Water: A Novel (Bapsi Sidwha) Read online

  Chuyia scooted closer to Shakuntala and, turning, leaned her head on her chest. As the tenderness from the contact spread through her body, Shakuntala marvelled at the sweetness she felt. She tried to comfort the little girl. Chuyia’s sari had slipped from her shoulder, and she lay almost doubled over. Shakuntala noticed the swelling around her breasts. She wondered if they were incipient breasts, or just a fold in the flesh from the way she was hunched over. Still awkward with the mother-role she had unwittingly assigned to herself, she pushed Chuyia up and surreptitiously glanced at her chest. There was the faintest swell; only a mother’s anxious eye would notice it, she thought, smiling to herself, and then the smile froze on her lips as it occurred to her: or a man’s lusting eye. She quickly pulled the girl’s sari over her shoulder to cover her chest. Her concern making her voice severe, she said, “You’re growing up now; keep your chest covered.” Chuyia did not mind the severity: she sounded exactly like her mother, and she knew her concern for her was genuine.

  They sat in silence facing the river. After a while Shakuntala asked, “How old are you?”

  “Eight . . . Nine . . . I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know your birthday?”

  Chuyia shook her head. “No. Amma said I was born in the rainy season.”

  “Then your birthday could be today, tomorrow. I’ll tell you what; you can choose your birthday, and we will remember it. Will you like that?”

  Chuyia nodded uncertainly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kalyani came down the stairs discreetly. The widows were chanting a bhajan in the courtyard. Rocking back and forth on their haunches, raising their tired voices in song and juggling tambourines, they filled the evening with their melancholy hymns.

  Kalyani crossed the courtyard behind them and slipped into Shakuntala’s room.

  She stopped at the threshold. Shakuntala was mending a torn sari.

  “Didi?” she said.

  Shakuntala looked up from her work, as Kalyani came into the room and sat down on the floor. She wordlessly handed her the note from Narayan. She looked nervous. Shakuntala opened the note, and held it up to the light of the lamp. Without any preamble, she read it aloud in an even, dispassionate voice. “Kalyani, I would like to meet you tonight. At Karma Ghat. At the Shiva Temple. I will wait for you. Yours, Narayan.”

  As she listened to Narayan’s words, Kalyani’s face became flushed and she glowed with the rapture the words engendered. Shakuntala glanced at her and quickly turned her eyes away, but in that fleeing instant Kalyani knew she was pleased for her.

  Shakuntala folded the note into its original creases and silently handed it back to Kalyani.

  Kalyani, flustered, began to explain, “I met him with Chuyia.”

  “I didn’t ask,” Shakuntala replied dryly.

  “What should I do, didi?” Kalyani’s question was more a plea for help.

  “Don’t ask me,” Shakuntala replied, making it plain that she had only read out the letter and what Kalyani decided to do was entirely up to her. While she was happy that Kalyani had found love, she was all too aware of the dangers such a forbidden relationship could pose for her.

  Kalyani lowered her head and became thoughtful, quietly weighing the cost of going to meet Narayan against that of not going and losing this improbable, and, in all likelihood, her only chance at love.

  Shakuntala left Kalyani to her internal debate and wandered out into the courtyard. She needed to be by herself. She sat quietly, a little apart from the singing widows, finding a quiet space for herself in all that noise. She finally permitted her grief to take her wherever it chose. What difference did it make whether Bua was tied in an old jute-sack and dumped into a river or if she was burnt on a pyre? An old woman, who had once been young like her, was dead: and there was no one except herself, and perhaps the child, to mourn her. The poor widow had rotted in an ashram even though, like herself, she came from a family of landowners who had hounded her out of her house when her husband died. His brothers most likely didn’t want her to have a share in the inheritance, or their wives the care and feeding of this jinxed person whose karma it was to “eat up” her husband. Bua had told her that her two young sons had immediately been sent to another village, and whatever feelings they once had for their mother had dissipated over time. Bua was not allowed to write to her grandchildren because her sons found out that she sat on the streets of the Holy City with a begging bowl. Who had turned her into a beggar if not them? Bua had been widowed when she was about thirty-five. She had sung her lungs out till she was seventy. What for? A cup of rice and an occasional cowrie-coin flung at her? An old woman, who had once been young like her. And when she herself was an old crone, a younger widow would look at her and think, Some day, I too will be an old crone like her and I will die un-mourned. She remembered the time-honoured words known by all Hindu women, exhorting that the sight of the widow itself was something inauspicious, so inauspicious that if sighted at the beginning of an auspicious venture, the venture itself had to be postponed. Shakuntala felt a tug-of-war within her. Her common sense pitched against these age-old traditions practised simply because it was always so—these thoughts were running in opposing directions in her mind and heart.

  KALYANI LET HERSELF OUT THE DOOR of the ashram. It was quite late. She walked swiftly along a dark alley and stopped at a Krishna shrine at the end of a narrow gully, which ran along an open drain. The temple was fragrant with incense. There was a labyrinth of small spaces that appeared to occupy different levels, and the interior was bathed in the play of light and shadow from the flames of a hundred steadily burning oil lamps. They sat in rows on mantels, ledges, shelves, on the sides of steps and in alcoves, and the light they cast on the adobe walls was golden and calming. There was no one about at this hour, except the flute-playing Krishna ensconced in his sanctum. Kalyani prostrated herself before the image of the God who was filled with love and who loved with such abandon, marrying 8000 women who craved him for a husband and choosing from among his doting gopis whichever caught his fleeting fancy. She asked for the compassionate god’s permission to visit her lover, and at the same time for his forgiveness for what she was about to do. She asked for his blessing.

  Kalyani went to an extinguished oil lamp and with her finger lifted the soot from its wick. She carefully underlined each eye with the kohl on her fingertip: the temple was well known for the quality of its soot-kohl and sold it in tiny vials. She picked up an oil pradip, closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep, quavering breath. She stepped out into the dark and, with the light from the pradip, made her way down to the river.

  The river was a dark ribbon, except for the temple fires it reflected. Wisps of white smoke curled up against the black, star-pricked sky. A boat glided silently along the river. A gentle breeze carried to her the haunting, long-drawn-out notes of a flute. She stilled to listen, certain it was the same bansari-player she and Gulabi had heard in the boat that other night.

  Further down the river, at Karma Ghat, Narayan waited patiently for Kalyani. At fitful intervals he played the flute, or paced up and down along the river. He dared not let his hopes rise too high; he had a good idea of how much Kalyani would risk in coming to him.

  A temple, small and deserted, lay in ruins low on the ghats, its east wall open to the river. A black stone lingam nestled among the gigantic roots of an ancient banyan tree. Narayan waited beneath the enormous spread of its branches.

  Kalyani approached their meeting place, her head covered, her feet bare, still holding the pradip. She saw Narayan at once, sitting with his feet up on a stone bench and leaning against the tree; he was playing his flute. Kalyani felt her body drain of strength and her blood thud in her ear. Taken aback by the effect his physical presence had on her, Kalyani stood rooted to the earth and stared at him. When he finished playing and put his flute down, she announced her presence. “I’m here.”

  Narayan turned to Kalyani. She was a vision of beauty in her widow’
s white, lit by moonlight. He walked slowly towards her saying, “Neepam dhrashtva haritkapisham kesherre rardhyarudhe—ravirbhuta prathamkukulah kandalishvanukaccham. On the banks of the river, where the kadamba flowers bloom. . . .”

  Kalyani, not understanding his words, looked confused.

  His face radiating his joy, Narayan gazed at her and translated, “The kadamba is a flower so fragrant that people swoon in its presence.”

  Kalyani blushed. They sat down, well apart, on a stone ledge beneath the tree. It was lined with oil lamps. Kalyani looked straight ahead; she dared not look at Narayan.

  “It’s from Kalidas’s poem, ‘Meghdoot,’” Narayan explained, turning to Kalyani and gazing at her clean profile.

  Kalyani set her pradip down between them, and, keeping her head lowered and glancing shyly at Narayan from under her lids, confessed, “I can’t read. Shakuntala-didi read your letter.”

  Narayan was utterly enchanted. Every new facet of her was a revelation. Had she rattled off an obscure Sanskrit poem in riposte to his, he would have been equally enchanted.

  “Do you know what “Meghdoot is?” he asked.

  Kalyani shook her head, “No.”

  Narayan stood up and in an expansive, extravagant gesture stretched out his hand to the sky. “In Sanskrit, ‘megh’ means a rain cloud and ‘doot,’ a messenger. The poem is about the pain of separation between lovers.”

  As Kalyani raised her head to look at the clouds that were scuttling past the moon, the sari slid off her hair and her lovely features were lit by the candles and edged by moonlight. Narayan was mesmerized by her beauty and fell silent.

  “Go on,” urged Kalyani.

  Silently communicating his intent, Narayan glanced at her and stood up. Kalyani also rose, and as they walked together he continued the story.

  “The lover tells the cloud it resembles Lord Vishnu, disguised as Lord Krishna: ‘Gleaming with peacock feathers.’”

  “And the cloud hears him? How is that possible?” Kalyani, emboldened by his chatter, teased.

  “If we believe that a statue of a god can hear us, why not a cloud?”

  This Kalyani understood. Now she had a question of her own for Narayan. “Are you gentry? A seth?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Would it matter if I was?” said Narayan

  “Yes,” she said so softly, Narayan wondered if she’d answered at all.

  To tide over the sudden unease Narayan felt, he volunteered information about himself. “I just finished my law exams. I was studying in Calcutta.” And this time when he glanced at her, he took in the worn condition of her patched sari.

  “When did you become a widow?” he asked gently, his voice hesitant.

  They had wandered down to the river’s edge. Kalyani picked up a stone and threw it into the water; she intently watched the spreading ripples. “I don’t remember. Maybe when I was nine,” she said, uncomfortable with her status as a widow.

  “Was your husband good to you?” asked Narayan

  “I never met him,” Kalyani answered matter-of-factly.

  Narayan became quiet. They sat down side by side, the river lapping at the step below them.

  “Is there anyone else? Uh—in your house?” Kalyani asked awkwardly.

  “My mother, my father and Sadhuram, our old servant . . . my three younger sisters are in a boarding school in Nainital,” answered Narayan. He guessed what Kalyani was driving at, and put her at her ease. “No, I’m not married,” he said, laughing.

  Kalyani blushed, and her lips twitched in a smile. She was immensely relieved to learn this, but her relief was quickly replaced by surprise that such a desirable man was still unattached. “Good God! Why ever not?” she exclaimed.

  Shrugging, Narayan answered, “My father says, ‘Childhood is a time for play, not for marriage.’”

  “You’re a child?” Kalyani teased. “And your mother?”

  “If she had her way, I’d have a daughter as old as Chuyia.”

  “Your mother’s right. That’s how things are,” said Kalyani reasonably.

  “That’s how things were. Many of the old traditions are dying out,” Narayan said, speaking with a sobriety that underlined his assurance.

  Kalyani looked shocked. “All of them?” Before Narayan could answer, she added with conviction, “But what is good should not be allowed to die.”

  Narayan looked at her in amazement, surprised that a person who had suffered so much because of these very traditions would defend them in any way. “And who will decide what is good and what is not?” he asked her.

  “You!” Kalyani exclaimed playfully.

  They smiled at each other, and their eyes met, lingering shyly and tenderly. They sat in companionable silence, and watched the pink of dawn light spill into the river.

  THE WIDOWS LINED THE RIVER AT Tulsi Ghat, their teeth chattering in the cold. It was early dawn. A line of the palest pink edged the horizon. Using pulleys rigged to wicker baskets, in each of which burned a lamp, the widows raised the baskets. They prayed to the yellowing moon overhead, as trays heaped with marigolds and candles in their centres floated by. Chuyia wandered among the widows. A lumpy shape, covered in a white sheet strewn with flowers, followed the trays. Chuyia wondered if it was a corpse. She thought of Bua. The widows saw so little change in their routines, she would have enjoyed pulling up the baskets.

  Later that afternoon, the sky crackled with thunder and rain fell in torrential sheets. Chuyia came down the stairs from Kalyani’s room and ran quickly across the courtyard, trying not to get wet. By the time she entered Shakuntala’s room, she was soaked. Shakuntala looked up wearily; she was cutting dried coconut leaves.

  “Didi, when do we get food? I’m hungry,” said Chuyia.

  “Today we fast. It is Maha Shivratri. No food, no water. Come sit here,” said Shakuntala, bracing herself, expecting Chuyia to protest.

  When the protest didn’t materialize, Shakuntala asked, “What’s wrong? No tantrums?”

  Chuyia merely shrugged. She sat down beside Shakuntala and began to toy idly with a coconut leaf.

  This dulling of Chuyia’s feisty spirit concerned Shakuntala. “You’re getting used to this life,” she observed quietly.

  Chuyia was restive. “I have to go,” she said. “Kalyani’s telling me about Kalidas.”

  Shakuntala was surprised by this information and stared open-mouthed at Chuyia. “What?”

  “A poet,” Chuyia explained.

  Shakuntala’s stern features softened, and for the first time since Bua’s death she smiled. Chuyia ran out the door, eager to get back to Kalyani and her stories. Shakuntala wished she had stayed a bit.

  CHUYIA AND KALYANI LAY ON their mats in the covered portion of the balcony, looking contentedly at the rain. Its intensity had lessened, and the deafening clatter they had been subjected to when it pelted down on the corrugated-iron roof was reduced to a soothing drumming. Kalyani pointed to a cloud and instructed Chuyia, “‘Megh’ means cloud, and ‘doot’ a messenger.”

  “The Cloud Messenger,” repeated Chuyia.

  “Come on, let’s send a message,” suggested Kalyani. She closed her eyes in concentration, expecting Chuyia to do the same. When she opened them, Chuyia was stretched out on her stomach, her head resting on her hands, looking glum.

  “Did you send your message?” Kalyani asked.

  “I don’t want to send one.”

  Kalyani’s heart ached for Chuyia. The girl had abandoned all hope of returning to her family and her carefree life in the village. Kalyani remembered the slow draining of hope within her those many years ago when she began to realize that she could never go back.

  Madhumati’s imperious voice called out, “Kalyani!”

  They exchanged a glance, but neither stirred.

  “Why don’t you send one?” urged Kalyani, wanting Chuyia to reconsider.

  Kunti took over from Madhumati. “Kalyani! Have you gone deaf?” she yelled irritably from the courtyard, getting dre
nched in the rain. “Didi wants you.”

  Kalyani sighed. She got up slowly and went down the stairs, where she was met by a cold, wet and scolding Kunti.

  Kalyani stood in the door of Madhumati’s room, watching her feed chickpeas, one at a time, to her scraggly looking parrot. She didn’t bother to look at her.

  Madhumati crooned, “You are lucky, Mitthu. You don’t have to fast.” She laughed at her own joke and fed him another chickpea.

  “Yes, didi,” Kalyani announced her presence.

  “Come on in, child,” Madhumati said sweetly. She waddled to her bed and pulled a new white sari out from under her pillow. She held it out to Kalyani. “Here, this is for you,” she said, as if she were bequeathing a family heirloom.

  Kalyani, knowing full well the significance of this “gift,” did not care to conceal her resentment. She took the sari indifferently and turned to go.

  “Wait, child,” Madhumati said, stopping her. “Come, sit next to me,” she coaxed. Kalyani looked at her with foreboding. The last time Madhumati had given her a new sari and spoken to her in these syrupy tones, she had been sent to a house outside Rawalpur, where she had been brutalized and Gulabi had had to come to her rescue. It had taken her a long time to recover from the gang rape, and a penitent Madhumati had become more selective of her clients.

  Kalyani had somehow learned to compartmentalize her life. Her childhood was in one box, and occasionally she opened it and let the happy memories spill out. Her meetings with Narayan were locked up in another box she kept close to her heart and opened frequently. She kept her nocturnal calls in a recessed box hidden even from herself and allowed it open only when she was doing business for Madhumati.

  “Learn to live like a lotus,” Krishna had said in the Gita, “untouched by the filthy water.” Kalyani had taken these words to heart and had learned to live by them. This way, her life was made bearable, and the transactions with the clients did not poison her day-to-day hours or her relationships with others.