popular song from an old movie and part of the fabric of India. She has heard it a million times since Gopal first sang it to her, in the mad, heady days of their courtship and when he had whispered it to her on their wedding night. The fact that it had played from a portable transistor radio of the people picnicking across the river where they had just scattered Parvati’s ashes was coincidence, pure and simple.

  But perhaps this is her karma. To touch her husband’s feet one last time and ask his forgiveness for humiliating him all those years ago. How many times has she wished she could walk back her angry, heedless march into the bootlegger’s shop, where she had berated and struck her drunken husband in front of the other, snickering customers? As if Gopal’s drinking had meant that he had no dignity left? As if his unemployment had given her permission to strip him of his manhood? The wife of every poor man learns this lesson early—when a man is destitute and has nothing, he must be allowed to retain his pride. She had forgotten that valuable lesson for one reckless moment and she’d paid for it with the rest of her life. Yes, this much she owed Gopal, this begging for forgiveness.

  She glances at Maya, but the girl is chatting happily with another passenger, as if this were an ordinary trip, as if Bhima’s insides are not already twisting with embarrassment at the rejection and humiliation that awaits them. Could Gopal have taken another bride in all these years? Surely she would’ve heard if such was the case. As for Amit, who had her son grown up to become? Was any of that bright-eyed boy still alive in the man? And what did his wife think of her, the unfortunate mother who gave up her only son without a fight?

  “Ma-ma, look,” Maya says, pointing. “There’s a sign that says Tipubag. We must almost be there. Parvati mausi was right. It’s not very far, at all.”

  Parvati. If there is a hell, Bhima thinks, she’s sitting there, cackling and gloating over the predicament she has created for Bhima. She remembers that it was Parvati who had asked her to include Maya on this trip to scatter her ashes. If Maya had not accompanied her, if the girl had not read the contents of Parvati’s letter herself, she never would have found the courage to visit Tipubag, song or no song. It is Maya’s claim on her grandfather’s ancestral village that has brought them here.

  After they disembark, they look around the almost-empty station. Tipubag is much smaller than Lodpur. Bhima regrets not having sent a telegram ahead, but how could she? She doesn’t remember Gopal’s address. But if they could’ve alerted them ahead of arriving, she and Maya could’ve waited here at the station for the family to greet them, then caught the train going in the opposite direction if no one came. It would’ve been cleaner that way, less hurtful.

  She has been to Tipubag once before, in the early years of their marriage. She remembers the shock of joy that had run through her the first time Gopal’s mother had called her bahu—daughter-in-law—the newness of her married state still having the power to thrill, like the unexpected perfume from a jasmine bush at night. She remembers riding from the station in the family’s bullock cart, recalls the profile of Gopal’s older brother, looking so much like Gopal but more serious, as he drove the cart. She had almost yelled the first time he whipped the poor animal, but Gopal had made stern eyes at her and she had bit down on her tongue.

  There is no one to pick them up at Tipubag station this time. A lonely feeling wraps itself around Bhima, and when the train begins to chug away from the platform, she has to fight the urge to run after it. She takes Maya’s hand in hers, unaware that her palm is sweating until Maya comments on it. Already, she is cursing herself for not having taken the earlier train. As it is, there is the intimation of the encroaching evening in the clamoring of the birds even as they leave the station and step into the red dust of the parking lot. At this rate, it will be late evening, almost dark, before they reach their destination.

  “Where is the farm?” Maya asks again, and Bhima shakes her head. “I don’t know. We will have to find out.”

  There is a small cluster of auto rickshaws outside the station, and Bhima approaches one of the drivers who is standing next to his vehicle smoking a bidi. “Are you knowing Arun Phedke?” she asks, giving the name of Gopal’s older brother.

  The man squints his eyes as he thinks. “Phedke? No.”

  Bhima looks around uneasily. “He has a kheti in Tipubag. Whole family is from here. Surely . . .”

  “Arre, baba, I said no. Must I know every person who lives here?”

  “No need to be rude,” Maya says, before Bhima can stop her.

  The driver smiles. “Sorry, memsahib,” he says. “For you, I will find out.” He places his thumb and index finger into his mouth and lets out a loud whistle to get the attention of the other drivers who are milling around. “Arre, listen up,” he calls. “Anyone here knows Arjun Phedke?”

  “Arun. Not Arjun.”

  “Hahn. Arun,” he yells, nodding his
head.

  The other drivers murmur between themselves, and then one middle-aged man steps forward. “Phedke? I know him,” he says. “He does his shopping at my father’s provision store. You are wishing to go to his place?”

  Maya and Bhima look at each other in surprise. “Yes,” Maya says. “Can you take us? Is it far?”

  The man smiles as he motions for them to get into the back seat of the small three-wheeler. “Nothing too far in Tipubag, memsahib. This is a small place.” He glances at them. “Where you people from? Dilli? Mumbai?”

  “Mumbai,” Bhima says shortly, in a tone that makes it clear that she is not in the mood for idle chatter. She peers out of the rickshaw as it splutters down the road, taking in the vivid green of the trees against the red earth. The queasiness in her stomach grows more intense with each passing kilometer. This is a mistake, to come here uninvited, unannounced, unwelcomed. Parvati is dead. Easy for her to suggest this trip. But she and Maya will have to live with the consequences of Gopal’s rejection the rest of their days.

  Just as she is about to tell the driver to pull over so that she can control the nausea fueled in part by the exhaust from the vehicle, the auto comes to an abrupt halt at the edge of a field. “You please walk it up from here,” the man says. “Too much rain here the last few weeks. The road to the house is all muddy due to the flooding. At this hour, big problem if my auto gets stuck.”

  “Arre, bhai, show some mercy,” Bhima argues. “How are we to walk? Evening is approaching and we are strangers here. We don’t even know where to go.”

  But the man is already out of the vehicle and is setting their suitcase on the ground. “Very simple,” he says. “You go straight through the middle here, until you reach the house.” When they look unconvinced, he turns around and spots a young boy in shorts and a sleeveless shirt hanging from one of the many trees that dot the farm. “Ae, beta,” he yells. “Hurry up and go tell your folks that they are having visitors.”

  The boy stares at them and then, before Bhima can get a close look, jumps off the lowest branch and races down a path cut in the middle of the field. He is yelling something that Bhima, busy with paying the fare, can’t make out.

  “Will you wait here?” she asks the driver. “Until we are finished with our business? We may need a ride back to the train station tonight.”

  The man looks at her curiously. “No train for Mumbai stopping again tonight, madam,” he says. “Next train not till tomorrow.” He turns toward Maya. “You need auto rickshaw tomorrow, you call my mobile phone,” he says. “I will write number down for you.” And he does.

  They wait until he reverses and drives away, until they cannot hear the phut-phut of his vehicle anymore. The silence that follows is deafening, a pastoral silence that their citified ears are unaccustomed to hearing, pierced occasionally only by the calls of the birds returning home to their trees. Maya picks up their suitcase and with her other hand takes hold of her grandmother. “Don’t be scared, Ma-ma,” she says.

  Bhima looks at Maya, her old eyes searching Maya’s youthful face. “But what if they don’t want us here? What if they’ve forgotten us?”

  Maya looks shocked. “Have you forgotten Gopal baba?” And when Bhima doesn’t reply, “Ma-ma. Have you?”

  Bhima shakes her head. “Not for a day. Not for a minute of a day.” She stares into the distance for a moment, then says, “He is the first man I gave my heart to. For safekeeping. And he never gave it back. Not even when he left.”

  “Then why do you think he’s forgotten you?” Maya squeezes her hand. “Come on, Ma-ma. Let’s go find our family.”

  They walk for several long minutes before they are close enough to see the distant house. With each step, Bhima’s fear grows. Above them, the sky has gone from a fiery red to a soft violet and the birds are home now, quiet and at rest. The setting sun flares in the tips of the old trees, and against the backdrop of the sky, Bhima sees the silhouettes of a few men working in the fields, their sickles raised as they hack at the crops. She sees one of the figures straighten up as he spots the strangers in the distance, and then she notices the young boy from earlier, almost hidden by the tall stalks, pointing in their direction. The man appears to say something to the others, then begins to walk toward her and Maya. He walks slowly but resolutely at first and then picks up his pace so that he is trotting as he bridges the distance between them. Finally they are face-to-face.

  “Hanh, ji?” he says politely. “Are you looking for someone?”

  But Bhima cannot speak. Because it is Gopal who is standing before her, her young, beautiful Gopal, with his dark, shiny hair and that face that is always on the verge of melting into a smile. She waits for recognition to come flooding into his face, but instead of smiling he is frowning, not in anger but puzzlement. And then she thinks, How is it that her Gopi is so much taller than she remembers? So much more muscular and broad-chested? Her Gopal was slender and slight, one of the things she’d loved about him.

  “Gopal?” she says cautiously, her eyes already flooding with tears because she knows that something is amiss, that this is another one of life’s cruel jokes being played on her, that she will leave here even more brokenhearted and empty-handed than before.

  The man bends his head to look at her in the fading light of the day. He blinks, looks away, then stares again. “Ma?” he says. “Ma? Is it you?” His face breaks out in a smile and he beats on his chest with his fist. “It’s me. Amit.”

  “Amit?”

  Bhima wishes they were anywhere except in the middle of a field. She wishes there was a chair for her to sit on, to wait out the pounding of the blood in her head, that makes it hard to hear, to believe, to understand. She looks blankly at Maya for help, but the girl looks as helpless as she feels. “Are you my Amit uncle?” she says.

  He turns toward her sharply. “You are Pooja’s daughter?”

  Maya nods. And does what Bhima is incapable of doing. She takes one step toward him, just a single step, but suddenly she is in her uncle’s arms, her teary face resting against his chest. “Child,” he murmurs. “My child.” But his eyes are still on his mother, transfixed.

  “Hey,” Amit yells suddenly. “Chotu. Where are you?” and just like that, the boy appears again from the stalks that are taller than he is. “Ma,” Amit says. “This is Krishna. Your grandson.”

  A grandson named Krishna? Bhima remembers all the years she has prayed at the shrine of Lord Krishna. She curses the tears that are curtaining her eyes, making it hard to clearly see her grandson for the first time. “I have a grandson?” she whispers.

  “Ha. You have four. He’s the youngest.” Amit laughs. He looks at her shyly. “I named him this because Dada always said that Lord Krishna was your favorite God.”

  “You don’t remember?” she asks, and before he can answer, she shakes her head ruefully. “How can you? You were so young when he—when you left.”

  “But I never forgot you,” Amit says fiercely. “Believe or don’t believe.”

  “You still play cricket?”

  Amit lets out a laugh. “Me? Look at me, Ma. I’m an old man. But my sons do.” He picks up their suitcase as effortlessly as a toothbrush. “Chalo. It will be dark soon. Let’s take you home, Ma. You city folks will not be able to see your own hand once the night falls.”

  “And you?” Maya asks boldly.

  He laughs again, easily. There is none of the rancor that Bhima had been dreading. “Arre, munni,” he says, “I can walk these fields with my eyes closed. These are my father’s fields, after all.”

  And even as Bhima glows from the nickname—Little One—that Amit has so effortlessly bestowed upon Maya, as if they are already family, her heart twists at Amit’s casual mention of his father. “Is your dada . . .” she begins, but Amit cuts her off, turning toward his son. “Ae, chotu,” he yells. “Go inform Gopal dada that we have visitors.”

  They walk toward the house, Amit leading the way down the narrow clearing, and now Bhima
can see the concrete house with the tiled roof. It is a solid house, and she is both grateful for the fact that Amit has grown up in comfort and resentful of the years she and Maya have spent in squalor.

  There is a large courtyard that separates the fields from the house, and as they step toward it, the door opens and an old man walks outdoors. “Ae, Dada, come look at who has arrived,” Amit calls. His voice is casual, his manner at ease, as if a million years have not divided them, as if this reunion is not a miracle, as if fate has not taken Bhima by the hand and brought her here. As if—Bhima stops walking as the thought hits her—Amit has been expecting them all along. As if he knew that someday his mother would come looking for him. She has spent so many bitter years wondering why her grown son and her husband have not come for her. Now she wonders why she waited for them to make the first move.

  “Kaun hai?” The old man’s voice has a tremor in it, but it is unmistakably Gopal’s. And even though they are now only a little more than an arm’s length away from each other, he shades his eyes with his hand, as if he’s staring into the sun. That gesture, in its frailty, its tenuousness, is new, and Bhima feels it in the tug of her heart. The years have aged both of them, but in her mind, she now realizes, Gopal never got older. No wonder she had mistaken Amit for his father.

  Gopal is staring into her face, as if he is trying to recollect something, and she sees her own confusion reflected in his eyes, the difficulty of reconciling the images in their heads with the flawed, bent bodies standing before one another. The moment stretches until finally Gopal looks away to consider Maya. But the next second, he is staring at Bhima again. The sky is indigo now, its ink dropping on all their skins, shading the world around them. She smells the loamy earth, hears the last twitter of the birds. The evening breeze tugs at her scant hair, loosening a few strands. It is so quiet that she can hear Maya’s tense breathing, hears the sound of water running inside the house. Still, the silence stretches between her and Gopal. Beside her, she feels both Amit and Maya shift nervously.