The City Son

by Samrat Upadhyay

  She’s also afraid of running into Sahara again. Soon after she visited the Newar lover’s house, there were phone calls from Sahara, but Rukma refused to take them. Then Sahara came to Lazimpat, to the house. The guard sent Rukma a message upstairs that a woman was at the gate. “Tell her I’m not home,” Rukma instructed Sanmaya, who inquired who it was. “An acquaintance who thinks she means more than she does,” Rukma said. She went down to the living room, parted the curtains, and watched. Sahara was quarreling with the guard. Rukma couldn’t make out the words, but Sahara’s index finger kept pointing to the house.

  “She’s a fancy dresser,” Sanmaya said.

  “She feeds off other people’s emotions,” Rukma told her.

  A few days later Sahara was at the gate again, and after nearly getting into fisticuffs with the guard, she broke down and cried out Rukma’s name. “Shall I bring her inside?” Sanmaya asked. “Perhaps she’ll go away if she just got a glimpse of your face.”

  Rukma shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “That woman is insatiable. She’s the epitome of greed.”

  The Newar lover also phoned, and she spoke to him. He sounded cocky and self-assured. He told her he had two tickets to a newly released movie. She told him she’d meet him at the theater, and she simply didn’t go.

  Mahesh Uncle is concerned about her. “It’s not right,” he says to her, “you sleeping in his mother’s room. You and Tarun should sort out your differences.” As he talks she notices how old he looks, with craggy lines running down his cheeks. He lives in his robe these days, an unlit, fat cigar between his fingers, as though it’s an image he’s copied from a gangster movie. He also neglects to comb his hair some days so when he stands in the doorway to her room—her mother-in-law’s room that she’s made her own now—he appears like someone who has wandered in from the street. But Mahesh Uncle is really not interested in the details of what’s going on, is he? He might have a vague sense that it has something to do with Tarun’s aloofness, but he’s not sure why it has reached the point that they have to sleep in separate rooms. Rukma has heard him say to Tarun: Take her out, go and do things that young couples do. And yes, Tarun and she have gone on outings, have tried talking, but it’s no use.

  She’s been contemplating, with increasing frequency, simply ending the marriage. She thinks these thoughts at night when the house is in deep sleep. She sits up in bed, without turning on the lights. She peers out at the darkness through the window. There’s a hazy type of glimmer that’s coming off the surface of the earth, and it makes the outlines of trees and bushes visible. She sees an apparition, a fluid figure, perhaps a female. A ghost. I’ve begun to see ghosts, she thinks bemusedly. Her mother-in-law, too, spent countless nights like this, staring into the dark, seeing her own brands of ghosts.

  Today’s ghost stands near the fountain, a woman ghost, her mother-in-law, Rukma is sure. Now, why are you there and not here? Rukma whispers. The figure turns toward the window, as though she has heard Rukma. All right, Rukma thinks, I’ve made you real. Let’s see what you’re going to do. Now the ghost is bending to smell flowers. Is that what ghosts do? Smell flowers at night? The ghost keeps looking in her direction after each smell, as though she’s reminding Rukma of what she’s missing. My dear sasu, my dear mother-in-law.

  At some point she drifts into sleep. Tomorrow she’ll tell her husband that she’s moving away. Where, she doesn’t know. She may return to her parents’ house, if they’ll take her. But they’ll probably insist that her rightful station is with her husband. Has she tried everything to make her husband happy, to make her marriage work? Has she done enough self-analysis to see if she’s contributing to the problem? She pictures her mother’s weeping fits.

  Instead of returning to her parents’ home, she’ll find a room in the city. She will return to work at Swarga. If the mood strikes her, she’ll have an affair with her Newar lover.

  Yet when dawn breaks, she is unable to move from her bed. Her muscles have become heavy, and the room closes in on her, and the walls oppress. She wants to shout for help, to call Sanmaya. But how much can Sanmaya do? She can’t be at the beck and call of people all the time! It takes Rukma a long time to sit up in bed, like she’s been drugged. In front of her is the old photograph of her mother-in-law from her younger days. It shows her in red high-heeled shoes and matching red lipstick. She is wearing bell-bottom pants that tighten at the crotch and flare absurdly at the bottom; she has on a tight shirt that makes her breasts protrude. The photo was taken about the time, or right before, she met the Masterji.

  Holding the staircase railing, Rukma manages to go downstairs. Descending slowly, like an ill person, not unlike her mother-in-law during Rukma’s first visit. She sees herself through her mother-in-law’s eyes: innocent Rukma bruised by her Newar lover, half hopeful about a new life. There they are, the concerned parents, wanting to make everything right for their daughter, wanting so desperately to ensure that she doesn’t suffer.

  Rukma calls Sanmaya. She can hear her voice float away toward the kitchen, from where Sanmaya emerges. There’s some exchange, but she’s not sure what is being said. Now she’s being led to the dining room table, where Sanmaya has her sit and says something like she’ll be back in a jiffy. Out in the Japanese garden the sun is already so bright that the sky has turned white. It seems as though she herself has become older and slower and needs to be taken care of. And the person taking care of her returns from the kitchen, and a shaft of happiness enters her. Good old Sanmaya. What would she do without her? She asks Sanmaya something, but Sanmaya puts her tea on the table, spoons and stirs some sugar into it, and doesn’t answer her. She must not have heard what Rukma asked, so Rukma asks again, but Sanmaya is busy now with her own monologue about the chores she has to do that day, a talk that’s interspersed with how things were done in the village when she was a child and what the weather is going to be like and what festivals are coming up. Her voice is like the gentle patter of the rain, which makes Rukma think, briefly, that it’s indeed raining, but when she looks outside there is no rain, only a blinding kind of whiteness.

  The earlier resolve she had about leaving this house comes to her like a tiny bird with a message. Sanmaya brings her pakoda for breakfast, and suddenly Tarun and Mahesh Uncle are at the table also, demanding things of Sanmaya, rustling the newspaper, commenting on the weather. Mahesh Uncle—how come he’s down here so early, and he’s even dressed? He’s flying to Biratnagar to see a dying aunt, he informs them. Tarun is eating quickly. He doesn’t meet her gaze. He’s in a rush to get to his office.

  So what are you doing today, Rukma? Mahesh Uncle asks. Why don’t you go to Tarun’s office later, and you two can go out for lunch?

  I am leaving this house for good today, Rukma says.

  I won’t have time for lunch today, Tarun says. Many things to take care of.

  Why don’t you take some time, Tarun, Mahesh Uncle says. It’ll be good for the two of you to go out.

  I’m looking for a flat today, Rukma says.

  Not today, Mahesh Uncle, Tarun says. I simply can’t do lunch today.”

  Or why don’t you two come home for lunch, Sanmaya chimes in. I can cook something special. I’ll even have the guard write up a menu, like in the hotels.

  I’ll be out all day looking for flats, Rukma says.

  But it’s clear no one has heard her, or no one is listening. Mahesh Uncle is asking her: Are you not feeling well? Why don’t you go and lie down. Here, why don’t you lie down on the sofa in the living room? Sanmaya will take care of you. Tarun, try to come home in the afternoon, okay? Rukma is not feeling well. I’ll be back in two days.

  At once the house is quiet, except for the sound of Sanmaya cleaning in the kitchen. Rukma is shivering. Her body is hot, burning, floating, yet it doesn’t feel unpleasant. It’s a different type of energy now, not quiet and closed but expanding, as if she’s on her way to discovering something. The kitchen has gone silent. Perhaps Sanmaya i
s eating? Sanmaya is shy about her eating. No one sees when she eats or how. A few times when Rukma has entered the kitchen she’s found Sanmaya in the corner, her back to the door. But Sanmaya immediately stops eating when she senses a presence. She doesn’t even turn toward the intruder without first finishing chewing and swallowing. Come to think of it, Rukma has never seen her with food in her mouth. She has, however, seen Sanmaya drink water out of a karuwa. She raises the karuwa above her head, tilts up her chin, then allows the water to pour into her open mouth, the veins and muscles on her neck going up and down like pistons.

  Rukma wishes that she’d been able to make Tarun and Mahesh Uncle hear her a while ago about her intention to leave. They should be given notice, put on alert, given time to recuperate, but they’re not her landlords, nor she their tenant. She tried communicating it to them, and it didn’t work. So, she’ll first find a flat, then inform them. Tonight. She’ll inform Tarun tonight, and he’ll let Mahesh Uncle know when he returns.

  It’ll take too much effort to climb the stairs to her room to change. She looks into the living room mirror. She’s in the dhoti that she wore to bed last night, and with a pleasant shock she realizes that it’s a dhoti that belongs to her mother-in-law. Now she remembers: when she’d moved into her mother-in-law’s room she had noticed the deceased woman’s clothes in the drawers. She was about to ask Sanmaya to give them to charity, but then she’d ended up picking up a dhoti—it might have been this one—and smelling it, wondering whether there’d be the scent of a dead person. But it had smelled good, faintly flowery, and it had felt soft in her hands, so she had pressed it against her cheek. She had remembered then that her mother-in-law had been wearing this dhoti when Rukma first visited. And last night somehow she had picked up this same dhoti to wear. It’s little wonder, then, that now, gazing into the mirror, she thinks she resembles her mother-in-law. Even her hair is uncombed.

  She walks out the front door. The guard observes her curiously but he opens the gate for her so she can venture into the blinding light of the city.

  Where does one go in order to find rental flats? She moves toward the center of the city. She’s aware of curious looks of passersby—her unkempt hair, her rumpled dhoti, her slippers—she came out in her slippers, and now she’s going to pound the pavements in them!—all of these add up to an unsettled woman. She wonders what her parents would think of her if they were to encounter her now. Respectable people, they are—this picture doesn’t fit the desperately managed image they have of themselves. She ought to rattle this perfect picture, just like she did with her Newar lover. She ought to visit her parents. But today she’s not feeling like a rebel, merely someone seeking direction.

  There’s noise behind her. A festival. A large procession is rapidly gaining on her, and no matter how hard she tries she cannot move out of its way fast enough. The procession barrels down on her, a stampede of feet and arms, a clash of cymbals and pounding of drums, with shouting and yelling that are meant to be chants but resonate as cries of anger and vengeance rising up to the narrow patch of the sky and the rooftops that float above. She’s picked up and hurled in the air, and she rapidly glides forward on top of a thrust of arms, hands, fingers, and thumbs, like a star football player who’s being fêted for securing an impossible goal. The roar of the crowd reaches the onlookers cramped in the windows of these ancient houses. Because there are seven or eight people per window, some of them are hanging from the windowsills precariously, like monkeys. If they fall down, Rukma thinks, as she is ecstatically hopped above the caterpillar hands of the revelers, they, too, will ride the crowd like her. The people are so jam-packed that all Rukma sees are heads, a sea of heads. A chariot looms ahead, but she can’t be sure it’s a chariot. It could just be people climbing one another for a view or to construct a human pyramid. She imagines herself a queen, being honored and celebrated by her subjects. Then she is hurtled up in the air—a loud aaahhhhh erupts from the crowd—and she’s jettisoned to a side lane, where she lands with a thud.

  The lane is nearly deserted because everyone has gone to watch the procession. A couple of people walking by observe her with sympathy; they think she’s a down-and-out woman cast aside by her family, like the old folk she ministered to at Swarga. As the festival moves away, the raucous sound in and around her ears also diminishes.

  Two thoughts come to her in rapid succession. The first is that she could find a modest room in this part of the city, live with the common, dust-and-bones people who work with their hands and go wild with their celebrations. Maybe this is the life she ought to be living, among the average folk. She can find a job, then spend time at Swarga. She can return home tired after a day’s work, listen to her radio, make friends, commiserate with her neighbors, dance during the festivities, watch the passersby from her windows, and call out to them. Immediately at the heel of this thought comes another thought, barreling down, knocking the first thought away: This is Bangemudha. Tarun’s first family, including the infamous Didi, lives on this lane. God! Where has she landed? She meant to move away from him, and here she is deeper in his past.

  She stands and dusts herself. A laborer carrying farm equipment stops and stares. “What are you looking at?” she barks at him, but he doesn’t budge. “Don’t you have work to do?” she asks, but moves on without waiting for an answer.

  Now she has to. How can she not? She’s right here, isn’t she? She recalls, almost with relish, that he told her Didi wasn’t yet ready for her. Well, here Rukma is, isn’t she? She has been literally thrown into this lane. Ready or not, here I come.

  How to find the house? Ah, the Masterji. Everyone should know about the famous Masterji, even though his glory has greatly diminished now. But this is a city where legends remain in circulation long past their expiration date, so when she stops to ask at a shop about the Masterji, the bored shopkeeper tells her his house is at the end of the lane. “The one who married twice?” the shopkeeper asks to confirm, and she nods. “Yes, down this way. It’s a one-story house with a small front yard.” It’s dusk now, with a haze in the air that makes it hard to distinguish what is smog and what is mist. Lights have begun flickering in the dwellings and shops around her. As she approaches the end of the lane, she sees the house. She slows down. The first room in view is the kitchen, which has a window, about ten or fifteen yards away from her, that allows her a glimpse of what’s inside. A woman is working. She’s a heavyset woman. There’s a sizzle—she’s frying—then the shrill blast of a pressure cooker.

  The woman looks up. Their gazes lock. She has a round, fattish dark face; her eyes are big. The woman doesn’t smile; neither does Rukma. The woman frowns; she’s attempting to remember something; she’s trying to figure out who Rukma is. Rukma strolls past the window as though she were only passing through. She can feel the eyes of the woman on her back even after she’s moved away.

  She’s at the small gate of the house. She hesitates briefly, wondering whether she should go in, but she has nothing to lose. Let’s see what’s special about her. This visit might mean nothing, she realizes, for living apart from Tarun eventually could lead to divorce. The word sounds funny when she thinks of it, and she realizes that it’ll be an anathema to many concerned. Even to Rukma it sounds like a big, grumbling, nasty, mythical beast. She hasn’t thought that far ahead, only of separating, going her own way, living apart. If indeed this separation will soon culminate in a divorce, then what’s the point of her going into this house?

  Yet here she is, and inside is the legendary Didi whose hold on her husband is strong. Besides, the woman has already seen her, so Rukma is locked into going. She opens the gate, enters the yard, then walks up to the door and knocks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A YOUNG MAN opens the door. He has a pleasant, smiling face. “Kallai khojnu bha?” A sweet voice.

  “Is this Tarun’s house?”

  He laughs softly. “Tarun dai doesn’t live here. Not anymore. Well, he hasn’t lived here in age
s.” Then recognition dawns in this eyes. “Bhauju ta hoina?”

  “Yes, I am Tarun’s—”

  The young man’s happiness is palpable. “Oho, bhauju, katabata? Please, please, come in. How could I not recognize you, the fool that I am!”

  “How did you recognize me, though?” she says, stepping in. “We’ve never met.”

  “I’ve seen your picture.”

  Her eyes take everything in: the sickly looking man sitting cross-legged on the bed. Then through the kitchen door, she glimpses the woman she’s seen from the outside. Despite the voices at the door the woman hasn’t turned around, and Rukma senses that she knows precisely who has come visiting.

  “You must be Sumit,” Rukma says. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

  “No, no, of course not. You’re not disturbing us at all,” the young man says.

  “Ko?” the man on the bed asks, lifting his finger.

  She does a namaste; the old man returns it.

  Sumit says, in a loud voice as though the old man is hard of hearing, “Our bhauju. Tarun dai’s bride.”

  A smile breaks on the old man’s face, and he beckons her closer. The woman in the kitchen still hasn’t turned; she has the excuse of the pressure cooker going off right at the moment when Sumit spoke, but Rukma is convinced she is simply biding her time. “Perhaps I’ve come at the wrong moment,” Rukma says. “Isn’t Didi at home? Tarun is always talking about her.”

  Sumit points to the woman, then goes to the kitchen and speaks to her. The woman responds in a low voice but doesn’t turn.

  “Come here, buhari,” the Masterji says, and suddenly Rukma is sitting on the bed with him. “Let me feast my eyes on you.” His happiness at seeing her is evident.