Bhairavi Read online

  ‘Amma, you sleep here. We will both sleep in the godown. It has everything, from quilts to sheets.’

  Chandan took the girl with her to the godown where the wool was stored with such familiarity as if she were a first cousin. Rajeshwari lay in bed but her suspicious nature kept bothering her the entire night.

  ‘What if the young girl were actually a Sardar?’ But the next moment her intellect would mock her foolish thoughts and blow them to smithereens.

  She had scrutinized the girl with her alert, X-ray vision but was still not satisfied. No matter how innocent the face of a Sardar boy might be, there was no way he could have borrowed those lovely curves from anyone, could he?

  The godown was on the top floor of the house and the suspicious Rajeshwari walked up there soft-footed at midnight and put her ear to the door. When two girls of the same age get together, no power in the world can keep them quiet. Their friendship may be old or new, but they get close with surprising alacrity and laugh so loudly right from their young bellies that walls could come down. Hearing such laughter from behind the door, Rajeshwari went back to her bed and tried to sleep. It was difficult to sleep, however. She was certain that the two girls wouldn’t ever meet again after this night, but she had worked hard to protect her innocent daughter from the new decadent culture that could take hold of her in just one night.

  This worry of hers was not without any basis.

  By the time the group left the next day, the girls knew a lot about each other. The girl who had slept with Chandan was called Sonia. She was not from the hills either in language or behaviour, nor by the colour of her skin or appearance, but even then she was as much from the hills as Chandan. Years ago, her grandfather had settled in Delhi. Now, her father was running a successful business there. She was the only daughter. She was not particularly interested in studies and so had done a course in Home Science from a reputed Home Science institute in Chandigarh.

  ‘Haye! Are there colleges for Home Science too?’ The naïve Chandan was hearing about this strange subject for the first time today. Did one have to study Home Science? Here, her mother was a walking-talking institute unto herself.

  ‘Do you know how to cook without having learnt from anyone?’ Sonia asked in surprise. That good citizen had taken two years to learn how to set the table in the western style.

  ‘What else?’ Chandan laughed and said, ‘Do girls from the hills ever have to learn cooking?’ Indeed, she had learnt to cook by observing her mother.

  ‘No wonder!’ Sonia thought to herself.

  Chandan could learn from her Amma but what could poor Sonia learn from her mother? Her sisterin-law would be abroad six months in a year and Mummy? Could she even boil an egg on her own?

  But this girl was really quite something. She went into the kitchen as soon as it was morning. Sonia went with her and stood behind the mother and daughter admiring their skills.

  One put wood in the stove and got a flame going so quickly, it was as if the stove was running on gas. The other quickly washed a dozen glasses and dunked a handful of tea leaves like a cook in a canteen and strained golden tea into the dozen glasses.

  Once again Rajeshwari was tying her sari firmly before picking up the tray and taking it to the drawing room, when Chandan swooped in like a black kite grabbing one tray and Sonia, the other.

  Before Rajeshwari could indicate her displeasure to Chandan with her eyes, the two were gone. She didn’t even get the time to think whether the tea was hot or cold or whether it had enough sugar or needed more.

  The young, intelligent boys had understood that the moment her mother walked in this flash of sunny beauty would hide behind the dark clouds. All eleven pairs of hands ignored Sonia’s tray and leapt at Chandan’s like they belonged to hungry beggars. The tray swayed with the sweet laughter of the person carrying it, which splashed all over the room.

  ‘Look at her teeth, Sonia. They look like Mummy’s pearl string from Basra.’ That same beautiful boy, whose sweet request had won the stern Rajeshwari over, whispered into his sister’s ears.

  ‘Why? If you say, we will add this string to Mummy’s collection. What do you say?’ The sister laughed and replied. At that moment, Rajeshwari walked into the room and saw the two city faces looking at her daughter and whispering to each other.

  ‘Chandan, go. I have put milk on the stove. Just sit there and wait till it boils.’ On seeing her mother’s stern expression, Chandan realized that she didn’t like her presence in the midst of so many boys. She knew she would be reprimanded as soon as they left.

  The others kept praying that the milk would boil quickly and the beauty would return to join them soon, but that never happened.

  A fortnight after this group left, on the fifteenth day itself, an impressive ‘Chev’ came and stood at Rajeshwari’s doorstep, looking for her.

  Rajeshwari was taken aback at first. Mother and daughter had spent the entire day painting and fixing the rooms. Rajeshwari had not been able to find a mason in the market and had decided to do the work herself.

  Rajeshwari had given up hope when even after two months of looking for a groom for her daughter she hadn’t been able to find one. They hadn’t found a groom but perhaps they might find a tenant. She decided to hand over the keys to a tenant and leave. After all, her leave was also getting over.

  Dressed in a torn sari, she was washing away the cement from her hands. Chandan was dressed in a pink churidar and loose kurta with her hair covered with a pink dupatta to keep it safe from the cement and paint. She was standing on the ladder made of old, worn ropes and painting the walls with Michelangelo’s dedication. Usually, Rajeshwari never let her wear churidars. The girl looked prettier in that

  Muslim attire and she didn’t like the Muslim family that had gifted it to her daughter on Eid. Since they were both working locked up inside the house and Randhir Singh had also gone back to Kathmandu, she had allowed her daughter to wear the outfit.

  Such a big car had come to Dharchula for the first time. A group of children accompanied it, guiding it to Raji’s doorstep.

  ‘Does Rajeshwari Devi live in this house?’

  ‘Please come in.’ Raji was washing her hands right there. Wiping her hands with her sari, Rajeshwari had no choice but to relent. She could neither run inside nor outside. Her old sari had got a tear in her haste to get up, and she stood shamefaced in front of the lady facing her, blazing like fire in her red silk sari.

  ‘I was right, Mummy. It was this very house.’ Rajeshwari looked again at the lady in surprise.

  The young woman smiled a mischievous smile. ‘You couldn’t recognize me, right? I stayed with you just fifteen days ago. You have forgotten me already.’

  She laughed again and said, ‘We went back without inspecting the hills. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. I praised your hospitality and your daughter’s beauty to such an extent that Mother came running to have a look herself. There were ten other boys in our group. They will all send their mothers here one after the other.’ Saying this, she started laughing.

  ‘Shut up.’ Rajeshwari was reminded of her torn sari yet again when she saw the careful make-up on the older woman’s face, a face more attractive than her daughter’s, as she stood there brandishing a large handbag.

  ‘Please sit inside, I’ll just fix my sari in a minute and join you. Actually, it is a small place. You don’t find workers so easily. We have to take care of everything ourselves.’ She went inside having explained the reason for her strange attire.

  Chandan had been listening to their strange conversation from the ladder. She couldn’t decide how to get down with the bucket of cement and a broom in her hand. Amma was bringing the guests inside. As soon as they came in, she would get down and go to her room by the back entrance and change her clothes. The excitement of the plan made her hands shake and the broom smeared in cement fell at the feet of the guests. The cement made a batik pattern on the red sari.

  The glorious mother-daughter d
uo looked up at once and couldn’t take their eyes off the lovely face of the inexperienced painter.

  Sonia started laughing loudly, ‘Look at her, Mummy! Didn’t I tell you? Isn’t she a beauty?’ She asked her mother in English.

  It didn’t take the mother too long to realize why her son had practically pushed her out in the cold. The same son who at times acted like her sworn enemy and made her heart ache. It had been two years since mother and son had almost stopped talking to each other. Vikram did the exact opposite of whatever she asked him to do. This time he had sent Sonia with the message that his mother should take his proposal to the girl he had seen in the hills. On hearing this, Rukmini had felt like she had fallen from the skies. What was she hearing! Her wildcat of a son had finally jumped off his high horse?

  She had left no stone unturned in the education of her two sons and one daughter. She would feel content when her sons came to visit in their shiny public-school uniform. She always dreamt that her handsome Anglo-Indian-like sons, who spoke in fluent English and wished their mother with bouquets of ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’, would heap gifts on her when they grew up. But when reality took a turn and pierced a spear in her bosom, she couldn’t bear it. The sons got naughtier with age.

  Their foreign principal would keep sending warnings to her but Rukmini had closed her ears a long time ago. Her husband’s business had opened a fount of wealth in their house. If Gajanan, who had grown up in a poor household, even made an attempt to be judicious about his expenses, his beautiful wife would tear into him.

  ‘Had your ancestors spent money, you would have also learnt generosity.’

  She would sing praises of her affluent maiden home and bully the husband she has been bullying since their wedding day. Poor Gajanan was ready to cut off his head and place it at his wife’s feet to please her. How could he ignore her command? The house would get decorated every day with things that were not needed. Lakshmi’s wrath made the dignity of the home cower and hide in different corners of the house. With age, Rukmini’s love for beautification had started to turn into vulgarity. She would dress up in brightly coloured saris with jewellery in the latest style and play cards in her drawing room decorated in the modern style. Her card parties would sometimes go on till midnight. There were few women in these parties, but you would need four hands to count the men here who were half her age. It first started with murmurs but after a while people started talking about Rukmini’s offensive behaviour openly. She was still affluent enough, however, to shut the mouth of any detractor with a handful of coins.

  Her daughter Sonia returned home like a bad egg with a litany of incomplete schooling in three-four schools. The school where both her brothers were studying was known for the quality of its higher education. The fee given in annual instalments was impossible for common parents to pay but for those who could, it was like a golden insurance policy for the future. Tea garden jobs where you found both women and money or Burma Shell, or a plum foreign job or managerial positions in industries—all these were served by the distinguished public school on a platter to its students.

  It was for this reason that Chandragupta, Rukmini’s older son, didn’t face any problem in getting a high-paying job. Rukmini had found a daughter-in-law from among her own circle, but that guinea had turned out to be a bad coin. Rukmini had chosen her son’s bride with a lot of care. The sons she had educated in English schools, who laughed in English, whose un-Indian pronunciation of Hindi words she had laughed at and told stories of, could they ever like girls who had been educated in Hindi-medium schools? It was for this reason that her first criterion was that before entering her house, the girl should furnish her with a convent school marksheet. Her older daughter-in-law had fulfilled this criterion with great ease. She had studied at Shimla’s Taar Hall, which ticked her checklist. The second criterion was that the girl must be beautiful. Sumita overcame this hurdle with great ease again. The girl might not have been a raving beauty but was attractive; though her attractiveness was in part because of her father’s wealth, in part because of her good education and also because of her ability to do excellent make-up.

  However, within six months of the marriage Rukmini realized that in spite of fulfilling both criteria, the bride’s father had cheated her like a clever merchant. Sumita was quick to anger, she pranced around like a wild horse, sometimes threw Chandra out of the room in the middle of the night. When she would come back from her card parties, she would often find her sharp and smart son reading a book in the corridor like a tame dog with its tail tucked between its legs.

  ‘Why are you here in this cold? Why are you not reading in your own room?’

  ‘Oh Mummy, I can read anywhere I want.’ Her innocent lamb of a son would try to calm her by tickling her with his humour. ‘Actually, Sumita can’t sleep when the light is on, so I am reading here.’

  But gradually, Rukmini understood everything. Dressed in jeans and a jersey, her daughter-in-law would smoke in front of her and she could not say a word. Weren’t her own actions coming back to mock her? When she used to come back late from her card parties, she would find her husband asleep without having eaten anything in her absence. The fatigue of long business trips, staying nights at foreign hotels, travelling without any routine and his wife’s disinterest would drown him in deep sleep till ten in the morning. By now, both husband and wife had become used to each other’s disinterest. How could she say anything to her daughter-in-law? Her mother-in-law’s regular foreign trips had made Sumita even more courageous. She had no fear of her mother-in-law or any care for her father-in-law’s reputation. One son was studying in the same school that her husband had gone to and the daughter in hers. Sometimes, on their sports day, Sumita would wear one of her expensive saris, put on sunglasses and stand with pride in the middle of those parents who like her had not breastfed their children but done their health a world of good by feeding them Farex.

  Sometimes, when there was a cold war between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, the younger son, Vikram would take his sister-in-law’s side.

  ‘Why don’t you say anything to that shameless hussy?’ Rukmini had once scolded Vikram, ‘She walks around shamelessly in jeans in front of your father!’

  ‘So what, Mummy! It’s not like she is roaming around naked. In fact, I think jeans should be made the national dress of Indians. At least, the knees are covered. Besides, if your Sonia can roam around in jeans in front of father, why can’t Bhabhi?’

  How could Rukmini counter that? On top of that, ever since Narendra with his paan-stained smile tucked under a bushy moustache had started visiting her in her drawing room, her blunt son had become even more brusque and started rebelling. Narendra was Rukmini’s distant maternal cousin. But Vikram’s keen eye could not be fooled by this distant relationship for too long. This distant maternal cousin, who would visit without invitation and use his things without asking permission, angered him to no end. Narendra would sometimes shave with his electric shaver, smear his imported aftershave, of which only a drop should be used at a time, like an idiot, and irritate Vikram with his terrible English. Vikram would sometimes scold him in front of his mother but Narendra had a thick hide. He would tease Vikram more by spraying some of Vikram’s Eau de Cologne on his rhino-like hide.

  Sonia had also become very familiar with him. This indiscipline at home had made the son rebellious again. Flowing in this feeling of rebellion, he would sometimes invite a dozen of his foreign friends home for dinner and his room would then become worse than a pig-sty. His servant from the hills, Ram Singh, would be crushing bhang in one corner and bottles of Indian liquor would keep coming in. One time, Vikram crossed all limits. His mother had her NGO friends over that day, and in another room, her younger son had a ‘Jogeeda’ event going on with female beggars and white beggars. He had left two-three jobs in senior positions before managing to hang on at the fourth one that his father had found for him. He had gone with the hill-bound group after taking a long leave
with the aim of leaving this job as well and found this beauty there. In the meantime, the atheist Rukmini was turning devout by keeping fasts and praying in the hope of getting her lost son back.

  She found herself enchanted by this suitable candidate who had been raised in a traditional family from the hills. The naturally rosy complexion and lips brimming with the red juice of the sweet, yellow local berry. The pink churidar and loose kurta and the pink dupatta covering her head made her look like a smiling, young handsome prince.

  Rukmini felt stupid; she had forgotten to bring her camera when she was getting out of her car. Then she could have captured this unmatched beauty on her lens to pour water on the pride of wealthy made-up faces. No matter what, she had to have this gem as her treasure. One, this beauty would perhaps tame her son who had turned into a wildcat. Second, she would be able to keep her proud older daughter-inlaw under control.

  There was another worry that had been bothering her. Sonia’s Punjabi friend Darshan had been throwing herself at her younger son despite knowing all about him. Her face might not even be worth a quarter of this beauty, but her son was at an age that was ripe for foolishness. The son was in his prime after all and his western upbringing could prove to be his undoing. Now, she would not have to worry about Darshan.

  ‘Ay Idiot!’ Sonia chirped again, ‘We have come from so far to meet you and you are carrying brick and mortar? Get down.’

  Chandan laughed a small laugh and then like a consummate painter hung the bucket of cement on a nail on the ladder and climbed down it with her back to them. Then she turned around to look at them.

  ‘Take the turban off your head—you look exactly like a stick-wielding Rajput off to play Dandiya.’ She yanked Chandan’s dupatta off and put it on her shoulders. Then, she took her hand and led her inside as if she were the host and Chandan, the shy guest. Sonia perhaps took Chandan away to another room deliberately because Rajeshwari had just then entered the room after a change of clothes.