Home (28 page)

Wanted own business, graduate, manglik boy, over 1.65, from kaiyasth community, own property, for only mangli daughter, UP kaiyasth, migrated from Lahore, graduate from a prestigious woman’s college, extremely fair, beautiful, homely, 1.60, 20 years. Early marriage. Horoscope a must. Send details with recent colour returnable photograph (must) to Box –, The Hindustan Times.

Sona and Rupa were going through the responses. They were all mangliks, all with an unfortunate combination of stars. ‘It is very difficult to choose from just a picture,’ complained Sona. ‘God knows what all it is hiding.’

Nisha picked up some of the photographs. What could one tell from them? Young, moustachioed, some puffy-cheeked, mostly nondescript. But then, were Suresh to be among them, he might look the same. These faces meant nothing.

The rains came. Bhutta sellers appeared on the pavements around Karol Bagh. The jamun trees that were given on contract to vendors were shaken every morning for their purple, tongue-furring fruit. There were phalsa sellers too, with small, tart, reddish-violet berries that, like the jamun, were sold in paper cones with salt and masala.

One by one the girls Nisha had known in school and college were getting married. The wedding invitations, heralds of gloom, arrived in the post, red, white, and gold reproaches, the ceremonies of sangeet, barat, wedding, vida, and reception further nails in the coffin.

Or these girls came personally, sat in the drawing room, met Sona, and rubbed salt in her wounds by airing their prizes: details of job, business, family, house, car, property, height, looks.

‘Auntie, you must come. Uncle too. Mummy – Papa will be very disappointed if you don’t.’

‘Of course, beti, of course,’ Sona would smile tightly. ‘And please put some sense into the head of your friend.’

‘Auntie, Nisha is so beautiful, so fair. If I can get married (giggle, giggle), so can she. In fact, in college we always thought Nisha would be the first.’

Nisha held her breath at these statements. Would they mention the unmentionable boyfriend? But thankfully they didn’t, too caught up in their own futures to give Nisha’s prospects more than a passing reference.

The stay was always short, for there were many houses to visit. The wedding invitation, along with a box of sweets, was left on the small centre table of the drawing room. Accusingly, it remained there for all to see and exclaim over, while Nisha’s failure to live up to her future gained greater prominence.

Nisha’s results were declared at the beginning of August: 48 per cent – a third division. She had not deserved more; besides, what did marks matter? The arena of competition had shifted.

Mr and Mrs Yashpal were pleased. An Honours degree from a good college, but without the distinction that might frighten forthcoming suitors.

‘Now I have my degree I want to do a course,’ declared Nisha.

‘What obsession do you have with courses?’ rebuked her mother. ‘A BA degree is not enough? You want to spend your life running on the streets?’

Nisha ignored this. ‘I want to study fashion designing. Lots of girls do it, why can’t I? Why should I sit at home every day waiting for proposals?’

‘If you had thought of your future earlier, you would not be sitting at home waiting for proposals,’ snapped Sona.

‘Your in-laws will not like the idea of your working,’ said Raju, with conviction. ‘I certainly won’t let my wife work – who is going to look after the house?’

‘Why can’t you be mature like your brother?’ demanded Sona. ‘He is so sensible, while you are just a fool.’

‘I don’t have in-laws yet,’ Nisha raised her voice.

‘Chee-chee. Why do such inauspicious things come out of your mouth?’ retorted her mother. ‘Once you are married, and in your own home, you can do what your in-laws think fit.’

‘At least till then let me do a course. Later we can see,’ pleaded Nisha.

‘No.’

Sona didn’t add that after what had happened, Nisha would only go to an educational institution over her dead body. Who knew how many boys would ambush her on the way?

When dark-brown patches began to appear in the folds of Nisha’s arms and neck, her family could no longer think of mosquitoes or prickly heat as answers to the strange things that were happening to her skin.

Instead they blamed her.

‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ asked Sona suspiciously.

‘Nothing, I’ve been doing nothing.’

Sona pushed the hair from her neck and saw the darkness. She stared at her feet and saw the scabs, she pulled up her salwar and noticed the sores.

‘You are not happy with the trouble you are already causing? For how long has this been going on?’

Nisha could give no coherent explanation.

When Yashpal was told of the damage, he merely said, ‘If you are worried, take her to the doctor.’

‘A doctor – which doctor? Who can deal with this girl?’

‘Dr Gupta will tell us what to do. It must be some little irritation, these things happen in the heat.’

As her parents conferred, Nisha itched. Her skin prickled and irritated her to such an extent that she could be aware of nothing else till she had reduced it to burning rawness. Water had begun to ooze from the sores.

‘Stop it,’ said her mother harshly. ‘Your skin will become as black as a buffalo’s, then nobody will ever marry you.’

Dr Gupta, two lanes down, family acquaintance, prescriber of all-purpose pills for reasonable charges.

That evening they sat in the waiting room, every page Sona rustled in her magazine a reproach to her daughter. That they were there was Nisha’s fault of course, but it was also the mother’s wretched destiny. Had she known the misery her stubborn daughter would cause her, she would not have bothered with the fasting or the praying. Fortunately there was no need for her to speak in order to make Nisha understand her feelings.

The doctor lifted the curtain that divided the room and called them in. ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time,’ he stated briefly, before the inevitable demand for good news about the girl

Immediately Sona started wailing. ‘Dr Sahib, see what is happening to her skin. All day she itches, no matter how much I keep telling her, she goes on.’

In front of the doctor Nisha found it easier to speak. ‘I don’t do it on purpose. It itches so much, I can’t bear it. It’s like ants crawling all over me.’

Sona blinked. The doctor glanced at the mottled skin, prescribed lotions and anti-allergy pills, advised the mother to tie strips of cloth around Nisha’s hands at night, and come back after a week.

Her body had been scrutinised, medicine prescribed, a return visit set up. Nisha was sick, the world had acknowledged it. But she didn’t feel sick. Only dry, itchy, and restless.

For twenty years people had commented on her fairness. From the day of her birth her complexion had been protected from the sun, nurtured with uptan before every bath and in adolescence safeguarded against pimples by bitter herbs. Now it was turning against her. When the scabs dried they faded to a pale brown that stood out in patches against their pristine surroundings. She stared at herself in the mirror – her face was still untouched, but for how long?

She looked at her limbs. Sparse hair had begun to appear on her arms, stubble decorated her legs. She had always had heavy body growth. Once she entered college she often went to the neighbourhood beauty parlour to wax her skin into appearing smooth, soft, clean, and white. Suresh had loved running his hands along her legs in the little Vijay Nagar room.

And now? How could she go to the beauty parlour with these angry red blotches, which oozed under her roving, raking fingers. The parlour girls would refuse to touch her. You will infect our cloth, our knives, our waxing mixture. Go home, go home, go home.

The stubble on her legs grew to bristle, the bristle grew into rough, wiry hair, and then the wiriness became long and supple. As she itched she wondered how the scratching could peel her skin off in layers while the hair remained intact. At least one unsightliness should cancel out the other.

Her body began to haunt her dreams. She was covered with huge gaping mouths, all screaming through a jungle of thick black hair. She was a monster, coarse, dark, and hairy – she was more than a monster, she was a man.

At night Sona tore an old soft kurta into strips and twisted them around Nisha’s fingers. ‘You think I like doing this?’ she demanded, irritated by the whole exercise.

Nisha’s vulnerability meant a silent acceptance of her guilt, even before a rhetorical question.

Religiously Sona applied the cream the doctor prescribed to Nisha’s sores, religiously she doled out her anti-allergy pills. Each night she patted on a mixture of katha and rose water to soothe the burning flesh.

But pieces of cloth, if scraped against the skin hard enough, are not ineffective. The patches had a life of their own, choosing to expand their territory while the girl was sleeping. In the morning, when her mother inspected her carefully, she would see fresh signs of Nisha’s malady.

‘Why can’t you restrain yourself?’ she asked in despair. ‘It is in your hands.’

‘Send her to me,’ said Rupa.

Sona tcched in annoyance. Sometimes her sister couldn’t see a problem even if it waved a hand in her face. Did she think these were poor marks her husband could fix? Or nightmares that demanded a change of place? ‘What can you do? Will these scabs go away in your house? She needs constant attention. Look – look – and look –’ Sona pulled up the salwar, rolled up the sleeves, lifted the hair from the neck to reveal the dark, rough skin decorated with the thin lines of powder that Nisha used to camouflage her condition.

‘Maybe a change of scene –’ suggested Rupa helplessly.

‘The only change of scene this wretched creature will get is after her marriage. Right now she is like a small child who has no control over herself. No matter how often I tell her not to, night and day, night and day she goes on. Whoever heard of having to tie the hands of a grown girl?’

‘Take her to another doctor,’ said Yashpal wearily as Sona complained bitterly to her husband. They were in their bedroom on a double bed of Dunlop foam and white Sunmica, flanked by little matching bedside tables.

‘But there is nothing
wrong
With her. If only she would stop itching. Sometimes I think she does it on purpose.’

‘Why would anybody destroy themselves on purpose?’

‘How should I know? I am just telling.’

‘Don’t worry, it will pass with time.’

‘
When?
’

‘It is God’s will. We just have to wait,’ said Yashpal, turning on his side, away from his wife, who stared at the wall, her worries pushed firmly back at her.

Why had this thing come to poison her days? Her children were of marriageable age, she had spied the end of her responsibilities. Did God have some grudge against her? She sighed. Her husband slept on. Poor man, always so tired. She stopped the second sigh. He at least should sleep.

Away in her home Rupa was also sighing.

‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Prem Nath, unable to follow Yashpal down the paths of sleep. For him a sigh was enough to create instant and cantankerous wakefulness.

‘Can’t we do something for Nisha?’

Prem Nath thought bitterly of the years he had spent looking after this girl – for what? To see her idle, miserable, and eczema-ridden in her house? She had begun to wilt and darken before his eyes, but how could he help? It was an illness he did not understand.

‘What can we do?’ he asked harshly.

‘Bring her over. She will get better here. Remember when she stopped screaming in her sleep?’

‘Years ago. She was small then.’

‘She is the same girl. Very sensitive. I feel they do not understand her.’

‘They are her parents. If her skin gets worse, who do you think they will blame?’

So Nisha stayed where she was, in her new house, in her new bedroom, right next to her parents.

It became a family duty to stop Nisha from itching. ‘Exercise self-control. The more you itch the more you will want to.’

They tried to hold her hands. She pulled them away. ‘Leave me alone, I can’t help it. I don’t itch for my own pleasure.’

‘You can. You can help it. You are not even trying. Take God’s name. Say the Gayatri Mantra.’

Nobody understood. Nisha was alone in a scratchy, burning, oozing, bleeding world. Perhaps the ugliness in her was coming out. Perhaps that was what Suresh had banked on when he had felt her and made her feel him, perhaps it was this thing that had attracted Vicky.

‘Don’t you know what this means? About your marriage?’ implored her mother, holding Nisha’s hands, noticing the line of dark blood under the nails, now so usual. Nisha looked down. Her bangles tinkled, the bangles her mother made her wear after the itching spread. Two dozen on each arm, to protect the world from the sight of her scabs, clinking with sweet feminine noises, grating on Nisha’s nerves. Once she had loved glass bangles, buying them eagerly, arranging them colourwise on rolled-up magazines. Now she hated them.

Months passed, months in which the family hoped that the eczema would vanish as it had come. Miraculously Nisha would get up one morning shining with pearly incandescence. Finally they had to admit that moment was not to be.

Allopathy had its limitations. They had to look further afield.

Sushila suggested a famous nature cure centre near Ajmeri Gate. Any port in a storm. There they went, Sona and Nisha, there they were offered hope. It was not going to be easy, they would have to come every morning, they would have to follow the regimen strictly, very strictly. ‘In two months,’ promised the doctor, ‘in two months she will have a skin like a flower.’

Nisha was put on a diet of juice, fruit, and vegetables cooked without spices, oil, or salt. For two months tea, coffee, synthetic food, refined sugar, and starches were forbidden. Every morning they covered her body with a pack of herbs and mud to draw out the toxins.

‘I have seen girls who emerge from this treatment looking like lotuses,’ said the woman who applied the mudpack. ‘They get so many offers the problem is in choosing.’