Ode to Broken Things (20 page)

“Too heavy,
lah
, this conversation,” said Agni.

“Anyway, I feel I can do more if I stay in the US, you know; help change the direction things are moving in globally right now.”

Agni sat up. “What about making a change here? Making things better here?”

“Change?” Rohani snorted. “I’ll leave it to my politician brother. It’s his job.”

Agni didn’t even smile at her sarcasm.

“Ahh, Agni. I am just waiting for the wheel to turn full circle. I can’t handle all this stuff with
haram
this and
haram
that. That’s why I joined the Sisters in Islam – to make sense of some of it. I can’t even argue with my family because that proves how the West has corrupted me. But I grew up with stories of magic and sex as facts of life. Nowadays, we are told that if we dress this way and pray five times, that’s the only magic to wipe out all evil. I’m running off overseas again.”

“You’ve really agonised about this.”

‘Well I
care
about what is happening! My mother’s family followed the matriarchal system from Sumatra, and property passed from mother to daughter. Now, as soon as my cousins get married, they change into docile wives. This change is not what I want, but what to do?” She looked over Agni’s head and leapt to her feet. “Hey, loverboy’s here!”

She rushed past Agni. Agni swivelled in her chair to see Abhik envelop Rohani in a deep hug. Then Rohani said something into his ear that made him grin at Agni.

It is almost midnight and Agni is not home. I worry about her, at that party all day with Jay, and what he is whispering into her ears. He will not leave until he has destroyed her.

I worry about her. The streets are uneasy again. The Tamil nurse has dragged the small TV into this room and watches the screen all day; she is slopping the medicines into my mouth without checking the labels. Just an hour earlier she was giving me water to swallow my pills and was so mesmerised by the TV that the water dribbled into a pool at my neck, soaking the collar of one of the new maxis which Agni bought last week.

The new maxis are very pretty, all three of them, in pastel shades of pistachio, pink, and lavender, my favourite colours. As my pink maxi was getting ruined, I was so upset I gagged because I couldn’t shout, but the nurse was irritated at the mess as if it was my fault. She twisted the collar as though to wring my neck. I am resigned to this. When you are old, you pay for curses and shifting moods, living on the scraps of kindness from those you employ.

The streets are uneasy again, just as they were when Jay left the last time. He has returned to finish the job he left unfinished because his parents fled so soon after the riots of 1969. But I will not think of him as a fire-breathing deathgiver; oh no, nothing so powerful when he is only the scum of the earth.

Maheshbabu had to leave this country because of Jay. He left me because of his son’s vengeance. I have no illusions about this, although people like Mridula and the other Bengali women will tell you Maheshbabu left because he repented. They will tell you that Ila returned from India because she loved her sons too much to stay away, and that she came back to her husband who welcomed her with open arms.

All lies.

Ila had given up Maheshbabu almost as if she was delighted to release him. In one stroke she had cut through the knot of their marriage and set him free so that she would never again share his bed, a meal, or anything remotely marital. He didn’t matter any longer, so his relationship with me was of no consequence.

And Maheshbabu? He twined me closer to him in response, especially after Nikhil passed away. As much as I had hated Nikhil’s distance, his hiding in his poetry and his books, I chafed at this cloying neediness too, this grasping of Maheshbabu’s that insisted I match my rhythm to his tune, never let go of his hand even in sleep. I would awaken on nights physically gasping for breath.

Ila was strong. Whereas my life has been lived as a long lie, always searching for missing alibis, I could never accuse her of an untruth. She was hateful, so hateful. In the five years we all spent together, living in what became a communal dormitory, it was their relationship that spoke the loudest in the house through the night, the chinking of Ila’s shakha and pola keeping time to a beat we could not shut out. In such close quarters, oh, we all heard her joyous bangles through the night and had to pretend not to.

Ila had left Maheshbabu for only a few months before she came back from India, but she had lost much of her physical strength. Maybe we had broken her, Maheshbabu and I, but I think her physical weakness was an act to goad me into my worst indiscretion.

She spoke often about the atrocities of the partition that had made two nations from one India. She snivelled, especially about how the changed India had beggared her brothers and killed her parents.

We were all at Mridula’s house that day. Mridula was peeling young banana flowers, dipping her fingers delicately in the mustard oil to get rid of the sap. She was seated on the floor, one foot balanced on the boti while the blade curved upwards, slicing the tendrils into minute portions.

I said, “My mother is a minister in Delhi now; the partition brought new opportunities for the patriotic.”

Ila stiffened slightly. Then she said, “Perhaps women should attend to their families instead of politics, eh Mridula? So that the daughters don’t become the kept women of married men, like common whores?”

I was shocked; it was the first time Ila had voiced such venom. I had not thought her capable of the language she used. Mridula got up quietly and, laying the lethal blade of the boti softly on its side, muttered “Hari Om, Hari Om,” and left without looking at us.

I wanted to take that blade and slice as cleanly through Ila’s neck as I would through the neck of a scaly carp. She must have understood, for she bent down and, setting the boti upright, she calmly continued to cut the banana flower stems.

I ran to the house next door, where Maheshbabu would be, and bumped into him as he was coming back from attending to Siti. Siti had taken to her bed after seeing the shadow-play between Zainal and Shanti the previous evening, and was still in shock.

“Did you already know about Zainal and Shanti?” Maheshbabu asked me, completely befuddled. “Zainal is unrepentant. He says there is a child, but he will take her as a second wife.

I felt the room spin madly. “A child?” I could barely speak.

Shanti’s love had developed over many years, in the hothouse of the times, but I had been so distracted by my own passion for Maheshbabu that I had not known. The way I had failed Shanti could not be spelt out more obscenely.

In that distraught state – my churning emotions compounded by Ila’s venom – I dragged Maheshbabu into a bedroom and told him all. Everything Siti and I had sworn to never tell another human being. I shut all the doors and windows, uncaring of what people might think of our need for privacy under a blazing mid-morning sun.

What I didn’t count on was Jay, who had crawled under the bed to tighten the screws on an electrical outlet. Jay had stiffened in embarrassment when he had heard the door slamming shut, followed by the clicks of the windows, and the sound of his father’s voice and mine. He had curled into a ball and shut his eyes tight, while his ears had opened wide.

We found him curled into a foetal position, Maheshbabu and I, when the screwdriver clattered from his hands. His breathing was shallow, as if he were holding back an emotion so overwhelming that his lungs would burst from the effort. Maheshbabu and I looked at each other wordlessly and I thought, this boy will tell my Shanti immediately and it will kill her, but Maheshbabu waited for Jay to emerge, dirty and dishevelled, from under the bed and said, “Son, you are old enough to understand why you must never tell anyone what you have just heard,” and the boy had nodded and left.

It took him four months to exact his revenge. He must have planned it, for he did it on his birthday. Yes, he killed Shanti on his own birthday. When Shanti was dead, Maheshbabu left for America, taking his accursed son and wife. I was left with a baby, Agni, alone.

I know Jay will not spare my Agni – he will want to tell her everything, too.

“That was a
great
party!’ Agni chattered happily as she and Abhik headed home after saying goodbye to Rohani. “I even got a few
ang pow
s filled with cash.”

“I noticed!” Agni could see Abhik’s eyes glinting in the darkness.

“I know. At our age, we should be giving them out to children, but the tradition of giving money to the unmarried during festivals is great, and I’m very happy with things as they are.”

“Hmm! We need change the
things as they are
but I won’t lecture you tonight,” Abhik said indulgently. “Drop you home? You’d better get some rest since you volunteered to drive my grandparents to Port Dickson tomorrow morning.”

“No problem. I’ve driven that stretch a zillion times. Tomorrow will be a practice run in being a good Bengali daughter-inlaw type.”

Abhik’s voice was serious as he held her hand, clasping her fingers in his. “I’ll hold you to that! But, B, you know they’ll take you just as you are. You don’t have to try any harder.” He drove with their fingers interlocked until the next light forced him to change gears.

“I know. Please be careful tomorrow, Abhik. Your grandfather isn’t the only one worried about you. Sometimes, I wonder whether you even think about whether all this stress is worth it… all the late hours, everyone worrying…”

Abhik’s profile hardened as he lowered the windscreen to touch the card reader at the tollway. The car glided in silence and they merged into the Damansara Highway.

“You are going the wrong way!”

“No, Agni. I think it’s time I showed you what’s at stake here, and what’s worth fighting for. Sometimes I think you just don’t get it.”

Abhik brought the car to a halt at a clearing in downtown Kuala Lumpur. The foliage in the square looked lashed by a tornado; flowers lay ripped off their stems and a long hedge lay capitulated, too tired to stand up.

“It took the police more than five hours to clear this street of protestors, Agni.” Abhik held her hand, “Here, can you see the streaks? That’s from protesters being hit with water cannons laced with chemicals. Helicopters overhead, and tear gas. All this to break up a peaceful demonstration.”

“I saw it from my office window, remember?”

He turned to her. “Yes, shielded by the height and air-conditioning. You and I have been too privileged to see this coming. We went to expensive schools, and our money cushioned us from this kind of desperation. You have to see it to believe it. It’s a vicious system that keeps people in poverty. Have you even seen an estate school, ever?”

Agni shook her head. She had only her grandmother’s word for it. When Nikhil’s work took him into estates in remote corners of Selangor and Negri Sembilan, in those early days of their marriage, Shapna would go with him. Sometimes she would teach small classes of children in the estate schools. “Schools,” Shapna had said, “they were such a mockery.”

Nikhil had been responsible for ensuring that estates had schools but, most frequently, he would come across a classroom, blazing like an oven in the midday heat with an unhappy
kangany
, usually a barely literate labourer, completely ignoring the noisy children. The estate children and their descendants found it hard to escape the life of labour, and today, they were the underclass of this country.

This, too, was her history; an inequity her own grandfather’s negligence enabled.

She looked around the defaced walls of the ancient square. Violence became an option when other doors had closed.

“They are really frustrated,” Abhik was saying. “No job opportunities in the government or the private sector, and discriminated against when it comes to business licences or places at university.” He held her face in his palms. “We have a voice, Agni, you and I.
We
have to use it.”

Agni glanced at Mridula’s reflection in the rearview mirror as she drove through the crowds of revellers. Mridula was concentrating on the road with a slight frown on her face. She, too, was worrying about Abhik.

Not that Abhik’s grandparents would ever share their worries with her. For them, Agni was a favourite grandchild, to be petted and indulged, never to be treated as an adult.

Agni felt a wave of love rushing over her as Ranjan’s head lolled slightly forward in sleep. He was seated next to her, and a gentle snore escaped from his open mouth. She pushed his forehead back, straightening his hair in the process.

Maybe it was time to tell everyone how she and Abhik felt about each other. It would give everyone so much happiness that her own caution seemed irrelevant. Abhik’s grandparents could see they were much more than friends. Earlier today, as Abhik had guided her towards the car, his hand had rested, unselfconsciously intimate, on Agni’s behind. Mridula had smiled knowingly as Agni had jerked away, and although they didn’t kiss or hug in farewell, Mridula knew.

Not that the signs weren’t everywhere. She was acting stupidly secretive, as if she and Abhik were the first ones to be in love in the history of the world, and that only they know the secret code. Rohani had called her out on it too. It was time to tell everyone as soon as Abhik joined her in Port Dickson. There, amongst all the friends and family she had known since birth, so many people who would genuinely wish them well, they should make their relationship public.

Agni felt a burden lifting. The air that streamed through the open windows seemed lighter and fresher than anything she had breathed for a while. She couldn’t wish for a better family to marry into. So what if her own blood was impure? Abhik had convict blood running in his veins! The Bengalis had whispered all kinds of things about Agni’s father and the
bastard child
, but it didn’t make any difference to Abhik or his family.