‘Tara couldn’t have taken away Sheelo against her will,’ Kanak said in agreement.
‘He says what’ll become of Sheelo if Mohanlal marries another woman. Mohanlal already must have tried to marry again during this time. For people like Mohanlal a wife is nothing more than a servant who’s only to be kept fed and clothed. When he failed elsewhere, he probably thought that he would try to get back the one he could push around. Sheelo’s an adult. What can we do if she doesn’t want to go back to him? It’s strange that they both kept silent for three years. But what reason Tara had to get involved in this?’
‘Tara had our address. You also wrote to her. She did not care to answer us, but went to Sheelo on her own. She also met Babu Govindram’s family. What could be the reason?’ Kanak said with suspicion.
‘What do I know?’ Puri replied. ‘Maybe she didn’t want to face me.’
‘Why? You said she wanted revenge. Why so?’
‘I had caught her meeting secretly with Asad, so she’s probably harbouring some sort of resentment against me. When I had asked her what she was up to, she had bashed her head to appear innocent.’ Puri continued, ‘I also wrote about Somraj in the letter to her. She hasn’t answered, so
you can draw your own conclusion. Why should we pick a quarrel with Somraj for nothing?’
Kanak kept silent. Her own secret meetings with Puri, her being found out with him in Nainital by Nayyar and Kanta went through her mind. She felt grateful for Nayyar’s gentlemanly behaviour. She thought of the letter Babu Govindram had sent from Delhi: ‘Tara beti is like a devi.’ Jijaji did tell me that Tara was married off against her wish.
After they reached the office and before she could start to work, Puri called Kanak to one side and explained, ‘It won’t be appropriate for me to go to Delhi. You wanted to go and meet your mother, so why don’t you go? You can find Tara’s address from Govindram. I don’t know what Tara has in mind. She seemed quite happy at the time of her wedding and even during the months before that, but now she’s clammed up after being told about her in-laws. My appearing at her doorstep may scare her, there may be a scene. Govindram and Ratan are in touch with her. Go with them to her place. And tell Hari not be too friendly with Kishor Chand. There’s no need to mention all this to pitaji for now. Do as you think proper when you have assessed the situation in Delhi. Give Sheelo’s address to Kishor Chand. Don’t take on any other responsibility. There’s no need to give Tara’s or Govindram’s address to Kishor Chand.’
The weekly went to press on Thursdays, so it was the busiest day for Kanak, but she could not help thinking, ‘He does not want to go to Delhi. He still feels so much anger towards Tara. And Tara is nothing if not a mystery. Either she is showered with praise or severely condemned. Hope I don’t get into some mess. If that appears to be likely, I won’t get involved.’
Puri said to Kishor Chand in the evening, ‘Something unexpected has turned up. I won’t be able to leave for two days. Since it’s a family matter, it’d be easier for Kanak to talk to women. You can stay at Kanak’s parents.’
Kanak and Kishor Chand reached Delhi early in the morning. It was 10.30 before Kanak finished talking with her parents, had a wash and got dressed, and was ready to go to Karol Bagh with Kanchan. She had asked Kanchan to telephone her college for a day’s leave. Kanak told Kishor Chand to wait for her to come back or, if he felt like it, to go for a walk in some bazaar for a while. Although Jaya had come to her maternal grandparents after a year and a half, she remembered meeting them. She sat in their lap, delighted
them by giving kisses and hugs, but began to wail when she saw her mother leave. She had to be taken along. Kanak told her mother that she had to visit several people and not to worry if she was late in returning home.
The taxi dropped Kanak and Kanchan at Karol Bagh. Kanak had difficulty in recognizing the district where she had come five years ago with her father to attend Gandhiji’s prayer meeting. The area that had been sparsely built with one or two-storeyed houses was now buzzing with activity. The bazaar was not crowded at this hour, but the stores were chock-a-block with goods. Fruit vendors, with oranges and bananas piled up high in handcarts parked under the shade of a tree or in the shadow of tall buildings, were shouting in competition with one another. The scene was reminiscent of the bazaar outside Lohari Gate or the Anarkali square in Lahore. Punjabi women, with some piece of work in their hands, sat on charpoys placed on the shady side in galis. Smoke rose from a couple of tandoors, and the thump of laundry being beaten with a bat could be heard. Some women, sleeves rolled up and salwars raised up to knees, were walking up and down trying to avoid male gazes.
The address Kanak had was from Babu Govindram’s letter of three years ago: Number Three, Nai Wali Gali. Govindram was not at Number Three anymore, but the nine-year-old daughter of the family living there accompanied Kanak and pointed out Govindram Khanna’s new dwelling on top of a row of shops in the bazaar. Fixed to a door in the gali behind the shops was a small letterbox with ‘Govindram & Sons’ inscribed on it in Urdu and English, and next to it, the button for a buzzer.
A girl of about fifteen opened the door to the stairs to the first floor. Kanak said, ‘I’ve come from Jalandhar. I am Tara bahin’s bhabhi.’
The girl’s eyes opened wide. She moved aside to make way, then unable to contain her excitement, turned around and leapt up the stairs.
Kanak and Kanchan were half way up when they heard her yelling, ‘
Jhhai
, mom, bhabhi has come from Jalandhar. The wife of Puri bhappa has come.’
Meladei, smoothing out her aanchal, came to the door at the top of the stairs. She gave aashirwad to Kanak and Kanchan. She showed them to a takht covered with a duree and khes, and asked, ‘Where’s your luggage?’
Kanak said, ‘We’ve no luggage. I’m staying at my parent’s home.’
Meladei said complainingly, ‘Wah, if that is home then this is also your home. You always stay there. This time you should’ve come here.’ Turning
her face, she called out towards the next room, ‘Channa beti, come here. Your bhabhi’s come.’
Her daughter-in-law came and shyly said namaste.
‘She’s you elder brother’s wife. Do pairipaina,’ Meladei said in a voice choking with affection. The young woman bent down to touch Kanak’s feet.
Kanak pulled back her feet, and holding the woman’s hand, made her sit beside her on the takht. Jaya was hugged and kissed. She had to say namaste to everyone.
Meladei said, ‘My daughter, you’ve been out in hot sun. First tell me, what’ll you have? Orange juice, lassi, lassi with
pera
s or lemonade? Have whatever you like. Don’t be formal. You are Bhagwanti’s daughter-in-law, so you are also mine.’
‘Maaji, we ate something less than an hour ago. Don’t feel like anything right now. It’s like home, we’ll ask ourselves,’ Kanak and Kanchan both said.
Meladei said, shaking her head, ‘I won’t have any of that. For me there’s no difference between you and Dammo, Tara, Usha or Channa. You can have something to eat after an hour or hour and a half, but have something to drink.’
Meladei began to ask after Kanak’s in-laws, Jaidev, Hari, Usha and others. How happy she had been, she said, to know about Puri becoming a ‘member’, and about Usha’s marriage, adding as if to complain, ‘Hai, you people didn’t even inform us about Usha’s wedding. It’s all the result of Masterji’s hard work and of doing his dharma.’ She said good things about Puri for his intelligence, sincerity and principles, and how decent he had been to them. Then she mentioned Tara, and began to praise her to the skies, ‘She’s like a devi, she’s the personification of peace and generosity. Who hasn’t been helped by her? May God give a daughter or a daughter-in-law like her to everyone. That poor Brahmin woman Purandei, our neighbour from Bhola Pandhe’s Gali, was really badly off, with a twenty-year-old daughter to care for and nobody to help her. Only Tara arranged vocational training for the girl, got her a government job, and then spent her own money on the girl’s wedding. Where can one find such big-hearted person? And what she hasn’t done to help us. We always sing her praise and give her many aashirwad. May God give her a life of a hundred years, may she become the lord officer of the highest rank.’
‘I’d like to meet Tara bahin. Where does she live?’
‘You mean her flat on Panchkuian Road?’ Meladei said. ‘She moved into that place two years ago. You haven’t been to Delhi lately?’
Around 1 p.m., a five-year-old boy wearing a convent school uniform arrived. Meladei wiped the sweat off his forehead with her aanchal, then said, ‘Ghullu, do pairipaina to your mami.’
He was a good-looking child. Kanak pulled him into her lap. Her mind was busy working what the relations of bhabhi and mami could mean.
Govindram had gone to Meerut on business, and was expected back late in the evening. Ratan came home for lunch. On being introduced to Kanak, he respectfully addressed her as bhabhi, and touched her feet. He sat down next to Kanak, and began to complain about not being invited to Puri’s wedding. He asked the same questions about the family in Jalandhar that Meladei had asked.
Meladei broke in, ‘First share with us whatever plain and simple lunch there is, then you may chat till the evening.’
Meladei stopped insisting only after Kanak and Kanchan swore many times that they had no appetite. The daughter-in-law filled three platters with grapes, bananas and oranges, and put it before them. Ratan asked his thali to be sent where they all sat. As long as he was eating his lunch, Meladei kept on asking Kanak and Kanchan to have some fruit. If they said no, she’d complain lovingly, ‘My daughters, even though we live in Delhi, we are pukka Punjabis when it comes to eating, but you live in Punjab and hardy eat anything! What has happened to you?’
After Ratan finished his lunch, Kanak asked him to give them Tara’s address or to accompany them to her place.
‘I won’t let you go out in the blazing sun with the child. I can’t do that. She’s so sleepy. Relax here for some time, even if our place is small. Have your dinner early, then go,’ Meladei said decisively.
Ratan agreed with his mother, ‘Tara bahin would be in her office at this hour. She’s seldom back before 5.15 or 5.30. You rest here, we have hardly talked. We’ll leave at five o’clock. I’ll take you there.’
Ratan’s baby daughter Munni was sleeping in a cot draped in mosquito netting. Dammo fixed another bed for Munni and Jaya, laid them in it and covered them with mosquito netting. Meladei asked for a charpoy to be brought into the room for her. So as not to disturb the sleeping children, the rest spread out mattresses in the other room and sat on them.
Channa took out two fresh dhotis from a steel trunk for Kanak and
Kanchan to change into so that their saris won’t get crushed. Ratan began to describe recent happenings in Tara’s life: Her sharing a flat with Mercy in Daryaganj, the Bhanu Dutt affair, the problems at her office after the camps had been closed down, Tara’s promotion to the post of undersecretary, and how hard she worked and how even the secretary of the department thought twice before changing the remarks she made on case files. There was rampant corruption in government offices. The clerks in Tara’s office sometimes accepted bribes without her knowledge, but she could not be bribed even with a million rupees to change even one letter in her remarks on case files.
Ratan went on, ‘We’d have been ruined if Tara had not helped by arranging a loan of Rs 16,000. We had all but used up all our money in buying a 134 square yard plot of land where we have a row of shops now. Then we took a loan against the land and bought another plot of 100 square yards. One had to have the guts of a Punjabi to pay 125 per cent of the actual price, half in cash and the rest on deferred payments at 12 per cent interest. The locals used to laugh at us. Bhabhi, when the foundation for these three shops was laid, we hardly had Rs 2,000 in cash. Then people began to offer advance payment for renting the shops. We decided on a rent of Rs 700 for the three. My father refused to accept even one paisa less than a premium of Rs 10,000 for the shop in the middle, and Rs 15,000 for ones on both sides of it. People had to pay up. We got the shops built in three months, sometimes working at night by gaslights. Last year we built these rooms on the first floor, and rented out half of it at Rs 125 per month. It’s not a bad deal for us to pay 12 per cent interest on the loan. When we build the second floor, a rent of Rs 150 per month is almost certain. I used to work with Gajendar Singh at one anna in a rupee as my share of the profit. I was forced to. This year I bought my own truck in instalments. Gajendar joined his hands and begged me to join him. I said to him, “All right, we’ll work together but you’ll have to give me three annas in a rupee…”’
Ratan noticed Kanak not taking any interest in his business talk. Kanchan also had said ‘excuse me’ and turned her face twice and yawned. Ratan added a few final words, ‘Bhabhi, it’s not money that matters. It was Tara who saved Channa’s life. I was able to have my own family only because of her kindness. Otherwise I had vowed never to marry.’
Channa got up shyly and left the room.
Kanak gave Ratan a questioning look.
Ratan smiled, ‘You didn’t recognize her? Channa is Tara’s cousin Sheelo. She’d have committed suicide if Tara had not reached in time.’
His words gave Kanak goose pimples.
Ratan went on, ‘Now I’m related to you in more than one way. You’re my double bhabhi.’
Kanak was unable to say anything, so she just smiled.
Ratan got to his feet, ‘Bhabhiji, I’ve to go out for a while. You take a nap. I’ll be back by five and take you to Tara bahin. I’ll also ring her from the shop below.’
Kanak could hardly take a nap. She was puzzled by Tara’s labyrinthine story. Kishor Chand’s anger and Puri’s worry! But when she came to Sheelo’s home she found her so happy! How would she now bring up what Mohanlal and Kishor Chand were asking?
Sheelo came and asked Kanak, ‘Bhabhiji, would you like some
shikanjbin
lemonade?’
‘No, no.’ Kanak held her hand and ask her to sit. She asked, ‘I’m so happy about you. Tell me, what happened?’