The Age of Shiva (29 page)

I saw what she meant. People were hardened by husbands who beat, who broke skin and bones and teeth. They would mock my pampered complaints, laugh that my disappointment could hardly compare. Perhaps I'd have had a better shot if Dev occasionally slapped me around, punched out a tooth, darkened an eye. At least then I could point to my bruises as I left, giving the world a reason why.

I never did get anywhere with my plan. Zaida pointed out a flaw that made it unworkable. A married woman could hardly expect to survive in a small town away from her husband, she said. “They'd rip you for sport, come after you like wolves.”

Dev must have sensed something amiss, because he tried to squeeze out sympathy by putting his wretchedness on display. He started inexpertly frying his egg himself now every morning, gazing at me with sad, jobless eyes each time the yolk spilled out and hardened against the pan. He stopped listening to the radio or taking naps during the day, spending silent hours on the sofa staring worriedly at the calendar instead. He wore the darkest shirts he owned, with pants that were charcoal black, to show me how solemn he felt. One day, I even found the newspaper had
Positions Available
ads circled in red—he never followed up on them, though, as far as I could tell. He hugged you often and spent time playing with you as visibly as possible, in a misguided attempt to appeal to my motherly instincts.

You understood the dangers better than your father. You wriggled out from his demonstrative romps each time you sensed they might trigger my remoteness again. Whenever a fight broke out, you hid in the bathroom until the shouting subsided, to avoid being pressured into taking sides. You learnt to divide your affection so scrupulously you could have been in training to be a diplomat. Sometimes I felt guilty when I saw your growing cautiousness—your antics always guarded, your laughter no longer carefree. But I was unable to shake off my anxieties, unable to rescue you from having to tiptoe around my needs.

One afternoon, I came back from my shopping to find neither you nor Dev in the flat. On the landing, Pinky was skipping rope, one of the many new girlish pursuits Mrs. Dugal had nudged her towards. “Uncle's teaching him to fly a kite on the terrace,” she said, her healthy cheeks jiggling as she skipped. “Another useless boys' activity.” She rolled her eyes as I went up the steps.

How long was it (five and a half years already?) since those blackout nights on the terrace? When I waltzed around with you in the moonlight, your mouth at my breast? Now, as I gazed across the same expanse, you seemed so grown, the kite string grasped with such determination in your hand. “Pull!” your father shouted, launching the kite—paper rustled, slender ribs flexed through the air. Just when it looked like the kite was going to enjoy a graceful ascent, the nose did an about-turn and dove back towards earth. “Let out more string!” Dev yelled, but you were too mesmerized by the spectacle of the plunge to react. The kite hit the terrace and lay there like an injured bird, a triangle of paper protruding like a broken wing.

Surely I could teach you to control the string better than that. Our servant Kesar had secretly introduced us to this male pursuit at Darya Ganj. I remembered the afternoon Roopa had engaged my kite in a duel, and much to her shock, I had severed her string. How surprised you would be to discover that your mother had some proficiency in this activity as well.

“Mummy's going to teach you today,” I announced the next afternoon, as you gathered up your kites and reel. “You might not believe it, but in her heyday, she used to be quite the ace.”

My heart lurched as your face fell. “But I always go with Daddy. He was going to show me the trick of how to fly the kite in a circle through the air.”

“Daddy's a little tired today,” Dev said. “Mummy can show you as well.” He looked at me hopefully, glad for the opportunity to be of help.

On the terrace, we knotted the string to the kite, and I ran back to you once it was aloft. As I helped you tug and reel out, your reserve began to dissolve. The kite ascended into the sky, soaring past the tallest buildings, rising even higher than the sun, it seemed. When it was barely a patch against the clouds, the riffle of its paper no longer audible, you squinted at it through narrowed eyes. “It's so high,” you whispered, as if suddenly realizing how distant was the other end of the line that sprang from your hand.

“Don't worry, sweetie. You've seen aeroplanes in the sky, haven't you? Those fly even higher than that. One day, you'll see for yourself—we'll go up there in an aeroplane together, travel to some new and wonderful place. Wouldn't you like that?”

You stared at the kite, your brow furrowing. Then you turned around. “Won't Daddy get lonely all by himself?”

I felt my cheeks flush. I tried to keep my voice singsong, carefree. “We'll take him along, of course. I wasn't going to leave him behind.”

You examined my face, perhaps to decide if I could be trusted. Just when I thought your next question would slice like a scalpel to expose my innermost intentions, your expression relaxed. “Where will we go?” you asked.

FOR A WHILE AFTER THAT,
I still managed to cling to my fantasy of the two of us running away together from Dev. But you wiped out even these lingering traces on the night before your sixth birthday, when I asked what present you would like. “I wish you would kiss Daddy,” you replied. The earnestness of your expression could not hide the tide of insecurity shored up behind.

Guilt rose inside me. What kind of mother had I become to keep putting you through this? I pressed your face to mine.

The next day, we stood on either side of you, Dev and I, and helped you guide the knife through the cake. After you blew the candles out, I gave your father a peck as you had requested. “Nothing's going to happen,” I told you, squeezing you in my arms to make you feel safe. “Mummy and Daddy are fine, so you can stop worrying your little six-year-old head.”

But I was not fine. My resentment against Dev had not abated, it bided its time inside. I felt increasingly in the grip of your unborn sibling from fifteen years ago, his phantom presence come to haunt me. He did not manifest himself in my nightmares, creating grisly images of the room above the plumbing shop, or visions of blood and gore. Rather, he infiltrated more subtly, more insidiously, sending questions bubbling up through my consciousness each time I saw Dev at play with you.
How could your father hug and kiss and wrestle with you so breezily, without the slightest inkling of guilt? Why should someone be allowed to enjoy such affection from you after snuffing out the life of your twin?
I tried to calm myself with arguments—hadn't Dev been contrite, wasn't I culpable as well? But your twin always had the perfect counter to my reasonableness.
What if you ended up loving your father more than your mother—where would be the justice in this?

In June, you started first standard at St. Xavier's. We had managed to get admission for you through one of Paji's contacts. The fees were three times what we'd paid for pre-first, and now there were uniforms and books to buy as well. I had to ask Paji for a supplement to the monthly check he had been sending ever since Dev had quit. “There are some very promising leads Dev's found,” I wrote. “He's bound to have a job again any day now.”

In response, Paji cut out a newspaper article, which spoke about how the prime minister's “Green Revolution” had proved to be a success. “This begging-bowl image of us that Indira's putting an end to—let's hope you'll soon be able to match her example as well.”

By now, Dev seemed completely at ease with his unemployed status—settling in for the long haul, it appeared. One night, he even asked me if I thought we should have another child. “Munna seems so alone sometimes, I feel we're depriving him. Just think when both of us are dead and gone, he'd still have someone to call family if we gave him a sibling.”

I stared at him, stunned. “We can't even afford to buy Ashvin a second pair of shoes—how do you think we can afford another child?”

“There's always God to provide. Besides, don't you think your parents would be overjoyed if we gave them another grandson?”

It took me a moment to figure out Dev's meaning—a second child would make Paji amenable to sending more money. “Maybe one of them could be an engineer—an astronaut, even—the other, a physician. He'd like that, wouldn't he, your father?—his grandson the doctor he never could become?”

I turned around, pretending I hadn't heard Dev's words.
Tell him,
the voice within me urged.
Tell him that we would have already been two, Ashvin and I. If he hadn't…
I concentrated on the edge of my pillow and willed myself to be silent.

“And of course if it were a girl, there would be nothing like it. She would be our little princess—we'd all dote on her—Munna, you, and I.”

T
HE WAR THAT RIPPED THROUGH OUR EXISTENCE ORIGINATED AT THE
border with East Pakistan, hundreds of miles away from where we lived. I had been reading about the events there for months—the elections where the East Pakistanis voted against years of exploitation, the brutality with which West Pakistan repressed the resulting rebellion, the millions of Bengali Muslim refugees who streamed into India as a result. How could I have ever imagined that something so distant could cause us such irrevocable change?

It took a while for the conflict to reach us. As the atrocities against the East Bengalis by their countrymen mounted, the calls for Indira to march in became increasingly shrill. “She's getting the world to accept us as liberators, not aggressors, so that America can't come after us in Pakistan's defense,” Paji explained. He claimed the trouble had been building even longer, ever since the Partition. “Yet another sign of British genius, to lump together such far-flung regions with not even a common language, only because both were Muslim.
Now
will people realize just how worthless religion is?”

In the beginning of December, the Pakistanis blundered in with a preemptive attack against India. It was just the excuse Indira had been awaiting. “There is no option but to fight,” she declared.

1962, 1965, and now 1971—preparing for wartime felt so familiar, it could have been a way to mark the passage of years. I had saved the panels of blackout paper from '65—I took them out from under the birthday decorations and put them up. The previous routines started up again—offices closing at 4 p.m., night shows cancelled at movie theaters, sugar and kerosene disappearing overnight from grocers' shelves. Police advised pedestrians to wear white shirts so as not to be run over by public buses in the dark. “Only confirmed drinkers make it to speakeasies,” the newspaper reported, a caption worthy of a photo of Auntie's place.

By the second night, the rumor mill was grinding in earnest—Pakistani agents swarming undetected all over Bombay, reports of enemy planes sighted (as usual) at Madh Island. Mrs. Dugal muttered again about suspicious goings-on in the building, but quieted down when I reminded her that this time our East Pakistan allies were also Muslim.

Although the war went on for two weeks, for all practical purposes, it ended for me on the fourth day. The fall of Dacca, the liberation of Bangladesh, the drama of Nixon deploying the Seventh Fleet against India—all these could have occurred in a different era, on a different continent. The only memory that somehow lingers hazily from that week's newspapers is a picture of a Soviet spaceship landing on Mars.

The day before, a Sunday, started out innocently enough. You insisted on sharing Daddy's egg, so I fried an extra one for him. He was feeling a little groggy, so instead of tea I made him coffee, which he also let you sip. It being a holiday, Dev didn't take his bath until noon—he spent the morning in his pajamas, wrestling with you on the bed. At one point, while I rolled out the chappatis in the kitchen, you dragged your father in, to show me how well you had lathered his face for him to shave. A few minutes later, you ran in again, to show me how Daddy had lathered your cheeks in return. You came a third time, with an ash mark on your forehead—Dev had sent you to rummage around for a fruit offering for Ganesh.

At lunch time, Dev pulled out one of the oversized bottles of beer he had stored in the fridge. “Just this one,” he told me, when confronted with the look I gave him. “To clear out the kidneys—I feel I'm not urinating enough.” Ever since he had stopped working, he always claimed some therapeutic reason for drinking during the daytime—beer for urinary health, whiskey to ward off an impending cold, rum to cure the ache in his neck. I snatched your hand away when you tried to hold the glass for him while he poured.

Afterwards, you wanted to go to the terrace to look for enemy planes, but Dev convinced you it would be too dangerous, directing you to the balcony instead. He rolled a sheet of paper into a telescope and asked you to keep a watch on the sky while he took a nap. Zaida showed up a half hour later and put on an old Beatles record she found at her cousin's place. You barked in accompaniment as they crooned about working as hard as a dog.

That evening, more cars jammed the road below than I had ever seen before on a Sunday. Perhaps people were already getting claustrophobic after two nights of blackouts. We watched them from the balcony, the Fiats and Ambassadors crawling by the unlit streetlamps, the drivers blowing their horns more aggressively than usual to compensate for their painted-over headlights. At seven, the air-raid siren sounded. You ran inside to turn off the lights—you were still enthralled by the novelty (all false alarms, so far). Even after the all-clear siren sounded, you insisted we keep the candles lit and sit in the dark.

So Dev began singing, reprising his Saigal performance from the last war. For a moment, I was transported back to when you were an infant in my arms, when I could see his voice fill your luminous eyes with calm. Now, as you sat in your father's lap, you fidgeted and drummed against the chair, out of sync with his words. One foot pivoted around on the floor, as if doing the twist with a life of its own. “Can we put on the Beatles now?” you asked, the moment Dev's lyrics died down.

We actually had to turn the lights on to make you sleepy that night—the darkness had excited you too much. The next day, the sixth of December, was a Monday. I didn't know if your school would be open, but dressed you up early in your uniform all the same. We waited at the corner until nine, but the school bus never came. Dev was still asleep when you burst into the bedroom. You woke him up, yelling, “No class today.”

Perhaps it was providence that kept you home to spend one last day with Dev. Although, had you been away, I might have been less rankled, and things could have turned out a different way. Something oozed inside of me that morning when Dev let you break the yolk of his fried egg again. I felt a slow burn spread into my chest when you lathered him and wrestled him and ran around once more with ash on your forehead.

“Still having beer for your problem?” I remarked as Dev poured his second glass at lunch. “Perhaps one doesn't need to urinate quite as often as you think.”

Dev set the empty bottle down on the table noiselessly, as if the slightest clink or scrape might propel my anger to a higher level. He sat where he was and stared at the crumbs on his plate as if waiting for permission to touch his beer.

“What's the matter, something else wrong now? Your elbow, perhaps, or is it your neck? I forget, should I get you rum or whiskey for that?”

Still, Dev did not speak. You looked at him, then me, hiding your face behind your tumbler of lemonade. “Well?” I said. “Are you going to answer me, or do I have to call Auntie to come make the diagnosis?”

“Just once,” Dev said softly, shaking his head. “Just once.”

“Just once what? Speak up, maybe your son wants to hear as well. Just once can school fees not be squandered on alcohol? Or just once can Daddy digest his food without having a drink?”

“It's
you
who can't digest your food, not without having a fight with me after every meal.” Dev threw back his chair and stood up so abruptly that the beer bottle toppled over and rolled off the table. “Just once I wish you wouldn't talk down to me. Day after day you train your tongue to speak only in taunts. If not for me, at least think what Munna must feel.”

“What
must
Munna feel? Watching you loll around the house unemployed every afternoon, gulping your drinks. Is that the model you've set for him to grow up as?”

“Yes, yes, go on. Tell him how useless his father is, how he can't even get a job. Don't think I haven't figured out your scheme. You've been trying to turn Munna against me since the day he was born.”

Dev wrapped a protective arm around you as if I was about to pull you away, and this further infuriated me. “I'm not the one who's turning him away,
you
are, with the behavior you keep displaying. He's six years old now, he has eyes and ears and a brain, he can see for himself what his father is like.”

“And what about his mother, does he see through her preciousness? So refined, so much too good for everyone, always strutting around with her nose in the air, always doing what her father directs. Instead of coming after me and ruining my life, why didn't she marry her Paji instead?”

I'm not sure how long the fight went on. I remember you disengaged at one point and disappeared into your usual hiding place in the bathroom. I remember dredging up every grudge I could think of, from Roopa to Freddy to my dowry, and Dev doing the same. Only the shadow within me, the phantom presence of your unborn sibling, remained uninvoked.

The bell interrupted us. It was the postman, delivering a letter from Delhi, which had arrived with Paji's usual impeccable timing. By the time I returned from the door, Dev had stalked off to the balcony.

The fury within me was so centering that it held me in a state of heightened clarity for the rest of that afternoon. I felt like an actor during the intermission, charging myself for the second act of a play. While Dev smoked cigarette after cigarette on the balcony, I decided on eggplants for dinner and blistered them over the gas. I sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and onions as well, arranging them precisely on a platter in an enormous burst of salad. At one point you asked me for help on using a compass, and I bore down so hard that the needle pierced your notebook. I read the letter from Paji with its sheaf of clippings rubbing in the news of Indiraji's latest accomplishments. Neither the usual accompanying gibes nor Paji's meddling suggestions left much of an impression in the spate of my rage.

The siren went off promptly at seven again. You kept sitting at the dining table, drawing circle after circle as if hypnotized. I switched off the lights myself and used a single match to try and ignite all the candles. As they blossomed into flame, a snatch from some familiar tune swirled unidentified through my head.

I sat in silence and waited for Dev to come in from the balcony. Your compass pencil rasped against the paper as it crisply etched out its curved lines. The traffic outside seemed less noisy compared to the day before. I remembered reading that between sirens, cars were supposed to come to a standstill at the curb. Every now and then someone took advantage of the cleared road and I heard them zooming through the night.

Dev finally appeared, and for a moment, I wavered. I could feel the afternoon's events weighing down oppressively—did I have the stomach to complete the unfinished fight? Then, through the darkness, Dev's defiant eyes met mine. I felt instantly electrified. “Look, Ashvin,” I said. “Daddy's come inside.”

Even then, we had a chance. I could have vented my sarcasm, which Dev could have chosen to ignore. He might have gone back to the balcony, or braved the blackout at Auntie's like one of those
Times of India
souls. After all, we knew the options, we had played out these roles so many times before.

But then the unplaced tune surged back into my mind. It unmasked itself, overrunning my consciousness, garrisoning the centers of my brain. “Daddy's going to sing for us,” I heard myself say. “The song he's been singing for years now to make Mummy his.”

I had never thought myself mean or sadistic, always staying behind a self-imposed cordon of restraint. But now I felt compelled to try cruelty as an experiment, see what effect it would have on Dev. I wanted to summon up something truly venomous, experience the thrill of it issuing from my lips. “You know the one I mean, don't you? The one Daddy likes to sing every chance he gets? The one he's spent his whole life singing and done nothing else? The trouble is, nobody's thought his voice good enough in all these years to make a record out of it.”

I didn't discern any visible reaction from Dev, so I thrust in deeper to make sure I reached him. “Come, let's hum it together—it looks like Daddy's forgotten, but we can remind him. I know you prefer the Beatles, but I promise we'll play them after Daddy's finished.” With that, I set the tune free, humming it loud enough to drown out your protests that you didn't want to sing. I picked you up and twirled you around in a show of affection for Dev.

A voice inside urged me to retreat, but I continued, unable to stop myself. “Looks like even this isn't ringing a bell for poor Daddy—perhaps he needs to hear the lyrics as well. Come, Ashvin, this is fun, you must join me in helping him.” I started crooning the song, twisting around the words, inventing new lines, exaggerating the tune as mockingly as I could.
“Will you light the darkness of my heart? To dispel the fire in my life. Nobody wants to hear this song. So I keep singing it at home every night.”
You struggled as I grabbed your hands to clap them along with the words.

I brayed on for a few more verses, until Dev shouted for me to stop. “Can't you see he's crying?” He strode over and lifted you out of my arms.

The act of having you physically taken from me crystallized all my outrage. I went on the attack instinctively. “So much concern you have for your son,” I said, the presence inside me furiously typing up the script. “Before he gets too attached to you, why don't you tell him what you did?”