A People's History of Heaven

by Mathangi Subramanian

  The people and boxes and bits and pieces disappeared, but the buildings didn’t. One by one, the floors became kitchens, stages, changing rooms. Company signs came down and flowery marquees came up. Temples sprung from the pavement like granite lotus blossoms. Bit by bit, piece by piece, the warehouses stopped being warehouses and started being mandapams: wedding halls for the not-so-rich, the never-will-be-famous.

  In auspicious months, the street fills up with Hindu brides and grooms and wedding parties. Cars decorated with carnations, brides decorated with gold. Plastic signs draped with garlands reading Ganesh Babu weds Kavita, Kavita weds Suresh, Suresh weds Sujata, Sujata weds Ganesh Babu. Some days, when three Sureshes are wedding three Sujatas, everyone ends up at the wrong wedding. Even the brides and grooms.

  The ceremonies lap at the streets like the edge of the ocean, advancing and retreating. Future mothers- and fathers-in-law argue about what the caterers are charging, whether the bride is wearing enough jewelry, why the relatives are acting so local. Children drag their parents to the corner store and ask for paneer soda and vinyl balloons. Guests hitch up their dhotis and saris, fling rice and flower petals at the appropriate times. We can see it all from the mandap tree.

  It’s like watching our futures unfold.

  Fatima Aunty lets Rukshana wear trousers to school, but she draws the line at formal occasions. So in eighth standard, when we all go to Deepa’s uncle’s wedding, Fatima Aunty makes Rukshana wear the same clothes as the rest of us: a sequined blouse with snarling clasps that itch her back, catch her hair. A low-waisted skirt that tangles around her kicking knees, flying feet. Silver anklets strung with bells that announce her presence every time she tries to disappear.

  While the rest of us eat and laugh and dance and flirt, Rukshana flees. Desperate for a wall to scale, a tree to climb. Some way to heave herself off the ground, untangle herself from the crowd. A place where she can be herself. Alone.

  A place like the mandap tree.

  Except when she gets to the mandap tree, someone is already there.

  Leela dangles her soft, bare toes over brides decked in pounds of jewelry, yards of silk. Strains her swan-long neck over grooms worrying the ends of their dhotis, facing down the beginnings of the rest of their lives. Holds her body tense as a wound-up top. Like she’s waiting for someone else’s hands to spin her into motion around the marriage fire. To snap her into a dizzying future.

  “Hey, you,” Rukshana yells through the branches. “Who said you could be up there?”

  “It’s a tree,” Leela says. When she flicks her eyes at Rukshana, they flash a brown so bright it’s almost green. “You don’t need permission to climb a tree.”

  “Maybe not in Purvapura,” Rukshana says, “but here in Heaven, you do.”

  “I’m not asking for permission from a girl who always dresses like a boy,” Leela says.

  “I don’t dress like a boy. I dress like myself.”

  “Right.”

  “Like you should talk,” Rukshana says, pointing to Leela’s clothes. She’s wearing a government-issued school shirt and blouse. “I bet you don’t own anything besides that uniform.”

  Leela doesn’t answer. Which might as well be a yes.

  “That’s what I thought,” Rukshana says. “I’m coming up.”

  “Fine. Come up then,” Leela says. “I’m not moving.”

  “Fine. Scoot over,” Rukshana says. Scales the tree with village-sure feet. Stops only for a split second when a piece of her blouse catches on a twig. Swears under her breath as she pulls herself up, hears the tear, imagines what her mother will say.

  “That was quick,” Leela says, making room for Rukshana on the limb where she perches like a starving pigeon.

  “City girls can climb trees too, you know,” Rukshana says.

  Below them, drums thud and horns shriek, a choreographed chaos, brassy and bronze.

  “Oh, the men are leaving for Kashi!” Leela says. “This is my favorite part.”

  Sure enough, a dozen grooms leave the marriage halls, pretending they’ve changed their mind about getting married, pretending they’re on their way to the mountains to become ascetics, men of God. A dozen bridal families follow, pretending to beg the men to stay, to take care of their daughters, to remain in the material world. One family hands their groom a plastic umbrella. When he opens it, rose petals rain around his shoulders, form pastel puddles at his feet.

  Leela leans back and sighs.

  “Your favorite part is when the groom runs away?” Rukshana asks.

  “My favorite part is when he comes back,” Leela says. “He decides his wife is more important than his own dreams. More important than God, even. It’s so romantic.”

  On the branch, there’s barely enough room for the two of them. They are thigh to thigh, elbow to elbow, knee to knee. The wind picks up, fills the air with Leela’s aroma, a mixture of perspiration and jasmine. She smells pure and determined. Nervous and sweet.

  “Want me to fix this?” Leela asks, pointing at the fresh rip in Rukshana blouse.

  “How?” Rukshana asks. “You carry around a Singer?”

  “Something like that,” Leela says. Pulls a pouch from the waistband of her skirt. It looks like it’s made out of a torn piece of sari that used to be purple. Or maybe red. Inside is a needle and thread. “I don’t have anywhere to keep my things so I carry them all with me.”

  Leela leans across Rukshana and starts stitching. Her too-tight school shirt rides up, revealing a patch of Leela’s bare stomach, the skin smooth and even and brown as a seashore worn smooth by the ocean.

  “There,” Leela says. Snaps the thread between her teeth. Admires the line of invisible stiches. “See? You can’t even tell it was torn.”

  “Huh,” Rukshana says.

  Leela rolls her eyes and turns around. “You’re welcome,” she says. “You city girls are so rude.”

  “If you don’t like me, then leave,” Rukshana says.

  “Why should I leave? I was here first.”

  “Maybe I’ll leave then. Just to get away from you.”

  “Not if I go first.”

  “Go then!”

  “Watch me, no?”

  They stop arguing. But neither one of them climbs down.

  Hindu weddings always happen in the mornings. Apparently the first hours of the day are the most auspicious.

  Leela understands why. In the mornings, the mandap tree’s bark is warm and sun dappled, the leaves slick and clean enough to catch and scatter light. Promises feel less fragile. Bodies less bruised.

  At night, the world is a vortex of uncertainty, a black hole of pain. At night, Leela’s father lurches home reeking of fist fights and chicken sixty-five. Rotten breath, cut-up knuckles. Babbling about the old days when families from his caste got what they wanted. What they deserved. Land, women, servants. Money and respect.

  The old days, before this age of cities and cell phones, computers and concrete. Before this age of pollution. Not the pollution the rich people care about—not the kind that comes from the tailpipes of buses, the sewage pipes of factories. The kind that foreigners rate on a meter of red and green.

  This is a different kind of pollution. Makeup, loose hair, tight shirts, short skirts. Mutton, chicken, bacon, fish. Cigarettes, alcohol, English cinema. Romance.

  “All these modern women going to work in their jeans pants and lipstick,” Leela’s father says to the men who sit beside him on the side of the road, sharing a bottle of something poisonous brewed out of coconuts and sunlight. “No wonder there are so many rapes. So many murders.”

  When the other men agree, Leela’s father says, “Remember how women used to be? Back home in the village? Eyes down. Mouths closed. Pure, like Sita. See how she waited for Ram in a garden full of demons? That is how a woman ought to be.”

  Every sip of toddy makes him surer, nobler. Meaner.

  “It’s our dharma to shelter our women,” he says. “Otherwise who knows what will ha
ppen to them?”

  Leela and her mother are polluted. Every night, Leela’s father tells them so. Voice tough and leathery as an old man’s knuckles, fists dense and gritty as factory smoke.

  Leela’s mornings are black eyes and battered limbs, bruised skin and broken bones.

  But mornings are also brides and grooms, gold and silk, fire and roses. Escape velocities mapped out like calculations on an astrologer’s chart.

  And now, more and more often, mornings are also Rukshana.

  “Hey, you there,” Rukshana yells through the branches where Leela is sitting. Holds up a plastic bag full of something soft and cottony and purple and green. “This is for you.”

  “What is it?” Leela asks. She’s wearing her same old school uniform. When the wind blows, it pierces the thinning fabric, and she shivers.

  Rukshana puts the bundle between her teeth and shimmies up the tree. Leela takes it from her with pale hands that flutter like nervous doves.

  “Just an old salwar kameez,” Rukshana says, shrugging. Watches the weddings so she doesn’t have to meet Leela’s eyes.

  “Oh,” Leela says. Undoes the bundle. Pulls out the long-sleeved top, the baggy pants. Puts the cotton dupatta around her shoulders, hugging it close to her chest. The fabric smells like soap and dust. Like Rukshana. “These are nice.”

  “I’ve worn them a million times before. Thought you might as well have it,” she says. After a second, she adds, “Purple and green are supposed to be good for fair skin, though. Right?”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “No,” Rukshana says. “That’s just what people say.”

  “Since when do you care what looks nice on me?”

  “I don’t,” Rukshana says. “It’s just—I owe you for fixing my blouse. Now we’re even.”

  “Fine,” Leela says. “We’re even.”

  On our way to school, Joy greets Rukshana with a giant smack.

  “Ow,” Rukshana says, holding her arm. “What was that for?”

  “Slapping some sense into you,” Joy says. “What are you doing with that girl?”

  “Leela?”

  “I don’t know her name,” Joy says.

  “Yes you do,” Padma says. “You stood up for her against Yousef that one time. You acted like you liked her.”

  “Standing up for her is one thing,” Joy says. The rules of the world are boys against girls. For Joy, who has to keep proving that she is a girl, the rules are even stricter. “Hanging around in trees with her is different.”

  “She needed clothes. I took her some,” Rukshana says, pushing her fingers through her hair. “It wasn’t even my idea. You know how my mother is with her charity nonsense.”

  “See,” Padma says, sniffling. Links her arm with Rukshana’s. “Rukshana’s being nice.”

  “Nice is handing her the salwar on the way to school,” Joy says. “Climbing up a tree and making a special delivery? That’s too much.”

  “Why does it even matter?”

  “Because that girl will break your heart,” Joy says. “Just watch. That family of hers will be here one second and gone the next.”

  “Actually, they’ll probably be here awhile,” Banu says. “Leela’s dad is working on that mall they’re building in the empty lot. That takes time.”

  “A mall? In the empty lot? That can’t be,” Padma says. “That lot is way too small. For a mall, they’d need half of the land in Heaven too.”

  “All the building materials are stamped with this company called Krishna Industries,” Banu says. “They only build malls.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Banu,” Rukshana says. “You know you can’t even read properly.”

  “Ignore her, Banu. She’s just trying to change the subject,” Joy says. “Look, Rukshana, I don’t trust that girl, and you shouldn’t either.”

  “It’s not like I’m going to marry her,” Rukshana says. As soon as she does, her cheeks turn red.

  On Friday, Rukshana and Fatima Aunty go to morning prayers at their mosque. Arabic verses coat Rukshana’s tongue with a honeyed hopefulness, thicken her chest with a syrupy peace. After the service, when she leaves her mother at the bus stop, she’s supposed to meet us at Deepa’s house so we can all walk to school together.

  But she doesn’t go to Deepa’s house. She goes to the mandap tree.

  “Hey, you,” Leela yells. “Rukshana, right?”

  Leela’s pinned the dupatta Rukshana gave her to the shoulders of her government-issued school shirt.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know my name,” Rukshana says.

  “Hurry,” Leela says, staring out over the mandap street. “They’re about to leave for Kashi.”

  Horns trill and drums rat-a-tat-tat. Silence splits into coppery shards. Grooms pour out of the mandapams, umbrellas in the air. Rukshana pulls herself up into the branches, feet still chilly from the mosque’s cool marble floor.

  “See that boy, down there?” Leela shouts over the clatter and clang.

  “What, the skinny one?”

  “No, no, the fat one. See how he wants to come back from Kashi so badly? He loves his wife.”

  “So?”

  “So. He’ll be a good husband.”

  Rukshana nods. Tilts her head and watches.

  “But then that skinny one,” Leela says. “The one with the thin little hips? He’s got no spine. His wife will always get her way.”

  Rukshana considers. This new game, these new rules. Decides if she’s interested in playing.

  Finally, slowly, she says, “That one seems like he doesn’t drink.”

  “Definitely,” Leela says, giggling. “He loves his mother too, too much.”

  Above them, parakeets dart in and out of an empty hole in the trunk of a coconut tree. They plunge into the hollow carrying long brown leaves in their sharp orange beaks. When they emerge, their blue and green tail feathers flare, necks glitter like glass bangles.

  “That one can’t take his eyes off his wife. Sweet, no?” Rukshana says. Makes a face and a sound like she’s going to vomit.

  “Too, too sweet,” Leela says, gagging. When she adjusts her brand-new dupatta, she brushes Rukshana’s thigh.

  Probably accidentally. But maybe not.

  The government of India announces that our nation is in crisis. Secularism, they say, is destroying the country. Hinduism is in danger.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Leela’s father says. “Our way of life is in peril. We must remember who we are, where we came from. Like the prime minister says, ‘Gharwapsi.’ ” Come home.

  Of course, he doesn’t mean us girls. There’s no coming home when you’re not allowed to leave in the first place.

  The boys, though? They wear pressed khaki shorts, paint their foreheads with ash. Fumble with strings of bumpy brown beads, chant prayers in a language they don’t understand.

  One Sunday morning, our brothers and cousins and classmates leave for a meeting. The lanes of Heaven are lined with orange.

  Leela is up in the mandap tree. Swings herself out of the branches, lands on the pavement with a slap of her bare feet, right in front of Joy’s door. She’s wearing the salwar that Rukshana gave her. Pulls the dupatta over her head, across her face. Just in case her father is somewhere in the crowd.

  Joy’s on the front step now, wiping her floury hands on her green and yellow nightie. “What’re they doing?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” Leela says. “But I don’t like it.”

  Yousef, who has followed the parade on his bicycle, parks next to them. Joins the conversation like he’s always been a part of it. Like boys do.

  “Vihaan says he’s learning about discipline and morals and ethics,” Yousef tells us. “He says he’s becoming a man.”

  “At least one of you is,” Joy says. Even though she doesn’t believe him.

  “They got new shirts,” Yousef says. “Pencil boxes too.” His voice twitches with something—longing? Fear? Loneliness? Something we’
ve felt in our voices before. Something we thought was the property of girls and women.

  “What do they need all of that for?” Joy asks.

  “For their mission. They’re going to make our country stronger,” he says. “Vihaan says India needs order and progress. A return to traditional Hindu values.”

  Leela asks, “You really think a bunch of men in orange are going to make India better?”

  “For Brahmins, maybe, but not for the rest of us,” Joy says. Glances at Leela, with her high-caste skin, her Brahmin name. Notices a bruise on Leela’s sloping neck, purple and black and winged, the size and shape of a crushed moth. Dark enough to show through the green webbing of the dupatta’s borders.

  Leela sucks her teeth. “Not for Muslims either. Remember partition?”

  “What’s partition?” Joy asks.

  “People died,” Leela says.

  “They did?” Yousef asks. Rubs the back of his neck like he does when he’s nervous.

  “Since when do you care about Muslims anyway?” Joy asks Leela.

  “I don’t,” Leela says. But Joy knows she’s lying.

  Under Leela’s father’s fists, Leela’s mother wilts, petal by petal. Wrinkles around the edges. Takes any job she can at any house she can—even if it’s just doing dishes, mopping floors. Hands her wages to her husband without trying to save any for herself.

  Leela’s mother shrinks, but Leela expands. Throws books at the boys, pinches blue bruises onto the arms of the girls. Dares us with her wild and brutal eyes, with looks so sharp we feel like we’ve been pierced all the way through.

  “Leela!” Janaki Ma’am yells over and over and over. “Go to my office. Again.”

  “You see?” Joy spins around in her desk and leans across Rukshana. “I’m telling you she’s no good.”

  “She is good,” Rukshana says. “She’s just got too much inside her. She’s got to let it out somehow.”

  “So let her pray,” Joy says. “That’s what the rest of us do.”

  “She does pray,” Rukshana says. “But it’s not enough.”

  Every Tuesday before school, Leela goes to the Hanuman temple on the main road. Closes her eyes, moves her lips. Presses her forehead to the ground. When she stands up, she looks like the candles they give out at Joy’s church. Pale as unmade wishes, solemn as unlit flames.