The Selector of Souls (22 page)

In the refectory, Sister Imaculata shows Anu to a seat at the nun’s dining table. Steel serving bowls are arrayed on a long buffet table against the wall, along with a stack of compartmented steel plates. Forks and knives are provided so Anu knows not to eat Indian-style, with her fingers.

Sister Imaculata introduces Sister Clare. Very black eyes peer from a deeply lined brown face, framed by a black wimple. Sister Clare’s habit is white, the skirt of mid-calf length. Anu’s cheeks warm as Sister Clare’s gaze flicks to and away from her face. Sometimes she forgets the damn scar herself.

Oh dear, don’t even think damn
.

More nuns file in. Middle-aged Sister Roshni and Sister Lorena are wearing white saris with black sweaters, and three younger nuns are dressed in grey salwar-kameezes. They greet Sister Clare with namastes and in Hindi. Sister Clare’s pidgin Hindi response sounds worse than Sister Imaculata’s, and marks her as an Indian Christian.

A tall thin woman in a white salwar-kameez approaches. “Bethany,” announces Sister Imaculata, “our second novice.” Bethany’s smile
sparkles against the red-brown of her face. A fall of straight bangs over Keralan features makes her look as if she just graduated from school, but up close, she seems older—probably just graduated from college. Anu raises her hands in namaste, but Bethany offers a handshake. Her compassionate onyx-black eyes contrast with her purposeful look. The handshake is quick, as soft as the brush of a birdwing. And when it’s past, Anu senses a new warmth from her.

An unnecessary test of touchability between Christian women, surely?

“This arrived for you,” Bethany says, handing Anu a brown envelope festooned with Gandhi stamps and bearing Mrs. Nadkarni’s return address. Anu thanks her and puts the envelope in her handbag.

“I just arrived two days ago and already I’m feeling at home,” Bethany confides as they queue for red lentils and rice. She nods at two very dark nuns wearing white dresses and stockings, with nurse’s caps. “Sister Rose and Sister Sarah have been so welcoming.”

Anu holds her steel plate close to her chest, and nods. Sister Roshni and Sister Lorena are talking about a school play. Sisters Rose and Sarah are greeting Sisters Clare and Imaculata with utmost respect.

“I felt my calling as a little girl, in the second or third standard.” Bethany’s merry eyes light the dining room. “So long ago, I knew I wanted to help the poor.”

“I remember you at your First Communion in Delhi, Bethany,” says Sister Imaculata from the middle of the queue. “So small in the large cathedral, and filled with the love of god even at that age. I always thought you would join us after school. How is it you waited till after college?”

“I played basketball, no, Sister?”

“So?”

“So I loved wearing shorts. I thought I’d have to give them up if I became a nun.”

“Silly Billy! If you play or teach basketball here, you can wear shorts. Just as if I were to go swimming, I would wear a swimsuit.”

Bethany exchanges an amused glance with Anu.

“Don’t be giggling, now, you two!” says Sister Imaculata. “I don’t look so bad in a swimsuit. Really, we should give our students a few lectures to explain that nuns are not in the dark ages.”

Sister Clare sets her plate down at the head of the table. “Hindu politicians would send protesters immediately. They’d accuse us of trying to convert Hindu girls.”

“You’re right, Sister.” Sister Imaculata sighs as she spoons rajma beans over her rice. “As it is, our young ladies are under so much pressure to study the National Council curriculum, get good marks, get a corporate job, marry an engineer, doctor or accountant. I tell my relatives in Ireland they should come and see our classes—fifty and sixty students to a teacher. If they saw how much competition there is even to enter this school, their children might stop all their whinging and whining about too much homework.”

“You young nuns are all so busy with your ministries, with teaching and healing,” says Sister Clare. “You all say no time, no time. Not even time for introspection.”

“Oh, no Sister,” says Sister Imaculata, taking her seat at the middle of the table. “We have constant introspection. I’m forever worrying.”

Anu takes her seat and unfolds her serviette on her lap as Bethany approaches the chair beside her.

“Anu, with your background, I’m sure you will really help the poor,” says Sister Clare.

Is Sister Clare too old to know everyone now realizes that the word
background
is code for caste? Her compliment implies that caste decides your competence. Anu addresses her plate so as not to respond.

“Bethany, what is your full name?” Sister Clare, again.

Bethany sits down. After a pause, she says, “Valmiki.”

Sister Clare nods. “You often can’t tell these days, but I thought so.”

Anu reddens with indignation for Bethany, and shame for Sister Clare. What would Jesus say? Sister Imaculata distracts them by
leading grace. Sister Clare begins eating as soon as the prayer is over, dabbing her lips with her serviette from time to time. Bethany stares at her plate as if worms have sprouted from the rice.

“Don’t you be heeding her,” Imaculata whispers to Bethany. “Bit of a superiority complex.” She picks up her spoon. Rajma beans add their red-brown colour to the brown rice grains.

The saucy fragrance of cumin and garam masala informs Anu she is hungry; she follows Sister Imaculata’s lead. Sister Clare tips a jar of mango pickle in Anu’s direction. Anu shakes her head.

“When I arrived here,” Imaculata says to them all, “I thought only Hindus had caste. And I thought intermarriage meant a Christian marrying a Jewish person, or a Catholic marrying a Protestant in Belfast. Here it can mean a caste Hindu marrying a Valmiki, anywhere in the country! Now eat up, my dear—god’s work is waiting.”

Bethany looks up, manages a smile.

After a while, Imaculata rises. Anu isn’t finished, but jumps up to help an elder.

But Imaculata says, “It’s my turn,” and takes Bethany’s plate, Sister Clare’s and her own to the kitchen, plainly demonstrating how the refectory operates without servants or the tyranny of the old over the young.

Sister Clare goes to the corner of the room and washes her hands at a small sink Anu hadn’t noticed before. Anu sits down and turns to Bethany. If they were two women meeting for the first time at a party, the first question Anu would ask is, “Are you married?” and then, “How many children?” But here?

“Were you ever married?” she asks.

“No” says Bethany. “And I don’t think I will ever feel married to Lord Jesus, even when I take my final vows.”

“I don’t remember any nun really believing she was married to Jesus,” says Anu.

“I never wanted to be married,” says Bethany. “I told my parents, please don’t plan a wedding for me, I will join a convent.”

“Were they sad when you left?”

“No, relieved. My number one sister just got married, and in a few years they’ll have to marry off number three sister then number four.”

The black Bake-lite phone in the nun’s common room makes choking sounds as Anu dials Purnima-aunty’s number after dinner. She gets through on the seventh try. “Hello, Aunty. We arrived safely. How are you?”

Purnima-aunty gives a sigh. “I’m well, I’m well. I should be editing my speech for the Cairo Conference on Population. Instead, I’m sitting here worrying about you. You know, in the old days, people would renounce everything and go live in an ashram. But only after raising a family, after all expectations were met—it’s too early for you to go into sanyas.”

“I could live to be a hundred and never meet everyone’s expectations, Aunty.”

“Want to give me a phone number?”

“No—it’s best if you don’t know how to reach me. Just call Mrs. Nadkarni if you need to get in touch. I don’t want to cause any more trouble. I have put you through too much.”

“No trouble, darling. Please, call your mother?”

“I’m about to.”

And she does, listening at arm’s length to Mumma’s telling her how immature, short-sighted, irrational and unrealistic she is. Ungrateful for the best match any girl in Delhi ever dreamed possible. And selfish, always selfish. And how dare she create more drama by telling everyone, even her parents, to contact her through that meddling woman, that lawyer. “You’re the most stubborn girl in the universe,” says Mumma, making the first statement Anu can readily agree with. “I don’t know how you think you’re ever going to become a nun. Well, at least no one can blame me for this one.”

“No one would dare blame you for anything, Mumma.” A bubble of giddy laughter is rising in Anu.

“Don’t give me any backchat or I’ll tell your father. You have no consideration for your parents whatsoever.”

After evening prayers in the chapel, Bethany shows Anu to her room on the second storey of the mother house. “I’m next door. Knock if you need anything.”

Anu switches on the bedside lamp. Light coagulates, viscous and yellow under the shade, barely reaching her suitcase in the corner. She lifts it onto the bed.

But wait. First, the envelope from the lawyer. Anu pulls the straight-back wooden chair in the corner over to the bedside table and opens it.

Newspaper cuttings. Some in Hindi, some in English:

And one of those new colour newspaper photos, with a note clipped to it. A crowd of men brandish iron trishuls, the trident of Shiva. The caption:
Swami Rudransh followers march to the Babri Masjid
.

Call me
, says Mrs. Nadkarni’s note.

Anu tiptoes downstairs, back to the black phone. Like most people with home offices, she probably won’t mind a call at this hour. Besides, it sounded urgent. Anu gets through on the fourth try.

“Some things cannot be written down,” says Mrs. Nadkarni. “When I asked about organizations to which Vikas donates, you said the Bajrang Dal.”

“I did,” says Anu, and waits.

“The Bajrang Dal,” says Mrs. Nadkarni, “is the youth arm of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Both Hindutva organizations, you know. Affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”

Anu knows of the VHP and the RSS, hardline Hindu organizations founded by the upper-caste ideologues who spawned the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi in the 1940s. Radical nationalists, they run colleges and ashrams to promote the worship of Aryan Hindu gods, Aryan history, Aryan superiority. They admire what Hitler did to the Jews and Gypsies in Europe and would like to sweep away democracy and pluralism in the same way to create a Hindu-only India.

“And?” she says.

“You could accuse Vikas of participation in the crimes of the Bajrang Dal. Standard procedure to accuse the other side of something,” the lawyer says, “i.e., to fast-en up the process.”

“Just a minute,” says Anu.

She scans the clippings again. Could the charges be true?

Were she to accuse Vikas of participation in the crimes of Hindu jihadis it would hurt Vikas’s parents. And her daughter too.

She must begin from Christian forgiveness, no matter what her lawyer counsels. This is her first challenge. The events in these cuttings are past—the people who were killed cannot be brought back. “Let it be,” she tells Mrs. Nadkarni. “Membership in a group doesn’t mean Vikas is personally responsible. He may not know what the swami is doing with his money.”

“Up to you, Miss Lal.”

To Anu’s ears “Miss Lal” sounds strange—as if she is an unmarried girl again.

Back in her room, Anu stuffs the clippings back into the envelope and the envelope back in her suitcase. She unpacks a kaftan, takes off her clothes, and stands on the dhurrie beside her bed, clad only in her white bra and panties.

On her wedding night she had wanted her husband to see her like
this, just as she was, and hold her close. Wanted him to feel her shakti, know it could create and nurture more than children.

Stupid, stupid Anu. Expecting the impossible
.