The Selector of Souls (20 page)

Steel giants stride past the tracks, carrying their load of current downhill to cities hungry for power. Piara Singh used to know each
pylon, from below and above. An electrician, he was climbing one of those ladders to the sky, providing a connection for those without connections, trying to bring a little light to a tiny village, when the gods struck him down for his temerity. Damini has the khaki envelope they found in his pocket. She has never spent the three hundred rupees he was bribed. His spirit will come too, sometime. He knows her intentions, knows her so well.

The young bride’s eyes are closed, her head rests on her husband’s shoulder, and his on her head.

How lucky she is
.

Damini gazes through her parents at the reclining torso of the Shivalik Hills. They seem to loom larger than five years ago.

Does her father know beauty now? The flowers he sold to templegoers were just names and prices for him when he was in the physical world. When she was a little girl, if she found a single date or coconut she’d place it on her father’s hammock chair. Never did he mention her gifts.

Oh, she knows—he didn’t want to feel affection for a daughter who would be leaving him as soon as marriage turned her into a woman. Loving a daughter, he used to say, was like watering your neighbour’s garden. Unlike other fathers, he never beat her—maybe because she never did anything that might bring shame to his name. Instead he allowed her go to school till she was fourteen, almost to the week before her wedding. Without the gift of that schooling she couldn’t have written messages in Hindi and Punjabi for Mem-saab, and Sardar-saab wouldn’t have hired her.

Now her father’s second wife is a widow. And without even one son for her old age. Can she read and write in any language? Mem-saab used to say a woman who can read and write can always do and learn enough to feed herself. And one who can act and tell stories may find new work. But still—her father’s widow is only twenty, as Damini was when Piara Singh died.

At twenty, Damini could have become a living ghost.

Dayan!
whispered villagers, calling her a witch for bringing her husband terrible luck.

And when Damini claimed a share of the land from her brothers-in-law for Suresh, they were outraged.
Haq-lene-wali!
they called her, for asserting her rights.

At first they said Damini could live with her in-laws. But then they said an astrologer had foretold that if even one square metre of land was given to Suresh, it would be lost to the family forever. Astrologers! Who believes them? And then they warned that Damini was unlucky. They said more accidents could happen. So Damini’s mother-in-law, Ramkali Bai, said, “Damini, better that you leave us.”

So it was that she left her children in Gurkot and made her home with Mem-saab in the city. For that opportunity, she will always be grateful to Sardar-saab—a Qutb Minar towering above other men—who gave a widow a second chance.

Her father looks up—words have arrived.
You should have planned for this, knowing Aman, knowing Timcu. You should have …

Planning is for saab-log, she tells her father. Can I predict my life as they can? And why didn’t
you
come and tell me what was going to happen, ji? Can my third eye see everything? If you can’t even come in a dream and tell me something will happen, how can I plan?

Damini had imagined riots, floods, famine, sickness and drought, but not this. But now that she is on this train of events, she must go where it is going.

“Kalka! Kalka Station!” A railway employee appears at the door between carriages.

Damini has arrived at the end of the line, in a city baking in the shade of the foothills. From the window she sees porters—gunny-sack pads over their kurta-clad backs—besieging first- and
second-class carriages. One has grabbed a suitcase before its owner can fix a price and is arguing to shame the passenger into payment.

Her father, her mother? Their spirit-energy has faded.

The bridegroom rises and collects the couple’s luggage.

“May you be the mother of a hundred sons,” Damini says to the bride as she passes. The centuries-old blessing is powerful enough to serve this shy, smiling girl-woman as well.

The woman in the magenta sari gathers her brood, smiling farewell as she transfers a sleeping boy to her waiting husband’s arms. The woman in the green and mustard print kameez covers her head with her dupatta, draping a corner over her infant’s face to fend off mosquitoes, then steps onto the platform. The muggy warmth of the platform in the midday sun envelopes Damini.

The man who resembled Damini’s father helps his karma by carrying Damini’s bedroll and shoulder bag from the train. He even guards her luggage amid the jostling sweaty crowd while she uses the station restroom—Damini sends his mother mental energy as blessing for raising him well, and brings her palms together to thank him.

The cloth-bundle of parathas and mutton curry Khansama provided as his parting gift should be saved for her Leela and her family—they can so rarely afford meat. She can’t arrive empty-handed. In fact, she should arrive bearing gifts.

She browses the stalls. A peacock-feather hand-fan for Leela.

The shopkeeper proffers a tray of goldthread bracelets for the Rakhi festival tomorrow. Damini shakes her head, “I have no brothers.” No brothers on whom she can tie a rakhi. No brothers to whom she can give milk sweets. No brothers to whom she can turn instead of going to a son or daughter. Damini’s misfortune, and her mother’s failure. She moves to the next stall to avoid his look of pity.

Something for Chunilal, but what?

A spider-limbed man squats amid stacks of books and magazines and urges her to purchase his bestseller in Hindi. A gora with a vertical bar of a moustache gazes from its cover, under an untranslated
title,
Mein Kampf
—the bookseller says it may mean “my trembling.”

Trembling is not a good sign in a man, unless a god is vibrating him. This one looks angry and powerful. Asuras could be vibrating through him—a demon-man.

Damini buys a carved metal rod that Chunilal can use to thread cords through his pyjama waistbands. And for thirty rupees, a cassette with songs from the hit movie
Hum Aapke Hain Koun
for him to play in his truck.

For Kamna, who adores the
khun-khun
sound of glass bangles, she buys a maroon pair studded with paste diamonds—they sparkle enough to pass for real in a dowry. For Mohan, a bamboo flute in honour of Lord Krishna. Maybe he can learn to play.

Chai and a suntra orange cost five whole rupees at the chai-stall.

“Only chai,” she calls to the man simmering tea leaves. Anyway, it’s best not to eat before a bus ride through the Himalayas. She checks her bedroll, to make sure she has her water bottle.

Two women who also seem to be travelling without relatives to accompany or greet them are standing a few feet away, waiting in an imaginary queue for tea. Damini recalls seeing them emerge from a second-class carriage. A red-shirted porter lifts their two suitcases from his head to the platform, and wipes his brow with the dangling end of his turban.

The older one is a gora, as ghost-pale as the Embassy-man. She must be a Christian from abroad. Her sashed grey frock only covers half her legs, as if she is still a girl. The younger one is Indian, but isn’t dark enough to be an Indian Christian—most Indian Christians Damini has ever seen are southerners. She turns, and Damini sees the leaf-shaped reddish-brown scar that spreads across one cheek, from eye to chin.

It’s the unlucky woman she saw at the lady-lawyer’s office, just four weeks ago, the one with the bruises. No wonder her almond eyes dart left and right. No wonder she glances over her shoulder at the stationary train as if a demon might jump from it. She’s tall—definitely
Punjabi. She’s talking with the older woman in English, answering “ya-ya” and “no-no” as little Loveleen does.

She must have been very beautiful, once—definitely saab-log. She must have had an amma who pressed and pleated her frock for private school and whitened her tennis shoes with chuna every night. She probably wore a checked wool skirt in winter, the kind with the large diaper pin. She probably went to an English-medium college.

But she’s wearing an unprinted grey salwar-kameez and white muslin dupatta—colours more appropriate for someone twice her age. A plain steel watch on one wrist. No bangles on the other. No henna designs, no tattoos. No nose ring, though her nose is pierced. No earrings, though her ears are pierced.

Like a widow. Like me
.

No mangalsutra necklace or marriage collar, not even a wedding ring—did her husband cast her out?

The tea leaves come to a rolling boil. The tea-seller adds milk and returns the pan to the burner.

She’s a Jesus-sister. Both are sisters. But they’re dressed differently—old and young. No husbands, poor things
.

The chai comes to second boil, the pan is removed from heat.

They don’t seem unhappy, though. In fact the younger one seems excited, despite her fear
.

The tea-seller pours three tan streams from his pan to the tiny glasses before him. Damini reaches for the same glass as the Indian nun, and stops. The nun stops too, gives a hesitant puff of a laugh, and reaches for the next glass in line. For a moment, guileless brown eyes gaze into Damini’s. Kind, questioning eyes.

As they sip their chai, the gora nun asks—in Hindi!—where Damini is going.

“Gurkot.”

“I was there a few years ago,” says the gora nun, still in Hindi. “Our priest held an education camp and a few medical camps there, and our sisters served there for a few days.”

Damini listens carefully, amused by the gora nun’s accent and attracted by her effort.

“Now, praise be to god, a politician finally gave a permit for a paved road, and there are plans to open a permanent school and clinic there soon.”

“Do you live in Gurkot?” asks the younger one.

Damini shakes her head no, then wobbles it—yes. Then again, no. A film is rising before her eyes; she looks away quickly. She doesn’t know yet if she lives in Gurkot. The Indian nun doesn’t press for an answer, but her large-eyed gaze seems to plunge to the core of Damini’s being. She takes another sip, then turns to the tea-seller and requests three oranges. He pops them in a newspaper-bag and hands them to her. She presses one into Damini’s hand.

Damini’s cheeks warm—the nun must have overheard her asking how much it cost. She searches the young woman’s face for any hint of condescension, but senses only the kindness most people reserve for blood relatives. Perhaps the nun’s wound opened her to those of others. Maybe she too remembers Damini from the lady-lawyer’s office. Damini’s heart is too full to ask.

“Dhanvaad,” Damini thanks her in Punjabi. She wedges the orange into the side of her bedroll and follows them through an archway.

A cream-coloured jeep is waiting for the nuns in the golden afternoon light. The driver, a Muslim, judging from his karakuli cap, stands beside it. A dignified man of about sixty with a salt and pepper goatee, he wears navy blue pants and a matching jacket with epaulets. He makes a quick namaste and loads their bags.

Damini narrows her eyes and looks around, a little unsure.

The older nun glances at Damini and then turns to her driver.

“Shafiq Sheikh, inko bus par charda do.” She sounds accustomed to giving orders. She nods farewell to Damini and gets in the jeep. The driver approaches Damini, and reaches for her shoulder bag. He slings Damini’s bedroll over his shoulder, as if he was ten years younger than her, and beckons for her to follow.

Surprised, Damini rushes after him down the street to the elephantine horde of trucks and buses gathered at a crescent-shaped motor stand. Then she stops and turns to give the nuns a parting wave and smile.

The Shimla-bound bus is not scheduled to leave for an hour, but it’s already half-filled with passengers and if she doesn’t take her seat now, she might have to stand all the way. While she buys a ticket, Shafiq Sheikh brings himself merit by climbing the ladder to the roof of the bus and tying her luggage to it. She nods farewell and he trots off down the street, back to the nuns’ jeep. A few minutes later, the jeep passes by. The younger nun looks up and smiles as if Damini is no longer a stranger.

Christians are good-hearted people
.

Grey clouds arrive, collide and pucker. Rain patters on the roof. Damini reaches the corner of her dupatta through the window, wetting it to wipe her cheeks and forehead. Then her cupped hand for a little rain to drink.

The cooling shower is a blessing from the gods.

The bus fills up with people and belongings, then takes on more. Two hours later, a singer who perfectly imitates Lata Mangeshkar strikes up a song on the bus speakers. “Which movie, which movie?” Damini asks, igniting energetic debate among the passengers.

Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aayee
. Again I remember your story. The driver settles it. The bus lumbers forward with its aluminium sides vibrating and begins to wind its way uphill.