The Hope of Shridula (20 page)

"I wish I did not know," Ashish said. "I wish I could still believe I work for a purpose. I wish I still had hope."

Zia said, "You are alive, Husband. There is always hope."

"If the English ever leave India," Ashish wondered, "will they take their God with them?"

22

December 1946

L
ook at this, Shridula." Glory Anna held up her painting. "What do you think?"

Shridula looked up from where she sat in the corner of the great room. She leaned her head to one side and scrutinized the green stripes accented with brightly colored drippy spots.

"It is bright," Shridula offered.

"Leaves of a mango tree," Glory Anna explained. "With ripe mangoes showing through. That is what it is."

"Yes." Shridula nodded and smiled. "Very colorful."

When Glory Anna tired of painting, she instructed Shridula to clean up after her. Glory Anna got out the sitar, carefully balanced it on her shoulder, and began to pick a whining refrain.

"My grandmother taught me to play this," she said.

Shridula sank back down into her corner and pasted a smile on her face.

"Enough of that noise! Enough!" Saji Stephen bellowed from the veranda.

Glory Anna sighed. She untangled herself from the sitar, carefully set the instrument back up in the corner, and headed for her room. Shridula got up and followed her.

"I have never had a friend before," Glory Anna said.

Shridula sat in her place in the corner and sank her head into her hands.

"Do you want me to read to you?" Glory Anna asked. "My grandmother taught me." She reached behind the cupboard where she had hidden Parma Ruth's leather-bound Bible. "It is written in English, though, so first I will read it and then I will tell you what it means."

Glory Anna opened to the beginning, Genesis. She flipped a few pages until she got to chapter six. "
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them . . ."

When she finished the chapter, Glory Anna told Shridula, "It said that everyone in the world was really wicked except for one man named Noah. So God told Noah to build an ark, which is another name for an enormous boat, because monsoon rains were coming and they would flood the entire world, but Noah would be safe in the ark."

"What I do not understand is how Noah got all the animals to go into the boat," Shridula said. "When the monkeys saw the tigers, why did the monkeys not run away? Because the tigers would eat them. Would they not?"

Glory Anna stared at Shridula. "I did not say anything about the animals."

Shridula flushed red and looked away.

"Hindus do not have this story," Glory Anna pressed.

Shridula picked at the edge of her sari and twisted it between her fingers.

"How do you know the story of Noah and the ark?"

Shridula sat in terrified silence. She didn't dare to look up.

"Tell me!" Glory Anna ordered. "You are my servant, and you have to obey me!"

"The pale English lady . . . at the mission clinic . . ." Shridula stammered.

"You know her?"

"No. She told the story to my father when he was a little boy, and he told it to me."

"How could he understand her?" Glory Anna demanded. "They speak English at that clinic. Did she tell him the story in English?"

"Maybe . . . I do not know."

When Glory Anna didn't respond, Shridula pleaded, "Please, do not punish my
appa!
He did not mean to do anything wrong. Please, do not tell the landowner!"

"I will not tell anyone," Glory Anna said. "Did you ever see the pale English lady?"

"No," said Shridula. "But I wish I could. Maybe someday I will."

"Maybe Sheeba Esther could take us to see her," Glory Anna said.

"Do you think so? Do you think she really could?"

"Sit beside me," Glory Anna said to Shridula. "I am going to teach you to read."

Shridula fixed a well-practiced blank look on her face and stared at the open Bible. It looked very much like the Holy Book she had so often read with her father, but of course, she said nothing about that.

"These are called words," Glory Anna said—slowly and carefully, as though she were talking to a young child. Shridula nodded. "I will point out easy words and you try to say them after me."

Shridula took great care to stumble on even the easiest word and to make mistakes. Over and over. Each time they read together. Morning and afternoon. One day after another day after another day.

When they came to the book of Exodus, chapter twenty, Shridula forgot herself and read all the way down to verse eighteen.

"You are learning so fast!" Glory Anna exclaimed. "I must be an exceptionally good teacher!"

"I do not understand this part, these commandments," Shridula said. "There are no idols in your house, and Master Landlord says the laborers should not work on Sunday. Those are the first commandments. But look at these other ones.
Thou shalt not kill.
Everyone believes your father killed his brother.
Thou shalt not steal.
My father knows about the landlord's book. Everything my father earns the landlord steals from him.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor . . ."

Shridula paused, but Glory Anna pressed, "
What?"

Shridula took a deep breath and chose her words carefully. "Lying. My
appa
grew up playing with your father. My
appa
suffered always because of lies your father told about him."

"Yes," Glory Anna said. "I know."

"I do not understand. If these are the Christian commandments, and if this is a Christian house, why is everything so wrong?"

"Everyone here is Christian because their ancestors were Christians and not Hindu—well, except Amina, Rajeev's wife, of course. She is Muslim. But even though everyone says they are Christians, no one really is, because no one really follows the Christian God. That is what my grandmother said. No one except my grandmother and me. And Sheeba Esther. And maybe your
appa."

"Appa does not like the Hindu gods," Shridula said, "but I do not think he follows the Christian God, either."

Glory Anna forgot about her paints stacked under the table in the great room. She didn't get the sitar out of the corner anymore, either, for which everyone in the house gave great thanks. Instead she spent almost all her daylight hours sitting with Shridula, reading the Holy Bible.

"Come, come," Sheeba Esther called to Glory Anna. "You spend too much time closed in your room. Play the sitar. What sort of wife will you be, able to do nothing but make that beautiful instrument suffer and squawk?"

"I cannot play it," Glory Anna said with a pout.

"Come, I will teach you."

Sheeba Esther took out the polished rosewood sitar and balanced it delicately between her dainty left foot and her knee.

"Pluck the tune on these seven main strings," she said. "These other strings—" she pointed to the eleven strings under the frets, "they are sympathetic strings. Listen now when I play the accompaniment on them." Her pale, smooth fingers brushed over the strings and started the buzz of the
jiwari,
the music of the sitar.

Shridula, who sat quietly in the corner, closed her eyes as the soft warmth of the tune enveloped her.

"I wish I could play like that," Glory Anna said.

"No one starts out playing well. It takes much practice. It is said that one must spend twenty years learning, twenty years playing, and twenty years teaching in order to truly appreciate the sitar."

"How old are you?" Glory Anna asked.

"Not even twenty years. But I started practicing when I was very small. I cannot even remember back so far."

She would do exactly as Sheeba Esther said, Glory Anna promised. She would practice every day.

"Sheeba Esther," Glory Anna suddenly asked, "Will you take us to the English Mission Medical Clinic?"

The music stopped with a harsh plunk. "I will not! Why would you ask such a thing of me?"

"Because I have never seen an English lady," Glory Anna pleaded. "And I have never even heard a real English lady talk. I know she lives at the clinic, and I know she is very old. And I thought . . . I told Shridula—"

"How very foolish you are!" Sheeba Esther exclaimed. She stood up and carried the sitar back to its place in the corner of the great room.

When Sheeba Esther handed her husband his bowl of rice and
sambar,
she said, "What does get into the head of a young girl? Today Glory Anna and her servant girl asked me to take them to the English medical clinic so they could see a real English lady! Can you imagine anything so foolish?"

Later that evening, as he sat on the veranda, Nihal Amos said to his father, "Whenever the British leave India, it cannot be too soon. Why, that Glory Anna of yours had the audacity to ask my wife to take her to the English medical clinic because she wants to see a real English lady!"

"Women talk too much," Saji Stephen said. "You should have told her—"

Rajeev stood up abruptly. "I have much to which I must attend, Father," he said. "Do excuse me this evening."

In the early hours of morning, when no one except the servants stirred, Shridula, who had already started her morning chores, headed back to Glory Anna's room, her arms loaded down with fresh
saris
for the cupboard. She nudged the door open with her foot.

"It is about time you got back!" Glory Anna whispered. "We must hurry! Dress me in a clean
sari
and brush my hair. Rajeev Nathan has the cart ready to take us to the English clinic!"

Shridula almost dropped the pile of clothes.

"Come, come! Do hurry. You and I are going to meet a real English lady!"