The Gurkha's Daughter (10 page)

He wouldn't have minded an extra hand, but it was silly to expect his grandmother to be useful. She did what she could by spreading out the clothes he had salvaged from the tin boxes to disinfect in the sun. His brother hadn't made an appearance since leaving early that morning, and Tikam was busy chasing crowing roosters in the front yard, so Rajiv continued his solitary effort. But when he found what was under the beds—yellowed, silverfish-infested books and tattered clothes heaped in a foul-smelling bundle that he was certain housed mouse droppings—he gave up. Overcome by exhaustion and feeling defeated by the impending work, he lay on one of the mattresses on the terrace and fell asleep.

It was almost dark when he awoke. Sandeep walked out from the bathroom, freshly bathed and whistling the tune of an old Bollywood song. Rajiv's head throbbed, and he asked Sandeep if he'd get him some water. Sandeep called for Tikam but received no answer.

“He's never here when you need him,” his brother grumbled, going to the kitchen. “I have to do all the work around here.”

The water he handed Rajiv was cold. With every gulp, Rajiv pushed down an entire day's worth of pent-up anger.

“You know I don't drink cold water,” he said.

Sandeep pretended not to hear. Rajiv looked at the glass and then at Sandeep, who was clearly trying to avoid his gaze.

Certain that his brother wouldn't answer, Rajiv left for the bathroom. He filled the plastic bucket to the brim with water and took off his clothes. When he reached for his Lifebuoy soap (after being inspired by a particularly enlightening talk on hygiene with the Scotts, he had just two weeks ago declared to everyone at home that he would use a separate soap that no one was to touch), he saw on it a helix of hair. On the other side of the soap were several strands of hair of varying lengths. He tried removing the hairs with his fingers, but they obstinately remained. His nails dug into the soap, turning pink.

The anger came back in flashes. Several emotions surged in turns, each trying to subdue another but managing only to compound it. He thought of the day he'd had—his uncle's sudden appearance, his grandmother's jabs for not finding a job soon, and his brother's lack of consideration—and confirmed what he had little doubt about: he received zero appreciation from his family. They took all his sacrifices for granted. Not one soul, not even Tikam, whose workload Rajiv tried to lighten in every possible way so he could concentrate on school, had said a nice word to him all day.

Lifting a bucket of ice-cold water and pouring it over himself didn't change anything. He stretched—his back still hurt, and every bone in his body smarted—as he heard loud, urgent knocks on the bathroom door. Tikam was calling out his name and beating the door repeatedly. Just a few months ago, after some very careful budgeting and making a few sacrifices, Rajiv had hired workers to break down the wall separating the toilet and the bathroom and replaced the Eastern-style squatter toilet with a commode for his grandmother's convenience. The renovations had gone well, and even his grandmother was happy she
didn't have to squat anymore. Because everyone woke up at different hours, the times for bathroom usage seldom overlapped. At the moment, though, Rajiv concluded that not all was sane about his replacing the two rooms with one. It was, he cursed, a silly, Western thing to do.

He didn't even get a moment's peace in this house. He dressed slowly as the knocks grew more frequent.

“It's almost in my pants,” Tikam screamed, first jocularly, then with seriousness.

Rajiv applied some gel to his head and combed his hair. Dissatisfied with the way he looked, he styled his hair again, this time parting it in the middle. He sprayed cologne under his arms.

“Please, please, Dada,” Tikam cried.

Rajiv saw he was wearing his T-shirt inside out and took it off to put it back on again. When he opened the door, Tikam was gone. Rajiv was sure Tikam was defecating in some isolated corner of the backyard. When his cousin returned, relieved but with a smell emanating from him that gave away the act he had just committed, Rajiv summoned him.

“Why did you knock when I was in the bathroom?” he asked.

“Dada, it was almost out,” Tikam said. “In my pants. One more second, and it would have been on the floor.”

“But you knew I was in there.”

“And you didn't open the door despite how many times I knocked. A hundred times I knocked.”

“What makes you think I'll give up whatever I am doing for you?”

“But I could have dirtied the floor, Dada, and you didn't open the door.”

“This is my house, and I'll spend however long it takes me in the bathroom, get it?” Rajiv's voice rose. “From now on, if you ever knock when I am in the bathroom, I'll stop sending you to school and increase the chores you do here.”

He boxed Tikam's ears and then slapped him hard on the face. He pulled his hair. Tikam's sobs grew louder as the beating progressed to kicking. Tikam was now on all fours. The kicks were aimed at the shins, the stomach and the head. By the time Rajiv was done, the neighbors on Zakir Hussain Road were all out of their houses. Curious tourists from Andy's Guest House peeped out to confirm their horror. Rajiv felt liberated by the animal inside him he had unleashed.

“Just because we are related doesn't mean you can take advantage of me, Tikam,” he spat. “You will never, never, never knock on the door again when I'm in the bathroom.”

Finally at peace with himself for a reason he didn't quite understand, he pushed Tikam away.

The Scotts arrived right on time the next morning. In their hands, they each held a copy of the New Testament.

“How was Sunday?” Christa said.

Rajiv told them all. He started with his
mama
, his grandmother's insults, the backbreaking cleaning, and the beating.

“Do you regret it?” Michael asked.

“Regret what?”

“Beating Tikam for no fault of his.”

“I don't,” Rajiv said. “It felt good.”

“Can you elaborate for us, Rajiv?” Michael asked. If he condemned Rajiv's actions or justification, he let neither his tone nor expression reveal it.

“I don't know, Mr. Scott, it was a long day, and when I beat him, I felt less like a victim. The more he screamed in pain, the less my pain became, the less I felt like I was suffering.”

“Do you think it was a contest thing?” Michael said.

“Contest?” Rajiv was confused.

“Yes, a competition, as in his sufferings should be more than yours.”

“I didn't look at it that way,” Rajiv confided.

Tikam walked to them bearing three glasses of tea. His eyes were still swollen from crying. No physical hurt was evident, but he refused to look up when Michael cheerfully greeted him.

“The sight of him—doesn't it break your heart?” Michael asked as Tikam turned around.

“I don't know.” Rajiv took a sip of his tea and grimaced at its bitterness. “No, it doesn't. It's twisted, but I'll say it—I think he deserved it.”

“We aren't here to preach, but violence isn't the answer, Rajiv,” Christa said.

“Is that what the New Testament says?”

“No, it's not only what the Bible says,” replied Christa. “It's something every religion in the world teaches.”

She spoke more slowly than she usually did and enunciated every word. Christa was definitely more transparent than Michael—she was letting her disapproval show.

“You don't know about all religions,” Rajiv testily declared. He was surprised he was talking to the Scotts that way. “Just today a court in the UAE declared that it wasn't anti-Islamic for a man to use violence on his wife or children.”

“It doesn't make it right, Rajiv,” Christa said. She had stopped sipping her tea.

“I didn't say it's right, Ms. Scott.” Rajiv let go of the handle of his cup and gripped it by the body. “I just find it weird that you claim to know all religions.”

“This isn't about religion at all, Rajiv,” Christa said. “I am afraid—”

Before she could finish, Michael said, “Are you ashamed of your poverty, Rajiv?”

“Who said I am poor, Mr. Scott?”

“No, no one said that, but I think you're stressed about your relatives' arrival. It's festival time; you should try to enjoy
yourself. Too much attention to their needs is making the holidays painful for you. You must remember you can still eat and have a roof above your head—that's more than what many people in this country have.”

“But you have to understand I have a lot of people visiting,” Rajiv said. “And they aren't here to see Sandeep or me but to feel better about themselves, to use us to teach their children that they need to be grateful for their good fortune. I know they'll gossip about our one-bedroom house all the way back to Shillong. If they came here with nobler intentions, maybe I'd look forward to their visit.”

“Why do you let their pettiness bother you?” Michael asked. “You're worrying endlessly about what they think. Aren't you giving them the power to control you? Why is what they think so important to you?”

“It's easy for you to say all that, Mr. Scott, but these people bought me my engineering degree. My mother's sisters and brothers—the four of them—each paid for a year of my college. They expect me to be obligated to them even though I have already paid them all in full after our Kurseong property was sold to those hotel developers last year. I wanted to pay them a little interest, so I wouldn't have to feel indebted for life, but that's not done with your close relatives.”

“They helped you in times of need, Rajiv.” The aggressive tone in Christa's voice disappeared. “Shouldn't you be thankful to them?”

“If thanks were all that was needed, it would be okay. I can't stand their patronizing attitude. Even their children know I wouldn't have gone to engineering college had it not been for their parents. It's in the way they treat me, in the way they treat Sandeep.”

“You just have to see them once a year, Rajiv,” Michael said.

“My
mama
is the worst of all, Mr. Scott, and he lives in Darjeeling.”

“But you rarely see him,” Christa reminded him. “You're thinking of these people so much that you're venting out your frustrations on others—it was Tikam yesterday, and it's me today. If it's just twice a year that you see him, that's not a problem.”

“And when I do see him, I have to make sure Tikam is far away so I don't take out all my anger on him,” Rajiv said.

Before they left, Christa gave Rajiv a copy of the New Testament and told him to read it. It was, she said, the best way to understand Christianity. They weren't trying to convert him, she added. For someone who was losing faith in everything around him, reaffirming his faith in God—any god—might do a lot of good. They were, of course, available anytime he wanted to discuss the book. There was one for his brother, too, but Michael suggested it'd be a better idea to ask Sandeep first before assuming he was going to read a book—any book.

Feeling partly guilty about having been rude to Christa, Rajiv set about cleaning again. Sandeep was still sleeping, and Rajiv didn't wake him up. His grandmother was rotating the knob of her radio to pick up signals from All India Radio Kurseong. He hadn't seen Tikam since he'd brought them tea that morning. Rajiv took a blouse—it probably belonged to his mother—from under his bed and wiped the windows and frames with it. When he removed the pictures from where they were positioned on the walls to wipe their backs, more displaced silverfish hurried about. He killed one or two and let the others live. The dust that had gathered on the pictures provoked his allergies, and he wrapped another of his mother's blouses around his nose and mouth. When the coughing wouldn't stop, he headed to the terrace, where his grandmother advised him to look up to the sky as soon as he felt the coughs coming. It miraculously worked.

As his grandmother muttered details of a few old wives' tales, Rajiv washed the
khadas
that adorned the picture frames.
He'd have thrown them away and not replaced them with new ones, but the pictures by themselves looked incomplete. The people in them looked alive without the
khadas
around them. To Rajiv, that was wrong. He stared at his father's photo and felt an eerie sense of bonding—he looked exactly like his father. He tried to stir up an emotion from his mother's photo and failed. He stared the longest at his grandfather's face, wiped the frame once again, and put the picture back where it belonged. He'd have to make sure the
khadas
looked brand new.

In the evening, he tackled the mess beneath the beds. To add color to the drab room, he rescued the books from under the beds and placed them on the windowsill. He had gone to St. Paul's, a Christian school that, impressed with his academic brilliance, had taken him in for no fee. The beginning of each academic session, in late February, his father helped cover all his and Sandeep's books with brown paper; sometimes Appa stapled a transparent plastic sheet over the covering.

As a child, Rajiv loved writing his name on the book covers with an irregular mixture of upper- and lowercase letters. Sandeep, never academically inclined, begged his parents for leftover paper so he could construct little planes, which tore at an alarming frequency. Now, unable to resist leafing through the same moth-eaten books—big sections of Rajiv's were meticulously underlined and full of side notes, while Sandeep's were clean and barely used—he was transported to simpler, happier times. He didn't remember his relatives treating him shoddily then. He didn't remember a single responsibility. Except a few times, like when they beat him because he returned Niveeta's bite with a kick, his parents had given him a happy, even spoiled, childhood. His thoughts diverted once again to the biting incident, and he smiled. It would be interesting to remind Niveeta.