Bhairavi Page 7

  ‘The landlady’s daughter is Dr Chandrika Bisht; both mother and daughter live in Toronto. The mother has stayed back, she has come to look at the old house and meet her brother. She will leave tomorrow. Dr Bisht is a very friendly lady. She is as intelligent as she is beautiful. She has done her doctorate on Tharu-Bhutia festivals,’ Shanti carried on speaking.

  Many hammers rained down on Rajeshwari’s head at once—so is Kundan Singh also here? In one of these sixteen rooms? Does his soul also bear a mark of his youth’s mistake? Maybe all that is left of that youthful leap are memories.

  But was that youthfulness? If that was just youthfulness, then why is it that even after nineteen years her old heart is beating so fast? Why was her face buried in her pillow burning like a furnace? Why was she getting so restless like she had that night?

  All night, just like Quinine tablets stuck in her throat, the forgotten, old memories made her throat bitter. The same Chandrika who at one time was dearer to her than life, to meet whom she had challenged her mother’ strictest warnings and run like a mad calf, today why was she so scared of bumping into her? She suddenly felt a spark in her mind, a new idea forming. Why doesn’t she take off before the crack of dawn on the pretext of roaming around? Shanti had said that even if she didn’t get the bus at 8 am, Dr Bisht would take the bus at 10. Rajeshwari got up and quickly got ready.

  She had wanted to pay a visit to the shrine of Kaashar Devi for a long time. By the time she returned from the pilgrimage, the landlady would have left. Feeling certain about her plan, she opened the window to look outside. Sunlight was spreading across the veranda. Had she been fooled because the window was closed? She turned to look at her daughter sleeping without a care in the bed next to her. The sun was shining its glory on her tired, pretty face. How many times had she woken up at night to close her bird-like lips—‘it’s not good to breathe through your mouth, Chandan, close your mouth!’ She’d scold her a zillion times but every time Chandan would breathe through the narrow nostrils of her thin, Grecian nose, her mouth would open like the petals of a rose. Even today, both her hands on her chest, she was so fast asleep with her mouth wide open that she wouldn’t even realize if someone were to cut them off. In that case, would it be better to leave without waking her up? What if Chandrika came up to meet her and on finding the daughter, ended up saying something untoward? That mad woman can say anything! What if she cracks some joke about Kundan and her? In her heart, she understood the stupidity of her silly fears. Can Chandrika ever say anything so childish to her daughter on her first meeting? But Rajeshwari had been hurt many a time in her life and her soul had weakened like a body that had suffered numerous electric shocks and felt fearful of even a common small hope. Why doesn’t she wake her up and take her along?

  She had been exactly her age when in the haze of exactly such a bright morning she had run away from home. She had stood exactly in this corner, panting. She had fooled her naïve mother with such convoluted excuses: a teacher at school had summoned the entire class of their high school for an extra class at seven in the morning. They’d all be fed there and they’d all come back at the end of the day, etc., etc. Actually, the matter was something else. Kundan had hatched a plan to take his sister and her friend to Kaashar Devi, a foreigner journalist friend of his was also living there. They would spend the whole day at the friend’s bungalow, have a picnic and then visit the temple in the evening. Rampyari had packed some food in a big tiffin box and seen them off on a route that was only used sometimes for funeral processions. They took a detour of about two miles and then the three reached the road laden with black soil. The whole way, Kundan had narrated to her the history of the black road. How the Lohaniyas of Kumaon had come back here and performed homas and how the ones who performed the homas were forever referred to as the ‘Lohmi’ and the road had turned into ash:

  ‘I burned so

  That I became neither coal nor ash!’

  He had said this and brought his face close to hers. Chandri had stayed behind deliberately. Her mother’s profession had given Chandri an instinctive knowledge of the isolation the two lovers needed. She would at times slow down to such an extent that the two lovebirds would have to wait for her on a hilltop. Every bit of the trudge across the hills added to the glow on Rajeshwari’s face.

  Today as she watched her young daughter sleeping, she felt like she was seeing her own reflection in the mirror of youth. So many things, said and unsaid, the touch of her young lover’s newly sprouted moustache, and two sets of inexperienced footprints forever marked on the long black road had made her carefully laid plans come undone. She was struggling to make up her mind whether to go or not and was drowning in the dilemma when Shanti pulled open the door laughing and stood in front of her.

  ‘Look at you, all dressed up when I haven’t even brushed my teeth. Dr Bisht has been busy with some papers since the morning. I thought I should introduce the two of you since she will leave today. I would have always regretted it had I not made you meet this talent of Kumaon. Oh, you have come here yourself. I was just about to take Rajeshwari to your room…’

  Clothed in western attire, in jeans, and her hair cut short in and tied in a pony which she threw back very stylishly, Chandrika had changed entirely from head to toe. Had she not cottoned on even after hearing her name? She was swaying with ‘western’ joy, offering her hand to Rajeshwari as she moved towards her till suddenly it seemed like an unseen dagger had severed her extended hand at the wrist. Her hand hung limp and her mouth fell open in surprise as she said, ‘Raji—you!’ Rajeshwari tried to feign a laugh but her jaws refused to comply.

  Chandrika leapt at her and engulfed her in a hug, ‘You have become thinner!’ Teasing her, loving her, she had become the Chandrika of old yet again. ‘I had heard that you had spread the glory of your beauty at a sweetshop. I had thought you would have gotten fatter after eating Imarti and Balushahi.’ Having said this, she became quiet over her own lack of tact. The lack of a married woman’s marker and the display of her friend’s widowhood gave her a start.

  Shanti was looking at this union in surprise. Chandan also woke up on hearing the voices. Who was this woman? Amma had never told her about this friend of hers but the familiarity with which she had hugged her mother and kept wiping her tears reminiscing over their past seemed to suggest that they shared an intimate friendship. Such a flamboyant lady! Dressed in crisp, black, men’s trousers and a colourful jersey, with short hair that seemed as if every strand had been stuck down with glue.

  ‘I apologize!’ Chandrika turned towards Shanti and apologized as per the norms of western conduct. ‘We are childhood friends. You had mentioned her name a few times but I am so stupid that I didn’t realize that it could be my Raji.’

  ‘Oh, is she your daughter?’

  She leapt and pulled the shy Chandan out of bed and held her by both arms as she gazed transfixed at the face that had turned red. ‘Well done, a bowl on a bowl, child, fairer than the father—wasn’t there a riddle that went something like this? Raji, till now I always thought that you were the most beautiful woman on earth but this girl can defeat any Miss Universe in a heartbeat.’

  Very affectionately, she kissed the forehead of her friend’s dainty daughter and then looking at her wristwatch with impatience exclaimed, ‘Damn it! I wouldn’t have left you today had I not booked an air ticket. Oh Raji, why don’t you come with me to Rudrapur?’ The next instant, she cowered as she realized the impertinence of her own proposal and went quiet.

  How dare she ask her to accompany her to Rudrapur? Would Rajeshwari be happy when she saw Chandrika’s brigadier brother’s flourishing farms, gigantic tractors, five sons and his voluptuous wife?

  ‘Come with me to my room for a minute before I leave. I hope you won’t mind?’ She asked the question in English. She bowed and apologized to her tenant and her friend’s daughter and pulled Rajeshwari away with her.

  Chandrika seemed to have gotten more agile with age, as if she h
ad left the years behind, after having moved abroad.

  On reaching her room, she sat on a chair and, moving aside the imported lightweight suitcase kept on the empty bed, made Rajeshwari sit opposite her. She took out her golden cigarette case as soon as she sat down and pulling out a cigarette from it, started smoking.

  ‘Shame on you, Chandrika!’ Her lifelong conditioning made a shiver run down the Brahmin girl’s spine. ‘Have you started smoking too?’ Rajeshwari asked.

  ‘Oh silly!’ Chandrika laughed out loud and the hollow laugh wrenched the mask of beauty off her face and cast it far away. With her coloured hair, plucked eyebrows, false eyelashes and dried papery lips that had suffered the onslaught of lipstick continuously, Chandrika looked so tired and aged! ‘You should ask what I haven’t started doing! Children start smoking as soon as they are weaned off their mother’s milk in the society I live in and they even rinse their mouth with alcohol.’

  Rajeshwari was looking at her in shock. They were exactly the same age, yet their faces were so different.

  The glow of one face had been honed by control and discipline to such an extent that almost a decade had fallen off it while an indisciplined lifestyle had inked the other face into that of a tired, old woman who would have leaned on any man’s shoulders who offered support.

  ‘So Raji, won’t you ask anything about Dadda?’ She said referring to her older brother.

  Rajeshwari kept quiet but even her silence did not deter the roguish Chandrika. Stroking her friend’s cold hands, she started whispering, ‘You don’t ask a thing about him but this time when I met him he asked about you before even checking about Amma. Where are you, have you really married a sweet-maker? How is your husband, do you write to me? So on and so forth. And you don’t even ask about him out of courtesy? It isn’t like he has forgotten you! That is the reason why that idiot has drunk himself to a bad liver! One day, he scolded his older son a lot for coming home late. I teased him when we were alone, “Why Dadda, you scolded the boy so badly that he got teary but have you forgotten your Lal Kuan?”’

  ‘He started laughing and said, “Can I ever forget it, Chandri! Given half a chance I’d change the name of that station to Taj Mahal.”’

  Rajeshwari got up without saying a word. Her posture made it known that she wasn’t interested in raking up old stories. Both the friends were thinking the same thing.

  Was Rajeshwari the Rajeshwari of old? Otherwise wouldn’t she have shown some emotion at the mention of Dadda’s name? Chandrika thought.

  On the other hand, Chandrika’s crass attire, cigarette-smoking and incessant chatter had made Rajeshwari restless to get up and leave. The thread of the past that had been lost in the sky like the snipped thread of a kite, even if she tried to turn back and pull at it, what would she gain? Perhaps this tattered kite was the same as a fragment of her frayed truth.

  The wise Rajeshwari laughed and changed the flow of the conversation, ‘You have probably forgotten, Chandri, that now I am the mother of a girl of marriageable age. That is the reason I have come back to the hills, so that I can carefully look for a groom.’

  ‘The way you found one for yourself, and your mother found one for you.’ Chandrika was bent on getting under her skin.

  Before Rajeshwari could say a word, Chandan who had been looking for her mother pulled aside the curtain and came in, ‘Amma, where have you kept the keys?’

  Shanti came in behind her to tell her guests that breakfast was on the table. The two friends didn’t get another chance to parry alone again before it was time for Chandrika to leave.

  Before she left, she offered advice just as Sharda Behenji had done, ‘Rajeshwari, don’t roam around with such a beautiful girl. Times are bad, find a good boy and get done with her.’

  Rajeshwari was bristling under the weight of this loving warning from her friends and well-wishers. Will the boy drop out of the sky? But this oft-repeated bit of advice made her more cautious about the future, and the subliminal struggle that so occupied her took a precarious turn. Her conscious self could not understand her subconscious fear and neither did she even try. As a result, her strict control over her daughter became stricter.

  She left for Dharchula after staying in Almora for a few days. Her conflicted and tired self appeared to find a moment of peace on getting there. A teacher’s family had been living in her ancestral house for a long while but the teacher had been transferred just a few days before her arrival. When Rajeshwari opened the house after collecting the keys from her neighbours, she found it tidy. After socializing with the people of the Shauka tribal community, her father had adopted their lifestyle, and had built his house with an eye for their kind of aesthetics. Teak doors in red varnish with carvings in the Tibetan style, jharokhas made of Shardul wood, and on the top floor, ‘Milan’, her father’s bedroom, was designed in the style of the drawing rooms of his Shauka friends. Everything was exactly as it had been. The teacher belonged to the Shauka tribe and perhaps that is why he had made sure that the room was perfectly maintained.

  Mahim would often say to Rajeshwari, ‘People praise the art behind the way the Japanese decorate their houses but has anyone ever written a line on the Shaukas and their appreciation of aesthetics?’ In designing his bedroom, Mahim had been inspired by the way the Shaukas kept their drawing and dining rooms together. There was a stove in the middle of the room on which piping hot tea was made with butter, salt and milk; the tea frothed like espresso in a brass container covered with beautiful etchings and was then served to guests in silver glasses even as they sank into the plush rugs that her mother had knitted. It wasn’t as if anyone were welcome in this room. Special guests, close relatives and close friends were the only ones who would have the privilege of stepping into the sacred ‘Milan’. The stove would be cleaned and closed right in front of the guests as soon as the meal was over and into that stove would be put dau sticks. Then, women would sit near it and roll balls of wool and knit even as they forgot their tiredness and the sorrow of being parted from their faraway husbands by listening to the amusing anecdotes of Chinese and Nepalese merchants.

  These women had to take special care that their guests were looked after well, especially since their husbands were not present. Raji’s father would also go on long journeys like these merchants, sometimes to Tibet, China or Nepal. Raji would come to Dharchula during her vacations, which was her mother’s home. Once there, she’d swim like a fish who had been taken out of the water for a moment. Only one kind of crop grew in the entire valley. That ensured that there was no dearth of sweet leisure for the women.

  She would spend the entire day rolling balls of wool and knitting and soaking in the colourful atmosphere of ‘Milan’. Her father’s business had started making progress in leaps and bounds because of his good nature and business sense. Armed with just a gun, he would trade in kasturi worth thousands of rupees.

  He would hunt deer known for the exotic essence in the valley and then set out to sell it in lands such as Amritsar or Panipat. He had also adorned the shoulders of an umpteen number of beautiful foreign women with the furs of the cougar and buried a treasure in ‘Milan’. That was his only bank.

  The house was just the way it had been in her father’s time, but it was now more like a museum of wax statues. All around her, standing, as if in a void, were the witnesses of her childhood—the Peepal tree, the roots of the banyan tree, the cooling shelter of the Haraba and the Barada/Baheda, and trees of Dau laden with blood red flowers.

  She kept walking in the narrow lanes of her long-gone childhood. The army had cleared field after field. However, a few trees of Amla and patches of dried grass still remained, still standing like the ruined forts of defeated kings. As a child, she would go with huge bands of young girls from the community to swim in the black river and in the blink of an eye her water-borne army would gobble up an Amla each, leaving the trees entirely bare. The memory of the sweet taste of that Amla tinting her tongue black came rushing back to her mouth.
Had she got what she had asked for at the Shiva mandir in Tapovan after walking for two miles? The verdant Dharchula valley which was open both on the north and the south was still the same! The Kali River still flowed at its middle, dividing the valley down the middle like a parting in the hair. Right opposite stood the Dharchula peak, lying within the Nepal border.

  On getting the news of her arrival, all her father’s friends came over to meet her. Their ancient eyes went moist on seeing their dear ‘Podpancha’s’, or big merchant’s, daughter.

  ‘Do you remember how you used to steal away Chatarsya, dried salted goat meat and Podpanch caught you one day and beat you badly—and do you remember, Raji, when Rukmini and you drank Chyakti from my silver bowl and you danced till midnight after getting intoxicated?’ Rukmini had been her beautiful friend from within a small circle. This one time, she had taken her along to meet her unmarried youngest maternal uncle at the Ramakrishna Mission in Tapovan. Rukmini’s mischievous uncle had sung a Malushahi that had made Rajeshwari cry:

  Oh father, get me the proposal for a beautiful wife from a Shauka family.

  They’d go some distance and then he’d start singing the same verse again:

  Oh my son, where did you meet this beautiful wife from a Shauka family?

  How can a girl from such a family ever be married to the son of a Kumya?

  This time Rukmini would go red in the face with anger, but Shyam Uncle would again start singing after twirling his moustache:

  I met this girl at a gathering of Shauka families, saw her at the Bageshwar Fair and saw her grazing goats.

  Rukmini had burst into tears at that point and stopped going for the gatherings at Raji’s ‘Milan’ for a few days after that. Rajeshwari couldn’t go without meeting her even for a day. She had not forgotten the homemade chyakti made of rice, wheat and jowar till this day. The delicious somo is made by wrapping the chyakti in a cloth, put on a pot of boiled grains with ‘Balma’s’ khameeri tikki in it. Alcohol is made by straining that sweet syrup. The first bottle filled drop by drop from ‘Jugli’s’ edge is called brandy—Raji had picked up all this information without meaning to.