The City of Good Death

by Priyanka Champaneri

  She wrote a letter. She addressed the envelope to the place she had visited just once in her life, all those years ago when she was a new bride. And then she slipped the letter into one of her sari pleats. She stopped at the post office and went to the window with its iron bars that faced the street. She counted out the coins to pay the postage, money scrimped from haggling with the vegetable men. Then she pushed the letter through the iron grille, into the postman’s hands.

  Her stomach quivered as she turned toward the bazaar. She took in a deep breath, pulled her sari end closer around her head, and continued walking. In the market lane, Shobha filled her jute bag with ten rupees’ worth of miniature squash, a kilo of potatoes, and a half kilo of onions. She passed the stalls of ready-made clothing dangling from taut lines and stopped at a small table laid with cosmetics, where she purchased two cards of red bindis and a new crayon of thick black kohl. Not until she reached the puja shop and waited for the bent old proprietor to dig out a new copper oil lamp from his dusty stacks of wares did she allow herself to think about what she’d done.

  What was the fate of Kamna?

  That part of the letter was quick to write. She’d lingered for many moments over whether to sign her name. In the end, she’d simply written “Shankarbhavan” at the bottom. It was a cowardly thing to do, to hide behind the bhavan. Her courage extended to writing the letter and sending it, but not to fully exposing herself or her family. A woman like that does not forget.

  Shobha was not an impulsive woman. She always thought through the consequences before acting. Unlike some of her school friends, Shobha had a choice in whom she married. She accepted Pramesh not because her father was ill and desperate to see her settled, or because Pramesh was the only man with whom she’d spent some months in close proximity. She did it because there was something different in his eyes, something that suggested a desire for sharing with, not taking from, as she had sensed with those she’d refused. She saw a possibility for happiness with this man, rather than mere existence or all-out misery with another. And they had been happy. That first week of marriage, Shobha had been happier than she could remember being since before her mother had died. She’d walked around the bhavan in a dreamy haze, scalding the chai, burning the roti, unable to concentrate whenever Pramesh walked into the room.

  And then her father had suggested the trip, a visit to Pramesh’s childhood home. Shobha had protested, not wanting to leave him while he was ill. “If I go, I go,” he’d said with his usual bluntness. “You need to meet your new family, get their blessings.”

  “Promise me you will stay until I return,” Shobha had insisted, her voice dipping back into the pleading of a little girl, as if her father could control the moment of his death. He’d laughed.

  “Yes, yes, I promise. Even if Yamraj comes with his noose I will tell him to stay, sit in the corner, wait until my daughter comes.”

  So she agreed. All during the wait on the train platform and the journey crammed into the packed car, Shobha allowed herself to feel the sweet thrill of being the only one commanding her husband’s attention. Her husband! The word so unfamiliar and yet intimate that she had to pull her sari further over her head and across her face to hide her blushed cheeks, lest some keen-eyed auntie in the train car see and immediately begin asking questions.

  The rumbling train was crowded, heavy with the smell of many bodies, folk squatting or standing in the aisle, parents setting their children down into strangers’ laps, people shifting and squeezing when someone tried to walk through, and then resettling into the newly opened crevices like sand. They mostly talked to their neighbors, Pramesh to the other men on board, and Shobha to the woman sitting across from her. When they spoke to each other their voices were murmurs. Once, while seemingly deep into discussing the business of Shankarbhavan with the man across the aisle from him, Pramesh reached his hand over in a slow innocuous motion, his fingers finding Shobha’s with the ease of a bee alighting on a blossom, and with his skin on hers, in that crowded train car where it seemed everything and everyone demanded their attention, Shobha felt as if only they two existed. And then the moment ended when the woman in front cleared her throat loudly and gave them both a meaningful look, and Pramesh flashed a wink at Shobha, lightning quick, before turning to the man across the aisle, while she bit down on her smile.

  She had rarely spoken to Pramesh in the months he’d been working at the bhavan, mindful of the eyes inside and out that were ready to home in on any impropriety. Sometimes, when she’d brought her father his tiffin, she lingered while he ate, and if Pramesh was nearby, Dharam would invite him to sit as well, and they would talk, Shobha listening behind the veil of her sari.

  From those chats, she knew Pramesh’s mother and aunt were dead, and that most of his memories of his mother revolved around stories she’d told in the evenings or at the midday meal, spinning out tales of the great God or the Mother, of Vishnu spending 500,000 years in meditation on Manikarnika ghat, leaving behind footprints still there today.

  Of Pramesh’s father and uncle she knew only that they were farmers who had been reluctant to let Pramesh come to the city. Before this trip, she’d asked about their favorite foods, thinking she might prepare something during her stay. Pramesh had instead spoken of the aunt who’d raised him and his cousin. Perhaps she’d picked a bad moment. She asked Mrs. Mistry what she thought, and that woman had laughed her anxiety away. “A new bride must worry only about impressing the women in her husband’s family—the men are always easily won over. Pleasing words, something sweet with chai—it doesn’t take much, you’ll see.”

  She was most nervous about meeting Sagar, because she could tell her husband prized that relationship above all others. When he spoke of his cousin, when he read the letters he received from the village over and over, when her father coaxed him into sharing something about Sagar, a smile crept over his face like a secret he could not completely hide. She knew they were close in age, looked remarkably similar, and that Sagar was also a farmer. And unlike with the Elders, Pramesh readily told Shobha that his cousin’s favorite indulgence was pura. That morning, she’d woken hours earlier than Pramesh, her father, even Narinder, all so she would have time to make the soft pancakes, mixing the batter and dropping ladlefuls on a flat-surfaced pan slick with ghee until each pura was golden, spongy in the middle with crisp edges. They were now packed carefully into a steel tin snug in the bottom of her bag.

  Her seatmate interrupted her thoughts. “Newly married?” the woman said. She spoke it not as a question so much as a statement, and one that was flat and deflated, as if the state of marriage were akin to a disease or an irreversible sentence. “A good lesson to learn,” she said when Shobha smiled, turning her attention to the window, “is that they think they are always right. And they never are. But you must not ever tell them that. Not, at least, until you have four, five children between you two.”

  Shobha blushed at the mention of children, but the woman didn’t notice. She thought of it again hours later, once they’d left the train platform and began walking, until an old acquaintance of Pramesh’s family accosted them and insisted on giving them a ride.

  Bumping along in the creaking cart, alone with her thoughts as Pramesh patiently listened to the chattering farmer, she thought of a child—her child, hers and Pramesh’s, and more children to follow—and a sweet steady desire blossomed within her. She spent the rest of the journey with a secret smile on her face, taking no notice of her surroundings until they stopped and Pramesh came around to offer her a hand.

  “Are we already here?” She hurried to shake the dust from her sari, to wipe the damp away from her face and adjust the hairs that had flown away from the coiled bun at the nape of her neck.

  “Not yet,” Pramesh said. “A small change—Maasad suggested it,” he said, motioning with his chin to the farmer, who had disembarked to stroke the bullocks that had pulled them along, talking to them i
n a low soothing voice. “He thought it might be best to have you stay here first. He’ll take me to the house and I’ll come back later, with Sagar-bhai.”

  “Later?” Shobha looked behind her. They were at the door of a modest house, fields spreading out behind and trees stretching upward all around. A woman came to the door.

  “Champa-maasi has known my cousin and me since we were children,” Pramesh said. “You would have met her anyway. You are simply meeting her now rather than later.”

  It seemed an odd plan to her. They think they are always right. She wondered, suddenly, if Pramesh was embarrassed by her. If he thought his family would be displeased with her. But the woman came bustling over, smile wide, arms outspread, and the farmer carried her bag to the door and then sat himself back on the cart and turned to Pramesh. So she said nothing, simply bent to touch the woman’s feet and obtain her blessing, listened as Champa-maasi exclaimed over Pramesh and how well he looked, how beautiful his bride was, and wouldn’t he come in for water, for chai, for refreshment? But the farmer said they needed to be getting on, and Pramesh made his apologies, palms folded, eyes on the farmer’s wife, flickering for a second, half a second, toward his own wife. And then he was in the cart and gone, hidden behind a cloud of dust. Too late, Shobha remembered the pura, still in her bag.

  Now she sat in the front room while the woman made chai, unable to help, to do anything that might keep her hands busy in this strange house, this strange village, with people who were not even her husband’s blood. “What would they say, you here not even half a moment, a new bride, if I were to put you to work? Come, sit and talk to Divya; she is around your age and will have plenty more to entertain you than an old woman like me.” The farmer’s wife bustled off, and her daughter made small talk with Shobha, chatting away until someone’s voice came at the front door, and she stood up to tend to whoever it was.

  Alone, Shobha sighed and stood to stretch her legs after the long and cramped ride in the cart. The journey’s excitement had kept her awake, but there was nothing exciting in waiting. She stretched her arms upward, feeling the delightful jangle of her bangles—the ones that had been her mother’s mixed with the new glass ones from her wedding—sliding down her arms, and she yawned.

  “Oh but you must be tired!” The daughter, Divya had returned. “So stupid of us—come, you must rest; I insist.” She took Shobha’s hand and led her to a back bedroom, ignoring Shobha’s halfhearted insistence that she was fine, and almost pushing her down to the low rope bed. She relinquished the weight of her body to the bed, thinking she might close her eyes for just a moment, but she was soon fast asleep, such a deep and complete rest that when she woke, the sun had moved considerably along its daily arc, and she blinked several times while she recalled where she was.

  She heard voices, clear but low, and as she lay there, still in a hazy half sleep, she tried to pick out Pramesh’s. Surely he must have returned by now; surely his family was as eager to meet her as she was to get their blessing. Yet she could hear only women.

  “The older one. She wanted him specifically. Shameless thing!”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I heard it from my sister, and you know she does not lie. She is barren, you know.”

  “Your sister? Well I would think she was too old—”

  “No no, the girl!”

  “How? How do you know that?”

  “Everyone knows. Running around as she does…. She should have been with child ten times over by now. What woman does that? Leaves her family, plays the runaway, comes back home in time for chai as if she hasn’t been with—”

  “Hush! Such a thing to say! How can you know it is true?”

  “Oh it is. Why do you think her family has never stayed in the same place longer than a year? They move from village to village like you and I switch from a dirty sari to a clean one. They can’t stay in any place before people realize what they are, what she is. You know the stories?”

  “I know what people have said.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Not always. Tell me this though—why would they want such a girl in the family? And for their eldest?”

  “You know how they were. A bet they made.”

  “A bet? Hai Rama….”

  She didn’t recognize the voice of the woman telling the story. She thought the other one was Champa-maasi. Shobha listened with one ear, blinking away the veil of sleep. A beam of sunlight cut through the window on the other side of the room and landed near her stomach. She slipped off a glass bangle and idly held it up to the light, turning it this way and that, watching the light split and refract, a fascination she’d had since childhood. The gossip in the village, it seemed, was no different from the gossip in the city—and nor was the means by which it traveled. She wondered how much the truth had been diluted, how many times the story had made the rounds, and which version she was now hearing.

  “Yet, I feel sorry….” Champa-maasi said.

  “For who? For the girl? Or for the Prasad boys?”

  The Prasad boys. Pramesh was a Prasad. She was one now as well, for that matter. She stirred, but her anklets let out the softest of chimes, and her bangles responded, and she forced herself to remain still. What had they said in the beginning, about the older one? About Pramesh?

  “The older one was lucky to leave them all behind.”

  “If you can call it luck for him to spurn that girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A woman like that does not forget. You’ve heard what happened to that one—the one she bewitched.”

  “So you think she would do something?”

  “Rama knows what she might do. Would he have married her, do you think? If he hadn’t already married the one.…”

  The voices lowered, and Shobha could not hear the reply. A woman like that does not forget. Like what? Who was this other woman, who had wanted to marry Pramesh?

  The talk resumed, but now it shifted to something else, something mundane. She felt more tired than when she’d first given herself over to the bed, and her skin burned. She brought her wrists up to her forehead, the cool glass and metal of her bangles soothing away the heat, jangling as they did so. The conversation in the kitchen stumbled, and she could imagine the two women looking at each other, gauging how much they thought she—the interloper, the stranger, the one who’d taken another woman’s place—had heard. Waves of shame washed over her. Was this what marriage would be like? Her husband leaving her to fend for herself, while he continued on his own, oblivious? The marriage priest had bound their hands together over the fire, had said that the seven rounds they made around that sacred flame had fused them into one being, two halves of a single whole. Yet barely a week later, her husband was already leaving her behind.

  They think they are always right. Wait for children, the woman on the train had said. Wait for years to go by; wait to establish a position for yourself before you ever contradict your husband. She longed for her mother, the old ache of loneliness washing over her; she wished for Mrs. Mistry to tell her what to do. She could tell her father, but his understanding would go only so far. She needed an older woman.

  But she was alone. No one would come to her here. And sitting in the strange room, on the strange bed, would gain her nothing. Shobha pressed her palms against her eyes, breathed in the Mother’s name, and breathed out. And then she got up and went to the kitchen to help the women with their midday chores—and to think.

  When Pramesh returned, he arrived on foot, and alone. None of the people at the house—the farmer and his wife, their daughters and sons and the spouses and children—said anything, though Shobha saw the farmer’s wife flick a glance at her husband, saw the daughter Divya raise her eyebrows at her sister. The women served the men the evening meal in the back yard, going around with the individual dishes, and when Shobha came to P
ramesh’s place, she focused on the vessel in her hands, on spooning out his portion and setting it on his leaf plate, avoiding his eyes, avoiding everything about him. She took her meal in the kitchen with the other women, half listening to their talk, rousing herself to answer their questions when they turned to her, trying on a smile that hurt her face.

  Everyone seemed to know without discussing it that the newlyweds would spend the night in their house, and again Shobha felt like the outsider, the one everyone else talked over and around, but never to. She could hear the men talking outside as they ate, her husband telling them of his new life, of the death hostel, of her father, and he laughed and asked about old acquaintances and seemed to feel no guilt about leaving his new wife alone in a strange place for almost an entire day.

  That night, the women spread out on the floor in one room, and the men in another. In the midst of the rest of the family, washing up and lighting lamps, oiling hair and laughing over some internal joke, there was no time for Shobha to be alone with Pramesh, no opportunity for her to ask what was happening, when she’d meet his family, where he’d been all day, who this other woman was that his elders had wanted him to marry. She lay down for the night on a mat alongside the other women in the family, and when the air was full of snores and the occasional word spoken in sleep, Shobha felt stifled by her own silence, because if she let loose any sound, the wall within herself would break, and she wouldn’t be able to control what happened next. So she stayed still, curled on her side with one palm pillowed beneath her head, and she wondered how even now, married and in a room full of people, she could feel perched on the edge of a loneliness that extended deep within her, so black and so depthless that she squeezed her eyes shut and wished for sleep to wipe her memory clean.

  When morning came, Shobha insisted on helping with the morning meal, going so far as to take the dirty chai glasses from the farmer’s wife’s hands and bring them outside with the other plates and vessels through the back door, where they had their own well. She drew water and washed the kitchen things, half listening to the chatter of Divya, who told her all the village gossip and asked her about the city. Shobha wondered if there was a way she could ask about the other woman without revealing what she’d heard. Halfway through the washing, Divya got up to take the clean things back into the house, and Shobha was left to herself, at least until she heard footsteps behind her. But these were steps she knew very well, having memorized their stride and beat, her heart beating faster whenever she heard him approach in the bhavan, but now the warmth of anger and hurt muddled her usual anticipation. She did not look up as she continued her task. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “It won’t look right.”