‘Yes.’
‘Couldn’t I just talk about the injustice done to some girl or other, maybe to someone’s sister?’
‘I’ve no hopes, but I do have some misgivings about him.’ She shook her head diffidently as she spoke. ‘Let’s go,’ she said under her breath, and pushed her chair back to get up.
‘Have some coffee before you leave,’ Asad pushed aside her cup and slid his untouched cup before her.
Tara shook her head in refusal.
‘Just one sip,’ he insisted.
She again shook her head.
Asad remained quiet for a few seconds, and then picked up her cup in which tears had mixed with the coffee. He said looking at her, ‘Tara, I swear that I shall never forget your tear-filled eyes. I will wait for that day when I will see your eyes smiling, and the hope will give me the courage to wipe the tears from the eyes of innocent, suffering people everywhere.’ He put the cup to his lips.
‘What are you doing?’ Tara finally broke her silence. Asad drained the cup, and put it back in its saucer. He said, ‘Tara, trust me. Try and find a way for us to meet. I’ll try too.’
Tara stood up. Asad went up to her, and put his arm around her shoulders.
Tara said haltingly, ‘If that’s possible, if I’m alive …I can’t promise.’
Tears were again welling up in her eyes, but she bit her lip to hold them back and to control herself. She went out of the booth ahead of Asad.
Asad walked to the cashier to pay for the coffee. Tara began slowly walking towards the door. Asad paid up, then reached the exit by taking long steps to reach before Tara, and opened the door for her. As they reached the pavement, Asad and Tara saw Puri in a tonga going along the road. Puri had already seen them. The tonga came to a halt. Puri’s eyes were still on them. His face was flushed with anger.
Tara suppressed a chill creeping up her spine. Asad too was at a loss, but called out ‘Hello!’ and walked towards Puri. Tara, her head bowed, followed him.
Puri got down from the tonga. He did not smile or reply to Asad’s greeting. In spite of Puri’s cold, hard stare, Asad asked, ‘Where are you coming from?’
Puri turned his eyes away without answering him.
Asad felt insulted, but tried to lighten the awkwardness of the situation. He glanced at Tara, and said, ‘We came here for a cup of coffee.’
Tara, visibly shaken and nervous, was still looking down. Asad said in English, ‘Tara’s very upset. We were talking about her problem.’
Puri had been able to control his anger and surprise to some extent. He replied sarcastically in English, ‘Is that so? She’s my sister, or so I thought, but I see that you know her better than I do.’
That riled Asad, but he said in a conciliatory tone, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s not all that unusual for someone other than a brother to understand the problems of a sister.’
‘Oh really? I’ll try my hardest to understand her problems.’ Puri said curtly, and again looked away.
Asad swallowed the insult and said, ‘If you’re in a hurry now, maybe we can meet some other time and talk about this.’
Puri said, without looking at him, ‘Thank you.’
‘Goodbye,’ Asad said, ignoring Puri’s rudeness. He could not linger around further and began walking towards the party office.
Tara had been standing in silence. Puri ordered her, ‘Get into the tonga.’
When the tonga had gone only a short distance, Puri—still smouldering from the encounter—spoke in English so that the tongawallah would not understand, ‘What game are you playing?’
‘What do you mean by “game”?’ Tara protested in English. Her head was still bowed.
‘You’d come to meet Surendra.’
‘I did go to the party office with Surendra.’
‘There’s no doubt whom you’d really come to meet.’
Tara had nothing more to lose, and therefore refused to accept his accusation tamely. She said, ‘You too have meetings with somebody. Don’t I know?’
‘That’s my own business. What is that to you?’ Puri’s tone became harder.
‘This too is my own business.’ She did not hold back.
Puri squirmed with anger, ‘You used me as an excuse to get out of the house. And you came with me as escort, remember!’
‘Didn’t you send me to Kanak’s for the same reason?’
‘Didn’t you first ask to go to Kanak’s yourself?
‘I didn’t ask you today.’
‘But you did in the past.’ There was no conviction in his reply, but he still said that to justify himself.
Tara kept quiet. Puri too remained silent, seething with indignation. Tara felt she was being carried back to her home against her will just like an animal being dragged away for sacrifice. She had but one wish, that at the very moment she could somehow kill herself, that she could jump in front of a passing motorcar and die, but each clop from the horse’s hooves was carrying her back nearer home.
Finding it hard to contain his anger, Puri said, ‘I don’t want to be held responsible for your behaviour in future.’
‘That suits me just fine,’ Tara shot back curtly. Infuriated with each other, they both sat without saying another word.
The tonga went past the road leading to the Gwal Mandi. How could Puri ask Tara to go to Kanak’s house in the present situation? Tara was being deliberately malicious and unkind, he thought. She was going back on her word and letting him down, and he could do nothing about it.
In the evening, hired carriages were not allowed to enter Shahalami Gate because of the dense crowds in the bazaar. Puri and Tara had to get down from the tonga outside the gate. They walked side by side; Puri silently fuming at the wrongdoer he had unmasked, Tara silent with the guilt of having been caught red-handed.
Babu Govindram was smoking a small hookah on the chabutara below his house. Masterji was talking with him. Puri and Tara, still in silence, climbed the stairs one behind the other.
In the daylight that still remained, Bhagwanti, with the help of Pushpa, was sewing some embroidered
gota
lace on Tara’s trousseau. Usha was cooking the evening meal in the kitchen. Bhagwanti said to Puri, ‘You’ve both been out for a long time.’
Puri grunted in reply, picked up his lungi and went towards the veranda to change. Tara looked into the room, and went straight to the roof.
Most houses in Punjab had rooftop latrines, and it was not unusual for someone returning home to go straight to the roof. Tara pulled out a charpoy and lay down in the fresh air. She was too disturbed to sit or talk with anybody. A suicidal person does not like to be with other people. After what had transpired between her and Puri, what else could she wish for but death?
Puri had taken off his shoes and was changing his clothes. Pushpa called from inside the room, ‘Say, bhai, where did you take your sister for your outing? You might invite us to go along with you from time to time.’
‘What outing? We just went out for a while.’ He replied, folding his trousers carefully to keep the creases sharp.
‘I just thought I’d ask.’ Pushpa went on, ‘You’ve been getting the dowry together to present to your sister. Tell me, how far off is the day when you yourself would be ready to receive one?’ Her voice rang with teasing banter, inviting a response.
‘Yes.’ Puri’s tone showed that he was in no mood for jokes.
He changed back into his street clothes, put his shoes on and called out to his mother, ‘I’ll be back soon,’ and went downstairs.
Puri, already quite distressed by Kanak’s strange behaviour, was even more troubled by Tara’s actions and her unrepentant attitude. That he could not share his pain with anybody rankled with particular intensity. He wanted to deal with Tara’s improper and shameless behaviour without telling his parents. It was not easy for him to hide his concern and frustration from the others in the family.
Pushpa was threading her needle. Snipping the thread from the spool with her teeth, she asked, ‘Where’s Tara—still on the roof?’
As birds flying in the sky instinctively know about the approach of rain and storm, a mother too can feel the moods and whims of the children she has known and cared for since their birth.
‘They must have quarrelled, what else!’ Bhagwanti replied. ‘Both may seem to have become adults, but in temperaments they’re still children.’
‘Hai, why would they quarrel?’ Pushpa wanted to know.
‘Oh, perhaps the brother said, “Let’s go this way,” and the sister replied, “No, let’s take the other way.” That’s enough ground for a falling-out.’
‘I’ve never seen them quarrel.’
‘Wah, they quarrelled so badly when they were small that I’d lose all patience with them. He would beat her without reason, and she’s just as strong-willed. She’d bite him and swear at him like mad. They may seem mature and highly educated now, but their natures haven’t changed. Tara is the secretive type; she doesn’t say much, but she doesn’t forget things and nurses her grudges for a long time…’
After he passed out of high school and went on to college, Puri stopped hitting Tara, even when he was very angry with her. Usha had turned eleven, and she was there if he wanted to slap someone. When Puri was sent to prison, Tara regarded his courage and patriotism as reflecting credit on the family. Whenever she sent the family letter to him in prison, she addressed him as ‘Respected Bhaiji’ or ‘Honoured Bhai’. When he came back from prison, instead of calling him ‘Jaddi’ as before, she began to use ‘bhai’ or ‘bhaiji’ to address him. The squabbles, playful scuffles and horseplay of the past were now happy memories. They agreed on most things. Brother and sister formed a united front against the narrow-minded and conservative outlook of their family and of the people of the gali. Tara respected him for what she thought to be the exceptional brilliance of her brother.
She came downstairs from the roof after half an hour. Her mother gave her one look and said, ‘Come here.’
Tara was removing clothes to change into from the slung rope that was their collective wardrobe. She asked, ‘What for?’
‘Come here, I said. How’re you feeling?’ She held out a hand to touch Tara.
‘I’m all right. I just have a headache.’ Tara went to her and let her mother touch her arm.
‘See, she has fever!’ Her mother raised her eyebrows. ‘Pushpa, feel her arm and tell me.’
Pushpa agreed with Bhagwanti after feeling Tara’s arm, ‘Yes, she’s running a fever.’
‘She must have been wandering around in the sun. Her brother is just as thoughtless. He should remember that girls can’t gad about all over the place like boys.’ Bhagwanti said. ‘Go to the veranda and lie down on the charpoy. Your face is so pale. Why did you go out in the first place?’ A thought occurred to her, and she said, ‘If you couldn’t walk, you should’ve asked your brother to hire a tonga.’
Tara did not feel like explaining. She changed her clothes, tied her dupatta tightly around her head, and lay down. ‘It’s good if I have a fever,’ she thought, ‘it saves me the bother of answering every silly question.’
Puri returned home around eight. The curfew was to begin at 8 o’clock. As she gave him dinner, his mother said, ‘Tara has a fever. The two of you should take care not to be out and about so much, away from home. You’re not kids any more.’
Puri thought, ‘I know what’s behind her so-called fever.’ To answer her accusation, he said to his mother, ‘She’s the one who insisted on going out. And most of the time she stayed at her friend’s house, and hardly went anywhere else.’
As on every other night, Puri was working on the history textbook on the roof in the light of a table lamp. He had shaded the lamp in such a way that its light would not disturb the others sleeping on the roof. His mind was so uneasy after the day’s events that his eyes would read a paragraph of text in English, but his brain would not register a single word. When he tried to write, the pen clung to his hand without touching the paper.
‘It’s not good for you to sleep in the open if you have a fever! Why don’t you listen to me?’ He heard his mother say.
He shaded his eyes from the light and saw that Tara had come up to the roof and was lying on a charpoy. Tara answered her mother, ‘Must you always make a mountain out of a molehill? I have hardly any fever. I just can’t breathe in that stifling heat downstairs. I’ll feel better up here.’
‘Achcha, cover yourself with a thick sheet. I’ll bring you one.’
Puri’s lips tightened in disapproval. ‘What does she want to achieve by this display?’ he wondered. ‘Women! So much deception and slyness behind that façade of frailty! I’ve just seen two examples. How Kanak first pretended to give her heart to me, then got me to accept money doled out by her father so that she could put me down. She is acting as if Model Town is as far from Gwal Mandi as some foreign country. Makes her father dance
to her tune, and now she tries the same thing with me. Deception, thy name is woman! And Tara! What’s she up to, in her sly way, behind her pretended modesty and innocence, and her opposition to marriage? Couldn’t find anybody but a Muslim to get entangled with! Wants to blacken the family name! What cheek she showed to me! Such insulting behaviour! I’ll make sure that she gets rid of that attitude.’
Once again, Puri could not concentrate on his work the next morning. All his problems seemed to be closing in on him. Kanak had made him feel that he was not worthy of her love because she belonged to a higher social class, and Tara was sullying his and his family’s honour. He had no money, no social standing, not even a job; the only thing he could cling to was his reputation. He wanted to keep it intact, and Tara was bent upon dirtying it. A man is less concerned about his own philandering becoming public knowledge as about the disclosure of the misbehaviours of his womenfolk—mother, sister or wife. Kanak had hurt him and slipped out of his reach. His impotent rage against Kanak could only be vented upon Tara. His growing ill humour was clouding his mind.
Through that state of fogginess and confusion, the words that Asad had used shone like a flash of lightning, ‘Someone other than a brother might understand the problems of a sister.’ What does Asad claim to be, a husband or a lover? The utter gall of the man! He’s challenged me! I must do something immediately …’ He put his pen down and pressed his hands to his temples.