Difficult Daughters (26 page)

*

After the pugri was tied on Kailashnath, and the pollution of her father’s death wiped away by religious ceremonies, the Professor made love to Virmati every night. It was the only way of getting close, though the ardour was missing.

The morning Virmati retched in the angan was a happy day for him. She was pregnant, he was sure. Their union had borne fruit within her womb, and now she must be true to her nature and turn her attention to him and the child.

Out in the angan, crouched next to the pump, Virmati was staring at her vomit. She moved the handle slowly, and watched the water wash the sluggish, stinking mass down the small hole in the wall, into the open drain next to the house. As she watched she felt sick of her body, which as usual asserted itself when she was most unprepared. Now it had taken whatever small shred of privacy she had left. The whole household could hear her. The whole household could put two and two together.

‘What is the matter with Mummy?’ Giridhar was asking his mother. ‘Is she sick?’

‘Nothing that concerns us, beta,’ was Ganga’s reply.

‘Why is she throwing up then?’

‘Women do that, silly,’ said Chhotti. ‘Even Bhabhiji did this when she was having you.’

‘No she didn’t.’

‘Yes she did.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, Bhabhi, didn’t you?’ Chhotti turned to appeal to her mother.

‘Don’t trouble me,’ retorted Ganga sharply, a look of fear crossing her face.

‘Yes, you did. I remember. Now Mummy is doing it.’ Chhotti giggled as she said this. ‘What fun!’

‘Bhabhi, look at what Chhotti is saying,’ whined Giridhar.

Ganga slapped her daughter and shouted, ‘Let me see how you laugh when some woman’s baby comes and takes your father away from you.’

Chhotti stared at her mother, tears coming into her eyes.

Giri started to cry, ‘I don’t want a baby, I don’t want a baby.’

‘Don’t be upset,’ said Ganga silkily. ‘What can you or I do? Now your new mother is going to provide you with lots of brothers and sisters and you must be very good and share everything with them.’

By this time Giridhar’s cries had reached a crescendo, and Harish looked testily from his room to silence them.

*

Virmati’s morning throwing-up at the pump continued. The children stared at her from the veranda with bland faces. Virmati felt they almost made it a point to be there. Her sharp ears could hear them talking about
gandi
mummy.

Kishori Devi meanwhile changed. Without saying anything, she substituted Virmati’s morning cup of tea with a glass of hot milk, with either almonds or honey added to it. Then, almost every day there was a milk sweet with the evening meal, kheer, rubri, rasgulla, shrikhand, rasmalai – things that Kishori Devi especially made. There was even talk of keeping a cow.

*

‘Beta,’ said Kishori Devi to her son. ‘Bahu should sleep with us.’

Harish looked wary. ‘Why, Amma?’ he asked.

‘In her condition it is best,’ said Kishori Devi enigmatically. ‘I will move her pillow, sheets and quilt onto my bed.’

‘Your bed?’

‘Virmati is not some kind of maharani who needs a separate bed all to herself.’

Men were supposed to understand sexual taboos, but Harish had been in England so long that she elaborated for his benefit, ‘For the health of the child.’

‘But Amma, I do not see the need,’ said Harish lamely.

Kishori Devi replied sternly. ‘The shashtras say that a woman carrying a child must be governed by pure thoughts, loose clothes, sweet cooling liquids, milk …’

‘It is still too early, Amma.’

‘No, it is not. Her thoughts should be pure all the time. The effect will be seen in the child, the flesh and blood of your father.’

Harish was defenceless before these oblique references.

‘I will recite the Gita to him every night,’ went on his mother. ‘By the time he is born his sanskars will be very good.’

‘Amma, this might come as a shock to her.’

‘Let her learn our family ways as soon as possible. No sacrifice is too great for the coming child,’ stated Kishori Devi mournfully.

‘But Amma –’

‘With Ganga it was the same. I cannot make distinctions between my daughters-in-law.’

‘No, no … of course not,’ said Harish looking confused. What was his mother talking about? He had no idea of how Ganga’s last pregnancy had been spent, of how many Sanskrit slokas his mother had recited to the unborn foetus, on which bed she had spent her nights, what she ate, what she drank, what she thought.

‘So that is settled,’ said Kishori Devi, getting up, muttering ‘
Hai
Ram,
Hai
Ram,’ and groaning with every limb she straightened. She made towards the kitchen, her hand pressed to her back, as her son stood and watched, aware of her in a way he had never been before.

Virmati was appalled. Her mother-in-law had barely spoken to her in all the months she had been in Moti Cottage, and now she wanted to sleep with her. Her flesh prickled at the thought. Was she such a personless carrier of her husband’s seed?

‘How can you expect me to do such a thing?’ she whispered bitterly in the low tone she now almost automatically used when they were in their room together.

‘It is her concern for your baby,’ pleaded Harish.

‘What about me? How do you think I am going to feel about the whole thing? Did you say anything about that?’ demanded Virmati.

‘I thought you would be pleased, her showing such concern, reciting the Gita to you every night, when she is tired. She is old, you know.’

Virmati’s face assumed a pinched look, the lips thinned and straightened, the eyes glassed over as though they could not see. Even her cheeks seemed to fold inwards.

‘This shows great progress on Amma’s part,’ went on Harish. ‘She is struggling to reconcile herself to reality. With our child, you will be accepted in no time.’

*

That night Virmati lay stiffly next to her mother-in-law. The old lady sang some slokas in a low undertone. From time to time her voice would rise, and she would snake a claw-like hand onto Virmati’s abdomen to make rotating motions on it. The first time this happened, Virmati almost jumped out of her skin with surprise and horror. After that she lay rigidly, the slokas grating on her ear, tensely apprehensive of the moment that hand would touch her again. Cramps started to shoot across her back and belly. After Kishori Devi had croaked herself to sleep, Virmati lay on her back, her hands folded over a still flat stomach. She tried not to breathe too deeply. Her mother-in-law smelt of age, of sickly, heavy coconut oil, of foul, sweet breath. Resignedly, Virmati got up to vomit and then crept back to the dressing-room.

Every night for the next few weeks, Virmati would hear slokas in Kishori Devi’s bed, and then vomit her way back into her own. With an aching abdomen, and a lingering sour taste in her mouth, she would try and sleep. In the day she looked wan and hollow-eyed.

‘Soon this vomiting period will be over,’ said Kishori Devi to her son. ‘Then she will not have to get up in the night.’

‘I hope so, Amma.’

‘My poor boy,’ said Kishori Devi looking at him with pity. ‘Don’t worry. First pregnancies are like this. And with boys it is even more difficult.’

‘How do you know it is a boy?’

‘She has the signs. I can just see it in her face and movements, the shape of her belly, the things she craves.’

Harish was not aware of Virmati’s craving anything. ‘What does she want?’ he asked.

‘Sweet, cold things,’ said Kishori Devi categorically.

‘I’m not so sure she actually wants …’

‘That is what women should be given in the first three months,’ interrupted his mother. ‘Then Shashtika rice with curd in the fourth month, with milk in the fifth, with ghee in the sixth. Even her enemas should be of milk and ghee.’

‘I don’t think Virmati needs an enema.’

‘We shall see. The body should be clean and pure at all times. Sons cannot be born just like that.’

I will have a girl to spite her, thought Virmati.

*

It’s a girl, thought Ganga. She can’t keep away from sour things, though Amma refuses to see that. It wasn’t like that when I had Giridhar. God will make sure it is a girl. And, from once a week, she started fasting twice a week, for the long and prosperous life of her husband.

*

Virmati had completed three months of pregnancy when she woke in the middle of the night convulsed with cramps. Thick, dark red, rubbery clots dotted the inside of her salwar. Bent double with agony, she managed to get up, fold some old cloth into a long, thick pad and tie it around herself with a string. In no time at all she could feel the blood soaking through. Alarmed, she lay down, clenching her thighs together, hoping that if she was very careful and did not move, the cramps would go away. Perspiration dripped onto the sheet from the side of her face. Through the spasms ran incoherent thought – they mustn’t know – mustn’t come to know.

Virmati’s moans woke Harish, whom prolonged abstinence had made restless.

‘What is it, darling?’ he asked tenderly. He put his hand on her face and felt the perspiration.

‘You can’t be hot,’ he exclaimed as his fingers travelled swiftly over her, down to her salwar, and inserted themselves between her legs.

Inert and exhausted, Virmati let him do what he liked.

Harish’s hand encountered a wet and soggy mass. He quickly withdrew it and put on the light to see blood everywhere. He looked at his wife. Why hadn’t she said anything? He turned her towards him. Even through the pain he could see the inflexible, resolute expression on her face.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

Virmati said nothing. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyelids as Harish went to call his mother.

‘Hai
Ram!’ exclaimed Kishori Devi when she saw Virmati. By now the blood had begun to soak the sheets. ‘Why has she let it go so far? Beta, call the doctor. Hurry, nothing should happen to the baby.’

Ganga stood in the doorway and watched.

The doctor came, gave Virmati an injection, pronounced the baby lost, and made sure the miscarriage was completed in the hospital in sterile conditions. Released the next day, Virmati came staggering home to a durrie spread on the string bed. The mattresses had all been removed by her thoughtful mother-in-law, who assured her son that Virmati would not be able to bear the sight of bedding that had been so polluted by vaginal bleeding.

‘I will rip open the mattress, wash the cotton and the cover, get it beaten, stuffed, and stitched again.’

Harish stared mournfully at her.

‘So soon after her father. Some women are weak by nature.’

*

Virmati became better, but not less dull. One abortion and one miscarriage. She was young, she told herself, years stretched out before her. Years of penetration, years of her insides churning with pregnant beginnings.

God was speaking. He was punishing her for the first time. Maybe she could never have children. She had robbed her own womb three years earlier, just as she had robbed another woman of her husband. Ganga’s face, swollen with hate and fear, had followed her everywhere, the venom concentrated in the gaze of her evil eye. Maybe that was why Kishori Devi had taken all those precautions.

That brief first time she had been in perfect health, but, preoccupied with shame, she had violated her body. The time for a child lay in the future. Now she felt she was left with nothing. Her job could not sustain her, and flaunting Harish seemed a pathetic gesture, signifying her emotional poverty.

*

Summer came, and this time no poetic distraction to enliven the company. Harish was at his wits’ end. It had been over a year since their marriage and all that had made Virmati so dear to him seemed to have vanished completely. In her place was a block of wood, whose only response to the world was the passive oozing of tears. Even his most ardent caresses could not arouse her.

‘Why not, darling, why not?’ Harish started being more insistent.

‘It hurts.’

‘I’ll be gentle. It won’t hurt you, I promise.’ Then, when she said nothing, ‘Don’t you love me any more?’

Eventually she submitted to his caresses, but that was all it was, a submission, and he was too sensitive not to mind.

*

Ganga’s tread grew lighter in the house, her stares less malevolent, the scolding of her children less strident. Her husband had married the girl he had run after for five years – the witch – and much good it had brought him. The sindhoor in her parting shone brighter, her bindi sparkled on her clear white forehead.

Virmati silent and withdrawn, paled in comparison.

How stubborn she is, thought Harish. After her father and grandfather, she has not been the same. Further study will improve her. It was not like this when she was studying in Lahore. There she had a proper respect for our relationship.

Thus was born the idea of sending Virmati off to Lahore to do an MA. Harish chose philosophy for her subject. It would be a civilizing influence and induce a larger perspective on life. Part of his extensive library was devoted to European, British and Hindu thought, and Virmati could use those very books. They would read together, like they had done long ago, before things had become messy and complicated. Virmati and he had been at their happiest when he had been teaching, and she learning.

Virmati acquiesced. That is, she said nothing when Harish suggested the idea to her.

Ganga rejoiced. He was sending her away. True, she was going to study, and was not being returned to her mother’s, which would have been a clearer statement, but still, the house would be all hers. Just like it used to be. Poor Virmati. What woman would want to exchange a home for a classroom?

It is now 1944. On the war front, the Allies are slowly winning. India continues to feed this effort, with money, goods and manpower.

On the national front, after the 1942 agitations, most of the Congress leaders are still in jail.

Gandhiji is released unconditionally on 5 May, 1944 at 8.00 a.m., after twenty-one months in prison, for medical reasons. Reports of his health absorb the nation. His blood vessels are rigid, the pressure fluctuates, his heart is enlarged, his condition anaemic.

Segregation rears its ugly head. In Rani ka Bagh, a new locality proposed in Amritsar, ownership is going to be restricted to Hindus and Sikhs. In Sind, Hindus are not going to be allowed to buy property. In Lahore, two educated gentlemen refuse to continue eating the food they had ordered, or even pay for it, when they discover the bearer, as well as the caterer, are Muslims.

The word Pakistan appears more and more often in the newspapers. The Sikhs are agitated. They will resist it to the death.

Any form of assault on women is still a serious matter. In Lahore, three college students are tried and found guilty of outraging female dignity. The goonda element in the city is deplored.

Wheat continues to be in short supply. People who can afford to are told to eat meat and vegetables, leaving the grain for the poor. The language of crisis is used about food.

The Japanese invasion is a threat. In Kohima the devastation that the Japanese caused is used to fan fear of the outsider, to associate our interests even more firmly with those of Britain. This strategy is not always successful, but the enemy is still the foreigner, and not the neighbour turned stranger overnight.

The atmosphere of these years is heavy with expectations.When the war is over …, when shortages are over …, when prices are back to normal …, when the Congress leaders are out of jail …, when the Unionists finally show the League what’s what …, when the British go …, when India belongs to Indians.

*

Virmati and Harish are on their way to Lahore. Virmati is still young enough to feel that the unhappiness of the past could vanish from her life, like the thick black smoke dispersed from the train into the damp monsoon air.

The resolution concerning Virmati’s further learning has been preceded by bitterness, because family money was limited, and why should it be wasted unnecessarily on the higher education of a married woman? Ganga, who couldn’t wait for Virmati to leave, resented her studying the most. She couldn’t read, and Virmati was to do an MA! If that much attention had been given to her, she would not be in the position she was in today. She had taken her duties as a wife seriously, looked after the house, children, in-laws, and husband’s salary, but she had got no recognition for her hard work and years of sacrifice.

The night before Virmati and Harish left, Ganga looked at herself in the mirror. She traced her features with her fingers, watching the lines they made in her smooth skin. She had good eyes, a small nose with a winking diamond pin, a fair skin, the pores a little large but the colour clear. Her lips were stained orange with paan, and her lower teeth had a gap dating from her pregnancy, but still there was nothing very repulsive about her appearance.

Now that the witchcraft had worn off maybe her chance would come. Perhaps at night – after all, how long could a man remain alone? Maybe now he would see the uselessness of an educated wife. She smiled at the short while Virmati had lasted in the house. She herself would never clear the field for anyone.

*

Virmati’s stay in Lahore was going to be done cheaply. A sister of a friend of Harish’s, whose husband was away in the INA, had a small house in Krishna Nagar, not very far from Government College. A paying-guest arrangement would provide security and be economical.

As Virmati sat in the house in Krishna Nagar, and let her eyes wander over the slightly shabby furniture, over Leela, the sister, friendly but not very educated, she felt that this is what she might have been had the Professor not entered her life. Married in a slightly shabby house, with no books or music, no paintings on the wall, no air of culture, no sense of worlds beyond the here and now. Although the lady looked happy enough, she knew there were higher things in life.

*

Virmati’s life in Lahore was isolated. She was married with a husband, a co-wife and two stepchildren. She had had one abortion and one miscarriage. These barriers divided her from her fellows. She read, she studied, she spent time in the quiet hush of the library with its gallery running round, surrounded by books in wooden cupboards that stretched to the ceiling. At lunch-time she ate her solitary meal of paranthas, sabzi and achar sitting on the lawns and watching the traffic swirl around the district courts below. Sometimes the other girls strolled over to Anarkalli to shop or eat, but Virmati, acutely conscious of the need for frugality, seldom joined them.

*

Virmati’s friend in Lahore, what about her? What about Swarna Lata? They met. They exchanged news about each other, the easy part of this reunion.

‘Marriage. MA, Philosophy.’

‘A baby boy. Rationing centres opened. Price control offenders and penal servitude.’

Virmati’s negligible words became drowned in what Swarna Lata had done, ending with, ‘Come and demonstrate with us against the Draft Hindu Code Bill next Saturday outside the railway station. Men don’t want family wealth to be divided among women. Say their sisters get dowry, that’s their share, and the family structure will be threatened, because sisters and wives will be seen as rivals, instead of dependents who have to be nurtured and protected. As a result women will lose their moral position in society! Imagine!’

As Swarna talked, Virmati’s old feeling of being left out grew. Swarna hadn’t changed. Obviously her activities did not threaten her family structure. The Draft Hindu Code Bill. What did removing inequalities mean? Would a new Hindu Code remove the inequalities between two wives? From Ganga’s point of view, she was the one with too many rights, the one with monopoly. Their husband’s semen should be shared. Virmati began to giggle hysterically to herself. Swarna Lata stared.

Virmati quickly looked at her friend, her mouth slackening into wistfulness. She had to think of her husband’s good name, how he would appear to others, how his absent ears would react to any confidences she might reveal.

Lamely she said, ‘I wish I could come, Swarna, but I’m married.’

‘So? I’m not asking you to commit adultery. We have plenty of married women working with us. I’m married, aren’t I?’

Virmati looked at her hands. In Leela’s house she helped with the cooking. An old burn scar, long and brown, lingered on her right thumb. A ring that Harish had given her, a ruby set in a round of small pearls, had grease stuck in the crevices. Hands like hers, should they be raised in sloganeering? Would Harish like it?

‘It’s important that our voice be heard, Viru,’ pressed Swarna Lata. ‘Some men are planning to demonstrate against it. Won’t you add your strength to ours?’

‘If you think I can make a difference,’ said Virmati politely.

She didn’t go, though. And Swarna dropped out of her life.

*

At weekends, Virmati sometimes amused herself by taking out Leela’s offspring, Kiran and Kaka. She preferred to do this rather than make the hour’s journey to Amritsar. There was a lot to see in Lahore, and by now she was adept at locating beauty. At the mosque of Wazir Khan, she directed Kiran and Kaka’s gaze to the repetitive patterns on the four minarets. She admired the extensive inlay work in hushed whispers. She pointed out how the roof, the walls, and the pillars, every inch coloured intricately in vegetable dyes, reflected the earth and the sky in ochre, yellow, white and pale blue.

On the way home she bought the children kites, and helped to fly them on their terrace.

Another time she took them to Shalimar, built by Shah Jahan in 1652. They wandered around the gardens, admiring the pools of water, and the wavering single-spiral fountains, arising out of red stone flowers.

In the central pavilion they stared at the wooden ceilings, covered with meena work, dulled over the years, and at the mirror reflecting their images. And down below there were the marble niches where diyas used to burn behind a curtain of falling water.

She grew especially close to Kiran. Some of her most intimate moments in Lahore were spent with the girl. She was reminded of Shakuntala and herself in Dalhousie. Kiran too followed her eagerly about the house, asking her about her college, waiting to grow up so she could do all the things Virmati did, and acquire the gloss and patina Virmati had achieved through Harish, education, work, marriage and suffering.

*

Harish did not like Virmati frittering away her energy, seeing the monuments of Lahore with Kiran and Kaka. They were bright children, he conceded, but she was mother to two children in Amritsar, and sister-in-law to someone who was practically her daughter. So why was she wasting her weekends in Lahore, when she could be showering her family with the sunshine of her presence?

For the time being, however, Harish only made his displeasure known, he did not insist on any action. The charm in travelling to meet Virmati in another city lent romance and freshness to their relationship. As though they were lovers once again, with the unhappy time wiped out.

They would often go to visit Syed Hussain. In all those furtive visits to the guest room, Virmati had never seen the inside of his house. Now that she was legitimate, she could enjoy its atmosphere of privilege. Everything in it spoke of taste and refinement, the English books, the stack of 78 rpms, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, in faded blue-and-cream dust jackets, the shinning silverware around the plates at mealtimes, and the two large, sleek dogs (Faustus and Marlowe) that padded elegantly around the place.

Virmati sat on the margin, heard Harish and Syed talk, and marvelled at their flow of words, she who had no words at all.

*

With his friends, or with Virmati alone, the war dominated Harish’s conversation.

‘Their days are numbered, Viru, their days are numbered.’

‘The Allies are nearing Berlin. They definitely can’t last for more than a few days now. After so many years! I can’t believe it.’

‘Hitler is hiding in the forest caves, they say. Coward. Didn’t think twice about sending his own army to its death on the Russian front. Thank God our leaders are not like that.’

Why does he care so much? thought Virmati. It’s not our war. God knows the amount of money, arms, ammunition, not to mention soldiers, we have pumped into it, but, still, how can it be our cause when they imprison us here?

‘They are fighting in the streets now.’
At
least
their
fighting
is
open.

‘All Berlin is on fire.’
At
least
it’s
a fire
one
can
see.

‘Hitler is dead!’ 1 May, 1945.

‘Goebbels has committed suicide!’

‘Total Nazi collapse!’

‘Five hundred thousand Germans surrender!’ 5 May.

‘One million Germans surrender!’ 6 May.

‘It’s over, Viru! It’s over. War in Europe is over.’ 8 May.
Thank
God!

‘Now it’s our turn next. Now they will have no excuse. Cripps had given a commitment. At the San Francisco Peace Conference the eyes of the world will be on Britain. There will be pressure put on her to recognize our sovereignty. After all, a fifth of the world’s population is still in chains, groaning under its yoke, condemned to servitude. That is something that can cause the Allies a lot of political embarrassment given their anti-Fascist, anti-imperialist rhetoric during the war. No, Britain is now finished, Viru, finished. They have no power left, even in India. Look at the mess they are making of the food distribution. Shortages everywhere. All man-made.’

And me, thought Virmati, what about me? The war, or the end of it, rather, seems to have gone to his head. Suddenly he is transformed. He becomes visionary. His eyes are sparkling, his hair is flung about with passion. I feel so utterly left out, so utterly cold. Will there be any change in my life, I wonder?

*

In the holidays Harish’s pressure on his wife to come home increased. He had become principal of AS College, and it was increasingly difficult for him to come to Lahore. Virmati was evasive. She had a rival whom she didn’t want to see.

‘What has suddenly happened to you? You are getting very fussy. I can’t come here every time, you know.’

‘But you like coming here.’

‘Not this often. The area is too dirty and congested. Remember the tank last year.’

‘I remember many things about last year.’

‘I can’t afford to keep you in Lahore this summer. It’s two months’ board and lodging for no reason.’

‘I don’t mind going on a holiday with you, but I will not come home.’

‘Leela quite agrees with me. She thinks it better if you return.’