The family said nothing, and Virmati sensed they were waiting for her reply.
‘How can I compare with Shakuntala Pehnji?’ temporized Virmati after a silence. ‘She has brains. It is stupid people like me who have to study all the time, though it means my family think I neglect them. But that is not true! They are always in my heart.’
‘No child of mine is fortunate enough to be compared with Shakuntala,’ murmured Kasturi deprecatingly. Lajwanti’s face darkened. References to Shakuntala’s unmarried state lurked beneath seemingly innocent statements and she was ever watchful.
‘After the exams, Pehnji’ll be back with us,’ said Gunvati, smiling placidly at Virmati, and shaking her head ever so slightly to remind Virmati that she must not mind what her aunt said, it was just her way. Having an unmarried daughter nearing thirty was a fate so devastating that it must excuse any loss of temper.
Lajwanti looked at the sky and flung a long, perfectly curled potato peel casually to the ground.
‘Arre
,’
she remarked to her sister-in-law, ‘whatever happened to that woman? Has there been any news from her?’
‘Which woman?’ asked Kasturi, sifting through the dal, checking for dirt and small stones.
‘Oh, that one. You know. The one who had the baby boy recently.’ Lajwanti clicked her tongue in exasperation. ‘Oof, what is the name? Why, every day she used to come!’
‘Oh yes,’ said Kasturi, reluctantly. ‘That one.’
‘She came to meet us one, two weeks back,’ broke in Gunvati. ‘Came to take her leave, I think.’
‘Oh?’ said Lajwanti. ‘At last she has managed to make him see sense?’
Virmati froze. They were lying. He would have told her.
‘She explained that his classes were over,’ said Kasturi, carefully tossing the dal in the air, and shaking the thali. ‘They could now go home for the little baby’s mundan. Everybody was dying to see.’
‘Who wouldn’t want to see that little chand ka tukra? Such fairness I’ve hardly seen before. How happy his father must be with his little prince!’ enthused Lajwanti.
After a pause Kasturi added, ‘Everybody has gone. The whole house is shut up.’
‘If she has any sense, it will be permanent,’ said Lajwanti, hawking and spitting again.
‘It is not up to her, Taiji,’ said Gunvati.
‘That girl was too simple. She didn’t even know how to keep a husband,’ snorted Lajwanti disapprovingly. By now she had peeled and cut her last potato. She got up to leave and the strings of the bed moaned as they suddenly went limp without her weight.
*
After dinner, Virmati did not linger in the angan where everybody was gathered. Instead, quickly changing into her night clothes and pulling Paro behind her, she climbed the narrow staircase with its steep uncomfortable brick steps to the kotha. At the doorway, she stopped, while Paro wriggled past her, and ran to switch on the light of the storeroom. At the sight of the familiar place, Virmati felt a longing for the relative simplicity of being locked up. That punishment should have been saved for now, she thought. It would have been far more appropriate.
‘Pehnji!’ called Paro. ‘These charpais are too heavy for me.’
‘Then why are you doing it all alone?’ scolded Virmati. ‘Can’t you wait for me?’
‘But you are not coming, you’re just standing there,’ pointed out Paro.
Virmati joined her in the storeroom, and together they dragged the six charpais out, flung rolls of mattresses, pillows and sheets onto them, spread them, and then started to wedge poles for the mosquito nets crosswise between the legs of each bed.
‘Do you have to do this in Lahore, Pehnji?’ asked Paro.
‘No, we sleep inside.’
‘Inside? All the time! Chee! Do you like Lahore, Pehnji?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you glad you went there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everybody says you are studying more than anybody in the family, Pehnji.’
‘Really? Then what do they think Shakuntala Pehnji has been doing? Killing flies? And that too when she is First Class M.Sc.’
‘But they talk more about you.’
‘Oh?’
‘About your getting married. Why, why not, when, who, where! Oof! All the time! Then Pitaji says the nation needs teachers. Imagine!’
Virmati was concentrating on looping the ends of the mosquito nets around the poles. Paro continued chattering. ‘Won’t they be surprised to find the beds all done, Pehnji? Usually, Kailash and Gunvati do them.’
‘When I am here, I do them. Have you forgotten so fast, Paro?’
‘No, Pehnji. But for so long you are not here …’
‘Well, now I am.’
Virmati motioned Paro into one of the beds and slipped in next to her, carefully tucking the mosquito net beneath the mattress so that no treacherous gap would allow the insects in.
‘Now go to sleep, Paro,’ she said firmly, for Paro was all ready to go on with her stream of talk. ‘My journey has made me very tired.’
*
For a long time Virmati lay on the damp coolness of the thick khadi sheets, surrounded by the white net cocoon that once used to make her feel so safe. The moon was bright and made her ache with sadness for herself, for that thing inside her that she couldn’t name for fear of making it more real. Tears started sliding down her cheeks, and she cried, letting her breath out in small gasps in order not to wake Paro. From the gardens below she could hear crickets chirping in their thousands. The scent of the raat-ki-rani, so strong on moonlit nights, came floating up to her. The beauty added to her pain. She wished it were hot and uncomfortable and ugly.
Eventually her tears stopped, and she lay drained and corpse-like. The other sleepers had long since come and settled down. She was the only one awake. Like Lady Macbeth, she had murdered sleep. How Harish’s face had glowed as he murmured, tasted almost, ‘the multitudinous seas incarnadine / Making the green one red’, so that the stretched-out vowel sounds seemed to contain the mysteries of life. Given all that, she might as well wander around like Lady Macbeth. Quietly she got up, rearranged the thick sheet around Paro, and made her way down the ladder connecting the two terraces. On the lower terrace she was by herself, and could appear as distraught as she liked. Restless, she paced round and round.
Everything she could see from the roof was a reminder of some stage or another in her past. There at the water pump they had played as children in the summer, building miniature canals and dams, there were the fruit trees they had climbed, hiding from the mali, there her tai’s house, where the Professor had been a tenant, where she and her brother used to go for help with their English lessons, there the gate through which she had walked that fateful day, two years ago, to throw herself into the canal at Tarsikka. And right above, in the store-cum-bedroom, she had been kept locked by her mother because she had been so bad.
In Lahore she had thought that, once home, things would become clear, she would be able to meet Harish, think and plan. She had not considered what she would do beyond seeing him, and it turned out he wasn’t even there. What was she to do now? Even if she could get word to him, would he rush back and marry her? In time for there to be no disgrace? When he hadn’t married her for so long? What world was she living in?
Rapidly Virmati walked up and down the terrace, the firmness and lightness of her tread ensuring that she made no noise. Gradually her mind grew empty. She began to be more wholly alive to the brilliance of the moonlight, to the faint moist touch of the night air, to the fragrance of the raat-ki-rani, and the soft, quick flap-flap of her slippers. Whatever it was, she thought, she would be able to tackle her problems on her own. She had lived away from home for almost a year, she had seen women growing in power and strength, claiming responsibility for their lives, declaring that society would be better off if its females were effective and capable. Why had she been so upset to learn of Harish’s absence? She would solve her problems on her own. She was worthy of independence.
In this calmer state, she became aware of the fatigue of her body. She looked around her and smiled. How long it seemed since that morning! She had travelled so far. It was time to sleep.
*
Next morning, Virmati vomited quietly in the outhouse and hoped that nobody would notice. As she emerged, lota in hand, she felt exhausted. The mood of the night before vanished in lethargy. Her body felt stale, the burden of its separate life loathsome and repulsive.
If only she could get rid of it, just go back in time, to that fateful moment – how long ago was it? Two months, six weeks? She had always been irregular and, preoccupied with other things, she had not bothered to keep track of her dates. She had depended on Harish to protect her. Wasn’t it his duty, having drawn her into this situation?
‘Pehnji!’ Paro’s young, untroubled voice could be heard.
‘Coming, bebu.’ Virmati mentally prepared herself for another day of appearing normal as she walked quickly towards the house, listlessly swinging her brass toilet lota.
*
Eating breakfast was agony. Paro sat beside her on her small, flat, wooden patra, and lovingly insisted on doling out spoonfuls of fresh white butter and watching them melt into clear pools on the hot parantha. ‘Everybody says how thin you have become, Pehnji,’ she said. With the help of almost as much mango pickle as butter, Virmati managed to eat one parantha, chewing slowly, concentrating on getting each mouthful successfully down. Her lassi she made very watery, with two green chillies sliced into it.
‘Green chillies?’ exclaimed Paro. ‘In lassi?’
Virmati was aware of Kasturi’s eyes turned momentarily towards her, in an appraising glance.
‘I learnt this in the hostel,’ explained Virmati. ‘A Madrassi girl there showed us how to drink it with green chillies, ginger, and fried mustard seeds. Very tasty. I’ll make it for everybody, sometime.’
Paro smiled, and Kasturi turned back to her paranthas. Virmati decided she could not stay long. She could not endure more attention, more meals, more hiding.
*
It was evening, and Virmati was wandering confusedly outside in the garden. Desperately, she thought of how she felt last night. But that upsurge of confidence only tantalized her with its memory. In its place was a hollow helplessness she tried to fight. She needed help quickly. What about the dai who used to come for her mother? An old Muslim woman, she used to come every day after the children were born, to wash her mother’s clothes, massage her abdomen with ghee, and bind it tightly with cloth. Her hands were gentle, practised hands. But how could she get in touch with her? It had always been her great-aunt who had managed that side of things.
Indu had had her baby girl in a hospital. The father had not wanted any dai, or home birth. She would go where Indu went, but silently, secretly, with her face veiled, her thighs open, for that little growing thing to be wrenched out of her.
But why was she thinking like this? Virmati gave herself a small shake. Maybe she could send word to Harish, get his address from Kanhiya. Harish would want to be involved. It wasn’t only her. After all, it wasn’t only her …
*
The next morning, Virmati set out quietly on a bicycle to meet Kanhiya. She had never been to Kanhiya’s house, and knew that her unaccompanied appearance there would seem odd to his family. As she had expected, she was looked at strangely. The mother’s ‘Beti, we have heard so much about you, I feel like you are the daughter of this house,’ came with an edge to its tone. Then, ‘Kanhiya? Oh no, he is not here. Studies all day long now, poor boy, now that the exams are near, sometimes in one friend’s house, sometimes in another’s. But who would know the ways of these boys better than you … with so many brothers. I will tell him.’
Later, to her husband, she commented, ‘Those people don’t know how to keep their daughters in order. Just think! Virmati came here to meet Kanhiya! Alone! No brother, uncle, cousin, nobody. So shameless! The poor boy must be protected from her. Are you listening?’
The husband grunted. His wife was from a village, and tended to take these things too seriously. After all, women were going alone to jails without their men folk. They could surely visit a family friend, and that too in his own house, in front of his mother. Still, he was not one to interfere.
Virmati waited anxiously for Kanhiya to return her call. Nothing happened. When she asked her brother about him in a circumspect way, Kailashnath said tersely that he had no time for idle students. Virmati was nonplussed. Next day she visited the house again, but with similar results.
*
That night, Virmati lingered in the angan next to her father after the children had eaten and dispersed. Her father’s charpai was already spread, the movement of the white mosquito net testifying to the small breezes blowing.
‘Pitaji,’ said Virmati.
Suraj Prakash glanced at her. Virmati noticed how dark the shadows under his eyes had grown, how puffy his face looked. Her heart contracted. In all her troubles, he had never raised his voice to her, had never directly communicated any of the humiliation her mother kept assuring her he was feeling.
‘Han,
beti?’
‘Pitaji, in Lahore all the girls wear at least two – two bangles. I also want a pair.’ Virmati said, pouting slightly, and holding out bare wrists for him to see.
‘It was you who insisted on leaving behind your jewellery when you left, beti.’
‘I know, Pitaji. But now that I am almost a teacher, it doesn’t look nice, such bare arms.’
‘Bare arms never did, but were you one to listen?’
Her father’s gentle way of speaking deprived this statement of any sting. ‘So you want one pair or two?’ he continued.
‘Just one, Pitaji.’
*
Virmati’s Amritsar visit was soon over. She had to go back to Lahore, take her exams, do well. Indu embraced her again and again with tears in her eyes. Kasturi said, ‘I hope you do well and justify all the fuss that has been made over your studies.’ Kailash hugged her awkwardly. The younger ones waited impatiently for her to go, so they could run off and play. Paro insisted on coming to the station.