motherfucker, how many has he killed? How many has he maimed?’
‘None from our family. Thank God. And only because Amma’s brother is in the gang,’ says Mamta, giggling. During the harvest, more than twenty years ago, when the farmers scaled down their rations and looked for new places to hide their precious grain, Lata Bai’s brother disappeared. The whole family searched for his dead body, but not her father. No one knows for sure what happened to the boy, but Lata Bai’s father cut and threshed his wheat with impunity that very day, while other farmers left their crops standing to rot in their fields. Blood money. That’s what Lata Bai suspected it was. Blood money. A boy in exchange for protection. A boy who would one day become a man. ‘Imagine, my uncle in the gang.’ Her almost-wed status has made Mamta bold.
‘Mamta!’ Both father and mother censure her in unison. It isn’t a subject to be discussed, as it separates the family from the rest of Gopalpur’s inhabitants.
‘Well, it’s true.’
‘Mamta, leave things that don’t concern you alone,’ says Lata Bai. To this day she feels guilty that her hut wasn’t burned down with the rest.
‘You had better shut her up,’ Seeta Ram adds, slicing his palm through air in a smacking motion.
Shanti starts to cry. Lata Bai lets her cry. It will be a while before she will pick her up. That’s how she’s trained all her daughters into silence. The boys are picked up at once.
Mamta brings the baby to her mother. ‘Tch,’ the mother shakes her head at her eldest, and then she says proudly, ‘See, she’ll make a good mother,’ because as far as Lata Bai is concerned daughters are born to be good mothers first, before anything else.
‘She’s just playing,’ replies Seeta Ram with remarkable perspicacity. ‘If she didn’t have Shanti, she’d be teasing those boys from across the river. Still, she’d better make a good wife.’ As far as Seeta Ram is concerned, daughters are born to be good wives first, before anything else.
Mamta will satisfy both her parents and make a good wife and mother. Loving Mamta. Patient Mamta.
‘I am going out,’ says Seeta Ram suddenly, unable to stand being in the house with the women any longer.
‘In this weather? Where will you go?’
‘To hell,’ he says, charging out of the hut. He won’t give her more information than is necessary.
‘Take this for the rain –’ She follows him out into the wet darkness, holding a spreading jute bag over his head.
As soon as Seeta Ram leaves the hut, Mamta starts with her questions. She has been dogging her mother for days, it seems she can never have enough answers. ‘Tell me how it was for you,’ she asks. Her giddiness irritates Lata Bai.
‘You should be concentrating on your work: go collect the dung, go finish the washing, go pick the berries, collect the spinach . . . do something useful instead of following me around! You are going to be a wife and mother soon, stop wasting your time.’
‘Come on, Amma, I have only a week left, then I’ll be gone and I . . . I might never come back, just like Ragini.’
‘Your sister married up. It’s not easy for her to come back.’
‘So will I have a pukka house too?’
‘Oho, stop dreaming dreams, they will get you nowhere. Now go gather the dung.’ Lata Bai knows all about dreaming dreams. She had her own dreams before she was married to Seeta Ram at eight.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll do it. Amma, but first tell me, what was it like?’
Lata Bai looks into Mamta’s eyes ringed with lashes, two bright big moons of excitement. What should I say? It was frightening . . . painful . . . it snatched my childhood from me.
‘You got married after the drought, and then . . .’ Mamta starts her mother’s story for her, but she is fishing in muddy waters, there is no bite. Lata Bai looks away, remembering . . .
‘What, Amma? Tell me . . .’ Mamta puts her arms around her mother’s waist.
‘No more of this hugging baby business,’ says Lata Bai in exactly the same tone her own mother had used on her, unlocking her arms and making distance between them. ‘You are a woman now. Soon you will have your own children to look after, you won’t be able to keep running home to me.’
‘My own children? Will they be just like my Ladli dolly?’ Mamta had made Ladli dolly herself when she was seven, with rags and tree cotton, embroidering her eyes, nose, mouth, and covering her head with bright red string hair.
‘Oh, grow up, you’ll be sorry if you don’t.’ But in fact it is Lata Bai who is sorry as soon as those words leave her lips. At once she pulls Mamta’s arms round her again and says, ‘Yes, yes, they’ll be just like your Ladli dolly.’
The thought of children makes Mamta so happy and so scared. She knows children come only after jiggery. And jiggery hurts like anything. She’s seen dogs do it, cows do it, cats do it, and it looks awful. How will she ever do it?
‘Do you like Bapu?’ she asks her mother.
‘What sort of a question is that? I am a wife and a mother.’
‘No, I mean do you like Bapu like the heroes like the heroines in the films?’
‘So when have you seen a film?’
‘Oh, Amma, you know what I mean. Do you think he will be as handsome as Guru Dutt?’
‘Maybe.’ Lata Bai hasn’t met the prospective groom. The marriage was arranged exclusively by Seeta Ram. I hope he checked on the family. Hai, Mamta, I hope your fate is better than mine.
‘Amma, what will I have to do? How did you do it?’ This is the first time Mamta has asked her mother questions about babies and sex.
‘Do what?’
‘You know, have all of us.’
Lata Bai sees a disconcerting calm in her daughter’s face, an acceptance that she never had a chance to own as a young bride. ‘Mamta, you’ll get to know all about it by and by.’ That’s what her own mother had said to her, hadn’t she? You’ll get to know all about it by and by. And she was right. She did get to know all about it by and by . . .
When Lata Bai turned twelve, Seeta Ram came with the tongawala to collect his bride. They rode back to her husband’s house bouncing in a bullock cart all the way. Her father-in-law was so kind to her that first day. He dandled her on his knee all day and gave her sweets to eat. That night her father-in-law got on top of her, opened her legs to the ceiling and brought his fat body all the way inside her, till she thought she would choke on it. She’d screamed with the blood and pain. But only once. Her mother-in-law shouted, ‘Quiet! Do you want to wake the dead?’ from behind the curtain.
Her eyes were red from sorrow and shame the next day. ‘Sorry,’ her husband said to her, ‘he gets the first taste. That’s our custom.’
The first taste of a twelve-year-old girl. That was the last time her husband ever said sorry to her.
After
