Abu gently touched her stomach. ‘Bless you. I’ve given the horse and carriage to Dino. Carry on taking the rent from him.’
Nesti’s parents put great pressure on her, but she didn’t go back to them. Tiring at last, they gave up on her and left her to her lot. Nesti began to live alone. Dino would give her five rupees in the evening, which was enough for her expenses. She also received the money that had accumulated during the court case.
Abu and Nesti met once a week at the jail, meetings which were always too brief for them. Whatever money Nesti saved, she spent on bringing Abu comfort in jail. At one meeting, Abu, looking at her bare ears, asked, ‘Where are your earrings, Nesti?’
Nesti smiled, and looking at the sentry, said, ‘I must have lost them somewhere.’
‘You needn’t take so much care of me,’ Abu said with some anger, ‘I’m alright, however I am.’
Nesti said nothing. Their time was up. She left smiling, but when she reached home, she wept bitterly; she wept for hours because Abu’s health was declining. In this last meeting, she could hardly recognise him. The strapping Abu was a shadow of his former self. Nesti thought his sorrow had consumed him and that their separation had caused his decline. What she didn’t know was that Abu had TB and that the disease ran in his family. Abu’s father had been even sturdier than Abu, but TB soon sent him to his grave. Abu’s elder brother had also been a strapping young man, but the disease had caused him to wither away in the flower of his youth. Abu himself was unaware of this, and taking his last breath in the prison hospital, he said to Nesti in a sorrowful voice: ‘If I had known I was going to die so young, I swear on the one, omnipresent God, I wouldn’t have made you my wife. I’ve done you a great injustice. Forgive me. And listen, my horse and carriage are my hallmark. Take care of them. Stroke Chinni on the head and tell him that Abu sends his love.’
Abu died, leaving Nesti’s world desolate. But she was not a woman to be easily defeated. She withstood her sorrow. The house was deserted now. In the evenings, Dino would come and comfort her. ‘Have no fear, bhabhi. No one walks ahead of God. Abu was my brother. Whatever I can do for you, with God’s will, I will do.’
At first Nesti didn’t understand, but when her mourning period was over, Dino said in no unclear terms that she should marry him. She wanted to kick him out of the house when she heard this, but only said, ‘Dino, I don’t want to remarry.’
From this day on, there was a difference in the rupees Dino gave her. Earlier, he had given her five rupees daily without fail. But now he would sometimes give her four, sometimes three. His excuse was that business was slow. Then he began disappearing for two to three days at a time. Sometimes he said he was sick; other times he’d say some part of the carriage was broken and he couldn’t take it out. He went too far one day and Nesti finally said, ‘Listen, Dino, don’t trouble yourself with it anymore. Just hand the coach and horse over to me.’
After much hemming and hawing, Dino was at last forced to place the horse and coach back in Nesti’s custody. She, in turn, gave it to Maja, a friend of Abu’s. Within a few days, he proposed marriage as well. When she turned him down, his eyes changed; the warmth in them seemed to vanish. Nesti took the horse and carriage back from him and gave it to a coachman she didn’t know. He really broke all boundaries, arriving completely drunk one night to give her the money, and making a grab for her as soon as he walked through the door. She let him have it and fired him at once.
For eight or ten days, the coach was in the stable, out of work, racking up costs—feed on one hand, stable rent on the other. Nesti was in a state of confusion. People were either trying to marry her or rape her or rob her. When she went outside, she was met with ugly stares. One night a neighbour jumped the wall and started making advances towards her. Nesti went half mad wondering what she should do.
One day as she sat at home, she thought ‘What if I were to drive the coach myself?’ When she used to go on rides with Abu, she would often drive it herself. She was acquainted with the routes as well. But then she thought of what people would say. Her mind came up with many rejoinders. ‘What’s the harm? Do women not toil and do manual labour? Here working in mines, there in offices, thousands working at home; you have to fill your stomach one way or the other!’
She spent a few days thinking about it. At last she decided to do it. She was confident she could. And so, after asking God’s help, she arrived one morning at the stable. When she began harnessing the horse to the carriage, the other coachmen were stupefied; some thought it was a joke and roared with laughter. The older coachmen tried dissuading her, saying it was unseemly. But Nesti wouldn’t listen. She fitted up the carriage, polished its brass tackle, and after showing the horse great affection and speaking tender words to Abu, she set out from the stable. The coachmen were stunned at Nesti’s dexterity; she handled the carriage expertly.
Word spread through the town that a beautiful woman was driving a coach. It was spoken of on every street corner. People waited impatiently for the moment when she would come down their street.
At first Nesti shied away from male passengers, but she soon lost her shyness and began taking in an excellent income. Her coach was never idle, here passengers got off, there they got on. Sometimes passengers would even fight among themselves over who had stopped her first.
When the work became too much, she had to fix hours for when the coach would go out—in the mornings, from seven to twelve; in the afternoons, from two to six. This arrangement proved beneficial as she managed to get enough rest as well. Chinni was happy too, but Nesti couldn’t help being aware that her clients often rode in her coach only to be near her. They would make her go aimlessly from pillar to post, sometimes cracking dirty jokes in the back. They spoke to her just to hear the sound of her voice. Sometimes she felt that though she had not sold herself, people had slyly bought her anyway. She was also aware that all the city’s other coachmen thought ill of her. But she was unperturbed; her belief in herself kept her at peace.
One morning, the municipal committee men called her in and revoked her licence. Their reason was that women couldn’t drive coaches. Nesti asked, ‘Sir, why can’t women drive coaches?’
The reply came: ‘They just can’t. Your licence is revoked.’
Nesti said, ‘Sir, then take my horse and coach as well, but please tell me why women can’t drive coaches. Women can grind mills and fill their stomachs. Women can carry rubble in baskets on their heads and make a living. Women can work in mines, sifting through pieces of coal to earn their daily bread. Why can’t I drive a coach? I know nothing else. The horse and carriage were my husband’s, why can’t I use them? How will I make ends meet? My Lord, please have mercy. Why do you stop me from hard, honest labour? What am I to do? Tell me.’
The officer replied: ‘Go to the bazaar and find yourself a spot. You’re sure to make more that way.’
Hearing this, the real Nesti, the person within, was reduced to ashes. ‘Yes sir,’ she answered softly and left. She sold the horse and carriage for whatever she could get and went straight to Abu’s grave. For a moment, she stood next to it in silence. Her eyes were completely dry, like the blaze after a shower, robbing the earth of all its moisture. Her lips parted and she addressed the grave: ‘Abu, your Nesti died today in the committee office.’
With this, she went away. The next day she submitted her application. She was given a licence to sell her body.
The Mice of Shah Daulah
Salima was twenty one when she was married. And though five years had passed, she had not had a child. Her mother and mother-in-law were very worried. Her mother, more so, for fear that her husband, Najib, would marry again. Many doctors were consulted, but none were of any help.
Salima was anxious too. Few girls do not desire a child after marriage. She consulted her mother and acted on her instructions, but to no avail.
One day a friend of hers came to see her. She had been declared barren and so Salima was surprised to see t
hat she held a flower of a boy. ‘Fatima,’ she asked indelicately, ‘how did you produce this boy?’
Fatima was five years older than Salima. She smiled and said, ‘This is the benevolence of Shah Daulah. A woman told me that if I wanted children, I should go to the shrine of Shah Daulah in Gujarat and make my entreaty. Say, “Hazur, the first child born to me, I will offer up in your service.” ’ This child would be born with a very small head, she told Salima. Salima didn’t like this. And when Fatima insisted that this firstborn child had to be left in the service of the shrine, she was sadder still. She thought, what mother would deprive herself of her child forever? Only a monster could abandon its child, whether his head be small, his nose flat or his eyes crossed. But Salima wanted a child badly and so she heeded her older friend’s advice.
She was, in any case, native to Gujarat where Shah Daulah’s shrine was. So she said to her husband, ‘Fatima’s insisting I go with her. Would you give me permission?’ What objection could her husband have? He said, ‘Go, but come back quickly.’ Salima went off with Fatima.
Shah Daulah’s shrine was not, as she had thought, some old, decrepit building. It was a decent place which she liked well enough. But when in one chamber, she saw Shah Daulah’s ‘mice’, with their running noses and their minds enfeebled, she began to tremble. There was a young girl, in the prime of her youth, whose antics were such that she could reduce the most serious of serious people to laughter. Watching her, Salima laughed to herself for an instant. Then immediately her eyes filled with tears. What will become of this girl, she thought. The shrine’s caretakers will sell her to somebody who’ll take her from town to town like a performing monkey; the wretch, she’ll become somebody’s source of income. Her head was very small. But Salima thought, even if her head is small, her heart can’t be similarly small; that remains the same, even in madmen.
The Shah Daulah’s mouse had a beautiful body, rounded and proportionate in every way. But her antics were those of one whose faculties had been decimated. Seeing her wander about, laughing like a wind-up doll, Salima felt as if she’d been made for this purpose.
And yet, despite her misgivings, Salima followed her friend Fatima’s advice and prayed at Shah Daulah’s shrine, swearing that if she had a child, she would hand him over.
Salima continued her medical treatment as well. After two months, she showed signs of pregnancy. She was thrilled. A boy was soon born to her, a beautiful boy. There had been a lunar eclipse during her pregnancy, and he was born with a small, not unattractive, mark on his right cheek.
Fatima came to visit and said that the boy should be handed over at once to Shah Daulah saab. Salima herself had accepted this, but she had been delaying it for many days; the mother in her wouldn’t allow her to go through with it; she felt as though a part of her heart was being cut out.
She had been told that the firstborn of those who asked a child of Shah Daulah would have a small head. But her son’s head was quite big. Fatima said, ‘This is not something you can use as an excuse. This child of yours is Shah Daulah’s property. You have no right over him. If you stray from your promise, remember that a scourge will befall you, the likes of which you won’t forget for a lifetime.’
So, with her heart breaking, Salima went back to Gujarat, to the shrine of Shah Daulah, and handed to its caretakers, her beloved flower of a son, with the black mark on his right cheek.
She wept. Her grief was so great she became sick. For a year, she hovered between life and death. She couldn’t forget her boy nor the pleasing mark on his right cheek, which she had so often kissed.
She had strange dreams. Shah Daulah, in her distressed imagination, became a large mouse gnawing, with its razor edged teeth, at her flesh. She would shriek and implore her husband to help her. ‘Look, he’s eating my flesh!’ she would cry.
Sometimes her fevered mind would see her son entering a mouse hole. She would be holding onto his tail, but the bigger mice had him by the snout and she couldn’t pull him out.
Sometimes the girl whom she’d seen in a chamber of Shah Daulah’s shrine, the girl in the flower of her youth, would appear before her, and Salima would let out a laugh. Then a moment later, she would begin to cry. She would cry so much that her husband wouldn’t know how to quell her tears.
Salima saw mice everywhere, in bed, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the sofa, in her heart. Sometimes she felt she herself was a mouse: her nose was running, she was in a chamber of Shah Daulah’s shrine, carrying her tiny head on her weak shoulders, and her antics made onlookers fall over themselves with laughter. Her condition was pitiable.
Her world had been marked, like a face on which the fragments of a dead sun had become stuck.
The fever subsided, and Salima’s condition stabilised. Najib was relieved. He knew the cause of his wife’s illness, but he was in the grip of superstition himself and hardly conscious that he had offered up his firstborn as a sacrifice. Whatever had been done seemed right to him; in fact, he felt that the son that had been born to him was not even his, but Shah Daulah saab’s. When Salima’s fever, along with the storm in her mind and soul, cooled, Najib said to her, ‘My darling, you must forget your son. He was meant for sacrifice.’
Salima replied in a wounded voice, ‘I don’t believe in any of it. All my life I will curse myself for committing so great a wrong and handing over a piece of my heart to those caretakers. They cannot be its mother.’
One day, Salima disappeared to Gujarat and spent eight or nine days there, making enquiries about her son, but learnt nothing of his whereabouts. She returned, depressed, and said to her husband, ‘Now I won’t remember him any longer.’
Remember him, she did, but deep within herself. The mark on her son’s right cheek had branded itself in her heart.
A year later Salima had a daughter. Her face bore a great resemblance to her firstborn’s although she didn’t have a mark on her right cheek. Salima called her Mujiba because she had intended to name her son Mujib.
When she was two months old, Salima sat her in her lap, and taking a little kohl, made a large beauty spot on her right cheek. Then she thought of Mujib and wept. When her tears fell on her daughter’s cheeks, she wiped them with her dupatta and laughed. She wanted to try and forget her grief.
Salima had two sons thereafter. Her husband was now very pleased. Finding herself in Gujarat for a friend’s wedding, she returned again to the shrine and made enquiries about her Mujib, but to no avail. She thought that perhaps he had died. And so, one Thursday, she organised a memorial for him.
The women of the neighbourhood wondered whose death these rites were being so carefully observed for. Some even questioned Salima, but she gave no reply.
In the evening she took her ten year old Mujiba by the hand and led her inside. She made a spot on her right cheek with kohl and kissed it profusely.
She had always imagined her to be her lost Mujib, but now she gave up thinking about him. After the ceremony the weight in Salima’s heart lightened. She had made a grave for him in her imagination, and still in her imagination, she would place flowers on it.
Salima’s three children were now in school. Every morning she dressed them, made them breakfast, got them ready and sent them off. When they’d gone she’d think for a moment of Mujib, and the ceremony she had done for him. Her heart was lighter and yet she felt sometimes that the mark on Mujib’s right cheek was still branded on it.
One day her three children came running in, saying, ‘Ammi, we want to see the show.’
‘What show?’ she asked lovingly.
Her eldest daughter replied, ‘Ammi, there’s a man who does the show.’
Salima said, ‘Go and call him, but not in the house. He should do the show outside.’
The children ran off, came back with the man and watched the show.
When it was over Mujiba went to her mother to ask for money. Her mother took out a quarter rupee from her purse and went out onto the veranda. She had reached the door w
hen she saw one of Shah Daulah’s mice moving his head in a crazed fashion. Salima began to laugh.
There were ten or twelve children around him, laughing uncontrollably. The noise was so great that no one could hear a word.
Salima advanced with the quarter rupee in her hand, but just as she was about to give it to Shah Daulah’s mouse, her hand was flung back as though struck by an electric current.
This mouse had a mark on its right cheek. Salima looked closely at him. His nose was running. Mujiba, who was standing near him, said to her mother, ‘This, this mouse, Ammi, why does he look so much like me? Am I a mouse too?’
Salima took Shah Daulah’s mouse by the hand and went inside. She closed the door and kissed him and said prayers for him. He was her Mujib. But his antics were so moronic that Salima laughed even though her heart was filled with grief
She said to Mujib, ‘My son, I am your mother.’
At this, the mouse laughed uproariously, and wiping his runny nose on his sleeve, stood with his hands open before his mother and said, ‘One paisa!’
His mother opened her purse, but by then her eyes had begun to overflow with tears. She took out a hundred rupees from her purse and went out to give it to the man who had made a spectacle of Mujib. He refused, saying that he couldn’t part with his means of income for such a small amount. In the end Salima got him to settle on five hundred rupees. But when she came back inside, Mujib was gone. Mujiba told her that he had run out of the back door.
Salima’s womb cried out for him to return, but he’d gone, never to return.
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