Tell A Thousand Lies (49 page)

Chinni laughed. “Hasn’t your aunt told you the things
she
did?”

“The tree didn’t break?”

“Ved!” I said, appalled, but Chinni just laughed.

Ved and his friends were watching the two of us with undisguised interest. “How come you didn’t recognize your own friend?” one of them asked.

I’d last seen my friend more than a dozen years ago, when we were both sixteen. A lot had happened since. She had changed, I had changed. I was trying to think up a suitable answer, but Chinni beat me to it.

“Because where there was one of me, now there are three
Chinnis
.”A wide grin arced across her face.

The boys tittered, some of them hooting.

“And,” she said, looking at me intently, “if I hadn’t been warned to expect changes, I might not have recognized you, either.”

“Later,” I mouthed from behind Ved. “Go and play outside, all of you,” I ordered the boys. “My friend and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Because there is so much more of her?” Ved said.

Before I could reprimand him, Chinni said, “Oh, so you are the class joker now?”

The boys laughed.

“Are you younger than my mother or older?”

“Twenty days younger,” Chinni said, eyes twinkling. “What of it?”

“Since you are my younger aunt, will you make me call you Chinni
pinni
?”

The boys roared with laughter. Chinni joined in. I shooed all of them out.

“Chinni
pinni
, Chinni
pinni
,” they chanted, as they marched out.

 
After the children left, Chinni sobered. “I wasn’t a very good friend to you, was I?”

“You were young, with a life ahead of you.”

“So were you, but I let you down.” Chinni had tears in her eyes.

“Don’t,” I said softly, putting a hand on her arm. “I have enough regrets to last me a lifetime.” If a tiny part of me could have believed that
Renuka
pinni
, close confidant of my mother and loving friend to us, was a witch, could I blame Chinni for fearing I might be a Goddess? Over the years I had kept track of Chinni. I knew she had married a businessman and moved away to Kurnool. There, business had prospered. She had two children, a girl Ved’s age, and a boy, about six years old. “I’m glad to see you,” I said, my voice cracking. She gave me another hug. “What brings you here?”

“My mother is getting old, so we decided to come back to the village to settle down. My husband is setting up a hardware shop here.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. And I was. “But your mother won’t be happy that you came to meet me.”

Chinni sighed. “Believe it or not, she misses you. She’s bitterly ashamed of her behaviour. She talks about coming to see you, but doesn’t have the courage.”

“I’d love to see her again, Chinni. I’ve been working on letting go of my bitterness. What better way to move forward than meet your mother?” Chinni’s mother was an integral part of my childhood memories; meeting her would be another step towards calming my inner turmoil.

“We were cowards, Pullamma. Maybe if we had stood up for you, we could have got the other villagers to see what was being done to you.” She bent forward and clutched my hands, her belly making it difficult to lean all the way. “Forgive me.” Tears pooled in the half-moons above her cheeks, then dripped to the floor.

“There is nothing to forgive,” I said, turning my hand up and clasping hers. “No one wanted to risk being the first one to say I was no Goddess, just their little Pullamma. People were scared.” Mainly because no one knew how the others would react. I had come to this realization soon after I married Srikar; coming to terms with it had taken a whole lot longer.

“Your forgiveness is more than I deserve,” she said, voice breaking. She raised our joined hands to her forehead. “I hurt you.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “You were my very best friend, and I expected you to support me, no matter what.” I wiped away my tears. “Anyway. All that is best left in the past. What brings you here today?”

“Something is happening that I thought you should know. I wanted to tell you about it myself. But mostly, I just wanted an excuse to see you.”

“You, of all people, never needed an excuse, Chinni.”

“Still.” She sighed. “This is about your priest, Satyam, is it?”

“What is he up to now?”

“Has he done something before?”

“No, but I have been expecting mischief from him. He is that kind of a man.”

“He went sniffing at my mother’s house.”

“What for?”

“For dirt on you. He thinks since you and I haven’t talked in years, my mother and I would be willing to gossip about you.”

“Why?”

 
“He says…” She paused, before saying in a rush. “He claims you have been trying to pass off your own child as Lata’s.” Her cheeks burned.

“He is right,” I said, looking steadily at my friend. “I am.”

She inhaled sharply. “Who is the father, may I ask?”

“My husband.”

She seemed truly shocked. “Who is that?”

“The man Lata’s trying to pass off as
her
husband.”

Chinni looked at me in disbelief, so I gave a short laugh. “Sounds like one of those never-ending TV melodramas, doesn’t it?” I led her through the happenings in my life starting from when Srikar married me, to Kondal Rao’s interference and murder attempt, Lata’s shenanigans, and everything in between.

“Pullamma, please forgive me,” she whispered. “I should have been there to help you through all of this.”

“I’ve reached a point in my life where I am fairly content. I have my son, my medical practice.”

“But not your husband.” She hadn’t been my best friend for nothing.

“I’ve come to terms with it. I’m learning to be happy with what I have.”

“It’s incredible that you become a doctor!” She grinned impishly. “Remember how much our Master despaired at us?”

I grinned back.

“I can’t believe how Lata turned out. Wasn’t she the one who was always angry at how women were treated?”

“As years go by, I feel more and more sorry for her. If she’d been allowed to study, if she’d not been forced into marrying a man so beneath her in education, who knows how she might have turned out?”

“We always thought she would be the one to blaze a trail across the world,” Chinni said.

“She feels betrayed that I, the mediocre student, fulfilled her destiny.”

“You can’t be that mediocre if people travel hours to consult you.”

“That could be my Goddess aura, too,” I said. “Lata resents my degree, my fame, my money, even my looks. Everything she’s done in life has been driven by that resentment.”

“What a waste of a life.”

We were both silent.

Then Chinni said, “How are you coping?”

“I’ve made my first friend after you.”

“Who?”

“Bhavani. Wife of politician Chandrasekhar.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me, too. I wonder what Satyam plans to do with his information.”

“My husband did some poking around of his own. It seems Satyam is addicted to gambling. Cock fights. He owes some very unsavoury people a lot of money.”

“Kondal Rao appointed him as the priest,” I said slowly. “I should have known he wouldn’t have picked just anyone; he would have wanted someone he could control. Probably even got thugs to tempt Satyam with the money.”

“And now Satyam might be getting ready to blackmail you with this information.”

“I don’t need this,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I wish Kondal Rao and his endless machinations would just disappear.”

“What are you going to do about Satyam?”

“I wish I knew.”

”Kondal Rao is a dangerous enemy,” Chinni said. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“I have to go now.” Chinni scooted forward in her chair, balancing on an elbow to get up. “Too fat,” she said, laughing. “I will talk to my husband; maybe we can come up with a plan.”

“I’ll talk to Srikar, see if he has suggestions.”

We hugged again and Chinni left, promising to be in touch.

><

Before I could get around to talking to Srikar, my grandmother fell sick. “Ammamma, you really need to get yourself checked,” I said.

“Just because you are a doctor, doesn’t mean you see problems everywhere.”

“You’ve been losing weight.”

“Why is that such a bad thing? If you have noticed, I’ve been trying to cut down on food. At my age, one should be consciously working towards separating one’s self from earthly desires, from lust, anger, attachment; all manner of worldly appetites.”

“It is more than that, and you know it. Why have you been suffering from nausea?”

“Because my earthly body is still fighting its desire for food.”

Nothing I said would move Ammamma.

Two weeks later she showed up at the clinic. “Perhaps you should do that check-up.”

“Why now?”

“Well –”

“Well, what?”

“I’ve been coughing up blood.”

><

My life had been a balancing act of sorts – if joy outweighed sorrow, sorrow moved in to compensate. And so it was, when my child started to bond with me, Ammamma was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma.

Fifty years Ammamma had squatted in front of a coal-fed earthen stove in a poorly ventilated kitchen. Fifty years of lovingly cooked meals, and all she had to show for it was lung cancer.

I got in touch with Dr.
Govardhan
, my former colleague from Hyderabad. I begged him to come to the village to monitor Ammamma’s treatment. Once he got past his astonishment at my background, he proved to be a wonderful doctor and friend. He drove in once a week to check on her. I took Ammamma to the city whenever she needed to be in the hospital.

Ammamma’s days consisted of bouts of chemotherapy, followed by retching and intense pain. I watched with a heavy heart as she suffered.

Chinni had become a daily visitor now. She spent an hour with Ammamma every day, and then a couple of hours with me in the clinic, helping in any way she could. My former devotee Gopal – the very person who had discovered Lata helping herself to the collections – had gotten particularly attached to Ammamma. I was grateful for his help in the clinic and around the house, because it freed up my time to concentrate on Ammamma. She had moved back to the railway compartment rooms she had come to as a bride, leaving the private quarters for the use of Ved and me.

We were losing Ammamma, and there was nothing I could do about it. I refused to involve myself medically because I didn’t want to second-guess the oncologist, or Dr.
Govardhan
, but I knew enough to be depressed. I walked out of Ammamma’s rooms into the courtyard, intending to call Ved for dinner. Ved was moving back and forth listlessly, his upper body halfway through the tyre swing. I realized with a shock that it had been a long time since I’d seen a smile on my son’s face, and even longer since any of his friends had come over. How could I have become so involved in Ammamma’s condition that I’d neglected my son so?

I slowly walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. He reared back as if struck. His eyes were damp. It shook me to the core; he had lost a lot of weight and I hadn’t noticed. I tried to pull him into my arms, but he resisted. Trying not to let my hurt show, I unrolled a straw mat and settled on it. Ved sat down, too, but a little away.

“Amma says she cannot live without me.”

I was stunned. “When did you meet Lata?”

Ved wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Ved?”

“She’s been coming to meet me.”