In summer, the schools began at 6 a.m. Masterji, Usha and Hari were at school. Puri’s unquiet mind could not focus on his work, and that made the heat below the corrugated tin roof seem all the more unbearable. The rivulets of perspiration running down his back, had not bothered him before, as he worked under the roof barsati, but they felt unbearable today. He stopped working at 9 o’clock and went downstairs. He got his towel and an
angauccha
to wrap around his waist while having his wash, and was going to the common faucet on the ground floor aangan when his mother called out to him for his help, ‘Just look at the girl! How much more will she torment me! Had nothing to eat last night. I bought this
beedana
and
banafsha
sherbet from the bazaar especially for her. Having an empty stomach in this heat will surely make her sick. What’ll I do then? But she refuses to touch it!’
Puri turned around and saw Tara lying on a charpoy in the veranda. Her mother was standing near the head of the charpoy with a glass in her hand. He went to the veranda. He put both his hands on his hips to give himself an impressive posture, and called out in a commanding tone, ‘Why won’t you drink this?’
Tara got up without saying a word. She took the glass from her mother and drained it in a single draught. She put the glass on the floor, lay back down on the charpoy, and covered her face with her dupatta.
His mother was not pleased at his roughness. She said softly, ‘She’s not well. Don’t speak so harshly to someone who’s sick.’
She picked up the glass and went away. Puri stood in angry silence next to the charpoy. After a few moments he said to Tara in English, ‘I know you’re not asleep. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
Tara rose and sat hunched up at the foot of the charpoy. Puri sat on its edge, resting his weight on his hands. Keeping his voice down, he again asked in a firm tone, ‘What’s the idea of this silent treatment?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Tara replied, her head bent.
‘That’s how I see it. What problem were you talking over with Asad?’
‘No problem.’
Puri’s anger surged up again at this obvious lie, but he suppressed it, so as to be able to pry out her secret, ‘Was he telling a lie? He said in front of you that you were upset. What did you tell him?’
Tara gave no answer.
‘You can’t just keep mum.’ He chided her. ‘You went out with me. I have to know what happened because the members of this family, and I too, have a certain responsibility towards you. You must have told him something—must have said what was bothering you.’
Tara did not want to talk about the incident. She said, ‘Nothing in particular.’
Puri thought for a moment how to rephrase his question in order to trap Tara, and asked in a level tone, ‘It’s my duty and the family’s too, to help you solve your problem. You need money? Is something wrong with you, physically?’
Tara shook her head in denial.
‘What’s so secret that you can tell it to him, but not to me?’ He pressed on.
Tara, caught in his web, had to own up, ‘You know everything.’
Puri made a show of thinking, and said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. Explain yourself.’
Enraged by his persistent needling, she replied, ‘It’s easy for you to say that you can’t remember. Didn’t you say that this match was no good for me, that we should let the engagement be broken? That you didn’t have a good opinion of Somraj? And now you’re asking Ma how you can help in preparing the trousseau. Why would you want to remember what you’d said earlier?’
When they were young, Tara had responded to Puri’s punches and blows by biting him and by cursing him that he might die and leave his wife a widow. When she could not fight back physically, she would scream and cry so that their mother would intervene. In the previous four or five years she had become so shy and reserved that people seldom heard her complain. Her brother often talked proudly of the sharpness of her mind and her good manners. Now this same brother was trying to entangle her in the web of his questions, and she had fought back by calling him a coward and a liar! Puri was alarmed by her reaction.
To counter the bitter truth she had blurted out in anger and to deny the charge of not carrying out his duty towards her, he took a few moments to collect himself, and said, ‘You’re accusing me of not keeping my word. How could I object after seeing you willingly help them in getting together your trousseau?’
Staring into her brother’s eyes, Tara let out a deep breath of despair, as if life itself would go out of her body with that breath. Stunned into silence, she just looked at him in disbelief. Her eyes said, how could you twist the fact of my helplessness?
Puri could not resist a touch of
Schadenfreude
, ‘My opinion of that man Somraj is a secondary consideration. If you didn’t want to get engaged, you should have refused before they formalized it.’
‘Didn’t I oppose it?’ Tears filled her eyes as her body shook in anger.
To overcome her attempt to fight back, Puri said in a distracted way, ‘I don’t know. I was in prison at the time. Don’t hold me responsible. They couldn’t push me into an engagement even with an offer of a dowry worth thirty or thirty-five thousand rupees. If you had refused to go along, the engagement would never have taken place.’
‘I would have, if you hadn’t misled me into thinking that you too were against this marriage.’
‘Did you expect me to go on objecting even when I could see you helping with your trousseau?’ Puri asked.
Tara, her eyes brimming with tears, gave him a look of surprise and incredulity, but Puri was not moved. He felt he had recognized the devious, licentious nature of woman. He was now punishing one woman for sullying his own and his family’s honour, and, at the same time, ridding himself of the guilt of not protesting the injustice being done to her. He pressed on, ‘Your refusal of this marriage is a complete deception after you first accepted the arrangement, and made the family take out the loan that we could ill afford. And to top it all, you blame me for not supporting you. You just wanted to play a game, you want flirtation, not marriage. Does that come naturally to a woman?’
Tara joined her hands to beg him to stop, ‘Forgive me. I’ve nothing to say. Don’t mind me. Whatever becomes of me, just let it happen.’
Puri had wrestled the adversary that had dared to defy him to the ground, but his opponent was resisting him by answering him back. He hit again, ‘I still want to know, what was the purpose of discussing this problem with that fellow? What has he to do with this? What can he do about it? Have you no concern for the family honour?’
In self-defence, Tara retreated behind a wall of silence.
Puri said, ‘I want an answer to my question.’
Tara gave none.
He felt in Tara’s silence an insulting defiance and refusal to accept his authority. With his pride stung at one time by two women, the desire to take revenge was raging like a fire in his mind. He had rendered his adversary helpless and mute. Now he wanted to draw blood from the defeated opponent and to hear the cries for mercy, to slash with the sword of vengeance. He chose his words carefully before going on, ‘I know the truth even if you don’t tell me. I’m not lacking in imagination. You both had on your faces an expression of being caught red-handed. I know that you both were eloping.’
Tara jerked round and bashed her head on the corner post of the charpoy, and raised her head to bash it again.
Puri put his arm around her to pull her back, and threw her on the charpoy. She gave a slight moan and lay motionless.
‘What’s happened? What’s happened?’ Bhagwanti cried, as she came
running from the kitchen. Puri examined Tara’s face as she lay unconscious. Blood trickled from a gash on her forehead.
His mother asked with alarm in her voice, ‘What’s happened? Did she fall? Hai, my daughter!’ She began to weep seeing the blood.
Puri shouted at her, ‘Stop your howling! I’ll explain what happened. First bring some water in a cup and a piece of clean cloth. The wound isn’t serious.’
His mother tore a strip from an old garment, and carried it in, along with some water in a cup. Then she sat on the floor beside the charpoy and began to cry. Puri again spoke to her sharply, ‘What is the use of crying? I told you it’s only a scratch.’
Puri washed Tara’s forehead with a wet rag, then bandaged her forehead with it. Not much blood was to be seen on her forehead; most of it had seeped into her hair.
Tara was still unconscious. Ratan’s mother came over when she heard Bhagwanti cry, and asked with concern, ‘What’s happened?’
Puri replied, ‘She was talking with me. Said she was going to the roof for a minute. Fell in a faint as she stood up. Must have passed out.’
‘Hai, why didn’t you grab her? Don’t you know she hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday evening? Had a fever too. Anybody can faint in this heat if they haven’t had anything to eat. You boys have no feeling for anybody.’ His mother shed tears as she gently stroked Tara’s hands and feet.
‘I tried grabbing her as she fell. How could I know that she’d just collapse? I’ll ask the doctor to put some ointment on her wound when he returns home. It’ll heal in a couple of days.’
‘I hope it doesn’t leave a scar.’ His mother was worried about her daughter’s looks, even in her grief.
As Tara came round, her mother asked her tenderly, ‘Hai, did you pass out? Why didn’t you call me if you’d no strength to go up to the roof? Come on, hold on to me, I’ll take you upstairs.’
Tara realized that she was supposed to have got up from the charpoy to go to the roof, but had passed out and fallen, injuring her forehead. She accepted the story as true.
What could she say? She was not worried about a scar on her forehead, but the thought of why she had to cut open her forehead sickened her. What else could she have done to silence her brother as he levelled those accusations? Even if his accusations were true, what else could she, a woman,
do to save face? He, of course, wasn’t concerned with losing face when he sent a message through her to another woman, Kanak, under the pretence of a casual visit. ‘His, and the family’s honour, would continue to hang in the balance unless I was sacrificed to save it. That’s what he meant by his big talk of fighting for truth, justice and his country, and for the sake of Hindu–Muslim unity! But who cares how I feel or what I want? And if I do say what I want, where could I go? Men can spend the night roaming the streets, or on a bench in a park … And how would I face anyone with this telltale scar on my face showing that I was trying to escape an injustice?’
Meladei had the medicinal herb
shilajit
in her home for such emergencies. A tiny amount of it was given to Tara in a cupful of warm milk mixed with some ghee.
Puri too was shaken by Tara’s gashing wound. He felt a pang of remorse at being cruel to her. He was at a loss what to do next. Kanak’s face, streaked with tears and showing remorse, swam before his eyes. He went down to the aangan to take a bath. As he lay down after having his meal, thoughts of the previous evening returned to his mind: Such hypocrisy! To disarm and put down others with the threat of harming oneself! What a weird, conceited way of arguing! Doesn’t it amount to suppressing truth and justice by accusing others of violence? … What a cunning use of satyagraha!
Pushpa, Rampyari, Kartaro and other gali women had come to ask after Tara, who just lay there without saying anything. Bhagwanti would recount for her visitors how her daughter had collapsed after she had a fainting fit. They were all sorry to see her hurt, but even more concerned because it might leave a scar on her forehead. ‘Such a pretty forehead,’ they said, ‘it’s a pity that she’ll have a scar, and that too just before her wedding! Hope her in-laws don’t hear about this! Who can know God’s will?’
Bhagwanti would reply, ‘He does what He thinks best. Bahin, who can go against His will?’
Puri called the doctor to come over after he returned home. Prabhu Dayal removed the bandage to examine the wound, and advised, ‘Better to have one stitch on the cut. Otherwise it’ll take longer to heal. The wound is less likely to leave a scar if it’s stitched properly.’
Tara said indifferently, ‘No need for a stitch, it’ll heal by itself. Stitches will hurt.’ But she had to yield before the wishes of others. Bhagwanti, Usha or Haridev would wave a hand-held fan over her as she rested. The
sewing work for her trousseau was put aside for a day or two.
The wedding of Ghasita Ram’s daughter Dhanno was only three weeks away. The gali women took turns in helping Dhanno’s mother, Basanti, and Tara’s mother. Basanti had her hands full with preparing Dhanno’s trousseau, as well as the cleaning and grinding of the spices for the wedding feast.
Tara moved from her charpoy next day to a chatai on the floor. A nauseating smell of antiseptic came from the bandage on her forehead. If anyone came and spoke to her, she’d just say, ‘It hurts when I talk.’
In the afternoon, Basanti came to invite Bhagwanti and other women of the gali. ‘Dhanno’s wedding is on the fifteenth of jyeshtha month,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a musical party and singing today. Bahin, send your daughters early so that they can join in the singing. We’ll wait for all of you.’
Bhagwanti offered her congratulations and said, ‘Why wouldn’t we come? We will, of course. Dhanno’s like my daughter. You know Tara’s hurt her head. She probably won’t be able to come today.’
Usha held Basanti’s hand and said, ‘Auntie, I’ll play the dholak. I’ve learned how. It was I who played it at the singing party when Sheelo bahin’s family held the celebration for the birth of her son.’
Basanti placed her finger on her cheek in wonder as she replied, ‘Really, Usha! Let’s go to Uchchi Gali this evening. I must invite Sheelo and her mother too. The gathering won’t be the same without Sheelo.’
On the occasion of Tara’s engagement, Sheelo had sung all night in Bhola Pandhe’s Gali. Not only was she fond of singing, she had a good voice too. She liked to sing long, sad songs with a depth of feeling that touched everybody. Few girls, or even women, knew as many songs as she did.