Difficult Daughters (16 page)

‘Oh, Viru! Why didn’t you wait for me?’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought we were coming back together. You could have met auntie also,’ she went on, taking off her shoes, and flinging herself next to Virmati to tuck her icy-cold feet under her quilt. ‘She invited us all for tea, and Mary and Sarla made pakoras. We also had an impromptu meeting, that’s why it took so long.’

Virmati shifted her feet away from Swarna’s. She was feeling too ill to respond.

‘I almost got into trouble with the warden, you know,’ continued Swarna chattily. ‘Coming late, and all. Fortunately the weather was enough excuse. And she knew about the Women’s Conference meeting. The press was there too. Did you notice?’

‘No.’

‘It’ll be out in the papers tomorrow. I’ll read them in college, next to the fire. I love doing that.’ Swarna laughed happily. ‘There is bound to be a picture of auntie. Shall I get you one on my way home?’

This roused Virmati somewhat. ‘If I start spending one anna on the newspaper, my mother will kill me.’

‘I’ll buy it for you.’ Swarna leaned over and rumpled her hair, looking at her affectionately. ‘Don’t look so upset. Now go to sleep. For the first time today my feet are warm!’ With this she slid off the bed to her corner of the room, putting off the main light and switching on her small table lamp.

*

Virmati tried to sleep but couldn’t. She lay still, she tossed and turned. Cold and shivering, her thoughts slipped out of their normal grooves and wandered disjointedly. The faint light coming in from the veranda burned her eyes. Swarna was speaking. Mohini Datta was standing next to her. There were songs, gestures. That song sounded like the Internationale. She should have learned at least one of the three versions. Then she too would be part – part of what Swarna was. Other friends crowding around her … crowding her out. Their gaze washed around her, through her. Swarna, Swarna Lata, look at me. Ah! she won’t look. Why should she? In her heart she despises me, but we’re living together, she has to pretend.

He’s there, knocking. Writing, let me in, let me in. Answer. Answer. Now I’ll have to write. Write, write. Quotations of love, faith, duty, devotion. I must reread his letters more often … more often. There’s so much to learn … so much to learn. But we are one. One. One. Our one body. Twisting in the curtained gloom of Syed Husain’s house. Where I’m not cold but warm.

Virmati’s fever increased. She wanted water, but could not speak. Her lips felt swollen, her throat parched. Tears of illness and self-pity gathered under her shut lids and oozed over her cheeks. Beneath the quilt and all her sweaters her limbs felt heavy and damp. She groaned and wondered that Swarna did not wake. But Swarna was tired and slept like a stone.

*

Virmati was sick for days. Swarna cared for her when she could, and the neighbouring girls looked in. The warden kept a check, the principal expressed her concern, the doctor was called. He said her blood was drying up, her liver was weak. He prescribed medicine, tonic, compounds. Virmati just had one request to make of the RBSL authorities. She begged them not to disturb her parents, she was sure she would get well soon. Privately she hid the medicine, she didn’t want any drugs suppressing her symptoms. Let it all come out. Nature cure was what her family believed in, and she had never in her life taken anything remotely resembling a pill. She drank lots of water to wash away the fever. Sometimes she asked for tea.

The Professor was upset and irritated. Why was Virmati so careless of her health? And what was she doing going to women’s meetings anyway? She was in Lahore to study, not fritter away her energies. Though it was important that Virmati be exposed to the latest in political and social trends, she must not overdo it. He scolded her lovingly in letters. Virmati responded in wobbly, apologetic paragraphs. Harish would have more time to spend with his family. What nonsense, replied Harish. All he wanted in the world was to be with her, and this time in Lahore was such a wonderful opportunity. She was depriving him, she was depriving herself. He hoped he could say without vanity that she was depriving herself.

*

They met after two months. Virmati had grown very thin. Nature cure, though healthy, takes its toll from the flesh. The Professor looked at her. He could not speak. He had thought of Virmati’s fair skin so often, its rosy overtones, with faint yellow-ivory undertints. Now it was more yellow than rose, and he could feel the outline of her ribs. Tenderly he gathered her to him, and whispered into her hair, ‘Darling, it’s been hell for both of us, your being so ill.’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Virmati whispered back, rubbing her hand across his throat, liking the feel of his voice beneath her fingers.

‘You’re too delicate to go out much in the cold, sweetheart. You must be careful for my sake.’

‘It’s the first time this has happened.’

‘Still.’

Virmati pulled the Professor closer to her, and tugged at his hair. ‘I was dying for love of you,’ she teased. Loving him, and hoping to distract him at the same time.

The Professor smiled delightedly, looking like a boy in his pleasure. He continued to caress her, feeling her like a precious thing, arousing her, drawing a shawl closer around her. They lay silently together, while the late afternoon sun shone green and pale through the bushes outside Syed Husain’s guest room.

‘Soon your course will be finishing here, my love.’ The Professor’s words dropped with an unpleasant sound into Virmati’s deep contentment. She didn’t know why, unless the very slight uncertainity in his voice was the cause.

Her stillness became stiller. ‘And what are your plans for me?’ she inquired carefully.

His hands went on in their steady, stroking movements. ‘It would be a shame to waste your degree.’

Virmati drew away from him and sat up. ‘I’m cold,’ she announced, and moved towards her clothes.

‘Viru!’ exclaimed the Professor.

‘I have to go.’

‘What’s wrong? All of a sudden … you jump up and behave as though I have committed a crime.’

‘There is more than one way to commit a crime.’

‘What have I done?’

‘Can’t you see?’ asked Virmati, fumbling with her clothes.

‘No, I can’t. Tell me.’

‘Hari –’ Virmati spat out the name. ‘How long is it you say you’ve been in love with me?’

‘Three years.’

‘I break my engagement because of you, blacken my family’s name, am locked up inside my house, get sent to Lahore because no one knows what to do with me. Here I am in the position of being your secret wife, full of shame, wondering what people will say if they find out, not being able to live in peace, study in peace … and why? Because I am an idiot.’

‘No, no, Viru –’

‘Now you want to prolong the situation. Why don’t we get married? You say your family makes no difference. But still you want to continue in this way. Be honest with me. I can bear anything but this continuous irresolution. Swarna is right. Men do take advantage of women!’

Virmati had only to mention Swarna Lata for the Professor to explode, and he shouted, shaking with anger, ‘What does this Swarna Lata know of my situation, pray? How does she know of the difficulties I face at home? How do
you
know of them, Viru? I come to you as a haven. Except for this, my life is hell! Hell! Tantrums, sulks, sly accusations. My mother, sister, daughter, all she has turned against me. And now you are doing the same thing.’ He turned away and dropped his head in his hands.

Virmati felt trapped. What had she been saying, was it so unreasonable? Why was he looking so sad? How could she leave him like this? Slowly she moved towards Harish, and slowly she took him in her arms.

Going back to the hostel in a tonga, Virmati bit her lip to prevent her tears from falling. What was the matter with her? It was not her way to burst forth in anger or in crying. She supposed it was the weakness after her illness. It had been ecstatic in the beginning. And then he had said ‘What are you going to do after your degree?’ She felt again the cold, despairing recognition that her future plans must not include marriage. Only this series of furtive meetings in borrowed places. Did he think that would satisfy her for ever? Far better to be like Swarna, involved in other people, and waiting for no man.

*

‘What’s the matter, Viru?’ Swarna could see that she was agitated. Normally the occasions when Swarna did eat in the mess were precious to Virmati, but today she remained withdrawn through most of the meal.

‘Nothing,’ said Virmati.

Swarna asked no more questions, but after dinner she asked Virmati to come with her for a walk before they settled down for the night. The weather was mild enough now to stay outside for a while. As they were walking, she reached for Virmati’s hand. ‘What is it, Viru?’ she asked gently. ‘You are obviously miserable. I usually don’t have time for us to spend together, but I care about what is happening to you. Now tell me. Otherwise I shall feel terribly guilty.’

‘It’s him,’ said Virmati reluctantly. She thought to discuss him an act of treachery, but the heavy burden on her heart was weighing her down.

‘He came today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then?’

‘Well,’ stumbled Virmati. ‘First when he came … in the beginning it was all right. But I have to think about the future, even if he doesn’t. If we don’t get married, it cannot go on. I have to consider. My family has been so patient.’

‘Viru, you have chosen him with your eyes open. I am sure he will eventually justify your faith in him,’ said Swarna after a little pause.

Virmati briefly wondered how much actual choosing had gone into her relationship with the Professor. Swarna exercised such options in everything. Choosing a ‘friend’ who understood her need to be independent, choosing her political leanings, choosing to stand for senior studentship despite the unpleasantness about Ashrafi, choosing to stay in Lahore though her parents wanted her to come home and get married. How could she explain her own actions?

Swarna said thoughtfully, ‘His wife must be presenting a real problem, Viru. What does he say?’

‘That’s it. He doesn’t say anything, only looks hurt when I bring up the topic. As though I don’t trust him.’

‘Give him credit for not abandoning his wife. In my work I hear so many stories of men taking two or more wives, and the women left helpless, often with small children.’

‘But I can’t go on waiting. And I can’t – don’t want to – marry anybody else.’

‘Marriage is not the only thing in life, Viru. The war – the satyagraha movement – because of these things, women are coming out of their homes. Taking jobs, fighting, going to jail. Wake up from your stale dream.’

‘I wish people in Amritsar talked to me like this,’ said Virmati.

‘I wish people in Delhi would talk to
me
like this,’ laughed Swarna. ‘But they don’t. So here we are. Responsible for our own futures.’

‘You think he will never marry me?’

‘I don’t know, but why sit around waiting?’

‘In my family there is only marriage for girls.’

‘Most families look upon the marriage of a daughter as a sacred duty – or sacred burden. We are lucky we’re living in times when women can do something else. Even in Europe women gain more respect during wartime. And here we have that war, and our satyagraha as well.’

‘Perhaps I should go to prison, and help the freedom movement.’

‘It might make him think a little. But students are not yet supposed to offer satyagraha. Maybe a little fine?’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Offer provocation, but not too much. There are ways. Besides, you’re not a prominent figure, and they will not want you to take up valuable jail space. One look at your lovely eyes and they’ll do nothing more than fine you. They need the money, and what better way to collect it? They have already got over two lakhs this way.’

‘My family – ?’

‘If it keeps you out of the Professor’s way, I am convinced they’ll offer thanks to Gandhiji.’

They went on walking, up down, up down, around the trees of the playing field. Their feet sent up faint clouds of dust, the dew still hadn’t fallen enough to dampen the ground thoroughly. The moon was a clear, thin curve in the sky. It was so peaceful. Why can’t I be content with what I have? thought Virmati. Swarna’s words gave her some comfort. But that meant thinking of a life for herself without marriage, which was strange and not quite right. It meant she would be alone, and she wasn’t sure she was capable of it.

Next morning saw a slight postponement in Virmati’s plan to get fined or arrested. Her studies were her passport to independence, not just her passport to sleeping with the Professor. They were worthy of more respect. She would wait till her exams were over.

Virmati did not do well in her exams. She had memorized the theory, history, psychology, and modern practice of education till she could churn them out in her sleep, but that preciously guarded horde of information vanished from her mind the day she discovered that the egg in her uterus had mated with a sperm and was swelling with popping cells, in an insistent, anti-intellectual life of its own.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned, as she stared at the brown, viscous mass in the cracked white china toilet. She reached up to pull the chain dangling overhead, but another wave of nausea passed over her, and she leaned forwards to heave and retch again. This time there was no discharge except a thin trickle of foul, yellowish bile.

Quickly she calculated dates. When was the last time she had surreptitiously rinsed out the old cloths that were recycled to soak up the blood? The water from the tap had been cold then, it was that far back. She was certain she was pregnant. With this certainty, the nausea came again, ripping through her throat, salivating her tongue. She thought of all the hours she had spent over her practical files, her teaching charts, making sure that they were complete and decorative. What would happen to her BT now? What would they say at home if they found out? She shuddered as, supporting herself with one hand against the wall, she staggered slowly out of the bathroom. Thankfully Swarna had left the room. She sank onto her bed and started to cry, with sobs that racked her body as much as her vomiting had done, except that they lasted much longer.

When she stopped, she remained on the bed in a trance. How had this come about? Harish had assured her that it would not happen. She had raised the topic once, carefully, in a playful, casual manner. ‘Maybe a child of ours will decide the marriage date.’

He had looked at her and frowned. ‘No, Viru, we cannot allow ourselves to be pawns in the skeins of fate.’ He laced her fingers within his own, ‘She clings hard, but soon they will see it is all futile.’

Virmati gripped the arm that was around her. ‘Suppose it happens to me, like those women you hear about, who die trying to get rid of it. There was a woman we had, a widow from Tarsikka. She got pregnant from the cook, though he said she was lying, and Mati was going to dismiss them both, but before she could, the woman died in horrible agony.’

‘What talk is this? Are we poor, uneducated, unenlightened clods, to leave such things to chance? Don’t you trust me?’

He drew her onto his lap, and in an effort to increase her trust, gently and delicately fondled her, while taking off her clothes. When he talked and looked like that, she could not argue further. She had to prove she trusted him. Fulfilment lay in their union.

Now, each of Harish’s words echoed in her mind with an irony he had taught her to recognize in Shakespeare’s texts. Tragic irony, comic irony, how he had loved to expand on them. Which species was this? It lacked the epic proportions of tragedy, and the love-courtship-marriage theme of comedy. In either case, she was the Fool, that much at least was certain.

Virmati shook herself. She must see him. But how? His last visit had been about ten days ago, and she had told him not to come till her exams were over. She had to do well, and he distracted her. She must go to Amritsar instead. Slowly she got up and started a letter to her mother.

Within a week an answer arrived. The envelope that Virmati eagerly grabbed from the V-shaped slot in the cubby holes outside the dining-room was a thick one. As she tore it open, out slid two folded pieces of paper covered with her mother’s large round hand. One was a short note to herself – so at last you have remembered you have a home – and the other a formal note to the warden requesting permission for her daughter to leave the hostel for the prep leave.

That evening saw the warden scrutinizing the letter carefully, turning it over, reading through it again. Then she examined Virmati.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked severely. ‘Your parents will not like it if you fall ill.’

‘Madam, it is the studies. I will be better at home.’

The warden frowned. If Virmati was going to be ill again, she would be better off at home. As the BT course was over, permission was given, and Virmati left.

‘Goodbye, Swarna,’ she said, the tears which were always at the base of her throat creeping into her eyes.

Swarna looked at her strangely. Did she have an inkling, did she suspect? She who worked with women in the Lakkar Hatti, she who could detect early signs of pregnancy as well as anyone.

 

‘Yes, she was pregnant,’ said my old lady slowly, carefully. ‘Though she only told me when she had to.’

‘How was that? You were good friends, weren’t you?’ I asked naïvely to encourage the flow of words.

‘Good friends?’ she asked, the mockery in her tone shaming me in my artless pose. ‘Yes, we were good friends. But Viru knew, yes, she knew that what she had done would be seen by me as a social setback for women. Good God! This was the very thing the men were afraid of, even the mothers. Education led to independence and loose conduct. Things were better than they used to be, but these fears took a long time to remove. You should have seen some of the buildings that passed for girls’ schools. Dark one or two-room holes, no ventilation, no playground, all in the name of keeping them safe.’

Poor Virmati, I thought, how she must have suffered. Whatever did they do in those days when these accidents occurred? How was it kept a secret, when women could smell a pregnancy a mile off, just as Virmati smelt Ganga’s, or Lajwanti smelt Kas-turi’s.

‘Tell me, whatever did she do?’ I said leaning closer to Swarna Lata’s white-framed face. ‘I don’t think she married …? Or at least not right then.’

Swarna Lata snorted. ‘Oh no, she didn’t marry till he was good and ready, and that wasn’t then.’

‘Did her family find out?’

‘I don’t think so, because she came back, which they would not have allowed her to do had they known. In the end I helped her, it came to that … poor thing. Her pride prevented her from asking me first. Though if she had stopped to reflect, it would have been obvious that Lahore was a better place than Amritsar for these things, and I a better …’ Swarna Lata broke off, and didn’t continue. I remained silent. The shroud of secrecy my mother carried all her life now protected her in death, as I drew back from violating her with my knowledge.

*

I knew, Mother, what it was like to have an abortion. Prabhakar had insisted I have one. In denying that incipient little thing in my belly, he sowed the seeds of our breakup – as perhaps he meant to do. Yes, I knew what it was like. I had lain awake nights wondering why he wanted me to have an abortion, worrying whether he was having an affair, feeling unloved, because he didn’t want a baby from me.

‘Show it to her,’ he had told the doctor. ‘She thinks she is killing something.’

They thrust a stainless-steel bowl under my nose. It was full of floating blood and plasma. ‘That is all it is, you silly girl.’ I threw up in the red plastic basin kept under the bed.

It was never the same afterwards. That death haunted me for years, but Prabhakar was very careful, and I never conceived again. Now I have nothing. Mother, I never told you this, because you thought Prabhakar was so wonderful, and I was glad that in the choice of my husband I had pleased you. Why should I burden you with my heartaches when you had enough of your own? You believed too strongly in the convention that a mother has no place in a daughter’s home to stay with me, so you never really got to see the dynamics of our relationship close at hand. That was some consolation to me, though it meant that you were the more upset when the marriage terminated. He was what you respected, a successful academic, a writer of books, a connoisseur of culture, a disseminator of knowledge. Like my father.

How many times had you declared that I would be lucky if I found a husband like my father? I had agreed with you. My father was on a pedestal so high that to breathe that rarefied atmosphere was an honour.

 

For Virmati, the drive to the railway station was torture. The driver of the tonga, a young man, was reeking of coconut oil and a heavy, rose perfume. Feeling queasy, Virmati pulled her dupatta around her nose, and put a pinch of churran in her mouth from the bottle she kept in her handbag. The sour, salty taste helped, but by the time she reached the station her tongue was blistered with the amount she had eaten.

The hour’s journey between Lahore and Amritsar passed quickly. As Virmati gazed at the familiar fields of the Punjab countryside, crossed by the horizontal bars of the train window, it seemed to her that her miseries had just started. What was the crisis that had impelled her towards the river compared to this? Now that way out was not possible. Once tried, it had lost its power as a solution.

Amritsar Station, and Virmati lingered in the compartment, forlorn, as she watched other platform reunions. Quickly she decided her condition was making her maudlin, and with clenched jaw, she swung down her leather attaché case from the overhead rack and marched up the stairs, across the overhead platform, down another staircase, and outside into the mêlée of tonga-drivers clamouring for customers. She chose one, fixed the fare to Lepel Griffin Road, and throughout the ride stared unseeingly at the trees lining Grosvenor Road and the grassy stretches of the Company Gardens. Whatever happened, she could not allow any further stigma to taint the family name.

The tonga pulled up in front of the heavy metal gates of the house with its side door slightly ajar. Virmati stared blankly at it. It had been several months since she had visited home. The atmosphere wasn’t so conducive … she had to study hard … she couldn’t be distracted … those secret visits of Harish … those precious moments snatched in Syed Husain’s guest room.

‘Bibiji, you said this was the address.’ The tonga-driver sounded impatient.

Wordlessly, Virmati paid the man his four annas, and got down. As the driver manœuvred his horse around, he saw her still standing before the gates, holding her attaché case. She looked so lost, he regretted the missed opportunity of asking for an anna more than the agreed fare.

*

Evening time. Many of the family were sitting out in the angan, on the string beds pulled from the eating room where they were kept stacked. Virmati was with them, but she wished she could be by herself in front of the house, watching the evening pigeons, flapping wings imperceptible, circling in great, low, black wheels against the purple sky. She had missed this evening sight in Lahore, no orchards near SL College to attract such large numbers. But her absence would have been minded. Already, first day at home and she is wandering off by herself, independent as usual. Virmati could even hear the tone of voice in which this would be said. So she sat with them and peeled potatoes for dinner.

Thud, thud, thud, the potatoes dropped one by one into the brass patila between the two beds. The pile of potato peel on the brick floor grew slowly, to be gathered and fed to the cows later. Paro was sitting as close to Virmati as she could, her small, crossed legs pressed against Virmati’s knee, absent-mindedly separating some coriander leaves from their stalks. Virmati was enjoying the smell of the torn leaves, and she forgot to admonish Paro for doing her work so badly. Paro, meanwhile, thinking that her sister had become very nice after her stay in Lahore, broke through the low buzz of the women, asking in her high, clear voice, ‘Pehnji, why do you have to go away so soon? This time I’m also coming.’

‘Arre
wah!’
exclaimed Lajwanti, clearing her throat and expertly spitting into the narrow gutter running around the angan. ‘Your sister is too busy to bother with the likes of her family. Even when she became an aunt she didn’t come. Shaku said she tried to bring her along when she came, but it was no use.’

Virmati glanced guiltily at her sister. Indu was nursing her baby on the next bed, the little head bobbing up and down under her sari palla. Her face had become rounder, and she shone like the full moon, happy, tranquil and undisturbed.