Monsoon Memories (8 page)

Reena couldn’t sleep that night. She lay on the hard bed, her head spinning with questions, wedged between her mother and Chinnu, who for some reason had decided to come and lie down beside her. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she watched lizards expertly bypass the ceiling fan blades as they flitted across the wooden beams in search of food. Outside, rain drummed incessantly on the tiles. Gypsy howled plaintively for a while, echoing the neighbourhood dogs, and then settled down with a few half-hearted whines to sleep. Reena imagined all the nocturnal creatures coming out in the cover of the rain to look for food. She wondered where Shirin was and what she was doing, at that moment. Was she missing her childhood home? Was she even thinking of it? Where was she?

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Cricket Team

‘Y
es, she’s cute, isn’t she? Even if I say so myself. It was a real wrench leaving her. But needs must, I suppose. Have to earn enough to pay the childminder at least...’ Jenny’s tinkly, slightly breathless laughter filled the corridor as Shirin rounded the corner.

She was tempted to turn around, go to the loo or get a cup of coffee perhaps, but she was running late as it was. And she had to get this over with sometime.

Taking a deep breath, she walked up to Jenny’s desk, where most of her female colleagues were clustered, oohing and aahing. ‘Welcome back, Jenny. You look great.’

‘Thank you, Shirin! Managed to shift all those pounds I gained in pregnancy. Just. And you look wonderful, as always.’

‘Thanks. And is that...’ Shirin was drawn to the photographs of a pink-faced baby covering every inch of Jenny’s desk, obscuring her keyboard and phone.

‘Yes, this is Mia.’

‘She’s beautiful.’ Shirin couldn’t keep the wistful note from creeping into her voice.

‘She is, isn’t she?’ Jenny’s voice was dripping with pride. ‘It was so hard to leave her this morning. The childminder is lovely, though, and Mia adores her. She went to her without tears. Or a backward glance for that matter...’

‘Couldn’t say the same about the mother, I bet.’

‘No,’ laughed Jenny. ‘I was a mess when I left her, sniffling in the train all the way here. Wonder what my fellow passengers thought...’

‘Oh, don’t worry about them,’ one of the many colleagues still bunched around Jenny’s desk piped up.

When the question came, Shirin was not prepared for it. She had been too distracted by the photographs, unable to stop leafing through them, looking at the chubby white baby with wispy blond hair and imagining instead a tiny brown face mirroring her and Vinod’s features.

‘So, are you and Vinod planning...?’

She kept the smile fixed on her face. ‘We are not quite ready yet.’

‘It’s never the right time to have a baby, Shirin. You just have to go for it. You know how I kept postponing having Mia. But now she’s here, I cannot imagine a world without her.’

She wanted to say, ‘You decided to have a baby and—boom!—you were pregnant, just like that. Lucky you.’ She said instead, ‘This is a lovely one of Mia, on a highchair, food everywhere. Was she trying to feed herself?’

‘Yes, that is a good one. Richard clicked it, I think.’ Jenny giggled, diverted.

Shirin heaved an inward sigh of relief. It was over. She was just about to make excuses and head to her desk when Justine, who had been peering at the pictures over her shoulder, asked, ‘Don’t your relatives nag you to have children?’ A pause that lasted a lifetime. ‘I have this Indian friend, Priya. Her in-laws started hounding her to have a child barely two months after she got married. It’s an Indian woman’s duty, Priya said, to produce a son and heir to carry on the family name.’

She willed herself to keep smiling. ‘Our relatives let us be.’ Eleven years and counting.

‘That’s good then,’ smiled Justine.

‘Right. Got to get some work done. Thanks for sharing the photos, Jenny. Mia is gorgeous. Takes after her mum...’

Once safely at her desk, Shirin switched on her computer and got to work, refusing to give in to the pictures crowding her mind: dimpled arms, toothless smiles, grubby faces.

‘You saw Jenny?’ Kate was at her desk, her voice gentle.

Shirin nodded.

‘You okay?’

Caramel skin soft as candy floss and smelling of baby: that warm, milky scent; wispy black hair; long-lashed brown eyes; chubby arms extended out to her, mouth open in a pink-gummed, spit-bubble grin. ‘I’m fine,’ Shirin sniffed.

Kate leaned forward, gave her a hug. ‘If you need to talk, you know where I am.’

Lovely Kate. ‘I know. Thank you.’

‘You’ve always been there for me, Shirin.’ Kate’s voice was soft and Shirin knew she was thinking of David. Four years on, and Shirin could see that thoughts of him still hurt. Kate and Dave: college sweethearts, fifteen years together. And then David met Elaine: brunette, bimbo, ten years younger.

‘He’s a fool, Kate.’

‘I know. All men are. Except, perhaps, your Vinod.’

‘Oh, he snores.’ Shirin wrinkled her nose. ‘And will not put his book on the bedside table, throwing it on the floor instead, right where I’ll trip on it,’ She held up her hand, counting down on her fingers, ‘He’s always late. He can’t cook to save his life. He leaves the toilet seat open. He...’

Kate held her up her hands in surrender. ‘Right. I get it. He’s not a saint.’

Shirin considered. ‘Well...’

‘Shirin,’ laughed Kate. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ And, as an afterthought, ‘Business spec for Tanner ready by end of day tomorrow?’

‘Yes, if not earlier.’

‘You’re a star,’ Kate gave her a thumbs-up sign and was gone.

Shirin went to click on the Tanner document shortcut but some ungovernable impulse took over and she clicked on Internet Explorer and googled ‘Deepak Diaz’ instead. She scrolled down the list of entries, heart pounding. And there he was: Deepak Diaz, Senior Software Engineer, Hewlett-Packard Global Soft Limited, Electronics City II, Hosur Road, Bangalore. Her brother. So close she felt she could reach out and touch him. His hearty laugh. Those twinkling eyes. That teasing dimple. No picture. No mention of his family. She scrolled down the list, all twelve pages. Nothing more. Which was good. As it should be. And yet...

Why hadn’t she done this earlier? What was wrong with her? Why was she doing this at all? A baby: wispy hair, downy skin, huge brown eyes...

And then she was googling ‘Anita Diaz’, urgently scrolling down the list. Nothing. There were plenty of Anita Diazes but not one of them was her sister. Which was odd. Her Anu: exuberant, outgoing, wanting so much out of life, not settling for anything other than the best. Shirin had expected her Anu to be the first entry on the search-engine list, her name to be everywhere on the Web. Her name. Perhaps she had changed it when she married. Had she married? Uttam? Would she dare, after everything that had happened? Yes she would. What was his surname? She couldn’t, for the life of her, remember. But, then again, Anita changing her surname? Giving up her identity? Didn’t gel with the Anita she knew. Oh, what did she know really? She had a picture of her sister in her mind that was eleven years out of date...

Waves of regret, homesickness. The dull, familiar ache of loss like a phantom limb making itself felt. This was why she had not done this before, given in to impulse.

But, like pulling a scab off a healing wound, she scrolled back to Deepak’s name, the three succinct lines describing who her brother was now—her big brother who could do no wrong, whom she used to follow everywhere like Mary’s little lamb from the nursery rhyme; the brother she used to tease about his Buddha-belly, sticking out from atop stick legs: a shaved brown coconut; the brother who’d begged her to befriend his crushes and who, when she introduced them to him, hid behind a shy smile and endearing muteness; the brother who’d sneaked up behind her and Anita, snatched the note: ‘Got you…’
His eyes devouring its contents, his face going still, a faint imprint of his earlier smile visible—just…

The brother with whom she had, that gloomy monsoon evening eleven years ago...
Don’t think about that.

She tried to read between those three lines, picture him, swinging his briefcase—did he carry one?—as he walked briskly home. To his family.
Don’t go there.
To his wife: diminutive Preeti, pretty like her name. To his daughter…

A shaft of pain.

Blindly, she clicked on the X to close Internet Explorer, clicked on the Tanner document shortcut.
Load, please load.
It sprang up on the screen with a little ping like a sigh and Shirin immersed herself in it.

She was eating a sandwich at her desk while browsing through her email when she heard Madhu’s voice—clear as the bell heralding devotees to the temple on the banks of the Varuna River—just above her right shoulder, punctuated with laughter: ‘I know you want a cricket team, Shirin, but let’s see how you feel after you have moaned and groaned and given birth to one!’

And in a flash, she was twenty-five years younger, sitting cross-legged on the front stoop, feeling the gentle breeze rustle the coconut-tree fronds and caress her face...

It was a hot muggy day in May, during the summer holidays. Shirin had stormed in after playing cricket with the neighbourhood kids, her clothes muddy, hair a tangled mess.

‘What’s cooking, Madhu? I could smell it in the fields and had to come home, even though we were winning...’

Madhu turned from the stove, glanced at Shirin and launched into a tirade. ‘Look at the state of you! What will your mother say if she sees you like this? You are not a little girl anymore. How can you walk around with your hair loose and your clothes... Pah! Your clothes! Is that a tear in your salwar?’

‘It was already there.’ Shirin didn’t want Madhu dwelling too deeply on her ripped clothes. ‘I’m hungry.’

Madhu melted, a reluctant smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘I’m frying sweet-potato chips. After you’ve washed and changed you can have some. Where are Anita and Deepak?’

‘Still playing. I was drawn home by this wonderful smell. I told you before, but you weren’t listening...’

Madhu laughed, the last of her frown disappearing as she made to swat at Shirin with the slotted spoon she was using to scoop up the chips. Shirin ducked and ran to the bathroom, but not before she had nicked a handful of chips, Madhu yelling, ‘Your hands are dirty. Wait till you’ve washed...’ at her retreating back.

Afterwards, with the sweet potato warm in her full stomach, Shirin closed her eyes as Madhu’s gentle fingers massaged coconut oil into her hair and tenderly undid the knots.

‘Madhu,’ she asked, ‘did you ever want children?’

Madhu’s hands stopped working Shirin’s hair. Her voice when it came was soft. ‘You, Deepak and Anita are like my children.’

‘I know,’ Shirin said, impatiently. ‘But did you not want any of your own?’

‘I had a baby once...’

Shirin was intrigued. She had never given a thought to Madhu’s past before she came to live with them. She turned to look at Madhu. Madhu hated Shirin moving her head while she was combing her hair. It was one of the rules Shirin never broke as she got a thump on her head for her troubles. But now, Madhu didn’t even notice. She was gazing somewhere into the distance, far beyond the fields, farther even, it seemed to Shirin, than Beerakka’s house at the edge of the village. Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears, and this, more than anything, gave Shirin pause.

A heartbeat later she whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Madhu. I shouldn’t have asked...’

‘Why are you crying, silly girl?’ Madhu reached down and gently wiped the reciprocal tears from Shirin’s cheeks. ‘It’s okay. I have you now.’ Madhu smiled. It seemed to Shirin that the smile made her look even sadder than when she had been crying. ‘Now turn round and let me finish plaiting your hair. I don’t have all the time in the world, you know...’

‘What happened to your baby?’ Shirin wanted to ask. ‘Where is it? Is it a boy or a girl?’ The words tumbled over themselves in their hurry to pop out of her mouth, but she bit her tongue hard, tasted the salty tang of blood. She did not want to make Madhu cry again.

‘So,’ Madhu said after a while, ‘how many children do
you
want to have, Madam?’

‘Six,’ answered Shirin promptly. She had given it much thought. ‘Two sets of twins, then a girl and a boy.’

‘Oh, I see...’ Madhu’s voice was normal again—no sadness underlying it, only a hint of laughter. ‘And who will look after all these children, then?’

‘You, of course,’ Shirin said at once. Then, hesitantly, ‘Won’t you?’

Madhu laughed out loud, making Shirin inordinately pleased that she was happy again. ‘Do you know that there is a way of telling how many children you are going to have?’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t wriggle. If you keep moving your head, I won’t show you.’

Shirin sat still as the statues of the Holy Family residing in the altar, hardly daring to breathe until Madhu finished with her plaits. Then, unable to contain her excitement any longer, she jumped up and down in front of Madhu, ‘Tell me! Tell me!’

‘Give me your right palm.’

Shirin held both out for Madhu to peruse.

‘My! How you’re growing, Shirin! Look—your palm is almost as big as mine.’

‘Madhu, tell me how many children I’m going to have.’

‘See this line here? It is your life line. You are going to have a long life—ninety at least. And this one is for wealth. You are going to be very well off...’

‘Madhu! Children... I want to know... Ooh, that tickles...’

‘Okay, okay. It’s these lines here. Hmm... Let’s see. One, two, three, four. You are going to have four children!’

‘Only four?’ Shirin was disappointed.

And that was when Madhu, laughing, asked Shirin to try and give birth to one child first...

The phone at her desk trilled, bringing her back to the present. Shirin ignored it. The memory, long forgotten and yet retained by her subconscious as clearly as if it were yesterday, made the sandwich sit leaden in her stomach. Madhu’s face, eyes glistening with tears, swam before her. Shirin’s stomach heaved. The sandwich made its way up her throat and she got to the bathroom just in time. She retched long after the contents of her stomach had been dumped, trying to dislodge the memories, trying to purge the past and at the same time wishing she was back in the days before.