Married Woman (16 page)

‘Darling, you would hardly go and see a play called
Babri
Masjid:
Fact,
Fiction
and
You
if your children were not in it.’

‘No, I wouldn’t, but maybe I should. There are too many people like me in this country who are not paying attention to what is happening.’

Hemant raised his eyebrows. ‘What is happening?’

‘The locks on the masjid were opened to appease Hindu sentiments. Then the Muslim Women’s Bill was introduced twenty-five days later in Parliament to appease Muslim sentiments. Basically both communities were pandered to as an election ploy.’

Her husband stared at her. ‘Are you all right?’

Astha looked self-conscious. ‘Of course I’m all right, why shouldn’t I be?’

‘You sound like a parrot.’

‘To have an opinion is to sound like a parrot?’

‘Please. Keep to what you know best, the home, children, teaching. All this doesn’t suit you.’

The play was over. Himanshu came rushing over to them. ‘Did you see me?’ he cried. ‘I was under the sheet.’

‘Beta, you were the best mosque anyone has ever seen‚’ said Hemant swinging him up in his arms. ‘No wonder everybody was fighting over you.’

‘And me?’ cried Anuradha tugging at his sleeve, ‘Did you see me?’

‘Of course I did. You were soooo good, sweetheart.’

‘Come and meet Aijaz, Papa‚’ went on Anuradha dragging him to where the director stood, surrounded by parents congratulating him, telling him how their children had enjoyed the workshop, how they could talk of nothing but their play, and when was he going to do another?

Astha watched as Hemant met Aijaz, watched as they shook

hands, exchanged a few words, as Aijaz ruffled Himanshu’s hair in a parting gesture, watched as he turned towards other parents. A few months later she heard he was going around with a woman working in an NGO.

Her name was Pipeelika Trivedi. She lived alone in Delhi, sufficiently isolated from conventional society to believe her choice of partner concerned only herself. Her mother was horrified when she learnt of her engagement.

‘You can’t do this‚’ she told her daughter.

‘Why not? You’re the one who is always going on about me getting married.’

‘But not to a Muslim.’

‘He’s sweet. So what if he’s a Muslim?’

Her mother clicked her tongue. ‘They marry four times.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s part of their religion.’

‘Do you, you personally, know any Muslim who has married four times?’

‘How is that relevant?’

‘It shows you are speaking out of prejudice. Meet him and then decide.’

‘It has nothing to do with meeting him. You like him, he must be nice. But everybody knows that all they have to do is say Talak, talak, talak, and the girl is out on the streets.’

‘She is not.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The Qu’ran says.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Aijaz says.’

‘It’s not true. He is lying.’

‘Does he know more about the Qu’ran or do you?’

‘I know more about the world‚’ said the mother, tight and tense.

‘Well I know more about Aijaz.’

The mother looked at her stubborn daughter. ‘You kept saying no to any boy I suggested for this? For this I struggled after your father died, so that you throw yourself away?’

‘He is not a heap of dung, you know. Besides I am almost twenty-nine, you’ve always said you want to see me married, now is your chance. I’m not going to find anyone else. He’s intelligent, sensitive, socially committed, a history lecturer, a theatre activist, but all you can see is a Muslim who is going to both divorce me and marry four times.’

The mother stayed silent, hating to be so opposed to her daughter. The daughter wondered at the unreasonableness of her mother. They had always been so close.

Mrs Trivedi, the mother, had been a widow for much of her adult life. Her parents’ apprehensions about their daughter’s marriage to her Delhi University teacher, twenty years her senior, were fully justified when he dropped dead one morning in front of the blackboard in his classroom. The widow was left with two small children.

She tried for a while to manage in Delhi, but it was difficult. She was too gentle, too pretty, too meek, too young and her circumstances too straightened. Her parents called her to live with them in Bangalore.

Mrs Trivedi went. Gentle and meek though she was, she had also been a wife, and she found it galling to fit into the daughter mode again. Added to this was her parents’ obvious sense of her doom. The years with Jyotin had been the best in her life, it was an insult to his memory to be treated like a cornucopia of tragedy. She made enquiries about a teaching job in a boarding school where she could live with her children.

‘I am moving to Shiksha Kendra‚’ she announced. ‘Board, lodging, and the children’s education all will be taken care of.’

The parents were opposed to further movement. ‘You have not suffered enough?’ they asked. ‘These poor children have not been knocked around enough?’

‘We will manage. Their home is with me, their mother, not in a place‚’ said the widowed daughter, showing all the signs of marriage to an intellectual husband.

‘On what money?’

‘At Shiksha Kendra I won’t need to spend on the essentials. My salary will pay for the extras.’

Shiksha Kendra, set in a forest, miles away from nowhere, the brainchild of the philosopher S Swaminathan, a school which emphasised harmony with nature, respect for every form of life, and the all-round development of body and mind. All this the brochure said, and all this Mrs Trivedi felt when she visited the school. A home for herself and her children was what she was looking for, and at Shiksha Kendra she found it.

‘This school will not equip Ajay and Pipeelika for the competitive world‚’ warned the grandparents. ‘They need to get ahead. They have no father, they are starting out with a disadvantage.’

‘Swaminathan got ahead‚’ said their daughter, somewhat elliptically, ‘if fame and reputation are anything to go by.’

Ajay, the son, showed his determination to succeed from a very early age. No need to tell him the disadvantages of his situation, he felt them all himself. A boy with competition in his blood, he stood first all his life, in school, in IIT, making straight to the US as soon as he possibly could with a wonderful scholarship to MIT. His success evoked tears of joy in all concerned. The widowed mother’s sacrifices had borne fruit. He departed amid great jubilation, and never came back.

Pipeelika, the daughter, was left to fulfil the hopes of her mother on native soil. After school, she moved up North, to Miranda House, college and hostel, to do an Honours degree in Sociology. After that an MA from the Delhi School of Economics.

Her brother thought she should come to the States and do a PhD, increase her market value, he would sponsor her, but I do not wish to join the diaspora, and what about Ma, said Pipee, morally the superior. Instead, after a brief teaching stint, she joined an NGO run by three women, dealing with alternative education for slum children.

Pipee had been working in Ujjala for four years when she met Aijaz Akhtar Khan, at a conference. She was reading a paper on the effects of communalism on the education of Muslim children in the basti. They were discriminated against, made to feel stupid and backward, were told their loyalties were to Pakistan, and looked upon with suspicion. Aijaz was reading on the use of street theatre in the dissemination of social and political awareness in educational institutions. Clearly their interests were similar.

After the sessions were over, he sought an introduction, inviting her to a nearby dhaba for a glass of tea if she were free. She looked at him, the clear warm reddish light brown colour, the long thin nose, the gleaming even teeth, the thick grey hair, and then she smiled, her mouth turning in, making dents at either edge. Yes, she was free.

They talked for hours, it became dark and Aijaz insisted on escorting her back to her flat. She lay awake at night thinking of him. He seemed so gay and lighthearted, with many interests besides teaching. Not only did he manage and encourage drama activities in his college, but he was the prime mover and shaker of The Street Theatre Group. Drama was an effective way of addressing communal issues and dealing with social evils, if she liked he could bring the group to her basti. Pipee liked, and she was sure Neeraj, her friend and colleague would also approve. Ujjala was already involved in introducing drama to their children through the helpers, it would be a wonderful opportunity.

The courtship took six months. Now Pipee wanted to marry him. Mrs Trivedi tried an old tack.

‘Your father would not have liked it‚’ she said.

‘He would have. My father was a secularist‚’ said the daughter firmly. ‘Any father who names his daughter after an ant proves that.’

(Pipeelika? That’s not a proper name, that’s a word.

What does it mean? How do you spell it, pronounce it?

Is this a real name? Never heard of it.

Isn’t that the Sanskrit for ant? How can you be named after an ant?

And so on through the years.)

Pipee saw her mother momentarily at a loss and pursued her advantage. ‘You can’t deny it‚’ she said, ‘my father didn’t want his daughter’s life cluttered up with references to goddesses, and now I am going to live up to his legacy. He married whom he liked, so did you, now it’s my turn.’

‘You don’t know what you are letting yourself in for. It is only later that you will realise.’

‘We’ll wait for that day. Right now we are getting married.’

‘What does his family say?’

Pipee hesitated.

‘See. They are not happy either‚’ her mother quickly pointed out.

‘You are all the same. We don’t care.’

‘Oh, Pip, everybody else will care‚’ sighed her mother.

‘Neeraj doesn’t. She likes him, he is so charismatic it is hard not to like him, you would too if you gave yourself the chance.’

‘I keep telling you it is not him.’

‘So much the worse for you, Ma. Besides
Neeraj
thinks, even if
you
don’t, that I will be happy with him, she encouraged me.’

Mrs Trivedi was silent for a moment. Neeraj was somebody she respected, whose interest in her daughter she had been hitherto grateful for. Now she said bitterly, ‘You all work in your own NGO, and think you don’t have to answer
to anybody. My child you are swimming in a very small pond.’

‘Small pond! When I’ve been working with women for five years, going to all kinds of slums, seeing all manner of injustices done to people I have actually met. If we help them too overtly we alienate the community, and lose whatever influence we have. It’s so frustrating. Ma, you haven’t even seen a slum.’

‘I hope my daughter will not judge her partner by the men in slums‚’ said Mrs Trivedi crossly. ‘And don’t tell me what Neeraj thinks. I had no idea she would encourage you to go against your family and religion.’

This was not the time for Pipee to point out that she didn’t give a shit about religion. ‘Come on, Ma‚’ she said instead, wrapping her arms around her mother’s neck, ‘the world has changed, you don’t realise it living in this tiny place. When you meet Aijaz you will love him, you’ll see.’

‘At least make sure my grandchildren are Hindus. Once you marry God knows what he’ll make you do.’

‘Ma! They will be his children too. He’s not that sort of person, and do you think I would love him if he were? He never mentions religion, except politically, never suggested conversion, nothing. In fact you are the one obsessed with the whole thing.’

Aijaz to Pipee in Delhi, ‘Was it bad?’

‘It could have been worse.’

‘Poor thing, it must be very hard for her‚’ said Aijaz, shifting Pipee’s head more comfortably on his shoulder. They had finished making love, and were talking about their marriage.

‘When she sees you, she will come around.’

‘The whole world may not have your faith in me.’

‘But my world does, and she is a big part of it.’

‘You are very close to her, aren’t you?’ asked Aijaz wistfully.

‘Of course. She is all I have. My father’s family don’t like
my mother, we are not in touch with them, my grandparents disapprove of my lifestyle, and Ajay shows no signs of coming back. What’s the use of having a son and brother if all he does is write patronising letters from the States?’

‘Well, you have me now, and so does your mother.’ Aijaz pulled Pipee on top of him, and pushed his hands through her hair, pulling her head back so that he could look at her milky skin, and pink mouth with its indented corners that smiled in a peculiar way. She smiled now, loving the feel of his hands in her hair, the way he massaged her scalp.

Pipee had a lot of hair, it sprung up all around her head in waves and curls and frizzes. Aijaz loved it, loved it almost as much as he loved her breasts, large and full of give. He shifted his hands to them, and Pipee squirmed a little. She was still not used to how much sex Jazu seemed to need, but men were like that, and all the time before and after was the stuff of happiness, when they were talking, wrapped in each other’s arms.