Someone Else's Garden

by Dipika Rai

  The chants leave Lata Bai’s lips on an anonymous journey. She has the drought to thank for the purity of her knowledge and the discipline of her ritual. That’s the time her family had turned to rigorous prayer. Only Lata Bai knows the true meaning of the words, whereas her daughters know their essence, the stories they tell, and the superstitions they embrace.

  Lata Bai circles the air with the thali, dispersing more incense smoke as the flame cavorts in the breeze but doesn’t go out. It is a robust oily flame, culminating in strong, creamy smoke. She looks over her shoulder, Mamta steps forward to take the thali from her mother’s hands. She continues to sing her mother’s song, but she does so very softly. She’s afraid to make an audible mistake. Finally it’s Sneha’s turn. She hands Shanti to her mother and starts with her own smoke circles.

  ‘Ohm, Ohm, Ohm . . .’ the beginning of the universe. First there was nothing and then there was the cosmic sound Ohm, which manifested Nothing into Everything. Its residue resides in all nature, the sound of the wind, the warmth of sunshine, the blue of the sea, in every heart, in every thought. It is the link to eternity, it will transcend everything, never ending, once sounded always enduring. The mother sings the Gayatri Mantra, the girls join in. The energy is transferred back and forth between the women and they know exactly when to stop together . . . Just like that, there’s silence.

  ‘This prayer is very important for you, Mamta. Devi is your everything. She will fulfil you and protect you.’ Her mother’s tone is sombre.

  ‘Let’s see if there are any fingerprints.’

  ‘Sneha, your head is filled with hay,’ says her mother, but she walks them to the other side of the wall to fulfil their curiosity.

  ‘Aiee.’ Sneha drops to the ground. Not only are there prints, there are also broken bangles, hundreds of them, lying on the ground. Sneha picks the glass out of her foot. She licks her finger to seal the bleeding wound. Lata Bai sits on a rock to feed Shanti, saying, ‘We should be getting back soon. Your bapu will be wondering.’

  ‘Amma, so many bangles. Did all their husbands die?’ Soon to join their ranks, Mamta is worried for the fate of all the married women in the world.

  ‘Must be this Daku business. Some in his gang maybe didn’t want to surrender and went out looting instead. This is the result.’ Lata Bai scours the ground for offerings, picking out discarded spices from far richer plates than hers. She ties the cinnamon, jaggery, cardamom and fennel seed in a ball at the end of her pallav.

  ‘What will the widows do?’

  The mother shrugs.

  The women start walking back to the hut. The green and red are upright, the orange bobs up and down all the way, like the float on a fishing line, bouncing unevenly on a wounded foot.

  Mamta’s nervousness is a runaway horse. It gathers speed as her mother and sister knead the dough for the chapattis and boil the last of the tea leaves. The mother flavours the tea with offerings from the Red Ruins. ‘Thank you, Devi. Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho,’ she whispers each time she tosses in a spice.

  Mamta needs something to do. She’s twisted the end of her pallav into permanent creases which radiate out to the rest of her sari from the damaged corner like a fan. ‘So what is the first thing I’ll have to do?’

  Her mother and sister don’t look up from their work. Sneha has already started on the chillies for the chutney and her hands have started to burn. ‘You’ll get to know by and by.’ Usually her mother loves to talk while cooking, but today is different. Today the weevils are worrying her almost as much as the fact that Jivkant and Ragini haven’t arrived.

  ‘They will be arriving soon.’ Seeta Ram struggles out of his kurta and puts on a fresh one. The boys stay as they are. They have nothing to change into.

  Lata Bai gives Lucky Sister’s gold earrings to Mamta. ‘Put these on.’ Mamta approaches the mirror hanging from the tin door with a length of wire, the family’s only piece of vanity. She can’t see her whole face in it at once any more. The last big wind blew it off the door and left a huge horizontal crack in it. Luckily it didn’t break completely. Her face is divided along the crack, and the two halves don’t match up.

  She looks at her lips first. They are her best feature. She turns away from her birthmark sulking like a child might from a disappointing present. The yellowed skin crinkles as she looks closer. She bares her teeth, trying to look even uglier to satisfy some desire to hurt inside. She has started to despair. She replaces the sacred basil sticks in her earlobes with the gold earrings.

  ‘Now what are you looking at? Haven’t you seen yourself hundreds of times before? Spending all day at the mirror as if you were a great beauty or something!’

  ‘Stop it, she’s only putting on her earrings. On this one day . . .’

  Seeta Ram doesn’t let her finish: ‘Every day is “this one day” where Mamta is concerned. Yours is precisely the kind of useless “love” that spoils girls. See how Sharma’s wife turned out; I bet her mother also gave her some funny ideas. Running away like that. Serves her right. Serves her right, you hear?’ he shouts towards Mamta, pulling the inalienable rules from under the banyan tree into the room. ‘You listen to your man, you hear.’ Next he attacks the mother: ‘What will her husband think? That we’ve sent him someone vain and lazy and old?’

  ‘Namaste. Namaste.’

  Seeta Ram rushes out when he hears his son’s voice greet the guests.

  Lata Bai pulls the pallav low over Mamta’s head, covering her whole face and neck. ‘Don’t worry, people have been getting married for thousands of years, it will be fine. Just don’t run away,’ she says half joking, bending beneath Mamta’s veil to smile into her daughter’s eyes.

  The women stay indoors. It’s men’s business outside. Mamta’s dowry is piled up on the family’s hay mattress in the centre of the newly flattened courtyard. The dishes reflect a lusty sunset.

  She hears her father say, ‘Come, come, my friends,’ hesitating at the word friends, and shouting loudly, ‘Lata, tea!’ with singular authority.

  ‘They’ve come,’ whispers her mother under her breath, as if it’s a huge surprise that anyone’s turned up at all to partake in her careful preparations. She carries the tea out in tin mugs that the widow Kamla kindly lent her. Her husband doesn’t introduce her and once the hands have grabbed the mugs, she retires inside to be with her daughters.

  ‘There are four of them. Your husband looks very handsome in his turban. Mamta, you are a lucky girl,’ she says, pulling her daughter towards her. In actual fact, she didn’t look up from serving the tea so she doesn’t know what the groom looks like. Not that she could have seen his face anyway beneath the curtain of slightly bruised jasmine garlands that hung down from his forehead to chin like so many plumb lines. She hopes her lie will ease the pain of separation. Mamta has started to sweat and quiver. Finally the almost-twenty-year-old realises that she might never see her mother and siblings again. Up till now, the wedding has been a game.

  ‘What’s keeping that damn priest? I gave him the advance he asked for.’ She would never have dared to say this about some other priest, but Pundit Jasraj-feeler-up-of-brides-to-be is undeserving of her reverence. Her mother’s fretting fuels Mamta’s agitation.

  Finally Prem brings the message Mamta dreads: ‘The priest is here.’ She hugs her favourite brother for a long time. His presence comforts her.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘I’ll be there, don’t worry,’ he says. She pulls up her veil and looks into her brother’s eyes, still filled with childlike luminescence. Prem, the boy she looked after when she was only five years old. He would always stop crying for her, and she took him on her hip wherever she went. But today, it is he who is the stronger, easing her nervousness.

  Just three steps to a new life, through the door of her hut. Mamta puts one foot in front of the other. She stops in front of the door. Lata Bai kicks it open and pulls her daughter through by her arm. It’s as awkward as being born. The two women pull in diffe
rent directions. The mother wins. Did the mother pull her daughter through on the day of her birth as well?

  Lata Bai pushes Sneha back. ‘Stay here, don’t you go outside, and look after Shanti. Give her some water if she cries.’ She wants no comparisons made between the two sisters, one young enough to make the other look even older than she is.

  Just out of the door, Mamta hears an engine running at full capacity. She feels the dusty breeze on her face and up her nose before the engine stops with an angry cat screech. She stands forgotten, all eyes except hers are on the jeep. Hers stay looking on the ground.

  ‘Not too late, I hope. Not too late.’

  ‘Sahib, you are our mother and father, how can you ever be too late. We would repeat the wedding for you. You grace our home with your presence. The gods have smiled on us today,’ there is a cringing awe in her father’s voice.

  For Ram Singh, coming or not was a matter of casual choice, but for Seeta Ram and his family, Ram Singh’s appearance is nothing short of a miracle. This is the classic social seesaw that isn’t going anywhere. Ram Singh is so far above Mamta’s family that he has no conscious notion of what impact his attendance at the wedding makes. The stage set is instantly different, the players are totally reshuffled, someone new now has top billing.

  Brown sandals alight from the jeep. They are adorned with large decorative shiny brass buckles. The sandals are followed by oversized sturdy black leather shoes, with an air hole for the big toe to breathe. Ram Singh doesn’t go anywhere without Babulal his bodyguard. Mamta can see her father’s blue rubber Hawaii slippers walk up to the brown sandals. The buckles flash decisively in the fading light. The buckled sandals make her nervous. She can see her father’s feet fidget. Just like a new bride, she thinks, and almost giggles.

  ‘You’ve done well. I can see that you haven’t wasted your loan.’ At the sound of the word loan, her father’s Hawaii slippers do a small dance. Her mother’s bare feet walk to the dancing slippers. The slippers are still.

  ‘Tea, please.’ Her father’s voice is pleading.

  There are four more sets of matching new shoes, the smart polished city kind, with laces. The kind her father loves and will for sure envy. Mamta doesn’t know it, but her dowry has paid for them all. The laced shoes fill her with pride. Her new in-laws have taken the time to dress well. Just like Guru Dutt in Pyaasa, she thinks. The four pairs are in a circle. A cloud of murmured conversation rises like smoke from the huddle.

  ‘Meet our new in-laws.’

  The shoes fan out to form a straight line so the buckled sandals can make the acquaintance of their owners face to face.

  ‘Namaste.’

  ‘Namaste.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Barigaon.’

  ‘Ah, Barigaon, do you know Rattan Das? He’s a family friend.’

  ‘Not our zamindar, Rattan Das?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  The buckles have successfully set the stage for conquest. Suddenly the owners of the city shoes realise who Ram Singh is. It’s the turn of the city shoes to dance.

  ‘Please, sit. Come, come, why are we standing round?’ The shoes squash together on the rope charpoy, jostling to get a place next to the buckles. They sit, leaving a wide gap on either side of them. Mamta can see more of the men now. She can see the hems of the dhotis, hanging limp above the shoes.

  ‘My daughter, the bride,’ Seeta Ram introduces Mamta from a distance like he might the Red Ruins to a visitor. Mamta’s blouse is wet with sweat. First she was hot, now the wetness has left her cold, a little later, she will be shivering. Her mother stands next to her.

  Sneha is still in the house, all decked up with no one to look at her. Her sister almost married, she is dreaming her own dreams. She peeks outside, rocking Shanti violently. She hopes to see one suitable face she can place in her daydream, but all the men seem too old to her. Guru Dutt has raided her thoughts too, and one of Lala Ram’s boys. She let him feel her up behind the temple last week. She thinks Pundit Jasraj might have seen them. She wasn’t careful. The searing hot blood in her veins and liquid feeling between her thighs had made her crazy.

  Lata Bai seizes the moment to push Mamta towards the shoes. Mamta knows exactly what she has to do. She goes from sandal to shoe to shoe, bending low to touch each big toe.

  The buckles give her their blessing, from the oversized black shoes there’s nothing. Then again from three of the city shoes there are more blessings, each one brushing the top of her bowed clothed head with a hot heavy palm. She presumes the city shoes that didn’t give their blessings belong to her groom, still too shy to touch the top of her head with his palm in the company of strangers. She is both pleased and eased by her deduction. Not to leave her father out, Mamta touches the toes in the Hawaii slippers also.

  Lata Bai pulls Mamta towards the charpoy. Three city shoes rearrange themselves to give the bride room to squeeze in next to her future husband. Only the buckles stay where they are, surrounded by a moat of space.

  Then the white apparition that is Pundit Jasraj-feeler-up-of-brides-to-be appears, and deposits itself on the floor. Instinctively Mamta pulls her bare toes away, like a cat retracting its claws. The train whistle sounds in the distance. There is only one word on Lata Bai’s mind: Jivkant. She looks up, showing her face to her guests. Mohit and Sneha poke their heads out of the hut as the whistle goes off.

  It is up to the priest to create a miniature replica of the cosmic world on the earth between him and the couple. He deftly places a small pot with sacred fire at his feet and surrounds it with geometric symbols.

  Pundit Jasraj-feeler-up-of-brides-to-be may not be wholly holy, but he knows the philosophy of enlightenment well and is able to impart it with authority. He starts by propitiating the prodigious pantheon of over three million gods, demi-gods and avatars. His hymn is an ancient secret code revealed to the sages during their deepest meditation in a language long dead. It celebrates the universe in its myriad and infinite forms, thereby proving that the universe must be formless; and acknowledges the multiple opportunities that exist concurrently embodied by cause and effect, thereby proving the connectivity of creation.

  But the priest’s erudite hymn fails to ignite. The empirical world has the singers in its grasping hand. And though it is only in the human form that beings are able to realise their true self as one with Singularity, it is also only in this form that they are able to enjoy the pleasure that exists in the duality of the senses, not because it serves some higher genetic or divine purpose, but for the sake of the experience alone. Lata Bai, engrossed in samsara, the bonded world, can only think of what all this costs and how they will pay for it.

  The buckled sandals start shaking with impatient energy. The wedding goes on in the lee of the violently noisy bed. The priest starts chanting, faster and faster and faster. The buckles stop shuffling at last when they judge the tempo fast enough for a speedy ceremony, their impatience satisfied.

  ‘Please, feed the flames each time I say Swa . . . ha.’ Pundit Jasraj points to the swastika radiating from the floor, its arms symbolic of the four directions. Poised for movement, it is also symbolic of all motion, including time.

  It is all fitting in for Mamta. It might be her wedding, but it has to be conducted according to the rules of the Big House. All this time, she’d felt important. The widow Kamla had painted her hands with care, her mother had tied her sari with precision, her sister had prayed for her happiness . . . But now? When did she lose her importance? Her wedding has become a ceremony to be performed, hurriedly, while she stands like a bystander at an accident site, jostling for a better look at the centre of attention.

  The chanting done, the priest pulls the bride and groom to standing. They must circle the fire seven times. Each circumambulation defines a bond for the bride, her role in the partnership. The priest tries to explain: ‘For the first three circles the bride walks ahead, for the last four the groom . . .’ The buckles start pacing. ‘Go,’ the priest
commands, also mentally pacing.

  At the conclusion of the revolutions her love, obedience, succour, industry and allegiance belong wholly and solely to her husband. Never again may another man enter her realm and ask anything of her.

  The circling done, once again Prem, the eldest brother present, has a part to play. He slips a silver ring round Mamta’s second toe, and holds out a patch of sindhoor in his palm to his new brother-in-law. The groom takes a pinch between thumb and forefinger. The mother folds back her pallav slowly, neatly, to expose Mamta’s middle parting.

  The man pours the vermillion dust on to the naked skin in Mamta’s hair. His hand seems to waver as it comes close to her birthmark, but none watching can say for sure.

  Mamta, tied to her husband, is turned around to head away from her hut. Lata Bai hugs her daughter roughly. She can feel Mamta’s bones through the sari. A bony bride . . . it is not a good sign. She wishes she’d had the means to fatten her up before the wedding to make her more desirable to her husband. She presses a piece of paper into her hand, saying, ‘My daughter . . .’ Her voice cracks. It wants to release all those motherly words that will help the new bride in her future.

  ‘What about her slippers?’ Lata Bai whispers harshly to Mohit.

  ‘Slippers? Slippers?’

  ‘Go on,’ Lata Bai gives Mohit a push towards the hut.

  ‘Slippers? Bapu didn’t buy any slippers.’

  Prem takes off his own rubber slippers. Mamta stops, she hitches up her sari so he can place his slippers on her feet. A vehicle drives up the instant Prem’s slippers become hers.

  She hears the machine even as she sees leather slippers hop out from the truck and run towards her. She wants to take a step back, but she’s tangled in the knot that keeps her close to her husband. ‘Here, here, take this.’ The leather slippers hand her a box of sweets, then they make their way to the buckles.