secret that even he doesn’t know it’s there, under the frustration, anger and guilt. Have I been a bad father? Maybe he is standing up for what he believes. I should know all about that, you say. I know what you think, my beliefs . . . my traditions, will be the death of me. You are probably right. That’s what used to upset you the most, our traditions . . .
Perhaps I should have allowed you to change some things around here, then you might have been happy. Oh, meri jaan, I miss you . . . Do you remember how we used to go hunting every winter? I know you cried inside yourself each time I bagged a deer. I’m not hungry, you would say at dinner, just so you wouldn’t have to eat its flesh, my dear sweet love. You were so delicate in so many ways, but so strong when you wanted to be. I remember our chess games, you were much better than me. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you let me win . . .
If you could see me now. Would you pity me? Would you love me? Your boy did this to me. No sooner do the words become a coherent thought than he regrets them. But everyone knows the zamindar blames Lokend for his stroke. I try not to think of it. But I can still smell the stink. There he was, on all fours like an animal, cleaning the shit with his hands. His hands, the hands you and I created, doing a Sudra’s work. It might as well have been my hands that were polluted. We are Singhs, we are not Sudras. I have never let the shadow of a Sudra fall on my family, and there he was, cleaning shit. Bibiji, you are the lucky one, dead before your son could baffle you with his behaviour. An angry tear struggles out of his good eye. Protected by darkness, he doesn’t wipe it away.
Every time he goes to the toilet he is reminded of that other shameful day. His son on his knees, holding a piece of wood piled high with brown human waste, a stinking brown blob with no sense of decency. It was slipping off its perch, sliding to the ground like a slow drip on a spider’s web. A taunting, insulting pile that his own son was handling with his pure, even loving, hands. Neither his son nor his pet mongoose was disturbed by his labour, by the stench of it or the blue flies that settled alternately on the brown mass and face unchecked because the hands that belonged to the face were too busy to wave them off. But that’s not what disgusted his father into a stroke. It was the complete sense of normalcy in Lokend’s bent back, as if he’d knelt to pet a favourite dog, that crippled the old man.
The first thing Asmara Didi did after the stroke was get rid of the squatting toilets. They were replaced with Parryware commodes. Grey and ageing, the commodes now support a brown ring just at the top edge. The flush has never been used. The rusty chain hangs down from the ceiling like a noose. There are always buckets of water sitting in the bathroom to be poured into the cistern. Singh Sahib leaves a hanky hanging on the door handle if there is some big business in the toilet, otherwise, he pours a mug of water in himself to dilute the colour to a respectable, barely noticeable yellow. He is still uncomfortable on the Bakelite seat, and if he could have stood without support, he might have squatted on it. But he can’t, so he sits, properly, legs falling off the edge, cringing every time his skin touches the cold hard surface. Bibiji, in the cities everyone is using these filthy things. Can you imagine? I have to trust Asmara to clean the seat for me. You are the lucky one, dying once . . . I may be alive, but I do not live . . . I die a little every day . . .
‘Brooding isn’t good for you.’ She comes on silent feet. She shakes her head to herself. She can smell it in the room, that air of resignation. She tries to shun her thoughts physically by shrugging her shoulders, but they stay wrapped round her like a warm shawl. She wipes her upper lip and with a smile faces the man waiting for death. Still smiling, she lights the candles and ignores the tear.
He is tempted to tell her to go lose herself in the kitchen, but he doesn’t. ‘Lokend will be back tomorrow. Will you see him?’ she asks.
The big man says nothing, he looks at his feet with great intent. What can he say? Yes, he would love to see his son, nothing would make him happier, but there is so much history in their desperate destinies. How does one wash away history? He is in that gully of silence between mountains of anticipated rejection. To climb up one of those mountains he would have to give up his crushingly heavy fear. He might have been able to release his burden to Bibiji for safekeeping, but he has nowhere to put it now. The gully is a safe place. Help me. Please help me, he asks of the dead.
It is the living that replies, ‘Good, I’ll tell him then. I’ll make something nice for your lunch. Lokend loves puris.’ Asmara Didi chuckles. ‘Does he love them, or does his mongoose? What’s its name again? Raja?’
Today it’s just the same. The memory of holding a mongoose pup rushes over the old man unbidden. He feels the tears once again creep up under his skin, thick and strong.
‘Go,’ he says with desperation to the woman.
There isn’t just sadness in his tears, there is also anger. But as they fall, they become tears of regret.
Lokend jumps into the jeep. ‘Let’s go,’ he says to the mongoose, ‘let’s go find those bandits.’ He starts the engine. The jeep jumps into life, Ram Singh has left it in gear again. The sudden jump jogs Lokend’s thoughts. ‘Better not, my friend. I better take the truck. My brother is all spruced up for the wedding. He’ll kill me if I take the jeep and he has to ride in the truck.’ He chuckles.
Lokend started talking to Raja a long time ago. All through his lonely youth, he knew he was different from his brother who deserved and received his father’s vague attention. If he was someone else he might have been jealous. But he has no time for jealousy, or for that matter sadness. If there is one regret in his life, it is that his mother died before him. He would have liked to have known her.
Chapter 3
WHAT CAN SHE DO ABOUT HER BIRTHMARK? Her mother has suggested a little turmeric mixed with flour. When her father became indebted to the Big House, Ram Singh magnanimously invited him to consult with the widow Asmara Didi. She had silently begged her father to take her to the Big House and get a cure for her birthmark then, but he did not. Why? Acceptance, that’s why. Her father had accepted the birthmark on his daughter’s forehead as finally as he accepted the weather or the bandits.
The dew hasn’t formally evaporated off the mustard leaves outside. Except for the sleeping baby, she is alone at home. Her mother gave her this much. As an excuse Lata Bai left Shanti behind for Mamta to look after. She has an hour before her mother will return from the well.
Mamta runs her hand over her wedding sari. For a minute she considers why it is already lying unwrapped, in precise folds gleaming like a treasure in her mother’s tin trunk, then she remembers her mother had used the wrapping to deliver Shanti. She picks up a corner and looks through the sheerness of the fabric. Everything turns red, the red of love. Mamta smiles. It is as it should be. ‘Keep my world red, oh Devi,’ she prays. ‘Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho,’ she recites her mother’s words. Almost a married woman, she feels she has an equal right to them. The baby stirs in her cot. ‘Shanti, hey, Shanti. I am to be married. I hope Amma will be proud of me,’ she says with a laugh, and then quickly makes a face and adds, ‘and I hope Bapu will be pleased with me for the first and only time in his life.’ Shanti gurgles. ‘You should be happy, your turn will come. I will pray you get many suitors and that each one is more handsome and richer than the next!’ Shanti gurgles again.
Mamta interprets her baby sister’s sounds: ‘Will mine be a handsome hero?’ She cannot afford to indulge in self-doubt. By Gopalpur standards she is already an old woman, her younger sister was married before her. She looked after all her brothers and sisters and she’s still at home. Without the borrowed money, no one would have taken her. What kind of man accepts a woman, almost in her twenties, with a birthmark? It has to be a desperate man. ‘Of course he will be a handsome hero. Do you think Amma could have picked anyone else for me?’
‘He’ll
