Difficult Daughters (23 page)

‘There is no need to talk like that‚’ he replied, stung.

‘What about your wife, your children?’ demanded Kishori Devi. ‘How could you do this to them?’

Harish got angry. ‘I do what I can for everybody. But, to satisfy all of you, I am supposed to live my life tied to a woman with whom I have nothing in common. Who cannot even read. Who keeps a ghunghat in front of my friends.’

‘She is a wife, not a showpiece‚’ retorted his mother sharply.

The son maintained a sulky silence, while Kishori Devi thought wearily that there was no use saying anything. What was done was done, and hadn’t it been predicted in his horoscope, and hadn’t she seen it coming these five years?

‘We can move to a separate house, if it is going to be such a problem here,’ said Harish abruptly.

Kishori Devi knew that he could not afford to keep two separate households. He had just finished paying back the debts she had incurred in sending him to Oxford, he was supporting his sister, and she herself had been living with him ever since he had come to Amritsar. She looked at his downcast, harassed face, and her expression softened. He was a good son. How was it his fault if he was caught in the trap of some shameless young Punjabi? Her daughter-in-law was exemplary, thrifty, efficient, industrious and respectful, but if this was to be her fate, what could anyone do? She would have to accept it.

Kishori Devi got up heavily and sighed. ‘Go, go to your new bride,’ she said with slightly less hostility than before. ‘I have to manage this household, to which you have given such little preparation.’ She moved towards the back of the house, while Harish thankfully escaped through the curtains of the bedroom to the front.

*

Ganga was hunched over her knees, with some vegetables before her, pretending, with slow distracted movements, to work. She was too experienced to cut her fingers like Virmati had the day before, but she certainly wanted to. Not only cut her fingers, but slash her throat. May the new bride slip in the blood, and break her head in the kitchen from where she had served him so long.

‘Beti,’ said Kishori Devi.

‘Ji‚’ responded Ganga automatically.

Kishori Devi settled herself on a patla next to her daughter-in-law with many groans.
‘He
Bhagwan, we are all in your hands,’ she started, her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘Who can predict anything, or decide anything on their own? Whatever happens is for some ultimate good, even if we do not understand it at the moment.’

A suppressed sob broke out from Ganga. Kishori Devi went on, ‘In this life we can do nothing but our duty. Serve our elders, look after our children, walk along the path that has been marked for us, and not pine and yearn for those things we cannot have. Since our destiny is predetermined, that is the only way we can know any peace. Duty is our guide, and our strength. How can we control the things outside us? We can only control ourselves. Ganga, beti,’ and here she turned tenderly towards her, ‘you have been a good girl –’

The tears Ganga was determined not to show anybody, started pouring down her face. She buried her face between her raised knees, and wept as though her heart would break.

‘What have I done,’ she wailed, ‘that God should punish me like this?’

‘Beti,’ pleaded her mother-in-law, stroking her trembling back gently, ‘calm yourself.’

‘You tell me, Amma,’ demanded Ganga hoarsely, lifting her miserable, streaming eyes and runny nose to the older woman. ‘Tell me, what did I do wrong?’

‘Who can tell why this has happened? Something in his past life, or yours, or hers, or mine. We do not know, we cannot.’

Ganga continued to abandon herself to her crying, wiping her face with her sari end from time to time. Kishori Devi sat next to her patiently, waiting for her to stop. She had her arm around her, and pressed the younger woman close. Finally she felt Ganga quieten down.

‘We have to accept – this is our lot in life,’ repeated Kishori Devi sympathetically but firmly. There was a silence while her mind moved to the practical aspects of the problem.

The house had just one bedroom and it was shared by the Professor (on one bed) and Ganga, Chhotti and Giri (on the other). Kishori Devi and her daughter, Guddiya, used the veranda that bordered it. It was very inconvenient to give the Professor and Virmati this big room – it was right in the centre, and besides there wasn’t enough space for everybody in the rest of the house. No, the only thing to do, would be to move Harish and his bride to the dressing-room, off the bedroom. It was small, but it did have a largish window, and presumably they wouldn’t object. Then everybody else could share the big bedroom to keep Ganga company.

On summer nights all of them usually slept on the roof. Now two charpais would have to be brought down so Harish could sleep separately in the garden with his new wife.

‘We have to decide about things‚’ she said, getting up. She knew her daughter-in-law would understand.

*

Meanwhile, ‘Come and see your new surroundings,’ proposed Harish pulling Virmati up by one arm and into the front garden, where he showed her the mausambi, mango, mitha and mulberry trees. Virmati was tired and depressed. Now that she was actually in Harish’s house for the first time, she could see it was going to be difficult to live separately from everybody else. Where would she sleep, how would they manage?
Gandi,
wicked, go away, that is what the little boy had said. She looked at Harish, her brow wrinkled with unhappiness.

‘I should never have married you,’ she said slowly, ‘and it’s too late now. I’ve never seen it so clearly. It’s not fair.’ She faltered and stopped. How many times in their past relationship had she said those very same words. I should not, cannot, will not marry you. It will not be fair. And now she had married him, but the old words were still springing to her lips, so many futile noises in the air.

‘It will take time to adjust, dearest. Naturally you feel strange. Come, let us go for a walk.’

She turned her aching feet obediently towards the gate. They went out and walked silently down the tree-lined road, towards nothing, away from a situation neither could escape. At the end of that road lay Virmati’s old house. How far she was from it! Though married, she was dispossessed. Well so be it. She would walk tight-lipped, mute, on the path her destiny had carved out for her.

Thus ended the first day of her married life.

That night, the newly wed couple made love quietly and furtively in the dressing-room before moving to their charpais outside. At each sound Virmati made, the Professor grew tense and whispered ‘ssh’ in her ear.

‘Why do you keep saying “ssh”?’ she asked angrily after a while. Even in Lahore he hadn’t been so paranoid.

‘They’ll hear,’ he whispered again and gestured to the doors, two feet away from their bed.

‘Let them. After all, we are married.’ His hand was over her mouth and she could hardly get the words out.

She felt his weight grow limp and heavy on her.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, speaking as softly as she could to please him. She tried to turn his face towards her so she could see him.

‘We can’t rub their noses in the fact. It’s difficult enough as it is,’ he said in a low, troubled voice, all his attention focused on the other side of the door.

*

Next morning at five, as it was beginning to get light, the couple rose, and slipped out of their mosquito nets. The earth was still cool, the grass dewy, the birds were twittering and cooing. Virmati sleepily made her way to the toilet, the last room at the back of the angan. Coming out, she could see Ganga squatting next to the pump. She hesitated next to her bent back, but Ganga looked fixedly in the other direction, viciously spitting out bits of the neem twig she was using to clean her teeth. Quietly, on feet of lead, Virmati moved towards her husband in the garden.

Tea was brought on a tray by the mother and deposited silently on a little table next to them. Virmati felt uneasy, she was not used to being served by older women. Then, looking at the tray, she felt even more distressed. There was only tea there, no milk, which she was used to having in the mornings. How could her system be properly evacuated with this unhealthy stuff? She looked anxiously at the Professor.

‘What is it, darling?’ he asked affectionately.

‘You know I drink milk in the mornings‚’ she said, pouting a little.

‘And you know I drink tea. I thought you liked to drink tea with me.’

‘Yes, once in a while, I do. But in the mornings I
always
drink milk. Otherwise I can’t – you know – I can’t –’

‘Oh, I’m sure you can, if you try,’ he replied.

‘How would you like it if I asked you to change your habits?’ asked Virmati, looking upset. She was twenty-five. How could her body relearn something as basic as this?

‘I would do anything for you,’ said the Professor, holding her hand.

‘Except this.’

The Professor said nothing, but continued holding Virmati’s hand with an abstracted air.

‘So, I’m not to get milk,’ she persisted.

‘Let the dust settle down, sweetheart. If I start saying you want this and you want that, it will only make the whole thing worse.’

*

‘And what am I supposed to do all day?’ Virmati asked as she watched Harish get ready for college in the little dressing-room.

The Professor looked at her. ‘You can read, you can visit your friends, or your family, if you like.’

‘Family? I have no family left. After what I have done to them.’

‘You have done nothing.’

Did he really think so, she wondered.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ he continued. ‘By lunch. And in the evening we’ll go out.’

‘Should I help Ammaji in the kitchen?’ she asked doubtfully as she walked with him to the gate.

‘Why bother yourself with these things?’ replied Harish impatiently. ‘You are a thinking girl. Let those others handle the housework.’

He smiled at her lovingly and left, leaving her to pass a day alone in a place where her pariah status was announced with every averted look.

Virmati thought she would feel better after she had had a bath, and got ready. She gathered her own dirty clothes and looked around for Harish’s. They were not there. Last night, she had flung hers along with his, on the old wooden clothes-horse in the corner of the room, but now his seemed to have vanished. She searched under the bed, in his suitcase, and then made her way to the bathing room.

The small bathroom was swabbed dry, with two brass
taslas,
a brass bucket, and the big round wooden rod used for beating clothes clean stacked neatly in a corner. An alcove within the wall contained some reetha for washing the hair, and a thick, yellow cake of Sunlight. There was nothing else there. She must have done them, thought Virmati grimly, as she pounded her own lonely, single set at the pump. Later, as she was hanging them out to dry, she noticed his, right there in the middle of the line, between some small and some large female ones.

Virmati spent the morning in the little dressing-room, reading. By lunch-time the Professor had come home, and the mother served them lunch on the bed. Whatever little appetite Virmati had was taken away by the humiliation of being served before everybody else like a guest, and that too by her husband’s mother, whom, in the proper course of events, she should be serving.

*

In the evening, Virmati went to the angan to bring the clothes in. The line was bare except for her own, hanging forlornly at the end. She took them down, and clenched her lip. She wondered drearily whether this isolation would continue till the end of her life.

‘Harish, who washes your clothes?’ she asked later.

‘I don’t really know. Amma, perhaps. Or she. Probably she. Why? How is it important?’

‘She’s still doing it.’

‘Let her, if she wants to.’

‘She picks them up, folds them, I imagine, gets them ironed too?’

‘She’s a housewife, you know. Somebody has to do these things.’ Harish was getting irritated.

‘What else does she do?’

‘Oh, nothing much.’ Harish gestured vaguely round the room. ‘Just little small things here and there.’

Virmati was soon able to form a more accurate picture for herself. From washing his clothes to polishing his shoes, to tidying his desk, dusting his precious books, filling his fountain pens with ink, putting his records back in their jackets, mending his clothes, stitching his shirts and kurtas, hemming his dhotis, seeing that they were properly starched – Ganga did it all. His sleek and well-kept air was due to her. When his friends came, he sent orders to the kitchen that their favourite samosas – kachoris – pakoras – mathris should be made. Along with the khas, almond or rosewater sherbet of the season. All the effort of pounding, grinding, mixing, chopping, cutting, shaping, frying was hers. Was this Harish’s idea of nothing much? And what about her? What kind of wife was she going to be if everything was done by Ganga?

The next day she tried to get up early, before the sun was up. She was going to wash Harish’s clothes, come what may.

‘Where are you going?’ murmured Harish sleepily, as he heard the rustle of her getting out of bed.

‘To have a bath. To get ready,’ she replied.

Harish sat up in astonishment. ‘Now?’ he asked. ‘But it’s still dark. Why don’t you wait till I’ve gone?’

‘I’m used to early habits,’ said Virmati primly.

‘Of course, darling,’ said Harish. ‘But you get up early and be with me. After all, that is why we married. To be together.’

‘Maybe so. But people have to bathe. Or is there some reason why you don’t want me to have a bath?’

The Professor hesitated. ‘Let them all finish,’ he said. ‘My mother bathes at five. Right after her toilet.’

‘So, she’ll be finished by now.’

‘And then the children. Their school, you know.’

‘I’ll be before them.’

‘And then her,’ he said reluctantly. ‘She has to bathe before she enters the kitchen.’

‘So I have to be last,’ said Virmati, sounding mean and petulant even to herself.

‘But I also stay out of the way, sweetheart. Why do you want to make life difficult? Do you doubt that I love you with my whole being?’ He tried to draw her next to him. She resisted.

Finally she said in a whisper, ‘She continues to wash your clothes.’

‘And?’ asked Harish in surprise.

‘And? And – what? As your wife, am I to do nothing for you? Just be in your bed?’

Harish looked upset. ‘You are my other self. Let her wash my clothes, if she feels like it. It has nothing to do with me. I don’t want a washerwoman. I want a companion.’

He took her hand, and they tip-toed inside to their dressing-room. Harish locked the door and, drawing her on to his lap, began to kiss her solicitously. ‘I love you, Viru, I love you,’ he breathed into her ear, ‘and I always will.’

Later, there was a gentle thup-thup on the door, accompanied by the sound of a tray being put down. Virmati flushed with embarrassment. Their room locked, so early, everybody would know what they were doing.

‘The tea has come. Why don’t you bring it in?’ said Harish, stretching and yawning on the bed.

Virmati got up and unlocked the door as noiselessly as she could. Even in her own room she felt raw and exposed. She put her nose a fraction of an inch outside.

There lay the tea-tray on a small table, covered with a spotless white napkin with white embroidery. Underneath was the delicate bone china with the faint green leaves and small pink roses. Virmati picked it up. This tray was really Ganga’s. To think there had been a time when she had associated it with Harish, and only with Harish!

After tea, Harish wanted to go for a walk. That was his daily routine. ‘I’ll wait for you outside‚’ he said as he wrapped his cotton chaddor around himself.

‘All right.’

‘And do your hair‚’ he added.

Virmati edged past the bed, to pull her comb out of her suitcase. Her hair scattered easily, she knew, and now it was almost all out of her plait. Harish would not want her to appear untidy. There were so many eyes watching her.

*

The day passed, empty like the day before. Virmati had a bath, washed her own clothes – his, of course, were already done – read, and waited. The room she was in was so small, she had to force herself to concentrate on the print of her book in order not to feel stifled. Once or twice she went out. Giridhar, sitting on the bed with his grandmother, fell silent when he saw her, and looked at her with his big, round eyes. Kishori Devi, her face blank, muttered under her breath, as though each word was an effort, ‘What do you want?’

*

She tried to be friends with Guddiya. After all, Guddiya was her sister-in-law. She was not affected, like the others, by her marriage.

‘Guddiya.’

‘Hoon,
didi.’

‘Let’s talk.’

‘I have to do my homework.’

‘Shall I help you with your lessons? I used to teach girls just like you, you know.’

‘Why aren’t you teaching them now?’

‘Right now, I am here. I want to teach you. Shall I?’

‘I have to help Bhabhi in the kitchen.’

Guddiya always had something to do with either her mother, her bhabhi, or her bosom buddy, her niece, and soon Virmati had to give up with her. Though not overtly hostile, in the warring factions that existed in the house, she belonged to the opposite side.

*

She tried with Giridhar. He was young enough to be won over, she thought.

‘Come here, beta,’ she said, one day when no one was looking. The door of the dressing-room was open and he peeped in, his bright eyes curious.

Giridhar didn’t move, just stared and sucked his thumb.

‘Bad habit,’ said Virmati instinctively. ‘Take it out. Here, look.’ She quickly drew some figures on a piece of paper.

The boy inched forward and stopped.

‘Come,’ said Virmati, ‘here’s paper, I’ll show you how to draw.’ If only she could teach Giridhar to come to her! She would have someone in the house.

‘Giri … Giri …’ Virmati could hear Ganga’s voice calling sharply.

And then a pair of hands snatched the little boy up, scolding violently. ‘What are you doing here? Who asked you to give trouble where you are not wanted?’ A slap followed, loud wails, Kishori Devi’s voice remonstrating, Ganga screaming, ‘You want her to take him away too. One is not enough for that … that …’

Through Virmati’s heart hammered, that is how they talk of me, think of me.

It was only when Harish came home that Virmati felt free to move about in the house in the areas that were considered his. The big front room, where he sat, read, listened to music and entertained guests, the front garden, and the little dressing-room where they slept. When Ganga saw her, she would turn her face away, or what was worse, would stare intensely at her, her eyes moist, her lip trembling, her big red bindi flashing accusingly. Occasionally, at night, she could hear both the women arguing, and sounds of Ganga crying.

*

Virmati paid a single visit home. One morning, when she felt she could bear the dressing-room no longer, she started off, her heart in her mouth. What would they say? On her arrival in Amritsar, she had written and told them she was married, but nobody had come to see her, not one brother or sister, not any of the young ones to whom she had practically been a mother. They were justifiably angry with her, but she realized she had transgressed, she was willing to make amends. Full of a desperate hope, Virmati shuffled down Lepel Griffin Road.

When she reached the house she walked around the back, where the cows were kept. Her thoughts were confused. At this point, she felt far closer to her family than she had before her marriage. Groping irresolutely around the compound, it did not seem possible that the link was severed. Those bricks and leaves were mingled in the blood and breath of her body.

Virmati entered the angan from the narrow entranceway between the cowshed and the house. She stood there silently, while the weak tears she despised gathered in her eyes. Only her mother would be at home this time, her mother who might be hating her.

*

‘Get out of here! Why bother to come now?’ Kasturi’s harsh words hit Virmati, and she bent her head, hoping this was just the initial reaction, her mother was understandably hurt.