Serving Crazy With Curry (5 page)

Devi thought she'd contained the damage the best she could, though now she wished she had blown her brains out instead. So what if there would've been pieces of brain matter splattered everywhere, she would at least be dead.

And if she were dead she would not have to listen to this scene. Devi didn't want to open her eyes, didn't want anyone to know she
was awake, alive. As long as she kept her eyes closed, she could shut the world away and at least for another delusional moment pretend that the problems of her life didn't exist.

“Why did she do this?” Devi heard her mother again, speaking through a voice full of tears and agony. Devi had no doubt her mother loved her immensely, but she had come to the conclusion that she would never reconcile her notion of love to her mother's. This was going to be just one of those things that couldn't be resolved and if she'd died it wouldn't have mattered. All those things she wanted to escape would've been eliminated, but now that chance had eluded her.

The real world waited with questions.

She hummed a small tune in her mind, a toneless tune that she used when she was sad to keep thoughts from entering and leaving her brain.

Slowly Devi drifted into sleep, letting the sounds of her family and the music in her brain lull her to sleep.

Genetic Coding

It was a given, Devi was more like Vasu, and Shobha was more like Saroj. It was unshakable. Vasu sincerely believed in it, but now, as she sat by her granddaughter's side, she admitted that there were dark crevices in Devi's mind she knew nothing about.

She only thought she knew Devi, but Devi… ah, but Devi was her own person, unique, like no one else. Vasu admired her spirit, her courage to try the unknown, seek out the strange and the unusual. She wanted Devi to have inherited all those wonderful qualities from her. Now it looked like Devi was more like her suicidal ex-husband rather than herself, Vasu thought with a small laugh that quickly turned into a sob she needed to control.

The white bandages on Devi's wrists were evidence of Vasu's failure. On the surface, Vasu knew she could easily blame Saroj and her lack of compassion for this tragedy, but deep down Vasu knew that Saroj was not guilty. She knew inside her heart that Saroj stopped influencing Devi one way or the other, years ago.

Devi had been close to Vasu, had told her all the secrets, the first kiss, the first love, everything. Somehow Devi, who felt comfortable telling Vasu about her method of contraception, her years-older lover, had failed to mention her impending self-inflicted death sentence.

Oh, her heart hurt. Vasu put a hand against the pounding muscle inside her ribs. It was weak, maybe too weak to sustain this. Once again she stroked Devi's cool forehead and thanked God for sending Saroj in time to save Devi.

When her ex-husband, and he was always ex-husband, never just husband, killed himself, she'd felt myriad emotions, but they were a jumble. There was sorrow among the hate, the relief, the apathy, but it was buried, not like now, now there was only sorrow, gigantic, like the Himalayas, immovable. There was no comparison really.

Vasu married Ramakant because she was of marriageable age and his family proposed the arrangement. Then he worked in a bank and seemed normal. But once she started going to medical school, things went from bad to worse. Ramakant always reminded her that he was paying her way and how much money it was costing. He couldn't understand why she didn't want to just sit at home and be a housewife like every other woman he knew of. But Vasu had been determined. Even though she got pregnant in her final year of medical school, she persevered and didn't drop out as everyone expected her to.

Ramakant lost his job at the bank and Vasu joined the army. Her ex-husband never got over being fired from his job and made elaborate plans to sue the bank and/or steal from them. After that he started coming up with one get-rich-quick scheme after another. But it was when he started stealing money from home that Vasu decided to talk things out and tell Ramakant that he needed to start pulling his weight. The marriage that already hung precariously on mere legalities completely fell apart. The fights became intolerable. Ramakant would go away for weeks without telling Vasu and when he started hitting her, she decided enough was enough.

The divorce was a shock to Ramakant. He couldn't even imagine a woman would do something like this. But when the judge agreed with Vasu and gave her custody of Saroj, something seemed to snap completely in Ramakant. He threatened everyone, the judge, Vasu, even Saroj, and then moved in with his reluctant brother. Vasu wasn't sure what happened there but just three months after the divorce Ramakant killed himself.

Ramakant's brother called Vasu in Jaipur, where she was posted, to give her the news. He'd been very sincere in his apologies and very honest about why he thought Vasu should not come for the death ceremonies. “It wouldn't be proper for an ex-wife to come for the
puja.”
Vasu assured him that she wouldn't want to even if it were proper.

Saroj hadn't subscribed to Vasu's notion in this matter, as she hadn't in so many others. She wanted to go for her father's funeral. She was just five years old, but precocious enough to hurt her mother by calling her a husband killer. Vasu couldn't believe her ears; her heart shattered and she began to slowly dislike her own child.

She'd always thought that mother and daughter were on the same team, fighting against Ramakant, whose moods changed like the weather did in Jaipur, from cold to hot, from pleasant to windy. There was yelling and screaming, even an incident with a butcher's knife and voices inside his head.

And most importantly, Ramakant was gone most of the time. He was always looking for a job, always coming up with a new scheme to make them rich. He never spent much time with Saroj, had no hand in raising her, yet Saroj thought of him as the “good” parent and Vasu as the bad one.

Saroj had blinders on, Vasu was convinced. She blamed Vasu for Ramakant's death. She held Vasu responsible for her father's tormented soul, as Saroj had heard from a friend that those who committed suicide got stuck in Trishanku—in limbo between heaven and hell.

Matters only got worse when Saroj started telling all her friends that her mother killed her father. Her friends told their parents and soon the entire army base at Jaipur knew that Captain Vasu Rao divorced her “good” husband, who then committed suicide. The few who'd known Ramakant were unable to stand against the advanced army rumor mill.

Vasu's commanding officer held a meeting with her. He wanted to know the truth and seemed to believe Vasu when she unwaveringly explained a matter so personal to a veritable stranger. But
there was still a flicker of doubt. If Ramakant was abusive, how would five-year-old Saroj not see it? Because Saroj continued to claim her father was a nice man who brought her candy and dolls whenever he returned from out of town, no one ever completely believed Vasu.

But Saroj was just five years old, and Vasu was convinced that in a few years she'd forget about her father. That didn't happen. The rift that started when he died slowly got larger and deeper. Vasu sometimes was surprised that they even spoke to each other after all these years. Part of the reason they still continued to see each other was Avi, who kept the family together, especially after his parents died in a car accident in Delhi.

“You're the only grandparent Devi and Shobha have,” he always said to Vasu when she worried about staying three months a year in his house. “You're welcome to stay forever.”

It warmed Vasu that Avi said so, though she never took him up on the offer. It was one thing to visit, but to live in the United States? No, that just wouldn't do. She had friends back home in India. She had a home in India. Here, everything was too foreign, almost un-livable at times.

Maybe she should take Devi away with her for a while, just until she got better. A few months by the beach in Visakhapatnam would do the girl some good. They could even take a trip to Goa or go see the Ajanta-Ellora caves, the temples in Mahabalipuram.

Vasu dozed off as she started planning her Indian adventure with Devi.

Devi's eyes flickered open, her hands moved noisily against the sheets, and Vasu sprang out of her drowsiness. “Devi,
beta,
how are you feeling?”

Her eyes were like deep wells, filled with something intangible, and Vasu couldn't see past the brownness of her eyeballs. Devi could swallow herself whole into that vacuum, Vasu realized, and felt the pinch of fear that she may have lost her granddaughter even though she was physically alive.

Devi didn't say anything, didn't even look at Vasu, just turned her head away.

“Come on, Devi, you have to say something, anything,” Vasu persisted when there was no response.

But Devi didn't nod or even move, just closed her eyes and drifted into oblivion again. Vasu wanted to shake her awake, kiss her noisily, jerk her out of this silent madness, but she did nothing, she sat down beside her granddaughter and held her hand as she had for the past hours.

“When will she wake up, Mummy?” Saroj asked later, perilously close to tears.

Vasu shrugged irritably. Saroj had the disgusting habit of crying every time there was any kind of stress. She probably even believed that crying could solve problems. How could she have given birth to a girl who was such a water tap?

Vasu never claimed to be a great mother. She knew her shortcomings, and maternal, she was not. She realized now that she was one of those women who should never have had children. But now her child was grown and she even had grandchildren. Lives took their own course and she couldn't regret the part she played in creating her own little world. If she'd never had a child, wouldn't she have been lonely now? There would be no Devi, no Shobha, no Avi, no trips to the United States every summer. Life would be barren.

“Why did she do this?” Saroj asked, sniffling, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Vasu wanted to lay into Saroj and bring out every instance when Saroj had made Devi feel useless, but it was a pointless exercise. Saroj was convinced that she was the perfect mother, the perfect wife, and the perfect daughter. Saroj couldn't imagine being anything else. If her relationships with her daughters, her husband, and her mother were not working out, it was because something was wrong with them, not her.

“We'll know when she wakes up,” Vasu said quietly but couldn't find it in her heart to take her daughter into her arms and offer comfort. It was so easy for Vasu to hug Devi, cajole her friends, be playful
with others. With everyone she was easygoing, but with Saroj, she was serious, unbending, critical.

“Avi thinks it's my fault,” Saroj said bitterly.

“Did he say so?” Vasu asked.

Saroj shook her head. “But I can feel it. I can feel him accusing me every time he looks at me, even when he doesn't look at me. I saved her, Mummy, and he doesn't even mention it.”

Vasu wanted to say something about guilty conscience but Saroj was doing such a good job of beating herself up, it didn't seem right to kick her some more when she was down.

Avi came inside the small white room with a beautifully arranged basket of white lilies, Devi's favorite flowers. Seeing the flower basket, Saroj burst into tears again and Vasu felt the desire to smack the woman across her face.

“She woke up once,” Vasu informed Avi, not even stopping to think that she hadn't bothered to tell Saroj about Devi waking up. “But she drifted right back.”

Avinash nodded and then sighed when he saw his wife sobbing. “Stop it, Saroj,” he said as gently as he could, but the bite of irritation was there. “She can probably hear us, and do you want her to listen to this, to you crying? She's just sleeping. She isn't in a coma, she isn't dead.”

“Did you talk to the doctor?” Vasu asked quickly before Saroj could say anything to Avi. She didn't want Devi to witness a marital scene while she lay in a hospital bed, forced there by demons no one knew about.

Avi nodded, ignoring Saroj. Her dramatics when overdone became too fantastic to pay any real attention to, and Avi had started ignoring his wife's meltdowns years ago.

“He says everything is fine, just that she might be tired. She should wake up soon enough,” Avi said as he walked up to his daughter. He placed the lilies by Devi's bedside and stroked her hair. “He said a psychiatrist will talk to her and then, if they're convinced she isn't suicidal anymore, they'll release her to us.”

“What?” Saroj said, biting her lip as a new wave of salty tears threatened to claim her. “Why won't they just let us take her home?

We are her parents. We can take her anytime we want, right? We don't need some mental doctor to tell us how she is. What do they know anyway?”

Vasu sighed loudly, but didn't bother to explain that even after Devi came home, she would continue to need medical help. She would need to speak with a psychiatrist, figure out why she broke down like this, and ensure it didn't happen again. This was an illness, and just like you'd go to the doctor if your head hurt too much, you sometimes had to go when your heart hurt as well.

Avi leaned closer to his daughter, kissed her cool soft cheek, and whispered, “You have to wake up,
beta,
time to go home. Devi,
beta,
are you awake?” Avi asked when he saw Devi's eyelids flutter open. ‘Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

Devi nodded.

“Ready to go home?”

Devi shook her head.

Saroj rose shakily and stood by Devi's feet, peering at her face. She wanted to say something nice, something comforting. “Why did you do such a stupid thing? Do you know what a scare you gave us?” she demanded, love and concern turned rancid, spewing out of her as anger.

Avi hissed and Vasu made a clicking sound.