by Dipika Rai
Now my final duty is to find a husband for her. Should you see someone suitable in the city, be sure to send him to us! I pray daily to Devi for a good husband for her.
But tell me about yourself and your husband. Have you any children? I long to hear about a little one. We still haven’t heard from Jivkant since he left. Perhaps he is in your city. If you meet him tell him Mamta’s father thinks of him all the time. I am deeply worried about Mohit. He too left for the city just like Jivkant. You must look out for those boys.
May God keep you happy, your loving Lata Bai
Mamta makes Cynthia reread Lata Bai’s letter out loud four times, each time asking the girl to skip the husband and children part. The mention of Lokend’s name has her all aflutter. As long as she has him . . . albeit unilaterally, she is safe, she needs no acknowledgement of her devotion, and expects none from someone so above her in every way. As such, he is her precious amulet, put away in a safe place closest to her being.
Immediately she dictates a reply. She must squelch the need for information swiftly and conclusively. There must be no more talk of her husband or her unborn.
My dear Lata Bai,
Please send me more news of Prem and his important job in the Big House. Is Daku Manmohan as brave and handsome as ever? All the village girls were mad for him, even more so than Guru Dutt, if you can imagine that. I might as well tell you that I have seen the inside of a cinema hall and it is wonderful. But you need not worry; I won’t be doing that again, as I am saving every rupee I earn.
Also don’t worry about Sneha, I am sure there is someone waiting to marry her, and will come to get her soon.
Her optimism is for her mother’s benefit, she knows first-hand how hard it is to find a husband.
Lokend Bhai is a big hero here in Begumpet. [She cannot resist saying his name out loud.] His posters are plastered all over the city. It is quite a good likeness. They say he is going to become a Netaji and do wonders for our city. You tell Prem to tell Lokend Bhai that we are waiting for him here in Begumpet. Tell him we need him here, and that we pray for him every day. And what about you? You never send me any news of you and Shanti.
‘I have a baby sister, she must be walking by now,’ she says to Cynthia D’Souza.
Tell me about the well. Is there still water in it? Do you still meet Kamla Masi?
Her letter is filled with questions.
‘Do you miss your mother?’ asks Cynthia, unexpectedly reading her thoughts.
‘Yes, I do, but my life is here, with you all, Cynthiaji. Please write on:
What about the bandit raids? Have they stopped now that Daku Manmohan is in prison?’
‘Bandits?’ the city girl can’t believe real bandits exist, she’s never heard of such a thing.
‘Yes, Cynthiaji, they were terrible in my amma’s time. Now they have surrendered and the chief is in jail in Gopalpur. All the girls were in love him.’
‘Yes . . .’ the city girl licks her lips. ‘And what’s to tell? My brother guards the chief bandit Daku Manmohan, handsome as a film hero, in his cell at the Big House.’
‘Gosh, your life sounds so exciting.’ ‘It’s just life when you are living it. It’s yours that sounds exciting to me.’
I will go and see my lady doctor, the one I met at the dispensary, next week to start putting away money in the post office. Men and women are allowed to do that. It’s so different here in the city, you can do what you like. Everyone is so rich, they don’t care for rules like they do in the village. That’s why Jivkant and Mohit left for the city. Don’t worry, I will look for them.
With deep respect, Cynthia D’Souza
May is ripped from every calendar. The season has started to change. The heat is suffocating. In the village she would be picking wild mangoes off trees. She was such a good climber that she always managed to get the most. There is nothing in the city like those round mangoes, sour enough to put one’s teeth on edge.
She has begun dreaming dreams of going back home. The two things she’ll take home are plastic buckets – two of them – and powdered salt. Plastic! Already Mamta has collected bits and pieces of all kinds. Thick plastic, thin plastic, leathery plastic, rubbery plastic, scaly plastic, smooth plastic . . . on her side of the staircase. She hides it from thieves under a rotting piece of cardboard when she goes to work. Besides her monthly wage, which she puts in the Post Office Saving Plan, that plastic is the only thing of value that she owns.
Mamta has come a long way from sharing the space under the stairs with Kalu. Now she sleeps just outside Mrs D’Souza’s flat, and it is habit that brings her down from time to time to chat with Kalu, add to her hoard of plastic bits, and pass on a bit of betel-leaf to him. ‘See that one, she’s as spicy as a hot Kerala curry; and that Maharashtran one is saucy, like thickened coconut milk; and Shobha the Punjabin, Lord, she’s sweet like a jalebi; now don’t ask me to tell you about one who cleans the first-floor pots and pans, she’s succulent like a fresh gulab jamun . . .’ Kalu has an imaginary affair going on with every woman in the building. He’s never had a woman, just like he’s never tasted the food he compares them to. Kalu will have to settle for someone like herself from the ditch-side latrine.
‘Arey, Kalu, shut up. Why do you compare the women with food? They’re the ones who get the least of it,’ says Mamta playfully. ‘I’m going back upstairs, I have work to do.’
‘I know about your plastic, Mamta,’ he shouts at her, lifting the corner of the cardboard.
‘Leave that! It’s mine! It’s for my mother. I will take it home when I leave.’
‘What will your mother do with a broken mug or a piece of string?’
‘Huh, you city types! Amma can find use in anything.’
‘Arey, don’t be angry, don’t start fighting, come here. Come on, come back here, I have a story to tell you.’ Kalu can see the change in Mamta, there is an eagerness to her gait. Mamta returns and squats beside him, staring at the floor. ‘Mrs D’Souza’s old sweeper also used to collect useless things when he came to the city, in his case it was fused lightbulbs. He was so excited by them that he used to pick the fused ones out of everyone’s garbage and save them. He even used to wear one round his neck. He worshipped those things. Then one day he had the bright idea of planting money plants in them and he hung one up in Mrs D’Souza’s bathroom window.
‘You must have seen it, so tiny, full of hairy roots. He might have started a fashion, that’s why every flat in Himalaya House has a money plant growing out of a hanging lightbulb in each bathroom window. Poor fellow, I wonder where he is now. I bet you he’s running with the kabari-man, shouting for people’s bottles and old newspapers . . .’
‘. . . and fused lightbulbs,’ Mamta says, giggling.
‘Yes, yes, and fused lightbulbs. What’s a living to some is clutter to others.’
‘Well, money plants or no money plants, lightbulbs or no light-bulbs, I’m taking this plastic home.’ She clutches her mother’s letter in her hand. Why does she miss her life in the village so much? It brought her only pain. Is it for the familiarity of it or the chance to go back and show everyone how well she’s done for herself? That’s human nature. No one wants to make a good life unseen and unheard. A life unshared is a life wasted.
‘See what I have written to my mother today . . .’ She speaks from memory, but runs her eyes over the letter as if she is reading it. Kalu is impressed.
‘My beloved Lata Bai. Namaste. The city is a big place, but if I meet Jivkant, I will tell him to come home soon. And, if not, to write to you. My brother Jivkant left home before the planting season years ago. That was before my wedding. He said he was going to become an engine driver. But we never heard from him again, and he didn’t send Amma even one rupee. Bapu thinks he’s dead, but Amma thinks he’s lost in the city. Now my other brother Mohit has left to join him too. In her last letter Amma asked me to look for them.’ She giggles, ‘Amma has no idea of the city. She thinks you can just bump into people
here like you do at the well in the village. How long have I been here, Kalu, and still I only know you and Mrs D’Souza and Cynthiaji. Find Jivkant, find Mohit – as if. They’re lost, but Amma won’t give up hope.
‘Tomorrow is my day off, I am going to get a form for the Post Office Saving Plan from the dispensary. Shall I get you one? Then you too can start saving and change your life.’
‘A form? Savings? I don’t have anything to save. I don’t have a fancy job like you,’ he says, half joking.
Mamta jumps on the number 210 bus which takes her to the dispensary.
Eyebrows is there, shouting orders. ‘Everyone who bumped into furniture today stand in this line. Those with cuts in this line . . .’ The scene hasn’t changed much, except for two new posters up on the wall. The smaller one is of a baby studded with dots: smallpox. In her village the afflicted were looked after by their mothers, because everyone knew that mothers were the only ones immune to the disease. Mamta regards the pus-filled spots with deep concentration, committing their exact shape, size and scabbiness to memory. Every bit of city knowledge is knowledge that might save her in the village one day. Nothing is wasted. The larger poster has two pictures on it, one of a back with patches of faintly noticeable discoloration poked at with the tip of a ballpoint pen, and the other of a face with a collapsed nose. Mamta looks at the nose and touches her own beautiful bridge. Yes, her nose is lovely, but perhaps she should poke a ballpoint pen into her birthmark. She’ll ask Eyebrows.
‘Didi . . .’ elder sister, it holds the right degree of respect.
‘Your number hasn’t been called, to the back.’
‘But I only want a form . . .’
‘To the back, wait for your number. Can’t you see I’m busy? I am just one person here. Today the volunteer hasn’t shown up either. So where are all these unemployed? We are supposed to have millions of them, but do you think you can get even one person to do a job when you need them to?’ No answers are given. None are expected.
Feeling like an impostor amongst the wounded and dying, Mamta takes her number to wait in line.
‘Side, side.’ The women look up, jerked out of their reverie by the commotion. A body shows up on a stretcher covered in a sheet. It is moaning and stinking. The waiting women put their pallavs to their noses.
Eyebrows knows exactly what to make of it. She tries to throw back the sheet, but it sticks in places to the moaner. She tugs harder then gives up. The waiting women have seen enough of the burned flesh to conclude that the woman is wounded all over. ‘So what was it, a cooking accident? Is she your daughter?’ she asks the dazed man and woman who brought the body in.
‘Yes,’ they cry, ‘yes, she’s our unfortunate daughter.’
‘Why don’t you put a police case on her husband and her mother-in-law?’
‘She wants to go back when she’s well.’
Eyebrows laughs a disgusted laugh. ‘And you don’t mind that? You’d send your daughter back to the monsters who did this to her?’
‘Didi, what can we do? We paid him the dowry. We have nothing left now. What should we do with her? You are educated so you can talk like this, but for us there is no choice. We are grateful that she wants to go back.’
‘You see this? You all are to blame. You, you, you. I am to blame. The world is to blame. I have no pity left in me for you lot.’
‘We had to bring her here. We tried to cure her, but her moans are making us mad. This happened ten days ago. Some of her burns healed, but these others, they are just too deep. We can’t care for her any more. I am a shoemaker, people from our slum have stopped coming to me for shoes because of her smell. We can’t survive like this. Take care of her. Please, Didi, take care of her.’
‘Yes, make her well so they can take her back and finish the job,’ says Eyebrows, grabbing the victim’s hand, still finely decorated with fading henna pattern, the one part of her body that’s escaped burning.
The parents shuffle out of the clinic, they are too tired to tangle tongues with Eyebrows any more. They leave their burned daughter, a hopeless case, in the hands of a total stranger. Their daughter will never see them again.
‘I will send you to the hospital, don’t worry.’
‘No . . . no . . . no,’ the woman can barely speak. ‘No . . . hospital.’ The waiting women shake their heads. They understand completely. A hospital means shame, might even mean a cure. Yes, the woman wants to go back if she is cured, but she doesn’t want to be cured.
‘You can’t stay here. I can’t take care of you properly,’ says Eyebrows.
‘No . . . please . . . plea . . .’ The victim’s words, released with such great effort, have no effect on Eyebrows.
‘See this woman?’ She shows off the patient, opening her arms wide to include her whole body. ‘You can stop it. Fight it, I tell you. Why is it that such a thing can happen in our country? In a land of saints, where so many great beings have lived? Is this not the land of Gandhi, of Mahavir, of Gautam Buddha, of Kalidas, of Sudama, of Guru Nanak, of Nizammudin Chisti? Where are these saints now? Are you listening? Do you hear me?’ Eyebrows is the rare type of woman who will not be numbed into silence by repeated scenes of pain and suffering. Her mind will stay alert and she will rant to anyone who cares to listen. Some call people like her Fools, others call them Warriors. ‘The sages may tell us that enlightenment is where solace lies, but in the meantime what does she do? Die slowly? Scripture cannot provide a cure; it is only a grindstone that pulverises pain, making it easier to swallow,’ says Eyebrows loudly. Every woman there is compromised enough to happily settle for an easier pain to swallow. Eyebrows’ face is red; in that moment she is one with the dying woman.
Then after a long time, someone says, ‘The saints tell us that there is a reason for everything.’ The woman is diffident with her explanation. Each one present is a speck of dust stirred up in the swirling eddy of Eyebrows’ rhetoric, they are all looking for an answer, and if not an answer, then at least stillness so they may settle again. ‘All this is happening to take us to the next spiritual level. It is only when things get unbearable that God comes to us. It is no coincidence that Buddha or Mahatma Gandhi or Kalidas or a million saints were born in this country.’
‘So you think those that burn their wives are doing us a spiritual favour?’
‘No . . . no,’ the woman has lost her footing, she’s never disagreed with anyone before, not even another woman. ‘No, it isn’t like that. We all have to act in the plays of our making, according to our karma. With great injustice comes great compassion, great understanding, great enlightenment.’
‘Whoever told you that sold you worm-eaten wheat.’ ‘Then how can you explain saints like, like Buddha, like Mahavir?’ Mamta knows the answer already, otherwise how could she have come this far?
‘Okay, where is the patient?’ The ambulance driver and his assistant have arrived to take the moaning woman away. Eyebrows is busy bandaging someone else’s arm, and doesn’t look up to say goodbye.
‘Next!’ she shouts.
‘I just wanted the forms for the Post Office Saving Plan, and oh yes, one other thing. I think I have that disease in the poster.’
‘Leprosy?’
‘Yes, on my forehead, see this red patch? You have something for it?’
This time Eyebrows laughs. A genuine laugh. ‘No, you don’t have leprosy. You wouldn’t be able to feel your birthmark otherwise, and I can see that you feel it quite a bit. Go home, you are a lucky one. Hey! I’ve seen you before. You came here with a cut eyelid, right? What did you do with the stitches? Took them out yourself, did you? No bruises today, I see. Good girl,’ she says as if Mamta got high marks in a very difficult exam. ‘Good girl. Here, fill these out and bring them back. I’ll take them to the post office for you. Can you do fifty a month?’
‘Fifty?’
‘Fifty rupees? Every month can you put fifty rupees in the rolling scheme?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
More t
han a year into her service, and Mamta knows she is happier than she’s ever been. She is definitely more than a sweeper now, she is a servant, the highest position she can hope to reach in this lifetime. She sleeps on the landing and has stopped eating the dog’s food because she gets so many leftovers from the table.
Mamta may miss the familiarity of her old life. She may even resent making her life here in Begumpet unseen and unheard, but sleeping on the floor outside the kitchen door, inhaling the smell of Baby’s food with each breath and feeling Mrs D’Souza’s latch-key dig into her hipbone, Mamta knows she is finally secure. If she is to look at things objectively, she’ll know that her new better life has begun to heal the old bitter one.
And then there is the dispensary. She goes to the dispensary once a month to give Eyebrows her savings to place in the Post Office Saving Plan. While she’s there, she cleans the dispensary’s bathroom for an extra ten rupees.
Each month she tots up her mental list of all she sees: two beatings, seventeen bad beatings (hard enough to cause broken bones), innumerable venereal diseases, the odd case of leprosy, some other confounding ailments which result in sores of all sizes, eight minor burns and four major burns. Major burns are inconvenient. The girls have to be taken to the hospital and Eyebrows is required to go to the patient’s house with a token policeman in tow.
Each time Mamta returns home, she says her prayer to Devi mentioning the sick and diseased by number. Then for good measure she bows before Mrs D’Souza’s statues, repeating her prayer for the patients, this time to the Madonna.
