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BHISHAM SAHNI
Basanti
Translated from the Hindi by Shveta Sarda
PENGUIN BOOKS
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
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Copyright
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PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
Basanti
BHISHAM SAHNI (1915–2003) was an iconic writer who transformed the
landscape of Hindi literature. Sahni was fluent in several languages—
Punjabi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and English—and his oeuvre encompassed a
wide range of literary forms: novels, short stories, plays, essays. Tamas, his
best-known novel, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975 and was
subsequently adapted into a National Award–winning film by Govind
Nihalani. His other well-known novels include, among others, Jharokhe
(published in Penguin Classics as Boyhood), Basanti and Mayyadas Ki
Marhi (published in Penguin Classics as Mansion). Sahni also wrote
numerous short stories (a selection of which has been published in Penguin
Classics as Middle India), six plays and a biography of his brother, the
eminent film and stage actor Balraj Sahni. His autobiography, Aaj Ke Ateet,
is published in Penguin Classics as Today’s Pasts.
Born in Rawalpindi, Sahni later went to college in Lahore. In his youth
he became involved with the Indian People’s Theatre Association as well as
the Indian National Congress. After Partition, he settled down in Delhi and
began to teach at Delhi University. From 1957–63, he moved to the USSR
to work as a translator at the Foreign Languages Publishing House, before
returning to Delhi. He edited the literary journal Nayi Kahaniyan from
1965–67, and was the general secretary of the All-India Progressive
Writers’ Association from 1975–85.
Sahni was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1998, and the Shalaka
Samman, the Delhi government’s highest literary prize, in 1999.
SHVETA SARDA is the translator of Trickster City (Bahurupiya Shehr) by
Azra Tabassum et al (Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2010), co-editor of
Cybermohalla Hub (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2012), and editor of With an
Untimely Calendar (National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 2014).
Between 2001 and 2013, during her time at Delhi’s creative adventure
called Sarai, she worked with writers and practitioners in working-class
neighbourhoods across the city.
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Tamas
Today’s Pasts
Mansion
Boyhood
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To Sheila
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Early that morning, when Chaudhary stepped out on to the lane, the air
was saturated with mist—bluish and bleary, the kind that we all wake up to
sometimes, that seems to appear out of nowhere and cover everything. The
wind was chilly, skin-prickling. Chaudhary looked up at the sky, at the
thick, beige clouds that had gathered through the night and now hung quite
low. ‘It’s going to rain. It’s sure to rain today,’ he muttered to himself. Even
though the clouds seemed to be holding the morning back, the
neighbourhood was waking up and, for many, the day had begun. His
neighbour Bisesar’s wife, Jamuna, started her daily walk up the incline
towards the tap with a pot on her head. Nearer the tap, Gobindi had already
readied her tea shop for business, and Chaudhary could see the flame of the
lantern she had lit, even through the thick air. He turned and ran his gaze
down the incline. All the houses, small and packed closely together on
either side of the uneven path, were stirring awake. Outside most of the
doors, women had begun to light up clay stoves. Girls were stepping out,
their heads and faces covered, to begin their day of work at other people’s
houses. The road that fronted the neighbourhood was already busy, and
Chaudhary could hear the horns of cars and trucks, though he found them
muffled today, as if they too were coated in mist.
Even the slightest sign of rain always left Chaudhary irritated. Today the
clouds were thick and there was a haze as well. There’s no point in my
going to the adda today. Who’s going to venture out for a haircut or bother
with a shave in such weather? Another day ruined. Gloomily, he dipped his
hand into the pocket of his blue kurta and pulled out a beedi. But instead of
sitting down in front of his own door, he started towards Gobindi’s tea shop.
Heera and Dhanna and some others had been to meet the sahib yesterday.
They were gone all day. It’ll be good to find out what they achieved and
what was ruined. People—sometimes few, sometimes many—gathered at
the tea shop for a while every morning before leaving for work. Some were
sure to be there today as well.
As Chaudhary neared Gobindi’s shop, he could tell that a meeting was
afoot. He heard Heera’s agitated voice before he reached the tea shop, ‘We
pleaded with him, “Sir, we are masons. We make houses for people, and
today there’s uncertainty about our own houses. It’s thanks to us that people
have shelters, and now we are in danger of losing the roofs over our heads.
Don’t make us homeless in the rains.”’
‘What did sahib say to this?’ someone asked.
‘Sahib is a fair man. He heard us out patiently. The higher-ups are always
fair; it’s always those lower down the hierarchy who are bastards,’
Chaudhary heard Heera say.
He stepped into the tea shop.
‘So then did you succeed in convincing the higher-ups?’ Chaudhary
asked as he settled down on a raised platform. There were about seven or
eight men in the shop. Heera was still wearing the Rajasthani turban, white
clothes and black waistcoat that he’d put on the previous day to meet the
sahibs.
No one paid Chaudhary any attention. Even though he’d been living here
for years, he was still considered an outsider because of his caste. The men
in the room were all Rajputs, and Chaudhary was an Ahir. They were headmasons and skilled labour, while he was a barber. They were a well-knit
community with their own panchayat, and he had no deep ties with his own
caste community. There were barely three or four Ahir households in the
neighbourhood and even they lived apart.
Heera continued without paying heed to Chaudhary’s question: ‘It was
only when sahib passed our case to an officer lower in rank that things
started going downhill. He told us to talk to him and that he would explain
things to us. That was that. Truth be told, a voice within me told me the
moment this lower-level officer entered the room that this was the
beginning of the end. Sahib had handed the rope that tethered the cow over
to the butcher. I knew there was no hope left.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean “Why”? We couldn’t get a word in after that. The
officer took us to his room and announced his decision—“The basti will be
demolished.” Ask Ramprakash. He’d barely opened his mouth and the
officer shut him up with a reprimand, “The government’s decision is final.
There’s nothing to discuss.” Now tell me, is this the way to talk to another
man? Our destinies are in God’s hands, but at least we can all be civil to one
another. What does he gain by being rude? Fate favoured you and you
became an officer. It passed us by and we ended up as masons and
labourers. But hell, at least you can be civil. You don’t have to humiliate us.
We’re standing at your doorstep, pleading with you. Why drag our honour
through mud? Our forefathers were landlords too; we too have land to till in
Rajasthan. It’s the drought that made us leave, brought us to Delhi to earn
for our families. At least you can be civil!’ Heera used the line, At least you
can be civil, like it was the refrain of some song.
It was clear to Chaudhary that their cause had been lost. Before leaving
to meet the ‘sarkar’ the previous day, the three who had accompanied Heera
had stopped at Chaudhary’s for a shave. All of them were dressed in
traditional Rajasthani clothes—they had turbans on their heads, their eyes
were lined with kohl, they wore overflowing frock-shirts and carried freshly
oiled staffs. ‘You’re all dressed up; you’ve even lined your eyes with kohl,’
Chaudhary had said playfully. ‘Now make sure you achieve what you’re
setting out to do; don’t return empty-handed like last time.’ But the officer
gave them no quarter. Rather, he threatened to have them roughed up by the
peon if they didn’t leave.
‘It’s all a matter of luck. Last time the sahib we’d met heard us patiently
for almost two hours. He had stalled the file and staved off the demolition.’
‘You should’ve met the same sahib yesterday. He’s the one you should’ve
pleaded with.’
‘But that’s just what I’m saying. When fate turns against you, even those
things that seemed sorted get laid to waste. We went to that same sahib’s
office. But he wasn’t there. He doesn’t work there any more. He would
definitely have found a way for us.’
‘So then?’
‘What could we have done? We’d gone with our backs bent; we’ve
returned with our hands tied.’
‘Go meet a different officer. Go meet a minister.’
Moolraj interjected, ‘I’d always said this land isn’t ours; there’s no deed
in our name; we shouldn’t make our houses pucca with cement and bricks.’
‘We’d have lived under thatched roofs if it were a question of a few days.
But when you live somewhere for years, you make pucca houses, and that’s
what we did. It’s no crime!’
Moolraj, sitting on an iron chair, with his legs folded up on the seat, was
puffing hard at his beedi. Despite the clouds, he must have been
whitewashing a house the previous day, since there was a slight spatter of
paint on his hands and feet, and even a couple of drops on his face.
‘So what does everyone think? Should we stay home and not leave the
basti today?’
‘No, there’s no sense in losing a day’s work. It’s not like they’re going to
start immediately. Even after they evict us, it’ll be at least a month or two
before they actually pull down our houses. And the file first needs the
approval of higher-ups. Such things take time.’
‘Who knows, maybe the demolition will be postponed yet again. No one
knows what’s in the sahib’s heart.’
‘We’d been given a month’s notice a month ago,’ Chaudhary said. His
eyes were filled with doubt.
‘Notices are nothing to worry about. Notices are sent out daily.’
Sitting by the kettle in which she was boiling tea, Gobindi said, ‘You men
folk just sit around trembling and feeling terrified. Take me along when you
go to meet a government official the next time. I’ll teach him a lesson he
won’t forget.’
‘And what does Your Highness suppose she’ll say to him?’
‘That the land on which our houses stand should be transferred in our
name. That we’ll pay for the land. That we’ve spent our own money on
making our houses—why should anyone break them? They’re breaking our
homes and laying our money to waste. And you men couldn’t get yourself
to say this much? You just pranced about in your frocks and came back.’
‘She has a point, Heera,’ Moolraj said. ‘That really is what we should’ve
said.’
‘Isn’t that what we’ve been saying for years? But to speak, one needs a
listener. Someone needs to listen! Why one, I can give you ten ideas. I’m no
novice; I’ve constructed innumerable houses with my own hands.’
‘Let’s go again today and take Gobindi along. What do you say, Heera?
You’re even dressed to go,’ Chaudhary jested.
Heera shook his head, ‘If only we could get a fair hearing from a good
sahib.’
Chaudhary got up and left in silence.
The basti was as if a miniature Rajasthan had sprouted along a road in the
middle of Delhi. After Independence, Delhi had expanded. The construction
of new colonies drew artisans and labourers to the capital. Droughts and
floods chased people out of their homes and took them to faraway lands.
Entire families, single men and even young boys and lads poured into the
city. From Rajasthan, from the villages of Haryana and Punjab, and from
the far south too. Though the masons were mostly from Rajasthan,
washermen and barbers, and paan- and tea-sellers, and so many more from
other parts of the country trickled into Delhi in search of work. Innumerable
small houses made with impermanent material came up whenever the
foundations of any newly planned colony were laid. Lives began to be lived
amid mounds of iron, steel, bricks and stones, in which meals consisted of
thick rotis, where children treated the stretches of construction material as
their playgrounds, and to which groups of women returned each night
singing songs after their day of hard labour. And so, the clusters of fragile
huts began to brim over with the warmth and intimacy of life. However,
once the construction of a planned colony was completed, the artisans who
made them would vanish, their huts replaced by streets and roads, and
verandas would hem themselves in with fences and boundary walls. The
city routinely erased all signs of these other houses as if they’d never been
there.
But when the construction of Ramesh Nagar was completed, the workers’
houses stayed. These huts stood a little apart from the colony, on a vestigial
mound at the cusp between two crooked roads, a step away from the main
road. Initially, it was just a sprinkling of huts on the lower gradient of the
mound. Then, slowly, it turned into a small cluster of huts. And in time, it
became a habitat that began climbing up the mound. The cracks and gaps
between houses turned into slips and lanes. Inhabitants called their relatives
and friends to come and live with them: It’s a big city; come on over,
opportunities for work will turn up. There really was no dearth of work in
Delhi. When the construction of Ramesh Nagar concluded, work on the
neighbouring South Ramesh Nagar began, and soon after that it was time
for West Ramesh Nagar to be built. And then soon after that, the nearby
Pandav Nagar came up. The city was expanding and newer colonies
constantly needed to be constructed.
The makeshift huts on the mound began to change as well. The clutch of
huts flowered into a settlement, an active hub from which women stepped
out to do domestic work in the neighbouring middle-class colonies and men
took buses to distant construction sites. Their settlement was beautiful.
Women wore lehengas and tinkling anklets, and the outside walls of houses
were painted bright with murals of peacocks, elephants and the blue
warhorse, Chetak. It was a slice of Rajasthan in the middle of Delhi, and it
stunned passers-by. Temporary migrants to the city became its permanent
residents. This was home. Caste panchayats were set up and people no
longer needed to travel back to their villages to solemnize marriages. Clay
stoves sprouted along unpaved lanes, and then, gradually, the lanes were
paved. Through various manoeuvres, three water outlets were tapped out of
a nearby municipal pipeline. Grocery shops came up within the lanes. When
Gobindi’s husband died after falling from the roof he was constructing, the
panchayat was convened and it proposed, and set up, a tea shop for her.
Alongside the houses in which they lived, the fabric that held the residents
together also strengthened.
A new generation was born and grew up in the neighbourhood, a
generation that had never set foot in Rajasthan, and which was unabashedly
urban. For these boys and girls, the basti was home and the lanes of the
neighbouring Ramesh Nagar were theirs to run around in. Girls wore
lipstick and sported bindis on their foreheads. They went to photo studios
and loved television, which they watched in other peoples’ homes by
peeping in through windows. Radios and cassette players blared in the lanes
of the neighbourhood and there was no film song the youngsters didn’t
know. And there were scandals too. Sahu’s daughter, Radha, mother of two,
ran away with a bus conductor, an outsider to the neighbourhood. Boys
drank, gambled and loafed around. When they gathered in Gobindi’s tea
shop, the older generation often puzzled over how to restrain this emerging
generation.
Barbers, washermen, shoemakers and others from Uttar Pradesh and
Haryana also settled along the main road, at the foot of the mound on which
this basti of Rajasthanis had taken root. These people belonged to castes
different from that of the Rajasthanis and though they wouldn’t inter-marry,
mingling was not forbidden and friendships were not taboo. Chaudhary, a
barber, initially lived near the main road, but upon the death of an old
woman who lived right in the middle of the basti, he shifted into her place
and set up his barber’s chair right outside the basti. And in this way, by
virtue of having lived there for many years, he had managed, somewhat, to
become a part of the life of the basti.
Having left the meeting that probably still continued at Gobindi’s tea
stall, he walked briskly down the incline. ‘There’s no time,’ he muttered to
himself. ‘If something must be done, it has to be now.’ He quickened his
pace some more. There was a deep restlessness in his small eyes. Tall and
dark, shoulders bent, walking intently—he looked just like a bear.
There was a nip in the air. The mist had begun to condense. Fine droplets
had gathered enough momentum in the wind to tickle the bare skin. The air
began to clear; lanes got busier and colours brighter. Stoves were beginning
to be lit to prepare food for men who would soon be leaving for work.
Women who worked had left earlier; their work day began before that of the
men.
As Chaudhary walked past his house, he saw his wife by the stove—
middle-aged and dressed as she usually was at home, in untidy clothes.
‘You’re late,’ she called out to him as he walked on past her. ‘Aren’t you
going to work today?’ she said, sucking air into her edentate mouth, ready
to blow into the stove again. ‘Who do you think is going to come for a
shave in this weather? Is it going to be your father?’ Chaudhary replied
irritably, without stopping. ‘Can’t you see the clouds?’
‘Should I make you some tea?’ she offered.
Chaudhary didn’t stop. ‘Wake Basanti,’ he yelled back. ‘Hear me? Wake
up Basanti. Get her tidied up. I’ll be right back.’
He walked briskly down the incline and stopped at the tailor’s shop.
Bulakiram, a broom in one hand, the other supporting his back, was
hobbling about on his good leg, sweeping the floor outside his shop. Ladies’
long skirts and blouses, children’s kurta-pyjamas, caps and several other
clothes hung from a taut rope tied high above a raised platform.
‘You’ve set up already. You’re always busy.’
‘Welcome, welcome, Chaudhary,’ Bulaki straightened his back. ‘What
brings you here so early in the morning? Come, sit.’ He pulled down a stool
from the platform and offered it to Chaudhary. And then, almost
immediately, he fired his favourite question at him, ‘You do remember your
promise, don’t you?’
‘What has been promised to you is yours. It’s safe with me and it can be
yours whenever you want.’ Chaudhary steadied his gaze on Bulaki’s face.
‘Even today, if you like,’ he added.
An odd squeal escaped Bulaki’s throat and his body swelled with joy.
‘And it won’t be like last time? I don’t want to arrive with my guests in a
procession behind me and learn that your daughter has swallowed poison.’
‘Let us do away with the hassle of a marriage procession this time and
wrap up everything quietly.’
‘You put your own house in order, Chaudhary. I’ll do whatever it takes to
bring my bride home,’ Bulaki protested.
‘Twelve hundred rupees.’ Chaudhary’s voice was deliberate. Fixing his
eyes on Bulaki’s face, he underlined, ‘Marry her today if you like.’
‘What! Why? What?’ Bulaki was blubbering. ‘We agreed on eight
hundred,’ he found his voice again. ‘And you’ve taken six hundred as
advance. You’re going back on your word. This isn’t right, Chaudhary. A
man shouldn’t go back on his word . . .’
‘Twelve hundred. Agree, and you’ll be married today. Give me four
hundred now and the remaining two hundred after you take your bride
home.’
‘Why twelve hundred? What for? The deal was for eight.’
‘Well, I’m only talking to you because we had made a deal. There’s no
dearth of offers for her. The girl’s not even fourteen yet and I’m handing her
over to one like you. Accept my terms and she’s yours.’
‘And she’ll be at my house today?’
‘Yes. Within the hour if you like.’
‘Do I have your word?’
‘You have my word.’
‘You’ve gone back on your promise twice before.’
‘Do you really think I’ll betray you? We’ve grown up together, Bulaki.
Have I ever let you down? Now don’t delay things. Give me the money and
begin preparing for the wedding.’
‘What money? I’ve given you six hundred already.’
‘Give me four hundred more. That’ll become one thousand in all. And the
remainder after the ceremony.’
Bulaki looked at Chaudhary with slanting eyes for a long while. His lust
was slowly winning over his doubt and suspicion. But he was wary because
he’d been let down twice before. The first time, his marriage procession had
reached Chaudhary’s house and Chaudhary had sent him away saying
Basanti had swallowed rat poison and was unconscious. The other time he’d
finished making preparations when Chaudhary appeared at his door and
said the girl had gone away to her sister’s. Promising the wedding after her
return, Chaudhary had even managed to squeeze two hundred rupees out of
him. And after that, for days on end, he’d evaded an answer to when
Basanti was coming back.
Bulaki retrieved a tin from under a mound of unstitched cloth. ‘I’m
taking you on your word, Chaudhary. Now it’s up to you—do as your
conscience tells you,’ he said. ‘Here’s two hundred rupees.’
‘Two hundred! Why?’
‘That’s all I have at the moment. I’ll give you the rest once my bride
comes home. Now tell me, how many guests should I bring? And should I
organize a priest, or will you?’
‘Two hundred more, and we’ll talk.’
‘I don’t have more. Would I refuse you if I did? You have my word.’
Then he touched Chaudhary’s chin and said cajolingly, ‘This is all I have.
I’ll have the rest for you by the evening.’ But after all this, he finally did
pull out another fifty rupees from the tin.
‘I swear to God, I’ve been saving this money for my queen, my goddess
of wealth, Basanti. Shouldn’t I have something to give her when she comes
home? I’d kept it aside for her, and now it’s yours.’
Chaudhary stuffed the money into his pocket and got up to leave. ‘Don’t
stall things now. Hurry over to our house and bring a priest along. I want
everything completed today itself.’
Bulaki leaped up just as Chaudhary was leaving. ‘I’ve stitched two sets
of clothes for my queen, Basanti, with my own hands. Take one with you. I
want her to come to my house wearing it.’ He rushed into his shop and
brought out a yellow long skirt, a green blouse and a deep-red dupatta
studded with shiny white sequins. He stroked them as he handed them to
Chaudhary. ‘Here, take these,’ he said. ‘Let there be no more delays. I’ll be
right behind you, a priest in tow.’
When Chaudhary reached his house, the clothes tucked under his arm, his
wife was still in the lane, stoking the fire.
‘Is she awake? Here, get her into these. The groom is on his way. Our
daughter is getting married today. I’ve worked everything out.’
‘You’ll get her married in this weather? Today?’
‘What are you blabbering about? Didn’t you hear me? Everything’s
settled. Are weddings not allowed on cloudy days?’
But when he stepped into the house, he saw that his daughter was still
asleep on the cot, lost to the world, her arm hugging her younger brother,
Ramu. Chaudhary lost his temper. He landed a hard punch on her back.
‘You wretch!’ he screamed. ‘You’re still sleeping! Get up!’ He yanked her
up by her hair.
Basanti woke up with a start. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t fully
awake yet. In the dark of the room, she searched for her father’s face on his
massive body. She heard her mother, standing near him, yelling at her, ‘You
wretch, are you going to sleep all day? Can’t you see how your mother
works all day? Get up! Go wash your face.’
Her eyes half open, Basanti looked in her mother’s direction and,
somewhere in her slumbered state, wondered if her mother was going to hit
her. Ma screams before she hits, while Bapu stays quiet while he beats.
That’s probably why she’s more scared of Bapu. When Ma gives her a
beating, she hits her continuously on the back till she manages to escape,
while Bapu hits her just once but packs all his energy into that single punch,
enough to knock the living daylights out of her.
Just then, Basanti’s eyes fell on the new, colourful clothes that her mother
was holding. She became fully awake instantly.
‘Get up! Go out to the tap and wash yourself,’ her mother was screaming.
Basanti jumped up and ran out of the house.
Chaudhary too stepped out. That’s when he heard an unfamiliar,
indistinct rumbling. It seemed to be reaching here from quite far, definitely
from outside the neighbourhood. It wasn’t a very clear sound. It seemed
muffled by the mist and the clouds. But it had Chaudhary’s full attention.
He strained his ears. ‘What’s that sound?’ Chaudhary asked his next-door
neighbour Ramu’s wife. ‘Can you hear it?’
‘No, I don’t hear anything.’
Chaudhary turned to look at the people walking up and down the lane.
They too didn’t seem to have heard anything. Bisesar’s old, blind mother
was sitting outside her house. ‘Maiyya, do you hear that?’ Chaudhary asked
her.
‘Yes, I hear it,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s coming from the left. What is it?’
Chaudhary’s suspicions deepened and he stood where he was, listening
intently.
Basanti walked up the busy lane, her spirit rising with every step. She saw
her friend Shamo sitting outside her house with her younger brother, busy
with a piece of jaggery—she broke it into two and gave one half to her
brother.
‘We had our photo taken yesterday, Basanti!’ Shamo called out. ‘Come
here, I’ll show you. Do you want to see it?’
‘Where did you have it taken?’
Shamo darted into her house and came back with an envelope.
In the photo, Shamo was standing with her friend Jamuna, their arms
around one another’s necks, smiling at the camera.
‘Look . . . you can even see the kohl lining our eyes,’ Shamo said. ‘We
applied kohl before having our photo taken. The photographer had already
told us that rouge wouldn’t show.’
‘Did you apply rouge?’
‘Yes, of course, we both did. And lipstick too. Jamuna wore a long green
skirt and I wore a red one. But they both look the same here. The
photographer had told us they’d look alike.’
Basanti returned the photo to Shamo. ‘I’m going to watch a movie on TV
today,’ she said dismissively, wanting to make it clear that having a photo
taken was no big deal and it wasn’t going to impress her. ‘They’re showing
a movie this evening.’
‘Which one? Where are you going to see it?’
‘At Devki bibi’s house. No one else is allowed.’
Shamo wasn’t about to be put down that easily. ‘I got anklets made. Do
you want to see them? They cost ten rupees.’
But before Shamo could show her the anklets, Basanti remembered her
father’s punch on her back and sped off in the direction of the tap.
Chaudhary stood rooted to the spot. The rumbling had grown deeper. The
lane was filling with people. All eyes searched for the source of the sound.
Everyone, it seemed, recognized it but, unwilling to let themselves believe,
stood still, quietly listening. Chaudhary glanced up the incline. Even
Gobindi was perched on the raised platform in her shop, her body leaning
with concentration in the direction of the sound.
Everyone saw the young boy running up the incline.
More people came out into the lane.
‘Didn’t I say . . . I told you . . .’ Gobindi’s voice travelled down the
incline.
The spell was broken; everyone started walking towards the road.
‘What is it, Manva?’ Chaudhary called out to the boy as he drew closer.
‘It’s the police. There are trucks everywhere,’ Manva was panting.
‘They’re here to break our houses.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To find Heera.’
The good luck charm Manva had strung through a black thread around
his neck swung from side to side on his bare chest.
All those who had been standing anxiously on either side of the lane now
began to run. The crowd at the bottom of the incline swelled.
Colour drained from Chaudhary’s face; his lips moved involuntarily.
Khhuddd! It sounded like a boulder had been flung into a well. A cloud of
dust rose from where the houses lined the road. There was chaos at the
bottom of the incline. Everyone had turned; they were running towards their
homes. Cans and pots and bundles and trunks—men and women withdrew
their belongings from their houses. The scene had changed completely in
the blink of an eye.
Heeralal, Moolraj and Shambhu, who had stepped out of Gobindi’s shop
to look, were still wearing their turbans and frock-shirts from their meeting
with the sahib. Manva stood beside them, trying to catch his breath.
Heeralal, his face pale, his lips moving wordlessly, took his turban off,
tucked it under his arm and started walking towards his house. He lived
further on, beyond the shop. Moolraj and Shambhu removed their turbans
as well and hurried towards their homes. Gobindi poured a bucket of water
on the stove, dousing the fire.
Gango ran up the incline. A voice called out to her, ‘What is it, Gango?
What’s happening down there?’
‘They’re breaking our houses,’ she answered without stopping. ‘Police
trucks are everywhere. I was at work cleaning utensils when I got to know.
Gather up whatever you can, as soon as you can. Otherwise you’ll lose
everything.’
Trunks, sacks and cans piled up in front of every house. People hurried
down the incline, their belongings on their heads, tripping and stumbling in
their haste. The neighbourhood grew louder and louder.
Gobindi had quickly gathered up all the cups, saucers, pots and pans
from her shop in a heap on the platform. Where should I take these? How
am I going to carry all this? she wondered as she grew despondent, sat
down beside them and started to cry.
Chaudhary, who’d been standing in the same spot, bewildered, suddenly
called out, ‘Basanti! Basanti!’
People continued to hurry down the incline with their sacks and cans,
even their cots. The flow thickened. Cloud after cloud of dust rose from the
far edge of the neighbourhood. Some people, especially the women, their
heads covered with chadors, stood silently and watched, refusing to believe
that they were going to have to leave their homes.
The silhouette of a man on the roof of a house dissolved into a thickening
cloud of dust. The outline of a man bent over on a roof, picking at it with a
pickaxe, grew darker inside another cloud of dust. With every rising cloud
of dust, the air would fill with cries. Each time the laments ebbed, a
resounding thud . . . thud . . . thud . . . filled the silence. And then, another
cloud of dust.
Basanti had only just reached the tap when the events that now gripped
the neighbourhood began unfolding. At first, she’d stood by the platform in
Gobindi’s tea shop, gaping about her. But it didn’t take her long to
understand that the centre of all the action was that place from where dust
was rising. She sprinted in that direction, like a doe in a forest.
Chaudhary stood outside his house. His household things lay in a heap in
the lane. Basanti’s mother was dipping in and out of the house, shifting out
the smaller utensils now. She was sobbing, but other than that she looked
like she usually did—the tangle of her uncombed hair fell on her face, some
of the buttons of her shirt were unfastened, and her saree was greasy and
torn in many places. Chaudhary called out Basanti’s name one more time
and then started to load items on to his wife’s head. First came a trunk.
Basanti’s mother stood still, sobbing quietly. The trunk was followed by a
canister of flour. ‘That’s all,’ she said, ‘no more.’ Chaudhary then placed the
bag that contained the implements he used as a barber, on top of the
canister. Basanti’s mother felt her knees buckling. ‘Are you going to kill
me?’ she protested loudly. Chaudhary continued with a brusque, ‘Who’s
going to come to help us? Is it going to be your father?’ Next came the brass
trough that she used for kneading dough and, finally, the water pot that she
used for cooking.
Where’s Basanti, that wretch? She could have carried some stuff.
Chaudhary took a quick look around. The cots and the chair he used for
seating his clients would have to be left behind. The low wooden stool, the
grinding stone and half a dozen tin cans that had been gathered up outside
the house for taking along would also have to be left here. He went into the
house. His son, Ramu, was still asleep on the cot. My dear boy. I’ll wake
him up after all the work is wrapped up. Chaudhary covered him with a
jacket and picked him up, rested his head gently on his shoulder, and began
the descent down the incline.
The clouds finally burst and it began to rain.
‘It’s raining,’ Chaudhary addressed the man who was walking alongside
him. ‘Maybe they won’t break any more today.’
The man, who had somehow managed to balance two heavy trunks on his
head, and had a big bundle squeezed tightly under his arm, squinted in
Chaudhary’s direction. ‘What does it matter now, Chaudhary?’ he said,
continuing carefully down the incline. ‘If not today, it’ll happen tomorrow.
They’re not going to let anyone stay here now.’
Though the incline was paved with bricks and in places with tiles as well,
a thick layer of mud had settled over it. With the rains, and with so many
people walking up and down, it was more slippery than usual.
All of a sudden, Basanti’s mother skidded and fell, landing on the ground
squarely on her bottom. The lid of the canister flew open and the flour
spilled out on the lane. No one stopped. The flour became indistinguishable
from the wet mud in no time. Luck had saved Basanti’s mother: the canister
had fallen behind her, and the trunk to her left, sparing her. She could just as
well have been grievously injured. She was crying but she got up quickly
and, with one hand supporting her back, began to gather up all her
belongings. Chaudhary was carrying a bucket in one hand and holding
Ramu with the other. He did not feel the need to wake up his son so they
might both carry some of the things and lighten her load.
Carting their pots and pans, cots and trunks through rain that was now
lashing down, the men and women jostled for space. There was commotion
all the way up the slope. Not only was the path littered with things people
had pulled out of their homes in the hope of taking with them but had
eventually discarded, it was also becoming increasingly laden with things
people had managed to carry with them but had misplaced on the way: a cot
here, a large pot and small tin cans there. Once something fell in this melee,
it was as good as lost.
Taken by surprise by a sudden thrust from the crowd behind her, Gango
chachi, Shamo’s mother, a trunk on her head, child clasped to her bosom,
lost her foothold. She regained her balance somehow and held on tightly to
her child, but the trunk fell. All the clothes she had packed into it came
tumbling out as it hit the ground. The crowd pushed on ahead; people
trampled over the clothes in their haste. Her red dupatta, bedraggled, now
crushed like a brown ball, rolled away from her. Gango chachi broke into
tears. She made a fierce attempt at retrieving the trunk but was pushed
down the incline by the unrelenting crowd.
The nimble-footed Basanti threaded her way carefully through the rally of
people to where houses were being broken. Her curious eyes soaked in the
scene before her. Four helmet-wearing, baton-wielding policemen guarded
the lane. Protective metal mesh hung from the sides of their helmets. These
men were regulating the flow of people emerging from different lanes,
directing them away from the lane they were guarding and into the one to
their left. In addition to the helmet and baton, a couple of them had cane
shields strapped across their shoulders. Their uniforms were soaking wet
and sweat dripped from under their helmets. Behind this row of policemen,
the landscape comprised tall bamboo poles and sticks, heaps of rubble and
wet mud. In their current, broken state, the remains of houses felt unknown
and unfamiliar to Basanti. She assessed the house that was right in front of
her. A few plastic and tin cans lay scattered in front of it. Rice had spilled
out on to the ground from one of the cans. Most of one wall of the house
was broken; its door, not entirely freed from the hinges, swung from side to
side. The clay stove by the door had been smashed. She turned her gaze to
the right, to another house. Two policemen had scaled the wall and were
beating down the roof with pickaxes. A third policeman walked up to that
house. He first beat in the stove, then began pounding on the wall with his
pickaxe. A beautiful mural adorned this wall. ‘Hey!’ Basanti yelled out
spontaneously. ‘This is Bishnu’s house,’ she said, recognizing it from the
mural that had two peacocks, while all the other murals this side of the
neighbourhood had horses and elephants. ‘What are you doing?’
The policeman breaking the wall turned sharply towards her. He bared
his teeth like a wolf and growled, ‘Get lost from here, you wretch, or I’ll
tell you what I’m doing!’
Basanti shrank from him in terror.
Policemen had moved further up the slope. The house next to Bishnu’s
was beginning to be demolished when, all of a sudden, a small group of
people gathered in front of it. The woman standing next to Basanti threw
her arms up in the air and screamed, ‘Oh, what’s got into you, Mehru! How
could you take up this work?’
The man she was addressing was standing with a hoe on the roof of the
house. He had dry, tangled hair and was wearing striped pyjamas.
‘You wretch! This is your own basti. Have you no shame? May you die a
leper.’
‘This basti doesn’t belong to us any more. It belongs to the government
now,’ Mehru replied.
A man yelled back at him, ‘Your own house is here, in this basti.’
‘So what if it is? The government will have the entire place pulled down,
with or without me. Why should I lose my wages?’
‘You are shameless, Mehru, demolishing the houses of your own people.’
‘The government is demolishing this neighbourhood, not I. They’re not
going to stop without me.’
‘I hope you die! May you die a slow, painful death. May worms eat away
your living flesh.’ Women cursed and spat on the ground in front of him.
A policeman charged towards this gathering. ‘Shut up and get lost from
here,’ he said, shoving a woman, ‘or I’ll arrest you.’
The woman stumbled back, taken by surprise. ‘May death strike you.
Would you push your mother like this?’
Police officials in charge of taking decisions knew an entire settlement,
especially one so immense, couldn’t be demolished in a single day. But they
knew that pulling down thirty to forty houses at the entrance on day one
would make the entire neighbourhood inhabitable, forcing people out.
That’s why they had enlisted a few masons from the neighbourhood itself,
offering them twenty rupees as bait, in return for their labour. Many
refused. But a few, like Mehru, who hadn’t had work in a long time, gave
in.
Just about then, Basanti noticed a little girl slide through the police
cordon, past the barricade of bamboo poles, into a house. She emerged a
few moments later, cradling a coin box made of black clay. In a flash,
Basanti’s thoughts turned to her own home, to the far wall of her house
where, behind a loosened brick, she’d tucked away four glass bangles, a
bottle of hair oil, two green clips and a brass ring. She yearned for her
things and, in that moment, also for her parents. She bolted towards her
home.
Rain was falling gently now. Basanti slipped through the crowd and moved
along one edge of the lane. Water had been collecting in the inside lanes of
the neighbourhood. It now gushed down in streams on either side of the
incline, making its way through the abandoned remains from different
households. Basanti saw a bird cage on the ground, in front of the head
mason Moolraj’s house. The parrot was still in the cage, shrivelled up and
terrified. She saw a cooking pot on a stove; the fire was still burning.
Basanti pressed on, up the slope. She suddenly caught sight of her father’s
blue kurta in the crowd. His turban had lost its shape under the weight of
the canister on his head, and was unravelling so that the loose end was now
around his neck. The bag containing his instruments hung from his
shoulder. Basanti also caught a glimpse of her younger brother. He was
carrying a lamp in one hand and held Bapu’s hand with the other. Basanti
couldn’t see her mother.
Basanti wanted to run to her father, but was scared. He might give her a
beating. And Ma too would probably join him. Then a strange thought
occurred to her: that with everything he was carrying, her father couldn’t
possibly hit her. But she also knew her father’s temper. He was quite
capable of dropping everything and coming after her. Nonplussed, she stood
where she was, looking at her father till he disappeared into the crowd.
Instead of carrying on towards her house, Basanti turned around, stepped
into the crowd and started walking down the slope. It seemed pointless to
her now to go back home in search of her clips and bangles.
By the time she reached the main road, Basanti was herself again. There
was a loud din here as well. Here too, belongings from different households
were scattered everywhere. The rain had reduced to a drizzle. Basanti took
in the scene before her.
The road was lined with trucks till as far as her eyes could see.
Policemen, batons in hand, steel helmets on their heads, were everywhere,
all along the road. Trucks were being filled by turns. Nervously, people
clambered into the trucks.
An empty truck stood right in front of Basanti. The moment its back-slat
was lowered, all those waiting near it on the pavement started loading their
things into it in a hurry. Some even tried to climb in with their cans and
trunks still on their heads. Policemen were stopping people from carrying
too much into the trucks. Himmatu, the painter, was among those struggling
to load his things into the vehicle. He secured a foothold on the rear tyre of
the truck, gripped the upper, horizontal bar of the frame of the back of the
truck, and hoisted himself up. His wife began handing him their things. She
had a long veil drawn over her face.
A policeman dawdled up to them. ‘And what do we have here?’ he said,
as he peered into the truck. Using the rear tyre as a foothold, he too jumped
in. ‘If I were to let one family carry so many things,’ he said, scanning the
vehicle, ‘we’d need one entire truck for every family. Take all this off. Clear
it at once!’ Saying that, he picked up one cot, and then another, and threw
them off the truck. ‘Carry them yourself if you want them. There’s no room
here.’ And with that, he forbade cots on the truck.
When the policeman left, Himmatu loaded the cots back in. ‘When we
can’t, why should you . . .’ The other people in the truck hurled Himmatu’s
cots out. Himmatu’s children, standing by the truck on the pavement,
started bawling; his wife cursed, and Himmatu screamed for someone on
the pavement to lend him a hand with the cots. The truck’s engine hummed
to life. ‘The kids!’ Himmatu screamed to his wife, ‘Forget all the rest. The
kids!’ His wife tried to pick up one child and raise him high enough for
Himmatu to pull him into the truck. But she was exhausted. ‘Raise him
higher,’ Himmatu encouraged her. ‘Higher!’ She couldn’t. Realizing what
was going on, the others on the truck stretched out their hands and pulled
both the children up. Just in time. For now the truck had gathered speed.
Himmatu’s wife held on to it and ran as fast as she could. ‘She’ll fall!’
Everyone on the truck screamed, ‘Stop the truck!’
The truck sped on.
Himmatu’s wife stood in the middle of the road, panting for breath. She
saw her husband, his arms raised, calling out to her, ‘Come by the next one.
Bring the cots with you.’ But she was beside herself and, sitting herself
down on the pavement, she wept.
‘Have you seen Bisesar?’ With her walking stick in her hand, Bisesar’s
blind mother sat on the pavement, not far from Himmatu’s wife. ‘Is my son
here?’ Himmatu’s wife heard the old woman calling out softly to the stream
of people walking past her. ‘Can someone get me to my son?’
People still poured out of the neighbourhood. Whenever they saw people
forming a crowd around any truck, the policemen waved their batons in the
air, chasing them, scattering them, sending them away.
Basanti walked ahead, along the pavement. In his haste to secure a place
in a truck, a man lost his grip on the bundle he was carrying. The bundle fell
off the truck; the knot that held it together came undone. Pans, clothes and
shoes tumbled out. A pot rolled on to the middle of the road. A young boy,
his skin darkened by the sun, swooped down on the pot from the other side
of the road and ran off with it.
People from Ramesh Nagar had gathered on the other side of the road,
watching this spectacle of demolition. People from the basti were not
unknown to them, as the women who lived in it worked as domestic help in
their houses, and the men whitewashed them. Basanti too had worked in the
houses of some of them, and knew many in the crowd. She scanned the
faces, looking for Shyama bibi. She was certain Shyama bibi would be
among them, and crossed the road to find her.
‘What can be done? The law is the law,’ Mr Ahuja, who lived in Block
No. 4, was saying. ‘I’d even cautioned Moolraj. I told him they shouldn’t
make the houses pucca; that making brick and concrete houses here was
against the law.’
‘This is government land,’ someone responded. ‘Not just pucca houses, it
was against the law to occupy this land in the first place. They were living
here for free.’
Basanti walked through this crowd looking for Shyama bibi but when she
didn’t find her, she crossed the road, back to the other side.
Just as she crossed, Basanti found herself standing face-to-face with the
tailor. She looked at him wide-eyed. He was wearing a bright red-andyellow frock-shirt which reached all the way down to his knees, and had on
a turban that seemed much too big for his head. The kohl lining his eyes
exaggerated his squint. He looked ludicrous and, for a moment, Basanti was
taken aback at the sight of him. Then she covered her mouth and burst into
peals of laughter. She had no idea Bulaki was dressed up as a groom, her
groom. And that if the demolition had started but an hour later than it did,
she would already be married to him. At first, Bulaki didn’t recognize
Basanti. But when she removed her hand from her face and he realized it
was her, he spread out his arms to embrace her. ‘Basanti!’ He cried out,
‘Basanti, my queen!’
Basanti ducked and, in a flash, disappeared into the crowd. Bulaki was
left stunned and standing where he was, calling out her name.
Basanti had hurried past just a few trucks when she spotted her father. He
was running, a bundle squeezed tightly under his arm. His turban was now
entirely undone and its loose end dragged behind him on the ground. His
blue kurta was soaked with sweat and it clung to his body. Then she saw her
mother. Her face was ashen. She was struggling to keep up with her
husband, a task made difficult by the weight of the bundle and the large can
that she carried on her head. They both looked so vulnerable, so helpless.
Basanti’s heart sank. Overwhelmed, she ran to them. ‘All the trucks in this
direction are full,’ she urged them the moment she caught up with them.
‘More lorries will arrive and they’ll all stop on that side. I’ve seen it with
my own eyes.’
Chaudhary stopped immediately, ‘You wretch!’ He turned around and
screamed, ‘Where were you all this time? Go find Ramu. He got left behind
somewhere.’ Then he continued peering from one truck into another,
searching for one that had room.
Basanti didn’t need to go looking for Ramu. He was walking towards
them, holding the lamp his parents had given him to carry.
And then, a scene not unlike the scenes she had already witnessed,
unfolded before her.
Basanti’s father fought with all the others around him, pushed ahead
through the crowd, the noise, the shoving and jostling, and managed to
secure a foothold on the rear tyre of a truck. He pushed himself up but
didn’t make it, and fell backwards. Her heart in her mouth, Basanti leapt
forward to help her father regain his balance.
Some of what Chaudhary was carrying landed in the truck, the rest fell
outside. Basanti climbed into the truck and quickly, one by one, pulled up
the things her mother was carrying.
The truck began pulling away and people started screaming. Basanti’s
father was inside but her mother was on the pavement, panicking, on the
verge of tears. Basanti leapt off the truck. ‘Ramu! Where’s Ramu?’
Basanti’s father yelled, ‘You wretch, don’t just stand there. Lift him up so I
can pull him into the truck.’
But Ramu proved too heavy for Basanti to lift up to the height of the
truck. Someone from the crowd heaved him up and another on the truck
pulled him in. Basanti’s mother ran after the truck and, this time, screams of
‘Stop the truck!’ brought it to a halt. Basanti’s mother leapt up and, helped
by many hands, managed to get in. But then, almost immediately, the truck
picked up speed again. Basanti, standing in the middle of the road, choked
as she watched her father, mother and brother vanish into the distance. They
took Ramu with them and left me behind, she thought. But true to her
nature, the next instant she shrugged it off. What’s so difficult about
climbing into a truck! One foot on the tyre, then the other on the metal ring.
Hold the wooden slat and pull yourself up. As if I can’t get into another
truck on my own!
She stood where she was for some time, contemplating what to do next.
Then she crossed the road and went into Ramesh Nagar.
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‘Come down at once, Basanti! You’ll break your bones if you fall!’
‘Don’t worry, Bibiji. Should I pluck some for you?’
Basanti was perched on a branch of a mango tree, nibbling at a raw
mango, her legs dangling in the air. She stretched out her arm, supported
herself with the branch above her, and stood up on the branch she’d been
sitting on.
‘No, I don’t want mangoes. I want you to come down!’
But Basanti was already climbing higher, quick as a squirrel.
‘The mangoes are bigger here. I’ll pluck three—two for you and one for
me. All right?’ She laughed playfully.
The branch Basanti stepped on next yielded under her weight and she lost
her footing. She held on tightly to the branch above her with both her
hands. She was swinging in the air.
‘I told you! Didn’t I tell you?’ Shyama bibi was panicking. ‘Climb down
that tree this instant!’
Basanti only laughed, ‘There’s no reason to worry, Bibiji.’ And she pulled
herself up on to the thick branch that she’d been swinging from.
‘Oh no! Parrots have bitten into all the mangoes here. Look at this one,
it’s huge!’ she called out. ‘You don’t mind if a parrot’s pecked at it, do you?’
she said, laughter ringing in her voice.
‘I don’t want to hear another word. Come down at once! I don’t want
your mangoes.’
‘One mustn’t eat something a crow has pecked at, but a parrot’s okay.
Isn’t it so, Bibiji?’
‘Basanti, I don’t have time for your endless chatter. I want you to come
down this second.’
‘Here, Bibiji,’ she said, and a large mango hurtled through the leaves, fell
on the ground and burst.
‘One’s quite enough. I don’t want more.’
‘Okay, Bibiji. No more mangoes. I’ll sit on this branch and eat all the
mangoes on my own,’ Basanti chuckled. She did, however, hop on to a
lower branch. Instead of coming all the way down, she jumped into the
adjoining balcony and hoisted herself up on its ledge. In a second, she was
standing on the narrow ledge with her arms outstretched, balanced
precariously like a tightrope walker.
Shyama bibi’s heart was in her mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut and
sank into the chair that was lying in the courtyard. Basanti was walking
down the narrow ledge of the balcony. She’s going to fall. She’s going to fall
and die. She’ll fall and her skull’s going to crack open. What a godforsaken
moment it was when this girl entered my life! Barely had she uttered these
words than she bit her lip regretfully and joined her hands, which she had
withdrawn into her dupatta, in prayer.
If Basanti were to lose her balance and fall to the right, it would be a
short fall into the balcony. But to the left was a steep fall of fifteen feet,
directly on to the hard, paved floor of the courtyard. And there was nothing
at hand that Shyama could use to break the fall.
Several excruciating moments later, Shyama bibi opened her eyes.
Basanti had made it to the other end of the balcony.
‘I’m begging you. Please come down,’ Shyama bibi pleaded with folded
hands.
Basanti jumped into the safety of the balcony.
Shyama bibi breathed a sigh of relief and, muttering under her breath, she
walked away from there, into her house.
Fate. Shyama feared it. Some ten or twelve years into her marriage, a
shadow had begun to cast itself over her married life. And while with time
the material conditions of the household continued to improve, the shadow
that loomed over the couple only seemed to darken. Shyama’s unease, her
feeling that something terrible was about to happen, kept deepening. She
was always restless, always fearful. Even a knock at the door when she
wasn’t expecting anyone would send her pulse racing. She had tried
everything—from doctors to charms and amulets. When someone suggested
that wearing a topaz ring would bring her calm, she did that too. Nothing
helped. Then one day she met a sage who blessed her saying, ‘Don’t worry,
bibi, your hardship will come to an end.’
Shyama knelt before him, her hands folded in reverence.
‘Your freedom lies in serving another. Serve a fellow human being and
you will be released from your agony.’
‘Where will I find the one I should serve, Maharaj?’
‘You needn’t go far in search. That person will appear before you. The
first person you see when you step out of your house tomorrow morning is
the one you must serve. It doesn’t matter who it is; all you should concern
yourself with, all you should know, is that you must serve him or her.’
On stepping out of the house the next morning, the one she saw, the one
whose wrist she clasped, was this dear wretch, this slip of a girl, Basanti.
From that day on, Basanti started working in Shyama’s house. Shyama
never let the reason for this become known to Basanti. Instead, she started
helping Basanti in small ways—she’d give the girl her old clothes now and
then, gift her sweets and money on festivals, let her hang around the house
and watch TV. Basanti soon grew fond of her. She found that the door to
Shyama bibi’s house was always open to her. If she happened to be passing
by her house, she’d impulsively climb up the stairs to Shyama bibi’s. If she
was in the mood, she’d make herself a cup of tea, press Shyama bibi’s
forehead and tell her gossip from the neighbourhood. She didn’t feel
compelled to keep her distance from Shyama bibi like the other girls had to
from the ladies whose houses they worked in. Basanti found succour in
Shyama bibi, and Shyama earned virtue in being of help to Basanti.
What the holy man had predicted came true. The palpitations that had so
plagued Shyama’s heart, lessened. Her blood pressure didn’t ease up but
neither did it rise any further. Her appetite returned. And something else
happened, which served as conclusive proof.
One day, a fight between Shyama and her mother-in-law—which was
routine—escalated and became so bitter that her in-laws packed their bags
and moved out to live with their younger son. Shyama was convinced she
owed this miracle to the holy man. For ten years they pricked at my heart
like thorns, hung like a weight over my being, crushing me. And now,
suddenly, they’ve left. As if this isn’t proof of the magnificence of the holy
man! From that day on, Shyama’s generosity towards Basanti flowed
unabated. There were days, though, when Basanti’s devil-may-care attitude
would bring Shyama to the edge and she’d want nothing more than to throw
her out of the house. But fearing the holy man’s wrath, she’d calm herself
down. It doesn’t matter what she does; all that matters to me is that I have
been instructed by the holy man and I must do as he says.
Basanti followed Shyama bibi into the veranda.
‘And what if you’d fallen?’
‘So what, Bibiji!’ Basanti tossed her head and laughed.
‘You’d have broken your legs, fractured your skull.’
‘So what, Bibiji!’ Basanti laughed some more.
‘It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d broken your legs?’
‘So what, Bibiji? I’d have had broken legs, that’s all.’
‘You can talk this way because they didn’t break. Had they been
fractured, you’d be lying in bed, screaming in pain. You talk so arrogantly.
Be careful, God might punish you for it one day.’
‘When has God ever been pleased with me?’ Basanti replied coolly. ‘I’ve
always only seen him with a sullen face, like this . . .’ and she puffed up her
cheeks but then she burst out laughing. ‘He gets cross if you talk arrogantly,
cross if you laugh, cross if you climb a tree and cross when you climb back
down!’ She was in splits over her own joke.
‘Hush! Don’t talk this way. Have some fear of God.’
‘Who all should I be fearful of, Bibiji? Of Bapu? Of Ma? Of you? Of
God?’ Then, realizing how cross Shyama bibi was, she changed tack and
made an attempt at humouring her. ‘Come, let me comb your hair, Bibiji.
Would you like me to oil your hair first? Oh no, it seems I’ve really angered
you.’
‘I don’t want my hair oiled. And don’t smooth-talk me. If you ever climb
up that tree again, I’m going to break your legs myself!’
‘I won’t climb that tree. I promise, I promise. I cross my heart . . . I’ll rub
my nose on the ground if it should please you.’
She laughed as she held her ears and knelt on the floor. ‘I vow,’ and she
laughed as she rubbed her nose on the ground, ‘that I will never eat a raw
mango again and that I will only eat mangoes once they have ripened.’
Shyama looked at Basanti incredulously and marvelled at the fathomless
springs of laughter God had buried within her. Everything makes her laugh.
It’s as if she has the body of a girl and the spirit of a bird. That’s why she
chirps and flits about all day.
‘Would you like me to oil your hair, Bibiji?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want me to sweep the veranda? It’s looking dusty. Should I
make some tea, Bibiji?’
‘Go make tea. Make tea for yourself as well. Don’t put too much sugar.’
‘Should I put less sugar in my cup as well?’ Basanti was still laughing
when she went into the kitchen.
‘Mein kya karun Ram mujhe buddha mil gaya!’ Shyama bibi could hear
Basanti hum the chorus from a movie song about a young girl playfully and
provocatively bemoaning her being wedded to an old man. She kept
repeating the chorus. Well, at least her presence is joyful, Shyama thought,
her anger subsiding.
Basanti emerged from the kitchen with a cup in one hand and a mug in
the other.
‘The day they’d come to pull down our basti, Bibiji, was also the day I
was supposed to get married. Do you know what I would have been doing if
those people hadn’t come?’ She chuckled.
‘What?’ Shyama asked.
‘I would’ve been pressing Bulaki the lame’s feet. No, no! By now, I
would’ve been breaking his good leg,’ and she laughed so hard that tea
spilled out of her cup.
‘It wouldn’t have harmed you to be married, Basanti. You would have
been living comfortably instead of washing utensils in other people’s
houses.’
‘Yeah, right, I’d be living in comfort! Massaging his feet when he got
back home, helping him walk, oiling his bald scalp . . .’ Basanti giggled.
‘What’s your father like?’
‘Oh, Bibiji, what a question! He’s a fine man. Free with his hands. Even
today I came to work only after being blessed by him with a slap.’
‘Does he hit only you or others at home as well?’
‘Sometimes Ma as well, but mostly he showers his favours on me,’
Basanti laughed.
‘And Ramu?’
‘Oh no, Bibiji! Why would he raise his hand on his son?’
‘That’s because he’s the only son. How many sisters are you?’
‘Why, no Bibiji. We’re three boys and three girls.’
‘Right, one of your brothers is a peon and has children himself. Who’s
the third son?’
‘I have another brother. But we haven’t seen him for a long time now.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘No one knows where he is. He was a dear. He was older than me. I was
very little. That was a long time ago . . . when we were coming to Delhi.’
Suddenly, Basanti’s voice became soft. ‘Who knows where he is now and
how he is, or if he is alive or not!’
‘Did something happen? Did he go away somewhere?’
‘No one knows, Bibiji. He was a lot like me; wouldn’t sit still even for a
minute. Whenever the train would halt at a station, he would jump off, and
when it would start moving, he would hurry back in through one door or
another. He was playing hide and seek with me. But when we reached
Delhi, he wasn’t there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘No one knows, Bibiji! Ma and my older sisters were in a different coach.
If he wouldn’t appear in our coach after a station, Bapu would think he
must be with Ma. That is where he was, most of the time. But when we
reached Delhi, he was neither with us nor with Ma.’
‘Maybe he ran away.’
‘Who knows?’ Basanti said softly. ‘Do you know what happened at one
station? Just as the train started moving, someone pulled the chain and
brought it to a halt. People were screaming that a boy had come under its
wheels. Who knows, maybe it was my brother.’
‘How’s that possible? Didn’t your father find out?’
‘Everyone was trying to make out what was going on by peeping out
from the windows of the coach; my father as well. There were too many
people along the track and I couldn’t see a thing. Someone was saying,
“He’s lost both his legs.” Someone was asking, “Is he alive?” Different
people were saying different things. Someone said, “Take him to the
hospital, he’s losing too much blood.”’ Basanti seemed to have travelled
back to the scene of the accident, as if she could see the faces, hear the
voices, feel the crowd. ‘There were many people from our village in our
coach. Someone said, “Bring him into the coach if he’s from our village.”
Another said, “He’s a peanut vendor. He was getting on to the train after it
started moving and he slipped and fell.” Everyone was saying something
different.’
And then the image of the fat woman from that day, who was sitting with
her legs crossed under her on the seat opposite Basanti, flashed through
Basanti’s mind. She started telling Shyama bibi what she was saying,
‘“What’s the point of taking him to the hospital? What can a hospital do
now?”’
‘Why! It may save his life.’
‘“And what do you want to save him for? He’s lost both his legs. He’s
never going to walk; he’s going to drag his body around all his life and beg
on the streets.”’
‘She was a portly woman with a squarish face beaded with sweat,’
Basanti continued. ‘She kept saying the same thing over and over. Who
knows, maybe it was my brother on those tracks. Suddenly the train started
moving and people hurried back in. I tried, but couldn’t catch a glimpse of
that boy’s face till the very end. My father also gave up finally and returned
to his seat. When the train reached Delhi and all of us regrouped at the
station, my brother never emerged from the train . . .’ Basanti’s voice was
overcome with emotion.
‘Didn’t your father ever go back to that station?’
‘He talked about going back but never did. There’s this man from our
village, Bibiji, called Janku. He’s a cobbler. He would keep telling my
father, “I saw the boy with my own eyes. Both his legs had got cut off, but
it wasn’t your son.” Bapu never went to the station. Who knows, Bibiji,
maybe he thought, It could be my son, but if it is, and he’s crawling around
the station having lost both his legs, what will I achieve by bringing him
back? Maybe he thought if he brought him back, he’d crawl around on the
roads here, beg for money in front of our eyes, and what’s the point in that?
Who knows, Bibiji, maybe he died. Who’d tell us where to find him
anyway? And, on the other hand, Bibiji, maybe he’s alive and well, and
maybe he’ll come home one day.’
Upon uttering this last sentence, Basanti felt a weight lift from her chest.
‘Ma says from that day on, Bapu turned into an ill-tempered man with
bloodshot eyes. But even so, Bibiji, how come he never loses his temper
with Ramu? How come he showers Ramu with love all the time? How
come he only beats me? Bibiji, do you know . . .’
‘What?’
‘. . . that Bapu sells his daughters?’
‘What rubbish!’
‘I’m speaking the truth, Bibiji. My elder sister was also married off to
some old man in the village for eight hundred rupees. She’s in the village
now, whiling away her life.’
‘He was trying to marry you off to an old man as well,’ Shyama laughed.
‘Why would I marry a lame old man, Bibiji?’
‘And what if your Bapu does marry you off to him?’
‘Let him try! I won’t let him. I’ll swallow rat poison again!’ Basanti
jerked her head and laughed.
‘But you said rat poison was terrible.’
‘Oh, it’s true, Bibiji. It’s just terrible. I was to be married the next
morning. I swallowed rat poison and went to bed. I thought I would die in
my sleep. But I woke up in the middle of the night with my body on fire
from the inside. There was a pot with water outside the house. I ran out and
drank as much water as I could. I kept drinking water but the fire just
wouldn’t get doused. Then I threw up and all the pellets I’d swallowed
came out,’ Basanti laughed.
‘What if you’d died, you silly girl!’
‘Then I would have died, Bibiji.’
‘And where is your lame man now?’
‘You know the bus depot here, at the back, don’t you, Bibiji? He’s set up
a shop there. It’s a small kiosk. He’s a tailor. He used to live in the basti
earlier . . .’ Suddenly, Basanti got up. ‘I’ll be off now, Bibiji. The bibi in
house number five must have woken up. It’s time to wash utensils there.’
She hurried towards the stairs, but turned and said, ‘I’ll come by in the
evening to watch TV. It’s Chitrahaar today, isn’t it?’
Shyama laughed and said, ‘Yes, come by in the evening.’
‘Ta-ta, Bibiji, ta-ta. Bye-bye.’ And as Basanti went down the stairs, she
was humming film songs again: ‘Mein kya karun Ram mujhe buddha mil
gaya!’
OceanofPDF.com
The basti had been ruined. A silence descended over it. The houses nearer
the road were reduced to rubble. Further in, upward from the slope, only the
roofs had been broken; bare walls protruded towards the sky like the
skeleton of a giant beast. The thunderous clamour during the demolition
seemed to have frightened even dogs and jackals, for they stayed away from
the neighbourhood for days afterwards.
Soon, amidst the deepening silence, life began to stir. Grass sprouted
along the lanes and on the ground surrounding houses, bushes thickened,
snakes and scorpions roamed, and Ramesh Nagar began hearing the calls of
jackals and dogs night after night, all night long. Of course, not all signs of
the warmth of human life that dwelled here could be erased. Murals of
elephants and dancing peacocks in red and yellow on the broken walls, and
bits and pieces of clay utensils that lay scattered here and there alongside
broken portions of mosaic floors and walls served as signs that this was a
neighbourhood built by the sweat and toil of those who lived in it, shaped
by their desires, enlarged by the fullness of their song and laughter. A storm
of destruction had swept over this neighbourhood, vanquishing it. One
might say the wheels of time had turned, destroying everything that came in
their wake. But in truth, it’s not the wheels of time but humans who make
things happen. Jackals and owls and other animals lie in wait for humans to
destroy. And then they descend.
Immediately after being demolished, the settlement was barricaded with
barbed wire; a watchman was appointed to guard it round the clock. It was
now a crime to enter the basti or take something from there. For two to
three days, its bewildered, erstwhile residents kept returning to it. Some to
take a last look at their former house, some in the hope of retrieving
something they had buried in the ground, and some simply to linger for a
while. They had been ousted, and now, taking something that had been
theirs was considered theft. The change was so sudden, so complete—the
neighbourhood was no longer theirs. All those who returned once, never
came back to it again. The neighbourhood, once theirs, had become too
unfamiliar, too strange.
People who had lived together were now scattered. Some went away to
another part of the city to live with their relatives, some returned to their
village and some roamed the city in search of a roof to cover their heads.
Trucks hired by the government had transported many to a barren stretch of
land about five miles from Ramesh Nagar. The people had been assured that
they would each be allotted a piece of land to rebuild their houses. They
waited with their families in the open, under the bare sky, and searched for
work in nearby areas. But there was no work to be found and so they turned
to Ramesh Nagar again. Groups of women and girls walked, took buses,
caught rides in tempos to reach Ramesh Nagar and resumed work there as
domestic help.
‘How could I not return to work at your house, Bibiji?’ They’d go back to
the houses they used to work in and say, ‘I’ve worked here so long, known
you for so long. You’re like my own.’ Others explained their return by
tracing ties that went even further back in time: ‘Before I started working as
a domestic help, I worked as a labourer here, Bibiji, when the colony was
still being constructed. My Radha was born when the house across from
yours was being built.’
In no time, life settled into a new routine. Early each morning, a tempo or
bus would halt on the road in front of Ramesh Nagar, and a ramshackle
crowd of women, young and old, would emerge from it—with dark, narrow
faces and dishevelled hair, dressed in long skirts and colourful blouses, a
cloud of beedi smoke hanging over them—and disperse into the lanes of
Ramesh Nagar.
Except the masons, most of the others, one way or another, had returned
to Ramesh Nagar for work and to scrape up a living.
With a few bricks and a couple of stone slabs that her children sneaked
out of the ruins of the demolished neighbourhood, Gobindi set up a tea stall
on a pavement right outside Ramesh Nagar. She no longer had the cover of
familiarity and security that having a tea shop in her own neighbourhood
had afforded her. Now any passer-by—whether it was some stranger
walking down the road, or an autorickshaw driver taking a short break—
could stop at her stall for a cup of tea. While some would hesitate even to
talk to her, on account of her being a woman, there were those too who
ogled at her shamelessly. But the tea stall soon began to do well and
Gobindi, like a protective mother hen with two chicks to raise, stayed put.
Moolraj gave up masonry and began ironing clothes. It had taken a fair
deal of pleading and cajoling on his part, but he had managed a spot—a
raised platform—behind a house in block number four. He spread a thick
bedsheet on the platform at once and brought a large brass iron from
somewhere.
Heera’s son set up a fruit cart near the market, under a tree. Two other
people, who had till then worked as masons, set up shoe repair stalls by the
drain that ran along the park, not far from where he was. With the
demolition of the basti, caste restrictions were somewhat breaking too: an
Ahir was ironing clothes and a Rajput was mending shoes.
The third or fourth day after the demolition, Basanti’s father too found
himself hovering around Ramesh Nagar. After much consideration, he
decided to set up shop on the pavement by a narrow lane that led into the
colony. He placed a slab of red stone there by the boundary wall of the
school. Like the others, he had obtained the slab from a mound of rubble
inside his old basti. He’d been lucky, for in the rubble he’d also found a
column of red bricks, about two feet high. He put his implements—razors,
scissors, comb—on the stone slab, and the brick column became a seat for
his clients. At the end of each day, he’d push the brick column against the
wall and hide the stone slab behind the wall, ‘shutting’ his shop before
heading back to the expanse of bare land which was now home.
Chaudhary had spotted his old barber’s chair behind a bush when he’d
gone into the basti. Excited, he dashed towards it. There could’ve been
nothing better than to be able to get that chair back. But the rear legs of the
chair and one of its hand rests were broken. It seemed like someone had
smashed the chair to the ground with some force. Chaudhary decided to
take it along anyway. ‘Why leave a useful thing behind?’ he thought. ‘If it
can’t be repaired, the wood can be used as firewood.’ But by then the
watchman had sensed someone was about, and started doing the rounds,
knocking the ground with his staff. Chaudhary decided to leave without the
chair.
‘The chair was mine,’ he called out as he ducked under the barbed wire.
‘It may have been, mister, but now it belongs to the government.’
‘Let them keep it then! So what if I can’t; maybe they’ll find use for it,’
Chaudhary said under his breath. ‘May it become a seat for some officer.’
‘Don’t bicker with me. Be on your way now,’ the watchman scolded
Chaudhary, rubbing his thumb into the lime-and-tobacco mixture he had in
his other hand.
‘And will you also object to my taking this stone slab? Does this slab
belong to the government as well?’ Chaudhary had spotted the stone slab in
the middle of his brief altercation with the watchman and put his foot on it
to claim it. But he asked the watchman, just to be safe.
The watchman’s mouth was now filled with his lime-and-tobacco mix,
and his head was still tilted upwards when he said, ‘Take it, take it. If only
you’d asked me, I’d have let you take your silly chair as well.’
The spot where Chaudhary had set up his shop was not great but since it
was now his, to Chaudhary, it was the best. So what if there was
pandemonium every morning when pots were filled by every household at
the public tap nearby? There was also a taxi stand across the road and just
around the corner was a public toilet that had been set up by the
‘Committee’. It’s true, wind from the east crossed the toilet before it
reached Chaudhary, and these days the breeze was constant—but at least it
was windy. The taxi drivers were all Sikh, but there was at least one potbellied Hindu among them. He’d surely come for a shave now and then. So
what if no taxi driver worth his name ever pays for a shave! Dangling right
over Chaudhary’s head was a billboard advertising a television brand,
installed there by the Committee. The board, though immense, provided
Chaudhary no shade from either the sun or the rain. It swayed and rattled
loudly whenever the wind grew strong. Chaudhary wondered if the board
would come crashing down in a windstorm, as such boards usually did all
over the city. In the basti, Chaudhary’s shop had been under a young peepul
tree. Sunlight would stream gently through its leaves, and Chaudhary felt
blessed. It was thanks to these blessings that he had found two old men to
marry his daughters to, and made his house pucca. And if that day the
demolition had been just an hour later, he would have got rid of that
wretched Basanti as well.
It was Chaudhary’s very first day at this new spot. He had barely
straightened his back after setting up his implements on the stone slab when
he saw a young man walk towards him. He placed a bag next to
Chaudhary’s spot. Chaudhary grew excited at the thought of greeting his
first customer. But the young man’s demeanour didn’t seem to be that of a
customer. Also, he’d brought a wooden stool along. It dawned on
Chaudhary that this man was a barber setting up shop right next to his own.
He knit his brows and sized up the young man: He’s not one of our own but
he doesn’t seem to be a stranger either. I may have seen him in the basti
once or twice.
Chaudhary decided to confront him. Arms akimbo, he addressed the
young man: ‘This earth, bhaiyya, is God’s and we are all free to park
ourselves where we like. But seeing how hard it is to eke out a living with
just me here, if you’re to set up shop as well, we’ll both end up stone
broke.’
‘I’m here to stay, chacha,’ the young man said in a steady voice and
started laying out his implements on the stone slab.
‘The well-heeled all get their shaves at parlours and youngsters don’t
believe in haircuts any more. In fact, no one wants a trim nowadays. Except
maybe one elderly man or two, once in a while.’
Unwavering, the young man repeated calmly, ‘I’m here to stay, chacha.’
Chaudhary stared at him, brows still knit. He’s a stubborn one; he won’t
bend easily. ‘I won’t let you set up your shop here,’ he said, with a little
more aggression in his tone.
He’s bound to get provoked now and will probably talk back rudely,
Chaudhary braced himself. But the young man remained calm.
Chaudhary upped the ante and launched the deadliest missile from his
arsenal: ‘Son, I’m Ahir by caste!’ He stared hard at his adversary.
‘And I’m a Rajput, chacha. Ahir is a very high caste. You should be
seated on a throne, not working as a barber.’
Chaudhary didn’t give in to the sarcasm.
‘So, you can’t be reasoned with?’
‘What about, chacha?’
‘That you won’t set up shop here.’
‘Oh, is that what you’ve been saying to me, chacha?’
Chaudhary was on the verge of bursting a vein. It’d be better to fritter
away the rest of his life in the village than to lose to this greenhorn. He
stared at the young man.
‘What’s your father’s name?’ He asked after a long pause, ‘You’re
definitely not from our basti.’
‘I’m Manglu Rajput’s son. I’m telling you, chacha, because you’re asking
me. But caste matters only in villages. No one cares about caste in Delhi.
There are plenty of Ahirs and plenty of Rajputs in this city.’
Chaudhary looked away. He was enraged; his eyes were red, the scant
hair of his moustache twitched. Despite his itchy fingers, he exercised
restraint. A voice inside him told him to hold back. Don’t get further
embroiled with him. He’s a Rajput, and they don’t spare even their own
fathers. Swallow your pride just for today. Deal with him tomorrow.
But the very next moment, overcome by a perverse impulse, he stepped
forward, picked up the young man’s bag and threw it over the wall. Then,
dusting his hands, he went back to his spot and sat down.
The young man stood where he was and smiled.
‘Oh, chacha, I’ve annoyed you. You should have been frank with me. I’d
have moved away from here if only you’d asked me.’
The young man was now standing very close to Chaudhary. He was still
smiling.
‘Bring my bag back and I’ll leave.’
Chaudhary thought to himself, I’ve set him straight now, haven’t I? So
much for him being a Rajput! As if I don’t know how to make people fall in
line. He raised his head and looked at the young man with slanting eyes.
The young man hadn’t stopped smiling.
‘Bring my bag back and I’ll leave,’ he repeated.
Something inside Chaudhary told him he should stand up, that it wasn’t
safe to keep sitting. But Chaudhary erred; he didn’t pay heed to his
instincts, to what he had learned from his wrestling days.
Chaudhary jerked his hand dismissively. ‘Go get it yourself,’ he said,
‘and get lost from here.’ These words had barely left his mouth when
Chaudhary found he had been lifted off the ground. In one swift move, the
lad’s right arm was under Chaudhary’s knees, left arm under his neck and
he was standing on the stool on which Chaudhary had been sitting. Before
Chaudhary could even make out what was going on, he was in mid-air,
flying over the wall. He landed with a crash on the other side. The ground
was soft, thanks to the rain, but Chaudhary saw stars in the middle of the
day.
‘I am your father’s age! You’re shameless! Would you treat your father
this way, you bastard?’
The Rajput peered down at him from over the wall, smiling. ‘Can you
pass me my bag, chacha? It’s there, right next to you.’
‘What kind of a generation is this! Is this how you’ve been raised? Would
you do this to your father?’ Supporting his back with his hand, groaning in
pain, Chaudhary tried to get up. He cursed his fate. He looked in the young
man’s direction a couple of times and muttered under his breath. Then he
picked up the bag and handed it to the young man wordlessly. The young
man took his bag with one hand and stretched out the other hand to
Chaudhary. Chaudhary was stumped. He stared at the hand for a few
seconds, then accepted the help being offered.
‘I’ll leave, chacha. Don’t worry.’ And the young man pulled Chaudhary
up.
All this on the first day of setting up the shop! Chaudhary sat down on
the stool and attempted to calm his unsettled heart. He put one leg over the
other, reached into his pocket, pulled out the packet of beedis, lit one and
took a long drag. He would have to get past this somehow. He stared into
the distance, like a philosopher.
Then the second event of the day began to unfold.
A crow sat on a tall tree that was a short distance from where Chaudhary
was. It had been cawing all day. It had even flown to the billboard over
Chaudhary’s head twice and cawed relentlessly. Chaudhary hadn’t given it
any thought. But now, disheartened and in pain from the hurt that darned
Rajput boy had caused him, Chaudhary focused his attention on the crow.
‘Someone’s about to arrive,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Well, one
already did. Broke my bones before leaving. Who the hell now? A
policeman?’ A chill ran down his spine. His first thought was to gather
together his mirror, comb and scissors and put them in his bag. This way,
he’d be ready to slink away if a policeman were to happen by. The barber’s
narrow eyes fixed themselves upon the esteemed crow. He was certain he
saw it bend its neck pointedly in his direction and caw thrice. Chaudhary
was furious. Oh, how he wanted to aim his shoe at that crow! But he knew
better. The crow is simply a messenger, and one isn’t supposed to hurl shoes
and stones at it. The beedi he was holding had gone out; he lit it again. No
sooner had he taken a drag from it than the pat-a-pata-pat sound of a stick
against the ground reached his ears. Chaudhary turned towards the public
toilet to see who it was. Around the curve on the road, there emerged the
one and only—Bulaki.
He was still quite far but there was no doubt it was Bulaki. And he was
headed in Chaudhary’s direction, his hand taking support from the boundary
wall that ran along the road, his iron-tipped stick knocking against the
ground, his limp unmistakable. There he came, in his deep yellow, richly
pleated frock-shirt, a pink turban on his head—still the groom. The voice
from within that had spoken so often to Chaudhary, urged him: Get the hell
out of here, Chaudhary. He reached for his scissors and mirror with his left
hand—the beedi had already slipped from his fingers a while ago—and
raised his right arm to cover his face. But the pat-a-pata-pat of the stick was
moving closer. It was so close, in fact, that Chaudhary knew this wasn’t the
time to hide his face but to save face. ‘Welcome, Bulakiram, welcome!
Welcome, my friend! I knew it was a well-wisher whose arrival the crow
had been intimating me of all day.’
Bulakiram pounced on Chaudhary like a hawk over its prey. ‘Where’s the
girl?’ he thundered. Bulakiram, you see, hadn’t come all this way to
exchange pleasantries.
OceanofPDF.com
The cycle raced ahead.
It wasn’t like it is in the movies. But still, it was a little bit like it is in the
movies! Oh, if only they’d reach a slope now, go down the slope—faster,
faster, faster—and she, sitting on the back carrier, would spread her arms,
like a bird in flight, and, in one elliptical moment, she’d be somewhere else
entirely—just like in the movies.
If this were a play, Basanti would be the solo performer and its sole
viewer. For what was happening was real, but it wasn’t missing any
theatricality.
No, this is all an act! And I’m enacting a role. But I’m not an actress, I’m
Basanti. No, this is all real, not an act. I’m enacting a role, but I’m an
actress, not Basanti.
The difference between an actress and Basanti would be of the courage
mustered and the risks involved. A performance, after all, is staged, and an
actress merely puts on an act. And though she was delighted at feeling like
the protagonist of a play or a movie, Basanti’s courage was real, as was the
danger in what she was doing.
The cycle raced ahead.
‘Turn into the narrower lane that’s behind this one,’ Basanti directed.
‘No, the washerman and his wife are sitting there. They know you.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Go on.’
The cycle turned into the lane. Basanti’s heart was pounding. The nearer
they got to the couple, the faster the cycle moved. The washerman was
ironing a red piece of clothing, and his wife was sitting on the ground, hand
on head, staring in the direction of the main road. The cycle zipped past
them. A laugh, short and sparkling, escaped Basanti’s lips. The woman
broke out of her trance and lifted her head, following the cycle with her
eyes. Basanti was still laughing, but she’d covered her face with a cloth.
Basanti wanted to turn left at the lane’s end. Turning right would lead
them to the milk depot.
‘Yes, let’s go left because your mother’s at the depot,’ the cyclist agreed.
‘I saw her on the way. There’ll be trouble if she recognizes us.’
‘Let’s take it from there then,’ Basanti changed her mind. ‘Don’t worry.’
Basanti saw her mother outside the milk depot. Her unkempt Ma, sitting
with empty bottles in a basket, looking like she was taking comfort from the
sand on the ground. Ma always reached the milk depot at least an hour
before opening time. She didn’t see Basanti for, on nearing her, Basanti had
turned her face away in dismay.
They had cycled past block number four. The boundary wall of the
school was to their right. The cyclist pedalled on, leaving behind the rows
of two-storeyed houses on either side of the street. The thought of courting
more danger lifted Basanti’s spirit again.
‘Let’s go towards the taxi stand,’ she said.
‘Are you out of your mind? What if your father sees us?’
‘Don’t worry. Let’s go.’
They cycled along, past the long boundary wall of the school, past the
public toilet, and turned with the road. Chaudhary was bent over a client
who’d come by for a shave. Basanti’s legs trembled at the sight of her
father. Oh my goodness! What am I doing! There’s going to be hell if he
recognizes me. As if on cue, Chaudhary stood upright, the shaving brush
poised in his hand, and looked at the road. The cycle was directly in his line
of sight. Basanti, her face half covered, stole a glance at her father.
Chaudhary’s tiny, round eyes—just like a snake’s—were on the cycle. The
cycle zipped past. Basanti saw no flicker of recognition lighting up his eyes.
‘Oh my God, I was so scared!’ The danger had passed and Basanti
laughed. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how scared! He looked right at me and I
at him. But he didn’t recognize me.’
Staying along the right edge of the road, in line with the pavement, the
cycle went around the school. Then they stopped, concealed by the
building.
Basanti was surprised. ‘Why have we stopped?’
‘Come here, in front of me.’ The cyclist’s voice was stern.
‘What is it?’ Basanti hopped off the cycle.
‘What if someone had actually seen you?’ he said. Basanti walked up to
the front of the cycle and stood facing him. He burst out laughing at the
sight of her. Hair tied in a top knot under a tiny turban, dressed in a bush
shirt and tight pants, Basanti looked every bit like a Sikh lad and not at all
like a girl in disguise.
They had deviated from their plan, which was that Basanti would don her
disguise and wait by the stairs behind Shyama bibi’s house, Dinu would
meet her there with his bicycle, and they would then run away. However,
the moment Basanti got on to the cycle, she was seized by a perverse desire
to take a few rounds through the lanes of Ramesh Nagar instead of leaving
immediately.
Dinu looked Basanti up and down, and smiled. ‘Get back on.’
‘At least one more round. Let’s go from here, from inside the market.
Don’t worry, no one will know,’ Basanti said as she hopped back on to the
carrier.
‘You’ll get us both killed.’ But accepting it as a playful challenge for
himself as well, he turned into the market.
As if obsessed, Basanti wanted to keep crossing her Ma and Bapu’s
paths, as also that of all her acquaintances, over and over again. For in
doing that, she was mocking them: Look, I’m running away right under
your noses. And you can’t do a thing. Try and stop me; let’s see if you can.
She knew that if her mother were to recognize her, she’d drag her off the
cycle hissing like a female cobra guarding her nest. And her father? Oh, he
would beat her half to death. Basanti was playing with fire, and loving it.
She passed by her mother a second time. By now there was a small crowd
of people at the milk depot. Her mother had already bought milk—the
bottles in the basket she was carrying were filled, and she was walking
away from the booth. Basanti looked straight at her, removed the cloth that
was half covering her face and stuck out her tongue. But her mother didn’t
notice. Delighted, Basanti stuffed the loose end of her turban into her mouth
and laughed.
They left the market for the colony and meandered through its lanes, past
the houses Basanti worked in.
The cycle went past babu Hargopal’s house. When his wife wakes up this
evening and finds the utensils in her kitchen are still unwashed, she’ll
wonder why I haven’t turned up and will curse me. This thought tickled
Basanti.
Basanti was suddenly struck by the realization that she was leaving these
houses behind forever.
They were approaching Shyama bibi’s house. Basanti looked up at the
balcony. There was no one there. Shyama bibi’s napping as well. She has no
idea I’m leaving. Basanti looked at the mango tree that stood stoically in the
courtyard, a few yellow leaves scattered around it. Come down! Basanti
heard Shyama bibi’s voice. Get off that tree this instant! The memory
tugged at Basanti’s heart.
They went past Doctor babu’s house. Basanti heard her own voice: Find
me! Let’s see if you can! Instead of playing along, the doctor’s wife had
scolded her: ‘Come out at once. I don’t like your pranks.’ Basanti was a
little girl when she’d started working in Ramesh Nagar, and she loved to
play hide and seek with the women whose houses she worked in. The
doctor’s wife, incredulous at how mischievous Basanti was, would say,
‘Basanti, your eyes are like a doe’s. But doe are such gentle creatures, and
you’re the devil incarnate.’
Basanti was leaving it all behind. She felt like she was sitting in a fastmoving train, where the landscape and everything in it keep receding from
view and you can never return to it.
The cycle had turned along block number eight and was headed once
more towards Shyama bibi’s house. As they neared it, Basanti looked up
again, expectantly. But there was no one in the balcony even now. ‘If I
don’t get two hours of sleep during the day, I get a headache,’ Shyama bibi
used to say. If she’d been standing there, would she have realized that it’s
me, Basanti, on the cycle? I changed right behind her house, on the stairs,
and got on the cycle from there, but she had no clue. Would she know it’s me
if she were to see me now? And just at that moment, Shyama bibi stepped
into the balcony. She was rubbing sleep out of her eyes, tucking back stray
strands of her hair. Basanti saw her rest her elbows on the balcony’s ledge
and look out at the lane, and her heart leapt with joy. She turned her head
away nervously, but then, unable to contain her feelings, looked up in
Shyama bibi’s direction. The cycle edged closer but Shyama bibi still hadn’t
recognized her. Basanti felt assured and disappointed at the same time. She
wanted to call out to Shyama bibi, ‘Look it’s me, Basanti! I’m right in front
of you!’ But she didn’t. Shyama bibi, her head tilted slightly, was now
looking right at her. Basanti’s heart fluttered and she waved. The cycle
turned along the bend in the road.
They had left Shyama bibi’s house behind. Basanti felt a tinge of sadness.
I don’t know where I’m going, when I’ll be back, if I’ll ever come back at
all, or if I’ll ever meet Shyama bibi again. No! Of course, I’ll come back to
meet Shyama bibi. One day I’ll sneak into the colony and go quietly up the
stairs into her house. Shyama bibi will be sitting in her living room
watching TV. She’ll be so startled that she’ll stand up, and she’ll say: ‘You
ungrateful wretch! What are you doing here? I hope no one saw you coming
here.’
They turned the corner and Shyama bibi disappeared from view. Good
she didn’t recognize me. She’d only have got mad at me! But why, oh, why,
did she not recognize me? Now she won’t even know that I passed from
below her house before I left.
They were now near the dhaba. Basanti saw her elder sister. She’d come
there to ask for leftover bread and had brought her three little children
along. Basanti turned her face quickly away. She gets to know things about
me that even Ma can’t. And I can never tell with her, she blows hot and
cold. My unkempt sister with her unkempt children who hang around the
drains all day long, flies buzzing over their eyes and mouth. Her saree’s so
dirty and torn all over. Her teeth are dirty, her eyes are filthy. And she just
leaves her kids anywhere when she goes to work, in this house today, that
house tomorrow.
Basanti saw her sister’s husband in the distance. Her middle-aged
husband, he’s untidy just like her. But unlike my sister, he’s a good-fornothing! I’m sure even now he’s looking for her to wangle money out of her,
just like he does every single day. She’ll curse him loudly when he does, and
he’ll stand on the street and curse right back.
Basanti focused her eyes on the cyclist, on the back of his neck. It was
slender, and the skin was light. There were beads of slight perspiration. She
felt an unmistakable tremor of pleasure at what she saw. He’s so neat and
tidy, and he has his own cycle too. She tugged gently at his shirt.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Something must be the matter.’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Sit properly then.’
‘I am sitting properly.’
Basanti’s eyes roved up and down Dinu’s head and back. She looked at
his hair, which was fine and a lovely brownish-black, and at his elegant,
slim back. He looked so nice. And he’s not old, she said to herself, and felt
proud.
‘Turn towards the taxi stand. Let’s go that way one more time.’
‘No,’ Dinu’s voice was authoritative.
‘Come on, let’s.’
‘No!’
The cycle left Ramesh Nagar and was on the main road.
Evening was descending by the time they went in through a lofty gate,
entering an expansive, open area. There were no rushing cars here, no busy
city roads, no noise of traffic. A dense solitude had replaced them. Basanti
felt everything familiar drop suddenly away, as if she had stumbled into a
new, unknown courtyard where she didn’t know what she might find or
what she should expect. The feeling that she was free coursed through her
body, filling her.
This was an altogether different world. Tall jamun trees lined the road on
either side. On one side, far behind the row of trees, were a few houses,
standing close together, looking like an accumulation of darkness.
‘I know, I know . . .’ Basanti said suddenly, ‘I know this place. This road
turns right towards Maheshpur. But there are no buses to Maheshpur. The
Employment Office is on the other side. I know everything. We used to
come here to pluck fruit from the trees.’
‘Don’t go nosing around here,’ Dinu cautioned her. ‘No one should find
out that a girl has come in.’
‘A girl! Or a boy?’ Basanti chirped.
They saw a car driving in their direction. When it was still some distance
away, Basanti peered out at it from behind Dinu’s back, but when it was
nearer, she shrank back and hid herself behind Dinu. The car sped past
them.
‘That was the superintendent sahib’s car,’ Dinu said.
Running away together had been Basanti’s idea, but she hadn’t planned
for anything after that. Where Dinu would take her, how he’d keep her
presence concealed, what they would do once they did run away—Basanti
had no idea. But it seemed like Dinu did. He had become alert since they’d
entered the park and was keeping an eye out for every peon or sahib they
happened to pass by.
‘At night,’ he said to Basanti, ‘the old watchman will do the rounds. Be
sure to stay out of his way.’
As they moved ahead, Basanti saw a two-storeyed building on the right.
There was a row of windows all along the ground floor and light streamed
out from all of them.
‘That’s the library. It’s filled with books. People come here to read even
at night,’ Dinu said.
‘I know, I know. There’s a garden as well. We used to come to the garden
to pluck flowers.’
They went a little ahead and the garden appeared on their left. The air
was saturated with the fragrance of flowers.
‘There are lots and lots of roses here,’ Dinu said, trying to impress
Basanti both with his tone and his knowledge of the space.
‘Should we take some flowers?’
‘No way! No one’s allowed to pluck flowers here.’
‘No one’s going to see us; it’s dark now.’
‘No, you mustn’t!’
But Basanti had already hopped off the cycle and was running across the
road. She was in the garden in no time, among the rose bushes.
‘What are you doing? Come back! You shouldn’t be there!’
Dinu propped the cycle against a low pillar and followed her. By the time
he reached her, she’d already plucked four roses.
‘What are you doing, Basanti? The gardener’s always on duty here. The
fat watchman is also always about.’
‘So what!’ Basanti jerked her head to show she didn’t care, and
proceeded to pluck more flowers. ‘Do you know of any weddings without
flowers?’ Basanti laughed as she said this and tucked a rose into her hair.
Then she thought the better of it—she was dressed as a boy after all, with a
turban on her head—and she removed the rose from her hair and tucked it
behind her ear instead.
‘How does it look?’
‘What?’
‘The flower, what else? What are you thinking? It looks nice, doesn’t it?
Pramila bibi’s daughter wears it like this, tucked behind her ear. Hema
Malini too—I saw it on TV.’ Basanti was laughing.
‘Are you Hema Malini?’
‘Of course I am,’ she laughed cheerfully.
‘Don’t make a ruckus here. Speak softly.’
Basanti looked at Dinu defiantly, arms akimbo. The moon had appeared
in the sky; the flowers seemed to be glowing and it was as if they had, all at
once, begun releasing their fragrance into the air. Looking at Dinu filled her
with joy; her body felt radiant. Tiny beads of perspiration formed above her
lips. He is so handsome. She wasn’t very tall and the clothes she was
wearing made her look so boyish; except, she was breathing excitedly, and
Dinu felt his gaze drawn to her breasts under her bush shirt.
‘You are a strange one,’ he said. ‘Someone will see us. I’ll get fired.’
But Basanti was becoming more reckless by the minute.
‘No one’s going to do anything to you. I’ll say I’m here with my man. I’ll
tell them you’re my man,’ she said with verve and laughed. ‘You are my
man after all, aren’t you?’ she said, her fingers dancing on his chest. ‘My
man. Here he is, my man,’ and she laughed again. ‘Would you like a flower
in your hair?’ And she raised herself on her toes and tucked a flower behind
Dinu’s ear. ‘Wow. You look smashing.’
In Dinu’s eyes, Basanti was being childish. But how did Basanti perceive
all this? She felt pride at having given a slip to the life her father had
planned for her with the lame tailor, pride that she had eloped with a young
man instead, and pride that she had done what her sisters hadn’t been able
to do.
‘Let’s go now.’ This time Dinu was firm. Basanti gathered in the loose
end of her turban all the flowers she had plucked and stepped out of the
garden. ‘Great, so you’ve started ordering me around already,’ she teased.
As Dinu rode the cycle now, he felt more relaxed. Basanti’s proximity,
her youthful effervescence made him feel lighter, less hesitant, less bound
by the rules of his employment. The desire he felt for her was spreading like
silk over all that was harsh, softening it.
The two-storeyed building of the hostel was still some distance away when
Dinu stopped the cycle. He asked Basanti to get down and then said, ‘Cross
this ground and hide behind that big tree.’
Dinu was still on the cycle. ‘And you?’ Basanti asked.
‘I’ll take the road to the main gate. We’re behind the hostel right now.
Now look there, to the right, on the ground floor—the corner room is mine.
I’m going to go into the hostel from the main gate, and to my room. I’ll put
the light on and then switch it off soon after. Just look out for the light and
start walking once I switch it off. Once you cross the ground, you’ll reach
the shared courtyard. If someone sees you and calls out to you, don’t
respond. I’ll leave the door open. Walk right in.’
‘Okay.’
With that, Dinu rode away on his cycle. Within moments, he had
disappeared into the dark evening. Basanti was immediately worried. It was
so quiet around her. She stood very still. It was certain now—she had left
everything she knew. There was no denying it—the door she was going to
walk through would lead her not only into Dinu’s room but into her future
as well. In the vortex of emotions she had experienced within her all day—
of joy, play and excitement—something new was added. She felt doubt and
fear. She was never one to make detailed plans for every step she would
take but standing here, alone, in the dark evening, connected to her future
by nothing more than a delicate thread—this was new for her. The dark
mass of the hostel building seemed even less decipherable to her than it had
just moments ago. She put all her energy into concentrating on the corner
room on the ground floor. Suddenly, for no reason at all, right out of the
blue, two heavy drops of tears rolled down her cheeks.
It wasn’t that Dinu and Basanti had known each other for very long. Their
acquaintance with one another was only a few days old, but they had
become close. They met at a wedding in the three-storeyed house in block
number eleven. Basanti had been employed to wash utensils and Dinu was
in charge of preparing food for the two hundred guests, which involved
setting up big ovens. All the other people working there called him ‘cyclewala Dinu’. Basanti was attending to a huge pile of dirty utensils when he
came and stood behind her and ordered, ‘This won’t do. Be quicker about
it.’
Basanti shot an angry glance at him.
‘You’re washing five utensils in the time it takes to wash twenty.’
‘Then why don’t you do it?’
And he actually did. His method impressed Basanti. He brought a large
vat full of warm water and dunked as many of the plates, bowls and spoons
in it as he could. Then he went at the plates, one at a time, scrubbing them
briskly with a soap-soaked rag, and piled them all, one on top of the other,
on one side.
‘Rinse them. And quickly.’
‘Why should I? You’re washing the utensils now, aren’t you?’
Dinu stared at her with his big eyes and Basanti started rinsing the soaped
plates under the tap without any further argument. The entire pile of utensils
was washed in a matter of five to seven minutes.
When Dinu stood up, Basanti saw his clothes were as clean as they had
been when he started washing the utensils.
‘Come and help me again in the evening,’ Basanti had laughed.
‘This isn’t my job.’
‘And what is your job? Ordering people about?’
Dinu was the silent type, unlike Basanti who could talk non-stop. He
didn’t respond and walked away wiping his hands. Basanti liked his quiet
nature and smart personality.
There was yet another mountain of utensils for Basanti to wash that
evening. And the space she had by the tap was so little and dark that it
really was next to impossible for her to wash them. On top of that, she felt
distracted by the people who had gathered and were waiting for leftovers.
Her mother was among them, hopeful that her daughter would pass her
some pooris. Everyone was agitated and they were creating quite a
commotion. Dinu appeared from nowhere with a bucket of warm water. Just
like he had that morning, he began to soap the plates, quickly and
efficiently.
‘Keep rinsing them,’ he said. Basanti felt there was a sense of solidarity
in his tone.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said suddenly. ‘Go bring that basket here. The one
lying under the table. Empty the leftovers from the plates into it.’
Once again, work was proceeding quickly. Basanti felt glad for this
change; washing utensils lost its monotony.
‘Have you seen the boy?’ she asked.
‘Which boy?’
‘The groom, who else? The one whose wedding this is.’
‘No.’
‘I have. He looks like you,’ she said. ‘He’s sickly, just like you. Pale skin,
big eyes, like an owl’s.’ She was cracking up at her own joke. Dinu
frowned. He stared at her for a few moments and then returned to the task at
hand without responding. Basanti stole glances at him, at his slim body, the
amulet hanging from his neck, his chest visible through his unbuttoned
shirt, the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt. Dinu kept his head down and
worked.
‘Should I bring you some food?’
‘From where? All the guests haven’t eaten yet.’
‘From this basket then,’ she said, pointing to the basket in which she had
collected the leftovers.
‘I’ll slap you so hard across your face that your teeth will fall out.’
‘And then I’ll slap you so hard that your stomach will fill with your
teeth,’ she responded, and was in splits.
‘Stop blabbering and do your work.’
Dinu disappeared after the wedding and Basanti didn’t see him for many
days. Then, one day, as she sat on the raised platform behind Shyama bibi’s
house, she saw him cycling down the lane. He stopped beside her.
‘Were you looking for me?’ she laughed. ‘I’ve been sitting right here ever
since that day.’
‘I’ve got a job now.’
‘Where?’
‘Close by. In the boys’ hostel.’
‘But you were cooking at wedding parties. Why did you stop doing that?’
‘There’s no certainty in that about when you’ll get your next job. Now I
have a proper job. And they’ve given me a room to stay in as well.’
‘Before now did you sleep on your cycle?’ Basanti giggled. ‘It’s quite
possible that you did. Owls can sleep sitting on the branch of a tree. They
even keep their eyes open,’ Basanti doubled up with laughter at her own
silly joke. Dinu looked at her, utterly confounded.
And now, Basanti was hiding behind a tree, looking at the hostel where
Dinu worked. She felt a bit lost standing there, a small bag in one hand,
hastily stuffed with a couple of her clothes, and her turban in the other hand,
filled with a few flowers from the garden.
The light in Dinu’s room came on.
A wave of emotions swept through Basanti: of happiness, of faith in
Dinu, of a lust for life. She was ready. The light in the room went off. She
stepped out from behind the tree and dashed across the ground towards
Dinu’s room.
Basanti wandered for a long time in the storm of emotions that was rising
inside her. Then, her head resting against the edge of Dinu’s cot, she fell
asleep.
It had taken her very little time to reach the room. She had crossed into
the veranda, quietly pushed the door open and stepped into the room in the
blink of an eye. She closed the door behind her. Dinu wasn’t in the room.
She called out his name many times but didn’t get a response and realized
he’d probably gone back to work. The room reeked of beedis and seepage.
It was pitch dark. To get her bearings, she felt her way around the room.
Her foot struck the cot. She moved her fingers over it and felt the sheet.
There were some clothes on the cot. Soon enough, her eyes adjusted to the
darkness and she could make out shapes. Basanti sat down on the floor and
waited with eagerness for Dinu’s return.
Different sounds trickled into the room through the window. She heard
the clanging of utensils; this sound came from some distance away. That
must be from the hostel kitchen, where Dinu is working. The sound of water
flowing from a tap. Of a song. Someone was singing as he crossed the
veranda. The sound came close, and then receded.
The song was: Mein kya karun Ram mujhe buddha mil gaya.
Basanti couldn’t help laughing. That was her song. And everyone else
seemed to be singing it as well. She felt her heart stir. ‘To hell with the old
man!’ she muttered under her breath and laughed. They can’t do anything
now—neither Bapu nor Ma. I am no longer under their control. She felt a
strong urge to smoke a beedi. She even pulled out a matchbox from the
pocket of the bush shirt she was wearing, but then stopped. If I strike a
match, the room will light up and Dinu will be so cross. He’ll ask me: ‘Why
did you do it, Basanti?’ So she didn’t. But then she felt like smoking again
after a few minutes. I’m sitting in a corner of a darkened room. Who’s
going to know? What nonsense. So she lit a beedi. And in the brief moment
that the match was lit, the entire room was illuminated—at least enough for
Basanti to have a glimpse of everything in it. The pyjamas hanging on the
wire, the water jug on the window sill, the closed door, the cycle leaning
against the wall, the cot and even the matchsticks that lay littered all over
the floor.
Basanti took a few drags and put out the beedi. She felt her way to the
window, picked up the glass that was kept on top of the jug, filled it with
water and drank it down in big gulps. She felt immense relief. She hadn’t
realized she’d been that thirsty.
She felt her way back and sat down on the cot. But then she had second
thoughts and sat down on the floor near the cot, to its left, with her back
resting against it. She wanted to light another match and take another closer
look at the room. She pulled the matchbox out of her pocket but then
thought, Oh, forget it. Why give that fool something to get agitated over?
She slid the matchbox back into her pocket. ‘He’s left me alone here in this
darkness,’ she muttered to herself. But at the same time, a flood of love for
Dinu was sweeping through her heart. What she had glimpsed in the
flickering light of the match had been enough to evoke a strong sense of
intimacy in her and she now thought of the room as her own. Her heart was
in an unfamiliar, incredible state. She felt like something inside her was
giving way, breaking, but that something new and remarkable was being
born as well. Like a tree sheds its yellowed leaves for fresh ones to sprout
forth, she felt something within her was ending and something new coming
to life. I’ll sweep his room tomorrow and wash all his clothes; I’ll clean
everything.
Sailing through a stormy sea of emotions, her head resting against the cot
and waiting for Dinu to return, Basanti fell into a deep sleep.
Basanti felt a hand move up her body and reach her breasts, fondling them.
She woke up with a start.
‘Who is it?’ She sat up disoriented, rattled by the dark, unsure of where
she was.
‘Don’t! Someone might hear you,’ Dinu said softly.
Basanti relaxed. She rested her cheek on Dinu’s knee and drifted back
into sleep.
Dinu folded her in his arms. She found herself melting into them and yet
she wanted to tear herself away. She’d had all kinds of experiences cleaning
people’s houses. Men had stood close to her as she swept floors and she had
felt their heavy breath on her neck. She wasn’t unfamiliar with the scent of
men’s bodies; she had seen lust in men’s eyes. There had been so many
occasions when she’d had to invent reasons to run out of rooms, disgusted.
But here, with Dinu, this experience was new to Basanti. She wanted to let
herself go, to drown in his arms. It was like letting herself go in a sea,
deeper and deeper, without the fear of drowning.
Suddenly, Basanti pulled herself together and pushed Dinu away.
‘Get up! Get up.’
‘Why?’
‘Get up, please,’ Basanti said lovingly, ruffling Dinu’s hair with her hand.
‘What is it, Basanti?’
‘Do you want me to switch the lights on?’
‘No, no!’
‘Then get up.’
‘Stop shouting. Someone’s going to hear you.’
‘No one’s going to hear anything. Get up.’
Dinu rested his hands on the cot and pulled himself up.
‘Do you have an idol of any god here?’
‘What?’
‘An idol.’
‘Why are you talking like you’re insane? Why would there be any idol
here?’
‘Then, a picture? You’ll have that, I’m sure.’
‘What’s this nonsense, Basanti?’
‘You mustn’t talk like that. We’ll stand before God. We’ll bow before
Him. We’ll marry each other. You’ll put a sacred mark on my forehead and I
on yours. So, do you have a picture of God?’
Dinu remembered a friend had left his almanac in his room, and it had
Lord Krishna on the cover. He pulled the almanac out of the cupboard.
‘What kind of a game is this?’
‘This isn’t a game.’
‘Then what is it? Is this how marriages are performed?’
‘What is this in your hands?’
‘It’s an almanac. It has a picture of God on it.’
‘Great!’ Basanti was delighted. ‘Let’s go out now.’
‘Outside! Where? You’ve lost your marbles, Basanti.’
‘Right here, in the veranda. Nothing will happen. Everyone’s asleep.’
Basanti really was behaving like she’d lost her mind.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Bring the jug and wash your face first. I’ll wash mine as
well.’
Dinu was restless with desire. This hindrance in its fulfilment was
irritating him, but he also knew that to oppose Basanti right now would
only provoke her further. He decided to go along with whatever she wanted.
They splashed water on their faces. Basanti then cupped her hand, poured
water into it and wet her hair, like she’d seen Bengalis do at the start of any
auspicious ceremony. She walked up to Dinu and said softly and with
dignity, ‘Let’s go out now. No one’s going to see us. Bring the God with
you.’
They stepped into the veranda. The moon shone brightly in the sky. A
cool breeze was blowing. Basanti looked around for a spot, then placed the
slightly torn picture of Krishna in an alcove.
‘Stand in front of it, like this,’ Basanti said firmly.
Dinu smiled and did as she said.
Basanti stood next to him.
‘Fold your hands before God.’
Dinu shrugged and complied.
Who is to say if Basanti’s need for this ceremony was inspired by what
she had seen in the movies, or if she was responding to a call from her inner
being. Either way, she was meticulously performing the wedding rituals.
As if she had suddenly remembered something, Basanti ran back into the
room. She came out with the flowers that she had gathered in the evening.
She gave one flower to Dinu: ‘Put it in my hair.’
Dinu put the flower in her hair.
‘Everyone wears one flower normally,’ Basanti said as an afterthought.
‘Here, take another and put it in my hair as well.’ And she handed Dinu
another flower.
Dinu was getting tired of this game. But the nearness of Basanti’s body
was intoxicating. He did as he was told, however silly he thought it all was.
He tucked the flower into her hair.
‘You should now put some vermilion in the parting of my hair. Do you
have any?’
‘That’s enough, Basanti. Come, let’s go into the room now.’
‘That’s no way to talk when you’re standing before God. From this day
on, I’m your wife and you’re my husband.’
Dinu stayed silent.
Basanti raised herself on her toes and stuck two flowers in Dinu’s hair.
Then she plucked the petals off the remaining flowers and threw them up in
the air, so they fell on both their heads.
She looked at Dinu—in the moonlight, his face seemed lovelier than
ever. She clutched his sleeve and pressed her body against his. ‘Now that
you’ve taken my hand in yours, never let go,’ she said, a bit like it is in the
movies.
This was everything it seemed to be—an act, a game, a wedding, the
pretence of a wedding, a woman’s ardent prayer for the well-being of her
married life. The moon, after all, was shining brightly in the night sky,
doing what it does—lending romance and mystery to all that is otherwise
plain and ordinary about life.
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Moolraj was the only one who still wore a turban to the panchayat
meetings. The panchayat was but a faded version of its pre-demolition self.
Its membership had dwindled. More than half the people transported to this
desolate expanse of land had left to live in other parts of the city. And from
among those who had chosen to stay, most left for work at the crack of
dawn, every day. There was a road about half a kilometre away. Setting out
early enough in the morning, one could catch a bus or a truck from there.
The only source of water was a tap, about two hundred metres away.
Everyone filled their pots there. Crowding at the tap was inevitable and
fights were routine. There were but two trees in the entire area. One was an
old neem tree. Old men and women, and young children, would spend the
day under it; it provided shade and shielded them from the scorching sun.
The other tree was at the opposite end of the field, by the mud track that
connected this place to the tar road. This tree was leafless and had a
crooked trunk. It seemed ominous in the dark and people felt fear if they
crossed it after dusk, which they did when returning from work. The land
was otherwise bare. By day, baked by the sun, eddies of sand would rise,
their dance taking over the land. By night, the place seemed haunted by
ghosts. But people weren’t sitting idle. Some had scraped up every meagre
resource they could, and a few houses of brick and mortar had already come
up. Others hung sacks and still others had hammered together pieces of
wood to make their enclosures. Two weddings had been celebrated. Women
often sang songs while crossing the field on their way back from work.
Sitting under the neem tree and plaiting hemp into rope, Bodhraj’s elderly
father would gaze up and say, ‘It must have been a holy man who planted
this tree that shelters us from hot winds with its cooling shade.’
Night was approaching. Some seven to eight men had gathered for the
panchayat meeting. Among them, Moolraj was the only one still here from
among the chiefs who used to preside over these meetings earlier. Truth be
told, he had none of the authority he used to enjoy. Heera wasn’t here; he
now worked at a shop in Ajmeri Gate that sold paint for whitewashing
walls. And though two more headmen had stayed on in this new place, their
attendance in these meetings had become rare.
Moolraj began the meeting. ‘We’ve met the sahib. He has shown us the
map of this place. He told us we will each get plots of nine square yards.’
‘We’ve been hearing this same nonsense for four months now.’
‘Come, come, Bodhraj, hear me out first. You have a bad habit of
launching forth before you even know all there is to know.’
‘Fine, go on then. Let’s hear what you have to say.’
Bodhraj was in a foul mood. He’d returned from work to find his son had
high fever. He’d sat at his bedside and stroked his head till it was time for
the meeting. He hadn’t eaten anything. His face was sunburnt from
whitewashing the outside walls of a house all day, and was still spattered
with paint. So was the black cap he was wearing. He was exhausted; his
right eyelid twitched involuntarily.
‘Sahib said the map is ready. Work will begin as soon as the map gets
cleared.’
‘What work?’
‘Work to make the basti, what else? Everyone will be allotted plots.’
‘You’re not saying anything new.’ This was Matiram. Like Bodhraj, he
too had lost faith. He rubbed his thumb vigorously on the lime and tobacco
mixture in his hand.
‘How can you say a map is unimportant? Aren’t you a head mason? You
should know!’
‘What have they drawn up a map of now?’
‘Of the basti. What else! Where the roads will be made, which area is for
the construction of houses.’
At this, Bodhraj got up to leave.
‘We don’t even have drinking water. That’s how screwed up things are
here. We’ve been living out in the open. And he’s dreaming of roads.’
‘Please sit down, Bodhraj. Where are you going?’
‘Calm down, Bodhraj. We’ll see when these roads will get made.’
‘Is this a joke? Get up at seven in the morning and drag your cycle for
seven kilometres to get to work. And then come back exhausted to listen to
this shit. The map is awaiting clearance. Roads will be built.’
Bodhraj was beside himself. He turned to leave.
‘Wait, Bodhraj. Don’t leave like this. Sit down.’
‘You sit here. I don’t want to listen to this nonsense,’ said Bodhraj and
stormed out. But then he turned around. ‘Didn’t he have the sense to open
his mouth and say to the sahib, “Come with me, sahib, come and see with
your own eyes the condition in which we are living there.” No, he didn’t.
Instead, he’s presenting the government’s case to us. The map is ready.’
This annoyed Moolraj. ‘I won’t go for these meetings from now on. Let
someone else do it. Send Bodhraj.’
‘Come, sit down, Bodhraj. Calm down.’
Bodhraj stood where he was. ‘What good has the panchayat done?’ he
asked. ‘The basti was demolished. Moolraj had been frequenting the sahib’s
office then as well. Can the panchayat really do anything? The government
will do what it wants and when it pleases. We can’t do a thing about it.’
‘What you’re saying is true,’ Matiram tried to defuse the situation. ‘But at
least the panchayat is an excuse for all of us to sit down together from time
to time and talk to each other about things. Come here, sit with everyone.’
Bodhraj walked back to the meeting but muttered, ‘What is the panchayat
going to do?’ Then he raised his hand in the air and said, ‘Ramu’s daughter
ran away with a driver. What did the panchayat do about that?’
‘Sit down, sit down,’ Matiram was trying his best.
‘She did come back, didn’t she? She’s returned to her husband, hasn’t
she?’ Moolraj said in defence.
‘What hand did the panchayat have in her return? She came back on her
own. What did you do?’ Bodhraj sat down on the ground and addressed
everyone. ‘Moolraj, it’s time you forgot this turban etcetera. You’ve no
business leading this panchayat any more.’
‘Oh, sit down, sit down. The panchayat hasn’t been called just to discuss
one matter. There are more things to go over. You needn’t be ready for
battle all the time.’
‘So go on then.’
‘Go on, Moolraj. Let’s carry on.’
Moolraj straightened his turban and called out Ramdayal’s name.
‘Ramdayal? Is Ramdayal here?’
‘He’s here.’
‘Say what you want to say.’
‘What more is there to say? The matter is resolved. His wife has
returned,’ Matiram interjected.
‘So what? She can always run away again,’ Ramdayal said crossly.
‘Where is Radha? Call her here.’
‘She won’t come here,’ Matiram butted in.
‘Is it because she feels shame? Or is there some other reason?’
‘Why don’t you ask him that? He’s sitting right in front of you,’ Matiram
said, pointing towards Ramdayal.
‘What is it that you want, Ramdayal?’ Moolraj asked.
‘I want her to be punished.’
‘How?’
‘She should be barred from stepping out of the house. She should be
disallowed from going out of this basti.’
Matiram laughed. ‘Where is the basti here that she shouldn’t step out of?
It’s just fields everywhere,’ he said. ‘Should she not go to the tap to fill
water? Should she not go into the fields to relieve herself? What do you
mean by “she shouldn’t go out”? What’s “inside” here, and what’s
“outside”? And if she were to stay at home, what about the money she earns
by washing and cleaning?’
‘I want that she not be allowed to go to Ramesh Nagar any more.’
‘Yes, that makes sense. Let her not go to Ramesh Nagar from now on,’
Moolraj said.
Matiram laughed again. ‘Let us assume that she doesn’t go to Ramesh
Nagar. So what’s stopping that lad from coming here? And what’s stopping
her from flirting with someone entirely new? Let’s get to the point,
Ramdayal. Stop beating her and she won’t go anywhere,’ he said.
‘When she does things like this, how can I not raise my hand on her?’
Ramdayal said irritably, defending himself.
‘She ran away because you beat her all the time. Continue doing that, and
she’ll run away again.’
They had reached an impasse. The gathering split into two. Some tried to
get Ramdayal to commit to never raising his hand on his wife, while others
defended him. The latter group’s argument went something like this: It has
been known since time immemorial that only the fear of punishment keeps
a woman on the correct path. Some of the men wanted Radha to be
summoned to the meeting. After all, men and women can both have their
say in the panchayat. Let Radha too present her case, they argued. She was
sent for. But she refused. The members of the panchayat were still caught
up in this matter when, in the darkening shade of the evening, they saw
someone walking through the field towards them. His walk was crooked but
he was heading straight towards them.
It was Bulaki. He was still in his frock-shirt which swirled around him as
he walked, pivoting his body on the stick to swing forward.
‘It’s Bulaki,’ Matiram smiled and said. ‘He’s coming straight from the
royal courts of Jodhpur.’
Tensions eased. Everyone started chatting and smiling.
‘Welcome, Bulaki, welcome,’ Moolraj greeted Bulaki.
Bulaki didn’t live in this neighbourhood. He had rented a small kiosk by
the road that led to Roop Nagar. It was near a basti of labourers. There were
some Rajput households there as well. He lived there and had also started
his tailoring business again.
‘And what brings you here?’ Moolraj asked.
‘I heard the panchayat was meeting today. I was hoping my plea could be
heard.’ Then he hesitated. Before proceeding, he jerked his hands and made
a gurgling sound. ‘Chaudhary has robbed me of nine hundred rupees.’
‘What did he do that for?’
‘For what? For his daughter to be married to me. That’s what for.’
‘Oh, that’s just terrible,’ Matiram said, shaking his head empathetically.
‘For you to have kept quiet this long . . . he must be very dear to you,’
Ramdayal joined in.
No one was a stranger here to Bulaki’s ways. This wasn’t the first time
he’d been promised a marriage in return for money.
Bulaki felt emboldened by the praise he was receiving. ‘He has promised
me the girl’s hand, and cheated me, thrice. Of course we are close. Anyone
else would have got him arrested.’
‘That’s true. That’s true.’ Matiram shook his head again. Ramdayal and
he exchanged glances and smiled.
‘It’s understandable that Bulaki should keep his groom’s attire on. He
could be married any moment.’
‘Yes, take your clothes off only after your bride is home with you,’
someone laughed.
‘You’re a true Rajput, Bulaki. Our honour is in your hands. We are all
with you.’
Bulakiram felt deeply gratified by this show of solidarity. Of course he
could count on others of his caste! They understood him best; saw the
goodness in him. Bulaki had, in fact, taken a vow that he would change out
of this frock-shirt, which he had worn for his wedding, only after Basanti
came home with him.
The panchayat was warming up again. Even Bodhraj was beginning to
enjoy himself.
Someone said, ‘Call Heera. What does he keep sitting at home for when
there are such grave matters to be discussed here?’
At this, Ganesha, who had been sitting quietly beside Bodhraj, said,
‘Everyone should come to the meeting today. Bulakiram is here. Men and
women—everyone—gather here.’
With slow, deliberate moves, Matiram picked up a pebble and drew a line
on the ground: ‘There is no doubt. Bulaki’s honour is our honour.’
Taking the cue, Moolraj said, ‘But someone ask Bulakiram why he
hadn’t mentioned anything all this time? To be cheated by Chaudhary
thrice!’
‘That’s right. If only you had, Bulaki. By now your bride would have
been expecting.’
Some people sniggered.
‘And someone should also ask him why, when he was about to be
married thrice, he hadn’t invited any of us even once? It’s not like he would
have been inconvenienced in any way. The feast would have been the
responsibility of the girl’s family, not his.’
It had been a long time since Bulaki had felt this loved. Normally,
everyone just clowned about with him. In fact, he felt, this was perhaps the
first time in his life that his people had bestowed affection upon him. They
really care for me, he thought to himself. Only those who are one’s own
complain about not being invited to one’s wedding. It had become quite
dark, and Bulaki wasn’t able to see the expressions on anyone’s face. But to
him, the warmth in their voices was unmistakable.
Bulaki was overcome with emotion. He stretched his arms and cried out,
‘You’re my own. Punish me if you want. Rain down your slippers on me. I
have made a grave mistake. Forgive me. Not once, I will invite you again
and again. Only, I beg of you, make this happen for me. Get the girl home
to me.’
‘Haven’t we promised you that already? We all agree that Bulaki is a
lionhearted man.’
More people had joined the meeting by now. Men and women were still
trickling in. Even children were prancing about near the gathering.
‘Consider it done, Bulaki. Now that the panchayat has been made aware,
your marriage is everyone’s responsibility.’
Bulaki screamed, ‘Is that a promise?’
‘You have our word! It’s carved in stone,’ Matiram assured him. Then he
added, ‘Come on, this calls for a treat.’
Bulaki’s emotions welled over. ‘Chaudhary took nine hundred from me.
Oh, I would give him one thousand; I would even give him twelve hundred.
But he should honour his word. I mustn’t be cheated.’ He then reached into
the inside pocket of his frock-shirt and pulled out a bundle of notes. ‘By
your grace, I have no dearth of money, and everyone knows Bulaki is not a
small-hearted man.’
‘So, everyone!’ Matiram called out. ‘Let there never be a delay in the
carrying out of a good deed. Today is a doubly auspicious day. We have
pledged Bulaki his marriage and Moolraj met the sahib.’ Then he looked at
all the people sitting around him. ‘Who’s the youngest among us?’ He
stopped at Ganesha. ‘Come on, Ganesha. Bulaki chacha will give you
money for two kilos of laddoo. You can take Ramdayal’s cycle.’
‘One kilo should be enough,’ someone said.
‘No, no, let’s call for two kilos. Now, where should you buy them from?
You know Natraj Cinema on the main road, don’t you? A Punjabi sweetseller sits behind the hall. Bring two kilos of fresh boondi laddoos from
him.’ Then, modifying his own suggestion, he thought aloud, ‘Just laddoos?
Or should we get some barfi as well?’
‘What does Bulaki say?’
Ramdayal turned to Bulaki and advised him, ‘The more sugar you add,
the sweeter your preparation will taste, Bulakiram. The more you sweeten
everyone’s palate, the more heart everyone will put into making things
work out for you.’
Moolraj became worried. It was fun pulling this prank on Bulaki and
making him open his purse strings for four kilos of sweets. But eventually,
he was bound to realize that he had gained nothing from it. Then he might
scream and shout, and create a ruckus.
‘There’s no need for that. The laddoos are enough,’ he said. ‘Laddoos are
what important moments are commemorated with. That’s the tradition.
We’ll eat barfi when we go as part of his marriage procession,’ Moolraj
declared.
Ganesha fetched the cycle. People were coming out in droves now. It
seemed to Bulaki that his wedding celebrations had already begun. He
undid the knot of the silk handkerchief, pulled out ten ten-rupee notes and
handed them to Ganesha.
‘Make sure the laddoos are fresh,’ Matiram said.
Once Ganesha left, Bulaki began narrating his woeful tale to the
gathering. ‘Chaudhary has cheated me thrice,’ he said with feeling. ‘I made
a mistake by not coming to all of you earlier.’
‘And what does Chaudhary have to say about all this?’ Heera asked. He’d
come in late and had no idea of the fun everyone had been having at
Bulaki’s cost.
‘What will he say?’ Bulaki’s voice was almost choking. ‘He says she’s
gone to her elder sister’s.’
Moolraj shook his head for a long time. ‘Bulaki,’ he said, ‘Chaudhary is
trying to squeeze more money out of you. I know the ways of that man.’
‘Call him here, I say. Punish him. The panchayat can set him straight.’
‘But he’s not from our caste. We can’t punish him.’ This just slipped out
of Bodhraj’s mouth.
‘Shh . . . shh!’ Matiram whispered urgently to him, ‘Let’s have the
laddoos first. Be quiet till then.’
Bodhraj became quiet; he felt confused.
‘Take your turban off, Mool. The panchayat’s meeting is over.’
Moolraj removed the turban from his head and placed it by his side.
Ganesha was already on his way back—the cycle was visible at a distance
now. Everyone’s eyes lit up. They sang Bulaki’s praises. They convinced
him that the panchayat would summon Chaudhary and, if he refused to
appear, Bulaki should slap a court case on him. They promised him that
they would appear as witnesses from Bulaki’s side.
The meeting ended. Everyone watched Bulaki cross the field, his frockshirt swirling as he hopped and skipped away. And while the jokes about
Bulaki continued long after he had left, and even as people continued to talk
about Bulaki and Chaudhary as they reached their homes sprinkled across
the field and lit up by the soft, flickering glow of wicks dipped in oil, no
one once commented on, nor questioned—not even in jest—why the sixtyyear-old Bulaki was intent on marrying a fourteen-year-old girl. No one, not
even Bodhraj.
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In the fading light of dusk, her arms outstretched, Basanti whirled, softly
singing, ‘O . . . o . . . o . . . o . . . Mujhe kisi se pyar ho gaya.’ She seemed to
be in different parts of the room at the same time.
‘Stop it, Basanti. You’re very loud; someone’s going to hear you,’ Dinu
said.
‘No one will hear anything. Now I remember—this is from the movie
Do. Have you seen it? It’s lovely. It made me cry.’
Dinu watched her. Basanti’s voice was hoarse, her singing tuneless. But
she had an incredible capacity to remember lyrics.
‘O . . . o . . . o . . . o . . . Mujhe kisi se pyar ho gaya.’ She stopped again.
‘Actually, the story isn’t that good. But the songs are great. Have you seen
the movie?’
‘Which one is it?’
‘The girl’s ill; the hero takes her home with him. When she wakes up the
next day, she clutches his hand and declares—“You’re my husband!”’
Basanti was very tickled. ‘She’s ill, you see. Has some screws loose. She
doesn’t remember the hero’s only just brought her to his house.’
Then a song playing on a transistor in a room on the other side of the
veranda reached Basanti. She stopped moving. ‘I know this song as well. I
heard it in Shyama bibi’s house.’
Clapping to the beat, she started singing along: ‘Jis zalim ne mujhe
tadpaya, usi par pyar aya; badi mushkil se . . .’
Basanti seemed even more carefree now than she had been a few
moments ago. She started dancing again, her arms outstretched once more,
her neck moving from side to side with the beat of the song.
Dinu was growing more anxious by the second. He was sure someone
was going to hear her loud singing.
‘That’s enough, Basanti! Be quiet,’ he snapped.
Basanti stopped singing and cupped her hands over her lips. ‘Oh, all
right, I won’t even speak now,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ll make sure to tie a rag
over my mouth before you come back to the room. But really, what am I to
do? You’re always away. I have to be by myself all the time.’
Dinu understood it was difficult for Basanti. He knew that after she was
silent the entire day, the floodgates opened the moment he returned to the
room.
Basanti stood absolutely still in the middle of the room and said, ‘My
singing will give me away one day.’ Then she laughed, ‘And what are you
going to do then?’
‘What will there be for me to do then? Sahib’s going to show me the
door, what else?’
Basanti took a step towards him. ‘Please, let’s rent a room somewhere,’
she said softly, entreatingly. ‘I’m tired of being on my own all the time. I
don’t like living in hiding. Why should we hide from the world?’
‘You’ve run away from home. If your father finds out where you are,
he’ll catch you by your hair and drag you back home.’
‘And you’ll just stand by and watch?’ she laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not
one to be caught easily.’ Basanti sat down on the cot, very close to Dinu.
‘Let’s go to some other basti and rent ourselves a room. No one will know
us there.’
‘And this room?’
‘You have a cycle. You can get here easily.’
‘No, we can’t do it.’
Basanti ruffled his hair lovingly. ‘Come on, agree. Agree, my dear Dinu,
agree, agree.’ Then she roughed up his hair completely and laughed loudly.
‘Go, look at yourself in the mirror. You look like a monkey.’
Dinu pulled her close.
Basanti liked that. But she tried to wrestle herself out of his arms. ‘First I
want to talk to you. I’ve had no one to talk to all day.’
Dinu didn’t stop.
‘Stop it. Stop it and talk to me first. You know only one, and one thing
alone.’ She was laughing. ‘Am I dough that needs your constant kneading?’
‘Be quiet! Someone’s going to hear you,’ Dinu said as he tried again to
pull her into a tight embrace.
When Basanti tried to wrestle herself free again, Dinu said thoughtlessly,
‘If not this, then what have I brought you here for?’
This wasn’t the first time Dinu had spoken this way. Then what have I
brought you here for? Basanti disliked being shut up all day long in this
room. But unmindful of that, every day, as soon as he returned from work,
Dinu would behave as if possessed. He didn’t even seem to care what time
of the day it was. And when Basanti would try to stop him, he’d say, ‘Then
what have I brought you here for?’
‘What does it matter to me? It’s fine by me. I can shit and piss in this
room. You can keep cleaning up after me,’ Basanti laughed.
Ever since she’d come here, Basanti had been able to step out of the
room only a couple of times and that too only before sunrise. On both
occasions, she had relieved herself in the fields and washed her face with
cold water from the tap. She’d felt so good, she’d returned to the room
dancing. The door closed for her at daybreak. Once the sun rose, forget
stepping out of the room, even looking out of the window was forbidden to
her. But she wasn’t able to wake up before daybreak most of the time.
Expecting Dinu to wake her up was out of the question. He would sleep
without a care till the sun rose and it was time for him to get up. Basanti
hadn’t even been able to wash her clothes. And it was pointless to hope for
Dinu’s help with that.
Basanti clasped Dinu’s hands in hers and snuggled up to him.
‘I’m missing Bholi today,’ she said. ‘You don’t know her. She was a
friend of mine. We lived close to each other in the basti. She was married
some time before the demolition. Do you know, I was to be married as
well? But the police came and the basti was broken. So I wasn’t married.’
‘I know. I’ve heard enough times.’
‘But you don’t know Bholi. Bholi’s husband would beat her. He would
get drunk and then he’d rain down on her. Our men aren’t good people.
They drink hooch. He used to ask her to drink with him. But she didn’t like
it. Why should someone have to drink what she doesn’t like? No one should
have to do what they don’t want to. Then he would get drunk and beat her.
You don’t drink, do you?’ Basanti was very proud that her husband didn’t
drink.
Dinu didn’t answer her and tried to get his hands free.
‘One day he brought a litre of hooch from somewhere. And he also
brought a friend along. They drank the entire litre. What then? They started
fighting with each other. Our people get very carried away when they are
drunk. Poor Bholi, she tried her best to intervene. You know what her
husband did? He threw her out of the house. Now what was her fault, tell
me? She was only trying to get them to stop fighting. The next morning,
one man woke up with a swollen eye and the other with a swollen jaw.
Bholi wasn’t to be found anywhere. No one knows where she went. Bholi
did the right thing by running away, didn’t she? I wonder where she is now.’
Ensconced in the dark of the evening, Dinu’s hands clasped between
hers, Basanti talked on.
But then Dinu managed to free his hands. And he tried, once again, to
wrap her into his arms. Basanti tried to catch hold of his hands again. ‘What
comes over you? All you ever want to do is stick my body to yours.’ She
was laughing. ‘I find it dirty. I haven’t even bathed.’ Then her voice turned
soft, as if she was talking to herself. ‘My father was just like this with my
mother. That’s why she used to complain all night. That’s why she whelped
like a bitch. I don’t want that . . . ’
Dinu didn’t mind her talking. But now that she tried to push him away
yet again, he snapped at her, ‘I’m going to slap you across your face! What
do you think I’ve brought you here with me for?’
This time Basanti froze. ‘For this? Just for this?’
‘Then what else?’
Basanti looked at him, stunned. That’s not how she saw it. She’d come
here as a bride, to her husband’s house. She considered herself his wife. But
what she heard in Dinu’s voice was harshness and crude lust.
‘That’s not how you speak with the one you’ve married.’
‘When did I marry you?’
‘Didn’t you take a vow in front of God? Didn’t you fill the parting of my
hair with vermilion? Didn’t you put flowers in my hair? If that wasn’t
marrying me, then what was it?’
‘You forced me to do all that. I can find women like you anywhere.’
Basanti’s heart was sinking. Her hands turned cold. She looked at Dinu’s
face, disbelief filling her eyes.
Dinu realized he’d been harsh and his voice softened. ‘You wanted to
believe that you were my wife. I didn’t see any harm in that. I thought, if
that’s what she wants to think, then let her.’
‘You don’t think of yourself as my husband?’
Dinu didn’t answer her. Night had fallen. In the darkness, Basanti felt his
blueish eyes on her. And for the first time, she felt unsure about what was in
this man’s heart.
‘Say it. Why keep it to yourself? Say the words, and I can leave tonight.’
From the day she had entered this room, she had behaved as his wife. She
swept the floor, kept his clothes tidy. The very first day, while she waited
for him, she’d tightened the strings of the cot, emptied out the beedi stubs,
sorted the shelves and the cupboard. Then she’d combed her hair and tied a
bun. She’d treated the room like her bridal chamber. Dinu had been so
pleased when he came back. He’d said it felt like a home.
Dinu reached for her again. Basanti didn’t say anything this time; she
didn’t try to stop him. She just sat still, as if her mind was elsewhere. She
was thinking how indecipherable Dinu’s catlike eyes were, how she had no
way of discerning from them what he really felt. She thought momentarily
of pushing him away again. But then, she felt a surge of emotion. To me,
he’s my husband. I consider him my husband. In my heart, he’s my husband.
I don’t care if that’s not how he thinks. I do. Her hands rose and caressed
Dinu’s head. He’s done well by me, bringing me here with him. Otherwise
my father would’ve married me off to that lame tailor. And Basanti felt a
new fount of affection spring in her heart, filling it with love for Dinu.
A little while later, Basanti was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling in
the dark. Dinu lay beside her, with his back to her. Basanti stroked his back.
‘Do you really not think of yourself as my husband?’ she asked, her voice
dripping with affection.
Dinu spoke without turning towards her. ‘I’m already married,’ he said.
Basanti sat up. Her hand was still on Dinu’s back, but it was trembling.
‘What did you say?’
‘I’m married.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ Basanti’s voice was sinking.
‘What could I tell you? You never asked.’
‘Where’s your wife?’
‘In the village.’
‘Where’s your village?’
‘In the hills. Near Pathankot.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married? You’ve cheated me.’
‘In what way have I cheated you? You were the one who wanted to run
away with me.’
‘I didn’t want to just run away with you! I wanted to run away with you
to marry you.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You didn’t say anything even when we stood before God.’
‘If you want to play wife, you go ahead and do that. As you like. In our
caste, men often marry twice. Even thrice.’
Dinu considered the night Basanti had dragged him into the veranda and
made him stand before a picture of God. Of how she had tucked flowers in
his hair. He’d considered it all a game, a farce. He’d been eager to take her
into his arms. The mellow smell of her body, its nearness to him, the
moonlight—they were making him crazy with desire for her. He wondered
about it now. His own eagerness seemed a little strange to him.
It was as if a faint mist of desire had covered his eyes from the moment
Basanti had come into his room. It stopped him from thinking about the
situation—his own, and Basanti’s. And he didn’t want to, anyway. A young
girl, after all, had walked into his room of her own volition. She was always
available to him, had no place to go, neither any wish to be anywhere else.
What more did he need? She’s thinking of settling into a household with me.
So what? Let her live in her dream world. That doesn’t harm me. She
doesn’t ask things of me. She’s cheerful. And I can feed her with food from
the hostel kitchen. It’s perfect. Everything is free. What more do I need? And
she’s a good worker too. When she does get some work, which she will,
eventually, she’ll earn. She won’t be a burden.
Basanti sat staring at Dinu’s back for a very long time. The things that
affect us most in life strike suddenly but they don’t let their effects be felt
immediately. They strike and glide past quietly. And we humans, we carry
on as if unaffected. The pangs of pain come later.
‘What’s your wife’s name?’ Basanti rested her chin on her knee and
asked.
‘Rukmi.’
‘How old is she? Is she older than me?’
‘She’s older than you.’
‘Is she fair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she ever live here with you?’
‘No, she’s in the village.’
‘How many children do you have?’
‘None.’
‘How come?’
‘Just.’
‘My mother bore seven children. And your wife has none?’
‘No.’
Basanti became quiet. She lives in the village. She must be a simpleton.
She mustn’t have been to the cinema ever, wouldn’t have sat in a bus, won’t
know what a TV is. Basanti felt proud of herself. She was definitely the
better of the two.
‘Don’t you want to live with her?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? She’s my wife.’
‘Then why haven’t you brought her here?’
‘She lives in the village, with my mother.’
Suddenly, Basanti became restless. ‘Why did you marry a second time?’
Dinu answered calmly, just as he had before. ‘I didn’t marry a second
time. You ran away with me and I didn’t refuse you.’
‘You’re right.’ Basanti became quiet. She sat quietly for a long time,
then, sighing deeply, she lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling.
The night was in its darkest hour. It was utterly silent. There was pindrop silence in the hostel. The doors, the transistors, the taps, the utensils—
they were all quiet. Not even the bearded night watchman seemed to be
doing his rounds. Basanti listened to the sound of Dinu breathing. He was
breathing deeply; he was falling asleep.
‘You should bring her here. We’ll all live together. Men really can marry
twice in your caste, can’t they?’
Dinu didn’t answer.
‘I’ll do all the work. I’ll teach her everything. Bring her here. We’ll take
up a room somewhere.’
But Dinu didn’t say anything. Basanti was about to repeat what she had
said but she realized Dinu was fast asleep. He’d begun snoring softly.
The night passed with Basanti staring at the ceiling. Sleep had left her.
Except for the sound of Dinu snoring and the buzzing of mosquitoes, it was
completely quiet. What must his wife be like? He says she’s fair. So what!
Being fair doesn’t mean she’ll know anything. She won’t even know her way
around Delhi. She’d get lost in a minute. I’ll probably have to hold her
hand to help her cross the road. I’ll be the one running the household. Dinu
will depend on me to do things. I’ll learn cycling. I can then take Dinu’s
cycle for different chores. That’ll make things easier. Basanti’s restless mind
thought this and that for a long time.
Then a sharp pain stabbed at her. The bastard! Why didn’t he tell me he
was married? Her eyes welled up. He has a wife.
Basanti felt like she was drowning. Should I leave? Should I get up and
leave now? But where will I go?
In the distance, the bell in the clock tower chimed. It’s going to be the
same again today. I’ll fall asleep when the sun is about to rise. And once
again, I won’t be able to go out. The previous night, Dinu had picked up the
cot and walked out of the room in the middle of the night. He’d said the
mosquitoes were troubling him and that he would sleep in the open field.
He’d even taken the water jug with him. I’ll wait for the clock to strike
three. Then I’ll go out. I’ll do all that I have to do and return before
daybreak. At that hour, a cool breeze blows. The sounds of night insects and
frogs fill the air. Even the birds begin to wake up. Flocks of parrots waking
up, taking flight . . .
Basanti could see a patch of sky through the window. The sky was dark,
resplendent with stars. Daybreak was still some time away. When daybreak
approaches, the sky changes colour rapidly. Blink once, and the shade is
lighter. Blink again, and it’s lighter still. And then, the first ray of the sun
muddies the sky with red. Blink, and more red. That’s the most beautiful
hour of the night.
Basanti closed her eyes and drifted into sleep.
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Shyama bibi looked up to find Basanti standing in front of her.
‘What in the world . . .’ She ran to the door once the shock of seeing
Basanti abated, and pulled her in. ‘Did anyone see you?’ She stepped out of
the door and looked around, then closed it.
‘Where were you? Look at your face!’
Basanti was smiling. It was a slight, inward smile. The smile of a person
who has experienced much in the world.
‘I hope no one saw you come here. Tell me, did anyone? Do you have
any idea how many times your father’s been here, looking for you? Each
time I told him that I had no idea where you were and turned him away.
That’s the truth, after all. How was I to know where you were? I didn’t even
see you leave. Where were you all this time?’
Shyama noticed Basanti wasn’t her usual self. She wasn’t dancing around
the room, chattering away. She seemed tired. She hadn’t been away that
long—three months, maybe. But it was as if in this time, Basanti had shed
all her girlish ways and become a weighed-down householder. Her lips
trembled with something like a smile. Even if it had managed to make an
appearance, it would’ve been a worn-out, pale smile. She was looking at
Shyama with her big eyes, but her gaze had turned inwards.
‘Where were you all this time?’
‘I was right here, Bibiji.’
‘Are you in hiding? Silly girl, then you should’ve waited for night to fall.
Who comes to meet someone in secrecy in broad daylight? Your father is
sitting but two houses away from here. Your chacha lives behind my house,
just a short distance away. Your sister is always doing the rounds of this
neighbourhood. And they are all under the impression that I played a role in
your disappearance.’
Basanti was still quiet, the same pale smile quivering on her lips.
‘Where’s your husband? Does he still work at the hostel?’
‘No, he’s not here, Bibiji. He’s gone back to his village.’
‘What? Didn’t he take you with him?’
Basanti didn’t answer.
‘When did he go?’
‘A few days ago.’
‘And where do you live?’
‘Nowhere, Bibiji.’
‘Nowhere? What does that mean?’
‘It means I live here and there,’ Basanti said, laughing a low laugh.
‘He’s left you homeless? Tell me properly. And tell me the truth.’
Shyama bibi had gauged that something was amiss, that Basanti was
hiding something.
But before Basanti could say anything, Shyama bibi stuck her forefinger
in the air and started saying, ‘I told you, didn’t I? Tell me, hadn’t I told
you?’
‘Told me what, Bibiji?’
‘That he’s not a good man; that you shouldn’t run away with him.’
Basanti didn’t say anything. She didn’t make a sound.
‘He’s left you here and gone off to his village. Is that the sign of a good
man?’
Basanti had always found a friendly ear in Shyama bibi. She was always
able to tell her things. That’s why she often thought of Shyama bibi’s house
as her refuge. But Shyama bibi seemed to be drawing some kind of pleasure
from finding she had been right in thinking Dinu wasn’t a worthy man.
‘Did he leave some money with you?’
Basanti didn’t answer.
‘Did he take leave from the hostel?’
Basanti’s discomfort with this question was plain to see. There was a
brief pause before she replied, ‘We were thrown out of the hostel, Bibiji.’
‘Thrown out? Why?’
‘I was living with him in secrecy.’
‘But why? You were married, weren’t you?’
‘We were, but it was against the rules to have a woman live with you.
One day, someone found out that I was living in his room and he
complained to the higher-ups.’
Shyama took this as yet another opportunity to show how correctly she
had predicted things. ‘People don’t get thrown out of hostels for bringing
their wives to live with them. Tell me the truth. Did you marry him or not?’
‘Yes, Bibiji, of course.’
‘Where was the ceremony performed?’
Basanti still believed that she had married Dinu. So she didn’t hesitate
and described the manner in which they had married—how they had stood
before the picture of God that they had pulled out from an almanac, how he
had tucked flowers into her hair, how she had in turn tucked a flower into
his hair, how he had filled the parting in her hair with red colour. Basanti
told Shyama bibi everything. Not only that, Basanti also described the
moon that had shone brightly upon them and how they had exchanged
marriage vows in the bright moonlight.
But before Basanti could finish, Shyama pursed her lips tightly and
started shaking her head.
‘You call this a wedding ceremony? Hadn’t I told you? Tell me, hadn’t
I?’
‘Told me what, Bibiji?’
‘That you can’t trust this man. That you should marry him first. That you
should step into his house only after you’ve married him.’
‘But I did marry him.’
‘Do you call this marrying someone? Weddings are performed by priests.
Elders from the caste are invited to bear witness to the ceremony. Bravo
Basanti, how clever you think you are! Neither a priest, nor witnesses. What
a fantastic wedding that must have been! That man had his fill of you and
now he’s left you.’
‘No, Bibiji!’ Basanti’s voice was but a whisper.
‘What do you mean “no”? What if he turns around and says he never
married you?’
‘What if he does, Bibiji? Let him say what he wants.’ Basanti sounded
like her old self as she said this.
‘He’s going to make you weep, Basanti. You don’t know the ways of this
world.’
‘So what if he does, Bibiji. If he does, let him.’
Basanti’s eyes were swollen. Shyama felt that Basanti was still in her
dream world and that’s why she couldn’t see the obvious. But that doesn’t
explain why she looks so tired. She used to be so full of energy. But then, it
hit her. ‘Oh, you’re pregnant. I should’ve known immediately on seeing
you. Come here and sit down.’
And Shyama bibi held Basanti by her arm and sat her down next to her.
Basanti felt her heart would burst.
Hardship, hurdles, adversity—the human heart isn’t frail; it can
overcome disasters. Only, it should receive some affection, a little love from
time to time. A little warmth, and the longest stretches of darkness don’t
seem daunting. It was her hunger for a little affection that had brought
Basanti to Shyama’s doorstep today.
‘You’re still obsessed, as if hung-over. You’ll see things for what they are
once that ebbs. You’ve chosen to be blind to reality. Do you really believe
that he’s going to come back for you?’
‘He will, Bibiji.’
Shyama stared at Basanti. It had become clear to her that Basanti wasn’t
following her. She didn’t have enough experience. Without experience, how
was she to understand her words? Unversed in the ways of this world, how
was this girl to distinguish between when someone was being true to her,
and when someone was being insincere?
Ever since Dinu had left her, Basanti felt like she was under the searing
sun one moment, and in the cool shade the next. She would miss him. She
would feel a sudden surge of love for him. She would curse him. She had
tended the fragile thread of hope, kept it alive. But still, it wasn’t always
strong; it seemed to quiver from time to time.
‘And then? Tell me what happened after that,’ Shyama bibi asked.
What could Basanti tell her? There was so much she herself didn’t know.
But some things did seem to be unravelling even for her as she talked to
Shyama bibi.
‘Oh, Bibiji! What should I tell you! Even if they hadn’t fired him, how
could we possibly have lived there much longer? Bibiji, I had to remain
hidden in the room all day. When the old watchman would take his rounds,
I would lie down flat on the floor, in a corner, or stand behind the door.’ She
started laughing as she recalled these things. ‘One time, I was so thirsty I
couldn’t bear it. I didn’t care, I opened the door and ran to the tap, gulped as
much water as I could, and dashed back into the room.’
‘Is that when someone found you?’
‘No, Bibiji. I don’t know how, but the cook, Manglu, started suspecting
something was up. He’s the one who complained.’
That afternoon, after the noise of utensils being washed at the tap quietened
down and the mess emptied, some of the workers sat by the kitchen
entrance smoking beedis and chatting. A couple of them lay sprawled on the
mat. Dinu sneaked back into the kitchen and pulled out the plate of food he
had hidden behind the stove. He covered it with another plate and started
for his room.
He’d just crossed the veranda when he sensed that someone was
following him, and stopped. ‘Who is the food for?’
Dinu turned around and found himself face-to-face with the most
cunning of all the people who worked in the hostel. A thin man with a jetblack moustache and a good-luck charm around his neck. Manglu.
‘It’s for the sahib in room number four.’
‘Four? He’s already eaten. He ate at the mess, just a short while ago.’
‘It’s for the guest who’s staying with him.’
Manglu laughed. ‘His door’s locked. Come, I’ll show you.’
Dinu felt irritated but controlled himself. ‘This is Teju’s fault. The sahib
in room number four is always asking for his food to be brought to his
room. Teju didn’t take it, so I thought I should.’
But Manglu was smiling and scratching his thigh.
‘Tell me who it is.’ Manglu’s tone was conspiratorial; he was sneering.
He looked at Dinu and winked.
Dinu felt vexed, but seeing that there was no way out of this, he changed
his tone and pretended that he was embarrassed and wanted to come clean.
‘My wife’s here. She came unannounced from the village. What was I to
do? She showed up yesterday in the middle of the night. Her uncle lives in
Basant Nagar, but I couldn’t have taken her there that late at night.’
But Dinu saw that Manglu was still sneering, still scratching his thigh
and still giving him strange looks.
‘Let me take a dip as well!’ Manglu winked at him again. ‘Give me the
plate. Let me take it to her instead.’
At this, Dinu lost his cool and started screaming angrily. ‘You scoundrel,
I’m going to slam this plate in your face. I told you she’s my wife and
you’re still throwing your nonsense at me.’
The next day, the superintendent called Dinu to his office and ordered
him to vacate the room within the hour.
After Dinu was fired, they started living with Dinu’s friend, Bardu.
Thinking about the incident with Bardu made Basanti’s skin crawl. A shiver
ran down her spine and she felt herself growing angry.
It was night when they reached Bardu’s shack. In the morning, Basanti
looked around at where they had come: Bardu’s room was one among the
innumerable wooden shacks dotting the steep slope that ran along the road
leading to Satnagar. Each one had been assembled by nailing together
broken and discarded wooden boards and splints. Worn-out sacks and rags
served as doors. Broken bricks, pieces of iron, tin and cans—whatever
anyone could lay hands on had been put to use. Pigs roamed freely and fat
rats scurried about all day. The place was a collection point for garbage
from Satnagar and other neighbouring colonies. Women, with large sacks
thrown over their shoulders, scoured the lanes of Satnagar, looking for
scraps of paper, fragments of glass and empty cans, pouncing on them when
they saw them. Kids spent the day in the mounds of garbage, searching for
anything they could find—empty bottles, broken cups. These were the
people who lived in the shacks. Bardu lived among them. Dinu and Basanti
too had now come to live here, but only for a few days. Soon, Dinu rented a
mud hut near Satnagar and they shifted there.
One morning, Basanti woke up to find Dinu’s cot empty. She stepped out
of the hut, rubbing her eyes, to find Bardu sitting there, an old, torn sheet
wrapped around him. Unkempt, filthy Bardu.
‘Where’s Dinu?’ she asked him.
Bardu laughed, revealing his ugly teeth.
‘He’s not coming back.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s left.’
‘Where has he gone?’ Basanti asked, her eyes wide with disbelief.
‘He’s gone back to his village.’
The last few days, Dinu had been talking about going to the village. He
was hoping to sell the crop and bring some money back. But she didn’t
imagine that he’d leave without telling her.
Bardu’s hollowed-out cheeks, the tattered sheet he had draped around
himself, his dry, coarse hair—they narrated his sorry existence.
‘You should stay right here,’ he said to her. ‘Don’t you worry about
anything.’
Basanti smelt something fishy.
‘Did he say something before he left? What did he say? Where is he?’
‘He’s not coming back.’
‘What is it to you whether he’s coming back or not?’
‘Of course it’s my concern,’ he bared his ugly teeth again. ‘I’ve given
him three hundred rupees after all.’
‘What in the world for?’
‘For you.’
Basanti gaped at him, aghast. How dare he talk to her this way!
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You call yourself his friend? I’m like
your sister-in-law; you called me bhabhi till yesterday.’
Basanti let out her rage but Bardu’s words had hurt her. The previous
night she had, in fact, found three hundred rupees in Dinu’s pocket.
Surprised, she had asked him where he had got the money from. Dinu had
told her he’d sold his cycle. But the cycle was still right there, in the hut.
Dinu hadn’t taken up any work since his dismissal from the hostel. He
didn’t even go out looking for work. Instead, he spent all his time with
Bardu.
‘You’re not his wife. His wife’s in the village and that’s where he’s gone.
He’s sold you to me. I’ll marry you—and properly. My relatives and caste
elders will attend our wedding. I’ll spend money on our wedding.’
Basanti broke into a devil-may-care, hearty, full-throated laugh. She’d
mustered up the courage for it somehow. She walked into the hut, picked up
a lock, stepped out, locked the door and turned to Bardu. ‘How should I
know if what you are saying about Dinu having sold me to you is true?’
‘Because I’m telling you it is.’
‘He has sold you his cycle, Bardu. Not me.’
‘He’s taken one hundred separately for the cycle.’
‘And where did you get so much money from? Don’t I know where you
live!’
‘You don’t have to stay in that shack with me. You should continue to
live here. I’ll shift here.’
Basanti had meanwhile edged away from the hut and towards the road.
Now she turned away from Bardu and started walking away.
‘Where are you going, Basanti?’
‘You bring the wedding procession. I’ll be right back.’
Bardu ran after her but Basanti had already darted across the field and
was nearly on the road.
‘Where are you going? Come back this instant or else . . .’
‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll lift you up and carry you away with me!’
‘Yeah, right! That’s great. Meet Mr Ravan,’ said Basanti, and ran the rest
of the distance to the road.
It was still early morning but there was traffic on the road. Cycles and
two-wheelers had begun plying.
Basanti didn’t stop but turned her head a little and said, ‘Go drown
yourself in the Yamuna. Or why go to the Yamuna! Go drown yourself in
the dirty pond down the road. Coming for your friend’s wife like this!’
She walked away.
‘This is not over, Basanti. I’ve given my hard-earned money for you.
Come back at once or I’ll be forced to come after you.’
Basanti disappeared into the lanes of Satnagar.
She had escaped Bardu for now but she knew he would be back, looking
for her. To escape him, she’d gone knocking on every door she knew—
everywhere, that is, except Ramesh Nagar. She wasn’t able to find refuge
anywhere for more than a couple of days. Bardu would always trace her
out. She couldn’t figure out how he did that. Wherever she went, she’d find
him lurking in the lanes within a day or two. This happened even when she
took up work in a house near Khan Market. She’d work during the day and
at night she’d go to sleep in the veranda of the house. She still didn’t know
how Bardu found her there.
So, one day, she did what came naturally to her. She got on a bus—
randomly, without a plan or a destination. She got off at some point and
started walking down the road. As luck would have it, she ran into someone
she knew—Lali, who used to live three houses down from Basanti in their
old basti. Lali was thrilled to see her. She found her work, even a place to
stay. But just a few days later, with the morning sickness and constant
nausea, Basanti realized she was pregnant.
Basanti’s mind was flush with all that had happened in the last few months
and she found that narrating it, and choosing what was possible to narrate,
was difficult.
‘Why did you leave your hut?’
There was so much Basanti could say about that.
Basanti returned to the hut after she discovered that she was pregnant.
But she wasn’t able to stay there for more than two days. She laughed as
she recalled this.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘I was unlocking the door, Bibiji. And that’s when I had a brainwave. I
went in, closed the door behind me and bolted it from inside. Then I went
up to the window and waited. I saw a boy walk by. I called out to him,
handed him the lock and told him to lock the door from outside. I had no
doubt, Bibiji, that Bardu hadn’t stopped doing the rounds of the hut. If he
came now and found the door locked, he’d assume I still hadn’t returned,’
Basanti laughed.
‘What’s there to laugh about in this?’
‘Oh Bibiji, when I woke up after my afternoon nap and peeped out
through the crack in the door, who should I see but Bardu! He was sitting
outside the hut! And he had another man with him. I was so scared. I
thought, what if he never leaves? But he sat around till evening, then left.
After that I took off from there and didn’t go back.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Oh Bibiji, what all should I tell you? I was at a loss. I had no idea where
to go. An entire day passed. I wouldn’t have worried if I didn’t feel so
nauseous all the time. But I did.’
‘So then?’
‘So then, Bibiji, I went to my sister’s house. I thought, to hell with it.
Whatever will happen, will happen.’
Shyama bibi listened with rapt attention.
‘She lives in Vinay Nagar. I decided to confide in her. I knew she
wouldn’t tell. And Vinay Nagar is so far away anyway. I’d be out of there
by the time news travelled and reached either Bapu or Bardu.’
‘Then?’
‘What then, Bibiji? I only managed to stay three days.’
‘But why?’
‘Don’t ask, Bibiji. My sister’s husband is a nincompoop.’
‘Why?’
‘Husbands are all nincompoops, Bibiji,’ Basanti laughed. ‘Don’t ask me
why. He’s a nincompoop and a wretch, that’s all.’ But then she carried on
with the story anyway. ‘I was sleeping. I was inside the house, and my
sister, her husband and their children were sleeping outside. I was in deep
sleep. I had felt someone come in and sit on my cot, so I woke up. At first I
thought I was in the hostel and that Dinu had just come back from work. It
used to be dark when he’d come back, you see. I won’t lie to you, Bibiji. I
shifted to a side so Dinu could lie down next to me. But I was more awake
now and remembered I was in my sister’s house. So who was this in my
bed? I panicked and tried to sit up. But that bastard—he covered my mouth
with his hand. Oh Bibiji, he’s not a good man.’
‘Then?’
‘What then, Bibiji? My sister must have sensed something. She woke up.
At first she called out to me from outside: “What’s wrong, Basanti? Aren’t
you asleep yet?” But then she got up and came inside.’
Basanti started laughing. ‘That bastard, he said, “I came in to drink
water.” But the jug of water was outside! “Come, I will give you water,” my
sister said and she dragged him out.’
‘He fears your sister,’ Shyama bibi commented.
‘No one’s scared of anyone, Bibiji. My sister screams and shouts and
curses. That’s all. Then she quietens down.’
Shyama bibi took a hard, long look at Basanti. She marvelled at her
transformation. Basanti had gained wisdom about the ways of men in just a
couple of months.
‘I left the next day, Bibiji. Had I stayed on, my sister would’ve turned
against me. She would have doubted me. She would’ve accused me of
having designs over her husband. Also, I was worried that if I stayed any
longer, Bardu would find me. Men always move about so much. My
brother-in-law wouldn’t have thought twice before tipping Bardu off about
me.’
‘Does Bardu know where you are now?’ Shyama grew worried. ‘He
won’t come here, will he? I’m warning you—don’t you bring him here.’
‘Why will I bring him here, Bibiji, when I’m running away from him?’
‘Basanti, I would say . . .’
‘What, Bibiji?’
‘Just go back to your parents.’
‘But that old man, the tailor! He’s always doing the rounds of my parents’
house. My father will yank me by my hair and hand me to him. He’s taken
nine hundred rupees from him, after all.’
‘You’re responsible for this entire mess, Basanti.’
‘Why, what have I done, Bibiji?’
‘What are you going to do when your child is born? Where are you going
to live?’
As she was saying this, Shyama realized she still didn’t know where
Basanti was staying these days.
‘Where are you living at the moment?’
‘Nowhere, Bibiji.’
‘Why? What happened to that hut?’
‘How can I go there, Bibiji? Bardu’s still looking for me.’ And she started
laughing for no apparent reason. Then she said, ‘Bapu here, and Bardu
there!’
Shyama said gravely, ‘Basanti, who knows, maybe Dinu did sell you to
Bardu after all.’
Basanti was quiet.
‘If your father can sell you to that old man for nine hundred, why can’t
Dinu have sold you for three hundred!’
Basanti looked at Shyama bibi with unblinking eyes. Then she said in a
small voice, ‘No, that can’t be, Bibiji.’
‘He’s left you. He won’t come back.’
‘He will, Bibiji.’
Despite everything she had been through, Basanti’s faith in people was
unbroken. She still trusted people, just like a child. Shyama saw it in her
eyes. It was as if Basanti’s life depended on it.
‘Don’t be stupid, Basanti. He hasn’t sent word and he hasn’t inquired
after you. How can you keep saying that he’s going to come back?’
‘He will, Bibiji.’
‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘He will, Bibiji.’
‘You’re mad.’
Shyama was perplexed. Does she really believe Dinu hasn’t sold her? Is
she still this oblivious to the world, after everything she has been through?
Is she living in a make-believe world? She used to play-act like she was the
heroine in a movie, battling all sorts of difficulties, holding on to her belief
that the hero would come and rescue her. Maybe that’s what she’s doing
even now.
‘Movies have destroyed your head.’
Basanti couldn’t help smiling. ‘It’s been so many days now, Bibiji, since
I’ve seen a movie. What’s playing on TV this evening? It’s Saturday, isn’t
it?’
‘If you hadn’t ruined your head with all the movies you’ve been
watching, you would’ve been sitting comfortably in your house right now.’
‘. . . Where you’d be massaging the old tailor’s feet or perhaps whiling
away your time doing nothing in some village,’ Basanti finished Shyama’s
sentence.
‘And what have you achieved now? Neither this nor that.’
‘What am I missing in life, Bibiji? Isn’t it true that wherever you settle
down is home?’ Basanti was growing agitated. ‘And what makes you say
that I have nothing. I have a home, I have a husband and soon I will also
have a child. My husband will be back soon, and I’ll go and live in my
house.’
Shyama bibi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Why in the world
will he settle down with you if he’s already married?’
Basanti was a bit surprised by the vehemence in Shyama bibi’s voice.
She looked quietly at her face for a few moments before she jerked her head
and said, ‘He may be married, Bibiji, but come back he will.’
‘Why? How can he possibly keep two wives?’
‘Men can, in his caste.’
‘In these times, no one can have two wives.’
‘But he can, Bibiji. Not just two; in his caste, men can marry thrice.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Dinu did.’
‘And you believed him?’
The glimmer of hope and trust in Basanti’s eyes made her seem even
more piteous to Shyama bibi.
‘I’ve told him,’ Basanti was saying, ‘to bring his wife here. His wife is
from the village, Bibiji. She’s a total rustic. She doesn’t know anything. I’ll
be the one running the household.’
‘When will you come to your senses, Basanti? Aren’t you going to learn
anything even after having been swindled again and again and again?’
Shyama bibi pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘You’re going to live a
very unhappy life, Basanti.’
‘What’s life, Bibiji!’ Basanti laughed. She seemed to have found her
laughter back—carefree and full of life. ‘You’ll see, Bibiji. He’ll come
back.’ Then she whispered conspiratorially, ‘He doesn’t have any children.
He hasn’t had any till now. When I bear him a child, I’ll be the one he’ll
consider his wife.’
‘You talk like you’re insane. Basanti, he hasn’t even married you. He can
throw you out of his house whenever he likes. Hasn’t he left you and run off
already?’
The scene of her marriage flashed before Basanti’s eyes. The silver
moonlight, Dinu by her side, the flowers in her hair. Her heart filled with
the beauty of the evening, drowning out all her doubt and worries. She was
swept over by a tide of emotions and an inner joy pervaded her being. It
was the same joy which would make her ruffle Dinu’s hair, which would
propel her body into dance, to swirl around in the small room and break into
song. She got up. ‘I should sweep the floor, Bibiji,’ she chirped, just like the
old Basanti.
‘Sit, keep sitting,’ Shyama said.
‘No, I’ll sweep the floor.’
‘But you’re pregnant, Basanti.’
‘My mother used to work even till the last moment. Nothing ever
happened to her, so why should being pregnant stop me!’ She picked up the
broom and walked to the room across the veranda.
Soon enough, she was singing: ‘Jab deep jale aana, jab shaam dhale
aana.’
Then, all of a sudden, she stopped and leaned against the veranda wall.
‘If he doesn’t come back, Bibiji, I’ll go away somewhere. I’ll take my child
with me. That’s that.’ Her eyes welled up. She turned and started walking
away. ‘So what if he doesn’t come back!’ She turned before entering the
room and said even as tears rolled down her cheeks, ‘But he’ll come back.
He’ll definitely come back.’
Basanti disappeared into the room. The moment she was out of sight,
Shyama started thinking, I hope I’m not making a mistake by allowing her
this intimacy. She’s not the innocent girl she once was. She has wisened and
she knows how to look out for herself. I didn’t ask her to sweep the floor.
She just got up and walked into my room. I didn’t even have time to put my
things away. What will I know if she nicks a thing or two? She’s desperate
for money, after all. Who knows why she’s even come here. And why now,
after all this time? And that too, in broad daylight. Who knows, maybe she’s
taken to stealing. There’s no way of knowing how much of what she’s been
telling me is true, how much is fabricated. She called out to Basanti,
‘There’s no need to sweep the floor. I want you to come back here.’
‘Do you want me to comb your hair? I’ll style it like Hema Malini’s.’
Basanti giggled.
‘No, there’s no need for that either. Just sit.’
Here they were, sitting before each other again.
Talking to Shyama bibi made Basanti happy. It was like old times. She
felt like nothing had changed, everything was like it had always been. Her
eyes beamed with an intimacy she shared only with Shyama bibi. She’s the
only one who asks after me. I can climb up the stairs and come to her
whenever I want, day or night.
But to Shyama, the distance between her and Basanti had lengthened.
Basanti was receding away. Doubt was replacing the intimacy she had once
allowed her. She’s not the playful girl I once trusted and let into my house.
She’s run away from her own home. Who knows where she stays, what she’s
up to, Shyama was thinking to herself.
‘Where do you sleep at night?’ she suddenly asked Basanti.
‘I’m going to stay here tonight, Bibiji. I’ve even brought my cot with me.
I’ve left it downstairs, in the courtyard.’
‘Are you out of your mind, Basanti?’ Shyama burst out nervously. ‘Your
father sets up his shop just two houses away. Do you think he won’t get to
know? He already thinks I have something to do with you disappearing.’
‘He won’t get to know, Bibiji.’
‘Of course he will. With all the people who’re following your scent
about, how will he not get to know? And you think Bardu won’t come
looking for you? What if he comes here? What if your father comes here?’
‘No one will get to know anything, Bibiji.’ Then giving in, she said,
‘Okay, Bibiji, I’ll sleep on the roof. There’s no way anyone will find out
then.’
‘If you sleep on the roof, where are we going to sleep? And even if you
sleep on the roof, won’t everyone see you when the sun rises? The things
you say!’
‘Then you tell me where I should go,’ Basanti said affectionately.
By now, Shyama bibi was very nervous. Her mind was in a tizz. It’ll be
dangerous to let Basanti sleep here, she was thinking. She’s in hiding, from
her father and from Bardu. Who knows what kind of man Bardu is. If he’s
following her around this much, he must be a lout. She’s going to land me in
such trouble.
‘No, there’s just no way you can stay here.’
‘I’m going to stay here, Bibiji. It’s only a matter of two or three days. I’ll
find work somewhere soon enough.’
Shyama bibi was so nervous that she didn’t even consider how weak and
fatigued Basanti had become with her pregnancy. And that maybe she really
had nowhere to turn to, no place to go.
‘Basanti, listen to me. Go straight to your father’s house. That’s your
home. Good or bad, at least it’s yours.’
‘Oh Bibiji, how can you say that!’
‘It’s better for you to return to your own home instead of getting kicked
around from place to place. Deal with things when they happen. At least
you’ll get some rest for a few days.’
Something inside Basanti cracked. She didn’t say anything. She just
looked at Shyama bibi for a very long while. Then she said in the girlish
voice familiar to Shyama, ‘That’s not a problem, Bibiji. It’s okay. If not
your place, I’ll find another.’
Shyama watched her quietly. A weight had lifted from her chest. But she
could sense Basanti was hurt.
‘Where will you go?’ Shyama tried to mask her relief with concern. ‘I
know you’re brave.’
‘I’ll find some place, Bibiji.’ Basanti stood up.
‘Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid,’ Shyama carried on expressing
concern.
Seeing Basanti turn towards the stairs, Shyama quickly opened her purse.
‘Wait. Take some money.’ She pulled out a five-rupee note.
‘Don’t worry, Bibiji. I don’t need money. I’m managing just fine,’ said
Basanti as she started down the stairs.
Shyama rushed to the balcony. She wanted to see which direction Basanti
would walk in. It had grown dark outside. Basanti had reached the
courtyard. Watching her walk towards the cot suddenly filled Shyama’s
heart with foreboding. The image of her guru maharaj flashed before her
eyes. If Basanti were to take her cot away from here because of her, that
would be breaking the vow she had taken, and that would be inauspicious;
it would surely result in calamity.
‘Let the cot be,’ she called out to Basanti.
‘But why?’ Basanti stopped and looked up at the balcony.
‘Don’t. Let it be there.’
‘But why? What if someone steals it?’
‘No one’s going to steal it. Leave it there.’
Basanti stood confounded for a moment, then started walking towards the
gate.
‘Oh Basanti!’ Shyama called out, her voice a loud whisper.
‘What is it, Bibiji?’
‘Wait. Stop. Wait. Come here, to the stairs.’
Basanti came back to the stairs. Shyama stood at the top of the stairs.
‘You’re going out. What if someone were to see you?’
Basanti, her hand resting on the wall, looked up at her and smiled faintly.
‘What then, Bibiji?’
Shyama was in a state of utter confusion. She couldn’t possibly let
Basanti sleep in her house. There was too much risk in that. But what would
she do if something terrible befell her because Basanti had left? What if the
wrath of fate broke upon her for turning Basanti away in her hour of need?
‘Wait. Come back. I’ll organize a place for you to sleep tonight.
Somewhere no one will find out.’
‘But where, Bibiji?’
‘In number seventeen. She’s a friend.’
‘Don’t worry, Bibiji, I’ll be fine.’
‘No, wait. Come back up.’
Basanti stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling, and a bit bewildered.
OceanofPDF.com
Basanti was discovered within three days. Not by Bardu, nor by Bulaki
the lame. It was her father who nosed her out. That morning saw him pacing
in front of Shyama bibi’s friend’s house, along with his son-in-law. The sun
hadn’t yet risen.
Suri sahib noticed him—an unfamiliar man loitering near the gate—when
he stepped out for his morning walk. A tall, unkempt man. He dismissed
him as a loafer. Every new colony throws up several, after all. But on a
closer look, he saw this was an older man. He even looked a little familiar.
‘What do you want?’ he asked gruffly. ‘How dare you open the gate? Did
you think you could just walk in? What’s this behaviour?’
Among the things Suri sahib had made up his mind about, one was that a
stranger who is poorer than oneself must be addressed with a strict and
distant tone. The way he saw it, it was okay to mellow down a bit once you
got to know such a person, but the first encounter should establish your
superiority. And this man, after all, was trespassing.
‘I’m Basanti’s father, sahib.’
Suri sahib scanned him from head to toe. By now he’d realized that he
saw this man daily on his way back from his morning walk. He had even
gauged who he was, but something told him it was better to continue
pretending they were strangers.
‘Who’s Basanti? First get out of my house. Out! What makes you think
you can just barge in like this?’ And he stepped out of the gate himself,
shutting it behind him.
Chaudhary stood before Suri sahib, his hands folded in supplication. Suri
sahib gave him another aggressive look. His first thought was to say he
didn’t know who Basanti was. But Basanti was sleeping in the courtyard,
visible to anyone who happened to pass by the lane. Basanti had pleaded
with Mr and Mrs Suri to let her sleep in their backyard, but they had refused
to give her permission for this. Mr Suri knew the man would have seen her
by now. He couldn’t lie.
‘And who are you?’
‘I’m Basanti’s father, sahib.’
‘So you’ve come looking for her now? And where were you all this time?
Where was your concern when she was being kicked about from place to
place?’ Suri sahib had softened his tone a notch.
‘Kicked about from place to place? That bitch . . .’
‘Mind your tongue. Who do you think you’re talking to?’
‘She’s abusing your generosity. She’s a blot on our honour.’
When Suri sahib had fought with his wife about Basanti, he had taken the
contrarian view. He had argued that she couldn’t be an honourable woman
if she was being pursued by ruffians. That the man she had run away with
was surely a goon, and he in turn had sold her to another goon who was
now out there looking for her. It wasn’t that Mrs Suri was particularly keen
on providing Basanti with a roof over her head. But seeing that Basanti was
pregnant, she was more inclined towards not turning her away. How could
she, in contravention of hundreds of years of tradition? And on top of that,
she’d been sent to her by Shyama, and Shyama was a friend. Suri sahib was
not the least bit impressed with this line of thinking, and he had battled it
till the very end.
But right now, standing before Basanti’s father, he took a different track.
‘Do you even know what condition she is in? Should we have turned a
blind eye to it and sent her away? Should we have spit out our humanity?
Do you think we are butchers?’
Suri sahib’s voice rang with ethical superiority. ‘You never even bothered
to find out if she was dead or alive. Should we have abandoned her as
well?’
Suri sahib was now under the spell of his own voice and its ethical
reasoning. ‘What is she to us?’ he carried on. ‘Is her well-being our
responsibility? Why should we even be concerned with things like where
she will live, where she might sleep, where she could end up next? She’s
nothing to us, after all. But no! Unlike you, her father, we felt a moral
obligation towards her.’
‘Sahib, she’s been ruined by the city air.’ Chaudhary still stood with his
hands folded. ‘I have other daughters. They’re all married, they have
children, and they live with their husbands. She’s the only one, this wretch .
. .’
Basanti had woken up by now and was sitting upright on her cot,
watching her father. She thought about sneaking into the house and running
away through the back door. But there was no sense in that. She had
nowhere to run to. She stayed where she was. The fear she had felt upon
seeing her father at the gate now slowly ebbed out of her. Her body eased. A
slight smile flickered on her lips, as if she’d decided not to be cowed down
by the situation, choosing to face it instead.
Chaudhary saw that Basanti had woken up. He yelled at her from the
gate, ‘Pick up your cot and come with me.’
‘Your father is here to take you with him. It’s in your own interest to go
with him. Of course, our door is always open for you. We’ll do whatever we
can for you,’ Suri sahib, taking on the role of father and teacher, began
explaining the situation to her.
‘You carry on, I’ll be right behind you,’ Basanti said softly.
‘No, you’re coming with me right away,’ Chaudhary screamed again.
Basanti weighed her situation. Had she not been pregnant, she’d have run
away. She wouldn’t have cared. She could have disappeared in a split
second through the back door. But she knew she couldn’t do that now. And
even if she could run, where would she go?
‘Given the circumstances, you should be with your family. You may
think of them as good or bad, but they are your own,’ Suri sahib gave
Basanti some more advice.
When Basanti turned to lift the cot, Suri sahib roared at Chaudhary:
‘Can’t you carry the cot? Can’t you see the condition she is in?’
‘Give the cot to me.’ Chaudhary crossed the courtyard and walked
towards Basanti.
‘No sense at all! He can see that she is . . .’ Suri sahib mumbled as he
walked into his house.
Chaudhary, Basanti and her brother-in-law walked out of the gate and
turned right. Chaudhary carried the cot. None of them turned around even
once.
‘They don’t even have the manners to thank or say goodbye to the people
who took so much trouble for them. Just walking off like that with their
stupid faces. And they didn’t even shut the gate behind them!’
Suri sahib had to go back himself to close the gate.
Back inside the house, he called out to his wife, ‘Basanti’s left.’ Then he
settled down on the armchair with the newspaper.
Mrs Suri was in the kitchen.
Suri sahib repeated, ‘Basanti’s left.’
‘I heard you the first time. She wasn’t going to stay here forever
anyway.’
‘Her father came for her. Who knows how he found out she was here.’
Mrs Suri didn’t offer any guesses. After some time, she asked, ‘Do you
want your morning cup of tea? I don’t suppose you’re going to go for your
morning walk now. It’s late.’
Encouraged, Suri sahib decided to talk some more about his morning. ‘I
thought it best to let her go. After all, no one can replace family. I thought
being with her own family would be best for her.’
He didn’t get any response from the kitchen even now. After a brief
pause, he said, ‘I hope you were careful about your valuables. These people
can’t be trusted. They don’t think twice before biting the hand that feeds
them. Just check that she hasn’t made off with something.’
Absorbed in the newspaper, Suri sahib settled deeper into the chair and
looked forward to his morning cup of tea.
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Basanti sat on the bed, propped up on her elbows, and Bulaki sat on the
floor, caressing her feet, jumpy and jabbering.
Landing up here was what Basanti had worked so hard to fend off all
these days. Bulaki had married Basanti. She was in his house. He was
jubilant.
‘I’ve been saying all along, my queen, Basanti, will be mine one day, and
that day isn’t far . . .’ Bulaki choked with emotion. He was drivelling.
Basanti was exhausted. She tried to keep her eyes on Bulaki but her
eyelids felt heavy. She kept dozing off but forced herself awake every time.
I must be dreaming; this must be a dream. But that really was Bulaki sitting
on the floor. The kohl lining his eyes was real. The yellow frock-shirt he
was wearing was real. His exultant jibber-jabber was real.
‘I am mesmerized, I’m inveigled, I am slain by your charms.’
Bulaki’s head swayed with fervour. His hands never left Basanti’s feet.
‘How delicate, how gentle, how lovely are my queen’s feet!’
He had served Basanti sherbet twice since he’d brought her home. He
showed her dresses—skirts and blouses in vibrant colours—that he had
sewn for her. Basanti’s exhausted body, her sleep-weary eyes, took it all in.
Truth was, she felt a measure of respite. She was even laughing to herself a
little. Yes, press my feet harder. Pamper me. It’s the least you should be
doing for having brought me here. Why should I refuse today that which I
may be denied tomorrow? Who knows what fiend you’ll turn into. Basanti
didn’t want to think about the future. How could she? And yet, she couldn’t
keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks. Dinu had said he’d come back,
and he hadn’t. She was holding on to hope; a part of her still believed he’d
be back. He knows I’m with his child.
‘Try these on, my queen, Basanti,’ Bulaki said as he pulled out still more
dresses from a trunk from beneath the cot. ‘See how well they’ll fit you. I
may not have had a chance to take your measurements, but that doesn’t
mean I don’t know my queen’s body.’
When she first entered the house—or rather, was forced to enter the
house—Basanti had wanted to tear Bulaki to pieces, break everything in
sight and set fire to the house. But she was surprised by what she
encountered. Bulaki, she saw, was a strange man, a man aching for a
woman. His slimy ways had repulsed her. But soon she felt like she was
witnessing a masquerade, entirely separate, disconnected from her and her
life. So distant from her, that all there was for her to do was watch. It was
also steadily dawning on her that there was no way out, no place to hide,
nowhere she could escape to. She felt the softness of the bed she was on
and, like one yielding to the might of the river one is drowning in, she
surrendered to it.
‘Just try it on, Basanti, my queen,’ Bulaki held a yellow silk blouse in his
hands, stroking it. And then he did something even odder—he raised the
blouse and covered his face with it. He rubbed his face into it, stroked it
with his hands, kissed it, and started swaying ecstatically from side to side.
‘Stop that! What are you doing? Such nonsense!’ Basanti leaned forward
and snatched the blouse from him.
Taken aback, Bulaki looked at Basanti for several moments before he
said, ‘Are you upset? Have I made my queen cross? But I wasn’t doing or
saying anything to you, my queen, Basanti.’
After losing one of his eyes to smallpox thirty years ago, Bulaki’s dreams of
becoming a householder had remained just that—dreams. From time to
time, he’d grow fevered and hear the tinkling of his bride’s anklets from the
courtyard, her laughter in different corners of his house, and glimpse the
swirl of her skirt and the flutter of her dupatta outside his door. It would
leave him restless. He’d circulate word that he was seeking a bride. One
time, it looked like Bulaki’s prayers were about to be answered when a
woman from the barber caste agreed to marry him. Bulaki was over the
moon. He couldn’t keep still. He took to following her around everywhere.
One day, he saw her walking down the road with some other women. He
called out, ‘Chameli, my queen, won’t you give me a set of your blouse and
skirt? I’ll stitch you new clothes for when you come to my house.’
Oh, the embarrassment! Her companions doubled up with laughter. She
managed to flee from the scene somehow but how can one possibly escape
the banter that follows something like that! Word spread in the village like
wildfire and she was teased everywhere she went. Even her friends didn’t
spare her. Unmindful, Bulaki continued to chase her everywhere, eliciting
endless laughter from everyone, young and old. Unable to bear it, the
woman left the neighbourhood for good. So that was the end of that.
The village had now discovered how ripe Bulaki was for ridicule. People
started promising him that they’d arrange his marriage and took to pointing
out potential brides to him. And they’d even squeeze money out of him for
it. The trusting fool, Bulaki, was always duped. And so his youth passed
him by and he started to age, his heart’s desire unfulfilled. But through it
all, to this day, Bulaki kept his house in readiness for his bride’s arrival. His
bed stayed decked up like a nuptial bed, brand new dresses in bright colours
for the bride hung everywhere, the door was always festooned.
While Bulaki’s ardent search had not yielded him that which his heart
ached for, it did make a fine tailor out of him. Women flocked to his shop.
They’d pull his leg while they placed their orders. Someone would tease,
‘Devki keeps asking about you, Bulaki.’ Another would chip in, ‘If only
you didn’t try so hard, Bulaki, they’d all come running to you. You aren’t
lacking in anything.’ Such talk inflated Bulaki’s illusions, bolstered his
hopes. He kept his eyes lined with kohl, was always dressed in a groom’s
attire, and bought rouge, kohl, ribbons, pearl necklaces and clips for his
wife-to-be. That’s not all—he’d even bought a cradle, a red-and-yellow one,
and embellished it with paper flowers and tiny bells.
Then he moved to Delhi. He received a couple of marriage proposals
here but they too came to naught. Once again, Bulaki became the butt of
everyone’s jokes. Then one day, he ran into Chaudhary whom he had
known since before he moved to Delhi. Whether it was with the intention of
cheating Bulaki, or because his situation really was so dire that it made him
want to wash his hands of his third daughter, Chaudhary kept promising her
in marriage to Bulaki. This too would have been forgotten but, no doubt
incited by others in the neighbourhood, Bulaki filed a case against
Chaudhary. The case was still being heard in court when one day, out of the
blue, Chaudhary called Bulaki home with a pundit and handed Basanti to
him.
After they plucked her out of Suri sahib’s house, Basanti’s parents kept her
holed up at home. They were so scared that their wretched daughter would
run away again, they took turns at guarding the door. Her younger brother,
Ramu, was the only one who spoke with her, but he too mostly parroted
their parents’ dialogues. Basanti had no doubt that she would soon be sent
off with the old Bulaki but the hope that Dinu would return still breathed
inside her. Never mind that he’d said he would be back in three months and
now nearly five months had passed. No, she wasn’t about to lose hope. She
knew, nay, she believed, he would dash in like a hero in the nick of time,
and her parents and Bulaki would bite the dust; he would whisk her away
and they would have to stand aside, unable to do a thing. Trapped inside the
small, dark room, her eyes dreamed these dreams and ferreted the lane for
Dinu. This morning, seeing an autorickshaw halt in front of the house,
Basanti grew excited thinking that Dinu had come for her. But it was Bulaki
the lame who emerged from the autorickshaw. And he wasn’t alone; he’d
brought a priest along. Basanti watched him get off the autorickshaw with
the help of his stick and plant himself in front of the house.
The farce of a wedding ceremony was performed to the hilt. Basanti’s
mother dressed her in the set of clothes Bulaki had brought with him for
her, and applied the ceremonial turmeric paste on her hands. Her cheeks
were coloured with rouge and her eyes were lined with kohl. A veil was
lowered over her face and she was led outside, slowly, like a demure bride.
The room filled with the sound of mantras that the priest chanted. Basanti’s
father and mother hugged her by turns and, sobbing, bid her farewell.
‘The girl is yours now, Bulaki,’ Chaudhary said in an uneven voice.
‘We’re steeling our heart and giving our daughter to you. Believe me, we
received so many proposals for her. “No,” we said. “No, we’ve promised
Bulaki. Our daughter will be his bride.”’
Bulaki’s voice too dripped with emotion. ‘Rest assured, Chaudhary,
you’ve done the right thing. With me, your daughter’s life will be a bed of
roses.’
Basanti’s mother just couldn’t stop her tears from flowing, though she
kept wiping them with her pallu. Through the barrage of tears, she said,
‘Go, beti. Be well.’ She sniffled, ‘We have no claim over you from this day
on; you now belong to someone else. Serve him well.’
At this, Bulaki was moved to tears himself. He took a step forward and,
resting his body on the stick, he said, ‘Your pain as parents is
understandable. But Chaudhary, you mustn’t think that you are sending
your daughter to a stranger’s house.’
‘You rushed us, Bulakiram,’ Chaudhary said, reining in his sadness. ‘We
have not been able to bid our daughter farewell with the pomp and
splendour she deserves. If only we had had time to prepare—oh, a couple of
days would have been enough—the sound of the dholak would have filled
the house; we’d have called a band, there would have been music; Basanti’s
sisters would have come for the ceremony; we would have thrown a feast;
we would have served Coca-Cola to your guests who would have come as
your baraat.’
The air filled with the sound of Basanti’s mother’s wailing. She folded
her daughter into her arms and said, ‘If it is in her destiny, she’ll surely
drink Coca-Cola in her own home.’
‘Yes, yes, she will,’ Bulaki said with great feeling, swinging his head
from side to side. ‘Yes, Basanti’s mother, Basanti will absolutely drink
Coca-Cola in her home.’
‘She’s my youngest daughter,’ Basanti’s mother sniffled. ‘I’ve raised her
with so much love. The house will feel empty without her.’
The ceremonial send-off to the daughter after her wedding can take place
without a musical band, it can carry on without friends and relatives, but it’s
nothing without tears. Basanti’s mother was sincere in her crying; she really
did believe in that moment that they had raised Basanti with all their love,
and that their daughter was the apple of their eye.
This emotion had been singularly missing the previous day, when Bulaki
and Chaudhary had negotiated their final deal regarding Basanti.
‘Five hundred rupees, Bulaki, and you can take what is yours.’
‘Five? How’s that? We had discussed twelve in all. You’ve already taken
nine. So now I have to give you three hundred.’
‘Three hundred, yes, and add another two hundred for the child she is
carrying. You are getting the whole deal—a family. Two hundred is really
not too much for that.’
Bulaki had almost thrown a tantrum at this. ‘You think I don’t know that
people are going to spit on me for marrying a girl who’s already pregnant?
But, no, I said to myself, it doesn’t matter, I’ll bear their words. And you’re
asking me for two hundred more than what we’d decided on?’
Chaudhary didn’t mince his words when he responded to this. ‘Don’t
think I don’t know about you, Bulaki. I know that you’ve been married
thrice before and that you still don’t have a child. All your brides ran away.
And still, I’m asking you for only two hundred. Anyone else would have
demanded five hundred or a thousand at the very least. People will have to
swallow their words once they see a child playing in your courtyard.’
Bulaki had no answer to this and, ultimately, Chaudhary succeeded in
extracting more money from him.
And now, Basanti’s parents were giving a tearful send-off to their
daughter, blessing her with a long life, a happy married life. ‘Doodho
nahao, phoolo phalo,’ they put their hands on her head and blessed her with
a life of plenitude, one in which she may bear many sons.
Bulaki was in ecstasy.
Basanti’s Ma, Bapu and younger brother walked with her to the
autorickshaw and Basanti, her face still covered with a veil, sat down in it,
next to Bulaki. The autorickshaw started, and soon raced along bumpy
roads till it came to a halt in front of Bulakiram’s house.
‘Look, my queen, Basanti,’ Bulaki held up tiny clothes for Basanti to
admire, ‘a coat, an undergarment and a cap for the child. I’ve already
stitched these.’
Basanti was stunned. She looked at the clothes, then at Bulaki, and then
at the clothes again. The coat had a thick border; a white pom-pom adorned
the cap. With their bright colours, they were beautiful.
Basanti had no idea how to react to the clothes or to the fact that it was
Bulaki holding them.
‘They’re nice, aren’t they?’ Bulaki was excited. ‘Let the child be born
and then see what lovely clothes I’ll stitch for it. A child’s clothes aren’t
even a tiny bit difficult to make. And they hardly need any material at all.
What gets left over after I finish stitching women’s garments is enough.’
Basanti felt the baby move in her womb. She liked that feeling. She had
found a shelter for her child. She would feed it milk from a bottle, just like
Sushma bibi did. She would give it colourful toys to play with. She would
rock her child to sleep in a cradle.
‘Do you like them?’ Bulaki was asking her. ‘I have some more work to
do on them. I’ll stitch some bells on to them and embroider flowers on the
border. I’ll use Japanese thread; it’s perfect for embroidering flowers.’
Basanti felt the tension ease out of her body. She felt like she was going
to fall into a deep sleep. A sweet, deep sleep, free of the fear that Bardu was
lurking right outside the door; free of the sharp, snake-like eyes of her
father bearing down on her; free of the fearful image of her running down
an alley where dark shadows lurked, waiting to pounce on her.
‘What are you thinking, my queen?’
Bulaki’s voice stirred her out of her torpor. Bulaki had tilted his head and
was looking at her with his mouth open. He was still holding the clothes in
his hands.
‘You like them, don’t you?’ he asked her. ‘Bright colours suit children.’
Suddenly they heard voices outside the door.
‘Have you brought home a bride? Won’t you let us see her?’
They heard women laughing.
Someone knocked at the door.
‘He must be sitting by his bride. He’s not going to open the door for any
of you.’
‘Open the door, Bulaki. We want our clothes. What are we going to do if
your bride runs off with them?’
The women giggled.
‘But it’s the middle of the day. This is no hour to sit with your woman
behind closed doors. That’s what nights are for.’
They laughed.
‘Why, is he going to transform into a man at night?’
‘I hear there was a time when he was fine. If it weren’t for the fury of the
goddess of smallpox, Shitala Devi, he would’ve had children by now.’
They knocked at his door again. ‘At least let us see your bride’s face.’
‘What’s there to see? It’s that Chaudhary’s daughter. You must have seen
her already.’
The women walked away, laughing and chatting.
‘They’re all jealous of you, my queen, Basanti. They’re jealous, each one
of them,’ Bulaki turned to Basanti and spluttered. ‘Every other week, one
woman or the other comes knocking at my door.’ He was leaning towards
Basanti to emphasize what he was saying. ‘But, no, I said, no. I refused
each one of them. I said, no, Basanti’s the one I’ll marry. Basanti and no
one else.’ Basanti sat absolutely still on the cot. Bulaki’s face had grown
pale. ‘One of the women you just heard was Janaki. Her father wanted me
to marry her. I refused. Now she’s become my arch enemy.’ Suddenly
Bulaki clasped Basanti’s feet. ‘Please don’t leave me, Basanti, my queen.
Please don’t leave me. I’m fine in every way. There’s nothing wrong with
me. Nothing at all.’
Then he got up abruptly and reached for a bottle on a small table by the
bed. ‘Look at this. The doctor’s given this to me and he’s assured me that
I’ll be free of the goddess’s grip once I finish this entire bottle.’
Waving the bottle before Basanti, he added, ‘I’ve already finished two
and this is the third. It’s just a matter of a month or two now.’
Basanti’s eyelids were drooping. Whatever else the room may have
lacked, at least the mattress on the cot was soft and fluffy, and with all the
things that were scattered about the house, it felt intimate, like a real home.
Basanti wanted to let herself go. She didn’t need to run any more, didn’t
need to be elsewhere. She peeped out one last time from behind her halfclosed eyes and saw Bulaki waving a bottle about, gesturing and talking
animatedly. But beyond that, she didn’t know what was going on and didn’t
care. She let herself drift into a deep, deep sleep.
It was late at night. Basanti stood by the window, surrounded by the same
quiet stillness that she used to experience in Dinu’s hostel room. The same
sprawling silence; the ground outside the window similarly speckled by
moonlight. Basanti looked about her. The lame tailor was asleep in this
room, just as Dinu used to be asleep in that one. The ground outside the
window was uneven here, just as it had been there. She could tell that the
dark masses in the distance, on the other side of the ground, were houses
and kiosks. This too seemed familiar. She raised her eyes towards the sky. It
was resplendent with stars. She was struck by this: the infinity of the sky
seemed new; she felt she was noticing it for the very first time in her life.
The stars from Dinu’s room had never seemed so many. She contemplated
this endless spread of countless, sparkling stars. If only I could disappear
into them. If only I could lose myself amidst their infinity, dissolve into it,
disappear in it.
She lowered her eyes to look once more at the moonlight scattered on the
ground. A ray of silver lit up the window by which Basanti stood. As her
eyes travelled through the patches of moonlight, her thoughts turned to
Dinu. Who knows which high mountain he has hidden himself behind. He’d
said he’d be back. He’d said he’d be back in three months, and now five
months have passed. Where is he? Who knows, maybe like me, he too is
staring at the stars while his wife is asleep next to him. Suddenly, the image
of Dinu’s face, bathed with moonlight, bright and exquisite, emerged before
her eyes. Basanti was thrilled at being able to conjure Dinu’s face and look
uninhibitedly at it. And then her child turned in her womb and Basanti felt
awash with joy.
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Around the time Basanti was being transported to Bulakiram’s house,
Dinu was deep in the hills, on an unpaved, dusty path, en route to the
temple of the fire goddess, Jwala Devi. His wife was a few steps ahead of
him, prone across the back of a pony.
The terraced fields that the path cut through looked grand in the
afternoon sun; they were lush with crops which swayed gently in the
breeze. A few farmers’ houses stood beyond the fields. The hill past which
Jwalaji’s temple lay was just another mile or so away. The path disappeared
from view after winding around the foot of the hill.
Dinu’s wife slipped off the pony yet again. Dinu was constantly on the
alert, making sure she didn’t fall. They’d travelled five miles and she was
exhausted—her ribs ached, her back doubled up.
‘I’m going to die,’ she’d said a few times and cried every time. Dinu
scolded her, ‘Be quiet! You’re on a pony and yet you’re complaining.’
‘It’s my heart.’
‘What’s the matter with it?’
‘I feel like something’s gnawing at it.’
Dinu had stopped a few times and helped his wife off the pony so she
could lie down and rest for a while.
He was taking her to Jwalaji’s temple at his mother’s urging. The elders
in the village were of the opinion that Rukmi had incurred the wrath of the
goddess, and this meant that until the deity was placated, she wouldn’t be
able to carry her pregnancy full term. She had miscarried twice. Dinu’s
mother had tried everything that she could on her own. She’d taken her
daughter-in-law to a shaman who lived two villages away but to no avail.
She then got a talisman made for her but that didn’t help either. However,
now, since Dinu had been in the village for three months, she had finally
convinced him to make a trip with his wife to Jwala Devi’s temple.
The sun had begun to slide down the sky. It had already dipped below the
highest peak. And in no time, it sunk lower, and the hills began to cast their
long shadows over the valley. It had become dark at the base of the hill, and
Dinu became restless. He climbed on the pony’s back and began to hurry it
forward. Every time they’d cross someone on the path, he’d inquire, ‘How
much farther is the temple?’ And each person would tilt his head towards
the hill and say, ‘It’s near now.’ While this had been going on for some
time, the end of the journey was still nowhere in sight.
Dinu wouldn’t have thought twice before taking Rukmi to a doctor if she
had been in Delhi with him. It would have been an ordinary enough thing to
do. He would have taken her to a doctor in the village as well, had the
village had one. The tehsil they belonged to did, and Rukmi had been to
him and taken the medicines he’d prescribed for a long time. But these
medicines, just like the totems and charms she’d tried, had had no effect.
That’s why, when the village priest suggested that pleasing Jwala Devi
could yield favourable results, Dinu, egged on both by his mother’s
entreaties and his own longing for a child, agreed. Living in the city may
not have made him better informed than before but Dinu could definitely be
credited with having become surer of himself, more confident in his ability
to do things. He didn’t procrastinate—once convinced, he went straight to
his uncle’s house, borrowed his pony and set off for the temple with Rukmi.
He had decided he would return only after performing all the rites and
making all the offerings required of him to placate and please the goddess.
The sky was still blue. They finally reached the hill and began to make
their way along the narrow dirt track that wound its way to the other side.
The view was dramatically different from what it had been until now.
There was a hustle-bustle there, and the sound of a brook that couldn’t be
flowing far from the road. Peepul and banyan trees flanking the road
provided ample shade. Young boys chased visitors, hopeful of some alms,
and there were lepers and beggars too. An idol of Lord Hanuman stood by
the road. A fiery-eyed sadhu with a long beard and tangled tresses sat next
to it with his ewer. The idol was richly daubed, from top to bottom, with
vermilion, though it was greasy and dark at the base. The sadhu called out
to Dinu as he passed by; Dinu stopped, knelt before the idol and put ten
paise in the ewer, which was filled with oil. Rukmi too bowed to Hanuman.
She touched the idol with one hand, which she then brushed on her
forehead for a smear of the vermilion.
A short distance ahead, they came across a rock that had been daubed
entirely with vermilion, just like the idol had been. The simple rock had
been rendered sacred.
Dinu made an offering of ten paise here as well. Living in the city hadn’t
dulled him to the awe of the sacred that this place was suffused with, and
evoked.
They saw a sprawling banyan tree. On inquiring, Dinu found out that the
platform near it was the one on which the sacrificial offering to Jwala Devi
would be made, and that the short flight of steps by it led up to the temple.
After tethering the pony to the trunk of a tree, Dinu and Rukmi headed
towards the banyan tree. There were many people here, from near and far.
Some were carrying hens or goat kids in their arms, while others had goat
kids on a leash trotting alongside them. While they’d brought along the
animals they’d be offering as sacrifice, the animals could also be obtained
from the temple for a price. One only need give the money to the priest of
the temple and a goat would reach the sacrificial pier in no time. This is
what Dinu was going to do.
The platform was near the banyan tree, and next to the platform was an
enclosure. Dinu headed towards it, while Rukmi sat by the tree. Upon
entering it, Dinu saw that three idols of the goddess had been installed
along the inner walls of the enclosure. The sacrifice would be done on the
pier and the severed head brought into the enclosure for anointing the idols
with its blood. A sacrificial mark with the same blood would be drawn on
the devotee’s forehead. Feathers coated in blood were scattered all over the
blood-splattered floor; the idols were soaked as well.
A boy approached Dinu and demanded a rupee and twenty-five paise
from him, on receiving which he dragged a goat on to the pier. Dinu
climbed on to the pier as well. He saw a half-naked man wielding a chopper
was already there. The boy, meanwhile, led the goat to the centre of the pier.
In a few deft moves, he pulled back the kid’s hind legs and spread them
apart a little so that the goat wouldn’t be able to move. The kid was
trembling; its soft brown hide shivered.
The sacrifice didn’t take long. A single forceful strike of the bloodstained chopper sufficed. The move was so sudden that the body of the kid
remained standing even a few seconds after the head had rolled off. The boy
leapt towards the severed head, picked it up and gestured to Dinu to follow
him into the enclosure.
The sacred mark of blood on Dinu’s forehead was still fresh when he
walked back to Rukmi.
The temple courtyard was immense. It had several low seats without
backrests, red and white in colour. The famous well that housed the
shivalinga, to which people came to pay homage, was at one edge of this
courtyard. Dinu and Rukmi rushed straight to the well, hoping for a glimpse
of the shivalinga. But the well was guarded by a mantra-chanting priest.
They had only just craned their necks to peep in and barely discerned that it
was more like a deep, narrow tunnel with something like water glistening at
its base, when the priest yanked Dinu away from it. Without halting his
chanting, he gestured to Dinu to drop a one-rupee coin into the ladle he was
holding.
Immediately on receiving the coin, the priest replaced it with a cube of
camphor. He continued his chanting as he set fire to the cube, then gestured
to the couple to look into the well and dropped the burning camphor into it.
The camphor dropped down and, when it finally hit the bottom, it flared
fiercely blue for a moment, and then floated on the surface, a blue streak of
light blazing behind it. Dinu and Rukmi watched mesmerized. When the
flame burned out, they stepped away from the well, folded their hands in
respect and bowed their heads.
‘Did you see?’ The priest was brief and to the point. ‘Did you glimpse the
snakes coiled around the Maharaj’s neck?’
As it burned, the streak of blue light had parted into two, giving the
semblance of snakes coiled around an idol of Shiva. Dinu had seen this blue
snake, while Rukmi had also discerned the faint form of an idol in the
water.
Once again they turned towards the temple and its courtyard with the redand-white seats. To the right, there were idols of many gods and goddesses
bedecked in bright clothes and garlands of flowers and pearls. Before
entering, all devotees went to a small pool of water to wash their feet. There
was a priest here as well, who poured water on their feet. Now they stepped
into the courtyard where Dinu opened a bundle that he had brought along
with him as instructed by the village priest. It contained sweets, a coconut
and various other things needed for the rites that were going to be
performed. He placed them all on a plate.
What followed shook Dinu to the core.
A priest sat down in the middle of the courtyard and began the rites. The
priest asked Rukmi to sit on his right, and Dinu to her left. He chanted
mantras for a long time, then got up and filled a vessel with smouldering
coal. He continued to chant mantras as he tossed different powders into the
coal. A fire was ignited but in a couple of seconds, turned into thick smoke.
The priest placed the vessel on the floor in front of Rukmi and asked her to
bend over it. Rukmi complied, but the smoke was too much for her, and
soon it became impossible for her to keep taking it in. She straightened her
back, moving away from the smoke. The priest picked up the vessel and
took it near Rukmi’s face, moving it in circular motions, chanting mantras
all the while. It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to breathe; she
tried to pull away. The priest was angered; he told Dinu to hold her head
and keep it still, or the goddess would refuse to arrive.
The pupils of Rukmi’s eyes rolled up; her face had turned pale. But, once
initiated, it was of utmost importance that the rites be taken to their proper
conclusion. Dinu held her head tightly. Rukmi now jerked her head free.
Her eyes were only half open, her head thrashed from side to side. Her hair
had come undone and swung, whip-like, this way and that. Her eyes turned
crimson.
‘Leave her! The goddess is entering her,’ the priest announced, and Dinu
moved quickly away. With her head swaying, her hair flying and her mouth
open, Rukmi was unrecognizable.
The chanting had grown louder. The priest pulled away the plate with the
sweets and the vessel in which the fire burned.
‘The goddess is furious. She might strike us. Move away.’
Rukmi’s brows were stretched, her breathing heavy. Her face came alive
with uncountable crooked lines. Dinu took another step back. Just then, as if
struck by a force, Rukmi’s body lurched to one side and she twisted in
agony. She slammed her left leg on the floor; her body fell to the ground
with the impact. She lay there writhing, her arms pounding the floor, her
body contorting, moving from side to side. The priest’s chanting was
reaching its crescendo.
‘Oh, the goddess is furious. Look how she’s acting out her scorn,
swinging on the swing of her anger.’
He asked Dinu to placate the goddess, to please her, with sweets. It was
no small task to put a sweet into the mouth of a swinging, contorting
goddess. Dinu picked up a laddoo from the plate and took it to Rukmi’s
mouth even as she continued to flail her arms and legs and throw her body
from side to side. Her lips were pressed tightly together.
‘Put it in her mouth, put it in; the goddess is furious.’
Dinu pinned down his wife’s arm with his knee, grabbed her jaw with
one hand, squeezing it hard to prise it open, and tried to stuff the laddoo
into her mouth with his other hand. Rukmi writhed; her head jolted severely
from side to side. Dinu grabbed her by her hair and tried once more to push
the laddoo into her mouth. Rukmi’s eyes were popping out, sweat dripped
off her forehead, her lips were turning blue. She looked like she was having
difficulty breathing.
The priest’s chants grew louder still. Dinu’s hands trembled. He was still
trying to push the laddoo in through Rukmi’s pursed lips. His heart beat
wildly.
Dinu grabbed at Rukmi’s jaw one more time; this time her mouth opened.
The goddess accepted the offering. Dinu pushed the sweet into his wife’s
mouth but a part of it crumbled and fell out. Rukmi’s body no longer
writhed; she had become absolutely still. The laddoo was in her mouth and
she closed her lips again.
‘The goddess is satiated. The goddess is placated,’ the priest said.
Dinu’s heart was in his mouth.
The priest picked up the pooja plate. He stretched out his right hand
towards Dinu and said, his voice emotionless, ‘Five rupees.’ Dinu stood up,
took out three rupees from his pocket and put them in the priest’s
outstretched hand. ‘Five rupees,’ the priest repeated, and flung the money
on the floor.
Dinu grew agitated. He was quite stumped by the entire ritual as it is,
which he’d found utterly frightening. Having lived in Delhi for some time,
he had adopted a somewhat sceptical stance towards such acts. He’d agreed
to bring his wife here only at his mother’s urging and partly because of the
clouds of disappointment that had surrounded them all.
‘Why did you throw the money? Couldn’t you have given it back to me?’
‘You insulted the goddess, you low-born!’ The priest was screaming. He
stared at Dinu with such ferocity that he froze.
Dinu reasoned that not one but several priests had been involved in the
ritual—the priest with the chopper on the sacrificial pier, the priest in the
enclosure where the sacrificial offering had been made, the aged priest by
the well. And Rukmi, who was lying senseless on the floor, needed his
urgent attention. He bent down and picked up the coins one by one, quickly.
Then he pulled out two more rupees from his pocket and handed the five
rupees to the priest.
The priest took the money, then picked up a thimbleful of boondi from
the plate he was holding, and gave it to Dinu. ‘Here, take the Devi’s
prasad.’
Dinu cupped his hands to receive the blessing.
‘The Devi’s wrath has been placated. Your wife now has her blessing and
she will bear a child.’
Fixing his gaze on Dinu’s forehead, the priest declared, ‘You will have a
son. The Devi has blessed you. You must make offerings to her every
fifteen days.’
Rukmi was still unconscious, her lips blue. Dinu began making
preparations to have her lifted up and start the journey back to the village.
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It was the same neighbourhood and yet, it felt so distant, even strange. Do
things age in just seven to eight months? The outer walls of many of the
houses seemed time-worn. Kapoor sahib emerged from his house by the
milk booth; he too seemed to have aged. He walked with his back bent. He
saw Basanti but didn’t recognize her, and turned away and started crossing
the road. He’s going to the hotel to have tea. He always did, at this hour.
The same time, every day. The old woman who lived in a house near the
place where she was standing, was on the road. She was moving with the
support of a walker. She used to be able to walk with a walking stick. She’s
so much frailer than before. Basanti’s heart went out to her. Mehtaji had
had the trees outside his house chopped. Basanti felt that now his house
looked naked and exposed. Now what did he have to do that for? Basanti
had climbed those trees often; she’d hid there so many times. But there
were no trees any more to give her cover.
Basanti carried her child, shifting him from one arm to the other every
now and then. She stopped from time to time to look at the houses. Her
husband was walking behind her, a short distance away. Her heart had
brimmed over the moment she’d stepped into the neighbourhood and she
looked around very attentively, as if at something she’d left behind and
which she’d never be able to touch again.
There were more taxis at the taxi stand than there had been before. There
were more people too—more drivers and cleaners—who could pass
comments: ‘Did you consider us worse than this one-legged man?’ Loud
laughter followed.
Basanti didn’t feel bad. Well, at least someone’s recognized me. Had she
been by herself, she might have answered back. She always did, after all.
Each time she’d passed by this place, which used to be every day not long
ago, this had been the routine. Whenever women from her neighbourhood
walked to Ramesh Nagar, the men at the taxi stand passed comments. Times
have changed but these idiots haven’t. She walked on past them.
The afternoon was waning. Servants, each with a set of six bottles, were
stepping out from different houses, and gathering in front of the milk booth.
Will Ma be there as well today?
‘Aye, Basanti!’ She heard someone call out to her. It was Jassa; he
worked in Sushma bibi’s house. It took Basanti no time to recognize him.
‘You’ve grown a moustache, Jassa!’ Basanti laughed cheerfully. ‘You’re
all grown up! Where do you work now?’
‘Still at Sushma bibi’s,’ he said.
‘And how much water do you mix in the milk now, Jassa?’
‘Who does that!’
‘Oh, don’t you try to fool me. Didn’t you mix water from the tap behind
the houses?’
‘The water timings have changed,’ Jassa feigned irritation. ‘Who’s that?’
he asked, pointing.
‘Who?’
‘That one, following you on one leg.’
Basanti turned and said dismissively, ‘Isn’t that your father?’
Jassa immediately pointed to the child Basanti was holding and said,
‘Not mine, it’s his father.’
‘Have you seen Dinu?’ The question came spontaneously.
‘Dinu? Why ask about Dinu?’
Basanti felt chagrined but found her balance quickly. Her question had
taken her by surprise as well. ‘The washerman who used to sit here—do
you know where he is? He was my uncle,’ Basanti said, changing the topic.
‘The washerman? He sits right here. Do you know, the police took his
pushcart and iron,’ Jassa told her.
‘And then?’
‘What then? He works by Babu’s place now, on the platform there. He
still hasn’t got his pushcart back. And he sleeps on the platform itself at
night.’
‘Why so?’
‘His son, Manglu, threw him out of the house. Manglu has his own cart
now; he sells fruit. He stations the cart at the crossing.’
‘What are you saying? Why’d he turn his father out of the house?’
‘Not just his father, his mother as well. They’d both started living with
him and he threw them out one day.’
Basanti was quiet for a few seconds, then asked, ‘Would he have come to
work today?’
‘The washerwoman does come sometimes. But the washerman, he
wanders about looking for Lachhmi.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s run away! No one knows where she is.’
Basanti remained quiet. So much had changed. She felt lonely, estranged.
While they had been walking towards Ramesh Nagar, Bulaki had said that
they should meet her father. Basanti had hummed in response but she had
no real desire to meet her father. But now she saw two slabs of stone by the
wall where her father used to have his stall. Two more barbers had set up
their own shops nearby. They were both young, and Basanti didn’t know
either of them. She also couldn’t see her mother at the milk booth. She
should have been there by now as it was her habit to come and wait for up
to an hour before the booth opened.
People were gathering outside the booth. Servants from different houses
chatted while they waited for the booth to open. Basanti realized she didn’t
know many of them.
Bulaki had caught up with her by now. But Basanti hadn’t been waiting
for him and she didn’t start walking when he joined her. ‘You walk on to
the market,’ she said. ‘Wait for me there; I’ll catch up with you soon.’ And
she continued chatting with Jassa.
Basanti learned of many new developments from Jassa. Many of the
houses had started employing men and women from south India as
domestic help now. Hardly any houses employed full-time help any more,
and everyone who worked as a servant would now rather be a peon or a
driver, or work in a factory.
‘Do you remember Bishna who worked in Vadhera sahib’s house? He
drives a truck now.’
Basanti’s thoughts turned to Shyama bibi, about whether she still lived
here. What’s she going to say if she sees me with that oldie? She’ll say,
‘Your father did the right thing. You were wandering about. Now look at
you! Such a fine saree you have wrapped around you. And your son too—
he’s looking so good.’
Basanti did want to meet Shyama bibi. In fact, that was one of the things
that had drawn her to Ramesh Nagar that day. She wanted Shyama bibi to
see her son, her ‘Pappu’. He was sound asleep, his head resting on her
shoulder. And truth be told, she wanted Shyama bibi to see how nicely she
was dressed up herself.
While walking through Ramesh Nagar held a charm for Basanti, she also
felt disdain for it; while she felt an excitement in being here, she also felt a
sharp twinge of pain. Basanti had left Jassa and started walking towards
Shyama bibi’s house but for no apparent reason, she then turned away and
resumed walking towards the market.
Basanti reached the market and found Bulaki. He had wanted to buy some
cloth and she wanted to buy milk for her son. Basanti fed her child milk
from a bottle, just like the women who lived in the pucca houses in the
colony did. She’d tie a napkin around his neck just like them, and powder
him up after bathing him just like they did their children. She did for her
child everything she had seen being done for the children born in those
houses. Her child’s cradle had a tiny mattress, just like theirs, and was
decorated with bells and toys just like those of infants born in those houses.
They quickly finished buying what they had come for, then went into the
park that faced the colony. Basanti was filled with excitement once again.
She noticed that the seller of spicy snacks who used to sit by the park was
no longer there. Who knew what became of him! Had it really been so very
long since she’d left this neighbourhood?
She liked being in the park; it pleased her. There were many children
here; they ran on the grass, chasing one another and laughing, filled with
joy. She used to bring Sumitra bibi’s child here, pushing his pram. It wasn’t
likely she’d recognize any of the children now. But she looked hard, and
some of them seemed familiar.
The park hadn’t changed but it seemed a bit smaller than how she
remembered it. The houses around it seemed to have lost some of their
lustre. Like always, so many unemployed people sat around on the grass.
The park had always been a hang-out for the unemployed, and a club for the
old. Dinu too, when he was between jobs, used to come and spend hours
here day after day, lying on the grass, puffing at beedis. Anyone who didn’t
have a job to get to, or money in his or her pocket, would come here and
find some corner, some patch of shade by a shrub, and lie about for hours
on end. Those a little better off than that would gather in small circles and
play cards, munch on peanuts, chat and gossip. It wasn’t yet evening and
already the benches along the four sides of the park were filling up with old
men from the surrounding houses. And there was one corner which was
filling up with old women. Basanti knew almost all of them. Kapoor sahib
was there too, scanning a newspaper inch by inch.
‘Oh Bibiji, he carries a newspaper around in his pocket always. He sits
down somewhere, and out comes the newspaper and he begins to read,’
Basanti would tell Shyama bibi about all the old people she used to see at
the park. ‘Once, I was playing with Sumitra bibi’s son, Tippu, when Kapoor
sahib came and sat on a bench near us. That day he had neither a newspaper
nor his reading glasses on him. He looked so confused about what to do!
There was some other old man on the neighbouring bench, and he was
reading a newspaper. Kapoor sahib got up, went to him, and borrowed two
sheets of the paper from him. And then he borrowed glasses from another
man. And that’s it, he sat down and started reading!’ Basanti used to roll
with laughter as she narrated these anecdotes from the park. ‘Bibiji, get
three old men together and all they’ll do is talk about their health. One will
say he drinks six glasses of water a day. Another will say he makes sure not
to eat more than two chapatis for lunch and one chapati for dinner, not even
if he pines for just half a chapati more, because that way his stomach won’t
give him trouble.’ Basanti would act out the conversation, stroking her
stomach with her hand like she had seen done by the man in the park.
‘Another will say, I only eat two dry rusks with a glass of milk at night, and
that too before 7 p.m. I don’t eat after that.’ Then she would mimic the next
speaker: ‘Constipation is the root of all illness. One should make sure not to
get constipation.’ She would say, ‘Get three old men together and they start
talking about “incidents”. What do you suppose they mean by that, Bibiji?’
Old women had begun to gather around the bench that was tucked away
at the far end of the park. Shyama bibi’s mother-in-law must be among
them. Basanti moved closer, hoping to spot her. She had, on occasion, also
mimicked the women for Shyama bibi’s entertainment. She’d say, ‘Bibiji,
these women idle about in the park all evening, leaving only when the stars
begin to shine brightly in the sky. They’re scared of their daughters-in-law,
so they stay outside their houses till after dinner time. Sushma bibi’s
mother-in-law was saying today, “I buy myself one bottle of milk
separately. Bless their souls, those people at the booth let me buy even
though I don’t have a token for it. It saves me from having to hear ‘Where’s
the milk gone? Who drank all the milk?’ at home.”’
While Basanti mimicked them just as she did the men, listening to these
women usually saddened her. ‘Sister, what should I do so that my mind
doesn’t stray from God?’ Sushma bibi’s mother-in-law would say. ‘I pray
daily, I worship every single day, and yet my mind doesn’t find its stillness
in God.’
Upon gathering in the park, the women would sing devotional songs,
chant prayers, but one or the other among them would invariably get
distracted. There was just so much that troubled them about home that
complaining came easily, as did tears. They’d wipe each other’s tears and
console one another, ‘One can’t hasten the passing of life or speed up time.
Till then, we must bide our time and sustain our bodies with two meals a
day.’
These same bodies would swell with joy and life when a grandchild
would run up to one of them and tug at her hand playfully. A smile would
break through the wrinkled face, full of affection, as if this were paradise.
‘This is my grandson, Subhash,’ the woman would say, pulling the child
close. And then to the child, ‘Go on, tell them your name. They are your
grandmothers as well.’
Basanti couldn’t see Shyama bibi’s mother-in-law in the gathering that
day. She’d hoped so much to inquire about Shyama bibi. She walked back
to Bulaki, who was waiting for her on a bench by the entrance to the park
with her son on his lap.
Bulaki suggested that they should cross the road and catch a bus home.
But Basanti insisted they walk further, towards the crossing where the small
eatery was, and go to the main bus station from there. Basanti chose this
route because Shyama bibi’s house was on the way. And while she didn’t
want to go and meet Shyama bibi, she did want to catch a glimpse of her
from afar.
They reached the eatery and turned right. Shyama bibi’s house was very
close now, just straight ahead. Basanti fixed her gaze on the balcony. She
wakes up about this time. She’s sure to come out and stand in the balcony.
But she didn’t. All Basanti could see were clothes hung out to dry. They
fluttered slightly in the gentle breeze.
Basanti followed Bulaki, though her eyes never left the balcony. Her
anklets tinkled, the pallu of her scarlet saree kept slipping off her shoulder,
try though she did to keep it in place. She had dressed her son in a yellow
satin kurta and, despite the heat, a plumed hat covered his head.
But Shyama bibi never saw them, for she didn’t step out into her balcony.
They turned the corner and Basanti looked ahead at the road. What she saw
sent a shiver through her body. It was Dinu. Basanti stopped where she was.
Dinu had already seen her. He was looking right at her. Sure, the way she
was dressed, it wasn’t easy for him to accept it was indeed Basanti. But
recognize her he did. And he wondered too about the man who was walking
right in front of her—his body leaning over a stick, dressed oddly in
different, stark colours, a turban over his head. He noticed that Basanti was
walking behind him obediently, like a good wife. He wouldn’t have
believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
Basanti was motionless now, her body seized by the emotions Dinu
always evoked in her. She could have been drowning. She felt helpless, as if
someone, something else controlled her. As if she was being swept away by
a giant wave.
‘When did you get back?’ She finally broke out of her spell and walked
up to Dinu. She fixed her eyes on his face. She held Pappu towards him.
‘This is your son.’ As soon as she said this, milk flowed out from her breast
and drenched her blouse. ‘He looks just like you, doesn’t he? Look at his
eyes. When did you get back?’
Pappu was still in his mother’s arms and he looked at Dinu with wide
eyes.
Dinu too felt a tumult of emotions. He felt like he was losing his
composure internally, and then, just as suddenly, he was swept over by a
wave of joy. His son! He’d been married for ten years but that hadn’t borne
him a child. His wife had been pregnant twice but she hadn’t been able to
carry full term. And here he was—his son, so close to him, looking right at
him. His son, this really was his son. He stared at the child incredulously.
Standing next to Dinu gave Basanti an immeasurable sense of fulfilment,
as if everything she had ever wanted, everything she could ever want, had
been granted to her all at once.
‘You’d said that you’d come back soon. Then why didn’t you? You didn’t
even send word.’ Basanti’s voice was trembling. Dinu looked at her and
then back at his son. And this simple gesture betrayed the primacy of the
child.
‘I knew if I came this way, something amazing would happen. I just
knew it.’ Basanti was speaking excitedly.
Dinu didn’t respond. He simply looked towards the old man who
accompanied Basanti, and who had walked on ahead by now, and asked, ‘Is
that your husband?’
Basanti was taken aback for a second but then spoke up, ‘You’re my
husband.’
‘But you’re with him. Did you get married?’
‘So what if I did!’
‘That must mean that you live with him.’
‘So what if I do!’
Basanti felt that old feeling, that old attitude of devil-may-care, returning.
She kept her eyes focused on Dinu’s face; that old charge, that buoyancy
once more gained strength in her. Overcome with emotion, she held Pappu
up again, towards Dinu, and said, ‘Here, take him. Hold your son.’
Dinu took the child in his arms—the plump, snuggly, soft baby who was
staring at him with his innocent little eyes. Dinu trembled with joy. His son?
His own son! The child let out what seemed like a deep sigh when Dinu
pressed him close against his chest.
‘Where do you live?’ Basanti asked him.
‘At Ramu’s.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Not far. Near the lake.’
‘Let’s go.’ And Basanti held Dinu by his elbow to steer him in the
direction of the lake.
Bulaki had, meanwhile, halted by the neem tree. When he turned to look, he
saw Basanti was a fair distance away, standing in the middle of the road,
talking to a man. It seemed to him she was turning, and then he saw that she
had started walking in the opposite direction from where he was. He felt
utterly confounded. ‘Basanti!’ he called out, ‘Basanti! I’m here!’
But they kept walking. Bulaki saw them—Basanti and a man, Pappu
between them, though he couldn’t really see the child—slowly receding
away. He was close to panicking. ‘Oh Basanti! Basanti!’ He walked as fast
as he could, supporting himself as best he could with the stick, in their
direction, hastening to cover the distance he had walked away from Basanti.
Something told him that things were not right, that something untoward was
about to occur, that its unfolding had already begun.
‘Oh Basanti!’ he called out again, his agitation rising. ‘Oh Basanti, stop!
Where are you going? I’m here!’ He was doing his best but his limp was
severe; he felt frustrated by how slowly he was moving, by how steadily
Basanti and that man were moving away from him. They had already
reached the eatery and were turning left; they’d be out of his line of sight
soon.
‘Oh Basanti!’
Bulaki’s anger flared. He stopped and flung his stick in their direction.
Some men stepped out of the eatery for a better view. ‘Get back here, you
haramzadi!’ Bulaki screamed. The cobbler who sat on the pavement under a
tree stood up. ‘Get back here. I’m warning you.’ Bulaki was beside himself
and it looked like he was going to break down and start crying. ‘I’ll go to
court,’ he screamed wildly. ‘I won’t go lightly on this.’ Screaming and
ranting, supporting his back with his hand, Bulaki continued in their
direction. ‘Oh haramzadi! Get back here. Right now!’ But before he knew
it, the receding figures had disappeared.
‘Help! Somebody help me!’ Bulaki lost his composure entirely. ‘He’s
taking away my wife in broad daylight. Help! Oh, I gave fifteen hundred for
her, in cash.’
At this, some of the onlookers started sniggering. A few started walking
with Bulaki but only short distances—they too laughed at him and walked
away. Bulaki continued to scream as he walked from lane to lane and road
to road, in search of his absconding wife.
Everything is finally as it should be. Basanti was reunited with Dinu.
Having found him, she felt like she had found everything she had been
looking for, and in search of which she had been wandering about,
surrounded by darkness. Husband, wife and child—the pieces had finally
come together and fused to make a whole.
There was a rugged, unkempt garden opposite the row of single-storeyed
houses they walked past to reach Ramu’s house. It was overtaken more by
brushwood than flowering plants and trees. There was a small pond as well,
and since the water in it never dried, it had begun to be called a lake.
Basanti and Dinu sat down under a tree by this lake to rest their backs.
Basanti had so many questions, so many complaints. But sitting with him
there, her body so close to his, she found all those questions and complaints
evaporating into the air, as if they were meaningless, unnecessary,
irrelevant. As if the answers to all those questions had been found already.
‘Do you know?’ Basanti said, ‘The moment I stepped into Ramesh
Nagar, I felt in my heart that something was about to happen. I felt my feet
were moving on their own, as if they knew where they should lead me. Why
else would we have gone towards the eatery, when we had to go in the
opposite direction? That happens sometimes, doesn’t it?’
Pappu had fallen asleep in Dinu’s lap and Dinu was stroking his head
affectionately. Then he kissed his head and asked Basanti, ‘Where was he
born?’
‘What’s it to you? Why should you care where he was born? You just
took off, abandoned us,’ Basanti remonstrated.
‘Who was with you, by your side?’
‘Nobody.’ Then she gently rested her cheek on Dinu’s shoulder and said,
‘You were with me.’
She sat like that for some time, then said with enthusiasm, ‘Shyama bibi
kept saying you’d never come back. But I always said you would. I would
tell her, “Dinu will come back, Bibiji, you wait and watch.” I know you
better, don’t I?’
Basanti was convinced that she was led towards the eatery by some
supernatural force, so she could be reunited with Dinu.
‘Your husband’s not going to follow you here, is he?’ Dinu asked.
‘You’re my husband,’ she answered. Then added brashly, ‘Forget about
him; he’ll never find us. He doesn’t know these lanes like I do.’
Basanti was right. There wasn’t a wall in this neighbourhood that Basanti
hadn’t scaled, not a tree she hadn’t climbed; she knew these lanes inside out
because it was in them that she had shielded herself—from Bardu, from her
father—behind a wall here, in the porch of some house there. She had been
playing hide and seek in these lanes for some years now.
‘He looks like you,’ she said proudly. ‘His eyes are just like yours and so
is his chin, isn’t it?’
‘He’s got your curly hair,’ Dinu said. Hearing herself praised by Dinu
thrilled Basanti.
‘It’s not that curly any more. It used to be but that was then. Had I oiled it
and washed it regularly, it would have been fine. The lady whose house I
worked in, in Sujan Singh Park, had very curly hair as well. Once I applied
her oil after washing my hair. At least I’d assumed it was hair oil. But it
wasn’t oil at all. It was something else, something quite slimy.’
‘She didn’t say anything?’
‘She threw me out, what else! She told me I should go find some other
house where they wouldn’t mind me applying their oil in my hair.’ Basanti
was laughing. ‘It’s quite easy to find work in Lodhi Colony and Sujan
Singh Park. They even give you quarters to live in. But they don’t pay well.
And they don’t give you anything to eat. Just two slices of bread and a cup
of tea, that’s it. It’s better here. You can ask for a cup of tea any time. I
reach a house in the morning and the bibiji says, “Basanti, do you want a
cup of tea? Go ahead and make yourself one.” And when the men leave for
work by ten, and after the women see them off, the one whose house you’re
in at that time will call out to you as she climbs up the stairs, pulling her
hair up in a bun, “First, let’s have a cup of tea. Go on, make a cup for
yourself as well. Have tea, and then you can work and I can go take a
bath.”’
Basanti was chatting away like she used to.
Dinu watched her. Basanti liked that Dinu was watching her.
She was exultant. Dinu is back. I’m free of that tailor. Otherwise I
would’ve, even now, been trapped in that room with that salivating old man
clinging to my thighs. My husband is with me now. He’s sitting with me and
he’s holding our child in his lap. What more could I want? After so many
days! Basanti wanted to stretch her arm out and ruffle Dinu’s hair.
Instead, she asked, ‘Did you take three hundred rupees from Bardu?’
Dinu’s eyes widened at this unexpected question.
‘What did you take that money from him for? Did you sell something to
him?’
Dinu continued to stare at Basanti, no words escaping his lips.
‘Did you sell your cycle to him?’
‘Yes, that’s what,’ Dinu nodded.
‘Did you sell your cycle or your wife?’
‘I needed money, so I could go home.’
‘Bardu told me that he paid you three hundred rupees for me.’
‘Why would I sell you? I had my cycle to sell, after all.’
‘He said he gave you one hundred for the cycle.’
‘That bastard! He lied,’ Dinu said with feeling. Then he added, ‘He
wanted the cycle for one hundred but I took three hundred. I needed the
money.’
‘Why did you leave without telling me?’
‘Two or three other people from the village were going. I left with them.’
Basanti looked quietly at Dinu. She held Dinu’s cat-like eyes in her gaze.
She couldn’t tell if he was lying or telling her the truth. But she was feeling
positive today. Truth or lie, I don’t care, I’ll accept them both. I don’t care
about asking him. I don’t care either way.
Dinu too could tell that Basanti had changed. She was no longer that
young girl who didn’t know the world, the one he’d taken to his room to
live with him. She was now his son’s mother; she had borne him a son.
‘How’s your wife?’
Dinu’s face darkened and he shook his head. He locked his arms around
Pappu and said quietly, ‘She isn’t able to carry her pregnancy to its full
term. She gets pregnant but then loses the child.’
‘Bring her here,’ Basanti said. ‘I’ve said this before as well. Just bring her
here. Shakuntala bibi too used to have the same problem. You know the
bibiji from house number seven? But then this woman in Meerut gave her a
medicine. Something blackish, like ground-up coal. And she became okay.
It’s true, just bring her here. Shakuntala bibi had a son sixteen years after
being married. And then she had more children as well. Just bring her here.’
Basanti was talking excitedly. ‘I said this to you before as well. I did, didn’t
I? She can stay at home, and you and I will go out and work. No?’
She continued in the same spirit, ‘Why didn’t you send me word? You’d
said you were going for three months and you’re back now after an entire
year has passed. I thought about you all the time. Do you know, even on the
day they were sending me off with that old tailor, I was searching for you
on the road. I kept thinking, He’ll come. He’ll be here any moment.
Carrying on with Bulaki wasn’t very rational of me, was it? But what could
I do? I had nowhere to go. And I was pregnant with Pappu . . .’
Evening had begun to set in and shadows had elongated by the time they
got up to carry on towards home. Basanti felt confident, assured about the
time to come. She felt the future once again extend its arms to embrace and
welcome her. She felt like she could make plans again; dream about the life
awaiting her.
It was late evening by the time they reached Ramu’s house. Basanti was
carrying Pappu and Dinu was walking ahead of her. On reaching the house,
Dinu waited for Basanti to catch up with him before he knocked at the door.
When the door opened, Basanti found herself standing face-to-face with a
fair dame from the hills.
‘This is Rukmi,’ Dinu said. ‘She’s come with me.’
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The household split into two along what seemed like a natural divide.
Dinu and his first wife slept on the large cot, and Basanti and her child on
the one by the wall. Rukmi, not Basanti, got the status of a married woman,
of being a wife. It wasn’t as if this had been at Rukmi’s insistence. Like
Dinu, she spoke little. It’s just how things had happened on their own. The
husband and wife slept on one cot, and the mother and child on the other.
After all, what could be more ideal than for a child to be with his mother as
he slept? As far as Basanti was concerned, Rukmi could perform the role of
the wife as much as she wanted, sleep with Dinu if she wanted; but she
knew that she was the one who had borne a son: Dinu’s son. She took pride
in that.
While Basanti had been friendly towards Rukmi from the moment she’d
come into the house, Rukmi needed time. The day after they returned, Dinu
had left for Bardu’s to get his cycle back. Basanti took that time to chat with
Rukmi. Rukmi was really very fair. So fair, in fact, her skin was almost
pale. Fair skin, timorous eyes. And she blushed at the smallest thing. Even
talking to Basanti made her cheeks turn crimson.
Basanti teased her, ‘Forget your veil here, maharani. How are you going
to do any work if you keep your face covered like this?’
She laughed at Rukmi’s tasselled hair tie: ‘Who wears a paraanda in the
city? I’ll get you ribbons.’ She showed Rukmi the ribbons she’d tied her
own hair with. ‘I even wear flowers in my hair. I’ll get you some too.’
She offered advice, ‘And listen to me carefully. Don’t go out alone. There
are just too many cars and trucks; you won’t be able to cross a road by
yourself. I’ll teach you how to. Did you see any red and green lights on the
road while you were coming here?’ Rukmi shook her head to say she
hadn’t. ‘Every crossing,’ Basanti continued, ‘has traffic lights, red and
green. When the light is red, the vehicles stop. They’re not allowed to move
then. They can only move when the light is green. Red means stop. Green
means go.’
She then commented on Rukmi’s clothes: ‘This cloth is so coarse. It’s so
clear you’re not from here. No one wears such coarse material here.’
She took it upon herself to teach her. ‘You should wear a body like we do
here. Have you ever worn a body?’ At first Rukmi couldn’t figure out what
Basanti was talking about. So Basanti showed Rukmi her bra strap. Rukmi
turned crimson with embarrassment and started shaking her head
vehemently.
‘That’s okay, I’ll get one for you.’
The way Rukmi looked at Basanti, like a startled doe, convinced Basanti
that she had the upper hand now. And that’s when she produced her trump
card.
‘Have you ever watched TV?’
Rukmi shook her head and said, ‘No, what’s that?’
‘Oh, then you’ve seen nothing! I’ll take you to Shyama bibi’s house one
day. So many houses have TVs here.’
Basanti felt a strange tug at her heart the moment she uttered Shyama
bibi’s name. What’s Shyama bibi going to think when I take Rukmi to her
house? She’ll say, ‘See? I told you you’ve been duped.’ Basanti froze
momentarily at this thought but then jerked her head and said, ‘You don’t
even know what a TV is? It has moving images. It has sound. It’s just like
the cinema. They even show movies on TV. You can watch movies at home.
I’ve seen so many. Shyama bibi has a really nice TV. It’s imported.’
Basanti was chirruping. She held Rukmi’s hand and rattled off names of
movies and singers and sang their songs. ‘I’ll teach you all the nice songs. I
know so many. When I was expecting, I was alone, and I used to sing all the
time.’
And then she sang another song, completely out of tune as usual, ‘. . . jis
zalim ne mujhe tadpaya, usi par pyar aya; badi mushkil se . . .’
‘You can’t have a child, isn’t it?’ she asked.
Rukmi’s face turned pale and she lowered her eyes. She looked as if she
was about to cry.
‘Oh, what’s there to cry about in this? So what if you haven’t had a
child!’
She held Rukmi’s hand. ‘Don’t cry. You shouldn’t cry!’ Then she started
telling her about herself. ‘You know, I never cry. I don’t even know how to
cry. Yes, but I do cry when I watch movies. I don’t know why. Someone can
hit me, beat me up, and I still won’t cry. But a movie can make me cry.’ And
she started laughing.
‘You’re older than me, and still you’re crying.’ She leaned forward,
wiped Rukmi’s eyes with the edge of her saree and smiled gently.
‘I know everything. I just asked you, just like that. You shouldn’t worry
about it.’ And with that, she told Rukmi about Shakuntala bibi: ‘There’s a
woman in Meerut who has this medicine. She’s not a doctor and she doesn’t
even charge for the medicine. They’re small, black pellets. Who knows,
maybe Shakuntala bibi still has some. I’ll find out today. Otherwise I’ll go
to Meerut and get you some myself. Meerut’s not far. I can leave one
morning and come back the same day. Or we can both go. That way she can
take a look at you if she wants. We’ll take Pappu along. What do you say?’
Rukmi looked at Basanti, her eyes shining brightly, full of hope.
She’d been caught off guard when Dinu arrived with Basanti the previous
night. She didn’t know who Basanti was, what she was doing in their house.
Dinu had never mentioned her before. Sure, once, when they’d had an
argument, he did say he had a girl in the city. Rukmi had started crying and
Dinu had made no attempt at making up with her. Instead, a few days later,
he’d brought her to the city in the hope that he could have her treated here
so they could have a child. The more it became clear that Rukmi would not
be able to bear him a child, the more his desire for a child grew. He’d run
into Basanti quite by chance but it had pleased him. He’d been thrilled to
find out that he had a son. Pappu was his son, after all, even if not with
Rukmi. And so he’d brought them home with him. Seeing Basanti in her
house had shocked Rukmi. These may be the ways of the city and, sure,
unfamiliar though she may be to them, this didn’t seem in the least
acceptable to her. But now Rukmi felt touched by the intimacy with which
Basanti was speaking with her, and she felt like she could open herself up to
her.
Basanti talked on. ‘Every day after Dinu leaves for work, you and I will
go out. I’ll take you to Red Fort, to Qutub Minar, to Connaught Place. Such
crowds throng these places! It’s hard to walk a step without being pushed.’
Rukmi’s face had turned red on hearing Basanti take Dinu’s name. She
said quickly, ‘You shouldn’t take his name.’
‘Whose?’
‘His.’
‘That harami’s?’ Basanti said with panache, enjoying herself.
Rukmi’s face turned a deep red and she covered it with her pallu as she
said, ‘It’s a sin to take his name.’
‘Then you should call him “darling”,’ Basanti laughed. ‘That’s what
Shyama bibi calls her husband.’ And she mimicked Shyama bibi. ‘Darling,
would you like another chapati, darling? You haven’t eaten anything at all,
darling.’ And she burst into uncontrollable laughter.
‘Once his work takes off, we’ll get new clothes stitched—identical
clothes. Same colour, same design. What do you say?’
Rukmi found this idea rather strange.
‘Then we’ll go everywhere together. I’ll take you around Delhi. I’ve seen
all the places—Red Fort, Qutub Minar, India Gate. We’ll eat ice cream
there. Have you ever had ice cream?’
Once again, Rukmi was staring at Basanti, her eyes filled with a child’s
wonder about the world.
‘Lado and I used to hop into buses and go anywhere we wanted. We used
to live in a basti not far from here. We never bought a ticket and we weren’t
caught even once.’
Basanti was prattling on merrily, ‘We’ll even get a photo taken together.
There’s a shop in Ramesh Nagar. I’ll take you.’
Basanti felt life was beginning afresh for her, that her childhood—with
all its desires—was getting a second wind; that the vortex of time really
could calm down and be gentle to her; that the last few years of her life
could, in fact, lose their harshness and loosen their hold over her life.
Then Dinu came back and brought reality, with all its ramifications, with
him.
‘Where did you find this country bumpkin?’ Basanti had so enjoyed taking
on a bemused and slightly superior tone with Rukmi that she continued in
the same vein with Dinu when he got back home in the evening. ‘She
doesn’t know a thing. She’d be adrift in the city. She’ll have to be taught so
much before we even let her step out of the house.’
Dinu had just walked in through the door. What he heard was mockery in
Basanti’s voice. And worse, he heard it directed not towards his wife but
towards him. Basanti was mocking him.
‘Where in the world did you bring her from, anyway?’
Basanti was playing. She didn’t see it coming; she didn’t expect the harsh
slap. Her body was trembling. And when she stepped away, towards the
door, her hand on her cheek, Dinu yelled at her, ‘What are you standing
there and staring at me for? Am I supposed to light the stove now?’
Dreaming of her future, Basanti had erred in assessing Dinu’s place in it.
Dinu, husband to two wives—he was the master and had the final word on
things. Not she, the mother of his son, the sole bread-earner. Basanti had
misjudged her place in the household. Dinu, not she, was the pivot around
which everything revolved.
Basanti stood by the door, sobbing silently, for a long time. No, one slap
couldn’t possibly shatter her dreams to pieces. But yes, it could stun her. It
could throw her off, it could make her contemplate the irony in how
troubles chased her and how, despite everything, she could never stop
dreaming.
Days began to pass. Dinu still hadn’t found work. Not that he was searching
high and low for it. He spent the first few days claiming his cycle back from
Bardu. This exercise had also involved taking seventy rupees from Basanti
—money she had saved from the lame tailor. The wedding season was over,
and there was going to be a three-month lull till the stars favoured weddings
again. Basanti went back to work and suggested that Dinu take up work in a
few houses as well. But Dinu considered working as a domestic help to be
beneath him. ‘No way,’ he would say, ‘I can’t possibly work in people’s
houses. A worker in a factory or a clerk in an office—that would be more
appropriate for me.’
‘But for that you first have to get yourself a job in a factory or an office,’
Basanti tried to reason with him, to no avail.
Sometimes, Dinu would talk about turning brass and bronze into gold.
He’d say he had heard of a man in Vinay Nagar who knew how to. He
talked of finding this man and learning from him. One could only glean
from this that Dinu considered alchemy more suitable for a man of his
caste, who had two wives and possessed a bicycle, than he did domestic
work.
Basanti watched him sink into a new daily routine—he’d sit outside the
house all day with Pappu in his lap. He had also taken to chewing tobacco.
This was new. From time to time, he’d leave the house in the morning with
his bicycle but no one knew where to. He’d always come back by the
afternoon and boss his wives around.
He’d criticize Basanti about her work, ‘If Sushma bibi can’t even pay
you thirty rupees, then there’s no point working for her. Who needs that
kind of work! You should take up work in a different house.’
Or he’d just sit outside the house and issue orders.
The nights he divided between his two wives. Some nights he lay with
Basanti and some nights with Rukmi. It was as if exercising his claim over
Rukmi’s and Basanti’s bodies had become his chosen vocation.
Basanti got au fait with these conditions of cohabitation quickly. This is
what it is, and this is how it currently flows, she’d tell herself. How it would
unfold, where it might lead—this, try though she did, she couldn’t tell. She
had learned to take each day as it came. She had work today; quite possibly,
she may not have it the next day. She had a house today; tomorrow, the
neighbourhood may be demolished. Her husband was with her today but he
could pack his bags and leave any time. The weave of life was too fragile
for Basanti to join days into weeks, weeks into months, months into years
and beckon an image of the time to come. She had found a way to treat each
day as discrete, to let each day take what shape it did, to not expect today to
flow unbroken into the day that would follow. This is what it is, this is how
it currently flows, so let it.
The house, however, had settled into a rhythm. It was the kind of rhythm
that complicates relations, deepens the cracks between them and
exaggerates the tensions. It was stifling.
Things hadn’t been this way in the beginning. The first time Dinu had come
into her bed, Basanti had been pleased. He had been frenetic in his
lovemaking; his animal-like hunger for her body, his lasciviousness towards
her had not displeased Basanti. She had lain close to him the entire night,
her body against his, embracing him, a deep satisfaction filling her. ‘If you
have so much love for me, then how could you leave when I was pregnant
with Pappu?’ She had let her vulnerability show. ‘How could you leave me
like that?’ she had said. In response, Dinu stretched out his hand and
stroked his son’s head. Basanti had so many questions but in this moment
she felt all her complaints fall away. She held Dinu tighter, moved her body
even closer to his. Not even Rukmi’s presence on a cot so close to hers
could pierce through the peace she felt that night. She felt protected by
Dinu’s closeness to her. It was then that Dinu had asked her for money, and
she gave him her remaining seventy rupees. It wasn’t that Dinu’s
lovemaking had had an intimacy towards Basanti which he slowly
withdrew from her. Dinu was the same—brusque and urgent in how he
devoured her body. And yet, Basanti had been able to draw happiness from
his proximity, satisfaction from lying beside him at night. But as their days
started filling up with envy, bitterness and parsimoniousness towards one
another, their nights, bereft of love, began to reek of prurience.
Among the three of them, Basanti was the only one who worked. At first,
she found work in three houses and earned fifteen rupees from each. Then
she started working in two more houses, for ten rupees each. She’d leave
Pappu with Rukmi and Dinu while she went to work. But often, she would
become restless and run back home between houses. And more often than
not, she’d find the stove hadn’t been lit because Rukmi had nothing to cook
with as Dinu hadn’t bothered to buy anything and was away somewhere
whiling away his time in idle chit-chat. She’d find Pappu had cried himself
to sleep near the door. It broke her heart to see her child like that. She
would quickly light the stove and cook something. Soon enough, Dinu
would appear and Rukmi too would join them for a meal. ‘Did Sushma bibi
give you a raise or not?’ Dinu would start off on some tangent or the other.
‘Has the cat got your tongue? Can’t you tell her fifteen rupees is not
acceptable? Be sure to tell her today.’
Rukmi too had begun to whisper all sorts of things into Dinu’s ears.
Basanti would see it happening in front of her but couldn’t find it in herself
to intervene. After all, she had to leave her son in Rukmi’s care every day.
Whether he played or he cried, as long as Rukmi watched over him, he
could stay at home. Taking him along while she worked wasn’t an option.
Not that she hadn’t tried that a couple of times. But he’d sullied the floor in
one house and the mistress had not only made her mop the entire house
again, but had also forbidden her from ever bringing him to work with her
again.
‘Come, join us if you like,’ Dinu called out to Basanti one night. Pappu had
fallen asleep while drinking his milk, and muffled sounds from Dinu and
Rukmi’s bed filled the room like every night. Basanti hadn’t been able to
sleep. She stuffed her pallu into her mouth to stop herself from throwing up.
Instead of answering Dinu, she ignored him and turned her back to him.
‘Aye, Basanti,’ Dinu called out again. ‘Come here if you want.’
Basanti didn’t say anything; she just shook her head and said ‘uh-hun’ in
response. Then she got up suddenly and ran out of the house to throw up.
Dinu saw her but stayed put in bed. ‘I don’t need anything,’ she said as she
lay back down on her cot. ‘Stay right where you are.’
‘Come here if you want,’ he repeated.
‘Why?’ Basanti shot back at him. ‘Is she not quite enough for you?’ She
turned on her side so her back was towards them again. ‘I don’t want any of
that,’ she said. ‘It’s so suffocating here.’
Dinu didn’t reply. He was lying quite still now. Basanti could tell he was
no longer aroused. Quite possibly, he hadn’t felt fully aroused to begin with.
She knew Dinu well; after all, when they lived together in the hostel, once
aroused, it was impossible to get him to back off.
And then, suddenly, something Basanti had kept quiet within her,
erupted.
‘Did you take money from Bardu?’
‘What money? What nonsense are you starting on now?’
‘Three hundred rupees. Say it, say that you took the three hundred rupees
from him.’
Dinu hadn’t expected Basanti to ever ask him this question so directly.
‘I’ve already told you. That was for the cycle.’
‘And he returned your cycle for a mere seventy?’
‘I owe him the rest. Now stop your nonsense.’
‘According to Bardu, you sold me to him.’
Dinu didn’t contradict her. Basanti’s anger spiralled.
‘Open your mouth and speak. Did you leave me here as his mistress?’
‘Shut up! Shut up this instant. Stop screaming or I’ll slap you so hard
your teeth will fall out.’
But the dam that had held back Basanti’s fury had burst. ‘You’re a
bastard and so is he. Don’t you dare touch my child ever again. You think
you can sell me? You got me pregnant and then you went out and sold me,
you fucking bastard! You have no honour, no shame.’
Basanti was beside herself. In all the time that she had spent alone,
feeling abandoned, tormented by all that she had to go through while he
was away, Basanti had uttered not one word of critique, not one syllable of
complaint against Dinu. Yes, she felt hurt and thought a lot about what was
going on, but in her mind, Dinu always emerged blameless. But today, it
was as if the tiny flicker of anger which she had managed to bury deep
inside her had flared up and taken over. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow with my
child,’ she said. ‘I’m going to find myself a different place to live in.’
‘Go where you want,’ Dinu replied to this. ‘Why tomorrow, leave right
this moment if you will. But Pappu isn’t going anywhere.’
‘What’s that? I’m going to cut you into tiny bits if you touch Pappu.
Don’t you dare call him your son,’ Basanti said this so sharply, her voice
had so much rage, that Dinu, who never thought twice before striking her,
and who had quite a mind to do so now, lay unmoving on his cot.
‘Both of you just mope about the house like two helpless little pups. You
have no shame. You’re both shameless! Pappu gets so hungry that he cries
himself to sleep . . .’
‘If I hear one more word from you, I’m going to come there and slap
you,’ Dinu said. But his voice didn’t have its usual command.
‘I’ll pull out your stinking guts. Who the hell do you think you are? Try
and touch me.’
Pappu started crying. The screaming had woken him up. Dinu got up
from his cot and walked towards Pappu. ‘Come, come now, son. Go to
sleep, go back to sleep.’
‘Don’t touch my son,’ Basanti hissed at him. But Dinu had already lifted
the child into his arms.
‘Go to sleep, beta. Sleep now. Go to sleep.’
Dinu gently thumped the child’s back and started lulling him back to
sleep. Whatever his behaviour towards Basanti was, there was no doubt that
Dinu adored Pappu. A couple of sob-filled breaths later, the child was
asleep again, his head gently resting on Dinu’s shoulder.
Basanti’s temper cooled down just as suddenly as it had flared up. She
could see that Pappu had started recognizing his father’s touch. Even in the
darkness, she could see that Dinu was holding Pappu just like she did and,
after he put him back down in the cot, he bent over him to make sure he
hadn’t woken up again, just like she would have done.
She sat quietly at the foot of the cot. ‘Go back, I’ll take it from here,’ she
said.
‘He’s asleep already. What are you going to do?’ And with that, Dinu
returned to his cot.
He may be terrible towards me but he dotes on his son. He can’t bear to
be away from him for even one second.
Basanti let out a deep sigh and lay down. For a brief moment, she felt as
if there were just the three of them here—Dinu, Pappu and Basanti. And as
if she had a home like she had imagined she would have—whole, unbroken.
‘You can lie here next to him if you want,’ she called out softly to Dinu.
‘I can sleep on the floor.
Dinu didn’t answer her. And soon the room filled with the sound of his
snores.
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Basanti was her cheerful self when she stepped out of the room the next
morning. It was as if the previous night had never happened.
‘Maharaniji, put the water to boil. I’m going to go buy milk,’ she said to
Rukmi. Then she peeped into the room and joked, ‘The sahib is asleep but
he’ll wake up by the time the tea is ready. So let’s get to work.’
Later, before leaving for work, she advised Rukmi, ‘Be sure to go to the
tap to fill the pot. Don’t forget, the water supply closes by ten.’ Then she
laughed, ‘Just ask someone for the time. And wash the sahib’s kurta and
pants at the tap itself.’ Turning to Dinu, she said, ‘Sahib bahadur, I’m off to
work now. I’ll see you at lunch time. Ta-ta!’ Like an actress, Basanti rattled
off this dialogue which she had heard in the houses where she worked. Then
she stepped out of the room and wrapped her pallu around her waist and
tucked it into her petticoat. She lit a beedi and marched with long strides
towards the colony.
Rather than wait on Dinu, as she had been doing till now, Basanti had
decided to take charge. It was as if she had come to the realization
overnight that they—Rukmi, Dinu and Basanti—were a family. That they
should be together, not break down into smaller units. He adores Pappu,
she thought to herself, then why should I tear them apart? And he can’t part
with Rukmi either. He’s brought her here with him, after all, then why
should he abandon her? She had decided not to think of Rukmi as her
competitor, as the ‘other wife’. Rather, Rukmi was to be seen as a woman
dependent on her, who would go adrift without her. Basanti had achieved
some stability in how she thought about her situation and, with that, she felt
a certain poise, a command over things. It wasn’t as if submitting to what
life offered was ever in her nature; she always followed her heart. And now,
it was as if something crucial, which had been indistinct till now, had
revealed itself to her. She was able to shed the feelings she had been vexed
by—feelings of helplessness, doubt and uncertainty—the way a tree sheds
its leaves and prepares for the new. Overnight, Basanti had crossed the
threshold of adolescence and taken on a new role—of a woman with a
household to run.
Days rolled by. Basanti learned how to ride a cycle. She started taking the
cycle to work, smoking a beedi as she rode it. A smart and alert working
woman, she wore bright clothes and tied her hair in a bun with a red ribbon.
The ribbon would flutter in the breeze behind her as she rode her cycle.
She’d wrap up as much work as she could at home, before setting out to
work. She made sure Pappu drank a glass of milk, and that Dinu and Rukmi
knew what needed to be done during the day. She’d work in three houses,
cycle back home, feed her child, and then prepare rotis for everyone.
Dinu and Rukmi’s behaviour towards Basanti didn’t change drastically
but, given all that she did for their home, they couldn’t compete with her
either. Rukmi both feared and envied her. But she didn’t let this show. She
had come to Delhi with her husband but he didn’t hold as much sway over
her here as he did when she lived in the village. And on top of that, there
was this unyielding presence of another woman—this wretched woman, her
tormentor—who had thundered her way into her house with a child. Her
heart sometimes felt as if it was being scorched by fire. And then, her
helplessness—for there was nothing at all she could do about the situation
—would leave her feeling weak and subdued. She hadn’t borne Dinu a
child after all, while this other woman, her tormentor, had. She didn’t know
Delhi, she didn’t have her wits about the city; she had to seek this woman’s
help for everything. The meals she ate were because of her earnings. And
perhaps more significant than all this, deep in her heart, she knew that any
hope she had for a child—any cure, any treatment, any care—lay with this
woman, and this woman alone.
Outwardly, Dinu didn’t change his behaviour towards Basanti. He acted
like he was in charge; he growled at her like before, lay claims to her
earnings like before. But somewhere he knew that he no longer had a hold
on her, that he couldn’t boss her around like he used to.
Much else happened. Bulaki did, in fact, file a case, and it was even
heard a couple of times. Dinu went to court and testified that he had indeed
married Basanti, and that he took a second wife because he didn’t have a
child from his first marriage. He even took Pappu along and presented him
as proof of his marriage to Basanti. These hearings troubled Basanti’s father
immensely but no matter how much he threatened Basanti and Dinu of dire
consequences, he wasn’t able to change their mind. Basanti didn’t care;
she’d pass by him on her cycle every day like it meant nothing to her. She’d
run into her mother often as well, at the milk depot. Her mother would turn
her face away every time but Basanti didn’t feel hurt by that. In fact, one
day she walked up to her mother and, setting down empty bottles next to
her, said, ‘I have to go and do something; please buy milk for me,’ and
handed her some money and left.
All in all, Basanti’s life had taken an even course, and it seemed like
things had found a stable equilibrium.
‘You go about stealing things from people’s houses! You’re embarrassing
me!’ It had been a few peaceful months. Basanti had started going to meet
Shyama bibi again. She went once in a while, even though she sensed that
Shyama bibi didn’t look at her with as much empathy and affection as
before. But this outburst was unexpected.
Basanti laughed. ‘From where did I steal something, Bibiji?’ she asked,
trying to figure out if perhaps Shyama bibi was playing with her.
Basanti, who had taken Pappu along with her, was wearing a lovely lightyellow saree. Looking at her, no one would assume that she was a domestic
worker. And she’d dressed up Pappu with a lot of care as well—a red
tasselled cap on his head, eyes lined with kohl, socks on his feet.
‘Where did you get the money to buy such nice clothes for yourself and
your son?’
Basanti laughed at this. ‘Oh Bibiji, you should’ve just asked me.’ And
she sat down next to Shyama bibi, on the low wicker stool. ‘My husband
gave me this saree,’ she said.
‘Which husband?’
‘The lame tailor, Bulakiram, who else?’ Then mimicking him, she said,
‘Basanti, my queen, see what I’ve got for you. Yellow as the spring,
basant.’ And she burst into peals of laughter.
‘And the shoes your son’s wearing? Where did you get them from? It’s
been months since you left Bulaki.’
Basanti’s face turned crimson. ‘They came from somewhere as well,’ she
said.
‘From where?’
‘Oh Bibiji. Once you start, you don’t let go. I got them from somewhere.’
‘And these nylon socks he’s wearing?’
‘I bought those, Bibiji.’
‘Basanti, I don’t want you to come here any more.’
‘Why, Bibiji? I won’t, if you don’t want me to.’
‘It’s these things you’ve started doing. No one’s going to want you in
their house. Tell me the truth—where did his shoes come from?’
Basanti’s voice was a murmur when she replied, ‘Everyone steals from
time to time, Bibiji, but not I. I’ve never stolen anything.’
‘Then where did you get them from?’
‘I found them in the park, Bibiji. You know where they have children’s
swings? I found them lying there, near a bush. I didn’t pick them up the first
time I saw them. I just pushed them a little till they were covered by the
bush,’ Basanti was laughing again. ‘When I saw that they were still there
the next day, I waited for it to get dark, then I picked them up.’ Basanti
snapped her fingers, ‘Now that’s not theft, is it?’
‘What is it if not theft!’
‘It’s only a half theft, Bibiji, not really a theft.’
‘And the socks?’
‘I bought them with my own money, Bibiji. I swear.’
‘You bought nylon socks with your own money?’
‘The lame tailor’s money. That too is my own, isn’t it?’ Basanti laughed
loudly as she said this. ‘I’ve had the socks for a long time now. But now I
thought, a good pair of shoes deserves a good pair of socks! Bibiji, my
Pappu looks so nice that no one in the park can tell he’s my son. People
think I’m his nanny. I swear!’
Seeing that Shyama bibi was still suspicious, Basanti went on, ‘Look,
Bibiji, when I do something for Pappu, I don’t see it as theft. I don’t care
what anyone says. Yes, sure, you can call me a thief if I were to nick
something for myself.’
There was still no softness in Shyama bibi’s face, so Basanti felt she
ought to clarify further: ‘Oh Bibiji, some people have so many things that
they lose count.’
‘Does that mean you can just steal from them?’
‘No one’s stealing anything, Bibiji. I am only telling you a fact.’
‘If you were to ask for something, people might just give it to you,’
Shyama said.
‘You never get anything on asking for it, Bibiji. Not even a dime.’
‘Such an animal!’
‘Why, Bibiji? How does that make me an animal?’
‘No one’s going to let you enter their house if you dress Pappu up so
well. They’ll think you are a thief.’
‘How does dressing my child in good clothes make me a thief? Doesn’t it
matter that I’ve bought everything with my own money?’
Shyama bibi stared at Basanti for a few seconds, then asked, ‘Why have
you come here today?’ Her voice dripped with indifference.
‘Oh Bibiji, I’ve come to tell you something really big. You distracted me
with all this talk. Rukmi’s going to have a child now.’
‘Is that so?’
‘This time, her womb has held. And she has heeded advice and stays
lying down all day.’
‘Did you take her to Meerut? Did you give her Shakuntala’s medicine?’
‘No, Bibiji, Dinu had taken her to a ladies’ doctor. I went with them as
well. The doctor told her she should stay lying down. So now she just lies
around all the time. Doctor’s advice, after all.’
Shyama bibi sat quietly for some time, then knit her brows and jerked her
head as she said, ‘You can forget about ever being happy, Basanti.’
‘Why, Bibiji?’
‘In the scheme of things, once Rukmi has a child, you’ll count even less
than a shoe.’
‘Why is that, Bibiji?’ Basanti’s face turned pale and she looked intently at
Shyama bibi. ‘You’re wrong, Bibiji. He loves Pappu, adores him. He carries
him around in his lap all the time.’
‘He’ll love Pappu only till his own child is born.’
‘Pappu’s his own child, Bibiji.’
‘You are never going to understand this. Pappu may be Dinu’s child but
Dinu isn’t your husband.’
‘But why would you think that? Dinu’s even testified in court that he
married me.’
‘So what if he did? He can say what he likes in court but whether he lets
you live with him or not is an entirely different matter.’
‘That house can’t run without me, Bibiji. I’m the sole bread-earner in that
house.’
Shyama bibi jerked her head again. ‘Listen, Basanti, the standing you
currently feel you have in that house is only because of your son. Your
status will be pulverized to nothingness once Rukmi has a child.’
‘“Status”? What does that mean, Bibiji?’
‘It means no one’s going to care one bit about you.’
Basanti was staring incredulously at Shyama who was saying, ‘Well,
either Rukmi doesn’t have a child this time as well. Or. . . Well, there is no
“or”. Even if she doesn’t, Dinu can do as he pleases.’
‘And what can he do, Bibiji?’
‘Why, if they don’t have a child, they can also just take Pappu and leave!’
‘Why are you saying such things? Who would dare take Pappu away
from me?’
‘If the courts believe Dinu that he married you, then doesn’t that mean
Pappu is his son?’
‘But that doesn’t mean he can just take my child from me and leave me
here.’
‘He can do what he wants.’
Basanti shook her head vehemently but Shyama bibi’s words had filled
her heart with doubt.
‘You are blind, Basanti. You can’t see what’s staring you straight in your
face. Dinu doesn’t work anywhere. And with the things he’s been up to, he’s
bound to get arrested one day. He’d rather just return to the village, where
he has land, where his mother lives . . .’
‘He can also just leave his wife in the village and come back, can’t he?
Bibiji, his wife used to live in the village earlier, didn’t she? And he lived
here, in the city.’
‘How do I know what will happen? But the signs are pretty clear and
they aren’t good.’
Basanti couldn’t really understand what Shyama bibi was saying; to her,
Shyama bibi’s way of thinking was strange. But even so, her heart had
grown restless, full of doubt and foreboding.
‘You’re mad, or you’d never have landed in this situation.’
‘What have I done, Bibiji?’
‘You ran off with Dinu without first making sure you knew all the things
you should know about him. Isn’t that insane behaviour?’
‘Oh Bibiji, if I hadn’t run away with him, I would’ve been married off to
an old man.’
‘Well, now reap what you have sowed.’
‘Oh Bibiji . . .’ Basanti became quiet. A darkness descended around her.
There was no denying the transformation, however slowly it may have
happened, in the relationship between the two women. Earlier, Basanti
always felt Shyama bibi had empathy and affection for her. She could see it
in her eyes and sense it in her voice. A bitter critique had replaced affection.
Yes, she still did her duty by Basanti but there was a mechanical quality to
it now, a formality. Basanti too had changed. Earlier, she paid scant
attention to Shyama bibi’s advice and brushed aside a lot of her
interpretations with ‘So what, Bibiji?’ But now she hung on to every word
Shyama bibi said, words that affected her and sent shivers down her spine.
Where earlier, her inner joy could wade through any negativity that came
her way, now, Shyama bibi’s words weighed her down.
The two women sat facing each other, Basanti’s heart sinking and
Shyama bibi’s heart filling with suspicion. Who knows who she really is and
what she’s up to? The man she lives with is good for nothing and unreliable.
I’ve given her too much freedom with me. I should be careful or I’ll be sorry
one day.
They sat before one another for some more time, then Basanti got up to
leave. ‘Okay, Bibiji, I’ll be off now. It’s getting late. I should go home and
make dinner.’
Basanti picked up her child in her arms, and then the bag that she had
brought with her. She had reached the stairs when Shyama bibi’s suspicions
raised their head again.
‘What all are you carrying around in your bag, Basanti? Come here, let
me take a look.’
‘There’s nothing here, Bibiji. Just Pappu’s clothes . . .’
‘Let me see.’ And with that she stepped up to Basanti and thrust her hand
into her bag. ‘And what’s this?’ she asked, holding up the box of Horlicks
infant formula she found in it. ‘Which house did you pinch this from,
Basanti?’
‘I bought it from the market, Bibiji. I paid eleven rupees for it.
Sometimes, there’s no milk at home to give Pappu, so I bought this.’
Shyama bibi’s eyes didn’t leave Basanti’s face as she put the box back in
her bag. ‘I’d like you to leave your bag downstairs in the courtyard from
now on.’ She turned away from Basanti and went into her room.
OceanofPDF.com
Circumstances changed rapidly. No one was prepared for the events that
took place next.
A son was born to Rukmi. Basanti sat by Rukmi’s bed through the
delivery while the midwife attended to her in the room lit by the flame of a
tiny oil-dipped wick, and intently watched Rukmi thrash about in pain. She
felt for Rukmi but she was curious too. She was waiting to see if Rukmi’s
child would make it, or if it would die during delivery. When the room
filled with the vigorous cries of the newborn, and Rukmi, exhausted by the
efforts of childbirth, fell into a deep slumber, relief flooded Basanti’s heart
and, yet, at the same time, she was beset by dark shadows of the deepest
disappointment.
This frame of mind extended into the days that followed. One day, she
thought that Rukmi’s milk was black, not white. The child can’t possibly
survive after drinking black milk.
‘I swear, Bibiji, it’s black,’ Basanti had run over to Shyama bibi’s house
to inform her.
‘Don’t be silly. How can breastmilk be anything but white?’
‘But hers isn’t! I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Hers is dirty, it’s muddy.’
Shyama bibi cast a hard, long look at Basanti. To her, Basanti’s feelings
seemed natural and quite in keeping with her circumstances.
‘Stop worrying about the child,’ she said. ‘Only God knows if it’ll live or
die. You’d better concentrate on yourself, Basanti.’
Basanti, who once had the ability to shrug off every difficulty that life
presented her with, felt constantly besieged by troubles. She felt ill at ease
all the time, always on the edge. Even the most inconsequential things made
her restive.
Two months had passed since Rukmi’s delivery. Her milk hadn’t harmed
her child but Basanti remained tense. She’d dart nervous glances in
Rukmi’s direction every time she gave her infant her breast. She’d wake up
jumpily if the child cried at night, certain that it suffered. On one occasion,
she even felt the child’s breathing had become uneven, that its skin was
turning blue and its body was stiffening.
‘What’s happening to him? Look how he’s thrashing his limbs!’ Basanti
stood by the child and screamed. Dinu looked carefully at his child, held its
hand, and placed his other hand on the child’s chest. The child’s breathing
eased.
‘Nothing at all is wrong with him. What’s gotten into you?’ Dinu asked
gruffly. ‘Why the hell are you screaming?’
‘Didn’t you see how he was crying? I’ve never seen any child cry that
way. It’s colic, I’m telling you, it’s colic.’
‘Carry on this way and I’ll slap you.’ Dinu lifted his left hand as if to
strike her. ‘Isn’t he fine now? How could it be colic?’
‘How is it any of my concern! She feeds the child her dirty milk. She’s
going to make her own child sick. But see if I care!’
Even Rukmi was beginning to dislike Basanti now. She felt scared of her,
worried that Basanti might poison her child. Hadn’t the fortune teller who
sits on the bridge read her palm and warned her of some dark presence in
her house that was casting evil shadows on her child? Who else could this
person be, if not Basanti? Before her child was born, she considered Basanti
as her friend, a well-wisher; now, after the birth of her child, she saw her as
a witch. Basanti’s enormous eyes seemed to her to be the eyes of a witch.
Basanti felt restless all the time. She no longer wanted to leave Pappu at
home when she went to work. She started taking him along, leaving him to
play outside whichever house she was working in. But people didn’t like
having the child around. They’d become angry if he broke something by
mistake, fuss if he soiled the floor. Carrying him around wasn’t physically
easy for her either. But Basanti felt like she didn’t have an option. Once,
when she did leave Pappu with Dinu, she found herself running back home
after wrapping up work in just one house, to bring him with her. The
buoyancy in her personality, her characteristic carefree self, had vanished. A
fire smouldered inside her. Every cry from Rukmi’s child was like a
whiplash and a hope, that the mother’s black milk was affecting the child.
Rukmi too was no longer the Rukmi who once became wide-eyed with
wonder and disbelief at the things Basanti told her. She was irritable and
complained about everything. And every time she did, it seemed that Dinu
was ready to strike Basanti.
The small room had become like a den that hosted two restless snakes.
Basanti felt she had to shield her child from Rukmi, and Rukmi that she had
to protect hers from Basanti. They had become full of suspicion for one
another; their gaze upon each other had turned cynical.
Things were further complicated by the slow but certain decline in
Basanti’s credence in the neighbourhood. The clothes she wore were
considered gaudy, and women would whisper among themselves when she
walked through the lanes of the neighbourhood. Why does she dress so
flashily? How is she earning money to buy such clothes? Shyama bibi told
some of her friends that she had found Horlicks in Basanti’s bag. Word
spread; people gossiped about her. She had run away with a man once, they
said, and that just wasn’t how respectable women conducted themselves.
They talked about how she had not only run away with one man, but now
lived with another—a married man, no less. If it had been just this, it might
have been fine, they said, but recently they had heard she was caught trying
to steal a wristwatch in babu Jagannath’s house. Truth be told, this was
quite unexpected, they said, for it didn’t quite sound like Basanti, but then
who can tell what lurks in someone’s heart. And she’d been fired, hadn’t
she? In fact, babu Jagannath had been so incensed that he had warned her
never to be seen in those parts again, threatening to break her legs and hand
her to the police if he saw her there.
The number of houses Basanti worked in had dwindled from five to
three. Her earnings were no longer sufficient to run the household. Dinu
still refused to work—he couldn’t agree to work as domestic help, cleaning
people’s utensils and sweeping their floors, or to work anywhere at all, in
fact. That’s when Basanti came up with the idea to leave the work she had
been doing and, instead, set up a tandoor.
‘I’ve seen a spot, Bibiji. It will take me no time to set up the clay oven.
I’ll make rotis in it and sell them at two paise each. There are enough
people, I know, who’d rather not make their rotis at home.’
But from where could Basanti get the money to set up a tandoor?
There was a time when Basanti knew how to cast aside Shyama bibi’s
prophecies. Shyama bibi’s advice, the way she saw the world, had always
seemed a bit alien to how she herself perceived things. But ever since she
had started living with Rukmi, what Shyama bibi said, however strange,
affected her deeply. She had lost her sleep ever since Shyama bibi
pronounced that once Rukmi’s child was born, she would find herself
sidelined. She seemed to be losing her sense of balance. She would run to
Shyama bibi every day for advice, only to become more restive, more on
the edge than she had felt to begin with. She felt strained all the time, heard
voices that were inaudible to everyone else. Basanti, who once upon a time
refused to let her future interfere with her present, now sat with Shyama
bibi all the time, devising plan after plan.
Whenever she was alone, her sense of self threatened by yet another
wave of restlessness, she would wonder. What’s wrong? What’s going on? I
was stalked by Bardu but I bore through it boldly. My father dragged me
away from my life and still I emerged from that intact. I was married off to
Bulaki but even that didn’t send me into the depths of sadness I seem to be
sinking into now. Why is it that now, when I am with Dinu, and I have my
child, I am coming unravelled? A thought struck her—that if she’d only
stop meeting Shyama bibi, stop listening to her, she wouldn’t feel so
desperate, and that maybe then she’d be more confident about how she saw
things herself and act in the manner she deemed best. For, it had begun to
seem to her that Shyama bibi was too invested in uncovering things to
reveal their perversions. Things that otherwise didn’t seem daunting always
appeared like menacing, repugnant beings with venomous bites and redrimmed eyes when she dwelled on them with Shyama bibi.
In the middle of all this, one day, Rukmi’s child really did start passing
black, watery stool. It was late into the night, and the child’s wails had
awakened everyone. In the uncertain, flickering light of the sole earthen
lamp that burned in the room, Basanti saw the child’s body had elongated
and become flaccid, its fists were only half clenched and its eyes half open.
In the child’s moaning, Basanti heard the cry of helplessness, the wail of an
infant who was at the threshold between life and death.
‘What has happened to him?’ Basanti screamed with pain.
Rukmi had seen no reason to be alarmed. The child had been sick before
and it was just a bout of diarrhoea, after all. But seeing how Basanti was
reacting, she began to tremble.
‘What’s happened? What’s happened to my baby?’ Rukmi began to
moan, just like her child. She shook Dinu. He sat up rubbing his eyes and
turned to look at his child. ‘What is it? It doesn’t seem to be anything at all.
He has diarrhoea all the time. Boil some aniseed in water for him, just like
the doctor has told us to do.’
‘But look at him! How can you say he’s okay?’ Basanti said, her eyes
betraying her panic. ‘I’ve been telling you Rukmi’s milk is black.’
Dinu turned sharply towards Basanti.
‘Stop talking trash,’ he yelled and stood up.
‘Can’t you see how laboured his breathing is?’ Basanti said.
Rukmi had turned absolutely pale. She looked at Dinu, her eyes full of
pain. When she spoke, her voice was so forlorn, so weak, that it threw
Dinu’s mind into utter chaos.
‘This witch has poisoned my son,’ she said and started to cry.
‘Me?’ Basanti was indignant. ‘What could I possibly have fed him?’
The child was still moaning; its breathing was even more laboured.
‘Give him a drink of water,’ Dinu said. His mind was in tumult; he had
no idea what to do next. If Basanti hadn’t been screaming the way she was,
he would have gone right back to sleep, certain that the child’s stomach was
hurting and that it was something quite minor. But this time he was deeply
worried.
‘How is it my fault that your milk is black?’ Basanti said. Her gaze was
fixed on the child. She saw that his belly had bloated and his breathing was
bellowed. She couldn’t understand why Dinu and Rukmi couldn’t see this.
She could sense that, cloaked in the dark shadows formed by the faltering
flame of the lamp, death was encircling the cot the child lay on.
The child shivered and passed watery stool again. It clenched its fists
once, then opened them. Rukmi fetched a glass of water and put drops of it
in the child’s mouth. Basanti saw how Rukmi’s hands were trembling; the
water wasn’t going into the child’s mouth at all.
‘This witch has fed something to my child. Oh, what should I do now?’
Rukmi wailed.
‘Why would I do that? What could I have fed it?’ Basanti’s voice was
barely a cold gasp. She wondered if she really had given the child
something and Rukmi had found out about it.
‘May the child of the one who has poisoned my child die!’ Rukmi uttered
this curse in a mournful, broken voice and burst into tears.
‘Why are you cursing my child? What have I done?’ she said, but her
eyes were still fixed on the child.
Dinu remembered something his mother used to do. Whenever any of her
children had loose motions, she would wrap a cloth around the child’s belly
to keep the warmth in, and that would soothe the pain. He thought it best to
do this now, and cleaned up his child and wrapped a cloth around its
stomach.
But Basanti saw that the child’s pupils were rolling up and its breathing
was very, very strained.
She felt a shiver run through her body. ‘Why are you just standing
around?’ She moaned, ‘Do something!’ And then suddenly, she swooped
down on the child like a hawk, picked him up, bundled him into a sheet and
dashed out of the door.
‘She’s going to kill my child, she’ll kill him!’ Rukmi screamed.
Dinu stood where he was, in a fog, even as Rukmi ran screaming to the
door. Then he stirred and ran to the door himself and called out to Basanti,
‘Come back, Basanti! Come back. Where are you taking him?’
In the faint light of dawn, Dinu’s eyes trailed Basanti’s silhouette as she
ran across the maidan, past a tree.
‘She’ll strangle him. She’ll kill my child. He will die in this cold.’ Rukmi
was beside herself.
‘Come back, Basanti!’ Dinu called out to the receding form that was
Basanti. Within moments, she disappeared into the winter fog.
‘Please go after her. Oh, please, go. She’ll kill my child.’ Rukmi’s voice
was heavy with pain.
Dinu began to run, calling out Basanti’s name. But he saw no trace of her.
Not on the road, nor by the pond, nor along the bushes that stood by the
side of the pond. He returned home and sat down on the cot. Rukmi lay on
the floor, moaning with pain.
‘Don’t cry. Nothing’s going to happen. Stop crying,’ Dinu spoke loudly,
like people do when there’s nothing else they can do, in the hope that if they
say something loud enough, it will become true.
But it wasn’t enough to assure Rukmi. ‘I’ll poison her son if anything
happens to my child,’ she said. ‘You just stood by and watched while that
witch carried my child away.’
Basanti paced outside the doctor’s door. The sun had not yet risen; the door
was closed. She had pounded on it six times already, with only brief pauses
in between.
‘Doctor sahib! Doctorji! Open the door. Open the door, doctorji.’
Finally, when he switched on the lights and opened the door, the doctor
found standing before him a young girl, breathless with anxiety, an infant in
her arms.
‘Please, doctorji, he’s passing black stool. Look how his breathing is
broken.’
The doctor muttered angrily under his breath, ‘It doesn’t matter to them
what time it is, does it?’ But the girl’s worried face, her urgency, had
already softened him.
‘Bring him inside,’ he said and turned around.
He lay the infant down on the table, removed the cloth wrapped around
its belly and examined it by pressing it down from different sides and gently
opened its eyelids. This went on for some time.
‘Why are his eyes like that, doctor sahib?’
‘Go sit there,’ the doctor said brusquely. Basanti stepped back and sat
down on the bench.
‘Is he going to make it, doctorji?’ Basanti’s voice was thick with tears.
The doctor continued his examination of the child.
‘What’s the matter with the child?’
‘He’s passing black stool, doctorji.’
‘What do you mean “black stool”?’ The doctor picked up the child’s
diaper and asked, ‘What’s black about it?’
‘So that means he’ll be fine?’
‘What happened?’
‘He passed black stool and his breathing became uneven. And the pupils
of his eyes rolled up. And his hands and feet were turning cold. That’s why
I brought him here.’
The doctor was a man who spoke little. He picked up a piece of paper,
wrote down a prescription and smiled at the frightened, anxious girl as he
said, ‘Give him this every three hours and your child will be fine.’
Basanti had stood up by now. She looked intently at the doctor, relieved.
The sun was in the sky and the fog had begun to lift. Basanti walked back
towards her house, holding Rukmi’s child affectionately against her bosom.
It had all been a bad dream and it was over now. The world looked bright
once again. She felt the child’s even breath on her shoulder as he slept
peacefully.
What had come over me?
She entered the house and laid the baby in Rukmi’s lap. ‘Here’s your
darling. I’m going out to buy his medicine.’ She opened the trunk to take
money out from it. ‘I forgot to take any money with me,’ she said. ‘Good
thing that the doctor didn’t ask for a fee.’
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Days passed. Now that the river of Basanti’s maternal affection had found
its course, it flowed unabated. And it swept away all her bitterness, all her
envy, all her scorn. She chirruped like a bird. She was always one to be
guided by her emotions. Now they were making her dance, hug, laugh and
chat away, again.
To Rukmi, Basanti was the one who’d saved her child. She hadn’t been
out to kill her child at all. Rather, she’d brought her baby back, smiling,
holding it lovingly in her arms. Rukmi had clasped her child and wept. She
was overwhelmed; words escaped her.
To Basanti, it wasn’t clear even now if the precariousness of the child’s
condition had been her imagination entirely, or if the child’s breathing
really had been unsteady. But now that she had smoothened out the creases
from her afflicted heart, there was no going back. She felt steady; surer of
herself.
Not too long after, she announced: ‘I’ve decided. I’m going to set up a
tandoor here. The three of us will work together now.’
It was clear from Dinu’s expression that he wasn’t a fan of the idea.
Basanti had laughed. ‘What are you staring at me like an owl blinded by
light for? It’s final—I’m setting up a tandoor in that small, unused patch
nearby. We’ll make and sell rotis. People can bring their own dough as well,
and we’ll prepare rotis for them too. And we can cook some curries to go
with the rotis. I think there was a tandoor in that spot earlier as well.’
Dinu made a face. He thought it all a bit cumbersome and, besides, he
considered such work to be beneath him. He was a cook worthy of large
parties, after all. Was he really being asked to jump up at the idea of selling
rotis by the piece! Never mind that it had been a while since he’d got a job
to cook for a wedding party. Never mind that he had two wives and two
children to think of. He’d earned not even a penny for the household and
yet, unable to restrain himself from passing judgements like a man in
charge, he said, ‘There’s going to be no tandoor. That’s final.’
‘I have work only in three houses now, not five. It’s not enough. If there’s
a tandoor, all three of us can work.’
Dinu muttered for long but Basanti saw no point in arguing. She started
her preparations the very next day.
She found the bricks lying around behind her house. She carried them,
two at a time. The small iron rods, she found lying outside the scrap
dealer’s. She picked up two, and beat and bent them into the shape she
needed. She brought gunnysacks from Shyama bibi’s. They would serve as
mats for sitting. And for water, she took the pitcher from the roadside water
kiosk, as it was functional only in summer and it was now winter. Having
garnered the basic resources, Basanti began to dream up a majestic heaven
around the tandoor.
Once the tandoor is ready and working, I’ll bring two big brass pots as
well. Perched on top of the tandoor, the steaming pots will draw passers-by.
Hungry or not, everyone will want a bite. Dinu can make rotis and I’ll serve
food and collect payments. When the season changes, and before summer
sets in, we’ll raise a thatched roof over our little spot. We can lean a long
pole against the roof and a lantern can hang from it. Who knows, maybe
soon we’ll be able to save up enough to buy a gas lamp. It’ll light up the
entire place till far, even all the way to the road. And our children can be
with us all the time; they can play right here. And sometimes, Basanti really
could see a row of brass vessels lined up by the tandoor, Rukmi’s child
asleep and her Pappu playing near the oven. She could see the gas lamp
lighting up not only the surroundings but also her future.
The tandoor was finally ready. And believe it or not, one of the first
customers of the food was none other than Bulaki the lame. He had come
this way in search of Basanti and, on feeling hungry, he’d sat down right
there for a bite.
Dinu was making rotis and Basanti was stirring a ladle in the lentils.
Bulaki hadn’t recognized Dinu. But Basanti had seen him. She had quickly
lowered a veil over her face and turned her body slightly away so he
wouldn’t see her face.
While he ate, Bulaki asked them questions. Did they know this bastard
called Dinu who had run away with his wife a second time? He’d heard
they lived around here. Basanti had laughed under her breath and whispered
to Dinu, ‘Ask him who his wife was.’
When Bulaki told them her name, she whispered into Dinu’s ear again
from behind her veil, ‘Go on, ask him why she ran away.’
And Basanti played with Bulaki for a long time.
After he finished eating, Bulaki said, ‘May God bless you. If you ever
hear of that bastard, be sure to tell Chaudhary the barber. We’ll take care of
the rest.’ After he left, Basanti laughed her heart out.
But the tandoor didn’t do well. It was a bit of a distance from the twostoreyed houses whose gentry could have made for a good clientele, and the
eatery closer to Ramesh Nagar catered to all the needs of that colony.
Maybe, with time, the tandoor could have carved a niche for itself. Basanti
worked so hard on it, after all. But dark clouds had begun to gather over her
life yet again. Once again, Dinu and Rukmi had grown restless about
Basanti; Rukmi’s gaze had filled with suspicion and envy for Basanti again;
Dinu had taken to speaking bitterly with Basanti again. He threatened to hit
her all the time, on the smallest of matters and, every day, he’d take the
entire day’s earnings away from her. Basanti could sense they were headed
towards yet another precipice in their lives but she carried on working all
the same.
Then the skies burst.
That morning, Rukmi woke up and started packing her things, and soon,
Dinu joined her. Basanti stood on the side and watched, bewildered.
‘What are you doing?’ When Basanti asked this, Dinu replied brusquely,
‘You can very well see what we are doing. We are going to the village.’
No one spoke after this. Basanti pulled Pappu close and looked at Dinu
and Rukmi and this new display by the couple, wordlessly.
Basanti, carrying her son, walked back home slowly from the bus stop after
seeing Dinu and Rukmi off. The conductor had refused to let their trunk
into the bus and Dinu had got into a wrangle with him. Basanti then slipped
a twenty-five-paise coin in the conductor’s hand and gained the trunk’s
admission. Dinu had said he was only going to the village to leave Rukmi
and their child there, and that he’d be back. But who could tell if he really
would. In her heart, Basanti was convinced he wouldn’t come back. She felt
he didn’t need her any more and there was no reason for him to come back
for her. She looked at Rukmi through the window. She seemed so happy.
Rukmi didn’t return Basanti’s glance; she didn’t even say goodbye to
Pappu. And Dinu—he didn’t kiss his son goodbye. He did hold him for
some time but when the driver started the engine, Dinu just handed him to
Basanti, turned his back to them and got into the bus. The liar! He’s leaving
her again. He’s never coming back. He’s leaving Basanti to go live with
Rukmi.
Spring arrived. The fragrance of flowers filled the air. The sun was out and
walking in it felt good. Now that the cold had waned, everything looked
bright and fresh. Basanti walked down the road with her child, oblivious to
it all.
She looked up at Shyama bibi’s balcony as she walked past her house.
No, she didn’t have the courage to go and meet Shyama bibi. What’s she
going to say, after all, except, ‘So he did leave you, didn’t he? I had told
you. I’d warned you, Basanti, that he’ll turn on you like a snake. He’ll treat
you like dirt once a child is born to Rukmi. I told you not to trust him. He’s
a good-for-nothing. I was right, wasn’t I? He’s treated you like dirt off his
shoes.’ Shyama bibi speaks to me as if she’s won some bet. She won’t feel
sad that he’s left me again. Rather, she’ll be delighted that she’s been
proved right.
Basanti had grown disenchanted with Shyama bibi. She’d hardly been to
Shyama bibi’s place since that night when she’d got a fright about Rukmi’s
baby. She didn’t want to experience the dark feelings she’d felt before that
day, and which seemed to get heightened whenever she spent time with
Shyama bibi. She didn’t give in to her old habit of running up the stairs to
her house every time something bad happened to her; Basanti walked on
past Shyama bibi’s house, towards the market.
Carrying Pappu wasn’t easy for Basanti. She had to stop often and, from
time to time, she’d let him walk alongside her.
She had decided she’d keep the tandoor going. It may not have been
enough for the entire household but it could surely support two people. And
she wouldn’t have to leave Pappu behind to go to work. Things, she felt
certain, would work themselves out one way or another. Winter was over;
the days were longer again. It wouldn’t be easy doing everything alone but
she was confident she’d handle things. I’ll go and see my own people. Who
knows, maybe Radha’s come back. Maybe she’ll want to help me out with
the tandoor. Who knows, maybe Ma will agree to come and spend time with
me during the day; she doesn’t work far from here, after all. And suddenly,
for the first time in all this while, Basanti wanted to go and find her mother,
to sit and talk to her. She talked with so much affection when we ran into
each other at the milk booth. Not like before, when she’d just wrinkle her
nose and turn away the moment she saw me. But that was only because she
was scared of Bapu. Now she doesn’t hesitate to ask people in the
neighbourhood for news about me.
Basanti walked on, thoughts racing through her head, when suddenly she
heard a strange din and a rumbling. She looked around but couldn’t make
out what it was and where it was coming from. She was looking at the tree
across the road when, to her right, she heard the sound of running feet. She
saw it was the old cobbler who set up his stall by the wall of a house. He
was carrying his crate of things on his head and running towards the road,
panting, and a policeman was hacking away with a large pickaxe at the
raised mud platform on which he used to sit. Some three or four more
policemen were standing near him. They were all wearing green metal caps
with a thick net over them.
Soon, there was commotion everywhere. Wherever you looked, you
could see policemen. Here, a policeman was chasing someone, his baton
raised in the air. There, a policeman was breaking something with his baton.
Seeing the place crawl with policemen, all of whom had descended here in
a matter of moments, Basanti was reminded of the day the neighbourhood
she had grown up in was being demolished.
‘They’re clearing the pavement! They’re here to make us all leave!’ This
cry spread everywhere, fast as lightning.
Basanti picked up Pappu and stepped to a side. She saw a commotion
further ahead, on the road leading to the market. The fruit-seller who sold
fruit on a pushcart was surrounded by some men. Then she saw many police
batons, and then, oranges and apples and many other fruits rolling down the
road. A short distance away, near the crossing, another fruit-seller, who
didn’t have a pushcart and sold fruits on the pavement, had begun to panic.
He mumbled furiously to himself, ‘Pick them up! Pick them up!’ And he
lifted his basket of fruits and carried it away into the backyard of a house
off the road.
As he ran, the crate the cobbler was carrying fell. It cracked open and
everything it contained spilled out on to the road—small, colourless scraps
and patches of leather, thread, rubber pieces from tyres, his various
implements, small nails. The old cobbler was so stricken that he froze,
unable to decide what he should pick up and what could be left behind. He
looked around at the policemen and saw one walking in his direction. This
frightened him so much that he left the crate where it was and bolted to the
gate that opened into the park. Across the drain that ran along the road, a
snack-seller’s stall, with its large, shiny brass pot, had been overturned. A
baton landed on his earthen pot, smashing it, and a fountain of spicy,
savoury cumin lemonade splashed out and flowed down the side of the
road.
Basanti heard the rumbling sound again. This time when she turned
around to look, she saw a truck hurtling towards where she was. It was
carrying policemen; they were standing and they all wore metal caps.
Seeing how fast it was moving towards her, Basanti leapt out of its way. It
drove past her. And then Basanti saw her father.
‘Give it back! Give me back my bag! Oh sir, please, give my bag to me!’
Basanti’s ageing father was chasing after the truck. One look at him and
it was clear he had been running a long while. One could see that his legs
were about to give way and that, still, he wouldn’t let it go and went on
running. The truck had taken so much—pushcarts, tables, crates and boxes
and lots more.
Basanti choked up with tears. The look of desperation she saw in her
Bapu’s eyes felt unfamiliar to her. She always thought of him as a monster
—strong and unyielding.
‘Bapu!’ she called out to him. ‘Bapu!’ But he didn’t hear her. Basanti
wanted to run and catch up with him but she was holding Pappu and it just
wasn’t possible for her to run while carrying him.
Her father’s blue kurta was receding further away from her. The truck
had already disappeared from view but he was still calling out after it,
flailing his arms in the air to catch the attention of the policemen.
Then Basanti saw her mother. She was running as well. She looked
terrified, anxious, and she was calling out again and again, ‘Oh ji, please
come back. Oh please, I beg you, don’t run. Please, please come back.’
The pallu of her saree, with which she used to cover her head, had
slipped down and gathered around her neck, and she was barefoot. Her
voice was becoming hoarse. She too looked like she would fall any
moment.
Basanti called out to her mother but her voice got lost in the din. Another
noisy truck hurtled down the road.
If the police have taken Bapu’s bag, they must also have taken chacha’s
iron, and my cousin’s pushcart too.
Basanti saw Gobindi running down the road. She was weeping. The
bulkiness of her body made running difficult for her. She would sprint, then
slow down and walk, then sprint, but she wasn’t giving up the chase.
‘Those fiends! They’ve destroyed everything. They’ve left nothing.
They’ve ruined me. They’re taking my crate away.’ She was breathless,
panting, cursing.
Owners of shops, and innumerable others who’d have come to the market
to buy or just to wander, stood along the shops and watched this spectacle
of the stalls and stands and kiosks and vending corners of hawkers and
barbers and cobblers being wiped away.
‘What a strike!’ A man with a large girth and a terrible itch on his thigh
seemed to be quite enjoying something. Basanti followed his gaze. Outside
the bank, she saw a vessel filled with sweet and sour snacks had been
pushed off its slender yoke, and was rolling down the road. Basanti
completed the arc her eyes had followed to see the policemen, one of whose
batons had struck the vessel and sent it rolling.
‘What a strike!’ Basanti followed the man’s gaze again, to not far from
where she was standing. She saw a policeman had grabbed the shoe-polish
box of a young boy and now he reached for the boy’s cap and tossed it up to
the roof of the nearest shop. At this, the shopkeepers who had gathered
there started to laugh. The policeman was laughing as well.
‘Run along now,’ he said, ‘or I might just lift you off the ground and send
you packing to where your cap just went.’ Then he looked around at the
shopkeepers and they laughed together.
Basanti searched the crowd for her mother but couldn’t see her. Her face
had turned pale; she was crying. She grew worried about her parents and
wondered where they might be.
Two, or perhaps three, more trucks rumbled past her, each filled with
policemen and all the things they had seized from the street. But she saw
there were some people as well in the trucks. These must be people who put
up a fight, she thought, and refused to let the policemen cart their things
away.
For the first time now, Basanti thought of her tandoor. What if they’ve
smashed it as well! Oh no, my bench and kneading trough and pots and the
canister with flour . . . They were all by the tandoor . . . Basanti’s heart
filled with panic. She had asked her neighbour, an old woman, to sit by the
tandoor till she came back from the bus stop after seeing Dinu and Rukmi
off. Now she hurried back along the park, walking as fast as she could while
carrying Pappu. But she had a feeling it was too late already, that there was
nothing to be gained from quickening her step, that whatever had to happen
had happened already.
Basanti turned the corner. The air in the compound was thick with dust.
There was no one there—neither policemen, nor trucks—save some
children wandering about. Everything was over.
The two bamboo poles from which she used to hang the hurricane
lanterns jutted out from the debris of clay and mud. She found one of the
two lanterns, its chimney broken, near the base of the raised platform she
used to seat the customers on. Scattered near it were broken pieces of a few
of her plates. The policemen’s batons hadn’t spared her already worn-down
bench and it lay upside down on the ground, its legs in the air. She couldn’t
see the gunnysacks she used as seats; perhaps they had got buried under the
debris. Shards of clay from her kneading trough were scattered on the
platform and on the ground beside it. And the tandoor . . . She could tell the
force with which batons would have struck at her tandoor, breaking it to
pieces, the same way they had rained down on the stoves and braziers that
were inside homes when the police had come to demolish their houses.
Basanti stood there for a long while, contemplating the ruins of her
fragile household.
‘I saw policemen in the market and it struck me that I should come by
and see what was going on with my own eyes.’ It was Shyama bibi.
‘Where’s Dinu? And his wife?’ She continued, ‘Yes, this is exactly as I had
feared—they didn’t spare the tandoor.’
The children who had been wandering around the compound gathered
around Basanti. ‘The police took away all your utensils. They even loaded
the canister of flour into their truck.’ They’d been there when the police had
arrived and had seen everything.
‘Where are Dinu and his wife?’
Basanti had stood quietly but now felt compelled to answer. ‘They’re not
here, Bibiji, they’ve left,’ she said.
‘Left! Where have they gone?’ Shyama bibi focused all her attention
away from the broken tandoor, and on Dinu and Rukmi.
‘They’ve gone back to the village, Bibiji.’
‘And you let them go? Are you saying he just got up and left you here in
these conditions?’ She pointed her forefinger at Basanti and continued, ‘I
told you it would be this way, didn’t I?’
Basanti couldn’t help breaking into a smile. ‘Yes, Bibiji, you did indeed
tell me it would be so,’ she said.
‘I had said all along that he wasn’t trustworthy. That he wasn’t a good
man. That he was going to lead you to your ruin one day.’
Basanti was even more amused. ‘Yes, you had indeed predicted it all,
Bibiji.’
Shyama bibi was aghast. ‘What are you going to do now, you silly girl?
Where are you going to live?’
‘Why, Bibiji, I have my house; I have my child.’
Shyama bibi cast a glance at the wrecked tandoor and looked around at
the rubble they were both standing amidst. She shook her head and said, ‘I
had advised you not to set up a tandoor here. Where was the sense in
erecting a tandoor on someone else’s land, tell me?’
‘So what, Bibiji!’ Basanti said in an unengaged voice.
‘The police came and broke it, didn’t they?’
Basanti didn’t say anything, just jerked her head slightly. Her smile
turned melancholic. She lifted Pappu up; he had started playing with the
broken pieces of the plates while they talked. Then she turned and started
walking away.
‘Where are you going now?’ Shyama called after her.
‘They took away my Bapu’s bag with all his implements, Bibiji. I saw
him running behind the truck. And Ma was running after him. I’m going to
look for them. I want to make sure they’re okay.’
And clasping her son close, Basanti walked on towards the road.
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THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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New Zealand | India | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be
found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This collection published 1980
Copyright © Kalpana Sahni and Varun Sahni 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Pia Hazarika
ISBN: 978-0-143-41981-5
This digital edition published in 2016.
e-ISBN: 978-9-385-89068-0
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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