Читать книгу A Matter of Time - Shashi Deshpande - Страница 12

ARU GOES HOME encompassed by a sense of humiliation. It is not merely the fact that she broke down before Gopal when she had determined to be in full control of herself; it is the recalling of how she had imagined it would be that mortifies her. She had been almost certain that Gopal would take her into his confidence, that the special relationship there had been between them still existed and he would reveal his feelings to her as he had not done to anyone else. She had seen herself reasoning with him, persuading him to change his mind, and then, coming back to announce that they could all go back home.

Home? What home?

She puts her scooter away, has a wash and changes without anyone noticing her, for which she is grateful. She does not want to talk to anyone about what has happened. She is glad she has not spoken to any of them about her visit, not even to Charu.

Charu senses something, nevertheless. Covertly she watches her sister getting ready for bed, the pillow set straight, the blanket unfolded, spread carefully in a wrinkle-free smoothness with a fold at the top, her slippers placed on the floor, side by side ....

‘What are you staring at me for?’

Charu flushes guiltily, begins to say something, changes her mind and asks, ‘Going to bed so early?’

‘Yes.’

Charu does not react to the challenge in that single-word reply.

As Aru lies down, settling her head on the pillow, and pulls her blanket over herself, they hear Sumi call out, ‘Aru.’

Aru closes her eyes as if shutting out the sound.

‘A R U?’

‘Damn!’ She sits up with an angry jerk.

‘I’ll go,’ Charu offers.

She returns to find her sister in the same position, the ‘damn’ expression intact on her face.

‘What was it?’

‘Nothing, really. Just some vague thing—you know how she is.’ Charu yawns loudly, showing her tongue quivering in the cavern of her open mouth. ‘God, I wish I could go to sleep and wake up late tomorrow morning. Oh well ....’

She has picked up her book and, with a weary sigh, is going back to her page when she is startled by Aru’s voice.

‘Why do you call her “she”?’

‘What?’

‘Why do you call Sumi “she”?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can’t you say Sumi, or Ma, or anything else ... why do you say “she”?’

‘Hey, cool it, Aru, what’s with you?’

‘Just because Papa has left her, it doesn’t give you the right to be rude to her, it doesn’t mean she’s worthless ....’

‘Have you gone crazy?’

‘You ... think you can insult her ....’

‘Shut up, Aru, just shut up, will you!’

Charu, too astonished even to be angry, sees that her sister is in a cold fury, she doesn’t seem to be able to stop.

‘You’re showing your contempt for her when you say “she”. Why,’ and the question is propelled out of her with the force of a bullet, ‘why do you call her “she”, tell me that.’

‘Oh, shut up, I don’t want to talk to you when you’re in this—this—this state.’

There is silence after that. Charu, tapping her teeth with her pencil, picks up her book and turns her back resolutely on her sister. But the page is a blur, she can’t read a word. It is a relief when Aru speaks in a more normal tone.

‘Well, say it, go on, say it.’

Charu looks at her. Aru’s body no longer has the tense look of a tightly wound spring.

‘You saw Papa today, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s no use, it’s no use talking to him, I could have told you that. Listen to me, Aru, let’s not get involved in their hassles, let’s get on with our lives. All these things are not important.’

‘Not important? Charu, you—you frighten me. They are our parents, it’s our home and you say these things are not important!’

‘They’re important if you let them be. I won’t. They can’t mess up my life. I’m going on with what I want to do.’

‘Five and a half years of medical college before you can start earning—where’s the money to come from?’

‘I’ve asked Premi-mavshi. Or rather, she asked me if she could help and of course I said yes. I’m not proud. As long as I can complete my studies, I don’t care where the money comes from. I’m not like you and Ma. Make a note of that, I said Ma—not “she”.’

Charu is grinning, her usual impish grin, but Aru does not respond. She is silent.

‘You all right, Aru?’ Charu asks hesitantly when the silence stretches between them.

‘Fine. You go back to work. You’re right, you just go on with your life, don’t bother with all these things.’

Charu does not notice the emphasis on the ‘you’. She is too relieved to have her sister back to her usual self. It seems as if they have returned to the normal level of their intimacy, but the sisters are conscious nevertheless, of a wedge-shaped shadow that has come between them.

Sumi has become aware of this, too. She sees that despite the girls having resumed, on the surface at least, the normal course of their lives, something has changed. They have withdrawn into themselves, each pursuing her own activity, interacting minimally with each other. Even the occasional bickering—over Charu’s untidiness, Aru’s obsessive orderliness, Seema’s dependence—has ceased.

The three girls have changed in themselves, too. Aru’s reserve has turned into a secretiveness. She goes out a great deal, more than she did before, and it is obvious that this has nothing to do with college or her studies. In fact, she has resigned from the Student’s Council, something she had taken very seriously until now. Charu has become wholly single-minded and dogged, the intensity of her pursuit of a seat in a medical college frightening. Nothing else seems to exist for her, apart from her college, her evening classes and her books when she is at home. And though Seema, belying Sumi’s fears, looks the most untouched, she keeps aloof from her mother and sisters, following Kalyani about, even holding her sari-end, as if she is reverting to that early infancy she can’t possibly remember. It makes Sumi uneasy.

There’s something else, too. Sumi has an odd feeling that the house is accepting them, like it did Kalyani and her daughters all those years back, making them part of itself. Sumi sees her daughters unconsciously, unknowingly, lowering their voices to the exact decibel required to keep them from being heard by their grandfather upstairs. And she thinks: I don’t want my daughters to live with a hand clasped over their mouths, like Premi and I had to. And I don’t want my daughters to live in a house where—where—but she can’t pinpoint this until Hrishi spells it out for her.

Hrishi, who is in the same class as Charu, is now a daily visitor, picking her up for their special evening class and dropping her home after it. It is when Charu makes one of her usual jokes against him that Hrishi retorts, ‘You know what you are? You’re a clown. A female clown,’ he adds.

‘Why female clown?’

‘Clowns are always males, silly.’

The girls begin to laugh at that, laughter that becomes uncontrollable at the dawning look of realization on Hrishi’s face. Unnerved finally by their laughter—even Seema has joined in—he says, ‘Tchah!’ flapping his hands as if driving away a smell. ‘Too many females here. It’s like a zenana.’

And to Sumi, Hrishi’s words echo something Gopal had said once—reluctantly, and only in response to her urging, her goading, rather—in explanation of his increasing silences, his withdrawal from them.

‘It’s not easy to be the only male in a family of females. You feel so—so—’ he had hesitated and then in a rare, uncharacteristic gesture, propelled his fist into his other palm, as if breaking through something, ‘you feel so shut out.’

They’re right, Sumi thinks now, both Gopal and Hrishi, there’s something wrong about a house with only females—or males. It’s too lopsided, not balanced enough. There’s already a change in our behaviour; there’s a carelessness that lies, like a thin overlay of dust, over our lives. And ease, too, there’s too much of it. There’s none of the tension that’s necessary to make us feel alive, to give us the excitement of living.

What Sumi likes even less is that Aru is becoming conscious of the situation in the house, of the queer relationship between her grandparents. Sumi has never spoken to her daughters about this, but now, living in the house, in the midst of it, there is no getting away from it. Things have changed since Sumi’s childhood, Shripati is not the same to his granddaughters as he was to his own daughters, yet the oppression of his unseen self cannot but make itself felt. In this atmosphere, how can any of them, Aru especially, forget what Gopal has done, Sumi thinks.

But Aru has no intention of forgetting, no intention of letting Sumi forget, either.

‘I think you should see a lawyer,’ she says to her mother.

‘You mean because of Gopal? Devi’s been saying that to me, too, she wants me to meet Murthy’s cousin who’s a lawyer. But I don’t see the point of it.’

‘The point? The point is you’ve got to do something.’

‘What? Get a divorce? I’m not interested.’

‘But he owes you, he owes all of us, yes, you especially, he owes you—’ lamely, ‘something. He can’t get away like this! He has to give us maintenance.’

Sumi laughs, she seems genuinely amused. ‘Gopal has outsmarted the law. He’s given us all that he had. And he has nothing now, not even a proper job. I don’t think he’s getting more than a bare subsistence from Shankar’s press—so Ramesh tells me. So what can the law make him do?’

‘Sumi, you’re making it too easy for him, you’re letting him get away with it. He’s getting off scot-free. It’s not right, he must be made to realize what he’s done ....’

‘How? By punishing him? Do you want to punish him, Aru? I don’t. I’m not interested. I just want to get on with my life.’ She puts an arm around Aru’s shoulder. ‘Let him go, Aru, just let him go. This is not good for you.’

But the feel of Aru’s body, rigid and unyielding, tells Sumi that Aru will not let go.

‘Let him go? As if he’s a—a mere acquaintance or somebody with whom we’ve had a small misunderstanding? He’s our father, Ma, he’s your husband. How can you dismiss it so lightly? I don’t understand you at all.’

But Sumi understands what Aru is doing: she’s trying to reclaim, not her father, but a situation of which he was a part. I know she can never get it back, but she has to learn it herself. I can’t do anything more.

Aru goes back to Gopal. He’s in the press this time, working, he seems unsurprised to see her.

‘This is a rush order, we’ve got to complete it today. It’ll take me some time to be free.’

‘I’ll wait.’

When he comes to his room nearly an hour later, she is waiting for him. Shankar, following closely on his heels, is taken aback when he sees her. He looks awkwardly at the glass of coffee he is holding.

‘Please, sir, you take this, I’ll get another glass right away.’

‘No, Shankar, I don’t want any coffee. Aru, you ....?’

Though she recognises his unspoken desire that she should refuse it, too, Aru takes the glass from Shankar. Gopal emphatically refuses one for himself and Shankar goes away leaving them alone.

‘Have some?’ Aru holds out her glass.

Gopal smiles, shakes his head. Aru does not respond to the smile. She intends never to lose sight of the fact that he is an adversary. Accepting the coffee from Shankar was a blow struck at Gopal, and now, offering him some is also an act of hostility, not of friendship. Gopal recognises this.

It is a bloodless duel this time, both of them are unimpassioned and restrained. She does not ask him any questions, she tells him—how it has been for them, the feeling of displacement, the questions and innuendoes they have to face, the sense of shame and disgrace. She speaks to him of Sumi, of the change in her, of Charu and her desperation, her feeling of having been let down. She is finding it hard to stay cool now, anger is slowly rising in her, but she still holds it on a leash. She calls him a callous father—‘it was Seema’s birthday, you know that, you could have sent her a letter, she was waiting, we could all see that’—a cruel husband, an unfeeling man.

And then, finally, comes the question: Why did you get married at all, why did you have children?

Her eyes are fixed on his face, a cold and dispassionate regard.

There is a long pause, she can see he is deliberating his answer, finally deciding not to say anything at all.

‘It’s too late to think of that now, Aru. It serves no purpose arguing about these things.’

When she is sure there is no more to come from him, she speaks. ‘I’m going to see a lawyer.’

There is no doubt what this is intended to be: it is a threat.

‘It’s not important what you do to me now, Aru. It’s what you’re doing to yourself that’s wrong.’

‘It’s too late to think about me now, isn’t it? Too late to show your concern.’

And on that little bit of childish spite she walks out. Both of them have been too engrossed in their conversation to notice that it has begun raining. Aru takes an angry pleasure in not wiping the seat of the scooter, in the discomfort of the wet seat. By the time she moves out of the small lane, the drizzle has become a downpour. She keeps going mechanically, her head down against the streaming rain, still in that world of hostility and pain. It takes her a while to realize that she has lost her way. Looking about, she finds herself in a place she has never seen, a lane lined by old-fashioned tiled houses that open straight on to the road. She makes a tentative turn and finds herself in equally unfamiliar territory. She comes to a crossroad and gets off her scooter, gasping slightly as the rain streams down her face, trying to find her bearings, to orient herself.

A motorcycle stops by her. ‘Need any help?’ the rider asks her in English.

She gives the person a wary look. But his visor is down and she can see nothing of his face.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’m lost.’