Читать книгу Water - Bapsi Sidhwa - Страница 9

Chapter One

Bhagya sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, grinding rice with a mortar and pestle and adding it to the flour she stored in a brass jar. Dusk had thickened into night outside the kitchen window, and the hectic twittering of the birds had given way to the muted sounds of nocturnal animals of the forest and the sudden orchestration of cicadas. Her day’s chores done, her family fed, this was Bhagya’s hour of solitude. The rhythmic pounding of the pestle and her automated movements had a meditative quality, and she often chanted or hummed holy passages from the Bhagvad Gita or the Mahabharata at this time.

Somnath came into the kitchen with the box of betel nut and, after adjusting his crumpled night dhoti, quietly squatted beneath the pots lined up on a shelf nailed to the wall. Although Bhagya had her back to him, she was aware of his presence. She brought her sari forward to cover her bare shoulder and head. Somnath waited patiently. Even though her body had thickened with child-bearing, she was as beautiful as the Goddess Bhagyalakshmi, whose name she bore. And with the passion of youth diluted by the daily grind of household tasks and the passage of time, she was surely as pure as the Goddess Sita.

Bhagya wondered what had brought her husband to the kitchen. He usually left her alone to finish her chores. She sensed it had something to do with his visit to the widower Hira Lal’s house earlier that morning. On his return from the house, he had barely spoken to her or to the children. Hira Lal’s mother had sent for him, and Bhagya had assumed it had to do with the prayer rituals Somnath often performed at their house. Now she wondered what it was; she would find out soon enough.

Bhagya added the last lot of ground rice to the jar and pushed the pestle and mortar against the wall. She placed the lid on the jar and turned her head slightly.

“You wish to say something?”

Somnath patted the clean clay floor. “Come, sit by me.”

Bhagya wiped her hands on her sari and sat down cross-legged where he had indicated. She pulled the box to her and started spreading the red katha paste on the betel leaf. She glanced at him. “What’s the matter?”

“Why should anything be the matter?” Somnath said. “Don’t look so serious, I bring you good news.”

Bhagya searched his face from the corner of her eyes. Although he was trying to smile, the drawn lines on his face belied his words. Something was the matter.

“So, tell me,” she said.

Holding his hand out to receive the betel leaf, Somnath breathed out in a way that was almost a sigh. “Hira Lal’s mother wants our Chuyia to marry Hira Lal,” he said.

Bhagya lifted the edge of her sari and lowered her head to disguise the sudden tumult that agitated her heart and left her short of breath. She waited for him to continue.

“I have agreed,” he said. “Their horoscopes match. We have looked at some auspicious dates. They want the marriage to take place before Diwali—in September or October. The monsoon will be over and our guests can sleep outside.”

“She is only six,” Bhagya said, her quavering voice so low Somnath had to strain to catch her words. “I’ve heard Hira Lal is a grandfather.”

“He’s younger than me, about forty-four,” Somnath said. “They don’t want a dowry; they will pay for the wedding. She will be well cared for. Hira Lal’s mother is a kind woman. She will be good to our girl.”

“Shouldn’t you have consulted me?” said Bhagya.

Somnath stretched his legs out and, adjusting the fall of the sacred thread that ran diagonally across his bare chest, leaned back. Although the flesh on his chest was spare, his stomach protruded in a small, spongy roll. He swallowed the juice that had collected in his mouth and, tucking the betel into one cheek, said, “How could I refuse Hira Lal’s mother?”

Bhagya drew her sari forward so that her face was in shadow. “It is settled then! Why bother to tell me? So what if I have never set eyes on the man?” She had not spoken to him so harshly in a long while.

“He’s not bad-looking. The family is of noble Brahmin lineage. We should be honoured,” Somnath said, and, in an attempt to placate her, he added, “Our little mouse will remain with us until she comes of age. She will play with her friends, have a normal childhood.”

“Ishh, Bhagwan: may she never come of age!” Bhagya spat out the words.

“Don’t speak such ill-omened words,” he said uneasily, shaking his head reprovingly. “A girl is destined to leave her parents’ home early or she will bring disgrace to it. She is safe and happy only in her husband’s care.”

“She is safe and happy enough in our care.”

“In the Brahmanical tradition,” said Somnath, shifting into the soothing and at the same time authoritative mode he adopted when speaking to his clients, “a woman is recognized as a person only when she is one with her husband. Only then does she become a sumangali, an auspicious woman, and a saubhagyavati, a fortunate woman.” And, as if recalling a passage from a holy book, he half-closed his lids to add, “A woman’s body is a site for conflict between a demonic stri-svavahava, which is her lustful aspect, and her stri-dharma, which is her womanly duty.”

Bhagya jerked her head up so that her sari fell from her hair and stared at him. “And you think that man will be able to satisfy her stri-svavahava? By the time her womanhood blooms, he’ll be old and spent.”

Somnath was shocked. Although he well knew his wife’s passionate nature and discreetly relished it, her lust was contained within the parameters sanctioned by marriage. But to hear her speak so crudely about his daughter’s sexuality violated the principles upon which his ideas of sanctity were based. The Brahmin elders were right: women were dangerous. They sapped a man’s strength and stood between him and salvation. He leaned forward to stare at the woman confronting him.

The hard glint in her husband’s eyes pierced Bhagya like an arrow hurled by the God Arjuna; he had never looked at her this way before. Frozen with the weight of a hoary tradition that brooked no deviation, his look chilled her blood.

“You are the wife and daughter of Brahmin priests; surely you are aware of our traditions,” he said. “Outside of marriage the wife has no recognized existence in our tradition. A woman’s role in life is to get married and have sons. That is why she is created: to have sons! That is all!”

Bhagya, overwhelmed by her husband’s fury, knew she had overstepped her bounds. She dropped her eyes. Her husband was right; his words bore the cumulative wisdom of gods and ancient sages, and who was she to challenge that august pantheon? A girl carried within her the seeds of dishonour, and the burden of responsibility was to be borne by her parents until she was married. “I am sorry,” she said humbly, duly chastened. “It’s just that I hadn’t thought about her marriage. She scampers all about the place like her namesake, Little Mouse. I need time to get used to the idea of her absence from our house. It will be as you say—you are her father.”

Bhagya carried the kitchen lamp into the children’s bedroom. Her sons Prasad and Mohan were asleep on the thin mattress on their hard bed. She sat down on the edge of Chuyia’s cot and held the earthenware lamp so that its light bathed her daughter’s face in a coppery glow. Her curling eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks, and her face was full and round like the moon that had arisen and now shone through the window. Her mouth was an inlaid bud in the moon of her face. Impulsively, she bent to lightly kiss the sweetness on her daughter’s lips. The wash-worn rag that served as Chuyia’s tiny sari had ridden up her thighs, and, with her sturdy, rounded limbs, she looked like one of Krishna’s cherubic gopis.

Bhagya was not given to looking at her daughter so closely. She often gazed upon her sons as they slept. She covertly observed them when they were absorbed in school work or having the extra portion of food she had saved for them, and then her heart brimmed over with love and the special pride that was her due as mother of sons. She fretted about them because they were pale, and their thin limbs and stalk-like necks gave them an appearance of fragility. Bhagya never worried about her robust daughter and, scolding her for her playful and wilful ways, plied her sturdy little body with work—fetch the water, carry the firewood, sweep the yard, feed the cow.

Bhagya pried loose a strand of hair from Chuyia’s neck, and with her sari patted dry the moisture that had formed in the crease where her neck joined her collarbone. Chuyia’s hair, which already fell to her waist, spread about her in a velvet tangle of curls. Bhagya knew she must have looked like this at Chuyia’s age. Then why did she not lavish on her the affection and attention she lavished on her sons? Feel the same surge of love and pride for her daughter? Was it because her heart knew that a daughter was only a guest and never belonged to the house into which she was born? As she looked down at her daughter’s baby face, Bhagya’s eyes became moist and she was swept by a wave of tenderness and pity she had not allowed herself to feel before. She kissed her daughter’s forehead and brushed her eyelids with her lips.

All at once the girl opened huge eyes, and in the lamplight they appeared clear and luminous with understanding, as if the child had grasped the complexity and paradox of her mother’s emotions. Bhagya stroked her daughter’s cheeks. She whispered, “Go to sleep, my little mouse.” The girl’s heavy lids slowly sheathed her eyes and, as if the taut skin of her eyelids were insufficient to cover them, left milky crescents beneath her eyelashes. Flesh of my flesh, the beautiful fruit of my womb: her gaze lingered on her daughter’s face.

Bhagya sat up, suddenly filled with a guilty sense of foreboding; a mother’s unbridled love would surely attract nazar to her child. Bhagya snapped her fingers thrice in quick succession to ward off the evil eye. She drew her sari over her bowed head and, folding her hands, prayed to Shashthi, the goddess of children, to watch over her sleeping daughter.

BHAGYA HAD RECITED HER morning prayers by the time the boys left for school. As she watered the holy basil bushes, Somnath, in white dhoti and shirt, armed with his basket of sacred texts and the caste-marks on his forehead, came looking for her.

“Accha, I’m going,” he said by way of farewell.

Bhagya covered her head. “Bring plantain. If you can, some fish for the children.”

Somnath nodded confidently. “I’m owed quite a bit.”

“Our neighbour said a holy man has come from far away. His name is Gandhi. Get his picture if you can for my prayer nook.”

“Yes, people are talking about him; they call him bapu Gandhi,” Somnath said. “He wants us to weave our own cloth—the English sarkar thinks he is a troublemaker—but I hear he is a good man. He says all religions are true. He wants people to unite in their struggle against the English’s raj. I’ll look for his picture in the bazaar.” And then Somnath set off for far-flung houses to collect the meagre tithes that were his due as a Brahmin.

Chuyia helped her mother pick up her brothers’ soiled clothes for the wash and rolled up the bedding. She went to the back of the house to lay out the feed and fill the water bucket for the cow and its wobbly-legged calf. When she returned, she found her mother reclining by the window and chanting from the Mahabharata. Bhagya often did this before preparing her midday meal. Chuyia promptly covered her head with her sari and snuggled up to her mother, intent on listening to the passionate stories of the gods and goddesses. Bhagya arranged her sari to accommodate Chuyia and began to read out from the tattered copy of the Mahabharata.

A covey of parrots, the sudden whir from their wings startling them, streaked greenly past their window on the way to the neighbour’s orchard. Chuyia didn’t mind sharing the fruit with the parrots: in any case, they would forage among the higher branches she couldn’t reach.

After the sacred text had been put away, Chuyia followed her mother into the kitchen. She prattled away about the doings of the deities as Bhagya, sitting on the palm leaf mat on the floor, sliced onions and prepared the spinach. Bhagya answered her questions distractedly. Chuyia watched her mother rinse the spinach. “Why don’t you cook fish? I’m tired of spinach,” she said. “Radha’s ma cooks fish every day.”

“If your father brings it, I’ll cook it,” she said. “You’ll get as much fish as you want at your husband’s house.”

Chuyia slipped her sari off her little shoulder and spread it between her hands. “I want this much!”

Her daughter’s chest was flat and her small nipples dimpled inwards. Bhagya had an urge to hold her. She cleaned her fingers and reaching forward, swung the child to her lap. “Don’t worry; he’ll fill your lap with mangoes and almond taffy,” she said. “But will you share it with him,” she teased, “or will you gobble it all up yourself?”

Chuyia, dazzled by the unsustainable images of abundance her mother conjured up, nodded shyly and buried her face in Bhagya’s soft bosom.

Bhagya got up when the mustard oil in the karahi began to smoke. She dropped a pinch of salt and turmeric into the oil and stirred the onions into it.

“Let me do that,” Chuyia said.

“No, you’ll burn yourself.”

“But I want to help you cook,” Chuyia importuned. “I want to help you.”

To keep her daughter away from the wok, Bhagya gave her a steel platter half-filled with lentils. “Here; remove the grit and small stones from the daal if you must help.”

But this didn’t conform with Chuyia’s idea of cooking. After a short while, she announced, “Amma, I’ve cleaned the daal,” and put the steel platter aside.

Bhagya looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. “Either you put your heart into what you’re doing, or you don’t do it at all.”

“Then don’t tell me to clean daal. I can’t put my heart into lentils!”

“Hai, what a rude girl you’ve become,” said Bhagya, taken aback. Not for the first time she thought, the child is old for her years. “If you talk back to your mother-in-law like this, she will shame me for not bringing you up properly,” she said aloud, dramatically smacking her head to convey the humiliation that lay in store for her.

“I’ll tell her, ‘Don’t shame my mother,’” said Chuyia heartlessly. She climbed on a stool and reached for the clay pot of mishti-doi that Bhagya had made with rich milk from their cow, which had just calved. “It’s empty,” she wailed.

“There was only a little left. Your brothers must have eaten it.”

“Amma, I want mishti-doi. Please make some, please, please,” whined Chuyia.

Bhagya flung an arm out and thwacked Chuyia, catching her on her thigh. “Go play outside before I lose my temper and thrash you.”

Chuyia stepped out of her mother’s reach and, holding her hands behind her back, obdurately shook her head. “There is no one to play with.”

Bhagya made a small cone with a scrap of paper and got up to fill it with roasted gram. “Here, feed your dolls this,” she said, pushing Chuyia out the door.

Chuyia called Tun-tun, but he wasn’t around. Munching on the roasted chickpeas, Chuyia crossed their yard to the thatched hut. A tangle of mossy branches weighed down the roof, and the small yard in front was overgrown with weeds. Chuyia pried open the door that hung crookedly from its hinges. It was dark inside the hut, and the cooler air held the sweet odours of damp earth and vegetation that had taken root in the earth floor.

Chuyia dragged the doll’s house, a rough plywood crate the size of two shoeboxes, to the centre of the room and, in the light that came from a sagging slit of skylight, examined its contents. She picked up the chipped clay dolls, the faded outlines of their stiff, glazed arms barely discernable against their torsos, and wiped them with her sari. She talked to her dolls as she tipped the contents of her toy box and lined up the miniature cooking utensils in front of a brick, which served as a make-believe stove. “You must be hungry; I’ll cook you turnips,” she told the dolls, pulling out some spongy weeds growing through the cracks of the floor. She squished them and collected the pulp in a tiny karahi. She added the few remaining chickpeas from the paper cone to the mess and stirred it with a minuscule ladle.

Chuyia force-fed her dolls with the food she had prepared and, when the green slime stained their faces, scolded them for being dirty. She used the same words and tone of voice Bhagya used, except she kept her voice hushed, lest someone should intrude on her imagined world and break the spell of make-believe she had conjured up.

Tun-tun’s shrill little barks returned her to reality and filled her heart with love. Although he sounded less puppyish now, his voice still broke at the higher octaves. Abandoning her dolls Chuyia went outside to greet the now-brawny little fellow. Before long, they both wandered off into the jungle.

Tun-tun kept within calling distance as Chuyia foraged for wild berries and leechees. After a while, she lay down on a bed of yellow leaves fallen from a thorn tree, and Tun-tun, placing his forelegs on her chest, pinned her down and gazed at her for all the world like a conquering lion. He licked her face. Chuyia pushed him away, and, after chasing a squirrel up a tree, he settled down beside her to keep watch.

High above, the thorn tree was in blossom, and the fragrance from its flowers mingled with the other wind-borne scents of the forest. A tailor bird was stitching its nest in the fork of a dried branch, and, at a small distance from her, a pair of canaries sat swinging on creepers that hung down from a jackfruit tree. Birds hopped among the branches of trees, making the leaves tremble and filling the forest with birdsong. The squirrels played hide-and-seek around tree trunks. Closer to the ground, her ears picked up the rustle of fecund vegetation and of unseen insects inhabiting it. All of Chuyia’s senses became steeped in the forest’s wild beauty—her pulse slowed to match its deep green rhythm, and her heart was at peace.