Water: A Novel (Bapsi Sidwha) Read online

  Madhumati turned toward the barred window. “Have you brought the stuff?”

  Gulabi foraged sulkily in her pouch and, without deigning to even look at Madhumati, disdainfully held out the pouch as if it were a dead rat.

  “It had better be good. The last lot made me sick and cranky.”

  CLEARLY SETH BHUPINDERNATH’S mansion had seen better days. Chipped busts of Englishmen filled every recessed nook, and the dusty bric-a-brac crowded on tables and mantels gave it a cluttered look.

  Rabindra and Narayan were in one of the mansion’s cavernous living rooms. Rabindra sang a lied from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin with lusty abandon and accompanied himself on a baby grand piano. A glass of red wine stood on top of the piano.

  Narayan sat on a divan, absently gazing at a crystal chandelier, its lustre dimmed by neglect; occasionally, when Rabindra took liberties with the aria and his singing set his teeth on edge, he glanced at the chunky figure at the piano and grimaced.

  Outside the mansion, Gulabi sashayed down the familiar length of the verandah with a forward thrust of her swaying hips, the silver rings gleaming dully on her dusty toes. She turned to glance at Kalyani; her covered head bowed, hands clasped tight to her sari, Kalyani shuffled several feet behind her. As they walked past the stately columns that supported the verandah, Rabindra’s rich tenor drifted out the French doors of the living room. A bored servant, slouching on the floor and leaning against a pillar, held out his hand as they passed. With a coquettish shake of her shoulder and a grimace, Gulabi dropped a coin into his hand. Without bothering to glance at them, the servant slipped the coin into a fold of his turban. Gulabi looked back to make sure Kalyani was following.

  They arrived at a spiral staircase made out of rusting metal. It was the servant’s staircase. Gulabi started up, but Kalyani hesitated at the foot of the stairs and looked back to the French windows from which came the sound of the singing.

  Gulabi turned and hissed, “You’ll be seen.”

  “Take me back,” Kalyani replied with uncharacteristic firmness. “I don’t want to go up—”

  Gulabi’s eyes grew wide in alarm. “Are you insane?”

  “I want to go back,” Kalyani insisted.

  “Then you tell that to the client yourself!” Gulabi grabbed Kalyani firmly by both wrists and all but hoisted her up the stairs. Kalyani was shocked by the steely strength in those swarthy arms.

  The singing grated on Narayan’s ears, and he finally walked across the room and clapped a hand over Rabindra’s mouth. His friend’s plump face felt too soft. Narayan leaned on the piano and smiled into Rabindra’s startled, bloodshot eyes.

  “To interrupt someone in the middle of a recital is an insult, Narayan.”

  Rabindra, offended, shut the piano with an air of injury and crossed the room to a large window.

  Narayan smiled, saying, “You can do the same when I sing.” He walked over to placate his friend. He glanced out of the window and caught sight of Gulabi perched like some large nightmarish parakeet on the balcony rail of a second-floor room.

  “Who’s that?” Narayan asked.

  “A eunuch, my father’s pimp. In proper English, a procurer,” Rabindra answered nonchalantly.

  Narayan looked pained by this answer. Rabindra shrugged and said, “There’s a famous saying . . . ‘Widows, bulls, slippery steps and holy men. Avoid these, and Enlightenment awaits.’”

  There was no overt reaction from Narayan. Rabindra left his pensive friend at the window and crossed the room to drape a doily over his head; in imitation of a lovestruck Juliet, he recited in falsetto, “‘Romeo, oh Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’”

  Narayan, exasperated, said, “Can’t you ever be serious?”

  Rabindra shrugged his shoulders and gave up his Juliet gig. He retrieved his wine and reclined on a chaise.

  Narayan began to lecture Rabindra. “Say you had a wife . . .”

  “I’m not married,” interrupted Rabindra.

  “Just imagine you were . . . and she died. And everything you’ve cared for is taken away from you.”

  “If you hadn’t met that widow, you wouldn’t be such a champion of their cause,” Rabindra interrupted acidly.

  Narayan was miserable. “I don’t even know how to see her again.”

  Rabindra, still refusing to acknowledge the strength of Narayan’s feelings for Kalyani, quipped, “Stand beneath her balcony and quote Romeo. People here don’t know Shakespeare.”

  “You disgust me. You really are a Brown Englishman! I’ll tell you one thing, Rabindra, your precious English are not going to last!” Narayan was almost shouting.

  “And who’s going to take their place? Your Gandhi?” said Rabindra sarcastically.

  “Of course,” answered Narayan with conviction.

  The friends sat in strained, unexpectedly hostile silence, and, after a few desultory attempts at polite conversation, Narayan stood up. “It’s quite late, I’d better go home.”

  Getting up to ring the bell, Rabindra said, “I’ll tell them to bring the carriage.”

  “Don’t,” Narayan said. “I prefer to walk.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Shakuntala’s eyes snapped open. She sat up, alarmed by the sounds of choking and laboured breathing. There was something wrong with Bua. Shakuntala lit the oil lamp and quickly went over to her. The old widow lay on her side, curled up like a shrivelled river-shrimp, writhing and gasping for air and moaning. Chuyia lay fast asleep on her mat alongside Bua’s. Shakuntala crouched next to Bua and felt for her pulse. A frown deepened the creases on her brow when she felt how thready it was. She sat down on the floor. Leaning close to Bua, stroking her arm, she spoke to her gently in her husky voice. “You’ll be all right. Don’t worry; I’m here,” she said reassuringly. She wiped beads of sweat off the skeletal brow, troubled by how quickly they formed again.

  “Take me outside. Take me outside.” Bua fretted and, speaking between her rasping breaths and moans, she said, “I want another laddoo. Hai Ram, I want a laddoo.”

  Despite the gravity of the situation, Shakuntala could not help but smile. Just then, Kalyani, who had heard the groans and rushed down the stairs, appeared at the doorway. She stood quietly, taking in the situation, ready to help however she could.

  Shakuntala murmured, “Try to sleep.” Then, as an afterthought, she asked her, “Do you want water?”

  “I want to die in the open,” was Bua’s heart-wrenching reply.

  “No!” Shakuntala gasped. With each passing moment she was becoming increasingly aware of how much Bua meant to her. Who else did she have? She bent her head to Bua’s chest, listening for her heartbeat.

  Kalyani, sensing time was short for Bua, intervened, saying calmly but firmly, “Didi, we should take her outside.”

  As they gently lifted the frail old woman and between them carried her out into the courtyard, they were shocked at how light she was. “Kalyani, lay out the mat. I’ll hold her,” Shakuntala instructed, taking Bua into her arms. Bua, who had become quiet, hooked a skinny arm around Shakuntala’s neck. Kalyani quickly spread the mat in the courtyard, and between them they gently laid her on it.

  Kalyani went in to fetch Bua’s thin, board-like pillow. She knelt beside Chuyia and, stroking her head, awakened her. “Chuyia, Bua is not well,” Kalyani said. Chuyia noticed the empty space where Bua’s mat should be; she gave a cry.

  “It’s all right. She’s outside. Come, let’s go.”

  Kalyani hastily rearranged her sari as Chuyia impatiently pulled away and ran out into the courtyard.

  The clay lamp burning beside Bua cast wavering shadows on her shrivelled face. Shakuntala sat leaning over her, as if sheltering her with her body, and held her hand tightly in hers. Chuyia and Kalyani sat on the verandah steps, huddled close. News had a way of travelling swiftly in the ashram, and one by one the widows came out from their various recesses to keep vigil; even Madhumati sat at watch.

  A hint of dawn began to dilu
te the night. A stray dog barked, and other dogs joined their desultory barking with his. A cock crowed in the distance. Madhumati sat on a chair Kunti had brought out for her; her takth was too far. She sighed dramatically and took charge. “Bua is so lucky,” she said, gazing indulgently at the dying woman and spreading her arms at the wonder of it. “Brahmin widows keeping a vigil. For free!”

  Snehlata shot her a dirty look, but the other widows ignored her customary coarseness. Shakuntala continuously whispered God’s name into Bua’s ear, “Ram, Ram, Ram . . .”

  After a long period of silence, during which a few widows went into the house to relieve themselves and hurried back to their vigil, Bua muttered, “Shakuntala! Holy water!”

  Shakuntala quickly turned to Chuyia and ordered, “Get some water from the river. Hurry!”

  Chuyia nodded solemnly, gratefully accepting the responsibility for carrying out this task for her beloved friend. She grabbed the steel pot that sat on the rim of the well and rushed out the doors of the ashram.

  As Chuyia hurried in the direction of the river, running part of the way, the air grew lighter and the sky paled. She passed small white temples, white goats, white statues of cows, men praying in the white dawn. She descended the stone steps leading down to the river and quickly filled the pot. Holding the pot in both hands, careful not to spill the water, she hurried back the way she had come. When she turned into the alley leading to the ashram, she was stopped by a voice she at once recognized. It was Narayan.

  “Chuyia! Remember me—Narayan?” He sat in a cradle formed by the roots of an ancient tree, leaning against its vast trunk, holding the book he was presumably reading in his hand. Chuyia wondered at his vigilance; he had known the instant she arrived in the alley and had called her name. Chuyia turned toward him and nodded “yes.”

  With a slight toss of his head toward the ashram, Narayan sheepishly asked, “Is Kalyani inside?”

  “Yes,” Chuyia replied. But, intent on her errand, she started to walk away. Looking back over her shoulder, she explained, “I have to go.”

  “Wait!” Narayan pleaded, calling her back. “Just a minute,” he said. Chuyia reluctantly came toward him. Quickly, he tore a page from his book, scribbled a note in Hindi, folded it small and then knelt in front of Chuyia so that he was looking up into her eyes and beseeched her, “Please take this to Kalyani?”

  For the second time in the span of one short morning, Chuyia accepted the responsibility of serving a friend. She brought her head forward in answer to his request and handed him the pot of water to free her hands. She took the note from Narayan and tucked it carefully into the waist of her sari. Then, taking back the pot, she walked purposefully off around the corner, water spilling from the pot as she went.

  Back at the ashram, Chuyia stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the courtyard, taking in the scene. Bua’s small form was wrapped in a white sheet and circled by a thick, shifting band of widows. She was lying on her back, eyes shut, her toothless mouth closed in a restful smile and covered with a tulsi leaf, silent and still. The widows were weeping, heads bowed. Madhumati sat in her chair indifferently fanning herself.

  “Didi, I’ve brought water,” Chuyia called to Shakuntala.

  Shakuntala turned slowly to meet her eyes. “You’re too late,” she said, her voice heavy with weariness and grief.

  Chuyia, dismayed, dropped the pot. It banged and splashed, as it bounced down the stairs. Chuyia turned and ran out of the ashram.

  “Chuyia!” Kalyani called after her.

  Shakuntala started to rise, but was stopped by Kunti who, turning to Madhumati, said coldly, “The money for the cremation?”

  There was complete silence.

  The widows turned and looked expectantly at Madhumati. She was ready with her excuses. “Every penny from Kalyani’s work goes to pay the rent.”

  Turning to Kunti, she ordered, “Go get Bua’s things.”

  Kunti hurried inside and quickly returned with a little bundle of ragged cloth, a begging bowl, a walking stick and a tattered grass mat. She crouched before it, opened the bundle and set it at Madhumati’s feet.

  Madhumati irreverently pawed through the contents with her big toe. There was an old sari and a tin box containing Bua’s sandalwood paste. “Nothing,” she pronounced, and shoved the bundle aside with her foot. The other widows immediately scrambled forward to fight for whatever they could grasp from Bua’s meagre belongings.

  Kalyani and Shakuntala stood apart. Shakuntala’s face was a mask of consternation and anguish; without the money for cremation, Madhumati would have Bua’s body placed in a sack and thrown into the river. Reading her thoughts, and fearing the same, Kalyani quietly opened a knot in her sari. She removed the few coins secreted there, and handed them to Shakuntala, saying: “Didi, I was saving these for my cremation.”

  “Oh! What a goddess!” Madhumati simpered with one of those flattering smiles she could conjure up at will. Absolved of all responsibility for the cremation, she stood up ponderously. Her aged bones creaked from sitting so long in an upright chair, and, calling upon two widows to assist her, she hobbled off to conduct business from her bed.

  CHUYIA PUSHED A SIX-INCH toy boat, with a leaf stuck in it for a sail, along the river with a stick. The day that had started off for her as white, a milky, disorienting white, with its white temples and white goats and white steps, was now beating down on her in a blinding glare that skewered her to the darkest reality. Bua was dead. A frail, old woman who had once been a little girl like her. She felt she was surrounded by the dead, hounded by death, by the constant stench of funeral pyres.

  With the natural acceptance of a child, Chuyia had initially taken the ghats and the funeral pyres in stride, viewing them as a component of city life. Rawalpur was the first big city she had seen, and to her mind all big cities were on the banks of rivers, lined with ghats and glowing with funeral fires. Now she wanted no part of this city of death. The monsoon-wash from the mountains muddied the blue waters with its rich silt and turned the Ganga into a raging torrent. Across the boiling river, on the other side, stretched garlands of trees, and behind them lush forests festooned with creepers that she knew were alive with birdsong and the fresh fragrance of fruit and flowers—and beyond that her village. The homesickness that had become a buried component of her being now came to the surface. How she ached for the soft comfort of her mother’s flesh, for baba, her brothers.

  Chuyia noticed a broken chain of marigold flowers between two rocks. As she picked it up, she recalled a prayer her mother had taught her to say for Prasad and Mohan by the village pond. Chuyia stepped up to the rough waves at the water’s edge and, releasing the flowers into it one by one, prayed:

  Oh, sacred pond; oh, holy flower!

  I worship you beneath the sky.

  A girl’s purity is my dower;

  My brothers live and blest am I.

  As the flowers bobbed away, she wondered: was her life with them, as Sadananda had tried to patiently explain, just maya, an illusion that went phut! and opened into another illusion in which she was a widow? If there were better illusions in store for her, she didn’t want them. She wanted to be back in her village home, back in a maya teeming with loved ones, with gooseberry bushes and wild leechee—orchards that miraculously produced tart, unripe mangoes and ripe mangoes more delicious than the sweet laddoo Bua had choked on.

  Chuyia’s body turned cold at the thought. She saw Bua, straight-backed, bring the yellow orb’s fragrance daintily to her nose, and then shove the whole laddoo into her mouth. She saw the hand clapped to her mouth. And then she saw her long, serpentine neck, so thin it was almost transparent, as the squished laddoo slithered down her throat. The muscles of her neck distended and contracted, bulged and contracted—and then Madhumati’s insistent summons called her away.

  Chuyia flung herself down on the stone, racked by sobs. She had killed Bua by giving her the laddoo. She had murdered the sweet old woman who loved her and
treated her as her best friend. When her crying was spent, she was surprised to see the toy boat with its leafy sail, still there, snagged between some pebbles and held to shore by the ripples. She picked up her stick and began pushing the boat downstream.

  Shakuntala had been searching frantically for Chuyia, calling for her everywhere. She spotted her playing with her stick along the river and was at once swamped by the conflicting emotions of relief and anger. Part of her wanted to smack the girl silly, and another to clasp her to her heart and never let her out of her sight.

  Drawing near to the girl, her consternation plain in her face, she scolded, “Where did you run off to? Don’t you ever listen? I’ve told you . . .”

  Chuyia interrupted the flow of her scolding words and disarmed Shakuntala with the simple truth of her statement, “You’re always angry.”

  Shakuntala lowered her gaze and collapsed to sit on the steps, feeling guilty for all the times she had been impatient with Chuyia. She felt old and drained from loss. Cut off for so long from her family, Shakuntala had made Bua her family. She sat down on the ghats and gently pulled Chuyia down to sit beside her.

  “I was going home to my village,” Chuyia confessed.

  “You can’t go home,” Shakuntala said, her heart aching for the child. She tried to search for words to console her.

  “I know,” Chuyia said, before Shakuntala could say anything.

  The resignation and finality in her voice tore at Shakuntala’s heart. She bent forward and looked closely into the wan face.

  Chuyia couldn’t meet her eyes. After a moment, as two tears slipped down her cheeks, she despondently said, “Bua ate a laddoo.”

  Shakuntala recalled the yellow stains at the corners of Bua’s mouth. She had wondered about it at the time but had forgotten about it in the ensuing chaos of her death.

  “Don’t worry,” she smiled. “After eating the laddoo, she’ll go to heaven.” She added wryly, “God willing, she’ll be reborn as a man!”