least we can be thankful that the hijras won’t come today. They know we have nothing,’ says the mother.
‘Yes, and probably they won’t show up at my wedding either,’ says Mamta ruefully. ‘At last Bapu can be glad, he won’t have to look at my ugly face much longer,’ she adds.
‘Uffo,’ Lata Bai replies in half-agreement. Ugly-face-talk before the wedding is fitting, because any kind of praise is inauspicious. There is always someone listening, people willing to spoil your plans. She places a dot of lampblack behind Mamta’s ear to take the ‘perfect’ out of her beauty, more as a courtesy to her daughter than anything else. They both know Mamta’s beauty isn’t perfect, the red birthmark dangles above her eyebrow like a sign of disapproval from God.
‘I shall put the henna leaves to dry as soon as the rain stops,’ says Mamta. ‘Just imagine, beautiful red henna patterns all the way to my shoulders and up to my knees . . . hai,’ she sighs.
Her mother shakes her head, but says nothing. She is going to be married after all. Another six days and she’ll be gone. Thank you, Devi. That should put an end to the village sniggers: ‘Arey, Lata Bai, how is it that you got your younger daughter married before your elder one?’ . . . ‘Arey, Lata Bai, have you had an offer for Mamta yet?’ Even those guised as concern: ‘Arey, Lata Bai, what can a mother do but love her daughter, good, bad, beautiful or ugly?’ And the pitying, this-is-destiny ones: ‘Don’t worry, someone will come for her. You just wait and see. After all, girls are someone else’s gardens. We mothers only borrow them for a time.’
Lata Bai has woken Mamta and Sneha early and ushered them out of the hut. They must be quick today, bringing the water from the well, cooking two days’ food that won’t spoil with keeping, repairing the roof and collecting the dung pats. At last, mid-morning she packs some dried chapattis and spicy baked potato skins in some ficus leaves for their journey. They will travel light, the only thing of value they carry is a bottle of homemade chilli pickle for her father.
‘Okay, we are ready,’ says Lata Bai to Seeta Ram when he comes home for lunch. ‘I am taking Mamta and Shanti,’ she adds, quickly placing his tray at his feet. Her husband winces, the name Shanti is too new, too disappointing, too female.
‘So what about Sneha?’ he says, pulling Prem and Mohit to one side of the hut, separating the females from the males as if in some fiercely competitive game. ‘Take the girls, the boys are staying with me.’
Lata Bai cradles Shanti and leaves without looking back at the house. The women walk towards the tonga stand under a flowing ficus tree, an hour away. She hides the baby deeper inside her pallav to spare her the sunlight that can crisp skin faster than an open flame. It beats down on them like a pounding stick, knocking all the energy out of their stride. The Red Ruins glimmer in the distance. Two girls are praying at the shrine. Lata Bai walks faster, lifting her hand in acknowledgement, but not her head.
‘Who are they?’
‘Must be some girls from the village, come to pray for sons.’
‘When I’m married, I will come here to pray for sons too. I wish I was a boy. Bapu says to wait and see, my husband will sort me out well and good. I think he’s waiting for that.’ In Seeta Ram’s eyes Mamta has no right to exist at all, but since she does, she has to prove herself day after day, working harder than the boys, eating nothing that might be noticed, and being silently present. Like the extra baby section in an orange, not missed if it isn’t there, but swallowed whole if it is, without releasing any of its flavour into the mouth.
‘I won’t let my husband rule over me. Husbands aren’t kings, you know.’
‘Look here, Mamta,’ Lata Bai takes hold of her daughter’s shoulders tight and hard, ‘you will not survive a day with that attitude. For now, work sincerely at home and stay out of your bapu’s way. That’s the best and safest thing for you to do. Pray to Devi every night that your husband is kind to you . . .’
‘. . . and that he won’t beat you or send you back to us in disgrace,’ adds Sneha, who has learned the lesson of womanhood much faster and better than her elder sister.
‘Huh. Small mouth, big talk,’ says Mamta.
Under the appointed tree, Lata Bai opens her blouse to suckle Shanti. ‘Sneha, you better go home. Nani hasn’t room for us all. You can visit her any time, let Mamta have her attention, she is going away for good. I promise I’ll take you next winter.’
‘Next winter! But Nani might be dead next winter!’
‘Sneha, back to the house! If you start walking now, you’ll be there before sunset,’ says Lata Bai, brushing aside Sneha’s tears.
‘Stay out of Bapu’s way and he won’t even notice you are back,’ says Mamta viciously.
* * *
They arrive early in the morning, to the smell of home fires.
‘Arey, Lata, what’s happened to this girl of yours? Look at her hair, it is orange,’ says the grandmother, tugging at Mamta’s oily plait.
‘Oho, what am I to do, he won’t give her food. Each time I say give her food he says, “Am I made of money? Do you think we live in the Big House? Throw some more oil into her hair, it’ll get black in no time at all.” Then he says, “Look at her huge belly, is that the belly of a starving child?”’ Of course they all know that a distended belly means starvation. How many children have they seen die holding their ball-bellies in their hands? But Mamta’s father creates his own mirage, an image that suits his ends. He neither minds nor cares if she lives or dies.
‘Come. Come here. Now you will have more to eat. You need meat on your bones, good body fat before you are married. We don’t want your husband thinking we cheated him, do we?’ says Mamta’s grandmother, putting their hands in red clay and plastering their handprints on the mud walls of her house. ‘In case I never see you again, your hands will hold me as I ride Yamraj’s bull to my next life.’
‘I won’t let Yamraj take you any time soon, Nani. You can’t go before you’ve told us all the stories.’
‘Look at this girl of yours, Lata, to be married soon, and still she wants to hear only stories.’
‘Why do you think I brought her here, Amma?’ laughs Lata Bai. ‘For your stories . . . and your food, of course. Hai, I am exhausted, her ears are never satisfied.’
‘Come, see your bapu, Lata. Not that he’ll know you.’
The women enter the hut. Lata Bai touches her father’s feet. He is lying on the charpoy, loosely tied to the rope bed with strips of sari material.
‘Namaste, Bapu.’
‘Who?’ The man’s eyes seem to float in their sockets, moving from his daughter to his granddaughter’s face. Lata Bai kneels by his side and runs her fingers over his feet.
‘It’s Lata, I’m here,’ she says.
‘Who?’ He asks no one in particular.
The grandmother replies. Her frustration reaches into her gullet and pulls her voice out of her throat, catapulting it to a high pitch: ‘Your daughter is here!’
‘Sh, sh, Amma, sh, he’s not deaf. Bapu,
